The Tech Guy Episode 1881 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. 

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Podcasts. You love

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From people you trust.

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This

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Is TWiT.

Leo Laporte (00:00:11):
Hi, this is Leo Laporte and this is my tech guy podcast. This show originally aired on the premier networks on Saturday, April 2nd, 2020. This is episode 1,881. Enjoy this episode of the tech eye is brought to you by Linode with Linode there's no hidden fee and you can scale up or down without penalty. Get $100 in credit right now when you visit linode.com/techguy.

Leo Laporte (00:00:43):
Well, 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. You know, all that jazz eighty eight eighty eight. Ask Leo's the phone number. If you want to talk high tech with me, 8 8 8 2 7 5 5 3 6. That's toll free from anywhere in the us or Canada outside that area. Well, you'd still need to use Skype or something like that, but it should still be toll free. 88 88. Ask Leo. Now on this show, we talk about all kinds of things, computers, internet, home theater. I told you that to original photography, anything with a chip in it. If you want to call and ask a question, make a suggestion, make a comment. That would be cool. I would welcome you. Should remind you that there is a website. What kind of tech I would I be without a website? That website is at tech. I labs.com and it'll have a lay, anything I talk about, but also after the fact audio and video from the show, and even a text transcript, you can search and then jump to the particular part of the show you wanna listen to. So all of that at techguylabs.com. Good to remember that that is there.

Leo Laporte (00:02:00):
Let's see, what's going on in the old, around us, a couple of things I wanted to warn you about. You might have seen this already. Scammers are texting you. You I've been getting calls a lot in the last month or two about an unusual growth in the number of spam texts, just obviously, you know, bogus malware style texts. And of course you know, if, if your phone company or wireless carrier offers some sort of filtering, you should probably use it. They should give that to you for free, by the way, most do a few, try to charge. Don't pay, just say no, get rid of this stuff lately. And this happened first of Verizon, I think it might be happening to others. People are beginning text messages from themselves, their own number. So it's important to understand the, the sending number is meaningless just as it is in spam. It can be anything there's websites and software out there that let you spoof any number. And so this is kind of a clever one because what the message says, this is from your phone company, right? Well, who else would it be? If it's my phone number must be for my wireless carrier and then it links to a free gift. Okay. Now that should set off alarm alarm bells in your brain for me, a free gift. You, it should not encourage you to click that link.

Leo Laporte (00:03:22):
The link leads to potentially malicious websites. It's kind of unclear what they're up to Verizon confirmed it in a, in a statement to CNBC as part of a recent fraud scheme, bad actors, No, not Nicholas cage, bad people have been sending text messages to some Verizon customers, which appear to come from the customer's own number. Since uncovering the scheme, my company has made a significant effort, Always like it. When the phone company's made a significant effort. Thank you for your effort a for effort. When, when school, when you got an a for effort, usually that meant an a C for result since then covering the S scheme. Our companies made significant effort to limit the current activity. So maybe you're not gonna get it. I don't know, but if you did, don't click that link. Don't robo killer more than 5,000 incidents of the same number, spam text messages over the past week, as of last Thursday, robo killer's one of those places, people filter calls through. I don't know if robo killer what robo killer would do if it said, oh, that's your number, I guess at now it would say, well, it's not something you want. Although

Leo Laporte (00:04:44):
I don't know. Clicking the link in some cases takes you to a Russian television network, but Verizon said we have no indication of any Russian involvement. In some cases, it takes you to link. That looks like a survey from Verizon. It's not, Why would they do that? Well, if your phone has vulnerabilities, you know, if it's not up to date or if there's an undiscovered vulnerability, we call those zero days. Cuz it's been zero days since they were discovered an undiscovered vulnerability, then even a, just go into a website could trigger. So a, so it's just a, you know, good advice not to do that. In fact, never click links that you get in your, in your, in your text messages, unless it's Clearly not only somebody, you know, cuz that can be spoofed to, but clearly like, you know, oh that's mom. I can tell that's how that's how she talks. I we're almost outta Bitcoin. Well, not out, but we've got 19 million as of this week, 19 million Bitcoin And the way it was designed by Satoshi Nakamoto, whoever that may be, cuz we don't know. But the designer Bitcoin was that there would only be 21 million. So there's only 2 million left to mine.

Leo Laporte (00:06:06):
Actually. That's kind of interesting cuz if there are no more and this is to avoid inflation, right? You can't print money. You can't print Bitcoin. Once you got the 21 million Bitcoin you're done. But in the design of it, it gets harder and harder. And some say that the, the last 2 million might take years, The last 2 million might take years to generate. There will actually, technically people have done the math. There will only be 20 million, 999817.31 Bitcoin units. I've seen people on Twitter say it could take another a hundred years. So I don't know. But I think when they're, when, when the, I can pretty much guarantee cuz of human psychology, not for any real reason that when the last one is mine, People will go crazy, right? They're gonna say, oh my gosh. And the price is gonna go up briefly until cooler heads. So if you have any Bitcoin And you can wait a hundred years, I don't think it's gonna take a hundred years. You can wait a little while to the last 2 million, we've got 20, you know, we've got 19 million already. If you can wait until the last then I don't know. That seems like that would be a good time to sell fast,

Leo Laporte (00:07:23):
But I'm the wrong guy to ask. I have 7.85 Bitcoin, which at lasts count is more than a quarter of a million dollars. If I could only remember my darn password should have written it down. Darn it.

Leo Laporte (00:07:40):
I'm against this. I'm not happy. I use a, there's a company called ubiquity ubiquity. They make wifi and network tools that are widely used in small businesses. It's kind of a prosumer unit here at the studio. We use ruckus cuz it's a good name I guess. But ubiquity is, is another good name. That's widely used in businesses, mostly small businesses, some big businesses. I use ubiquity at home cuz I finally got tired of my wife screaming that the internet was down. So I said, well, we're gonna get better internet. And that meant better routers. So we put in ubiquity and it's been very good. I'm not happy with the company. You may remember some time ago That ubiquity had a breach. They actually had, I think it was a malicious employee. And there was some concern about passwords being leaked at the time. Ubiquity sent out an email

Leo Laporte (00:08:41):
Saying Hey there, you know, you might wanna change your password. It wasn't the strongest email ever. And a very good security blogger who used to be at the Washington post. I think he's really good. I re I refer to him a lot. Brian Krebs wrote a, a blog post saying that ubiquity had intentionally misled the public about the data breach. Ubiquity said not only did we not, but Krebs was using the bad guy as his source. So they're suing him. Him. They're suing him. Which in general, I think almost destined, certainly destined to fail because we have thank goodness, a free press in this country. And unless you can prove intentional malice, like he knew better and he did it on purpose cuz he was going after ubiquity. You're gonna to be hard pressed to succeed in this suit, but they, but it has a chilling effect.

Leo Laporte (00:09:40):
And that's the point reason I mentioned this. It's not a good thing. Look, you're gonna get bad press in the world suing that isn't that the Streisand effect Barbara Streisand sued cuz somebody flew a helicopter over a house and published pictures and see suit. And all it did is make more people see the than ever before. And I don't believe she won that case. Anyway. It's very hard to win in a case like that. And again, thank goodness we have a free press, so I'm not happy ubiquity don't do that. That was bad. That was wrong. Cuz I don't know when Brian, I don't think he did that maliciously. He might have made a mistake. He might have made a stake. And I remember when this went out and a lot of people were telling me, oh you gotta, you know, you gotta change your ubiquity password and stuff, which I did. Ubiquity said that too. Anyway by now if you use ubiquity and most people again are using in business, your, your it persons come over and change the password. Make, make sure it's safe. Eighty eight, eighty eight, Ashley, the phone number (888) 827-5536 website tech guy labs.com I think I think barring other stories to talk about. Let's let's go to the phones next.

Leo Laporte (00:11:11):
I'm just waiting to hear what this is. This is wild. This is for our phone angel Kim Shaer. Hello Kim. Hi. Have you ever heard that song before Chris? I have. Oh, you know it, well, I don't know it, but it's a mashup, right? No. I think two things were playing at once in the beginning. Yeah. And the name of, oh, that was a mistake. I think it was a mistake. Oh. But I liked it. It was done so well, I don't think that was intentional professor Laura's at the controls. She knows what she's doing. That's funny. No. Yeah. That's funny. You were like mashup. I'm like, I don't think so. You can, you know, that was a train wreck, not a mashup. Do you like, I like mashups. I do like mashups. I

Kim Schaffer (00:11:53):
Actually heard a Miley Cyrus one.

Leo Laporte (00:11:55):
So you take a couple of songs or more and you play them like

Kim Schaffer (00:11:59):
Together. She was her song, wrecking ball and then went into nothing compares to you by STO co.

Leo Laporte (00:12:04):
Oh, I've heard that. It's a really powerful mix. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, I don't know. I don't know what was going on as usual as usual. I'm confused. Should I take a caller?

Kim Schaffer (00:12:17):
Yeah. Good. Think go to Orlando.

Leo Laporte (00:12:19):
Orlando.

Kim Schaffer (00:12:20):
Jamie's in Orlando and all right. Thinks his business emails are automatically going to the spam folder.

Leo Laporte (00:12:27):
I oh, that would be bad.

Kim Schaffer (00:12:29):
Not good for business.

Leo Laporte (00:12:29):
Thank you, Kim. Hello, Jamie for Orlando. Leo Laport. The tech guy. Welcome.

Caller 1 (00:12:36):
Hi Leo. Thanks for taking my call.

Leo Laporte (00:12:37):
Hey, thank you for calling. I appreciate it.

Caller 1 (00:12:40):
Thank you. Well, so the issue is generally we have had a couple instances lately where we have sent perspective client and email and they don't receive it only later to find out that they found it in their spam folder.

Leo Laporte (00:12:58):
Yeah, it's very common.

Caller 1 (00:12:59):
Yes. and we we've tried to remedy this. It's kind of been plaguing us for really the past couple years and we kind of are able to put a bandaid on it every now and then by switching different emails and things like and the only thing that we've found so far is that we've searched. Our we've done the, the email spam tests to find out that we are potentially on a couple of email, ah,

Leo Laporte (00:13:27):
List. Yeah. The, the black hole list. Yeah. That's not good. So a couple of things to say about this Jen early, and you'll see this all the time with newsletters and so forth, it says, add us to your contact list. So it won't go into spam, but that requires your client to do something which they may or may not want to do. And it isn't gonna overcome if, if you're, which, which which lists are you on maps, orbs? Which one are you on? Do you know?

Caller 1 (00:13:58):
I don't know specifically I've been chatting with my wife about it. And you know, we don't send out newsletters, but what we we'll typically do is we'll say like, thank you for your inquiry here. And, and this might be a problem. We do include an attachment, which includes like pricing and that kind of the information about,

Leo Laporte (00:14:17):
Yeah. So there are certainly things you can do that will make you look spammy, whether or not you're getting blacklisted attachments, links, those kinds of things often, but you, you know, that depends on the, on the clients tools which spam filters are using, which email provider they're using. There's a website called MX toolbox.com. And if you put in your domain name or your IP address, it will tell you who's blocking you.

Leo Laporte (00:14:47):
And then you have to go to those blacklists and say, Hey, knock it off with, and by the way, you may have varying success on that because of course the spamer is gonna say the same thing. This is, I think blacklisting is not a very good way to do this. Unless these blacklists are extremely careful about who they add, you know, they air on the side of caution as opposed to just block everything and then let you defend yourself. So that's one thing to try. Another thing to try is who do you use for your outbound mail?

Caller 1 (00:15:26):
So we used to just use originally when we were starting out, we used just our Gmail address. And then we had issues with that tried a couple things and settled on paying for a group of Google workspace. Okay. Emails to try.

Leo Laporte (00:15:45):
So you, so, so Google's doing it.

Caller 1 (00:15:47):
Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:15:48):
Well, that's, that's good. Because usually if it comes from Gmail, that's a, that's a, I mean, not necessarily a bad thing, but if it's coming from a Google workspace, Google does all the right things as far as authentication de Kim and so forth. Okay. now here's another one D maybe this is this one's I think free, the other one had looked like they were charge you after a hundred list, DNS b.info, make sure that's not a paid. Some of these are, are paid, man. This might be as well, at least check these to see if you can find out. And then all you can do is appeal it and say, get me off your blacklist.

Caller 1 (00:16:27):
Okay.

Leo Laporte (00:16:28):
That would, if you are on a blacklist that would really help. A lot of providers are cautious in their use of blacklists. They don't ne you know, so it really depends, you know some providers, probably internet service providers in particular are very cautious. They don't want to let spam come in. And so they may be, you know, worse than the over-cautious, which may be, in other words, blocking you incorrectly, try changing the, you know, attachments are always a bad idea links, spammy, subject lines, always a bad idea. All of that can get you caught by the spam filter at the receiving end, adding you to, you know, and you could, I guess, they're clients. So you could say, Hey, we, we wanna, we do wanna send out you know, important information about your account, et cetera, et cetera, in order to receive this, please add us to your contact list, add this email address to your contact list that will help. But, but honestly, if you're on a black list and the internet service, it's not all clients are, it's just some,

Caller 1 (00:17:36):
The main Culper was always it would go to spam whenever we sent to a Yahoo email address. Yeah. But now more recently it's been cropping up on a couple other of the

Leo Laporte (00:17:47):
Wall. Yeah. So there's a couple of you know, there's, there's at least 50 spam blacklist sites and some of them are better than others. If you, once you get on that, it's very hard to send out email. So it's probably worth trying to get off these sites, look at DNS B. Sure. It for DNS blacklist, dns.info, they have a list of them. And if you figure out which ones you're being blocked by, you, you, you can appeal it. That's probably the best thing.

Caller 1 (00:18:20):
Okay.

Leo Laporte (00:18:20):
Yeah.

Caller 1 (00:18:21):
And will that, will that help temporarily, or do you think that no.

Leo Laporte (00:18:24):
Well, unless you get back on 'em, you know, try to keep your, try to keep stuff from being less spammy, I guess.

Caller 1 (00:18:31):
Okay. Thank you so much.

Leo Laporte (00:18:33):
You're welcome. That's a, a real problem for all of us. I get a lot of stuff that's sent to spam directly. Leo,

Leo Laporte (00:18:52):
Hey, everybody, the tech I podcast brought to you today. Bye Linode love these guys been a line node customer for a long time. They were one of the very first what do you, what do you, what do you call this? Compute instances is cloud servers. They were one of the very first offer SSDs and they were always Linux, you know, very Linux focused, which is great. And so I very early on signed up for line node for the speed for the reliability. And I've been a line node customer ever since they offer the industry's best priced for value for compute instances, all kinds shared dedicated high memory. They've got even got GPS, very nice GPS. You get, by the way, with every account, free DDoS protection, a free cloud firewall, unfiltered API access and more, and you don't have to pay all these crazy tier that some other people will do.

Leo Laporte (00:19:54):
Line offers predictable flat fee pricing, and it's the same across all 11 data centers. So you know what you're getting, you know, what you're paying for no surprises in the billing. And the really re the reason I love line node and always has, is it's people the best support experience. They don't think of you as a product. They think of you as a customer, and they're there to serve you. Le node's independence and mission. Drive them to a different standard. The customer is the driving force behind everything. They do very transparent pricing. It's predictable. It's pay as you go. They pioneered this flat pricing model for of computing, no more anxiety over hidden costs, easy to launch and scale in the cloud. This is, this is transformational, really? Because now you don't have to buy a server or buy a, you know, colo.

Leo Laporte (00:20:45):
You don't have to. I mean, I remember in the, my first websites you'd have to, you know, go to a company, you'd have to have to provision it, blah, blah, blah. And it was like take days, cuz it was an actual, you know, piece of hardware and they, you, you couldn't do anything with Linode. I should show you, I will. And when I get the computer working, you just log in a line.com and boom set it up all by yourself. No waiting full featured API, a great cloud manager, best in class documentation. In fact, no matter what you wanna do, there's a page or a video that will just tell you how to do it on Lin node. Cuz they've been around for a long, timely node, makes it easy to manage your applications in the cloud with secure, proven enterprise grade infrastructure, totally reliable.

Leo Laporte (00:21:33):
They've got, again, this comes back to how long they've been around great peering relationships with everybody. And they're not, believe me. They're not resting on their laurels. They've got an incredible NGN next generation network. So you getting modern infrastructure perforyrmance gives you the opportunity to innovate no matter what scale. And as you grow line, node's there for you, whether you're hosting your website. That's mostly what I do. Although I have to say, cuz I like to learn web technologies like react. I love the ability to create spin up a quick server, set up, you know, put in node and all that stuff. And, and, and so it's great for building apps, hosting apps. You can use it to back up to store media really easy way to set up developer applications or hosted services or websites they have. I said GPU's they can do AI and machine learning workloads, just, I mean great stuff, gaming services.

Leo Laporte (00:22:29):
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Leo Laporte (00:24:00):
What is hip B?

Scott Wilkinson (00:24:01):
B

Leo Laporte (00:24:04):
Ladies, gentlemen, I give you Our famous wind instrument. Mr. Scott Wilkinson. You play them. You aren't one.

Scott Wilkinson (00:24:16):
Yes.

Leo Laporte (00:24:16):
Yeah. Home theater, geek and contributor@techhive.com. Hello Scott.

Scott Wilkinson (00:24:22):
Hello Leo. How you

Leo Laporte (00:24:23):
Doing? Good. I'm good. Glad to see you.

Scott Wilkinson (00:24:25):
Yeah. Glad to see you too.

Leo Laporte (00:24:26):
How are things in the world of big screen TVs and surround sound?

Scott Wilkinson (00:24:31):
Things are great. I've I've actually got a, a video I want to hit you and the listeners too. It's from a friend of mine, Peter P Mackey, who is an a quantum.expert. Actually, he, he was on my podcast at one point and he has started making a series of videos. The first one is up now where he basically tears apart a TV and takes a look at the innards and how things work. It's really fascinating. His, his handle on YouTube is nano Palo Mackey

Leo Laporte (00:25:09):
N a

Scott Wilkinson (00:25:11):
Cause he's a quantum.expert. So he's into nano technology. So N a N O P a L O M a K. I nano Palo Mackey. Dr. Pete, Dr. Pete. Yep, indeed. And he's got one video up there currently in which he basically completely disassembles a Visio MQ eight.

Leo Laporte (00:25:39):
He wouldn't think dissembling. It would give you anything of value because I mean, it

Scott Wilkinson (00:25:45):
Give, it gives you information. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:25:47):
The things are so small. Can you tell that it's a nano?

Scott Wilkinson (00:25:53):
Well, certainly you can't see the quantum dots of course, as they are in fact nano scale, but what you can see, he, he shows you how the, the quantum.film works and he takes, he takes measurements spectrographic measurements of, of the light coming off of the L E D itself. Oh,

Leo Laporte (00:26:19):
So you can at least see the,

Scott Wilkinson (00:26:21):
You see the effect

Leo Laporte (00:26:22):
Effect. Yeah. Yes.

Scott Wilkinson (00:26:24):
And then he takes all the films off and you can actually watch the the FA local dimming work. He sends it a signal.

Leo Laporte (00:26:33):
Oh, neat.

Scott Wilkinson (00:26:34):
And you can see the signal on his computer monitor. You can see what the video image is. And then you can see the, the, the LEDs and the fall backlight working and dimming and brightening, according to what's on the screen. It's oh, that's really fascinating. Really fascinating.

Leo Laporte (00:26:53):
So yeah, obviously you can't see quantum dots, but you can see the effect. So he's looking, you

Scott Wilkinson (00:26:57):
Can see the

Leo Laporte (00:26:58):
Effect. If he takes it apart, he can control it directly and he can show the fuller array, local diming.

Scott Wilkinson (00:27:04):
Yep.

Leo Laporte (00:27:04):
Exactly. There aren't as many diming zones, as I thought, I'm looking at his video right now. They're actually fairly, fairly big.

Scott Wilkinson (00:27:09):
Well, they, they are, there's only 180 LEDs back there and there's only 90 diming

Leo Laporte (00:27:16):
Zones. Is that typical? Or is that just a no, that's a fairly

Scott Wilkinson (00:27:20):
Lower,

Leo Laporte (00:27:21):
Expensive

Scott Wilkinson (00:27:22):
Exactly is a less expensive brand. And so they, one way to save cost is to use fewer LEDs.

Leo Laporte (00:27:30):
Although any local diming is better than no local diming.

Scott Wilkinson (00:27:32):
Correct? Correct. That is correct.

Leo Laporte (00:27:35):
So they set off fireworks and do all sorts of things and they show right. And you can see that's really, yeah. They're playing the snake game, you know, is that snake unders around on your screen and that's what up. And so they're showing how the full array, local diming lights up for the snake and it's not as fine as the snake, correct.

Scott Wilkinson (00:27:52):
Not nearly as fine.

Leo Laporte (00:27:53):
No, but it's still, you can see how it's and it's, it's kind of cool to see that lighting up like that.

Scott Wilkinson (00:27:58):
So I I've talked about F a L D full array, local diming on the show many times, and, you know, I can talk about it, but you really need to see it in action to understand how it works. Yeah. And, and this is great

Leo Laporte (00:28:10):
In a way it's better to use the less expensive Viseo with a larger diming zones. Cuz you could see it more clearly.

Scott Wilkinson (00:28:17):
Yeah. That's

Leo Laporte (00:28:18):
True. And then you could just imagine in your mind, well, what if this were, you know, these were 10 times the number of local.

Scott Wilkinson (00:28:23):
Exactly.

Leo Laporte (00:28:23):
That kind of thing. I've

Scott Wilkinson (00:28:24):
Seen that actually. And when you have a bunch more LEDs and a bunch more zones, it actually looks almost like a, like a black and white, low res version of the, of the image on the screen.

Leo Laporte (00:28:37):
That would make sense. Yeah. And especially if you play snake or something like that.

Scott Wilkinson (00:28:40):
Yeah. Well, yeah. Especially,

Leo Laporte (00:28:42):
Yeah. Cuz then you could, that's the only thing lid on the screen. So you could it moving around, what is the typical number of local diming sounds?

Scott Wilkinson (00:28:49):
Well, it, it can go from 90 here in the case of vis or even in the lower cost vis it might be even lower than that. Yeah. It can go up to couple hundred, 256 in the really expensive ones. It can go up into the five, 12 set range. And then in the mini L E D TV,

Leo Laporte (00:29:09):
It's very right. I think Erica was talking about thousands.

Scott Wilkinson (00:29:13):
Thousands. Yeah. Thousands of songs. I

Leo Laporte (00:29:14):
Think they apple to, they had 2,500 local diming zones on their mini LEDs for the iPad and the iPads. Not that big. It's only 12. Not that big. Yeah.

Scott Wilkinson (00:29:24):
So they're using mini LEDs there and so yeah, Pete Pete's video I think, is really fun to look at. Yeah. And very instructional, very informative.

Leo Laporte (00:29:35):
Does, do you see anything from the quantum dots, the Q led, I mean yes. Local dimmings available in normal L E D back lights

Scott Wilkinson (00:29:43):
Too. Correct? Correct. And what he does with the quantum dots is he shows you their effect. And so he'll take a, a probe, a meter and show you the spectrum and how the spectrum of the light that's coming out of the, of the TV changes is when you, when you read after the quantum dots and read before the quantum dots.

Leo Laporte (00:30:05):
Interesting. Okay.

Scott Wilkinson (00:30:06):
So he'll show you the red, green and blue. Cause as we know, color TV images, video images consists really are made out of red, green, and blue. That's all there is. And you combine those in different ways and you can get a full color image. And so he shows you how those red, green, and blue peaks in the spectrum change with and without quantum dots,

Leo Laporte (00:30:28):
What this really informs us of is that when you're talking about an LCD TV, it's the back light, that's the most important technology. Yes. The actual L C D part, the lick quid, crystal shutters yep. Are completely secondary to what you're putting through those shutters. The backlight,

Scott Wilkinson (00:30:47):
The backlight is I think I would agree is the most important part because that determines the color, the, the character of the light that you're gonna see coming off the TV, the LCDs, all they do is let more or less of that light through. Yeah, exactly.

Leo Laporte (00:31:03):
So actually in a, I guess in a way that justifies companies like Samsung calling their TVs, L E D TVs, even though we know they're LCDs, they're talking about the backlight and the same thing with Q L E D. They're talking about the backlight, not the

Scott Wilkinson (00:31:18):
Backlight, which, and a Q L E D the backlight is a quantum dot enhanced, right. L E D backlash

Leo Laporte (00:31:24):
Have there been improvements in the actual L E D crystals. I mean, back in the early days of laptops, we had you know, twisted LEDs and TFTs and all that. Well,

Scott Wilkinson (00:31:35):
Those are LCD technologies.

Leo Laporte (00:31:37):
That's what I mean, LCDs. Well, I was wondering if they've improved those shutter technologies,

Scott Wilkinson (00:31:42):
Not particular.

Leo Laporte (00:31:43):
So we got to a certain point where they were good enough. Then we started focusing on the back light.

Scott Wilkinson (00:31:47):
Yeah, exactly. There are two types of L C D shutter technologies. One is called I PS. And you asked me about this off camera last week.

Leo Laporte (00:31:55):
Yeah. In fact, most, most computer displays now are IPS.

Scott Wilkinson (00:31:58):
Right. Which gives you a better off axis picture quality. You can go away from center and see a better picture. Right. But the blacks aren't as good.

Leo Laporte (00:32:07):
Right.

Scott Wilkinson (00:32:08):
Whereas VA or vertical alignment gives you better black level performance, but worse off access

Leo Laporte (00:32:16):
Performance. I PS is in plane, switching

Scott Wilkinson (00:32:19):
In plane switching, which is a, a reference to the technology that the L C D uses to make it shutter.

Leo Laporte (00:32:25):
So I should not look for IPSS. I should look for,

Scott Wilkinson (00:32:29):
Well, in terms of a TV, if you're gonna be watching on axis. Yes. You want a VA panel.

Leo Laporte (00:32:34):
Okay.

Scott Wilkinson (00:32:35):
VA. And if you want, if, if though you're gonna have a, a big super bowl game and a bunch of people off axis in a bright light situation, then black level doesn't really matter that much. You probably would prefer an IPS panel

Leo Laporte (00:32:47):
Now get ready because LG has just announced something, they call IPS black.

Scott Wilkinson (00:32:52):
Mm they're. Ah, so here may an example of trying to improve yeah. An existing tech technology.

Leo Laporte (00:32:59):
Yeah. Interesting. These are, these are coming to Dell monitors first, so really?

Scott Wilkinson (00:33:04):
Yeah. Oh, I'll have to look into that. I had heard,

Leo Laporte (00:33:06):
It was literally announced two days ago, so.

Scott Wilkinson (00:33:08):
Oh, wow. Okay.

Leo Laporte (00:33:09):
That's the hot news. Scott Wilkinson. He is the hotness in home feeder. Geekery thank you for joining us. Leo. Leport the tech. Okay. Do I can't give you a clock.

Scott Wilkinson (00:33:29):
Oh, you can't gimme a clock cuz of your computer problems.

Leo Laporte (00:33:31):
Yeah. But as soon as I get it fixed you'll have a clock before the end of the before the top of the hour. I'm sure.

Scott Wilkinson (00:33:38):
Yeah. I, I, I will be listening for your cue.

Leo Laporte (00:33:41):
Yeah. So you can just watch, watch me. Futs all yours.

Scott Wilkinson (00:33:46):
Ah, thank you very much. Mike B you know, I should have mentioned this, that Martin Pope recently passed away at 103. He was a physical chemist and largely responsible for O so we weren't, we weren't really talking about OED in this particular case. And you said that a lot of discussion wouldn't be possible without Martin Pope. I, I don't, I don't have a detailed list of the technologies he worked on. He worked on quite a few and he may very well have worked on L E D or L C D as well, a but he certainly was instrumental in bringing OED into reality. Aaron clap asked what's that cube thing on the shelf behind you. That is a, what's called a hypno light and it's an array of four by four by four color LEDs. And it does a random cycling of colors and patterns and blinking and stuff. So it's just a fun thing.

Scott Wilkinson (00:34:56):
Beat master, let's say the link out that you posted last night. Yeah. Last week. Sorry he invented the science. Mike B says the science of OED of TV of, of what exactly. Let me just quickly take a look at what this link is here. Ah, here it is. Yes. Thank you. The concern over QD OED, pixel structure. I'll have to read that and see, oh, this is interesting. There's a green, there's a large green and then a smaller red and a smaller blue in between the greens. Which makes some sense because green, we, we, as humans are most sensitive to green and less sensitive to red and blue. But I'll, I'll have to read that. I, I'm not gonna do that while I'm here in the chat room, chatting with you folks, but but I will read that.

Scott Wilkinson (00:35:52):
Thanks beat master. I really appreciate it. FAPA can you rank micro L E D mini L E D and nano cell? Well, those are somewhat different technologies. Micro L E D as the name implies compared to mini L E D, the L LEDs are smaller and micro Ledd is typically a direct view technology. So have a panel of micro led, an array of micro LEDs and they emit light and you see that directly many L led D is a backlight technology for LCD TVs, and they're smaller than regular LEDs, but they're larger than micro E DS. And they are behind the screen. And we were talking about this on the air that they're smaller, so you can have more of them behind the screen and you can have more local dimming zones. And that makes a better quality picture. Nano cell is a technology from LG and that a, I don't understand it fully but it, it is a supplement to the LEDs L led backlight. I, I, I won't pretend I know that much about it cuz I have to read about it. But, but that is a supplementary technology in LG LCD TVs that presumably gives better blacks better and better viewing angles. So they say Mike B says Mike Martin Pope paved the way for the development of high performance displays in general. Well, yes, the certainly O led I guess other technologies as well. Yeah, he was a very important guy and he died just recently at the age of 103. Good for him.

Leo Laporte (00:37:52):
Leo Laporte the tech guy, 88. It's a beautiful morning. Eighty eight eighty eight. Asked O the phone number back to the phones. We go Johnson Johnston on the line from Durham, North Carolina. Hi Johnston.

Caller 2 (00:38:08):
Hey li Leo, how you doing today?

Leo Laporte (00:38:09):
I am. Good. Welcome.

Caller 2 (00:38:11):
Well, thank you. Thank you for stepping my call. First thing I wanna do is thank you. I've been following you since the tech TV days and I do a of it, my it career. Nice. And some of my personal journeys too. What the guys and your team had done throughout the years with the information?

Leo Laporte (00:38:27):
I hope you enjoy it.

Caller 2 (00:38:30):
I do.

Leo Laporte (00:38:31):
I do. You don't curse me every morning that you're going to work. Okay. That's good. And that Leo, he made me an it man. Yeah. Why wouldn? I've been making geeks for many, many years now. So I'm glad you're in the,

Caller 2 (00:38:44):
And you have one more on your belt.

Leo Laporte (00:38:46):
Yay. Thank you.

Caller 2 (00:38:48):
Yes, sir. Yes, sir. My question is I have a Dale longitude 73 92 and one. Yeah. And it had an old version of windows on there that I didn't like, so I totally wiped the drive and I was gonna install Linux. So I can go ahead and stop playing with linens and have a Len space machine. It's

Leo Laporte (00:39:06):
A good choice for Linnux. Yes. Yeah.

Caller 2 (00:39:08):
Yeah. So when I did it I wiped it and I able to boot the laptop via on my thumb drive. But when I went ahead and tried to install it, it wouldn't let me do it. Yeah. And once I reboot it, it came up with the message saying, no blue pull drive fine. Right. You can't see, I see the system. And I tried to

Leo Laporte (00:39:33):
Let me just before you, before you tell me what you tried to do, let me just suggest a couple of things. So Linux traditionally doesn't do well with secure boot. So the very first thing you do is you go into the bio setup. You probably did this and turn off secure boot. Did you do that?

Caller 2 (00:39:48):
Yes, sir. Yeah, I did.

Leo Laporte (00:39:49):
The other thing sometimes you need to do is turn on legacy bio style booting, and there'll be a setting in that Dell for that as well. Like some usually call it legacy boot. And that just makes it more compatible. Probably the problem is EFI that way EFI booting works. You probably know this as an it guy is there's a little portion of code on the hard drive that it boots from. And there are, Linuxes that support EFI. I mean, that's one other way to do it is to make sure that you have a Linux and you make a USB installer that will support U EFI. So that's probably the preferred method, but, but if you've already got a Linux and stuff, just try turning on legacy boot that that basic says pretend you're not U E I pretend, pretend you're a bio system. And often that, that, that, yeah, that often works. You can though download and more and more Linux support. U a I, which Linux did you try? Ubuntu?

Caller 2 (00:40:53):
I tried tu at first it didn't work. So I went to Lin Lenn mint.

Leo Laporte (00:40:59):
Mint.

Caller 2 (00:41:00):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Mint as well. So I got both of 'em I tribe both. And you one em, working.

Leo Laporte (00:41:06):
Yeah. Buntu should support U E F I, I would I would say, do you want a dual boot or do you want just, you said you wiped out Lennox. Oh, windows, right? You don't want windows, right?

Caller 2 (00:41:17):
No, I don't want windows. Oh, just Lenux.

Leo Laporte (00:41:19):
Okay. So I, you go into the bios and turn on turn on compatible, you know, booting, make it more like bios that may just be all you need. The other thing to do is when you install wound tu or any Linux, you should let it completely re partition the drive. So you wanna make sure that Linux puts its own partitions in place for EFI, for the swap and all of that stuff. And all Linuxes have two ways of doing it. One is custom where you get to choose everything. I would recommend at least for the first install that you just let it wipe the entire drive, REIT it Linux style and let it go. You don't do that. Obviously if you're doing a dual boot, but since you don't care about windows, I would just do that. Okay. All right. So there's a couple things to try.

Leo Laporte (00:42:09):
This is good. Every it guy should become an expert, not in Linux, per se, but in Unix style operating systems, because you know, Unix is how many network servers run it's Android is based on Linux. A AKA Unix Macintosh is based on a, a flavor of Unix called BSD. So knowing kind of having a comfort with Lin with Unix is really valuable. It's the oldest operating system still in current use and, and probably pretty dominant. If you include all the Linux installations, even Microsoft windows is now adding WSL, which gives you a Unix command prompt under windows, which is great.

Leo Laporte (00:42:50):
Oh, finally, if you're gonna do U E I, that's a very good point. Somebody's make sure you make the USB key. U F U E F I USB key. So Rufus, if you did it with windows, Rufus will do that. There are various ways to do that, but you it's easy to make a USB boot key that isn't U E F I by accident. So, okay. All of these are little, little stumbling blocks. That's part of your exciting journey to Lenox nerd have fun. John, I'm glad to meet you and thank you for the kind words. That's great. Call me back if this doesn't work. Okay. We'll figure it out. I will tell you, the latitudes are very good. Lenox machines. Dell actually sells latitudes and other computers, the PS with Lenox pre-installed Buntu. So it should work. All the hardware should work, should be compatible. They've done a very good job of making their systems compatible with Linux Julian on the line from Los Angeles. Hi Julian.

Caller 3 (00:43:50):
Hey Leo, how's it going? Ah,

Leo Laporte (00:43:52):
It's great. How are you?

Caller 3 (00:43:54):
I doing good, but a little frustrated. So hoping to get some advice or at the very least just to use your megaphone here, to hopefully get somebody's attention, who can help with things.

Leo Laporte (00:44:05):
I'll shout what's up.

Caller 3 (00:44:08):
I'm having some problems with, with, with these companies and almost feel like, you know, we need to sort of eCommerce digital revolution. And I'm hearing John than in my head right now, as I say it you know, I'm having problems, particularly with with Walmart, they have a grocery delivery, which is great. And as a blind person, especially, this is very helpful because it's a much easier and much less frustrating way normally to get your groceries delivered. But it seems like these days, a lot of these companies like Walmart are set up to where if you have a problem with their system, they have a number you can call, but the person you're talking to while very pleasant and you, you can tell they really wanna help. It's not set up to, to ultimately let you get the help you need, because they're not Walmart particularly is not set up to, to transfer you to a supervisor. This is what I'm told and I've experienced it now several times to believe that it's true. And it's just frustrating because when you're trying to use their app to get something delivered some of the problem I'm having may be accessible related, but just to give you the, the short version of it, you know, certain items you, you put 'em in your card and they appear as though they're in stock and everything like that. And you choose

Leo Laporte (00:45:20):
Your, oh, I know exactly what you're gonna talk about. Go ahead. I'm sorry.

Caller 3 (00:45:23):
And then, and then you go to check out, sorry. We're out. Well, no, it's even more cryptic than that. It's that? So these items can, cannot be delivered to your location.

Leo Laporte (00:45:35):
Yeah. This is a problem with all grocery delivery services, which is, and I think it's a flaw in their system. They don't know what the local store has or doesn't have, I've had the same problem with Amazon and whole foods where you can get all your whole shopping cart full, and then you go and then they just take them out out. They say, oh yeah, you don't want tomatoes. You

Caller 3 (00:45:55):
Know, certain things will say out of stock, which okay. That, and you know, it's outta stock, but others like these, no indication whatsoever. I don't know if visually it maybe puts a symbol on there that is not being, I

Leo Laporte (00:46:07):
Bet. I bet not. Cuz I've been, I've been, you know, saying bagged by this several times in Walmart, in Amazon's whole foods. Yeah. I, you know, so there's really two different problems. One is they, they haven't given you a recourse. And this is, I think every company should have an accessibility officer that really handles this and a lot of the big technology companies do this. So I think this is a good thing to lobby for in general is what is your commitment to accessibility? And give me the email address at least, or a phone number for an accessibility officer who I can talk to better than a supervisor. Somebody will underst and could do something. Leo port, the tech guy four years ago, Walmart was sued over this by the way.

Caller 3 (00:47:03):
Oh yeah. And you know, the funny thing is it worked really good for a while. And then last year, at some point somebody decided, Hey, let's merge the walmart.com with the grocery delivery. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:47:13):
That's the problem.

Caller 3 (00:47:14):
And ever since then, it's just been nothing but headaches.

Leo Laporte (00:47:16):
Yeah. Walmart was sued over the self checkout kiosks, which were not accessible, but usually when you see that that was 2018, what you'll also see is a company that goes, oh shoot, we better do better. And I'm just looking to see if they have an accessibility officer, cuz that's, you know, this that's who you wanna talk to.

Speaker 8 (00:47:37):
Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:47:38):
Cuz they'll be more, I see that they have, it looks like accessibility services for each store maybe, but that's not, you don't really want that. Boy, this is a good, this is a good question. Disability accommodations. This is for employees. Okay. Senior director. This is from LinkedIn Kayak tree Agnew, senior director and head of accessibility center of excellence. Well now it's gotta be good At Walmart. That's interesting. G a Y a T R I space a G N E w. Walmart did settle Over this issue. They've actually been sued a number of times cuz they're such a big retailer. They've been sued by the E O C for disability discrimination. Wow. That's interesting. Yeah, I, this is the only, the only person I can find is this is this Geri Agnew. Let me see if I can find anything more like a phone number would be awesome. Senior director and head of accessibility. I don't know if This is for customers or employees. She's on the leadership team, Which is a good sign that they give them a high level of you know,

Speaker 8 (00:49:32):
Let

Leo Laporte (00:49:32):
Me see. It'd be great if I could find the email. Yeah. You know, that's the kind of thing where web designers need to be made more aware obviously. Right? I think it's also though not an unusual problem. Oh, she has a website. RI agnew.com. Interesting. She's elected official as well. She's on the city council. Huh? Maybe that's a different one. What are the chances of be two of them? Leads, leads the accessibility center of excellence for Walmart, Designing a strategy to make the company a leader in, in increasing access for both its shoppers and employees. Well that's who you wanna talk to? I have to run cuz I'm using up Scott's time.

Caller 3 (00:50:31):
Yeah, no problem.

Leo Laporte (00:50:32):
But this sounds like if you could get her address. Yes. There's a contact button on our website. That's where I would start.

Caller 3 (00:50:40):
Okay. Assume you're gonna put this in the show.

Leo Laporte (00:50:41):
Yeah. G a Y a T a T R I. Hi, is her first name? RI Agnew is her last name a G N E w. And I'll put it in the show notes right now.

Caller 3 (00:50:53):
Okay, awesome.

Leo Laporte (00:50:54):
Hey, it's a great question as always Julian. A pleasure. Thank you.

Caller 3 (00:50:58):
Thank you, Leo. Take care. All

Leo Laporte (00:51:00):
Right. Take care. Sorry Scott. All yours now my friend.

Scott Wilkinson (00:51:04):
Hey, no problem.

Leo Laporte (00:51:06):
Clock. We're still still working

Scott Wilkinson (00:51:07):
On it. Well actually somebody in the chat room who was at arch Chandra sent me his

Leo Laporte (00:51:15):
Oh yeah. He has a very good clock. Yeah.

Scott Wilkinson (00:51:17):
He has a clock online. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:51:18):
He has a very good clock. Thank you.

Scott Wilkinson (00:51:20):
So that's cool. Yes. Thank you very much. Unfortunately it doesn't super superimpose on on the zoom, so I can't see it and the chat room at the same time, but I'll just keep looking back and forth. Anyway. We wanted somebody wanted to know the brand of the floating sphere back there. It's from a company called floating ideas which unfortunately floating ideas.com, which is the website on the box is no longer available. In fact, it's for sale, if you wanna buy it. Because going there goes immediately to buying domains.com and it's distributed or was distributed by a company called fascinations do com. And they're still there, but they only do licensed products like star wars products. Now at least that's all I could find on their website. I got this many years ago. My mom got it for me for Christmas or birthday, I think many years ago. So that is

Scott Wilkinson (00:52:33):
Phoenix warp one. Yes. I need to hook up with multiple monitors. Yeah, I know haven't done that yet. That could be something, something in my future for sure. Mike B sent me something on Amazon floating globe. What is floating globe? Oh, it's a similar thing. It's a similar thing and it's only like 30 bucks. Wow. It's certainly more modern than, than mine. Oh, here's one for 90 bucks. That's floating on top of a spaceship, like thing, which that's pretty cool. But I might have to get one of these $30 ones. Those are pretty cool. Wow. Okay, cool. Oh, and they also have colored L E D lights in the, in the surrounding support structure. So that's kind of cool. Chicken head 21. Yes. I do have multiple TVs, but they aren't in this room. My, my new office since Santa Cruz is tiny. It's not much bigger than a walk-in closet. So I don't have room for a lot of TVs in here. Thank you, tech Dino. I appreciate that. Beat master. Yeah. Video and coding systems. Don't like the backdrop. So Jackson, I was a little concerned about that and but, but you tell me, can you see the action clearly? Is it getting a lot of artifacts?

Scott Wilkinson (00:54:17):
Yes. I red con five, every closet should have a TV. Let's see. Oh, here's another floating 3d rotation thing at, in Sears. Oh, it's very similar. No, I don't want $35 off for my Sears. Thank you very much. Yeah, here, the one at Sears that red con just sent me is in fact very much like this. One more like this one. That's 170 bucks. Holy smokes. Chicken head 21 says one larger monitor as opposed to multiple smaller monitors. Yeah, I could do that. I'd have to I'd have to re rejigger my whole thing here. Beat says looks good. Good. What's Sears twisted Mister. Yeah, exactly. Good question. Hamster. M H do flat earthers have floating maps. Let's see. Jim Allen can you describe the difference in light output regarding QD O lead versus LG lead with a white sub pixel? I suspect, I don't know for sure, But I think QD OED probably has more light output. LG put the white sub pixel in their regular O LEDs in order to increase slight output. And they currently get to, well most get to about 700 nits. I've heard that some of the super top end ones can get to a thousand. I believe QD led will get higher than that because they're direct emitting quantum dots and they can get very rare.

Scott Wilkinson (00:56:14):
I think that's probably it. Where's my show timer. Four seconds left. Here we go. Thanks everybody. Thanks Scott.

Scott Wilkinson (00:56:24):
My pleasure.

Leo Laporte (00:56:26):
Why? 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. If you wanna talk about technology high tech, I'm here for you. 8 8 8 2 7 5 5 3 6 website is tech I labs.com. I hope you had a calm and a non surprising April fools yesterday used to be. It's interesting. It used to be the tech industry just loved April fools day. Remember Google, every dev vision of Google would have an April fool's joke. And I think the memo went out.

Leo Laporte (00:57:10):
I

Leo Laporte (00:57:10):
Think the memo went out knock it off. Just don't do it anymore. It's confusing people. I saw a few not so many from the tech industry, but a few usually they're annoying, not funny. You know, Jimmy Fallon and Jimmy Kimmel trading shows no big deal. That's, you know, that's mild, that's mild butter finger created a mayonnaise, mild, dumb, but mild new egg put out a video of the world's smallest computer. So small, you can't even see it, you know, immediately dumb. That's a joke. So it's not, it's not like you get all the ones I don't like is where you believe them. They're so credible. You what, what? And then you go, nevermind YouTuber, marque Brownly reviewed the $19, apple polishing cloth. The Sonology NAS folks announced a floppy drive network attached storage With five megabytes of capacity. I'm you know, and I'm thank you Google for not honestly for not doing it. I really appreciate it. You know, I'm not a, I'm not a fan. Did apple do it? I of apple did anything. I don't think Microsoft today. Not that I know of. I'm just looking through the, you know, the C of all the April fools jokes. No, thank you. Thank you for not doing it. Google did all sorts of weird stuff in the day. In fact, you can go back and look, and I think they have a page dedicated to April fools jokes from years past. But I think it was a couple, three years ago. I remember that Google said put out a memo. Was it the, was it the pandemic that did it

Leo Laporte (00:59:24):
Or, or, you know, I feel like they, they just, they realized it wasn't good. You know, Wikipedia has a, a, a whole page of April fool's day jokes. And in 20 it says in 2020 Google canceled them due to the pan day urging employees to contribute to relief efforts instead. Yay. Canceled again in 2021. And yes, again in 2022, you know what? This is one pandemic tradition I'd like to keep going. It's really hard if you're a journalist a tech journalist, especially years. I I've just said I'm not looking at the news. Don't I don't wanna, I don't wanna, I don't wanna know. Eighty eight eighty eight ask Leo. That's the phone number and that's no joke. Chris is on the line from orange county, California. Hi, Chris. Thanks

Caller 3 (01:00:18):
For, Hey, Leo, how are you? Long time listener first time, caller.

Leo Laporte (01:00:21):
Thank you. So or

Caller 3 (01:00:23):
Yeah I do a lot of live streaming of sports, specifically baseball, and I do live commentary over those events that I produce and I'm using my iOS device as one of my camera sources. Yeah. And I use it in conjunction. I use it in conjunction with an it called zoom. It's a portable audio interface. It's called the zoom H six black, and it's got four input channels. So you can either go with a three pin XLR or whatever. And when I'm connecting, I'm using the apple camera adapter. So I'll come out of like a, oh, that's

Leo Laporte (01:00:59):
Interesting.

Caller 3 (01:01:00):
Which is a micro output. Yeah. And then I convert it. I convert the signal USB into the, into the back end of the camera the apple camera adapter. And then it's got the lightning port to go into the phone, but I'm just curious. Cause I'm getting a lot of static and a lot of just dysfunctional noise. It just doesn't seem like it's working properly. I've talked to zoom we've the device correctly, but I still get that, that issue where I'm not getting quality audio, and this is really a super cool device, but I don't know whether it's just because I've got too many things being connected. Any, any thoughts on that?

Leo Laporte (01:01:37):
Yeah. Might well be I'm trying to think there, there are some apps I'm just I'm I wanna, I'm almost rethinking your whole, your whole way of doing this. So your goal is to, by the way, does major league baseball ever get angry at you for doing this?

Caller 3 (01:01:55):
No, it's not major league. Ah,

Leo Laporte (01:01:57):
There

Caller 3 (01:01:57):
You go. So it's it's

Leo Laporte (01:01:59):
Youth baseball, travel

Caller 3 (01:02:00):
Baseball. Oh,

Leo Laporte (01:02:00):
So you're doing play by play. You're basically doing a broadcast. That's cool.

Caller 3 (01:02:06):
Absolutely. And it's super cool. Especially for people like during COVID that parents, parents can't see their young kids. I

Leo Laporte (01:02:12):
Love that idea.

Caller 3 (01:02:13):
It's a neat platform and yeah, we push it out to multiple platforms and we've had a lot of success with it and I continue to expand that reach, but my audio pieces at times I struggle with it. So now I've gotta go just directly. So let me,

Leo Laporte (01:02:28):
Let me understand how you're doing this. There is a program called shoot for the iPhone that turns your iPhone into a camera. So you not using the camera adapter. This, this was what I was gonna recommend, but let me see if I can understand the the whole structure here. So you've got where's the video coming from? Is it coming from a camera or, or from your iPhone?

Caller 3 (01:02:53):
Yeah, it comes for camera. So, so I'll use my iPhone as a video tool and then we'll.

Leo Laporte (01:02:59):
So what you're trying to do is mix the video coming into your iPhone with audio coming from your zoom, and then you're sending that to the same computer or D to a computer, or what are you sending it to?

Caller 3 (01:03:12):
We send it out to a different platform because we actually have a it's really pretty cool thing. We actually have a, a graphic overlay that will push it out to whether it's YouTube or whether it's Facebook, whatever. So

Leo Laporte (01:03:26):
You have a USB, so

Caller 3 (01:03:28):
That signal all gets pushed

Leo Laporte (01:03:29):
Out. I'm just trying to understand the chain here so that you have the camera connector on the phone and that's so that you can get the USB output of the camera and that's going into the zoom or no, it's going separately into the computer.

Caller 3 (01:03:41):
No, it goes into the zoom. So basically the zoom, the zoom is the audio piece, and then we're connecting it to the camera, which is the, the phone.

Leo Laporte (01:03:50):
Yeah.

Caller 3 (01:03:54):
And that the entire signal then gets pushed out

Leo Laporte (01:03:57):
Into what into, and, and then you have a laptop there.

Caller 3 (01:04:01):
Yes, sir.

Leo Laporte (01:04:02):
Okay. Yeah. So what I would suggest is not using the zoom as the mixer for all of this. I'm not sure where the static's coming from, but I think eliminating the zoom as the mixer would help. What you, what you should probably want to do is you can use your iPhone as a camera. There's an app, as I said, called a shoot pro webcam, that turns your phone. One of the problems with the phone, the reason you're using the camera connection kit is it, it will have informational overlays and stuff on the video, but with shoot pro webcam, it's in the app store, it it's, it turns your phone without any additional hardware into a USB camera that a computer can see you put that in. Okay. And then what I would suggest is running a program called OBS studio on the computer, And then you can take the output of the zoom. I presume it has a USB output for the audio. You could connect the zoom to a computer for USB audio,

Caller 3 (01:05:00):
Right?

Leo Laporte (01:05:01):
Okay. and if not, then you can, you could get a USB mic, which would be the simpler solution, just a simple USB mic that would connect into the computer. Now you have video coming in and you have audio coming in, and then you use OBS studio, which is designed to do this. This is the program that most Twitch and YouTube lets play streamers use. And it mixes the signals together, right? Gives you a lot of capability. You can do overlays. You can do a lot more stuff with it. So that's one solution that would involve everything you've got, but just not having it mixed down in the zoom, which I think might be part of the issue here. If the zoom continues to crackle, then you can get an inexpensive USB microphone, like the audio Technica, ATR 20 30, that's a very inexpensive USB microphone that would do the same job. And then you, then you have a little bit more control.

Caller 3 (01:05:55):
Yeah. Well, I've had some experience with OBS and I've used OBS in, in the environment that I work in and keeping in mind that I'm sometimes in areas because I go using wifi. So I've got a hotspot. Yeah. So the connectivity with some of these devices is all wifi driven. So being able to isolate a good signal and not have of latency or glitching or buffering or whatever. I had those problems when I used OB oh, interesting. I used to go through OBS. So

Leo Laporte (01:06:24):
What, so

Caller 3 (01:06:25):
I don't, so there's just too much happening.

Leo Laporte (01:06:27):
What are you running on your computer? That's streaming

Caller 3 (01:06:33):
I'm running the application that will convert the signal, which is it's called like the overlay or what, what,

Leo Laporte (01:06:40):
Yeah. What are you using instead of OBS studio?

Caller 3 (01:06:45):
Well right now I'll go directly to a service. It's called sideline.

Leo Laporte (01:06:51):
So you've got a website open with side, you've got a website open with sideline

Caller 3 (01:06:56):
Correctly, so I'll open group up. And then that's where my connectivity comes into place. And it'll pick up my video output from my iPhone and I do it through lyrics. You're probably filming with the lyrics app. Yeah. You're able to convert that and that that's tied in. So that's where the audio, or excuse me, the video portion comes into effect and it, it all interfaces with the sideline group, but it's just, I, I think the OBS is great. I've used it, but there's so many layers and so many steps that

Leo Laporte (01:07:25):
I, it seems like you've got more layers, to be honest, be honest with you. This seems, this seems worse. My, especially my issue is with it mixing the video through the zoom, which is a lot of bandwidths going through the zoom. And I, I think that's where the problem is. I right. I think you want a solution. I think you're right. That will take videos separately. Audio separately. You don't need a fancy thing. Like the zoom, which is really a built to be a recorder more than anything else. And then mix that down on the computer. There's one other solution that's really good would give you multiple cameras, which at some point you might on, and that's inexpensive, it's called the a, a T E M mini from black magic design. It's about 300 bucks. It takes up to four HTM. I inputs. So you can have four cameras which means they could be static. You know, you could have one right behind home plate, you could have one of the outfield and you could switch 'em, it's a switcher. And it also takes audio in mixes it all down in that hardware and then sends a signal U single USB signal to the computer, which is what essentially you're doing. In other words, instead of using the zoom, the at ATAM mini would probably be a better choice cuz it's designed

Caller 3 (01:08:39):
To. Yeah. I interesting you say that cause yeah, I, I actually have the, at a mini in my podcast studio. There

Leo Laporte (01:08:45):
Ya go

Caller 3 (01:08:46):
Work. Absolutely beautiful. There

Leo Laporte (01:08:47):
Ya go.

Caller 3 (01:08:48):
But however, out in the field, I don't have a one in the field and I've often thought about,

Leo Laporte (01:08:55):
I built my at 10 mini into a Pelican case actually Berk my, one of my studio engineers built into app Pelican case. It's got everything in a little case you can carry around. It's portable, you needs power in a computer, obviously. It's great.

Caller 3 (01:09:08):
It's really great.

Leo Laporte (01:09:09):
The at 10 mini pro will even stream without a computer. So yeah. See, I think that what we're, I

Caller 3 (01:09:15):
I've got the mini pro.

Leo Laporte (01:09:16):
There you go. So what we're seeing here is that you're trying to do, I think with the zoom too much. I don't think the zoom can handle all that bandwidth.

Caller 3 (01:09:23):
I think so. Yeah. I agree Leo. I think you're spot on there. So I think we'll, we'll terminate that piece and, and move on. Last question real quickly, just MIMO being that you can use MIMO in a multi-cam apple, a application they're small, they're portable. They're easy to travel. Cause I travel around a lot, doing

Leo Laporte (01:09:41):
Love. The Mevo, love the Mevo.

Caller 3 (01:09:42):
What's your thought? What's your thought on Mevo? What

Leo Laporte (01:09:45):
I had the first Mevo, which I was really impressed with, then they sold the Logitech. I haven't tried the new ones, but my guess is they're gonna be a, an excellent choice for that. Now with a single camera, you can see, you can switch, you can say batter, picture outfield, because as you know, it's a 4k image it's capturing that you can then use any part thereof. I think the Mevo is an excellent choice, right? The only issue you're gonna have with the Mevo, unless they've solved, this is the audio doesn't come from an out separate source. Unless they all that where it's now got takes audio in, it used to use these array mics.

Caller 3 (01:10:22):
It, it will take audio in. Awesome. It will take it. Yeah, you're right. It, yeah. And I think now they've put the capability of connecting an audio and

Leo Laporte (01:10:30):
That's another solution, which is really, that's a perfect,

Caller 3 (01:10:33):
I think. Yeah. Well, good. Well, I, I really appreciate your input and insight. I've tried a million times to get through. You're a very popular tech person and very very exceptional of what you do. And I certainly appreciate your time and giving me some insights.

Leo Laporte (01:10:48):
I think there are a lot of a lot of little league and is it, what, what level ball is it?

Caller 3 (01:10:55):
Yeah, so we're playing across the, a nation it's traveling

Leo Laporte (01:10:59):
Teams

Caller 3 (01:10:59):
For it really? It ma travel. Yeah. So it's a majors level and we do a lot across the country with the top rated players in the country and it exciting. They're very, very good programs.

Leo Laporte (01:11:10):
Do you, do you a website or is it private?

Caller 3 (01:11:15):
You, you can learn more about what our, yeah, it's, ZT baseball Z as in zebra, T as in Tom baseball club at Facebook. So you can just go right there to learn more about the organization. We're in eight states, we travel all over and we're really trying to do more within the community to provide those types of opportunities for love it. People to enjoy of a game that can't necessarily travel.

Leo Laporte (01:11:34):
I, I think it's a great idea. And you get to live out your dream of being being a Vince Scully.

Caller 3 (01:11:43):
Yeah, absolutely. And I've enjoyed, I've enjoyed it thoroughly. I just wanted to try to get my tech platform really, really well grounded so that our outputs really good. I love it. Thank

Leo Laporte (01:11:52):
You. The, yeah. Thank you for calling Leo. Leport the tech guy, Leo. Leport the tech guy, eighty eight eighty eight S Leo, the phone number back to the phones. We go and on the line. It's Hotfrog from Paris, California. Hi, Hotfrog

Caller 4 (01:12:24):
How you doing Leo?

Leo Laporte (01:12:26):
I'm great. How are you?

Caller 4 (01:12:28):
Good. I just wanted to share a quick April fools joke. We did last year.

Leo Laporte (01:12:32):
Okay.

Caller 4 (01:12:32):
I work. I work for company and we sell parts for vintage British motorcycles and they use really old technology for the ignition. We're talking points and condensers. Wow. Very old technology. And one of the upgrades that's done in the FA past few years is electronic ignitions. And every year we put out are April fool day digital sales flyer to a lot of people. And one of the things we put on there last year was the Marconi wireless ignition.

Leo Laporte (01:13:04):
Were you able to pick, what

Caller 4 (01:13:06):
Did point no. Pensky wires

Leo Laporte (01:13:09):
Were you pick up dots and dashes?

Caller 4 (01:13:14):
The funny thing is we had people, most of our, our customer base was between 50 and 80 years old. So

Leo Laporte (01:13:20):
They knew and yeah,

Caller 4 (01:13:21):
They, they, they should have known, they should have known, but we had calls months afterwards. Oh

Leo Laporte (01:13:27):
No,

Caller 4 (01:13:29):
They get this back. It, we felt bad afterwards. We explained, no, this is April fool's prank. But when they got it, they let, they just thought it was the greatest thing.

Leo Laporte (01:13:37):
I saw one security researcher put out a he says, I am, I am publishing a database for all pin numbers for all ATMs globally. Worldwide.

Caller 4 (01:13:50):
Oh

Leo Laporte (01:13:50):
No. And if you looked at it, yeah, it was all the numbers from 0 0, 0, 0 to 9, 9, 9, 9. It was he's right. It was all the pin numbers. It just wasn't useful. Anyway. So maybe you should develop a Marco ignition and business would be brisk.

Caller 4 (01:14:08):
That's what people have actually been asking that

Caller 4 (01:14:11):
Thing. You guys gotta,

Leo Laporte (01:14:13):
Sometimes that happens an April fools joke, turns into a product. Hey, thanks for calling. I appreciate it. Leo. Leport the tech guy, Johnny jet coming up.

Leo Laporte / Johnny Jet (01:14:34):
Yes. It's the theme of the United States postal service. But originally it was the theme for Johnny jet. Johnny jet is here on the tech guy show. We've been using this since day one, I think. Right. I've been everywhere. It's been a while. I was a little perturbed I'm I'm watching the TV and of a sudden ad for the postal service comes on. And I mean, it's not like we own Johnny Cash, but you know, I'm thinking, well, I haven't seen that. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I've been everywhere. I've been every anyway, Johnny jet is our travel guru helps us travel better with technology. And so you're, you're, you're it's I understand if you thought we were gonna do something with the post service today, but no, it's with the traveling guy and your home. I am home your home. And I'm actually very happy about it because the airlines are having many meltdowns today.

Leo Laporte / Johnny Jet (01:15:21):
Cuz there's some bad weather in the Midwest. And in Florida, my sister is one of them. She was at west Palm beach airport last night and jet UE just kept delaying their flight. And actually she called me up and said, listen, my flight's delayed by two hours. Can I show up to the airport late? I said, no, you can't. Because a lot of times airlines will actually you know, scramble to get, you know, new crew or the weather might happen. I've been sitting in the airport, your flight's gonna be late five hours. And instead they go, oh good news. We got some equipment. So you get on and yeah, you better be there. A lot of people don't monitor their flights. You need to monitor. Even after they say it's gonna be delayed. Yeah. I always track the inbound and don't stay.

Leo Laporte / Johnny Jet (01:16:04):
Don't go too far away from the gate. So anyway, I told her, told her, she thought I was crazy. And then like an hour later she wrote, oh my God, you're right. When they just moved the flight up an hour, whenever I fly, I will put the app for that airline on my phone. Definitely. And log in, set up an account and say, give me an alert, all that stuff always. Yeah. And as well as trip it. Yeah. So that, that way you have double backup. So trip, it will send that an alert and say, Hey, your flight's changed Def for sure. Yeah. And I used that used trip. It, they used to be, they used to do it before the airlines, although the airlines have now gotten savvy and they're actually beat trip it by a couple seconds. They want you to have their app.

Leo Laporte / Johnny Jet (01:16:41):
And if you have an apple watch a lot of these apps work on the apple watch as well, because you can use 'em to log in, you know, to get into the, you can put your, your ticket on your watch and hold it up to. Although it's always funny to see not all of the readers can accommodate a full human hand. So as I've seen people trying to get their hand jammed in there so that their, their watch, which has the QR code can be read. Yes, doesn't always work. I still like to print out the boarding P me

Johnny Jet (01:17:08):
Too email is have it just as a backup in my back pocket. What

Leo Laporte / Johnny Jet (01:17:11):
If the watch died or something? Yeah, exactly.

Johnny Jet (01:17:13):
And I've had that happen. Yeah. So, or not die. It's just malfunction,

Leo Laporte / Johnny Jet (01:17:17):
Not working. And there's nothing worse. You got a long line of people want to get on the flight and you're just, ditzing around with your phone. That's not, well,

Johnny Jet (01:17:24):
I'm talking about security going through security, same thing. Then you, you have to go downstairs. Yeah. And you know, fight that battle. How

Leo Laporte (01:17:31):
About this? Now? This is interesting. You can in the state of Arizona and I presume some more states, apple has set up this to put your driver's license on your apple wallet. And you can use that to only in a few airports, like sky Harbor. You can use it to check in with a TSA. Yeah.

Johnny Jet (01:17:47):
It's awesome. And, and more state start gonna roll out with it. And I can't wait because

Leo Laporte (01:17:51):
They have to have a reader. That's why it's not, you don't just show 'em your phone. You don't even, you don't even really wanna give 'em your phone. What you wanna do is tap your phone to a, to a terminal. And then it says, I just gave the TSA everything.

Johnny Jet (01:18:04):
I'm still surprised when they grabbed my phone to, to do it when I just put my phone over it.

Leo Laporte (01:18:08):
But I'm not let anybody touch phone.

Johnny Jet (01:18:09):
That's not, but also use clear. I, I use clear and you have to pay for it, but you don't have to show your ID. So I've flown when I've lost my ID. Oh, that's nice. And they just scan your eyes. And only once in a while, will they ask you for an ID when you're using

Leo Laporte (01:18:23):
I are your ID. I love

Johnny Jet (01:18:25):
It. Yeah. So that's, that's a great way. But the thing about my sister's flight yesterday in Florida, it ended up getting canceled. Oh, the worst part about it was she was in the airport for hours trying to get her bag back. So if you cannot, if you can avoid checking a bag right now, you will be a happy person. If things like that happen, if delays or cancellations, cuz that way you can get on another flight and you don't have to wait around for hours. I was like, listen, just take off. She goes, normally I would, but I have some expensive.

Leo Laporte (01:18:49):
How long did it take to, to get her bag back?

Johnny Jet (01:18:51):
I think three hours

Leo Laporte (01:18:52):
After they canceled the flight.

Johnny Jet (01:18:54):
And, but you couldn't, she couldn't get in contact with anyone. And listen, I have elite status right now on American airlines. The highest you can get actually second highest concierge keys is the highest. And then I have executive platinum. I just called this morning to book a flight. And my whole time as a, as a elite status, over three and a half hours.

Leo Laporte (01:19:11):
Well I guess you're not as elite as you thought you were Johnny. Maybe. No.

Johnny Jet (01:19:14):
I mean, but the point is if, if I have that whole time, if you're a general member have

Leo Laporte (01:19:20):
A normal schlub like me, we're we're outta lock.

Johnny Jet (01:19:24):
So I told her to contact them via Twitter and she did, did not work. I think all these airlines are having stashed issue. Yeah

Leo Laporte (01:19:32):
They are. Oh, you think it's staffing issues. Ultimately I think that's one of them, not just whether Southwest had a computer problem and they're having delays this morning, but maybe staffing kind of makes it worse. The other thing that makes it worse is they're all. So just in time is the, you know, the way they put it in manufacturing where you don't have extra stuff, you just have what you need. And if some of they're also

Johnny Jet (01:19:56):
Cutting back and they're cutting backs, they're trying to save money. And I mean, you can't blame 'em after the pandemic. Yeah. But they used to have two gate agents now they mostly have one. So

Leo Laporte (01:20:06):
Yeah,

Johnny Jet (01:20:06):
It's a problem.

Leo Laporte (01:20:07):
It's a problem. That's all right. Life, life is hard. It's always been hard now. It's just harder.

Johnny Jet (01:20:14):
Well it's actually, some airlines are, you know, using technology for the good. So if your flight is delayed or canceled, they'll send you an email. Right? Well,

Leo Laporte (01:20:22):
That's why I want the app on there. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Johnny Jet (01:20:24):
And say you're not, you've been rebooked on this light and which happened to my sister, but a lot of them will not cover your hotel. Right. And including my sister. So you need to scramble for these hotels, especially like in south Florida right now on a weekend where, so

Leo Laporte (01:20:36):
Now these

Johnny Jet (01:20:37):
Hotels are sold out.

Leo Laporte (01:20:38):
If you are a, a, a road warrior, you have to have an array of tools on your phone, ready to leap into action. If anything goes wrong on

Johnny Jet (01:20:47):
What I do is I either run to the airline club. If I have a member, a membership, because usually you can get to an agent right then and there, or you get in line, get on the phone tweet and do whatever you can to get in contact with someone. Because time is the essence, cuz there's not a lot of empty seats. So if your flight is delayed or canceled, you know, you, especially during peak times, you're not gonna be able to get on another flight for

Leo Laporte (01:21:10):
A while. And if you see a bunch of guys in suits, running down across the Concourse towards the, towards the booking desk, you know, something happened, you might wanna run with them, just get in line, go, you know, I don't know what's going on, but I'm here.

Johnny Jet (01:21:26):
Yeah. Or run the other way

Leo Laporte (01:21:28):
Or run the other way. That's what kind of suits they're wearing if they're talking into their their sleeve go the other way. Yeah, for sure. Yeah,

Johnny Jet (01:21:35):
Definitely. I got one more quick thing. I wrote a post this week that did well about what's the first thing you do when you check into a hotel room, when you get into a room.

Leo Laporte (01:21:45):
First thing I do is I take off my shoes and I up on the bed. What should I do?

Johnny Jet (01:21:50):
The sun does.

Leo Laporte (01:21:51):
Yeah. One of the, of the first things sold in life. Go ahead. What should I,

Johnny Jet (01:21:54):
One of the first things I do is I unplug the alarm clock.

Leo Laporte (01:21:58):
Oh yeah. Cause it's always wrong. It's

Johnny Jet (01:22:00):
Always no, not wrong. It, it, the people, you know, the housekeeping doesn't check to see if it's

Leo Laporte (01:22:05):
Been somebody set. Yeah.

Johnny Jet (01:22:07):
Yeah. For the night before three o'clock in the morning, I've had that happen too many times and I've learned my lesson

Leo Laporte (01:22:12):
Unplug.

Johnny Jet (01:22:13):
So don't let that happen to you. The

Leo Laporte (01:22:14):
Alarm clock I noticed it's often wrong too. So it's so it's all a mess. Yeah. Unplug the alarm clock. Cause you unplug it. Yes. That's a very that's good advice. And then when, at what point do you scan it with your blue light to make sure that it's been cleaned? Whatever. Do you ever bring one of, of those

Johnny Jet (01:22:32):
Care? I don't. I don't. I don't. No, I don't. You

Leo Laporte (01:22:33):
Touch, you don't wanna know. Yeah.

Johnny Jet (01:22:34):
And I, I bring wipes and I wipe down all the key points. Like the

Leo Laporte (01:22:38):
Yeah. That's

Johnny Jet (01:22:38):
Smart's remote control is the dirtiest thing in the room.

Leo Laporte (01:22:41):
That's smart. Good thinking. Yeah.

Johnny Jet (01:22:44):
Yeah. I'll tell you. I'll tell you joke off.

Leo Laporte (01:22:46):
No, no. Off the ear please. Yeah,

Johnny Jet (01:22:48):
Please.

Leo Laporte (01:22:50):
I try not to stay in hotels where they bolt the remote control down though. It's cuz it's harder to clean that way. Right?

Johnny Jet (01:22:56):
I haven't seen

Leo Laporte (01:22:57):
That. Oh my gosh. I stayed many years ago in Las Vegas in circus circus and everything. The lamps, the remote control for the TV. Absolutely. Everything was bolted down. So you couldn't take it with you. I'm surprised they didn't bolt down the towels. You know, here's a corner use that. Unbelievable. That shocks me. Well, they must have had a problem they were saw. But these days, most hotels will let you use your phone to connect to the TV. So you don't even need to touch remote control. You know, I love it. I'm seeing more and more or they'll let you log into your Netflix account, which is really a great boon. I love that everybody should do that. Johnny jet.com. If you wanna read all about it, his newsletters are free. Johnny jet.com/newsletter. He's got a podcast there. He's also got a YouTube channel. He is a traveling man joins us every week. Thank you on a safe travels. Thank you. You too. Where you going this week? We are traveling in two days, the whole fam. We know it. The FAMs going somewhere. You've already been to Hawaii. So it can't be that. Oh, I bet you're going to Canada. You'll find it. Time to visit Toronto Toronto. It's it's a little chilly there right now. Yeah, I bet that's all right. Patio. Weather is days away. I don't know about Canada.

Leo Laporte (01:24:17):
Well, their definition of patio weather also is a little bit more broad than you and me. The people living in beautiful downtown LA. All right, Johnny, have a wonderful, wonderful week. Safe travels. Thank you. Will you be home next week? You'll find out. Oh I will. Okay. Thanks John. All right, take care. Bye bye listeners of this program. Get an ad free version. If they're members of club TWI $7 a month gives you ad free versions of all of our shows plus membership in the club, TWI discord, a great clubhouse for TWI listeners and finally the TWI plus feed with shows like Stacy's book club, the untitled Lenox show, the GIZ fizz and more go to twi.tv/club TWI. And thanks for your support. Jazzy jazzy, Leo Laport, the tech guy, eighty eight eighty eight. Ask Leo the phone number. I know you're not playing this. Jeremiah. Are you playing this song? Professor Laura would never play this song. Elbow is on the line from Los Angeles. Hello? Hello.

Caller 5 (01:25:29):
Hey Leo. Good to talk to you. Thank you.

Leo Laporte (01:25:30):
Thanks for calling. Good to talk to you. What can I do for you?

Caller 5 (01:25:33):
Iphone question? I'm an old guy and still trying to catch up with tech technology, but I get all these phone calls, so many random in the role that don't leave a message, but they're not really necessarily important. And I've already

Leo Laporte (01:25:49):
They're robo calls. If you answer them, do they say, hang on for a special message or your auto warranty is about to expire or how would you like a weekend in beautiful Hawaii? Anything like that? Any, huh?

Caller 5 (01:26:04):
Yeah. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:26:05):
So those are what we call robo calls. There is a nice way on the iPhone to stop getting those. But it may not be what you want, but I'm gonna mention it. You can, with the iPhone say I don't ring my phone if it's not somebody. I know if it's not in my contact list.

Caller 5 (01:26:22):
Oh, enter. Cause I, I block 'em all, but they still kept. Yeah,

Leo Laporte (01:26:25):
Because they're, they're spoofing the outgoing number. This is a huge problem. And thank you FCC for not fixing it. Yeah. So what FCC created, tried to sort of fix this by creating a system called stir and shaken. That is a way of identifying the originate source and in particular, the originating phone number. So you, it eliminates spamers because they don't wanna be identified and they don't, and they don't want to use a real phone number. So it's a very effective way of doing this. The problem is they make the big companies do it, but they don't make the little companies do it. It's too much revenue. They don't want to give it up is my opinion. So that's where all these, all these spoof calls come from.

Caller 5 (01:27:11):
So I haven't tried calling back one number. No, it's not a, the guy goes, I never called you. And I go, yeah, you just,

Leo Laporte (01:27:16):
Yeah, no, no, no. That's yeah, please. You, some days somebody will call you saying, what are you calling me for? And you'll and you'll say, say no, no, it wasn't me. It's not, it's a spoofed number. It's not a real number, no point in calling 'em back. So what I mean, the only I'll tell you the problem. If you can say, you know, in your settings on the iPhone, do not, I don't want to get calls from unknown numbers, but if you do that, anybody calls you with an unknown number. They'll just go straight through to voicemail. And here's where I have a big problem. My doctor, for privacy reasons, I'm guessing uses an unknown number. And for privacy reasons, won't leave a voicemail. So check with your physician, make sure they're not gonna do that. You know, but, but if you go in the settings for phone on your phone and then you go to the F, so this is confusing.

Leo Laporte (01:28:09):
You're on your iPhone. You go to the settings, then you go to the setting called phone. Okay. And you can say, I, you can have all sorts of information there, silence, unknown callers. You can try blocking 'em. But of course, as you've realized, the phone number changes every single time. So that's not gonna be helpful, but they are, they, apple has put in some very useful tools in there that are independent of your phone company. The other thing you can do of course, is contact your phone company. They want you to, if you get robo calls, but that's the same problem. Essentially, if they're not willing to block calls from little carriers, you know, carriers that aren't using stir and shaken then it's not gonna fix it because that's, who's, that's who the spamers use. They use little internet based phone originators to, to call you

Caller 5 (01:28:57):
One day, I was waiting for an important, important phone call for my doctor. Right. I had to answer every single one cuz I wasn't sure who it was.

Leo Laporte (01:29:04):
Yeah. Isn't that awful. And they use your area code. And I mentioned the beginning of the show, they're even now using your phone number to text you. Yeah. Saying this is your phone company. Ignore those, ignore those. So I have turned on, on my phone silence, unknown callers,

Caller 5 (01:29:20):
Unknown.

Leo Laporte (01:29:21):
Yeah. And that way, at least you won't get a caller that's and the, the way they know it is it's near contact list. So your kids, your mom, your family, your work, all of those people should be in your contact list that they're not at. They'll go through.

Caller 5 (01:29:34):
Well one slight problem with that with is that Leo, I work in the emotion picture television industry and I calls from other guys looking.

Leo Laporte (01:29:43):
I know John Travolta will not, he, he just keeps doing this block and caller ID John, stop it. So I get it. You, you do get UN blocked calls, unknown calls. That's a bigger issue. I don't know how to fix that. That's the, the flaw in all this, you gotta just tell people, please turn on caller ID cuz otherwise, because you're not alone. This is universal.

Caller 5 (01:30:09):
Yes.

Leo Laporte (01:30:10):
This is a huge problem.

Caller 5 (01:30:13):
Very, very

Leo Laporte (01:30:14):
So who's, who's calling with blocked IDs, emotion, picture like jobs and stuff.

Caller 5 (01:30:19):
Well, no, just like other crews. They, they need a, a, a man at the last minute, right? Yeah. And so they call and, or I'm not sure if they're calling who it is calling and it,

Leo Laporte (01:30:31):
Oh, so you do see a number, but you just don't know who that number is,

Caller 5 (01:30:34):
Who that number is. And I, and I, and I've answered it several times of course. And it, and

Leo Laporte (01:30:38):
It's robo calls. Yeah.

Caller 5 (01:30:40):
And I'm waiting for a call for somebody, you know? And I

Leo Laporte (01:30:42):
That's so horrible.

Caller 5 (01:30:44):
It, it is. It's very frustrating, very, very frustrating. And my, my friends who also have iPhones have the same thing, they spend at least two, three minutes a day deleting or blocking

Leo Laporte (01:30:53):
Isn't that ridiculous.

Caller 5 (01:30:54):
It is really ridiculous. Really ridiculous. So

Leo Laporte (01:30:58):
Write a note to the FCC saying you've got to enforce stir and shaken for phone companies. You know, they left a little loophole basically. And phone companies should not accept. And if, you know, by the way, if good, good on you for calling cuz the phone companies are here in this, they know they're getting a lot of bad press cuz they're allowing this all they all, who's your carrier.

Caller 5 (01:31:21):
Verizon,

Leo Laporte (01:31:22):
All Verizon have to is say, we will not accept phone incoming calls or texts from companies that don't use authentication that don't use stir and shaken. And that will immediately eliminate all the spam right there. They'll get none,

Caller 5 (01:31:36):
Even join the Verizon. What is it here? It's called I can't remember what it's called the so whatever it

Leo Laporte (01:31:45):
Is and that's not working,

Caller 5 (01:31:46):
It's not working. It's not working at all. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:31:49):
Well they do, you know, okay. I'll, I'll be honest and I'm a cynic, but they do that. So you think they're doing something,

Leo Laporte (01:31:57):
But they are not doing the thing. The one thing that the FCC says, we'll fix this. And, and it's very simple. I mean, I know why they don't do it. They they're afraid of calls not getting through from, you know, some little Caribbean phone company that, you know, you might want. But honestly this is the solution. And the FCC has given them the tools they've even mandated that they use them, but they they left in the loophole that allows them to not use it. Let me see if there's a date as of April 20th, 20, 21 last year, a year ago, FCC requires all providers certify in the robocall mitigated data mitigation database that they have fully implemented stir or shaken, but they, they kind of loop pulled out a bunch of providers apparently. So I, it just seems to me, I don't know if it's the FCCS fault or Verizon's fault. Verizon could easily say we will not accept unauthenticated calls and that would eliminate it. I guess maybe they don't wanna do it because they're afraid that, you know, somebody's gonna call from Trinidad and Tobago and it won't go through cuz it's not authenticated.

Caller 5 (01:33:09):
Hmm. Side question onto that. So like I said, I, I had to answer the phone because I was waiting for a very important yeah. Now do they put you on a, on another list that you an actually answered the phone?

Leo Laporte (01:33:21):
Yeah. You bet if you, if yes. Okay. So this is why you don't wanna do interact in any way with robocalls. Cuz as soon as somebody picks up, they go, Hey, we got a live one cuz they're just using random numbers. Right? Many of the numbers don't answer don't don't don't respond. Don't do anything soon as you pick it up, they go, Hey, put that in the database. You're exactly right. Your instinct was exactly right. Your, your gasp of exasperation has been heard nationwide. I completely agree with you it's they gotta do something about this. And honestly it's gonna come down to the FCC cause

Caller 5 (01:33:58):
Well, especially if you're waiting for an important phone call, so you have to ask, so who, what number they're calling from? Yes. And I'm so frustrated and now that I that you've said that yeah, you are put on another, another list that he answered the phone. You

Leo Laporte (01:34:13):
Don't even wanna answer it. You gotta though, you gotta got no choice. Leo Laport, the tech guy I'm I share your frustration. You're in, you're in that group of people who have to have to answer the phone, they can't say, oh no, it has to be somebody. I know. I mean, I guess you could go through and add every phone number from every possible source of work

Caller 5 (01:34:36):
And the television and motion picture industry. Yeah. Thousands of guys,

Leo Laporte (01:34:40):
Thousands of them,

Caller 5 (01:34:41):
Thousands. What

Leo Laporte (01:34:42):
Do you, what do you do?

Caller 5 (01:34:44):
I work for, I'm a, almost retired. A lighting technician.

Leo Laporte (01:34:48):
A gaffer.

Caller 5 (01:34:49):
Yes.

Leo Laporte (01:34:50):
You're a gaffer. I love gaffers.

Caller 5 (01:34:52):
Yes. God

Leo Laporte (01:34:53):
Bless you.

Caller 5 (01:34:54):
I've done so many shows. And the last big show I did was a red carpet at the critics awards, which was really cool. 

Leo Laporte (01:35:01):
How fun is that? How fun is that? It was fun. Yeah. So you do mostly TV or do you do film as well or?

Caller 5 (01:35:07):
No. I try to stay away from film cuz that, that can really 

Leo Laporte (01:35:10):
Long hours.

Caller 5 (01:35:12):
Well, you don't have a life. Yeah. Cause you know, they, they wanna stay within eight hours that you're off. So you start Monday morning at nine and you finish at 10, you got eight hours. So now your in time changes to the next day and then the next day. So you, you start coming in at, at like four or five in the afternoon. On a Friday. You don't oh

Leo Laporte (01:35:32):
No, no,

Caller 5 (01:35:32):
No. Saturday morning. Yeah. It, it it's, you know, I can't do that. My body can't take it. I'm 65 and I can't do that anymore.

Leo Laporte (01:35:41):
Hey, but you're gonna have a nice pension. I'm hoping when you retire,

Caller 5 (01:35:44):
I'm look, I've looked at that. It's somewhat there, but I kind of joined late. Yeah. but it's there it's something better than nothing. Yes. And I'm still working at it and and the, the hard thing is of course the, the retirement age is 65, 67 for social security and

Leo Laporte (01:36:02):
Right. Oh, I know I'm 65. I'm your age. I have to hold out to 70 if I can.

Caller 5 (01:36:08):
That's that true if I can and I don't think I can.

Leo Laporte (01:36:13):
Yeah. And you're having physical job. You can't, you know, you gotta be going up ladders and stuff. You can't. 

Caller 5 (01:36:19):
Yeah. And then, and then the other thing too is I'm working on a show that we're working with a lot of L E D lights. Yeah. So it takes almost it takes more time to put it up. Cause yet now you have to program it, learn, learn how to program it. 

Leo Laporte (01:36:33):
And yeah, we've moved. We've moved almost entire. Well, we still use a few fluorescence, but my key light is a fluorescent, but every, all the, all the highlights and everything are LEDs, they're just expensive, those panels. So,

Caller 5 (01:36:48):
But they work much better and

Leo Laporte (01:36:49):
Oh, we love them. Yeah. And they don't burn out. No, no heat. It's nice.

Caller 5 (01:36:54):
No, you could, you could get the ones that have the, the Calvin temperature from fifty two hundred and thirty two, which is better on the eye. Yeah. Which is probably what you need

Leo Laporte (01:37:02):
There. Well, I think we're 6,500 in here. I don't know. What are we, John? Are we daylight? What are we, what are we using here? I can't remember. 57. He says, yeah. That's easier for me.

Caller 5 (01:37:10):
That's bright. Of course. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:37:11):
Yeah. It's pretty bright. Yeah. I'm used to it. Hey, it's a real pleasure talking to you. I share, I love that your, your your, your grown, because I'm gonna turn that into an audio sound and use it on the show. Anytime anybody calls about caller ID

Caller 5 (01:37:29):
Our first time caller.

Leo Laporte (01:37:30):
Nice to meet you elbow.

Caller 5 (01:37:31):
Thank you very much.

Leo Laporte (01:37:32):
Is that your nickname? Is that your gaffer nickname?

Caller 5 (01:37:35):
Yes. It's is actually spelled a L B L w.

Leo Laporte (01:37:38):
Oh, nice elbow. I love it. Nice to meet ya.

Caller 5 (01:37:43):
Thank you very much for taking my call. Have

Leo Laporte (01:37:44):
A great one. Take

Caller 5 (01:37:45):
Care. You too. Bye bye.

Leo Laporte (01:37:47):
Nice guy. That was fun. I always love talking to the guys in the trades, especially the Film and movie TV. The ASIS. I like talking to the ASISs now, John, I'm not getting anything. I don't remember what we did last. Yeah, I'll do 'em. I got one. It's not too bad.

Leo Laporte (01:38:19):
Why? Hey. Hey. How are you today? Leo? LePort here. The tech guy. Yes. It's me. 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. If you wanna talk high tech with me, I'd love to talk high tech with you. 8 8 8 8 2 7 5 5 3 6 website. Where we put everything. I talk about all the links up tech guy labs.com will also put audio from the show video from the show and a transcript of the show up there. It takes a day or so to get all that stuff up there, but tech guy labs.com. You're looking for this today's episode, 1,881 back to the phones we go and on the line, Ray from Los Angeles. Hello Ray.

Caller 6 (01:39:11):
Hey, thanks for taking the call.

Leo Laporte (01:39:14):
Appreciate it. Yay. Thanks for calling what's up.

Caller 6 (01:39:16):
No charge. Hey, listen. I I've got a USB stick that is not being read by about a five year old RCA television. I transferred WMA files, excuse me, converted WMA files into MP3. The television reads the USB stick, but not in the order that the files were on the USB stick. Right. So if I have files run through 63 on the television, it starts with two goes to 22.

Leo Laporte (01:39:55):
Can it, can it play them back?

Caller 6 (01:39:56):
It plays them fine.

Leo Laporte (01:39:58):
Yeah. So it's, it's, it's not an issue of the file format. It's just that you don't like the sort order.

Caller 6 (01:40:05):
Yeah. The sort or, and I sorted it on the USB stick, but what

Leo Laporte (01:40:09):
It, well, no, you didn't. Okay. So here, I think here's the issue. The USB stick is sorting in a pretty much an arbitrary order. What you're seeing when you say sort it is the dis the file Explorer displaying it sorted in some way, but really the USB is not sorting, sorting it in that order. So what you want is kind of the a way, and let me just see to, to put it in the physical order which would involve move, moving files. And so if you think about it, when you say to the file Explorer, Hey, I wanna see this alphabetical. It does it like that because it's not moving those files around on the USB stick. They're just stored in some arbitrary order. Basically it goes through the directory. It says what's free. I need this much space. Thank you. I got it. So what you need is a program and I'm, I bet you there's such a thing. In fact, I dimly remember programs that would, would save them out into the physical order that you want. And then the cuz the TV's dumb, the TV is not paying any attention to file names or anything. It's just saying what's the first one, which the chicken one, which the third one,

Caller 6 (01:41:24):
Shit, the TV has not listened to me in the past. It's

Leo Laporte (01:41:27):
Not listening to you. Yeah. let me see. Okay, so I'm looking Phillips, which makes USB keys.

Caller 6 (01:41:39):
Sorry. No, it's

Leo Laporte (01:41:41):
All right. He's very excited about something.

Caller 6 (01:41:44):
Yeah. The dogs are very frustrated as well. They

Leo Laporte (01:41:47):
Say, what are you on the phone for? Get off the phone. Aren't they play? I wanna do something. So here's, this is crazy. I don't, I, there must be a better way to do this, but okay. What you do is is you take all the files off the USB, right? Okay. And format it. This is important. So by formatting, it you're clearing out the directory. You're saying there's nothing on here. Yep. On the computer, you sort the files in the order you want.

Caller 6 (01:42:14):
Yeah. Is it format as fat or

Leo Laporte (01:42:16):
Yeah. Fat, fat. Fat's the most legible, the old RCA will probably be able to handle fat. Got it. If you get anything fancier than that, you know? Huh. Now what Phillip says is sort the files in file Explorer, then select them all control a control C to come then go to the new folder and control V to paste. And Phillips says, oh, you know what? This is because they have a dumb player. This is, this is their answer to this. Phillip says, when you do that, it will stay. It will stay in that order because you formatted the drive. Right. And, and you're copying them. And when you do the copy, then the operating system goes a through Z or whatever order you want it to be. I think there is also, I'm looking for, there must be in the copy command. There must be copy in the order that it's sorted.

Caller 6 (01:43:13):
Yeah. The other, the other question are wondering is that, is there a device rather than purchasing a computer or out there that will play the USB files, but that we could see and read what the file name is, ah, or, or do I back one?

Leo Laporte (01:43:32):
No, there were quite a few of these in the back in the day. I don't know if still are, it's kind of changed, you know, over the years, people don't have physical media so much, they stream everything, but in the day you were able to buy USB drives that would have a video interface and you'd plug it into the TV and the USB drivers, really just a little computer and would display the album art and all of that stuff and play it back that way. I imagine they're still being made. I'm looking here at the command line switches for robocopy, which is a command line line copy. That's a little bit better, a little more robust on windows. And to see if there is a way to copy it in a particular order, cuz that's what you want. You want to preserve the alphabetical order?

Leo Laporte (01:44:26):
Well, there's so many switches. I don't know. Look at, look up two, two copy pro grams that are already on your windows machine and look at the, the command line to see if they'll do what you want, which is to copy them in the same order. They're sorted. One is called X copy and one is called robo copy. And Microsoft has docs pages where they'll describe all these switches. And there are a lot of switches. I don't know if I'm gonna be able to, I'm looking at X copy right now. There should be a way to copy it in the same order. And it may be if you just delete you format the drive first and then copy it. That may work. That may work. And if anybody let's see, here we go. Thank you. Scooter X in the chat room thinks he might have found something that will hook up to your TV from a company called a G P tech.

Leo Laporte (01:45:22):
Yeah, it's an H D I media player. So you plug your USB drive into it and it has a remote control. It has an interface. You know what? This may sell all the whole problem. It's only 40 bucks. I'll put a link in the show notes to it. This may solve the whole problem because it probably will show 'em in the order that it says that you want it to be, you'll be able to sort it. It sure has a lot of buttons on the remote movie. Music photo looks like it does a lot of things. A G P T E K TMI mini player. You, it doesn't have its own storage. You plug your drive that you're using or a USB drive into it and then it displays it on the TV. So it's in other words, instead of the RCA reading that drive, it's this little player and I bet you there's quite a few of 'em ah, and Irvine Rob and the chatroom has come up with a copying program. Again, you may not need it. I would look what the free Microsoft programs do, but it's called drive sort sorts. The directory tables of a volume, according to a customizable or mineable order. That's nice cuz you wouldn't have to copy 'em again. So I'll put a link to that too. Looks like that's free from teas layer.

Leo Laporte (01:46:35):
You know, if you've got an itch, there's a geek out there somewhere. Who's scratched it 88. So we've got two links and we'll put 'em at tech eye labs.com eighty eight eighty eight. Ask the phone number. If you wanna talk high tech with me, thanks to the chat room. By the way, they are great team techGuy@irc.tv, always indispensable Leo Laport, the tech more calls to come Le Laport the tech guy. If I have seen father than others, it is because I stand the shoulders of giants. I think actually that's a from sir Isaac Newton, Leo. Leport the tech I 88 88. Ask Leo, Mike on the line from Cerritos, California. Hi Mike.

Caller 7 (01:47:38):
Hi Leo. Thanks for taking my call. I appreciate it.

Leo Laporte (01:47:40):
Thank you for calling.

Caller 7 (01:47:42):
I I've been listening to you for many years and I've learned a lot from your show and I don't, I don't know where I'd be without some, a lot of the stuff I learned.

Leo Laporte (01:47:51):
I learned too. I learned never to ask Siri for a phone number again. Yeah, that,

Caller 7 (01:47:56):
That was surprising. Boy, that I feel sorry for that fellow.

Leo Laporte (01:48:00):
Isn't that awful? Oh yeah, yeah.

Caller 7 (01:48:02):
That that's bad. That's bad. But so I've got a couple questions. The first one, the main one is about VPN. I'm gonna be doing some traveling in the later this year. And I wanted to take my HP laptop with me and because I'm gonna be using wifi maybe in the hotel or, or wherever I'm at, I wanted to put a VPN on my computer.

Leo Laporte (01:48:27):
Great idea.

Caller 7 (01:48:29):
Yes. I got that from your show.

Leo Laporte (01:48:32):
That's one of the, one of the, honestly, most of the time you probably don't need a VPN, but that's one of the compelling uses for it. And, and it became clear to me when I some years ago was staying at a hotel and I fired up a Mac and apple at the time had a way to share your music with iTunes. And I saw everybody's music in the whole hotel and I thought, oh wow. That's not good. That's not good.

Caller 7 (01:48:58):
No, that's

Leo Laporte (01:49:00):
A good hotel will have will prevent some of that. But yeah. Why, why rely on their good services? Get a VPN. No, they're inexpensive. They're easy. They work well.

Caller 7 (01:49:10):
Well, didn't work so well for me. Of course. That's why I'm calling

Leo Laporte (01:49:14):
What happened. I,

Caller 7 (01:49:16):
Well, I, I picked one of the more popular VPNs. I don't know if I'm supposed to say the one, say the name,

Leo Laporte (01:49:21):
Say the name. Yeah.

Caller 7 (01:49:23):
I just, I put on surf shark. Okay. Which is supposedly it got good reviews and it, you know, it's, it's not a free one. I for it. But to be honest, I had nothing but problems. As soon as I installed it and launched it, I started going to some of the websites that I frequently use. Like my banking.

Leo Laporte (01:49:45):
Yeah. A lot of places won't use a VPN because hackers and trolls use them to hide their identity.

Caller 7 (01:49:56):
Well, that, that seems to be the problem because I, I started logging into like, I wanted to go to bank of America. Yeah. And I, the page wouldn't and then I went to eBay and it made me do that thing where I had to pick out the pictures that match the description.

Leo Laporte (01:50:13):
Oh, they do that a lot anyway. But yes. Okay.

Caller 7 (01:50:17):
On eBay, eBay sent me a message saying, we, you have to change your password. We think somebody's trying to hack your

Leo Laporte (01:50:25):
Account. So what that is that may just be geolocation. They say, well, wait a minute. You're coming from the British Virgin islands. That's not right.

Caller 7 (01:50:36):
Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:50:37):
So remember when you're using a VPN, what you've, what you're doing is you're scrambling and you know this already, but I'm gonna say for everybody, you're scrambling everything that comes outta your computer until it reaches the VPN server in this case, surf surf sharks server. And then it goes out in the public world using the IP address from that server. So that can cause a myriad of difficulties. For instance, you can't get into our chat room because we will say, well, you aren't who you say you are. You're pretending to be somebody in the British Virgin island. So we won't let you in banks, which of course really are concerned about security. Here's the good news. When you're going to the bank, you can turn off the VPN because the bank's using encryption between you and your computer. Anyway, it's using, oh yeah. That's the HTT PS for secure, the padlocks closed. And the bank has a certificate and your browser's encrypting everything. So even if I'm staying in the same hotel, I might see that you're going to the bank, but I can't see anything else. And I certainly can't in intercept any traffic.

Caller 7 (01:51:43):
Well, that's news to me. I, I didn't know that

Leo Laporte (01:51:45):
That's one of the reasons VPNs are less common is because almost all websites. Ebay does it too. Now use HTTP S and you can see that in the address at the top there, if you're not, unfortunately, apple and others now are hiding this information. But if you turn it on, you can see. Or if you click the padlock or the shield, you can see, oh yeah, it's the certificate says, this is eBay. That's good. And it means everything in between me and eBay is now encrypted. So one thing probably you should do if you're using a VPN, it's nice. If you can turn, keep it open and keep ha you know, a lot of them have a big button that says, turn on and turn off when you're going to the bank, turn it off when you're going to eBay, turn it off. Because yeah, if it's causing problems, obviously it's not helping and you are secure. You don't need to worry about it.

Caller 7 (01:52:37):
They, I, I chatted with the people at their help desk off and on for the, about the better part of the week. And they had me changing servers. They had me changing the IP from static. Oh

Leo Laporte (01:52:52):
No, This is the problem is they're not paying those help people much more in a minimum wage. If you really know this stuff, you can get a job on the, a radio, make hundreds of thousands a year. Don't work for minimum wage.

Caller 7 (01:53:09):
Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:53:10):
They're most, most customer support. People are nice people. I'm not knocking 'em, but most of the time they're working out of a notebook. And what they don't know is what I just told you, you know, which they should, but they don't. So,

Caller 7 (01:53:23):
So if I go and I'm traveling and, and my web browser shows HTTPS you're secure, I, I don't need to use a 

Leo Laporte (01:53:33):
VPN. Nope,

Caller 7 (01:53:35):
Nope. That's interesting. Cause everything I would wanna do would, would probably have that HTTPS

Leo Laporte (01:53:42):
That's exactly right. In fact there was an interesting article in the New York times about VPNs just a few months ago. I'll put a link in the show notes came out in October by good guy, Brian X. Chen saying it's time to stop paying for a VPN. Now he has two reasons. One is because a lot of the VPN companies are owned by advertising companies and other things. We have a sponsor VPN. I won't say the name, but that 

Caller 7 (01:54:17):
Oh, I, I,

Leo Laporte (01:54:18):
Yeah. And they're, they actually are. They did get acquired by a company that used to do online advertising. So I really quizzed them when that happened and we continue to do ads for 'em because they, they convinced me that this does not change how they operate, but you really do wanna check out a VPN. So there, so that's one issue that Brian talks about and the other issue is frankly you don't need it in many cases. Are you on a PC?

Caller 7 (01:54:45):
Yeah, I have a window. 10 HP laptop. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:54:49):
Yeah.

Caller 7 (01:54:51):
It's a late model. You know, another interesting thing that happened besides the websites is for some reason if I couldn't use my printer, my wireless printer.

Leo Laporte (01:55:03):
Yeah. Same thing. Same thing, cuz it's no longer you. Yeah. So that's what a VPN does. It makes you somebody else and you know, your printer is not gonna let somebody else print to your printer.

Caller 7 (01:55:20):
Sure.

Leo Laporte (01:55:21):
Right.

Caller 7 (01:55:21):
But 

Leo Laporte (01:55:22):
So VPN VPN is still useful. I still support 'em. I still use 'em you gave the perfect use case, but it's not, it's not necessary for a lot of the things we do these days. And since almost everything we do now, you know, this is relatively recent, that there was a Google created a big campaign. They call it HTTPS everywhere and they said, we will rank you higher in search ratings. If you turn on HTTPS and every darn website, even my websites, which have no reason to be secure turn it on because Google ranks you better. Okay. It's not, it's an easy thing to do. And so most sites you're going to now are HTTPS. So they're encrypted and in the same way they would be if you're using a VPN. So I think you, I would leave the VPN on while you're just, if you like, you're plugged, you're plugged in or you're joined the hotel, wifi, leave the VPN on. Cuz then that just keeps people from seeing what you're doing, messing with you, that kind of thing. But when you're going to a bank, if they give you any trouble at all, just turn it off. Leo. LePort the tech guy, the VPN has other advantages for security, point of view, for instance, somebody in the hotel, can't see you're there and can't spoof, spoof you and stuff like that. So that's why, if you're just gonna stay connected to the hotel wifi, I'd leave it on at that point

Leo Laporte (01:56:45):
And then just disable it when you need it.

Caller 7 (01:56:48):
Okay. Yeah. Cause BA you know everything I wanna do is, is kind of stuff that I have to log into. If I'm gonna be traveling,

Leo Laporte (01:56:55):
If you have to log in, make sure it says HTTPS before you log in and then your golden.

Caller 7 (01:57:02):
Okay. Well, that's comforting to know. I, I didn't realize I would be that secure with the HTTPS. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:57:10):
That the one thing they can see is that you're going to that site, but they can't see the conversation with that site.

Caller 7 (01:57:18):
Okay. So they can't get my password.

Leo Laporte (01:57:20):
No, no, no, no, no. And you should never use an email provide that doesn't use HTTPS, cuz you know, in the old days, a few years ago you logged into your email provider without a VPN. You're sending your password through the air unencrypted. That would be bad. But nowadays Gmail and everybody else uses HTTPS.

Caller 7 (01:57:42):
If my computer stays logged in to like Gmail, if I don't log out and I, and I just plug the computer in somewhere else, the, is, is that safe? But like I haven't piped in the password.

Leo Laporte (01:57:56):
Yeah. So what it's doing is saving on a cookie on your computer. That's a token that says, oh, this is Mike, the token ex buyers. That's why every once in a while you do have to log in again. But that token Facebook does it. A lot of people do that. That also by the way, was a cause for a bad hack called fire sheep that allowed people at a coffee shop to log into your Facebook and start posting as you. And that was the primary reason why Facebook and everybody else went to HTT EBS that prevents it. So. Okay. So yes, you're still secure. You're using that token. The token can't be stolen, but, but again, if you're, if you know, if you're just sitting on the internet, I would use the VPN.

Caller 7 (01:58:42):
Okay. Could I ask a quick question about, about your website? Yeah. a few months ago you changed it and now I can't, I can't search the way I use though. I,

Leo Laporte (01:58:54):
No, I'm sorry. Yeah. You use Google to search it though. You should be able to search. If you say site twi.tv, which is the website's address, tech iLab redirects to twi.tv. That's the podcast site. And then do the search term that actually works better than the old search worked anyway.

Caller 7 (01:59:15):
Okay. Cause I used to be able to put, I know

Leo Laporte (01:59:18):
I'm sorry

Caller 7 (01:59:19):
I put something in there. It's and I could pull up all the,

Leo Laporte (01:59:22):
I know it makes me, so what happened is the software we used on that site was pretty old. And we were informed by the company that does it Droople that there was a major update coming and they would no longer support the old software, just like windows. We were like effectively using windows night. And we went to the company that set it up and said how much to fix it. And they said a quarter of a million dollars and we choked, I choked and said, well, we have another site we're gonna fix that site. That's also running through, but we are gonna fix that site. So let's just move tech guy labs over to that site. But we did lose that. We lost a number of feature. We lost all the old shows. We lost the search capability and I apologize. And

Caller 7 (02:00:07):
Cause that was valuable. Especially if I missed the show,

Leo Laporte (02:00:10):
It's gonna get better because we do now do transcripts, which we didn't do before. And Google will search through those transcripts through the

Caller 7 (02:00:19):
Google

Caller 7 (02:00:20):
Home app.

Leo Laporte (02:00:20):
Right. So that's the good news is you'll you'll start getting better search, but it's gonna take a little while before it gets everything in there. I apologize it. That was just cuz I was too cheap.

Caller 7 (02:00:34):
I wouldn't spend that money either. That's

Leo Laporte (02:00:35):
A lot of money.

Caller 7 (02:00:37):
Yeah.

Leo Laporte (02:00:37):
Hey, it's a good talk to Doug talking to you, Mike. Have a great day. All right.

Dick DeBartolo (02:00:41):
Mr. J Hey Leo. Hi Dicky. Oh, what's that cute? Little thing. You have

Leo Laporte (02:00:48):
Cute little thing. My little penguin

Dick DeBartolo (02:00:50):
On, on your desk.

Leo Laporte (02:00:52):
Oh the

Dick DeBartolo (02:00:53):
Little,

Leo Laporte (02:00:53):
The little Atari. Yeah. Leo Laport. The tech guy living in a disco Wonderland. Dick de Bartolo. Although he calls it his boogie Neyland. Hello Dickie.

Dick DeBartolo (02:01:10):
Hell are

Leo Laporte (02:01:10):
Ya? He's our gizmo wizard. Our GWiz. I am great. I bought your gizmo from last week. Thank you very much.

Dick DeBartolo (02:01:17):
Oh, the little guitar, the world smallest entire 20.

Leo Laporte (02:01:20):
I love this thing

Dick DeBartolo (02:01:22):
You finger. Can you play?

Leo Laporte (02:01:24):
Yeah, sure. Totally. I mean it's pretty tiny. So it's a little TV set with cute little bent Rabbiters and it's attached to the world's smallest Atari 2,600 game machine. Dick Dick talked all about it last week. Yeah. And and yeah, it's got a joystick and everything and it works great. Oh, super. It falls over once in a while, but it works great. And yeah, I could play the games I was playing. It's kind of cool. Cuz you can play you know, all my FA I, this is and you and I both started with Ataris. Let's see I'm yeah, absolutely played. And it plays it's somebody said it's not the exact version, the 2,600 version, but I feel like it's pretty good. Yeah.

Dick DeBartolo (02:02:09):
On one and a half inch screen, you don't have to

Leo Laporte (02:02:14):
It's a fun game.

Dick DeBartolo (02:02:16):
I would not look for Doby sound.

Leo Laporte (02:02:18):
No mic after the show. Last week ran out and bought two one for him and one. Oh great. Yeah. So thank you for that recommendation. What am I gonna buy this week?

Dick DeBartolo (02:02:26):
You know what, thi this is really fun. Not only is it fun, you can make your money back really easy.

Leo Laporte (02:02:32):
Is it Bitcoin?

Dick DeBartolo (02:02:34):
No, no, no. Not at all. Not, not at all. Okay. It is. It is an L the it's an L E D light. Okay. Okay. And what's neat about it is that it is in the lamp and all the time it's in the lamp. It is charging because it has a little built in a battery. Yes. But they send and, and now

Leo Laporte (02:02:57):
The power goes out. It's like it stays on 

Dick DeBartolo (02:03:01):
You know what it, I thought it did until I was playing with it with, with the circuit breaker in my house. It's actually the problem with the ones that

Leo Laporte (02:03:11):
Just a test. You turned off all the power.

Dick DeBartolo (02:03:14):
No, just in, in a couple of in the background,

Leo Laporte (02:03:18):
Do you have a light switch you could use?

Dick DeBartolo (02:03:21):
Well, I wanted to make sure I'll tell you I have power drift plugged into powerr. That's true. And if it's, if it's, it's not plugged into a wall, it probably is not gonna work properly.

Leo Laporte (02:03:32):
If F DNY is listening. Dick is, is if, as a disaster waiting to happen.

Dick DeBartolo (02:03:38):
Yeah. But in the box with it comes this a little it's a little plastic square. Okay. And it has two slots, like it's a plug. Yeah. So you can, if the light is in the lamp and the power goes out, you can say to your friend, oh, you know what it's okay. Because I'll just plug the lamp into my portable wireless outlet. Yes. And when you do that,

Leo Laporte (02:04:02):
Oh my God. The lamb, the so it's but the juice is all in the bulb. Cuz it's got a battery in the bulb. Exactly. But why does it need to plug into that little thing though? I don't understand that

Dick DeBartolo (02:04:13):
Because that completes the circuit. Oh, okay. Okay. Okay. You know, I freaked Meyer out, you know, I was Meira is a weekly guest said, Myra, look of, I have, why is electricity? And I plugged the light. That's

Leo Laporte (02:04:24):
Really cool. Yeah. It's like the light bulb you put in your mouth that lights up. Yeah. Yeah.

Dick DeBartolo (02:04:30):
You could do that. Okay. You know why I'm not gonna put, are you saying

Leo Laporte (02:04:37):
You complete the circuit with your tongue? Is that what you're saying?

Dick DeBartolo (02:04:39):
Well, I, I can say you can, you can do it with a wet finger and I'm assuming,

Leo Laporte (02:04:44):
Oh, it works.

Dick DeBartolo (02:04:45):
Yeah. I'm not gonna say

Leo Laporte (02:04:47):
They say that in the, in the manual. Do not put it your

Dick DeBartolo (02:04:49):
Mouth. It says, it says no, it, it says start it with a damn finger. Start

Leo Laporte (02:04:55):
It with a damn finger

Dick DeBartolo (02:04:56):
Finger. Okay. But there's more, it comes with a little screw on, on, off switch. Yeah. With a hook. Okay. So if the power goes out, you can screw the bulb into that. You'll get three to four hours of power. And now you have a little portable bulb with a hook.

Leo Laporte (02:05:17):
Oh,

Dick DeBartolo (02:05:17):
That's cool. So you, you can hang it in the workshop or you work on fuses or anything like

Leo Laporte (02:05:23):
That. Uncle fester would love, love this.

Dick DeBartolo (02:05:25):
Yeah. I think they're really, they're relatively inexpensive. They're $9. You have to, they, they sell 'em in pairs 1799. And I got two of them in the package

Leo Laporte (02:05:37):
And, and what's the name of the product so

Dick DeBartolo (02:05:39):
We can, oh, okay. It has a really stupid name. It's called Jack on Lux. J a C K on, you know,

Leo Laporte (02:05:47):
Forget

Dick DeBartolo (02:05:47):
It. It's

Leo Laporte (02:05:47):
On website, ko.biz

Dick DeBartolo (02:05:49):
Biz. I have a, of 

Leo Laporte (02:05:53):
G I Z, w I Z dot B I Z click the button, the big button that said as the GWiz visits, the tech guy that's me. And then you'll go to that page. And

Dick DeBartolo (02:06:04):
You are the tech guy.

Leo Laporte (02:06:05):
That's me. Did you know that all this time? I like, oh, you just thought I was some guy

Dick DeBartolo (02:06:09):
Saying you should listen to. And I said, well, I do this thing with this guy, Leo,

Leo Laporte (02:06:13):
What?

Dick DeBartolo (02:06:14):
I said, if you have a contact with the tech guy, I'd like to be on his show. Cause it's wildly. I'll

Leo Laporte (02:06:19):
Never forget.

Dick DeBartolo (02:06:19):
Well, this is, this is

Leo Laporte (02:06:21):
I went backstage to visit Steve Martin in a concert he did in the, in the area. He very kindly invited me to go backstage and hi. And there were other people there all excited about meeting Steve Martin and Steve puts his arm around him. He says, Hey everybody, it's the tech guy. And they just looked at me and had no idea, no idea whatsoever. I said, Steve, they're not, they don't care. Steve. They're here to see you just, he's a very humble man, I guess.

Dick DeBartolo (02:06:48):
No, that's great.

Leo Laporte (02:06:49):
GIZ, G I Z gizmo wizard. Right? G I Z w I Z dot B I Z click the blue link that says the GI Wiz visits. Steve Martin. I mean the tech guy and then, and then he wishes in his dreams. And then you'll see all the stuff he's mentioned on the show, including this. And you can, you can go right to the Jack on Luxe, L E D bulb or get the world's smallest working Atari 2,600, which is last weeks perfect. Or the black and Decker drink maker, which was two weeks ago. You can also click the button that says, what the heck is it? And play the, what the heck is it contest? You got a new one?

Dick DeBartolo (02:07:28):
Well, yeah, this is 

Leo Laporte (02:07:30):
Oh no, it doesn't.

Dick DeBartolo (02:07:32):
We have all of April.

Leo Laporte (02:07:33):
This goes through April. Oh, okay. Exactly. Okay. Yeah. Cause I saw some owls there for a second, but that was just a mistake.

Dick DeBartolo (02:07:40):
Oh, that, that was a, a Burg of the alarm system. Okay.

Leo Laporte (02:07:46):
I don't know why they popped up briefly, but now I see the big red button it looks like. Yeah. Is it a button? Could

Dick DeBartolo (02:07:53):
They it's I don't know.

Leo Laporte (02:07:54):
Yeah. It could be a yo-yo. It could be a flying saucer for an aunt. I don't know what it is, but if you do submit your your guess up to six autograph mad magazines for the correct answer, but you know what, there's twice as many for the best wrong answer. Best being funniest give is Wiz biz, gmail.com. But you know what? Read all the, read all the rules. And do we know what we're playing for yet?

Dick DeBartolo (02:08:24):
Well, you're playing for the June issue and I should have we don't have By next week or the week

Leo Laporte (02:08:29):
After I know, because Dick sends me these, I don't even have to play and I get 'em and this is a great memory piece of my memorbilia. You will want this. I love it. From MAD's maddest writer, five decades. He started in high school writing in four mad magazine. Don't forget his podcast too. He does it with Chad Johnson. It's the GIW show@giw.tv. How many gadgets do you do on that show? It's like a

Dick DeBartolo (02:08:57):
Yeah, I, I do three new gadgets. Then Chad does a gadget and then we do a warehouse thing. Wow. So we do five

Leo Laporte (02:09:04):
Gadgets. That's a lot of stuff. I know Dick, so many gadgets. He spends hundreds of dollars a month to store them in the Dick's gadget warehouse. And he'll pull out classics. So like a, in a few years you'll pull out this light bulb and I bet it'll still of it.

Dick DeBartolo (02:09:20):
Yeah, it probably will

Leo Laporte (02:09:21):
Probably still work probably will. Thank you. Dickie. Do you have a great week?

Dick DeBartolo (02:09:24):
Okay, buddy, thanks to

Leo Laporte (02:09:25):
You next week. Thanks to all of you for stopping by. We appreciate it. Thanks to Jeremiah and Laura doing the music today. Thanks to Kim Shaer answer the phones, but of course, most importantly, thanks to you for joining me. We'll do it all again. Tomorrow, if you're around, come by say hi, don't forget the website, tech guy labs.com audio and video from the show goes there after the fact plus our transcripts. So you can follow along as you listen. Tech guy labs.com. I'm Leo. Leport the tech guy wishing you all a wonderful day and a, I hope you survived April fools and we'll see you next time. And as always, I want to bid you a safe and happy geek week. Take care. Well, that's it for the tech guy show for today. Thank you so much for being here and don't forget. TWI T I T. It stands for this week at tech and you find it at 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. 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.