Ask the Tech Guys Episode 1957 Transcript
Please be advised this transcript is AI-generated and may not be word for word. Time codes refer to the approximate times in the ad-supported version of the show.
Leo Laporte (00:00:00):
It's time for us, the tech guys. I'm Leo Laporte coming up. Why marketing terms and security Do not mix.
Mikah Sargent (00:00:06):
And I'm Mikah Sargent and I'm going to show you how to take a look at the battery health on your smartphones,
Leo Laporte (00:00:11):
Plus a great chili recipe and a TV that's gonna fall off your wall. It's all coming up. Next un ask the tech guys podcasts you love from people you trust. This is TWiT. This is Ask the Tech Guys episode 1957 for Sunday, January 15th, 2023, battery powered suction cups. Ask the Tech Guys is brought to you by Melissa. Over 10,000 clients worldwide in industries like retail education, healthcare, insurance, finance, and government. Rely on Melissa for full spectrum data quality and ID verification software. Make sure your customer contact data is up to date. Get started today with 1000 records cleaned for free at melissa.com/twit. Thanks for listening to this show. As an ad supported network, we are always looking for new partners with products and services that will benefit our qualified audience. Are you ready to grow your business? Reach out to advertise at quit tv and launch your campaign now. Hey, hey, hey. Welcome. It's the tech guys. We're here, Mikah, Sargent and Leo
Mikah Sargent (00:01:34):
Laporte. Hello.
Leo Laporte (00:01:36):
You're so natty and you're wearing cool socks. Ooh, we realized, and this is, if you're just listening to the radio show version, you don't realize that we are sitting on a camera. Uhhuh <affirmative>. And you can see us. Yeah,
Mikah Sargent (00:01:48):
We wave, we smile.
Leo Laporte (00:01:50):
And normally every other show I do, you can't see anything below the waist. Oh,
Mikah Sargent (00:01:54):
That's true. This is a rare occurrence.
Leo Laporte (00:01:56):
And I thought, oh, all of a sudden they're seeing my socks. So I, I, and somebody commented, so I thought, well, okay,
Mikah Sargent (00:02:02):
I'm
Leo Laporte (00:02:02):
Digging them today. Do we have enough crazy socks that we can
Mikah Sargent (00:02:04):
Wear these? I definitely do.
Leo Laporte (00:02:06):
Former sponsor Bombas. Oh,
Mikah Sargent (00:02:08):
Are they? Yeah. That's what I'm wearing. These are Bombas socks.
Leo Laporte (00:02:11):
We're Bombas brothers.
Mikah Sargent (00:02:13):
Baba. We are.
Leo Laporte (00:02:14):
So Mike and I going to be joining you and I hope you'll be joining us. We do it live every Sunday from two to 5:00 PM Eastern time. 11:00 AM to 2:00 PM Pacific. That's our time. As you can see, we're on Pacific time. Look at that clock. Wow. Beautiful. That's a nice clock. We, we realized we didn't have a clock last week. Gotta have a clock. Everything we do has to Do you have in your house? Maybe it's just me. There's no line of eye line in my house that I can't see a clock. Yes.
Mikah Sargent (00:02:41):
That's, that's how it has to be. My great-grandparents instilled that in me. Is that weird? They've got hundreds of clocks in. They had hundreds of clocks in their home.
Leo Laporte (00:02:48):
Why is I thought it was cuz I was in radio. But I guess
Mikah Sargent (00:02:51):
Not. I think it's because we want to be in control, even though Yeah. The world is random and nothing matters.
Leo Laporte (00:02:57):
And time is a con, is really just, just a construct. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. But it's a construct. We choose, we enjoy. Yeah. So every, every Sunday at this hour, you can tune in. You can watch us live at Live dot twi do tv. That's our podcast net cast website. The other day Lisa was saying, I wish we hadn't changed a podcast, cuz you know, for a long time I didn't want it to be a podcast cuz of Apple's iPod. And I thought, we are not about what we, what you listen to us on, which is good cuz there's iPods no more. We are about how you get us, which is over the internet. So I thought Net Cast mm-hmm. <Affirmative>. And it's casting a net. I thought it was so much better. I I gave a keynote of Podcast Expo Implo early in the early days, imploring podcasters, call themselves net casters.
(00:03:39):
So finally I went to Podcast Expo a couple years ago with Lisa and Jerry, our COO and somebody, I think it was Tim Street in his panel, who's the guy I really admire. Said, call yourself a podcast. So we renamed everything now, Lisa says, as the podcast advertising market collapses, can we be a net cast again, <laugh>. Anyway, whatever we are. Net Cast podcast, we come to you over the internet now. No more towers, no more transmitters. Although we do have a very nice am transmitter in the studio over in the radio corner. That's an AM transmitter. That works. Oh, yeah. Oh man. So we could be a radio station, but we've decided that's probably best. The downside of that is, it used to be very easy to hear the radio show. You could, in fact, many people discover it by accident. You're driving in the car, you, you know, you Hello.
(00:04:30):
And then suddenly you're hearing a radio show. Yeah. And maybe you go, oh, that's interesting. Cause I like tech. But we don't have that serendipity anymore and people have to find us. So tell your friends, we are also on YouTube. There's a YouTube channel dedicated. Ask the tech guys. Am I right? Yeah. I think it is. Youtube.Com. youtube.com/oh probably Tech guy. Probably. Probably. But here's the reason I mentioned that. If you want to tell your friends, those people who can't figure out how to watch a show that's not on the radio, if you wanna tell your friends, you can use your YouTube, take a little snip of something. For instance, I'm gonna talk in just a second about, we're gonna talk about passwords some more. If you think that's important, you can snip it on YouTube and send it to them. And they will and will help them discover us youtube.com/tech Guy Labs.
(00:05:14):
Okay. Website remains tech guy labs.com. You, if you subscribed, as you probably figured this out by now, if you subscribe to ask the tech guy in in the you know, in the podcast client you use, if you subscribe to the tech guy, you'll continue to get the show. It's the same, it's the same. In fact, we even started the numbering with what, 1956. So this is just a con. In other words, I'm considering this a continuation of the show we've always done. Now, there's a couple of points before we get to the calls. Calls, by the way, are Zoom. Now we don't want to, we don't, we don't have to use the phone. So we're using Zoom call dot twit tv. Just, and you know what the best way to do this on your smartphone, Mikah showed this last week. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, just on your browser in Safari or Chrome, go to call dot twit tv. If you, if you have Zoom, it'll launch it. If you don't, it'll give you the opportunity to download it because we know your camera and your and your microphone work on your phone. Just do it like that. It's okay if it's shaky, cam.
Mikah Sargent (00:06:15):
Yeah. And if you, if you wanna be fancy, you just turn your phone to the side that makes you, does that work? Fancy? Yep. Oh, then it'll be landscaping.
Leo Laporte (00:06:22):
Either way, you're gonna end up in a round hole. Yeah.
Mikah Sargent (00:06:24):
It doesn't, ultimately it doesn't matter. I'm just saying if you're feeling a little fancy,
Leo Laporte (00:06:27):
Because what we're gonna do is we're gonna zoom in on your head do make your bed though. We might see that behind you. Yes. And that way we get video calls, we get higher qual call quality. It is again, another barrier to entry. So, you know, grandma and grandpa, well, you gotta help them figure out Zoom, I guess. Or they can ask you the question or they probably know how to use email. Email. We got a ton of email, didn't we?
Mikah Sargent (00:06:50):
<Laugh> we've got so much email
Leo Laporte (00:06:51):
Already. Cow. In fact, let's put that on the lower third. If you would ask the tech guys@twit.tv, that's our email. So you could put that right down there next to call twit tv. Ask the, so we'll take email preferred. We'd love to see you, we'd love to see video. You could record a video with a question. Send it via email. But text is fine too. We're gonna do a lot of those too. So one of the things, we got a lot of emails about spanking me badly. Oof. Because I did not give enough love to one password. We talked about leaving last pass. And I think by now most of us understand that last pass has mishandled this breach. They knew about it earlier. There you go. I love that. Thank you. They, they put the email in they knew about the breach in July.
(00:07:40):
Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, they said at the time, oh, we don't think anything important was stolen. And then by December 23rd, two days before Christmas, that's always a bad sign when a tech company puts out a press release two days before Christmas. You know, they tried now. Oh, bury it. Yeah, exactly. They're trying to bury it. They said, oh hey William. Actually, the, the vaults were somebody stole all the vaults, a backup of the vaults. They got it all. That's as bad as you can get. Now the issue though, really is the vault that you, you know, your last pass vault or your one password vault, or your apple key chain, or your bit warden vault, or your robo form, whatever, the password manager, those are always encrypted in such a way that they're not just, it's not just text in there, not your passwords. Anyway, turns out last pass there was a lot of text about what sites you visited, what sites you had passwords for, things like that.
(00:08:28):
But which they should not have allowed. But never, nevertheless, your, your login and password was encrypted. And so the bad guy would have to guess your master password. But there were two problems with that. One, most people don't use good last, you know, master password. So if your password was, you know, password 1 23, the bad guy's gonna be able to crack that very, very fast. Oh, in milliseconds. Yep. Nanoseconds. The other thing is they do have a system all password managers do for re-encrypt over and over passwords to make it even harder to brute force it. They call it a key derivative function, P B K D F. And there's other ways to do that. In fact maybe sometime we'll talk about that because there are better ways to do that. But most password managers are using p b pbk D F too.
(00:09:15):
It turns out when Steve found this out last week, this was a big revelation. Last pass has not mentioned this. Many, many people, including many of our security and our listeners, those are the most secure people in the world, had a iteration number, a pbk D F two iteration number that was very low one. So combined that with a guessable password and surprisingly large number of guessable means they had zero security. So those people, especially your information is kind of out there now over time. Last pass turned that number up to 500 to 5,000. Most recently it's 100,000, 100. It could be even higher. I went into Bit warden turned my P B K D F two, my iterations up to 2 million without any woo problems. O OSP recommends like 300,000. I think it was the, yeah, around 300,000. I turn it higher.
(00:10:08):
The only disadvantage having a higher number is it'll take a little bit longer the first time you download your password vault into your device to open it a second or two big deal. Okay. Anyway, pa LastPass had not updated those old passwords. They also had old passwords stored in a format that wasn't very good. A codebook format that wasn't very good. So there were a number of issues with that fault. So, and the fact, the biggest issues, they didn't tell anybody. They, they still haven't said much. We don't know when the backup kit was from. We don't know a lot of things. So a lot of people are moving off. Last pass I showed you how to export is very easy. Last week, I didn't actually say which password managers should go to. I think Dash lane is very good. I think one password is very good. I think bit Warden, our sponsor is very good and there are others. <Laugh>,
(00:10:57):
I saw your toot on ma it on, which is by the way, the equivalent of a tweet on Twitter. Except better. Yeah. Translate <laugh>. I saw your toot on Maed on saying, well, yeah, I used that one password. I just didn't want to interrupt Leo. Well, good for 10 years. That's a perfectly good password manager. But then I got a lot of people because I had said on TWI last Sunday you know, I was talking about two factor and Doc Rock said, well what about this secret key, this agile key chain one password uses that, that makes it more secure. Right? And I kind of poo-pooed it. Let me explain that. Cause a lot, a lot of people said, well you, Leo, you shouldn't have done that. So one password does something of interest. They add a second in effect a second password that they generate numerically. Actually your phone or device generates numerically. One password doesn't have access to it. To unlock your fault. Is two better than one is the question. And the answer is complicated of course, but I'll try to simplify it. You don't even use it, do you?
Mikah Sargent (00:11:58):
I I guess if it's built in to the, I mean it
Leo Laporte (00:12:00):
Is, well here's it adds some inconvenience. Okay. So you would know if you use it because you have to, you have to keep track of that file. Okay. That has that secret number. And when you use a new device, you have to transmit it to the new device. Oh,
Mikah Sargent (00:12:12):
It's that, it's that. Okay then yes, I
Leo Laporte (00:12:14):
Do use that. So that's good. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, it adds some inconvenience. Of course there's always this trade up between security and convenience. It also it's cost more. You now have to pay for a subscription to LastPass to use it. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> it also has a sexy name. <Laugh> <laugh>. And that my, my spidey sense when I see sexy names and when I see marketing terms and they cost more, I always say, well, okay, let's talk about what it does. So it is valuable in one particular case. And it's maybe the reason you should recommend one password to your family members who are less sophisticated. If your master password is bad, it's a good password that will backstop it. So if you're using password 1 23 on one password, Hey, good news, there's a second password that's strong that was generated mm-hmm. <Affirmative> automatically, you don't have to remember it, but you do have to store it, you can't lose it.
(00:13:08):
Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. So that's another potential problem. Here's the real question. If you are a smart person who listens to our shows and you have a very good master password, does that second password make you more secure? I would say no this much, A little bit. No, because you're mast. If you have an infinitely hard to crack master password, does it matter that there's a second one? No. Right. So you adding inconvenience and cost for something you could handle yourself. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. So the re but now this is why it's good for Aunt Mod, because Aunt MOD's gonna use her birthdate. Her cousin's maiden name, her dog's name and her dog's name, which is not a good password. And so she's backstop. So one password probably is a good choice except for they have to maintain this separate file. They can't lose it, which is even, that's the most problem even for me.
(00:14:03):
Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. So my suggestion is it doesn't matter what password manager you use, you do not need this magic, agile keychain second password. You need a strong master password. And that means it can't be obvious. It, it should be as random as you can make it and still memorize it. It should be long. Mine I just counted was what, 31 characters. It should be long. And those, that combination makes it impossible to break that plus a good high pbk D F two. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. So if you do all that, I don't think you need to pay extra for the extra security that one password gives you. And I don't think the inconvenience, it, it, it creates is worth it. It, it's actually a disadvantage. But it does put more burden on you to have a good password. And your family members who maybe aren't very good, encourage them not to have passwords that have English words in them.
(00:14:59):
We were talking on Tuesday with security. Now Steve was explaining what entropy is. Ent the more random the password is, the more entropy it has, the harder it is to guess What it means is that the third character in your password is in no way related to the second or the, or the fourth. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, you can't in, you can't narrow down what the third is based on what the second was. So if you use an English word c a r e, you see the C there are very, there are much smaller subset of letters that could be the second one after that. Right. That's poor entropy. That's why pass phrases, I'm sorry, Russell Monroe, I'm sorry. X K C D horse staple does not work. It's not good. You want something that's random. Now, how should you make a random password? You, I mean ideally you generate it with your password manager, but then you're gonna have to memorize Q3 79 4 1-842-QUESTION mark. And nobody can memorize that. Right? What do you do for your last pass master password?
Mikah Sargent (00:16:00):
I actually used the builtin Mac os keychain
Leo Laporte (00:16:06):
Very smart
Mikah Sargent (00:16:07):
Tool to make. Oh,
Leo Laporte (00:16:08):
That password. Oh, that's so
Mikah Sargent (00:16:09):
Smart. Password for my one password. I
Leo Laporte (00:16:11):
Should mention that. By the way, your Apple key chain is doing the same thing. One password does, it generates a second secure key, which it stores in the hardware secure enclave. That's why you have to, when you create a new device, you have to get that, you have to get the approval from an existing device. That's what's going on there. That's actually a better way to do it. You don't have to store it yourself. Your phone or your Mac stores it and transmits it over Apple's doing that. And they should do that because most people's login password, which unlocks the key chain isn't good. Right. You don't want a 31 character login. Yeah.
Mikah Sargent (00:16:44):
You're having to type
Leo Laporte (00:16:45):
The whole thing in. Yeah. Mine's not good. It's it, you know, and even Apple says, oh, that's strength is terrible. <Laugh>. That is not. So that's why Apple does that. And they should do that. I think you're very smart. You use Apple's very good keychain password manager. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> to
Mikah Sargent (00:17:00):
Generate it just, it's a really, it's, it's a really good generator because they have one, they have an option that's called memorable. But memorable. Well, hold on. I know memorable does not mean English words. It means that letters think of it like the, I make up a word now. Chlor 72 thanks Ty. Those aren't real words, but I can remember Chlor.
Leo Laporte (00:17:23):
Sty. Remember t h Thanks Ty.
Mikah Sargent (00:17:25):
That's true. Th
Leo Laporte (00:17:26):
H h often comes after a T in the English language. So entropy is lower for that H So ideally if it's
Mikah Sargent (00:17:34):
Member, so you think it should be G your, it shouldn't be memorable one character, however,
Leo Laporte (00:17:38):
And this does lower the entropy, but, but marginally you could use for instance, the first letters of a phrase. Ah. So let's say your phrase is to be or not to be. That that is the question. Yeah. If your password master password were the number two and the letter B, the nu the letter o n the number two B T I t Q. And you could even use some commas in there. That's a good start. If you can remember it commas, if you can remember inter cap, things like that. And then still short add something else because longer is better. This is another thing Steve taught us. He has a page called password haystacks. Even if it was 20 periods, that's a lot better than just two B two. So what I do is I create a phrase that I can remember mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, but that generates an acronym.
(00:18:33):
The first, the initialisms, the first letters of each phrase using some rules that only I know about punctuation and capitalization. And then that's even not enough. I add some numbers and I'll give you an example of what you might want to do. Your childhood phone number. But the first three digits, and then put your childhood zip code and the last four digits. Now you've got, what is that, 12? Pretty random numbers. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> A adding that 12 things is a huge improvement. So if you combine this acronym initialism thing with a number or something that you just know, and by the way, that thing will be useful to add to other passwords later. Like if you want other memorable passwords. Yes. Keep that number around. I can remember my childhood phone number, right? Everybody's drilled into this again. Yes. So, but, but it's gonna be hard to figure out what that is.
(00:19:30):
And that by itself is still not enough. Right? You have to have that, have to know how you've entangled it with other things. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. So I think it is possible to generate a good, long, strong password. If you do that, then you don't need to pay for and go through the rigamarole of one password's secret password. Because you've already got an impossible password to begin with. Turn up your, your derivatives to the pbk DF two to as high a number as you can stand. 600,000 is minimum 300,000. I guess it's a wasp's recommendation. What is O wasp? I don't remember the initials. It's a nice security group. Yeah. <laugh>. Okay. So now the problem is not you, you're watching our show. You're smart. You know how to do this. The problem is friends and family, especially if you have a family last pass or a family, you know, password manager mm-hmm. <Affirmative>
(00:20:19):
Because they're gonna all be in it too. And we have this problem here. We use Last Pass Enterprise for the, for the company. And and Russell, our IT guy <laugh> just had to set out a second email saying, you guys, I told you to change your passwords. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, please do that. And he has to go through all because of this problem has to go through all of our passwords. I forgot I had a last pass account. I know. I, I never, I never use it. I never use it. You do. I never use it,
Mikah Sargent (00:20:49):
But company. But
Leo Laporte (00:20:50):
I changed it and I did what you did. I generated a password for it in Bit Warden. Yeah. Stored it in bit Warden, so don't have to remember it. So it's very, very secure.
Mikah Sargent (00:20:58):
Same.
Leo Laporte (00:20:58):
And I have to bother Russell. Anyway, that's the the sermon again two weeks in a row is about passwords. But this, it's important. This is so important. Yeah. Yeah. And so tell your family members don't reuse passwords. Come up with a, a good, long, strong master password using a technique. You know, somebody once said that, that, here's another good one. The presidents of the United States, older folks can remember this. Eisenhower, Kennedy Johnson. They can remember that. But don't use the words, use the first letters and uppercase the Republicans or something like that. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. That's again, a mnemonic. Something you can remember. You won't remember the pass password probably, but you can recreate it as you go. What should we do now, Mr. Mikah? Sargent?
Mikah Sargent (00:21:42):
Well, I do,
Leo Laporte (00:21:43):
We do You wanna do a Sunday sermon?
Mikah Sargent (00:21:45):
Not today. Next
Leo Laporte (00:21:46):
Week
Mikah Sargent (00:21:46):
Is your turn. We'll do, yeah, I'll do one next week.
Leo Laporte (00:21:48):
Let's take a call. We got, Brian has been, his hand has been up. His arm is getting tired. He's been, he's been waving it. Oh, Mr. Kata. Mr. Kata. <laugh>. For the last half hour while Leo Blathers on. Brian, I'm welcoming you into the on-air room. Click that button that says, okay, I'll talk to these guys.
Mikah Sargent (00:22:07):
Look. Well,
Leo Laporte (00:22:09):
He's dialing the dial. Brian, where are you calling from today? <Laugh>, don't touch me. Don't touch me. <Laugh>. We can't hear Brian, but I'm sure there's something we can do to fix that.
Mikah Sargent (00:22:24):
Oh, Brian's switching.
Leo Laporte (00:22:26):
He's doing something.
Mikah Sargent (00:22:30):
This is the
Leo Laporte (00:22:30):
Other thing. This is why we wanted to use the phone generally, because we know your microphone works. We know your camera works. And generally your microphone's
Mikah Sargent (00:22:38):
On. Yeah. And AirPods can kind of get in the way of that
Leo Laporte (00:22:40):
Sometimes. Oh, is he using AirPods?
Mikah Sargent (00:22:42):
I think I see an AirPod
Leo Laporte (00:22:43):
In a way. It's so matter. We went to on vacation during the holidays. Went to Mexico, to the beach. I forgot my AirPods. I was so
Mikah Sargent (00:22:50):
Upset. You didn't have anything on the, on the plane.
Leo Laporte (00:22:52):
Well, I had, fortunately I carry three sets of ear butts with me at all times.
Mikah Sargent (00:22:57):
<Laugh>
Leo Laporte (00:22:59):
And and when we got home, we pulled into the garage and there were my AirPods on the floor in the garage. They had been in my pocket. Oh no. So you
Mikah Sargent (00:23:07):
Fell out. You did have them. I didn't
Leo Laporte (00:23:08):
Forget 'em. These fell outta my pocket. Scott Wilkinson's coming up, we're gonna talk about TV's and audio video from
Mikah Sargent (00:23:15):
Cs. Yes. Time. Just
Leo Laporte (00:23:16):
A little bit later on today. We're also gonna talk to Chris Marqui. He is going to give you an assignment,
Mikah Sargent (00:23:22):
Which I'm so excited we're keeping that going. Yeah. I'm really excited about that. Yeah, I, I've been looking at that flicker page for ages now and just going, Ooh. Ah.
Leo Laporte (00:23:30):
So what should I do with Brian? Should, are we gonna get this working or no? Should I move him back in the lobby while he fixes it? Let's do that. Yeah. I'm gonna move him into post air. And then I think this would be a good time to talk to Scott Wilkinson, who is on the line. I dig it. Hello, Scott Wilkinson. Home Theater. Theater. Hello,
Scott Wilkinson (00:23:50):
Leo. Yay. Hello Mikah.
Leo Laporte (00:23:53):
Hello, Scott. Welcome back to the, the Tech Guys.
Scott Wilkinson (00:23:57):
Thank you. It's so nice to be back.
Scott Wilkinson (00:24:01):
I hope you guys had a good holiday.
Leo Laporte (00:24:02):
We did. I know you got kind of sick over the holiday and
Scott Wilkinson (00:24:06):
I'm sorry. Oh, I got so sick. I I was, that was the worst. I've been sick in many years and you didn't even go
Leo Laporte (00:24:13):
Sick. In fact, CS
Scott Wilkinson (00:24:15):
I decided I was gonna skip ces cause I was getting better by then. But you know, it's an international Petri dish and I really didn't want to expose
Leo Laporte (00:24:25):
Myself. Yeah. But the good news is you have friends and like Mike heis who did go, and you are keeping track of all the press releases. And of course you have friends with all the manufacturers, so, you know. Oh yeah. What happened Now, last year CES was a big deal because we Dece saw for the first time the O LEDs, which is that right? My Yes. Qd OD QD ods, I felt like
Scott Wilkinson (00:24:48):
Somewhere QD od Quantum od. Right. That was, those were first major TV technology advancement in many years.
Leo Laporte (00:24:57):
Yeah. Yeah. And so I was curious this year, this year, yeah.
Scott Wilkinson (00:25:02):
Well, not, not, not revolutionary like that. I would say evolutionary. One of the, one of the most important things I was looking for was, is someone gonna bring out a larger Q D O lead? Because last year the only sizes available from Samsung and Sony, who are the two companies that that brought them out for consumers we're 55 inch and 65 inch. And as I've heard, a number of people say 65 inch is the new 42 inch <laugh>. Oh, wow. You know, PE people are buying bigger TVs. And this is always,
Leo Laporte (00:25:39):
I was the hardest thing to explain to I, I won't keep doing this, but I apologize. But the older folks who listen to the radio, they, they're
Scott Wilkinson (00:25:48):
Older folks like us.
Leo Laporte (00:25:49):
We're old and we remember that a 32 inch Sony Trinitron Woo is
Scott Wilkinson (00:25:55):
Massive. That was huge.
Leo Laporte (00:25:57):
Massive <laugh>. Partly because it was massive <laugh>, it weighed, weighed 50 pounds, well, yeah, hundred pounds. Well, but with flat screen, 300
Scott Wilkinson (00:26:05):
Pounds. Yeah,
Leo Laporte (00:26:05):
Yeah. With flat screen TVs. A they're thinner and lighter and Yeah. You want the movie theater experience. You, you definitely want it bigger. Would you say 50, you just say, said it. I think 55 is the minimum, right?
Scott Wilkinson (00:26:18):
Yeah, it is.
Leo Laporte (00:26:19):
Unless you're watching in the bathroom or some, like
Scott Wilkinson (00:26:22):
A kitchen, right. Or the kitchen or something. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. 55 is kind of the minimum. And 65 is now kind of a, a pretty standard smaller size <laugh>. Although so I was, I was gonna, I, I really was curious to see if someone was gonna bring out a bigger one and Samsung did. They have now a 77 inch. So that's great. Now, I will tell you this, all, all, virtually all of the announcements of new TVs and products at c e s, there's no mention of price and there's no mention of availability. So, you know, sometime in the spring or summer for some amount of money, <laugh>,
Leo Laporte (00:27:05):
This is one of the things I don't like about ces. In fact TVs isn't the case. But a lot of times the products you see at CES will never come out. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. Right?
Scott Wilkinson (00:27:13):
That's true. That
Leo Laporte (00:27:14):
Is true. And, and it's really become the Gizmo Expo where it's just a lot of stuff that the local TV people go crazy over, but is Right. Right. Is it really significant? But TV AV is a little different. Cars and av I think Wes, we see some significant products,
Scott Wilkinson (00:27:31):
We tend to see more of them actually come to fruition. Right. Yeah. Although I will say in general, CES this year, the, the presence of televisions in the booths that we would expect them in lg, Sony Samsung, they were much less. Sony had none. What they made, they made no TV announcements whatsoever.
Leo Laporte (00:27:56):
Their big announcement was a, was a car venture with Honda, the Aila
Scott Wilkinson (00:28:00):
With Honda. Yeah. They're putting
Leo Laporte (00:28:02):
Five in a car, but no tv. That's right. Now what does that
Scott Wilkinson (00:28:06):
Mean to no TVs
Leo Laporte (00:28:07):
At all? Does that mean they didn't think CES was a good place to do this or that they really are getting out of the TV business?
Scott Wilkinson (00:28:12):
Oh, no, no, no, no, no. They're not getting outta the TV business. I think what it means is they want to have those announcements to themselves. Yeah. They're gonna make those announcements in the spring, maybe with a line show, remember line shows. Yeah. Each of the manufacturers in the past, in the deep past used to have their own announcements at their own event, and they would actually bring journalists. I went on, you know, five or six trips to Mitsubishi and Sony and Samsung and LG in a, in a year. And, and they announced their own products. Well, we're not gonna see that anymore. It's gonna be online, it's gonna be by Zoom or
Leo Laporte (00:28:56):
Whatever. So really the pandemic gave us new patterns. And even though it's not as much of a problem those patterns are gonna stick. And I think that this means That's true. This is more of gonna be more of a <laugh> of a gadget expo than ever. Right? Yeah. Because, because
Scott Wilkinson (00:29:11):
Yes. And Automotive, automotive was huge.
Leo Laporte (00:29:14):
Yeah. There is a big auto automo now two company show Semitech that yeah. Every year in Vegas. So, and then of course there's a big auto shows like the Detroit Auto Show. We'll have to ask Sam what he, exactly, what he thinks CES holds for future. But yeah, there was a big, what was it? The North Hall was full or the, I'm sorry. The West Hall
Scott Wilkinson (00:29:31):
Was full of it's actually the, they now have a West Hall. Yeah, yeah. That was mostly automotive hall. And interestingly, the south hall of the convention center was empty. There's nobody there.
Leo Laporte (00:29:42):
That's
Scott Wilkinson (00:29:43):
Interesting. So the show was smaller CES was
Leo Laporte (00:29:47):
Taing a a, a surprisingly large number of attendees, what, 118,000
Scott Wilkinson (00:29:53):
115 hundred 18,000. Yeah. Before the pandemic. It used to be 180. Yeah,
Leo Laporte (00:29:59):
It was too crowded.
Scott Wilkinson (00:30:01):
Thousand
Leo Laporte (00:30:01):
Stacey showed
Scott Wilkinson (00:30:02):
Us, which was too crowded.
Leo Laporte (00:30:03):
Stacey, on Sunday Stacey Hi. Bought us show, bought them, showed us some of her pictures of empty halls and the, you know, the center hall, which which where you go into the main TV area, usually you can't correct like this, you can't move. And there was a lot of space. So maybe there were a lot of people like you who thought, yeah, maybe it's better to wait another year or
Scott Wilkinson (00:30:23):
Two. Maybe it's better not to Right now, the, I said that some of the LG had fewer TVs in their booth. Sony had none. Samsung had fewer, the two exceptions to that were high Sensee and tcl. They apparently went all in on TVs,
Leo Laporte (00:30:37):
The Chinese manufacturers.
Scott Wilkinson (00:30:39):
Correct. Correct. And you know, they're doing some great stuff. They really
Leo Laporte (00:30:44):
Are. You know what I thought was interesting? Roku announced, one of the things tcl has done very well with is TVs with Roku built in. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, Roku announced they're gonna do their own TVs now.
Scott Wilkinson (00:30:54):
That's
Mikah Sargent (00:30:55):
Right. Interesting. As well.
Leo Laporte (00:30:56):
What do you think of that, Scott?
Scott Wilkinson (00:30:57):
Very interesting.
Leo Laporte (00:30:58):
Are they making, do we know who's making them?
Scott Wilkinson (00:31:01):
No. I'm sure it's probably TCL or High Sense. Yeah. TCL has a panel manufacturing arm, like Samsung and lg. Do
Leo Laporte (00:31:12):
We should say that's, that's the dirty little secret of all of this is they're only a handful of panel manufacturers companies just correct.
Scott Wilkinson (00:31:20):
So LG Display is what it's called. Yeah. Samsung Display. Right. Make these panels and then sell them to their electronics division, their consumer division, and also to other companies. Yeah.
Leo Laporte (00:31:32):
Yeah.
Scott Wilkinson (00:31:33):
T TCL has one as well. And so we don't know, they have not announced who's gonna actually make the Roku panels, but you know, it's gonna be probably, I would say one of the Chinese, well, they're all made in China, but you know, it's probably TCL or, or High Sensee. I'm
Leo Laporte (00:31:51):
A little nervous about the idea, the Roku tv only because I like the idea of having my connection to the internet external from the tv.
Mikah Sargent (00:31:58):
Absolutely. I,
Scott Wilkinson (00:31:59):
I agree with you. Yeah. I
Leo Laporte (00:32:00):
Don't want agree with you. I want TV spying on me.
Mikah Sargent (00:32:01):
I can, I tell you, just the other day, I temporarily connected my television just to give it a firmware update. And Uhhuh <affirmative>, in that period of time, I looked in my app for my router and there were 15,000 ad blocks that had taken place from that television. Yeah. From it trying to connect from a, just from a brief connection, just for a brief connection.
Leo Laporte (00:32:24):
15,000. I'm sure Roku's doing something similar, but at least it's constrained to
Mikah Sargent (00:32:29):
The Roku. Yeah. This is the TCL Roku tv Yeah. That I had. And so Yeah. It's just Right. Yeah. I
Leo Laporte (00:32:35):
Also worry if it breaks. I also worry if it breaks that I, I want to be able to just Roku part is broken. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Exactly. So,
Scott Wilkinson (00:32:41):
Right, right, right, right. It
Leo Laporte (00:32:43):
Also No, I agree with you. I got it from my mom. And as I've mentioned before, because it was easier. Right. She doesn't have to learn a Roku remote in a TV remote. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. That's the sole Right. Sole benefit to that. Now, Scott we're, we're gonna probably get you back before the Super Bowl cause that's a, that's a, a month out. But this, this would be a good time to buy a tv. Is that right? Because of the Super Bowl? Is this when the the big seat buying season is?
Scott Wilkinson (00:33:04):
Yeah. Yeah. Black Friday is one good time. Super Bowl prior to the Super Bowl is another good time. Yeah. And I think the Super Bowl's probably a better time than Black Friday even because they're, they want to dump their 2022 inventory and get ready for the 2023 models.
Leo Laporte (00:33:22):
Well, and you've told us something important, which is that 2023 isn't a big leap ahead over 2022, so you're gonna probably get it. It isn't, yeah. You're probably gonna get a pretty good TV even though it's last year's.
Scott Wilkinson (00:33:32):
Oh, no question. Yeah. No, and
Leo Laporte (00:33:34):
The other thing that's changed is Fox is broadcasting all of the post-season games in 4k, H d r,
Scott Wilkinson (00:33:43):
You know, I don't watch football, so I don't think I was even aware of that.
Leo Laporte (00:33:46):
I have, the puppy ball is not, I'm sorry, Scott. Bad news
Scott Wilkinson (00:33:49):
Saying it. I'm bummed the puppy ball is not in 4K
Leo Laporte (00:33:53):
Hdr. I haven't figured that out yet. And as you mentioned last year, and they're doing it again this year, what Fox is doing, although they said we're trucks are getting freed up, so they're getting better and better. They're still shooting 10 80 p and upscaling it and
Scott Wilkinson (00:34:05):
Then up converting it.
Leo Laporte (00:34:06):
Yeah. Yeah. Their upscales are very good. But this new thing is hdr, which I thought was kind of interesting. I don't know if there's a
Scott Wilkinson (00:34:11):
Really good, and I wonder which format of HDR they're using. Yeah, probably HDR 10, maybe H lg. Yeah. I think at the, there was, there, there was a recent game maybe the the World Cup, I think was using Dolby Vision for the first time in a live broadcast.
Leo Laporte (00:34:28):
Redacted in our IRC says, I only buy a new tv and my team is in the Super Bowl. And since I'm a Detroit Lions fan, I still have a 13 inch <laugh> tv. I'm sorry, redacted from Scooter X N R, irc, LG issues recall of 50, talking about big screen TVs. 52,000 TVs dudu. Yep. They're serious tip over hazards. These are the 86 Yep. Inch TVs. They're a little top heavy. Yes. That's terrifying. Actually need
Scott Wilkinson (00:34:57):
Just saw that. I I just saw that today. Yep. Wow.
Leo Laporte (00:35:02):
Wow.
Scott Wilkinson (00:35:03):
Ex Exactly. Because of a tip over
Leo Laporte (00:35:06):
You know, there's an easy way to fix that. And I do this with anything that could tip over. Strap it. Here we live in earth. That's right. We live in earthquake country back. And you
Scott Wilkinson (00:35:14):
Wanna do that anyway, here in California.
Leo Laporte (00:35:15):
I got my bookshelves, my water heater. Everything's strapped to the wall. And you probably should do that with your
Scott Wilkinson (00:35:21):
That's right too. Yeah. That's, you really want to do That would be bad. Hey, did you guys, did you guys see the see the notice about this displaced tv?
Leo Laporte (00:35:29):
No. What's that? Oh, I did. I saw some stuff about it. Yes. Tell us more about it though.
Scott Wilkinson (00:35:33):
This is, this is really something. This is a 55 inch TV from a company called Displace. Completely wireless, no wires whatsoever. It's, it run, the power is supplied by four lithium ion batteries that are supposed to give you, I don't know, 20 hours or something before you, you have to plug 'em into recharge 'em. But basically you, this is a, a flat panel tv. It's got a basically a, a vacuum suction system that you can just cl cl clunk it up onto virtually any surface, not brick, but, you know, like drywall or something.
Leo Laporte (00:36:13):
So you, you stick it to the wall,
Scott Wilkinson (00:36:16):
You, you stick it to the wall and it sticks to the wall and there's no wires coming out of it at all. It gets it. There you go. You're,
Leo Laporte (00:36:25):
You know, I saw all this attention for wireless tv. I'm not sure I really understand why you would want wireless tv.
Scott Wilkinson (00:36:33):
Well, because if you mount a, a TV on your wall, do you really
Leo Laporte (00:36:37):
Loves so ugly to dangling coming in? I mean, I do agree with that. I agree. All right. I do. But I don't know. This is, I don't want my H dm. I signal going wirelessly. I'm sorry. Remember now. Maybe it's cause I have, I don't know how ts d from the old days of wireless H D M I. Is it better
Scott Wilkinson (00:36:53):
<Laugh>? Right? I'm sure it is. I I am in the process of investigating exactly how they do it. Yeah. LG also announced a wireless tv, not wireless power, not battery powered. But it's like a 93 inch O LED TV that beams its signals from a little box. And so you connect your, your, your streaming device and your game console and all your stuff to this little box. And then itch beams wirelessly <laugh> the signal to the tv.
Leo Laporte (00:37:27):
I'm not sure I'm gonna, and I think if you can wire it, I don't, I don't even have wifi on my devices. I have wire in. I'm just, I just, right. You know, I don't mind. Well, according to, we can do them in the wall. How does the power go wirelessly? I don't understand that. Is it a battery? Well,
Scott Wilkinson (00:37:44):
It doesn't And on this lg, on this LG it doesn't, the display,
Leo Laporte (00:37:48):
Do you still have a cord coming out of it?
Scott Wilkinson (00:37:50):
No, no, no. Not on the displays. Oh,
Leo Laporte (00:37:53):
What are they? Battery power,
Scott Wilkinson (00:37:54):
Power displays? It's, it's ba Yeah, it's battery power. I
Leo Laporte (00:37:56):
Don't wanna charge my, your tv tv, yeah. <Laugh>. This is a very narrow market. But this is my, this is my point exactly about ces, which is, it's kind of gimmicky. Yeah. That's a gimmick. It is a, yeah. Yeah. I mean, look at most people
Scott Wilkinson (00:38:10):
Demo, most display TV was
Leo Laporte (00:38:11):
Gimicky. That's a demo. That's a gimmick. And you know what the other one, the And
Scott Wilkinson (00:38:16):
What happens when the batter, what happens when the battery runs out in the middle
Leo Laporte (00:38:19):
Of the
Scott Wilkinson (00:38:19):
Super Bowl? This falls off the wall. <Laugh>.
Leo Laporte (00:38:22):
What? The suction cups are battery powered?
Scott Wilkinson (00:38:26):
Yes.
Leo Laporte (00:38:26):
Oh, wait, you, you're not kidding. Oh, <laugh>.
Scott Wilkinson (00:38:29):
I'm not kidding.
Leo Laporte (00:38:30):
Okay. That's a strong, do not buy suction cups
Scott Wilkinson (00:38:32):
<Laugh> are battery powered.
Leo Laporte (00:38:35):
No, it's a strong Do not bother. You know what happens? That means you're gonna leave it plugged in all the time. Yeah, exactly. So guess what? Your wireless TV just got wired. <Laugh>. Scott Wilkinson, we love you still doing the podcast at AVS Forum, right? Yep. youtube.com. Lot more information about ces. I bet. Yeah. We just wanted a little toe in. I appreciate that. Youtube.Com/Avs forum. We will have you back talk about the best Buys in TVs the week before the Super Bowl. So plan on that for the Super Bowl. You bet. Yes. Yes. Look forward to it. Really appreciate it, Scott. Always a pleasure. You bet. Thank you. I'm also happy because I think a lot of people were worried we would lose Scott and Chris and all the, you know, Sam, all the people that we love from the radio show. No, we're not gonna lose anybody.
(00:39:19):
I promise you. We love 'em all. Yay. Thank you, Scotty. Thanks, Scott. I'm glad you're feeling better. You bet. Take care. Thanks, Scott Wilkinson, home theater geek. You know, I missed the ads on the radio show. I feel like this is a chance, just a lot of stuff. It just keeps going strung together. So let me do an ad <laugh>. All right. There's only one, so don't worry. In radio, we had 19 min, the legal limit was 19 minutes of ads an hour, and we played, and they took it every one those minutes up to the millisecond <laugh>. We we have a rule on twit and I that no more than one per half hour. So show like this. No more than three ads. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. Okay. My promise to you. Now, of course, our ads are better because they're products we know about and we love, and we recommend to you like Melissa.
(00:40:09):
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(00:41:04):
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(00:42:08):
Melissa's technologies will enable faster work through workflows. Their auto completion tools, stop data mistakes at the door while you're keying it in, whether it's your customer or your sales rep. It'll reduce undeliverable mail based on validated standardized addresses using postal services all over the world. So every address is what that postal service wants. Eliminate waste, eliminate lost opportunities from mailing something to the wrong person. And it also, it really has to do with customer satisfaction. Those and, and frauds. You can eliminate fraud with seamless real-time identity verification tools. Plus they've got matching and d duplication, which will mean that, you know, if you've got 15 entries for the same customer and you're sending em 15 brochures, that's gotta stop. You'll have a single high quality customer record linking all the customers usps, their move, update system. So you get the most current address through processing in the postal services national change of address database.
(00:43:08):
That's just one of many data sources Melissa uses. They've been doing this since 1985. I mean, they really know this business. They have specialized in global intelligence solutions. And if you're worried about giving them your data, don't worry. They undergo continuous security audits by independent entities to make sure that your data is safe, secure, private, and compliant. Their SOC two hipaa, GDPR compliant. Your data really is safe. Make sure your customer contact data is up to date. Get started today with 1000 records cleaned for free. Melissa.Com/Twi. M e l i s s a melissa.com/twit. We love these guys. They've been with us for a long time and they've really helped a lot of people. Thank you, Melissa, for supporting. Ask the Tech guys and you support us, by the way, when you use that address, melissa.com/twit. Alright. I am gonna, I want to give Brian a second chance.
(00:44:04):
I have his question in text here. I've invited you into the on air room. Brian, let's see if we can get the audio working. And we have many calls. Actually, I want to get through some, yes. Quite a few calls, a pile of calls if we can. A lot of hands raised poor people here. Please me. Brian, can you hear us that we're not hearing him? All right. Not a problem, Brian. Cuz I have, he's texted me his question, so I have a backup here. He says, my question is the m series, iPads with stage manager. He's using the 16.2 iOS. This is for you Mikah. He's using an external monitor. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> using his MacBook Air. So he, I guess he wants his iPad as an external monitor. He's interested in basic computer functions, web browsing, word processing. He's in a master's program, but all his coursework is online in cloud-based Google Docs. Office 365. So what do you think about using the stage manager, the MacBook Air? He's saying, okay, this is, oh, you know, this is similar to a question we had last week. Let me, let me reinterpret this. He says, versus a MacBook error. Didn't he ask
Mikah Sargent (00:45:13):
This last week? Is this the same
Leo Laporte (00:45:14):
One?
Mikah Sargent (00:45:15):
This is a very similar question. I don't dunno if it's the same person, but certainly
Leo Laporte (00:45:18):
We, we answered this once. Yeah. Okay.
Mikah Sargent (00:45:21):
We, I mean, so again, it depends on what you're doing. Obviously. I, I think the high-end iPad Pro is very similar in its capability to what a MacBook can give you. But I have to say, I'm just more of a laptop person. <Laugh>
Leo Laporte (00:45:38):
I am in
Mikah Sargent (00:45:39):
General,
Leo Laporte (00:45:40):
This, what did we said last week? It's iOS versus Mac os and you have to decide what you
Mikah Sargent (00:45:43):
Like. Exactly.
Leo Laporte (00:45:44):
Good rumor though. Did you see the rumor?
Mikah Sargent (00:45:46):
Yeah. A touchscreen Mac
Leo Laporte (00:45:49):
In 2025.
Mikah Sargent (00:45:52):
I just I'll be, I'll be somewhat surprised if that happens because it was,
Leo Laporte (00:45:57):
It was from Germin
Mikah Sargent (00:45:57):
I think. Yeah, it was Germin.
Leo Laporte (00:45:59):
So he's a reliable mm-hmm. <Affirmative> source.
Mikah Sargent (00:46:01):
It's just, they've talked for years about how that was never a thing they would do.
Leo Laporte (00:46:05):
This is what I think is really interesting about Apple. They've, they've kind of ch culturally they've started stepping farther away from this Steve Jobs my way or the highway attitude. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, they're looking at what people want. I don't know,
Mikah Sargent (00:46:17):
I what they call it Ape wrist or something. It's funny term
Leo Laporte (00:46:21):
Because I have a touchscreen in front of me right now. This is a Lenovo think padd extreme. I ha I haven't touched it once. <Laugh> <laugh> during the show anyway, because I always forget A and B. It's, yeah, you gotta, it's ape reach. You gotta reach out. It's so much easier. You got a mouse here. Just so much easier to do with
Mikah Sargent (00:46:37):
That. That's why I go to my Mac because I like the pointer control. Right. And the keyboard and all that stuff. Right. I don't like touching on the
Leo Laporte (00:46:43):
Screen. Brian. I'm sorry we couldn't make it work. We'll, we'll work it out. But again, this is why I do want to encourage people whenever possible, use your phone. Don't get fancy on us. It works pretty well. We got Guy, I think Guy wants to join. You wanna join Guy? I see you moving. That's a good start. Let me add you to the on air. Yeah, he's waving at us. Okay. So you're gonna see a little popup that says Join. We'll get this working. That's one of the things. Phone has it bit of an advantage. Hey, how you doing? Welcome to the show, Mr. Guy. Where are you calling from? Unmute your mic.
Mikah Sargent (00:47:21):
How about this now? Yay. Fireworks. Fireworks.
Leo Laporte (00:47:27):
Oh, wait a minute. Wait a minute. Wait a minute Now is he, is that a Georgia Jersey's got on the, on the wall there?
Caller 1 (00:47:35):
No, it's Oklahoma sooner. Oklahoma and my Oklahoma Sooners boo sooner. Sorry.
Leo Laporte (00:47:41):
That's okay. Aunt Aunt's sitting right across from me in Clems and Orange, but he says, oh, he thumbs up. You got thumbs up. He says it's okay. The Sooners are good. Welcome.
Caller 1 (00:47:50):
All right. Well, hey, hey I had a question.
Leo Laporte (00:47:53):
I take it you're calling from Oklahoma?
Caller 1 (00:47:57):
Oklahoma indeed. Anding. Yes, sir. I, I'd say this is the next best thing to come into the studio since the studio has been locked down for quite some time. So I hope that changes soon. So I can say hi to you and everything. But I, I wanted to ask you this. I, I'm a tech nerd. I've loved technology and stuff like that. But my thing is, is that I have always been an iPhone person and I like the advances that iPhone does with their mobile ware and stuff like that. But I also am intrigued by the Pixel, you know, Google going all in on their phones and stuff like that. And I like to dab into that. So I got a Pixel phone that I play with and everything. But the thing that keeps me fully from the Google Pixel is the watch thing. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. And my thing is, is that I'd like to see Pixel make a great watch. Now, it really didn't jive with your watch because it was basically, sorry, Google, you know, a Fitbit on your hand and everything like that. But, you know, I was kind of wondering if you guys had any suggestions for comparable watches that would work with a Pixel. I've looked at Tech Watch and other things, but I kind of get like to get your information on that.
Leo Laporte (00:49:15):
What are you wearing? Mikah? <laugh> an Apple Watch Ultra. Which is what you're wearing too. Yep. Mm-hmm. <Affirmative>. I don't think there's anything that comes even close to the Apple Watch. I have Samsung. I think the Samsungs are pretty nice. I don't have a Pixel watch. I have some concerns about the Pixel Watch. One is I've heard a number of people complaining cuz you know, the bezel on that sticks up and over the watch. And I've heard a lot of people say, I broke my crystal. Cause it's just Oh, cuz of the domed crystal. Yeah. The nice thing about the Ultra is is that the, the, the edge is actually, the metal edge sticks up a little bit over the crystal. And I just don't think the features come even close. No, you have, do you, do you have both an iPhone and a Pixel? Is that what you said?
Caller 1 (00:50:02):
Yeah. I I have an Apple Watch Ultra that I wear.
Leo Laporte (00:50:04):
Oh God, you're already there, man. You're already there.
Caller 1 (00:50:07):
Well, yeah, I'm just trying to
Leo Laporte (00:50:08):
Be fair to the Pixel. Is that what you're saying?
Caller 1 (00:50:11):
I, you know, I've been toying around with the Osmo and everything today, so, oh,
Leo Laporte (00:50:14):
I
Caller 1 (00:50:14):
Love the Osmo working my iPhone's. Oh, it's,
Leo Laporte (00:50:16):
It's for those who don't know, he's holding it up. But if you're listening, he, that's the gimbal that's made by the dj I folks that holds a, holds a phone and really does a good job. Look at that. Yeah. And you know, I that's beautiful. In the early days of Jimbos, you had a Gimbels, kimbos Jimbos, hello Jimbos. In the early days, gi I think we've found a name now for Ra Thetic guy listeners here. Jimbos <laugh>. In the early days you had to do a lot of balancing and getting it all working and everything like that, that nowaday
Mikah Sargent (00:50:42):
Nowadays weights on it and everything. Nowadays
Leo Laporte (00:50:43):
They're just, they just boom, it's ready. Love that. Anyway
Caller 1 (00:50:47):
Now the closest thing I've ab been able to use is a Samsung smartwatch. Just
Leo Laporte (00:50:51):
That's the closest agree. I think they're not bad. Especially now that they've, I embrace raced wear. Remember Samsung initially used ties in their own operating system. Oh, that's right. And it was limited because there were limited number of ties in apps. But now that it's also, I'm, I'm not kind of unclear. Is it a, is it a, a wear watch using Android wear that has some ties in stuff? Or is it a ties in watch that has compatibility with Android wear? I've never really figured that out. I'll have to ask Jason how yeah, that's the best. I think I have, like I said, I haven't tried the Pixel watch, but I think right now the galaxies are really
Mikah Sargent (00:51:27):
The best. And it's telling that you have people asking who are going. So is there one that's good <laugh> because they, he's got the one that is the best.
Leo Laporte (00:51:36):
The alter
Mikah Sargent (00:51:37):
Dude isn't even, but I mean, on the Samsung side, if the one that you have is Samsung side, you're going, is there something that's better than this. And we're going, no, there really isn't. Unfortunately. I, I, I wonder, part of it is the, the thing that we do complain about with Apple the closed off the walled garden the deep integration that makes it so that I can't use my Apple Watch with an Android device. But at the same time, because it is closed off, there is this really good experience and it's why people really like their Apple watches because of everything that it can do. A and I don't know, I'm holding out hope that somebody figures it out on the Android side, but that open nature, I think, makes it difficult to come up with a watch that's going to work with all the different devices that are there and, and try to, to match or surpass what Apple has done
Leo Laporte (00:52:25):
Really is a great question, is why Android watches have have failed. Partly cuz Google didn't really embrace it. This pixel's their very first watch. Right. and I have to think that what really happened is that Apple got a lead and then just expanded it and expanded it. They're, they have the money and the manpower to put a lot of research into these watches. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. So for instance, one of the things I use my watch for is my exercise. Right? And the Samsung's pretty good. It will notice that you're walking not as well, or as often as the Apple Watchers will say, you look like you're taking a walk. You want me to record that? I think the Apple Watch has a much broader range of exercises that it understands because Apple brings in people and they have 'em row mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, and they say, what does that look like on the watch? There's also features, you know, Samsung is, is pretty close. They're trying to do, they, you know, they have fall protection. They have a lot of the same basic features, but in almost every case, I feel like Apple has put more thought into it. It's the heart rate monitor is much more accurate on the Apple Watch than it is on even on the Fitbit. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> and on and on and on. I just,
Mikah Sargent (00:53:37):
I think part of that Apple doesn't make refrigerators, <laugh> or washers and dryers or run a a a online video platform. They focused, aren't they? They're so much more focused than Google and Samsung, respectively.
Leo Laporte (00:53:49):
Dr. Mom in our IRC says the Pixel watch does notice her exercise just fine. And, and so does the Samsung. But I don't, I don't know. I just, I feel like it's close, but no cigar.
Mikah Sargent (00:54:02):
There you go.
Leo Laporte (00:54:04):
So st you got the ultra. I, I really honor the fact, what's great about you is that you are willing to and interested in expanding your horizon. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, most Apple people just say, well, I got Apple. I don't, what, what, what do I
Caller 1 (00:54:19):
Need? Well, that's why people call me for tech support. There you go. He says, God, you know, you know both of the things and stuff. So, you know, you tinker with that. You tinker with that and say, how can you fix that?
Leo Laporte (00:54:27):
And that's why I use Post too. Yeah. Yep. Yeah. Yep. Yeah. You know, that's why I'm sitting
Caller 1 (00:54:31):
Witness. One more, one more thing. If I since ATS 3.0 is coming out for cord cutters, which I am one, a big one and everything, I'd love to see more talk about cord cutters on Twitter. Good.
Leo Laporte (00:54:44):
Good. Are you a cord cutter, Mikah? I, yeah. Yeah. All right. We got a cord cutter here. I am about to journey into the cord cutter. Right. Really? Yeah. So that's that. Definitely. We're gonna, I
Mikah Sargent (00:54:55):
Would love to hear more about that,
Leo Laporte (00:54:56):
That Yeah. Thank you for inviting us into the Sooners fan cave. <Laugh>
Caller 1 (00:55:01):
Sch.
Leo Laporte (00:55:03):
How did they do this year?
Caller 1 (00:55:07):
That's
Leo Laporte (00:55:07):
Why getting, that's why aunt doesn't mine <laugh>. Now I understand. Aunt says, that's
Caller 1 (00:55:13):
Fine. I love my suits. Yeah. No,
Leo Laporte (00:55:15):
Love my suiters not, you're not a fan if you only love a team when they're on top. Right? That's
Caller 1 (00:55:19):
Not, that is correct. That's not a fair. Yeah, that's correct.
Leo Laporte (00:55:21):
That's a f that's a fair weather fan. God, great to talk to you. Thank you so much for I Thanks sir. Joining us on Maas, the tech guys. Tech guys too. We do have, speaking of Jason Howell in just a bit, we're gonna talk to Jason. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> he, you
Mikah Sargent (00:55:37):
Had a question. I'll do a little demo and then Jason will join us to answer Oh, good. From the Android side of things.
Leo Laporte (00:55:41):
Oh, excellent. Yeah. Okay. I have some machinations to do here. I have to, when I move somebody into the OnAir, then I have to, I have to shoot them, stage them out of OnAir, shoo them away into, it's like two separate rooms. It's very complicated. I see some hands raised. Shall we try? Let's see. First of all, there was a question in the discord. I, I did want to mention this cause I thought it was kind of provocative.
Mikah Sargent (00:56:09):
It says, how dare
Leo Laporte (00:56:10):
You. Yes. How dare you, Tim. He's also on the Zoom line. My zoom crashed. Oh, sorry. But he wanted to ask about, and that's an interesting question. Does chat, G P t stable diffusion, all of these new AI tools, are they gonna generate more jobs than they cost?
Mikah Sargent (00:56:30):
How are they going to generate jobs?
Leo Laporte (00:56:32):
I think the only jobs will be for people writing chat. G p t
Mikah Sargent (00:56:36):
<Laugh>. Yeah.
Leo Laporte (00:56:39):
I think of the, this is actually an interesting question because for more than a decade, maybe two or three decades, all the economic experts have been saying there's gonna be a massive displacement. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, because technology's gonna take away so many jobs. There're gonna be so many people out of work. There was concerns, severe concern about this, and a lot of conversation about it. About, about a decade ago. I remember Mark Andreessen, the creator of of Netscape, and he's now a venture capitalist response was, well, it's fine because all of the technology is going to create, is going to make so much extra value at such a low cost that no one will have to work, will all just be rich,
Mikah Sargent (00:57:24):
Universal basic income.
Leo Laporte (00:57:25):
Right. Well, it would require something like that, right? Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, they didn't, he didn't, he was a lot of hand wave. Right.
Mikah Sargent (00:57:30):
<Laugh>,
Leo Laporte (00:57:30):
But, but we won't have to work because we're not there yet. But what's interesting is we are so aren't in that high unemployment state either. Unemployment is actually at a record low. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. So is that, you know, it's, it's hard to, it's hard to say. Are we still at the, you know, are we at the infancy of technology taking jobs? I don't, I don't know. I mean, there's no Burger flipper jobs, no robots flipping burgers as much as Dominoes would like to so far there are you know, people are still working in warehouses. I
Mikah Sargent (00:58:03):
Think the closest thing right now are freelancers right. Lance writers, because we just saw cnet revealed that they are doing live
Leo Laporte (00:58:13):
Articles
Mikah Sargent (00:58:14):
Doing article since November. Yeah. So those are AI generated. But it's interesting because that has been long time going in sports betting articles and in investment. AI has been writing articles for a long time for those categories. So it's not new. But I do think about, you know, some of my friends who do freelance tech writing who may not get the gig to write the very boring piece that's a step-by-step article. And I do wonder if in that case, it loses some jobs. I mean, I guess there will be some job growth in the market that specifically detects if a college student has written an essay using chat G P T. Yeah. Yeah. There are engineers being hired right now, I'm sure for that. But outside, I'm, I'm trying to think of how this creates jobs other than I type into chat. G p t create some jobs for me, <laugh>, and then it comes up with some answers. Chat.
Leo Laporte (00:59:09):
G p t makes a lot of mistakes. Great. Great article by Steven Wolfrem of Wolf from Alpha Ooh. About how Wolfrem could be used to fix a lot of those technical mistakes that chat g p t makes. I also saw too, which I really like that said, chat. G P T is just the latest version of mansplaining. <Laugh> a a somewhat condescending person or thing explaining something in trivial ways as if they were the expert. It, I think that's right. That's
Mikah Sargent (00:59:36):
Really good. Because one day I asked it, why am I having so many issues being able to talk to you? And it said that it was my fault.
Leo Laporte (00:59:44):
Yeah. It's mansplaining.
Mikah Sargent (00:59:45):
That's your, that's your internet connection. We need to work
Leo Laporte (00:59:47):
On it. We're gonna have to create a new term. Ai, spraining <laugh> Andrew in our discord says, I'm a traffic signal tech. And that role has changed from the older generation of, you know, mounting signals, running cable, running wire. He says, now I'm doing networking data, troubleshooting scripts, ve video vehicle presence detection, it's all software. Right. I think AI will actually expand and change non-technical ones to technical ones. Ah. So that may be, that may be, in fact, what, what the original question was is, you know, how, how are jobs gonna change? AI is, you know, we still need people who are gonna use their bodies to work labor. Right. Right. That's not gonna go away. Robots aren't gonna take your burger flipping job or your ditch digging job. I wish they would. Those are the jobs we want them to take. Yes.
Mikah Sargent (01:00:34):
Yes. Yeah. Let us do the fun and creative things. Yeah. But no AI's doing the fun and creative things. Damn. You darn it.
Leo Laporte (01:00:40):
They're taking all the mansplaining away.
Mikah Sargent (01:00:42):
<Laugh>, who am I going to Men Splaining to now?
Leo Laporte (01:00:45):
<Laugh>. All right. I am gonna attempt once again. Oh boy. Let's see how it works to get somebody in here. I, I don't know what the order is. I never was able to get the answer to this of the people at the top of the screen, but I'm just gonna do them in order as if somehow magically they are being prioritized chronologically. So that means we're going to Las Vegas. Woo. Viva Viva Las Vegas. We're gonna say hi to Kevin. There he is. He's got his Eye World shirt. I live in a Oh yeah. Hi Kevin. Can you hear?
Caller 2 (01:01:18):
Hi. How can you hear me? Are we here?
Leo Laporte (01:01:20):
You great? Yeah. Sound great. It's
Caller 2 (01:01:22):
Magic. That's great. Yeah, just a few quick hits. I mean, I originally wasn't the Bay Area. I was working musician at several different jobs and retired about a year and a half ago to Las Vegas. So I've been here for a little while and I joined The Heat and I had jobs up there as a musician working as a musical theater accompanist And
Leo Laporte (01:01:49):
Aunt, you're man, he's your man. He's a musical theater accompanist that Do you do that in Vegas now?
Caller 2 (01:01:56):
Well, I, I've gotten a few Jo Church jobs actually. Nice. Here. Hard time. Nice. so I'm, I'm been working at the Cathedral here, which is right next to Wyn <laugh> on the, the
Leo Laporte (01:02:08):
Script. You got your cathedral to Commerce <laugh>, and
Caller 2 (01:02:11):
You got your cathedral. Yeah. I hope, hope you can see me while I'm using my iPhone. Tens.
Leo Laporte (01:02:15):
It works great. See, this is why I wanted people use it. Phones, look how good this is, is Yeah. Look how quickly your audio worked. I feel like this is the ideal way to do it if your phone isn't crashed. Yeah.
Caller 2 (01:02:24):
But what I wanted to say was a few weeks ago when you were on the radio show, you had mentioned about the copyrights had been expiring and you mentioned Tom Leer had Yes. Released his copyrights. Yes. And one of the shows I did when I was up in the Bay Area was for a coastal repertory, the in half, half Moon Bay. And I did a show called Tom Foolery.
Leo Laporte (01:02:46):
Oh yes. Which
Caller 2 (01:02:47):
Is, I dunno if you're familiar with his Yeah. Great review show
Leo Laporte (01:02:52):
Of his music.
Caller 2 (01:02:53):
Oh, it's, yeah. And it was just a hoot to do. And I love, and I first got, again, this is gonna date me, I first got introduced to Tom Lair through the Dr. Demento show. Yes. If you remember his doc.
Leo Laporte (01:03:09):
Is Dr. Demento not doing it anymore? I think he is.
Caller 2 (01:03:11):
Isn't he still? You know, I haven't kept up. It was back in the seventies.
Leo Laporte (01:03:15):
He's been doing this forever. He was the king of novelty songs. Phish, oh, heads, fish Heads oli, fish Heads, right?
Caller 2 (01:03:24):
Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. Yeah. Wonderful. Yeah. So there, there, there's some before of course before weird al Yeah.
Leo Laporte (01:03:31):
But weird. I think Dr. Deto actually put weird al on the map. He was the instrumental. Yeah. But Tom LAIs certainly predated weird Al and was in some respects, an in a inspiration. Somebody look up and see if Dr. Deo is still with us. I think he is.
Caller 2 (01:03:46):
Yeah. And I have to thank you again for all your advice. When I was calling about changing Cause I had a 2008 cheese gra Yes. I changed to the Mac Studio Max.
Leo Laporte (01:03:58):
How do you like it? Oh, I remember you now. Yes, I remember. Yes. Kevin,
Caller 2 (01:04:02):
It's humming along, and I'm glad you talked me out off the ledge of getting the apple display. Guess I got a Dell,
Leo Laporte (01:04:09):
Guess who
Caller 2 (01:04:10):
Got it? Display for a, like, about a third of the price. Good. And it's wonderful. It's a, it's a great, it, the good thing about this one is it has a so many ports. So I replaced the hub that I was using. And it's working wonderfully. It's 4k, but it's still, you know, a great, great monitor.
Mikah Sargent (01:04:27):
I have so many issues with the Apple Display Studio studio. I have to unplug it to reboot it all the time because of the audio. It's a audio issues. Yeah.
Leo Laporte (01:04:35):
That's, that's exactly what a display should not be. So good job on. Yeah. Picking the Dell, Kevin, and I think, good job. I'm picking the studio. I really wonder whether Apple's gonna have anything to compete with that studio this year. Mark Irman saying that Apple is going to really slow down its Mac releases, and this really bothers me. We talked about it Tuesday on Mac Break Weekly. He's of the impression that Apple's transferring engineers from other divisions, including iPad and Mac Right. To work on this v v goofy VR thing. They're putting all their eggs in this VR basket. They said, this is the future. We think, you know, we really gotta put our best people on this. That disturbs me <laugh>, because I don't think that's going, going anywhere. But the good news is that Mac Studio is about as good a Mac as I've ever used. I think it's, it should last you at least as long as that old cheese grater lasted you, if not longer. And it's faster, isn't it?
Caller 2 (01:05:30):
Oh, it is. It's tremendous. And I'm starting to use play with Logic Pro and some other apps that I Yeah. Kind of neglected when I was working full-time. Now that I have the time to kind of do it on my own and play with it, I'm, I'm getting into that and it's definitely really speedy. I'm waiting. I can't wait to start using a little bit of the video editing
Leo Laporte (01:05:51):
Nice.
Caller 2 (01:05:52):
And see what happens with that. How about
Leo Laporte (01:05:54):
Sure. Your retirement is pretty active.
Caller 2 (01:05:57):
<Laugh>. Yeah. Yeah. Well, that's the thing. You know, musicians never really retired. What's
Leo Laporte (01:06:01):
Your, you pianist?
Caller 2 (01:06:03):
Kist. Organist was a music director at a church up in the Bay Area. Like I say, I'm doing that part-time now. Some masses. I've played at the Cathedral, Catholic Cathedral. Nice.
Caller 2 (01:06:14):
I was piano teacher. I like I said, did musical theater shows locally and through the high school, or I was in accompanist for the coral groups at Aragon High School in San Mateo. So I did a, I was working 75 or 80 hours a week, but, you know, loving it.
Leo Laporte (01:06:31):
Well, this is, I understand why you call this retirement. You're only working 60 or 70 hours <laugh>.
Caller 2 (01:06:35):
Yeah, I can, I can pick and choose now, which is really nice. And, and just to prove to you, I actually am in Vegas. There we go.
Leo Laporte (01:06:43):
Oh,
Caller 2 (01:06:45):
The Bellagio.
Leo Laporte (01:06:46):
Hey. That's the hotel we're staying at this fall for the F1 race. Yeah. So we are, oops. I, I accidentally pushed. I disconnected him. Bye. I had my finger. Thank you, Kevin. Thank you, Kevin. <Laugh>. I had my finger over the button and it just twitched down. Whoops. I, I'm sorry, Kevin. I apologize. That's where podcast expo's gonna be next month. Oh, okay. I, I told Lisa, she said, we have to go, we have to try to find some advertisers. I said, okay, good. So she and the sales team are going, I think it's March, not not February. And I said, but I, she said, you just come out and be my, my plus one. You can just, you know, stay in the room, get your hair, did your nails, you know, I said Fine. Fine. That's good. That's good for me. <Laugh>. all right. Gary's been very, very patient. Gary, you're a patient fellow. I'm gonna push the buttons here. Try not to hang up on you prematurely. I'm moving you into on air, Kevin. Thank you. I'm sorry I hung up a, I apologize. I I screwed up. Kevin. Gary, where are you calling from? Mr. Gary?
(01:07:56):
What's going on? What's going on? He's not muted. I see a headset, not a phone. I see a headset, not a phone. Is it possible that that is the problem? We need a, maybe Kevin could come be our accompanist. Yeah. Can you hear me now? We can hear you, Gary. Well, all
Caller 3 (01:08:14):
Sorry about that.
Leo Laporte (01:08:15):
No, that's fine. So,
Caller 3 (01:08:16):
Yeah, I'm the Gary from Discord Rockford, Illinois
Leo Laporte (01:08:20):
Disc. I see you right there. I'm looking at you. Name two Rs.
Mikah Sargent (01:08:23):
Yeah, two, two Rs, Gary. Okay. Oh, two
Caller 3 (01:08:25):
Rs. Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
Leo Laporte (01:08:27):
<Laugh>, welcome. Thanks, by the way. Thank you. Thanks for being a club TWI member. Yes, we, that makes it. Thank you. Big big difference to us. It really does.
Caller 3 (01:08:36):
No problem. Thank you so much. I had little, some health scares in October and November and December, but things are getting better though. I had a blood infection and then a blood clot in, in
Leo Laporte (01:08:48):
My word. Oh, yeah. Are you the one who said I shouldn't be sitting on my leg?
Mikah Sargent (01:08:52):
Yeah. No. I'm
Leo Laporte (01:08:53):
Like,
Caller 3 (01:08:55):
No, I did not. But
Mikah Sargent (01:08:57):
Blood flow <laugh>.
Leo Laporte (01:08:59):
Yeah. We're gonna do the blood flow segment just a bit. We're gonna make Mikah walk all the way over there. But first, what's your question, Gary?
Caller 3 (01:09:07):
So, my question is about this last pass thing so I not able to actually go take an, actually get back into, you know, I'm trying to get back into my last pass. So it says it needs to send, like, you know, something to my email to actually Yeah. To get logged in. That's right. Well, it's not allowing me to do that.
Leo Laporte (01:09:28):
What, what do you mean?
Caller 3 (01:09:29):
It's not even, it's not sending me, it's not sending me a link to get back into
Leo Laporte (01:09:34):
Are you're pushing my pass. You give it the email address and you, and make sure you use it. By the way, the email address you offered, you provided as a recovery email address, which can be different than your login email. So that might be problem number one. And then it's the same one. So you push the button recovery, you push the button, and you don't get the email. Is that what happens?
Caller 3 (01:09:53):
Yep. I'm not getting the email.
Leo Laporte (01:09:55):
Yikes.
Caller 3 (01:09:56):
Check and spam.
Leo Laporte (01:09:57):
Yeah.
Caller 3 (01:09:57):
Okay. And I checked and it's like, I, I've done it several times and I've done it, you know, on different multiple computers, and it's not allowing me to get the reset button to reset the password.
Mikah Sargent (01:10:10):
Hmm. Hmm.
Leo Laporte (01:10:11):
And of course you wanna do
Mikah Sargent (01:10:12):
That. Can we ask you what email service you're using?
Caller 3 (01:10:16):
Gmail.
Mikah Sargent (01:10:16):
Gmail. Okay.
Leo Laporte (01:10:17):
Can I ask you what your master password is? <Laugh>?
Caller 3 (01:10:20):
No. No.
Leo Laporte (01:10:21):
Mother's Good. You answered that one, right?
Mikah Sargent (01:10:23):
<Laugh>? the reason I ask is because I have had this issue a similar issue specifically. It was a two factor via email. And it wasn't showing up for me, but it was not with Gmail. I think this is a case of needing to reach out to last pass support.
Leo Laporte (01:10:41):
Yeah. Good luck. Yeah.
Caller 3 (01:10:43):
Especially with especially with all this problems going on, I just,
Leo Laporte (01:10:46):
Yeah. They're probably a little busy, right? I'm
Caller 3 (01:10:48):
Afraid.
Leo Laporte (01:10:48):
<Laugh>,
Caller 3 (01:10:49):
I'm afraid with with, with you know, some, somebody has my
Leo Laporte (01:10:54):
No, no. I'm sure that's not the case. I, I think it's, I don't know. Make, so again
Mikah Sargent (01:11:02):
Oh, I'm being told that our own Patrick who works on the website and does a web engineering stuff, senior
(01:11:12):
Send de he
Leo Laporte (01:11:13):
Has a great Spanish named De Lati
Mikah Sargent (01:11:15):
Has, yeah. Has the sa had the same issue, had to contact support. Support, said your password was oh, no. Right. The encryption was Borked and we need to redo this. And they did help help him out, so. Oh,
Leo Laporte (01:11:29):
Yeah. Get a, get ahold of support. Get ahold of support. Yeah. It sounds like, okay. We're having lots of problems. Golly. All right. Problem. Problems upon problems. You know what's, probably, I'll be honest, Gary, what's probably happening is they are swamped right now mm-hmm. <Affirmative> with a lot of people saying, <laugh>, get me outta here. And and they're, and I would say almost certainly that, that, you know, this is part of that problem is that you know, can you imagine how many
Mikah Sargent (01:11:58):
<Laugh>? Yeah. There are so many people.
Leo Laporte (01:12:00):
Yeah. So,
Mikah Sargent (01:12:02):
And if they don't roll their own system there, then it's weighing down whatever server they're using to do
Leo Laporte (01:12:07):
That. Yeah. I feel bad. We, we, I love Last Pass. That was the first, it wasn't the first password manager I just wrote before AI for a long time before that. But it was the first one I really trusted. I really love the company. I love Joe Siegrist, the guy who've created it. As you know, Steve Gibson became friends with him, and, and, and they went over all of how they're doing stuff. And Steve gave it his thumbs up. We were very and, and they were a big advertiser in the pandemic. The first year of the pandemic. They sponsored the studio. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> as ACI learning from it, it pro from ACI Learning is doing now. And that was a big help for us, especially when the early days of the pandemic, when everything was kind of shutting down. There you go. But they got sold a couple of times. I think they fired a lot of engineers. My guess is some of the people who really cared about security were gone. And and at this point you know, is it a lost cause? No. What they need to do is not what they're doing.
Mikah Sargent (01:13:04):
They, that's what it is. That's
Leo Laporte (01:13:06):
The problem. Yep. They need to make a full explanation of what happened. Give us all the details, and then they need to go to somebody. Just, this is what Zoom did. And Zoom wasn't anywhere near this, you know, catastrophic of failure. Zoom just said they had end to end encryption when they didn't, but they went out and they got well known experts in the crypto community and the cryptography. And by the way, not cryptocurrency with the cryptography community Yeah. To come in. Alex Stamos we've had on twig, who's wonderful, came in as a consultant, helped them do it right, reassured everybody that they had. This is what Laspas needs to do at this point. And until they do that, I mean, may, they may well do that. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> I hope they would hurry and do that, because a lot of people are on the fence probably saying That's a lot of work.
(01:13:55):
I don't want to, I don't wanna leave. Hey everybody. Leo Laporte here. I'm the founder and one of the hosts at the TWIT Podcast Network. I wanna talk to you a little bit about what we do here at twit, because I think it's unique. And I think for anybody who is bringing a product or a service to a tech audience, you need to know about what we do Here at twit, we've built an amazing audience of engaged, intelligent, affluent listeners who listen to us and trust us when we recommend a product. Our mission statement is twit, is to build a highly engaged community of tech enthusiasts. Well, already you should be, your ears should be perking up at that because highly engaged is good for you. Tech enthusiasts, if that's who you're looking for, this is the place we do it by offering 'em the knowledge they need to understand and use technology in today's world.
(01:14:49):
And I hear from our audience all the time. Part of that knowledge comes from our advertisers. We are very careful. We pick advertisers with great products, great services with integrity, and introduce them to our audience with authenticity and genuine enthusiasm. And that makes our host Red Ads different from anything else you can buy. We are literally bringing you to the attention of our audience and giving you a big fat endorsement. We like to create partnerships with trusted brands, brands who are in it for the long run, long-term partners that want to grow with us. And we have so many great success stories. Tim Broom, who founded it Pro TV in 2013, started advertising with us on day one, has been with us ever since. He said, quote, we would not be where we are today without the Twit network. I think the proof is in the pudding.
(01:15:46):
Advertisers like it Pro TV and Audible that have been with us for more than 10 years, they stick around because their ads work. And honestly, isn't that why you're buying advertising? You get a lot with Twit. We have a very full service attitude. We almost think of it as kind of artisanal advertising, boutique advertising. You'll get a full service continuity team, people who are on the phone with you, who are in touch with you, who support you from, with everything from copywriting to graphic design. So you are not alone in this. We embed our ads into the shows. They're not, they're not added later. They're part of the shows. In fact, often they're such a part of our shows that are, other hosts will chime in on the ads saying, yeah, I love that. Or just the other day, <laugh>, one of our hosts said, man, I really gotta buy that <laugh>.
(01:16:38):
That's an additional benefit to you because you're hearing people, our audience trusts saying, yeah, that sounds great. We deliver always overdeliver on impressions. So, you know, you're gonna get the impressions you expect. The ads are unique every time. We don't pre-record them and roll them in. We are genuinely doing those ads in the middle of the show. We'll give you great onboarding services, ad tech with pod sites that's free for direct clients. Gives you a lot of reporting, gives you a great idea of how well your ads are working. You'll get courtesy commercials. You actually can take our ads and share them across social media and landing pages. That really extends the reach. There are other free goodies, too, including mentions in our weekly newsletter that sent to thousands of fans, engaged fans who really wanna see this stuff. We give you bonus ads and social media promotion too.
(01:17:30):
So if you want to be a long-term partner, introduce your product to a savvy engaged tech audience. Visit twit.tv/advertise. Check out those testimonials. Mark McCreary is the c e o of authentic. You probably know 'em one of the biggest original podcast advertising companies. We've been with him for 16 years. Mark said the feedback from many advertisers over 16 years, across a range of product categories, everything from razors to computers, is that if ads and podcasts are gonna work for a brand, they're gonna work on Twitch shows. I'm very proud of what we do because it's honest. It's got integrity, it's authentic, and it really is a great introduction to our audience of your brand. Our listeners are smart, they're engaged, they're tech savvy. They're dedicated to our network. And that's one of the reasons we only work with high integrity partners that we've personally and thoroughly vetted. I have absolute approval on everybody. If you've got a great product, I want to hear from you. Elevate your brand by reaching out today@advertisetwit.tv. Break out of the advertising norm. Grow your brand with host Red ads on twit.tv. Visit twit.tv/advertise for more details. Or you can email us, advertise@twit.tv if you're ready to launch your campaign. Now, I can't wait to see your product, so give us a ring. Richard Subaru.
(01:18:59):
Subaru, I've have to ask Richard a question. Subaru is his chat handle known Richard for some time. And I'm just curious. I never thought about this. Press the button Richard, and, and join us on mute. I'm just curious, are you a Subaru? Are you a Subaru owner? <Laugh>?
Caller 4 (01:19:19):
Yes, sir.
Mikah Sargent (01:19:20):
Okay. Ah, sometimes makes
Leo Laporte (01:19:22):
Sense. Chad handles
Mikah Sargent (01:19:23):
Make sense. Yeah, occasionally.
Caller 4 (01:19:25):
I, I still own my very first Subaru Forester of 1998. Whoa. And it runs like a clock. Whoa. We got outback. I've had turbo Subarus and just, just about every model.
Leo Laporte (01:19:39):
It gives you a good handle. Actually, my handle is so boring. I want a better handle. Yeah. I need a better handle. But I didn't, you know what part of it's my age now you're, oh, I thought
Mikah Sargent (01:19:49):
You were talking about your username. Still.
Caller 4 (01:19:50):
I'm a month older than you, Leo.
Leo Laporte (01:19:52):
Yeah. But, but younger people have good handles because they were on, you know, AOL instant messenger.
Mikah Sargent (01:19:58):
Oh, you are talking. Okay. I'm so confused for a second. I thought you meant handling in a vehicle and you were saying, I wish I had a better handle
Leo Laporte (01:20:04):
Handling. I wish I had better
Mikah Sargent (01:20:06):
Handle than, your handling is so, so boring cuz your car just responds or doesn't res respond. Oh, that's what that's
Leo Laporte (01:20:10):
About. Your chat room. Handle chat, room handle. And so what, what was your, as a kid, what was your
Mikah Sargent (01:20:15):
Handle? Mine. I'm a bo, I'm a boring old man. Mine has literally always been Mikah Sargent. Me
Leo Laporte (01:20:20):
Too. Although Chief Twit is pretty good. That's till that other guy stole it. So I,
Mikah Sargent (01:20:25):
Well wait, I take it back. Way back in when you were a little kid. Super, super young. I, I, it would've been, I don't know, third, fourth grade. My grandpa and I set up an email for me so I could play Neo pets online.
Leo Laporte (01:20:36):
Yes. Neo Pets. That's what my daughter started.
Mikah Sargent (01:20:38):
Yeah. And it was Toothless for now@yahoo.com. That's cute. Cause I was cute. Cause you were toothless. Yeah.
Leo Laporte (01:20:44):
See, and then a lot of people are still toothless for now in their fifties. <Laugh>. Maybe they're going back to that <laugh>. So what's your question, Gary? I mean Richard. Richard. Yeah. I'm, I'm a email.
Caller 4 (01:20:59):
How are we using Gmail? Yeah. Thinking of switching to FastMail,
Leo Laporte (01:21:03):
Our sponsor
Caller 4 (01:21:05):
I would use Thunderbird on my Windows. Computers
Leo Laporte (01:21:08):
Flying. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, good
Caller 4 (01:21:09):
Choice on the max on the Apple stuff. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, what client aggregator software do you guys use
Leo Laporte (01:21:17):
That
Mikah Sargent (01:21:18):
Your
Leo Laporte (01:21:19):
Email? That's a good question.
Mikah Sargent (01:21:20):
I love this question.
Leo Laporte (01:21:22):
Apple comes with I think a fairly good client called Mail. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> wish the companies would come up with something better. It's like if they called Safari Browser.
Mikah Sargent (01:21:31):
So they just have a boring handle.
Leo Laporte (01:21:33):
Yeah. <laugh>, they need a better handle. Yeah. but I think, I think mail is pretty good, but neither of us use it.
Mikah Sargent (01:21:40):
No, I, so I use two different mail applications. I'm, I'm strange in that on my iPhone I use an application called Air Mail, which I love because it's got so many integrations. You can do so many things with it. And on all of my Mac os well my two Mac OS devices, the studio in this air, I used Spark and the
Leo Laporte (01:22:00):
Spark started as a iOS client. Yes. And became a
Mikah Sargent (01:22:04):
Mac client. Became a MAC client. And, and didn't
Leo Laporte (01:22:06):
They they were free at first and now they're charging, right?
Mikah Sargent (01:22:09):
Yes. Yes. Okay. and, and you know, so you may have to pay depending on what features you want. The reason why I would use air mail everywhere, but air mail on the Mac is essentially just like a web wrapper. It's not exactly, it doesn't work. I want a Natives native. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. And so that's why I use Spark there. But they both have so many great features that are very similar and that's why I use those two. I don't remember what you use. You like to do encrypted emails at times a
Leo Laporte (01:22:36):
Day. Well mail, in fact, when I just set up a new Mac, my I got that midnight blue M two that you have. I thought I should try Apple Mail again. And it's actually very competent. It does everything you I need, including PGP signing, which is the key for me. But for a long time on my other systems on them, their max, I used a program called MailMate from fron Freek. It's a single developer MailMate. If you just Google MailMate, you'll find it very quickly. And I like it because it, it's a little clunky. Since you use Thunderbird, you'll feel right at home with it. <Laugh> Richard cuz Thunderbird is also a little, you know, old school and, and MailMate is an old school male program. But it does some things I really like. For instance, it has templates really sophisticated templating systems so that you can pre template replies and and and new mails and so forth.
(01:23:32):
And have that stuff automatically kind of started using, by the way, the templates will pull the name of the recipient from the email that you're responding to, things like that. So it really is a, it's kind of a nice tool. It uses pgp but it also has a lot of plug-ins, lot of capabilities. It isn't free either. It's not expensive. And I actually spend a little extra to support free run and his development of this, because I think he's doing a good job. I think it's one guy. It's very old school. But since you use Thunderbird, I would take a look at MailMate. It's not as Swift, newfangled. Newfangled is the Sparrow sparked mail, the handling on Spark. I tell you, you do you use the swipe? I do. Yeah. See the swipe is what the young people like. Where you, you swiped to archives swipe.
(01:24:19):
You have touch on your Mac, by the way, cuz you could. But I have this beautiful touch pad to swipe with. I don't like swipe. I like a button that says reply <laugh> <laugh> or archive or, you know, and so forth. There is no perfect email client. I think really, I'm afraid that that's the case. One of the things I wanted to show you today, I don't know if we're gonna have time, is a little bit about my email set up and the filters I use. To me that's more important. And one of the things I, you know, free ad for fast mail here, one of the reasons I moved from Gmail to Fast Mail is because I really want a very highly customizable environment where I completely control what happens to inbound mail. So fast Mail has a scripting language called SIV that's ostensibly for Andy Spam.
(01:25:08):
Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. And that's how they, if you use the kind of the easy user interface, that's kind of what you'll be doing. You'll saying Yeah. If it says this, go. But it's also a very powerful tool for filtering. And so what I'm looking for, and I think anybody who does a lot of emails looking for is a way to take all that stuff that comes into your inbox and organize, pre organize it so that when you finally, you know, open the inbox, there's folders that make sense and so forth. Like, my Mom's mail goes into a, a, a, a place where I will look, I have a v I P folder that is just by name, you know, five people you're on at Mikah. And then I also have an important folder, and that's people who are in my contact list. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. So I figure if they're in my contact list, I do want to see what they sent to me. And then I have other, I have a filter call that basically, and this is what fast mail let you do. But, but MailMate supports this as well. It has very good filtering. The reason I, I'll tell you why I do it on fast mail instead of on MailMate, because I want it to be everywhere. Yes. So MailMate is on one machine, but I want, but with an IMAP server, like fast mails or or Gmail for that matter, you can have those rules be server
Mikah Sargent (01:26:15):
Side. I just advocate for doing a server side anyway. Like even Yes. The, there's so many different reasons to do that. And I, I like that it's quicker that way it doesn't, you know, when you open up your mail application, it's already done. Yeah, yeah. It's,
Leo Laporte (01:26:28):
It's beautiful. Yeah. it's kind of old school to have it client side, to be honest. Like, like Thunderbird and, and MailMate, because we now have more than one computer. This comes from a day when this was your computer, that was it. <Laugh>, <laugh>. If you filtered it there, you were done. Now we have many ways of looking at our email. So that's why you want a good iMac client and why you want good filtering on the server. I, I have a, I, this is my, my favorite filters in in, in a good client. You'll be able to say in the, there are some additional headers that are in the email. You wanna be able to filter on email headers. Yes. That's a very powerful thing to do. They're not normally visible to you, but they are visible to the client. I have I look for some tell tales for mass mar male marketing messages and things like that. I look for an unsubscribe in the body of the message, things like that. And that way you can be very good at filtering out what I call bacon. It's not spam, it's not unsolicited commercial email. It's something you signed up for,
Mikah Sargent (01:27:32):
But it's not necessarily good for you,
Leo Laporte (01:27:33):
But it's still not good for you <laugh>. So I get a lot of bacon and a lot of bacon and I want to be able to really control that. So that's where those filters come in some at some point when we have more time, I will I will walk through some of the filters. And then some of them are very simple things. Like, if, if the male is not in English, just put it in the other, like, part of that's cuz my last name is French. Oh yeah. I get a lot of French spam. <Laugh> No is the par must be interested in great. Two we have of the, or something. I don't know. Anyway. so those are worth trying, but I, there are many, many, many, many more choices. It's even worse, Richard on Windows. Oh yeah. Because there isn't really a good email client for Windows. Microsoft's is terrible. Outlook is, oh,
Mikah Sargent (01:28:21):
It's so weigh down,
Leo Laporte (01:28:22):
Divisive, <laugh>, let's say. So there are a lot of, and there are very, some very weird ones. I used Pegasus Mail for a long time on Windows. Yeah. There's, it's very divisive over, over there. In fact, you know, the truth is when on, on this Windows machine and most of my Windows machines, I just used the web mail, web-based mail cuz fast mail's web's. Good. Richard, a pleasure to talk to you. Enjoy your, how many Subarus do you have
Caller 4 (01:28:48):
Currently? Just two. An Outback and a Forester.
Leo Laporte (01:28:51):
Oh, come on man.
Mikah Sargent (01:28:52):
Hey, two,
Caller 4 (01:28:53):
That's my daughter has an outback. My brother has a wx. It's in the family. My father-in-law has an outback. My sister-in-law has a forest brand New Forester.
Leo Laporte (01:29:05):
My son's a Subaru guy. He calls it a Subi. My son, my partner Henry Baruch too. Yes. Yeah, that's right. A Subaru guy. So yeah, I can understand the appeal, although Henry now says I I want a Jeep. No. What does he want? He wants a Bronco. That's what all the kids want. Oh, those are cool. Yeah. He wants a Bronco. Yeah, A
Mikah Sargent (01:29:23):
Bucking Bron like a horse. Right.
Leo Laporte (01:29:25):
He wants to go back. He wants ride a horse. Richard,
Mikah Sargent (01:29:27):
You're the chili guy. Right?
Caller 4 (01:29:29):
Exactly. Thanks.
Mikah Sargent (01:29:30):
Thank you. Thank you again for that recipe.
Leo Laporte (01:29:32):
Oh, so good. Well, I hope you will share that. I
Mikah Sargent (01:29:34):
Know mid chili. Yeah, I will, I'll, I'll share it
Leo Laporte (01:29:37):
With what's the secret of a great chili? Apparently
Caller 4 (01:29:40):
It's Dejan.
(01:29:41):
Yeah. Little deja. That
(01:29:43):
Made
Mikah Sargent (01:29:44):
Such a difference.
Caller 4 (01:29:45):
Yeah. And I, I throw in a little squeeze of lime too, and I don't think that's a nice
Leo Laporte (01:29:49):
Lime is I'll add that to the recipe. Lime is God's gift to
Mikah Sargent (01:29:53):
To taste buds. Taste buds.
Leo Laporte (01:29:54):
I agree. There's something about the lime. It's magical. Thank you, Subaru.
Caller 4 (01:29:59):
Thank you. Thank
Leo Laporte (01:30:00):
You guys. Have a good one. Take care. Ooh, it's nice when I press that button, they just disappeared. <Laugh> <laugh>. I have power. Let us say hello to our dear friend and photographer. Chris Mark, watch. Hello. Hey, welcome back. Ask the tech guys welcomes Chris Mark Ward. I've discovered the top floor.com. He was of course for how how many years were you on the tech guy show? 15
Chris Marquardt (01:30:30):
Or something? Long time. Must be 16 now, I think.
Leo Laporte (01:30:33):
Wow. Wow. Yeah. And every month Chris would give us an assignment. And this was something I was very loath to get rid of, really loath to get rid of. You know, we have Aunt Pruitt who's our photographer in-house at Twit, and he can give us tips, but no one has the fishbowl. No one can do what Chris Marco does. <Laugh> and I, and we need our assignments. Hi Chris. It's great to see you.
Chris Marquardt (01:30:57):
Well, I, I would hi Mikah, by the way. Hello. Hello. I would like to just, just take a short minute and, and look at what we have online, because that's the place where we do the assignment. That's the flicker group, the tech
Leo Laporte (01:31:11):
Out flicker. Yes. And I don't wanna lose that either. That was another reason. Yeah.
Chris Marquardt (01:31:14):
I'm glad. Yeah. That's, that, that would be, that would be horrible to, to lose that. Especially as, I mean, just look at the statistics. That's 13,942 members. Wow. 7,640 photos on there. Nice. there's discussions, like 300 discussions going on. The group has been going since May 26th, 2007. So that dates us <laugh> and it, it's, if, if you go through, if you go through the let me bring that. Is that, oh, no, it's, it's not coming up on the screen for some reason. Anyway.
Leo Laporte (01:31:50):
Oh, we're having this is, this is Zoom trouble day. Yeah,
Mikah Sargent (01:31:53):
It's a curse.
Chris Marquardt (01:31:54):
Yeah, it's not, it's, it's my infrastructure. Trouble day.
Leo Laporte (01:31:57):
<Laugh>. Well, I I'll pull it up.
Chris Marquardt (01:31:58):
It's fine. Zoom is not the pri so No, no, I, i, I just, I just, I'm just, I just wanna point people towards it. If you go to flicker.com/group/tech guy or you search for the tech guy, then you can, you can basket the glory of, of thousands of photos and become a member of a wonderful community. It is amazing. So yeah. It's, it's a cool place to go. It's it's also Renee Silverman does a great job administering that and, and moderating it. So she's still around and it's, yeah, it's a cool place. And that's where we do the assignments. So,
Leo Laporte (01:32:39):
And if you, we'll do one. If you're not a Flicker member, the good news is it's free to join ffl i c kr.com. There is a Paid Pro membership. Chris and I are pro members because we wanna support it. It's owned by smug mug now, not Yahoo. And the McCaskill's are doing a great job, I think with it. If you go to flicker.com, you have to join the tech guy group. So look for that group with 13,000 members. I don't think there's any tech guy group with as many members as that <laugh>. And join. Then you can submit your photos up to one a week for the assignment. And Chris, we're gonna give everybody their four week chance to find a great image.
Chris Marquardt (01:33:20):
Yeah. So we have, we have a a schedule for this. I think it's every third Sunday in a month. So that'll be kind of when we look at photos, when we make a new drawing from the fishbowl. Awesome. And that's what we wanna do right now.
Leo Laporte (01:33:34):
Good. Because we need a word. The fish, this fish ball, fish the fishbowls full of adjectives, full of great adjectives. Yes. It's to describe your, and by the way, Mikah can participate, right? Even if he doesn't have a fancy camera, he can use his iPhone. And actually many of the, many of the best pictures come from camera phones. I would
Chris Marquardt (01:33:51):
Oh yeah. Love to. Oh
Leo Laporte (01:33:52):
Yeah. Just participate. Yeah.
Chris Marquardt (01:33:54):
Look at, look, look at, look at, look for the, look through the, through the pool of photos there. 7,000 plus photos. I would venture that at least half two, two thirds are from smartphones.
Leo Laporte (01:34:05):
But no peeing in the pool. You can't in the fishbowl or in the pool. Oh,
Chris Marquardt (01:34:09):
The pool. Unless, unless you are very gentle. That's the word for gentle.
Leo Laporte (01:34:14):
Gentle. J e n. No, <laugh>. J e n t E l. Gentle. okay. So how does this work, Chris, for people who are new to the show?
Chris Marquardt (01:34:26):
Well, it, the, the, the whole reason to do this is because we want people to get off the couch, get out, take photos, become active. And that's what we're doing here. So you wanna take a photo that somehow shows the concept of gentle in some way, and submitted to the tech guy group. And then we are going to go through the photos next month, and I will pick three and talk about them.
Leo Laporte (01:34:54):
You might wanna just stop by any next. So many great images.
Chris Marquardt (01:34:58):
So that's what I've loved looking
Leo Laporte (01:34:59):
Through the photos. Yeah, it's really quite beautiful. And there's Renee and Renee's a photographer. So her info, you know, she, you can see what pictures she's got in there, but her, her, she's, she's a great person to know and follow on Flicker. And once you're, once you're in the group again, you see, you go to groups under the U and go to Tech guy. And and let's get some let's get some images that are gentle. Now, when
Chris Marquardt (01:35:28):
You, and real, real photos, by the way, real photos. Oh
Leo Laporte (01:35:31):
No. Ai. You're not gonna accept ai,
Chris Marquardt (01:35:35):
Darn
Leo Laporte (01:35:36):
It. We should do a se You know what, can we do a, like a separate pool for AI generated ones?
Chris Marquardt (01:35:43):
Oh, we, we could, we could make one of the assignments in AI assign. Let's
Leo Laporte (01:35:47):
Do this. I mean, there's, let's do this. I
Chris Marquardt (01:35:48):
I'm gonna, it's not this one. No.
Leo Laporte (01:35:50):
I'm gonna start a new rule. When you, when you take a picture and you say, that's a gentle picture, a picture of my kitty cat lying in the pillow, whatever it is, you tag it, upload it to Flicker first, and then it'll ask you for some tags. Tg, we're gonna use Tech Guy still TG Gentle, so we know it's for this assignment. But if you tag it TG gentle dash ai, you can upload an AI image and we'll just keep that in a separate pool. And maybe next time we'll look at some there's some pretty good at, you know, Alex Lindsay's become a master of Mid Journey. He's amazing what he could do. You told me all about this before anybody, Chris, so I think it'd be kind of fun. We still want you to take photos. This is not a way to, to bypass that. To win. Yeah. <laugh>, we're not, there's no prize for ai, but I'd be curious.
Chris Marquardt (01:36:38):
There's no winning here. There's no
Leo Laporte (01:36:39):
Winning here. I'd be curious what people come up with for gentle. So it doesn't have to be literal. It could be the idea gentle, the concept, gentle. Anything that that makes you feel gentle. And, and, and I will quote good friend of mine, a National Geographic photographer, I once asked him, how do you know if I have a good shot? He says, I feel it right here, my tummy. So you'll know it's a good shot. You'll go, oh, yeah, that's a good one. Chris, when's your, when's your next photo? Ex Expedition?
Chris Marquardt (01:37:10):
Well, I will do a big workshop in May. And then the Eastern European Photo Workshop photo roads trip is coming up in September. Still a couple of seats left there. So you can find all, all about that on discover the top floor.com, where we'll go from Berlin to, to Prague to Vienna, to Budapest, to Transylvania lots of history, lots of European history. And then a second tour going the same way back. And it's all in an electric vehicle, in a Tesla model three. So oh, fun. We'll be eco-friendly doing it as
Leo Laporte (01:37:45):
Well. Are you gonna promise us though, I, I beg of you not to turn on full self-driving with people in your car. <Laugh>, I just beg of you,
Chris Marquardt (01:37:53):
It'll be the safest
Leo Laporte (01:37:55):
<Laugh>
Chris Marquardt (01:37:56):
Journey through Eastern Europe than you can have. I
Mikah Sargent (01:38:00):
Promise that.
Leo Laporte (01:38:00):
Okay. Chris Marqui, discover the top floor.com. Great to see you, my friend, and we'll see you four weeks from today.
Chris Marquardt (01:38:10):
On the third Sunday next
Leo Laporte (01:38:11):
Month, third Sunday of the month, every month. Beautiful.
Mikah Sargent (01:38:14):
Right. Thanks so much. Thank
Leo Laporte (01:38:15):
You. Chris. When's the
Chris Marquardt (01:38:17):
Super Bowl? All right, thank you very
Leo Laporte (01:38:17):
Much. Thank you. When's the Super Bowl, man? Super Bowl. Do we know when the Super Bowl is? Oh, shut up. It's something with soccer. <Laugh> <laugh>. I want to get a woman on the air, so I am gonna go to an audio only call. How about that? Man, Mary Maryanne. Hey Maryanne. Let me see if I can assign her to honor and then I want you to do your demo. Cool. Okay, cool. Yep. Okay, so let's see. Maryanne, there should be a button that says turn on. We don't see video, which is fine. But we would like to hear your audio cuz I would just like to get more women on this show. Hi Maryanne.
Caller 5 (01:38:57):
Hi. Hi you guys. So nice to see you and talk to you.
Leo Laporte (01:39:01):
It's so great to have you. You know, if you're uncomfortable putting out video, anybody, it's fine to do what Maryanne's doing. It's just like the radio show, but notice the quality of the audio is a lot better. Yeah. So I like that. Where are you, Maryanne? Oh no, she's disappeared is where she is. Are you there, Maryanne? Oh no, we lost her. Oh,
Mikah Sargent (01:39:24):
That's
Leo Laporte (01:39:25):
Too bad. I wasn't me.
Mikah Sargent (01:39:26):
I bet it was a Yeah. Slip of the finger on Maryanne's side.
Leo Laporte (01:39:29):
Did, did you push mute? I bet she muted. She's still in there. Oh yeah, she's, there's a zoom mute. No. Okay. Okay. Si. Well we have about half an hour left in the show. I would like you Yep. To take a walk. You need to get your blood moving.
Mikah Sargent (01:39:48):
Ah, yes. I'm worried about those clots.
Leo Laporte (01:39:51):
<Laugh> Mikah is going to, now we, do we ever set up a camera so we could watch Mikah walk? Oh yes. So turn on the Magic Room camera. Do you have that? Should I walk through the shot? There we, oh, look at that. Look at that. There's Mikah. He's walking. He's walking. He's walking. He's a tall young man. Striding over to what we call radio corner. You're over there. That's a radio transmitter over on on your right there, Mikah. That's a AM radio transmitter. Yeah. It's not turned on though, or it is. It is. It's the lights are on, but there's no one home.
Mikah Sargent (01:40:27):
So I thought it'd be a good time to talk about battery health on the iPhone and actually battery health on smartphones in general. So you can take a look and see if your phone needs to be if you need the battery replaced, because if it's within warranty and if you've, especially if you've got some sort of apple care, then you can take that in, get a new battery and get it replaced. So over here on the iPhone we're going to launch the settings app. And then we are going to scroll down until we see battery, which is above privacy and security. And below exposure notifications, I'll tap on battery. And here we've got three different options here. Battery percentage, low power mode, and battery health and charging battery health and charging is the option we want to select. When we go in here, you're going to see some different settings.
(01:41:13):
The first one is maximum capacity. This is the most important thing to look at. Maximum capacity for a new phone is going to show 100%, but as your phone ages and your battery ages, that percentage is going to drop. That's due to the way that batteries work. There's chemical process going on in that battery. And as the battery gets older, as the battery heats and cools, that chemical process is not as good, so to speak, as it was when it started. And so the capacity of your battery is going to drop over time. This second setting is called peak performance capability. And this is something that with a newer phone with a hundred percent capacity is not something you really need to worry about. But again, as your battery ages, you can toggle this option on and off to give yourself longer battery life versus getting the best performance out of the phone as possible.
(01:42:11):
So you get to make the choice at that point. If this switch is on, then it's not a bad time to head into an Apple store or a a third party support technician who can help you make that battery change. Of course, no matter what it, it will cost you a certain fee, but as I said, the prices will be going up soon. So that would be the time to do that. The third and the fourth option are going to depend on your location. The third one is optimize battery charging. And what this does is it just basically in the background, the phone's kind of looking at how you charge your phone and it starts to keep a schedule of when you charge your phone, do you charge it at night, whenever you go to bed do you find yourself charging it in, in the middle of the day?
(01:42:55):
And then as it figures out your routine, it will change the way that it charges to give you the best battery health possible. So what happens with this, it's kind of interesting, is it will slowly charge up to 80% because a slower charge is going to be better on the battery. And then that last 20%, it will wait until right before you wake up, for example, or right until you are sort of seen to be picking up your phone and then it'll go ahead and charge it the rest of the way. It turns out that having a little bit of juice out of a battery is better than having it at full charge for the life of the battery. So that's why they do that. And the last section, this is a relatively new feature. It's called Clean Energy Charging. And this is just kind of the, the little setting that you can feel a little bit better about yourself.
(01:43:42):
Because what it does is it notes your location and then it looks at in your region the way that the power network works in your region. Meaning that when is the electricity that's on the grid that has lower carbon emissions available, and when is it not? And then it will try to charge whenever the energy is cleaner. So this is just kind of a nice way to be, be mindful of that. But it depends again on your region. So you may not have that feature. Now, again, when we're talking about battery replacements the first two settings, maximum capacity and peak performance capability are the two settings that you're gonna wanna pay attention to if that's toggle is on. And that second one, maybe about time to take that into a technician and say, Hey, I think I'd like to get a new battery into this thing.
(01:44:35):
Now, I looked into the way to do this. I, I thought, oh, I'll just look up how to do this on Android. No <laugh>. If you do that, then what happens is you're told that depending on, of course, what device you have, it may or may not have information about the battery health. And there were some suggestions for third party apps that you can download. But the problem with the third party apps is that they only start paying attention to your battery from the moment that you download it to the phone. They're not able to dig in and see the the, the sort of registration information for that battery to know when it was created, what the discharge and charge cycles have been. So only once you've downloaded are you able to use it. However specifically with pixel devices, Google is actively working on a battery health feature that should be coming in.
(01:45:27):
The next version of Android, I did download the beta to my Pixel six device. Of course, beta software is the software that's still in testing, but they let you try it out to see what's broken, what's working. And in doing so I was still not able to get that battery health feature on my phone, although some pixel phones, it is showing that. So it seems to be kind of AB testing that they're doing. So we'll see about that. The good news is Samsung appears to have a battery health feature. And joining us by way of movie Magic <laugh> is Jason Howell to show us how you check that out if you've got a Samsung device.
Jason Howell (01:46:06):
Hey there, tech guys. I'm Jason Howell and I happen to have the, my hands here, the Samsung Galaxy Note 20 5g. Why do I have it? Well, because I'm gonna show you how to check the battery health of your Samsung device, and Samsung has made it incredibly easy. So let's dive in. So first of all, pull down your notification shade, and up at the top right corner, you'll see the settings icon. Just tap that and then in this whole list of options, scroll down and find battery and device care. That's the option that you're looking for. So tap that, look for the diagnostics option on this next page that's down at the very bottom of that page. And go ahead and tap that. Now, you may need to agree to Samsung's terms of service upon first launch. I needed to the first time, but you're not seeing it here, here in this video, you may see it.
(01:46:51):
So just, you know, choose as you will. And once you do, you'll see this huge grid of different aspects of your phone that you can test. Now you can either choose to do all of these tests together, which I'd say takes around five minutes or so, or you can just fire off any of these tests individually. That's what we're gonna do with the battery test. So find battery in this grid and then tap it and it'll perform that test for you. Now, what you're looking for here on this next screen is the section that says life. This is the actual health of your battery. Now mine shows good in that field, which is, well, pretty good, but you might also see normal there. Or you could see weak there. Now if you're seeing weak, then you're probably getting less out of your battery than you did when the phone was new. So you might want to think about replacing that battery to bring it back to life again. See, it's really that easy. All right, tech guys, back to you.
Leo Laporte (01:47:48):
Thank you, Jason. Thank you. So this is one thing that'll be a little different than the radio show. We have a vast array of experts in the podcast, sorry, NCAST Network <laugh>, and Jason Howell is one of them. A host of all about Android Your're co-host on Tech News Weekly. And I'm a producer of twit and some other shows. So it's great to have him. Aunt Pruitt, Sy right across from me, of course, our community manager at in the club Twit also hands on photography is his show. And he will also be giving us some photography tips. An I hope, wait, man, I'm counting Wave. Oh, there's his head. He's wearing Clems and Orange. You can't tell cuz you only can see the the head. <Laugh>. <laugh>. Now I'm gonna try again with Maryanne. I think we've figured it out. Or maybe not. Maryanne, are you there?
Caller 5 (01:48:31):
I am very much here.
Leo Laporte (01:48:32):
Yay. Well, I don't know what happened. We lost you, but welcome back.
Caller 5 (01:48:35):
Well, thank you. But you know, that may have been a premonition of what I'm calling you about. Ooh. Because now you've done me a good deed and you know, good deeds never go unpunished
Leo Laporte (01:48:45):
<Laugh> as long as it's not a printer Question. Maryanne, I'm cool with that.
Caller 5 (01:48:50):
<Laugh>, no printer questions? Nope. I spent a month in Europe last summer. Nice. Without a smartphone.
Leo Laporte (01:48:57):
Very
Caller 5 (01:48:57):
Nice. I had a Samsung tablet and that saved my bacon a few times, but I'm going back this summer and I thought, you know, a smartphone, maybe I ought to migrate out of medieval times.
Leo Laporte (01:49:12):
<Laugh>. I'm smart. Where, where are you traveling?
Caller 5 (01:49:16):
This time? I'm going to go to Portugal and Wales. Nice. Wow.
Leo Laporte (01:49:19):
Well that's an interesting juxtaposition. <Laugh>, too much sun. Let's go get some rain. Okay. <laugh>.
Caller 5 (01:49:26):
Perfect. Yes. I wanna ride some rain stuff, so, so I'm not with tours, so I've gotta be able to find my way around.
Leo Laporte (01:49:33):
It's amazing how travel has changed thanks to the smartphone, having it always on device that you can get maps on. Yes. I, you know, it used to be, I, and I kind of mind maybe missed this. I remember getting lost in Venice, like completely lost. Like I had no idea where I was, where my hotel was. Cuz it's a maze. Yeah. And I didn't have a smartphone to get back and there were some serendipitous things that happened getting lost. I think it's not the end of the world, but it's a little bit reassuring to be able to drop a pin at your hotel. I know that you can get back there no matter what happens, especially if you're not with a group.
Caller 5 (01:50:09):
Yeah. And you know, the, the expectation is there that you can do that too. So you really have to grab people and look desperate to get their help. Cause they
Leo Laporte (01:50:20):
Think, lady, don't you have a smartphone? What's are, yeah.
Caller 5 (01:50:23):
What, what's the matter? I'm very busy here
Leo Laporte (01:50:25):
To do,
Caller 5 (01:50:27):
But here at home I get by with a landline and a flip phone. I just don't wanna be on a leash. I don't want people thinking I'm waiting for my pocket to vibrate just cuz I wanna listen to them. So, so, okay.
Leo Laporte (01:50:40):
I don't blame you actually. It's
Mikah Sargent (01:50:42):
Sounds like a very free life. Yeah.
Leo Laporte (01:50:43):
Yeah. The tablet, it was a good choice. The tablet gets you a, a good way there without having a phone. Mm-Hmm <affirmative>. The problem is as soon as you leave the hotel, the tablet is big. Yeah. It's not that it's, it's not that you can't download the maps cuz you can with all the mapping programs mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, you can, while you're in the hotel on wifi, get all your maps and the, and if the tablet happens to have gps, many don't. So you have to, first of all, see if you do
Caller 5 (01:51:06):
That.
Leo Laporte (01:51:06):
Yeah. But if it has gps, for instance, you might wanna look at an iPad mini.
Mikah Sargent (01:51:11):
I was thinking iPad
Leo Laporte (01:51:12):
Mini, you'd have to get the cellular version of it cuz that's where you get gps. Otherwise it doesn't have a GPS built in. So you're gonna spend a hundred some bucks, 129 bucks more for the cellular version of the iPad Mini. It's, you know, I keep meaning to bring it to the show every week cuz it's perf it's like there's something about it. So
Mikah Sargent (01:51:29):
Lovely's,
Leo Laporte (01:51:30):
Mikah and I are both doing things with our hands. We're Yeah. <Laugh>, oh, it's seven inches. And that's, that's big for a phone, but small for a tablet. Uhhuh <affirmative>, it's, it's percible
Mikah Sargent (01:51:43):
Fits in a bag or purse or backpack or whatever very easily. And
Leo Laporte (01:51:47):
With a cellular would have all of the functionality of the phone minus having a phone number.
Mikah Sargent (01:51:52):
Yeah. So you wouldn't have that, everyone thinking that they can reach out to you and buzz your, your
Caller 5 (01:51:58):
Pocket. Yeah. So that would replace my Samsung tablet. It would replace my iPod, which takes photos and does stuff. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, but you can't call and it would replace my flip phone then for tr No, not my flip phone. You
Leo Laporte (01:52:14):
Could make calls on it. Actually, it's even possible to make calls on it.
Mikah Sargent (01:52:17):
Not, not the standard way. So it, you know, involves a little bit of of work. So I wouldn't say that it's a full replacement for your flip phone. But
Leo Laporte (01:52:24):
For instance, in Europe you probably noticed this, especially in Portugal. I betcha in Wales, WhatsApp is the default way of communicating. Right.
Caller 5 (01:52:33):
Whatsapp is, yes. Yeah. Yeah. And I got it on my tablet.
Leo Laporte (01:52:36):
Yeah. So then you can make calls from WhatsApp. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> video and voice calls
Mikah Sargent (01:52:41):
From WhatsApp. Yeah. You could do that from I on the
Leo Laporte (01:52:42):
Ipad. Okay. So I'm not sure. Now does I think WhatsApp, does it
Mikah Sargent (01:52:49):
Have, oh, is it tied to a phone number for a login? I
Leo Laporte (01:52:52):
Think it's tied to a phone number. But you're gonna, do you bring your flip phone with you? You might, anyway.
Caller 5 (01:52:56):
No, no it doesn't. It's, it's tracphone. It has no antenna. Oh,
Leo Laporte (01:53:00):
It has nothing. Yeah,
Caller 5 (01:53:00):
Yeah. No, no, no. Walmart's,
Leo Laporte (01:53:02):
I just, I feel like with, if you've got a data plan, you're gonna have to buy a data plan. I'm sorry, but they're not expensive because it's, it's a tablet. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. So you're gonna have to buy a data plan. At least temporarily you're gonna be using eim. So when you get to Portugal, you could buy, buy it from a Portugal Portuguese provider. When you get to Wales, you could buy it from a Welsh provider or a, ah, like three in the uk. And they will give you data. They won't give you a phone number. I mean, they won't, they, you will have a phone number technically, but they won't give you a line that you can call from. But you could use data to call, you could even use Apple Zone messages program to make video calls of FaceTime. So you're really not actually out of the universe. You can make FaceTime calls for instance.
Caller 5 (01:53:43):
Is this, is this the time for me to just go whole hog and start with a new suite? My PC at home is 2012. It will not take Windows 11. Is it time to get an Apple computer? And should I have a watch, you know an apple or some kind of watch that would notice that I've been knocked in the head <laugh> by, by a flying? Honestly, wood off my leg. That's
Leo Laporte (01:54:11):
Kinda important.
Caller 5 (01:54:11):
I'm working all alone.
Mikah Sargent (01:54:12):
Do you have a, do you have family members that you know what, what devices they use?
Caller 5 (01:54:18):
Oh no, no. Family members write postcards. That's it. Got
Leo Laporte (01:54:23):
It. I like your family. Can I, wow. Can you adopt me <laugh>? I like that. That's very nice. Yes.
Caller 5 (01:54:30):
<Laugh>, they would like,
Leo Laporte (01:54:30):
Do they do it with quill pens and calligraphy?
Caller 5 (01:54:32):
Yes. Yes. Exactly.
Leo Laporte (01:54:34):
<Laugh>. I think that's cool. I don't, you know, I, this is, this is an interesting question. You know, you'd think as tech guys we'd say, oh yeah, yeah, you're good. Get all this stuff. I don't think we feel that way.
Mikah Sargent (01:54:44):
No, neither of us do. Yeah. It's, it's not necessary. Unless it's necessary. And I don't know that it sounds like it's necessary. I mean, it is interesting. I will say, I've noticed in talking to you, you did bring it up twice about thinking about, I
Leo Laporte (01:54:57):
Think you want permission all these Yeah. You think
Mikah Sargent (01:54:58):
She wants permission. So it does feel a little bit like your subconscious is saying, I really would like to jump in and of course then we'll be here for you. I've gotta show I ls today. That's got a lot of questions. Very good. Show for answered for you. Yeah. But it, I, I would wonder if it wouldn't be better for this first trip. Let's dip our toe in before we jump into the polarized
Leo Laporte (01:55:19):
Series. I think you'd love a mini.
Mikah Sargent (01:55:20):
Yeah, I agree. You could.
Leo Laporte (01:55:21):
That could be great. Some, you could get this is, I'm getting really complicated here, but the chatroom's reminded me you could get a Google Voice number. Those are free. That gives you a phone number. Uhhuh <affirmative>. You could then use that number with WhatsApp on your iPad Mini. And now you actually have an incoming and outbound phone number and all of that stuff. You're not, don't think of it as a phone though. And that's really, I think, important to you Think of it as a mobile computer, computer. A portable little computer that will give you the maps that you want. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, you know, nowadays, hotels, restaurants, they want you to reserve online.
Mikah Sargent (01:55:51):
I was gonna say. And a lot of times, receipts you pay with your phone, you know, you got that little QR code that you scan. It's a good
Leo Laporte (01:55:58):
Camera on. You're obviously smart. Maryanne. I think you would probably do well with a watch and probably you don't need a computer. Computer
Mikah Sargent (01:56:09):
Mac I mean, unless you're just talking about at home you know, yeah. Whenever you come back.
Leo Laporte (01:56:12):
Certainly not for travel. You wouldn't wanna bring that.
Caller 5 (01:56:14):
No, not for travel, but for home. Starting over again. You
Leo Laporte (01:56:17):
Know, I think a MacBook Air don't, you don't need the M two, the most expensive new one, the thousand dollars MacBook Airbase model. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> might be a good, you know, for email for browsing the internet. Do you feel a little disadvantaged that you can't browse the internet?
Caller 5 (01:56:34):
You mean when I'm traveling?
Leo Laporte (01:56:35):
No, when you're at home.
Caller 5 (01:56:36):
Oh, and I'm home. I have a, a pc.
Leo Laporte (01:56:39):
Oh, you have that 2012 pc. That's right.
Caller 5 (01:56:40):
Yeah. I've got everything on it. Yeah.
Mikah Sargent (01:56:42):
It just doesn't go
Caller 5 (01:56:43):
When 11 Windows 10,
Mikah Sargent (01:56:44):
Which is okay. Okay. Cuz Windows 11
Leo Laporte (01:56:46):
<Laugh>. Well, and if you're comfortable with that, I don't know if you need to upgrade it. As long as it's running and it's, and it's doing its own thing. I prefer a Mac, especially for people who aren't particularly technical or even a Chromebook. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, which is less expensive a Google Chromebook. But if you are happy with that, let's not, let's not blow the budget outta the water. Let's, let's get a mini, let's,
Mikah Sargent (01:57:04):
Let's trying it out.
Leo Laporte (01:57:05):
And then I think an iPad mini
Mikah Sargent (01:57:06):
Would be an iPad mini. Yeah. I really think that that's gonna cover all your bases cuz it's so easy to travel with. And you uhhuh again, if you've got the cellular model. So you'll wanna make sure to get that cellular model. And there are, there are two. Yeah. There's lots of different ways that you can then use it overseas. Whenever you're traveling.
Leo Laporte (01:57:23):
I'll tell you the one thing I love about the watch that for me is transformational. When it first came out, I thought, no one's gonna do this is Apple Pay and using the watch to pay. And I imagine these days, everywhere you go in Europe, touch to pay is there. It will save you from having to carry a credit card and a wallet. And I just, I I mean you probably still want to have a wallet, but I just, I feel like this is such a convenience mm-hmm. <Affirmative> I didn't really buy into it at first cause I thought, what's, how hard is it to take a credit card outta your pocket? But now I'm sold. Yeah.
Caller 5 (01:57:56):
Interesting. That's very interesting. Cuz I was amazed that my credit card was just getting me everywhere without having to get a ticket. You can go to all the train stations and stand in light and give a, a ticket or you just take out your credit card, show it to the post, and off you go.
Leo Laporte (01:58:11):
You re you re Yeah. Cuz they have, they all have chips now and they look just like an Apple watch. So That's a good point. You don't really need a watch to do that. But you probably remember as I do, when, when you were going to Europe, you would buy American Express travelers checks. <Laugh>. Right.
Caller 5 (01:58:24):
All right. All right. Alright. Alright.
Leo Laporte (01:58:25):
This before you left and you'd sign, you have to, you have to sign 'em twice. You'd sign once and then when you got to the American Express, Mike is looking at us like we're weirdos. You get to the American Express office and then you could sign the other side and then you get cash. And then, but now with ATMs,
Mikah Sargent (01:58:39):
Is that how you paid to send
Leo Laporte (01:58:41):
Morse code across the sea? Yes, that's right. I'd like to shed a telegram. Oh, <laugh>.
Caller 5 (01:58:45):
Yes, that's right. That's right. Oh my goodness. And what's the exchange rate today? Yeah, lemme
Leo Laporte (01:58:50):
Yeah, exactly. Now you go to an atm, pull cash out, you've got the local currency. I don't even bother getting the currency ahead of time anymore. You get it right there at the airport. No everything's touched to pay, as you say, all the transit master. And so I don't think you need a watch, but that's the kind of, that's now you're wearing on something on your wrist that, and by the way, one of the things the watch does that is really cool. I dunno well do it with the iPad. I think it will, is when you're walking around a town, it gives you the, the turn directions on your watch. Oh, it used to be you would know a tourist in any European city cuz they'd be the ones with the maps. Yes. Holding the maps up, going like looking
Caller 5 (01:59:28):
At the sky
Leo Laporte (01:59:29):
And, and they're inevitably somebody comes and said, would you like something head? That's what towers would see. <Laugh>. <laugh>. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. But nowadays you can have your watch discreetly say, turn left here, turn right here. It's 300 feet, you're there. And I like that feature also for walking around. Having maps on the watch is actually very nice. Cause it, it buzzes your wrist when it's time to turn and stuff like, and
Caller 5 (01:59:50):
It makes you look like, what, what is that connected to? Is that connected to
Leo Laporte (01:59:54):
Tell me Mike, you do With an iPad. Ipad you cannot, you have to have a phone. You do have to have a phone. So that might be the argument for getting an iPhone. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. It sounds like you don't wanna do that though, Marion,
Caller 5 (02:00:04):
But are there different kinds of watches that go with different phones or you've gotta have the Apple match?
Leo Laporte (02:00:11):
Well, those are the best. We were just talking about that earlier. You can get
Caller 5 (02:00:14):
An
Leo Laporte (02:00:14):
Android. Yeah. Okay. You can get an Android phone and an Android watch. They're not bad. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, but they're not as good.
Caller 5 (02:00:19):
Okay.
Leo Laporte (02:00:20):
<Laugh>.
Caller 5 (02:00:22):
But it, it won't talk to my iPad mini with my cellular God.
Leo Laporte (02:00:26):
It won't. Yeah. Unfortunately. No. They, they lock that into the iPhone. They really want you to get an iPhone. Don't fall for it. Get the mini try the mini. Okay. I think the mini will be very nice for you. You will be able to carry it around. Do whenever you remember, when you're on the hotel wifi download maps ahead of time. Reduce your data usage as much as possible. But in an emergency you've got the mini and you can make a, you know, you can get a hotel, you can get a, you can, you, you know what, there's some great useful maps for transit in most European cities that you can say. I can't remember the one I used when we were in England. But it was wonderful. You'd say, I want to go to well see the Tower of London. And we say, well, there are three ways you can go. You can take the tube <laugh>, you can take a black cab. And, and, and you would, it would tell you how city, long City, city mapper. Yeah. It was wonderful program. And it would say, oh, there's a tube stop, you know, three, three blocks away from you. You take the j car to the, it would and it does it all. And it's really a nice way to get around. Wow.
Caller 5 (02:01:26):
Yeah. Really.
Leo Laporte (02:01:27):
Wow. That it's transformed travel. It has absolutely transformed travel and you know, I think even more every year it gets better and better. So
Caller 5 (02:01:33):
Mm-Hmm. <Affirmative>, I probably ought to get it soon so I can practice getting around the There you go. Block in my hometown.
Leo Laporte (02:01:39):
Good thinking.
Mikah Sargent (02:01:40):
Good
Caller 5 (02:01:40):
Idea. Is there a good time of year to buy these or a
Mikah Sargent (02:01:44):
No. You might check the refurbished section if you Oh yes. Want to save some from
Leo Laporte (02:01:48):
Apple? Yeah. From Apple only
Mikah Sargent (02:01:48):
From Apple. Yeah. Yeah. Don't get it refurbished from a third party. But if you go to apple.com and you go into the store, there'll be a refurbished section and if you can find an iPad mini there that has cellular connectivity, you will be good to go. Yeah.
Caller 5 (02:02:01):
Ah, okay. Interesting. Well, I, I, it's time I gotta jump. It's,
Leo Laporte (02:02:06):
Well, don't feel compelled, but if you feel the N urge, I think you're gonna really enjoy it.
Mikah Sargent (02:02:11):
Yeah, I agree.
Leo Laporte (02:02:12):
Okay. I really do. I
Caller 5 (02:02:14):
I'll send you guys a postcard. Please, please
Mikah Sargent (02:02:16):
Love amp on it. Genuinely love that. Write
Leo Laporte (02:02:18):
That with your quill pen. If you want to use your ceiling wax to put your stamp on it, that's fine too. Really a pleasure talking to you, Maryanne. Absolutely. I hope you call again. Thank you.
Caller 5 (02:02:28):
Thank you so
Leo Laporte (02:02:28):
Much. So nice to, so nice to see you. Talk to you.
Mikah Sargent (02:02:32):
I love using ceiling wax. I think it's the coolest thing I
Leo Laporte (02:02:35):
Did as a kid. I, I had a whole thing in the, in the L
Mikah Sargent (02:02:38):
One's. Got my last S on it. <Laugh>. It's so much fun. You still do that? Yeah. I just think it's neat.
Leo Laporte (02:02:43):
You melt, you melt it, melt with
Mikah Sargent (02:02:44):
It. It, yeah. I've got this little spoon, I've got a candle and I put the wax in the top and then I pour it on and I put the little stamp. It's so fun.
Leo Laporte (02:02:51):
He's an old man in a, in a young man's body. I don't understand it. I really don't.
Mikah Sargent (02:02:55):
But I never have travels checks.
Leo Laporte (02:02:56):
Yeah. Well that's true. There are some
Mikah Sargent (02:02:58):
Things. Well I didn't travel though, so that's why.
Leo Laporte (02:03:00):
Oh yeah. We gotta get Mike out of the country. He's never been outta the country. That's next. That's next on Aaron. Yeah.
Mikah Sargent (02:03:06):
I'm calling to you from Wales right now. <Laugh> Tech guy
Leo Laporte (02:03:12):
Goes global. Hey, we've been having a lot of fun. I, this is our second episode, even though it says 1,957. Second time we've done it this way. I apologize. There've been a few little glitches, although I'm sure we'll snip some of those out to smooth things out. Yeah. We want to thank very much, not only our sponsor Melissa, and of course our studio sponsor, ACI learning it Pro from ACI Learning. They're a great company, been with us for many, many years. They've now got a new name they want you to know about. I should mention this. You know, we have a lot of freeways to interact and I encourage you to interact with us, you know, on this show and all of our shows using our internet Relay Chat, our irc, IRC dot twit tv. We have a fabulous forums, not, it's kind of underused.
(02:03:55):
I would like to see more people in twit.community. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, again, open to all free and our master that instance. If you've been hearing about this alternative to Twitter and wondering, well what's it all about? It's only open to twit listeners. So twit.social. And when it says, you know, tell me something about why you wanna join, mention Mikah or mention twit or just let us know somehow that you listen that way. We would love to have you in there, but I just want to keep it constrained. So there's the, the forums, twi, socialism, ama on, and of course these all cost money, but they are absolutely subsidized by Club Twit members. Not limited to Club TWIT members, but Club Twit members help. So thank you so much to our now 6,000 strong members of a club Twitter. It's
Mikah Sargent (02:04:42):
A great, great group of people. Seriously. That's incredible.
Leo Laporte (02:04:44):
And frankly, without Club Twi, I don't know if we'd even be doing as the Texas. Exactly. It really helps us do stuff like this. It's a little more experimental. Speaking of which we have our survey for the rest of the month. Only a few more weeks to go to twit tv slash survey 23. It's our 2023 survey. It's how we do this. Once a year, we get to know you a little bit better so we can make programming that fits you a little bit better. But also I admit it helps us tell advertisers a little bit more about you. Cuz we don't want to track you, we don't want to spy on you. So it's completely voluntary, completely optional, but it does help us a little bit if you go to twit.tv/survey 23. Thanks in advance. Anything
Mikah Sargent (02:05:24):
Else? I have one very good question we can round things out on. All right. Did you wanna do another question?
Leo Laporte (02:05:28):
I have a bunch of emails actually I haven't gotten to.
Mikah Sargent (02:05:31):
This was, I thought a brilliant question because I think it touches at the heart of
Leo Laporte (02:05:36):
We're eating into Benito's lunch. But go ahead. Oh,
Mikah Sargent (02:05:38):
Okay. Well, okay, we got 10. We got 10 minutes. Fine. It's fine. So the question I, the question that someone asked via email and they said, okay, I have heard you talk about how when you have a p n you should be a little skeptical if that p n is free and you know that you've got this concern that by paying for a VPN that makes a difference. So tell me why it's okay to use a password manager that is free. Why do you not have that concern for a password manager that is free? And of course we know the answer to this question, but I thought that it was a question that a lot of people would That's legit. Yeah. Would wonder
Leo Laporte (02:06:13):
In general, what, what people say, and I think it's somewhat true, is that if a pro, if a, a service is free, then the way they monetize it is you, you're the not the customer, you're the product. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, Gmail, Google, all of this, this stuff. Facebook costs money to run lot of money to run lot. They need to make money back. They do it by collecting information about you and then selling advertising. So it is, and, and with a vpn, there's, you know, the whole reason you're using it is so that you, nobody collects information on you. Right. Yeah. Bit warden, I presume this is a best thing.
Mikah Sargent (02:06:50):
This Yeah, this
Leo Laporte (02:06:50):
Is bit warden. So bit warden, our sponsor isn't really free. Free in the sense that they want people to buy premium subscriptions, family plans, enterprise plans and so forth. And that's how they make their money. But like a lot of free, free and open source software, the open source basic version is free. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, they make their money on consulting and additional services and things like that. In that case it's a little bit different cuz it is open source bit, bit Warden has a free tier. That's actually probably all most people would need. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> there are few extra features if you want to factor, which you probably do. I would pay the 10 bucks a year for premium small price to pay.
Mikah Sargent (02:07:30):
Yeah. That's a really good
Leo Laporte (02:07:31):
Price. But it's free because it's open, open source I guess. And open source software, anybody who wants to can go take that software from GitHub or wherever it's stored and you know, compile it on their computer and use it for free anyway. So they understand, you know, well we're gonna offer a free tier, but like almost all open source projects, you might say, well Lennox is free. Right. open office is free. Like many open source projects, they have a free tier, but they make, they do make money, they make good money. You know, Firefox is free, it's an open source product, but Mozilla has additional tiers of that you can pay and services that they offer and things like that. And that's worked out pretty well for a lot of open source. Yeah. projects. There are open source VPNs, by the way, some very, very good open source VPNs. A lot of people prefer to commercial VPNs. And the difference there is they're free. There's no one snooping on you because you're running it. You just have to have the technical expertise to run it itself. Exactly. And for people who don't than a paid VPN is probably a better choice. Yeah.
Mikah Sargent (02:08:35):
So when we look at the, the behavior, it tends to be that a free vpn, it tends to be that a free VPN is making its money off of that tracking data that it gets. Right. And then can resell versus with a password manager, like the ones that we've talked about where they're making money through other ways, either by more expensive or an actual cost option or through the consulting and things like that. Yeah. So that's way, that's why we have those different opinions about VPNs versus
Leo Laporte (02:09:03):
Password. Also with open source, you know, they're not tracking you cuz you, you or somebody check can look at the source and see what's going on. I got this a couple of months ago and I, and I wanted to read it. This is a snail mail. I got this in the, with a,
Mikah Sargent (02:09:14):
The
Leo Laporte (02:09:14):
Post in the envelope. They use ceiling wax and a quill pen. It's a showbiz. David from Oakland. Thank you showbiz David. How sad I was to learn if you're leaving, he's talking about the tech guy show. You're my favorite of all talk show hosts that got my attention. Hey, good way to start. Yeah. <laugh> I couldn't understand why you needed a regular co-anchor. You have a room full of techies. He's talking about the char rated off for answers. So of late, I've been listening to you only on Sundays preferring you solo. Well, I hope you've changed your tune by now. You realize why Mikah's here. He adds so much to the experience. I never called a talk show, but had I called you, I would've said, what's going on the cursor on my Dell latitude can't stay put often running away to another spot on the page.
(02:09:58):
I've talked to Dell, Googled some fixes. Nothing works. Am I correct? Is there no permanent fix for this problem? I think you need to get Dell to replace your track pad. Yeah. <laugh>. But, but there's one more thing you could try Always when there's heart, when there's a issue like this with a computer mm-hmm. <Affirmative> the fundamental question, is this a hardware problem or is this a software problem? Yep. So always a good idea. And I do this to have a boot device of some kind of USB boot device. Could be Windows installer, it could be a Linux. That's probably the best way to do it. You can download for free boot to that USB key and then see if the track pad's jumping around. If it continues to jump around. It's good news. It's not the software, it's hardware. Dell needs to fix it. Those are usually on most laptops that certainly latitude's easy to replace. You can in fact go to i fixit.com. You'll see. You can take it apart. Buy a standalone track pad, pop it in. You might be able to fix that. He also says there's nothing like the vitality of live radio. That's probably true. And you are only 65, 65
Mikah Sargent (02:11:01):
<Laugh>.
Leo Laporte (02:11:03):
Anyway, I'm not retiring, as you've probably figured out by now. Show biz. He says, you can Google me show biz David. He says I'm not retiring. I am joining Mikah to continue doing this show in a more Salk environment. How about that? Boom. For a big
Mikah Sargent (02:11:22):
Beautiful, I like it.
Leo Laporte (02:11:24):
Sesqui alion.
Mikah Sargent (02:11:25):
Let me write that one down. Yeah.
Leo Laporte (02:11:27):
One thing Mike b says in our irc, Mike's good disabled to touch Pat. See what happens. One of the settings that many people have is palm rejection. Mm-Hmm. Look in your, look in your windows settings. See if you have that. It might be special to that track pad, but sometimes when you're typing and your palm
Mikah Sargent (02:11:45):
Gets all
Leo Laporte (02:11:45):
On there, the track pad and and almost every computer I've ever seen with a track pad has that ability to say, turn on palm rejection. You don't. Whoa. That's a palm when you're typing my fingers. Yeah. When you're typing. You don't want the track pad to move. And Mike has from killer tech tips.com disabled Adele Touchpad. Now obviously you don't wanna do that forever.
Mikah Sargent (02:12:05):
Touch your mouse. Yes. Temporarily. Although
Leo Laporte (02:12:07):
Here's a fine Dell Mouse that actually works fine with Adele laptop. And you just move it around instead of your fingers. What else? I think
Mikah Sargent (02:12:17):
We're done. I think that really does do it.
Leo Laporte (02:12:19):
Our clock is a tid
Mikah Sargent (02:12:22):
Bite. Yes. Oh, <laugh> good. Yes, I
Leo Laporte (02:12:25):
Know. We're gonna
Mikah Sargent (02:12:25):
Get the emails. Yt.Com.
Leo Laporte (02:12:27):
T I D Y t.com. It's programmable. I just
Mikah Sargent (02:12:31):
Thought your own little apps for it. We ought
Leo Laporte (02:12:33):
To have a clock cuz people seem to like that
Mikah Sargent (02:12:36):
For some reason. Somebody somewhere likes that. Somebody and they let us know when we don't have it. So, and
Leo Laporte (02:12:42):
And as you, as you now know about both of us, I'm an old guy. Mike is a young guy, but we both need a line of sight clock. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> at all times. Gotta
Mikah Sargent (02:12:51):
Know what time it's at all times for some reason. Thank
Leo Laporte (02:12:53):
You for joining us and ask the tech guys. Our email has asked the tech guys twit.tv emails are welcome. Videos are even better. Or audio questions. The zoom number is called twit tv. We're gonna improve this over time. We've got some, there's this initiatives in process to make that process more streamlined. What else should I tell them? You can find this show on live. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> every Sunday from 11:00 AM to 2:00 PM Pacific. Two to 5:00 PM Eastern time, 1900 UTC at live dot twi tv. There's audio if you are an old timer and you want radio, there's, there's video. If you, if you're, you're an old timer and you want tv, there's chatroom at irc.twit.tv or in our discord. You can chat along as we're doing it live after the fact. The show still lives@techguylabs.com. You can watch audio or listen to audio watch video there. There's also links there to most of the big podcast clients.
(02:13:49):
So you can subscribe. There's also a YouTube channel, as I mentioned at the beginning of the show. It's a great way, in fact, we'd appreciate it to share clips from the show. If you've got somebody who's using a password like Monkey 1 23, oof. You might wanna send 'em a clip from that segment of the show. Maybe battery segment, that kind of thing. We hope you'll do that because we wanna spread the word about this brand new old show. Thanks for joining us. Thank you. We'll see you next time. Unas the tech guys. Oh, bye. Bye. Have a great geek week there. It's Bye <laugh>.
Jonathan Bennett (02:14:21):
Hey, we should talk Lennox. It's the operating system that runs the internet, but the game console, cell phones, and maybe even the machine on your desk. You already knew all that. What you may not know is that Twit now is a show dedicated to it, the Untitled Lennox Show. Whether you're a Lennox Pro, a burgeoning ciit man, or just curious what the big deal is, you should join us on the Club Twit Discord every Saturday afternoon for news analysis and tips to sharpen your Lennox skills. And then make sure you subscribe to the Club twit exclusive Untitled Linux Show. Wait, you're not a Club Twit member yet. We'll go to twit.tv/clubtwit and sign up. Hope to see you there.
