Ask the Tech Guys Episode 1982 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 as the tech guys. I'm Leo LaPorte coming up an update to my six rules of computer security.

Mikah Sargent (00:00:08):
And I'm Micah Sargent, and we help someone who's traveling internationally. Close those Apple Watch

Leo Laporte (00:00:13):
Rings. Then a librarian calls in to give us some great tips on using Google search as the tech guys is next. Podcasts you love from people you trust. This is tweet.

(00:00:30):
This is asked the tech guys with Micah, Sergeant and Leo LaPorte, episode 1982 or Sunday, July 9th, 2023. Traffic Cone confusion. This episode of Ask the Tech Guys is brought to you by Miro. Miro is your team's online workspace to connect, collaborate and create together. Tap into a way to map processes, systems, and plans with the whole team. Get your first three boards for free to start creating your best work yet at miro.com/podcast. Listeners of this program, get an ad free version if they're members of Club twit. $7 a month gives you ad-free versions of all of our shows Plus membership in the club. Twit Discord, a great clubhouse for twit listeners. And finally, the twit plus feed with shows like Stacy's book Club, the Untitled Linux show, the GIZ Fizz and more. Go to twit tv slash club twit and thanks for your support. Well, hey, hey, hey. How are you today? It's time for as the tech guys. Hi, Leo LaPorte. I'm Michael Sargent. How are you today? I'm very well. Did you get on? I know you did. This is a rhetorical question. The hottest thing going, the biggest tech launch in years. It's the new threads from meta.

Mikah Sargent (00:01:54):
Yeah, it's, I almost, I don't even know if it's fair to call it a launch. It's sort of like a a, a hopping over or a a <laugh>. It, there's something there.

Leo Laporte (00:02:03):
The, the hottest hop over

Mikah Sargent (00:02:04):
In history. Yeah, the hottest hop over. Because that's the thing about this is you, if you've got an Instagram account, you've basically got everything you need to join threads in.

Leo Laporte (00:02:12):
In fact, you can't really you really can't change it, right? Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, you, you have to be your Threads account, which in my case is twit. Leo, what are you? I

Mikah Sargent (00:02:19):
Am Mike a sergeant. That's

Leo Laporte (00:02:21):
All this. But you might say it looks a little bit like something, in fact, so much like it that Elon Musk is threatened to sue for stealing Twitter's look and feel. Yeah. I I don't think they're gonna get away with that.

Mikah Sargent (00:02:34):
Steal Twitter's look and feel and also make use of the Twitter employees that they hired. Which they didn't. Which they didn't. Yeah. They didn't work on this. So

Leo Laporte (00:02:44):
A lot of people before this launch, there was a lot of concern in Mastodon. A lot of Mastodon admin said, we'll never have anything to do with this. I saw a lot of art articles about the privacy issues with this, cuz it's meta. Yeah. It has the same privacy settings as Instagram and Facebook, Facebook app. So it's no different in that regard. But it does, it potentially could collect your health information whether you're pregnant. They don't have any ads yet.

Mikah Sargent (00:03:13):
Right. In fact Zuckerberg said on the service that just like Facebook, we are going to try to build this up first, and then once we get there, then we'll

Leo Laporte (00:03:22):
Start looking. Then we'll, then we'll get

Mikah Sargent (00:03:23):
You, then we'll get Exactly.

Leo Laporte (00:03:25):
But Zuck also said yesterday, 70 million users already. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, it's, it is these single fastest launch of any, any app I ever in history, I think.

Mikah Sargent (00:03:37):
Wow.

Leo Laporte (00:03:39):
And it's because, a, it's very easy, but b it, the timing couldn't have been better.

Mikah Sargent (00:03:44):
Truly there, there's Twitter is at, its, we keep, you know, we've, we've seen this a number of times, but for us being in this, this sort of group that we're in as sort of techie journalist the Twitter Blr area, we may have seen that Twitter was, oh, it's so bad. It's this, it's that up to this point. And we made that jump. But there was nowhere

Leo Laporte (00:04:06):
Really

Mikah Sargent (00:04:07):
To go. There was nowhere really to go. And also it still did not impact the everyday people. Right now, the everyday people are also getting to a place where they want to go elsewhere and try the new hotness and threads. Did a good job of making itself the new hotness.

Leo Laporte (00:04:22):
Here's the data linked to you health notice on the iPhone. These, the following data may be collected in linked to your identity, health and fitness, financial info, contact info, user content, browsing, history, usage data, diagnostics purchases, location context, search history identifiers, sensitive info and other data. Yeah, basically everything.

Mikah Sargent (00:04:42):
Everything. Which is why you should be very mindful of what accept, accept, accept buttons. You hit upon, you know, creating your, your Threads account and also be mindful of what you have on Instagram. So I always recommend people go in, check up on their privacy, check up on what they've given permission for in these apps. But at the same time, a lot of this is not necessarily directly the app, just digging into the health app and pulling Yeah. We don't know. Pulling from there. We, it's instead the idea that this information can be garnered based on what you're posting, what you're interacting with, that kind of thing.

Leo Laporte (00:05:18):
If you're on Android, if you have the choice to use it on Android, cuz they have a more granular privacy settings, you could turn stuff off. And I'm told that it doesn't necessarily break the app if you turn off some of these things.

Mikah Sargent (00:05:30):
<Laugh>,

Leo Laporte (00:05:32):
It didn't stop anybody. No. even people like me who said, I will never use Facebook, but it's Instagram <laugh> what could be. So but what's really interesting, because so many people have instantly joined it, including celebrities mm-hmm. <Affirmative> Brands, npr, which famously left Twitter because Elon said they're a government funded entity. Joined immediately. Everybody joined immediately. So suddenly it feels like Twitter.

Mikah Sargent (00:06:00):
Yes. There were so many people there. And that I think has been one of the big issues with other social media services, is that even if you enjoyed this sort of, I'm in an exclusive club feel, you didn't necessarily have that. I mean, what does this all boil down to? It boils down to wanting to feel seen, wanting to feel heard, and frankly the sort of dopamine cycle that we get whenever people are interacting with us. And that is happening on this platform in a way for some people that it hasn't even happened on Twitter. I think that's one of the wildest things to me is you know, I know a few people who have been on Twitter for a long time. They've got maybe 12 followers or you know, 30 whatever and don't get much play. But because this was all day one or week one, they're getting so much attention there. And that is sort of amping them up to continue to use this.

Leo Laporte (00:06:53):
Well there's, and there's another reason mm-hmm. <Affirmative> and I th I don't know if people are aware of this or not it, so Twitter is a follow thing, right? They do have that for you. Tab where it's suggested stuff. Tiktok, same thing. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. But most people just look at the for you feed, or I can't remember what they call it.

Mikah Sargent (00:07:14):
It is for you on, on TikTok for Yeah. It's

Leo Laporte (00:07:16):
Not people you followed. It's algorithmic and Threads has decided to go with that model feed. So the minute you join Threads, it doesn't matter if you followed anybody mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, you will see all the things that threads wants you to see, which makes it very easy to discover stuff you wanna follow. And they make it even easier to follow because there's a little plus button on the head

Mikah Sargent (00:07:38):
On the main page. Yep.

Leo Laporte (00:07:39):
So I think in some ways Meta has learned from Twitter and has decided to go with the algorithmic feed. Now, there are a lot of people on Threads saying, we want the chronological feed, we want the followers feed. And, and Adam Ser who runs Instagram and is running Threads says that's coming. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. But I think it's really smart to start this way because it gets all of the velocity of something like TikTok. When you go to TikTok, you don't have to have followed anybody. Right. You instantly see content that, you know, is compelling because the algorithm is choosing it for you. And Threads is exactly the same. So that's one thing they did that was very smart. They have promised, and I'm a very interested to see if the promise comes through. They have promised many, many new features. This is the first edition. Right? Right. Although, because it's meta, I was talking to a friend of mine who's a former meta engineer, and I said, the stack, it's incredibly responsive. There's no fail whale. It everything works smoothly, fluidly. So much so that you're not even conscious of it. That's true. It just

Mikah Sargent (00:08:45):
Works. Hadn't thought about that. Yeah. Right.

Leo Laporte (00:08:46):
Yeah. And that's meta, they know how to do this. They know how to, their network stack is the best in the business. So they, so they, that's one advantage. But they may or may not, they promise to make some additions to this. So I say this because it's, yes, it's a first generation app, but it's very mature. It's very polished. But there's lots of missing features. For instance, there's no direct messaging. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, I don't know if they're gonna bring that. And I don't know if they should. There is quote tweeting where you can say, I like that post that Micah just did retweet it with my comment. Or re by the way, we don't have a word for threads. Yeah. <laugh>. And some people suggest just call it tweets I, which must drive Elon crazy.

Mikah Sargent (00:09:28):
I disagree with that so much. Not, it doesn't matter that it's, no, it's just why would you call, I just, I'm just going with posts right

Leo Laporte (00:09:36):
Now. We'll, now we'll go with posts. That's generic. Although

Mikah Sargent (00:09:38):
John, Len suggested thimbles, which I thought was hilarious because it's

Leo Laporte (00:09:41):
Threads,

Mikah Sargent (00:09:42):
Right? <Laugh>. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:09:43):
Or Skees or I don't know.

Mikah Sargent (00:09:45):
Stitches,

Leo Laporte (00:09:46):
Stitches, stitches isn't bad. I wanna stitch. Anyway. there are a few things they really do need to add. One is that followers feed one is a chronological feed. Because you'll see stuff from all over, from all kinds of people. For, for early adoption though, there's nothing better. And that's why 70 million people are going, yeah, this is great. I love it. It's like, I feel like I'm at home already.

Mikah Sargent (00:10:08):
Right.

Leo Laporte (00:10:09):
It also, I, if you let it, and most people will, it immediately copies your Instagram followers and followings over mm-hmm. <Affirmative>. So that's nice because you already have friends, right?

Mikah Sargent (00:10:18):
Yeah. Cuz that's one of the most hard, I think one of the most difficult things with a new social media service is you are presented with a page. It's like, here's some people you might wanna follow. Yeah. And it's always no one I want to actually follow. Yeah. So I liked that this was, okay, these are people who I've been following and interacting with for a long time. But then we're also seeing this extra

Leo Laporte (00:10:36):
Stuff. You do have some control over it if you go to these settings which is hard to find. Yeah. And the threads and replies, you can't change it a little bit. Again, they, they've made promises. The biggest promise from my point of view, that I'll be very surprised if they follow through on mm-hmm. <Affirmative> is to federate. Now, maybe because they made this so publicly promised, so publicly, maybe they will go ahead and do it. But what that means is if you're on say, TWIT Social, which is our Mastodon server, or Mastodon, those social or some other Fedi verse Chloroma or Kki or MIS key or one one of the other Fedi verse sites, you could follow somebody on threads. So all I need to know is it's at mica. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> at threads.net. Add that to my Twitch social. Now everything you post on Threads I'm seeing without seeing any of the other stuff. And similarly, if they do this the way it's supposed to be done, you could follow at Leo Twit Social on your Threads account

Mikah Sargent (00:11:34):
On Threads. Right.

Leo Laporte (00:11:35):
This would be, and now a lot of Ma Macedon people are seeing, oh, Yik, no, but, but it doesn't, that doesn't give meta any data. Right. It, it, activity Pub doesn't leak data. So it, you're not giving them anything. You're getting. So all those brands that have never joined Mastodon, all those people who say, oh, it's too hard, I don't like, it's too geeky. Suddenly if they do, this will be available to Mastodon users will make Mastodon and the Fed averse much more vital and exciting. It won't overwhelm it, it'll just make it better.

Mikah Sargent (00:12:10):
My, the, the conversation that I saw always seemed to be this sort of exclusivity thing. You can't sit with us. It was this idea that silly, the people who would be joining threads are the people you wouldn't want around you anyway.

Leo Laporte (00:12:23):
Well then you don't follow

Mikah Sargent (00:12:24):
Them. Exactly. That's how I feel about

Leo Laporte (00:12:26):
It too. You don't follow them. All this does is gives you a big universe that you can dip your toe into without contaminating your entire body. Yeah. And I think that's gonna be good. Now, the reason I, I'm skeptical that they'll do it at this point is they don't need to. And all it does is it makes it easy for you to not be on threads mm-hmm. <Affirmative> and get much of the value of threads.

Mikah Sargent (00:12:46):
Cause you wouldn't have to use the app. Right. And that's where they're going to be getting that data

Leo Laporte (00:12:50):
Eventually. If you look at the mast on privacy, zero mm-hmm. <Affirmative> No data. So there are a lot of people who are privacy focused or people who want more control over it, who don't want an algorithmic feed, who wanna be able to follow Micah, but don't want to go into the Threads world will suddenly have that option. Now you are posting a lot of threads, I noticed.

Mikah Sargent (00:13:12):
Yes. Right now I am I kind of do that with every new social media service that starts up Yeah. Just try it out. Yeah. Just to give it a go. It does

Leo Laporte (00:13:18):
Pictures very nicely.

Mikah Sargent (00:13:19):
It does pro tip for anybody out there who's running the beta and you are using threads, you cannot post photos the normal way because of bugs. Oh. So you just so you know, if you're out there, copy and paste the photo. Oh, interesting's how you do it to make it work.

Leo Laporte (00:13:36):
It does. I think such a nice job with photos that it's kind of like Instagram meets Twitter.

Mikah Sargent (00:13:40):
Yeah. That's what people I've seen almost more than anything else. Videos. That's the comment. Yeah. Is that they like, how the photos are laid out. They like how easy it is. My one problem that they should hop on is that you can't do image descriptions on these photos and they need to add that feature in

Leo Laporte (00:13:55):
Mastodon. Folks will not like that. There are no content warnings either. There's a, you know, MAs there's a somewhat of a mismatch in culture.

Mikah Sargent (00:14:04):
Definitely.

Leo Laporte (00:14:04):
Nevertheless, the fact that you could pick, you know, the top 20 people that you wanna follow, or brands who are not on the Fed averse mm-hmm. <Affirmative> is, is gonna be great. I hope that they follow through. I feel like they've made a commitment. However, threads is great and Elon is terrified. That's why he's suing and or threatening to Sue. I don't know if he's actually filed suit. I think this is gonna be very interesting because a lot of people, myself included, who said, yeah, it's the end of social, social media is dead. Nobody wants social media. It's a failed system. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. But there's a certain value, I think to having your finger on the pulse of, of the world and what's going on. That's what we use

Mikah Sargent (00:14:50):
Twitter for. Yes. This is just the other day on Tech News Weekly. My story of the week was about the death of Google Reader and what became clear to me from going through this, which by the

Leo Laporte (00:15:00):
Way happened to a long time.

Mikah Sargent (00:15:02):
10 years ago. Yes. 10 years ago. <Laugh>. Yes. So it is the anniversary of the Death. There's a great

Leo Laporte (00:15:05):
Article about it, and I'm sure that's what you, you talked about. Yeah.

Mikah Sargent (00:15:08):
And so in it, they talk about how leading up to that point, there was not really a way for people to know what what websites and articles were out there. And you'd go to your favorite websites and refreshed the page over and over again. But what the, what Google Reader did was it brought in all of that content from all of those other places. And in the piece they talk about how leading up to that point, there was nothing like Twitter or, you know, these things were getting off the ground. And so you didn't have people sharing content regularly. And I find that that is where social media is most valuable when folks are sharing stuff that I wouldn't find any other way. And being able to see what people who I find interesting or who I care about what they care about, what they find interesting. That's the value for me. And so in that way, I don't want social media to go away because I want to be able to have access to all of the, the stuff that people think is cool.

Leo Laporte (00:16:06):
Well, and that's one of the interesting things that's happening on Threads. There was a, a movement you know, one of the, one of the very important sections of Twitter was a community on Twitter called Black Twitter mm-hmm. <Affirmative> and has not, had not been replicated really on Macedon, or they didn't, A lot of black people didn't feel welcome on Macedon. And so they, there was a new Twitter clone called Spill as in spill the T Yes. Which I think is a

Mikah Sargent (00:16:30):
Great name, <laugh>.

Leo Laporte (00:16:31):
And it was just getting started. But I notice almost everybody that I followed on black Twitter has moved to threads. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. So I think they will probably, black Lives Matter is there. I think they will probably recreate much of the Twitter experience. I think the algorithmic feed is done much better than Twitter's for you feed it, instead of bringing up a lot of stuff you really don't wanna see. Yeah. It's like TikTok. It does a very good job of surfacing stuff and people that I want to follow. I feel like at this point I've followed 300 people on threads that I have pretty much the same group that I had on Twitter Yeah. That I'm following. So I, I find this fascinating. I really do. We haven't seen a launch like this in a long time.

Mikah Sargent (00:17:19):
No. It's, it's been exciting. And I, what I also find fascinating is how quickly folks are almost trying to set up these, these flags, these sort of agreements trying to sort of define the culture that's taking place there. But what always seems to happen. Yes. There's

Leo Laporte (00:17:36):
Always, people will say it changes

Mikah Sargent (00:17:38):
Over over time. Exactly. So, we'll, we'll see. We'll keep an eye on how this changes over time.

Leo Laporte (00:17:43):
You know, I hate to give Mark Zuckerberg any credit, but you gotta, when he did, when he does Deserve, and and this is, you know, the thing I've been mad about for a long time with me meta is they've just copied whatever's the hot thing. Yeah. When Snapchat was hot, they put reels on Instagram. I mean, they, you know, they've really just copied a dozen of other successful efforts. This is the first time it's worked. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. And I'm grateful because Twitter was a valuable resource. Elon I think has really destroyed it. And I'm glad to see it's back. I don't have a blue check on threads cuz I didn't have a blue check on Insta.

Mikah Sargent (00:18:22):
Yeah. I d what's annoying is I once did and then I don't even

Leo Laporte (00:18:25):
Understand deleting

Mikah Sargent (00:18:26):
All of my

Leo Laporte (00:18:27):
Facebook stuff. I don't care. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm just, I'm just really glad to see that something's happening. We've been kind of gridlocked for a while in technology, so it's fun. Always fun to see when something kind of Wow. Get some traction. Yep. Reminds me of the good old days, you know, of South by Southwest. If you wanna ask a question, make a comment, make a suggestion. The best way to do it right now is use the phone (888) 724-2884. And if the lines are open all the time, if you call when we're not on the air, which is two to 5:00 PM Eastern you will be able to leave a message. We have some voicemail messages, but if you call on Sunday, two to 5:00 PM Eastern, we'll be here. We will, we'll put you in a special room. You can hear what's going on. And then when we pick you up press star six to unmute and say who you are. First name and city. You can also use Zoom, call twit tv. We have quite a few Zoomers ready to get on the show. See your hands raised. And of course if you can't get through or you wanna do it when we're not on the air, you can always email atg twit tv. We love the audio recording. Send us video recordings too though. We love the, love the videos. Should we take our first call here?

Mikah Sargent (00:19:39):
Let's take our first call.

Leo Laporte (00:19:40):
Let's go to Sean, who is on Zoom and has his hand raised. Hello Sean. Welcome to the A at g Stargate.

Caller Sean (00:19:53):
Howdy. Hey,

Leo Laporte (00:19:54):
Howdy. Where are you calling from? Hi

Caller Sean (00:19:56):
Guys, I'm calling Sean from Buena Park.

Leo Laporte (00:19:59):
Nice to see you. And a very nice picture. Are you must be a podcaster with that, that microphone <laugh>.

Caller Sean (00:20:05):
No, but I do spend a lot of time on Zoom for work For sure.

Leo Laporte (00:20:07):
Yeah. Nowadays everybody right? Yeah.

Mikah Sargent (00:20:10):
I like that. You've got a shirt that's saying Mute your microphone. <Laugh>. You're on mute. <Laugh>, you're on mute. Yeah. The

Caller Sean (00:20:17):
Number one statement, us Zoomers, that's the most common phrase that we use, right?

Leo Laporte (00:20:21):
Absolutely. That's hysterical. Do you use Zoom

Caller Sean (00:20:24):
For work? Yeah. I imagine you guys have been in my neighborhood before I I'm right, right by knots. Great Farms, so

Leo Laporte (00:20:29):
Oh, knots Great Farms. Yeah, yeah, yeah,

Caller Sean (00:20:31):
Yeah. Right down the street

Leo Laporte (00:20:32):
From That's a great place. That's where Steve Martin got his start.

Caller Sean (00:20:35):
Yeah. In the

Leo Laporte (00:20:36):
Wild West

Caller Sean (00:20:37):
Actually. I didn't know that. Yeah. Wow.

Leo Laporte (00:20:38):
So, you know, they have that, the, I don't know, sort, sort of weird wild rest review at, at Knottsberry farm. I do. And yeah, he's, he started there. He tells the story in his born standing up

Caller Sean (00:20:49):
Books. I'm gonna have to listen to that. I'm a huge knot spray farm fan. Grew up in, grew up in the area. Went there, you know, my whole life. But that's a story that, that missed me. I'll go

Leo Laporte (00:20:57):
Back. He has some great anecdotes about it. We love Knot Bury Farm too. I've been there many times. So what can we do for you, Sean?

Caller Sean (00:21:03):
So my father-in-law passed not too long ago, sorry. And during the process of cleaning out his garage, we found a box of old photos. Like a lot of folks do photos and videos and we wanted to memorialize that. So what we did was gather all those up and look for the process to scan those in. And being a little bit with a tech background. I had done that before where I had purchased a scanner and, and used the scanner software to do the process. But we had over, over a thousand pictures. And, and I knew that would take some time. And then I also had had used the photo scan from, from Google. And that's a great tool. One at a time for pictures, but wasn't gonna solve this very large number that I wanted to scan.

(00:21:46):
I looked into some third parties to do it and little price prohibitive. And I thought, Hey, you know what, I could probably just take this on as a project and do it. Then realized I have a high speed SP scanner at work. So I took it to work with one of the very nice Xerox scanners and man, it worked, it worked like a charm. Just scanned all those photos in you know, one a second and, and, and did the whole process. However, this is where my question comes in. What I ended up with wasn't exactly with what I was hoping mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, I ended up with a photo that was cropped in one direction, but not the opposite direction. Oh. So now I have a thousand photos that need to be cropped and rotated <laugh>. And I'm wondering if, if there's any automated process or software out there that would allow for that to you know, aid in, like especially with AI these days, uhhuh any technology that would help with that. Oh,

Leo Laporte (00:22:41):
Absolutely. Are you on a Mac or windows?

Caller Sean (00:22:44):
Windows

Leo Laporte (00:22:45):
Too bad cuz actually apple ships with a command line tool that will do this in a batch mode.

Caller Sean (00:22:51):
My daughter has a, my daughter has an apple, so I could, I could certainly use her machine to do this.

Leo Laporte (00:22:56):
So, and there are many, many, many command line tools that would do this. You mentioned AI though, that's kind of interesting. Do you feel like it could be done exactly the same way on each image?

Caller Sean (00:23:07):
No because the way they scanned in it was they're different sizes and the crops are different. So, you know, groupings of them could be done similarly, but not all, all the same.

Leo Laporte (00:23:19):
So you want a tool that will say, here's the heads <laugh>.

Caller Sean (00:23:22):
Yeah. Or like, here's the corners

Leo Laporte (00:23:24):
Of the, the photo

Caller Sean (00:23:25):
Corners of the photo would be ideal. Yeah. Right. Exactly. Ha And, and, you know, optimally rotate. You know, but that would take some sort of AI to look at it and say, oh, which is the proper orientation? And I, and I don't know that that's out there yet. I'm sure it will be soon with, with all these AI tools that are popping up. But I just haven't been able to find something to solve this problem.

Leo Laporte (00:23:44):
So you want a way to and you'd ideally you'd like to have it batch mode so that you say, here's five, here's a thousand photos. Fix 'em, <laugh>.

Caller Sean (00:23:55):
Exactly. Fix. Exactly. So, you know, I, I could do it one at a time, but it'll take me months.

Leo Laporte (00:24:00):
Yeah. there are a number of tools that will do this. And I'm just thinking about the batch mode thing, which is often a, a command line thing. This is something I just found just now from Vance ai vance ai.com. It's called the Cropper. And it'll do this online. You could at least try and see if it does what you want it to do.

Caller Sean (00:24:22):
Okay.

Leo Laporte (00:24:23):
It seems like it has some ai, scooter X has just given us something called photo, f o t o r. Let me go to a photo.com cuz it does batches. Which would, you know, I, that's the ideal, right? I mean, obviously you'd wanna run it a couple of times with one or two images to make sure it's doing the right thing

Caller Sean (00:24:46):
For

Leo Laporte (00:24:47):
Sure. Yep. Yeah, this has an AI image generator in it. It's an online photo editor lets you edit photos in just a few clicks. Yeah. I'm not sure.

Mikah Sargent (00:25:00):
Yeah. That, that, that's the problem here is the sort of smart portion of that.

Leo Laporte (00:25:05):
Yeah. You want it to like know where the heads are. Yeah,

Mikah Sargent (00:25:09):
That's true. Yeah.

Caller Sean (00:25:10):
Photoshop. Can I share a, a picture? Yeah. I don't know if you guys have the capability share. Let me, let me share. I'll give you an example of what one looks like. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:25:17):
We're on regular zoom. Anything you can do in your zoom room.

Caller Sean (00:25:21):
There you go. Okay. So yeah, and you can see the, the actual crop is the gray on either side of the photo itself. So I, so that's

Leo Laporte (00:25:28):
Stuff that's missing or is it, does it get the whole photo?

Caller Sean (00:25:32):
It gets the whole, that is the whole photo. I see. And then the gray box is on either side or where the the crop didn't happen and then the white is not really part of the photo. So the

Leo Laporte (00:25:42):
Scanner you used was smart about saying this is what we want, but it did so it, so it got the whole image, but it Yep. But it just didn't,

Mikah Sargent (00:25:52):
It didn't crop on both sides. And when crop,

Caller Sean (00:25:54):
It didn't crop on both sides. Not this way too. Exactly. It it did, it did. One side only.

Leo Laporte (00:26:00):
Here's one called Cloudinary AI based image. Auto crop algorithm sticks to the subject <laugh>. So, but, but did, you don't wanna cut the sh photo, right? You want the photo to persist. You just want it to be put rotated. So it's six whatever it is, five by four or whatever size you want without the borders. That's a little different than this AI stuff cuz it doesn't have to understand the content.

Mikah Sargent (00:26:31):
Right. It just needs to know

Leo Laporte (00:26:33):
Normally when a scanner, my experience has been when a scanner and so have you scanned them all already? You have.

Caller Sean (00:26:40):
I did, but you know, I can always go back and do it again. It wasn't big of a process. Right.

Leo Laporte (00:26:43):
Normally a scanner has automatic image recognition where it'll know which part of the, of the scan has content, which doesn't and will then appropriately fill the page. So I'm wondering, there may be a setting in your scanner that you missed mm-hmm. <Affirmative> that would produce a scan, which is what you want the full size. Now you, it won't be rotated because it's not content aware. But that would be easy that there, there's a million tools that will take a four by five and turn it to a five by four. That's, that's a Sure, that's a simple thing to do. What you really wanna do is get rid of those blank borders.

Caller Sean (00:27:24):
I think you have the letter box on either side.

Leo Laporte (00:27:26):
I think the scanner should have done that automatically.

Mikah Sargent (00:27:27):
I agree. It is odd

Caller Sean (00:27:29):
That it do. I, I, yep. I dug through the menus and I got it to do this. Originally it would just scan with the full eight and a half by 11. Right. And then I, I, I said, oh no, it's gotta be something better. So I found the crop settings that it basically say, oh no, crop it to the size of the photo and this is what it ended up doing.

Leo Laporte (00:27:44):
What's the branded

Caller Sean (00:27:45):
Scanner? Brand scanner. I can look.

Leo Laporte (00:27:46):
What's this branded scanner?

Caller Sean (00:27:47):
It's a xerox, it's, it's one of the, you know do you

Leo Laporte (00:27:51):
Know the model number? It's

Caller Sean (00:27:52):
An 88 Xerox 88 30.

Leo Laporte (00:27:54):
So the reason I ask is we can crowdsource some of this manual scanning. I don't have chat GPT four here, but we do have a much smarter chat room in our discord mm-hmm. <Affirmative>. And I bet you some of them are gonna go look up the the scanner and see if there is a setting. Cuz see consumer scanners, you'll put four images on there and it will say, oh yeah, I see four images. I'm gonna give you four scans properly cropped. Yep. paper size. And

Caller Sean (00:28:24):
That's how I did it previously. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:28:28):
And are all the images the same size?

Caller Sean (00:28:31):
No, they're all varying size. I mean, you know, a couple hundred at the standard sizes and then a few larger ones, you know. Yeah.

Mikah Sargent (00:28:38):
Four by six.

Caller Sean (00:28:39):
Yeah, exactly. Eight, 10, all the standard photo sizes. But they're not all the same.

Mikah Sargent (00:28:42):
That's why you need this. See, and that's the thing is when I scan something on a slower scanner, it has that edge detection. It knows where the paper is and then can crop it to that. But for some reason it only was cropping along one side.

Leo Laporte (00:28:55):
Our chat room says that this is, cuz it's a document scanner. It's,

Caller Sean (00:28:59):
It's a document

Leo Laporte (00:29:00):
Scanner. It's specifically for scanning eight by 10.

Mikah Sargent (00:29:02):
So, so it's looking for a

Leo Laporte (00:29:03):
Little, so it's not gonna say Yeah, it's not gonna say. Yeah. Yeah. Hmm. It's very fast. Wow.

Caller Sean (00:29:09):
Oh, oh, it's great. It was just lightning through all of 'em, you know very quick know, but know

Mikah Sargent (00:29:14):
What, I think what you should do is, I think you should email me at iOS today, TWIT tv. Well, you're brave if, if you do that <laugh>, what's gonna happen is, I'm going to remember this. I'm going to ask my co-host Rosemary Orchard, who is a shortcuts expert who probably knows about a lot of smart tools. A shortcut Yeah. That could then do this edge detection. So, because I will forget if you don't do email that's interesting. Please email cuz Yeah. Then I can ask Rosemary, she's probably got a few ideas for how to do this edge detection. They may be just built in but if they're not, sometimes there are some tools that people have created because there's this there's this set of tools called Image Magic that's M A G I C K, that's an open source software suite

Leo Laporte (00:29:59):
For a lot of people use that and would do a lot of things that you wanted

Mikah Sargent (00:30:02):
Do, and they do talk about edge detection there. Yeah. So, yeah. I don't, I, it feels like this might be a question we won't be able to answer here in the short term, but I want to run this by Rosemary and see if she has some

Leo Laporte (00:30:13):
Ideas. Let me, let me find the Mac image, the command line image tool. Cause I can't remember the name of this. I, I wanna say s it begins with s I think, but I haven't ever used it. Most people use Image Magic that's on Mac, windows and Linux. And it's a very powerful tool. Is it Fit? F i m? Oh, I, I don't know off the top of my head. I had, I was, you know, I've been collecting Mac terminal commands. <Laugh>.

Mikah Sargent (00:30:44):
Yeah. I think you, it might have been in that. I

Leo Laporte (00:30:46):
Sent it to you. I did send it to you.

Mikah Sargent (00:30:48):
It is,

Leo Laporte (00:30:50):
And I just don't remember the sipps. S

Mikah Sargent (00:30:51):
I

Leo Laporte (00:30:51):
Ps it is S I P s. Okay. I thought it began with an S So sips. And then you could do you know man sips or sips dash dash help and it will give you the commands. It's designed for batch modifying things. So one thing you could do is sort your photos into the six by fours and the, you know, the different sizes. That's easy to do, just stack 'em, right? Sure. Sort 'em out. And then scan each batch separately. And then since you know, now this whole batch has these borders, you could use sips to then trim those off. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> or image manage Gotcha. Or any Okay. Things. So that's the boy, that's the, that's the manual way of doing it. <Laugh>.

Mikah Sargent (00:31:35):
Yeah. So still email me because we may have an automated thing. Yeah. that, that Rosemary has an idea about.

Leo Laporte (00:31:41):
The only manual part is just scanning the images, all the all the like images at the same time. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>.

Caller Sean (00:31:47):
Right. Very generous. Micah, thank you. I really appreciate the offer and I'll, I'll take you up on that.

Leo Laporte (00:31:53):
Good question. Yeah, it's

Mikah Sargent (00:31:54):
A great question.

Caller Sean (00:31:54):
Awesome. I have one follow up to what you guys were talking about offline. Or when the show started you know, I tech guy most of my life and did a lot of social media early on Facebook and Instagram and, and Twitter and, and really kind of fell away from that over the many years. And maybe a year ago, my daughter sent me a video on this thing called TikTok <laugh>. And, and I'm pretty much a junkie now. Yeah. So I need to figure out a way to disconnect from that. Oh my gosh. Just so upset. Are you losing

Leo Laporte (00:32:26):
Sleep? You're not really a TikTok junkie till you actually lose sleep?

Caller Sean (00:32:31):
<Laugh>. Oh my gosh, yes. I'll, you know, I'll, I'll spend the last 15 minutes what I think is gonna be 15 minutes of the night. Yeah. You know, getting caught up on what the latest tos are three hours later, <laugh> you know, I'm exhausted and trying to drag myself to bed.

Mikah Sargent (00:32:43):
You've gotta use screen time

Caller Sean (00:32:46):
If you I I put it on. It didn't help. Oh. If it just kills me. <Laugh>. Alright.

Leo Laporte (00:32:50):
Right. I'll give you one tip. You gotta get off. Cause one thing, now one thing both the Android and Mac will or iOS will do is turn at after, after a certain time, like 10:00 PM Make everything black and white.

Mikah Sargent (00:33:00):
Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I

Leo Laporte (00:33:01):
Have to say, it still works, but it's just not as compelling. <Laugh>. Yeah.

Caller Sean (00:33:06):
Yeah. All right. All right. That's, that will be by step one of, I think a multi-step process.

Leo Laporte (00:33:12):
Yeah. And yeah, to detox, the first step is to admit you have a problem. So you're, you're, you're getting there. You're getting there. Second.

Mikah Sargent (00:33:18):
Second, the third step is to buy one of those internet connected wristbands that zaps you <laugh>. And so after an hour on TikTok, it'll zzz

Leo Laporte (00:33:28):
<Laugh>.

Caller Sean (00:33:28):
I think, I just think my tolerance for pain would build up over time. That's what's

Mikah Sargent (00:33:32):
Gonna happen. <Laugh>.

Leo Laporte (00:33:33):
Isn't that amazing? Thank,

Caller Sean (00:33:35):
Thank you so much, gentlemen. I appreciate your time. Thank you for the

Leo Laporte (00:33:38):
Last, this is, this is how TikTok did. The did it well, they did well. And and it's kind of why I'm bothered by this whole desire to ban TikTok. Cause there's such useful, great content on there. And they did it right. And obviously meta learned. Yes. And and I think, I think Threads is gonna be the next TikTok. I honestly, I honestly do. Let's take a little break and we're gonna come back with more. Do we have anybody on the show today? Or is it just us? We do Sam Bull Salmon Car Guy coming up. Oh, I, that's exciting. He'll be here in about an hour, but first award from our sponsor,

Mikah Sargent (00:34:11):
He's here. So Yeah. We'll take a,

Leo Laporte (00:34:12):
Oh, he's here now.

Mikah Sargent (00:34:12):
Yeah. So we'll take an adv break. Holy

Leo Laporte (00:34:14):
Cow.

Mikah Sargent (00:34:15):
Head to

Leo Laporte (00:34:15):
Sam. It's like Beetlejuice. I said his name once though. <Laugh>. All right. Okay. He has appeared. We will get to Sam Bull, Sam to talk cars in a bit. But first a word from Miro. Quick question for you. If you have a team and you're creating new products, new ideas, marketing are, are you, are you struggling a little bit with the multiple tools you have to use? Going from tab to tab, tool to tool. You know why the struggle happens? It's, it's called the context switch. It's the same reason why you forget what you were gonna, what you were going into the next room for. As soon as you go through the doorframe. There's something about the human brain losing brilliant ideas and important information as you switch from tool to tool is normal. That's why you need Miro, M i r o Miros one tool that does it all.

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(00:35:50):
It can all live on a Miro board across teams. And what's nice is there's a single source of truth for the whole team, for everybody. So there's no question, this is it. This is what we're working on. And by the way, it's fast and easy to use. And faster input means faster outcomes. Miro users report that Miro will increase their project delivery speed by 29%. You can view and share the big picture overview in a cinch. And when everyone has a voice and everyone can tap into a single source of truth, it's, it's great for the team. They stay engaged, they're invested, they're heard, and they're happy. Cut out any confusion on who needs to do what by mapping out processes, roles, and timelines. You do that with several templates, including Miro Swim Lane Diagram. Go look at the Miro verse for some ideas. Strategic planning becomes easier when it's visual and accessible.

(00:36:43):
Tap into a way to map processes and systems and plans with the whole team. So they not only see it, but they have a chance to get engaged to, to give feedback, to be part of the process. And I gotta tell you who isn't feeling meeting fatigue. Right? Miro users report saving up to 80 hours per user per year. That's like a two week vacation every year just from streamlining those conversations and feedback. No wonder a million people use Miro every single month. You should too. Get your first three boards for free. That makes it really easy to try. Work better together. Miro.Com/Podcast, m i rro.com/podcast. Please use that address so they know you saw it here first three boards free so you can really get your teeth into it and see what Miro can do for you. We've been using it. It's just fantastic. Miro m i r o.com/podcast. All right, Micah, it's time. It's time to say hello to Car Guy, Sam Bull Samid, principal researcher at Guy House Insights. He is also the host of the Fabulous Wheel Bearings podcast we had at Wheel Bearings Takeover on Twitter a few weeks ago. It was so much fun. Great episode with Nicole and and Robbie. Hello Sam.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:37:58):
Hello, Leo and Micah. How are you guys doing today?

Leo Laporte (00:38:01):
You're sitting in front of one of the cars I've been considering for my next vehicle.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:38:05):
Sincere. V W I D Buzz. Yeah, it's really

Leo Laporte (00:38:08):
Cute. It's like a v w van. Yeah. Updated. It's electric. I

Sam Abuelsamid (00:38:11):
Kinda like it. It is, yeah. That, that, that is the the, the ID buzz which was first shown as a concept, let's say back in 2018, maybe 17. It, it was quite a while. I was at the, the Reveal at the Detroit Auto Show back then. Yeah. It was like five or six years ago. And they finally launched a production version of the, the ID buzz in Europe last year. Is it

Leo Laporte (00:38:37):
Coming to America?

Sam Abuelsamid (00:38:39):
It is Coming to America. There's, there's there's two versions of it. There's the, the one that's in the picture behind me is the short wheel base version. It's so

Leo Laporte (00:38:47):
Cute. Looks like a little

Sam Abuelsamid (00:38:48):
Honeycomb, honey. A two row. So it's a five seater.

Leo Laporte (00:38:51):
This is what Jamer B wants to go to Red Rocks to see unfreeze McGee in. No, he wants the Long camper. Is there a camper van

Sam Abuelsamid (00:38:58):
Version there that is coming? So what we're getting here in North America is a little bit longer version with three rows of seats. So it'll seat seven or eight, I think. And that's coming first half of next year. They recently unveiled that version at an event in Santa Monica about about three or four weeks ago. Oh, so cool. But the reason why I have this one up here this is actually the short wheel based version. So this is the version that's on sale now in Europe. Is this one. This one is one you won't be able to buy unless you happen to own a very large fleet. Because this one is fully automated. This is a robo taxi, a prototype Robo, robo Taxi. Ah Volkswagen had originally started working on this program couple of years ago with Argo ai, which was a company that was founded with funding from Ford, and then eventually VW invested in it.

(00:39:56):
And so they were working on this with Argo. They've had 'em, had automated versions of this testing in Munich and Hamburg. And I think maybe Hanover since sometime early in 2022 or maybe late 2021 unfortunately for a lot of reasons not gonna go into today. Today. Argo was shut down last fall. And so Volkswagen had to come up with an alternate plan. And so they switched their allegiance over to an Israeli company called MobileEye, which is majority owned, was until relatively recently fully owned by Intel. Intel still owns about 94 or 93% of the shares in MobileEye. They did an I P O last year, but MobileEye has been developing their own automated driving system. And after the shutdown of Argo VW opted to work with MobileEye on this program. And this past week they announced that the first batch of 10 of these equip, 10 of these ID buzzes equipped with the MobileEye automated driving system, are now testing in Austin, Texas. Huh. so they're not just in Germany. They're here in the US in, in Austin. And they're, they're gonna be testing these. They're, I think they're currently still doing some mapping and, and some initial testing. But they're gonna be testing these over the next couple of years in Austin where there are already some there's already a commercial robo taxi service running that, I can't remember if we talked about it here on the show or not. With Cruz,

Leo Laporte (00:41:34):
You, you and Nicole took a ride in the cruise, didn't you? Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:41:37):
Yeah. And had a few

Leo Laporte (00:41:40):
Issues. Wasn't ideal. Was it <laugh>? Yeah,

Sam Abuelsamid (00:41:42):
<Laugh>. And so there's there's a video that's on the on the wheel bearings YouTube channel that you can see where we shot a video during our ride. And if you, if you go there, you can, you can find that my

Leo Laporte (00:41:56):
Friend Charlie lives in Bernal Heights in San Francisco, and he says that for a while it was just jammed with Cruz vehicles. He thought they were sending 'em up there for testing, cuz it's very hard to drive up there very narrow streets. Yeah. he says it's, it's stopped. But San Francisco residents who have been inundated between Waymo and Cruz with these self-driving vehicles are, are getting a little bit unhappy about them. Annoyed. Annoyed. Yeah. The verge said that some of them are putting out orange traffic cones to thwart Yep. To thwart them.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:42:29):
Yeah. Basically turning them into unicorn sticking, just sticking a traffic c on the hood of the Chevy Bolt <laugh>.

Leo Laporte (00:42:35):
And it just sits there apparent.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:42:36):
Yeah. Apparently it confuses it enough that it doesn't go anywhere. Oh, wow. Yeah. The emergency officials fire, the fire department, the police the San Francisco Municipal Transit Authority, they're all pretty unhappy with the with the performance of these automated vehicles running around San Francisco. They're causing blockages, traffic blockages. Yeah. This was during the Pride parade the other week. They just get

Leo Laporte (00:43:04):
Stuck.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:43:05):
Two, two Waymo vehicles. You know, they, they got to a road closure and they didn't know what to do. Oh, no. And, you know, the police directing traffic couldn't figure out how to communicate.

Leo Laporte (00:43:16):
This has become a problem. Where to go. Cause they no longer there's a unicorn. They no longer have safety drivers, so there's no human inside. And so I was wondering why I saw all those cones in San Francisco yesterday. Now I know they're waiting for a, a unicorn to show up. It's kind of the reverse, you know? Yeah, yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:43:36):
I don't, I don't like this <laugh>.

Leo Laporte (00:43:39):
I do understand. I think this is fantastic. Oh boy. I feel bad for San Francisco

Sam Abuelsamid (00:43:44):
Cities. Lot of the fact that they're, that people are doing these cones hurtful hurt or that these cars are driving around San Francisco

Mikah Sargent (00:43:49):
And Oil Orleans hurts. It's not that the, the car, I'm, I guess I'm a boot lick. I don't mind that the cars are driving around San Francisco. Very sensitive. I do mind that they are placing, because first of all, those traffic cones were in those places for a reason. I don't know what they are, but they were there for a reason. So to take them and put them somewhere else, you shouldn't, I'm a law follower. That's what I'm having a problem

Leo Laporte (00:44:08):
With. I, I have a traffic

Sam Abuelsamid (00:44:10):
Promise. Well, we don't know where people are getting the cu from.

Leo Laporte (00:44:12):
No, I have one in my yard.

Mikah Sargent (00:44:13):
Tiktok was very clearly suggesting that people borrow, just go find one from

Leo Laporte (00:44:16):
Somewhere. But I have one in my yard. It's lying around if anybody wants to use it. If I see a Waymo, I'll run up and put it on there.

Mikah Sargent (00:44:21):
If you take Leo's traffic cone, then I'm okay with Yes.

Leo Laporte (00:44:24):
Somebody left it. I think somebody left it behind at some point. And it's just, but

Mikah Sargent (00:44:28):
These are also like, I, I understand this sort of argument about these for-profit companies maybe taking jobs. I get that too. It's

Leo Laporte (00:44:34):
Not just jobs. They're tying up the streets.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:44:37):
Yes,

Leo Laporte (00:44:37):
Yes. They're annoying,

Mikah Sargent (00:44:39):
But does making them stop in the road, not also tie up the

Leo Laporte (00:44:43):
Street? Yeah. Well maybe it ties it up enough that these guys leave town stop doing

Sam Abuelsamid (00:44:47):
It. Well, I think that's what a lot of people are hoping for is got it. That they'll go somewhere else. You know, or, or stop, you know, just stop testing on public roads until they get these systems working better. You know, it's, you know, for the foreseeable future, you know, this is not likely to cause any significant job loss. In fact you know, it, there's new jobs that are created because, you know, somebody still has to clean these things and, you know, charge them and do, do maintenance on these vehicles. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. So it's, you know, it's different jobs rather

Leo Laporte (00:45:19):
Than, I think we saw rather driving around, I think we saw in New York City with the adv advent of Uber, Uber was not a loss of taxi jobs so much as a complete congestion of the city. Yes. And that's because there were too many

Sam Abuelsamid (00:45:30):
Vehicles that's happening in San Francisco. Ah, okay. And, and this, this is, this is long been one of the challenges that I've been talking about and writing about around deploying these vehicles. You know, you know, if, if unregulated, these companies are just gonna go and throw, who knows how many of these vehicles out on the road? Much as they did with scooters when we started seeing scooter sharing popping up a few years ago.

Leo Laporte (00:45:54):
I was, I was about to say that when that happened in San Francisco about four years ago, every City street was strewn with dead scooters, all the sidewalks. Oh yeah. It was a real hazard. Now they kicked him out, is what they ended up

Sam Abuelsamid (00:46:08):
Doing. Right. And I think, you know what, what needs to happen, you know, before these things are widely deployed is we need to put some rules in place in cities. You know, there need to be some limits on how many of these vehicles can be deployed where and when they can be deployed, that sort of thing. You know, much as we've done with, you know, with it has always been done with taxis, you know, in any, I mean, going back with

Leo Laporte (00:46:30):
Medallions. Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:46:31):
Yeah. Well, yeah, I mean, and actually, you know, the whole idea of limiting the number of cabs is not a new concept. It actually goes back 400 years. Yeah. The, you know, long before we had cars the original London, the, the term hack for a taxi goes back 400 years to the, the creation of the the London Hackney cap, which was actually a carriage. It was a two-wheeled carriage, you know, with a, a driver on there. And, you know, these were used as cabs in, in London 400 years ago. And they had this problem then with, you know, too many of them causing congestion. And so the, the local officials put limits on how many of these could operate in the city at any time. And that has always been the case with taxis. And that needs to be the case with these vehicles, at least until such time as they are ubiquitous enough that people stop driving personal vehicles. And because otherwise we're just adding to the congestion. Especially if these things aren't utilized enough. If, if they're not, if ideally, you know, with these thing, with these robo taxis, what happens is people get out of their own vehicles and they use these and you know, cuz most personally owned vehicles operate about 5% of the day. Yeah. They might operate one to two hours a day. So they're idle 95% of the time. The

Leo Laporte (00:47:54):
Dream is sensible, which is to get rid of private car ownership. Mm-Hmm.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:47:57):
<Affirmative>. Right. You have shared it's a's nightmare, shared, shared use of vehicles. It's a nightmare. And then

Leo Laporte (00:48:02):
If you

Mikah Sargent (00:48:03):
Optimize that, it's no, it's a nightmare going into San Francisco right now, if I could beckon one of these vehicles and it would take me in, I'd not stuff,

Leo Laporte (00:48:09):
But it's always with, with big transitions, there's this period of time where it's very disruptive and Yeah. Right. Unpleasant for everyone. Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:48:17):
And the, the California Public Utilities Commission was supposed to have a meeting to vote on June 27th on giving permits to Waymo and Cruz to operate 24 hours a day throughout the entire city of San Francisco with paid passengers. They delayed that meeting. That's actually going to happen the end of next week. Now

Leo Laporte (00:48:37):
Bring your traffic cones kids. Do you think they put everybody go to the hearings? Do you think

Mikah Sargent (00:48:40):
They put traffic cones on the first taxi drivers back in the day over their heads whenever like the horsey buggy people had to switch for <laugh>? I

Sam Abuelsamid (00:48:48):
I somehow doubt that <laugh>,

Mikah Sargent (00:48:50):
What was the protest at the time?

Sam Abuelsamid (00:48:51):
I'm sure there were some other kinds of protests.

Leo Laporte (00:48:53):
Yeah, I, you know, so it's, I have mixed feelings about this cuz I do agree that the future of, you know much reduced private car ownership and, and ubiquitous transport is a great future. I mean, we, we kind of dropped the ball on public trans transit with street cars and buses and and subways. That's a shame, right? Yeah. But maybe we can, we can, you know, get that back with self-driving vehicles, but, well, I think we're not there yet. What we act and it's a mess. What we

Sam Abuelsamid (00:49:22):
Actually need is a mixed ecosystem because you know what you don't, what you don't want is you don't want only robo taxis. Right. You don't want only scooters. You don't want only buses. No, that's a good

Leo Laporte (00:49:33):
Point. You need it all

Sam Abuelsamid (00:49:34):
You, you actually need because they each have their strengths and weaknesses for different kinds of trips. Yeah, yeah. And so you need a mixed ecosystem of all of these that, that coordinate together, work together, you know, so you know you know, because what you want is maximum utilization of all of 'em. Right. And, you know, for mass transit, you know, you can't have buses and, and subways going everywhere in a city. But, you know, if you can have, you know, smaller vehicles like this and scooters that feed into the mass transit lines, you know, where you have the highest density. So you have more people using the, the buses and subways or trains being fed in, you know, in the, for first mile and last mile by smaller vehicles, then you can actually start to have a real impact potentially on congestion and safety?

Leo Laporte (00:50:25):
Well, I have mixed feelings. I do want an ID buzz <laugh>. I wanna get, I have to say I don't live in San Francisco, but my friends who do are not totally enamored of it. And I have to say, when you ride in one of these things, you might not share your, the enthusiasm the tech companies have for it. My friend Charlie said actually as Brock said it's like a grandma driving. It's very, it's very,

Sam Abuelsamid (00:50:51):
They, they do tend to drive fairly conservatively because they's they're buying for safety.

Leo Laporte (00:50:55):
Yeah, yeah. As they should be. Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:50:57):
I mean, they're not, they're, but they shouldn't be driving like a New York taxi driver.

Leo Laporte (00:51:00):
No. But they also fail at strange positions and places.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:51:04):
And that's there's the problem. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:51:07):
Now isn't, there's supposed to be somebody monitoring this who can drive at home, you know? Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. Yeah. But maybe they're just not doing a good job of that. There

Mikah Sargent (00:51:13):
Are too many road or

Sam Abuelsamid (00:51:14):
Something. Well, I mean, there's, there's also you know, to, in order to monitor it, you have to have a connection to the vehicle. Oh. And if you lose that connection, you know, as, as you're well aware, you know, especially in cities, you know, a lot of times you'll hit cellular dead zones. And if you, if you don't have a reliable connection that's a problem, then it's possible that whoever's doing the monitoring is not able to see what happens when it gets stuck and is not able to provide it with guidance, because they have remote guidance systems. So if the vehicle gets confused and doesn't know what to do, someone back in a control center is watching and they can step in and provide it some hints, you know, as to what to do next. You know, how, how, you know, if there's a new construction zone and the vehicle's not quite sure the best, the safest way to get around that somebody can step in and say, okay, you know, go, go around to the left. You know, but make sure you pause and check. Yeah. And, and gives, it gives us some hints and then lets it go. But if, if you lose the connectivity to the vehicle, then you can't do that. And that's, that's where the problem, part of the problem. I

Leo Laporte (00:52:18):
Share, Micah, your sympathy for the poor little ai. It's not doing its best. It's doing its best. And you put a cone on its foot and it goes a Yeah. Yeah. I sh I share that. I, my animosity, my animus is in entirely towards big tech. Yeah. Which just wants, you know, profits at all costs and take over the world and, and screw everybody else. And I think that, that we're starting to,

Sam Abuelsamid (00:52:41):
Well, I mean, that's capitalism. That's, that's not just big tech. That's all capitalism,

Leo Laporte (00:52:44):
But big tech's really good at it. And I think it's maybe time

Mikah Sargent (00:52:48):
Capitalize on capitalism

Leo Laporte (00:52:49):
For the rest of us to to say, no, that's not what we want. We like tech, look, we're a tech channel. We love technology.

Mikah Sargent (00:52:55):
I'm gonna buy some stock and traffic cone manufacturing.

Leo Laporte (00:52:58):
That's a smart move.

Mikah Sargent (00:53:00):
<Laugh>, that's, cause I think Leo just got a bunch of people to buy traffic cones, <laugh>

Leo Laporte (00:53:04):
Sam a Bull. Sam had always a pleasure. When's the ID buzz camper version coming? You said early next year?

Sam Abuelsamid (00:53:11):
Some, some sometime in 2024. They haven't given an exact date. But there will be a camper version available. The popup, the traditional bus, VW bus, that's what you want. Popup camper will be available as an option on the ID bus at, at some stage. They haven't said that'll be exactly when, but some, sometime in next, sometime next year.

Leo Laporte (00:53:30):
I was in maybe sometime you can review this. I was BMW announced their I five ev last month.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:53:36):
Yeah. They haven't had a chance to, to do drive for that yet.

Leo Laporte (00:53:41):
It's between that and Camper Van. For me, it's my capitalist side and my hippie side. <Laugh> fighting. Competing fighting. But I, I did put a deposit down on the I five. You tell me if I made a mistake. Okay.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:53:53):
Well, I've driven the I seven and it's based on the same platform. It's basically smaller than the I seven and better looking frankly. So I, I, I think you, if you were to get the I five, I've driven the I four and the I seven, which are smaller and larger than the I five. Right. and use a lot of the same hardware. It's right in the middle. Yeah. So I don't think you'll be disappointed. All right.

Leo Laporte (00:54:13):
The ID California's called that the ID buzz, the ID California

Sam Abuelsamid (00:54:17):
Ah no's. The, it's the ID buzz California edition. The capper may be called to California. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:54:22):
Cool. Yeah. Hey, thank you Mr. Sam Bull, Sam at Guide House Insights. My pleasure. Always a pleasure. We'll see you soon on the Yep. On Twit. Take care, my friend. Bye.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:54:31):
All right,

Leo Laporte (00:54:32):
Bye. Sam joins us every month on the show. I am ready for another call. Are you ready? I'm so ready. All right. Coming up, we're gonna talk to Chris. Chris is on the line. Lemme push the buttons and all that stuff. Chris is on the line. Hi, Chris. When you get when you get into the zone, tell us where you're calling from. Get in the zone. Get in the zone Tech guy Zone. Can you do the head which head? Yeah. Look at that Damn <laugh>. Holy cow. All right.

Caller Chris (00:55:12):
Can you hear me now?

Leo Laporte (00:55:13):
Hey, Chris, where are you calling from?

Caller Chris (00:55:15):
I'm in Aurora, Colorado.

Leo Laporte (00:55:17):
Beautiful. Ooh, good to see you. Welcome.

Caller Chris (00:55:20):
What's

Leo Laporte (00:55:21):
What's up in your I don't have a,

Caller Chris (00:55:23):
All right. I don't have a question. It's been a long time since you've done Leo's six rules. I think it's time that, oh, it gets pretty <inaudible>

Leo Laporte (00:55:31):
For setting up a wifi router. Those six rules.

Caller Chris (00:55:35):
No, no. Your general six rules.

Leo Laporte (00:55:37):
Six rules for living <laugh>. No,

Caller Chris (00:55:40):
Leo's six rules. You did this many, many years ago.

Leo Laporte (00:55:44):
Can you gimme a hint? Yeah. <laugh>, we say a lot of things.

Caller Chris (00:55:48):
Why? I just, why don't I just summarize those.

Leo Laporte (00:55:50):
You give me my rules, please.

Caller Chris (00:55:52):
All right. Let's see. Number one, do not open email attachments. Oh,

Leo Laporte (00:55:56):
It's the security rules. Yes. And that's,

Caller Chris (00:55:58):
That is that is self-explanatory at this point.

Leo Laporte (00:56:03):
And what's interesting is that has held true from the day I said it, which was probably 20 years ago. Email attachments are now the number one way people get hacked.

Caller Chris (00:56:15):
And also do not click links in email. Do not open up email that you do not know. Yes. Where I came from.

Leo Laporte (00:56:22):
That's right. That still part of one?

Caller Chris (00:56:25):
No, actually that's two. Okay. So

Leo Laporte (00:56:27):
Two is not, but I, part of one 12. Mike is writing this down for next time. <Laugh>.

Caller Chris (00:56:32):
Ok. That's fine. Micah can take notes. I don't care. And do not download file some places that you are not sure

Leo Laporte (00:56:40):
Of. That's right. That's true. Yep.

Caller Chris (00:56:44):
Let's see. Update your OS regularly. Oh, that's still in effect today, as it was back then. And that also applies to both Mac and Lennox. My fear is that someday some Lenox some disgruntled Lennox programmers to make a nasty virus that's gonna

Leo Laporte (00:57:04):
Spread. You know what, you know what's actually a big problem, and Steve Gibson's been talking about this on our security show, security now every Tuesday, is that the repositories like Pipi where programmers get libraries for use in their programs have of never had any security on them and have late, have been compromised. So it's a real problem because a, an honest, hardworking, legitimate programmer might get a library that is malformed f you know, not knowing it's, it's a security hazard and use it thereby making his own software dangerous. So it is really a big problem. We have yet to come up with a good answer for this. But we've seen Pipi which is a very big repository, compromised the node NPN rep Repository's been compromised. It's not hard to do that. I guess you'd call it a supply chain attack. So I'd have to update those rules.

(00:58:03):
The, the fundamental rule, and I, I think you know this, Chris is a bad guy, can't really infect your system unless he can get you to do something, run a program. So he either does that by compromising a program, by sending you a link that doesn't look like a program, or putting something on a website that runs a program. Now, if your operating system is, is insecure, it's possible to do a zero, what we call a zero click exploit, which is run a program on your phone or your computer that you didn't invite in and you didn't do anything. And those are the worst, scariest problems. And those are really down to the operating system not being fully secure. So that's why updating is so important. You know, really, there's two ways to get in. One, you, you invite them in, don't invite the wrong one in.

(00:58:55):
And two you have a hole in your system that allows them in without you even doing anything. And, and so those really, those are the fundamentals you need to understand. Everything else revolves around those two things. You shouldn't download, you know, or open email attachments. You can be careful what links you click, what software you use. I say don't install anything. You really, the, anytime you install anything on any platform, you open up a door, a potential door, install the fewest possible apps. You know, that was definitely not in the original six. What else is in there, Chris?

Caller Chris (00:59:30):
All right. Ready for number five? Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:59:31):
Mm-Hmm. <Affirmative>.

Caller Chris (00:59:32):
All right. Use a firewall. I think

Leo Laporte (00:59:35):
I changed

Caller Chris (00:59:35):
That one. Everyone uses a firewall, matter of fact.

Leo Laporte (00:59:38):
Yeah. It's automatic

Caller Chris (00:59:39):
Phone has a Yeah, yeah. Firewall built into it. Yeah. Also, I think use a VPN if you think it's necessary. Yep.

Leo Laporte (00:59:47):
I don't, those last two have changed over time. These rules are literally two decades old. Yeah. there used to be a rule reboot your machine regularly. Some people even said no,

Caller Chris (00:59:59):
Actually that whole true with Windows, you said, oh, you should yeah. Reboot your system at least at least twice a month. Yeah. If it stopped running all the time.

Leo Laporte (01:00:07):
And interestingly, your router, the FBI a couple of years ago sent out a notice saying everybody should reboot their routers because router exploits, some of them are zero click exploits, will persist in ram, not in firmware. So if you reboot your router, it clears out the exploit and Mirai, and I think some others actually just sat in RAM and could easily be cleared out. Huh? This is chat G P T. That's what it looks like. Leo Laporta, Wello tech broadcaster and founder of the Twit network has frequently emphasized the importance of security. While he has provided various tips and advice, there isn't a widely recognized six rules of security specifically attributed to LaPorte. However, I can provide you with a general set of fundamental principles. <Laugh> as always said, with great confidence. Yeah. Yeah. But he, but actually chat GP d's not wrong.

(01:00:58):
Use strong, unique passwords on every website. That's a great, we'd have to add that. That's changed over 20 years, hasn't it? Keep software up to date. Mention that. Enable two factor. That's new too. Absolutely. Use two factor wherever you can be cautious of phishing attempts. That's the don't app. Open email attachments and unsolicited text messages, things like that. Now, I disagree with chat gpt on this one. Use reputable security software. Install a reliable antivirus Oh, and anti malware software in your devices. I, I, you and I both. So times not a fan, like antivirus again. And that comes down to that thing that everything you install potentially opens a problem. And because Mal, any malware software sits at a lower level, integrates more deeply, you know, you have to give it permission to integrate into the kernel and things like that. It actually opens a superhighway. Yeah. It's your system. And it's, it's, and it's not a good idea. It's such a common path for folks. Yeah. To, oh, you need this antivirus. So he adds regularly. Ba a he is chat g pt, he no, it, it regularly backs. Says regularly back up your data. Which of course it's not even regular. You should have a backup plan that runs all the time. What was six was six? The vpn? Yeah.

Caller Chris (01:02:09):
Oh no, actually no, no. Six is six is different. I do not run as an administrator at home. I run as an administrator user. You absolutely do not wanna run No. As an administrator. Cause it gives you far too many too, too many privileges. So

Mikah Sargent (01:02:28):
Six is always run as super

Leo Laporte (01:02:30):
User. No <laugh>. I'm kidding. Never. I'm kidding. I'm kidding. Actually, all now, all modern. That's changed. Limit two. Cuz all modern operating systems do that. Windows was the last one with U A C. They finally said cuz you run as administrator in most cases as a, as a full user when you set up a Windows machine. But it still will warn you if you wanna do something and ask, in many cases, ask for an administrator authentication before you do something hazardous. So even Windows now does that Macintosh, you run as administrator always. You know, that's the default. But again, same thing. It will say, wait, whoa. Hey, hold on there. Do you really want to do that? And sometimes make you authenticate before you modify the system. For instance Lenux is,

Caller Chris (01:03:14):
What about Linux? Well, Linux, yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:03:15):
Linux. it's really rare to set up a Linux system with you as super user. Almost always you create a user account. And then if you wish, and most Linux users, I do this, you can say, but I wanna have administrative privileges using something called S u Do or S u D O or pseudo, sometimes people call it S U D O. You say, upgrade my account to administrator for this one command. You have to have permission to do that. You have to add yourself to the SUDO ring and all of that stuff. So most Linux is the way they're set up that's built in Debbie ands funny. It does not do that. But most Linux is you. You can use S U D O, you enter your password. But that's a way of saying, now, are you sure you wanna do this? Because this is gonna change something only an administrator could change. And you type your password to say okay with that. And I think that's a very, that's pretty much what Windows and Mac are doing now. So I would say all three of the major operating systems do require some sort of authentication before you enhance your abilities. So yeah, the advice is still true. Don't run as administrator, but, but in reality, you're protected from yourself. On, on modern operating

Caller Chris (01:04:30):
Systems. And I have one more thing if you have time. Yeah. Has anyone tried to use a Brave search engine? I can't tell the difference between the results from Brave and from Bing. They seem about the same.

Leo Laporte (01:04:40):
So this is a, this is the dirty little secret of these third party searches is very often they're either licensing Google or Bing, or both <laugh>. But in theory they hide your information from Google and Bing, you know, they're buying it wholesale and you're using it retail. And that information doesn't get back to Bing. Brave recently announced that they are going it on their own. So if you haven't tried it recently, it will be different. Now. They stopped using Bing, they say, and they're using their own index. If you think about it, Chris, it takes a long time to build up a web index of all the billions and billions of sites out. It takes a lot of effort, time, and money maybe even years. So Google and Bing have this built-in advantage. So it makes sense. If you're a new search engine as Brave created a couple of years ago, you're gonna, you're gonna use Bing or Google initially. But Brave says, no, we really want to be fully private. We don't want to use Bing results, so we're gonna go it on our own. And they did that not so long ago. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. So try it, if you haven't tried it recently and see what the results are mean, it should look very

Caller Chris (01:05:46):
Different. I mean, it's, I mean, using it seems about the same to me. Does

Leo Laporte (01:05:49):
It? Well, maybe they've improved. They're you know, they've been spidering long enough that their search index is good now. It's, you know, best thing to do is do the same search on Bing and, and Brave and see how I, how close it is they claim. Let me, let me look at the news story and see when they did this, they claim Brave Search will no longer use Bing. And I do think it was recently. Yeah, this was in April. Brave Search removes last remnant of Bing <laugh> from search results achieving 100% independence. So they may have looked bing like in the past, but at least now if you could trust them. And they're not lying. And I don't think they are. It is now a hundred percent brave. They said even in the past it was only, Bing was only about 7% of results. Oh, wow. So, yeah, I think I, I like Brave. You like the browser?

Caller Chris (01:06:44):
Yeah, I've been using it since it was in beta, I don't know how many years ago that

Leo Laporte (01:06:48):
Was. Yeah. It's based on chromium. So it's a Chrome browser. But they're very privacy forward. They have built an ad blocking and a lot of features. I think Brave's a very good browser. You know, total independence, they say from Bing was a primary goal of Brave in less than a year. The Brave Search goal, brave Search, global Independent Score rose from 87% to 93% <laugh>. And now it's a hundred percent <laugh>. Well, wait a minute. It, they're intended to be a hundred percent. I'm not sure. We're trying to be 1%. Yeah. By default, brave Search users will now receive, this is again, at April 27th, a hundred percent of results from the Brave Index. There is a setting. So you might look in your search settings and see if you've turned off all Bing. They do say this Independence does not come at the expense of quality.

(01:07:41):
Over the past several months, the search team has drastically improved Brave's searches ability to answer nuanced long tail queries. Those are the tough ones. You know, if you search for Yahoo, you're gonna get Yahoo. Right. Everybody's gonna give you the same result. It's those smaller, lesser known sites. The long tail, as we call it, that's hard for those who want it. And this is setting in the browser. Google fallback mixing <laugh>, it sounds like fun. I sometimes would like to try Google Fallback mixing <laugh> continue to be an option. Users continue to support the growth of the index by opting into the web discovery project and by submitting feedback. So keep using Brave, I admire what Brandon Ike and his team are doing. I don't really admire Brandon. Ike he's, there's some questionable behaviors in the past, but I think, I dunno

Caller Chris (01:08:29):
Anything about him.

Leo Laporte (01:08:29):
Yeah. Better not to <laugh>, but he used to be at Mozilla. I, I think Brave is a good browser and I think they've done a good job. I'm still a Firefox guy and the reason I use Firefox is I don't want the whole universe to become Chrome based.

Mikah Sargent (01:08:42):
Yeah. Everything else is chromium, isn't it?

Leo Laporte (01:08:44):
Except for, well, there's web kits, safari, there's chromium, Google a Chrom and others, and there's a Firefox's engine. And I, I just, I've been very happy with Firefox. But I, well,

Caller Chris (01:08:54):
Firefox user base is shrinking fast.

Mikah Sargent (01:08:58):
Well, I'm staying

Leo Laporte (01:08:59):
Oh, yeah. And Braves is going up because a lot of sites will not work unless you're using the Chromium engine.

Mikah Sargent (01:09:06):
Yeah. Oftentimes I, cuz Safari is my main browser, but I switched to Firefox when something's not working in Safari. Well,

Caller Chris (01:09:11):
If something does not work in Brave, I'll use Firefox. Right. If it does not use in Firefox, I use Edge. It doesn't work in Edge. I just give up <laugh>.

Leo Laporte (01:09:19):
Chris, you're like a, you're like the rest of us. I, I've, I doubt many geeks anyway. Have more than have fewer than several, you know, three or four browsers on their, on their computer. Because

Caller Chris (01:09:29):
I've been a geek since 1978.

Leo Laporte (01:09:31):
I could tell. Towyn

Caller Chris (01:09:32):
Contemporary with you.

Leo Laporte (01:09:34):
<Laugh>. Hey, it's great to talk to you. Thank you for joining us, Chris. I really appreciate it. All right. And

Mikah Sargent (01:09:38):
For the rules refresh. That's

Leo Laporte (01:09:39):
Great. And for the rules, there's actually a book I have if I almost got up and ran and got it. But I won't do that. There's a book I have that was a really good book on security. I'll get it next, next time you're handling a call, I'll run, get it. We were, we had intended to do a review of this very cool webcam today, but we're having a little trouble with the software. I don't know if the software's immature or, or I'm immature. I suspect it's the latter <laugh>. But but this is from Sbot. They have released one of these before. It's a P T Z point pan tilt zoom camera for a webcam. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. And it's got a big sensor. It's got big capabilities and a really nice 4K output. This is the new tiny two. They just put out Tiny to, and I had pre-ordered it, got it the other day. So but I'm gonna defer my review until I can really give it full justice. But it, but so far I really like it. I was, I compared it at home on my Mac to

Mikah Sargent (01:10:40):
A summer's day.

Leo Laporte (01:10:41):
A summer's day. No, I compared it on my, my MacBook Air to the MacBook Air Camera, which is actually pretty good. It's a 10 80 P camera. And of course Apple makes it very easy to use your iPhone as a camera. Yep. I would say the iPhone may still be slightly better, but it's a pain for me to, yeah, that's take my iPhone and connect it up and all that. If

Mikah Sargent (01:10:59):
You need to use it for something longer on

Leo Laporte (01:11:01):
The computer. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. So I do have a desktop that doesn't have a camera. The monitor doesn't have a camera. And I think this is what I'm gonna start using. So it's

Mikah Sargent (01:11:07):
Really nice looking too. It's

Leo Laporte (01:11:09):
Real. And it, and you can, and it takes hand gestures. You could say, hi, yeah, it's me, zoom in, zoom out, and all that stuff. And that was the part we couldn't get working on this Windows machine. So I don't wanna demonstrate it without that working. It worked fine on the Mac, probably me. We'll get back to you maybe next week we'll do that review. What do you want to do next?

Mikah Sargent (01:11:31):
I think we should take one of the caller callers, the people who've called into 8 8 8 7 2 4 2 8 8 4.

Leo Laporte (01:11:37):
I see one right here. Let me press the button and say hello. Wireless caller. Press star six to unmute and introduce yourself. And Yes. City you're calling from. Yes. You.

Caller Larry (01:11:52):
Hey, Leo and Micah.

Leo Laporte (01:11:53):
Hey, what's your name?

Caller Larry (01:11:57):
This is Larry Petaluma. Larry, I was your very first on phone.

Leo Laporte (01:12:01):
I, I welcome you back. Petaluma, Larry. Good to see you.

Caller Larry (01:12:04):
Thank you. Thank you. Unfortunately I'm calling you with a, with an issue that I'm not happy about. I for the last few days have not been able to open my Adobe Lightroom classic. And I've gone online and, and listened to all the nefarious advice and I've been able to, I, I was able to get it open a couple times, but then I can't get my current catalog. I even went to my backups and I'm not sure, I dunno if something's gotten corrupted, but apparently some people are having problems.

Leo Laporte (01:12:40):
Yeah. Doby Doby got corrupted by money. It's all about No, I'm just kidding. <Laugh>. I'm just kidding. What

Mikah Sargent (01:12:47):
Happens, what are you using a Windows machine or a Mac?

Leo Laporte (01:12:50):
I'm gonna let you handle this. Yeah.

Caller Larry (01:12:52):
I'm using, I'm using a Windows desktop with windows 10.

Mikah Sargent (01:12:55):
Okay. And I'm guessing you already did the preferences reset?

Caller Larry (01:13:00):
Well, that's what, that's the first thing that the internet tried to do. And I first few times I did it, nothing would happen. And then finally I finally got it to come up and I did do a reset.

Mikah Sargent (01:13:14):
Okay. So you were able to do the preferences reset and then the next time you launched it, it was still just not opening?

Caller Larry (01:13:23):
Yeah, I would and I would not open. And when I would go into the task manager, it would show it as running and I have to end the task, but there was nothing coming up on the screen. It just, it was not there.

Mikah Sargent (01:13:34):
Ok. Okay. I assume that you are keeping everything updated. So you checked to see if there were any updates for it. And honestly, that's probably what happened is that an update came that caused the issue. So you did the whole hold down, the alt and the shift keys and then Yeah. Yeah. Clicked on the shortcut. And then there was that window that popped up that said, are you sure you wanna reset preferences?

Caller Larry (01:14:04):
Yes. I did all of that morning and retro and reset or re redo. I, I uninstalled and reinstalled a later earlier version, the 12.3, which is the version before the previous 12.4. And that I can get to come up if I do the, the sh the shift and the alt key mm-hmm. <Affirmative>. But when I, when it comes up and I click on my, my catalog it, it comes up with some old catalog that has two photos in it. And I probably have, I dunno, thousands of photos. Many, many

Mikah Sargent (01:14:42):
More <laugh>. Yeah. I'm guessing what's happening there is the rest of your catalog, your library has been updated to that newer version. And so the older version is not displaying the newer version properly. This is, this is a tough one because there are so many different things that could be at the heart of this. Especially that it, it's showing up that it's running, it's just not showing the window for you. Have you gone into your files and looked for the actual folder that is containing your Lightroom classic catalog? Because yes, you're using the, the classic version, which means that you're not using the version in the cloud. So those photos are stored locally. Are you able to see those photo files kinda on their own even though it's not loading?

Caller Larry (01:15:33):
Yes. I have gone into my, into my backups or into my, yeah. The backups and I found the catalog, but when I click on it, I get a window saying it's not, I can't open it. Cause it's not a writeable file. There's some strange message Oh, that comes up.

Leo Laporte (01:15:50):
Oh, that's kinda, that's interesting. Interesting. Wait a minute. That's a, that's actually the clue right there. That sounds like a permissions issue. Windows, windows. Can I get into permissions problems pretty easily? You know, you already said this, I'm sure, but you, you know, probably the best thing to do is uninstall

Mikah Sargent (01:16:07):
And he's

Leo Laporte (01:16:07):
Done that Lightroom and wipe the folder out. And make sure when you uninstall it, you get all traces of it out. What I think you have is probably, and this can happen just kind of spontaneously, A cosmic rake can hit your yard drive that the permissions on preferences have been changed. So you don't have read and write privileges, or you might not have Right. Privileges, but you have read privileges and, and if it can't write to the preferences it's gonna really break it, it's gonna say, well, but you know, I can't, so I'm Or it can't read and write the li this is another problem. I, I honestly, I want to blame Adobe cuz I hate them. It might be a license problem they use. They put a license file on the hard drive. Right. That shows that you own it. Cuz you're not logging into adobe.com to assert your ownership. This is an old version that uses the license file, I gather. Is that right?

Caller Larry (01:17:01):
I, yeah, I think that's true.

Leo Laporte (01:17:02):
Yeah. So that's what this is, this is copy protection. I'm almost certain that's what this is. And either the file's gotten corrupt, it can't read the file or something. Did

Mikah Sargent (01:17:13):
You also try the, the other suggestion I'm seeing a lot of is removing that LR Cat dot lock file.

Leo Laporte (01:17:20):
Oh yeah. Any lock files will give you problems too. Yeah,

Caller Larry (01:17:23):
I did not, I did not do that.

Mikah Sargent (01:17:25):
Okay. So we'll include a link in the show notes to this, but basically, and this is kind of what Leo's talking about, that lock that gets put on there you can go in independently and remove that. And essentially what happens is when Lightroom restarts then just creates a new one

Leo Laporte (01:17:41):
Yeah. The lock file so you don't modify a file that it's currently using.

Mikah Sargent (01:17:44):
Exactly. So then it'll update that stream. So that would be my next suggestion for you. I assume you have not reached out to Adobe support yet. One of the good things about paying for a service is that the support is a little bit more, how

Leo Laporte (01:17:59):
Old is this Lightroom Classic?

Caller Larry (01:18:03):
Oh, it's I mean it's, I just updated it to 12.4, so, alright. Before I, before, before I went back to 12.3, it's, you know, it's, it's current.

Mikah Sargent (01:18:13):
Yeah. so I would suggest at that point if, if this is devastating lock file doesn't work,

Leo Laporte (01:18:19):
Because of course as a photographer, all of your catalog is, is vital. Right? That's, the photos are still there, but all the, all the stuff you've done, all the organization, all the modification, all of that's stored in the Lightroom catalog. And if so, if you can't open that catalog you probably had it set to make backups, right?

Caller Larry (01:18:38):
Yeah. I, I have, and I've actually tried, I went into OneDrive and pulled down the backup couldn't open and I won't read that. The same thing happens. And I have a, I have a local backup on a different external drive and that does the same thing. Well keep

Leo Laporte (01:18:52):
Those. So

Caller Larry (01:18:52):
This lock file

Leo Laporte (01:18:53):
Sounds at this point, yeah. Keep those safe and secure. It's good. They're on one drive so that Adobe can't modify it in any way. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. Yeah. Look at the lock file. Something's gone on that. It's, it, it's not very good software. It's mostly written in Lua and it's not very, it's kinda a little janky. I love Lightroom. I am off of it now. Cuz I just, Adobe's greed has just finally killed me. They make good stuff though. And Lightroom was a very useful tool. I switched to camera one. And then you know, there's a lot of third on the Mac anyway, there's a lot of third party really nice tools like pixel made photo and mm-hmm. <Affirmative> pixel made pro affinity photo that I find I have all, gives me all the juice that I wanted to.

(01:19:39):
The biggest thing with Lightroom is the digital asset management, the dam management and Right. And on Windows, there's no good there really isn't much of a good choice on that. On the, on the Mac. What I do now is I use photos, Apple's photos, it's good. That's my digital asset management. And then when I want to edit it, I, it allows me to open it, the photo, original photo in any editor. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. It's buggy too, by the way. I crash it all the time cause I have 60,000 photos in it, but at least doesn't do what Lightroom is doing to you. Now. I,

Mikah Sargent (01:20:09):
Yeah. This is frustrating. So yes, I also, I've just found another great page from Adobe that you may have seen an excerpt from, but I found the original page, it's got eight to 10 different troubleshooting options that you can take. And it's direct from Adobe. It's not like just some forum post. Good. So between deleting the lock file is what I would suggest next after that, go to this Adobe page that has a lot of different troubleshooting options. And then third and last would be to actually reach out to Adobe because as a paying customer as opposed to whatever we get. Yeah. At least

Leo Laporte (01:20:41):
You date.

Mikah Sargent (01:20:41):
Yeah. Sometimes people call in asking for help with their Facebook account and there's really not anything we can ever do with those

Leo Laporte (01:20:47):
Because Adobe obviously wants you to, I'm surprised they still do classic, but they say, no, no, we're gonna continue to do it. They want you to move to the CC version. They want you to move Creative Cloud. You know they, they're their incentive are really for them to get you off of Lightroom Classic. But frankly it's the only version of Lightroom I would even consider using. So I understand is

Caller Larry (01:21:09):
There, is there paid support line number on their website?

Mikah Sargent (01:21:12):
I doubt there's a phone. It's gonna be email contact us email. They may have chat though.

Leo Laporte (01:21:18):
Okay. Try the lock files. I have high hopes.

Mikah Sargent (01:21:20):
Me too. Me too. I

Leo Laporte (01:21:21):
Think those are, I think those are really what's going on. Hey, good luck.

Caller Larry (01:21:25):
Where, where do I look for the lock files?

Leo Laporte (01:21:28):
Everywhere. <laugh>, just look for CK.

Mikah Sargent (01:21:32):
Yeah, if you want, if you don't wanna wait for the show notes to get published, all you do is go to Google and type in Adobe Lightroom lock file

Leo Laporte (01:21:40):
And they'll tell you where they store is. It'll help you find it. Yeah. And I, the license file may also be the issue. And I don't know what the way Yeah, I don't know about, I would think be careful about that one. Delete. Well, I'm not gonna recommend it, but I, if it were me, I would delete it and try to ree and see if that fixes it. Right. Yeah. Don't delete it. Move it to another folder where it can't find it. Okay. But you

Caller Larry (01:22:01):
Still have it. All right gentlemen. Thank you. Good luck. I hope that works.

Mikah Sargent (01:22:03):
Yes. Best of luck. Best of luck.

Leo Laporte (01:22:05):
Take care. Thank you. Bye. That's a, that's a tough one. Yeah, because you really, you know, as a photographer you, everything's in Lightroom

Mikah Sargent (01:22:11):
And it's kind of annoying. It's nightmare that they're taking these photos and making them this special thing that you can't even get to unless light room's working. Cuz that's the photos app for Apple. You can get to all these photos. The

Leo Laporte (01:22:21):
Original photos are

Mikah Sargent (01:22:22):
There even. Yeah,

Leo Laporte (01:22:23):
Yeah, you can, I mean actually that's a, that's a good point. Yeah. Once it's in the catalog. Ugh. This is the book I was mentioning. This came out quite a few years ago. It's by a guy named Mark Goodman, who was a law enforcement officer. 2015. He was a law enforcement officer. He got picked to be the forensics guy in the in the I think it was the Chicago police force cause he was the only guy who knew the the codes for WordStar <laugh>. He became futurist in residence with the FBI senior advisor to enter Paul founder of the Future Crimes Institute chair for Policy Law and Ethics at Singularity University. Really great guy. I interviewed him on triangulation many moons ago and had his rules uhhuh, which is easier to remember cuz it's the acronym update update. U P D A T E.

(01:23:14):
And I think my six rules probably, I remember when I interviewed him, I said, oh, we have the same six rules. Update is update frequently as the u of course P passwords. And that's the advice, you know, use a long, long, strong, strong, unique password on every site. Download is the deed only from official sites. And I'd say I be highly skeptical of all software administrator. And that's the thing that's changed a little bit. That's the a turnoff. This is the only one I disagreed with. He says, turn off your computer when you're not using it. Oh, I didn't do that. You don't do that <laugh> and encrypt. Which actually is quite, quite smart. This predates the widespread use of two-factor auth authentication. So you're right, we should add that. Password managers, things like that. So, but this was a good book. It still is a good book. Future Crimes, everything is connected. Everyone is vulnerable, <laugh> and what we could do about it. So thank you Mark Goodman for being the inspiration for the six rules. And I guess they, what they would change regularly, Chris. Yeah, Chris is right. They they're, they're gonna change because new things come along. Alright, coming up next, we're gonna go to Florida and talk to Wayne as we continue and ask the tech guys, Wayne in Flo. Hey Wayne. Come on into the Stargate.

(01:24:41):
Oh, what did we lose Wayne? Is he there? He has things. He has to move the gears. We're gonna, I wanna get through a bunch of calls in the next half hour. Oh, let's do it. Can we do it Wayne? Unmute. We see you, but you're there. He is. Ah, wait, we're in Florida. Are you? Hey Wayne.

Caller Wayne (01:25:05):
I had to do a bunch of circling and stuff.

Leo Laporte (01:25:07):
<Laugh>.

Caller Wayne (01:25:10):
Glad to get through.

Leo Laporte (01:25:11):
Welcome. What can we do for you?

Caller Wayne (01:25:13):
Well, I, I saw that the episode was 1982 and it kinda reminded me that's, that's probably about when I started watching you on tech tv.

Leo Laporte (01:25:21):
It, it wasn't that long ago, but it feels like it. I know, let me see. Pretty close. 82. I was working in San Jose at K L O K radio, moved in 84 to San Francisco. 87 K N B R. It was not till 19. You might, although we did Devork and I started talking computers in 92. So you might have heard those early days in the radio. And then of course tech TV was 1998, but 25th anniversary of its launch was just a couple of months ago. Wow. Kind of. I am an ancient ancient as apparently. So are you. So anyway, well

Caller Wayne (01:25:58):
Actually, I met with you at CES about a dozen years ago. Nice. and you, you had me on to, to show a little invention that I had that was a one-handed, I mean a wraparound keyboard for Xbox controller. Wow. I dunno if you remember that or not.

Leo Laporte (01:26:19):
Wow. I don't, so you, what you're showing me looks like an Xbox controller. Is the keyboard on there?

Caller Wayne (01:26:26):
Yes. yeah, I built it so that you had 10 buttons on Oh,

Mikah Sargent (01:26:31):
At that. That's amazing.

Caller Wayne (01:26:32):
Two buttons on top. And with those 10 buttons you've got the entire query keyboard. Oh my

Leo Laporte (01:26:37):
Gosh.

Caller Wayne (01:26:38):
Got cord keyboard.

Leo Laporte (01:26:39):
So did you ever manufacture and sell it?

Caller Wayne (01:26:42):
Well the distributors wanted it to be a lot cheaper than I could even make it. Yeah. So we went and did a little kiss version of it. We came out with a, another product called the Deck Text. It's a one-hand Bluetooth keyboard <laugh>.

Mikah Sargent (01:27:01):
That's cool. It's like a Rubik's 10

Caller Wayne (01:27:03):
Keyboard. And you know, with those 10 keys you've got every letter function number and symbol below the regular keyboard available. And so my, my question was the new Vision Pro that's coming out with Apple, are they gonna accept a Bluetooth keyboard?

Leo Laporte (01:27:21):
Yes.

Mikah Sargent (01:27:22):
Yeah, that's that is one of the, the features. I imagine that at launch it's going to be used the magic keyboard from Apple because they are But it's Bluetooth. But it's Bluetooth. Exactly. Yeah. Well, yeah, now that I think about it, the reason why I was sort of delineating there is because

Leo Laporte (01:27:40):
They also have a, in the air

Mikah Sargent (01:27:42):
Keyboard they do, and the me Quest also lets you use a Bluetooth keyboard, but you have to do a special scanning thing to make it work. But now that I think about it, Apple's headset, part of it is that mixed reality. So you wouldn't need to worry about

Leo Laporte (01:27:53):
This. I think, I think it'll, you know, as far as we know, it'll work with any Bluetooth keyboard and mouse by the way. But they're also Well

Caller Wayne (01:28:00):
That's what I'm

Leo Laporte (01:28:00):
Hoping. Yeah. Cuz that would be a new market for you

Mikah Sargent (01:28:02):
Think it'll be

Caller Wayne (01:28:02):
See a killer killer accessory for you don't have to stare at it and wait for it to do stuff. You can just tab, tab and hit enter. The,

Leo Laporte (01:28:11):
The disadvantage of it is I have to learn a new courting system. You know, I know how to type and, and that's, that's a kind of a steep hill for a lot of people, but Yeah,

Caller Wayne (01:28:22):
Well it's alphabetical, so.

Leo Laporte (01:28:24):
Okay.

Caller Wayne (01:28:25):
It's pretty simple. It's just a single press. A, B, c, D top is easy. So

Leo Laporte (01:28:31):
You could learn it pretty quick. Yeah.

Caller Wayne (01:28:32):
T eight i j Yeah. Then you hold the top buttons and press the other ones. So it's color coded. So the, the red ones work with the red letters. The blue one works with the blue letters, and then the whole color key is on here. Sorry, the camera's not very good. Not showing it real well.

Leo Laporte (01:28:52):
But you know, it's, it's, we were, I was with my buddies at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View yesterday. And one of the things we saw was the Xerox Alto. And it was designed based on you know, the mother of all dem demos with Douglas Engelbart. It, it was the first computer that had a mouse, but it also had a cording keyboard and there was a little cording. It looked like four piano keys little cording device next to it. You, you're familiar with this? And oh yeah. And my friends Brock and Charlie said, what's that? I said, I think that's a cording keyboard. The earliest days of, of, you know, these were the pioneers of the graphical user interface. They really thought that we would want a cording keyboard. And I guess it just never really took off for some reason. Here's a, here's a picture of that. Well,

Caller Wayne (01:29:39):
Douglas Adams of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy said that he thought that the time had come that the Cordy keyboard is no longer good. And, and that system designers need to, to come up with something better about how people absolutely hold devices and the fit and feel.

Leo Laporte (01:29:59):
So, and as you know, stick to me court reporters don't use a regular keyboard. They use courting keyboards cuz they can't otherwise keep up with the speech. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. And so it is, it is out there and it's, and it's learnable obviously. And it is much faster. It is a much better way to type. So I wish you luck. I think it's a great idea.

Caller Wayne (01:30:19):
I'm also working on a, a virtual version called Nice Micro Text Txt, M I C R O txt. And you can look that up. Something like an app.

Leo Laporte (01:30:31):
I have to say, I, I agree with you. I mean, I'm so used to the cordy as we all are, it's obviously not ideal and it's really not ideal on a smartphone where it's, you know, the size of your, not even the size of your pinky. Right. I cannot type to save my life on a little, on a smartphone. I mean, auto correct helps a little

Mikah Sargent (01:30:52):
Bit. That's the only reason that I can type as I do.

Leo Laporte (01:30:54):
Yeah. Right. So I

Mikah Sargent (01:30:56):
I've got some of your texts. Yeah. You can't type only

Leo Laporte (01:30:58):
<Laugh>. Well, Steve Martin told me that all the young comics never fix their typos in texts. They think it's funny. So there's a, there's a trend to just, that's,

Mikah Sargent (01:31:09):
You know what It's true. Cuz then I always will comment on the typos that you make. So it is fun. It is

Leo Laporte (01:31:13):
Fun. And you know what I mean, usually. Yeah,

Mikah Sargent (01:31:16):
Exactly. Sometimes not you can, you can understand what the person's saying. I was told, I remember in middle school when I learned how to type we had the typist and the, the keyboard teacher, as she was called told us that the reason that the Cordy keyboard came along was because the typewriter was set up in the alphabet style and the typists were typing jammed so fast that they jammed the, the typewriter.

Leo Laporte (01:31:41):
I don't if it's true. I think that may an apocryphal story. Not, not,

Caller Wayne (01:31:45):
Not

Leo Laporte (01:31:45):
Actually. I heard that story too. But I think it's, I

Mikah Sargent (01:31:47):
Always liked that.

Leo Laporte (01:31:48):
It's a great story.

Mikah Sargent (01:31:49):
Yeah. But I remember as a kid going, that seems unfair. If they should just fix the machines.

Caller Wayne (01:31:55):
If you look at the original patent, it's, it's the query design from 1869.

Leo Laporte (01:32:00):
Wow. 18. Where did he come up with it? Changed it. Why did it, why is it q u q w e r t y ui o p at the top row? Why, how did that come about? I wonder

Caller Wayne (01:32:13):
A couple of, a couple of theories on it. He wanted the, the letters for the word typewriter, the name of his device on the top row. Are you kidding me? So all of the letters, the typewriter are there. Kidding me, they're,

Leo Laporte (01:32:25):
That's terrible. That's worse than the jamming story. <Laugh>.

Caller Wayne (01:32:29):
He also he also was a type setter, so he wanted to try to keep blocks of type where he felt his target market was. Right. And so that's kind of went into the influence. Plus he did originally line it up his two rows alphabetically. But the, the pre, you know, post civil war error technology, just, he couldn't, couldn't make that work with the hammers. Right. So he reduced it to three rows and then made it so that less popular letters were in top on top. So A is underneath Q and W cuz you're not gonna use Q and W very often.

Leo Laporte (01:33:07):
Oh, that's interesting.

Caller Wayne (01:33:08):
And and so, you know, he tried to, tried to maximize it. He wanted to try to get a little bit of left hand, right hand action in there so that there was a little bit more space between

Leo Laporte (01:33:19):
The, and that's, that actually is pretty true. You don't, when you touch type, it's pretty balanced, right? Yeah. You don't, one hand doesn't feel like it's working harder in than the, the other I'm not writing a bunch of words with just the right side. Yeah.

Caller Wayne (01:33:28):
Well, and then, then Dvorak came out in the thirties and he put all of the vowels on left hand and the most prominent consonants on the right hand, so that you do actually more common words on the Homero.

Leo Laporte (01:33:43):
There is, I will ask Glenn Fleischman because his book he did with March and which is called Shift Happens. In fact, my copy should be coming pretty soon. He has a whole chapter, it's a book all about keyboards and he has a whole chapter on Cordy and Dev Vak Myths and Legends. So I think he's probably done the deep research into why keyboards are the way they are. This book is just a book about keyboards. The, it's really, I can't wait to get my copy. I will I will definitely ask Glen next time he's on one of our shows. Hey,

Caller Wayne (01:34:19):
Excellent.

Leo Laporte (01:34:20):
Congratulations. I'm glad you've kept the prototype and you kept it going and good luck. Maybe the Vision Pro Yeah. Will be the breakthrough through. You need actually,

Caller Wayne (01:34:28):
Actually the, the deck text won an r and d 100 award.

Leo Laporte (01:34:33):
Nice.

Caller Wayne (01:34:33):
Nice. In 2017.

Leo Laporte (01:34:35):
Congratulations. And

Caller Wayne (01:34:36):
Remind us again of the software version software. Oh, okay. It's microt texttext, M ir O T X T. Excellent. Love it. And it's it basically reduces it to only five zones that you swipe on. And that gives you the ability to, to type most things. Part of the idea with that is to reduce it enough so that you could utilize your tongue on a device for people that don't have the ability to move their arms and legs. Yeah,

Leo Laporte (01:35:08):
Yeah, absolutely.

Caller Wayne (01:35:09):
And so that's, that's my, and also to be able to type on a

Mikah Sargent (01:35:12):
Watch before on my watch

Leo Laporte (01:35:13):
And on a watch would be very useful when

Mikah Sargent (01:35:14):
I had both my hands busy and I just needed one tap. I think

Leo Laporte (01:35:16):
The world's just catching up with you. That's all. I, that's

Mikah Sargent (01:35:19):
All I, yeah, it just took a little

Leo Laporte (01:35:20):
While. Yeah, exactly. Hey, a pleasure talking to you again. Look at the

Caller Wayne (01:35:23):
Websites and and and this is the d c a txt.

Leo Laporte (01:35:27):
D E C A T E X T. Thank you for calling, calling xt txt. No, e e

Mikah Sargent (01:35:34):
Yeah. Like Tumblr. <Laugh>. Thank

Leo Laporte (01:35:35):
No e

Caller Wayne (01:35:36):
You so much Noe and either sa text or Microtech

Leo Laporte (01:35:40):
Pleasure. Pleasure talking to you.

Caller Wayne (01:35:41):
Branding for you.

Leo Laporte (01:35:42):
Yeah. Have a great day. Thank you. Take care. That's fun. That's really fun. I've been doing this long enough now that you're starting to see meet people again that you met years ago. Yeah, back in the good old days. Paul Theat writing an interesting article that I'm just being told about in the in the I R c Evernote is moving its entire operation out of the US What, and I think a lot of people who, like me, were big fans of Evernote in the day. Some people haven't moved off of it. A lot of us have and there are a lot of great, you know, no

Mikah Sargent (01:36:18):
Yeah. I don't use Evernote

Leo Laporte (01:36:19):
Choices now, but for people who are on Evernote Paul says they're, where are they moving to? There's some fear of closure. They laid off most of their staff. So that is that is a little bit scary. It's been a hard road for Evernote because initially they were you would, was it always subscription? I feel like it wasn't in the early days.

Mikah Sargent (01:36:44):
Yeah. Probably very early. Yeah. Was

Leo Laporte (01:36:46):
Not 129 Evernote staffers laid off. They're based in Milan, the Bending spoons company that bought them.

Mikah Sargent (01:36:56):
I just learned about the, the magician that did the bending spoons thing. Rie Geller, that article. Yeah. There was a great article about

Leo Laporte (01:37:02):
Them. Yeah, it was a fake Yeah,

Mikah Sargent (01:37:03):
Yeah, yeah, yeah,

Leo Laporte (01:37:04):
Yeah. Needless just say, yeah, you can't bend spoons <laugh>, whether your mind. All right, let's get another call on the air coming up in just a bit. Reed Reed is on the line. Hello Reed. Welcome. Where are you calling from? Hello?

Mikah Sargent (01:37:26):
Hey. Hi Reid.

Caller Reed (01:37:28):
I'm calling from Cincinnati, Ohio.

Leo Laporte (01:37:29):
Great to see you. Thanks for calling.

Caller Reed (01:37:32):
Great to be on long

Leo Laporte (01:37:33):
Time. Now wait a minute. The old show, you just run a marathon? Is that what 26.2 is? Well,

Caller Reed (01:37:38):
This is part of the theme of my call. I did recently the Flying Pig here in Cincinnati as the first Sunday in May. So I did run that

Leo Laporte (01:37:45):
Nice.

Caller Reed (01:37:47):
A few weeks back. My call is connected to this topic of fitness and exercise. I'm an Apple watch enthusiast,

Leo Laporte (01:37:56):
As are we. As and I

Caller Reed (01:37:57):
Travel a lot.

Leo Laporte (01:37:58):
Yeah,

Caller Reed (01:37:59):
I know both of you are. My family and I are headed out to Southeast Asia. Okay. For a trip here actually in a week.

Leo Laporte (01:38:07):
Oh, I'm so jealous. Where you going?

Caller Reed (01:38:10):
We'll be flying into Singapore.

Leo Laporte (01:38:12):
Oh, I love Singapore

Caller Reed (01:38:13):
For a couple of days and then headed over to CM Reap in Cambodia where we'll see Ancor Watt. Oh. And then into Thailand, an island called Coem Wii for a few days and then Bangkok Wow. Coming home

Leo Laporte (01:38:28):
Bucket list of for a couple weeks. Have you been before?

Caller Reed (01:38:32):
Never been. Have no idea what we're, you know, that's exciting. What a great, an adventure for all of us. I've got teenage kids 18 and 15. Perfect. So it'll be a big adventure for Perfect for them as well.

Leo Laporte (01:38:42):
Yeah. Yeah. My dad got, got me into traveling and I've forever grateful because it's, it's one of the best things to do. Just enjoy it so much. So, oh yeah. Okay. How can we help you? You've got your watch your guy. What was your, what was your time in the flying pig by the way?

Caller Reed (01:38:58):
Well this year's Flying Pig was kind of a crazy event. We had a huge storm. Oh no. That morning. It kind of made, I think the Washington Post had a story about it. There was some controversy over whether the race should have been canceled. There was lightning and I mean, it was wild. Oh wow. Geez. So I got routed off the course at about mile five that stuck in a parking garage for about 10, 15 minutes.

Leo Laporte (01:39:20):
That does kinda

Caller Reed (01:39:21):
Hurts. So I'll claim a time of a little over four hours if I set aside standing in a parking garage. That's which gave me Covid a couple days later.

Leo Laporte (01:39:29):
Oh, what a winner.

Caller Reed (01:39:30):
You can cl you know what, I'll give you an extra 30 minutes off if you want. Take Yeah, right. Extra points. So was it was quite a race this, this last year. Well, I'm, I think it's,

Leo Laporte (01:39:39):
It's good they got you indoors if the lightning was coming. I think that's probably

Caller Reed (01:39:42):
They Well it, they, they said it was later they, they characterized it as a a discretionary pause. Yeah. That you, you know, cuz you can't, you can't pause a marathon. You either pull it, take it off, right. Cut, cancel it completely or so some people kept running, but I kind of went into the garage anyway. I think

Leo Laporte (01:40:02):
You were smart. Look at the water that they were oh my goodness. Running through.

Caller Reed (01:40:06):
Oh, did you find

Leo Laporte (01:40:06):
This? That is not a good, it's crazy. That is not a good way to run a marathon, I'll tell you. Unless your feet

Caller Reed (01:40:11):
Are hung. I love that you found that I was a little bit ahead of, so that group would've been later starting. And so I got a, they're, they are in Kentucky and they're gonna run back across the bridge just in a second. And they got swept up in really the worst of the, the deluge there. And as, as they were doing that, that's about the time I was standing in a parking garage in back in downtown on the other side of the bridge. So

Leo Laporte (01:40:33):
It's, it's Louisville to Cincinnati. Is that the, is that the race?

Caller Reed (01:40:36):
No, it's, so Cincinnati is sort of, the Cincinnati region is northern Kentucky, which is Newport and Covington. Right, right. If you fly into the Cincinnati airport, you're flying into Kentucky. Right, right. So it's, it's just goes this little, there's bridges across the Ohio River. Right. And across those bridges into Covington and then back across into downtown Cincinnati. Beautifuls about, I dunno, 90, a hundred miles per Oh,

Leo Laporte (01:40:59):
Okay. Yeah. It'd be a beautiful race though, wouldn't it? It'd be, oh,

Caller Reed (01:41:02):
It's, it's fun. It's, it's a very hilly city, so it's a challenging race in that way, but it's it's a good course. Nice. So, so I'm super into my, my closing my rings. Right. <laugh>. That, that's a big deal for me. Yes. And I'm on a long streak of like four and a half years. Something you

Leo Laporte (01:41:19):
Close, there are three rings. You close your rings if you get the proper amount of exercise activity and standing Yes. Right. In one day. Okay.

Caller Reed (01:41:26):
Right, right. So you may be able to anticipate my question here, if you're imagining I'm going to Southeast Asia, I want to close my rings every day and I wanna maintain my streak <laugh>.

Mikah Sargent (01:41:37):
Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>.

Leo Laporte (01:41:38):
Well you're gonna get a lot of walking and I think that's pretty safe on a plane.

Caller Reed (01:41:42):
I'm gonna lose a day. Yeah. I'm gonna lose a day.

Leo Laporte (01:41:46):
International dateline problems.

Mikah Sargent (01:41:48):
Yeah. So

Caller Reed (01:41:49):
Has anyone, I'm like, I know you guys

Leo Laporte (01:41:51):
Remember guys, you, you're gonna gain that day back in the other direction.

Caller Reed (01:41:54):
I gain it back at the other end, but like, I can't quite get my mind around.

Mikah Sargent (01:41:58):
Yeah. So,

Caller Reed (01:41:59):
You know, I land that day is gone unless I sort of, I don't even know if exercising on the plane gets anywhere.

Leo Laporte (01:42:05):
<Laugh>, that's a great question.

Mikah Sargent (01:42:07):
There is a way to, and I think it's in the health app, you can essentially,

Leo Laporte (01:42:13):
You don't change your time zone maybe, right?

Mikah Sargent (01:42:15):
Well, no. What I was gonna say is you cheat <laugh>. I, I, you,

Caller Reed (01:42:21):
You, when I googled this,

Leo Laporte (01:42:22):
Here's a guy on Reddit, here's a guy on Reddit said, I lost a 390 day streak due to a business trip to Japan.

Caller Reed (01:42:29):
There you go. Right? O

Leo Laporte (01:42:31):
Mg. How, what's your streak?

Caller Reed (01:42:34):
It's like 1,588 days.

Mikah Sargent (01:42:38):
Yeah. You should be able to add a run, you know? The thing is, I don't know how you would add stand data from a third party app, because Yeah, you could easily get the exercise and the move done by just using a third party app, and you just could hit like the plus button and log that you did in exercise and then you and your heart if you felt like you needed to make it up. You just do that exercise later,

Caller Reed (01:43:02):
Right? I just run X. Yeah. Right, right. I'll, I'll, I'll handle the conscience part of it. Yeah,

Mikah Sargent (01:43:07):
But as far maybe you need to stand <laugh> for, like, on the, I

Caller Reed (01:43:12):
I that's, well, I guess that's where I'm also like, confused. Like if I can, I, yeah, I can st Sometimes I'll be on a flight and I'll shake my wrist, you know, for

Leo Laporte (01:43:19):
This is the problem. I have the same problem because like, if I row one day without my watch, I feel like it didn't count you Right.

Mikah Sargent (01:43:28):
But

Leo Laporte (01:43:28):
Of course, it counted,

Mikah Sargent (01:43:29):
I know was watching. So Of

Leo Laporte (01:43:30):
Course, of course it counted. Of course. Of

Caller Reed (01:43:32):
Course. But you, and this is as much about like, maybe this is a sign that I just need to believe in my own fitness capabilities and not rely on the streak on the watch. But, you know, you get caught

Mikah Sargent (01:43:42):
Up in some, but at the same time, yeah. This has been gamified for you to this level. Now you said Sure. You, you read something. I am curious to, there are

Leo Laporte (01:43:49):
Worker adss. I'm

Caller Reed (01:43:50):
Looking at some, I mean, I mean, I Googled it. I came across a, a post that was on the Apple support site. I don't know if it was four or five years old. This guy had really thought through it. He didn't really, he didn't really come up with a solution and not a single person replied to his post. And I think what he came up with was, what if I put it on airplane mode and left it on that for the entire trip, but that then you're like off.

Mikah Sargent (01:44:13):
And this is because of, I dunno

Caller Reed (01:44:15):
If that's a solution, the time you

Leo Laporte (01:44:16):
Can manually add a workout. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>,

Mikah Sargent (01:44:19):
Right? That's what I was, yeah. So think,

Caller Reed (01:44:21):
So Mic is saying you could do that, but what about the stand? You know, does that do anything for the standout? That's the part

Mikah Sargent (01:44:26):
That

Leo Laporte (01:44:26):
Not, so if you ch, okay, so I do know this <laugh>, and don't ask me how I know this, but your stand will change if you set your exercise and activity zero, your stand will adjust. Let me see. I'm on a Reddit thread. Okay. That says there's, there are hacks. My solution was to keep my phone watch in my home time zone the whole time. Obviously that's not ideal. Well see. Yeah. set your time back to the day. Do stuff that day. <Laugh>,

Caller Reed (01:44:59):
Right.

Leo Laporte (01:45:00):
Or install an app that records activity and then records it for that day. Go into your phone, set

Caller Reed (01:45:07):
The time. So like a Strava or something. Like a third party

Leo Laporte (01:45:09):
App. Yeah. A third party app. Go into your phone, set the time and date for the 10th, then close your rings that day, then put it back to normal. In other words, you'd have to close your rings twice in one day.

Caller Reed (01:45:19):
Right.

Leo Laporte (01:45:20):
Right. And then put it in airplane mode. A lot of people say streaks should have rest days. Right. You should have a way, because

Caller Reed (01:45:28):
What happens? Absolutely. And this is actually a big issue, I think. Yeah. With the Apple Watch and the way it, it kind of, it's great to get people going once you're really a serious runner or whatever it

Leo Laporte (01:45:39):
Is. Absolutely. To, because it gives you incentive to do this every day. And,

Caller Reed (01:45:43):
And if you're a, if you're a serious runner, you look around and there aren't many Apple watches being worn. Its

Leo Laporte (01:45:49):
Garmin country. No, they all Garmin. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Caller Reed (01:45:50):
It's Garmin country. Yeah. And Garmin does all that stuff. But, you know, I like the Apple Watch and I went to the Ultra because

Leo Laporte (01:45:57):
It I love my ultra

Caller Reed (01:45:59):
Really is competing at that level, but my

Leo Laporte (01:46:01):
Marathon time is about 78 hours. So I'm not the guy to ask on that one. <Laugh>, I think

Mikah Sargent (01:46:06):
I may have something. I'm doing one more test here. He's,

Leo Laporte (01:46:10):
He's, he's messing with his watch

Mikah Sargent (01:46:12):
<Laugh>. Yes. So let me see if this, if this works. So someone suggested that you could essentially do a one minute workout. And in doing a one minute workout that you kind of add, what it'll do is think of it as if you were standing during that time. That's

Leo Laporte (01:46:33):
Exactly right. Okay's how you, that's how you hack the standard. Here's

Caller Reed (01:46:36):
How you do. So that's what, so if you do that workout kind of retroactively, it'll assume you've been standing. So

Mikah Sargent (01:46:40):
If you go into the health app, you choose browse, you tap on activity, you'll find your workouts page. And then at the top right, there's the add data button. You tap add data, you change the activity type. This is important. This is the most important thing. Okay. Change the activity type to other. And then under calories, you can leave that blank on the start and end. You just need to put a minute between the two. And so what you would do is from 9:00 AM to 10:00 AM you would have, or nine, sorry, 9:00 AM to 9:01 AM you'd have one. 10:00 AM to 10:01 AM you'd have one. Okay. And those, cause remember, it's once per hour that you're supposed to stand for 12 hours of the day. Once you've added those, that should then add that to your rings and you would get those. Okay.

Leo Laporte (01:47:25):
<Laugh>, we will also put in the show notes. Mike B has sent us a Mac rumors thread

Caller Reed (01:47:30):
Where Oh, terrific. Okay.

Leo Laporte (01:47:31):
Yeah. It, it's says it's a point by point to start. My phone is set to automatically set time based on location on the day of the fourth of film activity ring before leaving home for the airport, my watch registered to the activity for the day on the fourth based on Eastern Time. However, on arriving, then I turned date and time onto Manuel, set it to Australia, thereby getting my watch and phone to think it's on the fifth. I fill my activity ring for the fifth by doing a workout from the airport, doing my layover. I then continue on to Australia. I land in Australia on the sixth, hit the gym that day, then I can switch my phone back to automatic. So in other words, he, he does a double workout.

Caller Reed (01:48:03):
And I feel like I found this guy's post, but I'll, if you'll put it on the show notes, I'll, I'll,

Mikah Sargent (01:48:08):
Yeah,

Caller Reed (01:48:08):
I'll, but see, I've, for people who

Leo Laporte (01:48:10):
Think we're nuts, this is really why the Apple Watch helps people with their fitness. Cuz you get kind of compulsive mm-hmm. <Affirmative> saying, I gotta close my rings, I gotta close my rings, gives you awards and stuff, but they need to put it in a pause button.

Mikah Sargent (01:48:24):
That's what the, there's been so many, they really do for that, that, that they say, let's make this more human.

Leo Laporte (01:48:29):
Because, you know, you know, even a, even a professional athlete, even Arnold Schwarzenegger takes a rest day once in a while. Right. Well, the

Caller Reed (01:48:36):
Other thing to watch does, if you really get into it, is the monthly challenges, which get progressively more challenging to the point where it's like, apple, are you just trying to kill me? Yeah. Like, I can't, you know, I'm

Leo Laporte (01:48:48):
At the point where it's happy if I exercise now one more times a month. It says, oh, good for

Caller Reed (01:48:52):
You. They've gotten a little milder with monthly challenges, but they can be brutal. And, and it doesn't give you, you know, much. At least the monthly challenges are sort of cumulative over the month.

Leo Laporte (01:49:02):
I hope

Caller Reed (01:49:03):
Your daily rings are just like they're, I'm

Leo Laporte (01:49:05):
With, you know, I'm totally with you on this. You're absolutely right. Well, I'm sorry, but you

Caller Reed (01:49:10):
Can change your rings. You could, if I wanted to have a rest day, I could say for that day, I'll change my move ring you and I, you know, I think that's kind of the answer, you

Leo Laporte (01:49:17):
Know, in your heart.

Caller Reed (01:49:19):
Yeah. You're, you're doing what's right for you. Yeah. I do, Leo. But, but

Leo Laporte (01:49:21):
Get, do we get compulsive about this? And there are people saying, after my streak was broke, I lost all interest. You know, I never,

Caller Reed (01:49:30):
This is the thing. It's like,

Leo Laporte (01:49:31):
I'll never do it again. And it is very be beneficial. Yeah. Yeah. I, I don't know what the answer is.

Caller Reed (01:49:38):
Well, there's this, and then my wife is concerned about maintaining her wordle streak. So, we'll, we'll have to

Leo Laporte (01:49:43):
Figure that out. Oh, that's a challenge as well. Well, how does Wordle handle the international Dateline? That's a good question. <Laugh>,

Caller Reed (01:49:50):
But I can save that for

Leo Laporte (01:49:51):
Google more. How long is your wife's wordle streak?

Caller Reed (01:49:54):
Jen, what's your wordle streak?

Leo Laporte (01:49:58):
So

Caller Reed (01:49:58):
Cute. 562.

Leo Laporte (01:50:00):
Holy moly. Holy streak. That's like, almost, almost two years. That's incredible. Yeah. Good for her. She's never's. Never we can around. She's never not gotten, it's

Mikah Sargent (01:50:12):
Certainly something that runs in the house. The

Leo Laporte (01:50:13):
Answer in six tries on Wordle. She's never missed. Like, I can't get

Caller Reed (01:50:17):
That is correct. Wow. That is correct.

Leo Laporte (01:50:19):
Wow.

Caller Reed (01:50:20):
And she doesn't, she, she, she does, she uses fun words every day. Whatever she's got going on, she'll start

Leo Laporte (01:50:26):
With some Really, she doesn't have a

Caller Reed (01:50:27):
Standard. She doesn't do that. Like, you know.

Leo Laporte (01:50:29):
Oh, I have tears. I use tears, everything.

Caller Reed (01:50:31):
Optimal starting word

Leo Laporte (01:50:32):
Sometimes. Yeah. No, I have a good starting word. But there was a couple of days ago it was, I had O T E L and it could be too many different things. I had hotel, I had motel, I had hotel and hotel, and finally I got it. But it was on the sixth guess so. My streak is unbroken.

Caller Reed (01:50:50):
Well, I'll maybe I'll I'll email you guys back. I'll let you know. Yeah,

Leo Laporte (01:50:53):
Do And have a wonderful trip. I think this sounds great.

Mikah Sargent (01:50:56):
Thank you. Regardless of however the it goes. Please have a good trip even. Yeah.

Caller Reed (01:51:01):
I will not let this ruin the trip one way or

Mikah Sargent (01:51:03):
The other. <Laugh>, but I did, I double checked and it did update my stand ring, so okay. Terrific. Thank you. I been sitting in chair and he

Leo Laporte (01:51:10):
Hasn't stood up once and I

Mikah Sargent (01:51:12):
Haven't stood

Leo Laporte (01:51:12):
Up. Yeah, I think that's the hack. That's a great, it assumes that you've been standing if you've been exercising,

Mikah Sargent (01:51:16):
If you've been exercising and standing, so yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:51:19):
Good, good. Have a great trip. Great to talk to you.

Caller Reed (01:51:22):
Likewise. Thanks guys. All

Leo Laporte (01:51:23):
Right. Take care. Bye-Bye. This is fun. We're having fun today. Yeah, it's fun. I, I like getting more calls in if possible. I think we have time for one more now. Let's take one more call. Do you wanna do a a, a phone number?

Mikah Sargent (01:51:34):
Why not? Yeah, that 8 8 8 7 2 4 2 8 8 4. We appreciate you for calling in.

Leo Laporte (01:51:40):
How do I know if it's a phone number? It'll

Mikah Sargent (01:51:42):
Have a phone icon on it or it'll you

Leo Laporte (01:51:45):
Can, or upper or the letters are uppercase.

Mikah Sargent (01:51:47):
There's a John h

Leo Laporte (01:51:49):
Is all the saying. Yes. We're gonna do John. Yeah. All right, let's go. John, coming up in just a bit. As you're watching, ask the tech guys star six. John. I use tiers cuz I like the s at the end. I like to get that. Audio is another good one. I wanna get the vowels and e t a i o n s h r d o

Mikah Sargent (01:52:11):
E. I always try to get E in there since it's the most common letter you use. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:52:14):
That's why I like tier. I get two vowels. Yeah, that's good. I get an s t is good.

Mikah Sargent (01:52:18):
Only thing is I read that R is good. It's never a plural. Okay.

Leo Laporte (01:52:22):
Hey there, you're the answer. Hi, John.

Caller John (01:52:25):
Hello there. Where are you calling? Hi, how are you folks?

Leo Laporte (01:52:28):
We're we're great. Where are you calling? Sorry, I'm

Caller John (01:52:29):
Calling, I'm calling, I'm calling from Santa Clara. All righty. And what I, yeah, what I wanted to do was make a few points. I'm a retired academic librarian. I work, I still work part-time at the Anza College Library. Really? You know, in Cupertino.

Leo Laporte (01:52:47):
Librarians are kings and queens. I love librarians. All right.

Caller John (01:52:51):
The interesting thing though, I'm a person who owned a trash eighties, started out, used to go to West Coast Computer Fair. Oh yeah. That was great. Along, yeah. But what I wanted to do is make three points about searching the internet. And this is from a librarian who's been teaching online research since 1997.

Leo Laporte (01:53:13):
Nice.

Caller John (01:53:14):
And people complained about Google because they think that the some of the pages that Google is feeding to you as a result of your search is because they wanna put in hierarchy those kinds of things that they may, may, may be able to make money off of.

Leo Laporte (01:53:34):
Yeah. Why does YouTube always show up at the top of my videos, right? Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>.

Caller John (01:53:39):
Yeah. That's an example. And the thing about it is, is that Google still has the largest database of web pages, words, images, whatever. I read an estimate about a year or so ago, 10 to 20 trillion words. Wow. And, and Google database. Wow. so it does give you the best tool in terms of the total amount of information on its database that you can search for. The problem is learning how to search it properly. When I teach orientations, I thought online research at Foothill College, and actually several other colleges, junior colleges in the Bay Area, but I also talk online research for the School of Library and Information Science at San Jose State.

Leo Laporte (01:54:31):
And one all by the way, I just wanna say all three colleges are within the ring of influence of Apple de is just around the corner. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Foothills just around the corner. So you, you're right there in the heart of Silicon Valley there. Absolutely. And still Absolutely. People dunno how to use Google. What are your, what are your top Google search tips? Help us be better at Googling

Caller John (01:54:52):
The single most important search. Search is using Google Two things using Google Advanced Search and using Google Scholar.

(01:55:04):
Ah, both of those tools can give you sophisticated ways of doing searching. You remember Boolean? Yeah. Bullions are something that most people don't know know about, but that not Yeah. Right. But Google, Google also has a proximity search operation that most people do not know. And that is about, okay, if you put in one word and type the word about in capital letters and open peren and say, put a number, say three or five, and then a word after that, and will search for those two words in that proximity in either direction.

Leo Laporte (01:55:45):
Oh my goodness. That

Caller John (01:55:47):
Proximity searching was great. Now, I mean, I started out teaching you know, databases in the colleges like sco like dialogue. You remember what di do you remember dialogue?

Leo Laporte (01:56:00):
Oh, yeah. Oh yeah.

Caller John (01:56:02):
Yeah. I used to be on El Cam. El El Camino and Paloalto or Mountain

Leo Laporte (01:56:06):
Creek. Yeah. Yeah. We just, we just saw we, we were near down your way. We saw, we're at the Computer History Museum. We saw Lexus Nexus terminal. We saw it was kind of cool to see Lexi. Yeah. Yeah. And

Caller John (01:56:18):
I thought LexiNexis, I thought the medical databases, I've taught just about everything in terms of major databases.

Leo Laporte (01:56:26):
Michael Doesn doesn't remember those days. Those those days or long No,

Caller John (01:56:30):
No. Looking at

Leo Laporte (01:56:31):
It's kinda amazing though. Isn't it's amazing, John. I mean, here we have Google, which kind of combines all of those tools. I, I love Google's. I love it that you mentioned Google Scholar. Cause I think a lot of people don't know about that. What is Google Scholar?

Caller John (01:56:47):
Well, Google Scholar is just a sub subset of the entire Google database, but it's oriented towards academic sources that are on like dot org or.gov or do gov do edu, things like that.

Leo Laporte (01:57:04):
Plus it has a, now it has a case law search, which is really fantastic. You don't need to have a very expensive Westlaw subscription to search case law. So I

Caller John (01:57:15):
Think, no, but actually

Leo Laporte (01:57:17):
Go ahead.

Caller John (01:57:18):
Oh, I was just gonna say, but most colleges provide you with an access to LexisNexis. Oh, that's nice. DEA College does Jose State Foothill. So Westlaw is wonderful database, but

Leo Laporte (01:57:32):
But expensive.

Caller John (01:57:33):
Second point I really, yes. But very expensive.

Leo Laporte (01:57:37):
Yes. Very expensive. Yeah. It's kind of cool that we, I mean, who would've thought, I think you're roughly my age. Who would've thought in our youth when we went to college and I was writing papers on a typewriter and had to go to the library and, and go to a card catalog and do research from books to, to support my, my papers, who would've thought all of this would be at our fingertips? Not just on our desktops, but literally in our pockets. Instantaneously. What a revolution in information it is.

Caller John (01:58:09):
Back when I was in high school, I was graduated in 64. I was doing for a senior biology project as are compounds that could mimic or have similar capabilities to the oxygen oxygen, carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, you know, that are the basis of all

Leo Laporte (01:58:34):
Lives. Yeah.

Caller John (01:58:35):
Yes. And what I needed was a book on chlorine flooring compounds, which have a similar degree of complexity. And my librarian had to get the book request the books

Leo Laporte (01:58:48):
An interlibrary loan. Oh my goodness.

Caller John (01:58:52):
Yes. From, from uc, Berkeley.

Leo Laporte (01:58:55):
And it takes days a couple of days and Oh my gosh. It took you days

Caller John (01:59:01):
To get that couple days or sometimes weeks.

Leo Laporte (01:59:03):
Yeah.

Caller John (01:59:04):
Yeah. You remember sometimes it took weeks to get that from another

Leo Laporte (01:59:07):
Place. That's right.

Caller John (01:59:09):
Look it, the second point I wanna make about searching is that honestly, from a librarian's experience teaching online research, most people are lousy at searching. Yeah. Uhhuh, thank God for the sophisticated natural language parking algorithms that Googles and, and go the other databases

Leo Laporte (01:59:28):
Use. There came a time that really helped. I used to always promote the idea of using booleans and quotes to get exact searches and site colon and all these things. And it got to a point where Google, I got so good at guessing. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> what you were looking for that I stopped talking about that. Because unless you really have a specific search that's, you know, difficult most of the time Google's pretty good at just going Yeah, you might. I know what you mean. You knit wit. Here it is. I gets better. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's nice to have

Caller John (01:59:57):
Tools

Leo Laporte (01:59:57):
Help. Yeah. It's very nice to have those tools.

Caller John (02:00:00):
The one thing is the AI though has not been very much helped. I have seen students try to use GT or bar or seems like that to search. And honestly, the quality of searching they're doing is lousy. Yeah. And that's because there are four things that I think are important for students or anybody using doing online searching or any kind of database searching.

Leo Laporte (02:00:27):
I'm right. That's

Caller John (02:00:28):
One. It's a creative thing. Yes. One, it's a creative thing. You've gotta be creative. It's not just a a scientific logical, organized thing. But on the other hand, you also have to have a knowledge of the search tools, how each works, what their capabilities are. And that's why I, I always taught Google Scholar when people were doing web searching.

Leo Laporte (02:00:52):
Yeah, that's a really good one. Three

Caller John (02:00:53):
Ex three experiment. This goes along with creativity that you need to experiment and try things that if it didn't work one way, try something else. You've gotta be experimental when you approach a good search. I agree. And the final quality is understanding, thinking about the probable language and words that are being used in what they're searching for. So as an example, a veterinary a veterinary document about taking care of cats would use different language Yes. Than somebody who has a website, you know, their favorite cats and all of that kind of stuff.

Leo Laporte (02:01:37):
Uhhuh, <affirmative>.

Caller John (02:01:37):
You almost have a train. You almost

Leo Laporte (02:01:39):
Have to put yourself in the mindset of the site you're trying to find so that you know how to search, search for it. Absolutely. Yeah. I think that's really good advice.

Caller John (02:01:49):
Well, it's so, I mean, those are the things that I would teach in the class.

Leo Laporte (02:01:52):
This is, this is why we have to cherish librarians cuz mm-hmm. <Affirmative>. Cause this has been the discipline since, you know, the library of Alexander Alexandria, which was how do you find information in a pile of, of information? How do you find the thing that you're looking for? And that's such a useful skill even in today's digital age. John, I'm so glad you called. Yes, thank you so much.

Caller John (02:02:16):
No, thank you folks for this program and for 20 years of, is 20 years Ofw now?

Leo Laporte (02:02:23):
Almost. Yeah. We started in 2005, so it'll be 20 years and a couple of years. 18 years. Yeah. Hard to believe. Great. Isn't that

Caller John (02:02:30):
Amazing? Really appreciate

Leo Laporte (02:02:31):
It. We've grown up together. John. I look forward, I

Caller John (02:02:34):
Turned other people onto it as well.

Leo Laporte (02:02:36):
Yeah. Good. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you. And I look forward to hearing from you more. I really appreciate your knowledge.

Caller John (02:02:43):
Well, thank you.

Leo Laporte (02:02:43):
Thanks John. Take care. Take care. Yeah, of course. One way you could support what we're doing and it's becoming more and more important. And I really gotta put a plugin for Club Twit. Absolutely. because honestly at this point, I hate to say it, we're at breakeven. That means we can keep doing what we're doing <laugh>. As long as one advertiser doesn't drop out or, you know, as long as one show doesn't start losing audience and I don't like to be on that knife's edge of breaking even none of us here do <laugh>. Yeah. You don't like it either, do you? No because you know, we don't have deep pockets. We don't have venture capitalists. All we have is you, our community. We would love, you know, look, break even just means that I don't get paid. That's fine. I can live with that.

(02:03:32):
I just don't wanna drop below that point. I would love to get everybody who listens to these shows. People like John who appreciate it, people like you who just heard John and said that was good information. If you could just spare $7. Look, if you can't, I understand. People sometimes say, do you have a senior discount? I say, yeah, it's free <laugh> you that we will continue to offer all the things we do, like this show ad supported for as long as we can for free. But when advertising dollars go away and they are going away, it's not just us across the industry, we have to turn to you. Seven bucks a month I think is a very good deal. It's one of the lowest costs. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> out there for a subscription. You get ad free versions of everything we do. You get shows we don't put out anywhere else.

(02:04:20):
Micah does hands-on Macintosh. Paul Thora does Hands-on Windows. We have the Untitled Linux Show with Jonathan Bennett. We have the GIZ Fizz with Dick DeBartolo every Wednesday night. I think we do a lot of great programming with the help of our community manager. Aunt Pruitt, you're pay his salary as well. Aunt puts together some great programs. We also have, you know, twit bits and other stuff that doesn't appear in the podcasts on the TWIT plus feed. We also have the Discord, which is, you know, for some of, I know, not by the way, only I would say about 60% of people who join the club actually spend time in the Discord. But it is a great community for chatting about all kinds of geek subjects. I just love it. It's our social network. We have the free social networks, the mastodon@twit.social, the discourse forums@twit.community.

(02:05:14):
Yes. But this is the one where, you know, there's a little velvet rope in front and that makes it a lot. I have to say, the people who support the club who are in the club are great people. So it's a wonderful place to hang. I think for seven bucks a month you're getting an awful lot, but more important than anything else you're getting in your heart. The knowledge Absolutely. That you're keeping this thing going. And to, you know, look, I can afford to retire. I don't have to, I don't have to work. Micah cannot. <Laugh> <laugh>. Exactly. Please. So some of us, some of us, my dogs need to eat it. It's not gonna kill me if, if we, if Twit had to fold, but I think it might kill some other people. Might really bother them. It might bother you. This is how you keep it from happening.

(02:05:57):
Go to TWIT tv slash club twit and join the club more than ever. This is absolutely vital for our continuation. And as I said, I, you know, it's not for me. You're doing this. It, it's for it's for the content. So thank you in advance. And, and a big hardy thanks to all the current club members. I think it's eight or 9,000 strong right now. It's really good. The thing is <laugh>. Okay, one more thing. 700,000 people listen to our shows every month. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, that's 700,000 unique individuals and we only have eight or 9,000 members. I would love to get to 10%. If we got to 10%, we wouldn't need Advertis advertising. Fine. We'd never have to worry again. So if one in 10 maybe that's you subscribe. I, everything's good. I'm sorry. I've sounded like a TV preacher at this point.

(02:06:48):
<Laugh>. I know. I don't mean never, but you're never not to send a miracle water. So <laugh> No, no Miracle Water. I will pray for you. Albert <laugh>. Hey. Thank you everybody. We are we're done, right? We're outta time. We've got a big twi coming up. I imagine we'll be talking a little bit about threads among other tech news. This Evernotes story is concerning somewhat. That's coming up in just a little bit. We gotta give the, the hard work and studio team time to reset the studio. So I think Mike and I will decamp we shall for the week. Come back next. We do this every Sunday. 11:00 AM we, we, we show up at 11:00 AM The show's about 11 <laugh>, 1115. Anyway, we turn on this stream around 11:00 AM Yes. And to 1:30 PM That's Pacific Time. So that'd be two to four 30 East Coast time.

(02:07:36):
We would kick things off around 1800 utc. You could figure out what time that is in your locality. You can watch or listen live at live twit tv. I strongly encourage you to join. You know, the team tech guys by going into our irc. You all you Need is a browser, IRC dot twit tv. You can chat with us there. That's open to everyone. Of course, the Discord is also open to Club Twit members. That chat room's very helpful. As you see during the show, we get a lot of links, a lot of ideas, a lot of suggestions. You really are a big part of the, of the answers that we can give. So we really appreciate it when you join us in the chat room after the fact. You can watch the show or listen on demand cuz it's a podcast at twit tv slash a g.

(02:08:19):
That's the website. All the shows are there. Going back to episode one, I think, or maybe not. We, I think we, we didn't, we couldn't get one or two or three. I think four. Anyway, it goes back to, it goes back quite a bit. 2004. It's quite an archive. And of course the most recent 1982. Wow. that's at Twit tv slash atg. You can also subscribe. There's a podcast feed. Best thing to do is find your favorite podcast client and subscribe to this and all of the twit shows that way you'll guest to get 'em automatically. You can listen whenever you want. There's also a YouTube channel dedicated, which is a good way to share. I apologize to Micah and Brian and Str and Larry and all the people we didn't get to. But we'll be back next week. And I, I hope you'll call back then and we'll get to you as well. We don't like to rush.

Mikah Sargent (02:09:10):
Exactly.

Leo Laporte (02:09:11):
I wanna give everybody fair, fair time. Yeah. We,

Mikah Sargent (02:09:14):
We should. Yeah. And also remember that if you don't have the time to join us live, you can always call during the week and leave that voicemail. That's right. 8 8 8 7 2 4 2 8 8 4

Leo Laporte (02:09:24):
Or email audio video is also welcome as well as text ATG at twit tv. Mike, I'll be back with iOS today on Tuesday with Rosemary Orchard. I will, you can ask Rosemary for a tip on that thing that, I forgot what it was, but she will have some answers. And <laugh>, do you remember what

Mikah Sargent (02:09:45):
It was? It was cropping photos on?

Leo Laporte (02:09:48):
Oh yeah. Yeah. and then of course on Thursday with Tech News Weekly and right here on SA Sundays for us. Okay. I'm Leo LaPorte. I will be back in about five minutes. <Laugh>, thank you for joining us. Everybody. Have a great gee, please. Bye-Bye. Bye-bye.