Ask The Tech Guys 2009 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. Also, names of speakers may be incorrect at times.
0:00:00 - Leo Laporte
Well, hey, hey, hey, it's time for Ask the Tech Guys. I'm Leo Laporte coming up. Part two of Father Robert Ballasier's visit to the Consumer Electronics.
0:00:08 - Mikah Sargent
Show, it's Gadgets on Gadgets, and I'm Mikah Sargent, and Dickie D Bartolo stops by to show us his flying coffin.
0:00:15 - Leo Laporte
And what to do about all those unknown air tags following you everywhere you go. It's time for Ask the Tech Guys.
0:00:25 - VO
Podcasts you love. From people you trust. This is TWiT.
0:00:34 - Leo Laporte
This is Ask the Tech Guys with Mikah Sargent and Leo Laporte, episode 2009,. Recorded Sunday, january 28th 2024. Live and Let Snoop. Just a couple of days left to take the TWiT survey. It's the best way we have of getting to know you. If you haven't taken it this year, go to twit.tv/survey24. And thanks in advance. Well, hey, hey, hey. How are you today? It's time for Ask the Tech Guys. That's Mikah Sargent in the dressy outfit.
0:01:07 - Mikah Sargent
Thank you, and that's Professor Plum. I mean Leo Laporte over there, professor Plum aren't I?
0:01:12 - Leo Laporte
I like it, don't? They have a new character clue? Probably They'd have some new woman. I think it's Madonna, madonna Plum, madonna Plum, but I'm Professor Plum with the pipe wrench in the living room. Did you play that as a kid? Oh, absolutely.
0:01:26 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah.
0:01:26 - Leo Laporte
What a great game, but that's not what we're here to talk about. We're not here to talk about childhood games. We're here to talk about tech and help you with your tech at 888-724-2884.
0:01:39 - Mikah Sargent
Yes, that is the phone number you can call live to join us on the stage and be able to make a call and ask your question. It's very important that we've got instructions involving that. If you do hear from us that you get to join, then you need to hit star six that's asterisk six on your phone.
0:01:59 - Leo Laporte
Once we say hello and you hear I don't know, do you hear a click or a weird thing happen or something but you unmute with star six.
0:02:05 - Mikah Sargent
You'll know when it's time. If you are joining us by going to calltwittv on your device of choice, be that a computer or your phone we suggest your phone because you've got the camera and the microphone built right in then you need to do something, also very important. If you are joining us in that Zoom room by going to calltwittv, you will find a little button somewhere on the bottom of your screen that says raise hand. You need to click or tap on that button, because that lets us know that you have a question for us and that you're not just kind of hanging out in the Zoom room, because we do have some folks who hang out Hi there, hang outers, good to see you. And the last way to get in touch with us is atgtwittv. That is our email. You can send video, you can send audio or you can send text, and if it's text, it'll pop up in that little mailbox behind Leo. We'll be able to be able to answer your question that way. So those are the ways to get in touch with us, but, as we always do, I think it's time to start with some news.
Friday, the big day for you. Yes, friday, this Friday, I am excited, I am excited. I'm excited to see the whole process. I'm excited to. So what was great? Folks who don't know what we're talking about. I will be picking up the Apple Vision Pro headset and you got the appointment.
I did.
0:03:22 - Leo Laporte
I got one of the few people most of the people Jason Snell, alex Lindsay said oh, just mail it.
0:03:27 - Mikah Sargent
Anti-social. Send it along, send it along. I wanted to do the full experience. I think that a lot of people who are curious about this want to know everything that's involved, so I wanted to make sure that we did that. I'm going to do my best to capture as much of the process as possible. It may end up that I have to just describe it. You'll see. But what's great is this week Anthony Nielsen has let me borrow the. Well, it's not the Oculus Quest, it's the MetaQuest headset and I've been using that at home. And the newest MetaQuest you should ask me, I have the MetaQuest Pro, you have the Pro. The Pro is not as good as the one that the new Quest 2.
0:04:05 - Leo Laporte
Really.
0:04:06 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, in terms of it's the most comparable to what.
0:04:08 - Leo Laporte
That's really frustrating because I spent $1,400 for it.
0:04:12 - Mikah Sargent
It's the most comparable to what Apple is providing. Okay.
0:04:16 - Leo Laporte
And that's the one with the three eyeballs on the front.
0:04:20 - Mikah Sargent
Exactly, and so you're seeing everything around you. Actually, they look like aero slits on castles. Yeah, that's exactly what they look like, so I've been playing around with that this week in kind of preparation to do comparisons between the two.
0:04:32 - Leo Laporte
Quest 3, I guess somebody's telling me nothing.
0:04:33 - Mikah Sargent
That's right, quest 3. And then I also want to mention we've put out the call in several places. We've put it out on social media, but also in the Discord, if you're members of Club Quit to send in your questions After I do, kind of initial reactions, unboxing and everything else. I want to know the specific questions you've had. I've gotten some great questions in like does it work in complete darkness? What is the difference between having it in a bright room versus a darker room? How many screens can I have running at one time? Does it work with video editing programs and my Mac? Lots of great stuff that are, I think, practical questions, and, as some of the reviews that I'm sure will be coming out happen, you're going to end up having more questions about it, and so that's our opportunity to do kind of a second video where we're answering all of your questions.
0:05:24 - Leo Laporte
I have bad dreams about somebody coming down to Alley Looking like that, wearing the Quest 3. Like, somehow can you see my screen Somehow? Yeah, like wouldn't, that would be creepy. It would be very creepy Coming down, but you could walk around in this right.
0:05:40 - Mikah Sargent
That's the idea. Yeah, in fact I was walking around and I was able to see where my dogs were. I wasn't tripping over them. Get really close. Even I thought I would have some trouble because I've got that projection screen at home. I was. It doesn't look as good you could watch. The colors are strange, but I could still watch something of that projection screen. It's very strange.
0:06:01 - Leo Laporte
The Vision Pro should be better. I'm really glad you're using the Quest 3, so you'll set yourself up for that. You could also build up your vomit resistance, which I think is a very important thing to do as you use this Start slow, just a few minutes at a time, and slowly work your way up to half an hour, which is the battery life of the Vision.
0:06:19 - Mikah Sargent
Pro. We'll see, because I am more prone to getting ill in the arms. I'm curious what the experience is going to be like with this headset, with as much as it costs and all the technology that's involved and the two screens that are better than 4K, and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. We'll see how much it lives up to its name.
0:06:42 - Leo Laporte
I'm going to give you a choice on the outrage quotient from zero, no outrage. A balmy, warm glow surrounds you to 10. You're seeing bright red and you're so mad, you're so angry. I could do a new story anywhere in that range. Now, of course, it'd be better for us to do it at the high end of outrage, because that makes you outraged at home. That's good for us, but I'm going to let you choose.
0:07:08 - Mikah Sargent
I want to go seven. Oh, pretty high. More towards outrage.
0:07:13 - Leo Laporte
More towards outrage. I'm surprised. Okay, what we just talked about was pretty chill. Does this outrage you? The car industry seeks to crush AM radio. I know an outrage is quite a few people. That's a seven on the outrage scale. That's fair. My new car does not have an AM. I didn't even think of that till I saw this article from the Wall Street Journal today. Conservative talk show hosts FEMA are fighting car makers because it costs them money to put these AM radios in, especially the EVs. Now you can build a shielding into an electric vehicle so it doesn't make the AM sonar.
But the car industry and of course, take these figures with a grain of salt, estimates that will cost them $3.8 billion over seven years to shield the EV AM radios. Fema and the government say but this is the emergency notification system. We spent a lot of time and money over the years for the EANS but honestly I don't think anybody under 50 is going to turn to an AM radio if there's an earthquake.
0:08:23 - Mikah Sargent
Right. Do they have that instinct to do so? I don't even have it.
0:08:27 - Leo Laporte
I'm a little over 50.
0:08:28 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, because our phones just go and we'll know there's an earthquake.
0:08:32 - Leo Laporte
I guess the idea is well, there's radio stations all over the country, a few thousand of them, that have generators. They're the EANS stations that have generators and are designed to survive a massive earthquake and would be on the air even if the world were in ruins. The problem is, in my opinion, no one knows which stations those are.
0:08:58 - Mikah Sargent
Do you know what the station is? That was my first question they talked about in this piece. They talked about how important it is for the Latino community as well. That's different, right? That's where they actually did know the stations that were 600 stations.
0:09:14 - Leo Laporte
I was surprised it was so low, but 600 AM stations in the US broadcast in a language other than English. My old station that I used to work at in San Jose Clock AM, I think is in Turkish now. Oh yeah, that's cool. It serves a community, which is that's a good point. The problem is, most people don't listen to AM radio anymore, although I'm surprised that the numbers I thought it was high. Number two it seemed a little high. These numbers come from Nielsen, which does ratings. This was the other thing they said that was kind of weird is that the earliest period for which Nielsen has ratings is 2016.
0:09:54 - Mikah Sargent
What? Oh yeah, I remember reading. I was thinking hold on, they don't go further back than that.
0:09:59 - Leo Laporte
Well, and it was Arbitron before that, but maybe they don't want to ask Arbitron, maybe I don't know. Whatever, but anyway, am radio reaches 78 million Americans every month. It seems high, but it was seven years ago, eight years ago, 107 million, so it is dropping rapidly. That's about 30 million fewer people in the last seven years, eight years. It's the spring of 2016. So I don't know. I in fact. Fm has gained. We're just talking AM. By the way, you've still got FM. Fm has gained considerably since the seventies when it came out stereo. It sounds better. Anyway, a lot of cars just to prepare yourself, a lot of own automobiles don't have AM radios in, but I didn't even know my new car doesn't and I didn't even think of it. I didn't even notice it.
0:10:53 - Mikah Sargent
I think my old car, my Ford Mustang Mach-E, does, but I never listened to it, never used it Well, and this seems to suggest that they're kind of trying to ramp up a way to force car manufacturers to include a tuner.
0:11:09 - Leo Laporte
Yes, and out of Nash at a national urgency, an emergency. It's also, of course, a national association of broadcasters, the AM radio stations, who are desperate. Now, as a guy who worked for AM and AM radio for most of my life, I'm sympathetic. But honestly, you can't prop up a more of an industry by fiat. Right, you know you could pass a law that says they build these into cars at great expense to car makers, or some expense anyway. But does anybody listen? But if no one's, listening.
0:11:40 - Mikah Sargent
What's the point? What's the point? Yeah, and I don't, I don't, I don't cling to the idea. I don't necessarily believe in this whole idea that it's necessary for the sake of emergency preparedness, because if you've ever watched any disaster show, vehicles are one of the first things that go. You know people become nomadic after a period of time and they've got their little devices that think. I just I don't believe in this idea that I've got a lug around my car in order to get context from the emergency services.
0:12:11 - Leo Laporte
So Berserk is mad at me because he says, well, you could just scan for the emergency station. Okay, I'm just asking any of you know how to get to your AM radio in your car? B? Do you know how to scan your AM radio in your car? Is there a knob? Is there an? You do know how to do that. Boy producer, boy wonder. See he is. I only say that because we want to emphasize that you're young In this case.
0:12:37 - John Ashley
Yes, I'm 34 and my RAV4 does have a little knob.
0:12:43 - Leo Laporte
Yes, it has a little knob.
0:12:44 - John Ashley
Yeah, and you turn it and it goes Well, not like that. But I can scan through different channels very easily. Yeah.
0:12:51 - Leo Laporte
All right, so you. So if there's an earthquake, are you going to run to your RAV4, hop in, turn it on and scan until you find the? By the way, it's KCBS in San Francisco. No, you find KCBS in San Francisco and say what happened?
0:13:04 - Mikah Sargent
I'm going to go to my bug out bag, pull out my crank radio and I'm going to use that to listen to the emergency.
0:13:14 - Leo Laporte
If my phone isn't working. I mean yeah, I mean, and it's true, maybe the cell system won't survive this. Whatever this is, whatever this emergency is, but anyway that was okay. Good, so that was a seven. All right, you feel pretty good about that. I feel good. Would you like to go? Would you like to?
0:13:33 - Mikah Sargent
go a little higher or lower. I think I know what higher is, that I want to go higher because I want us to talk about it.
0:13:41 - Leo Laporte
Is it an eight, a nine or a 10?
0:13:42 - Mikah Sargent
Man you've got an eight and nine and a 10. I have all of them. Okay, let's do 10, baby.
0:13:46 - Leo Laporte
All right, 10 baby, which is the one you're thinking of which is? It turns out, the NSA does buy Americans internet data without warrants.
0:13:56 - Mikah Sargent
Is that a 10 for you? I think for a lot of people who listen to the show it's probably a 10. If not more.
0:14:03 - Leo Laporte
Congressional scrutiny and a federal trade commission commission crackdown on data brokers. But you see, there's no law against data brokers and I think it's my opinion, my contention the reason there isn't is because the NSA keeps going to Congress. Hey, you know, they have, they have a cabal of congressional leaders that they can talk to, that they are high security clearances, so they can call them. And I think there's seven of them and they can say you know, it's the speaker of the house and the house whip, republican whip and Demer. Anyway, the seven leaders. They say hey, you know, we really, we really need this because you, you can't tell anybody this, but we caught seven terrorists last year by watching their internet. And then the, and then the congressional leadership goes out and says guys, we can't pass this bill. There is a bill, by the way, but but I'm just waiting for the guys. We can't pass this bill, this one can't go through. A letter direct to the director of national intelligence.
Thursday, senator Ron Wyden, our eternal hero for the internet, argued that internet metadata logs showing when two computers have communicated, but not the content of a message, can be as sensitive as the location data the FTC is targeting. That's exactly right Metadata, as you know, if you listen to Steve Gibson, security now, or even even our shows, is very is more useful than you think, because what you do with the metadata, what the NSA does, is they get metadata not just for me or you, they get it for everybody and then they build a fan, like it's almost like a family tree, of who's talking to whom and how often. And suddenly terrorists, cells pop up, mafia, you know groups pop up, you know people who own Chihuahuas pop up and they stand out amongst the data because of all, all the people that you communicate with, and it's only going to get more powerful with this AI.
0:15:58 - Mikah Sargent
push to where that will be able to notice those patterns even better and be able to confirm different things in this in the system.
0:16:07 - Leo Laporte
So Wyden put a hold on the nominee to the next NSA director last month, lieutenant General Timothy D, how to prevent the Senate from voting on his confirmation until the NSA told him whether it was buying location data and web browsing records of Americans, at which point the departing director, who says I'm out of here, I got to get out of here. General Nakasone said okay, we buy and use various types of commercially available metadata for foreign intelligence, cybersecurity missions, including that flow data related to Holy Domestic which is really important, by the way, holy Domestic, not international terrorist groups or anything Holy Domestic Internet Communications. But we know they do that. We've known they've done that since you know, day one. In fact, for a long time there was some speculation that there was something called echelon which would take all this traffic and monitor it for keywords like bomb or whatever. And we denied it, denied it.
But then the British, the British Intelligence Agency, oh yes, of course we have something called echelon. But what are you talking about? We like that Quite. So then we knew oh yeah, they were just pretending it didn't exist. So, okay, that may be only an eight or nine, I don't know. Is that a 10?
0:17:26 - Mikah Sargent
It depends on who you are right. For some that's a 10.
0:17:28 - Leo Laporte
It annoys me, but it also is one of the reasons, you see, one of the okay. So here's why it annoys me. We would like to get rid of data brokers. This is a creepy thing. That is really kind of.
The biggest problem in privacy in this country is that there are third party companies and there are hundreds of these who buy data from Facebook and Google and everybody and cross-reference it. This is where it really gets problematic to build up a profile on every one of us, which they then sell. They sell it not just to the US government, we know they also sell it to China, for instance. They also sell it to your local sporting goods store. So it is the biggest violation of privacy because it's not just from one sources, from all sources. It's cross-referenced. It's really a creepy business, but nobody's ever done anything to slow it down the FCC, the FTC or Congress, because I think the law enforcement loves this stuff. So that's why it's outrageous, because if we want a little bit of privacy, we need to regulate these guys. I mean, honestly, we should put them out of business, but we're not, for the same reason that we never put the credit reporting agencies TransUnion, equifax and Experian out of business, which they well, you know. I would love to see them gone too. They're talking about a privacy violation. It's wild how much information they have, but the credit card industry says, no, we need it, otherwise we don't know who to lend money to, who to give credit cards to. It's a whole Tower, a castle of stuff. So I don't know. Maybe we're just ignorant, maybe we should just live and let live, live and let snoop. That's my new motto live and let's snoop. Oh no, all right. There's one more thing that was sort of minorly annoying.
Npr had a story what's behind the mass layoffs of tech workers? There's been another 25,000 this month alone in being laid off, as in. This is, if you look at the quarterly results, amongst the most profitable Times of all for these tech companies Google and Facebook and Microsoft and tiktok and Salesforce and and meta. They have let off, laid off a lot of people who go to layoffs. Fyi, you can track it. What's driving it? Npr says well, actually they talked to a professor, so it must be true, at the Washington University of Washington's Foster School of Business. This is there is a hurting effect in Texas, jeff Schulman.
The layoffs seem to be helping their stock prices. So these companies see no reason to stop oof. You know. Their excuse is well, we over hire during COVID and now we're just getting back to normal. But no, they've laid off more people than they had before COVID. Schumann says they're getting away with it because everybody's doing it and they're getting away with it because it's the new. Normal Workers are more comfortable with it. I might not do with that. Stock investors are appreciating. We know that make sense. I think we'll see it continue for some time. So you know S&P 500 not notched multiple all-time records this month, led by the so-called magnificent seven technology stocks. Did you know that they I thought they call them fang. Yeah, I remember fang. I didn't know magnificent seven alphabet meta and Microsoft are now all three. You know soaring both both Apple and Microsoft are now worth 3 trillion Trillion dollars. Golly, we haven't seen anything like this since the East India Company. It's amazing. Wow, wow. So anyway, okay, that's maybe an eight. What a world seven. Oh, I've, maybe you don't care at all.
0:21:08 - Mikah Sargent
That's that's, that's an eight. You know that's people's job.
0:21:12 - Leo Laporte
I give up. All right, we're giving you the news. There's a straight look at what's really happening in the world today, brought to you by the man in purple and the guy in the three-piece suit. You look like a banker.
0:21:26 - Mikah Sargent
Oh no, Are you trying to get a job?
0:21:29 - Leo Laporte
as a banker. Are you trying anything? I'd like to work at Goldman Sachs. Would, you like alone too bad. Sorry, there's my lens to your type. Yeah, poor people, you don't belong here. You don't belong to Yale You're not speaking of your vision pro and your meta. Meta says now oh, we're glad about the vision pro because we're gonna be the Android to Apple's iOS. I saw that. It's good for us. It's true.
It might be good for them. Good for you, meta, although meta has already turned a lot of its investment over to artificial intelligence.
0:22:02 - Mikah Sargent
We'll see. I think most of the investment has gone to building Zuckerberg's weird compound.
0:22:08 - Leo Laporte
Yeah with a 5,000 square foot underground shelter? Yeah, and the thing that I think gives me 10 is what Apple is doing in response to the EU. There it is. Is that the one you really wanted? Yeah, the Apple is responding to EU with basically malicious compliance, saying, well, you can have a store, but warning, we've talked about that before and I, I think the EU is gonna come back and say, yeah, guys, no, that's not enough.
0:22:31 - Mikah Sargent
We yeah, I'm curious to see the interplay.
0:22:33 - Leo Laporte
that happens, I feel bad for Firefox, so Firefox. So one of the things Apple did is they said Okay, finally in the in Europe. Only because of the Digital Markets Act, your browser doesn't have to be Safari in.
0:22:46 - Mikah Sargent
The back, it's the chocolate sauce on top, you being the chocolate sauce.
0:22:51 - Leo Laporte
So when you use Firefox or Chrome on your iPhone, it's really Safari with a different UI, and so Firefox says, well, fine, thank you, apple, you're gonna let us do a special version for Europe, and but we still have to keep the other version going. That's like twice as much it's gonna cost us. We can't do it. So it's malicious compliance and Apple knows that. Apple knows that. So I would love to see all over the place.
0:23:16 - Mikah Sargent
If I wanted to use a third-party browser, I'm I like to see that that's the one that when I because this story broke right before Tech news weekly and so I made it a story of the week and I was really Advocating, more than any of the changes, for this to become the international change. That, yeah, if Apple was to sort of Bring it to other places. That, yeah, browsers should be able to use everywhere engine, why not? Yeah, I think I should be everywhere.
0:23:42 - Leo Laporte
For instance, I and we were talking about this before the show I have. Paul Throck talked me into using a new browser. I actually had an invite and installed it when it came out in last spring. Yeah, called ARC from the Browser company is the name of the website, I think. I don't know it. Search for ARC browser if you want to find out more. It's been out for the Mac for a long time. It just came out for Windows. That's why Paul's been aware of it.
I like this browser a lot. It's based on Chrome, so it is. It is very much like you know. It works like your chromium, your Chrome browser, but it's got some nice features, chief of which is very clean. So I'm using the full screen version of this and it's nice because you can't see any Browser what they call Chrome on top of this right. So I'm actually kind of Kind of excited about and there here's my browser bar, if you want, on the left they put the tabs. It takes them. As Paul said, this is a browser for pro users. It takes some adjustment.
0:24:38 - Mikah Sargent
It does and you really have to stick with it.
0:24:39 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, if you want to stick with it it took me a day to kind of get it configured, figure out how to configure it like I like, and now I'm finding and I really like it. I like these, but they call them spaces. So you have a space for social, for social and regular browsing, a space for my coding. This is social and regular browsing, my coding, and then this is the news Space. So I have different and the colors scheme can be different and the tabs are different. So you can have, you know, you can have, you have. You have some for work, some for play, some for your other pockets. I think that's cool. Anyway, that's why I would like to use an alternative browser. Not, you know, not everything you should have.
0:25:17 - Mikah Sargent
We should have diversity Absolutely, and that the one I'm making that choice of a different default browser. It should actually be a different default browser. Yeah.
0:25:28 - Leo Laporte
Okay, what do we do now, mr Senior Producer, age, age age appropriate age appropriate producer. Let's, let's old man. I'm gonna just go, old man hey man what do? We do now.
0:25:42 - John Ashley
I'm gonna not say anything and just pick up on the next car on a color. Oh, someone had their video upper. I think it was David. I want to start David.
0:25:49 - Leo Laporte
David was there.
0:25:50 - John Ashley
I don't buy pick up on it first, because he called in early good. Thank you, david had a good video, so let me try that we're gonna put him into the Stargate.
0:25:59 - Leo Laporte
Welcome, welcome. How do you like your ultra? By the way, old man, you get the ultra.
0:26:05 - John Ashley
I got the ultra, that's 24 ultra with the stars.
0:26:08 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, I love the galaxy note. For years I was a note a guy in fact. I have the s23 ultra and I'm trying to decide. Should I get the new one?
0:26:15 - John Ashley
I'll tell you this no, it's the same. $100 more, yeah, and the only real new thing is a newer processor. Yeah.
0:26:23 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, and we don't even get the best processor here in the US. We get the Qualcomm. Well, it used to be the X and O's. The wasn't good, but now the latest benchmarks are the X and O's is looking good, exynos is looking good. That's the one you get around the world in the US to get Qualcomm because of CDMA and licensing, anyway, yeah, so I'm think I'm gonna keep the s23 ultra and not worry about the s24 if I had the s23 ultra. I would not have.
0:26:46 - John Ashley
Only reason why is because with the s25 ultra, rumor is they're gonna be using the qi2. I'm universal chichu chat charging, yeah.
0:26:54 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, I think actually what's gonna be very interesting on All these smartphones is the addition of AI, and Samsung really touted that in the s24, and now, of course, apple is saying oh well, don't you know, hold my beer.
0:27:08 - Mikah Sargent
Yes.
0:27:08 - John Ashley
Ios 18, which they'll announce in June, so there is rumors that you might actually have to start paying for the AI futures.
0:27:14 - Leo Laporte
No, they just said in the license we only, we'll only give it to you free for a little Got. That's just, that's a that's. So they can charge if they have to. But I don't, I don't know if they'll do that. Hopefully not. Let's see, we'll see. Time will tell. I wouldn't get all hit up about it yet. All right, david Is David here. Did we get David? We were just stalling.
0:27:31 - Caller
Yes, sir. Hi David, when are you calling from? I am calling from Ithaca.
0:27:36 - Leo Laporte
Beautiful home of Cornell University and how many feet of snow is on the ground right now.
0:27:43 - Caller
It's raining, it's the snow. Oh oh it's raining, we're interested. Yeah, but we had plenty.
0:27:51 - Leo Laporte
That's actually the worst is, it snows and then it rains and it freezes and it's awful what we do? Messy, messy.
0:28:01 - Caller
So I called not too long ago Leo and Micah. First of all, I feel underdressed. I should like I don't if you guys just go to church like what's going on? We are getting well it's his fault.
0:28:14 - Leo Laporte
It's his fault. So I, you know, okay, I it started for me. I used to wear Hawaiian shirts, remember. And then Tom Merritt kind of raised the bar. He's, he wore a jacket. We're the same jacket. He just kept it at work, same ready. But it raised the bar a little bit. And I also realized there's a certain reason why men of a certain age like to wear a blazer because it hides the gut. So I decided to start wearing a blazer. Tom Merritt, you know, kind of up the ante. That was about 10 years ago. But then this guy comes in and he ups the ante even for it doesn't even have a gut, which pisses me off. Mike is wearing a three for those listening, a three-piece suit with a jack-tie.
0:28:53 - Mikah Sargent
I don't get to wear this anywhere else.
0:28:55 - Leo Laporte
Oh, and you look great and you're in your candy cane size candy cakes.
0:29:01 - Caller
It's looking great. Um, last time I called quickly, I've been talking to you. I mean listening to you guys, dude, leo, since whatever, when you were on TV, since well a long time ago. No one even remembers it was so long ago. I'm old too. I want to say I'm a proud club to it. Thank you, david. Thank you, I like. I consider it a moral duty, given how much I've listened to you, for free to give you, if you can afford it, seven bucks a month. Thank you, nothing, thank you. I learned so much.
0:29:34 - Leo Laporte
Thank you for that plug.
0:29:35 - Caller
I appreciate it. Yeah, of course it's getting.
0:29:38 - Leo Laporte
It's getting, as you know. I mean, if the media everywhere LA Times just laid off bunch of people, it's getting really hard for media for some reason.
0:29:46 - Caller
Well, I've been doing a podcast for 12 years to and and Advertising is just terrible. No, what's your podcast? Very bad wizards. I'm the disgust. Oh, I remember you last time.
0:29:57 - Leo Laporte
Love you, david.
0:29:58 - Caller
Yeah, it's great to talk.
0:30:00 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, I'm sorry, I should have known. When you said Cornell, I mean ifica.
0:30:04 - Caller
I should have known, I don't, I don't expect you to remember. I should remember, I should always remember, so you were ad supported.
0:30:12 - Leo Laporte
You've done 276 episodes, but you've been at support.
0:30:14 - Caller
We started getting ads. You know, I don't remember how many years ago we were working with an agency and it's just. You know, it's dried up, it's right up. Half of them want to do CBD or some other wack.
0:30:27 - Leo Laporte
Well, that's the other thing. We don't say yes to a lot of that stuff vaping.
0:30:32 - Caller
We say no as well, and and so there were some glory days there where we, yeah, thank.
0:30:38 - Leo Laporte
God I saved some money so I have a retirement anyway. But at this point, you know, and I Unfortunately, I have to go home with a CEO, so I know how you know, every night she goes. Oh, so I know how bad it is and it's, yeah, you know, I think we want to at some point. We'd like to pivot, to be club supported only.
0:31:03 - Caller
Yeah, yeah, we're trying to go patreon only as well. Yeah, but this is an inside baseball. Okay, here's my real question. So I'm building a little office space slash guest room and I Want to put a TV in there. I want it. You know it's gonna be primarily an office slash studio and guest room. I'm I Am thinking OLED big, but I don't why it's not that big and I don't know that I want it dominated by, like one of the walls, dominated by the huge no you do, I do okay Well.
0:31:45 - Leo Laporte
I do well, I kind of I max theater, you do.
0:31:50 - Caller
Here's what I want. I know plenty about TV technologies because all the text if I listen to, but no one talks that much about Projector technologies that I was looking at ultra short throws as a possibility.
0:32:02 - Leo Laporte
Goose guess who has an UST.
0:32:04 - Caller
Yes, it's this okay. So what are the downsides? Because I, I would, they all look like is a UHD and freight like a refresh rate all the same.
0:32:16 - Mikah Sargent
There are some downsides and I'll go into them, like the bars, that was good.
0:32:20 - Leo Laporte
That's the first thing. First and foremost, there we go. There's David.
0:32:28 - Mikah Sargent
It's, it's almost always Going to be darker than if you have a television, a true television.
0:32:37 - Leo Laporte
We so it's like it's direct view versus Bouncing light off a screen exact direct view can. It can always be brighter because they just you know they turn up the light bulbs.
0:32:46 - Caller
Yeah, those are there. In fact, is the quality of screen that you buy make a?
0:32:49 - Mikah Sargent
difference. Yes, yes, so that's what I was gonna say. So, very kindly. Leo Upgraded to a new television, a direct view, a direct view and was getting rid of the projection screen, and I Took it off his hands very happily, and it came with a special kind of screen. It needs to because of the short throw, exactly because of the short throw, and so the switch is made short throw means that the projector instead of being across the room is Right under the TV set.
Yeah, and so the the screen has these little kind of their little ridges that are sort of Triangular prisms, and so when it hits, it sends the light forward instead of kind of bouncing it in different ways.
0:33:29 - Caller
So that's the first thing you want to make that sound, that it makes you out the whole time.
0:33:33 - Mikah Sargent
That's one of the downsides, but the brightness is not ever going to be as good as if you get a TV TV. But it's big, it's huge and that is fun. I will say this too, though if you are working and I can't speak to Incredibly recent technology because this one's a little bit older, but From my experience, if you are working with very high contrast Bits on the screen, so if it's a white background and there's someone in a dark cloak running across, you will get a little bit of ghosting at times. Interesting, that's, not fun. I run everything that I do with captions on the screen, and so when those are coming up with the white text, when something is moving behind it, there's a little bit of ghosting that happens. So those little things may, you know, be annoying.
0:34:29 - Leo Laporte
But let's not forget, when you go to a movie theater, it's a projector. That's why you're in a dark room, yeah, and so ultimately, it can be a really great experience, a big, vibrant experience.
0:34:42 - Mikah Sargent
watching a football game on it is is fantastic if you can darken the room when we've had people over to you know watch the premiere episode or the finale episode of some show that you know the whole family is watching. That's always been a great experience. Yeah, so it's a lot of fun, it's. It looks amazing. But if you are a person who is, you know, super Into the little tiny details and that kind of thing would bother you, then I think you should go Oled instead. The other thing that I'll say that's a good thing. I remember talking to Scott Wilkinson about this and I was concerned that a Short-throw projector, or a projector at all If it's a laser version, which this one is, would have a shorter life than a television, and it turns out that that is not the case. That.
0:35:37 - Leo Laporte
The ball projectors do, and you can still buy those, yes, so if you buy a ball projector, you might get a thousand hours out of it. Then suddenly you got to buy a new bulb for 150 bucks or more.
0:35:46 - Mikah Sargent
But the laser ones, they last just as long as a television will, and so I was happy to hear that. And then I guess the last thing I'd say is you are Running electricity to multiple fans to keep it cool as well as those lasers. A little nice and so it's. It can be a little noisier, but it's also a little bit costlier. Oh yeah, it did impact my. You noticed it, yeah.
0:36:11 - Leo Laporte
Okay a big screw. I think a big screen TV might also.
0:36:14 - Mikah Sargent
That's sure, yeah, if you get a big enough television, it's gonna impact it.
0:36:20 - Leo Laporte
Right, I like you, I think, in your office, because you're close to it and you don't want to close all the windows to watch TV. I see you have a nice window looking out on the trees and stuff you. You probably want a direct view yeah, and, and, yeah, so on.
0:36:36 - Caller
These projectors are that. Can you ever get the contrast ratio? Like, do you get those rich blacks that you would get?
0:36:42 - Mikah Sargent
Not, not to the level that you will. I will say that it is. You don't notice it? Yeah, exactly, and the colors are rich. It's, you get rich, vibrant colors, but the contrast, yeah, you're not going to get that deepest of deep blasts.
0:36:58 - Leo Laporte
It was mad at me actually when I gave away our projector and got a small, so that was 105 inches and I got a 77 inch QD OLED which is kind of the top it's, at this point, the top of the line screen. I got the Samsung 77 it and I got it because we it's in the living room. We can't, we don't really darken it completely. The colors are better. The blacks with the contrast on a QD OLED is excellent, and so I Wanted a better picture. But but it's interesting because not everybody's sensitive to that exactly, and so she really wanted the bigger screen. Bigger was better.
Yeah, she was disappointed that I Inadvertently made a mistake.
0:37:41 - Mikah Sargent
The trade off. The trade off just wasn't for me. It wasn't. I wasn't a huge trade off. I am very happy to have this big you were excited.
0:37:50 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, and I get a nice stereo but you know also how far away are you gonna be, david, in your office.
0:37:57 - Caller
Yeah, well, I'm still designing like the space and trying to figure out how far I'm gonna put the seating space, because not primarily gonna be for sitting and and watching TV, but I I mean having a 77 inch, I think would be plenty like that it's not that big yeah and I've listened enough to Scott to know go, go big well, and Scott will tell you.
0:38:22 - Leo Laporte
You know he does his home theater of the month every every month on the ABS forum and Almost all of those are projectors. Because in order to get a home theater experience, you know, with seating and all, yeah, you need to have it a hundred or more inches and a projector can go even bigger than that. So if you're gonna duplicate a movie theater experience, that's one thing, it projectors the way to go. By the way, those are very expensive projectors. To this, the high sense that you have was $10,000 when it came out. It's gone down quite a bit, but it includes the screen. You need the screen. Yeah, I don't know. What is it now about? Five?
0:38:59 - Mikah Sargent
I'm not sure it went down, it's better and costs.
0:39:02 - Leo Laporte
It costs less and it's better.
0:39:03 - Caller
Now they have a three laser model and all that but so, like you know, it's a good L like LG, oh lead would be much better, in my opinion, would be, and costs less.
0:39:14 - Leo Laporte
Oh, a lot less. We're talking 2000, maybe.
0:39:17 - Caller
Okay, last thing do you fire it up less than you would if you had?
0:39:20 - Mikah Sargent
a TV, me no. Yeah, it's the primary television in the household. So it yeah. I mean every night when I go to bed my partner will watch a couple of hours of Buffy on it, even after. So, like, yeah, maybe I did. Did I reveal too much?
0:39:52 - Caller
You have to get reverse eyeglasses.
0:39:55 - Mikah Sargent
The point I was trying to make is we run it like a normal TV. It's not as if. Okay, because you're you're watching Buffy, you're just gonna watch it on a little iPad or something else and it doesn't need to warm up like those old projector with the bulbs.
0:40:09 - Leo Laporte
No, no, it's almost instantly. Yeah, in fact, my, my Samsung takes longer to turn on now than that. Oh yeah, I don't know why, but it's like going through a lot of yeah, and it works with HDMI CC.
0:40:20 - Mikah Sargent
So I hit the button on the Apple TV to turn the up. That's right. And then you get the CD on and it the one part where it takes a second is turning on the HDR mode, but that is like half a second that it takes, so it's, it's.
0:40:33 - Leo Laporte
I said it's a great TV actually, yeah and I'm fairly affordable. You know you can go on get a $20,000 run. Come in there. A lot more expensive TVs out there Projectures, but I think that's a good one. But I don't think you need a hundred inch TV in your office, I think yeah, thank you, I think you've.
0:40:50 - Caller
You've convinced me, thank you.
0:40:52 - Leo Laporte
Thank you.
0:40:55 - Caller
Yeah, they look so good. I mean, even at Best Buy when they've they have like the image all Like bright and gross, like the blacks on those things are just so. I've never had one of those and it just looks pretty nice, so rich, it's pretty nice. Yeah, I was gonna say your Samsung is taking long to boot up because it's phoning home and sending the government.
0:41:14 - Leo Laporte
Oh yeah, absolutely. Oh, my god, that thing. I tell you Whoo. But you know I I've given up and this is, I guess, the sad thing about privacy is at this point. It's like I use so many privacy invasive Devices and I want to use them.
0:41:29 - Caller
Even the projectors now come with like Android TV built in, right? Yeah, like a lot of the ones I saw. So it's not, you can't even get. Yeah, I'm a dumb.
0:41:37 - Leo Laporte
No, you can't. Yeah, and go ahead and try not to Connect with the internet.
0:41:42 - Caller
It'll yeah, I've given that your TV, did you?
0:41:46 - Mikah Sargent
connect as the internet. Mm-hmm Just wants to see a software update.
0:41:50 - Leo Laporte
It's gonna start bugging you to do it. I don't have an internet connection. Is that what you want? Is that really what you want? Do you want to think about your choices, your life choices? Maybe I do have a connected then, yeah, I think you might.
0:42:01 - Mikah Sargent
I Just have a block on the network for it. So thank you, david. Always a pleasure to talk. I think it's nice to see out the window.
0:42:11 - Leo Laporte
That's kind of what my mom's window looked like when I was visiting Providence.
0:42:16 - Caller
It's probably very similar weather pattern very muddy, right now, yeah, but yeah, yeah, it's a real winter, always pleasure. Thanks, thanks, take care, bye, bye, bye, bye.
0:42:26 - Leo Laporte
I'm excited about. There is a new technology coming called micro LED, and it's starting to make some progress. In fact, apple, it's rumored, is gonna use micro LED, maybe in screens next, later this year. Micro LED has the advantage of it can be any size because they're little extendable chunks that you can add, so the, in the long run, the future of Giant wall-sized TVs might be, yes, micro LED, not it. Not that it'll be cheap initially, but that will be an interesting transition. Right now, though, they just cannot build the OLED panels much bigger than they are, or even the LCD panels, although sharp did that years ago at 100 inch LCD, which we broke. I Don't know.
0:43:16 - Mikah Sargent
I wonder how many that they make that end up having dead pixels. Oh, I bet it's pretty common.
0:43:22 - Leo Laporte
This was I was doing live with Regis and Kelly and we had it shipped out from Vegas from right after CES. And they have to put in a Boeing 747, the belly of it. There's only one Cargo area big enough to ship the dang thing. Wow, and it came with four engineers from much for that. Tokyo, from Japan. Well, I want to get on national TV, right, and we got out of the box and there's a line From the top to the bottom like a whole row is out, the whole column is out, oh, and they were on the phone at Tokyo and we never did get it working. Oh yeah, let's take a little break because, guess what, it's time for mad magazines. Maddest, what is it? Maddest?
0:44:09 - Mikah Sargent
author maddest writer is usually writer, thank you.
0:44:13 - Leo Laporte
But first let's, let's just breathe, because it's important to breathe. A Moment of Zen provided to you For no charge. Wow, isn't that good you don't even have to be a member club to it for that. Now we say hello to Dicky DeBartolo Mads, maddest writer, and our gizmo wizard. Hello, dickie, how you doing wonderful, how are you, micah.
0:44:41 - Mikah Sargent
Yes, micah I can't believe this.
0:44:43 - Dick DeBartolo
These you know I have a three-piece suit. You should start wearing it three pieces don't match oh.
0:44:50 - Leo Laporte
So once Hawaiian, when's victory?
0:44:53 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, yeah and I lost the pants. Yeah, so you should have an Elizabethan collar as well. Yeah, oh my, I mean it's great.
0:45:02 - Dick DeBartolo
It's great. Thank God, you have the socks to balance it out.
0:45:05 - Mikah Sargent
Yes, Gotta get a little wonky in there, oh yeah exactly.
0:45:09 - Dick DeBartolo
Exactly.
0:45:10 - Leo Laporte
So dick joins us every week to share a gizmo or a gadget. Did you go to CES?
0:45:15 - Dick DeBartolo
You know what Well, I did virtual CES, chad. Chad went, a couple of my other friends went, but the disadvantage of virtual CES is that you can't go down the fine, the real bizarre things right, because the people with the real bizarre things don't have the money to have any PR. So I still I. Okay, I will go the opposite way for today's spot with the most expensive things I found Now the first one, I think you get some more money. You'd be interested in this. Okay, it's the world's first all electric ultra light personal airplane.
0:46:03 - Leo Laporte
Oh, I want one of those.
0:46:05 - Dick DeBartolo
Yeah, okay, it's ultra light, so you don't need a pilot's license, but you do need two weeks of training. You can take off from your driveway and land on your driveway, because it's vertical takeoff and landing Wow. Vtol yes, and the other requirement is you can only fly daytime and you must be in uncontested areas.
0:46:31 - Mikah Sargent
So if there are allergies in the area then you have to take some Claritin before you can fly.
0:46:39 - Leo Laporte
How do you know if it's uncontested? I mean, what is that, do you?
0:46:42 - Mikah Sargent
just look up and go. That looks pretty good. It's uncontested. I don't see anybody up there.
0:46:46 - Leo Laporte
Maybe there's an app.
0:46:47 - Dick DeBartolo
Well, you know, my guess would be Petaluma would be considered uncontested and New York City it would be a no-no.
0:46:53 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, so you just use your common sense. That always works when it comes to driving and flying.
0:46:59 - Dick DeBartolo
Yeah, yeah, common sense that's all you need.
0:47:02 - Leo Laporte
That's all you need, really, yeah.
0:47:03 - Dick DeBartolo
Yeah, that starts at $190,000. Yeah.
0:47:07 - Mikah Sargent
Oh, that's not Now.
0:47:09 - Leo Laporte
they've shown this every year at CES, don't they? I see?
0:47:12 - Dick DeBartolo
No, according to the interview guy, this is the first time that it's been an all electric version and FAA approved.
0:47:24 - Leo Laporte
Okay, so that means they can actually fly this thing.
0:47:29 - Caller
Yeah, is that?
0:47:32 - Leo Laporte
crashing or taking off, which is no, it is.
0:47:35 - Dick DeBartolo
it is going in for a land you know, I let's see.
0:47:39 - Leo Laporte
It looks like it's upside down no that is not a good picture, I don't know, this is the pivotal helix. Yeah, it's an ultra light.
0:47:48 - Mikah Sargent
Now do they watch the video?
0:47:50 - Leo Laporte
It kind of explains Did they intend this for John Denver types, or is this for commuting or it can?
0:47:58 - Dick DeBartolo
be whatever you want, for it has a 20 mile range. Okay, the guy said as battery technology increases 20 miles is pretty good actually. They'll be able to increase the range.
0:48:09 - Leo Laporte
So like people take helicopters from JFK to downtown Manhattan.
0:48:13 - Mikah Sargent
So you could take your own little pivotal helix.
0:48:15 - Leo Laporte
Is that what you think? This is?
0:48:16 - Mikah Sargent
maybe no, there's only one person, it looks like a flying coffin to me. So when I die, I think I would like to be, over, don't apply for the PR job.
0:48:33 - Dick DeBartolo
Oh guys, have I got a slogan for you? It's going to get a lot of attention, so it's flying.
0:48:38 - Mikah Sargent
We'll get a lot of attention.
0:48:40 - Leo Laporte
to be fair, so because vertical takeoff and landing to those wings turned so that you can go up, and then they turn so you can go down, I don't look at that. There's an example. It's like a oh you land at an angle. That's why they that that angle. I get it.
0:48:58 - Dick DeBartolo
Yeah, there you guys.
0:48:59 - Leo Laporte
So those are it's a fixed wing aircraft? Yeah, oh that's really fun and it flies. When you fly, you're downhill, you're always looking down. You feel that way, yeah, oh that's really interesting. Well, good for them, we finally have flying cars. I want to demo.
0:49:16 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, bring it out here.
0:49:18 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, we're in your stock congested here, unless you've got allergies.
0:49:23 - Dick DeBartolo
So now you guys are talking TVs. Okay yeah, the C seed 4k unfolding TV. It takes 60 seconds to. There's a little sick. And sit on on their website or on my website I think I had the little unfolding thing. It unfolds in under a minute to a hundred and thirty seven inch micro LED.
0:49:53 - Mikah Sargent
TV that actually does look pretty cool. I have to say, all right, we got to see it rotate 180 degrees.
0:50:00 - Leo Laporte
TV that doesn't when you're done.
0:50:02 - Dick DeBartolo
It falls up into a piece of sculpture.
0:50:05 - Mikah Sargent
The YouTube video shows you the unfolding process and it's actually also oh, there it is.
0:50:10 - Dick DeBartolo
So I mean this is a monster, a monster device. Oh, my guess is that this is going to be for, and they make an outdoor version which is $240,000. Is this LED?
0:50:26 - Leo Laporte
LCD. Micro, micro LED is what we were just talking about. Okay, that's how they can do that. Now, one of the things, dick, you know they've had micro LEDs at CES since 2020. In fact, you and I looked at one in back in the day, yeah, and you could see the lines where the pieces were fit together.
0:50:45 - Dick DeBartolo
They solved that, you know what for when this thing fully opens it looks pretty clean. It looks to me from the video right that the line totally I like this goes slowly.
0:50:57 - Mikah Sargent
See it now it's gone. Yeah, it was there for a second and then once it finally settled in, but you could see on the edge of the screen.
0:51:04 - Leo Laporte
See those black lines. Those are the, I believe, the micro LED snap together panels. You'd have to be very careful.
0:51:10 - Mikah Sargent
Make sure there's never a bug in between that gets squished, or your finger, your finger, yes.
0:51:16 - Leo Laporte
This is is it for it's not for outdoors there's an outdoor version. Two versions they met.
0:51:20 - Dick DeBartolo
The indoor version is 200,000. The outdoor version is 240,000. I think hotels will buy this. The outdoor version can lift itself up to eight feet high. So it says if you're, if you're walking from your jacuzzi to your swimming pool.
0:51:39 - Mikah Sargent
oh, there's a yacht version too. Yes, yeah.
0:51:44 - Leo Laporte
On the yacht. Well, it's a, you know, a fraction of the cost on a yacht. Oh, they go as high as 165 inches. Wow, oh, the folding ones.
0:51:55 - Dick DeBartolo
And so look, I mean, look at how big that is. Yeah, I mean you could. You could start a drive in theater with one of these.
0:52:03 - Mikah Sargent
Oh, it's a pay for the cost. Yes, Very nice.
0:52:07 - Dick DeBartolo
It's a great investment Very nice and the final really high price thing was a Boston whaler with prototype auto docking. See, I've always wanted a.
0:52:21 - Leo Laporte
Boston whaler, as you know. Yeah, yeah, that's good, I have it in my car. I should have it in my whaler. Yeah.
0:52:29 - Dick DeBartolo
Yeah, no, it's interesting because they were saying that 70% of the people who don't own boats, the main reason is they're afraid of docking. That's not the main reason.
0:52:41 - Leo Laporte
That's a lie. You know what I?
0:52:44 - Dick DeBartolo
can tell you. It's one of the reasons. There was a guy at the Marine had this beautiful yacht and I met him one day going into the Marine. I said you know, I never see you on the water and he goes. Do you think I know how to drive that thing?
0:52:58 - Leo Laporte
But I guess you know docking. But docking, don't you just like aim at the dock, turn off the engine and let it float in?
0:53:03 - Dick DeBartolo
No, you know what? In their demo video it is pulling into an empty marina. Oh yeah, it's the only boat that's going to dock Simrad. At 79th Street you have tug wakes and ferry wakes and an eight knot tide and wind. So docking in a very crowded marina is a chore. So auto docking I think it's a bit away, but joystick docking is great.
0:53:36 - Leo Laporte
I did a one of the things is cool is it has it looks like it has as a pods, does it? What'd you call me as a pod? You know Isaac as a pot, he wrote foundation. Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, it has the it, it can, it doesn't just go forward sideways and sideways thrusting. Thrusting. Yes, it can thrust in any direction.
0:53:56 - Dick DeBartolo
It looks like on the back of that are three Merc. Oh, look at this.
0:54:00 - Leo Laporte
Look at that 12. Do you need those 600?
0:54:04 - Dick DeBartolo
horsepower each. How so the base price of that boat, I believe, starts at about a million and a half dollars. Oh nothing.
0:54:15 - Leo Laporte
And it's funny it's just like a little motor, but it's not like a yacht, it's just a little no it's not like a yacht.
0:54:20 - Dick DeBartolo
It's not like a yacht. Well, first, of all. Boston Whaler is like the key name in in quality boats. Yeah, Did you ever have a Boston Whaler? I had, I, yeah, I had the 13 foot and the 15 foot, oh see, and, and they were kind of indestructible.
0:54:39 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah.
0:54:40 - Dick DeBartolo
Until you just read them.
0:54:41 - Leo Laporte
If people it would be for fishing, I guess, recreation maybe a little bit, but you don't sleep on. Well, I guess you could if you wanted to. You would not know all on that boat.
0:54:50 - Dick DeBartolo
It's not a sleep, no, that boat has a beautiful cabin. Oh so you could know that that that's a 43 foot and I think like huge 13 foot beam. Oh well, that's a that is.
0:55:03 - Leo Laporte
So what is a yacht then? Yeah, it is. Yeah, see, right next to a yacht you could have it and a yacht, oh, and then it'd be your yacht tender, just a little tender, it's a little tender.
0:55:14 - Dick DeBartolo
Yeah, the big yacht is for the TV and a little yacht is for radio.
0:55:18 - Mikah Sargent
There you go See radio Radio at it.
0:55:21 - Leo Laporte
Hey, look at this the 2023 Barnes and Noble edition of Barnes magazine. That means it has a perfect, binding. Look at that Barnes and Noble Mad Magazine. Yeah, it's kind of a 2023 wrap up Barnes magazine. Look at that. Is that everything that ever happened in 2023 in one magazine?
0:55:43 - Dick DeBartolo
No, no, that Barnes and Noble does their own mad special four times a year. This is volume seven treasure December. January, february February.
0:55:53 - Leo Laporte
February of trash autographed by the chief right of the, the Mads Maddest. Writer. What's in here of yours is anything.
0:56:02 - Dick DeBartolo
Let's see, it's their reproduced reproduction of the teen rage mula knit with turtles oh, I love them.
0:56:14 - Leo Laporte
That's on page 13. All right, you know I do like the Barnes and Noble cause. You can go right to the page. You can see. You can see the stuff. Is this a who? Who illustrated this one? Oh, it's a Sam Viviano.
Okay, oh look you can read over my shoulder. Look at that. Wow, this is something brand new, not the one on the phone. This is good. I like it, and that's also things we'd like the new hello Barbie to say. We don't really know what happened to Skipper. Can we change the subject? I like it Fun. I love Mad Magazine and of course, there's got to be a fold in there is. There is what scientific meddling has many folks trembling and we'll use this, have to buy it to find out. Fold it in. Is this an aljaffee? It is. It's a classic. It is an aljaffee. It's an aljaffee classic. Yeah, mad Magazine a treasure trove of trash. Volume seven Now, I mentioned this because you can actually win this from Dick If you play. What the heck is it? Go to gizwizbiz. That's his website. Thank you, and and you will have to guess, this is the new one. You will have to guess. The started a couple of weeks ago.
0:57:30 - Mikah Sargent
It's a goblet for a mouse.
0:57:31 - Dick DeBartolo
Actually, they'll win the February, they'll win the April issue of med.
0:57:35 - Leo Laporte
Oh, you won't win this, no, I.
0:57:37 - Dick DeBartolo
Oh yeah, okay, That'll be done by it by April.
0:57:40 - Leo Laporte
So go to your local Barnes and Noble and buy this yeah that, that's available. And then you can play for the April edition of Mad Magazine. If you know what the heck that is, a little mouse lantern. I thought it was a goblet for a mouse, a goblet, something like that. Oh, that's a good, that was a good. Just don't put your pencil in it, cause you never know. Of course, there are six Mad magazines for the right answer, up to 12 for the wrong answer. So definitely don't give it the right answer. You have a chance to win, and you got until the end of February. You've got two months to guess what was. Uh, oh, how many people came up with that? The laptop, just three cleaner. Wow, people knew what it was.
0:58:27 - Dick DeBartolo
And then there were a lot of kind of yeah, so then we gave a toaster with a mustache. Yeah, yeah there it is.
0:58:35 - Leo Laporte
There is folded up. Yeah, that's why it's hard. If you had unfolded it easy, yeah, it would sort of cut down a little bit on the plane. Then you see the brush. Now, Dick, I gotta tell you I gotta say Dick's gizfiz continues on gizwiztv. So if you missed the gizfiz on our network, Wednesdays 5 30 Pacific for the giz fizz and the full giz whiz show with Chad Johnson Thursday at 4 30 Pacific at gizwiztv. So you can absolutely see it all. Dick, we love you, it's great to have you on.
Thank you so much. We'll see you again next month with another back gizmo or gadget. Thank you, take care. Bye.
0:59:20 - Dick DeBartolo
Bye.
0:59:20 - Leo Laporte
Okay, take care. Bye, love it. Love it, giz fizztv. And to play the game Giz whizbiz. I'm sorry, giz whiztv. And to play the game Giz whizbiz. And to buy the Boston Weller. Just fork over 150,000 and you're in. You're in like Flynn. All right, you took a nice breath. I did. Shall we do a nice cleansing breath? You're watching, ask the Tech Guys Mike the Sergeant the best dressed, leo Laporte, the somewhat less best dressed. Let's take another call, shall we John Ashley.
1:00:04 - John Ashley
I don't know if that's your rose, but one of the phone callers a phone caller.
1:00:09 - Mikah Sargent
Remember, once you've been brought on, hit star six to unmute yourself. All right, they should be in. Welcome caller.
1:00:20 - Leo Laporte
And oh, by the way, people who are asking yes, we did have a power outage. I forgot I'm supposed to. We have power outages. Log back in to the server and I'm, as you can see, right now I am logging right into the server and I'm going to start the Minecraft server. Watch this, it's very exciting. C. M C slash flat world.
And now this is this. Everybody says, well, you should automate this, yeah, but I like doing this, I like going in there and let's see this one's going. That's. What other ones do we have here? I got them all. That's the IRC. There is Twit that's running, and then we got to start this one. C, d, m, c, michael. See, it makes me feel like a real geek to do that. This build is outdated, I think. I dare you say I think I need to get a new build going here. Let's go back to here. Anyway, I'll worry about that.
1:01:26 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, do we have our caller caller.
1:01:28 - Leo Laporte
Are you there, mr President? Ah, it's Micah from Maine.
1:01:34 - Caller
No, it's Lewis from Hollywood, it's.
1:01:36 - Leo Laporte
Lewis from Hollywood Same day different name.
1:01:40 - Caller
Oh, Leo and Micah Hi.
1:01:41 - Leo Laporte
Lewis, I remember you, in fact I remember. Yes, yes, I know exactly who we're talking to. Now. How are things in Hollywood?
1:01:51 - Caller
Calm right now. We'll see what happens when the game comes up.
1:01:57 - Leo Laporte
Oh, there's a certain football game coming up, eh Is it congested.
1:02:03 - Caller
I joined the club a while back.
1:02:04 - Leo Laporte
Thank you, lewis, thank you, thank you.
1:02:07 - Caller
Oh, it's mostly Jewish guilt.
1:02:09 - Leo Laporte
so I'm good at that. I've, eh what you don't support, Twit what's wrong. I mean, what did we do? Something to offend you? What could we do? What could?
1:02:21 - Caller
we do. Before my tech question. Speaking of football, who will the Packers fan in your household be cheering for in today's?
1:02:31 - Leo Laporte
Oh, I don't think he's going to be cheering for the Niners. We beat the Packers, as you know, last week. Michael, our son, our 21-year-old, has a shrine. He's an owner To the Packers. He is an owner. I gave him a share and he's very proud of that. A sticker on his car and everything says Packers, owner and stuff. He's very proud of that. That's one of the things I like about the Packers is they're owned by the community. They're not owned by some big corporation. The stadium's built by the community, so that's kind of cool. But I think he's so bitter about the loss that I don't think he's going to root for anybody in the NFC. I don't know, that's a good question. He might be rooting for the Lions. The Lions are in his division. They're a hereditary rival of the Packers, so I don't know. I'll be going home with interest. I'm on a tech.
1:03:23 - Caller
Do either of you gentlemen have an AT&T landline at home?
1:03:26 - Leo Laporte
Yes, as a matter of fact. Well, yes, it is.
1:03:32 - Caller
Last week I received a letter from AT&T, sent by order of the California Public Utilities Commission.
1:03:39 - Mikah Sargent
Oh dear.
1:03:42 - Caller
Now here we go. The letter informs customers that AT&T has filed two applications with the PUC and the only information about the applications are the titles and where the public hearings will be. So you've got to do a little research. Here are the titles of the two applications, from AT&T California to the PUC Application to relinquish eligible telecommunications carrier designation Uh-oh Application targeted relief from its carrier of last resort obligation. Now, from what I want, I'm not a lawyer, but once you get through all the legalese, it appears that AT&T wants to get out of the copper wire landline.
1:04:24 - Leo Laporte
Oh yeah, I'm not surprised.
1:04:26 - Caller
And this apparently includes both urban and rural areas which have wireless dead zone.
1:04:32 - Leo Laporte
That's not good, because without the copper wire you lose your phone service.
1:04:38 - Caller
That's right and even you know. The important thing to remember is, even in areas where there's reliable cell service in an extended power failure, cell towers are going to go up line when they're back up. Power systems are drained, as well as your home fiber and coaxial cable phone lines go down when your battery backup runs out.
1:04:58 - Leo Laporte
I feel like this is more than the PUC that has to get involved here. I would think the Federal Communications Commissions would also be involved. The FCC has rules against cutting the copper, as you probably know. Uh, rules that haven't really stopped companies like Verizon, when they come in and they put in a fiber phone system to you, from saying, oh, you don't need that old copper, can we just? You know, we'll just take away the old copper and they're not supposed to do that for that very reason. It's an emergency system. It's like AM radio, it's an emergency system.
1:05:29 - Caller
Yeah, well, you know if they take it away folks without cell service or you know, forget about calling 911.
1:05:36 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, I know what you're doing, oh my lord, yes, scuder-x has posted this.
1:05:41 - Caller
I'm calling on the uh twid army in California to go to the.
1:05:44 - Leo Laporte
they're taking online comments and you can imagine they're overwhelmingly against believing uh AT&T of landline service Amaric in our um uh discord says they did this in Georgia and uh, he said he had to move his mom to voice over internet with Comcast. Uh, and once once mom said no, no, I want my plain old telephone service. At&t said no, sorry, we don't do that anymore, we're out of that business. Um, thank, you for the link, Michael. We'll put that in the show.
1:06:20 - Caller
And get away with that without the federal communications come.
1:06:24 - Leo Laporte
Wow, um, maybe they can. That seems odd. Maybe you'd have to appeal to the FCC to get them to do something about it. Um, yeah, it's hard to even understand what this means.
Yeah, I'm looking at it right now Withdraw its eligible telecommunications carrier designation and relief from its carrier of last resort obligation. That's the big one, right? Uh, they have an obligation, if they're the only carrier in an area, to continue to provide that service and they say no, no, we don't, we don't want that anymore. Wow, you know, sad I don't. Yeah, yeah, fight it.
1:07:06 - Caller
I look I'm in the middle of Hollywood, I'm in an apartment building that, uh, I've got plenty of windows. I have almost no voice cell service on my cell phone.
1:07:16 - Leo Laporte
Now I have to say you know the law requires and I'm reading this frequently asked questions at least one telephone company in a specified area is legally required to provide access to anyone in the service territory who requests it. In many areas of the state AT&T is a designated they call this the COLR carrier of last resort and is the largest caller in California. Uh, where, where AT&T is the default landline telephone service provider, it must provide traditional landline telephone service copper to any potential customer in that service territory. At&t is proposing to withdraw as the COLR in certain areas without a new carrier being designated. Wow, now see, this is a. This is like that AM radio thing, but I would submit uh, you can live with that AM radio. I don't know if you can live without phone service of any kind.
1:08:12 - Caller
Well, you've always said if you live in an area with um potential natural disaster earthquakes, blizzards, whatever that you should maintain a landline.
1:08:21 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, Because even when the power is at, as you point out, it continues to work. Um boy, I uh, I think the C, you know, I would say the CPU, you see, should the California public utilities commission should just obviously deny this. But uh, as anybody who just got his PG and E bill, yeah, the CPUC is kind of in the pocket of some of these utilities, so I'm a little nervous about this.
1:08:49 - Caller
And and who would take over? If you know, I bet AT&T has gone to others. Frontiers are not going to take over, nobody's going to take it over. It would take over the copper landline.
1:08:57 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, they're basically saying we don't want to do it and and we're not going to. You know, spes, and no one else will. Um, the real question is has technology advanced to the such a degree that we don't need it? And I think you're absolutely right. There are areas with no cell coverage, no cable provider, uh, no internet provider. And you cut this cable. By the way, you cut the copper, you're not only cutting phone service, but for most of these people, you're also cutting internet service. Maybe they're hoping Starlink or somebody like that will take over. Starlink is working with T-Mobile to provide phone services. You know, um, that maybe maybe that's the hope, the plan. I could see Elon riding in as the white knight saying that's okay we'll do it, we'll take care of it.
For only $150 a month.
1:09:42 - Caller
For some reason I don't see Elon as a white knight.
1:09:46 - Leo Laporte
I was being facetious. Uh, no, I agree with you 100%. But I could see him saying that you know. And I could see AT&T saying that, yeah, everybody should. So there's a, there are hearings on this. Uh, you should participate. Um, you should. If you're in California, you should definitely get involved. We'll put a link in the show notes to the PUC page, uh, and so you can see what the AT&T folks are proposing. The good old mob out. They've got the base for that. Online comments would be great. I think you're right. I think we should now lobby hard for everybody to get involved in this Especially.
1:10:22 - Mikah Sargent
it would be different if AT&T could prove that there were three other carriers carriers in the area who could slide into this place. They're even acknowledging the other side. It literally says there that if AT&T goes away. That there would be none. That's not, I don't know. Sorry, no, yeah, no Wow.
1:10:41 - Caller
All right, gentlemen, thank you.
1:10:44 - Leo Laporte
That's. That's great, and and you have somebody in the discursing, maybe it's. Maybe the AT&T wants the government to do it, which might not be a bad idea. Uh, just costs money.
1:10:54 - Mikah Sargent
California is in big deficit for that.
1:10:57 - Leo Laporte
Oh, that's a good question. I don't know Some other. I don't know. Yeah, that's just sad. Uh, where we the state.
1:11:03 - Caller
Wasn't there a case of a city in um, somewhere in the south? Maybe it was.
1:11:10 - Leo Laporte
Chattanooga, Tennessee, was offering a a broadband over power lines and of course the big cable companies came in and said, oh, you can't do that, I don't know.
1:11:20 - Mikah Sargent
Sorry, no.
1:11:22 - Leo Laporte
You know it's a very weird. You know there's a, that's a 10. Go Niners, go Niners. Thank you, lewis, now that your Rams are out of it, Thank you. Thank you, lewis, it's great to talk to you, as always.
1:11:34 - Caller
Oh, I'm a San Francisco boy, so.
1:11:36 - Leo Laporte
Oh, okay, I just you know at least, as afraid of is that we'll get into the Super Bowl and then have to face the Ravens and and and lose ignominiously as we have. Are the Ravens doing really well this?
1:11:48 - Mikah Sargent
year. Well, so far I can't see anything. So far?
1:11:54 - Leo Laporte
Uh, we. The reason is she's scarred because we, we did go to a Super Bowl some years ago in New Orleans. That was the Niners versus the Ravens. Got it? Ravens Whooped oh, it wasn't a whooping. It wasn't a whooping, oh, okay, but it was a beating. There's a difference. Um, padres SJ was in our discord, says the last time the Niners played the Ravens in the Super Bowl. Leo and Lisa were there and I was hosting to it. Thank you, father Robert. Uh, there's no fear this year. Lisa says I don't want to go and watch them lose again.
1:12:29 - Mikah Sargent
It was. It's scarred her. That's hard yeah.
1:12:31 - Leo Laporte
It's scarred her. All right, I'm going to do something or other. Should I do it? I haven't done the email in a while. While you prepare yourself for another live call, let's let's just quickly check the email bag.
2013 MacBook Air 11 inch drive recovery. Hi, leo and Micah from Josh has become my family Sunday night tradition. It'll listen to ask the tech guys. Oh, that's a sweet. I love your family, josh Family.
Recently, my 2013 11 inch MacBook air. Oh, those were the days. That's the one that fit in the middle. It was so cute. It was so cute Little thing.
Yeah, uh, if it starts up, it accepts the password, the progress board goes to three quarters and then it shuts off. That sounds like it did battery. Well, I also have a more recent M one MacBook air. I always enjoyed the form factor of the old 11 inch version. I have a complete backup from a few months ago. So he's not, but I haven't backed up since. So, anyway, there are still some files I'd like to be able to retrieve. He's asking for a data recovery service. I don't think you need one. It does sound like battery. They're all expensive and I'm not sure I trust just anyone to have access to my data. So on that air, you can't as often with laptops. If you remove the battery, you can plug it in and use it. You can't do that with the air, obviously. Um, I think it needs a new battery and I think you can go to Apple and get a new battery for not a whole lot of money.
1:13:53 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, and if he can't, you might check, I fix it. You could put one in.
1:13:57 - Leo Laporte
If you're with yourself, I fix it, even sends you the tools and a little wedge Yep. And then I've got an old one. I've put. I have opened up that old MacBook Air. That's a pretty easy one to get into and it's all sitting right there, so almost well. I can't promise that's what's wrong, but it sure feels like it. You had the same reaction.
1:14:16 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah. I felt when you said it gets to that point it's working and then it just if it completely shuts off. That, to me, suggests that the battery is not getting past that point.
1:14:26 - Leo Laporte
With a battery in there. Even if it's plugged in, the bad it goes through the battery. So a dead battery would actually keep you. So you're getting just enough juice to get that far. The other possibility that you know, maybe the operating system is dead. But you could. You could solve that very simply by putting Mac OS and these older ones. You could put Mac OS on a USB key, put it in the MacBook Air and boot, hold down the option, keep boot to the USB key and if everything's okay, it would boot up to that and then you'd be able to look at the internal hard drive and get the stuff off.
1:14:59 - Mikah Sargent
And I'm on iFixit now and the you could take out the SSD that's inside of it, put it into a little enclosure as well. Thank you, ScooterX, for reminding us that that was a much easier time when the SSD was removable. And yeah, so we'll include a link in the show notes that iFixit. That could be a fun project for you.
1:15:22 - Leo Laporte
We a little later on on the Twits we're going to have Alan Malmontano who is an SSD guru. He used to do our show this week in computer hardware. He was our SSD God. He also then went to Intel and then to Soledon and SSD manufacturer, so he knows a lot about SSDs. I'll ask him about that. But I will also ask him about there's a new kind of memory that has just been announced and it is very interesting memory that could change the way we do memory. But there's a catch, which is we no longer do SO-DIMMs or memory that is removable like the Apple MacBook. The memory in here is part of the die, it's in the die, it's LPDDR5 in the die and this wouldn't help that. But for those that are still putting in external memory, this is a very new kind. That's very interesting. Anyway, alan will talk about that. Great question, yeah, really good question. Now have you prepared a phone call? I?
1:16:22 - John Ashley
have one of many phone callers, video callers, ready lined up. It is. I'll let him explain who he is.
1:16:30 - Leo Laporte
Mark. Hello video caller, Mark Hi.
1:16:35 - Caller
Hey, leo, hi, how are you Great? Where are you from?
1:16:39 - Leo Laporte
Chicago, Illinois, the Windy City, the city of broad shoulders, hog butcher to the world. Carl Sandberg's. My kind of town and my kind of town, that's right. What can we do for you today?
1:16:54 - Caller
First of all, Leo over the corner of your mouth. You might want to just wipe that off a little bit. Oh dear, you were drooling over those boats, Just a little.
1:17:04 - Leo Laporte
I know, I know it's so funny that Dick said oh yeah, the main reason people don't buy boats is they don't know how to dock them. No, no, the main reason people don't buy boats is they're very expensive and then they're a money pit that you continue to pour money in ever after and I don't know if I'll ever own a boat. Do you own a boat, michael? Do you sail around Lake Michigan?
1:17:25 - Caller
No, not at all. Not at all. Happiest day is in a boaters life is the day they buy the boat and the day they sell the boat.
1:17:33 - Leo Laporte
True words we're never spoke Love. That's great. I love it. What can we do for you?
1:17:40 - Caller
about a simple question. Hopefully have a medium, older laptop and MSI gaming series, which has done me fine I've been really push it to the max and it's doing great but I would like to Reinstall the operating system again. It's six, seven years old. There's, as you say, a lot of crux that builds up through the years and just want to give it a Windows 10, clean and shiny operating system. Is there anything I need to worry about in regards to the way that the specific computer is set up? Do I need specific drivers from MSI or will just a generic Windows in just work? Hmm?
1:18:30 - Mikah Sargent
What do you say, micah? Honestly, though, that's a good question, because I don't know about MSI specifically. So when you've got a gaming machine right and you have Special drivers for whatever graphics card it might have, that is going to play a role. Now, when it comes to, I assume that the process that you're going to do is a complete, absolute wipe and install of Windows.
1:18:58 - Caller
Yeah, that would be the best way to do it, I think.
1:19:01 - Leo Laporte
Yeah.
1:19:03 - Caller
Computer. That you know is so, oh my god, I can't lose it. That you know backing up is gonna be fine. I can start from scratch, so that's no big deal, excellent.
1:19:13 - Leo Laporte
Well, that makes it a lot easier, right.
1:19:14 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, absolutely yeah. But as far as Whether you're going to need to go and grab some special stuff from MSI itself, Usually I do. Yeah, I don't know.
1:19:25 - Leo Laporte
Windows does plug and play and we'll give you the kind of default drivers and I'll probably see the MSI motherboard. It's a big name but MSI also has motherboard drivers on their site and generally what I do is I go to the site and get them.
1:19:39 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, so I am here now and Basically there's a, there's a page where you can go to the downloads and you put in your specific model and Then it will show you all of the latest drivers and things. So I will include link.
1:19:54 - Leo Laporte
I'll tell you why you kind of want to do that. In general, there are probably two, maybe three drivers for any device on your Windows machine. There's the one that Microsoft gives you when you do updates or install a new version of Windows the plug-and-play driver. There's the driver that the manufacturer offers often Often called a reference driver and video and others make reference drivers. Actually, in that case it's. Nvidia is not even manufacturing the card, they just make reference drivers, which then the manufacturers will use. And then there's the Microsoft hardware quality labs Approved driver. Usually that's an older driver that's been extensively tested by Microsoft. Is your video card an MSI or do you have a discreet video card on that gaming machine?
1:20:46 - Caller
um, do you probably just know lap. Yeah, oh, it's a laptop so yeah yeah, so it would be.
1:20:51 - Leo Laporte
So that's the big one is the video card. The motherboard drivers include net, you know, driver for the ethernet, the Wi-Fi, the, the sound, a bunch of other stuff. That's that happens in in in the Operating system and in the hardware. But the big one for you is gonna be video and you want to have the best video. So I think probably worth going MSI and getting the latest one from them. I would like to first Want to do that just you'll do it after you'll do it after.
1:21:20 - Mikah Sargent
In fact, you can go on the machine after you've set it up.
1:21:24 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, you'll get. You put it on a USB key and then at some point you can install it.
1:21:29 - Caller
Right, so the devices will work. It just won't be great, it probably work just as well.
1:21:32 - Leo Laporte
Honestly, it would probably work just fine.
1:21:36 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, what you're doing is you're making sure that, absolutely, you're doing the latest and the best Connection because if, say, you install Windows by default and it installs what it needs to do, it's going to be communicating with the special card right, it will communicate with your graphics card but maybe it doesn't have all of the Possible features, access to all the possible features by you going to MSI and getting those specifically, then you're going to know Okay, I'm getting as much control over it as I possibly can, the OS has as much context as it possibly can, and it's the best experience possible. The same thing For me. I have a brother laser printer, the one that everybody has these days, and it works plug-and-play with my Mac. But by going and getting the brother printer drivers I have access to a little bit more features so I could print and do all of that.
Without it. It would work functionally, but to gain access to all of the stuff that I'd want to do, I needed to have those drivers. So, yeah, it's probably going to work fine without it. But just for your almost almost a piece of mind thing and knowing that you're making the most of the machine that you have, it's worth getting those down somebody's being a good point.
1:22:45 - Leo Laporte
Wizarding in the discord is MSI will also give you a bunch of other stuff you don't want, so I always this always bugs me where they have their very their own MSI Updater tool and stuff. And you know you just want the drivers.
1:22:59 - Caller
Okay, so then, in regards to windows, there's a windows 10. Where would I go to Download that? Is there a way to do this just within the operating system, or do I have to download a version of windows and reinstall it, or you want?
1:23:16 - Leo Laporte
to install, or? Yeah, I think the. I think the MSI stuff will come on installer. Let me check.
1:23:23 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, I'm pretty sure it'll come with an installer but one for windows 10, because he's saying once I've completely wiped the laptop and I want to install windows 10. Yeah, I'll have a windows 10 install.
1:23:33 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, okay, I'm pretty sure you know that's a good question. I don't know if you. If it doesn't have installer, yes, you can update the driver. You can do that in windows directly. I'm trying to remember it's been so long I don't remember off the top of my head, isn't it funny? I think you can go to the system information. Let me see Windows, key X and system information. And I think when you go to the hardware resources you'll see your video card and you can update it from there. I believe this is unfortunate. I'm running an emulation so I don't have. Let's just see there's a display driver. I don't know what it's gonna show. Yeah, I think you can update that from here. Boy, it's funny and I apologize, I am not as up to date as in windows, as I used to be.
1:24:44 - Caller
Yeah, I've got an Nvidia GTX 970. Oh, you do have an external card.
1:24:49 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, then you definitely want to get, and that one's funny because the Nvidia makes one. Whoever made that card makes one. Microsoft has one, they probably have an HQL one. There's gonna be five, four or five different drivers out there and who knows what the best one is. So, yeah, and you can do it in device manager, can't you? It feels like you can, but I don't, let me go to. I guess I was not in device manager. There we go.
Now we can look at this and we can look at Display adapters, parallels seats unfortunately it's a parallels thing, so you can't. But you can update driver from by right clicking on it. There you go. So if you update the driver and then it's gonna look for a driver on, I put on a USB key so you can search. You can search automatically or browse the computer for the driver and install it. Okay, they haven't changed that part. Yeah, interestingly, in fact it looks like this is the control panel. No, I'm on Windows 11. This is the Windows 7 control panel. I haven't changed that much either. It's pretty funny.
Some things never change. Some things changed dramatically. That one has not. So you can still right click an update driver. Have fun, michael. Thank you All right. Thanks for calling in. Take care, stay warm. I bet it's a little chilly in the windy city right now. Let's pause a little bit before we go on to our next call. What else do we have another guest coming up? Nope, just one today. So we got lots of calls today. That's good, I like it. I'll tell you what. Take a breath and I will reach behind me and play a voicemail I threw. I got that button right here.
Whoa, that sounds a lot like Robert. I'm calling from.
1:26:43 - Mikah Sargent
Lafayette, Louisiana.
1:26:45 - Caller
I have a Windows 11 computer that died and I'm trying to recycle the parts. The main problem having is that the hard drive is not letting the format it was. It's just dead, and I'm not sure if it's the same thing. It was, it's just dead and. I mean, I'm sorry, it is not dead. He just doesn't want to format you, so I could reuse this. How do I format? A. Windows 11 encrypted hardware drive. Thank you.
1:27:16 - Leo Laporte
Oh, this is a problem, because if you had anything on it, I guess you don't or you wouldn't want to format it. But what you'll be formatting? Not only the hard drive, but you're getting rid of the Certificates that let you unencrypt that hard drive. So just make sure. But I guess if he's formatting and there's nothing, on here he wants right.
Make sure that that isn't. If that's the boot drive, though, and you have A D drive, it's encrypted with certificates on the boot drive. So this is always a problem with BitLocker Windows encryption technology. It uses certificates for the, for the unlock, not passwords, and so that's potentially problematic, because if you, if you Delete them, you can no longer unlock that drive. So, other than that, you shouldn't have any trouble, just formatting it. Weird, you can't format it, don't know why, I wonder, if it's locked, if it's the drive itself, hardware is hardware read only locked. Yeah, yeah, that can happen. Padres says just format the drive. But what is what he's trying to do? What if, padre, he can't because it is hardware locked? That's a little more complicated.
1:28:24 - Mikah Sargent
And also will. Let's say, we're in a world where the person who's trying to do this Doesn't realize that the drive that they're trying to format is the drive that they're currently running Windows on. Don't format that.
1:28:38 - Leo Laporte
I'm wondering if that could also, if it would oh, it might not do it because it says wait a minute.
1:28:42 - Mikah Sargent
I can't format it right now. I can't format me, need a little more information.
1:28:44 - Leo Laporte
Unfortunately, I'd like to see that screen that says you can't format me.
1:28:56 - John Ashley
So okay, so thank you, Padre.
1:28:58 - Leo Laporte
Padre is in the in the chat right now. He says you have first is disable, deactivate bit locker on the drive. So boot into that system and turn off bit locker encryption and then Maybe you'll be able to format it fine.
1:29:17 - Mikah Sargent
And if all else fails, what else you can do? What I've done in the past where I had a Windows drive that was not working properly and I took that little Windows drive and I put it in an enclosure and I opened up my Linux machine, plug that bad boy into the Linux machine and I was able to format it just fine, because Linux did not care, it doesn't care, it doesn't know nothing about nothing about Windows.
1:29:43 - Leo Laporte
It just formats that sucker completely. I like it. I like it. Father Robert also says that you he tells me you have part two of his CES roundup. Oh, you don't have it on your system.
1:29:58 - John Ashley
He probably just sent it to us somewhere.
1:30:01 - Leo Laporte
Let's see if we can take that up, because you think we can just go online and play it. Play stuff. It's probably on his YouTube channel. Anyway, that's a. That's a good question. I would love to find that he says it's his gadget roundup and he found a lot of gadgets. He was great the other week, two weeks ago, on this on Twitter. If you haven't seen it, we did his father Robert's little run down of all the fun stuff. He saw it CES this year.
1:30:27 - Mikah Sargent
He's brave man, if it's via Google Drive, then yeah, maybe we can just play it.
1:30:31 - Leo Laporte
We'll figure it out. We'll figure it out coming up a little later on. Father Robert and his CES wrap up part two gadgets but right now let's take a call.
1:30:45 - John Ashley
All right, chris.
1:30:47 - Leo Laporte
Go ahead, unmute, hi Chris, I'm mute, you see, elf? Oh, I got it, here we go, hello Chris.
1:30:55 - Caller
Good afternoon, thank. Thank you guys for having me. Thanks for calling when you calling, from North Carolina.
1:31:01 - Leo Laporte
All right, all right, what's up?
1:31:02 - Caller
Yeah, a long-time listener of your shows, leo, thank you. Since the late 90s, yeah.
1:31:09 - Leo Laporte
Sad to say. Yeah, it sounds like a long time ago now. Now, what do we see? And that's a beautiful sunset there.
1:31:17 - Caller
Yeah, so I took that with my iPhone. That's off of the the Blue Ridge Parkway beautiful view.
1:31:25 - Leo Laporte
You didn't have to get up in an airplane for that. Huh, that's gorgeous, no.
1:31:28 - Caller
I had to get up at about 430 am.
1:31:31 - Leo Laporte
Oh sunrise okay.
1:31:33 - Caller
Sunsets. You're like, I'll be up there, I prefer the night you wouldn't get that of course, in the Blue.
1:31:37 - Leo Laporte
Ridge Mountains. It would be the other way. So what can we do for you?
1:31:42 - Caller
Sure. So my, my question is related to Cloud storage and encryption. Specifically, I've been using pCloud for a while and it has a feature called crypto folder. I love that feature. Yeah yeah, it's worked really well. Provides additional security. You know it requires a separate password, you know, to gain access to the contents. You know it's intended for more sensitive documents, etc. So, like you were mentioning earlier, I'm just trying to pair back things in it's so funny how I didn't mention it.
1:32:18 - Leo Laporte
I also have a lifetime subscription at pCloud, oh well there you go. There's yet another another thing, although I bought the lifetime, so I don't, I don't think they I have to pay them anything more in the future.
1:32:28 - Caller
Right, I did look at that. You know I'm an Apple user, so I've had iCloud. I've got the two terabytes. I actually regret it.
1:32:37 - Leo Laporte
I think pCloud slows down your uploads If you have that lifetime unlimited and I and I think that I've not had great performance from pCloud, so I'm thinking maybe that might have been the smartest choice to buy that lifetime subscription. I hardly use it anymore, but I do like that encrypted thing, the real. I'll tell you why they do that. Most, almost all cloud services are not end-to-end encrypted. It's encrypted at rest going there and it's encrypted at rest. But they have the keys and the reason they need that is for a lot of the features that you want with a cloud service ability to look at individual files, to move files, to delete files and, from their own point of view. That way, if you all, you know, 20 customers upload the same file, they only have to keep one copy of it.
If you encrypt, all bets are off. You only you can see what's there. They aren't going to decrypt it and send it to you. You have to. You know you have to give them as you know. You give them the key and then you can see it. So it's a really different experience but it is the only way end-to-end encryption, have true privacy on a cloud service. Most cloud services don't offer that pCloud wanted to give you the best of both worlds so that you can do all the stuff you can do with it An unencrypted cloud storage. But you have this area that you can put your most private stuff in. So what is the, what is the question that you have?
1:34:00 - Caller
Yes. So the question was is there a way to do that with iCloud? I don't see a way built in. I mean, do you have any other suggestions if I want to utilize my iCloud storage that I already have?
1:34:13 - Leo Laporte
I'll tell you what.
I did instead and this might be something that you could use. While while Micah is going to answer about this and encryption on iCloud, I use the thing a free program up open source program We've talked about it before, steve Gibson's talked about it as well called sync thing, and I've decided no longer to store things like tax returns, legal documents, my will and all that in public clouds, even with encryption. I use sync thing to sync that to different servers and I even have a copy syncing to my network attached storage, my Synology. So I have multiple copies, I feel secure about it and I can access it anywhere. But it never goes up to the cloud and only synchronizes between my computers and and it's encrypted in in transit and it's encrypted on all the computers. So that's where my most private stuff is.
Sync thing is is a pretty easy thing to set up. I put it on everything. It works on Mac, linux and Windows. It works on your phones as well, although it's not as useful on a phone because you don't have as much storage, but it's a really nice free tool and I use that. So I have a particular folder that I use with sync thing that only is seen by sync thing and backed up on my Synology. That way, I don't have to worry about any of that really private stuff. My tax returns have my social in it right that that's not in the cloud, so I don't have to worry about that. I think, though, that Apple offers end to end encryption.
1:35:42 - Mikah Sargent
Yes, so, but there's a there's a price to be paid as a consequence you do need to use so, as of iOS 7 or no, ios 16.2, when they introduce the advanced data protection option. That's what I thought. Yeah, there is end to end encryption, so what?
1:36:00 - Leo Laporte
you lose a lot of features you do so.
1:36:04 - Mikah Sargent
The way that it works is it end to end encrypts everything except for iCloud mail contacts and calendars.
And it can encrypt those because they need to be able to sync and work between everything. Everything else is going to have the key storage on your trusted device and everything else will be encrypted in transit and on server. So in transit and at rest. What you what you in theory give up is that when you go to iCloudcom and you try to access the different, different features, files etc. You're unable to access those unless you grant sort of temporary access, at which point the key storage kind of changes and you're able to access that information. Then that goes away after a period of time so you can turn on advanced data encryption. You will need to make sure that kind of every device that you have that's logged into iOS, ipad OS and Mac OS all are on the most updated versions. That's the only way to turn it on in the first place. And then at that point you will need to have your device passcode, your password, a recovery contact, a personal recovery key one of those options, because Apple will not have access to those encryption keys.
1:37:19 - Caller
So it's right the biggest risk actually do you have, I do you have advanced security enabled and I have the UB key security keys set up for MFA and you're good, then you're okay, then yeah, yeah, it's end to end encryption.
1:37:32 - Leo Laporte
They can't see it.
1:37:32 - Mikah Sargent
The iCloud drive is completely end to end encrypted and it, the key storage, is on those devices, so it is not able to be accessed by Apple. So you are already doing that with your iCloud drive files.
1:37:45 - Leo Laporte
The third option is something Steve Gibson calls Pi. He's called P, but I think Pi is a better name. He's called pre egress encryption. Now he calls a pre internet encryption, and it's a very simple thing. If you put your private, most private stuff, it locally in an encrypted file and then that is uploaded to iCloud, only you have the key to that, and so it's just as good. You don't have to turn on advanced data protection, it'll just upload the encrypted file. So that's the third way of doing. It is encrypt locally. Now, of course, you have to decrypt it anywhere you put it, but it will sync to everywhere because it's a file. As far as Apple is concerned.
1:38:24 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, and it sounds to me like, since you've already been using it, you haven't run into any of those issues, so you're good to go. You've been doing the most.
1:38:31 - Leo Laporte
I turned on advanced data protection as soon as Apple offered it and turned it off almost immediately because there's a lot of stuff you give up. You don't have family sharing. There's a lot of things you lose.
1:38:42 - Caller
Yeah, I did turn iCloud from the web browser. I turned that off just when it's needed. I turned that on temporarily, but I guess my only concern was if iCloud files are just mounted on the file system, like if I go to find or on the Mac, they're just sitting there. So if I was to get some type of malware, it would have access to those files.
1:39:05 - Leo Laporte
Well, that's always the problem. Once it's decrypted and on your hard drive, it's visible. If somebody gets on your system, that may be a good argument for doing this pie thing, because you can encrypt it and leave it encrypted on your system and only decrypt it when you want to use it and then lock it back up again. You can use a program called Veracrypt to do that. There are quite a few strong encryption solutions. I would always look for an open source encryption solution, which Veracrypt is, so that you can look at it and there's no back doors and things like that.
1:39:39 - Caller
Thank you for the suggestions, appreciate that.
1:39:41 - Leo Laporte
Hey, great question. Thank you for the beautiful picture have a good one, thank you, you too, take care. Bye, bye. Father Robert Ballasar, the digital Jesuit, went to Vegas a few weeks ago for CES and we have his part two of his recap all the gadgets he saw at CES.
1:40:27 - Father Robert Ballecer
Charging. The trends of CES is a great way to map out the development of future tech, and if you want to see that, you should watch the first part of my CES 2024 rundown. But sometimes you just want to see the gadgets. Now look, I know everyone else is showing off LG's transparent screens or any of the myriad high profile toys throughout the show, but I didn't want to show the same tech that every content creator is posting, so here's my list of the top 10 gadgets from CES that I want in my inventory.
10. The RCA Smart Bird Feeder. I know that AI is an overused term, especially once the marketing folks get a hold of it, but there are a few fun uses on the consumer level. One of them is RCA's Smart Bird Feeder. This is a $100 buffet for our feathered friends, but with a twist Along with whatever seeds you want to provide. This waterproof, weather resistant product includes a solar powered 145 degree wide angle 1080p network camera with night vision and motion detection that pushes video footage to local storage and the cloud. An app allows you to watch the feed and it uses AI to automatically identify more than 10,000 different species of birds. If you're an avid birder or just like to see what kind of wildlife shows up in your yard. This is fun.
Tech 9. The Govee Sync Box. I know you like gadgets and this is the gadget for me. This is the Govee AI Sync Box. No, not the monitor, no, not even the white panel behind. It's actually a system of lighting that ties into whatever is being broadcast over your HDMI cable. Now, that box right down there, that's the actual sync box. It's connected to those two light bars on the side and it's trying to pattern the light that it's projecting based on what it sees in the HDMI pass through. Now, the nice thing about this is it's not just color matching, it's not just trying to put up the same colors that it sees on the screen. It's intelligent enough to recognize what kinds of patterns it's seeing on screen. If you've got fireworks, it will generate fireworks in the background. If you've got explosions, it will try to amplify those explosions. Now, this isn't something that just looks good. If you're a gamer, it gives you a more immersive experience and, yeah, it just looks cool.
Number 8. Amazefit Helio. I didn't jump into the wearables craze as quickly as everyone else, but passing by the Amazefit Helio ring at PEPCON made me do a double take Aimed at the more athletic among us. The Helio uses a suite of sensors inside an attractive titanium ring to collect heart rate, blood oxygen levels, stress response and sleep data. Amazefit is planning to offer the ring in 12 sizes when it releases in the spring, which will lock out certain groups of prospective users. But I was a fan of the look, the app and the development team number seven rolling square in charge M.
You might be asking yourself, padre, why are we looking at a cable? Well, this is no ordinary cable. You see, when they manufactured this cable, they actually mixed some iron ferrite into the plastic that is being used to insulate it, and then they expose it to a very high magnetic field, which makes it slightly magnetic. The end result is this it allows it to recoil into its perfect shape Every single time. Sometimes it takes a little bit of a of a bump just to get it back there, but it will always try to retake its coiled form. Now They've got a one meter and a two meter version of this. It's gonna be starting at $20 available this quarter.
Number six the Rocksteady Stadium. There are dozens of vendors who want to show you their take on the greatest speaker ever, but I try to limit myself to just one a year. This year it was Rocksteady's turn. Their stadium wireless speaker provides 30 watts of power 20 watts to the mid-range and 10 to the tweeter and has enough USB C charge battery power for about 16 hours of continuous play. You connect via Bluetooth 5.0 or a wired connection, which I appreciate, but after you connect to one of their units you can put it into stadium mode. In that mode the connected speaker broadcasts and you can add an unlimited number of additional wireless speakers. Best part is that they use bamboo text codec to make sure that you don't get echoes or delayed audio from any of the speakers. It it truly, truly sounds good, better than what I would expect from Bluetooth speakers and they also have a subwoofer that adds some Serious baseline to your audio. You can buy a pair of the speakers for about $220 or the kit with two speakers and the sub for 370.
Number five the neokassa no mo and three robot vacuum $250 for a premium robot vacuum. For that price you get a Wi-Fi connected sweep mop vacuum with self-emptying, adjustable suction, 14th generation lidar, a 5.2 amp hour battery that gives you 320 minutes of continuous operation, an intuitive mapping function, google and Amazon assistant support and customizable no-go zones. I've never been a fan of RoboVax, but the n3 has changed my mind about the utility. Also, I named mine wally.
Number four the run hood 1200 pro. More power should be the rallying cry of every geek, and with the $1700 run hood 1200 pro, you get it. The kid includes four battery modules for more than 1200 watt hours of power, a dock that can hot swap those modules, five DC outlets, including wireless charging, three 1200 watt pure sine AC outlets and a travel ready 100 watt solar panel. You can power your dock with AC, dc or solar, and power or charge up to nine devices simultaneously. This is the perfect unit for RV, tiny home or van life. My favorite feature is the mini docks that can snap directly onto the battery modules that you remove from the dock to provide you with AC or DC power. You can even directly charge the modules from the solar panel without the dock itself. A Run hood seems to understand that geeks need flexible power solutions and they provided it in spades.
Number three the HP poly Voyager free 60. Last year my favorite earbuds were the HP poly Voyager free 60 plus, you see, with active noise cancellation, 15 hours of talk time, a touchscreen to control your calls at a glance and great sound. The 60 plus is an absolutely fantastic set of professional earbuds, but with a $330 price tag they were a bit much for many. The free 60 includes the same quality audio, same fit and same feature set, minus the touchscreen case and some service integrations, for about $200 less. Sure, there are some other great earbuds out there, but for users like me who spend a lot of time using unified communications apps, poly is undefeated.
Number two the targets dual host KVM dock 750. Now I know what you're thinking a KVM, a dock how is that new? But but hear me out, the 750 isn't just a dual host dock that provides 100 watts of power to two different computers and three display outputs. It isn't just a KVM. You see, targets created a device that lets you control both computers and their associated screens as if it were a single Desktop. It's like Microsoft's mouse without borders, except its OS Agnostic. That means you can have any two computers windows or Mac, mac and Linux, linux and more Linux and a single keyboard. Mouse and set of ports will control both seamlessly, without having to switch your mouse and keyboard just automatically rolled over to the other computer when you move your mouse from screen to screen. Now, I know that I may be an edge case user, but these capabilities are exactly what I needed in my lab.
Honorable mentions the snap for Lux from OSnap. Yeah, it's a $40 pop socket phone holder, but with two big advantages. First, it's crazy thin. Second, it's charged through compatible, meaning that you can wirelessly charge through the Lux Acer's entire predator line fast, dependable, pretty and feature packed at a price point that works with almost every budget. Acer continues to impress. The audio radar. This is a kit that interprets 7.1 surround sound into lighting commands, giving hearing impaired gamers of visual cue as to the direction of in-game sounds. Number one time kettle. Maybe it's because I spend most of my day speaking languages that are not my primary, but I love the use of AI to increase the accuracy and convenience of automatic translations. Time kettle does exactly that.
1:49:43 - Father Robert Ballecer
And this year we bring our newest product, the X1 interpreter hub, here, and also the most advanced product in this field on this planet. So it's a AI technology based hardware that help you can communicate with the other one using different languages.
1:50:02 - Father Robert Ballecer
And that's it. That's my top 10 list of gadgets from CES. Now there were plenty of others that showed great design and utility, but for me, this is the tech that I wanted my life, till next time. I'm Father Robert Ballacer, the digital Jesuit saying goodbye from CES 2024.
1:50:34 - Leo Laporte
Father Robert Ballasare, the digital Jesuit in CES. He gets the fun stuff.
1:50:40 - Mikah Sargent
I brought some of those gadgets with him. I want that cable with the magnets in it Recoils automatically know what the glasses did, but I wanted them.
1:50:49 - Leo Laporte
Well, you're gonna have your own glasses and you're gonna, you're gonna come in next week, next Sunday, on Friday. I'll be in you're gonna do an unboxing and then yeah on Sunday, of course, I'll wear them the whole time.
1:51:02 - Mikah Sargent
I want you.
1:51:03 - Leo Laporte
I want to see scary eyes, yes, the whole time. Eerie eyes, the uncanny eyes. I want to see them all day next week. It'll be interesting. Who should we take next?
1:51:13 - John Ashley
John, I'm gonna pick up on Ryan, who's been hanging out for a little bit.
1:51:17 - Leo Laporte
Hey, ryan, welcome to ask the tech guys. Join us in the Stargate. Actually, we'll get to Ryan a second. Oh, here he is. Hi, ryan. I Couldn't talk to you nice talk to you. Where are you calling from? Calling from Maryland, all right, what's up? Welcome I.
1:51:41 - Caller
Was calling to ask if you had any recommendations for Linux operating systems for the Raspberry Pi 5.
1:51:48 - Leo Laporte
I Would just use raspbian, the one that the rasp that's offered by the Raspberry Pi Foundation, but it's a pretty yeah, it's a pretty standard Computer. You can use any Linux distro that works with arm. It's an arm processor, but they have their own, which I think is quite good. Are you getting a new one, or what's the story?
1:52:07 - Caller
Um, so I do have one. Uh, it is. I put it inside of a like gaming case and I've been experimenting with Cali, because that's one of the official ones that you can run off the installer. Okay and that's pretty smooth. I also tried you bun two, but that's pretty power hungry and makes a little bit laggy.
1:52:23 - Leo Laporte
I think raspbian is of is a flavor of a bun two, so I haven't tried. Do you have a five? Do you have the new raspberry pi five or older one? Yeah, you do, you got a five. How exciting is. Is this your first pie or do you have you had some of them?
1:52:43 - Caller
three. Um, I it had the three. It was kind of hard to do most of the stuff on it cuz the operating system like the fair amount yeah this is much more powerful. Oh, I'm jealous.
1:52:56 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, the five just came out. It is, they say, two or three hundred percent faster, wow, than the previous generation. I Got it. I think you're gonna have a lot of fun with this. What are you thinking about doing with it?
1:53:12 - Caller
So we just installed new ubiquity Cameras and so we're thinking about possibly running the cameras off of that very cool.
1:53:20 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, so they have a new OS for this five, so I would use raspberry pi OS, unless you, unless you don't like it for some reason. They, it's Experimenting once yeah. Yeah, I don't have any because you have the new one. I don't have any. You know strong recommendations for this. They've replaced rasbian with the now pi OS, which I suspect is similar. It's probably a boon to with a little you know icing on the top. But I think, that.
That's, you know, gonna work the best I Do. I'm not an expert on the new five, that's. I'm thrilled that you got one I've. They've been kind of hard to get for a while, so that sounds like the way to go. Is the raspberry pi OS? Let me just yeah, I mean this up here. Those are the suggestions I'm seeing it's used to be called rasbian rasbian. It's based on Debian Okay, which a buntu is based on, so it will feel kind of familiar.
1:54:27 - Mikah Sargent
That is a really good point the Padre has just made. So I noticed this. I have a raspberry pi 4 and I Remember running into a bunch of issues where things just it was just laggy and I couldn't figure out why, and it turned out that the SD card I was using was not Enough.
1:54:43 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, you need a fast and micro SD card.
1:54:45 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, Padre recommends the Kingston canvas react or the SanDisk Extreme Pro. Those will keep you from getting throttled Whenever you're using them.
1:54:56 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, those TF cards, those little micro SD cards, are not normally very fast. They're never, they don't expect to be used in any application that they don't expect to be an operating system running off it. So that makes a lot of sense. You want to get the fastest storage you can get. This is the new OS. Has a new, improved desktop environment based on LXDE, which is very lightweight. For this and you know reason, you know I think this sounds like the one to use. Maybe just try getting a faster little Memory card in.
1:55:28 - Mikah Sargent
It might be the yeah that that made all the difference with my, for I was. I was very surprised at how much of a difference it made to switch in a card that worked so much faster. Oh, interesting.
1:55:40 - Leo Laporte
All right, good, good Thank you very much.
1:55:43 - Caller
I love listening to you guys every week. Me and my dad both listen. What's your? Chance name.
1:55:49 - Leo Laporte
I think Brad's in the room, isn't he? Hi, brad. Oh, that was a great trip to York. I remember that very well. I think I had who was with me? I think Kate was with me in York, wasn't? It was a show, remember? I think it was Kate. Yeah, we were, that was. That was a fun trip. That was one of our very first appearances. That's why I think it was Kate. It's the early days of the screensavers. Well, nice to meet you again and I love it that you've raised. You've raised a talented geek. That's a. That's a.
1:56:26 - Caller
That's great, good, good job and I think everybody should get a raspberry pie for their.
1:56:31 - Leo Laporte
I agree this is a great way to get into computing. You're asking, you're welcome. You're asking the right questions. Appreciate the call. Yeah, and thank you for listening. Take care by in Maryland, don't go Ravens, though I didn't mention that, let's see I'm. The only reason we're rooting against the Ravens is I'm scared to death of them. They look so darn good. That's really. It's really high praise. They're doing high praise. So who else should we talk to? John Ashley.
1:57:02 - John Ashley
This person right here this person here.
1:57:04 - Leo Laporte
Hello this person. Hello person. Press star six and unmute yourself thine self. Unmute thine self.
1:57:14 - Mikah Sargent
To thine own, to thine self.
1:57:16 - Caller
I'm just getting video on.
1:57:18 - Leo Laporte
Okay, good, oh, good there we go oh hello, what's your name and where you're calling from?
1:57:22 - Caller
My name is Claloc Lopez Waterman. I'm calling from Orlando. Today I travel. Is that your first I travel up from. Yes, my first name, claloc, it's the gas tech rain, god.
1:57:33 - Leo Laporte
That's how I roll. Oh, I love it.
1:57:35 - Caller
I love it. Wow, um and I. I've just recently become a twit member.
1:57:43 - Mikah Sargent
Thank you so much.
1:57:44 - Leo Laporte
I learned a view from through office hours actually, but which is a wonderful show that Daleks Lindsay does, of course. Yeah, I've had Lindsay.
1:57:54 - Caller
And I. I recently got the iPhone 15 Max okay, pro Max and I have about seven air tags that I use for for all my life.
1:58:08 - Leo Laporte
I know exactly what you're gonna say. Every time you leave the house, you get seven notifications Saying you just left your thing behind. You just left that thing by you.
1:58:18 - Caller
Oh, there's, there's that. I mean like I, I'm a person that forgets my stuff all the time, so that's you don't mind that? Okay, good, that's good. The issue is when I changed my phone. Now they all don't work. Oh and uh uh. Rosemary I think in your in the chat Told me to go look at a at a site that told me what to try to do.
1:58:40 - Leo Laporte
That's funny. You you wanted them to annoy you every time you drive off.
1:58:45 - Mikah Sargent
Let's let's, let's talk about um, you say, when now they don't work. Defined don't work.
1:58:53 - Caller
But yeah, it's about to get okay, go ahead.
1:58:55 - Mikah Sargent
Sorry, what, what, what this?
1:58:57 - Caller
What this means is that they essentially think that now my phone thinks that there are seven air tags that are stalking me because they don't belong to me.
1:59:10 - Leo Laporte
It says an unknown air tag has been following you. You know it's funny. I saw that and this is because Apple got a lot of heat for that right. I saw that when I was at the airport in Boston. I was sitting there and it says there's an unknown air tag near you. Of course it was another passenger right at the plane, but you see it now seven of them every time you you're at home. So I try to want to re-associate them with your phone is what you want to do, right?
1:59:39 - Caller
Yeah, and so the first step was to check to see if there was an issue with permissions or something was turned off or on inside of your find my settings, and then it was to reset it. And after I reset it I did you know, you do the battery out four times I get to the point where I can re-associate with the phone and then it says sorry, you need to resign into your Apple account, your iCloud account, which I'm signed into already. So I feel like I'm in a loop that I'm not quite understanding.
2:00:10 - Mikah Sargent
I had almost the exact same experience and I ended up, I spent and I'm not even lying when I say this hours on the phone with someone in the iCloud high up in the iCloud engineering development, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, to try to get this all figured out.
2:00:26 - Leo Laporte
So what would the normal thing be you got, you got a new phone, that you get a new phone and you open, find my and yeah, so normally it should just you don't even need it when you open find my. All of those tags should be there.
2:00:40 - Mikah Sargent
And so there are a couple of things that I want to ask you here. First and foremost, are you following yourself.
Are you or have you run any betas on your devices? Yes, okay, so that was. What caused the issue for me in the first place was I was running a beta and what ended up happening is it did not bring over the encryption key. That is tied, because basically, what happens is on the server side. When you create a new Apple ID or, excuse me, an air tag, apple associates that specifically with your Apple ID and when it does that it it links the two and if it is not removed from your Apple ID account properly, like if the battery dies, which is what happened with mine, the battery died and when I went to pop in a new battery, then it was still associated on the server side with the other account. And it was only when I updated to a later version of iOS that somehow, somewhere the the key chain properly registered and brought everything over.
One thing that you can do is on all of your devices, you can go into, you launch the settings app, you tap on your name at the top and you tap on iCloud and then you scroll down and you find password and key chain and you turn off. Sync this device. Mine says sync this iPhone because it's on an iPhone and that will disconnect you from the key chain, keep it locally and then toggle it back on right afterward. That can sometimes bump the server into pulling that proper information that says no, no, these are his air tags, these are what, what should be on this local device. Now, the only thing that ended up working for me after I spoke to this iCloud engineer blah blah, blah, blah, blah and everything else was just getting off of the beta and logging in or updating, excuse me to the latest version of iOS and, on all of my devices where the tags would show, also updating those to the latest version of iPadOS and MacOS. That was the only thing that ended up solving it.
One day I opened up because I just I thought for the rest of time I'm never going to be able to have another air tag and that these aren't going to work either. And then I opened up Find my and it was finally working. So it sounds like almost the exact same thing happened to you, and it was caused by being on the beta and then having an air tag die on me. I think in your case it's that you switch to a new phone, and that's kind of the same thing where it's a new phone, trying to look at a device that was not previously part of it.
So yeah, in the short term, my recommendation is, if you're currently running any betas, stop and you may have to wait until the next version of 17 hits for this to correct itself. If it's still not correcting itself, at that point I would reach out to Apple and explain everything that you've tried, because it could be that enough of us have had this issue at this point that they've figured out what they need to do on their side. But yeah, mine ended up correcting itself. It wasn't something they were able to correct. For me, that's a while, thank you.
2:04:08 - Leo Laporte
That's, it's really.
2:04:09 - Caller
it's also an argument not to not use betas, yeah well, I bet Apple's pretty sad about it being an argument to not ever buy a new phone.
2:04:22 - Leo Laporte
That would be even worse, wouldn't it?
2:04:23 - Mikah Sargent
Yes.
2:04:25 - Leo Laporte
Oh man, that would be even worse. You don't want to do that.
2:04:27 - Mikah Sargent
That actually makes me want to ask you on the old phone did you return it or do you still have it?
2:04:35 - Caller
I returned it.
2:04:36 - Mikah Sargent
I returned it.
2:04:37 - Caller
I reset it and dumped it completely before handing it over, because I wanted to make sure all my data was clear.
2:04:44 - Mikah Sargent
The only other thing I was going to suggest trying is on that device, if you still had it going in to find my to removing each of those tags. Unfortunately without it. Yeah, you could. No, I think that's probably about it. I was going to say you could restore from iCloud a backup that was from the previous device.
2:05:05 - Caller
And which is what I did.
2:05:06 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, and that's that's unfortunate, that it didn't work. So, yeah, yeah, I think this is going to be one that shakes itself out, like mine did.
2:05:14 - Caller
Gotcha. Okay. One other brief question, hopefully brief, because I know you guys have a lot of callers today, but I'm a lighting designer.
2:05:22 - Mikah Sargent
I work in the theater we often have.
2:05:26 - Caller
That's what I'm here in in Orlando doing. I was just doing an opera about Frida Kahlo Whoa, and yeah, and we often have clear, calm headsets, yeah, and so the and not the kind that you know, you hear Alex Lindsay talk about that are super awesome, kind that are 20 years old from when they were put in the theater and and the MacBook Pros are notorious for being incredibly noisy when you have your hands on the aluminum. Is that true?
Really yeah, you hear it inside the clear comps and and I just want, want the first step for me to have a grounded charger. So where can I get the old school cable version of that goes onto the charger instead of just the two prong? It just seems like they're harder to find than they used to be Because those had a ground on them, and I'm wondering if you know what the best way to get those are now. It seems like you can't get them at the Apple Store.
2:06:32 - Mikah Sargent
You basically, you want the, the, the part that's that thwacks in the table. Yeah, yeah, I don't know. I do know that Amazon sells little sort of adapters that also include a ground, but the problem is I can't speak to the if that'll actually work, yeah, the engineering quality of that, because there's there's one company that makes them. If you do, what did I do a search for?
2:07:06 - Caller
I did grounded Apple charger so you can show that, and it it clicks into one of those squares and it has the two standard prongs in the ground prong and there's a lot of other practical reasons except for me to have it because those two, the two pronged ones, are not very practical in situations when you're traveling all the time and when you're on a tech table and you need to plug it in, you know further away, or whatever.
2:07:33 - Mikah Sargent
Apple is selling that cable on Amazon. I'm seeing it. Oh good, yeah, the Apple Power adapter extension cable is what they call it. If you do a search for Apple Power adapter extension cable, surprisingly only $18,. I thought for sure it'd be $49.99 or something, and apparently you can also get it on. Yes, ScooterX is founded on Amazon itself. Are we excuse me, on Apple?
2:07:57 - Caller
Apple, I'm sure sells it. Yeah, of course I thought the projection designer on freedom. Every time he would touch his computer to do work, it would be like that's wild.
2:08:08 - Leo Laporte
That is wild. I didn't even know that was possible, wow.
2:08:12 - Caller
Yeah, it's. It's because there's nowhere else for any other noise, the digital noise from the, from the computer, to go no other than you, to the ground. Wow.
2:08:22 - Leo Laporte
Well, there you go it is. It's too bad Apple uses a non standard cable like that, but at least they only charge 15 bucks to get a new one.
2:08:30 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, yeah, I thought for sure, I mean more than that.
2:08:32 - Leo Laporte
Or by used for $15 and 81 cents. Oh, that's the one I'm looking at. New is $18.
2:08:39 - Mikah Sargent
I'm looking at the used one, 19 on an Apple site and 18 on Amazon.
2:08:44 - Leo Laporte
So yeah, yeah that's hysterical that Amazon offered me the used one first.
2:08:49 - Caller
Okay, Thanks you guys hey where are you going next? I'm going to do a show in Naples, florida. I was just in Pittsburgh before this, so kind of one of those people like that, that's no mad.
2:09:01 - Leo Laporte
And what is your favorite control system for a lighting?
2:09:05 - Caller
We use ETC almost exclusively, the ETC EOS. So yeah, I think we use the.
2:09:12 - Leo Laporte
What is what do we use that? I can't remember the name of it. It's more traditional. It's here, john.
2:09:18 - John Ashley
Ashley is stage.
2:09:19 - Caller
CL. I don't know what that is. Oh, if you see, is far more traditional than that.
2:09:24 - Leo Laporte
Is it.
2:09:24 - Caller
Oh, we're more modern.
2:09:25 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, I didn't even know that. I thought we were using something like really old Okay.
2:09:33 - Mikah Sargent
When I touch my MacBook and our stage, you know what.
2:09:36 - Leo Laporte
I'm touching my MacBook right now because I have a wire, but we use clear, come on.
2:09:41 - Mikah Sargent
All the lights to flicker in the studio oh my God, it's just terrible.
2:09:48 - Leo Laporte
It's getting darker and darker. Hey, it's a pleasure talking to you, talaq Talaq, talaq, talaq Very cool Were you born with that, or did you take it on?
2:10:01 - Caller
Yep, yeah, I was born with that. My mother was German and my dad is Mexican American, and so it's a wonderful name.
2:10:09 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, I love it. Really cool name.
2:10:10 - Leo Laporte
I mean, I'm sure it's a curse in some ways. You got to spell it every single time, but still surely by now you've got to do.
2:10:18 - Caller
Yeah, I'm so used to the conversation but it doesn't matter, no, I love it.
2:10:21 - Leo Laporte
I think it's a great name and it's powerful. What a powerful name. Yeah, yeah, you have a German surname and an Aztec first name. I love it. It's perfect. Yeah, it's a perfect combination. Thank you, talaq.
2:10:33 - Caller
It sums me up pretty good, pretty well.
2:10:36 - Leo Laporte
Well, have fun with Frida, and we'll talk to you soon, I hope.
2:10:40 - Mikah Sargent
Break a leg. I think we say that to you as well I don't know. We still say break a leg. Well, I know we say it to the actors, but do we say toy toy toy. Toy toy toy toy.
2:10:48 - Caller
toy is for opera, as you can ask Andy, and not go about that on Mac break toy toy toy.
2:10:53 - Leo Laporte
I never heard of that. All right, toy toy toy. Adios.
I looked it up and I got target toys. Maybe it's spelled here. It is. Yeah, it's an X expression using the performing arts tuition artist success and an imminent performance. I had no idea. It's similar to break a leg. No one knows where it came from. It's a mystery. Um, an alternate operatic good luck charm originating from Italy is in the mouth of the wolf. And then you respond creepy or creepy loop, may the wolf die. Okay, that's very Italian. Uh, we are.
We are now at the end of this program, but I thank you very much for your wrapped attention, invite you, of course, to join the club. As a number of our callers mentioned, it is, frankly, the future of twit. If you want us to keep doing this many of you don't in which case, don't give us $7 a month, but if you want us to continue, we really is going to come down to getting every person who watches and listens into the club. Now, I know for some of you, seven bucks is a lot. You do have a 2.99 per show plan that you can do. Uh, you, we're actually going to set up the YouTube subscription too. We'll find other ways to make it more affordable, but the key is, we can't rely on advertising support forever. We need to have our audience support us.
You get a lot of benefits ad free versions of the shows. You get access to our club twit discord, our chat room but it's not just about us. The chat room is all those sorts of great stuff. We've been having a great conversation in our coding chat room, but there's so many things to talk about the geeks like and, of course, the twit plus feed with additional content, shows we don't put out in public. Now, ios today is inside the paywall, uh, as is your show hands on Macintosh, Mikah. Hands on windows with Paul Therrat, the untitled Linux show, a home theater geeks with Scott Wilkinson Um, I, we. I think we'll always have some stuff outside the paywall. We really want anybody who wants to watch to be able to watch, but really it's the people who are members of club twit who keep this enterprise alive. So, if you can twit.tv/clubtwit, and I really, uh, really, really appreciate it from the bottom of my heart, indeed.
2:13:21 - Mikah Sargent
Uh, if you'd like to get in touch with us, we have three ways of doing so. Call.twit.tv is how you get in touch while we're on the show. If you go to that URL on your phone or on the computer, it will take you to a zoom room where you'll hang out and be able to answer your call. Uh, atg at twittv is the email where you can send audio, video or text. The text, of course, ends up over in the mailbox behind Leo, and we love answering your questions that way. And the last way to get in touch is 888-724-2884. If you call during the show, you will also hang out and be able to answer your question. Ask your question live on the air, but if you call during the week 888-724-2884, you can leave a voicemail that we will happily answer for you there.
2:14:08 - Leo Laporte
Yay, and we thank all of you for your participation, for listening uh, for being members of the club and uh, and for tuning in to uh Ask the Tech guys. We really, really appreciate it. That's Mikah Sargent and that's Leo Laporte, and we're all wishing you a lovely geek week Toy, toy toy.
2:14:26 - 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 Geek-a-tude.
