The Tech Guy Episode 1871 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. 

... (00:00:02):
Podcasts. You love, from people you trust. This is TWiT.

Leo Laporte (00:00:12):
Hi, this is Leo Laporte and this is my tech guy podcast. This show originally aired on the premier networks on 0Saturday, February 26th, 2022. This is episode 1,871. Enjoy Ooh, One note: last chance to take our survey. Once a year, we go out. We ask you a little bit about yourself. Of course, completely voluntary. We don't wanna spy on you or anything, but it helps us do a better job serving you and helps us all advertising to I'll be Frank. You could be Louise if you want. Doesn't matter. Go to twit.tv. That's right. You could use any name you want. Go to twit.tv/survey 22 and it'll expire in on the 28th. So take it now, if you will. Thank you very much. And now on with the show. Well, Hey, Hey, how are you today? Leo? Laporte here. The tech guy. Yes. It's time to talk computers, the internet, home theater, digital photography, smartphone, smart watches, augmented reality, all that jazz cyber warfare. Yeah. 88 8. Ask Leo, Scott. Wilkinson's back from his move. He'll be joining us in about 20 minutes to talk home theater. We got a call. I think you might remember it a couple of shows ago, maybe. I guess it was a week ago

Leo Laporte (00:01:37):
Saying Nice person saying, I don't know anything about computers, but what would a cyber warfare, what would a cyber war look like? And maybe we're gonna find out. I don't know,

Leo Laporte (00:01:53):
Because of course since I've been here last Russia has invaded Ukraine and we had, we had seen some DDoS attacks on the Ukrainian financial system. Prior Russia has always used Ukraine as a testing ground for its cyber capabilities. The Ukraine grid was brought down some years ago for a few hours and it was widely believed by us intelligence and others that this was Russia, just, you know, testing stuff. Can we do it? Yeah, we can. Good to know just a little bit. And the, and we're just waiting now to see what happens, especially as the latest news, is that right? Russia isn't, it's not going as well as, as everyone assumed with Russia's 200,000 troops on the border. There's the freedom fighters in Ukraine. Man, maybe they have a little more to fight for. So what I told her and I'm, I'll I'll guess I'll amend. This is that if I were going to target the United States and I wouldn't, of course I have no capabilities to do so, but if a nation state were to target the United States, they'd probably go after four different areas, our financial system, highly computerized and somewhat vulnerable. I hate to say our electrical grid, even more vulnerable, our, our food system, which is not great. And then there's a fourth kind of cyber warfare, which has been going on for some time already.

Leo Laporte (00:03:35):
They, they don't call it cyber war. They call it net war. Actually this goes back to a Kind of interestingly named Rand corporation pamphlet published in 1993. It's probably the first time the word cyber war ever was used. The pamphlet was called cyber war is coming with an ex mark 1993, the earliest days of the public internet, you know that's when people were just starting to get online. But I think the authors will give 'em credit, John ake and Don Ronfeldt or sorry, David Ronfeldt had some inkling that this world was gonna become more interconnected by the internet. The premise of the pamphlet, the information revolution would alter the nature of armed conflict. They talked about cyber war, Which is DDoS attacks and, you know, viruses and malware and ransomware. And that's certainly been in a, a, you know, part of our landscape for some years. It, it was estimated last year that 75% of all the ransomware attacks, all the ransomware attacks, bringing down infrastructure like colonial pipeline, state and federal government agencies were all 75% of 'em originated in Russia. And I, we don't know with, or without the support and approval of Putin,

Leo Laporte (00:05:09):
But I'm gonna guess with not much happens in Russia, that Putin doesn't get to say yay or neon. So they talked about cyber war that warfare were familiar with, but they also had this term that has not caught on, but it may, maybe should call net war. We call it today. Disinformation Conflicts waged via networked modes of communication. When one group attempts to disrupt the knowledge, another group has about its own members and social context. This is 1992. These guys wrote this 93 kind of prescient. They kind of, they must have had a crystal ball when one group attempts to disrupt the knowledge. Another group has about its own members and social context by means of messages transmitted by a network communications technologies that's network that's before Facebook, before Twitter In 1993, I don't, we had, I don't even know if we, we had, I C Q I don't even think we had aim, you know, this was, but they were, they were right. They, they imagined it as a state based activity. I mean, this is the earliest days of the internet. They already kind of saw this coming. I guess they said, you know, early examples of this would be radio free Europe or radio Liberty, or

Leo Laporte (00:06:37):
The net war we engaged with in, in Cuba, in the sixties and seventies via radio televi, Martin, federal government funded Miami television broadcaster that transmitted in Spanish to Cuba State run newspapers news services. But now, you know, we have RT Russia today, which is a Russian government news service that is widely quoted in the us that we have troll farms in Russia that have been used to spread disinformation on the social networks. It's just a it's, it's, it's essentially propaganda In a much more powerful, potent and dangerous form. So that's the fourth prong of the attack. And I think we may see all three. What concerns me a little bit? I hope it's just saber rattling, But This from the NBC news, president Biden has been presented with options for massive cyber attacks against Russia. Oh yeah. We have our, we have our capabilities. NBC news reported Four people familiar with the liberations two us intelligence officials, one Western intelligence official, another person briefed on the matter, say us intelligence and military cyber warriors are proposing the use of American cyber weapons on a scale never before contemplated among the options Knocking out Russia's internet,

Leo Laporte (00:08:19):
Shutting off electric power tampering with railroad switches, by the way. That's what, another thing Russia did they did it in wait a minute. No, I'm sorry. We did. I think, I think freelance hackers did that in be Russ, right? They, they shut down the train system for a brief period of time. You could do everything from slow trains down said one of the sources to have them fall off the tracks. That makes me a little nervous. This is, you know, we're, we're kind of well aware of the consequences of nuclear war. And there is a certain amount of deterrence on both sides because if one uses nuclear weapons, then the other could, and well, doesn't take much imagination to see the end game there. We saw it back with the movie war games. Remember the only to win is not to play. But we, we don't really have a good sense of what cyber warfare would look like or could look like. And I makes me nervous assuming that, you know, look, Russia's not a big, big nation. They do have nuclear weapons, but there really their economy is about the eyes of Texas. They're not a superpower, but they have, you know, any more than North Korea is really a superpower, but they have good hackers. Doesn't take much really to develop a core of talented hackers. China's got 'em, we've got 'em,

Leo Laporte (00:09:53):
I'm gonna guess England and Germany and France had two. It's a lot easier to create a cyber Nuclear capability than it is to create an actual nuclear capability. And I get very nervous. The idea of us shutting down the Russian internet, cuz I don't think that would happen without retaliation. 

Leo Laporte (00:10:21):
I got an email from somebody saying, you know, after this war we broke out, we thought we better get a, we better get a, a password manager. What do you recommend? Wow. And I, I recommend, you know, getting a password manager, almost anyone it'd be better than nothing. There's there's quite a few good ones out there. Google is saying, they're gonna respond to this war with stepping up security, especially in Russia. There's been calls for apple to abandon Russia, to shut down its app store, to make the iPhone useless, no response from apple, but it may be moot if if sanctions go far enough apple may, may stop working in Russia. The app store may be useless in Russia, I guess. I get, you know, I always have said, well, this is the toy store of Of subjects. You know, it's a fun stuff. It's important. That makes a difference. It's changing the world, but it's not, you know, nobody dies. Well, that could be that, that may not be the case anymore. I call for cool heads. Okay. Let cooler heads prevail. Let's not start something we will regret. Let's really think about it. And the good news is so far, there has been no move as far as I know, to carry out any cyber attacks,

Leo Laporte (00:11:48):
But I think it would be an act of war. Wouldn't it? It's a cheap and easy thing to do. But the risk of escalation is, is the thing that makes me a little bit nervous. Eighty eight, eighty eight, ask Leo the phone number. Oh, when we come back heavy topics. Let's you know, we'll lighten up a little bit. Let's let's talk high tech. As I said, home theater coming up to Leo Laporte. The guy, your calls are next. No, it hasn't 88, 88. Let's hope not. That's Kim Schaffer she's the opera writer to whom you will be calling.

Kim Schaffer (00:12:39):
That sounded very eighties.

Leo Laporte (00:12:42):
Yeah. Beauty

Kim Schaffer (00:12:43):
Early

Leo Laporte (00:12:43):
Nineties. The number you have reached, it's a craft book. Song, craft book, craft book. Craft book. Yeah.

Kim Schaffer (00:12:53):
Should I ask your mark word about that?

Leo Laporte (00:12:56):
Yakoff book. Hello, Kim Schaffer phone angel. Good to see you. Good

Kim Schaffer (00:13:00):
To see you.

Leo Laporte (00:13:02):
How is as always, how is life?

Kim Schaffer (00:13:05):
It's gone to the dogs.

Leo Laporte (00:13:07):
How many? How many dogs?

Kim Schaffer (00:13:09):
This week? One. Oh last week two.

Leo Laporte (00:13:12):
Bring your puppy to work day.

Kim Schaffer (00:13:14):
Not my puppy. Somebody else's house.

Leo Laporte (00:13:16):
Well you could bring somebody else's puppy to work.

Kim Schaffer (00:13:18):
Oh my puppy this week is a very rambunctious Husky.

Leo Laporte (00:13:22):
Maybe not bring that.

Kim Schaffer (00:13:23):
No, maybe a little critique up poodle.

Leo Laporte (00:13:26):
You know, I think big dogs can be quieter though, right? Can't they?

Kim Schaffer (00:13:30):
Yeah, they can be. It just depends.

Leo Laporte (00:13:33):
So who should I don't want, who calls us to be quiet though? I want

Kim Schaffer (00:13:36):
Them to be no, we want them to be loud and proud,

Leo Laporte (00:13:38):
Loud and proud. Who should I start with?

Kim Schaffer (00:13:40):
Brandon's an Eagleville, Pennsylvania. And he has password

Leo Laporte (00:13:46):
Loud and proud and Eagleville. That sounds about right know.

Kim Schaffer (00:13:49):
Right. Sounds very patriotic. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:13:51):
Thanks Kim. Hi, Brandon Leo. Laporte the tech guy.

Caller 1 (00:13:55):
Hi Leo. Thanks for taking my call today.

Leo Laporte (00:13:57):
My pleasure. Thanks for calling.

Caller 1 (00:14:00):
Yeah, I've just, just a little bit. I mean, I I've listened to you since I've been in high school and the Z DP. What?

Leo Laporte (00:14:08):
Holy moly. Well, it's a pleasure talking to you.

Caller 1 (00:14:12):
Thank you. So Ashley had a question for you. So I use last pass as for your recommendation and I, I use like their authenticator for two-factor authentication and thinking about it over the years, I've always wondered kinda what the best practices would be. If my phone, you know, would have to go to the apple store and, and, and be repaired. I mean, obviously I should log out of last ask, but do I need to like uninstall ASPA? Should I be concerned about those two factor authentication codes? I mean, I know everybody should be on the up and up, but you never know. I mean,

Leo Laporte (00:14:45):
No, that's completely reasonable. And I can tell you what Apple's policy is for this very reason when you send something, anything to the apple store, the first thing they do is they wipe all the data. It will come back completely empty. And I think that's to protect them as much as, as to protect you a few years back, the geek squad got in trouble because they were working kind of with the F B I, whenever they got a computer, they would go through it looking for criminal material at the behest of the FBI. And that didn't reflect well on the geek squad. It probably cost them some customers. So I think probably now it's the policy of the geek squad too, but it's certainly the pop policy of apple. I know because a friend just got a computer back. He says it was wiped.

Leo Laporte (00:15:30):
I said, didn't I tell you back it up before you send it in. And honestly, to protect yourself, I would wipe it yourself. That avoids all issues. So back it up and wipe it. I don't think there's any risk. But you never know. I remember talking to a a guy who worked at an auto repair place once you see. Yeah. The first thing we do when we get the car and we get the keys a lot of times there's a USB key thumb drive on the keys or there's memory in the car. We just make sure we just take all the music before we do anything else. We make sure we get all the music which to him probably seemed like, you know, a barely even a petty I, but you're right. You have stuff on your phone. That's why apple is so strict about defending it. I, you know, it's a good in, maybe somebody can tell me, I don't, I haven't brought a phone in a while. You'd probably have to unlock it for the people, or maybe even turn off the lock. Maybe they just wipe it in that way. They don't have to worry about the lock. Remember that your iPhone

Caller 1 (00:16:33):
Before, sorry. Sorry. I remember before now this was many years ago before I was using last pass. They make you turn off activation lock to prove that you own it. Yeah. 

Leo Laporte (00:16:43):
Yeah. Yeah. And also, so they can get into it. Right. Which is probably not a small matter from their point of view. I think it's a good idea to wipe it back it up and wipe, but it's just an occasion to do that. The good thing with an iPhone, that's not a tough thing to do. If you have iCloud backup you can do it or you can back it up to your computer. Yeah. Yeah. And so that's a pretty simple thing to do. And I would, I would do that. You're right. You're right. To be concerned. Your I, iPhone is encrypted, which is good. In fact, so is the, so is a Google phone these days in Samsung phones too. They're all encrypted, which means without that passcode, they can't read any data, but of course you have to unlock it to, for them to work on it. So yeah. Wipe it.

Caller 1 (00:17:23):
All right. Great. Thank you so much. That's a great question. Sure. Thank you. Thanks Brandon.

Leo Laporte (00:17:27):
Thanks

Caller 1 (00:17:27):
For taking

Leo Laporte (00:17:28):
Again. How many years has this been? It's we've been, we go back 20 more or more years. That's great.

Caller 1 (00:17:35):
Yeah, I was I was in high school, like I said, I think I was 17 when ZD. Oh

Leo Laporte (00:17:39):
My gosh. Oh my gosh.

Caller 1 (00:17:41):
But I mean, you've been a great resource and kind of an inspiration I'm, I'm kind of in the it field. Oh, nice. So thank you.

Leo Laporte (00:17:48):
I love hearing that. That's great. I turned you into a geek.

Leo Laporte (00:17:53):
There you go. I take full responsibility. Thank you. Thank you, Brandon. I appreciate the call. That's actually, it's funny because I was thinking I was talking to my friend and he said it got wiped off. And I said, oh yeah, I should probably remind everybody, you know, back up your device before you give it to a repair firm and probably you should wipe it now in his case, he couldn't because the reason he was getting it repaired was cuz he dropped it and he, it was nonfunctional. Fortunately he had apple care and only cost him 300 bucks. They replaced them, the logic board, which is usually very expensive. That's a little more challenging, especially with modern max where the, the hard drive is actually just chips. So it under the motherboard, I don't know how you would wipe them ahead of time. You just have to tr in that case, you have to trust apple. So if the phone's broken and the laptop's broken and you can't wipe it, well, you just have to trust apple. I think Apple's pretty trustworthy, but you're right. There's always employees. I think that's why apple has this, you know, policy wipe it first before you touch it before you do anything else. Scott Wilkinson coming up next.

Leo Laporte (00:19:12):
No ads, just the content. That's what you get. When you join club TWiT, you even get extras like TWiT plus our new bonus fee just for members and exclusive access to the club. Twit discord community. Join now for just $7 a month and support Twitter. As we continue to create topnotch podcasts, you expect and deserve just getting, earn it. So be one of the first to join. As we build club TWiT from the ground up, you could be an early member, go to twit.tv/club TWiT to learn more and sign up now. Thanks. Yeah, he's back baby. He's now he is officially a hipster living in Santa Cruz, California, our home theater geek contributor to archive.com. The great Scott Wilkinson. We mu missed you during the move, but you made it.

Scott Wilkinson (00:19:57):
I made it woo. It was, it was a tough one, but we managed and here we are. I'm looking out my window at my beautiful deck and backyard.

Leo Laporte (00:20:07):
Oh nice.

Scott Wilkinson (00:20:08):
Oh, it's so wonderful to be here. I, I, I went to school here some 40 years ago and moved to LA, had a great career, still have a great career, but now I get to do it back in Santa Cruz.

Leo Laporte (00:20:21):
I went to school there 50 years ago. I just realized next year will be the 50th anniversary of my grad joining class from Santa Cruz high. Hi.

Scott Wilkinson (00:20:36):
Hi.

Leo Laporte (00:20:37):
Up the street from you up up maple the street a little way. Walnut. I get a little ways Walnut. Yeah,

Scott Wilkinson (00:20:41):
Yeah, yep. Not too bad. Not too far from where I am right now. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:20:44):
So Scott what have we missed in the last three weeks? Has there been any, any excitement in the home theater world?

Scott Wilkinson (00:20:51):
Well, I, I mean, I haven't been keeping as close track how

Leo Laporte (00:20:54):
You've had other, other issues.

Scott Wilkinson (00:20:56):
I had other things to do. However, I will say this the I, unfortunately, because of the move, I missed one of the best events of the year, which went back to being in person called the HPA Hollywood professionals association, tech retreat. Oh. Which happens every February in Palm Springs.

Leo Laporte (00:21:17):
Oh yeah. That sounds like fun.

Scott Wilkinson (00:21:19):
And these are the hardcore tech geeks of the Hollywood industry of the media industry. I mean, mean they're the, the technical directors and the camera people, my friend, Mike, Michael Klein, who's in the chat room as we speak, Mike man went this year. They, they had it, they had it in person again after missing last year I went in 2019 and they missed it two years. I, they, they, I guess they didn't have it for two years. And Mike went and came back with all sorts of interesting information. Which, and I, man, I wish I could have gone, but like I moved in and then the next day it was happening in Palm Springs. So I said, eh, I can't really do it. Yeah. But among the things among the many that, that he learned and told me about were, were some interesting things about the super bowl, which was just a couple weeks ago. Right. there was a rumor, I think you and I talked about it last time I was on that, the super bowl wasn't in 4k because they didn't have enough 4k cameras. Right. Remember us

Leo Laporte (00:22:26):
Talking about, they were all in China, they were the Olympic

Scott Wilkinson (00:22:28):
Trying to, right. That's not true.

Leo Laporte (00:22:31):
Oh,

Scott Wilkinson (00:22:31):
There are plenty of 4k cameras that they could have had. What was missing was a 4k truck, a production truck that could handle the 40 or more cameras used for the super bowl.

Leo Laporte (00:22:49):
If you've ever been to an NFL game or an event like this, you'll see the big network trucks parked outside. That's where the director, big semis they're semi semi trailers and the director and the technical director, the production crew, they're all in that truck. Switching just like they would in a control room in a studio. So they didn't have enough 4k trucks to, to share.

Scott Wilkinson (00:23:09):
There is no up till almost right this minute, there are no 4k trucks that can handle 40 inputs.

Leo Laporte (00:23:17):
Oh. So you'd have to build a studio at the super bowl site in a correct.

Scott Wilkinson (00:23:22):
Correct. Now they are, someone is building a truck that can handle that many inputs. Right. And switch and switching.

Leo Laporte (00:23:29):
It's a lot of,

Scott Wilkinson (00:23:31):
It's an awful

Leo Laporte (00:23:32):
Line. The cable will be really fat going into that

Scott Wilkinson (00:23:35):
Truck. Well, all the cameras at the super bowl are transmitting via fiber. Right. So

Leo Laporte (00:23:41):
That

Scott Wilkinson (00:23:41):
Doesn't have to be that thick. Yeah. They are pretty big strands, but still get 40 or more of those into a, into a truck. Anyway, Mike learned that that was what the real bottleneck was. So yeah. Yeah. So we, we can't, we couldn't have that. The other interesting thing about the super bowl was that the, this was the very first time that the super halftime show was filmed or shot entirely with cinema cameras. What, now there's a difference between a cinema camera and a broadcast

Leo Laporte (00:24:15):
They've been playing with those in the NFL. I noticed all season on the they'd have on field cameras that you could tell were different than TV cameras cuz had shallow depth of field. The background was blurry. Correct. And the foreground was crisp and clear like a movie.

Scott Wilkinson (00:24:33):
Yes, precisely. And that is the, the entire halftime show was done on shot on 14 of these cinema cameras for exactly that reason.

Leo Laporte (00:24:42):
What kind of they used, do you know?

Scott Wilkinson (00:24:45):
They Sony, they were Sonys. No, they were Sony Venice. Okay. Cameras. And they did it for exactly that reason because of a shallow depth of field, which gives it a more cinema. Look, the sensor within the camera is much larger.

Leo Laporte (00:25:00):
It's a full frame sensor on the Venice.

Scott Wilkinson (00:25:02):
It's a full frame sensor. So they have lots of light gathering Cape abilities.

Leo Laporte (00:25:07):
Ah,

Scott Wilkinson (00:25:08):
Interestingly Mike told me, he learned that the first time this was done was at Coachella in 2017, I believe. Huh. And, and they did it on stage two on the secondary stage. And that footage ended up getting more views on YouTube than the primary stage where all the big artists were. I had to big artists start.

Leo Laporte (00:25:30):
I have to think that's part of the reason they did that at the super bowl too, because that show by the way was great, was a perfect standalone thing that people might watch for years. Hell they might sell a DVD of it. I, you know, oh,

Scott Wilkinson (00:25:43):
Well an ultra HD blue recipe.

Leo Laporte (00:25:46):
Yeah. Oh that's interesting. Yeah. So these I'm looking at, you can buy a Venice camera. They're not that expensive. Let me see. Well, not that expensive,

Scott Wilkinson (00:25:57):
Comparatively

Leo Laporte (00:25:58):
Speaking, comparatively speaking. Yep. Wow. Or you ha yeah, there, that's interesting. So E makes one, the Alexa that's widely used in movie king Sony's Venice black magic was, was who are, you know, our friends, the, the podcasters use and the video YouTubers use they're little less expensive. Wow. Interesting. They shoot it. They're interesting. Did they shoot it in six K or 4k if they're using

Scott Wilkinson (00:26:24):
So, and then they had to doubt that yes, they were, they were capturing at full resolution, but then they had to downshift it to 10 80 P or I, we, I'm not sure which

Leo Laporte (00:26:34):
So watch for a UHD release. I bet you anything you'll have an HD.

Scott Wilkinson (00:26:38):
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:26:41):
Now a city cent hanging upside down like a bat that would be, That's worth the price of admission alone

Scott Wilkinson (00:26:47):
Right there. Exactly. Now they, there there's a photograph. I, I wasn't able to share with you, but it's a picture of a cinema camera of one of the Sony Venice cameras outfitted to do broadcast and they had to cobble all sorts of stuff onto

Leo Laporte (00:27:03):
It all sorts.

Scott Wilkinson (00:27:04):
Yeah. Extra gear. Yeah. So that it looks like a Frankenstein's monster.

Leo Laporte (00:27:08):
Yeah.

Scott Wilkinson (00:27:09):
But 

Leo Laporte (00:27:10):
But that's how these cameras are built. Nowadays. Cinema cameras you buy in it's, it's a component system. You buy the body separate from the lens, separate from the, the view finder and you have these ring that hold them all together. And so they're very flexible. And another

Scott Wilkinson (00:27:27):
Reason to use a cinema camera by the way, is the quality of the lenses.

Leo Laporte (00:27:31):
Yes. Yes, of course

Scott Wilkinson (00:27:33):
There. I mean, broadcast lenses are fine. They're great. But cinema lenses are even better. Well,

Leo Laporte (00:27:37):
I'd like to see more of this. I, I, I, I would too. It's funny. I, I, I don't know if everybody, you know, your, your layperson would notice this, but when I watched NFL broadcast, I knew immediately they were using a special camera on the field interviews. It just looks so good and so much better.

Scott Wilkinson (00:27:55):
Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:27:55):
Interesting. Even during, even on a broadcast where it's down sample and everything. Right. Interesting,

Scott Wilkinson (00:28:00):
Interesting, exactly. Right.

Leo Laporte (00:28:03):
Well, we're, you know, this is this is the argument we're in this transition period, but I think, especially with events like that sporting events, I watched the much of the Olympics. No one else watched the Olympics, but I did in four. I know you, it was you and me a couple other people, worst raid ratings in history, but the 4k looked fantastic. It really did. It did.

Scott Wilkinson (00:28:25):
Yeah, it did. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, speaking of looking fantastic. I will just tell you quickly in our move, we I've switched from dish network satellite. Yeah. To Xfinity

Leo Laporte (00:28:36):
Much better. Huh?

Scott Wilkinson (00:28:37):
Much better. Yeah. Xfinity looks much better.

Leo Laporte (00:28:40):
Satellite has to be compressed. They don't have as much bandwidth.

Scott Wilkinson (00:28:43):
That's right. Yeah. That's right. So I, I was pleasantly surprised.

Leo Laporte (00:28:46):
Well, I wanna hear more about that, but not right now. Cuz we're outta time. Scott Wilkinson home theater geek. Good to have you back.

Scott Wilkinson (00:28:53):
Thank you. Zo

Leo Laporte (00:29:07):
Zonk. Good job.

Scott Wilkinson (00:29:09):
Thank good job. I don't. I have to tell you, I normally have a teleprompter with a timer so I can see how much time I've got left. I haven't found it yet.

Leo Laporte (00:29:19):
It's in the box somewhere. It's in, in

Scott Wilkinson (00:29:20):
A box somewhere. I haven't found it yet. I told the Packers, I, the movers, I said treat this very carefully.

Leo Laporte (00:29:27):
Oh, that's what happened. It's wrapped up in about a 300 layers of three hundreds

Scott Wilkinson (00:29:32):
Of

Leo Laporte (00:29:32):
Paper. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. All right. Well you'll find it.

Scott Wilkinson (00:29:35):
I'll find it.

Leo Laporte (00:29:36):
Yeah. This is always the fun part. I still have boxes from the last move.

Scott Wilkinson (00:29:41):
Really?

Leo Laporte (00:29:42):
No, actually I, Lisa is very good about this. She made me unpack everything. Well, maybe not. I might have a box or two in my office. I'll give you three minutes and 22 seconds if you want, you don't have

Scott Wilkinson (00:29:56):
To. Oh, I'm happy. No, no. I'm happy to be here and I'll stick around for the top as well.

Leo Laporte (00:30:01):
Yay.

Scott Wilkinson (00:30:04):
So thank you, UJA. I will enjoy the new place. Tremendously. I'm loving being here. I have missed it. I actually arrived. Over 50 years ago I arrived and went to school, started school here in 1971 and left in 78. So yeah, been 45 years or so. And I'm so glad to be back. It just feels great.

Scott Wilkinson (00:30:34):
Phoenix, Phoenix warp one. Gotta give us a live tour of the new place once you're unpacked. Well maybe, maybe not. It's so nice to hear about your old olden days there loquacious. They thank you very much. Yeah. Tho those were old and golden days for me. Definitely. And the good news is a lot of my close friends who I, who I made here. The friends that I made here while I was in college and beyond are still here. So I already have a built in community which is wonderful. Not only that two of my closest friends now have kids and grandkids, all of whom live here and we just had dinner over there last the other night. And the kids are very wonderful kids. And so we get to be aunt and uncle so happy to so happy to be here for that Salty corn bar. I'm surprised they only had 40 some cameras at the super bowl. NBC used 120, only two cameras for the first super bowl at the LA Memorial called cm in 1967, NBC had eleven, a hundred and twenty two cameras. Well, I guess there were 40 or so or so cinema cameras, if there were more than that they probably weren't cinema cameras. Mike Mann. Yes, exactly 10 ADP, 29.97.

Scott Wilkinson (00:32:13):
They wanted to do 24. I didn't get a chance to mention this in the segment, but they wanted to do 24, but apparently at least for the halftime show, but was a sync issue at 24 with, with I think Mike, you said the the monitors, I can't remember now what, which you said about why that was beat master any upgrades or changes to your home theater setup because of the move. Yes. That's the unfortunate part. I don't have a dedicated screening room here in this rental. So I'm gonna be it's actually a downgrade from, from my house in, in Burbank, which is sad, but you know, when we're looking for a house and when we buy a house, it will have a dedicated screening room. So I'll be able to get that back.

Leo Laporte (00:33:13):
Thank you. We're talking a few

Leo Laporte (00:33:17):
Leo Laporte, the tech guy, eighty eight eighty eight. Ask Leo, that's the phone number. If you wanna talk. I tech 88, 88, ask Leo website tech eye labs.com. That's free, open to all little different. If you're used to the old tech eye labs, we've in kind of rolled it back into the original podcast website, I, for economy reasons, for reasons of economy. So but everything's still there. So there's all the links that we talk about. We're putting up there. My, a Sergeant and our producers are putting those up there. As we go, they'll also be a transcript of the show, which is actually something we never had before, but that'll be there. It takes a little while to get it up there, maybe a couple of 48 hours after the show that has time codes. And that will go along with the audio and video, which we also post after the show. All of that for free. Just so you know, you don't have to write anything down as you're listening, tech guide labs.com Joe Lane in the, on the line from tab California. Hi.

Caller 2 (00:34:23):
Hi. Hi. Thank you. I'm glad you're there. Well,

Leo Laporte (00:34:26):
I'm glad you are too welcome. What can I do for you?

Caller 2 (00:34:31):
I have a MacBook from, I think it's from 20 16, 20 17 and I don't, I haven't had any problems with it. I was work on it yesterday and suddenly it froze and I tried to restart it and upon restarting it, I'd get the flashing question, mark. Oh,

Leo Laporte (00:34:53):
Nuts.

Caller 2 (00:34:54):
Yeah. And I can't get it to, I can't get it to start up and I'm not, you know, I'm not really good at troubleshooting, so I haven't tried that much

Leo Laporte (00:35:04):
Yet. Well, I can tell you pretty much what's wrong just from this the two data points. Yeah, I mean, it could be a number of things, but the question mark means I can't find the hard drive. I can't start up because there's no operating system available. The fact that you get the question mark means that probably most of the rest of the computer is all right. I mean, at, at it's at least able to do that. So it's turn, that's

Caller 2 (00:35:31):
My main con that's my main concern. Cause I I've been bad and I haven't backed up lately. So,

Leo Laporte (00:35:38):
Ooh, well that's about the worst thing that could happen to somebody who hasn't backed up. Cause that's right there. Your hard drive. Yep. What do we do at this point? 2016. I'm trying to remember. I think you can,

Caller 2 (00:35:55):
It's a and a 11 inch Mac book. I don't know what you,

Leo Laporte (00:35:59):
Oh, you have one of the 11 inches. Those are precious

Caller 2 (00:36:04):
Rose gold.

Leo Laporte (00:36:05):
Ooh. It's even rose gold. So that's the, I would say that's the Mac book is what they called that. And that was a very nice machine. I have cuz it as rose gold. I have a couple of those as well. I don't remember if you can open them measly or not. I do believe however, in that era that the unlike modern max, the, the drive was removable. It's a, it looks like a memory stick, but you can take it out that isn't, that means it'll be easy to get the Mac up and running again. But it sounds like your real concern is, is, is less that and more getting that data.

Caller 2 (00:36:49):
Exactly. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:36:51):
Yeah. So a drive not being able to boot does not necessarily mean the drive data is law. It often does, but it doesn't have to be. I think this really is gonna be one to take to the apple store. If they can recover the data. They'll, they'll be able to tell you if they can recover the data or not.

Leo Laporte (00:37:11):
It's just, it's, it's tricky. And a lot of the things that you could do yourself run the risk of damaging the data further. So somebody's suggesting, I guess it's worth trying to boot from an external drive or go into recovery mode. That might be the easiest thing to do. See if you can go into recovery mode, if, if the hard drive is usable at all. So the, so what could have happened is just a little portion of the hard drive, but unfortunately, a critical portion of it was damaged where the operating system is. That would be your best case scenario, cuz your data isn't there. You don't need the operating system. So one thing to do is to go into recovery mode. So shut down the Mac entirely, you know, just press and hold the on off button at this point. That's fine. And then turn it it on while you're hoping holding down command and R the command key, you know, the fan key and R that puts in a recovery mode and you can at least try disk first aid. I, what you wanna be careful about you, it might work to just reinstall the operating system if you, and that can be done without damaging the data. But you see my point is that sometimes it's better to get an expert to do this and explain, look, the most important thing to me is that data.

Leo Laporte (00:38:27):
Okay. The other thing that they could do, if you needed to use the computer right away is take the, if, if they, they have diagnostics, which they will tell you okay, I see it's the hard drive they could tell you right away, what's gone wrong. They can then open it up, put in a new hard drive and give you the old one without touching it. And then you can go through some data recovery processes of your own. You'd have to get an enclosure for that little drive unit. And and you could run some data recovery stuff on it. It may be completely fine. It may, it may be the data is there. And it's just your operating system that got corrupted. I'm gonna cross my fingers on that.

Caller 2 (00:39:05):
Me too.

Leo Laporte (00:39:06):
Yes. so yeah, I mean, unless you really it depends on how, if you really don't wanna lose that data, I'd bring it to an expert.

Caller 2 (00:39:19):
Okay. So when I do the command R so I, I suppress the startup key and then push down command R is that what

Leo Laporte (00:39:28):
You're saying? And keep holding it. And it'll go into a what's if, if you can, if this is running off of firmware, but it will go into a mode at that point, you can see if the disc is visible, you can even run disc first aid on it that doesn't do a whole lot, but you could try it. The problem is anything you do to the disc, if it's damaged, has the potential for further damaging your data. And I don't, you know, and so you could reinstall the operating system and it, and it's a gamble because it could be that that fixes it. Everything's fine. You go on. And it says if nothing happened,

Leo Laporte (00:40:08):
But it also could be that it doesn't, you know, so there is in disc recovery, there is a way to reinstall the operating system to kind of refresh it, try that. I think that's probably harmless. There are diagnostics you can run I don't know how helpful they are. I've never found them much helpful, but if you, if you turn it off, turn it on again and hold down instead of command R you just hold down the D key. And if you hold the D key, that puts it in a diagnostic mode, which runs off the internet, and it will give you some diagnostics that might help, that might help. So I feel like there are some things that you can try. I just don't want you to, you know, the next step would be to find some data, recovery, software and stuff, and all of that's kind of risky. You might see if you can boot up to an external drive that also will work, you know? Do you have another computer? You can, you can surf the internet on or your phone.

Leo Laporte (00:41:15):
Hello? Oh, I either put it sleep or she's gone. I think I might have put her to sleep. I'm sorry. I'm really sorry, Joe Lane. I, I we'll put, we will put up on the on website when you wake up, we'll put up on the website, some links to apple support notes that tell you about this recovery mode, the diagnostics mode the various things you can do, if you feel confident. And, and I guess the real thing is if this data isn't the most important thing in your life, the other thing that's possible. And I think this is often common apple by default, when you set it up is backing up your documents and your desktop to iCloud. I think a lot of people don't know that, but it's actually storing it an iCloud. So if you have, you know, another computer, you can log into your iCloud, a out, even on a windows machine and see if your data's there. And you may surprise yourself. I'm, I'm hoping, in fact, it may have backed up everything and it might still be there. That's what I was talking about my friend who's, you know, dropped his computer, brought it to apple, came back empty. He said, but it's okay. Cuz it turns out everything was on iCloud. That's why apple does that cross your fingers.

Leo Laporte (00:42:47):
Okay. Time time for you, Scott, you have nine minutes,

Scott Wilkinson (00:42:55):
Nine minutes. Mm ho hokey smokes

Leo Laporte (00:43:00):
Mo Mogley Mogley MOG googly. Mogley

Scott Wilkinson (00:43:05):
Now wait, this only says 30 seconds left, but I'm gonna,

Leo Laporte (00:43:08):
That's why I said nine minutes because we don't have that read at the end. We actually go out in a minute earlier. We used to oh, so, and I have yet to adjust this clock. So

Scott Wilkinson (00:43:19):
By the way, what, what happened to to iDrive? I

Leo Laporte (00:43:23):
That's that's who we would normally be doing, but I don't know, you know, advertisers come and go as, you know,

Scott Wilkinson (00:43:29):
Advertisers come and go, well, I just switched over to them just as

Leo Laporte (00:43:32):
You. Oh, they didn't go outta business or anything. Don't worry about that. They just not buying ads. That's all. All right. But I should warn eye drive. That's what people are gonna think.

Scott Wilkinson (00:43:39):
That's right.

Leo Laporte (00:43:44):
I'm sure they're they were very happy. We produced very good results, but you know, they were on heavily for a more than a year. Yeah. It's not unusual that you get diminishing returns, you know, everybody sure. Who was go sign up for ride drive did so

Scott Wilkinson (00:43:57):
Sometimes based on the ad.

Leo Laporte (00:43:58):
Yeah. So sometimes people take a break, they again, then they come back in a year and, and start all over again. I

Scott Wilkinson (00:44:04):
Get you. Yeah, I get you. Okay, well go, go get some coffee.

Leo Laporte (00:44:11):
Okay.

Scott Wilkinson (00:44:12):
Or as you wish, the Sue, the writer has been and twisted been, and I have been in the chat room talking about sound bars and she wanted to know the difference between 2.0 3.0 5.1 7.1 and twisted Mr. Gave a pretty good description there in the chat room. 2.0 is two channels left and right. 3.0 is three channels left center. Right? if, if the main number is a five you've got left center, right. And left and right around. If the main number is a seven, you've got left center front left center, right. Surround left, right side left right after the decimal point, the 0.1 0.2 0.0. That indicates how many subwoofers are in the system. And I generally recommend soundbar that come with a subwoofer because there's a lot of low frequency content in a lot of TV shows, certainly in movies and having a subwoofer is I think very important now the question is can, there are many so soundbars that claim to just have a sound bar in the front and then you, and then simulated surround around you and some work better than others.

Scott Wilkinson (00:45:43):
And in fact, I'm quite surprised that the PRI SB 300 which makes that claim actually works surprisingly well. The Yamaha soundbar do as well. However, the Harmon card en chant 800 claimed to do that and didn't do it very well at all. So buyer beware in that particular case, you have to be a little careful there. And I I'm interested in soundbars. In fact, I'm gonna be getting a soundbar in my rental because I don't have a screening room. I can't really set up a 5.1, a real speaker system, a real surround speaker system. So I'm gonna be getting a soundbar because that's what I, that's what I can do. I certainly can't install speakers in, in the ceiling for, at most. So I'm probably going to get a PRI SB 600 system, which has a soundbar in the front with left center and right. And actual surround speakers. So it's a 5.1 essentially, and a subwoofer, the surround speakers and subwoofer are wireless. So they connect wirelessly to the main soundbar. And it, I believe I'm pretty sure it has two up firing speakers that would fire back atmo, overhead channels off the ceiling now because I'm so impressed with the SB 300, which is, is in the bedroom. I, it doesn't have a subwoofer, but I am often surprised at how wide the sound field is way beyond the, the cabinet itself.

Scott Wilkinson (00:47:31):
So the, the I'm gonna be I'm, I'm gonna be checking out the 600 because I'm very impressed with the 300 Viseo is the other company I would look seriously at for relatively inexpensive soundbar. They make 0.0 3.0 2.1 3.1 5.1 with a actual surround speakers. Those are the kinds of things I, I would look at PRI and Visio the who, the writer, just seeing my background for the first time. Yes. Edmondson oiler guy, any projectors with Adobe vision yet? Nope. Not, not consumer projectors and I don't expect any ever, I just don't think it's gonna happen. Because do VI Adobe controls, Adobe vision very carefully. And the only projectors I know of that do Adobe vision are the ones in Doby cinemas. And they're the professional ones. They're the commercial cinema ones from Christie. And they cost hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Scott Wilkinson (00:48:39):
But, but Doby controls the environment of the Doby cinema very carefully and they can't control the environment in a home theater at all. So there's no way to tell exactly what the projector's gonna do, so they're never gonna license it. The only way you're gonna get high dynamic range in a projector is with HDR 10 HLG. And I that's U usually about it go to central.com and you'll find an article there by me about high dynamic range on projectors, very comprehensive. So if you want to learn more about high dynamic range on projectors, I recommend that article.

Scott Wilkinson (00:49:30):
Let's see, have I, Joe asked, have I tried using home pods as TV speakers when paired with an apple TV? No, I haven't yet. That, that would be something worth trying for sure. Cat and Jay, is there, is there a way to hide these surround system speakers? So they are not seen, not really. I mean, sure. If you, if you install them in your walls and with a grill, you certainly that that's one way to do it. I had a friend once long, long ago who didn't wanna see his speakers at all. So he mounted them behind dry wall and I mean, seriously solid drywall and then wondered why it didn't sound very good. He didn't ask me before he did that. Oh, Mike Mike Klein, Mike Mon Barco has an HDR demo in LA. Well, dang, I ain't in LA anymore. If it's an ongoing thing that one can visit anytime, then maybe next time I'm in LA and I, I will be going back to LA now and again, for one thing or another, I'll see if I can arrange a demo. I doubt it's Adobe vision though. I would seriously to out that if it is I'm shocked 

Scott Wilkinson (00:50:54):
Mac bookie says, I believe high sense announced that do vision is coming to their latest home projectors. Again, that would be shocking. I will look that up because I, I have a very hard time believing that Edmonton oiler guy, what is your go-to short throw projector today? Hmm. I don't have a lot of experience with them. I know EEPs are very good. High senses are very good EEP high senses has a try lasers. They, so they have RGB laser and I'm I'm pretty sure those are very good. I, I haven't looked at short throw projectors lately. Captain SHA back to the super bowl for a second. Why do you think the electric bill is for that one game? A lot. That's gonna be a lot of money that they spend on electricity there. And here we go.

Leo Laporte (00:52:03):
Thank you, Scott.

Scott Wilkinson (00:52:05):
My pleasure. See you next week.

Leo Laporte (00:52:08):
Why? Hey, Hey. Hey. How are you today? Leo Laporte here. The tech guy, time to talk computers, the internet, home theater, digital photography, smart phones, smart watches, all that jazz. Eighty eight eighty eight, ask Leo the phone number (888) 827-5536, toll free from anywhere in the us or Canada. You can still call outside that area, but you'll have to Skype out or something like that. It should still be a free call website tech guy labs.com. That's where you'll find links to everything we talk about. I put a bunch of links in for a last caller who was trying to recover her MacBook. I was looking up that particular model of them MacBook. And unfortunately that was one of the first, it was so thin and light. That was one of the first where apples started to put these storage chips on the motherboard. They're actually soldered in not replaceable. So when the hard drive dies on that thing, that is a problem. Yeah, back up is all I can say. He, you it's always after the fact that people say, oh, I should have backed up.

Leo Laporte (00:53:22):
More and more computers are being made this way. All of Apple's new Macintosh laptops are made this way. They don't have standalone drives that you can open up the thing, put in a new drive. If the drive dies, something goes wrong with the drive. That's the end of that computer. You have to actually replace the whole logic board, the whole mother board, which is an expensive replacement. If you're lucky and you have you know, AppleCare it's only a few hundred bucks, but at if you don't, it's probably better to buy a new computer at that point, which is sad, but that's the way you know, we want, 'em so thin, I guess, these days. And so light get an external drive back up there, you know, up to the cloud too, if you can drives die. And, and these modern things, boy, when they drive die, they're, they're dead. That's really dead. Porter, ranch, California, Kevin on the line. Hi Kevin.

Caller 3 (00:54:18):
Hi Leo. How are you? I'm great.

Leo Laporte (00:54:20):
How are you?

Caller 3 (00:54:21):
I'm good. I'm making a little lunch, having a little pasta. Good.

Leo Laporte (00:54:25):
I'm glad had something to do while you were kept on hold. I apologize.

Caller 3 (00:54:28):
No problem. I I was a little depressed after monologue, but as soon as I heard Scott's voice and his laugh, I, I cheered right up.

Leo Laporte (00:54:37):
We were talking about Ukraine, of course, which is a sad and depressing story all by itself. And yes, and the potential for cyber warfare, which is, I should also say don't nothing to freak out about because you know even, even some of the big security firms are saying we're pretty well. We're well prepared. We've known this was gonna happen for some time. And so we're well prepared. We'll see.

Caller 3 (00:55:00):
Well, I, I, I do agree with the sports organizations and everybody getting behind making a prior out of them. I think that,

Leo Laporte (00:55:08):
I think that's the way to do it. Yeah. Yes. The make the cost, you know, Putin cares about public opinion and making the cost so high that it's just not worth it. I think this is how we should, in a lot of areas, people talk about whether there ought to be a law or we ought to, you know, regulate it, or we ought to build a big army and invade them. But really social norms are immensely powerful for human beings. Yeah. If the rest of the world shuns you for your actions, that has a big impact. Yeah. And I think that's a good way to, you know, safely and, and non violently punish somebody.

Caller 3 (00:55:49):
Now, now I'm depressed all over.

Leo Laporte (00:55:51):
I'm sorry. Forget it. Forget. I said anything.

Caller 3 (00:55:53):
Gotta listen to, Scott's laugh again, but

Leo Laporte (00:55:56):
I know that'll cheer anybody up. I know Scott, just one laugh for us. Just go. Ha ha. I gotta record that. Then I can just throw it in any old time. Thank you, Scott. He Ren Santa here. Thank you. So, so okay. Now you've all cheered up. Kevin, what can we talk about?

Caller 3 (00:56:18):
Well, anyway, I've been, I bought a sort of the end of the cycle production for a surface pro four and which is great. I've loved this machine. It's a great architecture. It's ultra portable. It's what I need for traveling for just, and I love this machine, but it, it, and now like probably the like surface eight or something like that.

Leo Laporte (00:56:45):
I can't remember. I, I get mixed all messed up with Microsoft's numbering strategy. Yeah. But the four is fairly old. Yes.

Caller 3 (00:56:53):
Yes. So, but anyway, the thing failed in the battery swelled up and the screen off there,

Leo Laporte (00:57:02):
That's the,

Caller 3 (00:57:03):
And talking to Microsoft is like talking to a brick wall. Now I am shocked that there's customer support.

Leo Laporte (00:57:11):
So it's out of warranty. And, and what do they say? I mean, nothing, but

Caller 3 (00:57:16):
They, they don't even offer like a discount on a new one. They don't even wanna keep the customer. No, I'm like saying you're you're

Leo Laporte (00:57:24):
How long ago did you buy this? 

Caller 3 (00:57:26):
Surface? 20, 20 19.

Leo Laporte (00:57:28):
So it's not that old. It's three years old.

Caller 3 (00:57:31):
No.

Leo Laporte (00:57:32):
They're still selling the surface laptop for, let me see. But you have the, you have the surface pro pro. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Caller 3 (00:57:39):
It's very, ultraportable it's yeah,

Leo Laporte (00:57:41):
It's a tablet basically. Yeah. With a, with a, with a keyboard, a detachable keyboard, which is, you know, yeah. They're up to the eight. You're exactly right. They just released the eight,

Caller 3 (00:57:51):
The Mac the tablet. That's

Leo Laporte (00:57:53):
Very frustrating though, that they three, three years in, okay. It's outta warranty, but this is a fire hazard when the battery swells

Caller 3 (00:58:01):
Filled in, filled in an unsafe manner. Yeah. So now my, my recourse is I'm using Twitter. Of course I'm not getting any response there, which is shocking.

Leo Laporte (00:58:11):
Twitter is a very good way though, to get customer service. I don't know why, but companies really care about their Twitter. I dunno. What's

Caller 3 (00:58:17):
Wrong with Microsoft, but I have not heard of people.

Leo Laporte (00:58:19):
Wow. So what would you like? You'd just like them to would you'd you'd be willing to pay for a placement, right?

Caller 3 (00:58:26):
I would. But now, now after this experience, I'm definitely just going the Mac mini route and I'm going all your, your commentator on back, back weekly who loves the, you

Leo Laporte (00:58:43):
Can't. I can't wait. We, we expect there'll be a, an announcement of a Mac mini a week from Tuesday. Yeah. And I can't wait, but that's not a laptop. That's. That's not that that's portable in the sense you could put in a suitcase and carry it around, but right. Yeah. But it's not really a laptop.

Caller 3 (00:58:58):
Yeah. I'm not gonna get the same thing, but I'm just, I'm

Leo Laporte (00:59:01):
Lithium batteries. Lithium batteries will do this and it's not Microsoft's fault. They it's unpredictable. Their chemistry's unpredictable. And they occasionally they will swell. Once they swell, it's risky because you shouldn't charge it anymore because they can get punctured. And when they get punctured, there's vital chemicals that when exposed to oxygen will burst into flame. Right. Those chemicals are bad for you. They're bad to breathe. They're bad to touch. And the flame can, can expand into a more serious fire.

Caller 3 (00:59:32):
I, I don't mind that it, a thing gets old in it breaks, but if it breaks in an unsafe manner, that's kind of, they, yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:59:40):
You would expect. Cause there is some liability for that. And, and you know, my experience with smartphones is if you, most companies, if you say, look, the battery's swelling, they'll say, okay, here's what you do. We're gonna send you a flameproof box and we will fix it. You remember, of course what happened with the Samsung and the notes and you know, they take it pretty seriously. Surprise. Microsoft is not taking it more seriously. No. Do you have not? Yeah. There's no more Microsoft stores, unfortunately. Cuz that would be one form of recourse cuz often I find when you bring it and you look 'em in the eye. Yes. They, they will, they will take it more. They look at it and go, oh my gosh. So you have no response at all.

Caller 3 (01:00:21):
No, no, no Twitter response at all. And I've tried at least three or four messages I've gone at.

Leo Laporte (01:00:26):
And, but you've called the support number. You've emailed support. Yeah.

Caller 3 (01:00:29):
Oh yeah. I did. I did go through a support chain and they said we can't do anything for you. We've got nothing

Leo Laporte (01:00:34):
For you're out. They, they won't even replace the battery.

Caller 3 (01:00:37):
They they're not even, no, they

Leo Laporte (01:00:39):
That's odd.

Caller 3 (01:00:41):
No,

Leo Laporte (01:00:41):
Take it to the, a geek squad. And see if they can get a battery and replace it for you. Cause that's, that's gonna be a hundred bucks plus labor. It's not gonna be expensive.

Caller 3 (01:00:52):
I'm looking at 400. Mm oh. From, from a shop.

Leo Laporte (01:00:57):
You're

Caller 3 (01:00:57):
Kidding. Yes. So I'll try geek squad too. I,

Leo Laporte (01:01:01):
I don't think you know, Apple's replacement batteries to their laptops are typically around a hundred bucks. I can't believe it would be $400. Yeah. But that would be another argument against it,

Caller 3 (01:01:10):
Because what they're saying is that normally the screen breaks on ah,

Leo Laporte (01:01:14):
But is your screen broken?

Caller 3 (01:01:16):
No, the screen is not broken. Oh,

Leo Laporte (01:01:17):
But it'll break when they take it out.

Caller 3 (01:01:19):
Yes. This, this particular, oh,

Leo Laporte (01:01:22):
It's glue. It's glued in. That's why

Caller 3 (01:01:24):
They use so much glue that, that they can't move on. So check

Leo Laporte (01:01:29):
I fixit.com somebody, the Chapman's reminding me. I love, I fix it. I fixit.com and look up that model. They may sell the parts to fix it. And they may even have the videos. A lot of times with that glue, what they do is they have a, a little thing you heat up in the microwave. It's like a little, little Muff muffler. Yeah. And you put it on there and it, it softens the glue to the point where you can pull things apart safely. Oh, the 400 bucks makes sense. If it might break the screen or if it often breaks the

Caller 3 (01:01:57):
Screen. Yeah. Cause it definitely, they say we just order a new screen. Oh my God. A couple of shops and they wouldn't even touch it cuz they just said,

Leo Laporte (01:02:06):
Oh well they've made an unrepairable device. That's all. Yes. Let me see the surface pro four. Looking at, I fix it.com. They usually give it a repairability rating. Let me see what their repairability,

Caller 3 (01:02:21):
I just kind of wanna have it back and running too, but I'm definitely getting

Leo Laporte (01:02:25):
It back. Me look, Microsoft surface pro for battery replacement and they even sell the batteries. They say difficult 52 steps takes two or three hours. And there's a, there's a warning. This guide has been, let's see, it says exceptionally cool. I don't know what that means, but the battery itself's 55 bucks and they sell it.

Caller 3 (01:02:50):
Oh,

Leo Laporte (01:02:50):
Okay. So maybe it's time for you to do this yourself. They, they talk about the screen and how to, how to protect it. Yeah, you have to heat use their eyeopener, which is that little heating pad apply it to the right edge of the screen for two minutes to melt the glue. Oh my gosh. There's a lot of

Caller 3 (01:03:07):
Glue that, that might be the way to go. I've I've put a hard drive in a MacBook. Oh

Leo Laporte (01:03:12):
You could do this. I've done. I fixed it. In fact, I replaced a battery in a pixel five or a pixel four using their guide. And it was heavily glued in that little warmer worked melted it. They, their guides are very good. They have video step by step. I'll put a link in the show notes to this battery replacement.

Caller 3 (01:03:30):
Well you've, you've solved. You've you've cured. My depression doctor. Yay. How much, how much do I owe?

Leo Laporte (01:03:35):
Oh, nothing. It's free. And nickel. The doctor is in

Caller 3 (01:03:40):
From DWI.

Leo Laporte (01:03:41):
Wasn't that great.

Caller 3 (01:03:42):
Mr. Wil,

Leo Laporte (01:03:43):
I gotta record that and, and I'll have it at the ready from now on. Thank you, Kevin. Great. I appreciate it. Eighty eight eighty eight. Ask Leo the phone number (888) 827-5536. We'll put a link in the show notes to I fix it. Dot com great site. All about helping you. You do your own repairs and this one looks doable. Leola port, the tech guy. I feel like Ricky, Ricardo's gonna come out and sing Balu. Leo Laporte, the tech guy. I love it. That's a, I don't know where you got that professor. Laura, you went way, way back in the stacks of our record library for that one must have been some dust on it. Who is that? Performing? Al something Al something Cuban. It's Cuban. Yeah. That's why Ricky Ricardo sounded like to me. Yeah. Bob ALU, eighty eight eighty eight. Ask Leo the phone number (888) 827-5536. Rick Tite tech tech tech tech. Susan is on the line from Los Angeles. Hi Susan.

Caller 4 (01:05:02):
Hi Leo. I'm delighted to speak with you.

Leo Laporte (01:05:05):
I'm delighted. You called So it's mutual.

Caller 4 (01:05:09):
Oh great. So I have a Chromebook issue. Okay. My Chromebook opens. If I open the lid, I see a wifi login page and captive portal. So I need to log it to it says network not available.

Leo Laporte (01:05:24):
So you're on, this is when you're out and about. This is not when you're home.

Caller 4 (01:05:28):
No. When I'm home,

Leo Laporte (01:05:29):
When you're home. Well don't you have your own, you do not have your own internet.

Caller 4 (01:05:33):
I, I do.

Leo Laporte (01:05:35):
Why you seeing a captive? You haven't set that up on your router, have you?

Caller 4 (01:05:40):
No, I haven't.

Leo Laporte (01:05:41):
Oh, so you're trying to log into some other internet. Maybe.

Caller 4 (01:05:44):
No, I'm an unmanaged user. Not don't have a, a company involved. So this is something that just started abruptly. Yeah. And check

Leo Laporte (01:05:55):
The check the name of the Y access point. Maybe make sure you're joining your wifi access point. Not somebody else.

Caller 4 (01:06:01):
Oh, I am. I am.

Leo Laporte (01:06:05):
Well that's puzzling the captive portal is presented by your router, not by the Chromebook. So what the Chromebook is doing is it's going to your router and it's, and it's getting the instructions for this popup screen. Who's your internet service provider.

Caller 4 (01:06:25):
A spectrum.

Leo Laporte (01:06:26):
And did they provide the router?

Caller 4 (01:06:29):
No, I, I it's your own. I purchased my yeah. ASIS router.

Leo Laporte (01:06:32):
Okay. there, you can turn that on in the Asus features. Maybe it accidentally got turned Dawn.

Caller 4 (01:06:41):
So I'll just add one more bit of information, which I was quite interesting. So I tested this issue with a second Chromebook. I power washed, the second Chromebook then added created a new Gmail account, normal behavior. Then I added one of my existing Gmail accounts to this Chromebook. And it again, has this captive portal issue.

Leo Laporte (01:07:07):
What does the, what does the captive portal say?

Caller 4 (01:07:11):
So I it's one of two things. I, it says network not available, please connect to the internet design and to your Chromebook. And then if I use the ethernet cord, I get the out of the box experience. Who's using this computer, you a child, and then I can log in normally.

Leo Laporte (01:07:33):
Oh, interesting. Okay. And, and you get that, even if you've logged in, normally you get that again and again? Yes. Okay. That's done by the Chromebook, obviously the first one. It's interesting. So your wifi is, it sounds like your wifi is not working. Can you join your wifi with your phone or something else?

Caller 4 (01:07:53):
Yes.

Leo Laporte (01:07:54):
And it, and it operates completely normally? Yes. Okay.

Caller 4 (01:07:58):
And I've power washed several times. I've reset. Reset. The router. Reset the modem change the router admin login.

Leo Laporte (01:08:06):
Oh, good. You did all those things. That was my next, next suggestion is just to make sure your router's working reboot, the modem, reboot the router, but you did that. So when you log in by the phone, you don't get any of this stuff.

Caller 4 (01:08:20):
I don't the only audit with my phone is if I try to, like, for example, I go into my Gmail settings and I go to two factor authentication and try to change something there. It asks me to log twice to my camp there once. Huh?

Leo Laporte (01:08:38):
So did, did you turn on two factor or did Google turn it on for you?

Caller 4 (01:08:44):
No, I turned it on. Good,

Leo Laporte (01:08:45):
Good. Glad to hear it. Two factors are very, very good, helpful way to secure your stuff. So I'm glad you turned it on. So you're used to that. That's nothing new to you. You,

Caller 4 (01:08:55):
You know, I've had security problems in the past, so I'm very secure security

Leo Laporte (01:09:00):
Oriented. Good. And you are joining your your phone is joining via wifi. So the wifi works in your phone. Do you have, does the name of your wifi access something unique? It's not just, you know, internet, is it?

Caller 4 (01:09:15):
No, no. It's

Leo Laporte (01:09:16):
Unique. It's something unique. So, you know, you're joining your wifi router, not something else.

Caller 4 (01:09:22):
Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:09:23):
I am very, very puzzled and you've done this on

Caller 4 (01:09:27):
My internet or my router settings ad Naum.

Leo Laporte (01:09:30):
Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So you haven't turned on the captive portal features, so that's good. But, and in fact, you're obviously sophisticated cuz you knew to call it a captive portal. So most people just go, you know, that thing comes up when I'm at the Starbucks to log in that thing, that's called a captive portal. It's and you shouldn't see it on your own obviously on your own internet. And two different Chromebooks have both kind of given you this odd situation.

Caller 4 (01:09:58):
Right. And the second one acts normally with a, a new Gmail account. But when I add,

Leo Laporte (01:10:05):
Ah, so it's always on your Gmail account, Hey, hang on. I have to take a break, but we'll let me help you off the air. Leo Laporte, the tech guy. So that's interesting. So it, it, it acts normally until you log in to your Google account. Yes. And then it starts to say, are you an adult or a kid or who are you? It's actually as if you've never set it up before and it keeps doing that.

Caller 4 (01:10:32):
Yes. And I've looked the Chrome. There is a Chrome bug for people who have new Chromebooks with a captive portal, but they're not, they're not able to access the, yeah,

Leo Laporte (01:10:44):
This doesn't sound like a captive portal. So on the original Chromebook, what was, what, what were you seeing on the original Chromebook?

Caller 4 (01:10:53):
So I would see a network not available screen when I I'm.

Leo Laporte (01:10:59):
Okay. So you're not able to join the wifi network at that point? No. At all. And you picked, and so you picked, you went and you looked for your S S I D and you joined it and are you getting a signal in the network settings? Can you see it? Is it a assigning, an IP address?

Caller 4 (01:11:16):
Yes. And I ran a connectivity diagnostics. Yeah. And then everything's normal there

Leo Laporte (01:11:21):
And it says it's normal. Yeah. But for some reason your Chromebook won't join the wifi.

Caller 4 (01:11:27):
No, it does not. Initially not. When I open the lid I have to go through is network not available sign in as an existing user page. And then if I use the ethernet cord who's using this computer, you or a child. So if, if, if I'm setting up a new computer, but with the next screen, then I can use my existing Gmail account.

Leo Laporte (01:11:56):
I wonder if there's a setting in the Chromebook that's

Caller 4 (01:12:02):
Power washed it though. Wouldn't it

Leo Laporte (01:12:03):
Right. A power wash should just reset it to the original settings. Look in your network settings, make, don't have a proxy set or a VPN set it's possible

Leo Laporte (01:12:20):
That you have, and I would also check, make sure you don't have any malicious or unexpected extensions in your Chrome? No I don't. Cause when you power wash and then log in again, it will then copy over your previous settings. I'm thinking that's what's happening on the other Chromebook as well. That some there cuz it, if you don't log into your Google account, it acts normally if in fact you should try this on a guest account on the first Chromebook, the original Chromebook and see if guests act normally like they, you log in and it acts normally I'm thinking there's something in your Google account. That's getting connect, you know, copied over each time you log in. Cause it behaves normally until you log in.

Caller 4 (01:13:05):
Yes,

Leo Laporte (01:13:05):
Yes. And you have run the Chrome connectivity. Diagnostics. Yes. And why

Caller 4 (01:13:16):
Everything passes,

Leo Laporte (01:13:17):
Everything passes. It's a mystery. You don't have a hidden S S I D right? You're not hiding your SS. I D no. And your, your wifi settings. Okay. I'm thinking you have turned on and security maybe on your Google account.

Caller 4 (01:13:39):
So it's possible. So that's one thing I was gonna do is well, if I power wash, do the Chrome flags get reset. If I,

Leo Laporte (01:13:48):
Yeah. Everything gets reset when you log in, but not until you log in. So if it operates normally with a throw account, it is something in your Google account that some setting in your Google account,

Leo Laporte (01:14:05):
You obviously know what you're talking about. If you're talking about Chrome flags and so forth. So I will adjust my conversation to assume that, you know what you're you're doing here, but, you know, I have, when it's callers come in, sometimes they don't even know what the name of the browser is. Obviously you're much more sophisticated. So there is this, I'm looking at a, a Chromebook support page that seems related. And I suspect you've seen this because it's mentions captive portal. I'm unable to use as a captive. Well, now you can use a captive portal. If you, in fact, that's another thing to check, go to somebody else's wifi, go to a I have to run unfortunately, but go to a coffee up and try it there. And if it gets it there, then it is your Chrome account. Not, you know, it's something going on in Google.

Leo Laporte / Johnny Jet (01:14:58):
He's been everywhere, man. He's Johnny jet. Our traveling guy joins us every week at this time to talk about hitting the road. Johnny, have you hit the road yet? We are actually, we've been packing right now. We're getting ready to go. Hit the road packing. Are you going to Mandalay? Well, you'll see. I tell you next week, I'll call in with hope and Crosby on the road to somewhere. That's nice. It's nice. It feels good. Doesn't it? It really does. I was just talking about it with my wife. Like it just, we have not done this in where we're getting on a plane in over six months and I, you know, I it's with trepidation, but the center for disease control is now saying, I don't know if you can trust these guys. They seem a little bit politicized these days, but they saying it's, it's up to your county.

Leo Laporte / Johnny Jet (01:15:47):
And many, you know, 70% of us no longer have to wear masks at any time. It does feel like this is the time to, to maybe judiciously step out. It does. I mean, we did this in June when the cases went down, let's, let's hope it doesn't go back up, but right now they're down and it's time to get out there. So we're going the air, you know, the CDC did not loosen up the mass mandates for the plane, so have to wear it on the plane. Okay. Yep. They they're they're most likely gonna renew 'em I, I mean, they're pretty much guaranteed to renew 'em it's funny, cuz that may be the safest part of your journey. It's the airport. That's really a more cost for concern the air on the plane's pretty good unless you're sitting right next to somebody.

Leo Laporte / Johnny Jet (01:16:31):
Exactly. So you know, I wrote a couple posts this week. I don't know if you wanna talk about five ways travel's gonna change cuz of the war in Ukraine. Oh, you're interested in that. I didn't even think of that. How is the, how is that what's happening there? Well, there's a lot going on. Obviously number one is travel does not compare to what's going on there. You know, these guys, great tragedy, livelihood, great tragedy. In fact, inspiring heroism. Unbelievable. I mean that, Zelensky his quote, you know, send ammunition, not a ride. I, you know, I tear up when I he's been posting videos on Facebook and it's we do it. We haven't in this era, been able to see such heroism. It's really, it's amazing. Yeah. We're really seeing what war is like, like in real time's terrifying, terrify. It's insane, but I'm not flying to Keve anytime soon.

Leo Laporte / Johnny Jet (01:17:23):
It's going to Poland there. Yeah. Poland's I mean, listen, I just think, first of all, you know, number one gas prices are going up. So no matter what your, what boat of transportation, you're taking a cruise flights, driving, all those all that's gonna go up and you're gonna pay for it. Fuel is more expensive. Yep. Definitely. You're gonna see flights canceled also longer flights because airspace is getting closed. So UK band, which is a Russian carrier, so then Russia banned UK. And you know, if you ever flown from London to Asia, you go right over Russia for most of the trip. Oh, so you have to re round. Now you have to go around it. So either have to make a stop or it's just gonna take a lot longer and it's gonna cost more money in fuel and time. So, and now just you know, it's all half happening as we speak, but Lithuania just closed aerospace to Russia, Poland, Estonia, Lavia, Bulgaria, Romania, Czech Republic.

Leo Laporte / Johnny Jet (01:18:18):
So things are happening. I mean also cruise ITERS are changing. People are all the cruise lines are pulling out of Russia. Even if you know nothing's happening there. They're just like we don't a couple of cruises to St. Petersburg. It was a wonderful you too. It's beautiful court and a beautiful destination, but yeah, I wouldn't want to go there now. They don't, they don't wanna support him. And Rick Steves who has, you know, one of the biggest tour guides and tour and, and guide books. He, he just came out yesterday and he wrote, he tweeted, you know, our mission at Rick Steves is to help Americans understand the world through true travel. But when we bring travelers to Russia, we also bring their dollars dollars that that would support Putin's aggression. And we have now canceled all of our 20, 22 tours to Russia and and also the sport events, which is huge business for travel.

Leo Laporte / Johnny Jet (01:19:07):
You know, the, the world cup, the formula one, there was a big soccer match come going on. And a couple months they, they, they, they moved it to one was moved. You know, you, it's sad because I'm sure the people of Russia are good people. And then definitely, and it's a shame that they have to suffer because they have a terrible leader. That's exactly all the Russians I've met are almost all of them. I met are really good people. And here in LA, they did a story on the news about these Russians are joining these Ukrainian protests saying that we're ashamed to be Russian right now. Yeah. And I, I, I, that's amazing too. Talk about heroism. That's a brave thing to do to protest, especially there Russian. Yeah. Yeah. But even it's even going down to like alcohol, us bars and liquor stores are now pulling Russian vodka off the shelves.

Leo Laporte / Johnny Jet (01:19:55):
Yeah. And that is their way of sanction. And the other thing, by the way, and this is completely not travel related, but there are Ukrainian tech companies, which you might wanna support at this time. One of my favorite companies, grammar Lee is based in Ukraine. The founders of Ukrainian. Yeah. They do programmers of Ukrainian. It's a great little plugin that helps helps you write better. It's a, it's like a spell checker only for grammar. How you spell it? G grammar Lee, G R a M M a R L Y. Okay. And I think they have a blog post about this. We heard from them because they actually said, if, if you're gonna support the war for Ukraine, we don't want to advertise on your show. And I said, Nope, we're not supporting the war in Ukraine. We're supporting the Ukraines Ukrainians against the Russian aggressor.

Leo Laporte / Johnny Jet (01:20:45):
So there are a lot, it's a, it's a tech center, lot of companies, lot of very talented programmers in Ukraine. I've never been to Ukraine. I I've been around it, but I, I I'd love to go. And you know, let's hope that happens. Mac paw, which makes clean my Mac spark mail there quite a few, quite a few. Anyway we support, I'll tell you what, we support the people of Russia. We support the people of Ukraine. We don't support the leadership in Russia that is acting this way. That's a hundred percent. Yeah. And I think we can't send them our dollars at this point. I think that's appropriate. Plus I, I wouldn't feel safe going to Russia right now, frankly. No, listen. I mean, when I was on my seaboard cruise, we'd pull up to the dock. There was a dead body on the dock.

Leo Laporte / Johnny Jet (01:21:33):
Nice put and they wouldn't put a cover. They wouldn't put a, they wouldn't put a sheet over it that's the captain was begging for hours. Yeah. Yeah. I enjoy, you know, the Hermitage museum is one of the great museums in the world in St. Petersburg. It's a beautiful city. The people of St Peter's a great resilient people who survived the Nazi siege for many years and, you know, with great loss. But yeah, I won't be going there until this is resolved and you know, what, the best thing that could happen, the people of Russia say, yeah, we, we don't like Putin either. Let's just get rid of this guy. And I think that's what will happen. Let's hope. I hope so. That's yeah. That was time. We got, you got two minutes. Anything else you wanna? Yeah. So if, so, if people are going to Europe this summer, which, you know, I know people will be freaked out about going, but listen, unless you're going along that border, you really have nothing to worry about.

Leo Laporte / Johnny Jet (01:22:23):
It's actually probably one of the better times to go, because people will be welcoming you and happy to see you. It's kind like when Ebola broke out in, in what of Africa, South Africa and east Africa really got crushed, even though it's thousands of miles apart. And so it's, it's kinda like if, you know, if a bomb went off in Cleveland or there was a riot in Cleveland, there's no reason not to go to, to New York city or Chicago. So you just have to look at it that way. Yeah. Yeah. And actually I have a website for you about if you are traveling between countries in Europe, I can mention it next week, cuz we can go a little bit in more detail. Cause it's a really cool site about, you know, if you are traveling between what you need to know, especially COVID related.

Leo Laporte / Johnny Jet (01:23:05):
And yeah. I just, one of one of my favorite photo apps is called Luminar comes from a company called Skyla, which I just realized I just remembered is from Keve. And in fact, if you go to Skyla S K Y L U m.com, they have a big button at the top save Ukraine, do fund or defend democracy. They say we are, we were proudly founded in Ukraine. Our core development team is based in Keve. Yeah, just, you know, we're in a global society these days. That's why I agree with you. Travel is so important to understand the cultures and people of every country. And it's just a terrible thing when one country decides to act as an outlaw it is, and they should be shunned. They should be shunned until they until they start acting like a good citizen of the world. Thank you, Johnny jet, Johnny jet.com. Read his article five ways. Travel will change because of the war in ukraine@johnnyjet.com, his newsletters there they're free. And they're great. Thank you, Johnny. Thank you.

Leo Laporte / Johnny Jet (01:24:25):
Hello. So I didn't wanna scare people about the dead body, but it was disturbing to see that's very disturbing. Yeah. The Lisa, after we went, it was, it was gang related. They said, yeah. After we went to St. Petersburg, Lisa said, I don't really want to go back there. I felt, I felt a host. She's very open to the energies of places and how people are reacting. I've been there twice and I enjoyed it. In fact, I wanted to go to Moscow. I wanted to see more of Russia. She says, you know, I'm not sure I want to go back there yet. And now I'm thinking, you know, yeah, maybe, maybe you were mom. Definitely not going back for were sensing something. But I enjoyed it. I really enjoyed it. Oh, I enjoyed it. But it, but it is, you could tell it was kind of a police state even back then, you know, definitely people, I saw the cops going up to people randomly asking for their passports.

Leo Laporte / Johnny Jet (01:25:12):
Yeah. Yeah. And when you go in, they give you this card and you gotta keep it in your passport. Don't lose it. You can't go off on the tour. Can't you have to go anywhere tours. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. I got a quick question for you. Yes. So what do you, what do you recommend about with apple tags? Do you think, you think you know, I should put some in my check bags. I do. I keep one in my bag. The only thing to be aware of is, so I have one in my bag which is helpful. But when you then leave your bag in your hotel room and, and, and walk away, your phone will say, you left your you're bag behind and which is a not super annoying. And in fact, it's just reassurance that it's working. Right. But you will get notifications when you leave things with air tags behind.

Leo Laporte / Johnny Jet (01:26:00):
Right. Other than that, that's fine. But I, you know, I was gonna put one in my carryon bag. I carry my check. I have one of my carryon, just God forbid, ever gets stolen. I wanna know, you know, where they, where they dump. No, it's good. And because theres, it needs iPhones, but there are so many iPhones all over the place, less so in Europe depends what country you're in, in the us they're everywhere. And so in the effect you have a mass tracking network for your stuff. So yeah, I carry on my keys. I have an air tag. Okay. That's more cuz I lose my keys in the house than anything else. Yeah. but I have one in my bag. I have one in, in my purse. So yeah. I mean, I think they're, I think it's a good idea. They're cheap if you buy four of them.

Leo Laporte / Johnny Jet (01:26:36):
Yeah. A hundred bucks. Yep. $99. Yep. And I got one more question from a reader. They ask me how safe or unsafe is your, you know, your phone as your electronic room key. And I was like, you know what? I'm not a hundred percent. It's fine. But I mean, I don't think other people are gonna be able to crack that code to you. No. Bluetooth historically has had some problems it's using Bluetooth, but it's using Bluetooth El I think in most cases people are of course banging on it to make sure it's secure. I haven't heard about, of any problems. There certainly are problems with card, key door systems. Right. probably much more significant. So I think Bluetooth, I would say choose that if you had the choice, I would choose the phone. Would you? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I've walked in to rooms where they weren't mine with a hotel room key.

Leo Laporte / Johnny Jet (01:27:22):
Yeah. Key card, the car system. And there was a well known burglary gang that had built a little fake car tea that they could get into any room and they were going around and yeah, they're not super secure. I think that this Bluetooth's new. So watch, you know, people will be banging on it to see if they can find a pro. Well, and one quick tip for people always use that, you know, to close the door, whatever you call that thing, the locked up. Oh yeah. At the top because you can't access it. People can't access that. Right. So John, you're good. Tell a story about that. I hope you have a wet, are you gonna be on just for the week or? No. A little bit longer. Okay. So no. Are you gonna be here next week? You think? Oh, definitely. I'll be there. Oh, you'll be somewhere. I'll be there. I'll can't wait, I'll be there. I not in this seat though. In some other seat. Yeah. All right. Well have a wonderful trip. Thank you. All right. Take care. Take care. Leo Laporte, the tech eye eighty eight eighty eight. Ask the phone number back to the phones we go. Kevin is on the line for Pensacola, Florida. Hi Kevin.

Caller 5 (01:28:32):
Hello, sir. How are

Leo Laporte (01:28:33):
You? I am very well. How are you sir?

Caller 5 (01:28:35):
Doing great. So what I'm looking to do is upgrade my monitor and that sounds simple, but there's a couple of factors there. So right now I'm using a dual monitor setup and I'm thinking about going to a 34 or 38 inch ultra wide.

Leo Laporte (01:28:54):
Do all I could say is, you'll be glad.

Caller 5 (01:28:59):
That sounds easy, but here's the, the quirk is I remote into work now and with the post COVID stuff and I use RDP. Yeah. And so I'm, I'm mimicking my dual monitor at work and you know, and now it's gonna be a single monitor. Will that happen with a single monitor like that?

Leo Laporte (01:29:23):
So work has two monitors.

Caller 5 (01:29:26):
Yep. And I have two at home

Leo Laporte (01:29:27):
And you have two at home. Really? It's a function of RDP. And how you set up RDP at your home.

Caller 5 (01:29:36):
Right.

Leo Laporte (01:29:37):
So it's not, so what you're mirroring is necessarily what you're seeing at work that you get to set with the R D P. So I would say don't worry about it. It will either you'll have a, you'll have a window on your existing monitor because it, it can't, it's not getting enough information from the PC at work or you'll, or it will, it will spread out as you say to spread. I wouldn't worry about it. I think that, you know, you're gonna get the best thing you could get no matter what, regardless of the monitor.

Caller 5 (01:30:11):
Well, the, the thing I liked about the the ultra wide is the picture by picture was kind of neat. Yeah. That's not gonna work work in the RDP. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:30:20):
So it's really, it's what RDP capabilities there are. I mean, in RDP you can say, I want to use all my monitors and it will spread out, but it's not, it's not, it's not. I guess the thing to understand is it's not saying, oh, this is what is showing at work. So I have to show the same thing at your, at home. It's not, it's looking, it's talking to the operating system. And so the operating system can say, no, I'm, I'm gonna display this as a, you know 34 inch you know, 4k screen. And if the operating system can send that information, it'll send it and, and RDP will, will, will display it. So really it's I, I would say, get the monitor you want at home and RDP will accommodate it.

Caller 5 (01:31:01):
Okay. Cause I, again, I couldn't be ever thinking this, but you know, like LG has their own split screen software.

Leo Laporte (01:31:10):
Yeah. So stuff like that, RDP won't, you know, won't really know about that's what I thought. Yeah. There's some beautiful monitors out there. Alienware announced one at CES. The, I think is gonna be remarkable. It's an OED, which means you're gonna, I mean, depends what you, how much image quality you want. But their OED is actually surprisingly inexpensive, it's only 1299. I ha I have a very nice OED monitor, 55 inch OED monitor for gaming. And it's fantastic, but a bigger screen is always better. My wife uses a 49 inch, one of those ultra wides. She would use one at working at one at home cuz she does a lot of spreadsheets and having that capability to stretch out your spreadsheet and see all the rows is all the columns I should say is phenomenal. So okay. Every, every bit of research I've, I've seen says bigger is better when it comes to the monitor. The more you can see in one glance, the better. And honestly, I think a, a big, big single monitor is superior to dual monitors because you don't have the bezel everything's all together and most operating systems now can handle it, be windows for sure, because there are so many big monitors,

Caller 5 (01:32:27):
Right?

Leo Laporte (01:32:28):
She has a, an Asus. We use a Dell. That's also very good. Those are both 49 inch. I have a 55 inch alien wear, which is also Dell. That's just their gaming brand and the reviews coming in on this alien where 34 inch are phenomenal. This is one of those wide, slightly curved monitors.

Caller 5 (01:32:48):
Right. I was, you know, part of the thinking is too, is I'm gonna graduate from two devices to three and I'd have the three ports and the monitor you I'm looking at. Yep. And then I can flip between those and it was either that or go to a KVM switch, which, you know,

Leo Laporte (01:33:07):
Kvms just a little more convenient. You, you know, you can switch ports with the remote that comes with the monitor or with the bottom buttons on the monitor. So that's a little bit of a pain. If you don't do a lot of switching back and forth, that's not a problem. That's how to do it. When I get a Mac mini, it's gonna go on that 55 inch next to the PC. And I will just I don't think I, you know, you can get keyboards. I have a keyboard that will switch so I can use the same keyboard and mouse. And then yeah, I'll have to manually switch the monitor. A KVM would give you one button that could do that big deal.

Caller 5 (01:33:40):
Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:33:41):
A KVMs ad sometimes add more problems than they solve these virtual key, you know, keyboard monitor and mouse devices.

Caller 5 (01:33:51):
Yeah. That was one of the concerns. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:33:53):
Yeah. Not, not using a KVM is, is probably alright. If you don't mind switching the port, the port back and forth on the monitor, but big is better. Big is definitely better. And some of these monitors, HP makes one, you can have both hooked up. If it's a big enough monitor, the, the left side of the screen can go to the computer on the left, the right side of the screen computer on the right. You can have both hooked up at the same time. That's even better.

Caller 5 (01:34:15):
Right?

Leo Laporte (01:34:16):
Yeah.

Caller 5 (01:34:17):
That's, that's a picture by picture.

Leo Laporte (01:34:18):
That's the picture by picture. Yep.

Caller 5 (01:34:21):
Okay. Excellent.

Leo Laporte (01:34:22):
Yeah. Very nice way to go. Nice. Enjoy. You're gonna have a great setup. It sounds like.

Caller 5 (01:34:26):
Thanks, sir.

Leo Laporte (01:34:27):
All right. Take care, Kevin. I should have asked, are you in the service, Kevin?

Caller 5 (01:34:33):
Excuse

Leo Laporte (01:34:33):
Me. Are you in the service?

Caller 5 (01:34:35):
No sir. I'm not I work for a big bank here.

Leo Laporte (01:34:38):
Okay. You're just so polite.

Caller 5 (01:34:40):
Thank you.

Leo Laporte (01:34:41):
And I know there's a lot, lot of people in the service in Pensacola. All right. Have a great day. Yes, sir. Take care. I don't get Carl, sir. All that often. Lets let's let's put it that way. Scott from DeLuca lake. Hi Scott Leo. Laporte the tech guy.

Caller 6 (01:34:55):
Hi Neil. Long time listener since the beginning.

Leo Laporte (01:34:59):
Great to have you.

Caller 6 (01:35:01):
Okay. At my job. We're all competing for hours on a scheduling app. Every time hours are posted by the time I select any they're already taken.

Leo Laporte (01:35:13):
I hate it. When that happens.

Caller 6 (01:35:15):
I have a 3g iPhone seven on Verizon.

Leo Laporte (01:35:18):
Well, you're gonna have to replace that at the end of the year. Anyway,

Caller 6 (01:35:22):
Do you think if I bought a new 5g iPhone, it would make a difference. It

Leo Laporte (01:35:25):
Might. What are these other guys doing? Have you talked to anybody? How do you get in so quickly? Did you ask them? See that's

Caller 6 (01:35:33):
Thing. I was standing next to like four guys. Last time they were posted and two of them have newer phones

Leo Laporte (01:35:40):
And they were in like that.

Caller 6 (01:35:42):
Yes. It it's a matter of a second or two difference.

Leo Laporte (01:35:46):
Oh wow. What a competition? Holy cow. Yeah, sure. A faster. So it's faster in two ways. 5G has lower latency and bandwidth, so it will help there, but also a newer phone will have faster processors. And so is it, is it, you said it's an app or is it a website that you have to load up?

Caller 6 (01:36:07):
No, it's an app. It's

Leo Laporte (01:36:08):
An app. Okay. So that's, that's a little bit more of an unknown, but you know, the speed of the processor might well have to have some to do with how fast, when you, when you is you push a button and says, show me the assignments or how does it, what does the, how does it work?

Caller 6 (01:36:26):
They're blocks of time.

Leo Laporte (01:36:27):
Yeah. And in the app, do they just show up, like you launch the app and it says they're there they are.

Caller 6 (01:36:33):
They drop 'em at a certain time. Ah,

Leo Laporte (01:36:36):
Does the app automatically refresh?

Caller 6 (01:36:40):
If you scroll up and down, it does. Okay. So yeah, I sit there refreshing, refreshing.

Leo Laporte (01:36:48):
So you pull it down, you pull it down, pull it down. Finally it goes. Yeah, absolutely. That's both internet speed and speed of processor. A newer phone will benefit you in both cases. 3G is very slow. So you're gonna have to buy a new one anyway. Verizon's phasing out those 3g towers at the end of the year.

Caller 6 (01:37:04):
Fantastic. See, now that I have the, your opinion,

Leo Laporte (01:37:08):
I'll make more money, honey. I'll make more money. It pays for itself, honey.

Caller 6 (01:37:13):
Absolutely.

Leo Laporte (01:37:14):
That's all you have to say. And, and, you know, get the, do yourself a favor, get a nice iPhone 13, get the state of the yard. Why not?

Caller 6 (01:37:23):
Well, the other thing is on the rumors side, it said March 8th, the moves are coming

Leo Laporte (01:37:29):
Out. So what will come out almost certainly a week from Tuesday, all rumor is an iPhone se that will be the lower cost, but that will be adequate. It'll have 5g and it'll have a better processor. That might be all. You need save you money. Leo Laporte, the tech guy. Yeah. The 

Leo Laporte (01:38:01):
So what apple typically does with the se is they put, they'll probably put the, a 15, their latest chip in there. The iPhone 13 chip in there it'll be an older body. I don't think it'll have a home button. We don't know the rumors. It will not have a home button. It'll be face ID. So it'll probably be like a 10, you know, or 10 S or something like that. It'll have 5g, it'll have the latest chip and it'll be about half the price of a normal iPhone. So that will be a good one to go with, but we won't know the exact details till the announcement. And we won't know if it's March 8th until Tuesday, but I think even though people don't have to travel to these events anymore, they're all streamed live. My guess is apple will send out an invite on Tuesday. That's what they usually do. So all he said was he has a 3g phone, which by itself, I mean, I don't know what a 3g, the 3g iPhone's really old. That must be like a three, Maybe the four, right? It could very well be just processing speed. It's probably not a lot of data.

Leo Laporte (01:39:18):
He said seven. Oh Hmm. The seven should support LTE. Yeah. Huh? Yeah, no, I know that was the first one of support. 3G. The question is what was the last phone to support to only 3g. He said seven. Yeah. If it's a seven you're right. He has LTE Get, get the se And that's the other thing I should have mentioned with 5g. You also want to check what kind of 5g is available in your area. If you, you know, it probably won't be millimeter wave, but if it's mid band, that's very fast, you should beat all the other guys. If you could do that, I was getting 500 megabits down on my pixel six with T-Mobile's mid band. It's incredible.

Leo Laporte (01:40:29):
Hey, Hey, Hey. How are you today? Hour three of the tech guy show I'm Leola, port your personal tech guide in this wacky world of technology, the computers, the internet, home theater, digital photography, smart phones, smart watches, anything with a chip in it, eighty eight eighty eight. Ask Leo, that's the phone number. If you wanna talk about tech, that's what I'm here for. That's all I want to talk about. I just wanted to talk about tech 88, 88, ask Leo. Of course, these days tech, it means a lot more than it used to. When I first started doing this in the early nineties tech was kind of a by water. We do before even the internet was very widespread. And so O tech was for enthusiasts, hobbyists people who were forced to use a computer at work, maybe, but you know, it certainly wasn't mainstream as it is now.

Leo Laporte (01:41:22):
Everybody uses tech all the time. I never, I never imagined a world. I, I did imagine a world where you would have an always connected computer of some kind in your pocket, you know, cuz the apple Newton came out in the mid nineties and I, I even remember looking at it saying, boy, if they get this, you know full-time internet connection as you walk around, that might be amazing. I little did. I know we'd have super computers in our pockets. But what I really didn't imagine is how that global universal communication would change the world. I mean always being connected, always talking to people at all times, it's proven both incredibly distracting and incredibly powerful, you know when something happens, something newsworthy like this we're in Ukraine, you're you're on of it. You're always there this week. I got the new Samsung galaxy S 22 ultra, lemme get all the numbers and letters and names and the right order there which is essentially their version of the, of the, of the note, which I've, I always love the galaxy note. It has a stylist which pops out it has, you know, note taking capabilities but you can use the stylists, you know, to draw for a user interface. I remember when the first notes came out at CES, Samsung hired street artists with and put easels up in front of them. They dressed them up with Berets and, and painters smocks. And they had these street artists with their galaxy notes on easels, doing caricatures of people and, and things.

Leo Laporte (01:43:09):
I liked the, I particularly liked the beret. The beret really made it feel like a real artist device. I don't see a lot of artists using galaxy notes, but I think people do like big phones. I think the, the, the truth of the, the note was it was, it really was something people wanted. It was such a huge success. It actually put itself out of business because they don't make a note anymore. But the, but the note is basically mainstream. Every, everybody makes a big phone now. Right. So kind of not, not surprising that this thing is, is a galaxy note, even though it's just a galaxy S 22 alter, I'm pretty happy with it. Beautiful screen. I mean, I lemme see, I can't close this note now put away the pen. Maybe the note will go away. Yeah, you could tell, I just got it.

Leo Laporte (01:43:59):
I haven't really figured out how to, how to use it. It's a, it's a beautiful screen, best screen I've ever seen better than the iPhone, even. Yes. Not better software, the iPhone it's Android. Right. But 120 Hertz refresh. I've got it set for 4k for no good reason, but the battery life is fine. And boy, if you like a big phone, it's a beautiful phone. It's kind of a shame. These phones are so expensive. This is the one I have, which has five, 12 gigs of memory or storage 12 gigabytes of Ram and a snap dragon Qualcomm processors, I think was $1,400. That's crazy. So you gotta put it in a case, right? And then you don't get to see how beautiful the thing is. So I took it outta the case just so I can admire it, but I'll put it back in the case before I go anywhere with, they've done a nice job.

Leo Laporte (01:44:53):
If you're a Samsung fan Samsung's done it again. I haven't had a lot of chance to play with the cameras, but it's pretty impressive what these cameras can do, especially the zoom on the Samsung is remarkable. It has effectively a hundred X digital zoom is pretty impressive. You can, you can zoom in on almost anything and, and get a pretty good picture out of it too. Kind, it's kind of amazing to be honest, really cameras have gotten so good. I wonder, do I even need to carry, you know, a fancy cameras with me anymore? I've got a, I've got a phone that can do everything. Eighty eight, eighty eight, ask Leo the phone number. We can talk about that. The Samsung watch, we can talk about the iPhone and the apple watch. There's a lot of technology. These days come a long way since I started doing this in the nineties. Now it's every everywhere, every everything we do now soaked soaked with technology, Julian Los Angeles. Hi Julian.

Caller 7 (01:46:02):
Hey Leo, how's it going? 

Leo Laporte (01:46:04):
It's going great. How's things with my favorite tech JV

Caller 7 (01:46:10):
Things are great. I'm currently down here in beautiful Southwest Florida, visiting my parents nice and sun and warmth. And and you know, you're talking about cameras and, and all the advancements in cameras. One of the nice things about cameras in these devices is that it could also be used to make tools for those of us who are blind and low vision. And I wanted to share one such tool with the audience, please.

Leo Laporte (01:46:31):
Yes, we should mention Julian calls from time to time. He is our expert. You wonderful piece about Julian and PC magazine a couple of weeks ago. He volunteers to help blind people with assistive technology and his website is tech jv.com even puts his email and his phone number there. So a really great resource for our community and for, and for everybody who listens. So, hi, thank you and tell what is this new app? Tell me about it.

Caller 7 (01:46:59):
So it's an iOS app and it is developed by a very young programmer here. She's either I think in junior or high or high school, getting a little help with her dad or from her dad who works in the tech industry. And they've come up with this wonderful little tool it's called lock assist. And what this app simply does is it helps in locating things like crosswalks traffic signals. And it lets, you know, if you aim the camera just right, whether the signal saying walk or don't walk, so this is very helpful. 

Leo Laporte (01:47:34):
So it's using the camera on the phone to actually read the signal. Yes. Wow.

Caller 7 (01:47:41):
Wow. I should say just a little disclaimer here. This is not to replace your orientation, mobility training. I mean, obviously you're, you're in stinks your skills that you were taught and you've learned always come first, but this is a helpful tool to provide sometimes what is a missing piece of information? Just to give you explain a little bit how we cross streets, normally, as we go by the pattern of the traffic, we can't see the signal, so we have to go by the traffic. So if we're crossing a big street, we wait for the that's parallel to us to start going flowing continuously. And that indicates that it's probably the sign to walk.

Leo Laporte (01:48:17):
I do that too. That's a smart move. Yes.

Caller 7 (01:48:20):
So, but there are some intersections where it's a small street intersecting with a big street and there's a signal there, but there isn't always a lot of parallel traffic. So some, sometimes you end up waiting two or three cycles before you finally feel confident enough to know that it's okay to cross. And this is where an app like this comes in handy, also comes in handy if you are newly blind and you're learning how to use these skills. And you're wanting to know, you know, when the traffic light's indicating to you know, along with the signal that you're getting from the traffic. So this is great, even if you're just learning how to get around and across the street, it just helps to tell you that you know, that if there's a crosswalk nearby, cuz some, some streets have crosswalks like mid block without an actual intersection.

Caller 7 (01:49:06):
So it helps you locate those. Or again, if, if, if you don't have enough parallel to, and you wanna know, Hey, is that light is there really a light at the street? And is it saying walk or don't walk? So it's a great app. And I, I, I just think it's a wonderful effort on the part of this young student. And I might also say that they're very responsive. They recently put out an update that broke something and I used the contact info from the store. And within five minutes I received wow, a message back. That's great. And I made them aware of the problem and they took care of it. So they're, they're very anxious to get a lot of feedback and get this in the hands of as many people. And it's of course free. So no charge to use. So it should be in every blank, person's toolbox

Leo Laporte (01:49:51):
Bahar. And you said she's a middle schooler,

Caller 7 (01:49:54):
She's a middle schooler or high school. And wow. Also her and her dad working on this. In fact, when they wrote back to me on my feedback, they were actually attending a science fair, some kind, she was participating. They take care of me right then and there, but at least I got a response back saying, Hey, we, we got your message. We'll get back to you in a while.

Leo Laporte (01:50:15):
That is awesome. That is awesome. And if anybody wants to learn more about Julie and I will put a link in the show notes to that great article about you by my friend, John Kish in P C magazine nice coverage. You deserve it. I think you earned it. And I hope it, I hope it didn't drive too much traffic to your website.

Caller 7 (01:50:36):
No, no, it, it was great. And, and I might also add you deserved what he said about you as well. He said some really nice things about you and I think it was well deserved as well. Oh, that's nice by by letting me come out here and give this information and help provide information when people need it. It's a wonderful service and I very much appreciate

Leo Laporte (01:50:53):
It. Well, enjoy the nice weather in Florida. I hope you're having nice weather.

Caller 7 (01:50:56):
Oh, we are. It's be, it's like 86, right?

Leo Laporte (01:50:58):
How beautiful. Great, nice. And you can find out more about Julian. We'll put a link in the show notes, the PC magazine article, or you could just search for a blind tech, finds his calling and of course, tech jv.com is Julian's website. Thank you, Julian. Great boy. That's a great tip. Bre, her program is called walk assist. It's in the apple store for iPhone. Thanks Julian.

Caller 7 (01:51:27):
Take

Leo Laporte (01:51:27):
Care. Take care. Leo, look, the tech guy. We're gonna take more calls right after this. Eighty eight eighty eight. Ask Leo that's the phone number? (888) 827-5536. Give a ring. Leo LeFort, the tech guy. Thanks to professor Laura, our musical director who finds all that great stuff. Eighty eight eighty eight. Ask Leo. That's the phone number on the line? Claudia from north Hollywood. Hi Claudia.

Caller 8 (01:52:10):
Hi.

Leo Laporte (01:52:11):
Hi, what's up Claudia.

Caller 8 (01:52:14):
Okay. I was playing this game called word cross.

Leo Laporte (01:52:20):
Oh, I thought you were gonna say Wordal for a moment. Word cross. Okay.

Caller 8 (01:52:24):
Word cross it's word game. Yes. Anyway, went blank on me. Oh

Leo Laporte (01:52:31):
No. So,

Caller 8 (01:52:33):
Oh yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:52:34):
Now were you playing this on a website or were you playing on an app on your phone?

Caller 8 (01:52:40):
It's an app on my phone. Okay. So I 

Leo Laporte (01:52:45):
On, on Android or iOS?

Caller 8 (01:52:48):
Android, Android. A galaxy? Yeah, it's a galaxy a 32.

Leo Laporte (01:52:55):
Oh yes. Okay. In fact, I'm looking at the the, the app right now in the Google play store word cross from, we play word games. Looks like fun. Yeah.

Caller 8 (01:53:06):
It's okay. It's okay. So 

Leo Laporte (01:53:08):
Except when it goes blank when,

Caller 8 (01:53:11):
But it went blank until it goes blank. Yeah. And I restarted it or I restarted my phone that didn't help it. I actually turned the power off on my phone a couple times that didn't bring it. So

Leo Laporte (01:53:25):
Every time you came back, it was just blank,

Caller 8 (01:53:28):
Blank, blank. I reins blank. Just a black screen. When I went to I, I reinstalled it. I took it off.

Leo Laporte (01:53:42):
You reinstalled it and it still blank

Caller 8 (01:53:46):
Still blank. And I did that about four times and it just

Leo Laporte (01:53:50):
Blank. Somebody doesn't want you to play word cross, I think.

Caller 8 (01:53:54):
Right. I have another phone that has the same game on it. An older phone. And it's fine.

Leo Laporte (01:54:00):
It works fine.

Caller 8 (01:54:01):
Yeah. Hmm. So I don't know if it's the word cross people. My phone. I don't know. It is.

Leo Laporte (01:54:08):
I am looking at the reviews right now in the play store. And no one has said no, one's reported an issue with the game. In fact, its reviews are, you know, almost universally positive 4.7 out of five. So that's always the first place. If, if there's a problem with the game, you'll hear people, people like you posting. And you'll say, they'll say it went blank on me, but I see somebody February 20th, just a few days ago. Love this game. February 25th. Wait, wait a minute. Let's see. Oh, Hey look. Oh look, February 25th. Well, I admitted it to a high level and the app decided to go lack on my screen and not return. I installed the app and reinstall it still won't come up on the screen. What's the glitch. Are you sideways ministries? Is that you?

Caller 8 (01:54:58):
No, I

Leo Laporte (01:54:59):
Don't. So somebody else reporting the same thing and that's the most recent review. So sounds like there might be a problem. A problem. Yes.

Caller 8 (01:55:12):
With them.

Leo Laporte (01:55:14):
Okay. Yeah. So good. That's good news. It's not your phone. 

Caller 8 (01:55:18):
I've played over a thousand games on, you know, a thousand yeah. Nine.

Leo Laporte (01:55:23):
Oh yeah, yeah. Yeah. So what I did, I sort by recent and here's another one. This game is no longer working after opening. It just stuck on a blank screen. That's from today Andrea says, love the game. But when I hit 10,981, the game stopped blacked out. I tried uninstalling reinstalling doesn't play anymore. So it is something wrong with the game. Maybe it's with people. Cause it seems to be people with high scores. Maybe it's decided you've played too much, but you know what? Probably it is. It's a bug. It's not hitting, not hitting everybody. Just people like you who who've played a lot.

Caller 8 (01:56:01):
Well yes. Well

Leo Laporte (01:56:03):
Start over. Can you clear, can you clear your score?

Caller 8 (01:56:10):
If it did it, it won't go on. I can't

Leo Laporte (01:56:13):
Clear it. I think you're just gonna have to wait until they push out an update. It's a reli, it's a reliable game. It's an editor's choice from Google. As a said, it has excellent reviews, but in the last few days, people are saying, it's going blank on them. There you go. Here's faith says I opened played two plus years, but since your last update, I can't open the game. I get a blank black screen. And so I think that you are not game an opening after a recent update, it shows blank and gets stuck. So this sometimes happens and all of these complaints are over from the last couple of days. Game will not even start up after the recent update. So it sounds like the, and this happens sometimes the updates break the game. In fact, I'm seeing now a lot of 'em and they're all in the last few days. All of them yeah, it's funny because it's got great scores, great reviews right up till Tuesdays ago.

Caller 8 (01:57:12):
Great. Okay. Well I think that's when mine went out.

Leo Laporte (01:57:15):
Yeah, yeah. It says February 24th is the oldest one that says this. So I think that's yeah, exactly what happened a few days ago. It broke. Yeah. They'll push out a fix. They'll push out. Fix fear, not, oh, in fact, careful about deleting it cuz you don't wanna delete your high score, right?

Caller 8 (01:57:34):
No, but I've

Leo Laporte (01:57:36):
I've but you wanna play it, you know, you wanna play it.

Caller 8 (01:57:40):
Yeah. I've uninstalled it and installed it a number of times. So I put, probably have lost my score anyways, right

Leo Laporte (01:57:47):
Now. Well, don't mess with it anymore, but do, do go to the Google play store from time to time. Here's a little tip on Android phones. If you press and hold the icon for the Google play store, it'll pop up a little button that says my apps and it'll go right to your installed apps and it, and you can refresh it and pull it down and install the new ones. The updates quickly. I bet you the next day or two. Certainly if I were the developer, I would see all these reviews and I would fix it. I bet you they'll fix it soon. So fear not Claudia. Leo. Laporte the tech guy. Oh my goodness. That's a little adult for this program. Don't you think? Professor Laura, Leo Laporte, the tech guy, 88 88. Ask Leo Jerry's on the line from Hatfield, PA. Hi Jerry.

Caller 9 (01:58:46):
Hi, Leo. May I caution? You never lend anything to Kim and have her, or think she's gonna forget about it. What

Leo Laporte (01:58:57):
Is that? What did you lend out?

Caller 9 (01:58:59):
No, no, no. I'm, she's got a memory like Mary Lou Henner.

Leo Laporte (01:59:02):
Oh, she remembered you.

Caller 9 (01:59:05):
I called up. Yeah. She, she says, oh, you get the, that lousy magic jacket from Jersey.

Leo Laporte (01:59:10):
She totally remembers you. That's great, Jerry. Yeah. I, well, you know, she's my mind. I have exported my mind I've actually outsourced it to Kim and now she's responsible. So good luck, Kim. So what's going on?

Caller 9 (01:59:28):
Well, Leo, I, I currently have a Samsung TV and I can't upgrade the the browser on it. So essentially it's, it's a dumb TV. Okay. Yeah. Now what I would, I would thinking before I go another TV, cause my screen is starting to go a little bit. Yeah. What if I would buy a large monitor? Yeah. And a desktop computer would video cards in it. Yeah. And cards.

Leo Laporte (01:59:57):
Oh. And, and use that instead.

Caller 9 (01:59:59):
Well, rooms are carved against that.

Leo Laporte (02:00:04):
So these days when you buy a TV, it you'd be hard pressed not to get a smart TV. And what is the smart TV? It's a computer they build in kinda low cost, low quality components, not the fastest chips, cuz they don't wanna bring the price of the TV up too much. I mean, you get in the TV for three or 400 bucks. How much of a computer can be in there, but it's sufficient to plug it into the internet and stream video. But it also also by the way, and this is my argument against smart TVs is smart enough to spy on you. Samsung TVs, for instance it is said we'll send screenshots of what you're watching back to the home office because that's how cheap one of the ways they get 'em so cheap. They, they sell marketing information about you.

Leo Laporte (02:00:52):
So I always say don't connect that smart TV. You'd be better off. In fact, I think if you just used a dumb monitor and hooked it up to a computer, cuz computers, you could put privacy protection on, right? You can block that kind of nefarious, spying easily. So I think your idea is a good idea. That's the other problem by the way, is they don't update the software on these smart TVs. Very often Samsung sold a refrigerator with a browser. Did you know, did you know about this? They sold a refrigerator of the browser, but then never updated it. So you can't use the browser. The refrigerator works fine, but the browser's so out of date, nobody, nobody, no site will load. So some places a browser belongs, I don't think in major appliances is one of them. So I like your idea now a monitor is actually gonna be more expensive than a TV. Right?

Caller 9 (02:01:44):
Right.

Leo Laporte (02:01:45):
But you could get a smart TV and use it as a monitor. We had a caller last week and I'm, I, I, I probably, my, my data is outta date, but I said, well, I don't think TVs are as good as monitors. But nowadays, because as a 4k, the quality of these TVs is actually pretty good. And if the, if this text looks good, as you know, you can read it without I fatigue, it's as good as a monitor. So you have an interesting idea, which is get a smart TV, cuz they're bigger and cheaper. Use it as a monitor. It's got an H DM. I input like most computers have H DM I output. And actually you will protect yourself cuz you won't connect that smart TV to the internet. It's just a TV. It's just a display connect the computer to the internet, use the browser on the computer, which is getting updated. Yeah. I like your idea. I think you're exactly right Jerry. I think it's clever.

Caller 9 (02:02:35):
Has anybody done that? I think the opinion like have I mix TV cards? The

Leo Laporte (02:02:42):
Yeah. Yeah, because the TV is basically a monitor. Now. In fact, John, our studio manager, when I got this call last week and I was saying, well, I don't think you should use a TV for a monitor. I was being old fashioned. And John said, what are you talking about? I use, what, what is it, John, a 40 you using an LGC class old lead, which are very nice TVs. And yours is 47 inches. John, you said 47 inches. And it works fine as a monitor. Right? It's a good monitor. He said, text is great. No I fatigue because they're now for, and that was the difference. The old days the monitors were in designed to display crisp text at a any resolution. But now that we're getting monitors, TV monitors that are 4k, I think that it's safe to say they're high enough resolution.

Leo Laporte (02:03:29):
The other thing you'd wanna worry about is color bleed. You know, the way they make the, a white R on a black background is with RGB pixels. And if there's any color bleed at all, maybe there'll be a fringing around that. R which should be just pure white. It might be a little red fringe around it from the pixels. If you notice that you know, that's not ideal, you see that on some monitors too. There's an, I mentioned this earlier alien wear is now they announced this as CES. And I think they're about to ship it making a 34 inch wide screen monitor that is essentially their TV it's I bet they get the, I bet they get the panels from Samsung because they're these QD EDS, which is the new OED style, this quantum dot EDS. And I think only Samsung, I can't remember who it is. I only Samsung is making them Sony says they're gonna, but right now you, so it's a TV. It's the same, probably the same panel. You'd get on a smart TV, but they're selling it as a monitor. So I wouldn't, I wouldn't hesitate as long as the resolution is good enough. A lot of people are doing what you suggest, actually, Jerry.

Caller 9 (02:04:40):
Well, thank you, Leo.

Leo Laporte (02:04:41):
Yeah. and, and you know, if you can look at the TV with text displayed, you're gonna put up, you know, pull up a browser and, and see. But yeah, this just makes a lot of sense. In fact, nowadays with computers like Chrome boxes the Intel, no UCS or a Mac mini, these are little computers that aren't gonna occupy a lot of space. They're small enough to put 'em behind the TV, wireless keyboards, wireless mice. So you could sit a little bit of a distance, maybe put your feet up in your bark lounge. I think you now have a pretty nice setup and, and you've got a TV and a computing set up. I think there's nothing wrong with that. As I said, John uses an LGC class OED. That's actually what I use as my main TV. So it's the same kind of TV.

Leo Laporte (02:05:27):
They're very good panels, very good coloration. And you might wanna look at these new Samsung Q D O LEDs. These Scott was talking about 'em at C E S. They're just starting to come out. Now I'm thinking they're gonna be a little more expensive, but they're OED screens using quantum.technology, which means they're gonna be brighter, always a, this was, this is the one issue perhaps with using an OED display as a monitor. They're not gonna be as bright as a computer monitor. So you might need to darken the room a little bit. But not these QDS apparently the quantum dot makes it a lot brighter. The QD O L E DS, interestingly Alienware selling a wide screens. You wouldn't probably want this as a, well, maybe you would, as a TV set. It's 21 by nine, I guess, you know, Lawrence of Arabia would be perfect on that, right?

Leo Laporte (02:06:20):
It's a Ciera screen. And, and it's only 1299, which I think is probably less than the TVs. The QD led TVs aspect ratio is another thing to consider old school television. You know, I love Lucy was four by three, 16 by nine in is the default wide screen now for most TVs. So 16 by nine. And you're, if you gotta say 21 by nine computer monitor, well, you'd have black bars on either side. Unless if you notice sometimes when you watch a movie on your 16 by nine TV, there's black bars top and bottom. That means that's at a wider aspect ratio, maybe even 20. I think that was the close to the cinema aspect ratio. So if you got a wide screen movie on there, man, that would look good kind of curve around you. I, I, I like that idea, Jerry. In fact, I might steal it 88 88, ask Leo actually don't call cuz we're almost done just enough time for a gizmo or a gadget from our gadget guy, our gizmo wizard, Dick D Bartolo. He's coming up in just a little bit. So I won't, I won't give out the phone number cuz that's the last segment of the show. I will give out the website though. Tech guy labs.com. I'll put a link to this this new QD O led alien wear. Cause that looks like a good thing. I'll put that in the, in the show notes, tech guy labs.com.

Leo Laporte (02:07:52):
What is the Centerra's 2, 3, 5 to one. So, but I don't know. I have to do some maths to see how that, what is that to nine, right? Hello

Dick DeBartolo (02:08:07):
Dickie. D Leo, how you doing P

Leo Laporte (02:08:10):
You

Speaker 15 (02:08:10):
The mean? Well, Mr. Gr, you really are. Oh here

Leo Laporte (02:08:18):
1971. The Levi's ad. That's what? That was. We were talking about deep voice people.

Dick DeBartolo (02:08:24):
Oh

Leo Laporte (02:08:25):
Yeah. You're among them. Mike Mann has a very nice sound system on his he's listening to the show on.

Dick DeBartolo (02:08:35):
Oh, so when you are on all the dishes vibrate.

Leo Laporte (02:08:38):
Yes, exactly. So I'm talking like this.

Dick DeBartolo (02:08:43):
Oh, there goes another plate author. It's Leo

Leo Laporte (02:08:46):
Know, maybe so 1973 was the start of the new match games says Edmond guy. You already have some fans in here.

Dick DeBartolo (02:09:01):
Oh great.

Leo Laporte (02:09:01):
Yes. They're already talking match game. Yes. How is life?

Dick DeBartolo (02:09:09):
The good, good. And out there,

Leo Laporte (02:09:12):
Out here in the real world Is, seems alright.

Dick DeBartolo (02:09:18):
Do you live in the real world at all? I try

Leo Laporte (02:09:20):
Not to. Yeah.

Dick DeBartolo (02:09:22):
I you and you and me?

Leo Laporte (02:09:23):
Both. I just live in my hot tub. Yep. Oh, now expected. I just bought Lisa a new monitor and the Amazon saying, oh, we're very sorry. Your delivery is late now expected Sunday. Oh, that's not the end of the world. Oh, okay. I bought Lisa because she wants she wants to hook up her laptop instead of cuz she's got an old iMac. So I bought her a nice new monitor. What did I buy her? Oh great. Cause we were talking about monitors. What did I buy her? I don't know something good.

Dick DeBartolo (02:10:01):
Whoop whoop

Leo Laporte (02:10:04):
Guy. Time to disco Dick dance in moment. Hello Dickie D Dick D Bartolo

Dick DeBartolo (02:10:13):
Is Phil. How you doing?

Leo Laporte (02:10:14):
I'm great. Mad. Magazine's maddest writer. He's our Ismo guy joins us every week to talk gizmos. What do you got?

Dick DeBartolo (02:10:24):
Exactly. So I do not have this gadget, a viewer of the gizmo sent in a video about it. And if I had this about five years ago, I would've loved it. Do you still have any eight millimeter films hanging on

Leo Laporte (02:10:39):
Eight millimeter film?

Dick DeBartolo (02:10:41):
Yeah.

Leo Laporte (02:10:42):
Film. I never, no. No. I never shot any of that. Never. No. Oh, okay. I wasn't, you know, that was never in the film era. That's kinda like my parents might you have millimeter film? I, I made any VI video. Eight millimeter cassettes.

Dick DeBartolo (02:10:56):
No, no, no. Eight times film film from Kodak. Okay. And I kept a camera at Goodson Toddman and when we had real people that I loved on like match game, like Betty White, I would, I would make films. And

Leo Laporte (02:11:13):
Think you have some eight millimeter film of Betty White

Dick DeBartolo (02:11:16):
Def I, I do actually I posted it on YouTube a couple of weeks ago. Oh my goodness. Tom Wayne sent me a video about a thing called the Wolverine eight millimeter and super eight converter for that. I, I sent my videos out to a company called yes video. But before I sent them out, I called the company and I said, listen, I have filmed. I have Betty White. I have van Johnson. I have Audrey Meadows. I have all these famous people. Can you handle this with care? And I'm gonna FedEx it. And

Leo Laporte (02:11:56):
So well that's always been my concern. I don't wanna mail stuff in case it gets lost. That's the only copy. I mean, that's super valuable what you have there.

Dick DeBartolo (02:12:04):
No, a absolutely. Absolutely. As a matter of fact, they ended up doing it for free. The guy said, this is so

Leo Laporte (02:12:10):
Unbelievable. So

Dick DeBartolo (02:12:11):
We're not even going to charge you to do this anyway. So Tom Wayne found this thing called the Wolverine converter. So it does frame by frame eight millimeter. And does it come

Leo Laporte (02:12:26):
Atium clause? No. Nevermind. I'd that's a comic

Dick DeBartolo (02:12:32):
Joke. I know Sandy clause, but Sh Claus might bring you one at Chris. Cause when

Leo Laporte (02:12:37):
I search for Wolverine, all I get is Wolverine. How do you spell?

Dick DeBartolo (02:12:41):
Oh, okay.

Leo Laporte (02:12:42):
You spell Wolverine. Well,

Dick DeBartolo (02:12:43):
You know, just go to, just go to I visit you and There's a link

Leo Laporte (02:12:48):
There. His w do is. Okay.

Dick DeBartolo (02:12:50):
Yeah. And, and also I, I emailed him back and I said, Tom, can you send me a little video of something you actually transferred and digitized? And he sent me a little 32nd video. I also put a link to that up there of his father's 1960 Cadillac convertible.

Leo Laporte (02:13:11):
Wow. So this looks like, like one of those old movie Olas that they used to edit film with in a movie studio where it's got two reels where you put the film and a thing in the middle, but instead of editing it you're actually digitizing it.

Dick DeBartolo (02:13:27):
Exactly. So you put in a SD card. I, for some reason only up to 32 megabytes and it, it transfers. So if you are,

Leo Laporte (02:13:40):
That is a nice pink Cadillac is down

Dick DeBartolo (02:13:42):
There, boy. Yeah. That would take up three parking spaces

Leo Laporte (02:13:46):
Of how long it

Dick DeBartolo (02:13:46):
Is of, of today's cars is that

Leo Laporte (02:13:50):
It's an El Dorado beer it's convertible with a sofa in the backseat. It looks like, yeah,

Dick DeBartolo (02:13:56):
Exactly. A swimming pool. I think that's a swimming pool, hot and a hot to, He got all the options. Talk

Leo Laporte (02:14:03):
About a boat on wheels, but that's cool. So this was shot in eight millimeter film.

Dick DeBartolo (02:14:10):
Yes.

Leo Laporte (02:14:10):
And he was, is used able to use the Wolverine to convert it.

Dick DeBartolo (02:14:14):
Exactly. Wow, exactly. Now it it's not wildly expensive. It it's 300 bucks. It it's,

Leo Laporte (02:14:20):
If you've got a bunch of

Dick DeBartolo (02:14:22):
95,

Leo Laporte (02:14:22):
You know, film it's worth. So it does eight millimeter and super eight, which is cool

Dick DeBartolo (02:14:26):
And super eight. And there is

Leo Laporte (02:14:29):
Basically it's projecting, I would guess onto a pickup, like a camera pickup. And then cuz that's yes. That's basically how you would capture it otherwise. So it's projecting it onto a camera and then taking that picture. Wow.

Dick DeBartolo (02:14:43):
And it, so it's doing it in seven 20 P at 30 frames in Meg EG four. So you can either take the SD card out of the device and put it in your computer and then do whatever you want with it's. Seems like a, a great idea.

Leo Laporte (02:15:00):
He's using this to convert your old home movies from the match game.

Dick DeBartolo (02:15:05):
Well, well I already had mine done by yes. Video. Oh, okay. When I saw this, I thought, you know what? If I had this one, I was a few years ago. I would actually, I may still buy one cuz I actually have the cans of film here. Do you still

Leo Laporte (02:15:20):
Have stuff? That's not been digitized.

Dick DeBartolo (02:15:22):
I have a couple, I have a few things. I don't. How many

Leo Laporte (02:15:25):
Reels did you shoot?

Dick DeBartolo (02:15:27):
Oh my gosh. We, I shot.

Leo Laporte (02:15:30):
So you were the guy that they've go, oh gosh, here comes Dick game with his camera. Oh smile. Everybody.

Dick DeBartolo (02:15:36):
You no, normally it was with the celebrity in the dressing room like Jane. I, I said Jane, I do these silly movies. Do you mind doing 30 seconds of saying no, no, no. I don't wanna be in you movie and

Leo Laporte (02:15:49):
They play along.

Dick DeBartolo (02:15:50):
Have to, oh, they would love it. Oh, they would love it. I only once in a while someone would say Dick, everybody else is saying they're in your movie. Can you do something with me?

Leo Laporte (02:16:00):
What are you kidding? They don't want,

Dick DeBartolo (02:16:02):
What are you kidding?

Leo Laporte (02:16:03):
Oh, that's so cool. Yeah. So are all of your digitized movies on YouTube or

Dick DeBartolo (02:16:10):
You know what? Leo, they were on YouTube for about 20 seconds because all the background music, it's all copyrighted music. So I, I got an instant hit. So then

Leo Laporte (02:16:20):
Where is the background music something you added or was it actually in the dressing rooms? There was music playing

Dick DeBartolo (02:16:26):
Or I added it.

Leo Laporte (02:16:27):
I oh, that was your mistake right there.

Dick DeBartolo (02:16:30):
Yes, exactly. Exactly. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (02:16:33):
So can you go back through it? Do you have the original and

Dick DeBartolo (02:16:35):
I, you know what I did, Leah, it's very funny because I bought this record collection from Valentina sound effects. Actually the collection is 1500 thousand.

Leo Laporte (02:16:44):
I put some crappy music behind it and then no one will complain.

Dick DeBartolo (02:16:49):
This what happened? I traded him out the $1,500 collection by taking the guys out on my boat to an airport. Nice. Like so that they could make new sound effects. Right. I took him out in the ocean so they could get a buoy.

Leo Laporte (02:17:02):
Oh nice.

Dick DeBartolo (02:17:03):
And so I put all that music in, I got another hit again because Mr. Valentina died and sold the company.

Leo Laporte (02:17:10):
Oh Dick.

Dick DeBartolo (02:17:11):
And so the new company

Leo Laporte (02:17:13):
Royalty free should mean forever. Forever. Yes. Apparently not.

Dick DeBartolo (02:17:18):
Yes. No, apparently not.

Leo Laporte (02:17:19):
So would you just post 'em without music sometime? Cause I'd love to see 

Dick DeBartolo (02:17:23):
Yeah, maybe. Oh

Leo Laporte (02:17:24):
Yeah. Not maybe not. I could do that. You don't wanna,

Dick DeBartolo (02:17:28):
Well, I could get

Leo Laporte (02:17:30):
Where's the Betty White stuff.

Dick DeBartolo (02:17:33):
It was on Facebook and on, I I'll find it. What's

Leo Laporte (02:17:37):
Your YouTube channel know it's yet. What's your YouTube channel?

Dick DeBartolo (02:17:39):
The GWiz,

Leo Laporte (02:17:40):
The GWiz. Is it there?

Dick DeBartolo (02:17:43):
It still, it should still be there

Leo Laporte (02:17:46):
Unless, unless copyright took it down.

Dick DeBartolo (02:17:50):
It's silent.

Leo Laporte (02:17:51):
Oh good. Silence's always safer.

Dick DeBartolo (02:17:54):
Yes, exactly. Exactly.

Leo Laporte (02:17:56):
Oh, cuz I would, so this was Betty White back in the days. Maybe people don't know that you were a writer for the match game. You saved the match game.

Dick DeBartolo (02:18:05):
Yeah. Oh, you know it's on, on Facebook, Leah and not on my

Leo Laporte (02:18:08):
Channel. Oh, I don't have Facebook. What's this Facebook of which you speak Facebook.

Dick DeBartolo (02:18:13):
Are you off

Leo Laporte (02:18:14):
It? Oh, I've been off it for years. Why are you on it? It's horrible. So you're posting it on Facebook

Dick DeBartolo (02:18:22):
And Twitter

Leo Laporte (02:18:23):
And Twitter. I've heard of Twitter. I'll have to get a Twitter. Oh, okay. Okay. What's your Twitter handle?

Dick DeBartolo (02:18:29):
Facebook's having 

Leo Laporte (02:18:31):
A

Dick DeBartolo (02:18:37):
Gwi@Thegizatthegiwdickdbartologotogiw.Biz.

Leo Laporte (02:18:37):
That's his website G I Z W I Z dot B I Z to see more about this Wolverine, which is really if I had eight millimeter video, I mean not video film. I would get this cuz you wanna save it. That film isn't gonna last forever a digitizing it. You could share it and put it on YouTube and whatever. You can also find the, what the heck is it contest a chance for you to win an autograph copy of mad magazine? I've got mine right here.

Dick DeBartolo (02:19:01):
Just a few more days.

Leo Laporte (02:19:02):
Last chance. Last chance. Autograph copies of mad for the best right answer or the best wrong answer. It doesn't matter. Keys with right thought is click the what the heck is it? Button and of course gizwiz.tv. First podcast. Thank you DickyD. Thank you, buddy.

Dick DeBartolo (02:19:17):
See you next week, goodbye.

Leo Laporte (02:19:18):
Well, that's it for the tech guy show for today. Thank you so much for being here and don't forget. Twit T I T it stands for this week at tech and you'll find it@twit.tv, including the podcasts for this show. We talk about windows and windows weekly, Macintosh a Mac break, weekly iPads, iPhones, apple watches on iOS, today's security and security. Now, I mean, I can go on and on and on. And of course the big show every Sunday afternoon, this week in tech, you'll find it all at twit TV and I'll be back next week with another great tech guys show. Thanks for joining me. We'll see you next time.