Ask The Tech Guys 2011 Transcript

Please be advised this transcript is AI-generated, may not be word for word, and names may be incorrect at times. Time codes refer to the approximate times in the ad-supported version of the show.

0:00:00 - Leo Laporte
Well, hey, hey, hey. It's time for Ask the Tech Guys. I'm Leo Laporte Coming up. I'll tell you about my in new Instagram sweater. It's made out of seaweed.

0:00:08 - Mikah Sargent
Oh boy, and I'm Mikah Sargent, and we share some tips on how you can keep your credit card number from being stolen. It's tasty too.

0:00:17 - Leo Laporte
It's tasty too. Then Sam Abuelsamid will explain why EVs maybe should be taxed. It's all coming up next, on Ask The Tech Guys. Seaweed? No go Niners! Chiefs!

0:00:32 - VO
Podcasts you love. From people you trust. This. Is TWiT.

0:00:40 - Leo Laporte
This is Ask the Tech Guys with Mikah Sargent and Leo Laporte, episode 2011. Recorded Sunday, february 11th 2024. Protective Pessimism. This episode of Ask the Tech Guys brought to you by DeleteMe, have you ever searched for your name online? Don't, don't. You will not like. How much of your personal information is right there on the page Terrified me. That's why we turned to DeleteMe.

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Visit, joindeleteme.dom/twit. Don't forget to use the code TWIT for 20% off. That's joindeleteme.dom/twit. Code TWIT for 20% off. Well, hey, hey, hey. How are you? Today? It's time for a special Super Bowl edition. That's the tech guys. I wasn't sure if you would wear your KC gear, but you did.

0:03:10 - Mikah Sargent
I did. Yeah, I'm usually in a suit. Today I'm in a red sweater and my chief's hat, which does something special it does.

0:03:17 - Leo Laporte
That's right, that's right, it does. It plays the fight song.

0:03:20 - Mikah Sargent
No, it lights up, that is great.

0:03:25 - Leo Laporte
Is there a chief's fight song? You wouldn't know. Probably it's not fly eagles fly, I'm sure of that. So this is, and I'm wearing my 49ers shirt, which my wife bought me. And then, of course, we'll go home and either be very happy or very sad. Oh your, your hat's now in color.

0:03:41 - Mikah Sargent
It looks like your socks are also 40s. These are my lucky socks.

0:03:44 - Leo Laporte
They got us through the playoffs. Nice, I got the Niners socks again. They were. You know you don't change your socks. No, I have changed Since last year. I've actually washed them since last year. This is the show where you answer your tech questions at 8887242884. That's 7248TTG. I didn't know that. No, I do. That's good 8887248TTG yeah 8877278TTG Sounds like a football game. You can also get us in other ways.

0:04:19 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, you can go to calltwittv as the URL.

When you go to that URL on your smartphone or your computer, you will be taken to a Zoom room where you'll hang out and potentially be brought live on air to answer or to ask your question for us to answer it.

Importantly, if you do choose that route, down at the bottom of the screen either on your computer or on your smartphone, you'll see a little hand and typically below it it'll say raise hand, you want to click or tap on that button? Because when you click or tap on that button, that lets us know that you indeed do have a question and that you're not just hanging out in the Zoom room, because we do have some folks who do that, which is fine. So make sure you do that. And then the other way to get in touch is atgtwittv, an email address, if you will. If you send your text, your video or your audio to that email address, that will also get added to the pool. And we should mention that if you call that phone number 8887248TTG or 8887242884, during the week, you will be able to leave a voicemail that can be asked and answered here on the show.

0:05:31 - Leo Laporte
Very nice, very, very nice. We got a lot of emails. I'm almost tempted to jump the queue with one, but I won't. No, I won't, I won't. I've got a pile right here. We'll go through them, you can jump the queue.

Sometimes I read one and I go. I really want to answer that one. So they have. You remember that device that I showed you, the Flipper Zero. This is a pen testing device to test penetration testing, to test your security. I gave it to Father Robert. He says he's done some things to it to make it even more powerful. Robert, you better not go to Canada.

0:06:05 - Mikah Sargent
I was going to say did he head to Canada?

0:06:07 - Leo Laporte
Canada has declared that any device that can be used to capture, analyze or interact with your remote keyless entry system will be illegal. Illegal including the Flipper Zero. It's now, and actually that's going to sell a lot more.

0:06:24 - Mikah Sargent
I was going to say, the more people will be buying them right.

0:06:26 - Leo Laporte
The banned Flipper Zero.

0:06:29 - Mikah Sargent
What is the definition in this case? Because is it not already illegal to use a device to break into a car to then drive off with it? If you don't own it, that's already illegal.

0:06:42 - Leo Laporte
But it's too easy to do it, and so they. I think it's not unreasonable to ban device. Flipper Zero is a very poor choice, though. If you're going to do this, this is not a good way to do it. There are better ways to do it. So you know, because it's $200, you can get a $30 device and anyway, fine, go ahead, dan, I don't care. There'll be a good brisk black market for Flipper Zeros in Canada. Speaking of things you should not do, I don't know how it got through the App Store. Apple really makes a big deal about how the App Store protects you. This is why we don't want to comply with the European Union's request that we open a additional. It would be a disaster for security. Meanwhile, apple has let a fake last pass through. Did you fall for it?

0:07:26 - Mikah Sargent
No, I didn't fall for it, I. But here's the thing. This really upsets me, because I have this built in skepticism when I browse the Google Play Store and I will do my full due diligence, make sure it's coming from the right developer, all of this stuff to make sure that I'm downloading the app that I'm expecting. I think it is. But I will be honest that when it comes to the App Store, for the most part, I don't have that same level of skepticism. And it's reminding me that it's important to have that same level of skepticism. You need to be looking not just at the name of the app or the fact that it's in the App Store, you need to be looking at the developer who makes it.

Oftentimes, what I will do I do do this from time to time is in the sort of second area where you've got the ratings, you've got the age, you've got the category, you'll also see the developer. It's handy to tap on the developer's name and see what other apps they've put into the App Store, because if, for example, you're downloading an app from Microsoft and you want to check that it's actually from Microsoft, you can tap on that section and you can see okay, here are all of the other Microsoft apps. They're there as well and then kind of that's a good jumping off point to follow through here. We would have seen that it was from Parvati Patel or Parvati Patel, and upon tapping on it you might see that there are no other apps that the person has created.

0:08:56 - Leo Laporte
But this one has a five star rating. Yes, the reviews are very good for this one, so you might say you know. One of your techniques is to look at the ratings. See that five stars. Of course there's only one rating and it's from Parvati Patel, but that might fool people too. The other giveaway is it's LastPass. There's no T but it looks like LastPass is the same, lastpass colors. That LastPass is warning people, do not download it. Bleeping Computer, which has the article said. We didn't test it so we don't know if it's malicious. Nevertheless, something like this should never get into the App Store, and the fact that it did kind of undermines Apple's arguments that, oh, we are the stewards of your safety and protection and you should never let a third body App Store in. You know the super secure walled garden well.

0:09:43 - Mikah Sargent
At the very least, it's terrible timing that this is happening right after Apple complained about letting things happen through the third play.

0:09:51 - Leo Laporte
App Store no kidding, no kidding, Anything you thought was a big story. I'm just kind of scanning through the stories of the week. I mean we cover them all later today on this Week in Tech our big show.

0:10:03 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, and we talked about it on twig, but you did have that piece from Quartz about your phone not listening to you.

0:10:09 - Leo Laporte
I think it's always a handy reminder to bring that up again.

0:10:13 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, your phone is not listening to you. There are many other ways that phones are able to track your information. And it was funny because right after that same night that we did the show, went home and I got a text message from a friend and we were talking back and forth and then suddenly he said I know that Instagram is listening to me and I know all of you tech people will say that it's not true, but I know it's true. Going on and on and it was just like, quite literally on that show I had mentioned that the struggle that I have is we can provide as much proof as we want to, but still people don't believe us, whatever we say.

0:10:51 - Leo Laporte
So your phone is listening to you in the sense that when you type something into Facebook or Instagram you're telling, or you buy something on Instagram, you're telling them what you're interested in. But it is not. It cannot turn on the microphone without your knowledge, and the article referred back the Quartz article referred back to a study from 20, I think 18 of Northwestern University, where they really looked deeply into this and found no evidence that A&AP can turn on your phone without the light coming on on your phone and apps aren't sending about all this. It would be mounds of data constantly if it's recording everything you're doing. So, in any event, you should not, you should not worry about that. There was one other thing I did want to do, which is you have four or five more days to return your Vision Pro, and I'm just curious where we are in the hype cycle. Are we in the trough?

0:11:47 - Mikah Sargent
of despair, yet the trough of despair. So I actually want to mention everybody who's listening should go check out the Hands on Tech episode that we just published. It's a questions answered episode and it was more than an hour worth of answering different questions that I think people wanted to know. First and foremost, the comfort. They wanted to know how much multitasking they could do with it. They wanted to know who's it for, they wanted to know if it had games. So it was general questions about my use of the device. But there were quite a few questions about the comfort and the longevity and how much I was able to wear it and use it.

And I came up with a metaphor that I've decided to sort of apply to the Apple Vision Pro. And I am looking at this Apple Vision Pro like I think astronauts would have looked at the space suit that got us onto the moon in the first place Incredibly uncomfortable, very bulky, hard to move around in a maneuver, but you were on the freaking moon and so, separating this idea of this frankly horribly uncomfortable computer that I have to strap to my face from what truly is a magical and fun and exciting and really interesting experience, it's like like I get to go to the moon, but unfortunately I have to do it with this thing that makes me so uncomfortable and that I don't want to be a part of, and so, yeah, as it stands, paying that much money to be that uncomfortable for any period of time is just not worth it. So I guess, yeah, I'm in the trough of despair, which is a disillusionment, I think, is what is what the Gartner Group calls it.

0:13:51 - Leo Laporte
This is the Gartner hype cycle. You get the technology trigger, that's I don't know where that happened with the Vision Pro, maybe with the shipping, the peak of inflated expectations, that's in the first few days, then the trough of disillusionment, the slope of enlightenment and the plateau of productivity, and I think it's not unreasonable. I think maybe we'll hit that plateau with the Vision Pro. There was a very interesting post on Reddit Steve Jobs in 2005,. What is that, 18 years ago, 19 years ago, talking about? Well, let me play it. This is from the All Things D conference.

0:14:31 - Caller
The fundamental problem here is that headphones are a miraculous thing. You put on a pair of headphones and you get the same experience you get with a great pair of speakers. There's no such thing as headphones for video. There's not something I can carry with me, that I can put on, and it gives me the same experience I get when I'm watching my 50 inch plasma display at home. And until somebody events that you're going to have these opposing constraints, well, they have those huge goggles you can wear, but they're lousy, but you're never going to date, if you ever wear them.

0:15:02 - Leo Laporte
That's Walt Mossberg, so I thought that was interesting. Steve. Jobs, even in 2005, made a very, I think, an apt analogy. The problem is headphones. Maybe it's because we got used to them I mean, we've had headphones my whole life. They don't seem as uncomfortable or as unwieldy as covering your eyes. Covering your eyes is a I think it's a big thing.

0:15:24 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, covering your ears is not such a big.

0:15:26 - Leo Laporte
Thing. Yeah, I mean there's, there's. Remember headphones started heavy and big and somewhat uncomfortable. Now we've got them. Now we're both wearing headphones and they're perfectly comfortable, so maybe it's possible. I don't know.

0:15:42 - Mikah Sargent
I do. I think that it's eventually possible. I think you know in the same way, with that, that analogy, that I've made the next spacesuit that we're working on right now to go back to the moon. It's going to be very different from what we originally had. Right, you get to go to the moon and maybe it's not as uncomfortable, and that's what I see for the future of this. I just think right now I'm in this thing that I can barely move my arms in and I get to be on the moon, but it's still not what I want.

0:16:10 - Leo Laporte
So you, you are, oh, absolutely yeah. And would you if you were, if we we're making him return it because we can't afford to keep it, but if you, if we said, okay, keep it, would you keep it?

0:16:24 - Mikah Sargent
I don't, I wouldn't want to, Because then it would mean that I would, it would. It would be my requirement to have to wear it regularly.

0:16:33 - Leo Laporte
You'd have to use it. Yeah, yeah, see, I have. I spent $1,400 on the Quest Pro and it literally is dusty, sitting on the shelf in my office because I just not motivated to wear it at any point.

0:16:44 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, from the, from the desire to provide the people what they want. That's where, maybe you know, we would have interested in it. Yeah, people are interested in it and I want to be sure that I'm doing my job Well. Here's the good news.

0:16:57 - Leo Laporte
Alex Lindsey has it, Jason Snell has it. There are people, many people apparently, in our audience who have it, who probably won't return it. So, yeah, we'll let them. We'll let them do the heart part. Phone number again 888-724-ATTG. If you want to call in. Who should we talk to to start this? We can talk, but you were really interested in that one email. You want me to read it. I'll read it just really quickly because I thought it was interesting. He's going to jump the line a little bit though. Paul. I'm a Twit Club member, so you get to jump the line. Oh, thankful for all that you do for us. Leah and Mikah, your name's in here.

I finally decided it's time to make some changes to my internet and streaming services. There's some areas I'm unsure of. First, little background. My wife and I both work from home using Teams Three teenagers that love to stream and game online. Right now I have two ethernet lines for my Xfinity router. One goes to a 10 port TP-Link switch for their PC and gaming consoles, the other to a 5-point TP 4-f port TP-Link switch in our office for our work laptops. We use Xfinity. I have a plan with a least router that upgrades every two years.

Okay, that's good Upload speeds of 900 plus megabits Upload. I think he means download, because I have that gigabit service that they offer and it is download only. It's about 30 megabits upload. We also have TV service, but we only use it for live sporting events. We pay over $200 a month. Oh, they may have a business, a symmetric business plan. We also have streaming services on top of that. I'd like to make some changes, especially since there are other internet service providers out here. Get rid of TV, but I'm worried that I don't know what speed I need, that my wife and I could both work and not be affected by a board streaming and gaming. I think gigabit would be enough.

0:18:51 - Mikah Sargent
I was going to say gigabits, probably enough, and I think that, especially if you're in a home and not an apartment complex or something like that, that you're already in a better place, because it means that it's more likely that you're not going to be competing bandwidth-wise with a bunch of other people who are on that same node. I think that if they truly are upgrading the router regularly, or I guess if you go with a new system, then you're going to get something else, because that's going to play a role. It's not just how fast you are, but it's also is the hardware capable?

0:19:27 - Leo Laporte
So we went to in a similar situation although we don't have that many teenagers, thank God. But during COVID I really wanted to upgrade and that's when we went to gigabit and we used a ubiquity router and switch and ubiquity Wi-Fi and that has been more than adequate for the streaming and so forth. The nice thing about the ubiquity the ultimate dream machine at least the rack mount unit is it does. It can have a second internet connection that will then bond to increase your speed. So it is. Maybe the thing to do would be do some get a router that can do that bonding. Not necessarily get the second provider yet, but at some point you could get a second line from Xfinity and do bonding and so if a gigabit wasn't enough, you could do that.

I think a gigabit is. We're so spoiled now. That's a lot of bandwidth your teams upload. If you're both on teams at the same time and you have at least 30 or 40 megabits up and 30 or 40 megabits down, you're not going to use more than in fact I think I think with when we use Zoom. Correct me if I'm wrong, john, I don't know if you know, but I think Zoom doesn't use more than 18 megabits a second. I think that's the max 18 megabits a second.

Do we know how much Zoom ISO uses per call? I think it's much. It was surprisingly low to get a good high resolution call. So that's, let's say, you need 40 up and down for you and your wife for work. Your kids are just downloading, they're not uploading. But I think it's the same situation Netflix says. In fact, I'll show you the Netflix speed calculator. That's actually a useful thing to know. It's for Netflix, but it gives you a rough ballpark figure of what you need for any kind of streaming video. Let me see here there it is, internet connection speed recommendations. So if you want an ultra-high definition 4K for Netflix, that's 15 megabits.

0:21:30 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, that's down. 15 megabits down, easy peasy.

0:21:33 - Leo Laporte
So I think, even if you have 14-agers, that's 15 times 4, that's 60. Yeah, and you're doing it, that's another 40. That's still only 100 megabits. It's the 10th of your total download capability. I think you're okay. Gigabit is really a lot more than we think and I think, more importantly, we assume that we need a lot more than this. Now I think I would say you want 25 megabits down for Netflix ultra-high definition.

0:22:01 - Caller
I agree, but even that seems low.

0:22:04 - Leo Laporte
That's Netflix, that's their official number. But even then I just don't think you. A gigabit, I think is plenty, a great, plenty, plenty, plenty. But you're right about the equipment Get some good gear That'll help, and don't all be on Wi-Fi. I noticed he said Ethernet for the office.

0:22:19 - Mikah Sargent
That's good. That makes a big difference. Yeah, and a lot of the modern hardware will have things like bandwidth steering where depending on because different types of traffic.

0:22:30 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, they call it QOS. Look for that also, because you can then say prioritize teams.

0:22:36 - Mikah Sargent
Yep, there's different tagging that happens in the back end of what is being sent and delivered, and so it can say, hey, if it's Microsoft Teams or some other conference system, I want that to get priority, so that mom and dad can make the money so the kids could play the games.

0:22:52 - Leo Laporte
Right, yeah, I think that, honestly, what it would often do is say, well, prioritize two-way streaming and then prioritize one-way streaming and then email.

0:23:02 - Mikah Sargent
And then yeah, exactly.

0:23:04 - Leo Laporte
So great question, Paul. Thank you, and I hope you don't mind that I jumped the line with that, but I thought no, it's something a lot of people might want.

0:23:09 - Mikah Sargent
Exactly how much is enough? Those general universal questions?

0:23:13 - Leo Laporte
You can now get. Somebody was telling me oh, my friend Brock was telling me they're moving to Philadelphia and they're getting Verizon Fiber two gigabits. And he said well, I have to upgrade my hardware because most of my hardware won't handle two gigabits. So he uses a firewall as his firewall, which is a great little product. And they do have a two and a half gigabit version. So you wow, I think a gigabit is probably most gear is sufficient. You're not going to you have to get special gear. We have 10 gigabits down from Sonic, which we love, but most of our switches won't handle it. Right, I had my machine won't handle it, yeah, so we don't get the benefit of it. We do, because it's a shared environment. So, yeah, good question, good question, let's do another one, so real quick.

0:24:02 - Mikah Sargent
I just want to mention yeah for anyone that may have been calling into the show, yes, we normally don't start until 11. And because of that we have there's zoom call, little auto receptionist things set up that oh so that?

0:24:15 - Leo Laporte
do we not turn off the auto receptionist?

0:24:21 - Mikah Sargent
I am the auto receptionist. Do not call me At this point right now, john. You said it was 1040.

0:24:27 - Leo Laporte
It should be open now, oh it's opening now. So call in now. No wonder, wait, I do see Kenny's got his hand up, but I just I bet yes, so you might have gotten. What did it say? Don't, don't, it goes right to voicemail. Well, that would explain that. Okay, the auto reception. I'll tell you what. Let's take a little time out and when we come back the 49ers will beat the Kansas City Chiefs 53 to three.

If that's my prediction, 88 to 87, my prediction is we're going to beat you by a lot. Okay, maybe not 53.

0:25:05 - Mikah Sargent
Leo, my mom is watching today. Now you stress her out.

0:25:08 - Leo Laporte
I don't want to stress you, but we're going to beat you and I'm. You know what. It's good for Travis and Taylor, because everybody loves a loser. And this way, Taylor, when she flies back to Tokyo for the second leg of her Euras tour, we'll say yeah, he wasn't all that. There we go.

0:25:32 - Mikah Sargent
It's good for the relationship and it'll be great content for the next 50 years. All the songs about Travis's version.

0:25:40 - Leo Laporte
Do you think there is some conversation that the NFL won't let the Chiefs lose? Because Taylor. Swift is so good for the NFL.

0:25:51 - Mikah Sargent
Sorry, sorry. Are you saying it's like professional wrestling now, and so there are those who do that?

0:25:57 - Leo Laporte
And what happens is you talk to the refs and you say, just you know, little nudge in the Taylor Swift direction because it's good for business Come on. It's good for business, but you know what else is good for business?

0:26:08 - Mikah Sargent
What?

0:26:08 - Leo Laporte
Seeing Taylor Swift cry on camera and then getting all of the fans, and then she get a big hug from Travis and they walk off into the sunset and everybody feel bad for them, and then she'd write a song about the Chiefs losing. Yeah, yeah, either way you know that's good for business too. And then next year, see you next year becomes the refrain. In fact, that might be the name of her next song.

0:26:27 - Mikah Sargent
That's what it's called. See you next year. Wow, all these predictions.

0:26:30 - Leo Laporte
I'm just predicting. I'm going to set this up in case we lose. I want to have, I want to have an excuse. That's the thing these days Prepare for the worst.

0:26:40 - Mikah Sargent
You know, I've been doing that since I was four years old. Really, oh, it's called. I call it um. Oh shoot. Now I get protective skepticism. That's what I call it.

0:26:49 - Leo Laporte
It's funny because I used to do that when I was that age. I thought, if I say it's not going to happen, it will happen. So I say, well, it's not going to happen. It's not going to happen because I secretly want it to happen, right.

0:27:00 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, so you wait, you were almost doing reverse cycle to the universe To the universe.

0:27:04 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, cause I thought I had some influence.

0:27:07 - Mikah Sargent
Ha ha, and I I bet protective pessimism, not protective pessimism. Protective pessimism is my turn for it. Yes, yes.

0:27:14 - Leo Laporte
Uh, who should we talk to now? Nope, we're taking a break. We did take a break, that was the break. But we have Ecamm. Oh, I have to actually do a commercial in the break. Shocking, well, I thought I. Uh, I thought we were just stalling. Okay, our show today brought to you by Ecamm. You use Ecamm. I should be doing this commercial. Use it all the time. Although when I so we had the power go out last week, I ran home to finish. We were fortunate we were towards the end anyway.

0:27:42 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, what did I do?

0:27:42 - Leo Laporte
I fired up Ecamm Live cause I love Ecamm  Live. It's the leading live streaming and video production studio built for Mac and, frankly, if we had started Twitter now, I would probably just say, oh, we don't need all this expensive millions of dollars a year, let's just use Ecamm Live. Whether you're a beginner or an expert, e cam is here to elevate your video production. Everything we do on this show we could do with the cam live, from streaming and recording to podcasting and presenting. Ecamm Live is your all in one video tool. Perfect for simplifying your workflow.

Ecamm Live includes support for multiple cameras and screen sharing, plus the live camera switcher. It lets you direct your show in real time as you go, which is fun. You stand out from the crowd too, cause the video is super high quality. You know that's important. Plus, it does the lower thirds, the logos, the titles, the graphics, the screen sharing. You can drop in video clips, you can bring on interview guests, you can use a green screen. You can do everything. In fact, it's really more than I can even use I have. I love it. I mean, it's amazing.

Join the thousands of worldwide entrepreneurs, marketing professionals, podcasters, educators, musicians and other Mac users who rely on Ecamm Live daily. You know I love about Ecamm Live is the skies the limit. If you get better and better and better, you can do more and more and more. You're never going to feel like, oh, I'm limited by this software. Get one month free when you subscribe to any of Ecamms plans. When you go to ecamm.com/twit but you got to use the promo code twit T W I T at checkout. ecamm.com/twit Mikah and Rosemary use it for their show.

0:29:20 - Mikah Sargent
And I quickly want to mention something that really blew me away. I was not expecting the interview feature, which is essentially kind of like a built in calling feature that brings people in. What was amazing to me is that I had people calling in for this thing that I was doing, and one of them had a green screen behind them. I was able to pipe in their video and then locally key their green screen out and put the background in that I wanted and I just thought what that's so cool.

0:29:45 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, yeah, we may someday, you may. It may look exactly like this, but I may be in my living room. You never know. You never know. Thank you, e cam. All right, now we're ready for our next call. Yes, we are ready. By the way, I should have mentioned samable Samad coming up at noon, in about an hour and 15 minutes. But who should we talk to now?

0:30:07 - Mikah Sargent
Since you mentioned Kenny, I have to pick up on Kenny.

0:30:11 - Leo Laporte
Kenny, I know who it is, kenny, from cotton town, tennessee. Hello Kenny.

0:30:15 - Caller
Can you hear me?

0:30:16 - Leo Laporte
Okay, I hear you Great. Wow, you sound better than ever. What are you doing here, kenny?

0:30:21 - Caller
Well, I'm coming back from space, as you can see. By the way, I am for the chiefs. I used to have a brother in law and he's still listening to Kansas City, but he lived in around our area for a few years and I'm rooting for the chiefs by the ball. And plus, I don't want 49ers to win the super bowl because ranks, because it would then be the sixth ring yes, and nobody has more than five fingers on one hand Right, wait, that's wait.

0:30:49 - Mikah Sargent
That's the. Is that the reason why? No, that's not the reason.

0:30:51 - Leo Laporte
We're ready. It's ready. Where it's the quest for six? Look at you in space and you can look down and you can see Las Vegas and the sphere, probably because it's so bright. Yes, what's up?

0:31:05 - Caller
Andy. Hey, I got a question you guys are just talking about, ironically, netflix and professional wrestling. I want to get your thoughts on the news and this is a little bit an older story of Netflix saying the five billion dollar deal with WWE To broadcast one of their shows, monday Night Raw, for ten years for five billion dollars. Yeah, they wanted to get into the live content business. For quite a long time it was just a matter of what sport could they justify? And Professional wrestling it kind of makes sense in a way in the fact that they beat Amazon to the punch. I also thought Was pretty impressive, with everything that's going around in this being WrestleMania, which is their Super Bowl coming up in a couple of months. I don't know if you're aware of it or not, but what are your thoughts of Netflix finally getting into the live content business, netflix?

0:31:58 - Mikah Sargent
Netflix is really good. I have to give them props for their ability to understand social media, marketing and Trends, and you'll see that they've got these different parts of Netflix. There's Netflix to them and Netflix that does Indie films and all of these different kind of brands within Netflix, and so I'm not surprised to see them realize that there's a branding play here that they can really get people Excited and because that's the thing, it's this, it's this whole network that Netflix does, where it's not just what's on Netflix itself, but they've got Instagram accounts and X accounts formerly known as Twitter and other places where they're posting this stuff as well. So, yeah, I think that, if their first dip into live, it makes sense that it's something that I think so much aligns with the way that they do everything else.

If they had done golf, I would have been a little confused, as that being the, you know, you don't have as much of that social media presence and memes and everything else that's involved. If they had done I don't know snowboarding for live events, this just makes sense to me as as an opportunity. Yeah, I'm, that's all I have to say about it. I'm not a wrestling person, but I just think Netflix in this lineup, not a fan of stone cold, steve Austin.

I know many of them. Dwayne the Rock, johnson Dwayne came from WWE.

0:33:25 - Leo Laporte
Rock the Rock is cooking, yeah, so they consider what Netflix business issue is right now, which is it's one of the most expensive streaming subscriptions out there and there's a problem because people watch hits, so they buy a subscription and Netflix for stranger things, but then it's over and Somehow Netflix has to keep them subscribing and a lot of people I keep hearing people say this is what I do I sign up, I watch the show and then I cancel. Yep, so Netflix has a problem. They call that churn. People who sign up and cancel that was has a churn problem. They need something that's gonna keep people signed up Continuously and raw offers. That for sure, because it's every week. Right, it isn't, I mean numbers wise, it's not. It's.

Usa Network said they have 17 and a half million viewers a year over the course of a year. So it's not massive. But, very importantly, the demographic is which is it's one of the best performing shows in the demographic of 18 to 49 year olds, so that's a very prime advertising. So that's kind of interesting. Netflix has only recently turned to advertising. I should point out that we kind of see this coming. Netflix did its first live streaming event with a Chris Rock Comedy special last year. Do you remember that? And I think that was there. That was their test A, to see if people would tune in because we're not a this isn't, you're not the tune-in generation.

Yeah, yeah you're the, I'll watch it when I watch it, and so that's one problem with live is that that's not how we're conditioned to watch. So I think they were very curious to see if Chris Rock could get the draw with a live show. I think he did. I think it was a six. I know we watched it live because I wanted to see what he said about the slap, right, so so I think that was that was a good test for them. They said all right, but it's such a different business model from the watch it when you want to watch it. Now we I might have a little insight into that, because we are also a Podcast as a podcast network, a watch it when you want to watch it, but from day one, we've done live. The live audience is a small fraction of the total audience is a small fraction of the total audience, but there's something about that live audience, which includes you, kenny, because there's a to say I'm gonna get up on a Sunday and watch this show, right, those are your most devoted fans, those, the ones who are not gonna churn, who are not gonna Watch and then cancel, and so it's. It's a value, though you, the people who watch live, are a really valuable part of the audience. So I think Netflix it's an experiment for them.

I it Part of the reason they bought WWE. It was a lot cheaper than truck. You know Apple bought MLS, major League Soccer. You know they got YouTube, but Sunday night football or Sunday football, I mean, those are billion dollar deals. I don't I don't know if they ever mentioned a price on this, but I I don't think it was as expensive as though. So it's a great way for Netflix to take to experiment and, as you said, they're great. They're. I think they're very, very good business people. So I think that they said I don't, I don't feel like this. Is Netflix saying that our future Is live right by any means.

0:36:36 - Mikah Sargent
No, I think they want to test this one more place for them to test exactly. And you're so right about the churn. I think that's a really good point that, yeah, I know many people I'm not one, because I'm in a privileged enough position that I can keep the subscription over time but I know quite a few people who they wait for the whole show to come out if it is released piece by piece, and then they get the subscription so they can watch it during that period of time and then they cancel the subscription afterward you could tell that worries them because, for instance, they made 18 sequels to Bridgerton.

0:37:08 - Leo Laporte
It's like, well, we got people to watch Bridgeton, we guys just keep making more Bridgeton. So what is the? I'm just gonna look at a list of the most watched Netflix series. Number one oh, this is the 91 day list. So you know Netflix. It's interesting because they don't. Wednesday was number one, then, stranger things, dahmer, bridgeton, the Queen's Gambit but they don't get numbers that are, for instance, they don't even offer numbers that are comparable to TV numbers. They don't like billions of hours viewed and things like that.

0:37:44 - Mikah Sargent
I think there was even a push recently from producers and directors.

0:37:47 - Leo Laporte
They want to know the numbers. Try to get them to do numbers. Yeah, I Think this is Netflix being very smart and canny and and without you know, I mean, look, this major league soccer deal that Apple did 10 years, right. The YouTube Sunday ticket deal, I think, is five years. These are these and that's because these are Franchises that are guaranteed right. Major League soccer is actually kind of a bet, a risky bet for Apple.

Apple's just get a lot of money, but everybody's looking at live as a way to kind of keep the audience engaged. The live viewing is the only thing that still drives television ratings, right. People, people aren't really watching sitcoms on a Wednesday night to the degree they once were. It's the Super Bowl. Super Bowl, by the way, this year is expected to be the largest by far ever in viewing. I think they said as many as 120 million Viewers, which is remarkable. So live is still a driver, at least in broadcast. We'll see if it's a good thing for a good fit for Netflix, because Netflix is not traditionally you watch when you want to watch.

0:39:00 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, yeah, that's that is going to be the interesting branding. Play right to figure out how Netflix makes it clear that they're doing something that is indeed live, as opposed to what I've always known Netflix for, which is I go there and I Look at the library and I watch something when I want any can you smell what Netflix is cooking oh.

0:39:21 - Caller
Yes, I am smelling that raw will probably be among the top five, maybe not necessarily number one, in Netflix viewers. And another thing you're talking about experimenting. One quick thing ESPN Box sports and one brothers discovery are also getting together for essentially a bundled streaming plan.

0:39:40 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, I thought that was wild, yeah, and I don't think that's good. Who's?

0:39:44 - Caller
who's from the Rock Sun, leighton, said that this is designed more for coordinators, because of all the ones that have Streaming services, the only one that hasn't done it is box in terms of live content. Right, they pretty much held their sports side of it and now they're getting in. And the ironing all this everyone's thinking, well, maybe this is ESPN's Direct to consumer plan. They just announced that that's not coming to 2025. So this is again another like exposure and branding, where ESPN is trying to get their brand Everywhere they can possibly get, because they need to make money just needs to make money because, like everyone else there's struggling.

0:40:23 - Leo Laporte
We're in an interesting in interesting time in content, which is it's a complete, you know Disruption time.

Right, the way we used to watch TV 20 years ago is completely gone, and so all of these, all these companies, have to reinvent themselves. Remember that the interesting about thinking about Netflix is they have had big successes with episodic shows like Drive to survive, the formula one show, and it may well be that they just see WWE raw as a way to get. Then they're. Then they will create a whole bunch of episodic content around wrestling. There's a way to get that wrestling audience to subscribe to Netflix and then the way they keep them is not with the live stuff it's only once a week but with the episodic stuff. So expect to see and if you're a fan, this will be good news a bunch of WWE shows. You know they've done some really fun shows with the NFL where they go behind this the season and they watch a team for a whole season stuff like that. I think that stuff's really really good and a Netflix is really good at that kind of thing.

0:41:29 - Mikah Sargent
They are. They'll have a show and then suddenly six shows sprout from it like some sort of terrifying Hydra right.

0:41:35 - Leo Laporte
Well, speaking of Hydra's, there is a Netflix Cup tournament that pairs formula one drivers with pro golfers. So there are some hybrids out there, some some hydras out there that are a little scary looking. I you know it's a fun topic to talk about, kenny, because when you're in a disruption and the internet has created so many of these, it's always interesting to see who are the winners and losers. Who's nimble enough to capture the, the gold ring, and who just says I, what's going on? I don't understand it. It's interesting that Murdoch's kids are involved.

Lachlan is a smart guy, but but it's traditionally very hard for something like Fox, for something like the Murdoch Empire, to transition into a new thing. In fact, murdoch has had some spectacular failures with internet projects. You build newsrooms and stuff. It's hard to do because you know one business, you're making a lot of money in one business. Very hard to transition into the next thing without cannibalizing your business. Clay Christensen called it the innovators dilemma and I think it really is still the case, and so Netflix has shown a really good ability, I think, to be nimble. Remember when they announced the end? I don't know if people remember this, but they announced the end of their subscription disc business. They were actually going to split the company into a disc business and a streaming business and the stock market punished them brutally. People thought the company is over, it's dead. But re-hacing is brilliant and he was able to to transition and we know now, think of Netflix as a streaming company, right? We don't think it was they killed, right?

0:43:20 - Mikah Sargent
exactly, yeah they Messaged me saying hey, you've got a couple of those discs. You really still have some red envelopes. Yeah, wow, I had. Well, it's funny because I had just recently resubscribed to it because my partner had wanted to see a couple of films that we couldn't find elsewhere except on Netflix DVD. So I resubscribed to it and then it was a month later that they said, oh, we're getting rid of this, so I had some still that I needed to return.

0:43:47 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, I think the the market now likes Netflix a little bit more. It's a very it's. I love this because I don't have a dog in the sun, so I love it because it's fun to watch and it's great for us to report on it. And as people will consume content I think most of us are it's very interesting to see what's happening. There'll be some, there'll be some bumps along the way, that's for sure, but I think you know what's interesting. I think the fact that Fox and Warner and ESPN are getting together to create a single streaming channel is actually Retrograde. It's regressive and I think it's a mistake. But we'll see, we'll see. You know. We remember quibi. Anyway, it's great to talk to you, kenny. Go Michigan.

0:44:31 - Caller
Yes, great to talk to you too. I guess you probably noticed before I let you go I've got a University of Michigan shirt on. They won the national.

0:44:38 - Leo Laporte
I did, and we, and then, and then the, and then the Chargers stole your Stole, your coach.

0:44:44 - Caller
Hey, it's still guy, and still he's still there. So, as far as I'm concerned, he's with the family. I do want to mention, though, that you know, wait a minute.

0:44:53 - Leo Laporte
Are you saying there's another harbaugh?

0:44:56 - Caller
Well, jim, yeah, he's going to LA. Yeah, you got John, who's in Baltimore now. Yeah, and they're supposed to meet this upcoming season.

0:45:04 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, well, that'd be fun. Yeah, they had a data. That will be fun, yeah. I thought you I thought you said Michigan got a new harbaugh, okay, good, well, that's. Only two so far.

0:45:16 - Caller
Plenty. I think he's gonna be capable, but he's gonna have to. It may be a couple of years before they get back into the Big 10 national championship on, but speaking of University of Michigan's, don't worry about sports ball.

0:45:27 - Leo Laporte
You just don't understand. Yeah, I'm good, I'm good.

0:45:30 - Caller
Corset, of course, is Dr Chuck or Charles. Severance has a new program out and this is for anybody that's interested in learning a C programming Programming for everybody. Specialization is just come out. Have you taken?

0:45:44 - Leo Laporte
the courses from Coursera.

0:45:47 - Caller
I'm gonna take this particular one because it's on unix and Linux and I've had a couple of Linux operating systems installed, one for arm and one for the eggs, 86, 64 structures so I can get comfortable with using Linux more on a regular basis and I'm gonna try to see one out and see what it's all about.

0:46:08 - Leo Laporte
He's a great language and, of course, professor Severance is a big Python proponent. As well as written, yes, he is Python books and I, you know, if people ask me, I always say learn Python, not see, but If you, if you're, if you're a coder and you want to see was my first high-level language. I love to see a lot of fun. Yeah, hey, nice to talk to you, kenny, have a good day. All right, and go cheese, go blue. Take care, go chiefs. I Ask the tech guys continues with. Let's do another call. I'm in the mood. I'm in the mood. Do we have one?

0:46:45 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, I'm gonna pick up on Chris once I can hit the buttons.

0:46:49 - Leo Laporte
Chris. Welcome join your salary, dr Chuck. Clinical professor at the University of Michigan School of Information, chuck Severance.

0:47:00 - Mikah Sargent
His website. So you have to hit the button. I'm you to sell dr Dash Chuck calm.

0:47:05 - Leo Laporte
It's so. Looks like it was written in C. Holy moly. Looks like it was written in C.

0:47:09 - Mikah Sargent
So does that mean it has to be emulated?

0:47:17 - Leo Laporte
What's your first name where you're calling from?

0:47:19 - Caller
I'm Chris from South Florida. We've spoken before. Hi, chris. I have an update on a call from about three months ago. Oh, I was the guy that Google moved from Florida to Washington DC.

0:47:31 - Mikah Sargent
Oh my goodness, yes, that was ridiculous.

0:47:35 - Caller
I Kind of figured it out. I I had an old router in my house and I took that old router, plugged it in and set it up with Xfinity and Loan. Behold, I was back in Florida.

0:47:45 - Leo Laporte
Oh, what in the world? So is the right? Only no, you think it was the right.

0:47:50 - Caller
Yeah, the router was tied to some IP somewhere, so I went out and got a new Orbe and plugged that in and everything was.

0:47:57 - Mikah Sargent
Oh, so do you when you're right. Is it the modem that you're talking about? If no, the router? Oh, interesting, because if you plugged an Orbe into it, or the modem router combi.

0:48:10 - Leo Laporte
And you had used that old one in Washington. No, never, it's just cited. You know what happened, is you, you, you, when you put the new device on the cable network In order to get to work, the cable network registers a MAC address. In order to get to work, the cable, the cable network, I don't know. Did you have to call them and say, hey, I've got a new device, or or did?

0:48:32 - Caller
Xfinity and they've got an app, if you you think it, with the app yeah self-service it. Yeah, so that's what happens.

0:48:38 - Leo Laporte
As you said, I have a new hardware and they went, oh okay, fine, and they gave you. They may have given you a new IP address by the way, did, exactly and when you do that, then that, then they're gonna give you one from their floor at South Florida.

0:48:50 - Caller
So there's a Permanent. I put the old or be back on and, lo and behold, I was back in DC.

0:48:55 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, wow, so for some reason that IP address the old one is geolocated to DC.

0:49:00 - Caller
Hi to that or be yeah. Hey, I've got a new question for you. I'm kind of a logical thinker and I use Seagate's backup software to back up my hard drives. Mm-hmm, they cook like like co-branded and a cronus black. Yeah. Yeah, but it's it. It got updated and it's throwing up a new question to me and I'm really not too sure which way to go. It says to reap. When you copy the last step, it asked Do you want to use this On this machine to clone with a bootable OS, or do you want to use this on another machine? Well, really, my answer to that is both. You know if the hard drive goes on this machine. I just want to drop the new one.

0:49:44 - Leo Laporte
So here's what it's, here's what it's doing. You want the second choice because you want to be a backup. It's gonna be a larger backup because it's what's good. It's gonna clone the operating system including all the drivers for that current machine so that you can boot to that backup. I like having a bootable backup. That means if your internal hard drive fails you could tell the machine boot to the backup. It'll boot up and your stuff will all be there. But that's a different kind of backup than a universal backup that you could use and restore anywhere. And it's gonna be bigger because it's gonna have an operating system on it. It's gonna, in fact I would bet I don't know from this the cronus stuff, but I would bet it's actually a Clone of the drive as opposed to say a backup. You know it's gonna look exit that drive. That second backup drives gonna look exactly like the first one and that's.

0:50:31 - Caller
They both say bootable operating. Both says one to replace the disk on this machine and the other option is to use on another machine.

0:50:40 - Leo Laporte
But, but they're both bootable. Well then, maybe, maybe then the the one that for this machine is copying all the drivers for that machine, the hardware drivers.

0:50:49 - Caller
And this event if the machine died and I had to move that hard drive to another machine, I wouldn't have the drivers right.

0:50:57 - Leo Laporte
They're wrong drivers. You wouldn't have the wrong drivers.

0:50:59 - Caller
That's not a really want to use the the option to use on another machine.

0:51:04 - Leo Laporte
Well, I don't think it'll matter, because even if they do that, you should be able to restore the backup onto a new machine. You just may not be bootable on the new machine, right? So it depends on what you want. I like having a bootable backup because that's absolutely what I want.

Yeah so then choose the first option, choose the bootable backup on this machine. You should still be able to restore it on any machine. Okay, it's not boot, and even, truth is, with Windows, windows is smart enough that goes. Well, wait a minute, that's a different video card, let me go see what it's I get. So it's not necessarily gonna break it anyway, but I think they were just, you know, hedging their bets on that. I didn't know. I can't have a different driver. No, it's.

0:51:52 - Mikah Sargent
I don't think Windows sounds like that, although it should, yeah, I kind of like it yeah.

0:51:57 - Caller
Thank you guys. I appreciate your time, as always. Club member, we love you out here.

0:52:00 - Mikah Sargent
Thank you, thank you, thank you very much for your support.

0:52:04 - Leo Laporte
Do you get you let me ask you this a little Market research in in in the seat to market research. Do you Get value for your seven bucks a month?

0:52:17 - Caller
Oh, absolutely I don't. I own a Tesla. I don't know how to turn the radio on on a Tesla. All I listen is to yeah, the funny thing is I listen to the ones with the commercials. I actually enjoy the commercials.

0:52:30 - Leo Laporte
I don't go for the commercial free, You'd be surprised how many people say well, I don't want to join the club because I like the commercials. You can do both, you can do it. You really can.

The thing about the club is? It's a reason. I ask you this is it? We want to give you value, but really you're doing it to support us. That's that's the internal value is. Well, I want to keep the content going, but we try to give you, you know, ad free shows and additional shows in the discord and all that stuff Seven bucks a month. But we want to, we want to make it a thing that people, some people will go oh well, no, I've got to get my money's worth. But I would hope that most people would say well, I'm doing this because I want to stay on the air and keep doing shows. We, we really do need that extra revenue.

0:53:13 - Caller
OK, any fee, any fee at cost to keep you guys on the oh, that's very kind.

0:53:17 - Leo Laporte
And if you're not a member, you can go to wwwtwittv. Slash club twit. It does help us out. We very much. It's. It's a tough time right now for media, as you probably noticed, and we've suffered just like many other podcasts networks. I don't want to be one of one of the many who have gone out of business. I'd like to stick around. I think you'd like to stick around. I'd like to stick around. I like what we're doing.

Yeah, we, I think we really and we're being smart. We're returning the yes and pro, we're, we're, we're, you know, trying to tighten the belt wherever we can. Sometimes people say, well, leo, how come you have a car? Well, I guess I could walk. Probably better for me to walk. But a lot of what I buy these days people should know it comes out of my own funds. I did the radio show for 19 years that that money I put away saved so I'd have a retirement. So that's mostly what I when I spend, which is why I said you could have the Vision Pro, I'll buy it for you, and it mean out of Twitter funds right.

And out of my funds, yeah, but I'm glad you're not going to keep it because I'm not that loaded Take care.

0:54:26 - Mikah Sargent
So thanks for joining the club. I appreciate it yeah we want to.

0:54:30 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, we want it to be something that you go oh yeah, I'm getting my, my seven dollars worth. Yeah, seven dollars doesn't seem like that much.

0:54:36 - Mikah Sargent
No, in fact, over on Relay, they just raise their prices to seven dollars a month for the, for the membership.

0:54:42 - Leo Laporte
They probably watched what we were. Mike Hurley knows what we're doing, but Relay has been struggling to look like you know, their rocket, which is one of their premier shows, couldn't make it because of lack of advertising. That bothers me because that's such a great show. Yeah, absolutely, and you do clockwise.

0:54:57 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, and you're doing OK. Well, that's the thing. Is that there? For a while it was touching Very bleak? Yeah, We've had some, you know improvements, but it's still not not where we would want it to be, that's for sure.

0:55:11 - Leo Laporte
And you look at the LA Times and so many you know old school, traditional media, they're just all suffering and of course I you know there's layoffs in the tech industry, which is not suffering. So I don't understand.

0:55:23 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, yeah, well, and yeah. We talked about that on the show, didn't we? That a lot of the tech industry stuff is just for the stock market. It seems to be one following the other. It's a herd mentality.

0:55:33 - Leo Laporte
OK, the pre-show is over. We can now start the regular show. Oh good, 11-11. We are starting. We started a little early today. If you're just tuning in because of this, I know there's a football game later today Puppy Bowl, puppy Bowl, it's all about the puppy boy. Who I want to win? Fluffy Team, fluffy, team Ruff. Yeah, is that really the names, team Ruff and Team Fluffy?

0:55:56 - Mikah Sargent
Oh, no, team Ruff. Yeah, dr Mom agrees with me, go team.

0:55:59 - Leo Laporte
Ruff Ruff. You know, the stupid thing about the puppy bowl is nothing. They don't want to win, they're not trying to do anything, they're just running around. Isn't that football?

0:56:10 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, you ask your mom that, yeah she's like I'm probably going to get a text about that.

0:56:17 - Leo Laporte
So who else should we address?

0:56:20 - Mikah Sargent
I want to pick up on a caller. A phone call A phone call Now, the way this works.

0:56:25 - Leo Laporte
You press Star six, Unmute yourself Like the man said Star six and unmute and tell us your first name and socks are just slightly too short and it's really driving. Oh, I hate it when that happens. Did you ever in your life were garters, sock garters?

0:56:41 - Mikah Sargent
I've thought about it a number of times.

0:56:43 - Leo Laporte
Keep your socks up. I think that that's one of those things that modern socks with modern they account for Materials don't slide down. But in the old days, when there were just these saggy wool tubes, you'd have to have something to hold them up. My saggy wool tubes there's a few things with socks that are kind of old school Like. Do you know what a darning egg is?

0:57:05 - Mikah Sargent
I don't know what a darning egg is. I can imagine, because I know what darning is. So you put the egg into the sock so you can darn it. I've darned socks. Have you darned socks, those darn socks? Do we maybe want to do an email or a voice mail?

0:57:17 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, let's do an email, and if suddenly somebody starts talking, well, they're finding their darning egg.

0:57:22 - Mikah Sargent
That's what's going on.

0:57:23 - Leo Laporte
This is a uh-oh from JJ in Union City Stolen credit card number. I've had a recent problem with my credit card number being used without my authorization. It was used to buy movie tickets and concessions. That's it, that's so sad.

0:57:39 - Mikah Sargent
They went for the $20 purchase. Do you have a teen?

0:57:43 - Leo Laporte
I got a notification on my phone, immediately called City Bank, alerted them. Of course they had to cancel my card, issue a new one had to go to all the auto pay accounts that's the thing these days is so annoying and refresh my credit card. My question is finding a way to prevent this from happening again when I use my card at the grocery store online. City Bank could not pinpoint where my number was harvested. This is a chance to plug a former sponsor, but something I use every day practically Sounds like you do too.

0:58:09 - Mikah Sargent
You know where I'm going. It's amazing yeah.

0:58:11 - Leo Laporte
Privacy, yeah, privacycom. So privacycom lets you create credit cards that either are only used once the spoke credit cards or can only be used by the same merchant. In other words, credit cards. It cannot be stolen, they are easy to maintain, you can pause them, you can cancel them. They're also good for privacy because you can use any name, any zip code, any phone number and they'll say, yeah, that's fine.

Now there is a negative to privacycom it is tied to your bank account. Usually it's basically like a debit card, even though it shows up, as I think it's a visa, but it is a debit card. So you may be concerned about that. Debit cards don't have the same full, private, full protection as a true credit card. But I don't worry about it because for me, the real protection is it can only be used once or it can only be used as the same merchant.

In fact, somebody emailed me, said hey, call me, I want to get an updated credit card. Your credit card expired and I felt perfectly comfortable mailing them, emailing them with the credit card number and all that, because I know that once they use it it can't be stolen, so I don't care if it's in my email. I love that kind of security. So it's privacycom. They do charge a fee, but there are different tiers and I have the money back tier, so I actually never have to pay the fee. I use it so much that I always get cash back because I use it enough to pay the $10 a month credit card fee. So I recommend that because that way you get the cash back. If you plan to use it, you can use it just once for free, I think.

0:59:46 - Mikah Sargent
I think so, yeah, they've definitely got, because you got to see how it works. I and, depending on what services you're using, a lot of stuff will have integrations, so it will automatically create a privacy card for you. As Leo said, the fact that you can say I only want to use this once and then it won't be used again, it'll be declined in the future that's fantastic. When it comes to physically doing things, the one place that I recommend being mindful is, as much as you can use Tap to Pay wherever you are, because Tap to Pay has some special security that's built in that obscures your card, and particularly at gas pumps, anytime that there's not Tap to Pay available.

One thing I do is I will wherever the card is supposed to go in. If you and this probably sounds like I'm being super paranoid, but I do this every time If you grab the place where the card is supposed to go in and just give it a little yank, you can in some cases, see if there's been a skimmer that's been put on the card reader, because essentially, what a crook will do is they're specially designed to slide over the front of the card slot and so they just simply unclip. So if you give it a little yank and it's connected then you're good.

1:01:08 - Leo Laporte
Oh my God, there was one at a gas station in town just a little while ago. They're just everywhere. So privacy you don't get a physical card.

1:01:17 - Mikah Sargent
Right, so that's where you'd want to use Tap to Pay or something like that. Apple Pay has built in Protections, oh my gosh. Your card number is actually obscured when you're using it. Yeah, tap to Pay is practically free. Yep, I know, doesn't it feel that way?

1:01:32 - Leo Laporte
I know I get a free bagel. Wow, I just went like that Bagel. Maybe someday I'll have to pay for it. Bagel you do this and you get a bagel. The psychology of it is very bad, very bad. It's almost as bad as Apple Pay on Instagram. That's a problem. You know what I did last?

1:01:52 - Mikah Sargent
night. Oh no, what did you buy, leigh I?

1:01:54 - Leo Laporte
shouldn't. So I wake up in the middle of the night and I'm awake for a little bit and I think, well, I'm not going to waste this time. Bi-phasic sleep yeah, I think it is bi-phasic and I think really I should just get up and clean the house and then go to bed an hour later and split my sleep cycle into two. That's actually, I think you, you're a sleep expert. That's kind of a.

1:02:13 - Mikah Sargent
It's a very yeah, it's a very real thing. It's one way that a lot of people used to do it. Particularly farmers were bi-phasic sleepers and most people got conceived back in the day.

1:02:22 - Leo Laporte
Yes, that is true. So uh, but for me it's Instagram. So I'm watching a video about how they harvest the seaweed in Iceland. Okay, once every four years they harvest in this pure water, there's no pollution. And then they make it into sweaters.

1:02:39 - Mikah Sargent
You bought a seaweed sweater didn't you? I'm so sorry. Icelandic seaweed sweater Hold on.

1:02:47 - Leo Laporte
They said it's very thin, it's extra warm.

1:02:53 - Mikah Sargent
Where is it, oliver, charles, I need yes.

1:02:56 - Leo Laporte
Oliver Charles Icelandic seaweed sweater. Oh Lord, leo, I, I, I was, it was three, yeah, and you can eat it if you get, if like free bagel free, uh, seaweed Interesting.

1:03:11 - Mikah Sargent
I can't wait to see it. Did you get a summer sweater or a winter sweater?

1:03:15 - Leo Laporte
Ooh, Uh they say it'll last forever because it's made of seaweed.

1:03:21 - Mikah Sargent
It wasn't. It was not cheap. No, it doesn't look like they're very cheap, your sweater wasn't cheap either.

1:03:25 - Leo Laporte
I'm looking at your sweater. That's a nice sweater. Yeah, this is cost. A good sweater is going to cost.

1:03:29 - Mikah Sargent
I can't eat this one as well. So.

1:03:32 - Leo Laporte
And I figure this is good. This is like, uh, better than making it out of plastic.

1:03:38 - Mikah Sargent
Certainly that, but you could also just make it out of cotton. Oh, burke is going to bring us tiny sweaters.

1:03:44 - Leo Laporte
So these? So this is the Icelandic seaweed that they make the sweaters from. Lily. Lily eats it.

1:03:52 - Mikah Sargent
I think she could eat this. Dogs eat seaweed. This wouldn't hurt her, it's a lot of salt. I can't eat those. They make me physically nauseous, nauseated. Let's take a um as long as it doesn't have garlic. Dogs can eat them. If it has garlic, they can. I will wear my seaweed sweater here when it comes, please do. I can't wait. Just don't eat it, please. I'm just chewing it on on camera, that's all. No, I will know that it's the seaweed sweater. I'm not seeing any of the men's sweaters. Or are they unisex sweaters?

1:04:25 - Leo Laporte
Oh, God, I hope I got a man's sweater.

1:04:27 - Mikah Sargent
It might have some room in the chest for you. Let's take another call. What color did you get? No, no, we're not going to take another call. I got black. I need to hear more on this. Oh, just black charcoal.

1:04:42 - Leo Laporte
You're looking at the women's sweaters. Look at the men's sweaters.

1:04:46 - Mikah Sargent
There's no option. They're unisex. They're unisex. Well, they're made of seaweed. There's a man wearing it. It's solely sourced from Shokai, or is it Shake, a fully traceable Tibetan co-op? Wait, it's made in Tibet, wait, no, this is sorry.

1:05:04 - Leo Laporte
You're looking at the wrong one.

1:05:04 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, these are the wool sweaters. That's wool.

1:05:07 - Leo Laporte
I got seaweed. Yeah, my bad, come on, he's got his hand raised. Who's this guy here? I want to talk to him.

1:05:14 - Mikah Sargent
I just want to hang on this for a little bit longer but I picked up on Mark.

1:05:17 - Leo Laporte
Hi Mark. Welcome to oh hi Mark. Oh hi Mark. Hey, how are you?

1:05:22 - Caller
Yeah, oh, I'm doing fine.

1:05:25 - Leo Laporte
Where are you calling from? He just hung up on himself. He just hung up on himself. He's not doing that, fine, all right. All right, how about we take a quick ad break? I'll try to get it. All right, I'll do an ad break. Yeah, see, that looks good. It's not going to look good on me, though, is it? It'll look good.

1:05:41 - Mikah Sargent
It'll smell good too.

1:05:42 - Leo Laporte
I hope it doesn't smell fishy.

1:05:45 - Mikah Sargent
That's how you know it's authentic. You think it'll smell fishy? No, come on, it won't. I wonder how they process seaweed.

1:05:52 - Leo Laporte
Seaweed is a cellulose right. It's just like anything else. It's like making it out of bamboo or anything else.

1:05:57 - Mikah Sargent
They call it C cell.

1:05:59 - Leo Laporte
C cell. You break it down into the cellulose.

1:06:01 - Mikah Sargent
E cells, c cells, yeah, by the. He's sure, it's luscious silk. It's soft as pima cotton, or pima cotton. What is a pima cotton?

1:06:09 - Leo Laporte
You see, that's what got me. It's the ad copy. Yeah, in the video of the harvesters every four years going.

1:06:16 - Mikah Sargent
More breathable than linen. I'm sold More breathable than linen, able to leap tall buildings in a single bound Wow.

1:06:23 - Leo Laporte
Wow, I don't want to test that one out. I love these guys. Fastmail. I've been telling you for years, literally on the radio show. I've been saying if email is important to you in a business, it's surely important to you. But even as an individual, if email is important to you, why are you still using that junkie free email service that spies on you and puts ads in your feed and all that stuff? Pay a little bit, don't be such a cheapskate. As little as $3 a month you could get literally the best email service in the world. It's called Fastmail. It's the one I've been using for more than a decade. They are a leader in email, email privacy, of course. For more than 20 years they've been doing this, making email better. They're so well known that in fact they are leaders in things like email authentication. They contribute back to the open source community around the Cyrus server that they use.

Many email providers benefit from the good work that Fastmail does. But most of all, you will benefit. You will benefit Fastmail's quick settings in there. Oh, let me I should explain. You can use Fastmail just like you use any other email service. You can use it in your email client on your Windows or Mac or your phone, but they also have a web client that I think is superior to anybody else's, including Gmail or Yahoo or Outlook. They also have apps for iOS and Android that I think are superior to the native apps, so I use, for instance, fast Mail's app on my iPhone. If you're using the web mail, you'll love the quick settings, which lets you choose new themes, switch between light and dark mode, change text size, auto-save, context set, default reminders and more, all without ever leaving your email.

You can add or buy a domain. They sell domains now at Fastmail. You should do that, by the way. That's another way they make email yours. At Fastmail, your data stays yours. You get better productivity features and I'm telling you, as little as $3 a month. Isn't it worth it? And if you're a business, absolutely. It's easy to download your old emails data, move it over. You can even actually fetch your old email from your old address if you want, import it into your new Fastmail inbox. You can continue to do that. So there's a trend, you know. That way you don't have to worry about the transition to a new email address.

They have better spam filters. They have the best filtering of all. They have a system called SIV. You can write your own code if you want or use their automated email rules, and it makes it very easy to organize your email. And, of course, no ads. If you use our sponsor, bitwarden or OnePassword, you'll love it because Fastmail will generate unique email addresses for every place you log into. They all go into your inbox, but they can't be traced back to you and they're unique, so you'll know immediately if somebody sells your email address. Plus, it adds to your security. And don't forget to download the Fastmail app.

I really that's what I love Fastmail. It's the better email service with quality worth paying for. If email is important to you, why are you allowing the free guys to use you? Oh, and did I mention there's actual support? Go, try and get support from Google on Gmail. Fastmail is awesome. Free for 30 days, try it. fastmail.com/twit. fastmail.com/twit. It's not just privacy, it's everything. It's just the best. fastmail.com/twit. It's a good litmus test for a real geek if you ask them what they use and they say Fastmail. You know, they know what they're doing, they know they're smart. All right, now did he call back I feel so bad. He hung up huh Coming up in half an hour. Sam Abuelsamid, my car guy he's always great with car information talks about what's going on in the world of automotive technology. All right, I got him back.

He's back.

1:10:15 - Mikah Sargent
Just make sure you meet yourself.

1:10:18 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, press the unmute button, not the hand.

1:10:21 - Caller
No, no, it was the window in front that said, you know, accept or cancel. I just hit the close box which basically blew me out. How annoying.

1:10:29 - Leo Laporte
I thought we were going to kill the window. How annoying is that? Well, anyway, welcome, it's Mark. Yeah, yeah.

1:10:34 - Caller
Where you going from. You're video guy, Dustin. Yeah, oh, Mark from Dustin, Hi Mark hey yeah, by the way, just real quick on the just updates. The Cronus has a universal restore but the commercial adjust. Today, like at 10 o'clock, bought the yearly twit, put the commercials. I was thinking the same thing. Put the commercials at the end, because we can always blow it out if we don't want to hear it. You know, we were actually thinking about that.

1:10:59 - Leo Laporte
I think Lisa said what if we put the commercials at the end? That's not a bad idea. What we have done is we've added the commercials to the show notes, even for the club members, so you can at least see who the sponsors were. We also have in the discord there's a discord section called all the ads, where you put the sample ads up, but I think that's, I don't know. I don't want to make club members mad and remember the one thing would be that you're downloading now those commercials in addition, right, so I don't know, yeah, Real quick too.

1:11:28 - Caller
Mikah. My mom's phone that you asked me. The only color change was in the phone app and since that's mostly what she uses her phone for, that made it feel like her to her that it was the whole phone.

1:11:41 - Mikah Sargent
Ah, so it was only happening in the phone app. Interesting, huh, and remind me what color it was changing. It just kind of grayed out. There is a setting inaccessibility that basically sets up special colors for different color filters for your screen. What's going?

1:12:07 - Leo Laporte
on. I'm sorry oh so yes. What are you guys talking about?

1:12:11 - Mikah Sargent
So our dear listener called it in the past and was asking a question regarding his mom. Okay, mom said, when I'm using my phone, the color drains away from the screen.

1:12:25 - Leo Laporte
She using it at bedtime? No, no, it was right after.

1:12:30 - Caller
Yeah, but you were on vacation when this call happened, leo, and it was just right. After an update.

1:12:37 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, that's the weird thing.

1:12:38 - Caller
It just. It just made the screen just generally look more grayed out. She doesn't care, she, I just want you to ask me. Hey, you ever figure out what the answer was? I do it. But my um, oh, and I like your privacy for subscriptions because I hit, you know. I know people who run out of subscriptions because their card gets hacked and they forget to notify everybody on subscription. So those privacy are great for that.

1:13:02 - Leo Laporte
Sure Plus, you don't have to cancel subscription, you just pause the card and they can't get any money out of you. That's probably a mean thing to do, but it's sometimes it's easier to do that but it's also.

1:13:13 - Caller
It's good not to lose subscription. But my question is about contacts. I've got Apple contacts and iCloud and I've finally deleted the stuff on the Mac, cause there's on the Mac contacts and in um iCloud, but when I dedupe it just duplicated the same information in the memo section. Is there an app? Oh, that's interesting. So that would go through and delete it extras.

1:13:38 - Leo Laporte
It added it to the memo or the notes. So just in case you know, people are very, you know, as you might imagine, if you make a deduping program, you're going to be very nervous about deleting something that isn't a duplicate, and then people are going to get mad at you and yell at you and maybe even sue you. So they're trying to, you know, cover their bases. I guess I, you know, I have never found a good way to dedupe a common context and really this is a problem because anytime you're doing syncing for the same reason people are adverse to deleting data you're going to get duplicates. So over time I have probably half of my contact list is duplicated. Marissa Meyer started a startup. Let me see if it's still around. That was that did actually do a pretty good job, a job deduping. Let me just see if I, if she's still doing it. Um, it was so weird.

1:14:30 - Mikah Sargent
I'm like sunshine. That was it.

1:14:32 - Leo Laporte
So, uh, it does require you uploading your context to sunshine. It's trustworthy, uh, and it will deduple, and it did a pretty good job of it for me, so I don't I mean it's hard to do it, right? Yeah?

1:14:50 - Mikah Sargent
Should I really honestly? The way to do it is manually, and that's unfortunate what I always end up doing.

1:14:56 - Leo Laporte
Yeah.

1:14:57 - Mikah Sargent
So go ahead. I mean, yeah, that's for me. I've used these different services. I've used sunshine contacts I don't know if it's still around, because they also released sunshine birthday at one point yeah, and then they notice. It's all very weird. I've used the built in D dupe features that the contacts app on the Mac has. I've tried them that are in different mail apps and they always end up being overzealous or not underzealous, yeah, exactly.

Over or underzealous, and so what I've always ended up doing is just all right. I'm devoting, you know, three hours today. If that's what it takes to do that.

1:15:38 - Leo Laporte
Sunshine is still around. It's an app now on the app store and in Google Play. I don't know why I stopped using it. Why did you stop using it? I stopped using it.

1:15:46 - Mikah Sargent
I honestly it was because they never updated the the uh graphics to be modern, and then so it felt like it. I was using some preschool toy, yeah, and then, on top of that, it all felt very let me hoover up your details you were in all of your friends' details and I'm probably going to do something with them later. It just gave me bad vibes overall.

1:16:09 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, I'll try downloading it. It did, I seem to remember it did a good job of D dupe.

1:16:14 - Mikah Sargent
It did a good job, too, of. One of the things that I really like is having photos of people, and so it was really good at finding them in their social media profiles.

1:16:21 - Leo Laporte
Apple's gotten so good in its contacts, and don't they have a D dupe now? Yeah?

1:16:25 - Mikah Sargent
And Apple contacts has a built in D dupe feature. But again, it's either overzealous or underzealous, and I think for Apple contacts it was underzealous, which makes sense. I'd rather it not delete things that I want to keep. It will as I remember, it'll show you you chose your matching ones and say well, do you want to merge, Do you want to remove? And you can kind of go piece by piece.

1:16:44 - Leo Laporte
And that's like, that's like how manual, but but still automatic yeah. And it's not again. It's not perfect, but it's done up for me. That's why I think I stopped using sunshine, as is the Apple contact. Are you Apple or Android?

1:16:59 - Caller
I do both. I mean I've got Apple and Android, Okay.

1:17:03 - Mikah Sargent
Where do you keep your contacts in Gmail?

1:17:06 - Caller
Well, I do them. Actually, I started doing Gmail and so, just simply because I didn't have it and I think it's maybe this Mac is the one that's causing the problem upgraded from one of the big 27 I max to a Mac studio and it just seems like every once in a while, all the, all the contacts go duplicate and then, and then I dedupe, and then it just doubles up addresses, it doubles up phone numbers, it doubles up notes, and then then after a while it does it again, and now I've got three or four of each.

1:17:41 - Mikah Sargent
So one thing to be aware of. No, no, it's okay. One thing to be aware of with this is and this is a problem so when Apple, when Mac OS kind of, first came around and started syncing contacts, they had one place that they did it and then, as time went on, they sort of changed the way that you could choose what was in control of how the contacts were syncing which internet accounts you had. And so one thing is on your Mac make sure that you go to and now I'm struggling. Oh yeah, so on your Mac you launch system settings and you choose internet accounts and look there, if you have your Gmail set up as your contact management system and if you have that turned on, and then when you launch the contacts app, see, there are different controls here.

I like to make sure that under contacts, where I have my settings, that the default account is set to the default account that I want to use. So in your case it would be Gmail. If you have it set to iCloud and at some point you had pulled your contacts from Gmail and sort of synced them to iCloud, then it could be showing up in your contacts app both Gmail and iCloud. So you want to make sure that the default account set for contacts is the one you want, in your case Gmail, and that internet accounts has Gmail logged in as well. So it gets very confusing because the contacts app itself is the thing that's actually managing in the background what is your default contact application? It's not the internet accounts page in the settings app and that's reasonably confusing for folks.

1:19:29 - Leo Laporte
I ended up. You know I moved from Gmail to Fastmail because they do contacts and calendar as well and I use them. It is good to have a cloud sync somewhere and what I've done in the past it's kind of a pain is to delete it everywhere. Save out a copy of your contacts on a machine locally, then delete it everywhere so that the syncing is ground zero. There are no contacts anywhere. Then import the contacts back in.

You might want to clean them before you export them so that you have a clean copy. Import them in and let it sync. Then you know you can turn on the syncing on Mac or PC. Sync it, let it sync to all of them. You might have kind of a canonical contact list that is clean syncing around. You're going to get the dupes back. That's going to happen as soon as you have multiple syncing platforms. You're going to get duped, you know. But at least you've cleaned it once, you know, every once in a while. Actually, I got used to the idea that I'm going to have duplicates and just live with it.

1:20:28 - Mikah Sargent
To be honest, yeah, after a while it's like okay, I'm not doing this.

1:20:30 - Leo Laporte
It's like cleaning out your inbox and your email.

1:20:33 - Mikah Sargent
It's like there's storage is cheap. I actually what I started doing. I just stopped logging into those other accounts on my Mac and my iPhone. I suggest iCloud is what I choose to sync all of my contacts with and I just let that be the sync for each of them and everything else just pulls from that.

1:20:56 - Caller
Yeah, I think it's that Mac, because there's actually beach balls when I start dealing with contacts on that thing. So I think I'm going to do that is just clear everything out everywhere, put them back in clean and do it that way. I do have one quick question If you guys ever broken the glass while replacing a hard drive on an iMac and if so, do you have to buy the whole thing Because the crack is not over the screen Can you separate that out or just have to buy the whole glass? It's by whole painting the monitor, yeah.

1:21:23 - Leo Laporte
Oh, you don't have to buy a monitor. So the iMac, the glass is just a piece of glass, right?

1:21:28 - Caller
Well, it depends on how old it is, it's firmly fixed, it's a 2017 and it's firmly affixed. Oh, is it To the? You know it's not the older ones where you know you have the older ones.

1:21:37 - Mikah Sargent
You can use the suction cup With the magnet. Yeah, yeah got it. Oh, it's like Right.

1:21:41 - Caller
And so, yeah, I, you know, I pulled it out, get all the glue, took it all out and then I started to put it back in, but the hinge was too soft and it just turned. You know, it just turned. It's supposed to be like this Glass was like this, and it did that and then just fell and broke, and broke just the bottom right part, and so it doesn't affect the screen. But I'm still trying to decide do I get another one? Do I, can I just replace the glass? And but is it too hard to take apart? Yeah, I don't, anybody tried that.

1:22:14 - Mikah Sargent
I mean we'll have to ask yeah, of course, if anyone out there has done this before. I think that those are laminated, in which case you'd be buying the whole Go to ifixitcom and see what they say.

1:22:25 - Leo Laporte
There are people in the discord saying you can get a third party, but how would you laminated? Yeah, that's what.

1:22:31 - Mikah Sargent
I know, I think you have to get.

1:22:33 - Leo Laporte
I think you have to get a new one.

1:22:34 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, you know, you could just take some black gaffer's tape, since it's just on the frame, and just run some gaffer's tape across.

1:22:41 - Leo Laporte
So you don't see it? Yeah, purely cosmetic.

1:22:44 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, I mean it is it's, since it's just purely cosmetic.

1:22:48 - Caller
By the way, did spin right when I got spin right, when I downloaded the security now about two thirds of the way through it just went silent for a long time. Was it just me? Because I eventually just wiped it out, deleted it, redownloaded it and it worked fine this time.

1:23:06 - Leo Laporte
About 100,000 people listen to that show every week. I'm going to guess that it was just you, or I would have gotten a few emails.

It's sometimes that happens. Anybody have a big gap. Maybe we erased the 29 seconds where he admitted to taking over the federal government. I don't know. We're not supposed to talk about that. I think that I think it's probably local. Because we have so many listeners, I always assume if there's a problem I'm going to hear about it. Yeah, Somebody mentioned a discord, apparently. I don't know. Did we fix it? Did we fix it? I kind of yeah it's working now, ok, maybe yeah, these things happen yeah.

1:23:48 - Caller
I'm almost done. I'm at 11 minutes to the end. Now I apologize, and and it worked. It worked, it's just. I was just curious. Hey, here's a quick question for Steve Spin right. When I use the new one, I can spin right the same drive multiple times. I get the same smart error. If I spin right the drive with the old spin right and then spin right again with the new spin right, the smart errors go away.

1:24:10 - Mikah Sargent
I haven't. Well, that's a question for Steve. As he said, you know what? Yeah, you should ask him.

1:24:15 - Leo Laporte
I'll ask him if I remember it, but it would be better if you asked him yeah yeah, I think I've already my head spinning, I don't.

1:24:20 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, I spun it with the old spin.

1:24:23 - Leo Laporte
I spun it with a new spin right, but then the old spin right spins it. Hey, marcus, great to talk to you. Ok, thank you. Take care, bye. Scooter X has throw that drive away. It may be that that's a, that that's a sign that the drive is not, it's not happy. I was just looking. I use a card hop Flexi bits, you know does fantastic Al. And then, because I have a fantastic house subscription, I also have their, their, their cards. I tried, I tried using card hop. I'm almost feeling like I shouldn't even be paying for fantastic. It's not that different, is it my heart?

1:24:58 - Mikah Sargent
I love flexi bits. I live and die by fantastic how I wouldn't be. I just have yeah, it's it, it is how I calendar. Yeah, I understand. Like, if you don't do that very often, then yeah, I don't have much calendaring to do.

1:25:12 - Leo Laporte
I basically show up here and that's it. I don't, and I'm looking to see if card hop does a D dooping. Oh, that's a good question. I bet they do. How could you, how could you have a third party, a address book and not support that? It has smart lists, it has.

1:25:35 - Mikah Sargent
Oh, I guess it doesn't. I don't see do D dooping. No, in fact it's in the FAQ.

1:25:41 - Leo Laporte
They may have decided it's not worth the risk.

1:25:43 - Mikah Sargent
When they say because Mac OS has it built in. Oh, ok, that's, that's what it says, the FAQ.

1:25:49 - Leo Laporte
So yeah, all right. What are we doing, mr Producer? You know we haven't done it a while. Well, we've done a voicemail. Let's do a voicemail, I guess yes.

1:25:59 - Caller
Hey Leo, hey Mikah, Hi Hank, calling from Vancouver in beautiful British Columbia. Hi Hank, I have an older TP-Link router. It's a Wi-Fi device as well. It hasn't been getting updates properly now for several years. I'm just wondering am I exposed? Are there any concerns? Yes, the follow up to that is I'm considering working over to one of the open source firmwares and I'm just wondering what you might think about that.

1:26:36 - Leo Laporte
Thanks, good questions, hank. So first of all, absolutely, when your router starts getting updates, you should update it. The router is often one of the biggest problems in security. There have been many, many security issues. People don't think about it. I think, yeah, it's because it's hardware in your closet right. Here's a TP-Link's security page and their security advisories and, yes, there are vulnerabilities. So if you're not getting updates on any hardware, like that router particularly, I would get a new one. Now you did mention third party firmware. There are a number of third party firmware designed for routers. There's DDWRT and there's Tomato. If either one supports the TP-Link, that might be a good option. You could put that on there, and those are being kept up to date because they're open source, so you could keep those up to date. So if you didn't want to buy new hardware, there's another reason to get new hardware. I mean, honestly, it's going to be better.

1:27:40 - Mikah Sargent
You're going to get a exactly. I think it's worth investing in new hardware. I understand the desire to keep that around, not expensive, though I don't think.

1:27:50 - Leo Laporte
Well, the Wi-Fi ones are more expensive, yeah.

1:27:54 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, yeah, if you can. It's a better idea to get new hardware.

1:27:59 - Leo Laporte
I'm seeing vulnerabilities and a number of vulnerabilities that have occurred in the last year in TP-Link. They patch them. That's one good thing about TP-Link and I like them.

1:28:09 - Mikah Sargent
They'll patch them. If your hardware is newer, it's up to date. So good question If you've got something that old that it's no longer getting any updates, it's probably time to move on to something that will get updates. Although now I'm thinking about it, how often does my router get a firmware update? Mine's more often because it's fancy schmancy.

1:28:33 - Leo Laporte
Well, that's another thing I would recommend from now on, and Steve has said this as well on the security now, when you get an IoT device, it's really important in a router as an IoT device that you get one that automatically updates OTA updates over the year updates automatically, because people forget.

1:28:49 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, and also it could be difficult with the way that it used to be where sometimes you would have to. No, I'm still using Eero. Andrew, I meant fancy schmancy in comparison to our old school routers that you just and Eero is automatic over the year updates.

1:29:05 - Leo Laporte
Absolutely, you don't think about it. You don't have to think about it. They update fairly frequently.

1:29:08 - Mikah Sargent
They update exactly, and that was my point and I can remember in the past it was a modem that had a firmware update. It was a pain in the butt.

And it wasn't handled by the ISP in that case and yeah, it is a pain in the butt I had to find a friend who had a Windows machine so that I could plug an ethernet cord directly into it and then flash it with the new. It was a nightmare and people don't know that they're supposed to go and find that. So yeah, it can be pretty messy.

1:29:35 - Leo Laporte
I would say yes, either you'd use the third party firmware, if it's available for the particular model of router Not all routers are supported and or get new hardware and you might benefit from getting new hardware. Exactly, we have a constant running fight with our chat room, mike B, particularly in our chat room, about whether routers wear out. He says they don't wear out. I say, well, that's not true, because routers are little computers and they're very hot. They don't usually have fans and they do, I think, wear out and become less reliable.

1:30:10 - Mikah Sargent
Wait, let's see Where's the bell.

1:30:13 - Leo Laporte
I think they wear out. I think they wear out. He says they don't wear out.

1:30:20 - Mikah Sargent
What's next? I promise I'm paying attention. Yeah, you're just staring at me. Yeah, I'm looking at you.

1:30:27 - Leo Laporte
Because that's why you have the title on the door that says producer. You are the producer, so produce, damn it. You have a call for us, mr Producer, I'm going to start calling you. Boy wonder again, if you don't produce, I'm producing.

1:30:45 - Mikah Sargent
I'm going to pick up on Ivan.

1:30:47 - Leo Laporte
Ivan. Welcome to the show, Ivan the wonderful.

1:30:50 - Caller
Hey, hello, Hi Ivan.

1:30:52 - Leo Laporte
Where are you calling from today?

1:30:54 - Caller
West Cabina, California.

1:30:56 - Leo Laporte
Love it. What's up?

1:30:57 - Caller
So do I. Yeah, I'm calling with my quarterly Linux question.

1:31:05 - Leo Laporte
OK, good, I like it.

1:31:06 - Caller
And last time you helped me very greatly. It was great, oh good, and I really appreciated the help. But I have just run into this and I don't know enough to know what to ask. And so here's the situation I have a desktop computer with Linux on it, mint 20.03 or 20.3. And it has in it the Linux drive and then two other internal drives that are NTFS, and I've been able to, thanks to your suggestion, able to mount those drives on the Linux desktop and use them, and everything Nice. But I can't access those drives from my Windows computer. I can access on the Linux drive I have a shared folder which I can access from my Windows machine, but I can't do anything with the other two internal drives. I've tried creating a folder sharing it, nothing, so I don't know where to turn.

1:32:19 - Leo Laporte
So those drives, when you are in the box, the Linux box, right, they're part of the Linux hardware, so it's easy for your Linux machine to see them, because it's just a SATA drive and it's right there. In order to share the contents of the drives across the network to a Windows machine, you have to turn on SMB networking and that's the signal message block, the standard that Microsoft established way back when. And on Linux it's called Samba. Get it, samba. Smb is in there, just add a couple of vowels. So I'm sure that Linux ships with Samba. So if you don't have it you might have to install it, but you could do that with the app. I've done that on the.

1:33:12 - Caller
Linux side and I've done it on the Windows side, but it still hasn't worked. And then I read in one of the Reddit forums or something where the older Samba on the Windows.

1:33:27 - Leo Laporte
Oh, it's deprecated. Yeah, there is a very old Samba that nobody uses anymore, so this is a black diamond level thing, right, of course? Yeah, I'm looking on the Linux Mint forums and somebody has written a simple, foolproof tutorial, which is what we need. It is often difficult to get Samba working on Windows as well as on Linux, because it's really designed not designed for end users. It's designed for your IT professional who bangs his head against the wall for four years and finally figures it out and now knows how to do it. We'll put a link in this forum to doing this. I don't know if you've seen these or not. Setting up the Samba server make it discoverable. There's a lot of steps, right, you have to install WSDD to make it discoverable. That's a service. Have you done that? Yeah, and you got that service running. You may also want to install a Vahi. That's for Mac OS, I think. So I guess you don't have to worry about that, the nice thing about Samba and SMB is.

It's a standard. It came with Windows Land Manager. It's been around for that long, but it is a standard and that's why you can't do SMB1 anymore, because it was notoriously dangerous. It was an exploit, so you got to turn off SMB1. Your machine will not do that, so make sure you're using SMB2. That may be the problem.

You can actually in the Samba configuration it looks like I'm looking on this you can say server minimum protocol equals NT1. That will then tell Samba don't make Samba1 available. And then I think that will maybe solve the issue. Your Windows box is saying at all I'm not going to use that, so SMB1 is dangerous. I'll put a link in the show notes to this. This is in the Linux forum. Looks like a pretty good how-to.

1:35:50 - Caller
Yeah, it's a little more detailed than what I did, some of those things, but not.

1:35:55 - Leo Laporte
This is an advanced topic. I mean, you're really skiing on the steepest hill. This is a black diamond. But once you get it working, it's one of those things where you'll know that's why the IT pros it doesn't work for them the first time either. It's very important to remember this. Yeah, that's a good one, because they come in very confidently and say, oh yeah, because they've done it a thousand times. So maybe just this single line in the etsy slash, etsy slash, samba slash, smbconf, right out of the work group line, adds server space, min space protocol equals NT1. That's going to tell your samba software not to allow SMB1. And then the Windows machine will go oh good, ok, you're OK, you're a good man. And then there's various additional stuff. I mean this is complicated. Look at the configuration files you have to edit.

1:36:52 - Caller
Yeah, well, this is not an easy thing to do. Hey, give me something to do.

1:36:56 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, once you get it working, it should be rock solid and you'll be glad because now it'll be visible. Normally, windows expects you not to be using anything about Windows. I guess those days have started to change, but you're doing something that Microsoft goes well. I don't know why you'd be using that.

1:37:17 - Caller
I always like to stick it to the man.

1:37:19 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, this looks like this particular forum post looks like it's going to be one that'll be pretty helpful, so I'll make sure this gets into the show notes for you.

1:37:30 - Caller
A quick follow up question. I'm trying to find a Linux user group near me, even online, and most of the ones that I find don't have an online component, and the closest one is in the Bay Area and in Tennessee, oh no.

1:37:53 - Leo Laporte
That's what's happening to user groups now. People don't have low. It's too bad, because I really used to love going. You'd go once a month to the Berkeley Macintosh users group or the Homebrew Computer Club and you'd go down and be in an auditorium at HP or somewhere and there'd be 100 other people all suffering the same travails and you can raise your hand and say I can't get my sum, but we're going to be. Some guy come over and say, well, let me talk to you. Or they'd have demonstrations from companies. Waz would come in and say I've just built this thing called the Apple One. Would anybody like to buy the pieces? And those were the days. But really it's changed a lot. User groups one of the things that happened. They became the great out. Like you and me, it's older people who want to do this. A lot of them have gone online though. So if you look for Lugs, linux user groups online, I wonder if there is a directory somewhere. Surely you might have to go online. I don't think you, you know.

1:38:54 - Caller
Well, that's fine, I just tried to find it. I mean, I used Meetup to try to find some.

1:39:03 - Leo Laporte
Linuxorg has created a Lug directory and any Linux user group worth its salt ought to be in the Lug directory. So I would go to Linuxorg and search for a Linux user group in your neck of the woods.

1:39:23 - Caller
Well, I really appreciate the information in the house.

1:39:26 - Leo Laporte
Sure, this is one of those things where I think we're kind of like a user group. I always thought the radio show was a user group of the air, that, because we don't have these places, we can go and get together. By the way, there was always a librarian and you remember this in the back of the hall who had a stack of floppy disks. Right, remember that Shareware. And you'd go and you'd say hey, your card can't walk. Yeah, you remember that, yeah. Yeah.

We're old timers now. Things have changed and it's incidentally, it's not because things are easier than they ever were, it is a little bit because computing has become infrastructure. It's just kind of in the background all the time. But I think honestly that people mic' as age and younger. It's no longer a hobby, right. So the user groups are kind of like a hobbyist group. Remember, we still have it out here in Northern California car clubs, where people, cars and coffee is a popular weekend activity, where you go, take your car that you fixed up and you drive to some parking lot and 30 guys will come with their fixed up old hot rods. They'll have cars and coffee. They still do it every weekend in our area. But that's pretty old school, that's like American graffiti, 50s stuff, right. Well, we're rapidly becoming like that with computing, I think.

1:40:46 - Caller
Well, I run an Adobe user group and there you go. You know exactly that.

1:40:52 - Leo Laporte
Do you do it online?

1:40:54 - Caller
Yeah, we're only online. We used to be in person and then we moved online with the pandemic and just makes it so much easier to get speakers and people in to do demonstrations and such by doing it online.

1:41:10 - Leo Laporte
That's the thing that has changed. At least we can do that. I miss the fraternal. You can't have coffee when you're online. I miss that, but that's the way of the world. Go to linuxorg. They have you know, there's a whole section here and it, honestly, if you're, if you're a user group and you're not in this directory, go in there, you'll see. You can narrow it down to in person, online and online only. But in the in person category there's only four ones in Beijing, one's in Philly, one's in UCLA and one's at Rensselaer. So that that's the four. What's weird is there's only one online and that's the central Iowa Linux users group. So maybe they just aren't that many around anymore. Don't forget our show. I hope you listen on Saturdays to the untitled Linux show, jonathan Bennett.

1:42:03 - Mikah Sargent
Oh, that's another opportunity, yeah.

1:42:05 - Leo Laporte
Oh, that's the place to go.

1:42:07 - Mikah Sargent
Oh my God Got its own built-in little user.

1:42:09 - Leo Laporte
It got to be a club member.

1:42:11 - Caller
Yeah, okay. Join the club, join the club Seven bucks a month.

1:42:16 - Leo Laporte
But that is really a Linux users group. Yeah, and it's fun and you go in the discord Super responsive with one another, and the discord has a whole Linux section because of that.

1:42:26 - Mikah Sargent
So yeah, that's true. There's a user group there in the discord, I think it's worth joining the club for stuff like that.

1:42:34 - Leo Laporte
I'm very proud of the untitled Linux show. I really like what they do. They've done 137 episodes now. Can you believe that? Wow, holy mackerel.

1:42:43 - Caller
Wow, that would keep me busy.

1:42:44 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, I know what called in and you asked Jonathan and company about Samba, they would. They'd be able to answer it much better than I would Take it and run with it.

1:42:56 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah.

1:42:58 - Leo Laporte
Nice to talk to you have a great day.

1:43:01 - Caller
Enjoy the football game.

1:43:02 - Leo Laporte
Yes, I hope. I do. I hope Mikah does not.

1:43:09 - Mikah Sargent
It's time for a pause that refreshes, and Sam Abul-Samid coming up next.

1:43:13 - Leo Laporte
Car guy just around the corner. I'm so excited Our show brought to you by nobody. Oh, this next thing right here. No See, I okay, I'm not just behind the scenes.

1:43:25 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, here we go.

1:43:27 - Leo Laporte
If you're watching the video or you're in the club, no ad will appear, but if you're on the audio version of that's the tech guys and ad will may or may not appear, depending this just more behind the scenes. This is the way pocket. Unfortunately, this way podcast is moving. We we pioneered in 2005, the idea of what we call host red ads. In fact Lisa has a show called host red ads which I got from my days working in radio. You remember Paul Harvey for the Bose wave radio. This was something we and even farther back, arthur Godfrey, or if you watched Johnny Carson show at McMahon, would come out with a dog and a can of alpo. Host red ads are a very old school style of advertising that I happen to really like because I think it's a more personal way of and we pick the sponsors and I can talk about them and I think it's a better way to do advertising. It's also features and benefit driven as opposed to, you know, guilt or embarrassment driven. So I like it but unfortunately advertisers never did really like it. It costs more because we're picky and so advertising is going back.

I think on podcasting is going back to the way it's been for years on TV and radio which is, instead of pausing the show and a host talks to you about something, they stopped the show and then stick something in that's completely unrelated, and then a minute later you come back. That's called direct ad insertion. That's how every other form of media TV and radio that's how they do it. We were kind of old school, and, unfortunately, that's really the future. The other unfortunate is the costs of those ads are necessarily much lower, so the revenue goes way down. We only have I refuse to sell 19 minutes of ads per hour, like radio does, so we can't make as much money, as really cuts the amount of money we make in half. That's why we've been pushing the club, so the host read ads when we have them, as we did today.

That's wonderful, but probably by the end of this year those will go away. I expect those will go away entirely. I don't think we'll be doing them anymore, and I think everything will be direct ad insertion. We use a Libsyn company called Advertise Cast. I think they're very good. They work very closely with us. We have the right to refuse advertisers, which we do frequently. I have to prove every single advertiser, so the way that works now, though, is they don't do video yet. I think if someday they'll start doing video, but right now they only do audio. So there, even though we pause, there's no ad in the video. And of course, for the club there's no ad, so we try to do it subtly.

1:46:15 - Mikah Sargent
This was not an example of that.

1:46:18 - Leo Laporte
We try to say something like hey, you're watching. Ask the Tech guys, Mikah Sargent and Leo Laporte, Sammabool Samad, coming up next on the line with a Sammabool Samad, the car guy. Hello, car guy, Hello Welcome. How are you? I'm beautiful, Ipsilanti.

1:46:37 - Sam Abuelsamid
Michigan. It is beautiful today. The sun is shining, the temperatures I think about 40 degrees right now, so not bad.

1:46:45 - Leo Laporte
I was talking about that. With my friends yesterday we went on a hike out to the Point Reyes Lighthouse and we're going oh, it's so cold, it's 48 degrees. Oh, it's freezing. And Brock said, yeah, I'm moving to Philadelphia. My friends think I'm crazy when I say that it's like what are you? Talking about that's spring.

1:47:03 - Sam Abuelsamid
Well, I was in Chicago the other day for the auto show and it was 59 degrees when we went out for lunch. Oh, it's that beautiful that. You know I'm so used to going to the Chicago Auto Show, which is in the first week of February, and just freezing I mean, it's usually frigid there. You know there have been multiple times when we've gotten hit by a blizzard in the middle of the auto show. The only good thing about winter is spring.

1:47:31 - Leo Laporte
You really appreciate spring because you've been suffering, especially in February. February is the worst month because you're done with winter. Am I right?

1:47:40 - Mikah Sargent
No, you're done with winter. I love cold weather, so you love it yeah. Oh, you got a hat. I prefer the cold weather.

1:47:46 - Leo Laporte
I, I. It was like winter's great.

1:47:48 - Sam Abuelsamid
You know the stars love going out and playing in the snow.

1:47:51 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, so let me ask. I like to ask every time we see you, sam, what are you? What are you driving this week?

1:47:57 - Sam Abuelsamid
This week I've got a little bit of an overlap. I've got two cars in the driveway I have an Audi Q8 e-tron Sportback, which is very nice, and I also have a Ford F-250 XL four-wheel drive, which is very tall.

1:48:13 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, I was going to say it's one of those tall things, isn't it?

1:48:16 - Sam Abuelsamid
It is. You know this has got the the four by four off-road package on it with big 33 inch tires. So you know this. This is really. This is a farm truck, you know, because the XL is the base trim level. So you know, vinyl seats, hard plastic interior, this is a work truck and you know, with the four-wheel drive, you know this is really the type of thing you're going to use on the farm. And then it's also got a 12,000 pound winch on the front. But it's also very, very thirsty. I went to do my fuel economy loop the other day 13 miles per gallon.

1:48:53 - Mikah Sargent
Wow, I was actually going to ask you about that. If you have different places nearby that you go to test. You know, oh, I've got my all terrain area and I've got my farm. How do you, how do you go about?

1:49:07 - Sam Abuelsamid
Well, I don't have a farm, but, but I do.

1:49:10 - Leo Laporte
That does bug me, by the way when people who don't have like they're driving in the city drive these monster trucks because you can't see pedestrians. They're below the hood, oh yeah.

1:49:20 - Sam Abuelsamid
It's. Yeah, it's terrible for that and you know I strongly recommend that. You know you don't buy one of these kinds of trucks unless you actually have a need for its capabilities. You know this is something. If you need to tow a 25,000 pound trailer, yeah, go ahead and buy one of these, but don't buy this to commute to work, unless you know commuting to work means going from your house on your farm to the barn or up to the fields.

Yeah yeah, this is a work truck and even though they have luxury versions of these again, if you don't need the capabilities of these trucks and they have incredible capabilities, like versions of this Ford Super Duty can tow up to 40,000 pounds. Wow, and I've done that. I tested that last year, the Ford Proving Grounds, but for low commotive engines. Yeah, you should. You should not average. People should not be driving these trucks.

1:50:16 - Leo Laporte
Well, the gas costs alone probably chase some of them, or most of them, yeah.

1:50:22 - Sam Abuelsamid
Well, and this one has. This one has the 4.3 to 1 rear axle ratio, which means, you know this is really set up for heavy towing. If you really need to tow a you know, a really heavy trailer, this is better for that. You can also get it with different rear axle ratios so that it you know it's not going to be revving the engine quite as much when you're just driving. It'll get better fuel economy. So you know, that's one of the things about these trucks you can configure them in so many different ways to depending on what your use case is. Like one of my neighbor across the street, he actually, just about a month ago he got an F550 chassis cab. So this is, you know, this is a. It's got a gross vehicle weight rating, I think, of 16,000 pounds, if I recall.

1:51:10 - Mikah Sargent
And your neighbor lives on a farm.

1:51:12 - Sam Abuelsamid
Yes, no, he does not live on a farm but, what he's doing is he is getting this converted into an overlanding rig, so a camper. He used to have a one, a bago, that he would tow his, his old Jeep Wrangler out to Moab and other places to go off-roading, and he sold that last year to get this and he's actually driving it out to Colorado next month to get a flatbed installed on the back and then a camper rig you know, big camper rig on top of that. So that's, you know, he's got a use case for this. That is very different. But this is also not the vehicle he drives. He drives this when he's going on a trip, when he's driving to work. He's got his. He's got a Ford Explorer, which also is a bit larger than he needs. But that's neither here or there.

But speaking of big cars, paris and the they just had a referendum in Paris, france, and voters voted to approve increasing the parking fees for larger vehicles. So then, any vehicle over 3,600 pounds or electric vehicles over 4,400 pounds. They tripled the parking fees. So it's now 18 euros an hour to park anywhere in the city center of Paris. If you have a vehicle, let's heavier than that, which I think is a good thing. I think we should be doing that here too, to discourage people from driving these big, massive SUVs, one of the first things.

1:52:42 - Leo Laporte
The times I ever met you, Sam, was at CES. You were working with Chevy and they and they had a what they call the NV yeah, the NV concept, an urban vehicle, and the idea was and I still think it's a great idea. You know, there are some towns in Italy where there's a wall around the town San Gimignano is one of them and it's all pedestrian, and I love the idea of maybe this this was Chevy's idea. You keep the, you have big parking lots on the south skirts of town and then you have these little autonomous vehicles people can use to get around town. You keep vehicles, big vehicles, out of the center of town. I guess this is what Paris is thinking about. It's hard on the streets too. There's a cost.

1:53:27 - Sam Abuelsamid
Oh, absolutely. Yeah, it puts an enormous amount of load on the pavement when you have heavier vehicles on there.

1:53:35 - Leo Laporte
So I want to get a little like a golf cart and I want to live close enough to town I could drive a golf cart. That's cool.

1:53:41 - Mikah Sargent
Wouldn't that be good? Yeah, but you're still going to be competing with F950s.

1:53:46 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, and they won't see you. So you did make an interesting point, because EVs are very heavy.

1:53:53 - Sam Abuelsamid
Mike, I have a little sedan, but it's not, they're not all ridiculously heavy Like your Chevy Bolt. Yeah, that's only 3,700 pounds. Good, so I could go to Paris. Yeah, so it's relatively modest, but you know it's a reasonable size car. I think your i5 is somewhere around 47, 4800 pounds, so you would have to pay the higher parking fees in Paris with that.

1:54:19 - Leo Laporte
Well see, then that's an incentive for you to not drive into town but to park. And the other thing is a lot of city acreage is devoted to parking lots, like half of it.

1:54:32 - Sam Abuelsamid
Oh yeah, so anywhere from. Typically, in most urban centers it's anywhere from a quarter to a third of the land mass is devoted to parking cars. It's crazy. Wow, it is there's. In the United States there are seven and a half parking spaces for every car. You're kidding.

1:54:49 - Mikah Sargent
No, well, how come they're not all in San Francisco? Because that would be nice, it's impossible to park in the city.

1:54:56 - Sam Abuelsamid
Well, the problem is, you know, people want to use the ones in the city during the day, and then they use other ones at other times of the day. So they're not. It's not evenly. The usage of them is not evenly distributed at any point in time?

1:55:10 - Leo Laporte
So, mike, the gross weight of my car is 6,000 pounds, but the curb weight is 4,900 pounds. What's the curb.

1:55:15 - Sam Abuelsamid
What does that mean? So gross weight is the, the curb weight is the weight of just the vehicle by itself, and gross weight is the total maximum weight, including payload passengers cargo.

1:55:28 - Leo Laporte
whatever else, you can have 250 pound passengers in there and a hundred and a hundred pounds of luggage. Well, it is a German car, okay, all right, but that's still pretty heavy. That's I mean most of that's battery, right?

1:55:42 - Sam Abuelsamid
Yeah, it's, it's probably about 11, but probably about 1200 pounds of battery. Wow, in that car. Wow, the Hummer EV, the GMC Hummer EV. The battery in that weighs 2,932 pounds. Holy moly.

1:55:56 - Leo Laporte
It weighs more than many cars, yeah. It weighs more than our Honda Civic that's in our garage, right now and so when in the past I've gotten mad at cities that propose a taxes or states like Texas that propose taxes for EVs. But I think sometimes that's because of the addition First of all, evs don't pay gas taxes, so they're not paying for these, and that's the main reason why they're what are you doing with that and EVs do do some damage to these highways.

Of course, big trucks do more damage, but still, you know, I think that's not unreasonable.

1:56:26 - Sam Abuelsamid
Yeah, well, and you know the thing is, here in the US and in many places, the cost of building and maintaining road infrastructure has traditionally been paid for by fuel taxes. Right, well, if you're driving an EV, you're not paying for any fuel, and I love it. You're not paying any taxes, you know, on your electric builder going towards that, right, but you're still putting wear and tear on the pavement. So you know you should be paying towards the use, you know, towards the maintenance of that pavement, and so that's why they're, you know they want to put in these use taxes for EVs. You know, and, and I think over time, what we're going to see is a transition away from fuel taxes towards, just essentially, a VMT tax, a vehicle miles traveled tax. So it'll it'll.

The best way to do this would be a formula that is how many miles a year you drive and the weight of the vehicle. So if you drive a lighter weight vehicle, you're not doing as much wear and tear. You shouldn't pay as much if you're doing a larger vehicle. And that kind of is what happens now with fuel taxes, because a larger, heavier vehicle uses more fuel, so you're going to pay more fuel taxes. So we've got to find a formula for that to to pay, to pay for roads if we're going to continue using EVs. Yep, yep, yep. But to Mikah's question earlier about where I do my testing, so I do have a loop, about a 40 mile loop, that I use. You know that's a mix of highway, urban, suburban, rural roads to get a get a nice mix of driving in there, and I use that both for testing fuel economy and also for testing range on plug-in hybrids and EVs.

1:58:10 - Leo Laporte
I never thought of that. You probably put on quite a few miles a week.

1:58:15 - Sam Abuelsamid
I drive. I'd usually drive probably a couple hundred miles a week between just going out to do some testing but also, you know, to go to meetings and appointments that I have to do with various companies. So you know. I've worked from home.

I've worked, I've worked remotely, I've worked from home for for 10 years now, long before the pandemic, but I still have to go out and meet with clients and meet with, meet with other companies and so that that gives me an opportunity to put some test miles on the vehicles. And then there's other places where I go to to just test on some country back roads to test handling and occasionally, if I have an off-road type of vehicle like a Ford Bronco or a Jeep Wrangler, there's there's a few ORV parks, off-road vehicle parks that I can go to.

1:59:05 - Leo Laporte
Are you going to get a cyber truck to review?

1:59:07 - Sam Abuelsamid
at any point? Almost certainly not, and and, to be honest, I'm not really sure I want to. So first, first of all, tesla doesn't do press vehicles anymore. Oh, interesting they. They haven't for for quite a while.

1:59:20 - Leo Laporte
That sounds like a long decision, yeah.

1:59:23 - Sam Abuelsamid
Well, Tesla disbanded their, their PR department about four years ago. Yeah. So you know, if you send, if you send an email to press at teslacom, it just goes intoa black. Well, you either get a poop emoji or no response at all.

1:59:36 - Leo Laporte
Twitter. Twitter's X sounds out of poop emoji. Yeah.

1:59:39 - Sam Abuelsamid
So they, they fired all their PR people a long time ago and so they just don't respond to questions at all. But you know, for there are, I know there, there's some, some, some outlets that are buying their own cyber trucks, like my friends at the TFL truck channel. They're, they've got one ordered and then they, they get press vehicles, but they also buy some vehicles for longer term evaluation. They're buying a cyber truck, but I actually got to see a cyber truck up close in person at the Chicago show this week. Um boy, that thing is bad in a lot of ways.

Um, yeah, and setting aside aesthetics, which is obviously a very personal thing the, the stainless steel panels on that. Like if you look at any other vehicle, um, you open the doors, you open the trunk lid, what you'll see is when they stamp out those panels out of steel or aluminum, they then roll over the edges so that when you, when you look at the edges, they're, they're rounded. They roll over the edges and basically just fold them over and then weld that. Um, on the cyber truck, they literally just stamp out these flat pieces of of stainless steel and so now you have these sharp edges on there, um, and especially on the front of the vehicle, I mean on the door. It's bad enough on the doors because there's no door handles. So you've got to. You know, you press the button and it pops out. It's got the same kind of piston that you had on your Maki um Leo, where you press the button and it pops it out a couple of inches and then you grab the edge of the door and you know what I kind of like about the eye confused because it's the same body as the five series BMW, so it's got like a traditional door handle

normal door handle you pull it and opens the door, but I really like that.

2:01:23 - Leo Laporte
I know it's probably not a zero dynamic, but I kind of like it.

2:01:27 - Sam Abuelsamid
But the um, the cyber truck. Uh, you know, now you have these sharp edges along the doors. There was one YouTube channel late they were evaluating a cyber truck and they were actually, uh, they, they, they do, uh, the carrot test, um, and stick a carrot in their slam. That slam closed the door and it was slicing the carrot, oh my goodness, yeah Well, wouldn't most doors slice a carrot?

Not necessarily Um, but the the. The thing I have a real concern about is you've got the same kinds of edges all along the front. So if you hit a vulnerable road user, pedestrian or cyclist, you're going to do way more damage than you would with a traditional vehicle. And I don't think the cyber truck will ever be allowed to be sold in Europe, because in Europe they have pedestrian protection standards for vehicles, um and uh. So you know, to try to minimize to the degree you can, injuries that are going to be uh, done to a pedestrian if they're struck by that vehicle. Uh, the cyber truck will never be able to pass that with its current design, um. So there's, there's. I got a lot of issues with that thing, uh, but that's it's. It's bad in that respect, yeah.

But also a related thing you've probably seen, I think I think you guys talked about it on at least one of the shows this week, maybe on Mac break weekly um, with these morons that are going out and putting on their Apple Vision pro. I do not do that. I don't care what you drive, whether you drive a Tesla or anything else. Do not put on any VR goggles if you are behind the wheel of the vehicle? Of course not. Apple tells you that, like that's just dumb. Well, but you know what Apple should be doing, though. You know, if they're so smart, it should be. The cameras should be able to recognize that. Oh, there's a steering wheel in front of me. I mean a car, just turned the thing off.

2:03:17 - Leo Laporte
Doesn't it do some warning if you start moving around too much.

2:03:21 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, there's, there's a uh, basically there's a travel mode, and so it is waiting to see if travel mode should be turned on Right. And it only does that if you are in something like a plane or on a car, in a car, in which case it does have that warning at first. But you're right, it doesn't completely disable it.

2:03:39 - Sam Abuelsamid
Yeah, and that's that's what it should do is just disable it.

2:03:42 - Leo Laporte
Well, Apple recently said no one would ever do that they did. They underestimated the stupidity of human.

2:03:50 - Sam Abuelsamid
Yeah Well, a friend of mine I was talking to the other day, uh, he was at a mall, uh around near here, where there's an Apple store, and he was just parking his car and he saw somebody drive by in a Jeep Wrangler, which does not have anything resembling any type of autopilot or self driving type of functionality, with a vision pro headset on. It's just so. So don't be stupid, leave the vision pro at home, don't take it in the car with you, please.

2:04:18 - Leo Laporte
Tesla also got a little bit of a trouble. They had to do a recall of nearly all Tesla's cause, the icon mall for the warning. Things like the flashers were too small. Oh, and then, and it's a, I mean, it's a software update. You don't have to bring your car back to the factory to get it done, but that seems like a very Elon thing to say. What are the rules? Oh, forget it. Yeah, exactly, no, that's too big.

2:04:44 - Mikah Sargent
I have a question. So first and foremost, you as a car guy, I'm curious do you prefer to drive stick or automatic? And then my secondary question is for some, for those car enthusiasts who love driving manual is there some way for EV manufacturers to introduce something where having manual quote unquote transition in an electric vehicle would be something more than just that elevator close button like that would actually mean something and do something. Has there been any experimentation with that for folks who like to drive manual?

2:05:29 - Sam Abuelsamid
Well, to the first part of your question. I've owned vehicles for almost 40 years now and every single vehicle I have ever owned that has been primarily my vehicle, not something I share with my wife or kids. Everything that's been my vehicle has had a manual transmission. So I think that probably answers your question and who likes a stick? I do. I like to be actively involved in the driving process, not me.

2:05:54 - Leo Laporte
I just want to sit back, relax and enjoy the ride. And with his vision pro. Samuble.

2:05:57 - Mikah Sargent
Sam, I pray for your support.

2:05:58 - Leo Laporte
Wait, wait, there's one more question. There's one more question.

2:06:02 - Sam Abuelsamid
Yeah, I didn't finish answering my question which is about manual shifting in electric vehicles. There are some manufacturers that are working on simulated manual shifting in electric vehicles. Toyota's got got something where they've got a patent, where it'll actually have a shift lever on the console like you would normally have with a manual transmission, and that will probably be coming out in something in about two to three years time. And then Hyundai, on the new Ionic 5N that is going to be launching this spring, has a manual shifting mode where it doesn't have a, it's got paddle shifters on the steering wheel, so it doesn't have a manual shift lever, but it's got paddle shifters that you can manually shift. And what it does is it? It interrupts the torque delivery from the, from the electric motors, momentarily, like you would get when you're declutching and and releasing the clutch pedal, so it gives you that feeling of manually shifting. Tim Stevens, the NARS tactic.

2:07:17 - Leo Laporte
I wrote it makes no sense, but it's so much fun yeah.

2:07:23 - Sam Abuelsamid
Well, and this is the thing that the engineers from Hyundai told me said you know people that like to drive, like to have that kind of feedback, and you know when you're, when you're driving fast, you know you're used to hearing the certain, certain types of feedback the sounds of the acceleration or the interruption of momentary interruption of acceleration when you're shifting and it helps you keep track of what's going on. Yeah, you know. So you're not. You're not feeling quite so disconnected from the car. More engaged driving.

2:07:54 - Leo Laporte
But it's a it's a simulation, it's a simulation?

2:07:57 - Sam Abuelsamid
Yeah, you're not actually doing anything Tim writes.

2:08:00 - Leo Laporte
clutch to the floor. I slotted into first gear, then eased back off the clutch.

2:08:04 - Sam Abuelsamid
Oh, yeah, that's the throttle.

2:08:05 - Leo Laporte
I pulled smoothly away this is Toyota one too smoothly to really test the system, so I stopped to try it again. Clutch at first gear I dropped the clutch just to see what would happen. The car lurched and then it stalled. Yes, I stalled an EV. Actually, I simulated stall. That's amazing Nothing physically happened within the car the lurch, the dying of the engine, sound, the red flashing of the gear indicator all came down to software. It's all simulated, all fake, but it made me laugh just the same. Well, you guys are dinosaurs.

It is. You guys are dinosaurs.

2:08:38 - Sam Abuelsamid
It'll fade out and then we can drive our cars like humans.

2:08:41 - Leo Laporte
They'll come up behind us, they won't care. They don't care if you're having fun with your simulated stall.

2:08:47 - Mikah Sargent
Honestly for folks who like it again, especially if it makes you more engaged in the active, paying attention.

2:08:55 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, I'm not against that. Now, cool, thank you for answering those questions. My heads up display is making me do math sums. That would be good. No, no, I don't want that either. Sam Abuelsamid, principal researcher guide house insights and, of course, he does the wheel bearings podcast with Nicole and Robbie. wheelbearings.media. Great show. If you love cars, if you love this kind of conversation, you will love it. And he joins us from time to time both on TWiT and on Ask the Tech guys, and it's always nice to see you, sam.

2:09:26 - Sam Abuelsamid
Always great to talk to you guys, thank you.

2:09:28 - Leo Laporte
I am Somebody's asking me how do you like your new car? I am very much liking my i5. I like electric vehicles a lot and but I kind of missed having a more luxurious interior. That Tesla was. It was felt weird. It was like I paid a lot of money for a car that just felt like a Toyota.

2:09:45 - Sam Abuelsamid
Camry, that doesn't feel very premium.

2:09:47 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, yeah, not even a Camry, you know a?

2:09:50 - Sam Abuelsamid
Corolla. The BMW definitely has that premium feel.

2:09:52 - Leo Laporte
I love it.

2:09:53 - Sam Abuelsamid
I love driving, it's very smooth. And you I've heard you mentioned you know the phone is a key on that. Bmw actually one of the first manufacturers to utilize ultra wideband, for the phone is a key functionality. It's absolutely flawless yeah. And that's why it works by watch as well as my phone.

2:10:14 - Leo Laporte
It's in my Apple wallet, which means I can share it to somebody. I sent the key to my wife the other day. I don't think she knew what to do with it. I'm just kind of explained that you can put it in your wallet and then get in the car and drive off. It's really is flawless technology. I know a few other cars are using it.

2:10:31 - Sam Abuelsamid
I hope more do, because yeah, we'll be seeing a lot more of that coming over the next couple of years on new vehicles using ultra wideband yeah, very smart.

2:10:41 - Leo Laporte
It even works with my Apple watch, which is nice, very nice. Yeah, thank you, sam. Good evening, and we'll see you soon on Twitter. Take care, all right, see you guys soon. Bye-bye, samable, samad. Tesla is adding UWB support as well, so that's cool. I think that's neat. That's ultra wideband is the thing where you aim your phone.

2:11:05 - Mikah Sargent
It's incredibly detailed location tracking. It gets down to the centimeters.

2:11:13 - Leo Laporte
So that's nice, because one of the problems with these is we were talking about at the beginning of the show Canada was saying well, we don't want these devices that could steal your key. I have to really be near my car, but it knows I'm there right away and when I walk away, it knows I'm there and it beeps my phone in my watch, so I know that it's locking and unlocking.

2:11:31 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, doing it with Bluetooth has so many issues, because Bluetooth is notoriously low energy and so you've got situations where it's not checking enough and then there are also other Bluetooth signals that are going at the same time and has to make sure that it's truly the one. There are so many issues with Bluetooth and so it makes sense to switch to something like UWB.

2:11:53 - Leo Laporte
It's noticeable. I had phone as a key on my Ford Mach-E that I just turned in and exactly that. Sometimes it would work, sometimes it wouldn't. It got to the point where Lisa wouldn't use it because she's I'm always going to bring the fob because I don't want to get stuck, and I was. I was visiting Alex Lindsay last year in Marin and I couldn't get in my car. I couldn't start it. It was like oh, and I kept having to do it and I rebooted my phone, finally got it working. It was exactly what you were talking about.

2:12:18 - Mikah Sargent
The Bluetooth wasn't seen, it just doesn't. Yeah, sometimes Bluetooth doesn't give you what you want and it needs to every time, or else it's not good.

2:12:25 - Leo Laporte
UWB works flawlessly Nice. I highly recommend it. I think we are out of time.

2:12:31 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, we're out of time because it's the Super Bowl day.

2:12:35 - Leo Laporte
Yes, Benito's, here we're going to get ready to make the transition to this week in tech. We do thank you so much for watching the show and listening to the show. We do ask the tech guys. Normal time is Sunday at 11 am Pacific. That's 2 pm Eastern time, 1900 UTC. I tell you that because you can't watch us do it live. This is that little sliver of a of a audience, like the Netflix wrestling stuff, where people want to watch it live and actually for this show is important because you can't call in unless you're watching the show live.

We stream it in two places. If you're a club member, of course, in the Club Twit Discord. It's up on the stage there, but you can also watch it on YouTube. In fact, that's usually a better signal. Discord isn't great with video, yet YouTubecom slash Twit. When any of our shows goes live, we push a button, we start streaming on YouTube. You can watch the show as we do it For the fact. Of course we're podcasts. You can get the show on our website twittv slash, ATG or techguylabscom. We kept the domains that site points to it. You'll also see links there to podcast clients you can use. Or the YouTube channel. You can go after the fact. If you call after the fact, something interesting happens.

2:13:48 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, If you call that number 888-724-2884, after hours, then you will be able to leave a voicemail and we will play it back live on the air and answer it. You can also get in touch ATG at twittv. That's the email, and calltwittv, as was mentioned, is the website to go to.

2:14:08 - Leo Laporte
Michael will be back with his show Tech News Weekly on Thursday. You record for Club Members the iOS Today show with Rosemary Orchard on Tuesdays.

2:14:17 - Mikah Sargent
On Tuesdays, every other Tuesday, yep, he's on Mac as well. He's on Mac, although that's not recorded for your eyes.

2:14:24 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, but you can see it in the club after the fact. You can also watch the show every Sunday and we're glad you did Come back. Next Sunday We'll see you again at our normal time. One of us is going to be very happy. Who will it be? Unless it's a tie, wait, do they do that? Yes, you could have a tie. There's never been a tie in the Super Bowl, but it could happen.

There's no overtime in football, there's overtime, but at some point they give up and we don't have penalty kicks, so they might flip a coin to find out who wins the Super Bowl.

2:14:57 - Mikah Sargent
That would be awful, that would be ridiculous.

2:15:02 - Leo Laporte
Does the Super Bowl continue till it's over? Okay, so my hope is it will go deep into the night. We'll be seeing the same ad for the Vision Pro 400 times. What is your prediction for a Vision Pro ad? There'll be one and a half time for sure, because Apple owns it.

2:15:19 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, I don't think they're going to be. I think, because they've already sold all they can, yeah, and I don't think it's for every, I don't think they see it for everyone either, so they're not going to push it?

2:15:30 - Leo Laporte
I don't think so. I might be wrong, I might be very wrong. It was 1984. It was a Super Bowl. A mere 40 years ago that Apple introduced the Macintosh to the world with a very, very famous ad, compelling yeah. So there's some history there. We'll see, we'll see. Thanks for joining us. We'll see you all next time on Ask the Tech Guys. Bye-bye, oh, I forgot to say have a great Geek Week. Bye-bye, go Niners.

2:15:59 - Scott Wilkinson
Hey there, Scott Wilkinson here. In case you hadn't heard, Home Theater Geeks is back. Each week I bring you the latest audio video news, tips and tricks to get the most out of your AV system, product reviews and more. You can enjoy Home Theater Geeks only if you're a member of Club TWiT, which costs seven bucks a month, or you can subscribe to Home Theater Geeks by itself for only $2.99 a month. I hope you'll join me for a weekly dose of Home Theater Geekatude.