Ask The Tech Guys 2003 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 - Mikah Sargent
Coming up on Ask the Tech Guys. It's me, Mikah Sargent, hosting this episode of Ask the Tech Guys. We have some great questions, including look, why would I have a focus mode turned on? Am I still getting notifications on my Mac? Plus, we talked to Rod Pyle, spaceman about the current state of the new space race and I've got a lot of questions for him and he's got a lot of great answers. We're also joined by Johnny Jet, who describes a recent podcast scam he had to deal with, as well as talks a little bit about travel and some tips that he has based on the fact that he's getting back out there and getting on those flights. We've got all that and so much more coming up on Ask the Tech Guys.

This is Ask the Tech Guys with Mikah Sargent, episode 2003,. Recorded Sunday, december 3rd 2023. Beware the cannibal solar storm. This episode of Ask the Tech Guys is brought to you by DeleteMe. Reclaim your privacy by removing personal data from online sources. Protect yourself and reduce the risk of fraud, spam, cyber security threats and more by going to joindelete.com/twit and using code TWIT for 20% off. and by SecureMyEmail. SecureMyEmail provides easy encryption for your current personal and business email addresses. Setup takes only minutes. Start your free account or enjoy a 30-day free trial of a premium plan, no payment info required. And they have a special offer for TWIT listeners. Visit securemyemail.com/twitT and use code TWIT at checkout. And by Melissa, the global leader in contact data quality. Bad data is bad business. Make sure your customer contact data is up to date this holiday season. Get started today with 1000 records cleaned for free at melissa.com/twit. And by Mylio. Mylio Photos is a smart and powerful system that lets you easily organize, edit and manage years of important documents, photos and videos in an offline library hosted on any device. Check out their limited-time holiday gift bundle for a 25% discount on Mylio Photos Plus at mylio.com/twit25.

Hello and welcome to Ask the Tech Guys. The S is in parentheses this week as it was the past two weeks, as Leo Laporte is out. He will be back next week, but until then I, Mikah Sargent, am solo hosting the show. This is the show where people call in email, in write in video, in audio, in all sorts of ways of getting in touch to ask their tech questions, which we and in this case I, do my best to answer said tech questions. It is your call for help, your tech help line, your madam what was her name? Madam Cleo? Was that the one that did the sort of fortune telling? We don't do fortune telling here, unfortunately, but we do try to help you out with your technology.

If you'd like to get in touch with us here at Ask the Tech Guys, we've got many a way to make that happen. We've got this calltwittv. That is a URL, as you might imagine. We suggest going to that URL on your phone. If you go to it on your smartphone, then it will connect you to our Zoom chat, which I'm realizing is not up here on the screen for me, and when it is, when you get into that Zoom room, you have the ability to then hang out and be brought up onto our magical screen here where you can ask your question. So what happens is you'll be brought into that room and it's important that you look at the Zoom UI that little bit of frame around the video, and look for a little button that's a hands up, and you want to tap on that button to say, hey, I've got a question. So that's an indicator that lets us know that you're not just calling to hang out, because we do have some people who call to hang out, but that you actually do have a question you want to ask.

The other ways to get in touch include a phone number. It's 888-724-2884. If you're outside of the US, you'll want to dial 1-888-724-2884. When you call that number while we're doing the show, from around about 11 am Pacific to 1 pm Pacific, then you will be also brought into the Zoom, but it's not going to look the same to you, so you don't have to worry about that. What you'll do is you'll hold whenever you get brought up onto the stage, you'll need to press star six. When you press star six, then you'll be able to talk to us, because up to that point you remain muted. So listen for us to say hey, are you there? Hit that star six, you'll get connected. And then, if you call that number 888-724-2884, during the rest of the week, you'll be able to leave a voicemail. So maybe you're a little shy, or maybe your question comes in at a different time and you're sitting there going. What is it that I need to figure out? Call us 888-724-2884. Leave a voicemail. We'll be able to play it back and have that for you.

The last way to get in touch is ATG at twittv. Atg at twittv is the email. You can send us text, you can send us video, you can send us audio. Any of those will let you get in touch.

So this week I'm going to do something a little different, because I'm running the show and we have a lot of questions that come in in all sorts of fashions. I mean, we give you so many ways to get in touch with us. So instead of doing a little news segment here at the front because we've got two great guests coming up, including Johnny Jet, who will be here about one, and Rod Pyle, who will be back with us at noon I thought we'd get right into the questions. So let's do that. We're going to start with an email. Again, that's ATG at twittv, and typically these emails are over there in a mailbox and Leo sort of reaches back and grabs those. I'm kind of wondering if we should have it on this side. My rotator cuff is maybe a little bit more youthful than Leo's. I can get it, but without further ado, let's take a look at this email. This email comes in from Vinay, who writes hello, leo and Mikah.

This is Vinay from Ashburn, virginia, a long time listener of the show. I have a question about focus on macOS. I have the focus shared between my Mac and my iPhone and my iPad. When I have it in sleep settings, all notifications are silenced on my iPhone and my iPad. However, on my Mac, if I were to have an email open on the browser, it still pushes the sound notification. Any idea on how to fix this? Appreciate your help or your input on this. Regards Vinay.

So what Vinay is talking about here is Apple introduced this great set of features. They're called focus modes, and focus modes give you the ability to set up certain rules and permissions for the notifications that come through on your iPhone, your iPad and your Mac, and when these focus modes are turned on, you can have it do all sorts of things. You can say when I turn on my sleep focus mode, I want you to change the wallpaper on my iPhone and my Apple watch. I want you to turn off notifications for these apps. Let these apps continue to send me notifications. It is incredibly detailed how much you're able to do, but because of this, you have to be mindful of what you're actually telling the system that you are allowing or not allowing, and so oftentimes. So, vinay.

One of the things Vinay mentioned is that if they were to have the email open on the browser, it still pushes the sound notification. So that means that the push notification is not coming from an email app which is more locked down. It is more likely to be obeying the permissions set forth by Mac OS, but instead it is kind of bypassing that. And that is because, on top of the Mac being a little bit more open of a platform, there are also ways of sort of prioritizing the notification and saying this notification is allowed to continue through. So if there is a notification that is sort of a priority notification, those can sometimes come through.

There are multiple things that you need to check out here basically. So when you have your focus modes turned on, you need to make sure that, of course, in your focus mode on the Mac in here let me see if I can pull this up on screen for folks who are watching here One sec, so we'll do, to AirPlay One and then, if we look at this screen here, so we've got the sleep focus mode and we may not have a connection, but I can kind of describe it. So there we go. Is it possible for y'all to zoom in so we can get close to this screen here in the middle. If not, that's fine. But essentially what you want to do is click on focus mode here, choose the sleep focus mode and make sure thank you, that allowed apps, that you have none allowed in here and that you also turn off time sensitive notifications. Those are the notifications, that are those priority notifications.

So again, mac OS gives you the ability, just as iOS does, to say time sensitive notifications are allowed, they have a priority, and my guess is probably that the browser has said you know what I count this as a time sensitive notification because I want to be able to push that through no matter what. So make sure that that is toggled off and then you can see that I have allow some apps on up here. I don't have any apps actually added, but it's still worth it to click on this and say silence some apps or allow some apps and see if it's just a matter of needing to tell that specific app that it needs to be quiet. So again, I'm not sure which browser you're using Vinay, that would be helpful here in determining kind of what absolutely needs to happen but in any case, making sure you have that those time sensitive notifications turned off and that, if you need to, you target that browser specifically. That should help keep that sound from playing whenever you have that focus mode turned on.

An excellent question that I think is worth exploring. One thing it's just kind of a general bit of knowledge for folks on iOS, on iPad OS, on Mac OS, in that focus section there's a little toggle called share across devices. Make sure that you want to have that turned on. What I mean by that is ask yourself, do I want for when my sleep focus mode turns on on my iPhone, I also wanted to turn on on my other. You know three, four, five devices, whatever it happens to be.

If you don't, you can turn it off per device. So you can say look, when I'm in work focus mode and or sleep focus mode or driving focus mode on my Mac. That is just specific to the Mac, I don't need it anywhere else. Then you would turn off share across devices. But otherwise, like Vinay, you'll have it turned on and it will sync across all those devices. So, vinay, let us know if that helps you out with that issue. Again, my guess is that the browser itself is prioritizing those notifications, which is kind of annoying. All right, should we take another email? You want to go to voicemail? It's up to you, joe. I'll go to the email.

All right. So up next in the emails, we have one. This comes in from Steven, who writes I am currently using Ventura and I found out that Apple Photos will not display raw photos from a Sony or other camera correctly. The situation is I take the photo with the camera, I load it to Apple Photos, I edit it and then I save. When viewing the raw image after being edited, the photo is out of focus. Does Apple have a fix for this, or is it fixed in Sonoma? Thank you, steven.

So, steven, I have noticed this issue as well. Actually, what's going on with this is that it is a matter of the system needing to kind of reprocess the photo so that it can show you a representation of what the photo will look like after it's been edited. So, photos on macOS, photos on iOS. It does this thing with any photo file where it creates a sort of preview of the photo that is a little bit lower quality, a much smaller file size than the full on official file that exists. That way, you can quickly see the photo and do things like add it to albums or make duplicates of it or share it with someone and you know that you're sharing the right photo, but the full true, official photo. It exists separately and takes a little bit more time for processing. Now, that said, I have also had a couple of issues where, even after I sort of waited for it to load, it still did remain blurry, and that is something that I have not seen fixed in the latest version of macOS. But that is something that I'll have to keep my eye on because, yeah, there have been a couple of times where something happens and it just simply doesn't load properly and what I've had to do is open it up on a different device. It loads there and then that kind of kicks it through in the system and then it shows up again properly in photos on macOS. So, ah, harrington in the chat is saying that they've seen indications that it is fixed in Sonoma. So it is possible that in a later version of Sonoma this issue of displaying raw photos properly has been fixed. So, again, I'll keep my eye out for the kind of full, true, official answer on addressing that issue, because, yeah, that is something that is rather frustrating when you've got raw photos that you've. Even I just had them from, I think, from my iPhone, and there was a problem with that. So, thank you, knox Harrington. If you have links to those indications, that would be lovely to have those as well so we can include those in the show notes.

All right, moving right along, this one comes in from Fred, who writes Hi Leo and Mikah. At home we currently have an airport express in our Wi-Fi network as an AirPlay client to relay audio for two sets of speakers in different rooms. As we are now five years past Apple discontinuing the airport altogether, what could you suggest to replace it? Well, I met Fred in Wisconsin and Fred says that he visited the original Brick House 11 years ago for a Mac Brick Weekly taping and really enjoyed the experience. Awesome, fred. So Fred is talking about these AirPlay Express devices. Excuse me, airport Express devices were little Wi-Fi devices that had audio as part of the hardware itself, so you could plug some hardware into it, some speakers, whatever it happened to be, and play it over an AirPlay connection.

Since then, apple has introduced or not Apple itself, but different companies have introduced some ways of actually creating the same experience with AirPlay. So you've got your HomePod, for example. That, of course, will play over AirPlay, but if you're looking for devices that will give you the ability to take your own speakers and AirPlay with those. Apple has a page that's its home accessories page, and if you scroll through and you check out the speakers section, you will see a number of AirPlay enabled speakers. But these also include some of the actual devices themselves that can play that you plug into them. And so one of those is and let me see here Eve Home.

I believe this is actually a fairly new device, and Eve has come out with a new audio device that does exactly what you are after. It's called the Eve Play and it's an audio streaming interface. It's $150, $149.95. And it is a way to stream audio over AirPlay. It is built to be for your high-fi, high-quality sound and will let you sync that audio, obviously across multiple rooms. So here's the back of it. So you've got analog output, you've got optical, you've got coaxial and, of course, an ethernet connection and then the power itself, so you can choose between analog or digital. And so you can see here it's right next to an audio interface for playing whatever it happens to be that you want. And then what's great about it is, if you get multiple Eve plays, then you are able to have them play to those devices altogether or one independently. And then let me see if, because Belkin for a while was making an Air, yes, so they still do. It looks like Belkin has an AirPlay 2 device called the SoundForm Connect. It's available for $99.99. Now I have one of these. I've used it actually on when I used to do the show.

Smart Tech today reviewed this device and it is good for folks who are not super concerned about the audio quality. It is not for folks who are super concerned about audio quality. It is not going to give you that hi-fi sound that you might be looking for. If you are after kind of the so here. Yeah, so it does sample rates of 16-bit and it's only 44.1 kilohertz resolution. So not necessarily what you might be after. But and given that the Eve play is just $50 more, I would almost suggest just going for that extra, whatever you need to. That said, if it ain't broke, don't fix it. So as long as those airport express continue to work as these audio, these AirPlay clients, then I think that you should keep using them. There's concern about the security patches. I would say that if you're not using them as Wi-Fi devices, if you've kind of disabled that part of them, and you're just using them as audio, a method to stream AirPlay, then yeah, that's a good way to go. So, fred, yes, between the Eve play or the less exciting but also viable Belkin AirPlay2 audio adapter, that should be what you're after.

Thank you for a great question and you know what. I hope you have fun rocking out, however you happen to be doing so. All right, let us take a break and we'll be back soon with even more of your questions, but I want to tell you about our first sponsor of today's episode of Ask the Tech Guys. It is DeleteMe, who are bringing you this episode. If you've ever searched your name online and you didn't like how much of your personal information was available, it made you feel exposed or unsafe. That someone could search you and find out where you live, what you've done, who you know. It can be kind of creepy.

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0:25:56 - John Ashley
All right, I am going to try and pick up on Jack, who called in All right.

0:26:03 - Mikah Sargent
So Jack called in at 888-724-2884, who we are now bringing over to bring them online. A reminder to the individual calling in Press star six on your phone to unmute yourself. As soon as you are unmuted, say hello, tell us where you're from or tell us your name and where you're calling from. Yes, hello, hello. Hi, what's your name and where are you calling from? Hi Jack from Las Vegas. Hi Jack from Las Vegas. How can I help you today?

0:26:32 - Caller
I have a brand spanking new Apple MacBook Pro, the M3. And the same thing was going on with my previous MacBook Pro. I've got a program installed. It's called Memory Diag and it gives you notifications whenever the pressure has reached a high level. You can kind of recirculate it or recycle it. Why I'm not running anything extensive that I can see. I don't understand continuously getting this notification saying that the tree is at a high level.

0:27:15 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, this is a great question. Did you ever use a Windows machine in your past? No, no, you've always been on the Mac. Yeah, my first Mac was like a performance, I think.

Got it. I was wrong in thinking what I was thinking, because this feels like Windows PC trauma that is rearing itself. I did use a Windows PC and one of the issues that I always had with it was that it seemed to just spin up silly things and basically make use of as much of my CPU as it could and also just fill out as much RAM as it could, and so I had to have programs on there that would monitor and let me know, so that when I was in the middle of trying to render a video or something, I could say, oh, that in the background is causing issues and I need to get rid of it. So what is important to understand especially now that we are on Apple Silicon M3, is that Apple has introduced a new system that it's and I wish I could remember the exact name it's Dynamic Memory Allocation, I believe, and what it does is, at any given time, it lets your Apple Silicon chip use, or rather the machine use, as much memory as possible for any of the tasks that it does. So you're going to continue to get this notification because it's just making use of the system that it has. It's kind of like if you were to buy, say, a Ferrari, and you only drove it at 20 miles per hour all the time, and so you kind of wasted the money that you spent on this much more powerful machine by not making use of what's there. And so, given that that's the case, it kind of spreads out and uses what's available at any given time to make sure that it's making the most of the system. So this memory diagram is going to keep telling you that, even though you're only running you know calculator and the Safari browser, that it is running up against the memory.

What macOS does these days, what it's very smart about doing, is the second you open a program that's going to require more. It is going to do that thing that memory diag says it does, which is that it like clears out the memory and makes room for something else. It's going to do that automatically. It's going to make sure that the programs that need it and the applications that need it and the services that need it make use of it. So this is just the new way of things, and I wouldn't be surprised if, in the coming years, we start to see utilities like memory diag and even a program that I use all the time. That, I think, is a fantastic program. It's called CleanMyMac. It has a utility in it that does the same thing. It lets you quote, unquote clear out the RAM. What that does is it basically tells the machine I need all of the RAM possible and it takes up all the space and then it stops using that space and then that's what empties it out. But if you got it, use it as kind of the new way of macOS and so, yes, going forward, you're going to continue to see this. It's just using what's available.

And there's an argument to be made too on the electrical engineering side, on the computer science, basically on the hardware side of things, that we need to be using all of the chips and putting them to their paces, that it's important that this stuff gets used so that it is kind of conditioned and that it's always kind of doing what it needs to do, because if you let it just sit and linger just like a human being, sitting is not great for us. We need to keep moving. It's important that this stuff gets used. So, yeah, look, here's what I'll say.

I know that no one wants to hear that this tool that they're using to just be a little bit more aware of what's going on behind the scenes is something that they don't necessarily need, and to hear that it's not necessary is kind of troubling. I get that, but as much as I can possibly assure you you are going to. You have nothing to worry about here in terms of it using the memory. It is doing what it is designed to do and that memory diagram. You're just going to keep getting those notifications and you're kind of cleaning that out for nothing, because it's just going to keep popping up and using as much as possible.

Now, all of that said, if you do ever run into an issue where you're trying to do something on your machine you're trying to open up Photoshop and use the program and things are slow as can be you can always open up activity monitor on the Mac and you can choose the memory tab and see if there's anything that is really eating up memory at that given time, especially if it's a program that's not responding and that could be an issue. But what this sounds like is just it's the way the system is designed. It's using what you have, what you paid for, and using it to the best of its ability, and this program, which hasn't been updated since 2019 is just doing what it was designed to do, without the knowledge that this is not the way that things work these days. Does that help?

0:33:24 - Caller
Yes, it does. What I'm hearing you say is the way to fix it is to turn off the notification.

0:33:29 - Mikah Sargent
Ultimately, yes, it's to breathe in, breathe out and be A-OK with the fact that the machine is just doing what it's designed to do. Okay.

0:33:40 - Caller
And as far as clean my Mac goes, I've been using that for a couple of years. I really like it also Cool. I appreciate your help. I wish I could have said hi to Leo, been listening to him since KGO days. Love yourself, appreciate it. Thank you very much.

0:33:55 - Mikah Sargent
Thank you so much, Jack. Thanks All righty. Where should we go next, John? I am going to pick up on John. All right, we've got a John who is calling in. John, you will be brought into the on-air room and as soon as you are there, as soon as you've joined, you'll be able to ask your question of this here. Tech guy. Hello, Mikah, can you hear me? Yes, I can. John, hello, good afternoon.

0:34:32 - Caller
Thank you for taking my call. A couple of weeks or more ago, we were talking about the issue on a TV of having the TV on the volume, on the TV up and also somebody being able to have headphones and having maybe higher volume and this type of thing, and I think there was a couple of solutions, but I don't know if you came across this one. I actually found out by just asking the question that my DVR has Bluetooth. Ok.

Well, I was able to hook up with my shots headphones, which I really like, and it works quite well, so I can have the volume adjusted, of course, on the headphones and on the TV both. It seemed like a fairly simple solution to me, so it's.

0:35:14 - Mikah Sargent
That's nice. So your DVR, to be clear, gives you the ability to Bluetooth connect to it, but the DVR still outputs audio to whatever speaker system you have.

0:35:28 - Caller
That just seemed like a really simple solution, that is nice.

0:35:31 - Mikah Sargent
What kind of what? Who are you subscribed to? What's the DVR you're using? Pretty sure it's Motorola. Ok, cool.

0:35:39 - Caller
It's about five inches by five inches. No, I just got a new one a couple of months ago and the whole thing's amazing.

0:35:46 - Mikah Sargent
Oh, that's awesome. Yeah, so it's. It's simple. But you know, especially again, that it is knowledgeable of the fact that that is something that people probably want to do, to be able to have somebody connect to the audio and then, at the same time, continue to play the audio. So, yeah, if you've got a newer system out there listeners, you might try that out.

0:36:07 - Caller
That's kind of nice. Yeah, I don't know if it's going to work on all of them, but yeah, I just gave it a shot one day and there it was Cool, very cool. That won't take much more of your time. Thank you very much.

0:36:17 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, thank you for calling in and thanks for offering up that solution. I appreciate it. Yeah, have a good day you too. Bye, bye. Bye, bye, all right, why don't we head back to soon? Do a voicemail? Oh, we can do a voicemail. Yeah, so if you call during the week 888-724-2884, then you will be able to leave us a voicemail to ask a question.

0:36:41 - Caller
Hello Mikah and Leo. This is Ben from Omaha, nebraska. I had a question on the Apple Podcast app on the Apple TV. It is not deleting already played podcasts. How do I fix that?

0:37:01 - Mikah Sargent
This is interesting, I have to tell you, because I very rarely use any app outside of the Apple TV app itself on the Apple TV. So what I'd like for us to do is I believe it's AirPlay One. Let me check. I think that's the one that I'm actually logged into, and so well, sorry, what I mean is that my Apple idea is no, it's AirPlay Two that I have a connection to. Are we able to show AirPlay Two on the screen? Ok, yeah, because I actually want the Apple TV itself to be what shows on screen, because basically, what I'm going to do is connect to it and control it with my phone. Oh, and you've got? Well, yeah, I've got it pulled up, but let me get the remote, just in case this doesn't work. And then what we'll do is we will try to go through this together. It's not showing up. If you've got the AirPlay One remote, then we can just do it with that. I'll disconnect from AirPlay One and then we can just go to the TV itself and we'll figure this out together. That's fun. So what we'll do is thank you on the Apple TV. We will head to that in just a second and we'll try to figure out why it's not removing stuff, because I imagine surely there's a setting, just like there is on your iPhone or your iPad or even on the Mac. The podcast app there gives you the ability to turn on kind of a remove after period of time. So we'll see if we can't do that here Once we get AirPlay One to just show up for us on the screen. Yeah, ok, so let me just choose. Not Now here. So in the podcast app itself we can kind of check out what's in this library. Yes, continue and continue.

And so what this does not have is the ability to here. Let's go to browse, let's just subscribe to a show. Hopefully it'll let me, even though I'm not logged into an Apple ID, but we'll see. It seems that what you're actually doing here is just streaming a show in every case. But if it's getting put onto your Apple TV itself, perhaps like when you're following a show, what you can do is you can simply tap and hold on the show. Let's check the library, let's see. So I didn't save anything. I guess let's go back to browse, we'll find that show again. And if I tap and hold on it, that didn't do anything either. So we'll tap and hold on this. Yeah, no, it's not letting me Interesting.

So in theory, you should be able to tell it hey, I want you to save this show, and then you can go through and delete them individually. But it doesn't appear that you're able to actually set up a setting that says I want you to delete the shows after a period of time. So if we go into the Settings app and we look for apps which is right here and we click on podcasts, there's background app refresh sync podcast, continuous podcast, remove played downloads. So interesting. I would check if this setting is turned on. If it's not turned on, then you do need to turn it on. If, even after you've turned this on, it is still not doing it, make sure that you are listening to it all the way through to the end.

If you are actually saving a show to your Apple TV, then, yes, it will be saved there. Otherwise, what you're actually seeing is kind of like a bookmark to the show. So the show itself is not stored on the Apple TV. It may look like that, but it's essentially just a bookmark that says start streaming the show. So unless you click to save the show to your Apple TV, it's not actually a local file, but in that case you will need to delete it, to remove it because it's not actually there in the first place, so you're kind of removing the bookmark for it. So a little confusing, a little complex. But with the Apple TV it's important to understand that it does as much streaming as it possibly can, because there's not a whole lot of storage on the Apple TV, even if you buy the most expensive Apple TV. So, given that there's not as much storage, it doesn't want to do that download option unless you force it to by choosing to save. So what you may be seeing are just the different shows that are popping up, but whenever you go to play them, it's not a locally saved file. It is instead just a link that's saying when I click on this, go ahead and stream it and play it over from the cloud. So with that you can rest easy, knowing that it is not taking up storage space.

This leads me to a bigger topic here. I think we've got a little bit of time and it's a little bit of what I was talking to. The caller I'm so bad about remembering names, but our caller we just had who asked about the RAM taking up space on the Mac, and it is because when I talk about this topic, I feel hypocritical. It is my job to know as much as I can about as much technology as I can, and so because of that, I understand and in many cases often use some of these tools that I am recommending that others don't use. And so I think that's where it comes a little bit of hesitation, because I get the mindset you spend a lot of money on something and you want to know as much about it as you possibly can. You want to know that it's working as best as it possibly can. You want to protect your investment. It is, I think, why a lot of people get into the quantified self. We have to walk around with, as I call them, these ambulatory flesh sacks for as long as we are on this planet, and many of us want to know as much about the technology of us want to know as much about the hardware and software and literal software that runs our ambulatory flesh sacks. And I think the same applies. You're making an investment in a machine, and so I understand the desire to have these little utilities that are telling you oh, this is happening right now, but what it ends up being is kind of a it's about control, right.

When we are feeling anxious, anxiety oftentimes comes about because of a loss of control. Your anxiety about an upcoming meeting is because you don't necessarily know what's going to happen at the meeting. You're not in control of what's going to happen at the meeting, and so that loss of control makes us feel anxious. And so, to correct that anxiety, we attempt to gain control over something that we actually have the ability to act upon. So in the case of this machine that you spent a lot of money on and the knowledge, at some point someone came along and said oh, I use this program and it tells me how much it's using RAM. And did you know that a lot of the time your machine is using more RAM than it needs to at a given moment, and sometimes it's using too much and that's why everything's slowing down.

And so then you have this underlying anxiety, this little voice to the back of your head that's like maybe something's not happening how it should be. I should exert more control over it, no, more about it. And so I get that. And because I understand that aspect of it, that's what leads me to hesitate when I told our caller earlier look, you really don't need to worry about it, and so it's all about understanding. That's why it took the time to explain the way that the software has changed and the way that the hardware and the software are working even better together. Right, that when you have this system, it is now in a place where it wants to make use of as much as it possibly can of the hardware that's available.

So, hopefully, in understanding that, then you can go all right, I don't need to exert this control anymore, because I'm not anxious that the machine is doing something it's not supposed to do. Now, all it's telling me that app that we talked about, that memory app, memory diag. All it's doing is telling me that the machine is doing something that it is supposed to do, right? And so, in the case of this question about the Apple TV, if you go on your Apple TV and your Apple TV never says I'm running out of storage space, right? You don't ever get a notification that says, hey, if you want to watch this movie, then I need more storage space to be able to do so.

If it's not saying that, then the fact is, you don't really need to worry about removing those podcasts, right? And that is what I think that anxiety is. It's like I need to exert control over this because I think it's doing something that it's not supposed to be doing or something that I don't want it to do. But unless and until that notification pops up, I think that you'll be a lot happier just letting the thing do what it does. I think that it becomes a problem and it's important to fix it if you are presented with dialogues that are saying OK, now I'm stopping you. Now you can't do what you want to do because of x, y or z. But since I don't know that specific case, I'm not able to ask the voicemail. If they were seeing, or rather, was it the email that they're seeing? I think it was voicemail, but anyway that they're seeing those notifications, then it's fine. And in the case of the Apple TV, it's highly likely that it was streaming it anyway.

But that false belief, maybe that it's doing something that it's not supposed to be doing, is what makes you feel like I've got to gain absolute control over this, because if I don't, then something's going to go wrong. And yes, as someone's pointing out in the chat, that was the other thing that I meant to mention, the biggest place that I see it is with battery health. People really get super involved with their battery health and look, let me tell you, if you want to do that, if you find that that is a good use of your energy, by all means, I am happy for you. I think it's very cool, love that you do that and I'm totally fine with it. But if you are a person who has stress and anxiety about the life of your battery, then just try to be a little bit more.

This is where I am saying do as I say and as I do, which is that it's OK to just let that be, because finally, we have these devices that are smart enough to know when they should stop charging or slow charging or change the way that it's charging so that it is not hurting the battery. And you can be forgiven for not knowing that, because that's an education, that's information, rather, that you may not have been presented with and instead may have been presented with information like a family member of mine who was told at the carrier store that they shouldn't charge their device overnight. It's a misconception. That is not the case anymore. The battery is fine and if you like having that absolute control, great, but if it ultimately gives you stress and anxiety and maybe makes your stomach hurt, then this is your permission. You are receiving the permission you've been waiting for.

Forget about the battery health. Everything's going to be OK. Truly, though, that is kind of one of the big areas that I see is with battery health and how much people go. Oh goodness, I need to. I got to unplug it and I can't run it while it's doing this and I've got to power it down during this time and it's going to be OK. Maybe that's the message. Ultimately it's going to be OK, everything's going to be fine. All right, should we take a break? All right, let's take another break while we all breathe and know that it's going to be OK.

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SecureMyEmail's free forever plan lets you encrypt a single consumer email address from Gmail, Yahoo, microsoft and more. That's what I used when I set it up for me and I sent some emails to myself on a different account just to see and what they're saying is absolutely true that other email did not need to log in, sign up, do anything like that. I was able to respond and it all just worked. You get instant download and activation with no payment information, registration or call required. For paid plans, pricing is just $3.99 a month or $29.99 a year per user, allowing up to eight email addresses business or personal per individual user. So start your free account, free account or enjoy a 30-day free trial of a premium plan, no payment information required.

And they've got a special offer for Twitter listeners. Visit securemyemail.com/twit and use the code TWIT at checkout. That's securemyemail.com/twit with the code TWIT, and we thank SecureMyEmail for sponsoring this week's episode of Ask the Tech Guys. All right, we are back from the break. I am Mikah Sargent doing the show solo today as Leo Laporte is out. He will be back next week for Ask the Tech Guys, so that'll be a great time to have him back in the saddle after his brief vacation. Well, it wasn't only vacation, it was definitely work for a sort of self-healing retreat kind of a deal. He's trying to discover himself.

Yes, Although I think that it's a therapy thing. It's not ayahuasca in the woods, which is the name of my new fragrance, by the way. So let's move along to. Let's do one more email.

0:54:33 - Caller
Actually, there was someone in there, a discord channel, that's right.

0:54:37 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, let me take a look at that discord question. If you are not a member of Club TWiT. twit.tv/clubtwit you should consider joining. When you join the club, one of the great features you get is access to the club TWIT discord server, which is a fun place to go to chat with your fellow club TWIT members and also those of us here at TWIT. Join us. Twittv slash club TWIT $7 a month, $84 a year All right. So Matt in the discord asks this Is there a way to reset the iOS keyboard key mapping which says well, when you try to hit W, you actually sort of hit the Q key, so we'll shift the touch target for W a little to the left? Also, john, who is called in, if, oh, that was, is that part of the question? Okay, okay, let me try that again. So Matt in the discord has written in and says is there a way to reset the iOS keyboard key mapping which says, quote well, when you try to hit W, you actually sort of hit the Q key, so we'll shift the touch target for W a little to the left? Interesting question I have. I am unaware of, nor have I ever read about, nor what I suggested. Is true that the auto correct system that Apple has built into iOS makes considerations for whether you are sort of pressing W or pressing Q. And what I mean is this I'm not saying that it is not mindful of where you are tapping, but what I'm saying is I am unaware of, nor have I ever had evidence to suggest, that it changes that behavior based on your use over time. What it does do is it looks at the words that you type. It looks at the corrections that it's made in the past and how you change those corrections. It looks at how you are typing and what words you use frequently, what words you use infrequently. It looks at the text replacement information that you put in and it uses all of that to make adjustments to the typing. But I cannot confirm and I do like with every part of me that has ever read anything about the way that the auto correct system works. I do not believe that it makes a change on whether you're pressing Q or pressing W based on where you put your finger. So all of that is to say resetting the auto correct and resetting the dictionary and resetting your text replacement stuff I don't think that's going to have an effect on the keyboard key mapping. There's nothing that I've read to suggest otherwise, and in anything that Apple has said about auto correct itself, that's never been something that I have heard about Again.

It's not the same as them being mindful that, depending on how you're holding your phone and which way you're looking at your phone, it can change where you believe the touch target is. That absolutely is something that changes. But what I mean is the classic sort of behavioral knowledge that it has about what you're typing. It has nothing to do with key mapping that it doesn't change based on. Doesn't change the key mapping based on your behavior. I would love to be proven wrong about that. That would be really interesting, but I'd need some receipts to see that that is the case. So, yeah, I think, matt, your best bet there is that you could reset the dictionary basically, which, in effect, kind of shakes out the autocorrect system and says let's start over, let's pretend we've never met each other before, we're going to do this fresh, and that might help, but it doesn't change how the keys are mapped based on what you're seeing versus where you're tapping. All right, do we have our spaceman yet? Wonderful? Well, we do. Yes, we also set away real quick. Oh, okay, that's okay, let's go to an email real quick and then, whenever we come back, we will have. Well, whenever we continue, we will have Rod Pyle spaceman joining us.

All right, this question comes in from Tony, who writes Hi, mike and Leo, I recently left my iPhone in my wife's car when she dropped me off at work. When I realized what I did, I thought perhaps I could call her from my Apple watch, but my watch doesn't have cellular and there was no open Wi-Fi in my office. I was able to borrow a co-worker's phone, call my wife and she brought the phone back to my office. However, this got me thinking and I have two questions. One, is it possible to call my own iPhone from my Apple watch if I had cellular? Say, I lost my iPhone in an Uber and needed to get in touch with the person who dropped me off? Two, I tried turning off lost mode on my iPhone from my oh, they probably meant tried turning on lost mode on my iPhone from my Apple watch and the message on my iPhone said to call my own number. Any way to change this? So, tony, the second question that you had there, that you tried turning off or on lost mode on your iPhone from your Apple watch.

I don't know what that means. That is not something that I believe you can do from an Apple watch. I don't think you can From Mac. If you want to find my on the web, you could turn on or off lost mode, and what I was going to suggest happened in this case is that you used your Mac to go to findmyapplecom and then you simply hit the button that set. Well, you log in, of course, and then you hit a button that says play sounds on my iPhone and then, in theory, your wife would have heard the sound being played over and over again, recognized your phone and said oh dear, I need to get this phone to my husband. But in the case of turning off lost mode from your iPhone with your Apple watch, I don't. I would love to you know. I need some more information about that.

As far as the first thing, is it possible to call my own iPhone from my Apple watch? If I had cellular, this is a fascinating question, and so I'm going to try it, because I actually don't know if I could call my own phone. So I'm going to type in my phone number on my Apple watch and I'm going to try calling it, because here's the thing I use AT&T and my watch technically does have a number that is separate from my phone. So we will see if this works, and let me turn off focus modes and we will let this sound out and we'll see what happens. So, if I can get all of these notifications out of the way, I'm currently calling my iPhone and I am getting a call. Hello, oh, it's actually calling my voicemail, it seems. So, no, at least this is the thing, though On AT&T. Oh, here we go, transfer the call to the Apple watch.

Yeah, so on AT&T, it does this thing called number sync, where technically the numbers are the same but it is still on the SIM side of things, not a. Ah, here we go. So in, find my device. Okay, wonderful, thank you, andrew. I'm going to address that in just a moment. So in, let me. Let me go back a little bit.

So with your carrier it could be different. Each carrier kind of does this differently. It's all some sort of number sync utility where it tries to make the Apple watch and the iPhone match, so that way, if I tried to call somebody else, it would show up as my phone number, but technically, within the system, it is a different number. So I thought I could try that, but in the same way that if on my phone I make a call to my own number, it goes to my voicemail and I type in a code to access my voicemail. That's what's happening in my case. So it could be that it's different for you, but on AT&T, with number sync, it does not let me call my own phone. So with cellular, though, you could have called your wife with your phone for sure, but calling your own phone on AT&T doesn't seem to work. I can't confirm or deny for the other.

So thank you, andrew, who has reminded me that in later versions of watchOS, find, the find, my app has improved and so it has a lot more functionality, and so one of the bits of functionality is the introduction of three separate apps Find devices, find items and find people. So if I tap on find devices, I can see my red field, which is the name of my iPhone, and if I tap on that I can choose to play a sound, I can look for it via directions, I can turn on lost mode. So when I turn this on, it locks the device and allows me to leave contact information in a message for the finder. So I think I'm figuring out what happened, tony, when you turned on lost mode and you said it was asking let's see what did you say. I tried turning off lost mode on my iPhone from my Apple watch, and the message on my phone said to call my own number anyway to change this. So when you turn it on, it asks you what you want to show on the device, and so I chose phone number. So lost mode is going to turn on on the iPhone and what will happen is that my phone number will appear on it as soon as it goes into lost mode. So we won't show it on there, but basically it says this device is marked lost, please contact me, and it has my phone number on it.

Now, in case you did mean what you wrote, which is that I tried turning off lost mode, let's see what happens. So on my Apple watch I'm in lost mode and I'm going to choose to turn it off and it is loading and I did not get a prompt saying call my own phone number. So I think what you were seeing there was the what. I think what you meant in your message, tony, is that you? You wrote to. I tried turning off lost mode on my iPhone from my Apple watch and the message on my iPhone said to call my own number or to. I tried turning on lost mode on my iPhone from my Apple watch and the message on my iPhone said to call my own number. Is there any way to change this? Yes, when you turn it on, you can choose to not have your phone number display. When I turned on lost mode on my Apple watch, I could choose what contact information I wanted to have show up on my phone, so you could have chosen something other than your phone number if you'd like to change that. So I hope that answers your many questions, tony. Thank you for the help from the discord as well, with the reminder that there has been an update to find my on the Apple watch as well.

Alrighty, several questions down and folks, it is time for Rod Pyle Spaceman. Welcome back, rod. I don't hear the icky music. You know you're welcome. That's a Leo thing. I'll let him play that icky music.

1:07:18 - Rod Pyle
No, I was. I would have been on a minute or two earlier. Sorry to John Ashley, I stepped away because I was so fashion shamed. When I saw you were looking today I thought I can't wear this crummy old thermal shirt so I had to change. So I have a question. Yeah, I may, absolutely, before we start. I recently updated the operating system on the iMac here that I use and I swear to God, the onboard iMac camera seems to have switched to a wider field of view by about 20 degrees. Interesting, okay. So because I never had this much background before, I haven't moved anything, because I can't move anything in this room. It's tiny. Remind me again what Mac you're using. I have a 20. Is the iMac at 23 or 24. It's an M1.

1:08:09 - Mikah Sargent
So it's okay, it's an M1 iMac, so probably what's going on is so. The iMac has, much like many of Apple's modern machines, a special the lens is technically an ultra wide lens, and what it does is it has this center stage feature, right, and they've improved it over time to make it not look as wonky. But in improving it, what it's probably done is it's just extended out to the sides a little bit more. Now, unfortunately, there's not a whole lot you can do. That is very precise, to make adjustments to that. What you can do is and let me look here so that I get it exactly- right, didn't think this was going to be a service call, did you?

I love it. That's what this show is all about. So in the top right corner on your Mac menu bar, you should see a green rectangle with the video camera. Yeah, yeah, if you click on that. Oh, look at that. You should see some different options there, including, like portrait studio light reactions, that kind of thing. Right Weird, because now I'm not seeing what I was expecting to see here, which was a oh, you probably have it, because this, this Mac doesn't, but do you see something that's talking about center stage? No, no, okay, yeah, so this Mac doesn't. The Mac that I'm using doesn't have it, but there should be a setting, and maybe somebody in the chat can help me out with the name of the setting. What does show up in that little green menu?

1:09:51 - Rod Pyle
Portrait studio light reactions.

1:09:53 - Mikah Sargent
Okay, just turned off because I was wondering where the off switch was yes, that is something that everybody needs to have turned off, I think, because it gets awkward otherwise. I thought this had center stage, but maybe I'm, let's say, 1080p. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I guess it probably was just a matter of them updating the, just updating the camera in general, and so it just kind of tried to make it look better. It's probably doing a little bit of lens corrections on the edges as well, right, but yeah, I guess it doesn't have that center stage feature. I wonder if that's just the studio display.

1:10:37 - Rod Pyle
So yeah, well, there wasn't a little app I remember. I don't remember the name of it, but I remember there was something that allowed you to change the focal length a bit, make some adjustments, so maybe I'll check that out, yeah.

1:10:46 - Mikah Sargent
Webcam settings, which is a great app in the App Store for doing that. So, yeah, that might be something worth looking into if you want to kind of zoom in a little bit on your side, or I could just move the dark computer. Okay, let's talk about space. Let's go to space.

1:11:06 - Rod Pyle
So I got it. This story is not a surprise to anybody who watches this sector, as I know a number of your listeners do, but it's called no Moon for you, 2025. So we've been living for the last number of years, see, since probably 2017, 2016, 17, whatever Trump sort of shifted the NASA's primary human spaceflight program from hey, we're going to go hang out by an asteroid to go back to the moon. We've been living with this date of 2024, 2025 for that first landing. Well, 2024 is a couple of weeks away and we ain't even close. So the government accountability office, as they will do, presented a report saying hey, everybody, guess what? Nasa's not even close.

So the hangups the Orion capsule seems to work fine. It's going to be tested with people next year we hope late next year and they're just going to do a loop around the moon, not even quite Apollo 8 style, but it's still. You know, it's sending humans further out than they've been for 50 odd years. So that will continue to prove out. The Orion capsule and the SLS the snags, oddly, are well, not surprisingly. One of the snags is the first lander they want to use, the Zeland Musks. It's an iteration of the Starship which has only test, blown twice and exploded both times, but it's gradually proving out how it's supposed to work. We talked about that last time, I think, and that's a little behind schedule. The lunar landing version is a little behind schedule. It's actually a lot behind schedule. Now I'd love to blame Twitter for that, because I think he's really taken his eye off the prize.

But we also got to talk about the Federal Aviation Administration and the Department of Fish and Wildlife. Of all people, what? Because those two organizations, yes, have been, with reason, standing in the way of an accelerated testing schedule down in Boca Chica where they test this big rocket. This could be a lunar lander. Faa says, hey, we really got to make sure you're not going to smack at airplanes or shower hot metal debris on people below, which is valid. Fish and Wildlife is a little more about. I don't remember the name of the exact critters, but there's stuff in the wild preserves that are around Boca Chica that might be harmed or disturbed by the launches and or self-destruct mechanisms if the rocket's too low. I'm old enough to remember the Apollo years, the space race, where it was kind of like we were almost on a war footing If somebody had said, hey, you can't launch that moon rocket, you're going to disturb these subaquatic snails over in this freshwater pond. The government would again what are you talking about? It's a more advanced we're more advanced beings now. We've come a long way, but this is kind of a big deal and if we bonk a couple of alligators on the head with rocket parts, I'm not going to cry. But that's just me, that's the boomer in me talking.

So the lunar lander is one problem. There's another component of that, not to go into too much boring detail here, but it needs to refuel before it can go off to the moon and serve as a lander. So the big picture here is astronauts climb into the Orion capsule on top of the space launch system rocket. They go up into space, they rendezvous in lunar orbit with the uncrewed SpaceX Starship lunar lander, which is like the one that we've all seen, except it's got legs on it and no heat, no heat resistant tiling, because it doesn't need it. They climb into that, which is like sitting in the cab of a semi truck and landing on the tailgate, and then they go down and land on the moon.

To get that lander there, the SpaceX component there, with fuel, they've got to do somewhere between seven and 12 refueling flights when it reaches Earth orbit. So this whole thing is complicated and weird and there's a lot of steps between here and there. They've test flown Starship twice. They have not built or test flown the lunar version yet that any of us know of, although their their news gate is pretty tight and they got to test and perfect this orbital refueling thing. So we're not going to make it 2025.

Yeah, yes.

1:15:29 - Mikah Sargent
So forgive me if you explain this part, but why so the part where they're going to meet with the lander? That's atypical, or at least as far as what we've done in the past, right, did they? We didn't launch a lander first, or did we no, okay?

1:15:49 - Rod Pyle
No. So in the past this was all considered. They considered a lot of stuff in the early 60s because we hadn't done any of it before. The final choice, which was mostly for safety's sake, was to launch one rocket with the crew capsule and the lander together, and the only imaginations they had to do was, once they got into Earth orbit they had to pull the. So the capsule, the crew capsule, sat atop the lander, on the top of the Saturn five. They had to separate from that once they were in orbit, turn around and then dock with the lander, pull it out of its retaining holder and then head off to the moon. So they did have that maneuver.

And of course, back then they had a real basic. Real basic like your electric toothbrush, basic digital computer, but it was really done by hand and with a with a little optical reticle. So it was pretty primitive but it worked. Now you know we're doing all this. It's worth bearing in mind for about a tenth the money that we spent in the 1960s. So yeah, this is the result of NASA doing something which I think we mostly agree was pretty smart is entering this new relationship with private industry saying OK, we want you to have skin in the game. We'll hire you to build the thing and we'll effectively lease it, whether it's a space capsule or a lander or a space station or whatever and you guys have to take some of the risk and we'll just pay you to use it.

1:17:17 - Mikah Sargent
So when you say saving a lot of money when you say that we're spending a tenth of the money. Is it we're spending a tenth of the money because things have, like the manufacturing process has gotten simpler and computerization has helped? Are you saying we're spending a tenth of the money not by choice, but because that's all that's made available, because we're not in space race era? Is that? Is that the well?

1:17:43 - Rod Pyle
that's a really good question because we are at least by government perception, we are in a bit of a space race with China, who's made made it very clear that they plan to send as their astronauts to the moon. So you're very, you're very perceptive. So part of it is this is all the money that NASA got, you know they got. At this point they're operating off about one half of 1% of the federal budget, as opposed to almost 5% in the height of the Apollo years. So that changed a lot. But also it is cheaper doing business this way because we're not doing something very wicked, naughty called cost plus contracting, which is what they did back in the old days, and the military still does a lot of cases which is hey, boeing, you know we're going to pay you this much to build that rocket, that SLS rocket, for us. You have any problems? Just let us know and we'll keep giving you more money. I'm grossly simplifying, but that encourages the aerospace companies to bid low. And then we get these overages and next thing, you know, it cost five times as much as they had suggested in the first place and everybody kind of goes yeah, we expected that. So these things kind of conspire to make it more expensive. One other thing the GAO noted was SpaceX is taking half of the predicted schedule just to reach the preliminary what they call preliminary design review, which is where NASA looks at it and says, okay, that looks like it'll work, go ahead and build it for use Programs. The past took only about a third of that schedule to get to that phase. But, to be fair, spacex also iterates much quicker by just launching stuff and seeing it blow up and saying, okay, here's what went wrong, let's redo it, whereas in those other programs it's like we can't fail, we can't fail, we can't fail, it looks bad. So that's one big problem.

The other big problem, which is the one that's a head scratcher for me, is they don't have space suits ready to go walk around the moon in. Oh. So the last time we built spacesuits for NASA widespread use was for the space station, and those ones that they use for space walks outside the ISS are from the 1980s, so they're that old because they're real expensive to make and you have to, you know, let out contracts to the people that have done it before and all that kind of thing. So a few years ago actually back in 2007, nasa said, hey, we get, we need to do suits. They worked on it for a while.

Then this new vibe came along of we're going to work with private industry under different arrangements, and that's good. But it's been going very slow. So a couple of years ago NASA set contracts out to a company called Axiom Space and another, collins Aerospace. Axiom had never done this before, but they're partnered with people that had. Collins had done it before, all the way back in the space race era. But you know the people that worked on it are mostly retired and gone or sadly departed to this earth. So not on rockets, just die. So you know there's a this big loss of of of how to do it. So they kind of haven't to pull out the paperwork and reinvent the wheel a little bit. That should be there.

I would watch that Like yeah, or a featurey because it sounds kind of goofy but it gets really interesting. I mean, you've got to build a suit Now. When they explored the moon with astronauts back in the late 60s, early 70s, you were there for a few days and you were walking around being very careful and all that. So the suits were very robust, but they didn't have to be perfect. Now we're going back, hopefully to stay, to build bases and so forth. So they want these things to be very robust, long term, reusable, modular you can swap gloves and lower halves of the upper halves, things like that tearproof and much more flexible. The old ones, because those guys said it was basically like like trying to walk in concrete, hardening concrete so hard and stiff. That's why they walked around like gorillas all the time. Right, because these things are blown up, so they're like rock hard under air pressure. So they got a lot of work to do and that's that's the other so called pacing factor.

1:21:52 - Mikah Sargent
I want to. I want to watch this whole process of these suits being made. I think that's such a cool thing. I mean, I know it's. It's like watching a flower bloom, so we almost need someone taking photos every 15 days Watching your chia pet grow.

Yeah, yeah I know it's going to be a process Now, okay, this is kind of a big question and I just am curious to hear your thoughts on it in general.

So when I hear about us landing on the moon in the past, when you know I'm told these stories of how that went and how that process was you really get this impression that, like everyone in the United States and, frankly, in the rest of the world, had their eyes on this and that they were watching it and that everyone was together on, like you know, we got to make this happen and then we made it happen and it's awesome and of course then Russia's little displeased, but the point, like the larger point being that it did feel like it was humanity kind of working together and that that made sense for there being such a huge amount of money, a sort of unlimited amount of money that was going to it.

Now the budget is so much smaller and I'm curious do you feel like there's less interest in space these days? And if there is, why do you think maybe that's the case? But then the second kind of part of this question is has the interconnectivity, the internet access and sort of the social aspect of this helped or harmed our ability to be able to get together and go to space in the way that we did before, where maybe the message was more controlled and you know, it was about rah, rah, rah.

1:23:34 - Rod Pyle
So you ask really smart questions and there's a bunch of layers to this but in broad terms it's funny. You talk to people my age who should know better and they say, oh, the nation was united behind the Apollo project. We were all about getting to the moon, all the politicians loved it. You talked to the guy on the street and he said, yeah, apollo, let's go. My impression and in fact yeah, and that's a lot of very smart people who don't read the data will tell you that even who lived through it. I was there and I remember the doubters and I remember congressman pushing back on this expensive program and I remember the public perceptions. Later on, when I started writing about this professionally, I did a lot of reading of Pew and Gallup and other surveys done over the decades and it's astonishing that, depending on how the questions are asked and as you know, you know surveys are a little always gooey because they change the way they ask the questions and who they ask. But even when you statistically boil that out, it's writ large about 5050. Back in the 60s about half the country thought NASA was a good idea we should be doing something like the moon and right now about 50% of people think NASA's a good brand, a good idea. So as a brand, nasa really stands apart. But interestingly, like back then, if you start asking specific questions like, hey, john Coupublic or Jane Coupublic, do you think we should be sending back astronauts back to the moon? On the taxpayer's dime it's about 11 to 15% saying yes and the rest go. Eh, not so much. Now.

In the 60s, as we've kind of touched on, we had the Soviet Union as this perceived enemy and you know, kennedy was not. John F Kennedy was not big on space, particularly when he came into office. He wasn't that big on science. What he was big on was winning the geopolitical game of trying to get influence over all these smaller, non-aligned nations that we were trying to pull away from communism, which is what drove the Apollo program. Now we have this frenemy in China where, hey, we want to buy all your wonderful cheap stuff because we don't make things in the US anymore, but we don't like your record on human rights and we don't trust you to get to the moon first because you're going to claim everything and then we won't be able to get what we want. So we are kind of in this other weird new space race and some parties have been skillfully using that to try and spin public perceptions slowly not quite as much under Biden as Trump, but in both cases there's some of that.

In terms of the second part of your question, yeah, the control was pretty simple. Back in the 60s and 70s you had three TV networks, a few local sub networks, a couple of I forget how many, maybe seven major radio networks in the country at the time. So NASA had a press office and they had their guy. They had one at Kennedy and one in Florida and one at the Johnson Space Center in Houston who did most of the interfacing for that. So the message was very controlled, very clear. It was pretty transparent, to be fair, but you were talking from one to a few that then went to the many yes, and we had gatekeepers, the Walter Cronkites and the news editors and so forth.

Now, as you point out, it's the wild west. Everything's going everywhere. Nasa hosts these huge social events where they invite influencers and YouTube people and all that. So you've got thousands, if not tens of thousands, of messaging streams going out, who can say whatever they want, and, of course, a lot of them say things like we never went to the moon Lord. Yeah, don't be silly, nobody could do that, so I don't.

You know part of a. I was working, I was in a doctoral program, briefly, and I was working on this as part of the question NASA's way of communicating to the public and their messaging, and even as I was looking into it at that depth, it was still really not clear. I don't think anybody really knows how it works today because, as you know, you can't. Even though in the digital age you could track more than ever, you really can't track something that has this kind of reach and spread and dynamic, right, right, it's just mind boggling. And, of course, if you're young and attractive and you're talking about space as opposed to old and crusty like me, more people want to watch the young and attractive people and I get that.

1:28:06 - Mikah Sargent
You know it's just marketing, but it may not always get you the result that you're after, yeah, yeah and exactly and, as you point out, the most knowledgeable right and that's. I think that is important. That's why, you know, I'm curious about that, because there is, I can remember sort of a part of the underlying story that stuck out to me and I was never I was always skeptical of it, but I didn't know how much it, how much truth there was in it. There's this kind of narrative that it was make it to the moon at all costs and so that meant that people got hurt and people you know there were risks that maybe were taken and I wondered if there was any aspect of that. That.

You know the suits at the time they made happen what they made happen. But now is there even more concern that they have to make sure that every little piece is exactly as it needs to be, because 10, 15, 20 different people who talk to the right textile person. Suddenly they learn, oh well, they didn't spend the extra five cents on this sort of clasp and that could result in some sort of issue. Was there a moon at all costs, no matter who gets hurt aspect at the time that you were aware of, or is that something that's just kind of been added to the narrative to make it a little bit spicy over time.

1:29:39 - Rod Pyle
You talk to people from that that time that worked at NASA or at the prime contractors or who were astronauts and I've talked to gosh, I know a couple hundred of all three of those and it really was. It was on a war footing, you know it was like okay, we have to build the, we have to beat those commies to the moon. Was the was the idea at the time. You know you don't want a red moon, you want it under the red, white and blue and all that. There was a lot of money flowing. There were still limits to that, but basically everything was with a few exceptions, was over engineered to the point that failure is pretty unthinkable.

Now that said as I look back at it now from today's perspective, it gets harder and harder to believe that it worked, because we were just stepping off of vacuum tubes at that point. Right, you know, the computers that we had, as has been, was made fun of in the movie Apollo 13 did fill rooms. They were huge. They had to shrink that down to something the size of a briefcase to even be able to get into lunar orbit, much less land, and come home. So there is a lot of expensive componentry that was grossly over engineered and probably in some ways underused. But that said, there are a couple of single points of failure that did make it really dangerous. So, for instance, in 1968, we were kind of, you know, doing this sort of gradual paste okay, we'll do this flight into Earth orbit and then we'll test the lunar module in Earth orbit, and then we'll do this flight to orbit around the moon and then we'll pretend we're landing but we won't. So we had these many, many steps to make sure everything would work and it was safe. And then, at least as historical lore has it, there are a few different versions of this, but the general consensus is that Kennedy got word through CIA or one of the other three letter agencies hey, the Russians have got this really big rocket moving out to a launch site and we're getting worried that they're going to make a push for the moon. And in fact they did have lunar capable hardware. They just hadn't really tested it yet and it was a lot riskier than ours is very basic. So that that narrative goes that okay, we got to step up the pace here.

So the crew of that was next in line for one of the Apollo fights was called in by the astronaut chief and he said look, we got to change things. We're going to send you into lunar orbit. And they said you bet anything for the flag, you know. However, they did this without a lunar module, which just means you have the Apollo capsule and the rocket engine behind it. So that's great to get you into lunar orbit, but that's one rocket motor with one set of igniters, and if those didn't work after they're ready to come home, 24 of its later They'd still be there, right. So that was scary. So there are a few of those, of course. The other one which more people think about is when you're down on the moon in Apollo 11, first landing. You're there, it's time to come home and you hit the go switch and the engine doesn't ignite and you know. Again, another single point of failure. You could be stuck there and that would be a very bad ending for that mission.

But, we did it, we did it, we did it six times. Awesome, down to the lunar surface.

1:32:59 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, all right. Well, rod Piles, is there anything else you'd like to talk about before we say goodbye for today? How many hours do you want to spend? I've got three hours.

1:33:11 - Rod Pyle
OK, there's two other stories Let me jump. I had set John Ashley a link on this. We had a story on this week in space. Last week we had actually very interesting this is the day before yesterday.

We had a very interesting session with a guy named George Neald we used to work for the FAA about. It sounds boring, but it wasn't about how to regulate spaceflight and who should do it. So with all these new companies popping up, you know who's going to set the rules. We've already had an accident with Virgin Galactic. We'll have more because spaceflight is risky. Who's got to set these rules? It's kind of been a tug of war between the FAA weirdly, to some extent, the FCC Department of Transportation and a couple of other subgroups who want to control this, and you know there's a limited budget to do so and all that. So that was a cool conversation. One of the stories we covered, however, because Tarek loves these grabby, clickbait titles Cannibal Solar Storm to Hit Earth. What's a cannibal solar storm, you might ask? Well, we're reaching the midpoint of the peak of solar activity. These go and love your cycles, where you see sunspots and coronal mass ejections, you know, and you see those images of the flames leaping out of the side of the sun.

Those are plasma discharges. Well, the ones that you see on the sides are one thing, but the ones that you see less, because they're facing you, kind of come right out at Earth and they affect us. So you've been in radio, you know that you can have real problems, that there's a lot of solar activity with radio signals and, conversely, the power grid and so forth. So on November 29th there was a warning set out about a large coronal mass ejection. I think it was a G2 or something they have these weird classifications, but it was moderate, you know. But within a couple of days it was going to reach Earth. So as a sees an M 9.8 solar flare which puts it up, I guess, just against the next class. I was wrong there. So on the December 1st we got the first wave of that hitting Earth. Now what makes this a cannibal?

1:35:17 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, sunstorm. Yeah, is it eating itself? Because that's what it can.

1:35:20 - Rod Pyle
Well, that's what I thought, Right, and it doesn't really make sense, but you know, a lot of stuff in clickbait doesn't make sense. There were other discharges around the same time, but this big mother that came out kind of grabbed those and soon so cannibalize them, but it made it a bigger signal, if you will, coming towards our planet. So there were warnings going out about, you know, am radio disruptions and your satellite may get cooked and all that. As it turned out, at least as far as I can tell, it wasn't that bad, but the Aurora Borealis was apparently fantastic, oh really. So it's stretching down as far as where you are.

What People in Northern California, if you were in a dark enough place, could actually see a little bit of a rural discharge, and same going across the rest of the country and same in the Southern Hemisphere, because of course, all this energy is hitting the Earth's magnetosphere and then getting ducted around to the poles and, as it's, you know, being depressed there, I guess, is what causes these discharges, and I've never seen one, and I'm really, really disgruntled that I didn't get to the case.

1:36:25 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, oh, man, that would have been cool to see, even as far as I mean, I want to see that happen anyway, I want to see that. Yeah, I know.

1:36:35 - Rod Pyle
You've got a lot more years than I do, so I feel like I got to get up my backpack and then yeah, you need to make it happen.

I know I need to get up to Iceland or something Now. So this wasn't a huge storm. There was the biggest and worst that we know of, just for a little sake a comparison, was an 1859 called the Carrington event. I think it was an X10 or something, maybe more than that, and it caused telegraph wires to burst into flame. What it caused the telegraph operators to get shocked as they were, you know, tapping their keys. Some of their batteries blew up because there was this reverse charge going in, and I thought the part that was kind of the most interesting was so they knew what was going on.

Even back in the 1850s they had an idea of what happened with solar activity that's good, the telegraphs. So these operators shut off their systems, disconnected their batteries and then discovered they could still talk to each other because there was so much current Wow Generated in the wires, because they're antennas right that they sat there and tapped away for the next couple of hours saying, isn't this cool, we don't have to use our batteries. But yeah, solar storms can be a big deal. And because we were talking about human spaceflight earlier, on Earth we're protected by the atmosphere and the magnetosphere, so that's great.

You know we have inconveniences. They can damage satellites. So that's something to be concerned about, because we really depend on satellites. But if you're on your way to the moon or Mars, or on the moon or Mars, you don't have that protection, and that's why spacecraft have to be shielded and that's why, ultimately, whatever settlements we have up on those two places will probably be either in caves or at least buried under a dozen feet of dirt and rock, because they don't have a magnetosphere and an atmosphere to protect them from all this crap. Wow. That is cool.

1:38:22 - Mikah Sargent
I didn't realize that it was that powerful at the time. I'm glad that they knew when they weren't going, you know oh, we've angered the gods or something.

1:38:30 - Rod Pyle
Well, I think it was. Apollo 17 missed a solar event by a matter of a couple of weeks and you know, those guys were in a little, very thin capsule and had it been sufficiently powerful and they were out there, they would have been cooked. So it's a very real. The sun's kind of an icky place to be near.

1:38:52 - Mikah Sargent
Why do we park here?

1:38:54 - Rod Pyle
Why do we hang around here? I know Well, but we got the just and it's funny. You know I'm not a particularly spiritual person, but when you think about how perfect the earth is for the life that evolved here and I think the one that gets me the most is you see a solar eclipse and you see the moon being exactly the right shape and size to block out the sun perfectly. It's like okay, did somebody? Is this a joke? Somebody set this up, or is it Elon's big simulation? I don't know.

1:39:24 - Mikah Sargent
Yes, let us simulate another sun event.

1:39:29 - Rod Pyle
Yeah, I know, it's just wild, wild stuff. I'm checking the discord to make sure I didn't miss anything. You know people put up. You've got all these little gifs on here and you'll be in the middle of. I'm sure you do this all the time. I'm in the middle of talking to you and suddenly something's flashing over there yes. Like, give me your attention, I'm going. Well, it's Obi-Wan Kenobi. I didn't get it. What's the point? Yeah, I'm with you. I'm with you on that.

1:39:52 - Mikah Sargent
I think you're better at it. Well, rod Pyle, this has been a delightful and informative conversation. I always appreciate it when you join us here on the show. Of course, folks can head over to what is the website for Ad Astra?

1:40:09 - Rod Pyle
Oh, it's adastramagazinecom, because we're not clever.

1:40:13 - Mikah Sargent
There you go, adastramagazinecom. You can also check out this week in space, right here on the Twitch network, anything you want to plug before we say goodbye.

1:40:25 - Rod Pyle
I'll soon have a book title to start flogging, but for now I just would ask people to check out spacecom, because anything that I've talked about is there in spades. And if you're interested in a deeper dive into space stuff, do check out nssorg. That's the National Space Society's website and we will immerse you. There's two spots of the magazine I do and I'm the director of communications over there, and they will immerse you in more than you could ever imagine when it comes to this stuff. So at least check it out and see if it fits your taste Awesome.

1:41:00 - Mikah Sargent
If they've got anything on the spacesuits. That's what I'm looking for. I want to know everything there is to know about how we're designing these this time around. I think that's so cool. So thanks, We'll talk.

1:41:10 - Rod Pyle
Hey, are you going to be on the Christmas special, december 7th?

1:41:14 - Mikah Sargent
thing? No, I don't think so. I think that I think there's a theme for it, but I don't want to mention it just in case that's not been revealed yet. But I do not match the theme.

1:41:24 - Rod Pyle
Does it have something to do with the white and my beard?

1:41:26 - Mikah Sargent
It does yes it does All right, sonny Thanks. I'll see you on the backside, Thank you.

1:41:36 - Rod Pyle
Ryan, get off my lawn, okay.

1:41:39 - Mikah Sargent
I will. Let's do that, all right, I'll talk to you later. See you later. Bye-bye, all righty folks. It's time for another break.

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1:44:45 - Caller
Randolph, calling from Greenville, and the question is I, my iPhone. I have an iPhone 13,. It seems half the time, even though the phone is in my hand, that it just goes straight to voicemail. And it's not seven silence or anything. And it does the same thing with text messages too. And it says I have three bars of LTE coverage and yet half the times I'll sit there and I'll get text messages, but phone never makes a noise. Okay, thank you. Bye.

1:45:16 - Mikah Sargent
Okay, so it never makes a noise Doesn't necessarily mean that the message isn't being delivered, which would be a real reason for you to talk about your LTE. You know how much service you have, so I want to start there. If the messages are still coming through, then that's fine. There are many reasons why it may not be sending you a notification. One of the things that is something to be aware of is Apple. Depending on how old your phone is, which I think you said an iPhone 13, so it is one of the newer models in terms of the Face ID technology, it has an awareness of where you like, how you're holding your device where it is, if you're looking at it or not, and it can make changes to how it notifies you based on that. If you have an Apple watch, that can also impact where a notification might appear. It could be the case that if you're holding your phone out to the side and you're not using it, or if it's in your pocket, in particular, that notification may come up on your Apple watch and if you have your notification set a certain way, that that could be doing it.

In terms of calls, if you're getting a call from a contact that is an unknown contact, then you may want to check your settings. If you head into the settings app on your iPhone and you scroll down until you see phone messages and FaceTime they're the green icons and you tap on phone, you scroll down to near the bottom and you will see an option that says silence unknown callers. If you have that turned on, those incoming calls will not ring out, they will instead be silenced, and so they will not show up for you. Now, on top of that, if you have a focus mode turned on, it could also do not disturb. Or if you're driving, or if you have one set up for when you go for walks, or if you have one set up for work, that could also be causing a call to not come through.

If you do not have a sound turned on for phone calls, if you have in your control center the ring switch turned off, there are so many reasons, unfortunately, why you may not be getting notifications for a call, and so it's worth checking all of those different settings I just talked about to see if that could be why the phone is not making a sound like you'd like it to, if that's something that you'd like, and, as far as messages go, the same thing applies. There are different do not disturb settings. There are different notification settings and any of those could be playing at not having it actually make a sound for you on your phone. So I would start with the little ring silent switch on the side of the phone and then check all of your settings for notifications, for messages, for phone, and then, in settings, tapping on phone itself, check the settings there, tap on messages itself and check the settings there. If you're still having that issue, give us a call again or send us an email and we can address it from there. So, yeah, we got to start with the troubleshooting to see if any of that solves it before we can go from there.

All right, where should we go next, john? Let's pick up on the caller.

1:48:44 - Caller
There are a couple of John's in this call, so I'm going to pick up this John right here, who's apparently on their iPhone.

1:48:51 - Mikah Sargent
Okay, so John, who is calling from an iPhone you are being brought to? Ah, there you are, john. What's well, we know your name. Where are you calling from? Charlotte, North Carolina. All right, hi John from Charlotte. And like oh wait, camera, I don't like the camera. That's okay, we'll keep it off for us, so you won't show it. Thank you.

1:49:11 - Caller
First of all, like Rod, I must compliment you on your fashion sense. Your socks matches the set very nice, thank you. Thank you. My question is I am an Eero owner. Okay, I have one that's about five or six years old I think it's the Eero Pro, not the six, so it's ancient and I'm ready to upgrade, however. However, with Eero, if my internet provider loses their connections to the outside world, my home network goes down. I can deal with that, except when the grandkids are watching something off my in-house server. They can't watch a movie anymore.

1:49:47 - Mikah Sargent
Interesting. So you're saying there's yours to the same. So this used to be a problem for me, and then they issued a firmware update that caused that to not be a problem anymore, where it would keep the land, the local area network, active despite the fact that there was no wide area network access. I'm wondering if your Eero is old enough that that firmware update wasn't applied to it. Maybe that it was a little bit too old to do that, because, yeah, it would be a lot of stuff.

I would not be able to control any of the smart lights in my home, I could not gain access to my network attached server. I had all these issues, and so I was at the time going to switch away from Eero because that was very frustrating. And then they heard from a lot of customers who said, no, this is not great, and so they issued a firmware update. I remember the day that it happened, because I practically jumped for joy and it made it so that the local area network stayed on even though the wide area network was disconnected. Scooterx says that was-. My Eero's are probably too old for that then.

It was four years ago.

1:51:01 - Caller
I am looking to upgrade to the new Faster Wi-Fi 7 or something.

1:51:04 - Mikah Sargent
So that would be my recommendation. I hate that it's just outside of the update. Yeah, it was a feature. That was four years ago in August. Thank you, scooterx. It was a feature called LAN persistence, basically, which is what we know it to be, so that the network would continue to run. The new Eero's. I've heard very good things. End of the network. Steven Robles, who's been on MacBrick weekly before upgraded to the latest Eero's and had a great connection in his home, even on Wi-Fi with his iPhone, which does not support the latest Wi-Fi 7 standards, he was getting a gig down and a gig up on his network, and that's with Wi-Fi. That's rare that that is ever the case. So yeah, I've heard really good things about the latest Eero's and, yes, they do have LAN persistence now so you wouldn't have that issue. Then I know what to do. Thank you very much. Awesome. Thank you for the call. I appreciate it. Have a great day.

You too. Alrighty, should we take the other, john? Yes, we'll keep it to audio with that one as well. All right, john, you will be brought into the live room, so switch to on air and then, once you've joined, we know your name, john, but tell us where you're calling from. Walter. Am I unmuted? Hello, you are unmuted, yes, Hi there.

1:52:37 - Mikah Sargent0
Yes, this is John. I'm in Leesburg Virginia. Hi, john from.

1:52:42 - Mikah Sargent
Leesburg, I believe I recognize your voice.

1:52:45 - Mikah Sargent0
Oh yeah, I have a couple of questions. I have a comment first about the, about the, your discussion with Rob Pyle, if you don't mind, Wonderful.

1:52:53 - Mikah Sargent
I guess you're going to say that the moon landing was faked, in which case we're going to hang out. No, no, no, no, okay.

1:52:59 - Mikah Sargent0
I think the thing about the, the Kennedy speeches and so forth, what it did was engender a tremendous optimism in the country, and that was the thing that it was so successful. And and certain certain parties didn't like that, namely the British didn't like it. They put out a report that says that says there was too much optimism. Every woman and man in his dog want to be an astronaut. We can't have that, oh man, yeah. So it says you know, so this, this gets into more political stuff, which maybe you don't get to, but I assure you that that that's what's kind of missing somewhat today the because because we don't have a leader that will engender this kind of optimism, and I think that that goes to why the funding isn't as good and so forth.

1:53:53 - Mikah Sargent
I see, yes, the earlier question that I had was kind of where, where the funding is on space versus where it was at the time, and so for you, yeah, the optimism to the federal budget.

1:54:07 - Mikah Sargent0
It was the optimism that engendered it. It made that, I think, most people. You know the moon landing, there was billion, you know a billion people watching it and so forth. I mean it was a humanity thing that it was for the human race.

1:54:21 - Mikah Sargent
I'm sure it was magical. Yeah, absolutely. Well, thank you for your thoughts on that. How can I help you?

1:54:28 - Mikah Sargent0
So now the next question is this I use voiceover on these devices Apple Watch and the phone and the Apple Watch. I'm having terrible time seeking with with with the phone. It's on the phone, mirroring and all that, but it doesn't always work. For instance, I'll get, I'll get a message on the phone and or I'll get it, but usually it's the other way. I'll get a message on the Apple Watch and I I do something to it on the phone. You know, I go and change it to on from on red, but then it will still be on the watch. So it's a real mess, I mean. So sometimes it'll be the other way. Sometimes it'll be from an app where where I, I, I dismiss it on the on the watch and it'll still be on the phone.

1:55:22 - Mikah Sargent
I mean it's interesting. So the the notification is is persisting on the Apple Watch, even if you've cleared it on the other device. So and the other way around, the other way around.

Yeah, yeah, so what I would recommend Apple. Yeah, you never know, I don't know. With with that, what I would definitely recommend that. I'm curious to hear. If this is the suggestion suggestion they gave to you is on your phone. You want to launch the watch app and then in the watch app, the first setting is notifications and when you scroll down, you'll see a section. Well, you, you will hear a section that says mirror iPhone alerts.

1:56:09 - Mikah Sargent0
Yes, that's fine yeah.

1:56:12 - Mikah Sargent
And then you have those turned on for those different apps.

1:56:15 - Mikah Sargent0
Well, the apps don't have, the apps don't say.

1:56:19 - Mikah Sargent
So it's. So what I'm able to view is each individual app is listed and then I have a toggle to the right for each app and I have some of them toggled off and some of them toggled on, and so what it does is it mirrors that alert from each of the devices. Now, before we get to that section yes, there is a whole section, like for messages, that says do I want to mirror my iPhone or do I want to do a custom thing? And so I can say allow notifications, repeat them, group them. So if you have it set to mirror, it should, in theory, be clearing what it might be, as it could be a sync issue.

You know it's not syncing as quickly as you'd like, but yeah, I do find that there's a lot of notification management I have to do like what you're talking about here, but it I'm curious to hear if this is the same for you. I tend to find that the Apple watch does a better job of telling my iPhone what notifications to clear away. So if I am on my Apple watch and I swipe down from the top to access control center excuse me, the notification center there's a button at the very top that says clear all.

And if I usually use that, one, because you need to sort of do them piece by piece, right, and what I found is that if I hit that button then it does sync that to my phone, so my phone also clears all the notifications away. But what I found is that if I do it on my iPhone, it doesn't necessarily clear the notifications on my Apple watch every time. Oh really, I see, so the Apple watch might be the better device to kind of do that triaging that you're talking about, where you know if you interact with it on there and clear it away.

1:58:18 - Mikah Sargent0
Well, I usually just go into. For instance, if now messages I handle differently because I want to go on the phone and change it from unread, you know. So I always do that. But I've had that. I go on the iPhone, I go to the messages app, I change it, you know, I activate it and then go and then hit the back button and so on. But sometimes on the watch it's still there, it hangs on.

1:58:50 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, that's frustrating. I hopefully that's something that they correct over time. I don't know that there's a setting or anything that you're missing.

1:58:57 - Mikah Sargent0
Yeah, I don't. Yeah, it didn't seem that way, so that's. I have one other question, which is not about the iPhone, but about those things. That's maybe Well, let's try it. Maybe Well, let's try it. Okay, when we went to daylight saving time, something in my test scheduler went to an hour early, okay, and so it was four o'clock in the morning and suddenly it was three o'clock, and so that goofed everything up, and so the only thing I was able to do it's still an hour early. So I said to an hour late, you know, and so now it kind of works, but gosh, I mean yeah that's bad.

1:59:43 - Mikah Sargent
So a quick cursory bit of research here, and I'm seeing several instances of people experiencing a bug where DST has affected their task scheduler and unfortunately I'm not seeing too many responses from Microsoft itself saying ah yes, this is an issue that we had and that you know that there's. You know that they're working on fixing that. Okay, yeah.

2:00:23 - Mikah Sargent0
So I'm on Windows 10. I haven't gone to 11.

2:00:25 - Mikah Sargent
Okay, you're on Windows 10. That's helpful too, yeah, okay, so this is what it says.

2:00:29 - Mikah Sargent0
I'm in the Steve Gibson, you know, category.

2:00:33 - Mikah Sargent
So I'm looking back Windows 10 tasks scheduler issue. This is specific to Windows 10, unfortunately, really. Yeah, so there is a bug in Windows 10 and the Microsoft task scheduler that is, that specifically deals with DST, where it is not properly making those changes. Yeah, that's not great, no it's not.

2:01:02 - Mikah Sargent0
It's a lot of times it doesn't matter because it's every hour, 24, seven, but but this is once a day and it kind of made a mess out of things and tell us to get okay, so I'm just going to make it go, and now I'm just going to make it pretend you know it's an hour late and then it. Then it works okay, but it's kind of silly.

2:01:21 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, that's frustrating. Someone is saying that adjusting this this is in the again. The Microsoft support documents says adjust the schedule of the task to be for midnight or after 2am until Microsoft fixes the issue. But you said yours was three and four, so that shouldn't be a problem.

2:01:40 - Mikah Sargent0
Is this was? It was originally four, it changed to three when daylight saving time went off, so, yeah, so the work around. The work around was changing to five and now and now it goes off at four.

2:01:55 - Mikah Sargent
That's so frustrating. I'm sorry that that has not been fixed yet yeah, really. I'll have to call Satya Nadella and have a chat.

2:02:03 - Mikah Sargent0
You do that, yeah right, hey, thanks a lot. That's great to talk to you guys.

2:02:08 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, good to talk to you too. Thanks for calling in. And I hope Leo gets out of his cave, and me too I hope he makes it out, and if he sees his shadow we'll have several more weeks of winter.

2:02:18 - Mikah Sargent0
So that's right, there you go.

2:02:20 - Mikah Sargent
Exactly. Thanks. So much for the call. Bye, bye, bye, bye. All righty, I can hear the music. It's just in my head and it's all about travel, joining us here. On. Ask the Tech Guy, it's Johnny Jet. Welcome, johnny.

Hey Mikah how you doing. I am doing peachy keen. Johnny, how about you? Good, you're solo today, I am solo. Leo is away on a self help retreat, so it was a very intensive thing. We kind of joke about it, but in all honesty it's a really cool thing and super happy that he's been able to do it and I'm looking forward to talking to him when he gets back. Hopefully he will still just have two ears, two eyes and two legs. No see, there goes the joking again. No, in all honesty, we're looking forward to having him back. But, yeah, happy to have you here with me today to talk.

2:03:22 - Johnny Jet
Travel Breaking news, breaking news. I was just looking at X, formerly Twitter, and Alaska Airlines is buying Hawaiian Airlines for 1.9 billion. What? And that is big deal. So I was just scrambling to write a post. I literally just I just running downstairs I called my wife. I said listen, you need to edit this and post it as quick as possible. I met my wife on a press trip. She's a journalist and she's our editor and anyway, we work together. Nice, I didn't know that.

2:03:56 - Mikah Sargent
That's cool, yeah, so. So let's talk about the implications here. Like, remind me, isn't one of those airlines, the one that everybody says never fly on?

2:04:08 - Johnny Jet
this. No, no, no, no. Actually, both these airlines everyone loves oh, okay, these are good. Jetblue, Spirit Airlines merger or JetBlue is buying Spirit. That's the one Most people love, JetBlue, but it's not. Most people hate spirit, yeah, but this one, everyone loves Hawaiian I'm not, I shouldn't say everyone, but for the most part many people love what love Hawaiian and Alaska.

These guys have both loyal followings and Alaska Airlines is in the one world alliance. There's three major airline allow alliances One world, which is American Airlines, iberia, qantas, there's like 18 airlines. And then there's Star Alliance, which is United, and I mean they have so many marketing, think of them all. And also Delta is part of Sky Team with KLM and Air France. But anyway, hawaiian Airlines was not part of an alliance, but now, with them being acquired by Alaska, they'll now be in one world and I fly American Airlines all the time and I'm an elite passenger on American, so I will now get status on. I always got it on Alaska, but I will get it now on Hawaiian as well. And you know, living in LA, when I fly to Hawaii, I'm first. First of all, I'm very fortunate to go to Hawaii anytime, but I've been dozens of times and a lot of American Airlines only flies from LA narrow body A321s and I do not like the plane is three and three in coach, which normally I'm in on that flight, but Hawaiian Airlines.

They fly wide bodies from LAX, so A330 and soon to be the plus seven, eight, seven Anyway. So I think this is great news for consumers, especially people who are flying American Airlines. If you're not, you can start accruing your American miles or your one world status, and should be good. I mean, you know, when you step on Hawaiian Airlines, it feels like you're in Hawaii. When you step on American Airlines, you feel like you're going to like Chicago, which is nothing wrong with Chicago I was there this week and I love Chicago but you don't want to feel like you're going to Chicago when you're going to Hawaii.

2:06:15 - Mikah Sargent
Right, right, right. Are there any regulatory hurdles with this? Will they be in?

2:06:20 - Johnny Jet
that's a good question yeah, that does have to be approved. So yeah, but I don't. I don't think this one is going to be as tough as the JetBlue and Spirit Airlines one, but we'll find out. You know, it's so new that I'm not even sure.

2:06:35 - Mikah Sargent0
Yeah right.

2:06:36 - Johnny Jet
Yeah it's just. As a consumer, I'm happy about this one.

2:06:40 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah.

2:06:41 - Johnny Jet
You know the JetBlue Spirit one, I can understand. I'm not approving it because it definitely will make fares go up. Whenever airlines consolidate, fares do normally go up because it takes out the competition Got it. But you know you're getting a better product on this one.

2:06:56 - Mikah Sargent
Yes, indeed, okay. So that's, that is very exciting stuff and, as you said, especially for folks who have the status in particular, even if you don't have the status.

2:07:07 - Johnny Jet
it's just nice to to be able to earn miles now when you're flying Hawaii, and you could always get their points. But now you can do it towards other airlines.

2:07:16 - Mikah Sargent
Okay, that's yeah, that is nice, but it hasn't and it hasn't been approved yet.

2:07:19 - Johnny Jet
Obviously right, just announced it an hour ago.

2:07:23 - Mikah Sargent
So what's the price? Is that what you would expect? Do they tend to spend less or more you?

2:07:31 - Johnny Jet
know how much they, how much they're buying it for. Or you mean yeah, sorry, how much they're buying it for the 1.9 billion. Well, the 1.9, you know what that's out of my realm Got it Like? So I don't know, but I know they're. They're doing it for 1.9 billion, All right, which is a lot better than what JetBlue is buying a Spirit for I think. I mean they gave them an astronomical price.

2:07:55 - Mikah Sargent
I can imagine the. It's like oh, here's, here's this here, we'll give you some $50 to buy you the most, seemingly most hated airline.

2:08:07 - Johnny Jet
By the way, when I logged on to twittv, I normally hit live and then I joined the chat room so I could see what's going on and I can interact. I wasn't able to do that this time. Did you guys switch it up? Um, if you go, it's like you have a club now.

2:08:21 - Mikah Sargent
You now have a club. Yeah, oh, wow, you've. You've really not been around, um, I haven't been on in a month, that's, that's true. So basically, we um, it's kind of a complicated thing, but to answer your question, yes, sort of we have a live stream that allows you to watch the show, as we're recording it on YouTube, just YouTube alone. And then we also have everybody has access to who's a club member, to the discord, where you can watch it. But if you, johnny, go to IRCtwittv, that will give you access to the chat. Um, so that is where you'll want to go. I see no, no, no, irc, irc.

2:09:04 - Johnny Jet
Dot.

2:09:07 - Mikah Sargent
Twit Just IRC. Yeah, twit, okay Dot twittv. Okay, I RC.

2:09:12 - Johnny Jet
Oh, I guess I won't do it right now. I'm on the phone with you because I don't want to mess anything up. I just for future. I like to. I like to be able to see what people are saying and I also like to answer any questions for sure, especially after I'm on.

2:09:23 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, cause usually that page had that little embed of that of the IRC, and so you're just going to go direct to the source.

2:09:30 - Johnny Jet
I'm on there now?

2:09:31 - Mikah Sargent
Oh nice, Okay cool, Um. So, outside of that breaking story, what else do you have to tell us about travel?

2:09:38 - Johnny Jet
I mean, listen, I've been flying a lot lately this November I flown. I mean I think I was in like seven or eight airports and I, you know, during the pandemic, I just shut down. I mean I was like I'm not leaving, I don't want to leave my kids. I still don't even like to leave my kids, and some of these trips I was with my kids. But I mean I think I flew to New York, I flew to Tennessee, I, you know, I was posted.

I was sat next to the bachelor on one of the flights oh, it's a golden bachelor. I posted it on my Facebook. Oh, my God, all my high school friends girls were going, this guy and he's a really nice guy and um. And then I was in Dallas, I was in Chicago this week, I was in Turks and Caicos for uh, for right before Thanksgiving in Miami. So I mean I'm back to traveling and I'm learning a lot again. I mean it's basically a lot of stuff's the same. What's disappointing is that people have not learned their manners. Man, you would think after the pandemic people would cough by covering their mouth. Isn't that so frustrating? It's not. It's like hello, are you kidding me? And so, anyway, I was like I had a red post about you know how not to end up on social media.

2:10:53 - Mikah Sargent
And that's a good post. There are a lot of people, I'm sure, who end up on social media.

2:10:57 - Johnny Jet
Yeah, yeah, I mean number one is you don't cough without covering your mouth or sneeze. I mean number two is you know you don't watch your videos without headphones. Almost every single one of my flights I'm actually, I would say, nine out of the 10 flights People were just watching videos without headphones. You're kidding me.

Yes, I mean, it happens every flight. That's so frustrating. And some of them are kids, some of them are old people, some of them are middle age, like me. It's just I'm like I don't get it. I really don't get it, like, why do I want to listen to your conversation if you're doing a FaceTime or what I want?

2:11:34 - Mikah Sargent
That's even worse video Totally.

2:11:36 - Johnny Jet
Oh boy, yeah, so sometimes I'll just whip out my phone. If someone's on FaceTime, I'll just whip out my phone and get on FaceTime and just call one of my friends and say hey, stand next to the person.

2:11:48 - Mikah Sargent
Show them. This is what you're doing, yeah.

2:11:50 - Johnny Jet
Exactly. And then they'll look at me and I'm like I look at them, and then they get the hint.

2:11:56 - Mikah Sargent
I love that. That's fantastic. Have you? Do you have any experience traveling with pets? Do you have any pets?

2:12:03 - Johnny Jet
I don't have any pets. I mean grow up with pets.

But you know, we travel too much. It's just not. It's just it's very expensive and it's also cruel to the animal, I think, to leave them home or with someone else for so long. But I don't. But I did see a bunch of pets on this flight. I'm actually my flight. A couple of days ago I had I took some photos Lady just walking down the aisle with regular dog I didn't say service dog, but they do it. But you do need to do. You have a pet?

2:12:32 - Mikah Sargent
Oh, I have two, yeah, I just was curious, just in general. Have you traveled with them? No, no, are they dogs or cats? They're dogs. Turkey. It's part of the reason I don't travel. I have two dogs. Listen.

I understand they're short-snouted dogs too, and I have heard that the pressure of takeoff can be an issue for dogs that have very short snouts, with their breathing Interesting. I did not know that. Yeah, so it has something to do with, like, when it's first going, it sort of, you know, you get that little bit of G-force and that's enough to sort of press in on their right, basically all the folds inside and make it hard for them to breathe. And so if you have a dog that has like no snout, which is I can't think of the breeds off the top of my head, but there's like there are a couple that are like that Luckily I don't have one of those Then it can be deadly even. But yeah, I just I was curious in general if that what's, can you a flight that you've been on, the strangest animal you've ever seen, strangest animal Did anyone have a snake.

2:13:34 - Johnny Jet
You know, I've had a friend who's flown with a snake. She wore it as a belt and I go, are you nuts? I go, I'm not a snake person, first of all, yeah. So I mean, if someone sat next to me, I looked down and I see they're wearing a snake, I would be like what? Yeah, no, but I haven't seen too much strange stuff Really that I can remember.

2:13:56 - Mikah Sargent
You travel a lot, you don't see. You don't see any strange Not animal-wise, just humans.

2:14:01 - Johnny Jet
I mean I've never seen a pig, a turkey. I've seen on on lion, I've seen donkeys, I think. I mean there's been all kinds of stuff. But no, actually, you know, I take that back. I've been on a private jet with almost every kind of animal once, oh really, and I'll have to send you a video sometime.

2:14:21 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, that sounds interesting. That sounds like an interesting story as a whole.

2:14:25 - Johnny Jet
Hmm, okay, but yeah it's. But going back to the, you know flying with pets, you know. You know flying with our kids for the first time and that was one of our big concerns, the ears, I mean. So on takeoff, I make sure, in landing, I make sure they're drinking, like like every thousand feet I'm like take a sip of your water or we give them a lollipop, and that helps. With dogs, I'm not sure what you can do, especially if they're in the cargo, which I don't recommend doing?

2:14:50 - Mikah Sargent
Oh my gosh, I can't know. When I moved here to California, I drove the 26 hours from where I'm from to here, because there was no way I was taking my dogs on a plane and putting them through that either. I would. I would never, ever, ever do it in the cargo hold, but even on the plane, knowing the thing about the short snout. So yeah, I, I opted to drive the way for their sake, so that they were not uncomfortable, gotcha. But yeah, I know, you know some, some folks. They do take their pets with them everywhere. So they do end up taking them on the flight and it seems to go well for them. But on the flight with them. I mean not again in the cargo hold. But I was curious if you had any experience with that personally. So in your travels, your latest travels, you said you're kind of relearning. Can you talk a little bit about that? What? What other than the manners? What were you reminded of? Did you? Did you forget? And you actually checked a bag? Oh no.

2:15:54 - Johnny Jet
No, you know what? I pretty much have it. I mean, we've been traveling. We just I haven't been traveling as much as I used to. I mean, I used to fly, you know, 100 flights a year, and before I had kids, I go to 20 countries a year. Now, I mean this year, I think I've been to maybe seven or eight, but you know, and I'm not flying as much, and I and I don't want to fly as much. First of all, that's bad for the environment. I also, you know, I want to be home as much as I can. But you know some of the things I learned.

Actually, one thing I I'm not sure if it happened on in the flight, but I, you know, logged on the Wi-Fi. I forgot to use my VPN and I got hacked. I don't know if I got hacked on the Wi-Fi or what, but anyway, my six of my credit cards have been compromised in the last five days. Oh my God, and that's what I'm dealing with right now, like tomorrow, I got to go to one of the banks, oh no, I'm so sorry. All of a sudden, I logged down to my account. I saw a charge, for I don't know what it was. It was something stupid, like I think it was wixcom. Someone charged $29. What in the world? And my credit card company called and said did you do this? I'm like no, asked my wife. She said no, anyway. So then I called them up and they charged like $3,000 for airline tickets. They charged, they took out a $20,000 loan.

2:17:10 - Mikah Sargent
They are you kidding me On the credit card. Yeah, oh, my God.

2:17:15 - Johnny Jet
But I think they caught it in time. But six different, six different credit cards, four different banks, oh, and it's very disturbing because I don't know how it happened. I'm wondering. If it was Wi-Fi, oh, I'd be ready to throw away everything I own.

2:17:27 - Mikah Sargent
in that case I, oh, that's so, that's.

2:17:30 - Johnny Jet
I'm so sorry, that's awful, and I don't keep all six cards with me, so it's not like you know. Someone compromised me that way. I don't put them all on Apple pay, weird. I wonder what happened. That's that's what I want to find out, because obviously it's unsettling.

2:17:47 - Mikah Sargent
It's incredibly unsettling and especially, you know, thinking about where, how they could have gathered all that information, cause I was going to say, oh you know, maybe they got a. There was a site that had. But yeah, you're not going to put all of your credit cards on one site, even whenever you're making purchases. That is horrifying. I'm so sorry.

2:18:06 - Johnny Jet
But another thing I learned by the way on this trip, which I knew, but and I did, I thought I downloaded, I thought I updated all my apps but I was in Chicago a few days ago. It happened to be 15 degrees when I get off the plane, so the coldest day of the year and I'm waiting for my Uber and it just kept saying trying to find confirm your Uber. And I'm like what's going on? I just kept confirming and it wouldn't find me one and then I hit cancel because it was taking so long. I was going to try and different car instead of a comfort.

I was going to go to Excel and then it says you've been charged $16 cause you canceled on the driver. I'm like what are you talking about? And anyway, it turns out that I didn't update the app and they had a new update and it was just doing this. So I ended up having to pay with my credit card and I would have thought that's where I got hacked, although because I gave the driver my credit card. But it happened over started before.

Yeah, Cause the guy's like listen, I can see you're in here and we matched up, but it just wouldn't take. And it wasn't and he wasn't lying to me, I could see both of our devices.

2:19:09 - Mikah Sargent
And so he was able to do the charge on the account. He just, he just said how much how much did they quote you?

2:19:17 - Johnny Jet
I said it was $78. It was an Excel car from from O'Hare to downtown and he says I'll just just. Can you pay with your credit card or cash? I go, yeah, interesting.

2:19:30 - Mikah Sargent
Oh, I guess. Okay, Then he just yeah, that was actually a good deal for him, so he so he, so he canceled the trip. Yeah.

2:19:35 - Johnny Jet
Yeah, and then I gave him a tip on top of that and um, but anyway, my tip is make sure your apps are updated, because you don't want to. You don't want to go through this and if it's cold out like it was, you know, it feels like an eternity. Just a few minutes and I didn't realize that was the problem. I was like what's going on in my app Cause I thought I had it updated because two nights before I hit update all my apps, but I guess I was on slow wifi and it did not do it and I didn't realize until the next day or the day after this.

2:20:07 - Mikah Sargent
Some. So in the chat, Dr Mom said that, uh, she also got hit, um for her credit card, so there could be something. I'm going to. I'll keep an eye out for that too, just if there's some sort of maybe a credit, you know, um like TransUnion or something. Uh, god hacks or I don't know. This is just weird. This is that's. That's a. That's a lot to have happen. Um, you know that many cards and that they got access to all of them. It's like where, where would they have done that, that they could get access to multiple cards, right?

2:20:42 - Johnny Jet
So, my goodness, yeah, and one of them. I got it. I got a $10,000 check in the mail cash years check from my account from a from a loan company. I was like I don't even have this account, so I'm worried. They stole my identity and I called up the bank and they're like well, we don't have this account, you have to go to the bank. They're closed on the weekend. I'm like that's ridiculous.

2:21:01 - Mikah Sargent
You went in and froze all of your credit reports and stuff, right, and I'm sure I did go in oh my God, I'm so and right around the holidays too. For you to have to deal with this is just terrible.

2:21:14 - Johnny Jet
I'm just, I hate that I mean, yeah, I mean there's worse things in the world, but it is definitely unsettling, and especially cause I don't know how it happened.

2:21:22 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah it. That's one of the things that makes it so troubling is you don't know how it happened, so you don't know how to address it and know if you've addressed it fully or if two, three months from now you're going to hear about something. You know what I mean, so I'm for that. I hate that you're going to you know, I just thought of this.

2:21:38 - Johnny Jet
This is real quick. I got suckered to be on a podcast. I mean, this is the most gullible thing I ever did. But my wife, I got an email saying hey, we want you on this podcast. I never heard of it. I sent it to my wife. She goes it looks legit and they're, and they're being sponsored by Lulu lemon. They're giving you $3,000. I'm like that's crazy. I was going to delete it. My wife's like I think it's legit.

Anyway, we both were traveling, we didn't really have time to research it. So I I said, sure, I'll do it. The guy, you know all the the email had no errors in it. It seemed legit. And they're like listen, if you don't know how to do a Facebook live, set up let me know and I'll walk you through it. And so, anyway. So I call the guy and I was like, yeah, let's walk through it, I just want to make sure it's all set. He's like well, you don't have your paid on there, you're, you're paid events on there. I'm like I don't know, I don't know that is so anyway. He's like sure, your computer no, Johnny, no so anyway, but I only shared the screen.

I didn't let him, I didn't let him control it. So he just showed me he goes all right, go to the left and hit that, go to the right. And he was really fast, but he did have an arrow. He was able to point it with an arrow. But I was like man, you're like a wizard on this thing and anyway, that is probably. But anyway I called my friends at.

Facebook and they said this was about three weeks ago, I think so, even though it wouldn't take two weeks. My friends at Facebook said this is a. You know, this is a problem where they're actually stealing people's accounts that are verified and they usually just change the name right away and they didn't get your account because you have two factor in there. That's good, that part, oh man. But then I'm. But now I'm thinking you know, did they get into my computer?

2:23:17 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, this is what I'm thinking. I think that that's what I think, that they made it. They may have made it seem like they didn't have more access than just the you know screen.

Even for the two minutes that we are on. Well, they might still have access. You know what I mean. So once they have it if it is truthful access and you have your machine turned on, they can at some point go back in and control the machine again. So this is this is actually something.

There was a hack like this where it was happening in the Philippines, but basically the person installed something on their phone in the same kind of way and what would happen is it gave them access to the camera as well, and so they would wait for the person to go to sleep and then, while the person was asleep, they would gain access to the phone and move it around and do what they wanted to do on it, because they knew that the person was asleep, because they had access to the webcam, so they just watch. And then, when the person went to bed, then they would go on the phone and log into accounts and stuff. So I, whatever I do put tape over my camera that's good, but whatever machine, you did this on it's the one I'm on right now.

2:24:29 - Johnny Jet
Oh, this is I would.

2:24:31 - Mikah Sargent
I would, I would, I would wipe it, wipe it, yes.

2:24:37 - Johnny Jet
Are you serious?

2:24:38 - Mikah Sargent
Yes, I am dead serious. I'm worried that they could still have access to it right now. I'm genuinely concerned about that. So if they basically installed a system that, like through you, they were able to install a bit of software that made it seem as if they were just showing you where you needed to click and whatnot that they could have taken, that I didn't see anything installed.

2:25:03 - Johnny Jet
It was literally he was just showing it and it was so quick. He was just saying here point here, click here. And I signed it up and now I don't have control of my. I can't change my password on my fan Facebook page.

2:25:13 - Mikah Sargent
Yikes, Do you know if? Do you remember what like was it a website that you had to go to? Do you remember the process at all? No, it was Facebook, it was just so. But for him to show you stuff Did he say hey, let's do a Facebook call. Or because you said you called him, I did you call him on the phone.

2:25:33 - Johnny Jet
We were doing a zoom.

2:25:34 - Mikah Sargent
We did a zoom, okay, and so you were on a zoom and he said let's do screen sharing.

2:25:39 - Johnny Jet
Yeah, cause he was like okay, go to here on Facebook. I go, I don't see that line and it wasn't there. He's like okay, let me, let me share your screen and I will show it. That was reluctant to share it, but I was like you know, I really thought it was legit. Right, I can't believe I got suckered so bad.

2:25:53 - Mikah Sargent
It was like if this was through zoom, then maybe it wasn't these guys. Because, yeah, cause zoom makes me feel better. Yeah, Zoom, as far as long as it truly was happening just through zoom, that you know. He didn't say at some point oh, you know, let's use this, just click on this button and install this, or whatever. Then, as long as it wasn't an external app, I feel much more better, that I feel much better. Excuse me that it was. I mean, it was still a dupe, it was still, but it was very specific to that. So I don't think that that's where this happened. If you had told me that he said, oh, we can get this figured out, just install this program, then we'll do that. But yeah, I don't. I don't think. Let me see zoom control.

2:26:44 - Johnny Jet
Requesting or giving remote control allows you to take a bunch of bloggers, by the way that that wrote about this that when they get their Facebook or Instagram taken over and they just, they just take it right away so that they're not that's their end game is to get control of their right, and you didn't see that happen. No, I mean I still. I can still post on my Facebook, I can still sell.

2:27:09 - Mikah Sargent
So yeah, I guess there is the ability to gain remote control of a machine, but you can choose to turn it off If you click the view options and select give up remote control. Yeah, I don't know. That's still relegated to zoom, and unless you had zoom turned on at all times, I did not. Yeah, so that call yeah. Okay, I feel much better that that's not what happened, that that's not the way that you had all of your credit cards stolen, Okay. Well, in any case, this is good for any podcasters who listen to this show that that now they know that there is that you know group out there trying to get and they do not pay to go on a podcast.

2:27:52 - Johnny Jet
I was like no one's ever paid me. I told my wife, no one's ever paid, and let alone $3,000. But of course, everyone can use $3,000. Exactly, they want the guest to have $3,000.

2:28:04 - Mikah Sargent
And yeah, no, and I want to say this too I don't think anyone that I've actually had a conversation specifically about this In that moment. All of any, any blame that you're placing on yourself or any of that, always redirect that energy to the absolute turds who did this. Like they. They, you know, you can, you can say, oh, I should have noticed this or should have noticed this. They're clever people and so, if that you know, don't blame yourself in this.

2:28:35 - Johnny Jet
If these people were, well, I'm not gonna blame myself because I've interviewed, you know, experts on this and they're like listen, this is their job 24, seven, exactly. They're experts at it, they know exactly what they're doing. But I, this guy, couldn't click anything on my computer. He could just. He was just pointing an arrow telling me where to click. Yeah, so I could set this up, and he had me change it, and anyway, it was only in February frustrating, but, yeah, I'm at least happy to hear that it doesn't seem to be outside of that.

2:29:03 - Mikah Sargent
Now I'm getting lots of gestures telling me that I do need to keep the show moving along. Definitely. I don't want to be sorry for everyone taking your time. Oh God, no, no, no, that was very important. Like, this is a PSA just as much as anything else. So thank you, and I please let me know if you do find out. I will let you know, yeah, next time.

2:29:25 - Johnny Jet
I'm on.

2:29:26 - Mikah Sargent
Yes, all right. Well, again, I'm sorry that that's happened to you and wishing you and your family all the best as you figure out what happened. You too, thank you. I'll see you next year. Yes, happy holidays you too. All right, bye, johnny, bye, bye. Of course folks can head to johnnyjetcom to check out all of Johnny's awesome work and stay up to date with travel tips, tricks and everything in between. All right, we are going to take one more break and then we'll have a couple more questions. Before we say goodbye for the day, I want to tell you I love them. It's Mylio who are bringing you this episode of ask the tech guys.

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All right, here is an email that comes in from John, another John. John says hello, so happy you're keeping us educated on tech. I'm ready to upgrade my current ERO Pro Mesh system. The only downside to my current system this is interesting. I wonder if this was the same John who called, but we'll see. The only downside to my current system is that if the internet goes down, so does my wireless network. This makes my home cameras, iot devices, etc. Useless. I'd like to stick with ERO, but discovering no internet, no network, is making me look at other systems. One of the systems offer true wireless mesh networking. I wanna be able to use my network devices when my provider experiences an outage. Thanks, john. So, john, if you're the same John, we answered your question earlier. If you're a different John, we answered your question earlier as well, you can use ERO. It just requires a newer ERO, probably for you to have that LAN persistence, that local area network persistence. So we'll take one last question before we say goodbye for the day.

This comes in from William, who writes Mikah and Leo, I'm hoping you can help with my remote office setup. I'm looking for a hub that has an A B switch that would allow me to toggle between my work PC and my Mac mini for personal usage. Thanks, bill. So what Bill is looking for here is a KVM which lets you essentially switch between the two devices. Now I had a really bad experience with a KVM switch that has made me allergic to KVM switches, so I do not use them and have not used them in some time. But there are loads of different sites, including PC Mag, that have. So in this article, the best KVM switches for 2023 from PC Mag, and it talks about the different options that are available. We'll include a link in the show notes, but this lets you switch between your different PCs very easily.

I don't like them again. I basically I don't know how it did it, but it messed up a Mac. That, and when it messed up the Mac, it just it caused me to go nope, not interested in any of that. But there are several options available. The one that I'm seeing a lot is the what's it called? Great, it's like grief G-R-E-A-T-H tech, which is a KVM switch. So grief tech, I guess, is how you would pronounce that, the two port HDMI KVM. It's got several USB ports, switching time is 3.75 seconds and it has the HDMI and USB for connecting between the two. So, yeah, there are lots of options out there. My recommendation is to not shy away from investing a little bit of money in your KVM switch, finding one that costs $15, $20. You may run into some issues, the switching time can be a lot longer, and so it's worth investing in it if it's something that you're going to use regularly. So, yeah, check out that PCMag article, which has a lot more information about that.

All right, folks, that brings us to the end of this episode of Ask the Tech Guys. I remind you all out there you can get in touch with us by heading to calltwittv on your device, your phone or your computer if you'd like. When you go there, you will join a Zoom room where you'll hang out and be brought on air to have your question answered. You can also call us 8887242884. When you call that phone number during the week outside of Sunday, then you will be connected to voicemail so you can leave your voicemail to ask your question. If you call us on Sundays between 11 am and 2 pm Pacific, then you will be able to join us and actually ask your call live on air. The other way to get in touch that's where all these emails come from is by emailing us at atgatwittv. When you head to atgatwittv, or rather when you email atgatwittv, we will see that in our inbox and you'll be able to ask your question. You can send us text, you can send us audio, you can send us video. All of those are ways to get in touch.

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Along with those great perks, you also get some special exclusive shows. There's the untitled Linux show, which is a show all about Linux. There's Hands on Windows, which is a short format show from Paul Throut that covers Windows Tips and Tricks. There's Hands on Mac, which is a short format show from me, Michael Sargent, that covers Apple Tips and Tricks. And Home Theater Geeks from Scott Wilkinson, which has some great stuff interviews, reviews, questions answered, everything in between. Super excited to have that show in the club, as well as AI Inside from Jason Howell, that covers artificial intelligence. Alrighty, I am ready to say goodbye to all of you. Thank you so much for tuning in. We will be back next Sunday, and when I say we, I do mean we being Leo, the Portland, myself, and so we look forward to taking your questions at that point. Thanks everybody who has tuned in thus far and brought me some great questions while Leo has been out. It's been my absolute pleasure doing this show for you and we'll see you next week. Have a great week. Bye Bye.

2:40:00 - Scott Wilkinson
Hey there, Scott Wilkinson here. In case you hadn't heard, Home Theater Geeks is back. Each week I bring you the latest audio video news, tips and tricks to get the most out of your AV system, product reviews and more. You can enjoy Home Theater Geeks only if you're a member of Club Twit, which costs seven bucks a month, or you can subscribe to Home Theater Geeks by itself for only $2.99 a month. I hope you'll join me for a weekly dose of home theater Geekatude.