Ask The Tech Guys 1999 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.

0:00:00 - Leo Laporte
It's time for Ask the Tech Guys. I'm Leo Laporte coming up, scott Wilkinson with the best TV buy of the year.

0:00:08 - Mikah Sargent
And I'm Mikah Sargent, and talk about a throwback. Someone actually asks us how can I get those ringtones I bought back on my iPhone. What Ringtones?

0:00:15 - Leo Laporte
you bought. Then Johnny Jet talks about the busiest travel day of the year. Is it too late to buy tickets? All that's coming up? Next I'll ask the tech guys.

Podcasts you love. From people you trust. This is Tweet.

This is Ask the Tech Guys with Mikah Sargent and Leo Laporte, episode 1999. Recorded Sunday, november 5th 2023. He's so fluffy I could die. Ask the Tech Guys is brought to you by Traceroute. Traceroute launches with an in-depth look at AI Love it, paint it or fear it. It's time for certain couples counseling for this relationship. Don't miss this two-part special and other episodes that find the humanity in the hardware On their new season, on Apple, spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.

And by Fastmail. Reclaim your privacy, boost productivity and make email yours with Fastmail. Try it now free for 30 days at fastmail.com/twit. And by Discourse, the online home for your community. Discourse makes it easy to have meaningful conversations and collaborate anytime, anywhere. Visit discourse.org/twit to get one month free and all self-serve plans. 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 Linux Show, the GizFiz and more. Go to twit.tv/clubtwit and thanks for your support. Well, hey, hey, hey. How are you today? It's good to see you. I'm Lee. I'm Leo Laporte. Who is this over here though?

0:02:15 - Mikah Sargent
Hello, I'm.

0:02:16 - Leo Laporte
Mikah Sargent, Are you? They always say dress for the job you want, not the one you've got. Are you looking?

0:02:21 - Mikah Sargent
to be a banker Either a banker or a casino boss.

0:02:25 - Leo Laporte
No, no, no, no, no, no. You're much too well-dressed for a pit boss. Oh well, thank you, I think you're more like high finance. Okay, especially with the English rounded collar. Oh, you know this, the red tie. Thank you, I think you're going all in?

0:02:38 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, I just the next it'll be cuff links. That's the addition. I need to make some pearl cuff links. You didn't even button your buttons, not on the left, because the watch is too big. The watch is too big. The right one's buttoned, the left one's lock. Something we need to complain?

0:02:48 - Leo Laporte
about the Apple Watch. Ultra is too damn big. You can't get your sleeves over. This shirt's got ample cuffs. They must have known oh, that's nice, but many of my shirts, yeah Well, I have.

0:02:59 - Mikah Sargent
What I do is end up butting above the watch, which really looks, I know, and I hate that, so that's why I just keep it on buttoned. Yeah, you're smart.

0:03:06 - Leo Laporte
So today we are, we've got Johnny Jet. Am I right, johnny?

0:03:11 - Mikah Sargent
Jett at one.

0:03:12 - Leo Laporte
At one.

0:03:13 - Mikah Sargent
Scott Wilkson at 12.

0:03:14 - Leo Laporte
Talking about some potential Black Friday deal and Santa Claus will be tuning in at in about half an hour. Indeed Black Friday deals, and I think Johnny Jet's going to be talking about Thanksgiving travel. It's the busiest travel day of the year. You don't want to be. Are you going to St Joe for Thanksgiving? No, no, I'm thinking, maybe of driving to Sonoma for Thanksgiving. That'll be my big trip over the hill. Today in the news, dood dood apple had an event on Tuesday. That's right, exactly, I know, it seems like it's so far in the past.

0:03:51 - Mikah Sargent
It seems so long ago.

0:03:52 - Leo Laporte
Exactly 30 minutes long. It was so short. It was so short, I think. In the after there's always like the bubble of round apples events they call it the reality distortion field where you're going, huh, must buy. You know, apples events are very well designed for your lizard mind, must buy all the things. But then the truth starts to emerge it's still too early. Reviewers will be embargoed, probably till Wednesday. That's typical, right, and although minds come on Tuesday, so maybe not, oh then no, you'll probably see on Monday.

0:04:32 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, maybe Tomorrow, I guess.

0:04:33 - Leo Laporte
Reviews will start coming out and then people will start getting them both reviewers and real people and benchmark him and so forth. Some benchmarks have already leaked into geek bench and one thing seems to be clear and it was even actually kind of clear from the numbers Apple showed is that the M's. So they've got a new M three chip which is based on a new three nanometer process we talk about. We used to talk about the process in terms of the size of the kind of the wires, and in the early days I mean, we were talking, you know, the wires were millimeters. And then what comes after millimeters? A mega meter, mini, what's the opposite of mega, one millionth of a meter. And then nano, which is a billionth of a meter, the three billionths. We're actually going to be going to the next level pretty soon, but we're no longer talking about the wires. It's kind of more like three nanometer equivalent. So but what? What? In a sense, what we're saying is you can get a lot more on the same size chip. In fact, apple's top of the line, m three, has nine billion transistors plus on that one little chip. So that's mind boggling, right, that's incredible billion with a B. But what we're also seeing is that there are differences even within the three nanometer process. The company that makes these chips for Apple, tsmc and Apple, by the way bought the entire production for the year, like we'll take it all. No one else can have any, so won't even be till next year You'll start to see three nanometer chips. There are three nanometer chips in the new iPhone 15 pros, so we already have like the first version of those chips and I was a little dismayed because the numbers for these new iPhones run about 10% faster than the previous year.

You'd expect I would expect with this new process, more, and in fact that's probably what we're going to see with the M three, the base model. Right. Here's the surprise the M three pro. Apple actually slowed down memory bandwidth. The benchmarks that are coming out of geek bench now show that the M three pro is about the same speed as an M two max. So it's a little faster than the M two pro, but but not a huge amount. It's a little disappointing and it turns out that the M three max is the one where all of the speed improvements are, and when Apple says scary fast, they're not really talking about the M three of the M three pro.

It's really the max. It's the max which is very pricey. Trust me, I know, I don't know. I don't know why I did this. I was in the lizard brain lizard brain. But I did buy a max, partly because I want to compare it, because my wife has a M two max, I have an M one max in my studio. So I really want, I want to get, do our own tests, to really see and think about benchmarks. I don't tell you anything about performance because you know exactly.

0:07:32 - Mikah Sargent
Yes, it's. It's a very specific set of tests that is all about getting those numbers versus. I'm not yeah, I'm not sitting there running these tests every day. How does it work when I'm actually trying to use it in different applications in different ways that matter? So to speak.

0:07:47 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, yeah, so an apple really is. The road is forking between Apple and Intel and AMD by extension, because they're really pushing this power envelope. They want to get more, more power for less juice. They want to get more speed for less power, however you want to phrase it, and they're really doing a lot more tweaking. For instance, they built in now a decoder for a new video format that you're going to start to see on Apple TV, but also on Netflix and other places. Not encoder, just decoder. They started to do things in addition to these chips is very interesting.

So I think the main reason I'm bringing this up is if you're going to buy a new MacBook Pro and you may be tempted, as I was your lizard brain may be all excited. It might be worth holding off until well, I'd like to see more benchmarks, more, and maybe even till you can go play with it. And certainly one good one thing about Apple to return policy is pretty good, so you might want to. I mean, I'm certainly willing to return mine if it's not maybe that's if you're, if you're going from M2.

0:08:55 - Mikah Sargent
If you're doing it for that, you probably don't want to go from M2.

0:08:57 - Leo Laporte
Right, m1, yes, maybe, and certainly from Intel.

0:09:01 - Mikah Sargent
Because otherwise I guess you're waiting until M4. You know what?

0:09:04 - Leo Laporte
you're waiting for. I guess what I'm saying is I was really excited about the potential for going to this new process. Up to now, it's been five nanometers that there was a. You know, the smaller you get it, the more normally in the way of things, there was a great book by a guy named George Gilder, called Microcosm, in which he makes this point several I think it was more than a decade ago that silicon is different from everything else, and everything else you get improvements by more, bigger, faster, better silicon.

The smaller it gets, the more efficient, the more speedy it gets. So it's a weird reverse of the way the normal world is. You know, a bigger hammer is a more powerful hammer, right, in this case, a smaller hammer is a more powerful hammer. So it's a very different world and I expected perhaps a bigger jump from M, from the five nanometer to the three nanometer, than we really got, although the M3 Max is pretty impressive. So we'll see, we shall see. Just I would say don't rush to the store like this fool Leo did. Are you ready for AI and your desktop? I, it depends, it depends. I have very mixed feelings. So Microsoft is now pushing out co-pilot to all Windows 11 users, enterprise first, but everybody will get it soon. They call it co-pilot, not to be confused with co-pilot.

0:10:31 - Mikah Sargent
For GitHub. Yeah, so that's one thing that Microsoft did was they unified the branding across all of it. So it's all co-pilot.

0:10:39 - Leo Laporte
But here's a story from CNN that maybe it's a little bit of jealousy talking how Microsoft is making a mess of the news after placing staff with AI. Now I don't use Microsoft's news MSN, except if you're on a Windows 11, that note it's hard to avoid that notification.

In the lower left. There that's Microsoft news, msn and Paul Therat on our Windows weekly show, and I have always complained about the quality. You know it's terrible. It's terrible A celebrity focus, but that was when you had humans running it. Now you're getting literally misinformation, disinformation in your MSN news. According to CNN. False claims, false claims that President Biden fell asleep during a moment of silence for victims of the Maui wildfire A conspiracy theory. The latest surge in COVID-19 cases is being orchestrated by the Democratic Party ahead of the election, and an obituary for an NBA player that described him as useless. These false and bizarre stories are being published by Microsoft on MSNcom and Microsoft Start and CNN. Again, this could be a little, you know, jealousy, but CNN says it's because of Microsoft's increased use of automation and AI over human editors to curate the homepage, which means the AI see, ai's don't know truth and fiction, right, they're just making.

0:12:10 - Mikah Sargent
So. That's why it is only misinformation and not disinformation, right, because disinformation is an active role in trying to make people believe something else.

0:12:20 - Leo Laporte
As recently as five years ago, Microsoft had 800 human editors working on the news, but in recent years they've laid off editors, some of whom were told they were being replaced by automation, which they understood to be AI. The Guardian newspaper, which I do trust.

But again word I'm reading now about what it did Accused the company of damaging the paper's reputation after publishing an article from the Guardian on its site. They have a licensing agreement with the Guardian. I don't know if I want to go into details, because it's pretty triggering. It's pretty awful, yeah, it is. But when the AI republished the Guardian story about a murder I guess, well, a questionable death yeah, they published right next to it a poll saying what do you think is the reason behind the woman's death? Was it murder, accident or suicide? What do you?

0:13:19 - Mikah Sargent
think kids and because it was republished from the Guardian, folks might have thought that the Guardian would have had that poll as part of the the Guardian was furious.

0:13:30 - Leo Laporte
They said it was a deeply concerning application of the company's AI technology. Demanded Microsoft take full responsibility. Quote Not only is this a sort of application potentially distressing for the family of the individual, it's also deeply damaging to the Guardian's hard-won reputation for trusted, sensitive journalism and to the reputation of the individual journalists. I hope we're not going to see more of this. That's awful, and I have to say now, correct me if I'm wrong, okay, I, because I read Twitter, which is a big mistake, but it's full of people saying AI is changing the world. There's a company called Runway that has just improved its AI video generation and the clips I've seen are like I'll show you some mind-boggling, but it's still to me kind of a toy, like how many times do you want to ask it to tell you a story, like grandma used to tell you about Windows serial number? I mean, it feels like a toy, yeah.

0:14:28 - Mikah Sargent
No, that's the thing. I think it is a toy that has the promise of being a tool, and so, earlier, whenever you asked me on if I wanted AI in my system, essentially, I do think that if I was working on something and I realized, oh my goodness, I do this every day, five days a week, and I could automate this and I don't currently have the skills to create the necessary script that could do this If I could say to the AI hey, can we automate this task that I do every single day? And it's like yeah, here I've popped out a shortcut you can use on your Mac, because I'm built into the system. Have you done that? No, because it's not built in. I mean, that's what I'm saying.

If that was what it was able to do when it could be used as a tool like that, that is where I have found it. What I have done in the past, though, is had it generate some Python that I was able to use as part of a script that did help me, and so, when it comes to the tool use, yes, I like the idea of that, but you're right, a lot of this is not that. It is playing around making funny things and being silly, and yeah, it's just an expensive toy.

0:15:43 - Leo Laporte
Veneto. Here's some video. So Runway is like Dolly or any other AI you give it a text prompt and it generates video. This is AI generated video from a text prompt, and I think you'd be hard pressed to say oh yeah, that's AI generated. That's fake. By the way, it's a chimp looking at a bird.

0:16:08 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, and some of these birds look really.

0:16:10 - Leo Laporte
They're very realistic. Here's a penguin on the ocean. There's a polar bear in the snow. These are all fake and then not only generated from. They're not generated from videos or images, they're generated from text. That's wild. So this is the latest version of Runway, so there's no question it can do good stuff. Should we look at a human? Because humans are hard to do, but maybe not. That's good to say. So we're going to enter the era of deep fakes, aren't we Of stuff where, in fact, there was a high school where the kids were getting in trouble because they were making AI generated nudies?

0:16:52 - Mikah Sargent
of their classmates. Yeah, this was my story of the week on Tech News Weekly on Thursday, unfortunately. So there was a school in New Jersey and some young women had gone into school for the day and they saw the boys kind of whispering amongst one another, chatting, and finally one of the girls was able to get one of the boys to reveal what was going on, and a young man had shared in a group chat photos of the young women's real faces attached to AI generated nude bodies, and it really has become a large conversation about how the legal aspect needs to catch up with where AI is right now and how there's a lot going on in trying to understand. How do you even pursue things like this? What does this content? Is this CSAM, is it not? It's a whole mess.

0:17:46 - Leo Laporte
By the way, that's been another problem with CSAM, which is child sexual abuse material. It's Child porn, it's the new name for child porn. It has also problematic because they have, as you know, the National Center for Missing and Exploded Children has hashes they've generated for this child porn so they can quickly identify it just by matching a hash, without actually looking at the image or distributing the image. But the problem is now people are taking those images and using AI to modify them or creating new images with AI, and they're not in the Nick Mc database because there's no hash for them. It's just a mess.

0:18:22 - Mikah Sargent
It is, and that's the thing the people may be going. Okay, but you even type in something like the word gun in Adobe's Firefly and it won't generate. And you use open AI or Dolly, it doesn't generate. That's because there are lots of open source tools out there that people are basically tying to their tools that are doing this. They're called, you know, body swap or face swap or undress. These tools are out there and they don't have the guardrails.

0:18:51 - Leo Laporte
Exactly, and they're using them on their phones.

There's a lot of effort to get around guardrails and we've seen that happen, also that these guardrails are not perfect. This week there were two declarations that we should be more careful with AI One from the president and executive order setting out, I think, some fairly concrete things that companies need to do they need to invest in safety and so forth, and another from Bletchley Park, which is where, of course, the Enigma machine was cracked in World War II. It's where Alan Turing did his work, and there was a meeting there of governments from all over Europe and they made a similar declaration that well, we got to pay attention to safety, but you know, it's all moving so fast. Yeah, but that's the funny thing is, on the one hand, the stuff you're getting on the desktop, as Microsoft Copilot, is a toy, and even I mean some of this is a toy, but there's, I mean, like the video- I'm laughing because it's reminding me of Toy Story, where you are a toy, you're a toy.

And yet the opportunity for mischief is great.

0:19:57 - Mikah Sargent
Yes, which? Frankly, what is a toy but an object of mischief?

0:20:02 - Leo Laporte
Oh wow, I never thought of it that way, sort of.

0:20:05 - Mikah Sargent
It goes hand in hand, yeah, but that's a good point.

0:20:08 - Leo Laporte
Anyway, I think it's going to be very. We live in interesting times. That's all I can say. I mean, we're going to be starting to use AI for show notes and things.

0:20:16 - Mikah Sargent
And that's a great job. Yeah, it's a tool when it comes to that.

0:20:19 - Leo Laporte
We use we're going to use AI for text transcriptions of our shows.

0:20:23 - Mikah Sargent
Very, useful and we're replacing both Leo and myself with AI versions of ourselves.

0:20:28 - Leo Laporte
Or have we already? Oh, I'll tell you what you'll know when we start saying you know this AI stuff is great.

0:20:34 - Mikah Sargent
I'm very excited. There you go.

0:20:35 - Leo Laporte
I'm very excited about what AI can do today and, in fact, we really should welcome our AI overlords. 888-888-724-2884 is the phone number. If you want to call us that's good during the live show, which is two to five. Oh, by the way, happy standard time Two to five PM Eastern. We are now on standard time in the US.

0:21:02 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, there you go.

0:21:03 - Leo Laporte
But I'm not going to go off on that.

0:21:05 - Mikah Sargent
You can also call us during the week at that number and leave a voicemail, which we love having those as well. There are other ways to get in touch with us. One is by opening up your browser on your phone or, if you choose, your computer, going to calltwittv. That will connect you to our zoom call, where you'll hang out and have the opportunity to ask a question live on the air. We do ask that, if you join the zoom call, that you raise up your hand. There is a button in zoom that says raise hand, because we won't call on you Unless you have that, mr Goddard, mr Goddard, mr.

Goddard I don't even know what the audience is do you ever watch that show?

No, I know that through the office, because Michael makes references to it. I guess it predates you. So, yes, raise your virtual hand there, because some people just like to hang out in the zoom and watch from there, so that could be that as well. And then you can also get in touch with us via email, at ATG, at twittv you can attach video or audio to that if you choose, but we also take text-based questions there as well. So we'd love to hear from you.

0:22:09 - Leo Laporte
I am very excited to get to our first calls. And don't forget coming up in just a little bit, Scott Wilkinson with his Black Friday deals.

0:22:16 - Mikah Sargent
I can't believe how is it Black Friday already, just zooming by how is that. Oh my God. Well, it's not already, but it's a week from Friday. Right Stop, it is not a week from Friday. Best Buy has already started the Black. Friday deals. It's two weeks from Friday. Okay, Wait, that's so conf yeah, yeah.

0:22:34 - Leo Laporte
It's two weeks, friday, right? Okay, whew, let's take a break and then we will come back with your calls. First calls you guys talk amongst yourself, figure out who our first caller will be, but I know who our first advertiser is the great folks at TraceRoute. Ai continues to be integrated right into every facet of our lives. You're just talking about this. It's now time for us all to start questioning. This could not be a more timely ad.

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In every episode of TraceRoute, a team of technologists seeks to untangle the complex question of who shapes the internet. Now you may have listened. If you haven't go back and listen to season one and two, because they were all about getting a solid understanding of the inner workings of technology and, at the same time, revealing the human element behind it. But now they've got a new season just coming out and a two-parter to begin. It all about AI. But season three will tackle not just AI questions, but how can we use technology to preserve the earth? Who influences the technology that's made? What happened to the flying cars we were promised? Still waiting, still waiting.

Listen and follow the new season of trace route. It started just a couple of days ago, november 2nd, on Apple. Spot a fire wherever you get your podcast, check out trace route. Now we are thrilled to be able to support, uh, another podcast through our podcast podcasts. Good, they're good podcast. Good, let's uh, let's take the first call of the day. John Ashley just went back in the hall to turn on the lights. Sorry, I had to do my primary job function. His primary function is to keep this, so if you ever see this disc go out, it's cause there's nobody in the hall.

0:24:57 - Mikah Sargent
Exactly, no one's walking around at the we're all in the studio.

0:25:01 - Leo Laporte
Every single person in this building is right here right now. Okay.

0:25:05 - Mikah Sargent
So the first person I want to call they've named themselves in the zoom call uh, leo's last pass photographer.

0:25:12 - Leo Laporte
I know who that is. I think let's go right to it. Um, leo's last pass photographer. He's talking about an event we did Steve Gibson and I did in Boston and uh, and as it turned out, the it used to be uh, we'd go to these uh events and afterwards we'd meet and greet people and maybe sign a few autographs or give out some chachis. Every single body, every single person and there was a long line to do it Wanted a selfie and I was getting tired of this home, not my arm. So, my good friend here, what's your name? I forgot Richard, mark, mark, that's what it's, mark Mark, my good friend here, mark, was there and said I'll do it and he became our last pass. Oh, that's so nice.

0:25:55 - Caller
So I'll always think of Mark as three or four hours Felt like it. No, seriously, the line was out the door and I had to keep you moving, cause you're it. Anybody one needs to know. Is Leo really this nice? Yes, For that three or four hours. He's a sweetheart. I like Mike because he's like sweetheart Leo Jr, I mean.

0:26:18 - Leo Laporte
I wouldn't say nice, I would say verbose. But okay, you know, you get the idea.

0:26:23 - Caller
No, you, you were nice, you were sweet, you were interested in everybody who talked to you.

0:26:27 - Leo Laporte
You genuinely you know I love, I love our community. I I, I sincerely do. I've been very fortunate over the last 20 years to really develop a relationship 25 years now since tech TV started with some very nice people, people like myself, through nerds and I liked that. I liked the geeks. Mark you're, are you in Boston area? Where are you calling from? No, my brother lives in Boston.

0:26:53 - Caller
I happened to be visiting him that week and when you said you were there, I grabbed his card and, yeah, just drove down there.

0:27:01 - Leo Laporte
Did your Mike make? Did your wife make you sit in the wire closet, or is just just your? No, no, no no, no, I.

0:27:08 - Caller
What this is is. This used to be the patio, so what it is is like this is my I've got, like it's your monitor, I got it. Yeah, and it's my man cave.

0:27:18 - Mikah Sargent
Like if you go, yeah, if you go this way, that's back out, and so.

0:27:24 - Caller
So the thing is is that it's just a little hole in in the area. There's no actual walls or anything, nice, and so that's just where I am, and so I've got my headset for the computer and I've got my headset for my phone. Nice, do you ever leave your your man cave, mark?

0:27:39 - Leo Laporte
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, no, no, all the time.

0:27:42 - Caller
I just, I was just out from a walk before they started, and so it's just I'm the one that said you know, I listened to everything three times speed. So generally I don't listen to the live cause. You have more time, three X speed, you have more time and we sound probably now.

0:27:56 - Leo Laporte
We sound kind of drunk and slow. So what if we talk like this? Does that make it really hard for us to read?

0:28:00 - Mikah Sargent
Understand what we're trying to say. No, in fact, it's easier. No, no, in fact, if you get an idea.

0:28:05 - Caller
This if I go here, I can't even you're going to love this. This is. These are just some of the list of my podcasts that I listen to.

0:28:17 - Mikah Sargent
Holy moly, yeah, to get through all of that, yeah, yeah, and so I don't listen to all of it anymore.

0:28:20 - Caller
But you, your brain is good, your brain is good, yeah, and you feel like you're getting all the content.

0:28:28 - Caller
If you, if you listen to three, I know most of our audience actually listens at a higher speed.

0:28:31 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, more than one. It drives me crazy, cause Lisa listens to all our books at one and a half or two X. Me too, not too X. She'll turn them on the speakers. We can listen together.

0:28:39 - Mikah Sargent
It's like can you slow that down?

0:28:42 - Leo Laporte
I said, no, I can't, it's so slow. Calm. Yeah, I listened to calm and I have to keep re listening because my brain just zones out it's too slow.

0:28:48 - Caller
Yeah, Calm, so you're supposed to. By the way, it's sad those boys were were passing that stuff around, cause I can't imagine my son doing that. Um, but you know how the teenage mind is.

0:28:59 - Leo Laporte
they don't have impulse control and they're not really thinking about how the girls might feel about it and I you know who I really feel bad for is those poor girls, yep, they so many of them.

0:29:08 - Mikah Sargent
Uh, you know removed their social media entirely. There were a couple who said look, we feel scared going to school because we never thought that someone else would do this. You know you're going to school. Yeah, it's just, it was an awful situation, but I don't blame the boys so much.

0:29:24 - Leo Laporte
Cause that they're. That's what teenage boys are. They're just, they're lumps of of. Uh, we really, it's the parents that. Well, I don't even know if the I don't know if.

0:29:34 - Mikah Sargent
I don't know how you blame anybody. It's just maybe blame AI.

0:29:37 - Leo Laporte
Well, I don't know. No, it's. It's never the tool. It's not the tool. It's not the tool.

0:29:42 - Mikah Sargent
Well, I don't know.

0:29:43 - Caller
No, it's, it's never the tool. It's you need to have empathy for other people. Yeah, but it's, it's, it's just that simple.

0:29:52 - Leo Laporte
Your mom, your, wife, your daughter, I agree with these.

0:29:55 - Caller
Think about it.

0:29:56 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, I agree.

0:29:57 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, I yeah, because you know okay. Yeah, let's not continue to. How can we help you? Yeah?

0:30:02 - Caller
But okay, so I have, this is my little transporter and the poor little whoop. There are we, my little transporter, oh my.

0:30:10 - Leo Laporte
God, I haven't seen one of those in years.

0:30:12 - Caller
Yeah, I've got the puck over in that bay over there and so, but it just, like last month, stopped working. So I need to get something new and I just I don't want something like draw box, just cause I like my files to myself. So what I'm looking for is is there's sync I guess there's sync thing, and then there's the um, synologies, that kind of stuff.

0:30:34 - Leo Laporte
So the transporter was basically a, a nas with that, a dry Kind of sort of that you would plug drives into and it would connect up right or did have a drive in it.

0:30:47 - Caller
Oh, you, the other one I have. There's a sink and a puck. The sink has a little free, a two and a half inch drive in it, Right. And it's kind of curved up like that and then there's the puck which just you attach whatever drive you want to.

0:30:59 - Leo Laporte
I used to have a transporter. I gave up on that a long time ago. It, uh, I think what you really want ideally is a nas and network attached storage expensive, however, but the idea is these are, can these are? They look like just drive containers. They can have two, sometimes they have four or five. I've I tend to buy five drive nases, cause then you have redundancy, you can run them in RAID and if one drive dies you you literally hot swap it out and put in a new one.

Um, and the advantage of those is they really are computers. They have processors, ram storage, their own storage, plus these many, many drives, and you put them, you plug them into the network, just like the transporter. You plug them in the network and now every computer can use them. They're, they're great for backup. Um, I actually use my nas with sink thing. So sink thing is more about keeping all your machines in sync, right, but if, if you're nas or even if you're transported, if you're, if you have a backup drive that is also attached to sink thing, that's why it needs a computer. That's why nas is a good choice. It will also back it up and I have my sink thing running on my Synology nas and and by the way, it's available, for the Synology nas is a third party extension. You can add it and I have it in in read only mode so it takes all the changes without ever making changes to anything else.

So it's a backup, right? That's what a backup is Everything you've ever done, with no deletions. Sync thing can be set to delete as well as to not delete. So uh, for for, I've seen thing. So when I have a new computer I will put sync thing on it and I will say bat, you know, I will say, uh, here's another sink thing, and whenever it says it's got a folder for you accept it. And so I accept the documents, I accept the photos. I have a, a sync folder that has legal documents and stuff. And the nice thing about sync thing is not putting it in the cloud. So I can put private stuff in my sync folder and so I let it sync that and then I let it back up to the nas and none of that ever touches the cloud. So that's a nice way to go. What do you do?

0:33:09 - Mikah Sargent
I also use network attached storage. I don't use sync thing. Most of my uh sort of backing up is happening via time machine and then I do quite literally manual uh movements of of things that I have stored locally that I want to go on to my network attached storage, just because it's not for me, it's not everything on my system that I want there. So, yeah, it's all manual. I uh I don't do the full process of of those backups.

0:33:37 - Leo Laporte
Lots of ways to skin this fish, but uh.

0:33:41 - Caller
One question, yeah, does sync thing cause? The whole point of the uh transporter was my mom does my accounting, um, and so she, uh, she had transporter software and her like computer in her house. The kids were off to college and so they could have their stuff that they wanted to go back and forth between their desktops here and their college laptops, and so I just want to make sure that sync thing will sync things outside this network. Yes, no problem.

0:34:08 - Leo Laporte
In fact that's the thing. I have sync thing running on computers here, and when I set up a new computer here I attach it. Now it's a little complicated to get it to, to start talking to it, but it does network address translation so it's able to forward it around. It does it securely. It's worth reading about sync thing. Sync thing is free and open source and uh, and everything is encrypted in transit so you don't have to worry about somebody spying on that transit. And then there's a very clever, I think, authentication system that you use so that both ends have to say yeah, we agree, we're going to, we're going to send data back and forth. So the initial setup for instance, if your kids are going off to college, set it up in your network, say, sync this, sync this, the only trick with sync thing. And there's some good videos that I would recommend or read the documentation. But there's an excellent video on it, uh, that you'll find on YouTube. Uh, I'll put a link in the show notes to it.

The real key is have one kind of master computer, not the Synology, but one. For instance, let's say this is the master and I'm going to put sync thing on. In fact, you know what I should do is I should, I should start, I should set up sync thing, set up the dot, the folders that you want to synchronize on here. Then all you do from then on is introduce the next computer to this computer. This computer will say oh hi, welcome, I would like to share documents. I would like to share these folders with you. You decide you don't have to share them all, so you could have Peter's folder for his schoolwork I would like to share, you know, mark's, peter's and Sammy's folder. And then Peter on his computer says I don't want Mark and Sammy's folder, but I do want Peter's folder, and from then on they'll be synchronizing with one another. Uh, and, and so that's.

The key is not to set up new folders on each machine, but instead have a master machine that has all the folders and have then it introduce itself to each machine. So the machine decides which of those master list of folders it wants to accept. Now, if you did want to add a folder from another machine to the master, you could do that in reverse. The trick is not to have two documents folders with different GUIDs, because then you're going to have two document folders on each machine. You don't want that. So that's a little confusing, I know, but the video explains it pretty well. I love sync thing and Steve Gibson uses it too. I use it religiously. I think it is the best thing ever, especially because it's not backup unless you set up a NAS or or you could do it with some other thing. But you set up one machine to be the, the machine that keeps every change ever made and never deletes anything. Then it's a real backup. I think time machine.

0:36:54 - Caller
Yeah, it's your bet, and that's what a NAS is. No, I've got a backup machine.

0:36:58 - Leo Laporte
Okay, well, that might be kind of like a NAS. So the transformer is essentially a NAS. It makes it a little easier. Just like your NAS, you could share it with your mom. I can see my NAS from here, in fact mine. I have a duplicate NAS here that sees the NAS at home and they make sure they're in sync. Oh nice, and that's my offsite backup, so I don't have to ever store anything in the cloud. Everything is stored in a storage that I own, either here or at home.

0:37:26 - Caller
You could do that with your mom. One last question about your subscription yeah. Because I've had a like, one of the podcasts is Law of Self-Defense and I pay for that and I have problems sometimes getting these subscriptions to work. So maybe you should put it this is how it works, kind of this is how easy it is because you talk about it, but there's nothing like seeing a video that says you know this is what you get.

0:37:47 - Leo Laporte
If only we had a video that would explain how it all works.

0:37:52 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, I almost want us to have a tweettv slash, a tweettv slash club Twitter video or something, so that we can easily link to it.

0:38:01 - Leo Laporte
But basically we we saw that this guy here made a video.

0:38:05 - Mikah Sargent
And so we did make a video.

0:38:07 - Leo Laporte
Where is it?

0:38:08 - Mikah Sargent
So it's in the FAQ, if you head to.

0:38:10 - Leo Laporte
The best thing to do is go to Twittertv slash club Twitter. Everything is there, right? A Twittertv slash club Twitter.

0:38:16 - Mikah Sargent
Yep and then under the accessing club Twitter, you can see there is a video where. Where is that? Oh, look on the right and where it says FAQ for frequently asked questions down at the bottom.

0:38:31 - Leo Laporte
So maybe we made to make this more prominent.

Just yeah, closer to the beginning of the page so right there under manager membership, frequently asked questions and in the FAQ there's a video somewhere. No one, or no one, can find it. There it is. See, it's the second video there. Yeah, accessing your club Twitter account. So, yes, we do. Yeah, you know, look the page, the page. Yeah, it would help. Every time I say subscribe, I say Twitter TV, slash, club Twitter. That's the page. And then, if you get confused, the FAQ and Ant Pruitt is our club manager, is very good at helping people to. He's been really he is.

0:39:06 - Mikah Sargent
In fact, I know he's taken a number of calls with some of our members to help walk them through different processes, so it is something that we are very cognizant of that it is not the easiest thing, because of the way that all of these different systems talk to one another.

0:39:23 - Leo Laporte
So, yeah, we do our best. Mike, you're saying put the video at the top of the page. Well, but you haven't joined the club yet, so I didn't want to put it at the top of the page. Maybe it should be with the other video at the bottom, I don't know. We'll figure it out. We should make it more prominent. Okay, and we're using a Patreon company called memberful for this, so memberful handles the whole thing. When you subscribe, memberful handles the payment. You can use, I think, stripe to do it.

Yeah, I mean so many other variety of payment methods credit cards. Obviously, they handle that. We will then send you an email. There'll be a page that's dedicated to you with all of your feeds on it. We try to make it as easy as possible, and I think once you get it set up, it's not so complicated.

The thing that most people seem to have the most difficulty with is not getting the feeds, but the discord, and so the one thing you need to know and you explain this in the video is set up a discord account. First, you need to have your own personal discord account, and then you'll get an invite to join our server. So the way discord works is you can be a member of many different servers. So you need a discord account. That's your own account it's not related to your club Twitter account and then you'll get an invite to join the club Twitter server. Once you're in there, you're going to be participating in the best darn social club ever.

I love our club Twitter group. So you see, if you look at the my discord, I'm a member of many other servers. Here's the power on server for the mid journey server log seek. Oh, that was full journey, mid journey. Here's the podcasting server. Here's a list server, so ours is this one of the club Twitter logo, the animated club Twitter logo, and so that's just one of many servers. The one thing that mostly confuses people is you have to have a discord account first, and then you can join the club Twitter server.

0:41:16 - Caller
And I can use that through just real quick, Since probably people are listening. I can use that through pocket casts not discord, but you can listen to discord.

0:41:24 - Mikah Sargent
No, no, no, no, no no no yeah, the podcast, oh yeah, most of our audience listens in pocket casts I love.

0:41:29 - Leo Laporte
I'm just like you. I should show you my pocket casts. It's the same long list of shows that I love. Yeah, okay, pocket cast is great. We totally support pocket casts, along with the other big ones. We support everything. You're going to get a RSS feed that will work anywhere, yep. The only thing that's weird is that the ad free versions. Everybody has their own distinct RSS feed and that's kind of to keep you from giving it to everybody.

0:41:55 - Mikah Sargent
Yes, that's exactly what it's for. That way, if you're sharing it with other people, we know who's sharing it.

0:42:00 - Leo Laporte
We know who's sharing it. Yeah, and that wasn't something we instituted. That's just how members of the workforce, but it makes a lot of sense. Hey, mark, it's a pleasure to reconnect. Thanks for calling in, yep, have a great day.

0:42:12 - Caller
Talk to you later, take care.

0:42:13 - Leo Laporte
All right, you too Don't fall into the wires. No there, oh he did. He fell in, oh gosh. Hey, I think I would take a break here, but I think really we should get right to Scott Wilkins, and don't you think our home theater geek? He is, of course, in the club the home theater geeks podcast. He is an expert on audio and video AV systems. In fact, I hope you watch the most recent podcasts because they had the shoot out which, which picked the best TV for 2024. So that's fun. But let's say say hi to Scott. There's Scott.

0:42:50 - Mikah Sargent
Hello Scott.

0:42:51 - Leo Laporte
And his home in Santa Cruz California.

0:42:55 - Scott Wilkinson
I don't notice.

0:42:56 - Leo Laporte
I'm wearing my UC Santa Cruz nails, go, go up and have slugs.

0:43:01 - Mikah Sargent
We have a family member who just started at UC Santa Cruz. Yeah, oh, yeah, oh fantastic.

0:43:09 - Leo Laporte
My father was a professor there for years and a provost. Oh yeah, in fact, when we moved to California when I was 15, we lived in what was college. No, it was Kresge. We lived in the, in the, in the married student housing at Kresge, which is one of the colleges, and my sister and I had our own apartment. Wow, yeah, yeah, that's a fan. That is so cool. Anyway, hello, banana slugs, hey.

0:43:36 - Mikah Sargent
Mr Tuba himself.

0:43:38 - Leo Laporte
So everybody should listen to the last home theater geeks, but just top line it. What is the best TV?

0:43:46 - Scott Wilkinson
The best TV, the king of TVs, as they call it, is the Sony a 95 L, the Q D OLED, quantum dot OLED. And I'm not surprised. No one was surprised.

0:44:00 - Leo Laporte
This was the second year in a row for the Sony, wasn't it?

0:44:02 - Scott Wilkinson
Correct, correct. And it's its second generation and, of course, it improved.

0:44:08 - Leo Laporte
I saw I have the Samsung Q D OLED and I'm very happy with the brightness.

0:44:14 - Scott Wilkinson
Really really good. Yeah, the only caveat on that one is that Samsung does not support Dolby vision HDR Right, so if that's important to you, it's something to think about. But in terms of performance, samsung and Sony are very close, and maybe they were very close in the shootout as well.

0:44:36 - Leo Laporte
What happened to LG? They used to win every year with their OLED Well and they.

0:44:42 - Scott Wilkinson
now I can't have to look up the results, but certainly the LG OLED came in near the top as well, and it won every year until Q D OLED became available. Yeah, that's, that's simply a better technology. I mean it is better than OLED and OLED's great. Don't get me wrong.

0:45:02 - Leo Laporte
I still. You know we were watching oh, I can't remember we were watching something that was in the 4K HDR. Of course, that's what you want. And I have to say, while we have the Q D OLED in the living room, the 77 inch Samsung right, it still looks great to go in the bedroom and watch the LG Absolutely.

0:45:19 - Scott Wilkinson
Absolutely it's beautiful the. Q D OLED is brighter.

0:45:23 - Leo Laporte
That's the biggest difference. That's why it's in the living room Right, exactly.

0:45:27 - Scott Wilkinson
Exactly Quantum dots can get really bright.

0:45:31 - Leo Laporte
So that's not why we brought you here today. We brought you here today for your annual Black Friday roundup. Did you do the spreadsheet again?

0:45:41 - Scott Wilkinson
I Did a variation of it. It's it's a little too early to get the real black. Yes right, yeah even though Black.

Friday has become black November, right, you know. So there are a lot of black Friday sales starting now, but I didn't take the time to actually do the huge long spreadsheet. What I did do and I and I sent to you and I hope you can put this in the show notes is my recommendations for the TV lines from each of the major manufacturers, and if you can find a really good Black Friday deal on any of these lines, then you're gonna have a superb TV. It's an hour, the black Friday.

Friday deals. You know they. They will lure you in with super cheap prices on super cheap TVs, but I always recommend that you spend a little more to get a Level of performance that's going to be really, really good for years to come often the black Friday deals are Last years or, in this case, this year's model there that exactly, exactly. Yes, because come January.

0:46:55 - Leo Laporte
Yes you're gonna see the 2024 models exactly although they won't be available till spring, you know later yeah the Sony QTO led wasn't available until last month.

0:47:07 - Scott Wilkinson
Oh, wow, so the second generation, the new one, the a95l. So you know, sometimes they're kind of delayed, but and I don't expect to see a huge discount in black November For the a95l, this top of the line, flagship Sony TV, that's the king of TVs. But there are others within the Sony lineup and Samsung and Hisense and LG, tcl and Visio, and I listed those lines in my spreadsheet this year, yeah, which has some general notes about. You know, the, the QTO leads are the best TVs you can buy today. Period end of story. They just are so.

0:47:55 - Leo Laporte
And so I mean probably the ones you've put in this spreadsheet. Like we just talked about, the QTO leads will not be majorly discounted, probably not Friday probably not.

0:48:10 - Scott Wilkinson
And yet the LG OLEDs, many of them probably will be.

0:48:14 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, and I think those by the way, that's not those are to me, because I'm like watching that in a darkened room a little bit closer Fantastic, just as good. Yeah, I don't think the yeah, I mean the QTO led has advantages. But is the color accuracy is good on this? On the LG's yes, colors it's good if you're not seeing as huge a difference in the darks and the lights, correct that dynamic.

0:48:41 - Scott Wilkinson
Well, I wouldn't say that. I necessarily say that the OLED, the regular OLED, does have almost infinite contrast, oh, as does the QTO.

0:48:49 - Leo Laporte
Okay, it's the number of it's, the number of nits for the very brightest stuff is higher. On QTO, let correct current. If you're in a darkened room that could blind you.

0:49:02 - Scott Wilkinson
You don't need all those.

0:49:05 - Leo Laporte
So if you're able to darken the room, then the LG's would be just fine just fine, completely fine, great, in fact.

0:49:12 - Scott Wilkinson
I would be thrilled, super happy with that.

0:49:15 - Leo Laporte
I, yeah, I feel spoiled now with With a good OLED TV or the QTO led, I'm watching sports looks better. Mmm movies are gorgeous, oh yeah everything is just. Better. It's better than the theater, practically. I can't wait. I saw Oppenheimer on IMAX. I can't wait to see what it looks like at home on a really good screen. It won't be a big.

0:49:41 - Scott Wilkinson
It won't be. It Won't be as big, that's won't. It won't. Shift aspect ratio. Do you remember that, or did you not notice?

0:49:50 - Leo Laporte
There was a little bit of that. It always made sense in context because it happened when we went back in time. Yes, so In a way it was a signal Okay, this is, this is present, this is present day, this is passes. They also had a day. They also had black and white IMAX. They made a special film just for Christopher Nolan so that he could shoot black and white because I max doesn't have a black and white film and the black and white was gorgeous.

I can't wait to see that. Oh, do well, let's do well with black and white. Oh sure, yeah, I thought so because I was watching Casablanca the other night and they've got a remastered version of Casablanca that supposedly HDR.

0:50:29 - Scott Wilkinson
I guess it could be and it could be it was shot on film originally. You can scan that in HDR, sure, and it looked so rich.

0:50:37 - Leo Laporte
the I when, when black and white is well shot, you know an Ansel Adams still, or the film noir, a movie, yeah, it looks so good.

0:50:46 - Scott Wilkinson
I agree.

0:50:48 - Leo Laporte
The other thing Lisa and I noticed we were watching Band of Brothers was just shot on film, and then it's sequel Pacific, because the air war is coming out, the third of the three, and Lisa and I noticed how much we like film, even on an OLED.

0:51:02 - Scott Wilkinson
You know, a lot of people feel the same way, a lot of people do, and there's very few people shooting on film anymore.

0:51:10 - Leo Laporte
But Band of Brothers, which is hugely emotional, but it's also an action movie, right, it's mm-hmm, but the emotion, see, I don't know why, maybe because it's 24 frames, or I just it. Really it isn't 24 frames, I guess because it's a TV. Yeah, well, it can be yeah, but it's not a most movies.

0:51:29 - Scott Wilkinson
I'm a movie good TVs can can show 24 frames at 24 frame?

0:51:32 - Leo Laporte
I don't think they. I mean they were shooting it for HBO, for television, so I doubt.

0:51:37 - Scott Wilkinson
Well, I'm 24 frames well, but if they shot it on film, they it probably was shot at 20, maybe.

0:51:43 - Leo Laporte
There is. Maybe there's a dreaminess or something that you get there is just there's. There's some motion blur, for example, which it somehow hits you harder in the, in the heart you know this is very interesting that you say this, because you're not the only one.

0:52:00 - Scott Wilkinson
A lot of people say that the the quality of cinema, of Shooting on film some people call it a filmic effect Really is something. It has greater emotional impact, for example. You know, I I haven't seen that personally, I haven't experienced that personally, but I fully believe that you had. You did experience it and it's important.

0:52:28 - Leo Laporte
Well, and it's interesting because you and I have had these conversations, I'm kind of aware of it. But Lisa, completely independently, said this was shot on film, wasn't it? And I said, yes, it was. I can really tell Interesting, yeah, and you see the grain. I mean, I mean you could tell you see the grain, but I don't think that's what she's talking about. She prefers it no, and I think it's the emotion.

0:52:52 - Scott Wilkinson
Yeah, yeah.

0:52:55 - Mikah Sargent
Hi I actually think it comes down to the filmmakers who choose to shoot on film.

0:52:59 - Leo Laporte
Well, and this is Spielberg and Hanks, right, nobody loves film more than Spielberg.

0:53:03 - Scott Wilkinson
So it's like, it's like Right that really make it that good.

0:53:07 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, oh, absolutely. But I think even some older movies, like Casablanca, because it's shot on film, that richness of the black and white again, though, casablanca is like a classic yeah it's and by a great filmmaker, right? So, yeah, well, that's right, benito, right? I mean, I could shoot film and it wouldn't look great.

0:53:30 - Scott Wilkinson
Right, exactly, well, so, yeah, so I'm getting back to black November. If you can afford an OLED and there's one on a good deal I would say, get it. If not, lcd TVs are still, generally speaking, less expensive than OLEDs, and so that's what this list really is that I sent you. It's a list of the LCD based TVs that I consider the the higher quality, and so you know, if you want to save a little more than an OLED, you you could get one of these and and you'd be very happy and and and so if you're very price sensitive, mm-hmm, do you think you can get a black Friday deal like a $800 TV?

0:54:16 - Leo Laporte
that's still very, very good.

0:54:19 - Scott Wilkinson
Probably so, wouldn't be very large. Again, one of these TVs in a 55 or 65 inch you could probably, on in the black Friday marketplace, get it for a thousand or less yeah.

0:54:33 - Leo Laporte
We're the reason we don't they had. Those numbers are basically not out yet and you're not going to be on again for another month.

0:54:40 - Scott Wilkinson
By then we'll be talking about, which is why I wanted to do this.

0:54:45 - Leo Laporte
I don't know, maybe we have to get you back closer to a black Friday. Yeah, we could. I'd be happy to do that. I guess that would be two weeks from now. I would be two weeks, yeah, all right. Well, man, let's get a little little over a little. I don't look. Scott, you're probably feeling some relief that you net don't have to prepare that 80 page, do you still? Yeah, that's a lot of work.

0:55:06 - Scott Wilkinson
I'm sure it's a lot of work, you know, but people, I think people Find it valuable.

0:55:12 - Leo Laporte
Are you gonna do it for this show for your home theater geeks? Hadn't thought about that. You know you're gonna probably cover this on home theater geeks actually, yeah, probably so. So let's just say that this is a chance to promote the club. If you're not a member of the club, home theater geeks, it's in club twit Every. Is it Thursday, scott? When do you do that?

0:55:32 - Scott Wilkinson
Thursday we post Thursdays at four. Okay, we normally record four or five episodes at once, so you have you already recorded. Next, I'm a. I'm afraid I have recorded most of this month already. Oh, okay, so we'll never mind.

0:55:48 - Mikah Sargent
There are some great episodes coming up there are.

0:55:51 - Scott Wilkinson
Don't. Don't get me wrong. I've answered a couple of really good listener questions.

0:55:55 - Leo Laporte
I love this conversation we have every time and we often end up talking about quality and style, and you know.

0:56:00 - Scott Wilkinson
Exactly, yeah, yeah.

0:56:03 - Scott Wilkinson
Yeah, anyway. So there you go, it's uh. If you want, if you're gonna buy an LCD TV, check out this list. Those are the better ones. If you really are super price sensitive, go for whatever floats your boat. I generally recommend not going with the Third tier TV brands like element and insignia and so on.

0:56:25 - Leo Laporte
Those are kind of house brands, right. They are, yeah, best buy, but the other low-price leaders, high sense and TCL, the Chinese brands. Those are both really good.

0:56:34 - Scott Wilkinson
Good, yeah, really good. I can fully recommend them. Yes, we we.

0:56:39 - Leo Laporte
I recently moved my mom into assisted living and she brought her TCL with her and it was a very good choice because it could get the cable, because they have cable TV as Because it had Roku built-in. She has a Roku remote and so she. She doesn't need any extra boxes, she doesn't need any extra complications, is all in one remote, much simpler. And I upgraded to the high-end remote, roku remote, which has a headphone jack. So she we've been doing all this stuff. Remember we talked about this stick so she could use wireless headphones. I realized what am I talking about. She plugs her headphones into the remote. She sits a far away from the TV. It works great, love that. So it's a perfect solution for an elder.

0:57:21 - Scott Wilkinson
I always thought that was a great idea.

0:57:23 - Mikah Sargent
headphone yeah, that idea that they had. It was just brilliant, really good.

0:57:28 - Leo Laporte
So I, you know I got right on a lot of boxes and you know she had an Apple TV and a cable box and all that stuff. It's so simple. Now she plugs into the wall. The TV does have to be on the internet to get the television guy for the cable, unfortunately, and of course it has to for the Roku to for the Roku for streaming, sure, but Other than that, it is the simplest possible way for her to watch and she watches.

She was just watching Band of Brothers. She watches all sorts of great stuff on a variety of networks Thanks to that, so that's a good. The TCLs are very nice. There are others with Roku built-in now.

0:58:02 - Scott Wilkinson
Yes, yes, there are. Okay, I believe high-sense has some okay. Tcl is the main one yeah.

0:58:09 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, I really like that. And of course, then there's the Amazon TV with a fire built-in. Have you played with that at all?

0:58:16 - Scott Wilkinson
I have not okay down the road, has their own branded TV. It's cheap.

0:58:20 - Leo Laporte
Yeah yeah, there's a fire TV built-in.

0:58:23 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, yeah, they really have subsidized the cost on those TVs, yeah seriously, seriously.

0:58:29 - Scott Wilkinson
In that case there's I believe there's two lines. I would recommend the higher line, which is still probably really cheap Because I believe it has the FALD Fald Backlight, full array local dimming very important for an LCD TV makes it a lot better.

0:58:48 - Leo Laporte
Well, maybe we'll leave all these TVs that I recommend at believe that as a topic for another day, but I bet you Amazon. I bring it up because I think Amazon will probably have a massive Prime day sale on the yep fire TVs. No doubt they go as big as 55 inches. The 55 inch Fire TV's $269.00. What the what? You might as well just get one for every room right. Holy cow.

0:59:17 - Scott Wilkinson
Goes up to 55. What about? Isn't there an Omni series? That might be the upper.

0:59:21 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, oh yeah, you want to go to the next one up. That's the fourth series. Well, here we go. Now we're talking expensive. It goes all the way up to 75 inches for $899.

0:59:32 - Scott Wilkinson
There you go, 900 bucks and these are all that are.

0:59:35 - Leo Laporte
No, these are Q let's, these are Q let's. Get me every time with that little Q. I know that's marketing difference between the tail.

0:59:44 - Scott Wilkinson
Yeah exactly.

0:59:46 - Leo Laporte
Scott Wilkinson, follow him at home theater, geeks in our club and, of course, every month right here on the show.

0:59:53 - Mikah Sargent
Thank, you Scott. Thank you Mr.

1:00:01 - Leo Laporte
We'll get more of you, oh, oh what, what I've?

1:00:05 - Scott Wilkinson
this is my last chance to the Christmas mentioned, to the Christmas. I think, it's for allowing me to do that to the Christmas December 3rd Sunday, which means I can't be on this show on that first Sunday of December. So I'll have to work something out. Okay, to the Christmas in LA. Yay, 3 pm Performance free to the public. Come on out and bring the family totally family friendly Christmas, carols and Hanukkah songs played on a hundred tuba.

1:00:34 - Leo Laporte
So cool, scott is, are you Santa? Because you look like Santa.

1:00:39 - Scott Wilkinson
I do look like Santa, but no, we have a real beard tuba playing Santa, wow Is it streaming, or is it only in person? No, it's only in person. You can't stream a hundred tubas.

1:00:50 - Leo Laporte
Well, you gotta be in the driveway, didn't you? Oh, that's right. What's that? They did when you drive away one year.

1:00:57 - Scott Wilkinson
Yes, yes, very good, we'll join. I'm gonna be singing, she will. She will be Singing and leading the, leading the audience in song oh, it's at Forest Lawn Cemetery, yes, it is Forest Lawn, glendale. This year it's for the last 10 years. It's been at Forest Lawn Hollywood Hills, but the the venue there, 1200 seat gorgeous auditorium, was almost destroyed in last Last winter's storms. Whoa, I mean they. They're not gonna be ready to open that place again till next year sometime? So we move to a different campus of the Forest Lawn Cemetery, glendale.

1:01:37 - Leo Laporte
Glendale. The dead cannot be awaked by tubas, by tubas, that's right. That's right. Well, we're gonna try.

1:01:45 - Scott Wilkinson
We're gonna try. We don't. We do our best every year. Be sure to go to tuba christmas lacom To find all the details and the map of how to get there and when and where and so on and so forth. I really would love to see people come. Everybody's gotta go to that You've. You haven't lived till you've heard a hundred tubas play jingle bells. Come on.

1:02:11 - Leo Laporte
Thank you, scott, have a wonderful Christmas Thank you guys see if it have a great Thanksgiving and a great Christmas and everybody go out and honica and everything, and honica to yeah. Scott celebrates on a guy. Yeah, I do. December 8th, december 3rd, 3rd oh man, I gotta get my Nora going.

1:02:30 - Scott Wilkinson
Thank you, scott, thank you third Thanks. You guys really appreciate it Bye-bye.

1:02:34 - Leo Laporte
Our show today brought to you by. We'll get back to your calls in just a second. But first a word from our sponsor, Fastmail. Every time I open my email I thank the stars that I am a Fastmail user. I have been for a decade. It's just the best email. I've said it for a long time if emails important to you or your business, why are you using free email services that spy on you, that give you ads and don't give you customer support, when for as little as three dollars a month, you could get the best email provider in the world with real customer support, no tracking, no ads, true privacy. Fastmail.com You got to go there right now. Actually make it fastmail.com/twit, because then they'll know you saw it here and you'll get 30 days for free.

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fastmail.com/twit. fastmail.com/twit. We thank him so much for Not only the support of this show, but everything that we've done for us, for done for me personally for so many years. I just love Fastmail. Should I do a I can reach back? Uh uh, uh. Get an email. Time for an email. I like to pretend that's hard. I played pickleball for the first time yesterday, did you like it? My pickleball arm a little sore, I'm a lefty, but yeah, I had Lisa and I had so much fun. Have you ever played?

1:07:40 - Mikah Sargent
I've not played, but for some reason it seems to be really in right now.

1:07:43 - Leo Laporte
It's a tennis for old people, okay. So you get a bracket that's solid it kind of looks like it's size of a racquetball racket, but it's solid and then you use a wiffle ball. It's like a wiffle ball, it's probably a little different, so the court's tiny, you don't have to run as much, and it's really fun.

1:08:01 - Mikah Sargent
The ball is a little bit slower coming back down. Yeah, yeah, nice.

1:08:03 - Leo Laporte
It was invented where Stacy Hickenbotham lives in Bainbridge Island, washington. Stacey's husband is a big pickle baller, wow, and I thought you know I should play and we did. It was so much fun. Cool. But that's not what this message is about. From reshaw Can't use iPhone ring tones as text tones. Oh, this is for you, mr iOS today host. I have been experiencing an issue with my iPhone after this 17 iOS 17 update. I can no longer use ring tones I've purchased uh from iTunes as text tones. They must put them somewhere else. I've tried several options, including a restore, but the issue persists. Can I, can you help me? So you bought reshaw, bought her or his ring tones. See, I've never bought ring tones Airplay, I don't even know what that's like Airplay one, please, our airplay two is Leo airplay.

1:08:57 - Mikah Sargent
No, he's not airplay. I'm not airplay. Okay, then I'll do airplay one. So there is a button that you can press and I'm wondering if you have pressed it in the settings menu. If you go into sound, okay, um, if you go into sounds and haptics, uh, and you go into text tone or in ring tone or any of them, you'll see, right at the top there's a section that says store, and within store there is a button that says download all purchased tones. Um, from there it will see if you've ever purchased a tone. So there was a tone that I purchased from, uh, I think I've purchased a tone. You'll see if you've ever purchased a tone. So there was a tone that I purchased from, uh a the minion movie at one point. What does it sound like? He's so fluffy, I'm going to die. That's what it says. And it's this little girl who has this fluffy stuffed animal.

1:09:50 - Leo Laporte
Probably don't want that as a ring tone, but let's say so. You bought it. What it's? Just a tone, is it like? Do they call it a ring tone?

1:09:56 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, it's okay, yeah, from from specifically from the.

1:10:01 - Leo Laporte
but let's say, you wanted it as an alert instead of a ring, so let's a new email. Let's say for okay.

1:10:04 - Mikah Sargent
So let's say you wanted to use it for new mail. I could tap on new mail, yeah, and then I would choose download all purchased tones.

1:10:10 - Leo Laporte
Oh, you have to download them there too, yep, and then it'll pop up, and there he's, so fluffy.

1:10:14 - Mikah Sargent
Okay, and so I think probably what you needed to do is just tap that uh download button Now, if it is. If, if that button is not showing up, I would recommend tapping on the tone store button, because this can sometimes kick uh the system into going oh right, so you need to look to see if there have been any any tones that were purchased.

Oh my God, I must have bought some tones at one point a hundred years ago, because I just pushed that button and it's downloading something so you've got something I don't know what it's going to be and there, yeah, then it will take you also to the ring tone store, and all of these tones should be able to be used as alerts or as ring tones. Are you kidding me? Show them. These are awful.

1:10:56 - Leo Laporte
There's the Super Mario mushroom. I'm embarrassed that I bought these.

1:10:59 - Mikah Sargent
Let's see what that sounds like.

1:11:02 - Leo Laporte
Uh, it's still downloading. Yes, so I must have bought these ages ago. Um, so, okay, so you can do it, but you have to do it in the alert section or the text tone section and then and then download. Exactly, download it there, so downloading it simply in the ring tone section, right?

1:11:21 - Mikah Sargent
Whichever place, exactly wherever you're wanting to actually have it show up, you need to hit that download button. And now there's mine. I'm so busy I'm gonna die. Would you use that? I used to because at the time A I was surrounded by people who also had goofy tones, and so we'd all laugh at each other as they were playing. But now I don't ever have tones turned on at all. You don't have any friends anymore.

1:11:45 - Leo Laporte
I don't. I also have no friends. Nobody calls me. Here's my ring tone for the generic one. It's amazing, it's the. It's an old twit theme that somebody made for me Round the board. That's a good one, that is a good one. And then, uh, that's my ring tone, and then my text tone. Oh, it's still a default. I don't, I didn't want it to be. Oh no, it was this, it's passage. I like there aren't a lot of good text tones.

1:12:23 - Mikah Sargent
Just subtle.

1:12:24 - Leo Laporte
Oh there, here, yeah it's not very loud, but I don't want it to be very loud, right, I just wanted the little note that I've that I've been alerted.

1:12:31 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, I just never have alerts turned on, it's always just buzzing. Oh, you're always quiet. Yeah, I don't like sounds playing around the only reason I bought this.

1:12:41 - Leo Laporte
Oh it's not playing. Oh, because I have it. Maybe because it's too long for a text tone. It's really a ring tone. Why did I buy that?

1:12:52 - Mikah Sargent
That is so funny, it's. Rihanna right, yes.

1:12:55 - Leo Laporte
Why did I buy that?

1:12:56 - Mikah Sargent
I don't know, but it's like early 2000s.

1:12:59 - Leo Laporte
That's when I bought it. That's so funny to me. That's when I bought it a long time ago.

1:13:03 - Mikah Sargent
I imagine you at the doctor's office and you're looking around in your pockets as Rihanna is playing on your phone. And that's so funny to me because everybody would be like why is this older white gentlemen?

1:13:11 - Leo Laporte
Aren't ring tones embarrassing? Now, though, yes, they are. You don't want that as your ring tone Don't do ring tones. No.

1:13:18 - Mikah Sargent
In fact, I think having your phone make any sound around other people is embarrassing. It's like why are you making noise? This is the default on the new iPhone.

1:13:28 - Leo Laporte
I think that's pretty good. I don't mind that.

1:13:30 - Mikah Sargent
The only time my phone makes a sound out loud is the alarm in the morning.

1:13:38 - Leo Laporte
Oh see, now this is a bone of contention In my household. Lisa has the most annoying alarm and she gets up at six in the morning. Oh, and I don't want to get up at six in the morning, but I have to hear an alarm. What's your alarm sound?

1:13:51 - Mikah Sargent
Mine is. It's called early riser. Yeah, I don't like the name already I don't like it, and it does a slow kind of lead in.

1:14:01 - Leo Laporte
Oh, it builds up, so you can, if you were so inclined, lean over and quickly silence it.

1:14:07 - Mikah Sargent
Yes, and that's often what happens Before somebody. Yeah, and honestly, I don't really I have it because I have trust issues with myself, because it's actually my eight sleep that wakes me up. Yeah, it buzzes me. I like that.

1:14:26 - Leo Laporte
This is another one You'll say in my name that's another one. I bought.

1:14:31 - Mikah Sargent
I am without I must have bought these. You'll say you'll know same.

1:14:37 - Leo Laporte
I don't know tomorrow. Okay, gotcha, I don't know nothing about tomorrow. It's only today. It's stopped and won't stop either. That's another problem. Let's go back to this, this is the song that never ends. I think this is very. This is interesting. I think if, if you were going out on a date with somebody and you want to really get to know them, maybe one of the first questions is what is your ringtone? What's your ringtone, what's your alarm tone? And if it's yours, if it's if it's Rihanna, you maybe think twice.

1:15:07 - Mikah Sargent
I'm saying I, I would say I would say that if you ask someone born after 2000, they would tell you that they don't have a ringtone because I anecdotally, but you don't, but you have to have a ring. Well, yeah, sorry, then it's set to the default. But they're saying they would tell you I don't ever make it make a sound. No, they all anecdotally, everyone who I've heard from they make sure their phones are on silence.

1:15:34 - Leo Laporte
I don't ever want to hear it. Yeah, there was a time I don't know if maybe you're too young to remember this where you would make a separate ringtone for everybody person, yep. So like when my mom called you know, and they were funny too. I would always choose funny things. Yeah, I remember that and I think, when my son called I'd play the chicken dance, I mean, so that way you you know who's calling and B you could play a little, make a little fun. Sometimes I get people mad. Yeah, they hear their ringtone.

1:16:05 - Mikah Sargent
What the hell, that's not nice. Hey man, why is my ringtone chicken dance?

1:16:10 - Leo Laporte
What's wrong? I have separate vibrations set up for a few people, oh you do so that I know, oh, that's your phone only vibrates and never rings, never rings. But that means you have to have it in your pocket all the time, right?

1:16:22 - Mikah Sargent
Well, I also get a watch. Yeah, I guess you're right. And if it, yeah, and then if it's not in my hand, or and I'm not wearing my watch, then you just don't have things change.

1:16:30 - Leo Laporte
I mean when Rishio said I bought I tech tones.

1:16:34 - Mikah Sargent
I thought who buys ringtones? Right, but I have. Yeah, we did in the past, exactly.

1:16:41 - Leo Laporte
That was a big money maker for the phone companies I loved buying ringtones yeah. They made. They were 99 cents, but they would only work for three months, a lot of times.

1:16:47 - Mikah Sargent
Oh yeah, that's right. It was kind of like subscription.

1:16:50 - Leo Laporte
It was like that was a sneaky little. Those clever, clever cats. I love Rihanna. No, no hate here. Yeah, Nothing wrong with Rihanna, Love Rihanna. I bought this ringtone. But I don't want to hear that. When the phone Right, when you're going to a song, that's a different thing. Yeah.

1:17:06 - Mikah Sargent
No, I was listening to Rihanna just the other day.

1:17:09 - Leo Laporte
I like her that much.

1:17:10 - Mikah Sargent
And you like her enough to pronounce it Rihanna, which is the real way her name is pronounced. You gave me a hard time when I said I know I was shocked. Yeah, you taught me that. No, it's Rihanna.

1:17:20 - Leo Laporte
The quesious and RIS. He says when my guy called it played watermelon man. What is that? I've never heard somebody go in the hall. The lights just went on, oh no.

1:17:31 - Mikah Sargent
It might just now noticing this. We need to do like a Roomba out there with something on it. Yeah.

1:17:36 - Leo Laporte
All right, let's take another another call. Yeah, let's do a call. How about John? He's got his hand up. We'll send John.

1:17:43 - Mikah Sargent
John's trying to run back like no, I had a plan John come on back, john, hurry up, john, you've gone into the room.

1:17:50 - Leo Laporte
Press. What is it? Star six, star six to unmute.

1:17:54 - Mikah Sargent
No, you don't have to do that, it's only with phone calls. Oh, I know.

1:17:57 - Leo Laporte
I don't know nothing. It was zoom calls. You don't have to press. I'm basically in the backseat. I'm a passenger. You need to unmute on your end.

1:18:04 - Mikah Sargent
See, he does. Yes, but not with star six. That's only if you're on the phone. There's a Hi.

1:18:09 - Leo Laporte
John. Hi John, when are you calling from? I'm in St Petersburg, florida, love it and I love the, the, the, the Mexican blanket you have behind you there.

1:18:20 - Caller
That's it's actually an old towel, I think, for maybe hand me down. I love the towel.

1:18:26 - Leo Laporte
It's a beautiful towel.

1:18:27 - Caller
You didn't have to tell me.

1:18:27 - Leo Laporte
You didn't have to say that. You could have just said, yes, I bought that when I was in Tijuana.

1:18:33 - Mikah Sargent
You didn't, but I think John hasn't taken improv classes, so it's not aware of the yes and yes, yes, and it is a Mexican.

1:18:41 - Leo Laporte
Yes, my mother wore. It Wove that for me when I was a child.

1:18:45 - Caller
So how can we help you? Well, first off, love the show. I've used your, your information to make myself sound smarter than I am, so, but I really appreciate what you guys do, so thanks for that. Yeah, I think you're from the Mexican, I T no, but somehow. I always ended up helping people. You're the guy. Just from the knowledge I get from you guys. Two guys, yep, yeah, but I always give you credit.

1:19:13 - Leo Laporte
I say it's from it's from Leo and like they go. That's very kind and they are and they would be.

1:19:21 - Caller
So let us help you then with something else. Sure, so I'm. I think this is a similar question to what you guys were talking about. I'm trying to help my mom out. She bought iTunes songs. I hope this is an easy question, but I haven't been able to figure it out. It is, I know where you're going, but keep going.

1:19:39 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, a long, long time ago she wants to turn into ringtones. Well, no, no she, she has an.

1:19:46 - Caller
Android phone and she bought all these songs and she, she still has her old iPods, which are really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really. She still has her old iPods, which are They've got to be, you know, forever. They're like one of the original iPods she still has and so she'll. She has the songs you know on there, but she wants to be able to play them in her car and stuff like that, like through her phone, and she has an Android phone. So, you know, since she spent the money on them, she has like 600 songs or something like that that she's purchased through iTunes and I'm trying to figure it out. There's a way to I don't know, I don't know maybe get them out of iTunes or get them onto her Android phone in a way that she can access them easily through her phone.

1:20:30 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, so there are a few ways. First, if she wanted to, she could download on Android the Apple Music app and gain access to the songs that way. But if these were purchased in the time before Apple Music, they are just audio files, and so if they are on iTunes on a Windows machine or on iTunes on a Mac, you can simply export them and import them however you might want to. So, depending on the Android device, of course, the music player might be in a different place, you might be using a different kind of music player, but they all have the ability to read right from an SD card or read from internal storage the music, and it looks like Leo's got some apps to suggest.

1:21:16 - Leo Laporte
Well, and this is also because Apple stopped putting copy protection on their music some years ago. Yeah, from now. Now, if she bought the songs before that, they may still have copy protection on them.

1:21:29 - Caller
Yeah, I can't remember what our problem was, but for some reason I've struggled to make it work. So I don't know, maybe it may be the copy protection on it still, they are from their ancient, so I think it was probably a long long ago, because nowadays they're just AAC files and any Android app can play them.

1:21:47 - Mikah Sargent
Oh, and if you never use iTunes Match to get, the more, by the way that's the only as far as I.

1:21:53 - Leo Laporte
Well, there's two ways, Okay, there's the legal way and there's the illegal way. So the legal way is to give Apple 25 bucks, and this might actually be worth it. You pay 25 bucks a year for something they call iTunes Match. I just recently turned it off.

1:22:07 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, I don't need it anymore.

1:22:08 - Leo Laporte
But what it would do is it matches all the songs in our library with uncopy protected and, in some cases, higher quality versions of those songs. It replaces them. And that's what Apple did when it went from copy protected to uncopy protected as a kind of sop to the music industry. The music industry's hair caught on fire and they said you're taking out any piracy. And they said well, look, what we'll do is we'll charge people 25 bucks. We'll give some of that back to you. Everybody will be happy. So that's why that was there and that's why it's still there and I don't think you really need it anymore. But if you have old copy protected versions of the songs, that's the legal way to do it. The truth is, you can strip off that copy protection. There are many ways to do it.

For years I used something called Double Twist and I was just going to doubletwistcom. They're still around. I mean there's not as much demand for what they do. This was created by the guy who figured out how to crack DVD copy protection. But they do have a Double Twist Android player that I bet you. This is. The first thing I would do is just see if it plays the old copy protected Apple music, because that's what Double Twist's big thing was was it would play the copy protected music. I think they call it magic play, but I don't know. Anyway, if they no longer do that, they might not. You know there's some legal liability with breaking copy protection. Then you can pay Apple the 25 bucks or you could just do a little research. Now that you know that that's what the problem is, you can go and there's places you can find stuff to crack it.

1:23:51 - Caller
Okay. So she's, you know, not very tech savvy, but she keeps up to date with the Samsung phone, so I think it's one of the newer models Good.

1:23:59 - Leo Laporte
Those are great phones.

1:24:01 - Caller
But she doesn't know anything about, like, what kind of music player to use. So do you guys have a recommendation?

1:24:08 - Leo Laporte
Well, samsung has one. It's on there, it's called music. Yeah, that's, I would recommend it.

1:24:12 - Mikah Sargent
If she's not super tech savvy to use, in this case, use the built-in. If you're asking about podcasts, I would still say to go to Pocketcast and whatever Samsung offers, but because it's gonna have the deepest integration and however you two choose to get the music into a place that can then be read by that music library, samsung music is gonna be the best option because you know that it will be able to read the music and play it and, you know, get to everything Right.

1:24:37 - Leo Laporte
Speaking of today, it won't read copy protect songs. Yeah, so that's your first issue is it are these copy protected? I suspect they are. How do I get rid of it? 25 bucks, itunes match that's the legal, fair, safe way to do it. Or Go online and look, for there are a lot of programs will strip the copy protection out of songs. But in order to do that, you've got to get those songs off of the old phone or an iPod onto your computer and then process them if they're already on the back. It'll work.

1:25:08 - Caller
Well, she has a very old laptop. It's not a Mac, it might be a Lenovo. I think it's a Lenovo and it's it's. It's pretty ancient, but I don't think we were able to log in on a different computer to get in and find those songs, so you think they're still locally on the machine. Yeah, we, I think we tried to figure out how to get into iTunes and find them, and the only place we've been able to find them is on her computer that she originally used.

1:25:38 - Leo Laporte
And it's so. Apple dropped the protection in 2009. You think those songs are are more than 15 14 years old. I Think so. Yeah, I think so. So there's still copy protected.

1:25:54 - Mikah Sargent
So there's a lot of machine.

1:25:55 - Caller
I think maybe to. To get rid of the copy protection first, maybe yeah.

1:26:01 - Leo Laporte
Or you can burn them to a audio CD and Then rip the CD. You know I'm not crazy about that because that might degrade that the quality of it, but you can do that. That's called the analog hole. Yeah, she's not using a Mac. I don't think iTunes match will work.

1:26:22 - Mikah Sargent
Maybe, Windows just now, if she can download iTunes.

1:26:27 - Leo Laporte
She could do that.

1:26:28 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, iTunes match works with the latest version of Windows. Okay.

1:26:32 - Caller
And then, if we did that would, would I be able to log in on a different computer and still find?

1:26:36 - Mikah Sargent
those, they're just files yeah copy them to a thumb drive and you can do anything you want, but also because you've iTunes matched them, they will have a cloud analog that you could then, yes, oh yeah, it's already.

1:26:50 - Leo Laporte
Yes, part of iTunes match stores it in the cloud, so you can stream it to anywhere, that's part of, so you would be able to download it on a new machine at that point.

1:26:57 - Caller
Yeah, yeah yeah, just because her machine so old. I'd love to as quickly as possible. Yes, because she's gonna lose them?

1:27:03 - Leo Laporte
if yeah, yep, I choose. Match is also a backup, so that's really what I want to do, yeah.

1:27:11 - Caller
Okay, and then this may be a dumb question, but what file format? If I'm from trying to get them to, I guess stamps them's music app? What I'm File format, what I need to remove it, I don't know download them it doesn't matter.

1:27:25 - Leo Laporte
But MP3 is the most common. Apples will be m4a or aac files and I would say that's modern. Any modern phone should be able to handle those. Yeah, but if you really want to make, universal Universal plays, no matter where you a little sand disc player or whatever MP3.

1:27:47 - Caller
And then when I connect a cable to the phone from the computer to add them to her Samsung music.

1:27:53 - Mikah Sargent
That's one way of doing it. Oh, so that's with the Samsung phone. It needs to be in a special mode, right where it becomes a hard drive that the computer can see it, can't you?

1:28:04 - Leo Laporte
Can't you download them from Apple onto?

1:28:06 - Mikah Sargent
the phone. You could, but you would have to play them through Apple, the Apple music app. I don't think that it would give Outside access to it.

1:28:14 - Leo Laporte
See, this is part of the problem of the way phones work, is it? When you download, it stores it in a folder that you don't have access to from the music folder? But you might. This gets a little weird and complicated and it might just take some experimentation, but Apple Will. That music is in the cloud, so you can use a Samsung browser to log into the cloud. Right, yes, I cloud account.

Yeah, and there's the music and there's a little cloudy button with a down arrow and you could press that down arrow on each of them and it will download them. Yeah, it will then put them, though not into the music folder, but the download folder. It may be I think it is that the Apple, that the Samsung music player will will be able to see them. If not, then you have to move it from the download folder to a music folder. But I think that Most of the time on Android, when you get a music file, it wakes up and says oh hey, that's music. Do you want? Yeah, do you have access music to have access to that folder, and you say yes.

1:29:11 - Caller
Okay, all right, we'll get about all that a try. It's um, it's just been kind of a frustrating.

1:29:16 - Leo Laporte
I don't know, I thought it would be easier.

1:29:18 - Caller
Yeah, I just figured it'd be easier than this.

1:29:20 - Leo Laporte
This is why copy protection is horrible, and Notice, by the way, that the world didn't end after 2009, that the music industry didn't die. You know, it was just. It was a waste of everybody's time and the only people who were ever bothered by copy protection. We're honest people, because every single pirate knows exactly how to remove it. It's trivial, like like I've been telling you she paid for these songs.

1:29:45 - Caller
That's why we're you know she's on my case. That's her music library.

1:29:51 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, even if she didn't pay for them. I have a you know a couple of terabytes of music. I don't want to lose that. That's of course. Nowadays the Young's Don't buy music anymore, they stream it.

1:30:04 - Caller
and yeah, I told her that I was like listen, you just stream, that's what everybody's doing. And she quickly was like I'm not having any other.

1:30:10 - Leo Laporte
I bought those records and I'm gonna play them.

1:30:13 - Mikah Sargent
I have to tell you, though, I, when I've my grandma, was about it too, and then I showed her and she said wait, I can just listen to any song I want to, any time.

1:30:21 - Caller
And then she was like can I?

1:30:22 - Mikah Sargent
listen to this and I typed it in for wait, I can. What? What about this and it? When I did the object lesson, is that what it is? Then? That's whenever the the realization kicked in, and she's been an Apple music subscriber ever since right, yeah, I mean that far she just oh, she still is not. She was losing the money that she spent. Oh yeah, I dressed the original. She doesn't have to pay a monthly fee.

1:30:48 - Leo Laporte
I mean she owns it. Yeah, that's fair. Yeah, and if that's all she ever wants to listen to, she's got it her music taste is locked in.

1:30:54 - Mikah Sargent
Music taste is locked in.

1:30:55 - Caller
She well, kind of she did kind of say that she's like I know what I like and I already paid for these, so I'm not willing to accept your streaming solution, because that's throwing money away.

1:31:06 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, fair enough mom, although I gotta be fair, there is a free Spotify. You'll have some ads in there, that's true and it still has more. I don't know six million songs, how many songs it is, every song basically, yeah, everything man well good yeah, we have to let us know how it goes.

Thank you, yeah, we this is complicated but it's not. It's one of those things is like Easy, but there's a lot of different things you have to figure out. Figure out the route to take. The Spotify play is an ad for every song.

1:31:38 - Mikah Sargent
No, I don't have a free spot. I'm sure it feels like that I know, I, I. If I could be the, the Streaming music fairy and go around and grant friends and colleagues with a subscription, I would, because anytime I've been at someone's house and they're playing their Spotify and then an ad comes on like what a kind of. Please, I'll give you eight dollars if you subscribe right now. I can't listen to these.

1:32:06 - Leo Laporte
Dora, to you know I use yeah, same thing. Yeah, penta penguin and IRC says pay for her music streaming for a year and then take it away and see what she says.

1:32:19 - Mikah Sargent
So me, that's me. That sounds like a lab rat he's me situation.

1:32:23 - Leo Laporte
Hey, pleasure talking to you. Thank you for calling. Yeah, thank you, thanks, take care.

1:32:31 - Mikah Sargent
We're five minutes out from Johnny jet.

1:32:33 - Leo Laporte
I want another call, or do you have some good voicemails? Cute up.

1:32:37 - John Ashley
We have boys have voicemails.

1:32:40 - Leo Laporte
Well, let's play them. Play them, partner, cool. All right, that was fun. Vinnie apparently was watching the eclipse.

1:32:53 - Caller
Okay, durham, north Carolina. Yeah, about 10 years ago I realized I didn't like all the ads I was seeing as I was browsing the internet. So pops on Reddit tried to find an ad blocker. They recommended ad block plus. Up time put it in my chrome and I just haven't really thought about it for 10 years. It's still installed. I can see it. I was wondering it's stopping. It's not working as well as it used to. I'm seeing a lot more ads and Are there recommendations you have on better ad blockers? Are there privacy considerations around even having an ad blocker that can see all the traffic? Thanks for any help you can give easy peasy.

1:33:32 - Leo Laporte
There's only one that Steve Gibson recommends that I recommend that I use, and I bet you use yep, and we like it, because it's by a cranky guy. His name is handles gore hill and he's cranky, cranky, cranky guy and he doesn't know it. Is he not like ads? He doesn't. He's very big on privacy, so he's Unlike, by the way, ad block and ad block Plus, I don't read, which I don't recommend. He also doesn't do a deal with advertisers to let some ads through.

Ad block has something it called it created, called the acceptable ads policy, in which they said these ads are okay, and I guess they are. It's unclear why they're okay, maybe because they gave money to ad block. We don't know that though. Well, we don't know, but I I just just want to make that. I don't want to get sued, I don't know what, why, but I don't. If you were, if you're running an ad blocker, I think the position is no ad is acceptable. Yeah, now, I personally think there is an ethical issue with this, because ads are what supports those sites you go to. But I completely and, by the way, our podcast, but I completely understand the. You know, especially on mobile, the problem you have with ads because they take over, they're dancing. There's a security issue with them. There's also I mean it's in the bandwidth use and etc. Etc. So I'm not gonna judge you.

If you want to block ads, there was only one to use. It's called you block origin. Gore Hill has created this. It is. There is a you block. That is not. There's a fork of his. Don't use you block. You block origin. It works on chrome. I think it works on chrome. It works on I'm using Firefox, so that's why it's showing the Firefox logo. It is a very nice ad blocker. It does not work on Safari, right, because Apple has basically changed the way and they say for privacy. So your issue of well, do they see everything? Apple has changed, how extensions work to protect your privacy, they say, but it also happens to break ad blockers. Chrome is about to do the same thing, pretty much. So I can't promise this works on chrome, but it does work on Firefox.

Yeah, for now it works on chrome, not gonna for it, not going to work forever on chrome. I suspect Raymond Hill, gore Hill, is a a A, a living Hero Amongst people who don't like ads. He is the last cranky, last bastion. He does not. He's not gonna invade your privacy. They work. That works really well. Now there's an interesting battle going on because ad you know YouTube doesn't like ad blockers and YouTube has started to Go after the ad blockers and they try to watch YouTube with an ad blocker. I'll say sorry, you can't except this is a fight You'll never win YouTube because they always find a way around.

So now people are using even more draconian ad blockers and it's just um to the, it's up to the ad blocker Anti, and I suspect that what's gonna happen is exactly the opposite of what YouTube wants, which is that more and more people are gonna start running really strong ad blockers that work not just on YouTube but everywhere else, and you're gonna create a ad block health scape. So I Don't know what to say. I I Would invite you, if you really don't like ads, for instance, to join our club. So that's why we give you ad-free versions. But it costs your money and there's a reason the ads. It costs us money to do what we do. It costs every website you visit money. It costs reddit money. So there's only two things, two ways. They can well, there's three ways have a rich uncle who will give them all the money they could possibly want to run the site, charge you for the site or run ads. Or if you're Elon Musk, who is all three, a rich uncle and Charges you and still runs ads. So he's got it going on. But except for him, everybody else is gonna choose one of those methods and we give you the option to if you don't want to ads. But I would also say remember, those ads are what pays for the thing that you're enjoying, whether it's a YouTube video, our Podcasts or your favorite website, you know it's.

It's gotten to be very difficult now to have a website Without a paywall. Frankly, that's why everybody's doing it. Sorry to say, but if you're gonna use it and I use it because, hey, there's a couple reasons I use it. One is on the air I don't want to have a bunch of ads. Yeah, when I'm looking at a website, I don't want to have a bunch of ads blocking the website for you. So I'm running it now and it works quite well out of the box.

It has an infinite number of settings you you could go on and on and on With. You block origin in in playing with the settings, you can also, as you can see here, turn it off. There's a I just clicked the link and there's a little. You know it, by the way. It also will tell you, when you go to a page, how many it things it blocked, how many domains are connected to that page, how many, how many have been blocked since the install and so forth. And then, if you go into the settings, oh, my goodness, you can go crazy with these settings. This is just one tab. There's also a bunch of filter lists it supports. Here I'll make this bigger so you can see it 104,000 network filters. These are the ones built in. These are the ad guards. If you, you know it, you could go. You could check all these boxes if you want.

Yeah and not see anything I don't feel like I need to, but, but you certainly could. There's also, you know, you can have your own custom filters, your own custom rules. You can have trusted sites so that you can unblock, and maybe I would recommend that if, if you love the verge, you could say I want to see, I'll let the verge ads come through. Actually, the easiest way to do that is in the ad blocker itself. You could just, when you're on a site, press this button and then you it'll turn off, you block origin for that site. So I would say, use you block origin, but also consider that ads are how these sites monetize and If you're not a subscriber to the sites, maybe consider turning off the ad blocker for the sites you really like, only the ones you really like. All right, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, should I take a break and then get ready, because Johnny jet is gonna write on in and Get us some travel information as we approach the busiest travel day of the oh it's a common.

First, though, a word about Discourse, our sponsor. Now, I don't know if you've ever been to the twit forums, a twit.community, but if you have, that's Discourse. Discourse is the online home for our community, for any community. For over a decade, discourse has made it their mission to make the internet a better place for online communities. It's open source. That was very important to me. It's trusted by more than 20,000 online communities, including some of the largest companies in the world. It's that good, you know it's it's it's it's, I want to say, forum software, but it's gone so much beyond forum software. It's it's, of course, the power of discussion, but you have real-time chat built in now. They've added AI. I keep buying AI off of mine, but they have it. This course makes it easy to have meaningful conversations, and if you have a community, it's so important that you be a part of that community, and here's where you can collaborate with them easily, anytime, anywhere, and, and your users will love it. If you're ready to create a community, visit discourse.org/twit. That will give you one month free on all the self-serve plans, and they have plans for every possible need, whether you're just starting out or you want to take your community to the next level. There's a basic plan which you could use for a family or a club. It's a private, invite only community the standard plan if you want Unlimited members and a public presence. And then we have, of course, the business plan for active customer support communities. One of the biggest advantages to creating your own community with discourse is you own your own data no ads. You always have access to all your conversation history. Discourse will never sell your data to advertisers.

I love discourse. We've been using it for years now at twitcom. You know this course gives you everything you need in one place. Make discourse the online home for your community. Visit discourse.org/twit to get one month free and all self-serve plans. discourse.org/twit. I'm a big fan of discourse. I've tried a lot of different software over the years and the twit community software is the most robust, the most reliable, the most usable. It's discourse. It's just the best. I really love it. I love how they manage the server for me, so I it's always up to date. I have to worry about security or anything. It's really great. Thank you, discourse. All right, let us now go to mr Johnny Jets. Oh, look, it looks like Mike has flown to st Joseph, missouri already for Thanksgiving. Hi, johnny, how are you guys? Ah, we're great. How are you? I'm doing well, thank you, do you? Gee is? Am I wrong in thinking Thanksgiving is the biggest Travel day of the year?

1:43:15 - Johnny Jet
No, the Sunday after Thanksgiving is usually the biggest Travel day of the year. Everybody going home on Sunday, everyone's going home, and the Wednesday before is usually the second biggest, although I think there was one day in June I think it was June 30th this year or 28th that surpassed it, but I'm predicting this this holiday. We're going to definitely see that.

1:43:36 - Leo Laporte
see that number, oh yeah people can't wait to go see their families and fight over the turkey.

1:43:42 - Johnny Jet
So I think the record was almost 2.9 million people. I'm one day check points in one day, on one day that, so I'm predicting it's going to beat that. Can we hit three? They've never hit three million that would be.

1:43:55 - Leo Laporte
That would be double the normal number, yeah.

1:44:00 - Johnny Jet
Well, I was just looking like 1.2, 1.3, 2.1, normal on normal day point three the last time they reported it they don't report on weekends, so on 11 to 11 to November 2nd it was 2.3 almost.

1:44:13 - Leo Laporte
Oh, we're really back to traveling. We're really back to traveling, wow.

1:44:17 - Johnny Jet
I mean, and there was one day in here, october 22nd, it was 2.7 million, and in 2019, that same day, it was only 2.4. So it's really picked up big time.

1:44:32 - Leo Laporte
So what's your advice? I mean, you know I used to say, well, when should I book for Thanksgiving? I think you got to go now because it's it's only two weeks off, right?

1:44:42 - Johnny Jet
Definitely. Yeah, no, I mean, if you haven't booked your tickets, yes, what were you thinking?

1:44:46 - Leo Laporte
number one oh, it's too late to get a good deal.

1:44:50 - Johnny Jet
No it's not. It all depends on the market. So it depends where you're leaving, depends where you're going. Oh, okay, I just did a news nation interview a few days ago covering this and I was looking at different markets and you could still find them. It all depends, like an LA. If you're leaving from LA, where I am, the cheapest place to go in the country was Salt Lake City that Wednesday to Sunday. But if you're leaving from Dallas Actually, if you were leaving from New York, I think it was Seattle or somewhere there was there was different markets.

1:45:18 - Leo Laporte
You could go to? The price varies. Is that very based on Accupancy? Like are they constantly adjusting that?

1:45:25 - Johnny Jet
I mean, who knows what the airlines are thinking about? Yes, but usually it is about you know what their load factors are it's an interesting business, because if a seat flies empty, that's it.

1:45:36 - Leo Laporte
You've lost that money, right, you don't want to have any empty seats, but you also want to have as many seats as there are people. And then within the airplane, somebody should do a map sometime, you know, one guy might have paid a thousand dollars. One guy next sitting next to him might have paid $100, right, definitely, it's so computerized these days and that's why I like to have you on, because we need a defense against, against these complicated systems that the airlines are to squeeze every penny out of us definitely so.

1:46:05 - Johnny Jet
If you don't care where you're going, get away, okay, put. Go to Google flights, put in your city yeah you live, and then put anywhere in the departure.

1:46:14 - Leo Laporte
Oh, you can do that.

1:46:15 - Johnny Jet
I did not be a departure, there, the arrival, and it will show you a map of the world and you can zoom in and it will tell you and put in your dates and it will tell you what's the cheapest, oh my gosh. And also what I do, by the way, I also. I also use the alliances. So put in Star Alliance, sky team and one world. Don't put in any airline because they're gonna show you like spirit airlines. I'll say thirty nine dollars, you can go this weekend, but then you get to the airport if you're checking a bag, that can charge you a hundred dollars Just to put that bag in a carry-on over in the overhead bin, not just checking a bag but carry on. So you need to know these rules of the different airlines as well.

1:46:51 - Leo Laporte
I'm just looking where I can go Anywhere in the world for Thanksgiving, and with the best prices from Chicago you could go to Paris was 590, I think, a few days ago trip. Interesting. This is really. This is a really fun little thing to do. I know, oh, this is. I didn't know you could enter anywhere, I mean you can.

1:47:13 - Johnny Jet
You can put business class in, you could put first class in, you can put a specific airline only. But again, I stay away from the low fare carriers just because I want to know what I'm getting and I'm usually, you know, using carry on and I don't want to be charged a hundred bucks for the overhead.

1:47:28 - Mikah Sargent
How do you? How do you disable the other ones? What was it?

1:47:32 - Johnny Jet
How do you say I only use use the sky team or one world, or let me go in there, real star Alliance or Star Alliance that's. That's so. Star Alliance is United sky teams, delta, american is one world and all their partners. So American has a barrier Qantas I.

1:47:49 - Leo Laporte
Can go to Sacramento for Thanksgiving for 211 bucks. I can go to Chicago for 333 bucks. I could go to Sydney for a thousand bucks. This really is interesting. I mean, this is I literally put anywhere, and these are all.

1:48:05 - Johnny Jet
The place and listen, and if you change your dates by just a day or two?

1:48:09 - Leo Laporte
So if you leave on Tuesday or Monday, it's because I'm doing the day. Yeah, thanks.

1:48:13 - Johnny Jet
So if you're leaving Wednesday to Sunday, which everyone wants to do, you're not gonna get a great deal. But if again, if you can use your vacation days wisely this is the truth about any time of year you can save money just by being flexible.

Yeah and, and you know, when you have kids in school like I do, it makes it Difficult. But I'm actually taking my kids out of school next week because the flights were so cheap to go somewhere that we're going and I was like, listen, I got to, I Gotta take advantage of it.

1:48:40 - Leo Laporte
So I'm picking, for instance, sky team, non-stops, yeah this, and then you get an idea.

1:48:46 - Johnny Jet
So picks, yeah, pick non-stop if you want to go non-stop.

1:48:49 - Leo Laporte
Obviously they have a whole expensive filter to go to visit my mom Thousand bucks, so it's really interesting. Yeah, this is a kind of a fun thing to play with. I know I like this. Flightsgooglecom it changes. They don't have every airline though. For instance, they don't have Southwest right, they don't have Southwest, yeah all it can only book Southwest on Southwest comm, if you do.

1:49:10 - Johnny Jet
If you are checking two bags, always look at Southwest because they do offer free check bags.

1:49:15 - Leo Laporte
But you know that it's kind of built into the system and then the only tip I have because I flew Southwest To see my mom last time is check in Like exactly 24 hours, 24 hours at a time. Set the alarm, I set it for five minutes before Yep and get ready.

1:49:33 - Johnny Jet
Have your computer all set or your iPhone yeah fresh it is, and or you can pay extra Just for that. A list, yeah, but you know I like to get upgraded. I like to know that I'm gonna either be in the bulkhead or the exit row, or Nile, so I like to know, something happened to me.

1:49:50 - Leo Laporte
Did I mention this? No, I was. I think I was gonna save it for you. Let's hear, I'm worth standing in line. I I did pay for the a list coming home because I got squeezed coming going out. There I was. I was in the last group and I had a middle seat and it was very uncomfortable. I had a very big guy in shorts to my left who decided that he wanted at least half my seat and then, it's weird, a little old lady on my right who knew that that that armrest was hers, not mine, and literally said get off my armrest and jam. Oh if you're in the middle.

1:50:23 - Johnny Jet
She said yeah, I know.

1:50:27 - Leo Laporte
It's both arm right. Yeah, you tell her that, so anyway. What am I gonna? Do get the stewardess over and getting a fight. No, I just. I flew for five hours like this.

1:50:38 - Johnny Jet
Literally my arm.

1:50:39 - Leo Laporte
It was just, I just said, I can do it, I can do anything it for five hours.

1:50:43 - Johnny Jet
Kick her butt right there. I'm not gonna.

1:50:46 - Leo Laporte
She was a nice Little man, my big old man. So anyway, was I gonna say, oh yes, always, I got a list. But then so we're standing in line, I'm like a three, I'm feeling pretty good. I said I have any seat, this airplane. They said, but we're gonna pre-board. People need a little more help getting on and there were, I kid you, not 25 people in wheelchairs. Yeah, a lot of them jumped up after they got. They would jump out of the wheelchair and walk down the gangway, but it feels like a scam.

1:51:21 - Johnny Jet
It is a scam.

1:51:22 - Leo Laporte
They call my miracle flights, cuz I don't, I really don't mind if somebody's Disabled or needs a little more time, that's fine. Yeah, my mom was in a wheelchair and we wheel her up and that's fine. I understand that, but I don't think all these people were disabled, to be honest.

1:51:38 - Johnny Jet
No, it's a huge problem and actually I've had it in my notes to write about. Now I'm going to, after you said that I Was I, was you said miracle flyers mere cuz miracle flights, get up there miracle flights. I'm healed right, yeah, I would.

1:51:53 - Leo Laporte
They walk off the plane, everybody, all of their people who paid, whatever it is, 50 bucks extra to be an A or look at each other. Nobody wants to be mean, but and I'm sure some of these people absolutely deserve to get on early and get a nice seat. The only consolation was I told the the person next to me the good news is they can't sit in the exit row, so those eggs at rose are still gonna be available for us right.

1:52:20 - Johnny Jet
But there's another problem. They're doing on Southwest, a little trick that some people are playing where they're. One person in their party buys the a-list, they get on first and reserve the exit row, how? Or? Or the other seats. They put bags on them. Oh, you can't do that, well you can so Southwest does not have a policy against it, but some flight attendants do make an announcement saying please. So that's why I honestly.

1:52:47 - Leo Laporte
I'll tell you the truth and if I hope somebody from Southwest is listening, I will never fly Southwest again. I want a reserved seat from now on.

1:52:55 - Johnny Jet
Sorry, I'm the same way, I really fly South ruin my experience.

1:52:59 - Leo Laporte
Now we're going to Vegas for the F1 race and I'll be flying Southwest, but that's only an hour. If I'm in the middle seat Sitting like this, I can do it for an hour right, but for a cross country or longer, I am never flying Southwest again.

1:53:12 - Johnny Jet
Well, I had a post go viral last year because Taylor Swift Gave the NYU commencement address and she said that she gave it Southwest Airlines tip. I guess her and her mom used to fly.

Oh, that's so cute, oh, that's so cute and she said that her tip was that her and her mom, we used to pretend they were fighting and they would be in the window, one would be in the aisle, so when people are walking by they wouldn't take the middle seat. And so I wrote about it and I think what are you right about Taylor Swift? That thing goes.

1:53:43 - Leo Laporte
I mean, what is the deal there? She is amazing. Anyway, start going out with Taylor Swift. It'd be very good for the network. If you don't.

1:53:51 - Johnny Jet
I told that to my wife. I was like listen and and I'm, she didn't go for it, but, but, but, speaking of Taylor Swift, by the way, I just put in the show notes right before I got on, or the chat room, you know there's a tip about her. Yeah, she just got off of a huge tour. Did you see her concert, by the way? No, did you know? I'd like to, actually my wife.

1:54:12 - Leo Laporte
Really, you're a you're as to her, yeah, yeah. Anyway she's, she's things for three hours. Jason howling his Jason and his girl. So I loved it, that's right.

1:54:23 - Johnny Jet
Yeah, she did it in 53 different nights, 20 different locations, but the US travel association said that she is like she has the same power as when the Super Bowl comes into town. Yeah because Swifties averaged $1,300 a night and spending on a travel hotels.

1:54:40 - Leo Laporte
Every, every place that Eros tour showed up. It was a huge economic boom to those big time locations, isn't it amazing?

1:54:48 - Johnny Jet
I just so I just wrote a post know her dates because she's about to go on her International tour, starting this month. She's going to Argentina, then Brazil and she's taking a break, and then she's going to 19 countries, 90 concerts around the world, from Zurich to Australia, australia to Zurich, and and you need to find out where she is, because if you happen to book tickets to that place and you have no desire to see her, good luck finding cheap accommodations. Hotels are Mass. I mean, they hike them up. I just read an article the other day Someone paid like a thousand dollars for a Hampton Inn. Wow, in like like 20 miles away from the city. That's how much power she has.

1:55:26 - Leo Laporte
Wow. So she's a really a kind of an amazing economic force, isn't she? You wouldn't think anyone, you wouldn't think there would be anybody who could make the NFL more popular. Right, Right and yeah.

1:55:42 - Johnny Jet
It's incredible. You know, I have my homes on my team, my fantasy team, and my buddy has Kelsey. I said was is Taylor Swift at the game today? It's in Germany. It was in Germany this morning. She didn't go to Frankfurt for this one and I and I googled it and she wasn't there. But sure enough, I mean, but what's interesting?

1:55:59 - Leo Laporte
game, the NFL Refuses to say whether she'll be there or not. Right we are, for security reasons. We don't want anybody to think she might not be there. Oh yeah, oh, that's funny.

1:56:10 - Mikah Sargent
I Didn't think I like that, of course.

1:56:15 - Johnny Jet
They want people to show up, they want to tune in to see if she's there I'm such a force. It's really I mean I googled that to see if he was, if she was gonna be there, and there were so many news stories, including by the AP is Taylor Swift and in Germany for.

1:56:29 - Leo Laporte
I'm sure Travis Kelsey is not Dailing dating Taylor Swift Because he wants to improve Jersey sales, of course, but they did become number one Jersey Instantly.

1:56:43 - Mikah Sargent
Did you see Mitt Romney, of all people, and his wife dressed up as Taylor Swift and the chiefs player? Please?

1:56:50 - Johnny Jet
don't. I did see that, please, but I also.

1:56:57 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, and I could dress as Bill Belichick. You just cut the sleeves off your sweatshirt and you're done. I don't know who that is Well, Bill Belichick is.

1:57:04 - Johnny Jet
He's a coach of the New England Patriots. He's like a hard. Thank you you know a hard, you know what, and? And he he's commented on Taylor's performance he goes. She stands for three hours in the pouring rain. Oh yeah, she's boxboro stadium, she's she goes.

1:57:19 - Leo Laporte
I have respect for that one there's. She's not coasting by any means. This is an amazing and that's why she's so beloved, I'm sure. All right, so get ready. You have 18 days to Thanksgiving.

1:57:33 - Johnny Jet
And then you should be booking Christmas too. If you haven't booked Christmas, you know, the 22nd, the Friday before, is it gonna be? The is like the number three travel day of the year. It's gonna be one of them. Wow, what's your favorite?

1:57:46 - Leo Laporte
airline Johnny I.

1:57:48 - Johnny Jet
You know, it all depends on where I'm going Internationally. It's tough to beat the Middle East carriers like I know I have.

1:57:56 - Leo Laporte
For religious reasons I don't want to fly them not religious but I just don't right. I kind of want to stay at the Pacific.

1:58:03 - Johnny Jet
That would break the lines obviously China, right, singapore, I've flown.

1:58:07 - Leo Laporte
Singapore's at Hong Kong. Okay, Singapore's amazing yeah.

1:58:12 - Johnny Jet
Air New. Zealand.

1:58:13 - Leo Laporte
I'm about for domestic carriers.

1:58:15 - Johnny Jet
I fly American a lot because they have a great freaking flyer program. But the best run airline in the US is Delta.

1:58:22 - Leo Laporte
My son says Delta. Yeah, he let, he's a Delta guy yeah but they have.

1:58:27 - Johnny Jet
They don't have a very good freaking flyer program and I get free upgrades. I'm an American often, so that's why I stick with them.

1:58:34 - Leo Laporte
Do you? I mean some credit cards. I know you have some credit card sponsors, but some credit cards have airline points, right?

1:58:41 - Johnny Jet
Oh, every airline has a credit card. Are those credit cards or no it all? If you fly them often and you want to get into their lounges and they offer access, then do it. If not, don't get it, because they're there. Their APR is way too high and you have to pay off these credit cards, off in full every month, never, never, just pay the minimum carry your balance deep hole and it's tough to get out.

1:59:04 - Leo Laporte
I you know when I was young man I think thirty thousand dollars in credit card.

1:59:08 - Johnny Jet
I was the same way. I was twenty five thousand dollars in debt.

1:59:11 - Leo Laporte
It's really easy.

1:59:12 - Johnny Jet
Oh, my god, I got my. When I got my first big speaking gig, I put all that money and paid off my credit card.

1:59:17 - Leo Laporte
Yeah nice because the interest rate so high you almost can never get out of that hole. You know you're paying so much. You're paying two, three hundred dollars a month. It's like it kills you. It was a very good feeling when I finally get out from under all that debt. That was a hundred percent. Terrible, terrible thing, right, mr Johnny jet Anything else hey? I mean how much time we got as we got all the time in the world.

1:59:39 - Johnny Jet
Oh yeah, I had some time. How about how to quickly find global entry and Nexus and Sentry appointments? Yes, oh you know all about. You know all about global entry.

1:59:50 - Leo Laporte
I have global entry.

1:59:52 - Johnny Jet
Nexus is for Canada, right, it's the same as in. Sentry is for Mexico. So we talked about this many times. But you know, this is how when you land in, when you come to it back to the US and your long immigration lines, you can just bypass them. If you have global entry but you have to be pre approved, you have to pay a hundred dollars. It's for five years. Certain credit cards Premium credit cards will cover it, so make sure, if you do have one, to pay for it with that card. But you can't get an appointment always. And I just ran into one of the parents at our school the other day saying, hey, I Could not get a global entry appointment. And one of my friends is like, oh, I use this great app and I go. I my ears perked up, I just joined their conversation. I go what app are you using? And they said appointment scanner. So I went and checked it out and, sure enough, I actually wrote about it. They had my logo on their website. I totally forgot. But what they do is that funny.

2:00:46 - Leo Laporte
When somebody tells you about something, say, well, I gotta try that out.

2:00:49 - Johnny Jet
Oh, yes, I did, and then I remember I did write about it. So they charge twenty nine dollars for one month of alerts, for one month paid alert, and they'll tell you. I mean, they send bots out and every like few minutes You're gonna get an email say, hey, an appointment just opened up in LA, or wherever the way.

2:01:06 - Leo Laporte
I got. My global entry Was and I don't know if they still do this I was coming back from an international Flight and then, and even though it was one in the morning, I was able to do my interview then, as I came back into the United States, yes, you can ask for that, but for Nexus you can't.

2:01:23 - Johnny Jet
Nexus, they make it a lot more difficult because with Nexus you need to meet with Canadian and US at the same time. I mean, you actually, you might be able to, but it's difficult, and for Nexus appointments they're usually around the border. So we had to go to Niagara Falls. Hey, a lot of the, a lot of the offices were closed in Canada.

2:01:41 - Mikah Sargent
I think they're just open them back up, but it's really difficult to get an appointment our own, patrick Delayhenti, is telling an interesting story, says the annoying part of global entry is that when we were flying with our son when he Was an infant, they wouldn't let us go through the global entry line because he didn't have global entry to an infant. So we signed him up and he had to go to an interview. He had to go to an interview. What did they ask him? Do you have any foreign?

2:02:04 - Johnny Jet
Both my kids have it. They and they and they had to do the interview again for renewals.

2:02:09 - Leo Laporte
What do they say to them?

2:02:11 - Johnny Jet
They don't say anything to them.

2:02:12 - Leo Laporte
They don't, johnny. I just want to make sure you're your parent. How do you know how to make a Molotov cocktail Like?

2:02:19 - Johnny Jet
what he could even know. He could even speak. My son was one years old when he got it. He wasn't even one, he was eight months old when they really they're interviewing the parents.

2:02:26 - Leo Laporte
So did they ask your questions, then Definitely Okay yeah.

2:02:30 - Johnny Jet
Definitely yeah, so that's what they're doing, yet that both parents there, and it's actually a good idea because and actually when you use clear, clear is completely different, but it's for security in the US and actually concerts, certain stadiums, you can use clear. When we we bring our kids through, they ask the kids questions. They don't even let us talk they. They ask them all these different questions.

2:02:53 - Leo Laporte
Anybody ask you to carry anything in your?

2:02:56 - Johnny Jet
no, they want to make sure who they are and if, if, we're really you know these people.

2:03:00 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, yeah, that's actually what if?

2:03:02 - Mikah Sargent
you have a kid that's a little chaotic. It's like I have no idea who these people are these people? Well, they're not my mommy and daddy, you're not going somewhere.

2:03:08 - Johnny Jet
It's interesting, they don't get in LA, but it then at Newark Airport. They ask all the time, but here I do not.

2:03:14 - Leo Laporte
They never ask here it's probably because some ports are more date, more likely to have traffic no it should be universal.

2:03:20 - Johnny Jet
That, yeah, but I'm extra and I also used another site, so there's multiple sites where they do this. I've used one called global entry, notif calm, and that's 20 bucks for 30 days. That's really only for global entry, not for nexus. So if you're looking for nexus century and global entry, try this appointment scanner. There used to be a great bot on Twitter that was free, but you know who messed that up and they don't do it anymore.

2:03:45 - Leo Laporte
No TIF global entry. Yes, johnny jet, everybody should follow Johnny. That's where you should go. Johnny jet, calm we're, you can learn all about all of this. I mean, who else would tell you not to book travel to do to a Taylor Swift city? Nobody but Johnny. Johnny, jet commas newsletters are free. Johnny jet comm slash newsletter. He's also on YouTube, instagram, x just interviewed Rick steves this week.

2:04:13 - Johnny Jet
Oh, I love, I don't know him. I.

2:04:16 - Leo Laporte
Interviewed him I think many years ago when I was on radio, but I don't really remember much. But I, I love Rick. I've always read, bought his books and watched his videos.

2:04:26 - Johnny Jet
And such a sweet guy Is he a sweet guy I've traveled with him multiple times and they speak at a lot of the same conferences. Yes, it's just. I mean he's down to earth and I was like much surprising about him is that he's like I don't sign up, freakin fire programs. I guess I could care less. I have enough money. I don't need to try and get a free seat. I'm like whoa Rick, you can at least donate the miles. Sign up, it takes one.

2:04:46 - Leo Laporte
I'll take literally a minute. Take your miles, rick.

2:04:50 - Mikah Sargent
Hey, thank you Johnny. Thanks so much have a great holiday safe travel.

2:04:55 - Leo Laporte
See you next month.

2:04:56 - Johnny Jet
Take care, take you later.

2:04:57 - Leo Laporte
Bye, bye, bye, bye. Oh, I love that we should take a little time out and when we come back, I think one more call, one wrap this up.

2:05:05 - Mikah Sargent
What do you say? I agree here, here, where, where?

2:05:09 - Leo Laporte
there, there. What does here here mean? I think it means hear him, hear him. So it should be a G a r Ah here. I'll have to look into that. I think it means hear him, hear me, hear me. Who should I actually hear? John Ashley, yeah, who should I talk to? Yes, somebody very patient, paul. All right, paul, star, six to unmute. We're gonna put you in the zoom room and Then you may speak. Oh, hey, paul, where you going from?

2:05:46 - Caller
I'm calling from Louisville, kentucky, louisville. And is it Paul?

2:05:51 - Leo Laporte
Yes, yes, sometimes the first name is another name on the on the account we see your caller ID. Well, welcome Paul. What I love, louisville. What can I do for you?

2:06:01 - Caller
I've got my speakerphone on, is that yeah?

2:06:04 - Leo Laporte
we sound good. Yeah, you sound good.

2:06:07 - Caller
Yeah, I have a, a Samsung chrome book that I bought new in 2017 and it reached its end of life and I I decided to put on this To enable this thing called lacrosse. Have you, are you familiar with that, lacros? What it is, is it? Yeah, it's a. It's a way to separate the Chrome browser from the chrome OS, so this is something new, it's a new project I'm not familiar with.

2:06:49 - Leo Laporte
It comes from the chromium people, so I mean it's. It's still a Google thing Does it turn into a. Linux box. Is that kind of what happens?

2:06:59 - Caller
No, no, in fact I was trying to do that and and I was trying to, let's say, run Linux on this like a full disco, and it was going to be too complicated and possibly I could brick it. So I found out about this thing.

2:07:14 - Leo Laporte
It's really easy. So let me explain what lacrosse is. No first couple of things to say. First of all, even Google says yeah, just because your Chromebook is is not going to get security patches anymore doesn't mean it's unusable. Chrome will probably continue to get updated for some time, and then that's why they have lacrosse. The idea of lacrosse is you're gonna stop using the Chrome browser that comes with Chrome OS and Start using the Linux version of the Chrome browser, which will be updated Eternally forever. So that really solves 90% of any security issues you might have. I mean, if you were a spy I working for the CIA I might not recommend it, but if you're just a normal person, that Chromebook is gonna be fine. So lacrosse will just give you an up-to-date browser. Basically.

2:08:04 - Caller
That was the reason that the security issues is what I wanted to talk to you about. I was wondering. You have said for quite a while that you shouldn't use the bit warden extension and use the app.

2:08:17 - Leo Laporte
Well, I think it's fine on Chrome OS to use that. In fact, I've never said you shouldn't, but, but the people who said that actually were the folks at Chrome, at Google, specifically the zero-day people at Google. And it's a theoretical threat. Any browser extension, if it's malicious, can be dangerous because it has access to all sorts of stuff, and so if you've got a malicious Bit warden extension or last pass or one password or anything all the password managers have browser extensions. In Theory it could be risky, but if you make sure that you're getting the extension from Bit warden or one password or last pass or ever you're, you're probably fine. There would have to be a significant attack To take advantage of that. In theory, the safest thing to do would be use the app and not use a browser extension. In practice, it's fine to use a browser extension. There. To my knowledge, there's never been an issue With anybody's browser extension, and certainly not bit wardens. So that was, you know, tavis Armandy, who is the guy who works at Google to find the zero days. His answer was use the Chrome password manager, which I thought was a terrible answer. It required but it's good for Google requires that you use Chrome.

There are some in my mind a question marks about Chrome's own security. For a long time, chrome kept the passwords in clear text. I Don't think his solution was better, but he did raise an important point, and certainly Steve Gibson, I have talked about this. Probably wise to be Be aware of that and make sure you are careful when you install the password extension. I don't think there is a. Is there a Chrome app on them on Chromebook? I mean a bit warden app on Chromebook? I think there isn't. I think it's only on Windows and Mac and Linux. Because of the way Chromebook works, you can't run a standalone app. You could only run an extension to the browser. So that's the only thing you're gonna be able to do anyway.

2:10:31 - Caller
I thought I did use the a. I usually use bit warden on my laptop, linux laptop.

2:10:37 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, and then you can use the other hand.

2:10:40 - Caller
Yeah, I do there, but so anyway, maybe if it.

2:10:44 - Leo Laporte
Maybe if you're using a bit warden app, it's on the Chrome web store. Yeah, I see that now, but I don't think that's really it's really just the extension, an app. It's the same. It's mostly JavaScript, so I think that it's the same. It has the same issues, frankly.

2:11:01 - Caller
Let me ask you a question about continuing just to use this. You know, when I got I'm still looking at the message at the end and my settings that says for my Chromebook security updates that ended upgrade your device. Now that would pop that. For me it would be just restarting and resetting, is it? Do I really have to reset it if I'm always afraid I'm gonna mess something up? Is it a security risk to just keep? Keep this as it is, you know to keep my, it's fine.

2:11:37 - Leo Laporte
I mean, at some point you might want to get a new Chromebook. Google has I mean, google's taken a lot of heat for this, especially from schools that bought Chromebooks, and five years later they're no longer supported and I think they're gonna they're gonna offer longer support terms from now on. Nevertheless, I they even said at this when they announced that it's not like Suddenly, you're wide open, you're still pretty secure. I wouldn't. I think you're fine, in fact I'd be, I'd be fine to use it for banking and so forth. I mean, if you want to use your Linux machine for the most critical thing, yeah, banking, and then the Chromebook is fine for everything else.

The real problem the real reason that's safe is you can't do anything to a Chromebook.

2:12:21 - Caller
Right Well, now that they've got this separate browser, it makes it, you know that solves the body easier.

2:12:28 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, that's the number one issue.

2:12:30 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

2:12:32 - Caller
It. It's separate because they were saying that the Chrome, the, the updates when you were using the OS, we're not as frequent right as a regular browser and now that I've got this browser I notice right updates. You get every one virtually, but yeah, they you only on Chrome OS.

2:12:49 - Leo Laporte
Get a browser update. When you get a Chrome OS update, they get their hand in hand. Yeah, yeah.

2:12:55 - Caller
Point. Yeah, but I got a question Can. I get one more question, Sure of course.

I Got a Unsimilar situation with my pixel 4a and it shows that the last security update was in August, but curiously they had this Google Play systems update in October. Right Now I'm guessing that they're not going to be any. I think I've looked up and there's not going to be any more updates for security on the 4a. That's correct, and I Was thinking about going to the 6a, yeah, which is relatively cheap. Is that a good choice? I think so, you know. Look at the 7a.

2:13:40 - Leo Laporte
The 8a will be coming out in a few months. Get the, get the most recent one you can afford. Google did say when they released the pixel 8 that they were going to have seven years of updates. So the thing to understand is, as with most operating systems, there's a feature update, which is Android 13 to 14, that kind of thing, and then there's a security update which come out monthly. You, you've had your last security update. You're not going to get a feature update and you've just had your last security update. But they also update. They have. The store has some security features fact they just announced in increased scanning in the store. So you still are getting some security. And when they update the Google the various Google little bits and pieces that are in the store You're getting updates to those too. But Android is different than Chrome OS. Android is much more a target and Much easier to hack, and so I think security updates on Android are pretty darn important. So I would probably recommend getting a new phone.

2:14:40 - Caller
You want to keep it about Using that net mobile. They, there you go. I think they've got a Plan where you can buy that from them, yeah our sponsors, yep.

2:14:52 - Leo Laporte
They're good company and they're cheap and they offer, I think, inexpensive new phones.

2:14:57 - Caller
So An age at the 55 and plus plan is there. I'm trying to see a difference in that. Can you is there? Can you give me a brief?

2:15:06 - Leo Laporte
You know, I don't know off the top of my head, because I should be doing it, shouldn't I? They recently added that they were so affordable. I didn't really even look at the older plans I should, I should look at. I don't know anything about it.

2:15:19 - Caller
I am over 55 myself, and if there's an advantage, I should Well month $15 a month, you know if you pay 180.

2:15:29 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, that's what I did.

2:15:31 - Caller
Yeah, and they give you like dollars off, you know so exclusive plan for seniors.

2:15:37 - Leo Laporte
They I think it that they have better support. Mostly is what I think.

2:15:42 - Caller
Oh okay.

2:15:42 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, it looks like the same deal, but they're giving you additional Support freement, tech advisor service, full service, activation, transfer. Yeah, they're giving. All they're giving you is better support, oh.

2:15:58 - Caller
Okay, great Great.

2:16:00 - Leo Laporte
That's good, that's nice. Well, that's who needs support, right? Yeah, that's old folks. That's why I have my key yeah, we.

2:16:07 - Caller
Can I squeeze one little quickie in? Sure, this one just okay. When I travel, I used my last trip. What I did was I have proton free VPN. I used on my phone the Google Pixel, yep, and what I did was I tethered that to my Chromebook. And so was wondering if I have the proton running, the VPN running on my phone, the pixel, is it safe to tether that to my, yes, chromebook?

2:16:46 - Leo Laporte
you'll get. You'll be still going through the VPN, through the pixel.

2:16:50 - Caller
Yeah, that's what I was thinking. Well, I thought I checked with you. Yeah, well, leo, thanks a lot. Appreciate all your help.

2:16:56 - Leo Laporte
Hey, it's a real pleasure talking to you and I I know I appreciate your interest in staying safe. I think that's great.

2:17:03 - Caller
Yeah, I've called just several times and I'm usually I'm kind of like paranoid about security.

2:17:08 - Leo Laporte
You know, don't paralyze yourself with security, but, but I think you're smart to be paying attention to it, absolutely.

2:17:15 - Caller
Right, okay, well, thanks a lot, leo, take care.

2:17:18 - Leo Laporte
Bye, bye, good to talk to you. Bye, bye, paul, that is our last call. That is indeed the last call and that means you Know the story of that song, mm-hmm.

2:17:30 - Mikah Sargent
Okay, you told me about it.

2:17:32 - Leo Laporte
I did a baby. Yeah, I Always thought it was interesting because I thought it was like hey, the bars closing, you're gonna which? Which are these fine young ladies you take it home? Has nothing to do with that, nope.

2:17:45 - Caller
Nope.

2:17:46 - Leo Laporte
Anyway, that's a story for another day. You can Google it. We are done. I do hope you will join club twit. That is so important to us going forward. It's how we finance this show and every show we do, because, unfortunately, advertising has started to dwindle and Most the shows are not making money. Well, if you give us seven dollars, I can promise you an ad free experience for everything, plus shows we don't put out anywhere else, plus all the wonderful stuff that happens in the discord, plus stuff that happens before and after every show. It is just a bonus, but the best thing the warm fuzzy feeling you get in the pit of your stomach no one that you're spending that seven dollars to help us continue to do the stuff we love to bring you and I hope you love to listen to. Thank you to all our club twit members. Twittv, club twit. Everything is there. Read the FAQ for information if you have any difficulty joining the discord or downloading the shows. It's all there might have made a nice video.

2:18:44 - Mikah Sargent
Twittv slash club Twit indeed, and if you want to get in touch with us during the week, you can do that in a couple of ways. You can call the phone number 8887242884 to leave a voicemail, or you can email us, atg at twittv. You could send audio or video in that email if you'd like, or just text, and we will get that and be able to answer your question During the show, when we record it, at whatever time it happens to be. Where you are, it's certainly around about 11, 11 am Pacific, to somewhere around 130 to 140 pm.

Basically it's 11, 30 to 130, 11 Right, yes, then you can call us during the show at 8887242884, or head to call that twittv in your browser to be connected to the zoom call and Be brought up on the stage to ask your question.

2:19:38 - Leo Laporte
We love having your questions. You can also email ATG. If you email ATG at twittv, leave a, put a video in there or an audio in there, right, then we get a more, a richer, a richer experience of your question. Michael will be back Tuesday with iOS today and, of course, thursday with tech news weekly. I will be back Tuesday with Mac break weekly and security now. I hope you will join us then. In the meantime, on behalf of Mikah Sargent, I'm Leo Laporte. Say it with me now. Have a great week week, bye, bye.

2:20:12 - Rod Pyle
Hey, I'm Rod Pyle, editor-in-chief of Ad Astra magazine. In each week, I joined with my co-host to bring you, This Week in Space, the latest and greatest news from the final frontier. We talked to NASA, chief space scientists, engineers, educators and artists, and sometimes we just shoot the breeze Over what's hot and what's not in space books and TV. And we do it all for you, our fellow true believers. So whether you're an armchair adventurer or waiting for your turn to grab a slot in Elon's Mars rocket, join us on This Week in Space and be part of the greatest adventure of all time.