Ask the Tech Guys Episode 1973 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):
Well, hey, hey, hey. It's time for Ask the Tech guys. Micah Sergeant has the day off. It's just me, sorry. But I will be joined by Scott Wilkinson. We'll talk home theaters. Johnny Jett will talk traveling like a rockstar will also answer questions. It's next. Ask the tech guy podcasts you love from people you trust. This is tweet is tweet. This is Ask the Tech Guys episode 1973, recorded Sunday, May 7th, 2023. If it's Tuesday, it must be Belgium. This episode of Ask the Tech Guys is brought to you by Electric E-Bikes. Celebrate your mom and give her all the freedom that comes with a electric e-bike. Visit electric e-bikes dot com to learn more and explore the epic models Electric has to offer. And by ag one, by Athletic Greens. If you're looking for a simpler and cost effective supplement routine, ag one gives you a free one year supply of vitamin D and five free travel packs with your first purchase of a subscription.
(00:01:06):
Go to athletic greens.com/tech guy and buy Melissa more than 10,000 clients worldwide. 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 clean for free at melissa.com/twit. Why? Hey, hey, how are you today? It's time for Ask the Tech guys, but it's just one tech guy this week, Micah, we, it was hard. Micah has worked for us for three or four years now and I don't think he's ever taken a vacation <laugh>. We finally said, you have to take time off. So Micah's taken a week off and they said, well, who do you wanna work with you? And I said, I like doing the show all by myself like I used to when it was on the radio. So, hello everybody, I'm Leo Laport and today we will be answering your questions at call.
(00:02:01):
Do twi.tv. That's the zoom. You could do it on your phone. In fact, it works great if you do it on your phone cuz you know your phone's, camera and microphone works so well. And call.twit.tv. You can also do it at the desktop. You can also email us at ATG twit tv. And I have been given a sheth a sheth of email so I can answer some emails today. But we also have some good news. We are working on a phone number. Did you find a great phone number, John? I did. He did. He found a great phone number. Is it gonna be an 800 number? 8 88. 8 88. It's an 8 88 number. So we will have an 88, not an eight number. They're provisioning it, which means I guess they're, you know, I don't know. Somebody in a network operations center somewhere is flipping some switches.
(00:02:48):
They're provisioning it and we should have it by next week. So we'll give out that number as soon as we as soon as somebody's there to answer it. Unfortunately, the way it's probably gonna work is only one person at a time. We don't, it's not a radio station number. They, with radio stations have special phone lines where big trunk lines where many, many people can call in and they'll all get in. That's why, you know, Kim Shaffer used to answer the calls and put you on hold. We had six lines available, which you could have many, many more. And it's expensive <laugh>, and it's also kind of old school. It's a little it's a little old, old times. Crimson and Clover. That's the song, not incense and peppermints. Thank you very much for fixing that. I was talking before the show about the best version of incense and peppermints was Joan Jets, and it wasn't, it was Crimson and Clover.
(00:03:44):
Another fine pairing. Another, another good thing to combine <laugh>. Yeah, every and every, everybody has a trunk line now called the internet. So the way I think this phone number's gonna work is it'll, you'll get a busy signal if somebody's on it, but what we'll do is you'll watch and I'll say, oh, we're on the phone right now. And you watch, and as soon as that person gets disconnected, you dial that number cuz that number is, is now open and ready. What is in the news this week? Apple's a little bit in trouble with the eu. The EU has said dudes <laugh>. So as you probably know, apple uses a proprietary connecting port on its iPhone, the lightning port, right? And they even have a special program M f I made for iPhone that I think costs quite a bit of money to get into.
(00:04:36):
So if you're making a peripheral, it's gonna use a lightning port and you wanna label an mfi. You don't have to. People sell lightning cables that aren't, but we often say, oh, maybe you shouldn't buy those, but, but the MFI ones are more expensive. So Apple is gonna have to change this lightning port to a u s BBC port. According to EU regulations, not, not this year, but next year. However, the thinking is probably the iPhone 2015 I or the iPhone 15 for 2023, we'll probably have a u s BBC charging port. Certainly it will have to next year. Then Apple's starting to put out this, well, we have an M F I program for type C connectors. Of course, they use type C on their iPads and their MacBooks. And the EU is saying, no, <laugh>, no, you <laugh>, you have to be able to charge with any type C.
(00:05:26):
That's the whole point of this thing. So the EU is warned apple that you cannot have faster charging with M F I cables than you have with non MFI cables. You, industry Commissioner Tierre said, we will prevent iPhones from being sold in the eu if you don't do, as we say, the EU is really they're really feeling their oats as we, as we say, feeling their oats. There will be a DEFCON in Vegas in August. That's gonna be always, it's always exciting. They have a black hat and Defcon, the big hacker conventions in Vegas. Father Robert is undoubtedly going there this year. They often have these little villages. You may remember a few years ago, they had a election machine village where hackers had a bunch of election machines and we're hacking them. This year.
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They're gonna have an AI village where hackers will be invited to go on in and attack large language models. Things like chat, G p T from OpenAI and Bard from Google, Andros and others. AI village organizers say it's quote, the largest red teaming exercise ever. For any group of AI models, they expect thousands of people that might be a little over optimistic, including hundreds of students, all of whom will be tasked with finding flaws. What are flaws? Will things like hallucinations bias. That's actually probably a good thing. And jail breaks. That's, that's one of the fun things people do with chat. G p t. They try to find a prompt. You know, that's the thing. You type the question, you type the chat. D p g P t a prompt that'll get around chat GT's inherent limitations on what it can do. So if you want to get chat g p t to tell you how to, for instance, build a bomb, if you just ask it, it'll say, well, no, I am not gonna tell you I'm not.
(00:07:32):
Don't ask me that. I am not gonna tell you that. But then if you craft a prompt that gets around it, things like you <laugh>, you know, play a role for me, chat, G p T and apparently likes to do that as a bad guy, and I'm a good guy and I'm trying to get you not to build a bomb, but you insist on doing it, that kind of thing. And chat, g PT say, well, yeah, I like being a bad guy. Let me tell you how to build a bomb. So that's the kind of thing they're gonna be working on. That'll be interesting. That's in August at Defcon in Las Vegas. Finally, before we get to the calls, and we have a few again, call Twitter tv, oh, I didn't even mention Scott Wilkinson is coming up in just a little bit. He'll be here at 12 noon and Johnny Jett will be joining us at 1:00 PM That's both.
(00:08:19):
But those are both Pacific Times. So in about 45 minutes, Scott Wilkinson talking home theater. One more news story though before we get to the calls. <Laugh> Fortnite is now an Olympic eSport <laugh>. So you may remember we talked about this a couple of months ago. The International Olympic Committee said, we are gonna try out eSports. I don't think I, honestly, I don't think eSports or sports, but they have a competition. There'll be nine virtual re sports sports including just dance and grand charisma. The I Ooc has now added a 10th discipline. Are you ready for this? They call it sport shooting
Leo Laporte (00:09:05):
<Laugh>.
Leo Laporte (00:09:07):
They're gonna <laugh> they're gonna, you know, yeah. It's not exactly sport cuz you're, have you ever watched eSports, the, the guys playing it gotta slack, John <laugh>. It's not exactly athletics. Anyway, sports shooting will be especially designed island in Fortnite. And you'll be able to go in there and show. I don't know, we'll be like, will you have to ski? And then and then shoot like a biathlon. I don't know. So it'll be, it'll be interesting. This is a u-turn because the I o C had originally said we're not gonna do killer games.
(00:09:49):
But every combat sport has its origins and a real fight among people boxing, right? But sport is the civilized expression of this. So I guess Fortnite is a civilized version of this, this will be in the this will be 12 players from the top, 12 players from the 2023 Fortnite champion series. And this, I guess will be next next year Singapore, the 2024 Olympics. Next June, we'll have Fortnite. You know what, I will watch that. I will watch that. I mean, it's at least as fun as watching swimmers, right? A t g ask the tech guy the website, tech guy labs.com if you want to see more, get the show notes. If you want to see the video or watch the audio or get links to your favorite podcast players or YouTube tech guy labs.com is still working. Let's go to our first call, putting John in the room. Hello, John,
Zoom (00:11:08):
You are in the meeting hosted by with re
Caller John (00:11:11):
Hello?
Leo Laporte (00:11:12):
Information. Hi, John. We're here in the Oh, voiceover. Yeah.
Caller John (00:11:16):
Okay, well okay.
Leo Laporte (00:11:18):
It'll stop in a second. I know. <Laugh> John, welcome. Where are you calling from?
Caller John (00:11:23):
I'm here in Leesburg, Virginia.
Leo Laporte (00:11:25):
Beautiful. Leesburg, we've talked to you before. I know. How you doing? Yeah, we, and I know you're gonna ask me once again if I use bit warden command line. No, I,
Caller John (00:11:34):
I won't ask you that again because you, you know,
Leo Laporte (00:11:38):
War I played with it. The question I played with it, I'm not sure really what it, it, you know, worked fine for me. I did not have to run node js. So I, I think there's some really, yeah, so I think there's, it
Caller John (00:11:49):
Does say, yeah, it does say you have to do that.
Leo Laporte (00:11:51):
Yeah, I think that's, I think that's
Caller John (00:11:54):
Jq, jq
Leo Laporte (00:11:57):
Jq maybe. Yeah. I didn't, if
Caller John (00:11:58):
You wanna edit do anything with it because otherwise it's kind of jumbled up. And then, so if you wanna really edit anything or do anything, you have to. Okay.
Leo Laporte (00:12:09):
You
Caller John (00:12:09):
Know, and, and then once you do that, then when I put it in an editor, an emax of course, and then good man edit the, and then I, and then I copy the id and then you have to do it in code and then edit the, I edit
Leo Laporte (00:12:24):
How annoying is that? And that's just to add a password or to change a password. Yeah,
Caller John (00:12:29):
Exactly. Do anything you want.
Leo Laporte (00:12:31):
I, I did not experience that. Let me go back and look at it again. Maybe, maybe I, you know, I just installed it using a package manager and it seemed to run as a normal password manager would, but only at the command line. So they had some command line switches and stuff.
Caller John (00:12:47):
It's, it's, it's, it's called B BW when you do that. Right. And then there's all kinds of switches and there's help and there's a lot of different things. So, but it's, it's, it's definitely not exactly your user-friendly.
Leo Laporte (00:13:01):
Yeah. That's too bad. Yeah. And I know you wanna use it cuz you wanna use your screen reader with it and that that's, that's too bad. And then, you
Caller John (00:13:07):
Know, I I, I have Windows and I have Surf Mac here and so, but, but it's, it's nice to use the command line that we can. Of course.
Leo Laporte (00:13:15):
It's, yeah. So how is e how is EMAX with a screen reader?
Caller John (00:13:20):
Oh, well, the, it depends now on the Mac, I have to use a special screen reader called EMAC Speak.
Leo Laporte (00:13:27):
Oh, interesting. Which was
Caller John (00:13:28):
Written, which was written by a guy. And, and, and he u he invented it about 20 years ago. And, and, and it, it, it does certain, but way, the way it works though, it's strange because it only works if it, if you advise the functions. I don't know if you're familiar with that. So, so it'll, it it will work pretty well on
Leo Laporte (00:13:53):
Some Oh yeah. You have to let them know that. Yeah. Yeah. I understand. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, yeah. So this is very eax e so it's an EMAX package that's kind of interesting. Yes. It's an
Caller John (00:14:02):
EAX package. And then, and then you would, and then the, the author has to, or somebody has to advise the functions.
Leo Laporte (00:14:08):
Yeah. The functions need to hook into, basically have to be hooked into the That's right. The screen reader. So that they'll go through the screen reader. That's very,
Caller John (00:14:15):
That's cool. So this is this work with Mac on, on on Linux. I just use these speak up screen reader. Which, which, which, which comes with
Leo Laporte (00:14:26):
It. Eemax is a plain text editor that is in a command line. So it's a, it's a wonderful editor ideal. Yeah. Once you learn it, it's a wonderful editor. I'm a big EMAX fan. Oh yeah.
Caller John (00:14:36):
You have to it
Leo Laporte (00:14:38):
Fairly, it's a loaded curve.
Caller John (00:14:40):
Steep
Leo Laporte (00:14:40):
Curve. Yes. <laugh>,
Caller John (00:14:42):
It's a curve. Definitely. And, and the only thing that I, I, I don't like the arrangement is these h I hate HTL HTML email. I've always hated it. Me too.
Leo Laporte (00:14:54):
And a lot of no one should use it. A lot
Caller John (00:14:55):
Of times they'll send it in the, in the pla in the it won't be an attachment. It'll just be the plain part of the email. And so I have to do some trickery to, to to to, I use S H R to, to, so I can read the darn stuff. Yeah. But then I can't do links that way, you know, so it's kind of a mess. Ht, I hate anyway. HTML email. Well,
Leo Laporte (00:15:21):
And I've for a long time said people really shouldn't use H T M L and email because it'll basically is a security problem. You can, and
Caller John (00:15:28):
I never use it myself.
Leo Laporte (00:15:29):
It's, it's, it'll basically it's putting a webpage in your email package and as That's right. As with any webpage that you're visiting, it could have exploits and it can call script Exactly. And so forth. So, so it's a bad idea. An email is designed around plain text. It works wonderfully. Exactly.
Caller John (00:15:44):
It works great.
Leo Laporte (00:15:45):
And if you're plain and for accessibility, if you're blind having it in plain text instead of bracket, html, bracket, doc 3.0, bracket, bracket, all that stuff is much easier. Oh,
Caller John (00:15:56):
All that stuff. Yeah. Right. I
Leo Laporte (00:15:57):
Can't imagine what a screen reader reading HTML must sound like nuts. Well,
Caller John (00:16:01):
It, it sounds kind of strange. And so there's, there's a, there's a part of Eax called s h r Render Region. Ah. And then if you, if you have to
Leo Laporte (00:16:12):
You select a, a text only. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Caller John (00:16:15):
And then, and, and it, it, it gets rid of all the tags. <Laugh>.
Leo Laporte (00:16:18):
Well, John, we're boring. All the non eax, non non list abusers out there, which is like everybody Oh yeah. Except you and me. So what can I do for you,
Caller John (00:16:28):
<Laugh>? I had to look the lisp too, to the user. I
Leo Laporte (00:16:31):
Mean, of course you do. Yes. Cuz Eemax has written its own lisp dialect call E Lisp. Yeah.
Caller John (00:16:36):
Yeah, that's right. So, okay. So I have a Mac here, and I have this I amazing program,
Leo Laporte (00:16:43):
Which Micah recommends. And I started using a Micah's recommendation. It's a paid program, about 40 bucks, but it gives you access to your, your iOS device for backup and, but also for copying and, and looking at data. So are you But I'm using
Caller John (00:16:59):
It. I'm using it for, is my main backup onto the computer now. Oh. And it, I I, I haven't set to do a daily backup.
Leo Laporte (00:17:08):
Nice.
Caller John (00:17:09):
But what it, but it, what it does is it, it seems to gradually shift the time forward a little bit each day. And, and, and the, and the worst of it is, in order to work this, you have to enter your password to do the backup. That's an iOS
Leo Laporte (00:17:28):
Problem. That's a, yeah. Because Apple doesn't wanna put private data on a computer unless you encrypt it. And that's why the
Caller John (00:17:36):
Password and it's encrypted. Yeah. And that's
Leo Laporte (00:17:37):
Backup by the way. Apple does that also, when you just use its own facilities for copying the iPhone. Well, that's correct. You have to do an encrypted backup if you want it to get passwords and things like that. And that's, I guess to protect your privacy. Yeah.
Caller John (00:17:50):
But, but I, but I can't get it to stay at the same time. That's,
Leo Laporte (00:17:53):
That's very strange. So automatic schedule, automatic backups with snapshot report support. It, you know, since you're a Linux Unix user, a guru, you understand it's probably doing something like Aron job sometimes crime jobs randomize you doesn't
Caller John (00:18:13):
Get crime job. Exactly. It's part of the I amazing job.
Leo Laporte (00:18:16):
I understand. I understand. But I'm, but I'm saying that sometimes Kron will randomize a little bit at the time so that you don't get everything happening all at once. And I'm wondering if that's amazing as doing something like that, does it continually move forward in time? Or does it move backward and forward? It always goes forward.
Caller John (00:18:36):
I'd like to get it to, I'd like to get it to the old time, but there's some kind of rule only back up 24 hours later. And then, you know, that
Leo Laporte (00:18:45):
Sounds like a, a bug. And I, amazing. And I, you know, I wonder if, you know, a lot of times you don't know it, but under the hood, they're using facilities that are built into the Mac, like Kron Mac has. They
Caller John (00:18:55):
They could be. Or Kron, like I use
Leo Laporte (00:18:57):
For something or Kron like thing. And maybe that's, but I think you're gonna have to call, I'm sorry to say uhm amazing to find out what they're doing. Cuz that sounds like a bug. In fact, you might be doing them a favor. Yeah. It says configure when and how frequently each of your Apple devices is backed up. Yo know, be notified when you're behind. See, in theory, it should be exactly the same time every time. I could see, I could see if it maybe would rotate that time around so that you don't have collisions. You know, your system doesn't get bogged down. But it shouldn't be advancing continually into the future, because eventually you're gonna miss a backup. Right.
Caller John (00:19:36):
Well, I don't know. Yeah. Yeah. And then what, and then it also does some strange things like in Ventura, it used to be that you, that you could set a schedule for the Mac to wake up. Cuz the Mac has to wake up for us. Right. And in Ventura, they abolish that schedule. So I had to use a strange program called PM set to, to try to do a schedule when the Mac would wake up. But, but now the Thema amazing is way off of that schedule. Now. It's about an hour off now. More than an hour
Leo Laporte (00:20:08):
Off. Let's see what Scooter, scooter X says the i Amazing app has a backup timeframe setting. If you wish to restrict backups to a specific timeframe, you should allow for at least a few hours, Peter must be awake during the specific, specific timeframe in your iPhone or iPad reachable via wifi. If the last backup of the device was made too recently, amazing. We'll skip backup with all of that. Exactly what you expect. What it, what you don't expect is that, that that timeframe slowly slides through the day. Yeah. I think that's a bug on their part. And I think you would be doing them a favor by, by calling him and saying, or emailing them and saying, I'll there's a, there's a flaw. Yeah.
Caller John (00:20:53):
Yes. I will do that. I, you know, I hadn't done that because I thought, well, if there's a way to get around it, you know, then I'll come.
Leo Laporte (00:21:01):
Yeah. Well, if I knew of a way I would've, I would of course not hide it from you. <Laugh>.
Caller John (00:21:06):
But,
Leo Laporte (00:21:07):
But I do not know of a way. So interestingly, I think you've found bug that doesn't sound right, to be honest.
Caller John (00:21:13):
Well, yeah. The other question I have is if I wanted to send you a, a, a video message what app would I use to record the video message?
Leo Laporte (00:21:23):
Well, if you wanna do video, you could just use your iPhone and use camera and, and just record a video. And then at the end of the video, there's a share. This must be hard if you're blind, but you obviously, well,
Caller John (00:21:39):
That's a share thing. You
Leo Laporte (00:21:40):
Figured it out. Obviously I'm really impressed. But there'll be a share sheet and the share sheet can send it to an email address. And so, okay.
Caller John (00:21:48):
Got it.
Leo Laporte (00:21:48):
Okay. Just email us that video. Okay. Yeah.
Caller John (00:21:50):
Okay. Sounds good.
Leo Laporte (00:21:52):
Hey, it's always a pleasure talking to you, John. You're quite impressive. Quite the geek. Well,
Caller John (00:21:58):
I don't know. I, I love emax. That's the, I use it on everything
Leo Laporte (00:22:01):
I do too. And as I get older and my vision deteriorates, I'm glad to know I'll be able to continue to use it.
Caller John (00:22:07):
Oh yeah, absolutely.
Leo Laporte (00:22:08):
It's one of those things that you wish you'd started 20 years earlier, <laugh>.
Caller John (00:22:14):
Right, exactly. And then, you know, and some EMA apps have a, a tremendous amount of variables you have to set. And, and there's a lot of weakness.
Leo Laporte (00:22:23):
I'm, I'm impressed that you're able to do it, but, you know, it's kind of fun. And Amex is one of those things where it rewards the effort. But it is acknowledged to be a lot of effort. There's, there's a lot to learn, but it rewards that. And as you get better and better at it, I've, I've only been using it for maybe 10 years. I need a, I need a <laugh>. I need, it's gonna take me at least another 10 years to to be, get proficient at it. But it's funny because it's, you, you get it bit by bit. There's a wonderful book, by the way. That's right. Wants to learn about Eex called Mastering Eex by Mickey Peterson. It's online. Oh.
Caller John (00:22:57):
I'll have to get it. Oh,
Leo Laporte (00:22:58):
It's the best book. And Mickey has his Mastering emax site I think it's mastering emax.com has a blog. And so he'll cover different topics in the blog. It is a great way to learn. Cuz emax, you can't learn all at once, it's just too much. No. So there's best to kind of, there's a tutorial built in, do the tutorial so you know enough of it to start to use it as an editor and then just use it as your text editor from now on. And you'll slowly add things. There's, you know, the old a adage about emax, it's a great operating system with a mediocre text editor built in <laugh>
Caller John (00:23:32):
<Laugh>.
Leo Laporte (00:23:33):
It could do almost anything. And it, it really is a wonderful thing. It can
Caller John (00:23:37):
Read Epop books. Oh
Leo Laporte (00:23:39):
Yeah. And if I were, you know, for a blind user, I think it would be a, a godsend. Cuz everything is plain text. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Even the, you can even do plain text browsing built into it. Hey, always a pleasure, John. Well, doesn't work too well, but you know, well the web is not designed for text only, is it? I mean, that's, that's right. It's not, yeah. Okay. Thanks John. Well, thanks. Thank you. Have a great one. Take care. Thank to you. I think we got Richard back. Yes. You tell me. We do. And you press the buttons and everything. I see it going. So if I just, should I send him in the breakout room? Let's do it. Let's see what happens. Press him, send him Richard. We got you back. Sorry if I hung up on you earlier. You're watching. Ask the tech guys with just one tech guy today. Micah is taking the day off. Hi, Richard.
Caller Richard (00:24:29):
Maybe now.
Leo Laporte (00:24:31):
Yes, now.
Caller Richard (00:24:32):
Oh wow. Okay. Well, I, what
Leo Laporte (00:24:34):
Happened, not only now, but the sound is wonderful.
Caller Richard (00:24:38):
Thank you. You sound I pr 40 is a lifestyle. You
Leo Laporte (00:24:41):
Have a PR 40. That's
Caller Richard (00:24:42):
You betcha,
Leo Laporte (00:24:43):
Man. My ear must
Caller Richard (00:24:44):
Be a little, is there another mic? There is no other mic in the world. There's, I see people talking about she mics in these, you know, $2,000 neodymium, you know, electrostatic. No, no. PR 40
Leo Laporte (00:24:54):
For life. Isn't that funny? I, you know, I did not know you were using a PR 40. I just noticed how good it sounded must be. I, my ear is now tuned to this. I remember getting the, this is made by our friend Bob Hele, Hele sound, longtime rock and roll sound guy, ham radio operator. And he bemoaned, years ago, the lack of quality in microphones for ham operators started making better microphones for hams. And eventually he ended up making better microphones for everything. These are widely used in broadcast now and podcasts. And I remember that. It was a podcast expo. I think it was the second one. We won Best podcast award. And this was the award was Ohio. Mike Bob gave it to me and I plugged it in, and we did a show from the show floor and said, I'm in love with this mic. I will never, I will never use any other mic. And now I hear you using it. I love it. <Laugh>, what can we do for you, Richard?
Caller Richard (00:25:43):
Well, I, at first I had a very fun chat with John early on when the system crashed, it dumped he and I into a Zoom meet.
Leo Laporte (00:25:51):
Oh, nice.
Caller Richard (00:25:52):
And so, no, I meant John, who he was talking John
Leo Laporte (00:25:55):
Ash Blind, gentle. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Caller Richard (00:25:56):
And I, and we had a great conversation, but it was like, why am I talking to you? Why am I talking to you? Who are you? It was,
Leo Laporte (00:26:02):
It was, so everybody should get to know John Ashley, who produces this show and is one of our great editors. And John Ashley is gonna get a little bit of a promotion. Come on over here. He's gonna, you could sit in Micah's chair. He's gonna get a little bit of a promotion because our longtime coo, Jerry Wagley is leaving the, the building. And John, you're gonna get all of his responsibilities. Title, but not money <laugh>.
Caller Richard (00:26:29):
Yeah. A longer title on the desk. That's how they, that's how they hook you up. Maybe we title on the desk. Maybe we
Leo Laporte (00:26:33):
Could give you a little bump too. I'm not, I won't speak for Lisa, but that would be a, a nice thing. But yeah, everybody's, everybody's gonna step up. And John has done such a great job that we, we decided give him a little bit more to do. So what can I do for you,
Caller Richard (00:26:45):
Richard? So, so my question is, I'm on a Mac Mini 2014. Happy with it. Great machine. I'll never go back from a mini, I'll never use an iMac again. Yeah, they're really great. And been for years. Yeah, I've been for years. Yeah. I'm on 10 13 6,
Leo Laporte (00:27:01):
Which may be the, is that the o most recent you can use?
Caller Richard (00:27:05):
No, no. I can use most recent. Oh. But my question is, I have software that I have paid for. Yeah. 32 bits, let's say wiretap studio. Yeah. I have soundboard. I have you know, blah blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Yeah. Is there any place I can go, or software I can run that I can say, okay, I wanna upgrade to 10 15, here's what it'll kill of my purpose. Oh
Leo Laporte (00:27:24):
Yeah. There, there was so there's a couple of things you could do. One is, if don't go all the way to the most recent one, <laugh>,
Caller Richard (00:27:31):
Right? No, no.
Leo Laporte (00:27:32):
Catalina was the one that killed the 32 bits. But whatever, the one that was right before Catalina, when you ran those programs in that operating system and said, well, gotta warn you, this is a 32 bit. It's not gonna work with the next update. Right. So, so Apple gave us a whole year and warned you when you saw a 32 bit software. There must be, there must be I would think somebody would've written a program that would go around and just collect all the 32 bit.
Caller Richard (00:28:00):
I would think so too.
Leo Laporte (00:28:00):
Software, I don't yet. I don't know of one. Lemme see if somebody, yeah. So are you do you make music? What do you do? With all of this stuff?
Caller Richard (00:28:09):
No, no. I'm doing, I do radio shows of my own and I do produce for other people. Nice. So I produce online audio events. Oh. You know, gatherings of five to 600 people where they're lecturing or teaching a regular class.
Leo Laporte (00:28:20):
Are you a friend of Alex Lindsay's by any chance?
Caller Richard (00:28:23):
I should have been. Yeah. <laugh>,
Leo Laporte (00:28:25):
How
Caller Richard (00:28:25):
Does, how does, I saw Alex recently and he was using the Madonna microphone. He's amazing. Something better than the Madonna microphone. What was that little, well,
Leo Laporte (00:28:33):
It's called a countryman. Oh, wow. And we've used Countryman in the Wild when we go to c e s or n a b or other events, or you can't have a Hi sitting in front of you and you'll see 'em in Ted Talks and o Ted Ted use 'em and other lectures. They're just, they're the, they're, I think they were originally developed for the Broadway stage. Right. and so they're flesh, they're flesh colored, and you can get 'em in any flesh stone. And they're just a little tiny capsule. It is, of course, a condenser to be that small and but the sound quality is quite good. And, and, and that's what you'll see in Broadway. They'll they can, it's small enough. They can tape it behind a lapel. They can put, I've seen in Broadway, I've seen people, cause I like to sit in the front row with tape on their forehead and a microphone <laugh> subtly blended in with their hairline <laugh>. Yeah. But that's what the countryman can do. And a countryman is quite a good microphone. Yeah. Alex was using that the other day. Yeah.
Caller Richard (00:29:26):
The other day on Mac Break. And I thought, this guy looks like he's shot in, you know, I don't know how he looks as sharp and he's so well lit. And so that's
Leo Laporte (00:29:34):
Why I said, do you know him? So the best thing you could do, and I think you should do this, is go to Office hours.global, which is Alex's show. And it's, and there's 40 or 50 people in there every day and many people doing what you do. And they talk about all of these topics all the time, kind of obsessively. Yeah. and if you're obsessive about microphones and things like, you know, countrymen, wanna know more about that, that's a great place to go. If you join the Zoom and there's information there at Officer iStock Global, how to join the Zoom. You can ask questions, otherwise you can watch it on YouTube. You can passively consume it. But it is, I think, a great place for anybody who's in the fields of audio engineering streaming video. It's a really great place to learn all about that stuff. He, he's done an amazing job. I've
Caller Richard (00:30:23):
Followed it. I've followed in your footsteps. And I started in 2009 producing shows. Nice. Nice. For people online. But it's all always audio only because my thing is, as handsome as you are, I don't need to see us talk.
Leo Laporte (00:30:35):
Yeah. Well, thank you for saying I'm handsome. Obviously you're not watching <laugh> <laugh>. Yeah. I have a handsome voice. <Laugh>.
Caller Richard (00:30:44):
Yes, exactly. Me too. People are like, wow, you're sound, you look great. Oh, that's, yes.
Leo Laporte (00:30:48):
That's really, we were talking about that the last show with Micah from Maine who has a beautiful voice as well, another radio guy, and just doesn't match. He's not that he's not attractive, he just doesn't match my expectations. And it's always a problem with people in radio, when you meet people in the real world, they, their faces often fall because they have built, it's not necessarily that you're, you know, disappointingly ugly or whatever, it's just that they have a picture in their mind of what you look like. Yeah. Yeah. And then when you see them, it's like, oh, that's not my picture at all. So I, I'm looking, I was, I was kind of be honest. I was stalling. Yes. because I knew somebody would know this. Scooter X did in our I R C and it's turns out you already have this built in to your Macintosh.
(00:31:36):
Okay. so if you want to use Mac OS 10, anything after Mojave 10 point 14 is Mojave. The last version is Mojave, the sports 32 bid. So you can go, believe it or not, in, into system information. Wow. There is also, there also, and it will list it will list apps I guess in 32 bit. I but I also he also sent us an article from macworld that has a program from St. Clair software called Go six four that scans it, catch and tells you, yeah, go six four. It will give you actually really nice display of all the apps. Plus wed link web links to the apps website so you can see if there's an upgrade for it. Okay. but system report will also do this. If you, as you know, under the, under the Apple menu, you can select about this Mac and then press that system report button.
(00:32:32):
This is something they took away from us, by the way, in the most recent version of Mac Os Ventura. And then if you look at, in your system report there, there is a list and you can sort it by 32 bit or 64 bit. So that's another, another way to do it. Not quite as fancy. And I, this is, he also recommends, and this Macworld, I bet you it's somebody we know. Oh yeah. Roman Loyola worked with Roman and his wife for years at Tech tv. So Roman also does what I used to do when I got the M one Mac, which is to run activity monitor and sort. And you can actually sort the activities that are, but they have to be running. So this is only useful to look at it if, if you've got something running, but you know, you could just get it Anyway. There's three ways to do it. I, you know. Okay, great. Your pick your pick. Richard. A real pleasure talking to you. I'm sorry you got dumped out into
Caller Richard (00:33:27):
It was fun. It was an adventure. I produced live, so I was like, okay. Used to it with this guy. I'm with this guy while I'm trying to figure out what's going on. And he's like, who are you? I, you sound like Leo. I'm not Leo. Believe me, I'm not
Leo Laporte (00:33:38):
Leo. It's the beautiful John Ashley.
Caller Richard (00:33:40):
Exactly.
Leo Laporte (00:33:41):
And and he really is handsome, unlike Leo. So good for
Caller Richard (00:33:44):
Him. Yeah, yeah. No, well, you've met me. I'm not exactly what people expect either, but they recognize the
Leo Laporte (00:33:49):
Police. <Laugh>. Oh, oh, you're, this is, this is old chef guy. Yeah,
Caller Richard (00:33:53):
This is old chef guy. Yes. I
Leo Laporte (00:33:54):
Didn't put two and two together. Hi Richard.
Caller Richard (00:33:56):
Yeah. There we go. <Laugh>. Yeah. I'm jealous of your trip to Rome. Good
Leo Laporte (00:34:00):
Lord. Oh, don't get me started
Caller Richard (00:34:02):
On Rome. My waiting pizza, my body weight and pizza.
Leo Laporte (00:34:05):
Wow. The food is great, but everything's great. If you like history, it's great too. It's an amazing city. I bought Lisa a book for mother's Day. I thought it was today <laugh>. So I guess I have to get another gift now. Right. But it's called, I think it was called Silent Rome. And it was a a, a lovely set of pictures taken during COVID when, of course Italy was hard hit and everything was shut down, including all of the places that you go, they to Roman, it's jammed with tourists. Were were empty, empty, empty. And it's a beautiful book. It really was. Lovely. Rizzoli publishes it. Anyway. Wonderful. Thank you Richard.
Caller Richard (00:34:43):
Thank you, sir. I
Leo Laporte (00:34:44):
Wanna talk about electric bikes cuz I am a big fan. One of the things in Rome is famous for is Vespas, right? All these people driving these little mopeds around. But one of the things I thought was so great when we were in Rome is more than I would say a third of the people now are writing e-bikes. And, and what a great way to, to as good as a Vespa in Rome. We're gonna ride in. This is the e-bike you should get. This is an a I am a big E-bike fan. So e-bikes have batteries in them and they have motors in them, usually in the rear hub. And they're what they call pedal assist. So it's not a motorcycle, it's not a Vespa, although some have throttles. These great electrics do from electric e-bikes dot com. In fact, here I am riding one of their cargo bikes.
(00:35:35):
You, this is what they need all over Rome, big fat tires. You go over cobble stones, you can go over rough streets powerful engines. And they're silent, no emissions. Easy to charge up. Very economical. And if they are fu you know, this is the real thing. They're fun to ride. I am a huge fan from quick store trips to outdoor adventures, electric e-bikes, create a mode transport. Anyone can ride. I don't know about you as you get older, your knees, you know, start to get a little twingy. So when I, I love bike riding. I have since I was a kid, but as I, as I got older, the hills got higher. Steeper. Not anymore. My, my electric e-bike, I just whizz up those hills. You're still riding by the way. A lot of studies say you still get as much exercise cuz you get out more.
(00:36:30):
It's so much fun. You know, mother's Day is about a week off. Maybe I should, oh no, Lisa already has electric E-bike. That was the one we were just showing. I love this Mother's Day, right around the corner box of chocolate's. Not appreciated. Try this. This is electric E-bike folds. This electric folds. Look, I'm gonna unfold it. That means it fits into your trunk, it fits into anywhere you unfold it. And you can ride anywhere. So if you want to go to a park, if you want to go to a trail, you bring your electric bike, you unfold it, your e-bike, you set the seat the way you want it, and it is fun to ride. They have that key there by the way. Make sure that it will not <laugh>, you know, appropriately full unfold. It's got a great readout that shows you your speed.
(00:37:13):
It's got lights built in that are powered by the battery. So you're very safe. And man, are they fun to ride with? Quality, feature filled models financed as low as seven to three bucks a month. Your adventures won't cost a fortune. Mom will love it, but you know, don't just get it for mom. Get it for the whole family. You get a powerful removable battery, a bright LCD display, seven speed gearing. That's more than enough for an e-bike, by the way. And five levels of pedal assist to power your ride. And that's what I love in the pedal assist as you, you know, if you want, you could turn it down to one and, and do more work. If you, if you'd like more help, you could turn it up to five and you get going. It's at top speed at 20 miles an hour you'll red reduce actually 28 miles an hour on these.
(00:38:01):
Wow, that's really great. And it has a throttle. Now I'll tell you why you want the throttle. When you're pedaling it's fine. But when you're stopped at a stop light, you know how you have to kind of step on the pedals to get going and everybody behind you is going, come on, come on, come on with oh, with electric E-bike, you turn the throttle and you just start going without any pedaling and just start going. It's fantastic. Lower your gas cars, reduce your carbon footprint. It's, it's, it's fantastic. Electric. L e e c t r i c e-bikes. E b I K E S foldable. Oh, here's another thing. They ship free and they're fully assembled. So you don't have a big assembly job. You just, you just pull 'em up and you're ready to go. You'll be riding Mother's Day right in the morning.
(00:38:50):
Electric E-Bikes offer a wide range of customizable and adjustable e-bike options to accommodate all different lifestyles from the effortlessly fun XP light to that big expedition bike that we were riding. There's their cargo e-bike. One of the things they do with the cargo E-bike is they give you more torque. You know, electric engines have a lot of torque because if you've got a big load behind you, you need that torque to get started. It makes it very, very easy. Love the expedition. Join more than a quarter million dedicated riders on the road right now, riding electric e-bikes. Celebrate your mom or get one for yourself, or better yet, the whole family. Give her all the freedom that comes with electric e-bike. Visit electric e-bikes dot com to learn more. Explore the epic models they have to offer. Really affordable. I think a lot of people, you know, look at the e-bikes from some of these fancy, you know, designer companies.
(00:39:48):
Go, I, I I don't want one of those. No, no. These are, these are the best. They're great e-bikes at a great price. Electric, l e c t r i c e-bikes. E b i k e s.com. I love this foldable thing too, cuz sometimes I don't wanna ride in the streets, but the fact that I can fold it up, pop it in my trunk, it'll actually fit in my funk, even pop it in the funk and, and go to the mountains or go to the park and ride it there. Heaven, I'm in Heaven. Electric e-bikes dot com. We thank 'em so much for their supportive, ask the tech guys and you support us when you go, you know, they don't have a special address, I guess just go, just go and they'll know. And if they ask you just say, oh yeah, Leo sent me her son on the tech geiser or whatever you will love.
(00:40:43):
Just trust me. I've been a a fan for years now. You will love these. All right on we go with the show in just a few minutes. Scott Wilkinson, our home theater geek's gonna join us, but I've got some time to take another call and I see a hand raised. Julian's got his hand up. Is this tech JV on the line? Hello? Can you hear me? I hear you. All right. Hey, it's working. <Laugh> It is. I recognize the voice tech JV on the line. Hello, Julian. Julian is a great advocate for blind users. He's blind himself and he does mobile assistive technology training, consulting tech support presentations. But he is for years called the radio show and offered his support to blind listeners. You go to tech jv.com or email help tech jv.com. Did you enjoy John's conversation about screen readers in emax <laugh>?
Caller Julian (00:41:42):
I did, but it was a little over max. That's a, that's a little more geeky than what I get <laugh>
Leo Laporte (00:41:48):
Well, to each his own. Right. To each his own. Yeah.
Caller Julian (00:41:50):
Absolutely. I mean, I I I'm glad it's, it's doable, you know? Yeah. someday maybe I, I'll get inspired and learn to play with that stuff. So love that people like him actually help to give us that information. Yeah,
Leo Laporte (00:42:02):
Actually that's a great idea. Yeah. We, we all have to help each other, don't we?
Caller Julian (00:42:06):
Absolutely. So
Leo Laporte (00:42:07):
What's up in your world, Julian?
Caller Julian (00:42:09):
Well, I wanted to share a couple of app resources to, again, to help others. And if there's time, maybe ask you about a little gadget I'm contemplating. So for iOS, there's this great little app that's called oco, O K O. It's called the AI Co-Pilot for the Blind. And what this app does is it tells you the state of pedestrian crossing signals.
Leo Laporte (00:42:33):
Oh, interesting. Oh,
Caller Julian (00:42:35):
Interesting. So and so this
Leo Laporte (00:42:37):
Is one thing that that's really started to change thanks to the advent of AI in these large language models. We've talked before about Be my Eyes, where a human will help you but you have to wait for a human to get online, you know, use the app. But we're seeing more and more of these where an AI supports you and this is kind of what Oko is all about. It can actually, it can actually see the signs. How does it work?
Caller Julian (00:43:00):
Yeah. So, and, and let me just give this disclaimer that it, it doesn't replace your mobility training and skills and things like that.
Leo Laporte (00:43:09):
Absolutely. You
Caller Julian (00:43:10):
Gotta, you gotta do that always as an informational tool to confirm something. Right? So I always go by the traffic primarily before I cross a street, but there are some crossings, for example where it's not a lot of traffic going all four directions. So the way we normally cross the street is if we're, is you listen for the parallel traffic to be going, and that's how you know when it's safe to go. See,
Leo Laporte (00:43:34):
That seems to me this is one of the reasons people were advocates for the blind were worried about electric vehicles and I guess electric bikes too. Yeah, they're not as loud.
Caller Julian (00:43:44):
Yeah. I was one of the people who went with the N F B to Congress for years to get them to finally put regulations on that because it, it's a problem
Leo Laporte (00:43:52):
They do now. All of them have speakers and they make sounds at low speeds that you Yes. And is that working? Well, you can hear 'em.
Caller Julian (00:43:59):
Yeah. it, it does work better. I'd like to see it more and more, you know? Yeah. And I guess as time goes on, newer vehicles all have it, but what was surprising is how many people I would speak to in Congress that also as sighted people had incidents where they were Yes. You know, walking down the street and something came out of an alley and surprise themselves all the
Leo Laporte (00:44:18):
Time. You wanna hear these vehicles and it doesn't have to sound like a <laugh>. My Mae, my Mustang Mae has a kind of a, a a, it's hard to describe, but a low whining sound that's a little rumbly, but it's clearly an ev and it also has, and some people don't like it, but like a truck, it has a backup beep. Yeah. For the same reason. I think it's absolute safety reasons. And I think it's, I'm glad to have it, to be honest.
Caller Julian (00:44:46):
It helps. So, sure. But, but yeah, so, so, you know, we listen to the sound of traffic. Well, there are some intersections, for example, where you're crossing a big street, but the parallel street's a small street that doesn't always have a lot of consistent traffic or a T intersection. Right. So this is where this app really comes in handy, because you can basically hold your, the phone out at chest level or wear a little, a chest mount or something like that. And you aim in, in front of you and the back camera as soon as it sees the, the signal that you all are looking at to tell you whether it's walk or don't walk or counting down. Soon as it locks onto that, it starts giving you audio and haptic feedback to tell you what the state of that crossing is.
Leo Laporte (00:45:27):
That's fantastic. What a great idea.
Caller Julian (00:45:31):
It, it just works great. It's a free app, and so far for me, it's been a hundred percent accurate. So that, that's one thing I wanted to share. And it
Leo Laporte (00:45:39):
Works in the dark, by the way. Yeah. O K O AI Co-Pilot for the Blind. And it's from I A Y E S B V.
Caller Julian (00:45:48):
Yes.
Leo Laporte (00:45:49):
It's free on the on the app store. What a great idea. Yeah,
Caller Julian (00:45:52):
Yeah. It is a great app for Android users. I wanted to share a cash, a, a currency identifier app that recently became available there. It's been available on iOS for a while, and it is called Cash Reader. And this app is great because, you know, it does the obvious. You hold up any denomination in front of you, any bill, and it'll tell you what it is within seconds. But it also does many foreign currencies, and it even has a currency conversion feature that they just recently added where I
Leo Laporte (00:46:20):
Love that. I could have used that in row. It can hold
Caller Julian (00:46:22):
Yeah, exactly. <Laugh>. So you know, the disclaimer with that one is obviously it can't detect other abi counterfeit or reel. You can, you can test it by, you can go to Google and bring up a picture of a denomination and wave it in front of the app and it'll tell you that's the bill. It's, it's not for
Leo Laporte (00:46:37):
Testing. Doesn't detect for counterfeits. Yes. Okay.
Caller Julian (00:46:41):
But it, but it, but it does help when the bill's in your hand and, and you can sort your bills very quickly with, with AppSec these. So I just wanted to let everybody know this is now available on Android as well.
Leo Laporte (00:46:51):
We've had for a long time, coins, you can tell because they'll be ridged Yes. Or, or by size and weight. But bills are all pretty much the same in some countries. They're different sizes. And I, I think maybe we should consider that in the us
Caller Julian (00:47:06):
Well, you know, we, we had a supposedly legislation that was supposed to make that happen, and when they introduced new bills, they were supposed to, but I'm sad to say that when they introduced the new, I think it's $20 bill now with Harriet Tubman, they did not implement they didn't hold up their end of the bargain. So, you know, it's, it's, you know,
Leo Laporte (00:47:24):
It's that big. It's shame. It's that big change machine lobby. They don't want odd-shaped bills in their change machine. I don't know. I'm making that up. I don't Right. I can't think of a reason not to do it. And they do it in many countries.
Caller Julian (00:47:38):
Yeah, they
Leo Laporte (00:47:39):
Do. In Mexico, the, the smaller the bill, the, the lower the denomination. So
Caller Julian (00:47:43):
We should, but at least technology comes to the rescue and, and we don't have to depend on the government to do it for us. We can do it for ourselves. Cash reader there, I'm always a big fan of that.
Leo Laporte (00:47:51):
This is from Martin Dera. There, it says in-app purchases. What is it? It can't be. Is it expensive?
Caller Julian (00:47:58):
Yeah. Well, the way it works is you can subscribe to it or you can do a lifetime. I see. Purchase. Okay. So, you know, it, it's, it's not free. There are free things, there are things out there that are free that will do it, but this is just very lightning fast. It's being developed and it recognizes, again, multiple currencies from other countries where some of these apps will only do us, or, or a limited amount. So, you know, you get what you pay for it. I think it's a worthwhile tool for the toolbox. I wonder
Leo Laporte (00:48:25):
If Google lens you know, lens, which is built into Android now, and Apple has something similar. The idea is you have a picture and there's a button in the camera. If it would, it ne but it needs to be, it needs to say it, right? It needs to say it out loud. It can't just show. Right. And that's, I guess the problem. Yeah. Yeah. They're not designed.
Caller Julian (00:48:44):
Yeah. And, and I think some of these tools will, but this is just a very easy thing. You launch the app, it's running, it's, it, it'll do it fast. You don't have to open lens or open up some of these other apps that exist, right. Again, that are free, but that make you jump through hoops to get to that point where you can tested bill to see what it is. Right. So that's the thing. So, and then the last thing I wanted to ask your opinion of are these little mini PCs. So I'm looking at this one by a company called Mali, m e l e. It's called Mali Fanis pc. I think it's like three by five by almost one inch. Wow. And it's just incredible. The specs on this thing full fledged like the power of a desktop computer although they do say it's not the best for gaming or, or video editing, but for regular everyday tasks, like for what I use it for, I think it it looks very encouraging and I'm thinking about picking one up.
Leo Laporte (00:49:40):
Yeah. Intel created this form factor. You might have, they're, they're basically sticks Roku and other streamers offer stick versions of their video streamers. The idea is you've got an entire PC in, in what looks like a L oversized us B key. The negative on this is heat. And because there isn't a fan and, and it really doesn't have a lot of capacity or air in there to disperse heat. So that's where you're really gonna, you know, run into troubles. But Intel's been making these for a long time. I don't know if this is a Intel designer not from melee, 200 bucks for eight gigabyte of Ram 128 gigabytes of storage. And I don't know, does it say, oh, it's a Celeron J 41 25 processor. And that's the issue. You're never gonna see, you don't wanna see one of the high end 12th generations I five processors in there. They just, there's too much heat. I wonder if Apple an arm, you know, Qualcomm with these low energy efficient risk processors might do a better job with something like this than Intel. I'm gonna have to keep my eye peel, but this looks pretty good. M e l e, the PC go and they make it in a variety of form factors, not form factors processors and Ram Yeah. Configurations, but it's very affordable. Yeah. Yeah.
(00:51:09):
I,
Caller Julian (00:51:09):
I, so I'm thinking of just replacing an old desktop with this because these days Sure. I mean, most of what I do, I do on the mobile phones now, but there are some tasks that still just work better for web browsing. For example, the Jaws screen reader with its hot keys and, and all kinds of configurations is just more efficient for, for doing web research. That's
Leo Laporte (00:51:29):
A really good point. And you just plug this into the back of a, of a TV if you wanted to see something. I guess you don't really care about that. Does it have to have a screen? Yes.
Caller Julian (00:51:38):
No, that, that's a beautiful part for a blind person. This is ultra portable. So with a Bluetooth keyboard, a a, a Bluetooth headset, and just a little case, and you can even plug it into a 12 volt battery, from what I understand, you can have a very portable how cool, lightweight computing solution that you can travel with without a screen.
Leo Laporte (00:51:56):
Cool. Is that, that's really interesting. Comes with dual band wifi as well. So you, you're, you're connected very cool. Always jv great to have you on, and always great to hear from you and and get your tips. Tech. Yeah, thanks. J jpv.com is the website. If you wanna know more, you can email help@techjv.com for all of our blind listeners, and I know we've always had a lot you know, radio naturally has a lot of blind listeners we're, we've been really grateful for your help all this time. Thank you. Julian tech jv.com. There's Julian. Have a great day.
Caller Julian (00:52:38):
Take care. Take
Leo Laporte (00:52:39):
Care. Bye. Guess who's on the line with us right now? Mr. Scott Wilkinson, home Theater geek. Hello, Scott. Hey, Leo. How you doing, man? I am doing very well. It's always a pleasure to see you. We should tell everybody we've brought the home theater geek Show back. Oh man. I'm so happy about that. Scott's on every single week. It is a Club twit special right now as this is what we've been doing lately. It really works well when a, we have a new show, of course, new shows don't yet have an audience or an advertiser base so we can do it in the club cuz the club members pay seven bucks a month for access to that kind of stuff. Right. And that helps us subsidize it until it's, you know, big enough to push out of the nest and has its own wings.
(00:53:24):
That's what we, with this week in Space <laugh> it launched in the club, sort of launched in the club and then is out. So to the public, so to speak, with ads and everything. And we hope to do the same with Home Theater Geeks and all the other stuff. I hope so. In the club, if you're not a club tot member, you wanna see Scott, there's a couple of things you can do. We do offer it through iTunes. So for $2 99 cents a month, you could just get that show. Apple offers that kind of a thing
Scott Wilkinson (00:53:48):
In a, in an audio format, right?
Leo Laporte (00:53:49):
Audio only. They don't do video yet. But if you want full access to this show, plus hands on Mac, hands on Windows, on Title Linux show all the other things, all these
Scott Wilkinson (00:53:57):
Great show
Leo Laporte (00:53:58):
Had free versions of this show and all the other shows. It's seven bucks a month, I think for a few bucks more a month. It's probably worth doing that. And then you'd get really
Scott Wilkinson (00:54:05):
Worth doing it. Absolutely.
Leo Laporte (00:54:06):
I'll give it a plug. TWIT TV slash clip twit. So Scott sent me an email saying, what do I, what do you want me to talk about? Scott? I want you to talk about whatever is on your mind. Always <laugh>.
Scott Wilkinson (00:54:17):
Always. Well, I, there's plenty of stuff to talk about as always, which is one reason I love doing home theater geeks is that there's never a, a dearth of content <laugh>. Now, I, I wanted to, for, for example, I thought of you when I saw this story last week. You subscribe to YouTube tv, do
Leo Laporte (00:54:36):
You not? I do, and I really like it. I have not yet cut the cord. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> I subscribe to YouTube tv. This is YouTube's $72 a month basically cable replacement. You get your local channels, you get a number of cable specific channels like the ESPN channels. And now they've added some add-ons <laugh> for, for 10 bucks more a month to get 4k. I did that
Scott Wilkinson (00:55:02):
4K hdr.
Leo Laporte (00:55:03):
Yeah, I did that. If,
Scott Wilkinson (00:55:06):
If you, now what do you think? Go ahead.
Leo Laporte (00:55:08):
Well, I just bought another big expensive one because you Google bought the rights from the NFL to NFL Sunday ticket.
Scott Wilkinson (00:55:16):
Ah, yes.
Leo Laporte (00:55:17):
250 bucks for the entire season. Yeah. Or if you want the the red zone feature where you see what's going on, you know, all the, when, whenever a team's in the red zone, it's a little a by the way, a little a d d <laugh> <laugh>
Scott Wilkinson (00:55:32):
Because
Leo Laporte (00:55:33):
You got, you know, sometimes six games going on at the same time. And then they go, let's go to this one, let's go. But, and you don't see the whole game. You just see it when the, when the team gets in the red zone. But we've picked, that was an extra 20 bucks, I think 10 or 20 bucks the way I ended up getting that too. So.
Scott Wilkinson (00:55:49):
Well, if you're into football, you know, and that's a recent addition that they made to send NFL Sunday
Leo Laporte (00:55:54):
Tickets. This is the first season. Absolutely. Yeah.
Scott Wilkinson (00:55:56):
Exactly. And now can, can you do multi view with that? They, they also just added multi view, which I think is multiple programs on the screen simultaneously. Sure.
Leo Laporte (00:56:07):
I don't know why you wouldn't be able to, so but I don't know. Cause there's no football yet <laugh>, but, but when, when football comes, I'll be the first to let you know, I'm Yeah. Yeah. I, I think the quality of YouTube TV is great, and I particularly like the DVR feature of it, because Yes, all you have to do is find a show and say, add it to my library. You have an unlimited library by the way, for the fee. You also get family use. So you have six up to six people using it, each with their own dvr.
Scott Wilkinson (00:56:37):
Right, right. So they can have their own content, they don't see everybody else's.
Leo Laporte (00:56:40):
Yeah. And I love that. You know, I'm watching the Kentucky Derby. Lisa says, I gotta go, can you Don't tell me who wins, just save the race for me. <Laugh>
Scott Wilkinson (00:56:49):
On
Leo Laporte (00:56:49):
Youtube tv, you just press a button and it says, add it to my library. And you got it. Yeah,
Scott Wilkinson (00:56:53):
Yeah,
Leo Laporte (00:56:54):
Yeah. Yeah. The Coronation was at 4:00 AM California time yesterday. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. So I just had, I went online on the YouTube TV app, and I said, Hey, get the whole thing. And, and it did. So that really makes it easy.
Scott Wilkinson (00:57:11):
Very easy. Yeah, indeed. The
Leo Laporte (00:57:13):
One downside is skipping commercials.
Scott Wilkinson (00:57:16):
Ooh. You can't skip commercials.
Leo Laporte (00:57:17):
You can, but it's not easy. Will really depend on how you're doing it on an Apple tv. The, the control isn't really great. So skipping commercials is hard. There's nothing like on the TiVo where you just skip you, the TiVo has a button, or you press it and it skips through the commercial. There's nothing like that on YouTube tv. Yep.
Scott Wilkinson (00:57:35):
Yep.
Leo Laporte (00:57:36):
Although if you have a voice assistant, and we do with Apples tv, you can say, Hey, Schlomo, skip ahead three minutes. And if, you know, if you know how long the breaks are gonna be, that actually works quite well. So.
Scott Wilkinson (00:57:49):
Yeah. Yeah. Okay. All
Leo Laporte (00:57:50):
Right. I, I like the auto skip on TiVo. We also have a TiVo, and I prefer that. That's the one, maybe one downside. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. The other thing maybe you should know is that YouTube TV doesn't necessarily have all the commercials. In fact, every once in a while I'll be watching CNN and, and, and, and instead of a commercial, they'll have a picture of a bear in, in the woods, and it'll say, enjoy this quiet moment while they're really, they're covering up, I think the ca the local, you know, local cable commercials. So you have national commercials. Right, right, right. Local cable commercials. Right. And I don't think they make those deals, so they have a blank space. So they just put
Scott Wilkinson (00:58:26):
Nature. Oh, that makes sense. Okay. Film. All right.
Leo Laporte (00:58:29):
Anyway, I didn't mean to steal your thunder, but as a kind of devoted YouTube TV viewers,
Scott Wilkinson (00:58:33):
Well, this is why I thought of you. Yeah. Because it on Reddit YouTube just posted some, I think, kind of important news uhoh the most important of which is that they're experimenting with upgrading their bit rate and the image quality that they, that they produced. Now you say you like the image quality, it's, I think about to get even better.
Leo Laporte (00:59:00):
Yeah. That's, you know, and that's the thing that, that people forget is when you're watching on an antenna, what you get is what you get <laugh>.
Scott Wilkinson (00:59:07):
Right.
Leo Laporte (00:59:08):
But when you're
Scott Wilkinson (00:59:09):
Streaming and it's really good on an on over the air
Leo Laporte (00:59:12):
Antenna, it's the best quality. Cuz it's the least compression. Correct. But when you're streaming, it's highly compressed. And if your bandwidth is inadequate, YouTube tv, for instance, will step down the quality, the picture to match your bandwidth. That's right. So if you have a lot of bandwidth, you're getting whatever the best they have to offer, and now they're saying you're gonna make it even better.
Scott Wilkinson (00:59:29):
Well, and this is the point the, the, the in the information that I've been reading online about this is that YouTube TV typically maxes out at seven 20 p resolution on your TV and your tv, which is 4k, then upscales that.
Leo Laporte (00:59:45):
Yeah, <laugh>. Yeah.
Scott Wilkinson (00:59:46):
But now they're in, they're improving the code deck, the coder decoder compression decompression algorithms to increase the bandwidth where people have it going into their homes so that they'll actually be able to send 10 80 p
Leo Laporte (01:00:01):
Wow. Which
Scott Wilkinson (01:00:03):
Is a big
Leo Laporte (01:00:03):
Upgrade. So I pay for that 4K upgrade, but the very few broadcasts are 4k. Correct. I bought it during the Winter Olympics. Right. And they were offering a special deal. Right. and, and some of those broadcasts were in 4k, and so they really looked good. The snow was very, they looked good. Very high quality. But yeah, <laugh>,
Scott Wilkinson (01:00:23):
I love high quality snow,
Leo Laporte (01:00:25):
But there's very few things that are in 4k. We're starting to see more, but I have to say seven 20 p as bad as that might sound to a geek Hmm. Isn't actually necessarily bad. It's often what you're getting on broadcasts
Scott Wilkinson (01:00:39):
Absolutely.
Leo Laporte (01:00:40):
On your cable and system anyway.
Scott Wilkinson (01:00:42):
Well, in certain channels, Fox, abc, espn,
Leo Laporte (01:00:45):
Espn n Yeah,
Scott Wilkinson (01:00:46):
They do, they do seven 20 P. Everybody else does 10 80 I, which is co the, I stands for interlaced. And then the TV has to kind of put these two fields together to make each frame. But YouTube's now talking about doing 10 80 p, which means that the, the Each frame will come to you complete.
Leo Laporte (01:01:04):
But what will they do with espn, which isn't offering 10 80 p? Well,
Scott Wilkinson (01:01:08):
That's a good question. I don't know the answer to that.
Leo Laporte (01:01:10):
I guess we'll get seven 20.
Scott Wilkinson (01:01:11):
Yeah. You probably still get,
Leo Laporte (01:01:12):
This is what I get. Right now, I pay for 4k, but that's only on the very few things that are actually streaming in 4k.
Scott Wilkinson (01:01:17):
That's right. That's right. It's rare.
Leo Laporte (01:01:20):
Yeah.
Scott Wilkinson (01:01:20):
And it is rare. Exactly. So, so they're gonna make these improvements over the next few weeks, and you should see them since you're paying for the top tier. Yeah. I mean, you're pay, you're paying
Leo Laporte (01:01:32):
Original money, ridiculous amount of money. Money. It's as much as money. Cable money bill a lot of money. It's exactly, yeah. It's basically a cable bill. Yeah, yeah,
Scott Wilkinson (01:01:38):
Exactly. Yeah. but you should be seeing this then in, in the coming weeks, and they're gonna make it permanent in the summer. They're using the Kodak called VP nine
Leo Laporte (01:01:49):
That's a Google coded deck.
Scott Wilkinson (01:01:52):
Correct.
Leo Laporte (01:01:52):
And supposedly very good. Although I think, I'm guessing H 2 65
Scott Wilkinson (01:01:58):
Might be better. They're, they're, no, they're roughly equivalent. Are they the one the Yeah. And the reason they're using VP nine is that it's so ubiquitous. It's Right. It's, it's out there. It's also
Leo Laporte (01:02:08):
Unencumbered. It's not, it's not owned by the jpeg folks.
Scott Wilkinson (01:02:12):
Which H 2 65 is
Leo Laporte (01:02:14):
Folks. Right. Right.
Scott Wilkinson (01:02:16):
Now the other one to, to be aware of that I wish more people implemented is AV one.
Leo Laporte (01:02:21):
Oh, I don't know that one. Which apparent
Scott Wilkinson (01:02:23):
That has, that is even more efficient than VP nine, like by about 25%. And it's also free, but it's not implemented everywhere. Hmm. So it's, well,
Leo Laporte (01:02:34):
And that's, this is the, this <laugh> who, who was it said is it Neil? Neil game and the Future, or Neil Stevenson. The future's here, it's just not evenly distributed. <Laugh>.
Scott Wilkinson (01:02:45):
Right. Which is true,
Leo Laporte (01:02:47):
It's true about tv. There's you know, most broadcast signals are seven 20 P or 10 80. I
Scott Wilkinson (01:02:53):
Correct.
Leo Laporte (01:02:54):
W h is YouTube TV gonna make a deal with a b ABC to get a higher quality content stream? That would be cool.
Scott Wilkinson (01:03:01):
That would be cool.
Leo Laporte (01:03:03):
I don't know.
Scott Wilkinson (01:03:04):
Hard to say.
Leo Laporte (01:03:05):
Yeah. They're not being clear about that.
Scott Wilkinson (01:03:06):
There's all these deals though, that have to be made, and I must, I must say this is one of the things I really don't like about streaming, is you have carriage deals that only last a certain amount of time, and if they're not renewed, then the content goes away. Yeah. I, eh, this is why I like discs. One reason I actually like discs. I know you,
Leo Laporte (01:03:29):
When we're even spoiled by streaming these days, you and you stream you know, some services like Netflix, you're getting 4K in some cases, in some
Scott Wilkinson (01:03:37):
Cases
Leo Laporte (01:03:38):
Not as good as your Blu-ray. No,
Scott Wilkinson (01:03:40):
But
Leo Laporte (01:03:40):
I'm not gonna go, go out and buy a disc
Scott Wilkinson (01:03:43):
<Laugh>,
Leo Laporte (01:03:43):
Well, might, I might of my favorite show succession, but that's about it. Most of the time I'm not gonna rewatch something that's
Scott Wilkinson (01:03:50):
True. In
Leo Laporte (01:03:51):
Fact, more and more. And I, it, I it's not good. But when I wanna watch a movie even if I wanna buy it, I'll buy it on iTunes. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> cuz it's convenient.
Scott Wilkinson (01:04:02):
There it is. Convenience versus quality. And yes, discs are, are higher quality than virtually any streaming, but they're not as convenient.
Leo Laporte (01:04:14):
Do you notice that?
Scott Wilkinson (01:04:16):
I do.
Leo Laporte (01:04:17):
You do? Okay.
Scott Wilkinson (01:04:18):
I do. Yeah. But I'm have that
Leo Laporte (01:04:20):
Nice you know, qd o led TV in my living
Scott Wilkinson (01:04:24):
Room. Oh man, that thing is so sweet. <Laugh>, thank
Leo Laporte (01:04:26):
You for thank you. Did you, I have to ask you, did you, did you un unleash the filmmaker setting? I couldn't find it.
Scott Wilkinson (01:04:34):
No. No. It's in the picture mode. Oh, okay. It's, it's, it's one of the pic it's one of the listed picture modes. Okay. You just, you just didn't scroll through far enough to, to get to it. <Laugh> I
Leo Laporte (01:04:42):
Got, I think probably found cinema and said, okay, fine. Good enough. But there is a movie,
Scott Wilkinson (01:04:46):
Movie in that case it's movie mode. Movie mode. But yes, there is a filmmaker mode. You just have to scroll down a little farther through the list of picture modes and you'll find filmmaker mode. And that's what I, I sent it to picture mode to filmmaker mode. Yeah. Thank you. Which in fact, disables all of the frame interpolation.
Leo Laporte (01:05:04):
Right. That's what it really means, isn't it?
Scott Wilkinson (01:05:06):
But that plus it disables, it disables noise reduction and all that stuff, lack, enhancement, all that stuff. All
Leo Laporte (01:05:13):
That stuff is all
Scott Wilkinson (01:05:13):
That stuff. Which is fine. Which
Leo Laporte (01:05:15):
I, because you're looking at the way the intended it, that's the purpose.
Scott Wilkinson (01:05:18):
Correct. Correct. That's what the point of that mode is, is why it was developed.
Leo Laporte (01:05:23):
I have to say, it's not always what I want. For instance, right now paramount Plus is streaming a remake of the old Fatal Attraction movie, you know, with Oh
Scott Wilkinson (01:05:33):
Yeah.
Leo Laporte (01:05:33):
Michael Douglas. And and we're watching it. And for some reason, the make the filmmakers decided to severely desaturate it. I obviously didn't choice. Yeah. But I'm watching it, and I'm saying, is this, I'm, I'm like hitting the tv. Is there something wrong, <laugh>? Is there the tv? You know what? It's, and then I kept turning it off and on again and going to other channels. Oh no.
Scott Wilkinson (01:05:56):
It was that bad. Wow.
Leo Laporte (01:05:57):
Well, sometimes you get a signal, you know, with H D M I, the Signal gets garbled a little bit and it's, yeah. It was that bad. And eventually I realized it. No, this is how they intended it, because they had clips of the filmmakers that were nice, 4k, high quality inter and interposed with clips from the show, which are desaturated.
Scott Wilkinson (01:06:17):
Oh man.
Leo Laporte (01:06:18):
So sometimes maybe the filmmaker's vision is not <laugh>
Scott Wilkinson (01:06:23):
Not
Leo Laporte (01:06:24):
The best.
Scott Wilkinson (01:06:25):
Well, I always, I always defer to the filmmaker's vision. It's, it's what they want you to see. So I'm gonna watch it that way. Damnit
Leo Laporte (01:06:35):
Damnit, I'm gonna watch it. Desaturated <laugh>. And I'm gonna take it that way, because that's what Yeah. Apparently the director didn't want it to look like it was in Technicolor. And I understand that. Yeah, sure. You see this sometimes very famously was it Vittorio Sakara, the, the, the cinematographer for the Godfather soaked the film stock and tea afterwards to give it a certain look. And if you watch The Godfather, I had the same reaction, by the way, the, the Godfather, when I first got the, you know, the, the DVD of it, I thought, yeah, this is mu kind of glow. Muddy and muddy. Yeah. And that was intentional, but that
Scott Wilkinson (01:07:16):
Was
Leo Laporte (01:07:16):
Intentional.
Scott Wilkinson (01:07:17):
What's his name of here's, here's an example in the audio realm. Yeah. Oliver Stone? No. what's his name now? I can't think of his name. The guy who did Interstellar and Inception.
Leo Laporte (01:07:30):
Oh, yeah, I know who you're talking about. Chris.
Scott Wilkinson (01:07:32):
I love him. Yeah. I, yeah.
Leo Laporte (01:07:34):
Christopher Nolan. Christopher Nolan.
Scott Wilkinson (01:07:36):
Nolan. Yes. Christopher Nolan. Yes. That's it. Thank you very much.
Leo Laporte (01:07:38):
The Dark Knight of Movie. Yes.
Scott Wilkinson (01:07:40):
Yes. He very often will bury the dialogue Yeah. In sound effects. So that you, you going, what, what? I can't hear it. Yeah.
Leo Laporte (01:07:50):
That, yeah. Nolan does that on purpose,
Scott Wilkinson (01:07:51):
And he does that on purpose. Yeah. And that bugs the hell outta me, because I want to hear what they're saying.
Leo Laporte (01:07:57):
Gordon Willis was a cinematographer on the original Godfather.
Scott Wilkinson (01:08:01):
Oh,
Leo Laporte (01:08:01):
Yeah. Yeah. And what, what was surprising about that was he did, after the film was shot <laugh> Oh man.
Scott Wilkinson (01:08:09):
To the master, master to the Master Film.
Leo Laporte (01:08:12):
The Master. Oh
Scott Wilkinson (01:08:13):
My God.
Leo Laporte (01:08:14):
Oh, it was a very gutsy thing to do. No
Scott Wilkinson (01:08:17):
Kidding.
Leo Laporte (01:08:18):
That was also paramount. Maybe there's something about Paramount. They just don't want every, anything <laugh> Scott Wilkinson, our Home Theater geek go to. Well, I guess is there a, do you have a website? What, I guess you have to join the club actually.
Scott Wilkinson (01:08:32):
You have to join the club, and I hope you do. We do, we do publish episodes occasionally to the public to sort of give you a taste.
Leo Laporte (01:08:39):
Oh, good. So you can follow it on YouTube.
Scott Wilkinson (01:08:41):
You can follow it on YouTube. But yeah, by all means, join the Club. You'll, you'll have so much great content there, including Home Theater Geeks. And so yeah, what Twit TV slash htg, I'd say. Yes. I also write once a month on AVS Forum, a really interesting piece called Home Theater of the Month.
Leo Laporte (01:09:04):
I love that. Do you have a new one this month?
Scott Wilkinson (01:09:06):
I do. I do. Yeah. Go up to avs forum.com and you'll see it on the homepage. This is a beautiful theater. Oh man. He hired one of the premier home theater designers to come in and, and do his theater. And it's really gorgeous.
Leo Laporte (01:09:23):
And don't be fooled by this. I know we're in May, but it's always the month before. So it's the April
Scott Wilkinson (01:09:27):
Home. It's
Leo Laporte (01:09:27):
The April Theater, yeah. Of
Scott Wilkinson (01:09:29):
The month. Yes, I do it, I do each month at the end of the month.
Leo Laporte (01:09:32):
It's the award winner. Oh, that look, that does look, isn't amazing. He's got eight seats in there or something like that. That's just
Scott Wilkinson (01:09:38):
Nine, actually, nine <laugh>
Leo Laporte (01:09:40):
One for the director.
Scott Wilkinson (01:09:41):
Yeah. That's an, that's a, that's an expensive theater. That costs quarter of a million dollars to put that theater together, you know? But it's not the most expensive one. Two months ago, February, I think it was, I did a million dollar theater,
Leo Laporte (01:09:54):
<Laugh>. Oh my gosh. You know, honestly,
Scott Wilkinson (01:09:57):
You should look at, you should look at it because it's it, he replicated the Star Wars Death Star to the Nines.
Leo Laporte (01:10:03):
Yeah.
Scott Wilkinson (01:10:04):
It's unbelievable.
Leo Laporte (01:10:05):
So as much as I admire this, and I've been in some, you know, home theaters from, you know, famous movie directors Sure. And producers and stuff. And as much as I like that, I feel like I've got 90% of the quality for a 10th or less a hundredth of the cost.
Scott Wilkinson (01:10:23):
It's, it's true. It's true. The, it's that
Leo Laporte (01:10:27):
Last 10% you're paying for.
Scott Wilkinson (01:10:29):
Well, and isn't that true of, of most things in life of life?
Leo Laporte (01:10:32):
Yeah.
Scott Wilkinson (01:10:33):
You know, I mean, I I I liken it to particle physics. You, you, you get a particle up to 50% the speed of light, and then it takes a hundred times the energy to boosted another 5%. Yeah. Because as you get faster and faster, as you get more and more quality, the cost goes up exponentially. It's true in a lot of areas.
Leo Laporte (01:10:55):
<Laugh>. Well, I don't need a speed of light home theater. I'm just <laugh>. I'm happy, happy to go, you know, only a hundred thousand.
Scott Wilkinson (01:11:02):
Well, let me tell you this, the March, the March Home Theater of the Month, I think was on the order of $25,000. Yeah, that's
Leo Laporte (01:11:08):
A little closer
Scott Wilkinson (01:11:09):
Farm. And the guy did everything himself. Yeah. It was, it was all sweat equity. And it's beautiful. It's a great home theater too. Yeah.
Leo Laporte (01:11:17):
This is, this is, this is always a fun column to read. I love it. Thank you, Promontory. It's fun. Theater is the Home Theater of the month. Avs forum.com. Do you still do the AVS Podcast on YouTube too? Nope.
Scott Wilkinson (01:11:30):
Nope. I, I let that go home cause I was having too much fun with Home Theater Geeks. That's
Leo Laporte (01:11:35):
Right. Well, thank you, Scott. I appreciate it. You bet. Scott Wilkinson home theater geek avs forum.com. We'll see you again next month. You bet.
Scott Wilkinson (01:11:45):
June, happy to be here.
Leo Laporte (01:11:46):
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(01:14:38):
It's so good. I tried to offer it to John. He said, I'm not gonna drink outta your ag <laugh>, your JG one. It's actually delicious. You get the extra vitamin D, the travel packs. I love the travel packs cuz I used to have to go through a big process before I would go out on a trip with pill minders and all that stuff. Now it's easy. Athletic greens.com/tech guy, athletic greens.com/tech guy for that special deal. Do check it out. Go and read the label. Ah, it's got vitamins, minerals, supplements, pre and probiotics too. And so it really is, it helps your gut health a as well. It's really great. And I love this little shaker kitten and the whole thing AG one. See? Didn't make a mess, John. Perfect <laugh>. He's, he's, he doesn't believe me. Athletic greens.com/tech guy. We thank of so much for their support of the show. You support us by going to that address. Make sure you do that. AG one James is on the horn on the line. Let me press the buttons and bring him into our lovely star Stargate. Hello James. Welcome to Hey Leo, the show.
Caller James (01:15:52):
How are you bud?
Leo Laporte (01:15:53):
Oh, I'm great. It's good to see you. So nice to see, see people. Oh, you're wearing your hat shirt. You're an,
Caller James (01:15:58):
You gotta support the local guys, right?
Leo Laporte (01:16:00):
Yeah. The only the only American supported team one. And you know
Caller James (01:16:06):
What? We'll see,
Leo Laporte (01:16:07):
We'll see. Yeah. The, the Andrettis are trying to get into the act, which is great. I hope they, I hope they do Good for you. Yeah. I, I have to say I love watching Formula One racing. I guess you're supposed to pick a team. It does make it a little bit more fun. I'm always secretly rooting for Has, but this year I think I'm gonna go for Fernando Alonso. I got the, I got Oh
Caller James (01:16:28):
Yeah. Hat Wiley old. He's the old guy.
Leo Laporte (01:16:30):
Gotta gotta support the old guy, right. <Laugh>,
Caller James (01:16:34):
You guys gotta stick together. Oh, I get it. Lom a new Alonzo fan too because he's doing so well
Leo Laporte (01:16:39):
This year. And what a great driver. Yeah, what a great driver. Don't tell me anything about the race today. I don't want know.
Caller James (01:16:44):
Well, they're in the formation lap right now. Actually. I wanted to talk F1 with you. Let's get, cause I,
Leo Laporte (01:16:47):
Let's get through it so you can watch the race. I am a new fan and you know, I'm not alone thanks to that Netflix show Drive to survive. F1 is, is exploding, especially in the US It's huge. And this is the Miami race today. Hundreds of thousands of people at that race. Then they'll be Austin in Las Vegas. So you've, have you been a longtime fan?
Caller James (01:17:08):
Yeah, I've been a fan since 2010 I think. Nice. Right before they went with the hybrid engines. Nice. yeah. But yeah, no, I used to watch with my dad when we were kids, so. Oh, that's great. Very, very fun. Yeah. yeah, I was just wondering, how do you watch the races? Do you just watch ESPN n or are you an F1 TV subscriber?
Leo Laporte (01:17:24):
You, I subscribed F1 TV last year. I watched the I love Crofty, who's the the sky Sports announcer? He's the famous and it's lights out at Moola <laugh> love Crofty and love watching him. But E S P N you know, they only show the race. They don't show practice. They, they do show qualifying in the race. They, you miss some of it. Sometimes they stick an ad in there, which really makes me nuts. Oh. so this year I paid for, it wasn't very expensive F1 tv. I think it was 150 bucks for the whole season. And they have some really nice features. For one thing, you can listen to Crofty, but you can also listen to the F1 announcers, which who tend to be a little more technical. And so that's fun. But they also have lots of extra, you know, pre-race, post-race, pre quality, post quality. They have a lot of extra shows. They have some extra educational stuff. But my favorite new feature, which I really love an ESPN can't do this cuz they're, you know, a broadcast channel. You can pick the camera for any car and watch that car go through its lap and even hear the radio, the team radio. And I That's fantastic. Yeah. I find that so much fun. Have you tried that?
Caller James (01:18:34):
Oh yeah. So I'm, I'm an F1 TV subscriber and I'm gonna give you a tip on that. Oh, please
Leo Laporte (01:18:38):
Do. Did
Caller James (01:18:39):
You do do a search for f1 multi viewer and it's, it's just some guy, a fan just like you and me who made it's kind of an add-on to the F1 TV subscription. What he does is he gives you all those cameras and everything like that. And then he also, I don't know where he is getting it, but he's pulling live timing data from f1 and he has a whole interface that shows you oh, in, in, in utmost detail how the cars are doing in, in, in per sector, how their tires are doing. And it's just fantastic. This is
Leo Laporte (01:19:11):
The kinda information that engineers have. Exactly. They're, they're looking at. It's amazing. And, and it really you know, you have to be kind of a d d to Oh yeah. To do this <laugh> cuz you got a lot of stuff coming at you. What I will do is I'll rewind and watch a a, an interesting lap over again. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> and I could guess I could do that. So what the name of it is called f1.
Caller James (01:19:35):
It's just do a search for F1 multi viewer
Leo Laporte (01:19:38):
And you just hook it into your F1 account. F1 tv.
Caller James (01:19:41):
Yeah. So when you launch it, it asks for your F1 TV credentials. And it signs you in and, and it's basically just your account, but just with this overlay of, of the stuff that he's
Leo Laporte (01:19:50):
Doing. Build your own pit wall. Are you doing that? Yeah. Do you have about
Caller James (01:19:53):
18? I don't
Leo Laporte (01:19:53):
Screens going <laugh>.
Caller James (01:19:55):
Yeah, I actually do have a little setup here. <Laugh>. I have it minimized so I can talk to you, but
Leo Laporte (01:20:00):
Well I'm gonna let you go watch the race, but how exciting. How exciting. Give that a try. Now do you have a particular you're a fan of? I mean, first of all, everybody loves Gunter Steiner because Oh yeah. He became a star thanks to Drive to Survive. Haas has not been the strongest team. They're kind of in the back of the pack, but Gunter is hysterical.
Caller James (01:20:20):
<Laugh> Yes. No, he's great to watch. He's
Leo Laporte (01:20:22):
Made it, he's made the Haas team, I think a very fun team to
Caller James (01:20:27):
Watch. Yeah. He just wrote a memoir to him. Oh, I'll be
Leo Laporte (01:20:30):
Reading that. Yeah, yeah,
Caller James (01:20:31):
Yeah. It's gonna be interesting.
Leo Laporte (01:20:32):
I should call it the MoneyGram Haass F1 team now. Yeah,
Caller James (01:20:35):
Yeah.
Leo Laporte (01:20:36):
That's what they call it now
Caller James (01:20:37):
Cuz they got, they gotta get their money somewhere. Yeah.
Leo Laporte (01:20:39):
Yeah. So do you have a favorite driver?
Caller James (01:20:43):
I like Lando Norris. He he's, he's pretty cool. I have drivers that I don't like more than drivers that I do like. I, I'm really not a Vert staffing fan, but yeah, that's just me,
Leo Laporte (01:20:52):
You know. I'm with you. <Laugh>
Caller James (01:20:55):
<Laugh>.
Leo Laporte (01:20:56):
I'm with you. He's a little cranky. He is the best driver easily with the best car easily.
Caller James (01:21:02):
He won the championship,
Leo Laporte (01:21:03):
But I'm, I'm rooting for CCO today. We'll see.
Caller James (01:21:05):
Yeah. Yeah. I hope CCO wins a championship this year actually. That was
Leo Laporte (01:21:08):
Fantastic. Love. That would
Caller James (01:21:09):
Really make us sneak it a him. Yeah. Yeah.
Leo Laporte (01:21:11):
He's the other Red Bull. There's two Red Bull drivers. Max Verin World Champion two years in a row now. Really, truly a great driver. And, but CCO Perez, who is from Mexico, is just lovable and a great driver in his own right. And has always been kind of second fiddle to Max over the last few years. It'd be fun to watch him. He's only six points behind as we begin today. Go watch the race. Don't tell me what
Caller James (01:21:36):
Happened. So, no, no spoil.
Leo Laporte (01:21:38):
It's a very, it should be a very exciting start cuz it's a very weird
Caller James (01:21:42):
Yeah. And we might get rain. There's a small chance of rain, so we'll say. That always
Leo Laporte (01:21:45):
Makes it interesting too when they get out the wets. Yeah. Hey, a pleasure talking to you. Thank you for calling and thank you for the recommendation.
Caller James (01:21:51):
Thanks Leo. I just wanna say too I'm real glad that Scott Wilkinson is back on Twit. I, me too. Huge fan of his I watch this show every week. Me
Leo Laporte (01:21:57):
Too, by the way. This multi viewers Windows, Mac and Lennox. Yeah, Provo.
Caller James (01:22:04):
This guy's real cool. He, he's got a Discord server. You can chat with him during the race. He's, he's a great guy.
Leo Laporte (01:22:08):
Unofficial desktop client for F1 tv. I'll be putting this on my 55 inch Lennox Box <laugh>.
Caller James (01:22:14):
Ooh. Yeah. <Laugh>
Leo Laporte (01:22:16):
Watching the race tonight. Hey, thank you so much. It's great to see you.
Caller James (01:22:19):
Take care,
Leo Laporte (01:22:20):
Leo. Have a great day. Take care. Bye-Bye. Again, if you want to call, the Zooms are open. Yes, I see your hand, Dr. Mom, I'll get to you here in a second. The Zooms are open. It is call dot twit tv. That's the easiest way to do it. Actually on your phone, you've got a microphone and camera on your phone and makes it very easy. I promise we will have a phone number soon. I'm hoping even next week when Micah comes back. Micah taking the week off this week. Good for him. We had to make him episode 1973. And we also have a bunch of emails, which we'll be getting to Atg twit tv if you wanna send us an email. By the way, videos are great. Do we have any videos, John Ashley in the email? No, just, just printed one. So we'll get to that. But bring Dr. Mom into the Stargate, if you will. Hello? Lil, you're at home. Uhoh. Is she muted? Is that us or her? Looks like it's us. Looks like it's her. Unmute your mic there, doctor. Good Doctor. Gosh, I, I'm really tempted now to watch the game. Watch the race on my multi,
Dr Mom (01:23:27):
I am unmuted.
Leo Laporte (01:23:28):
There we go. There we go. Okay. You can hear me. Happy, happy. May the fourth. Belated. May the fourth.
Dr Mom (01:23:35):
Now here's your joke of the day. Okay. It was May the fourth, then we had Cinco de Mayo. Yeah. Well yesterday was Revenge of the sixth
Leo Laporte (01:23:45):
<Laugh>, revenge of the sixth yesterday. And John Ashley is applauding solo all by himself. <Laugh>.
Dr Mom (01:23:54):
Okay.
Leo Laporte (01:23:57):
Are you a, let me guess, are you a Star Wars fan? Lil
Dr Mom (01:24:01):
The original Star Wars? Yes. Before it got crazy.
Leo Laporte (01:24:04):
Well, you and I are of an age when we saw it when we were adults, I, I was 21 when the original Star Wars came out. Or 20, I
Dr Mom (01:24:11):
Saw it in a theater in New York City when I had just moved there. Hang on, let me kill my phone, which is barking at me. <Laugh>.
Leo Laporte (01:24:19):
Oh, that wasn't a dog. That was your phone.
Dr Mom (01:24:21):
That was my phone. Very
Leo Laporte (01:24:23):
Realistic.
Dr Mom (01:24:23):
That has a dog. So that's, that's
Leo Laporte (01:24:26):
Very realistic. I
Dr Mom (01:24:27):
Was with some friends in a theater in Times Squares watching this movie. And remember I'm from California and a subway rolled by underneath. Well, if you've ever been an earthquake, you know the sound of an earthquake. Yeah, yeah. I thought I was about to die in a theater in New York City. <Laugh>. I, they said, why you turn I've turned white. And I,
Leo Laporte (01:24:45):
Boy that death Star really is, is very authentic. Yeah. <laugh>. Yeah.
Dr Mom (01:24:50):
I mean, I thought I was, the theater was gonna collapse.
Leo Laporte (01:24:53):
<Laugh> was a terrible, a terrible force felt throughout the galaxy when it went under there.
Dr Mom (01:24:59):
Yes. But I was the only person who thought that we were having an earthquake New York.
Leo Laporte (01:25:02):
The sound. The sound of a thousand Voices screaming <laugh>. Yep. You know, it's funny
Dr Mom (01:25:06):
And going silent.
Leo Laporte (01:25:07):
Cause in hindsight, I mean, look at, how long ago was that? 1977. I mean, we're talking almost 50 years. It'll be 50 years in just a few years. And of course special effects. All of those were pre cgi. They were all done in in camera. And we've come so far and yet it was such a great movie and we'd never seen anything like it. Right. So it was, well
Dr Mom (01:25:29):
I didn't even like it when they remade it. And remember they put in all those activities.
Leo Laporte (01:25:32):
Yeah, they blew it. Cgi. Yeah, I agree. Yeah. That was a bad idea. Yeah, you
Dr Mom (01:25:35):
Had to have fun with it. I mean this was Pirates, this was Cowboys and Indians. Yeah. It was
Leo Laporte (01:25:40):
Cartoons. All
Dr Mom (01:25:41):
About movies thrown together. Yeah, exactly.
Leo Laporte (01:25:43):
Yeah. No, I agree. Lil what can we do for you? Actually, before you do that, Lil is also our unofficial Amazon Echo expert. And is, I think there's always new stuff coming along down the pipe from Amazon.
Dr Mom (01:25:57):
Is there? Not yet. But the ha I don't know if you mentioned it cause I was gone for a couple weeks. They've discontinued the halo.
Leo Laporte (01:26:02):
They've dropped it. Yes. We've been talking about that. I bought one of those band bands. It was a health band. And it wasn't a bad idea effect. They were even about to release a display version of it. So it would compete with the Fitbit.
Dr Mom (01:26:16):
It was, it wasn't that good. I remember they did their body fat analysis taking pictures of your phone.
Leo Laporte (01:26:22):
Yes. Did you do that? I, because you know, Stacy got one. The reason I have one is Stacy got one and she found out she had a pose in front of the camera naked and sent it back to Amazon. She said, well I'm not gonna do that. She sent it to me. I said, I'll do it. I don't care. So somebody at Amazon has a picture of me. Big deal. Nobody's gonna do anything with it. But I don't blame Stacy. You did you do it.
Dr Mom (01:26:44):
I tried it and I found out I could change my body fat by 15% by sucking my stomach again, <laugh>.
Leo Laporte (01:26:50):
That's not good. That's not an accurate No, that's not an accurate measure. That's
Dr Mom (01:26:54):
The point. It was not accurate at
Leo Laporte (01:26:55):
All. Yeah. Yeah.
Dr Mom (01:26:58):
But nothing new right now that's coming down the pike. I mean, I'm waiting for some stuff. I got an offer to buy the Astro,
Leo Laporte (01:27:07):
Which I saw that you sent me an email. That's the robot that no one wants that basically has a telescoping camera so Amazon can wander around your house and look at stuff. Oh,
Dr Mom (01:27:18):
Oh, I thought I told you to be quiet. <Laugh> ied it for an hour and she's still barking at
Leo Laporte (01:27:23):
Me. By the way, by the way. I imagine that's exactly the reaction a pet would have if this thing starts wandering around your house and telescoping up and down.
Dr Mom (01:27:34):
I guarantee you my dog would try to eat the thing. Yes. But they said, by the way, you've just gotten it, but the trial period's done so now you have to pay full freight. And I said, no thank you. Forget it.
Leo Laporte (01:27:44):
The one that was one of those Amazon day one experiments.
Dr Mom (01:27:49):
Right. And the one, the only day one I've ever liked was the Note Sticky notes prize.
Leo Laporte (01:27:53):
I was just gonna say, that's the one I got. And I love it. Cuz you, you know, you could print out blank sticky notes. You could print out tic-tac toe games more useful, you could print out shopping lists and other things. Right, exactly.
Dr Mom (01:28:03):
Yeah,
Leo Laporte (01:28:04):
I think that's quite
Dr Mom (01:28:04):
Print out a sticky note and stick it on the board for my husband to see and stuff.
Leo Laporte (01:28:07):
Yeah, to-do lists. Yeah, it's great. Exactly. Yeah.
Dr Mom (01:28:12):
Okay. I have an intriguing tech question for you today.
Leo Laporte (01:28:15):
As always. Go ahead Lil.
Dr Mom (01:28:17):
Okay. You know that now with phones, iPhones, Android phones, tablets and stuff, you have the option to a virtual Mac address supposedly increases security.
Leo Laporte (01:28:26):
Yes. It rotates through them every 15 minutes actually.
Dr Mom (01:28:29):
Right. It gave my home arrow fits.
Leo Laporte (01:28:34):
Oh yeah.
Dr Mom (01:28:36):
I finally had to turn it off. Yeah. On everything. Because I was noticing, all of a sudden I'm dropping, I'm getting a new connection and then I'm looking at the arrow D H C P table and the device is there multiple times disconnected, disconnected, connected. And sometimes it didn't even recognize the device. Now should I leave, should I leave it on when I leave the house or just leave the dang thing off?
Leo Laporte (01:28:57):
So the idea, the theory is your Mac address, which is associated with any network device, has a long number associated with it. That's unique. The first part of the Mac address is the manufacturer. So that's how it, they make it unique. So every manufacturer has a pool of numbers, fairly large pool of numbers. They can assign serially. So every device, your network card, your laptop's network card, your, your, your arrow, anything that's on a network will have a unique MAC address. Of course that's useful for the network devices. They, they can see stuff, but the theory apple's going by is, well, if somebody can see your Mac address, a, they know what they're looking at cuz it tells you the manufacturer. So, you know, immediately I'm looking at an Apple device, probably an iPhone, but B, it's unique and so I could use it to track you.
(01:29:52):
So and it's not hard to see a Mac address. All wifi traffic has the Mac address bundled in with it. Right. You're, you're, you're sending it out all the time. So Apple, I think Google started to do this as well as now rotating the Mac addresses to spoof them. So your Mac address is different every 15 minutes, which, you know, does reduce tracking I guess as always with these things. It depends on what, and we use this term a lot. Your threat model is, and all that means is how, how worried you are that you're gonna get attacked. So if you were somebody, if you were Elon Musk, you know, he hates it that that guy po posts his, his assassination coordinates the location of his private jet. He feels like that is a, a threat to his personal security. You probably would want to use this. Keep that feature turned on. It is on by default, I should mention you'd want to use this because you, there, there is an actual threat that somebody might be tracking you. I don't think anybody's tracking you or me Lil
Dr Mom (01:30:52):
I would hope not, but I just noticed all of a sudden it was giving my Euro system fits. That's
Leo Laporte (01:30:57):
A little frustrating to me, especially because the Euro folks are all ex Apple people <laugh>. They shouldn't, they shouldn't be. It shouldn't cause a problem for them. Maybe it has to do with yeah, it probably has to do with their q what they call q o s, their quality of service where they, okay, they pay attention to what everything is in your network and they will give you more packets if you, if you're watching a streaming TV device versus collecting email. So I bet you it's associated with their q o s.
Dr Mom (01:31:27):
Well the other thing I know is if I was moving between units, because I have thick walls in the house, so I've got a lot of arrows, you know, hardwired into the main one. And I would sit there and I'd go from one side of the house to the other, and I think the Mac had just changed during the interim. The system went, what, what's going on here? Apple, it's a new
Leo Laporte (01:31:44):
Device. I'm looking at the Apple page. It's under Apple platform security. Apple says that wifi scans don't happen while trying to connect to a preferred wifi connect network. In other words, they randomize on your arrow, they say.
Dr Mom (01:32:03):
Yeah.
Leo Laporte (01:32:04):
So it may not be, that's what's causing the issue. Although it's interesting when you turn it off, you don't have the issue. Huh.
Dr Mom (01:32:10):
I had, I turned it off on my work phone, my personal phone and my tablet and the issue went away.
Leo Laporte (01:32:17):
That's interesting. Now, one thing you could do fairly easily is create a shortcut that when you get home it turns it off and when you leave home, it turns it on. You know, I mean, not easily, but you could do that <laugh>, I guess depends on how easy it is for you to do shortcuts. But Apple says that's very interesting under address randomization. It does not happen when you're on a preferred wifi network. Maybe try saying you know, the arrow is preferred. Don't forget that kind of thing on all of those devices. Does
Dr Mom (01:32:53):
That, does that apply to Google too? Because it's, I have an Android phone. Do they have the same?
Leo Laporte (01:32:59):
I believe Google is doing it now. Apple did it first and I think
Dr Mom (01:33:02):
I, well I know a Google's doing it because I checked on my phone and it was doing it. Yeah, yeah. They started, I dunno if they have that situation where if I've moved from place to place.
Leo Laporte (01:33:12):
Well they, if, if you think about it it makes perfect sense that Apple should do it when you're out and about and it makes no sense that Apple should do it when you're at home.
Dr Mom (01:33:21):
Right.
Leo Laporte (01:33:22):
So and Apple says, that's exactly how it works. Make sure that you have that arrow set up as a preferred wifi. You know, don't forget, always join this network when I'm here. Right. Maybe that's what it needs. I'm just there's a good long technical article. We'll put this in the show notes describing how this randomization works. Peer-To-Peer wifi connections, randomized personal hotspot, randomized. It, it, it's interesting. It, it, it literally says at the, in the very beginning, we don't do this when you're on a preferred network and they shouldn't.
Dr Mom (01:34:02):
And like I said, I just, I turned it off for every phone in the house and the tablets and the problem stopped.
Leo Laporte (01:34:08):
Really interesting. Hmm.
Dr Mom (01:34:11):
But you know, it's a mix. It's a mixed ecosystem. It was Android device. They had multiple Android tablets. I
Leo Laporte (01:34:17):
Would, this would be a good one to ask ERO about just, you know, drop him a line and say, you know what, what's your response to this? Because you're, I would guess most of their users are using io some sort of Apple devices.
Dr Mom (01:34:29):
I did actually ask 'em and they said, we see packet collisions. And I'm like, okay.
Leo Laporte (01:34:37):
Wow. That's
Dr Mom (01:34:37):
That, that's their stock answer to everything. That's
Leo Laporte (01:34:39):
A terrible answer. Cause they dunno what, of course you see Packet
Dr Mom (01:34:41):
Cs, if they dunno what's going on, they see loopback and Packet collisions. Oh,
Leo Laporte (01:34:45):
Loopback. Huh.
Dr Mom (01:34:47):
But they see 'em both and that's their, that's their stock answer, which is of course not what the problem is.
Leo Laporte (01:34:52):
Yeah. There's something, there's something wrong. Cuz it's not to do it. So I would go into your settings, make sure that it, it, there may be some setting in iOS. It's supposed to be you, you could say, no, this is a preferred network. Don't do this. And that's ideal because you still do, I mean, again, you could leave it off. I I don't think there's any harm. For instance, apple, when they add that private relay feature, which is kind of like a mini vpn, it was on by default for people who are Apple one subscribers or by iCloud service. I co it caused so many problems in so many different areas. I just turned it off. I stopped using it. It did not, it, it did not help. It made things worth it. And maybe this is one that to turn off. I don't know.
Dr Mom (01:35:34):
This is the only people who wanna track me now are those anti-vaxxers who
Leo Laporte (01:35:38):
Know <laugh>. Nobody cares. Nobody cares where I am. You can have my, I'm gonna remind
Dr Mom (01:35:43):
Everybody the federal health emergency is ending next week. Yes. So I saw that any, if you were getting any free things like test kits and stuff, get 'em before the 11th, after that. They're not free anymore. It's
Leo Laporte (01:35:55):
Not just federal, it's international. The World Health Organization has declared the Covid crisis over. Now you're a phy. We should mention, we call her Dr. Mom cuz she's a physician. And I know you follow this very closely effect. You're a great source of information for me throughout the pandemic. Thank you Lil what's your opinion of that? Is it over?
Dr Mom (01:36:15):
It's over in the sense that we have it under control. The hospitals are not being overwhelmed. People are not dying at the same rates. They do. It's never going away. That's like saying flu is over. Right. Or measles is over. Right. Or mumps is over. It's in our population. It's endemic. We are not gonna get rid of it.
Leo Laporte (01:36:33):
Get your vaccine. So get your booster. I just
Dr Mom (01:36:35):
Had my second boost. I just had my second booster.
Leo Laporte (01:36:38):
I've had five. Lisa wants six
Dr Mom (01:36:40):
<Laugh>. Lisa's right. My problem is, I'm now, every time you took one, remember you got magnetized. I'm now magnetized in six planes of existence, which means I should be popping into the alternative view.
Leo Laporte (01:36:51):
Absolutely. Those lizard people are just waiting for you now. They know you'll be there any minute.
Dr Mom (01:36:57):
And I don't dare walk through a hardwood square store because the, the washers and the nails and stuff are gonna come flying off the shelves. And Kim Yeah. And hit me.
Leo Laporte (01:37:04):
I by the way, I I did wear a mask at some points in our you know, we were in Europe for three weeks. Right. Mostly on in air travel and in in, in airports and things like that. But nobody was wearing masks in Spain, Italy, Morocco Portugal. And I didn't, and I, I didn't catch anything, but I like idea of not getting the flu and not getting cold. So I might, you know, there are times when I'll probably continue to wear masks.
Dr Mom (01:37:31):
India's getting hit right now. Oh boy. So we're keeping our fingers crossed. It doesn't come across.
Leo Laporte (01:37:35):
So, so that new variant that everybody was that's
Dr Mom (01:37:38):
Indian. Yeah. It's
Leo Laporte (01:37:39):
India. People were worried about that. Jury's still out. We don't know.
Dr Mom (01:37:44):
Well, you know, you've heard that term police thing's a person of concern. Yes. This is a variant of a variant
Leo Laporte (01:37:50):
Of concern. Yeah. We're gonna, what do they call our tourists? It has some strange Yes.
Dr Mom (01:37:55):
Aur. We're going now with star names
Leo Laporte (01:37:57):
<Laugh>. We ran outta ab b bbb,
Dr Mom (01:37:59):
ZZI Z Well, we're now down to Xs. So we, I think we think
Leo Laporte (01:38:03):
Our tourists we'll use Star Wars names. Hey, maybe fourth be with you. I
Dr Mom (01:38:08):
Have a, the entire Greek alphabet and everything.
Leo Laporte (01:38:10):
Scooter X, who is the wizard of Google has come up with the Arrow support document. Does Arrow support devices that use Mac address randomization? And it says you should not have a problem.
Dr Mom (01:38:27):
Well, they're wrong.
Leo Laporte (01:38:28):
Yeah. Euro networks use Mac addresses as unique identifiers to provide connectivity as do all wifi devices for devices that change the Mac address between connections. There are a few things to keep in mind. For instance, a device that randomizes address might not be identifiable and will show up with an unknown type Right. In the mobile app all the time. You've seen that all the time. And some of the ERO features depend on consistent MAC addresses, including DHCP reservations pausing and blocking devices. New device. So they say, can I disable Mac address randomization of my devices? They say it's an effective way to maintain privacy in public settings. But your ERO network is managed. You don't need it in private settings on certain devices. You can disable it when joining your Arrow network. So I think that's what you wanna look for. Yeah. Since iOS 14 they've had this ability and it also says Android 10 and up have this ability to Right. Disable I turned it
Dr Mom (01:39:27):
Off. Yeah. Turned it off and the problem went away.
Leo Laporte (01:39:30):
Lil, you're a genius and you're
Dr Mom (01:39:33):
Also No, I'm an old-fashioned hacker. <Laugh>. I just sat there and said, okay, what can I turn
Leo Laporte (01:39:37):
Off? You're also a good friend. And here you're on the road again.
Dr Mom (01:39:42):
Yep. I was in Vegas and then Toronto.
Leo Laporte (01:39:45):
And where are you going next?
Dr Mom (01:39:47):
Right now I'm home for six weeks. Okay. And I'm looking at Portland. I'm looking at Portland. I'm looking possibly at DC Tampa.
Leo Laporte (01:39:55):
Are you a traveling physician? Do you do this as work?
Dr Mom (01:39:58):
No, what I do is right now my traveling roadshow is Neurodiversity, which is the politically director for autism disorder. Love
Leo Laporte (01:40:06):
That. Yes.
Dr Mom (01:40:07):
And how it affects access to healthcare.
Leo Laporte (01:40:10):
Love it. Great subject. Great subject. Keep doing the you're doing God's work there, Lil Thank you.
Dr Mom (01:40:18):
I'm not sure God wants me <laugh>.
Leo Laporte (01:40:21):
Well we do, we do. Oh, stay tuned. Johnny Jet Travel Guru coming up. He'll help you travel like a rockstar using technology. Thanks Dr. Mom. Take care.
Dr Mom (01:40:30):
Okay,
Leo Laporte (01:40:31):
One more email before we get to Johnny Jet. And this is from a dad. Okay. Carl. Carl says, I'm the dad that gets all my kids' tech hand me downs. Oh, he's getting the tech hamme downs from the kids. See my kids get the tech hamme downs from Dad anyway. And for my limited online usage, that's fine. What I'd like to do is set up my Dell Inspiron 35 93 to be kind of like a Mac Mini where I could connect a large monitor via H D M I and u SB keyboard and mouse. Then close the laptop. Isn't that possible? That's one of the things Apple did that I thought was a really cool feature. They did pretty early on with their laptops. They had a feature that you close the lid, but the laptop would sense that it was hooked up to a monitor and it would operate essentially Exactly as you say, Carl as a Mac Mini. Some Windows machines will allow that, some won't. I think it's hardware specific near Dell SPS kind of older, so I suspect it will not. How could he do that? Any thoughts? Chatroom or discord or Discord are club twit members and and they are as helpful as the folks in the irc you can join.
Benito (01:41:53):
But So is he trying to get his computer onto a screen without, without the laptop monitor?
Leo Laporte (01:41:58):
Yeah. He wants, what he wants to do is hook it up and close the laptop, stick it somewhere and still have it operate as a, as a pc. You see what I'm saying? Yes. That's what you can do. I
Benito (01:42:08):
Think you can do, I mean is he using Windows? What's
Leo Laporte (01:42:10):
The Yeah, I I, yeah, I presume he is using Windows. Yeah, he doesn't say which windows. He
Benito (01:42:13):
Should be able to disable the monitor. The actual lap on the laptop.
Leo Laporte (01:42:18):
Disable the laptop monitor and then it will continue to operate when you close the lid.
Benito (01:42:24):
There is a setting in there somewhere in Windows. I I but mind job, I'm on Windows stand, so I haven't really seen that on Windows 11 yet.
Leo Laporte (01:42:30):
We should mention that voice. You here is not the voice of God or of John Ashley. That's bonito our technical director. Who is an expert in this kind of stuff. So that's something to look for. A disable the external monitor, I mean the internal monitor rather.
Benito (01:42:47):
Yeah. And then there would be a setting in like a power setting somewhere, right? To like not turn off the computer when this is
Leo Laporte (01:42:52):
Basic. Yeah. Clamshell mode is what this is called. And Aunt Pruitt saying a docking station, that's for short. True. Right.
Benito (01:43:01):
And there's also John and Ashley just showed me a setting that says if you click right, click on the, on the bottom right, on the, on your display settings. Yeah. There's an ex, there's a setting to be second screen only. And that will turn off, presumably that'll turn off the laptop display.
Leo Laporte (01:43:14):
I think it's specific to hardware as well as the operating system. Here is a Dell community post on a latitude. Whether this will work on an Inspiron, I don't know. It turned out there's a way to keep the laptop display on when in closing the lid in bios, power management, <laugh>, there's an option lid switch when disabled, the display stays on even with the lid close so you can disable. See, that's exactly what's happening is there's a physical switch on the lid, which communicates to the operating system. The lid is closed, put the computer to sleep. You could try disabling sleep, you could try hooking up a dock or hook up an external monitor. But if your bios has a setting to disable that switch, that's all you would need to do. Cuz it wouldn't know. Another positive thing about this option is that if the laptop is in sleep mode and the lid is open, the sleep mode continues.
(01:44:07):
So that's something to be aware of. So look, so reboot your machine and go into setup right on the Dells, I think it's F two, I can't remember, but go into setup. Maybe it's delete. Anyway, there's a key you hit while you're rebooting. That'll put you in setup and look for a lid switch option in. It's under power management. I don't know if the Inpro has that, but that's possible. And then Dan and our IRC is saying you don't have to do that in Windows power settings. You can set what happens when the lit is closed. I remember that. Right. That's that Sleep or not sleep or hibernate or not. All right, Joe has a, Joe has a screenshot. Wow. You guys, you really come through when I <laugh> when I ask you that's, that's the one when I close the lid on battery sleep plugged in.
(01:44:56):
Do nothing. See if that'll work. Is that Joe? Is that Windows 10 or Windows 11? Looks like Windows. Looks like Windows seven. <Laugh> looks. It's the old control panel, isn't it? So that probably would work. Okay, I'm gonna take a little break when we come back. We are gonna go traveling with our traveling man, Johnny Jet. I'm so excited. He'll be joining us in just a little bit. But first a word from our sponsor, those good folks at Melissa. Melissa, m e l i s s a is a global data quality identity verification and address management solutions provider. I would say the top one, I think that's what G2 Crowd says, they're the best. In fact, Melissa's clean suite and data quality suite have again been named leader by g2, the leading peer-to-peer software platform in the 2023 data quality and address verification Spring report.
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Get started today with 1000 records clean for free at melissa.com/twi. We'd love these guys. Been a great partner for years. We use 'em. And you should do Melissa m e l i ssa.com/twit. Thank them so much for their support. You support us too when you use that address, melissa.com/twit. Ladies and gentlemen, I didn't see the sign. Is Johnny Jet here? He's here. He's in the Magic Tech guys. Stargate. Hello. Jj. Hello. How you doing? So great to see you. How's everything in your life? Everything's going great. How was your trip? Oh man, Johnny, I forgot how much I love to travel. It's been a long time since we've done something like that. And it was, remember, remember that? You remember that movie. If it's Tuesday, it we must be in Belgium. I do not <laugh>. It was a long time before your time. But it was a movie about touring and traveling and be a new country every day. And it was kind of like this, I think in in our three week trip we visited eight different countries. If you include Vatican City, the world's smallest country that
Johnny Jet (01:50:01):
That accounts,
Leo Laporte (01:50:01):
That counts. And we had so much fun. And I have to say, I fell in love with Rome. I think my new favorite city, Lisa still says Paris is her favorite. That's two very nice cities to have as your favorite. But Rome is very approachable. I was surprised. I expected this big metropolis like Milan. And because they can't dig <laugh> in the old part of Rome, there's no high rises. Cuz as soon as you start putting something in, they go, oh, stop, stop. You found another Roman ruin <laugh>.
Johnny Jet (01:50:32):
Yeah. Every time Julius Caesar's tomb. Yeah, the
Leo Laporte (01:50:34):
Archeologists have to come in and that's that. So it's really like wandering through history and the food and the people. Anyway, we had a wonderful time. I love travel and I and how
Johnny Jet (01:50:45):
Was the cruise? Was it Silver
Leo Laporte (01:50:46):
Sea? It was Silver Sea. Very high end hyper luxury small boat. 600 people. And we really loved it. You know, the internet seems to be getting better on cruise ships. Have you noticed it? Definitely,
Johnny Jet (01:50:57):
Definitely. Well, I haven't been on a cruise in three years, but I've heard
Leo Laporte (01:51:02):
We, you know, one of the things that you kind of embrace when you travel on a boat is, well, we're gonna be outta touch <laugh>. You know, Lisa tells the, you know, the staff, Hey, forget it. I'm not gonna be available. Because internet on shipboard is usually really unusable. Very, very slow. You can get email maybe, but not something you'd want to, you know, use for work. That's all changed. The last two times we've been on a, a ship. It's been, well let's on Silver Sea. This was almost as fast as at home. Wow. Yeah. And one of the things I know rural Caribbean, the parent company's been doing is putting starlink on many of their ships. I don't think we had starlink yet, but it was something better than usual. I was, I was very happy. And of course, you know, we have our our phones so when we get close to the shore, we're able to use those as hotspots. But we, we were in touch and Lisa got a lot of work done. I even did a commercial <laugh>. Did you really? Yeah, for Morocco. <Laugh>.
Johnny Jet (01:52:04):
So right when you got on the ship, you put your phone in the airplane mode. Correct. And put the wifi on.
Leo Laporte (01:52:07):
Tell me why I want to do that. Why?
Johnny Jet (01:52:10):
Yeah. So you don't, so you don't have a huge bill when you get off the ship. Because I learned that the hard way
Leo Laporte (01:52:16):
They, they have cellular at sea, it's called, but really you should call it taking my money. <Laugh>.
Johnny Jet (01:52:26):
I mean, there's no reason you can just do
Leo Laporte (01:52:27):
Wifi. It's very, very expensive. Yeah. And it's a, I guess it's offered as a convenience, but don't make a phone call from your cell phone when you're when you're in the middle of the ocean. Cuz it gonna cost you a lot of money.
Johnny Jet (01:52:39):
Yeah. But were you able to make a a, a VoIP call using Skype or
Leo Laporte (01:52:42):
Skype? Yeah. I don't know if it was that fast. I didn't try, we didn't try streaming or, or wipe. But it was fast enough that you could surf websites which in the past, I have to say, you know, website was too slow to use. Certainly email was fast enough. I think we are fine. I remember most cruises, you're in a port almost every day. So if we needed phone calls, we could do that from the port. Right. And we, I have Google Fi and Lisa had Verizon. That's another thing that's changed with travel is Verizon used to be very expensive overseas. Overseas roaming. But now they have pretty good international plans. It wasn't, wasn't it wasn't bad at all? Well, didn't
Johnny Jet (01:53:22):
T-Mobile buy 'em
Leo Laporte (01:53:23):
Verizon did that go through Verizon? Not Sprint. Oh, the, okay. And G you're talking about Mint Mobile and I, mint mobile is not a good choice for overseas our sponsor. No. We love Mint Mobile, but they do not offer the same plans. At T-Mobile. I had T-Mobile and Google five, two different phones. T-Mobile worked fine. I never hit that thing where it slows down to 3g. But as I said, and so those, those are nice cuz T-Mobile doesn't charge you extra. Google five doesn't charge you extra. They charge the same amount as you would stateside. But Verizon, which has international roaming plans, does charge you extra. But I have to say it worked quite well. And it wasn't that ex, it was less expensive than I expected. I think it was $5 a day, I think. Something like that. Great. Yeah, it's,
Johnny Jet (01:54:09):
It's, it's pretty, pretty good. Pretty
Leo Laporte (01:54:10):
Darn good. Yeah. And then I used that Polar steps thing. Scooter X has already put the link in our chat room. Remember that was the travel diary that I wanted to use. Yes.
Johnny Jet (01:54:19):
How'd that go? Worked out
Leo Laporte (01:54:20):
Really well. I mean, I probably bored people to tears. It's like being able to do a virtual slideshow. <Laugh>. Can I put a lot of pictures? It's
Johnny Jet (01:54:28):
Archived, right? Can I? It's
Leo Laporte (01:54:29):
Archived. Yeah, it's still there. And it was, it was our lots of pictures and we did the I did the I didn't bring a fancy camera. Lisa did. I didn't bring a fancy camera. You know what the Polar steps does? Is it, it sees your phone and it actually makes a map of your travels automatically. And then each day you can put the pictures in from that day and write a little bit of text. It's not very, it's not big on the text. It's mostly big on the pictures. Oh, and one other thing I wanted to show you. The Polaris lounge at S F O, the Uni New United Polaris Lounge is spec spectacular. Nice lounges. Airport lounges often are not very good. We were in an airport lounge in Rome. It was terrible. But the Polaris lounge at S F O is massive. Yes. And and beautiful. I was really pleased. I did a 360 degree video of it. I'll have to upload. But it's, it was really fantastic.
Johnny Jet (01:55:29):
I definitely wanna see that.
Leo Laporte (01:55:30):
Yeah. I know you're an airport lounge aficionado.
Johnny Jet (01:55:33):
Well, I was in, actually, I flew the other day from JFK to lax and I visited all Americans, five lounges in Terminal eight, <laugh> and jfk.
Leo Laporte (01:55:43):
Why do they have five lounges? Well, cause I
Johnny Jet (01:55:45):
Got upgraded the first class so I could go to any lounge. I went to the top one Chelsea first.
Leo Laporte (01:55:50):
Is that the one where you could go out in the balcony and watch the planes?
Johnny Jet (01:55:54):
No, they don't have an, an American, that's
Leo Laporte (01:55:56):
Delta. Oh, that's Delta. I liked that. They one, I really liked that.
Johnny Jet (01:56:00):
Me too. I a I a ab geek. Yeah. But yeah, I visited all five lounges and you know what, the, the top swanky one is not one for me. I like the in the middle.
Leo Laporte (01:56:09):
See?
Johnny Jet (01:56:10):
Yeah,
Leo Laporte (01:56:10):
You, you can't can
Johnny Jet (01:56:11):
Better windows. Yeah.
Leo Laporte (01:56:12):
Yeah. You can't assume. But United, I guess is putting in these Polaris lounges in a handful of airports. And they're, they're swanky. They're huge. This is one thing I've found with airport lounges. They're often jammed, crowded. And that's not a good experience. <Laugh>, we were in a lounge.
Johnny Jet (01:56:28):
No, no. Especially the Delta ones these days.
Leo Laporte (01:56:31):
We went to an American Express Centurion lounge in Rome, and it was so full, you know, there was no free seats except there were reserved tables. And people would keep sitting down the reserve tables and the woman would come over and kick 'em out. And I finally said, well, who, who gets to sit at these reserve tables? Do you have a black card?
Johnny Jet (01:56:51):
Oh, wow. I
Leo Laporte (01:56:52):
Do not.
Johnny Jet (01:56:52):
I have not seen that yet. <Laugh>.
Leo Laporte (01:56:54):
So you, yeah, if you have your guaranteed seat, if you have a black card, nobody ever sat in it, by the way. It was one guy. Well,
Johnny Jet (01:57:00):
<Laugh>, I downgraded my platinum card, which got me into the AMX and Terrain lounges. Oh, wow. Okay. During the pandemic. And I need to hurry up it, but
Leo Laporte (01:57:08):
It's an expensive luxury. But if you travel a
Johnny Jet (01:57:11):
Lot, plus the lounges are always been packed. So I haven't, I haven't added it back, but I will.
Leo Laporte (01:57:16):
What else?
Johnny Jet (01:57:16):
By the way, I was, go ahead. I was in New York this week for Airbnb. They, they brought me out for a press conference with the C E O, Brian Chesky, Brian
Leo Laporte (01:57:24):
Chesky. They are on a PR blitz right now. Totally. Why? I mean,
Johnny Jet (01:57:29):
They introduced five, they, they introduced 50 new changes this week, and they had this big announcement, summer announcement. And there's five that I'm actually really excited about. I think
Leo Laporte (01:57:39):
People are getting a little unhappy about Airbnb. Definitely on both, on both sides of the coin. Cities don't like it because it's eating up all the living spaces. People are taking their apartments, turning them into Airbnbs. It's putting hotels out of business. Plus there's nowhere for people to rent. So cities are starting to ban Airbnb or limit the number of Airbnb places that they can have. I know Rome's doing that. And then you need 30
Johnny Jet (01:58:06):
Days or more. Yeah. A lot of the cities are saying you need have to, if you're gonna rent a place, it has to be 30 days or more, or you can rent a room in someone's home.
Leo Laporte (01:58:13):
Yeah. And then of course, on the other side, Airbnb customers of which I'm one, often complain about these obnoxious, intrusive Airbnb landlords. One of the things, sometimes you'll find there's all these extra chores you have to do when
Johnny Jet (01:58:28):
That's stuff they talked about when
Leo Laporte (01:58:30):
You check out. There's also concern about cameras in the Airbnbs. I don't know how legitimate that is, but it certainly makes people nervous. So I think Airbnb has needed to kind of up its image. So what did Brian do? What did he suggest? So
Johnny Jet (01:58:45):
He said that, you know, he, he admitted that he spends too much time on Twitter. And he looks at, he's been looking at all this feedback and a lot of it's negative, or most of it's negative. And so he said that they were trying to fix it. And, you know, you know, the top five things that I thought were the most important were that they created a, a priority help line for travelers who are out on the road. And that they'll answer the call within 90, within two minutes, 90% of the calls will be answered within two minutes.
Leo Laporte (01:59:08):
That's interesting. Because they've, they've kind of been a hands off company. Right.
Johnny Jet (01:59:12):
Holy, A lot of times they're, people are really upset because they can't get ahold of the host. They can't get in, they can't find the keys. Right. So that's a big problem. I, that's one reason why I was reluctant to rent with them.
Leo Laporte (01:59:22):
I mean, the principle of Airbnb is fantastic. And it was transformative. We, we used a lot of Airbnbs, and still, that's kind of the way I'd like to travel, which is, you know, we want to get an Airbnb in Rome and spend three weeks or two or three weeks in Rome just to be kind of live like Romans do. And that's the best way to do that. Not at a hotel, but Agreed. But there's all these concerns. Legitimate. I think so,
Johnny Jet (01:59:47):
Yeah. So the other ones were like, total price. You know, when you, when you look at Airbnb or, or you, when you used to last week, it would say, you know, $179 for the night, but then you'd click, you keep tapping, and the next thing you know, it has all these fees. And that goes up to like $500 a night. So now you can, you know, hit the toggle and it will show you the total price from, from the step one. So you know what you're getting into. Which I think is great because, you know, no one likes to be hit with hidden fees. And then the other thing that they're doing is they, they're now allowing a, a, a much easier way to search for monthly rentals. Yeah. So, which I think, which has always been a dream of that's
Leo Laporte (02:00:24):
Preferable. Yeah. I would love to do
Johnny Jet (02:00:25):
That. Spend a month not only every month for a
Leo Laporte (02:00:29):
Year. Yeah.
Johnny Jet (02:00:31):
Actually 12 months a year. I like to be in a different place. Each month would be a goal. My wife's like, that's not gonna happen. We have two little kids I can understand, but I can do
Leo Laporte (02:00:39):
This than one. Listen, I can do that now. Especially because internet's gotten fast enough. I could do this show, for instance, from Rome. Actually I could use Father Robert's studio <laugh>. That's probably what I would do. But you could be almost anywhere if the internet is sufficient. Lisa could work. I could do shows. We could go somewhere for a month. We're not planning that, I should say. But I think it's kind of a dream. And that's, that's one thing that's really changed. You can work from anywhere now. And thanks to Covid, every company in the world has kind of adjusted to that notion.
Johnny Jet (02:01:11):
That was the best thing that came outta Covid barred on Yeah, I agree. Is that you can remote, you can work remotely. Also, the other good thing about Covid was that it got away with a change fees for airlines. Which, which was a huge sticking point for me. But another thing that they're doing Airbnbs, that they they're going back to their roots, which was, you know, these rooms, they realize that they think that the, the economy's gonna tank. And they're like, listen, save money. Instead of renting a whole house, you rent someone's room and there's gonna be a host there, and they're gonna have
Leo Laporte (02:01:42):
Files. Right. You were kind of Exactly. It was not exactly couch surfing, but it was like the guest room, the extra room. Right. Yeah. Right.
Johnny Jet (02:01:49):
That's
Leo Laporte (02:01:49):
What you're doing. Don't, I don't wanna <laugh>.
Johnny Jet (02:01:51):
No, I don't either.
Leo Laporte (02:01:53):
I don't wanna stay in somebody's house. <Laugh>. I don't need them, but myself, they
Johnny Jet (02:01:57):
Showed someone of these examples and they looked amazing. And actually this guy, you know, the c e o Brian, he says he rents out his place in San Francisco while he's there, and he makes them cookies from scratch.
Leo Laporte (02:02:08):
Oh, wow. There you go. That's nice. So I guess, you know what I would recommend, if you're gonna use RBAs, read the reviews, right? Because that line, they can be, they can be pretty much trusted, I think. Yeah,
Johnny Jet (02:02:19):
Yeah. No, you can, and I, I would not, I would rent with a super host, someone who's been vetted. Yes, yes. I may think they all have been vetted, but I would go with, you know, someone that, you know, is one of their top top renters. Well, it,
Leo Laporte (02:02:32):
It's really, this is one of those things where technology changes the world and creates an unex intended consequence. One of which was people got the business of Airbnb. So they would buy rentals and they would start and they would buildings. Yeah. They'd buy buildings. I mean, there's suddenly, it's a whole business and it isn't really the original intent. Correct. I think the, this is a really good example of a, I think Airbnb was a great idea. Incredible. And then travel, start gaming it and messing with it, and it causes problems. I'm glad to see that they're responding to that. Do you think the things that they've they've proposed are gonna make a difference?
Johnny Jet (02:03:08):
I do. I actually, you know, especially the ones I just mentioned, I really think I'm actually excited to to try it out. You know, I rented one during the Olympics, right before the Olympics in London when hotels were
Leo Laporte (02:03:19):
Crazy expensive. Yeah.
Johnny Jet (02:03:20):
Yeah. And I was just so nervous. Well, I'd be able to find the key. The guy told me he left the key underneath, like the barbecue in the backyard, <laugh>. And I was like, you know, and these days you wanna make sure you have the right house. You don't wanna get shot by going to That's
Leo Laporte (02:03:33):
A good point. I didn't even think of that. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah. So, yeah. Yeah. So there also are competitors and there's things like V R B O, vrbo vrbo, which is Rent by Owner. They're exchanges home exchanges, which Paul Throt used to do a lot of. Yep. there are other ways to do this. Do you know of other, is Airbnb the best? Do you think?
Johnny Jet (02:03:55):
It, I mean, it all depends. I've wor I've used VRBO many times and they're great too. I think you just have to see what's out there. As you know, with inventory, inventory, I think a lot of them use the same. I think a lot of homeowners will put their place on both Airbnb and vrbo. But I would try everything. Some, some don't. So that's why you wanna look at both places. Also home exchanges. I mean, that whole movie with
Leo Laporte (02:04:21):
<Laugh>, that was a wonderful, wonderful, was it ho the holidays or
Johnny Jet (02:04:25):
Not the holiday. Yeah. Yeah.
Leo Laporte (02:04:26):
That watches wonderful every year. Yeah. Yeah. I love that Christmas movie.
Johnny Jet (02:04:29):
And actually the, the company they use, I'm, I'm friends with the X c. He's, he sold it. He lived in Hermosa Beach, and he, he said the the director of the movie just called him up, said, can we use your website? He's like, of course. There was no, he didn't pay any money for it. It was like free publicity. Nice. And I really, I think it really, I really helped the whole industry for home exchanges.
Leo Laporte (02:04:49):
I also think that there are in certain cities, local agencies that do this and maybe do a little bit better. I know Paris, you stayed in Paris a couple of times as I remember Paris.
Johnny Jet (02:05:01):
Perfect. It's called Paris Perfect. And, and London. Perfect. These are luxury apartments in London. They even rent out apartment that a, a Madonna used or, or owned. Is
Leo Laporte (02:05:12):
It? Well, that's gotta be pretty expensive, right?
Johnny Jet (02:05:15):
It wasn't crazy expensive. They hosted me full disclosure. But it wasn't that bad. I think it was like 500 or $700 a night, which is not crazy. I mean, there's some places you can rent for $20,000 a night.
Leo Laporte (02:05:28):
You had, I remember your Paris apartment was amazing.
Johnny Jet (02:05:31):
Oh my God. You opened up the window and Eiffel Towers are right there.
Leo Laporte (02:05:33):
Yeah. Yeah. I mean
Johnny Jet (02:05:35):
That, I mean, we long for that.
Leo Laporte (02:05:37):
This is, this is one of the things, and this is why we love you Johnny Jet, there's a lot about travel that you would like to know before you go. And there isn't an easy way to learn this. You know, it's, for instance, I I I'm looking for somewhere to stay. We really enjoyed Cancun last Christmas, but we don't want to go to the West Coast. We wanted to go somewhere on the east coast of Mexico, but we don't know where. And it would be nice, I guess you should go to johnny jet.com is what you should do. <Laugh> there, there's information is imperfect information sharing. It doesn't flow freely. And it, and this is one thing where the internet really can make a big difference and finding a great site with lots of travel information. Johnny, I appreciate it com is the place to go.
Johnny Jet (02:06:27):
Sign up to the newsletter,
Leo Laporte (02:06:28):
Get the new You have,
Johnny Jet (02:06:30):
I have a daily travel tip and I do a, a Sunday roundup. Multiple free people
Leo Laporte (02:06:34):
Who don't
Johnny Jet (02:06:35):
Yeah. Don't want the daily tip. They, and they're free in there.
Leo Laporte (02:06:38):
And they're free. And he has flight finders, all sorts of free services. There's, it's a really great website. We're really glad you do it. You still, are you, are you going back to the YouTube videos? Are you still doing those
Johnny Jet (02:06:48):
Or, yeah. You know what? I haven't done it in a while. You know, my dad was sick. I didn't, I I've just lost interest, but I'm gonna bring it back up. You know, I, I feel invigorated and I know my dad, I can hear him in my ear going, you know, get back to work. Get
Leo Laporte (02:07:00):
Back to work, John. Yeah. So you got work to do. Well, your dad was sick. Was was a great guy. You had a good, you had a good service for him.
Johnny Jet (02:07:08):
Yeah, we did. We, we went back three weeks ago to New York, Connecticut to give him his, his funeral. Yes. And then anyway, it's been great. He's, I can always, he lived in 94. He lived a great life.
Leo Laporte (02:07:21):
Yeah. Yeah. I'm sorry we lost him. But you know what, a lot of the reason he had a great life in the last years was you, you were a great son and did
Johnny Jet (02:07:28):
A great life and travel did a lot of it. I mean, I, I spent my miles and I always tell people, if you have a lot of miles, that's nice. Use them on the ones you love
Leo Laporte (02:07:34):
And them the world. And do it in, in style. Fly 'em first class. I love it. Johnny Jet johnny jet.com is so great to see you again, John. You too. You too. Take care. Have a wonderful month. We'll see you next month. We're gonna get all the regulars from the radio show on at least once a month. So Johnny, and join us next month around this time. What is that the first, first Sunday in the, it's like June 3rd. Yeah. June 1st. Yeah. Sunday of the months. Every first Sunday. Johnny Jet. Thank you, John. Thank you. Take care. Safe travels. Thank you too. Balance on your dad. They're saying that in the chat room as well. Thank you. And find me a, a house in Rome where I can go for a month. <Laugh> with good internet and pizza nearby. Okay, well I have an, I have emails galore.
(02:08:17):
First off writes Dan jh. I have to compliment Micah on doing a fantastic job when Leo was on vacation. I agree. I hope you feel the same one. Micah's on vacation, the special co-hosts were an excellent edition. I enjoyed hearing their input. My question, oh, and this is really a good one for for home Theater Geek Scott Wilkinson, but maybe John, you and I could do it cuz it's concerning remotes and Sonos. And Jamer B is a big Sonos fan. Both of us longtime Sonos owners. I currently have a 60 inch Samsung series plasma television with a Sonos play bar. The only other device is hooked up to the tv, a cable box fire stick. Both remotes have been set up paired through the Sonos app to control the volume. Oh, this is a eternal quest of the play bar. Now this works from playing music, but as soon as the TV is on, I'm no longer able to adjust the volume, but either have to control it through the Sonos app or the slide volume buttons or the side rather the side, the physical volume buttons.
(02:09:18):
I've tested this multiple times. As soon as I turn the TV off the remote's work again, he says, I've read that plasma can possibly interfere with the IR sensor and the Sonos. I don't think that's it. Is there anything I can do to prevent this? So the remotes will work when the television is in use? It could be. I mean, I've, I've, I I, but I don't think that that's the issue, Dan. I think what's happening is the TV is sending a signal to the Sonos. I'll take it from here. And as soon as the Sonos is no longer is being controlled by the tv. So a couple of questions I would ask you if it weren't an email is, can you control the Sonos volume with a TV remote while the TV's on? In other words, when you turn up the volume on the tv, does the TV speaker go up or does the Sonos go up?
(02:10:06):
I'm gonna guess I'm gonna bet the TV speaker goes up, not the Sonos, because I'm thinking now this is an older TV plasma TVs. Of course that means they're at least five years old. So it, it may be not able to do this, but usually in the TV settings you could say, I am not using your TV speakers. I'm using an external system and I want to control the external system. If you set it up that way, then the TV remote should turn up the Sonos. And I can't see any reason why the Sonos remote wouldn't work either. Now, it is possible that the Sonos is configured so that if it sees a TV remote controlling it, that it says, well, you're not gonna use me. It doesn't wanna be confused or use two different remotes. This comes up for me a lot with the Apple tv.
(02:10:55):
In fact, nowadays most devices like the Firestick also will try to be intelligent so that you can use the streamer device, in this case, the Apple remote control to turn up the volume. And they try to be intelligent about, well what does that even mean? Apple forgets from time to time. I periodically get a notice from my Apple tv. Yours remote hasn't been configured. <Laugh>, do you want to configure it now? No, I'm watching the movie and it's working fine. So that's a bug. But it, it points to the complicated nature of, of this, which is you've got a confusing situation where there are different devices that can turn the sound up and down. There are even different speakers. There's a TV speaker, the Sono speakers, and it's a question really of just getting the configuration right. In general, you can do what you want to do in general.
(02:11:50):
You can set it up so that your Sonos remote will work. But I think you're gonna have to go into the TV settings and you're gonna have to tell the tv, use the external speakers and control the internal external speakers, not the internal speakers. I'm just looking to see if anybody in our chat room has any suggestions or the discord. It doesn't look like the, there's anything additional to add to that. Just checking. Yeah. All right. So, oh, and that's another thing. Yeah. Thank you. I guy social web <laugh>. I like your handle by the way guy's, a social web. So don't forget arc. So again, this may or may not be available in your, in your older tv. Modern TVs on the H D M I, there's one H D I port designated a r c audio return channel that this even gets more complicated.
(02:12:54):
I'm gonna guess cuz you have, it sounds like you have an older sono soundbar that you're connecting the soundbar via optical. That is not ideal. If your soundbar supports H D M I, that's a much broader channel, much more data can go through it. It is always the preferable way to connect a soundbar to a TV if it's available to you. And if it is, you're gonna connect the a r C port on your TV to the Sonos. That may be all it takes because then you're telling the tv, oh, I've got an external device and it's playing sound. And the TV may be smart enough to say, oh, fine, we'll let you do it. Or you still may need to go into settings. So if your setup is more modern, I, I'm guessing cuz you have a plasma, it's not if you have an Arc channel and if you have an H T M I port on your Sonos, the older ones did not.
(02:13:41):
The play fives the soundbar did not. I think they were optical only. The newer ones I'm sure do always use if you can H D M I. And that made me solve it as well. Right, I think we have concluded this episode of Ask the Tech guys. Micah will be back next week. I hope you're having a great time, Micah, and I hope you're not hearing this because if you are, then you shouldn't be watching the show. You should be go out and, and have a great vacation. I, I thank you all for joining us and remind you we love the emails. Thank you to our emailers. We have more we'll get to next week. We love it even more if you send us a video via email or audio via email that we could play. That way we get to at least hear from you.
(02:14:29):
And of course, the best way to contact us, call twit tv. The email address is ATG TWI tv and next week a phone number. So tell all your friends and family a phone number. It'll be more like the radio show will be a lot easier I think. I hope to get in technically. Anyway we do the show every Sunday round about 11:00 AM Pacific. That's 2:00 PM Eastern Time. It would be 1800 utc I mentioned that. So you can watch us live if you want live.twi.tv. There's live audio and video streams. If you're watching live you hear me mention it all the time. We've got a great IRC internet Relay Chat. All you need is a browser and point it to IRC dot twi, do TV so you can chat along with other people watching live. If you're already a Club Twit member, of course, you know, we have our Discord channel that's a open for all the shows.
(02:15:20):
Another good way I watch both. I especially enjoy the animated gifs <laugh> and may this cth be with you <laugh> after the fact on-demand versions of this show available, we still use tech guy labs.com. You can go there or go to the site directly trip tv slash atg for downloadable audio and video ad supported. We also have a link to the YouTube channel. You can watch us there and you can also subscribe in your favorite podcast player. That way you'll get it automatically. The minute is, is available. Who's gonna be on the show next week, besides Micah Sergeant next week. John Ashley says, who? Sam. Sam Bull Sam at our car guy. Well, that'll be a lot of fun. I hope you'll stop by next week. I hope you will call in too. We look forward to seeing you. Thanks for joining us. I'm Leo LaPorte.
