The Tech Guy Episode 1894 Transcript
Please be advised this transcript is AI-generated and may not be word for word. Time codes refer to the approximate times in the ad-supported version of the show.
Leo Laporte (00:00:02):
Podcasts you love from people you trust. This is TWiT. Hi, this is Leo Laporte and this is my tech eye podcast. This show originally aired in the premier networks on Sunday, May 15th, 2022. This is episode 1,894. Enjoy the tech eye podcast is brought to you literally by Cachefly. Cachefly is giving away a complimentary detailed analysis of your current CDN bill and usage trends. So you can see if you're overpaying 20% or more. Learn more at twit.cachefly.com. Well, Hey, Hey. Hey, how are you today? Leo Laporte here. The tech guy. Yeah. Time to talk computers and the internet and home theater and digital photography, smart phones, smart watches, you know, all the stuff, the digital technology stuff. That's making life both interesting and difficult at the same time. Eighty eight eighty eight. Ask Leo is my phone number. If you wanna talk about it, 8 8 8 8 2 7 5 5 3 6, toll free from anywhere in the us or Canada, outside that area, you can call the same number using Skype out and it should be free. I think I'm pretty sure cuz it's toll free here. So you know, 8, 8, 8 8 2 7 5 5 3 6. There's a website. Yes, there is. The website is tech guy labs.com and that's where you can get links to the things I mentioned. You can get a transcript of the show, audio and video of the show after the fact it's all there. Tech guy labs.com. Just look for episode 1894.
Leo Laporte (00:01:48):
Let's see on this day in 18 in 1894, I wonder if anything important happened something not probably in technology Ja well maybe, maybe Japanese scientist. Shaba BTO. Keith Asato discovers the infectious agent of the bubonic plague and publishes his findings in the Lance set. No, that's it. <Laugh> the motion picture motion. Yeah, film and TV 1894. What happened in film and TV? Couple of things. William KL Dixon captured Fred OTZ sneeze as a motion picture at Thomas Edison's, black Mariah studio in west orange, New Jersey. The first sneeze caught on film on this. Well wasn't this day, but in this, you know, roughly this, this timeframe 19 in 1894, April 14th, the first public showing of Thomas Edison's Kinetico scope. First public movies began on in this year in 1894. So there, yeah, first college basketball game, university of Chicago beat the Chicago, Y M C a 19 to 11, the games were lower scoring in those days.
Leo Laporte (00:03:18):
The horse racing starting gate was invented in 1894. The international Olympic committee was founded in 1894 and the United States golf association formed <laugh>. So it was a very good year. And that's the episode number 1894 this week. In more modern times, Google had its developers conference. They call Google IO, IO IO. It's off to work. I go Wednesday and Thursday of this week, they announced as I had expected a pixels six, a phone, they have a kind of a stagger step TikTok product release cadence. They do at, in, in the fall, they do the high end, you know, in this case it was the pixel six and the pixel six pro that was, that came out in October and then middle of the year, they do a refresh of that high end for about half the cost in this case, 450 bucks for the pixel six a which is I think in many respects, a very good, very comparable phone.
Leo Laporte (00:04:24):
It has the same chip, which is interesting. They're not, they're not putting a slower chip in there that then Google design, tensor chip, and that empowers a lot of artificial intelligence on the phone cameras. You know, it's just one, I think it's just one lens. Doesn't have as good a screen. You know, you have to make some sacrifices to get the price down, but not bad. And I, people often are asking, I don't wanna spend 1,012 hundred bucks on a phone. What's a good phone for half that. And I always say the the, a series pixel phones last year's five a the year before is four a, this year's six a now that's the good news. Bad news is you can't order it till July 21st, two months from now more than, and it won't arrive till July 28th, who will only come holy Kaul, holy cow.
Leo Laporte (00:05:12):
That's a, that's gotta be the supply chain. This thing is just a mess, just a mess. I, you know, I it's, it's a variety of different things. It's COVID it's factory shutting down. It's a problems in the United States with a I guess a lack of truckers. It's just a, it's a mess chips aren't being made. It's a mess. It's also some of it's not COVID some of it is increased demand. We're buying more computers, we're buying more, do do dads and, and do hickeys. So they can't keep up with the demand they're building now, which you know, what'll happen, right? They'll build a bunch of factories. They won't go online till 20, 25 in that's what Intel's saying right now. Yeah. Maybe in a couple of years, things will be better.
Leo Laporte (00:06:04):
Maybe not E maybe even three. What is this? 20 22, 20 25, 3 years. It's gonna all be better because they're building a bunch of factories. That'll be ready in two or three years. So they're gonna start cranking out chips, you know, end of 20, 24. But you know what happens that we go from a shortage to a glut and then all of a sudden the price is tumble. So if you can wait till 2025 to buy a computer, <laugh> no, I'm not gonna say that, but may, maybe prices will go down. You'll be able to get a better at cars. Look at the prices of cars. It's some cars you can't even get my, my Mustang mock my electric Ford Mustang. Nope, don't have any more. We're we're check your dealer, but we're not, that's it. We've got every one of 'em accounted for. Wow. They also announced a pixel watch not available till later this year with the pixel seven phone, that's like October why even bother? Well, because it's all leaked out. And so Google says, all right, in fact, they even showed a video of the pixel seven phone. And then next year Google said a pixel tablet. This was in other words, this was Google saying, yeah, nothing not. We had nothing to report down the road though. We're gonna have some stuff.
Leo Laporte (00:07:25):
What happened to Google? What happened? They used to be these, you know, used to, we used to get excited about Google. I own like we do about apple events and all the exciting stuff. And nah, the Android 13, which is already out in in beta, you can put it on your pixel phone if you wanted. It's it's a little early Fitbit integration in the pixel. Watch again. You know, you could say anything you want right now, the watch isn't gonna be out till October. Okay, fine. Pixel buds pro updated version of the pixel buds, which were, have been in two generations now awful make it three. If you include the very first ones, awful terrible products. Pixel buds pro $199 starting in two months, July 21st.
Leo Laporte (00:08:15):
It's hard to get excited about this stuff. And then they showed a video of a mother and daughter. The mother understands speaks Mandarin daughter understands Mandarin, but doesn't speak it. And they showed some glasses, really ugly glasses, big thick nerd glasses, big thick black frames. They're not working on style. It's Google. These guys wash their hair with soap. These are engineers. They don't care. They made these black glasses, big temples. And but this is the beginning of what people are looking forward to with what they call augmented reality. As the mom speaks in Mandarin, the English text shows up in the daughter's line of sight. It's you know, like a heads up display it's it's coming to her from the glasses. So she's seeing what the mom's saying in English and vice versa.
Leo Laporte (00:09:08):
I have to point out Google showed a very similar simultaneous translation thing with earbuds three, four years ago. <Laugh> and I don't remember that ever coming out or if it did, it didn't work very well. So I don't, I think Google's lost this mojo. If anybody, if you're looking around and you see some mojo on the ground, see if it's Google's and return to sender they're in mountain view, California. Just I think if you write on the envelope, Google mountain view, California attention C Pache here's your mojo. I think maybe he'd he'd realize it was for him to, I just don't understand what's going on at Google. I really don't 88, 88 ask Leo, but we can talk about that. We can talk about anything on your mind. Alternatives to Google. Yeah, sure. There's not many. We can talk about that. 8, 8, 8, 8 2 7 5 5 3 6. Give me a ring.
Leo Laporte (00:10:05):
Leo. LePort the tech guy. Kim Schaffer. I should not sing. I'm sorry. I apologize. <Laugh> I hope that didn't hurt you. You did a pretty good job in years. <Laugh> hello? Kim Schaffer phone angel. Hi. How are, how are you doing? Good. Good, good. <Laugh> somebody in the chat room said you didn't say anything about Elon? Nope. We don't talk about Elon. No, no. <Laugh> that's a good song. I want that song. Has anybody written that? I bet there's something I used to. I just did. Yeah, you just did. I bet there's it's probably out there. Yeah. Who should I start this fine show. I like this call cuz I don't think we've ever got it before. Okay. But Dave and twin falls, Idaho. Yeah, line one. He wants to know how to turn that thing off. When you walk in a store that says, do you wanna join our wifi? Ah <laugh> ah, I hate this. I hate that. Thank you, Kim. You're welcome. Appreciate it. Let me push these buttons. There's so many of them these days and say hello to Dave and twin falls, Idaho. Hello Dave,
Caller 1 (00:11:10):
How are you Leo?
Leo Laporte (00:11:12):
I am well, your phone's bugging you a
Caller 1 (00:11:16):
Oh my gosh. You know, I only noticed this the last probably month or so. You know, Kim has said, yeah, but she walks into like at a, a Verizon or something. She gets the, you know, the message there, but
Leo Laporte (00:11:30):
It's very annoying. Are you on an iPhone or an Android phone?
Caller 1 (00:11:34):
It's it's an, an iPhone, but now, I mean, if I go into the mall or go into a lows or anywhere, it doesn't just give me the option. Do you want to, do you wanna get onto the Lowe's network? Yeah, it will say it will have all kinds of networks
Leo Laporte (00:11:52):
There. Sure. Cause there's a lot in the mall. It's just, everybody's got their wifi. So here's what, here's what you're gonna do. You're gonna go into your settings on your iPhone. And there's a similar for people using Android. There's an analogous thing. You go into wifi and you you'll see all the wifi things, but right below it, you'll say at, you'll see, ask to join networks. And that is, that is known. Networks will be joined automatically. If no known networks are available, you will have to manually select in there. And there's three choices. Ask, notify, notify, which you, it probably is what you have. It could either ask a notify or off, which is don't ask me. Don't tell, don't ask. Don't tell, I don't wanna know auto join hotspot. Same thing. Automatic ask to join. Never. Now hotspot's something usually you're creating or somebody in your car or something. So you might, yes. You might leave that on asked to join it's up to you, but you can turn those both off in the wifi settings, but there's another thing I would do.
Leo Laporte (00:12:52):
I do this if you, if it, cause there will be some wifi access points you join automatically and you can look at all the access work. Yeah. Like where you work and you might want that. But you can look at it if you hit the info button, which is that blue eye to the right of it. And you can see there'll be a choice whether to join it automatically. And you can even say, forget this network, which means it won't join it automatically. So I'm fi I'm trying to find one that I have set to join automatically. This is the one I'm on. So auto joinin, you could turn that off. I do that. So there's in this area, Xfinity is the cable company. Not, not a fan, but I am a customer cuz I don't have a choice.
Leo Laporte (00:13:38):
They are a monopoly. And they do this thing with people who are Xfinity internet subscribers with their access point where they open up a public access point on every one of them. And this is how they support their phone service. So as you wander around town, you will see Xfinity, Xfinity, Xfinity, Xfinity, wifis. And if you've ever joined it, it will automatically join those. Now here's the problem. A lot of them are dead. The there's no internet on them. And so it breaks your internet, activ access as you're wandering around town. So I also look for things like that, old wifi access points, Xfinity one for me. And I forget those and I make sure it's do not auto. Not only do not auto join, just forget you ever knew about it. So it won't try it. Won't ping me. So that's what you wanna do.
Leo Laporte (00:14:25):
You want to go to the settings and you wanna turn off auto join and there's a, it's very similar in in Android. I think that's a bad auto joinin is, is I think security wise, a bad idea. And I'll tell you why you go to a a coffee shop. This is a well known hacker attack and you're in the coffee shop. You're online. A bad guy sitting in the coffee shop is on the same network as you, right? The Starbucks network can see that you're there. And with the proper tools, the tool you can buy online, fairly inexpensively. They're not illegal. There's one called for example, wifi pineapple. You buy that and it can, it can not only see your machine. It can see what access points your machine has joined in the past. And then if you're a really snarky, bad, bad guy, you say I'm gonna pose as you, for instance, your home access point, cuz you have it set to auto join, right?
Leo Laporte (00:15:21):
Or your work access point, you have it set. So he goes and he says, my, I am now setting up an access point on my laptop with the name that your computer likes and auto joins. In fact your computer will auto joinin it cuz it's stronger than the Starbucks wifi. Oh, it's really strong. I'm home. Well honey, we're home and it joins it. Now you're really vulnerable because you are on an unprotected link between your laptop and the bad guy's laptop. So these are the little hacks wifi should not, I think auto joint, the problem is you don't want to have to every time you get home, I mean the smart thing to do security wise would be to say, ask at least notify, but ask because if, if I know you get home and says, okay, you're home. You wanna join the wifi? Ask because if you're not home and you get that popup, you know, somebody's impersonating your wifi. That's a risky thing. Okay. Something that chat sing, but Leah, why do bad guys sit in coffee shops? I don't know. Maybe they like coffee. I don't know. Anyway, I hope that helps Dave. It's a great question. And now, you know the solution Dale in Nashville, Tennessee. Hi Dale.
Caller 1 (00:16:39):
Hey Leah.
Leo Laporte (00:16:40):
Welcome to show of this show.
Caller 1 (00:16:43):
Thank you.
Leo Laporte (00:16:44):
What's up?
Caller 1 (00:16:46):
Yeah. So I have a big, an old big windows machine that I use to do Adobe premier pro video editing.
Leo Laporte (00:16:56):
Yeah.
Caller 1 (00:16:57):
And
Leo Laporte (00:16:58):
You're a professional obviously
Caller 1 (00:17:01):
<Laugh> in, in that sense. Yeah. Yeah.
Leo Laporte (00:17:03):
We use windows. We use windows for a premier pro for for my network as well. So yeah, it's a good choice. Good. Yeah.
Caller 1 (00:17:11):
So whenever window, you know, when I got it in 2013, it, you know, it had windows seven on it. So when windows 10 came out, it upgraded to that and everything's been fine, including with premier pro. That's what I was initially nervous about, you know, upgrading it, but everything went fine and
Leo Laporte (00:17:31):
Yeah, we stayed with windows eight for a long time. We are finally, we got new Dell machines. I think we're going to win. Are we going to windows 11? John? I think we are maybe 10, but anyway.
Caller 1 (00:17:41):
Yeah. I think my hardware is too old for windows 11. Right, right. Yeah. So, but so of two years ago, you know, like in the summer of 2020, you know, when I was sitting in, you know, in my place, you know, nowhere to go because of the pandemic and everything, I did another, you know, let windows update update me. And I started getting these mouse, jitters and audio. Oh problem. You know where it went, you know, whenever I tried to play a video or, you know, watch a movie or whatever, you know, through that machine,
Leo Laporte (00:18:15):
Hold on just a sec, cuz we are, the magic music is coming up, which tells me I'm out of time. But hang on, I'll talk to you off the air. Meanwhile, car guy, Samble Sam is just around the corner. Leo Laport, the tech guy. Sorry about that, Dale. I have a, no, that's
Caller 1 (00:18:32):
A network I heard yesterday when I was listening.
Leo Laporte (00:18:34):
Yeah. It's a network break and I, you know, I should probably not have picked up your call, but I did my fault. So you ever, so you can't do windows update cuz it breaks your mouse and audio.
Caller 1 (00:18:44):
Yeah. I mean, you know, when I go back, you know, when I, you know, return to the last working windows version, it goes back to 1909, the version 1909 and everything's fine. And then the next step, you know, the next time it updates and you know, it's weird because every now and then I can like mess around like disabling and Reen, enabling the real tech audio and the maps. Yeah. Right. And you know, and do that in a certain sequence. And sometimes I get it to work, but then, you know, first time that happened, I was really happy. And then the very next time I restarted the machine, it was back to the same problem again.
Leo Laporte (00:19:22):
Huh? Is it a, is it a did you build the machine yourself or is it a brand name?
Caller 1 (00:19:29):
A friend who's, you know, like a, you know, really high tech geek built it for me. Okay.
Leo Laporte (00:19:36):
So yeah,
Caller 1 (00:19:37):
It's, it's an as rock.
Leo Laporte (00:19:38):
Yeah. Mother. So you, and presumably the both the sound and the mouse are connected to the motherboard. You may need special drivers from as rock. The problem is windows 1909, the version you're on ended life last year. Yeah. So you're not, you're actually not gonna be getting security updates, which is problematic. Right. really problematic. So AF so if you aren't going online with that thing. Okay. But I think you want to fix this. Yeah. So, so what I would suggest, there's a couple of things you could try make, first of all, make sure your bio is up to date and that you have the latest drivers from as rock. If you have, you don't have a SA a dedicated sound card I'm presuming
Caller 1 (00:20:29):
Right. It's the real tech that's on the mother. It's
Leo Laporte (00:20:32):
Weird that the mouse would be affected because there are no drivers for the mouse. That's just a standard USB human interface device. Yeah. So that's a little weird. It sounds like if things are getting jittery, it actually sounds like it might not be the drivers for those devices. It might be the system is getting occupied by something.
Caller 1 (00:20:59):
Yeah. They're like stepping on each other. Yeah. Because
Leo Laporte (00:21:02):
Of the, in the old days we've said, oh, you gotta interrupt conflicts, but I, we don't do those anymore. Yeah. I mean the ideal thing would be to
Caller 1 (00:21:09):
Do three, one. I could, I could just go in there and I could like load them in a certain order. And then it
Leo Laporte (00:21:14):
Would work. The ideal thing, the thing I would, I mean, if you really wanna fix this, what you wanna do is, is boot to a clean install of windows. And of course that will be up to date. If you get windows from Microsoft and you don't need a serial number or anything, cuz you've installed 10 you're up, you're, you're entitled as they call it to, to use 10. So I would go to the media creation center and download a copy of Microsoft's latest version of windows. In fact get 11 might as well.
Leo Laporte (00:21:43):
Yeah. You don't install it yet. Just boot up into the installer, make sure your mouse and audio sound okay. At that point. Now you're running from the installer. My guess is you're gonna be okay if you have mouse problems with that then maybe yeah. There is some sort of weird incompatibility I don't. Yeah. Yeah. But I, my guess more likely that there's something going on that will be fixed if you can get to the most recent version of windows. So you could do the latest windows 10 or the, or since you're gonna, and if that's the case, then back up your data and reinstall just reinstall, you know, with creative cloud, it's easy. Cuz you just download the next, you know.
Caller 1 (00:22:22):
Right. Do you know of any way to, to save a working configure? I mean, cuz like right now, after playing with it for four hours this morning, <laugh> you know, it's working right now just because of this.
Leo Laporte (00:22:34):
Yeah. Image it, image it. So, so they call it the windows seven legacy backup. I gotta run cuz Sam's here, but you can make an image of that. If it's working image that, put it on in a separate hard drive or somewhere else so that you have it and then you can go back to it. I should mention our show today brought to you by the fabulous Cachefly. And when I say brought to you by cash flow, I kind of mean it. Cachefly is our CD and our content delivery network, which means when you download any of the podcasts, including this one from twit, you are actually going through Cachefly. Cachefly solved a huge problem for us because well we were successful and all of a sudden hundreds of thousands of people were trying to download our podcasts and our little servers couldn't accommodate it.
Leo Laporte (00:23:28):
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Leo Laporte (00:24:23):
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Leo Laporte (00:25:15):
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Leo Laporte / Sam Abuelsamid (00:26:16):
Don't forget to ask about that storage optimization system SOS and the ultra low latency video streaming. I think you're gonna be very impressed. Cachefly twit.Cachefly.com, C A C H E F L Y Cachefly.com. We thank 'em so much for their support literally. I mean they're holding us up. <Laugh> for the tech guy show and all of our other shows, twi.Cachefly.com. Leo Laporte tech guy, Sam apples, Sam, the car guy is here pre principle researcher at guide house insights. He is podcaster his wheel bearings podcast. All about automobiles is@wheelbearings.media and wherever you get your fine podcasts and he's sitting in front of a Ford right now, hello? Saying, oh, oh, oh, you're finally off the embargo. That's right. You can tell us about, about driving the lightning. The F-150 lightning lighting the lightning, as they say riding it is Ford, you know Lisa was asking if there'll be an electric Ford Bronco.
Leo Laporte / Sam Abuelsamid (00:27:19):
And I said, well, Ford's all in on electrics. I'm sure there will be. It. It will be coming soon. Yeah. Sooner, sooner rather than later. Yeah. the F-150 business is by itself. One of the largest businesses in the world. Yep. Multi multibillion. It's like a $45 billion business by itself. Wow. That's more than Twitter <laugh> yeah. So it's a big, well I'm 45 billion in revenue. Yeah. Yeah. It's a big bet for Ford to say we're gonna go electric, but I think it's very exciting. So, so tell us all about it. Yeah. So Ford first announced their plans to build an electric version of the F-150 about four years ago three and a half, four years ago. And what they did was they went to work. They basically, they took everything under the cab, in the body from the gas F-150 and threw it away.
Leo Laporte / Sam Abuelsamid (00:28:16):
So up top it looks like an F-150. If you look at it, I mean, it's the same, same shape as an F-150. It still has the same cab structure and bed structure. But everything down below is all new. So they created a new custom frame that still mounts up to the same mounting points and they stuffed a battery in there and a couple of motors and, and it's all good. So piece of cake, not, not a problem at all. <Laugh> actually, it's a lot more complicated than that. But they have now started shipping the F-150 lightning to dealers. It looks a lot like an F-150. It doesn't have, it does. Yeah. It doesn't look like it's, you know, announcement that this is a cyber truck or yeah, no, I mean, it doesn't doesn't look like any kind of science experiment, right.
Leo Laporte / Sam Abuelsamid (00:28:58):
Except, you know, when you look at the front of it instead of a big wide open grill, there there's a plastic panel there. And then when you press the button underneath it, the whole thing powers up the, the, what would normally be the grill and the hood all powers up and you have a 14 cubic foot front trunk in there. You have up to the, the standard range version is 230 miles of range that one's really targeted more at commercial customers. Yeah. They're so they're calling that the lightning pro that starts at $40,000 and then they also have extended range versions with 300 up to 320 miles of range and 2200 pounds of payload capability. So this thing can do anything pretty much anything that a standard gas F-150 can do, but here's the question. Yeah.
Leo Laporte / Sam Abuelsamid (00:29:49):
One of the things people do with their big old trucks is tow things, your boat, your trailer, what's the kind of, what's the EV battery life gonna be? It, it, it can, it can tow 10,000 pounds, but I did, I did some towing. I had a 9,500 long, I had a 9,500 pound trailer hooked up to it. Wow. And it didn't even feel like there was anything there. Nice. It, it still accelerated faster than a empty gas F-150 now that said when you're towing, doesn't matter if you're towing with a gas engine or electric or, or hybrid, you're going to lose energy efficiency, cuz it's gotta do a lot more work. That's just it's physics. Right. but the amount of range you're gonna lose is dependent on a bunch of factors. It's not a simple answer. So you know, with a gas F-150 typically you can count on, you know, your fuel economy dropping by about half and as a general rule of thumb, worst case with an EV it's similar.
Leo Laporte / Sam Abuelsamid (00:30:49):
You gonna, you could lose about half of your range because my buddy for instance, has a boat. He wants to tow it up to lake Tahoe. It's about 180 miles he's concerned. And he probably is. Right. He's not gonna be able to do it without charging halfway. Yeah. So it depends a lot on the aerodynamics of the, the whatever you're towing. Right. and the and, and the weight. So a boat, not very aerodynamic. No. and you know, if you're going up from Petaluma to lake Tahoe, you're also climbing several thousand Uhhuh <affirmative>. Yeah. so you're going uphill with a, a non aerodynamic thing. That's probably worst case condition. So for your friend, I would not recommend getting the F-150 lightning right now. Yeah. but you know, what Ford does is when you, when you first hook up a trailer, a new trailer to the truck you can put a QR code sticker on the, on the trailer and the rear camera, the backup camera will look at that.
Leo Laporte / Sam Abuelsamid (00:31:47):
And then it'll, it'll prompt you to calibrate the the trailer. So what you do is, you know, they, they tell you to drive about 10 miles with the trailer hooked up and it does a bunch of, it measures a bunch of data, how much energy is being used as you accelerate and Ford on the, even on the gas F one 50 S now they have something called a smart hitch and load sensors under the bed so that it can measure how much payload you're putting in there. So you're not overloading it. And it also measures what the tongue weight of oh, that's of the trailer is. That's nice. So, yeah. So from that, so it knows how heavy the trailer is, and it knows how much energy you're using as you accelerate and break, and then it will it will use that to automatically update the range estimation.
Leo Laporte / Sam Abuelsamid (00:32:35):
So it tries to give you a more accurate range estimation. Nice, nice for depending on, on what you're towing. And if you have multiple different trailers, like if you have a horse trailer and a boat trailer, you know, and maybe one for jet skis or snowmobiles, you know, you can, you can calibrate each one separately and it'll store multiple trailers in there. And then when you hook it up, it, the camera looks cool. QR code on the, on the thing and automatically adapt updates the range accordingly. But really, but that's good. What we wanna know is cuz you've got to drive it and how, and for a while with a button under a bunch of different conditions, tell us how do you like it, it, it, it is, I would say it's the best F-150 they've ever built. Wow. It is wow. With, with the, with the, with the exception of towing long distances, it is superior to the gas F-150 in virtually every way.
Leo Laporte / Sam Abuelsamid (00:33:23):
It's faster, it's more comfortable. If you've ever spent time driving a pickup truck unloaded, especially in slippery weather conditions. Yeah. <laugh> pick, you know, an empty pickup truck bed means you usually don't have much weight over the rear axle. And so traction and stability can be a real problem. I, I, I know I've, I've owned a truck in the past and it can be a challenge driving in winter weather conditions. But because you have this big battery that spreads out the weight, the F-150 lightning has about a 50 50 weight distribution, which is way better than any other pickup truck. So it's actually a lot easier to drive in, in poor weather conditions. You know, it's got 580 horsepower and 775 foot pounds of torque, which makes it by far the most powerful F-150 ever built. And it is, it is, this thing is seriously quick when it's unloaded and you know, it will, it will go the distance, you know, in terms of range, you know, Ford's done a, a really good job on their range estimation model.
Leo Laporte / Sam Abuelsamid (00:34:23):
So it, it works really well. And with that front trunk you can store you know, we, we had four carryon bags and two backpacks put put in there. So you've got lockable, hidden storage. So you don't have to leave stuff in the bed. If you've got other accessories that you use with, with an F-150 like a toolbox or other things that you put in the bed, those will all fit right in there, cuz everything's exactly the same size, which is why they designed it the way they did. Hmm. Because you know, a lot of truck owners have that kind of stuff. And especially for commercial users you know, they also have a lot of upfit gear that they put in there and they can just drop, take it right outta their gas. F-150 drop it right in there. You've got the intelligent power backup for your home.
Leo Laporte / Sam Abuelsamid (00:35:05):
So you can power your home off of this thing if you're, if you have a blackout. And it's, you know, and the, the extended range versions come included with the ad amp connected charger for charge station pro, they call it so it will charge overnight, you know, even with this big battery it'll charge overnight in eight hours you know, what's cool is, is we're starting to see these car companies now they're in their second and third generation electric vehicles. They're really getting better and better at making these things. I think mm-hmm <affirmative> right. Yeah. And it's, it's got experience now. Nice. Yeah. When is, is it available now? They're shipping to dealers now. So the first customer should be getting them any day now if they haven't already, but if you haven't ordered yet, if you haven't ordered yet, it's say a, a long, long life. My friend probably until next year. Yeah. Yeah. Sam bull salmon. Thank you. My pleasure.
Leo Laporte / Sam Abuelsamid (00:36:04):
Say hello to my little friend, 20, 23. When is the cyber truck coming out? Maybe someday. Yeah. Big boy in the chat says a cyber truck killer. I said, well, you know, something would have to actually exist before you could kill it. You can't kill something that's already dead. <Laugh>, you know, assuming they ever build it, which I'm skeptical of. You know, then, you know, it certainly matches the specs that were originally published for the cyber truck, which are, by the way, no longer on the Tesla website. They took those off to the website some time ago. Really. Wow. Yeah. So what, what do you think the problem is? Is it harder to make a cyber truck than he thought or, well, there's, there's, there's actually several issues. I think one is the batteries, you know, they were counting on having these 46 80 cells, these larger cylindrical cells for this thing.
Leo Laporte / Sam Abuelsamid (00:37:01):
And they still have not been able to scale up production of those and, and a big part. It's not just the cylindrical cells doing cylindrical cells, you know, just scaling those up was not that big of a challenge, but they wanted to do the, this, these dry coated cells. So when, when you manufacture the the cathodes and the anodes the way they do it today is they have for the cathode, they have an aluminum foil and they coat it with a slurry of the, the, the chemistry, the, the the lithium nickel, manganese, cobalt, aluminum and then it goes through a drying process. They run through some rollers to smooth it out and get an even coating. And then it has to dry out and then they roll it up. And what Tesla wanted to do, and they talked about this at their battery day is do a dry coding process.
Leo Laporte / Sam Abuelsamid (00:37:47):
So it really simplifies the manufacturing, shortens it up, shortens the cycle time and reduces the cost, except that they can't figure out how to actually scale that they they've done some in pilot production limited like prototypes, but apparently the dry coating process puts a lot of wear and tear on the rollers. And so they, they can't, they haven't really figured out how to mass produce these things. Hey, how does it compare to the RT one to the Rivian? Did have you driven the Rivian? So I have driven the Rivian briefly. I drove it for about an hour a few. So back last fall, and I'm actually hoping to get one for a longer review next month. And I'm starting to see you around town or one. Yeah. So the, the R one T is smaller. It's, it's a midsize truck. It's not a full size.
Leo Laporte / Sam Abuelsamid (00:38:34):
Okay. so it's closer in size to a Ford ranger or a Chevy Colorado mid-size truck rather than a full size. And the, the, the R one, T's a great truck. It's it's even faster than the, the F-150. But it is smaller. So it's got less cargo capability. It's got less payload does have slightly more towing capability. It's 11,000 pounds versus 10, but, you know, that's neither there you think four it'll do it two 50 and a three 50 electric or eventually. Yeah. Wow. Wow. That, but those, those are still a few years away for the medium duties. Yeah. the, the use case for those is a little bit different. And so, you know, those will probably be based off the next generation of the trucks. Right. Or fuel cell, maybe even I wonder. Yeah, yeah.
Leo Laporte / Sam Abuelsamid (00:39:21):
Or maybe a plugin hybrid right. It might be a better, better solution for those that's. I think that's, that may be the direction to go with those, but they will eventually do battery electric versions of those as well. Wow. And, and Bev versions of everything else that they make as well. Right. So no, I mean, the, the era of the electric truck is with us and, you know, something I well, I'll mention it in and then the next break, but I was doing some thinking, you know, comparison of the F-150 lightning versus the Toyota BZ four X that we talked about a few weeks ago. And I'll come back to that during the next break. Okay. Thank you, Sam. All right. Hang in there. We'll be back at the top of the hour for more car talk with Sam eighty eight eighty eight, ask Leo the phone number. Leo. LePort the tech guy, David on the line from Naples, Florida. Hello, David.
Caller 2 (00:40:16):
Hey Leo, how you
Leo Laporte (00:40:17):
Doing? I am good. How are you?
Caller 2 (00:40:20):
I am doing really great, except for the fact that I am trying to connect a direct connect can and printer to my computer. And it seems to work sometimes. And I'm trying to get the concept here. It seems to wanna connect up through the wifi section, but previously it seems to me that there's only been one thing connected up to the wifi port. And that was where your internet feed was coming in
Leo Laporte (00:40:47):
Is so when you say direct connect you are not talking about USB to the printer. You're about wifi. That's easy. That just, yeah. That's easy. That works. You plug it in. It works. That always works. Yeah. So there's two ways to do a printer on wifi one, you join the printer to an existing wifi network, the same one, your computer's on. And that, that is just standard wifi, wifi direct turns the printer into a wifi access point, which then your laptop joins and prints to the printer.
Caller 2 (00:41:19):
And do they still come up through the same basic window where the wifi connection, where the internet connection comes up?
Leo Laporte (00:41:26):
Yeah, they should. So once you put your printer into direct connect mode, right. It should have, and it should display for you a name of the access point, which will be cannon Z, you know, something, Whatever. Right. Yeah. And then it'll also give you a password, cuz obviously it's like joining a hotspot. In fact it is. So
Caller 2 (00:41:45):
I think, I think after getting a couple of times, you know, just trying different things and in fact, usually I'm at a hotel like right now I'm at extended stage.
Leo Laporte (00:41:55):
Ah, that's why you would do that. That makes perfect sense. Cuz you don't, you don't control the wifi network. I mean they have one. No
Caller 2 (00:42:01):
I don't, I don't
Leo Laporte (00:42:02):
Want everybody. You don't wanna put the printer on that. Yeah, I understand that. So that's a very good use for that direct connect. You know, you just treat the printer as you would with your phone. When you put it a phone in a hotspot, you should see it on your machine, your windows machine, or your Mac machine as one of the available wifi access points. You'll need to enter the password that the printer tells you to enter.
Caller 2 (00:42:23):
And then have to copy it in from the port on the, on the screen. Yep.
Leo Laporte (00:42:26):
And then it's just like another access point. Like you've got a wifi access point in the room with you.
Caller 2 (00:42:32):
Excellent. I then I must finally be getting the right, right setup because I've got my wood springing guest suite, you know, in, for the internet and then the other one.
Leo Laporte (00:42:41):
Well that's the problem. That is the problem. Because once your laptop is on the printer's wifi, there is no internet there. <Laugh> there's just a printer there. You know the outside. Yeah. Now you're in wifi direct. You are not just, you're not talking to the outside world. So you're gonna then have to switch back to the hotel's wifi if you wanna get to the internet.
Caller 2 (00:43:01):
Oh, I did. Wow. Because before I've always had it connected through actually hide wire
Leo Laporte (00:43:11):
Or if you're at home, you can have it. Join your wifi at the printer, join your wifi network. Then you don't have to do anything. You theoretically <laugh> possible. I've never succeeded at this to well, yeah, no, I mean, I, I'm trying to think of a way you could do this and still have your internet access. Right. That's what you would like. I
Caller 2 (00:43:36):
Think it, I guess, I guess you need another access point to computer if that had Bluetooth interface on it.
Leo Laporte (00:43:41):
Yeah, that's right. Bluetooth. Yeah. If you could, if you could print via Bluetooth or USB, then your wifi, but your wifi radio can only attach to one access point at a time.
Caller 2 (00:43:51):
Ah, so that's the problem because that's the problem I would go. And then I'm like, wait a minute. What happened to my internet? And then, and then, you know, so now it's, it's, it's definitely there, but now they have the driver that came in with it when it installed. It's the other one that says direct, mm E nine. And then the model is the printer, the
Leo Laporte (00:44:10):
MD
Caller 2 (00:44:11):
700
Leo Laporte (00:44:11):
Basically you've decided to have a private conversation with the printer. And that means there's no internet to the printer or to you. It's just you and the printer talking to one another in order to get back on the internet, you will then have to select the wifi access
Caller 2 (00:44:26):
To log into the other one.
Leo Laporte (00:44:27):
Yeah, yeah. The hotels
Caller 2 (00:44:27):
To do it. Right?
Leo Laporte (00:44:29):
Yeah. Most of the time you don't need both internet and printing. I mean well I guess it'd be nice to be able to surf while you're printing or something like that, but yeah. Nope. That's the problem with wifi direct. Well,
Caller 2 (00:44:40):
You're trying to print out your airline tickets or something.
Leo Laporte (00:44:42):
Yeah, exactly. There might be a way I'm sure. There's a way I'm trying. I'm trying to think if there would be a way to make this all work, but like you could have, but I think not, I think your radio on your computer really can only connect to one.
Caller 2 (00:44:56):
That's all I've seen because every time I've tried to, even with two S it doesn't do it. It's either
Leo Laporte (00:45:02):
One it's always one or the other. Yeah. Bring a USB cable. That's the other option.
Caller 2 (00:45:08):
Oh, that's the USB cable is great. It just, it just plugs it in and works. Yeah. <laugh> there's no problem.
Leo Laporte (00:45:13):
Yeah. So that's the other option. Just bring a USB cable, then your computer can use its wifi access to the internet and print via USB, which is by the way, probably faster. And and more,
Caller 2 (00:45:23):
I wouldn't do that, but my trust USB cable didn't make this particular trip. So I just thought I'd try to, oh
Leo Laporte (00:45:28):
Yeah, yeah. For this particular trip, you're outta luck. The other thing you could do I think this would work. You can get a, an external wifi adapter just to plugs in the via USB that could be connected to the internet. Your other one could be connected to the printer. And I guess that this is what I was thinking. I think that that would work to allow you to be both on the internet and on the printer.
Caller 2 (00:45:48):
I've the other
Leo Laporte (00:45:49):
Ones I've never tried it.
Caller 2 (00:45:53):
Well, that's another fun thing of those.
Leo Laporte (00:46:01):
Well, have a good business trip then David and
Caller 2 (00:46:05):
Thank you very much.
Leo Laporte (00:46:06):
All right. I'm glad we can help. That's you know, this is sometimes you're on the road. You need some help. That's what we're here for. I love it. <Laugh> 88 88. Ask Leo, take care. Da let's see Dre on the line from Miami, Florida, Hy Dre,
Caller 3 (00:46:21):
Leo Laport. Hi. Nice to meet you.
Leo Laporte (00:46:23):
Nice to meet you. Good to talk to you.
Caller 3 (00:46:26):
Big fan from ZD TV days.
Leo Laporte (00:46:29):
Oh, those were the days back in the nineties. <Laugh> yeah,
Caller 3 (00:46:33):
You really,
Leo Laporte (00:46:34):
Me back in the OS <laugh>
Caller 3 (00:46:38):
That was a, the Renaissance. I think
Leo Laporte (00:46:40):
It was a wonderful time for everybody involved. In fact, I remember, you know, I was I was already had some experience in the TV and radio and I was telling the young kids who were working there, enjoy this. You will never get another experience like it. And I think they know now 20 years later, that was pretty, pretty amazing. They, it was like the inmates had taken over the asylum
Caller 3 (00:47:04):
<Laugh> I completely agree. Yeah.
Leo Laporte (00:47:07):
So what can I do for you today?
Caller 3 (00:47:09):
Well I did something that I regretted immediately.
Leo Laporte (00:47:13):
Oh no. <Laugh>
Caller 3 (00:47:16):
So woke. I woke up one day and my internet was out Uhhuh and I didn't get an outage notification from Comcast.
Leo Laporte (00:47:24):
Okay.
Caller 3 (00:47:25):
And I did a network reset and that like uninstalls your drivers and resets all your proxy settings, all your internet setting. And after that windows updates stopped working.
Leo Laporte (00:47:39):
Oh,
Caller 3 (00:47:40):
Microsoft, the Microsoft store stopped working, which some people say is a, is a, is actually not a problem at all. <Laugh>
Leo Laporte (00:47:46):
Were you able to get online with your browser?
Caller 3 (00:47:50):
AF after the Comcast came back in surface? Yeah. Yeah. I can, I can get online,
Leo Laporte (00:47:55):
But you've broken windows update somehow.
Caller 3 (00:47:59):
Yeah. So basically what I've been doing is going on the windows update catalog and manually installing everyth
Leo Laporte (00:48:04):
Everything. Right. They do that for it professionals who only want to download the update once and install it on multiple computers. That's good. You figured out how to do that though, but you, but you can't just, that's weird when you did the reset. It broke windows update.
Caller 3 (00:48:20):
Yep. And I even upgraded to windows 11.
Leo Laporte (00:48:23):
It shouldn't, by the way it shouldn't. And the, so neither the store nor update will work now.
Caller 3 (00:48:29):
Correct. So the windows update store it tries to download these four same apps. It three UWP run times 2013 to 15, 12.
Leo Laporte (00:48:40):
Yeah. And a direct that's probably the store itself, I would guess so that you could do the rest.
Caller 3 (00:48:46):
Yeah. And it just errors out on anything. I wanna install there. And, and then also windows defender, I get an error code.
Leo Laporte (00:48:55):
So you get, you can't get ahold of Microsoft. It sounds like that's the problem.
Caller 2 (00:48:59):
<Laugh> yeah.
Leo Laporte (00:49:00):
Could you go to microsoft.com and your browser?
Caller 3 (00:49:03):
Oh, let me try that. Let me, oh, I go, I bought some Microsoft answers, but let me just try my
Leo Laporte (00:49:08):
Well, yeah, that would count if, if you can get there. So I'm just trying to figure out if it's possible that something happened in your, maybe your host's file rerouted, Microsoft. This is a mess. I don't know what happened. So let me hang on. We're gonna take a break at the top of the hour, lots more still to come. Leo. LePort the tech guy and I'll help you off the air. So tell me again, what you did, you reset your net, you did the network reset. Sam. We'll be be with you in a second. Sam. I just wanna see if I can get this done here. So you did.
Caller 3 (00:49:40):
Yeah, I did a network reset. Okay. And then when I rebooted, you know, that's, that's when that's, when it happened and, and I, what I did, one of the things I tried already was I uninstalled my network drivers, all of them, cuz I had ver many versions of it and still no problem. I tried setting the Google DNS, I, you know, IP four and IP six, nothing. I ran some power show scripts to uninstall those apps.
Leo Laporte (00:50:09):
He's Louise <laugh>
Caller 3 (00:50:11):
<Laugh>
Leo Laporte (00:50:12):
You're messing it up worse now. Did you run the windows store troubleshoot?
Caller 3 (00:50:18):
Yeah. And, and what it tried to do was clear the cash and, and repair
Leo Laporte (00:50:23):
The app. Yep. And, and that did not work.
Caller 3 (00:50:27):
No, it's still the same issue.
Leo Laporte (00:50:31):
Interesting
Caller 3 (00:50:32):
Articles people have been having this issue back like in the 20 18 20.
Leo Laporte (00:50:37):
Yeah. It's not, I don't think it's yeah, I do see this. I'm I'm probably looking at the same sites. You are windows, Microsoft store. Won't have to open after reset. And yeah, the, I mean delete local cash. Change the DNA. Yeah. I don't, there's something, something weird has gone on.
Caller 3 (00:51:01):
I'm looking at the chat too. I, I I'll
Leo Laporte (00:51:03):
Yeah. Chat chat will often have, I'm gonna let them work with you cuz I have no idea. I would just be referring to chat. So if you're in the chat room, that's good. What's your handle in the chat room?
Caller 3 (00:51:12):
This is Dre.
Leo Laporte / Sam Abuelsamid (00:51:13):
Hi Dre, same name. All right. So I'm gonna let the chat room, cause I wanna give Sam is his due here, but I'm gonna let the chat room work with you and I'll keep an eye on it and see if something comes of it. Meanwhile, Sam it's all yours. Hey, so Leo, you were asking me about the, an electric Bronco. Yes. and while that will be coming eventually there's also going to be electric versions of the the Jeep Wrangler coming. Probably in 2024 or 2025. Jeep has promised by 25, they will have battery electric versions in every market segment they're in. Wow. so a Wrangler is coming, they've shown a, a concept version of it. So you're thinking the Wrangler's comparable to, from her point of view to the, you think. Yeah. I mean the, the Bronco was, was developed specifically as a direct competitor to the Wrangler response to the Wrangler.
Leo Laporte / Sam Abuelsamid (00:52:09):
Yeah. and then if you remember the old international harvester scout from the 1970s. Yeah. Yeah. That was a cool inter international is owned by Navar, which is a company that makes big trucks, heavy trucks and buses. Yeah. Navar was bought a couple years ago by a company called Trayton, which is a division of Volkswagen group, which also owns a couple of other truck brands in Europe. So Volkswagen owns the international brand. Huh. And they announced this week that they are bringing back the scout brand in 2026 for an electric SUV and an electric pickup truck. Oh, that would be really cool. I, I dropped, I dropped a link to an automotive news story in the chat. I see it. Yeah. it's got a couple of sketches of it. Oh. So there's gonna be several interesting electric SUVs.
Leo Laporte / Sam Abuelsamid (00:53:01):
If that's something that Lisa's interested in and VW seems well, you know, I don't know what she's interested in. Yeah. She comes and goes, we don't have to worry about it for a couple of years, but yeah. Yeah. The SCO might be kind of fun. Yeah. The scout or the Bronco or the Wrangler, all three of those will be around. And then there's also, you know, the Rivian R one S which is the SUV version of the, their pickup. They, they have the R one T, which is the pickup. And then the R one S which is a, an SUV version and, you know, the, the, the R one, the Rian R one T and R one S aren't really targeting like the F-150 cuz as I said, they're smaller, but they're also they you know, they're more premium.
Leo Laporte / Sam Abuelsamid (00:53:47):
So they're, they're really going after more, you know, the Jeep market mm-hmm <affirmative>, which is a more premium brand now mm-hmm <affirmative> as well as kind of the low end of the land Rover range Rover market segment. So the R Rian R ones is more of a range Rover competitor than anything else. And the, I think the R one T pickup is closer, closer to being a competitor, the Jeep gladiator right. Than anything else. Right. so you know, a bunch of different options there. But I, I was mentioning the the Toyota BZ four X and the F-150 lightning the, the base version of the lightning, the lightning pro which has a 230 mile range EPA rated range. And, you know, Ford's you know, Ford's numbers are usually come in on the, you know conservative side.
Sam Abuelsamid (00:54:36):
They usually actually do better, little better than their EPA labels on their EVs. And it starts at $40,000. By comparison, the Toyota BZ four X is a compact crossover. The all wheel drive version starts at $44,000 has a range of only 228 miles. And only charges at up to a hundred kilowatts. Whereas you get 150 kilowat charging with the the Ford. And you know, the Ford has, you know, you know, 10,000 pound towing capability and 2000 pound payload arguably the, the Ford F-150 lightning pro is a better value than the Toyota BZ four X. If you're looking for an EV it's cheaper. It has more range and, and more capability. So just something to keep in mind, obviously a little bit more challenging to park it. You know, if you have limited parking space, but you know, it's, it's there.
Sam Abuelsamid (00:55:37):
So that's, that's something to to take a look at. I forget who it was somebody way back in the chat mentioned trailers with batteries and motors. And this is actually an interesting idea which I think I, I wouldn't be surprised if this is something that we see in the next few years, you know, because the, the nice thing about, you know, electric, you know, the Mo electric motors are pretty small. You know, if you think about a trailer, I mean, you could, you could pack, you know, a put a battery pack underneath a trailer charge that up separately and, you know, have a little bit of extra propulsion and a little bit and, and some extra range. So it would take up some of the load off of the towing vehicle. If you had an electric electrically powered trailer you know, there are some dynamic some issues with driving dynamics you know, with balancing the, the power up put, cuz you don't want the you don't want the trailer over driving the vehicle that's towing it.
Sam Abuelsamid (00:56:39):
You know, but you don't need a very large motor in the, in the trailer. I mean, you could put something like a 50 kilowat motor, which is about about 65 horsepower, which would be enough to, you know, just to take off some of the load. And so you wouldn't have as big a hit on your range with it. But you know, as I was saying earlier the range hit from towing really depends a lot on the type of trailer you're towing. So for example, here in Michigan, you know, one of the things you see in the wintertime, you see people towing their you know, their, their snowmobile trailers up north and, you know, these are fairly low, long trailers, you know, they're usually, if you look at 'em in profile, it's down actually below the roof line of the truck, that's towing it.
Leo Laporte (00:57:25):
So it's within the, the wake of the truck. So there's not that much aerodynamic drag from it. Which means that, you know, what Ford has found from their testing is with those types of trailers, you know, these lower SL trailers you can you might only have maybe a 25% hit and range. So a 320 mile range might drop to say 230 220 miles. Whereas if you're towing a big horse trailer, it's much taller then you, you know, then you're gonna have a bigger hit on the range. So the range degradation from towing can be anywhere from about 25 to 50% depending on what kind of trailer you're towing, what or what your load is. And so, you know for Leo's friend that he mentioned, you know, that's towing that wants to tow a boat up to lake Tahoe.
Sam Abuelsamid (00:58:17):
You know, that's about 180 miles, but it's also a lot of uphill driving. That's gonna be a challenge to do that. But again, again, you know, the case here in Southeast Michigan, where I live, there's a lot of lakes that are within 50 or 60 miles, you know, 70 miles of the Southeast, you know, of the, the Metro Detroit area. And people are towing their boats out to the lake, you know, every weekend. And you know, for that kind of use case, you know, with 300 miles of range, if you're towing 50 miles, it's not a problem at all. So it's only for really long distance towing that you might wanna reconsider going electric just at this point in time. Thank you so much, Sam, have a great week. My pleasure, Leo, talk to you next I'll to you next week. Thanks. Yep.
Leo Laporte (00:59:03):
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, all that jazz. 88 88 ask Leo the chat room is working with Dre <laugh> to solve his problem. The problem he left us with at the end of the last hour of course probably if your internet goes out best not to attempt brain surgery on your computer, but first to see if the internet is in fact out in this case, I think it wasn't. And unfortunately <laugh>, the brain surgery was not a success and the patient has <laugh> not come back fully. But the, but I think the Char's got lots of great suggestions for Dre. So I'm gonna, I'm gonna leave you in their, in their capable hands team tech guy working on it. Meanwhile, Edward and Aurora, Colorado is next. Hello Edward.
Caller 4 (01:00:01):
Hey Leo. How
Leo Laporte (01:00:02):
Are you? I'm wonderful. How are you?
Caller 4 (01:00:04):
I'm doing fantastic. Fantastic. Thank you. The second time I called you last time I called you. I was on the one plus one. Yes. So it it's been a while. I've recently switched over to an iPhone 13 pro. Okay. I heavily invested in Google but after buying the pixel six, I was very disappointed.
Leo Laporte (01:00:26):
You've been burned enough. You said, and you know, the iPhone is always a safe choice. I think
Caller 4 (01:00:32):
It is. It is. So I, I, you know, my, my kids all have you know, the, the cheaper inexpensive pixels and we share a one Google one plan.
Leo Laporte (01:00:43):
Nice. Yes.
Caller 4 (01:00:43):
With a hundred gig gigabyte for storage or pictures and all that. Now the problem that I'm having is I downloaded that on the, on the apple phone. And now the, the phone, every time it tries to update or not really update by backup, it says I don't have enough iCloud store.
Leo Laporte (01:01:02):
Yeah. They don't want you to use Google one. <Laugh>
Caller 4 (01:01:06):
Yeah. They want me to go ahead and do the, the,
Leo Laporte (01:01:09):
So you can use Google one for a lot of things. I mean, Google photos and Gmail, Google one is their single subscription kinda like apple plus or apple one, I think maybe apple calls it apple one too. And it gives you also a lot of Google drive and you're probably thinking, gosh, I sure would like to back up my iPhone to Google drive instead of cuz I'm already paying for it instead of the expensive iCloud, but it really doesn't work that way. Does it?
Caller 4 (01:01:40):
No, it does not. They don't, they're not compatible. Yeah. The pictures are automatically being uploaded
Leo Laporte (01:01:44):
To yeah. If you have Google photos, it'll automatically update there and Google docs and all that stuff.
Caller 4 (01:01:50):
Yeah. My contact and everything was perfectly fine. It used, it used to be like, so I, the last time I had an iPhone was with the iPhone four before I switched over. Wait
Leo Laporte (01:02:00):
A minute, wait a minute, wait a minute. I'm looking at the Google one help. It says you can automatically back up your mobile device with Google one so that you have another copy of your photos, videos, messages, and other items in the cloud. Okay. So it has a, it has what gets saved by Apple's iCloud. <Laugh> and then what gets saved by Google one and all it looks like all the only thing Google one does is yeah, we already figured this out photos, calendars and contacts. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> yeah. Oh man. And it, and even Google says, no, you're gonna have to use Apple's iCloud for messages, app data and device settings. Now the got it. Okay. The good news is I you get, what is it? Five gigs free from apple, for iCloud. That's probably enough just to store that stuff. The only thing that gets big is the messages with iMessages or rather the images with iMessages. So if you say don't back up iMessages and that's a setting, you know, in the I, in the messages setting on your phone, you should be able to save almost everything else. Most important device settings. Right. That's what you really want.
Caller 4 (01:03:11):
Correct. Yeah. So are there settings inside the actual apps? Cause I remember all the settings.
Leo Laporte (01:03:15):
No. So this
Caller 4 (01:03:16):
Is the settings app.
Leo Laporte (01:03:16):
Yeah. This is the other thing. Apple does very different from the way Android works. In Android, all the settings are in the app, which it makes sense. Right? You have a settings button. Yes. Not on the iPhone. On the iPhone. You go to the apple settings icon, and then each app has its own individual entry there. And many of the settings, if not all, sometimes some apps do keep some of their settings locally. But apple tries to get them, tries to get developers, to put all the settings in the apples settings app. I guess they think that's easier for users. I don't think it is because that's not how any other computer in the world works, but apple and its infinite wisdom has decided that's the way to do it. So
Caller 4 (01:04:00):
And finally, so I I had, I used to have the iPhone four was the last iPhone I, I purchased,
Leo Laporte (01:04:06):
That's the one within the antenna. You're holding it wrong. Wow.
Caller 4 (01:04:10):
Yeah, exactly. Right. And you know, then I switched
Leo Laporte (01:04:12):
<Laugh> well, the good news is you can't hold the iPhone 13 wrong as far as I know <laugh>.
Caller 4 (01:04:20):
So there used to be a way that you can back up everything through your computer yeah. To iTunes in, go through iTunes and everything. Is that no longer possible?
Leo Laporte (01:04:28):
Ah, I think you could still do it, but it's not called iTunes anymore. However, I think there are better ways to do it. I would recommend not using Apple's solution and you have to buy it. It's like 50 bucks, but I think it's a, it's a, it's a better solution. And that's what I've been using. My friend, Mike, a Sergeant who's our apple resident, apple iOS expert recommended it. And I'm trying to remember the name of it.
Caller 4 (01:04:57):
Well, 50 bucks for one time purchase instead of the 9 99 a month. Yeah. I'll be best. Yeah.
Leo Laporte (01:05:01):
Right. I think it's called. I amazing. Let me see if they got, yeah, I amazing at, I M a Z I N g.com and it does a little more frankly than the a than the iTunes did. So it is really a good way to, to back up your iPhone, either on a Mac or a PC. And it does not use, as you pointed out does not use any cloud it's stored locally.
Caller 4 (01:05:25):
Okay.
Leo Laporte (01:05:26):
Yeah. I like, I amazing. I was happy. There's a free download. You could try it. I was happy to buy it because I, I, and then you get three devices for 50 bucks, so, okay. I think that that's, you know, you can back up other devices like iPads it's for iOS specifically. Okay.
Caller 4 (01:05:44):
Yeah. I'm looking at it right now.
Leo Laporte (01:05:45):
They have, they have moved the iTunes. So what happened is iTunes went away as you know, they kind of split it up into, into music TV and the finder, believe it or not does a lot of things, including that iPhone backup. You could still do that, but you have to do it from the finder. Once you plug in your iPhone, you will see an entry in the finder for that. But I honestly like eye amazing. Better.
Caller 4 (01:06:08):
Okay. All right. Shoot, there was one more thing I wanted to ask you. But I completely forgot when you, when you start talking about I
Leo Laporte (01:06:17):
<Laugh>. Well it's alright. I forgot. I amazing for a while too. <Laugh>
Caller 4 (01:06:23):
But it does it automatically, huh?
Leo Laporte (01:06:24):
Yeah. I, you know, it is a little frustrating. Apple wants to sell iCloud. They, you know, they make money on that. In fact, all of apple has moved. They even, you know, told the stock market this away from the idea of saying we're gonna make money on devices, which is historically how apple made money selling hardware. And now we're gonna make money on services. And in, in fact, in particular, we're gonna look at something called ARPU, which is a terrible name, but it's the average revenue per user. And that's what they're reporting to the stock market now. And so they're trying to get the average revenue per user up. Well, how do you do that? We already sold you the iPhone. Oh, we get you to buy crap. You don't need including iCloud. Right. So they're ne they don't wanna, and this is, you know, I mean, this is the negative about apple they're they're, you know, they're, anti-competitive, they don't want you to use Google drive for backup. They do thank goodness. Allow you to use stuff like I amazing, but you can't use anybody else's cloud to back up.
Caller 4 (01:07:33):
And the, the final question I finally remembered is so I use, I used to be heavily into the apple stuff I use, I had it, I had in my email, which is my Gmail account when I was using that account, my put all my apple stuff. Yeah. I, my daughter has an iPad and I, you know, she signs in through my account. I created another account when I got that phone with a new email address, because I didn't want it to be tied to my daughter's iPad
Leo Laporte (01:07:57):
At all. That's right. Every, every apple user, even kids in my opinion should have their own apple account. Absolutely.
Caller 4 (01:08:04):
Okay. Is there any way for me to be able to get like the music that I purchased years ago? Yes.
Leo Laporte (01:08:12):
Okay. So if you bought it, it should be a, a, a visible in your, in your music, in your music app, and it should be downloadable, as long as you bought it, you still own it. And as long as you have an apple device, you should be able to, or any, or iTunes, essentially, you should be able to download it still. Now, of course, apple, like the rest of the world has moved to streaming. Why RPU, because instead of selling it to you once for 99 cents, they can rent it to you <laugh> and get 10 bucks a month. But
Caller 4 (01:08:40):
Luckily I'm stuck with the music that I like.
Leo Laporte (01:08:42):
Yeah. The good news is they do, you know, they have family sharing now, which means you could have every kid that can have their account. Everybody can have mom and dad, the kids all can have their own accounts, but with family sharing, you can have up to six people sharing the music. So if you bought it, everybody can have it. If you, if you pay for apple music, everybody can have it, that kind of thing.
Caller 1 (01:09:02):
Yeah.
Caller 4 (01:09:02):
I'm already using Spotify for all that.
Leo Laporte (01:09:04):
So yeah. Well, they have a family plan too.
Caller 4 (01:09:07):
Yeah. And yeah, that's been exactly what I'm mean. The family plan.
Leo Laporte (01:09:10):
Yeah. Yeah. So look for, go to the music app on your phone. And and there's a button that says my library. And as far as I know, I don't think there was any time limit on being able to download their songs. As long as there's still available through the iTunes store, you should be able to download it. You could even search for those songs or albums individually. And there'll be a little, a little puffy cloud with a down arrow that says in effect, we have this in the cloud, you can download it to your device and then you don't. Then by the way, the one advantage of that over streaming music is you can listen when you're offline in an airplane or something. Nice to talk to you. Thank you for calling Edward eighty eight eighty eight. Ask Leo is the phone number (888) 827-5536. Toll free from anywhere in the us or Canada website, tech guy labs.com. More of your calls coming up. Yeah. <laugh> Mr. Vegas, Leo Laport, the tech guy, 88 88. Ask Leo, Randy on the line from Huntington beach, California. Hello, Randy.
Caller 5 (01:10:17):
Hi there. Let me get this off of speaker phone for,
Leo Laporte (01:10:20):
Hey sure. That'd be good. There
Caller 5 (01:10:22):
We go. Okay. Probably continue a little bit better now. Yes, sir. I have been taking pictures and I have progressive lenses for my glasses and it seems like how I focus to which part of the lens <laugh>
Leo Laporte (01:10:36):
So progressive lenses, which I have also, you have far vision in the top and near vision in the bottom, but there's no line or anything. They're kinda like the old bifocals or trifocals. It's just progressive. It's gradual. And yeah, that would be a problem as you're putting your glasses against the I piece, depending on which part of the glasses or against the I piece you'd have different, a different focal length.
Caller 5 (01:10:59):
Right. And I can't seem to make sure that where I focus <laugh> pictures come out clear.
Leo Laporte (01:11:05):
I never thought of that. Well, yeah. I guess you could wear context <laugh> that's a really, that's an interesting conundrum. I also wear progressive lenses. I will often when I'm focusing, take off my glasses, you know, most cameras have a diopter setting on the side there. And what I'll do is I'll take off my glasses. I'll get the, if the diopter is sufficient, you can get it. So it's in crisp. And then, you know, you have to take off your glasses each time somebody has found though, on the website, thank you, scooter X, an article from get this progressive-glasses.com saying, what is the best progressive glasses for a photographers? And there is something made by Leica which as any photographer knows is the high price spread for cameras. Absolutely. They they make a progressive lens. They manufacture in France called the Digi vid photo, progressive lens. Now I am not gonna recommend cuz it was from like a, it's gonna be a little pricing
Caller 5 (01:12:16):
Thousand dollars,
Leo Laporte (01:12:17):
Right? Yeah. But I guess if you were a professional here, the article says what distinguishes the digit photo photo from other preformed progressive lenses is that it's far viewing is six meters, 19 feet. The prescription, the upper half of the lense is at is approximately a quarter of a diopter to the prescription. Yeah. You know, I think really it's either having the discipline to keep, you know, the top part of your classes. <Laugh> on the, do you have a fancy camera? What kind of camera are you using?
Caller 5 (01:12:59):
Nikon.
Leo Laporte (01:12:59):
Yeah. B,
Caller 5 (01:13:00):
B 3,500.
Leo Laporte (01:13:01):
Okay. So you, you, you have a pretty nice camera and it has a, it has a cup on the back, right? Where you push your glasses against it. Yeah. that's a really, I've never been asked this question before and I've not much thought about it. Although as a glasses wear, I, you know, I often have issues shooting and I think what I do, I think what I do is I take off my glasses and I hope, and I have the diopter setting on the camera to compensate in effect like I'm wearing glasses. I know I do that with binoculars, for instance.
Caller 5 (01:13:36):
Well, there are certain focal links with the, the zoom lens that if I allow it to do its intelligent sensing and focus, it's fine. And if I correct it, it's
Leo Laporte (01:13:47):
Well that's the other option is to not manually focus or to manually focus. And your camera may do this. There are forms of manual focus that in fact this is the range finders, the like range finders used to do this. You kind of, you focus until it lines up. You might have that feature in your it, I think probably don't cuz it's an optical thing. But the other thing you also probably have, I have in my camera that I use all the time, you can zoom when you focus. So I set my focus button to be a separate button from the shooting button. I do what they call back panel focus. And the reason is I don't want to accidentally refocus when I press the button to take a picture. So it's on the back panel. So I've also set it up that the first time I press it, it zooms in and the second time it presses it zooms in even more. And so what you can do is pick an image. Part of the image is very, you know, a straight line focus. And and let me ask Chris mark work, cuz he's here. Our photo guy, he's probably listening. Chris, you don't wear glasses or do you?
Chris Marquardt (01:14:55):
I don't. So I'm not sure I have good answer cuz I've never had any, when you
Leo Laporte (01:14:58):
Do your workshops. Yeah. You don't know. Yeah. You have good, good vision. I, you know, I, I find those zoom in focus, you know, to be really accurate, you know, if I really want a good focus and I do have a, like a lens that's
Chris Marquardt (01:15:12):
Manual. Yeah. That's by the way, what that's, what video professionals do they would typically zoom in and, and focus and then zoom back out. Yeah,
Leo Laporte (01:15:20):
I know that because I'll be sitting in the studio and I'll suddenly see a giant image of my nose on the monitors and it's because they're, they've zoomed in to focus on me and these cameras, which is nice, allow you to do that, zoom in without changing the focal length so that you can see, you could set the focus, go back to a normal frame. And the focus doesn't change. So play with that. I would, I would say on on your camera, Randy, that's gonna help you as well. And, and when you're using that, I don't think will matter what part of your glasses you've got because it's, you know, you're so zoomed in, it's very clear if that's a crisp focus or not.
Caller 5 (01:15:55):
Is the auto focus more reliable for a distance? Yeah. Or close up?
Leo Laporte (01:15:59):
Oh I don't know, Chris, what do you say? I think for distance, both, both, both
Chris Marquardt (01:16:05):
Auto you're very good. These days auto focus these days is really good. That's really good. As long as you know, where it's focusing long as you try to have to control on where to focus, you might. Yeah.
Leo Laporte (01:16:14):
I always do center. I always set it for the center. Yeah. The center focus, cuz then I see that red dot and I could put it on the thing I want in focus, focus then reframe. And that's gonna, again, another reason you use back book and focus, so you're not gonna change the focus when you reframe. The only thing to be aware of is a lot of these focus systems need light. Sometimes they'll do kind of infrared light in the dark. You'll sometimes see a red light come on for focus. They don't work as well in low light. That would be the only thing I'd be aware of. Great questions. And guess what Chris Marwar coming up. Those are really that's really a quite good question. I, I don't know what the answer is, Randy, what do you do? How do you, what do you try to do?
Caller 5 (01:17:02):
Well, I try to zoom in and then fine tune it. And I find the fine tuning generally tends to make it worse.
Leo Laporte (01:17:09):
Oh <laugh> well then I don't know what, so
Chris Marquardt (01:17:12):
I
Caller 5 (01:17:13):
I've got,
Chris Marquardt (01:17:13):
I've got, I find that today's
Leo Laporte (01:17:16):
Auto.
Chris Marquardt (01:17:16):
I find that today's auto focus is, is equivalent to a good manual focus. Yeah.
Leo Laporte (01:17:21):
Yeah.
Caller 5 (01:17:22):
It does seem that way. I'm starting to trust it more and more.
Leo Laporte (01:17:25):
Yeah. Yeah. I have one like a lens, my most expensive lens that ha doesn't work with auto focus. You have to manually focus cuz it's like a and and that has the optical range finding thing, but it's not a range finder. It's it's through the lens where I'm lining up. I split's a split image I line up. Am I right? Am I remembering that? I think I am. That's very
Chris Marquardt (01:17:52):
Find, well, the, the one area you want to be careful is with macro where you're really close up because then between the, between the auto focus and actually taking the shots there this little time, there's no
Leo Laporte (01:18:04):
Depth, might little time frame depth. You
Chris Marquardt (01:18:05):
Might be moving. And the slightest movement, your slightest motion will, will throw that. Also
Leo Laporte (01:18:10):
One millimeter depth
Chris Marquardt (01:18:11):
Macro situations is auto focus and just take the shot right away. And that's usually the better way to get focus and it close up situations.
Caller 5 (01:18:22):
Yeah.
Leo Laporte (01:18:23):
Yeah. I, I think trust the auto focus. In fact, I have a like Q2, which I can manually focus and I almost always just let it cuz it's so fast these days. They're they're so good.
Caller 5 (01:18:34):
Yeah. I'm, I'm starting to do that. I do have a, a separate question regarding Google storage. I keep getting notes from Google saying, Hey, your storage is full. Please send us money. Yeah.
Leo Laporte (01:18:43):
And I keep it's all about the Gar P baby.
Caller 5 (01:18:46):
Yeah. And I keep deleting hundreds of megabytes worth of stuff. And I keep getting the same message.
Leo Laporte (01:18:52):
I was probably trying to re-upload those things you deleted video will really kill you too. Make sure you're not uploading video. You could turn that off in the photos. Settings.
Caller 5 (01:19:04):
Can I did it search by size and I've been deleting, you know, the top, the giant ones, 20 files at the beginning,
Leo Laporte (01:19:12):
Honestly, I'm up to two terabytes on Google drive because you know, I just keep buying more.
Caller 5 (01:19:19):
Yeah.
Leo Laporte (01:19:20):
I think it's 10 bucks a month for two terabytes. It's not awful.
Caller 5 (01:19:23):
Wow.
Leo Laporte (01:19:24):
Yeah.
Caller 5 (01:19:26):
Well, that's not bad if you wanna talk about that. I'm sure I'm not the only one on the planet. Who's got that question. Yeah. Cause they, they keep coming back at me every time, you know, I'm sure I've got plenty of storage, but I don't really know how to determine where my limits are for Google anymore.
Leo Laporte (01:19:40):
Well, yeah. Part. Okay. So part of that is to understand that Gmail is also using that drive, right? So you wanna look at what's using up. It may not be photos. It might be, you have a lot of attachments for instance, in Gmail that is also using that drive.
Caller 5 (01:19:54):
Yeah. I was killing the Gmail attachments first.
Leo Laporte (01:19:57):
How much storage do you have?
Caller 5 (01:19:59):
Whatever they give you for free.
Leo Laporte (01:20:00):
Oh, that's why they don't want you to use the free tier it's average revenue per user. It's all about the ARPU. They're all. They're all trying to get us to up, you know, buy more. There are other solutions. The problem is Google photos is, you know, for photography is the, is the best solution out there. I use I bought a lifetime, two terabytes from P cloud a couple of years ago. One fee I think was 400 bucks forever. <Laugh> so, you know, you can always, you can always do that, but then in order for it to get my photos, I think I have to set it up on the each device to automatically upload the P cloud. It's time to talk photography. Chris Marwar is here. He's our photo guru. Our sensei, if you will, at sensei.photo, he joins us every week to talk about using your camera, even if it's your smartphone to get better pictures. Hi Chris. Welcome.
Chris Marquardt (01:21:06):
Thank you. Thanks for having me again. Good to see you. Smartphones are awesome. Smartphones are so awesome to do
Leo Laporte (01:21:11):
Better all the time. Yeah,
Chris Marquardt (01:21:13):
Well better all the time you have 'em with you. They are really good at mimicking things that the bigger cameras do. We're talking shallow depth of field and long exposures in the dark and so on. So there are fewer and fewer reasons to get a big camera.
Leo Laporte (01:21:29):
Did people, we had an assignment this month. We did. Did we get a lot of submissions from smartphone users? Do you know? You probably don't look.
Chris Marquardt (01:21:38):
I, I, I didn't do any statistics on that, but, but there are certainly quite a few smartphones here are, here are some pictures. Let me bring them up on let's
Leo Laporte (01:21:46):
Screen. Let's elegant. That was the assignment this month.
Chris Marquardt (01:21:50):
That was the assignment. And of course we, there lots of, lots of elegant pictures. Oh, pictures of elegant things. There's always the question is that thing that you're shooting the word we're looking for or is the picture that you took along the, this word. So we look for elegant, I've taken a choice of three pictures that I wanna talk about. And if you look at the pictures, they are of a lot of different things, but the one recurring theme here is flowers. So I chose three flower pictures that were submitted. And the first one is by will Curtis
Leo Laporte (01:22:25):
Beautiful
Chris Marquardt (01:22:26):
Titled elegant zero two. And which, which I guess means there were more than one pictures and he had to make a choice. Not always easy when you take multiple pictures of the same thing. And he took a picture of red flowers. I'm not, I don't know plants that well, so I don't know what the name for this flower is, but it's it's a, it's a red flower on a green plant pretty much so. I like it. I like it cuz it's obviously taken either with a bigger camera that has shallow depth of field or a smartphone that can, can emulate that using portrait mode. And so the focus is where it needs to be on those flowers. That is important. There's a green plant, a, a bit of a distraction in the background. There's something blue in the background, blue table,
Leo Laporte (01:23:20):
Get me. Yeah, yeah,
Chris Marquardt (01:23:22):
Yeah. I wish I wish that wasn't there cuz it, it kind of draws attention towards it and I don't think the picture needs that table. So of course the way to do that is move, move around or maybe getting closer that would also help just get a bit closer and, and reduce the distractions, but still good job. Good job. Second one, Amy Len Love that and it's called spiral. So again, it's a flower at this this time. It's a close up
Leo Laporte (01:23:55):
It's this is for the camera phone, by the way.
Chris Marquardt (01:23:58):
That is O yeah, let me see. That's a that's that's a Samsung SM
Leo Laporte (01:24:02):
Yeah, it's an S 10. Isn't it? Oh, maybe not.
Chris Marquardt (01:24:05):
No, it doesn't does say something different in the, in the exit date.
Leo Laporte (01:24:09):
I, I see the, the picture, the icon is a camera, but the model I think is a Samsung, the nine and not Samsung
Chris Marquardt (01:24:17):
Anyway, it doesn't matter. Doesn't matter
Leo Laporte (01:24:18):
Mean because we don't care. Doesn't really that's right. We don't care. Yeah.
Chris Marquardt (01:24:22):
Doesn't really matter. I like the shape of this flower. I like the way the shadows wrap around things. And if you zoom in, there's lots of nice detail in there. So
Leo Laporte (01:24:33):
I think this is what the note care of. I think that model number in note 10, but I might be wrong Possible. Yeah.
Chris Marquardt (01:24:40):
Possible. And last but not least, we have the third picture by Tom lot. Hopefully titled IMG underscore 1 47.
Leo Laporte (01:24:52):
Oh, of course ever popular IMG 1 47.
Chris Marquardt (01:24:55):
My favorite. It is a closed view of a California poppy, the national flower of California. And
Leo Laporte (01:25:03):
That's right. It's illegally pick those, you know, in California you must lose, is it? Yes. You must leave them on the road. Yes. Wow. They grow wild. I mean they're everywhere.
Chris Marquardt (01:25:13):
We grew some in our garden in Germany.
Leo Laporte (01:25:15):
Nice,
Chris Marquardt (01:25:17):
Nice imported from seeds imported from California. So this photo, there's something about it. Well, first of all, it's in front of a neutral background, which You probably can take this at the side of the road without having to pick it by just bringing a piece
Leo Laporte (01:25:36):
Of paper, paper or something. Yeah. Background. Yeah.
Chris Marquardt (01:25:39):
Yeah. That would, that would work. But it, it really gives full focus on the flower. I like the way it's composed as in it does have spacing around it. So it feels well placed. It feels like a, like a very deliberate shot. And the, the focus is on those back leaves. That's where your eyes will go anyway. And in general it's an elegant photo. So Tom, good job and everyone else
Leo Laporte (01:26:08):
Very nice,
Chris Marquardt (01:26:09):
Good job to even, even the photos without flowers. Very good job. So there we go with the elegant photos.
Leo Laporte (01:26:18):
Now we go to the fish bowl.
Chris Marquardt (01:26:21):
We go to the fishbowl. <Laugh> here's the fishbowl. There's lots of words in it. I love my fishbowl. <Laugh> I'll I'll I'll add, I will draw. Here we go. One, no cheating and make sure the fishbowl doesn't fall. And we have, oh, oh this, oh, this is a good one. Colorful. That's the next one color.
Leo Laporte (01:26:46):
Oh, that's perfect for photography. How fun is that gonna be? Here we go. So the
Chris Marquardt (01:26:52):
Weight. Oh, black and white photos.
Leo Laporte (01:26:53):
Yeah. Well wait, maybe
Chris Marquardt (01:26:55):
Wait. Maybe,
Leo Laporte (01:26:56):
Maybe what we don't know
Chris Marquardt (01:26:58):
Could be,
Leo Laporte (01:26:59):
Could be, we're not gonna tell you the idea is we're gonna give you a concept and idea in this case colorful, you use that to inspire you, go out, take pictures, new pictures only. You gotta go out and take some. That's the whole point of this illustrating the word of concept colorful. Could you take a black and white photo that says colorful? Maybe you could
Chris Marquardt (01:27:19):
Definitely. I, I would. I would think so. Yeah. That
Leo Laporte (01:27:21):
Might be a good challenge for somebody, huh?
Chris Marquardt (01:27:24):
Absolutely. Yeah. Should we make this a challenge for everyone? No, no,
Leo Laporte (01:27:28):
No, no, no, no. Just only the brave at heart. But when you get a photo, you like, you feel like this is great. You can, you, I encourage you to submit it to our tech guy group on flicker. This is absolutely free. Flicker.Com. It's photo sharing site. You should be a member. Anyway. It's a really great place to share your photos and get kind of critiqued and commentary from others. In fact, I use a flicker wallpaper on one of my computers, cuz some of the images are so stunning on flicker. When you get into flicker, you can join the tech guy group you'll know you're in the right place. Picture me 11,000 members, 12,000, something like that. Lots of photos, Renee Silverman will welcome. You. You can tag the photo. If you get one that you really like tag it, TG colorful. So we know it's for the tech guy show TG and
Chris Marquardt (01:28:18):
Colorful American spelling.
Leo Laporte (01:28:20):
Oh no use allow. I think we're smart enough are we could, we could maybe accommodate somebody wants to spell it with a U come on. All right please. American spellings only <laugh> Renee will thank you for your submission. And then it'll be added to the pool and in four weeks, that's how much time you have. So you can submit up to, if you start now up to four different images in four weeks, Chris is gonna pick his three favorite. Talk about em on the air. It's inter now there weren't only elegant flowers. There were other things, but you decided this time you wanted to just talk about flowers.
Chris Marquardt (01:28:56):
Yeah. Cuz, cuz that kind of jumped at me. So but, but, but with a colorful assignment, I'd say I'll, I'll give a bonus point to anyone who dares to bring a black and white photo. Who, that, that, that says colorful in some way. Yeah.
Leo Laporte (01:29:12):
I mean there was Mandatory. It was elegant sewing machine and jewelry and shoes. There was that elegant guy in the San Clemente pier
Chris Marquardt (01:29:20):
And elegant ship
Leo Laporte (01:29:21):
A ship. Oh yeah. So just like elegant, colorful can mean almost anything. And that's the fun of it is you'll get to decide. We don't decide. You get to decide. Chris Marwar writes all the time about photography. He's got books on wide angle and film photography. The new film photography edition is out in Germany. And I hope soon in, in America in
Chris Marquardt (01:29:42):
The soon in the states, good
Leo Laporte (01:29:43):
Soon and of his workshops and his coaching is available@senseidotphotoesei.photo. And of course he joins us here every week. Thank you, Chris.
Chris Marquardt (01:29:56):
Thank you very much.
Leo Laporte (01:29:56):
We'll see you next time. Leo. Leport the tech guy more calls right after this Colorful, Colorful.
Chris Marquardt (01:30:09):
I was just, I was just trying to figure out if there's a, if there's an or condition in the flicker search <laugh> ah,
Leo Laporte (01:30:18):
Or you could do two searches. I don't know if there is. That's
Chris Marquardt (01:30:23):
Interesting. I could probably do that.
Leo Laporte (01:30:24):
Yeah, but it's nice to have 'em all in
Chris Marquardt (01:30:26):
What? One? Both the last one
Leo Laporte (01:30:29):
Elegant. Can you do or are
Chris Marquardt (01:30:31):
You doing an or elegant? Yeah, it looks like that does actually work. Yes. Oh
Leo Laporte (01:30:36):
Nice. It does nice.
Chris Marquardt (01:30:37):
Or uppercase or uppercase O uppercase are okay. Or is it lowercase even?
Leo Laporte (01:30:42):
I think I did lowercase.
Chris Marquardt (01:30:43):
Yeah. Even lowercase.
Leo Laporte (01:30:44):
Yeah. So there you go. Calor.
Chris Marquardt (01:30:48):
Let's let's have them spell it the way they want that.
Leo Laporte (01:30:53):
Well, not, not any old way. As long as it's in the dictionary, we can, we can handle it.
Chris Marquardt (01:30:58):
That helps. That helps.
Leo Laporte (01:31:00):
Thank you my friend. There, you have a wonderful week.
Chris Marquardt (01:31:04):
All right. See you next week. We'll see you next
Leo Laporte (01:31:06):
Week. Byebye.
Chris Marquardt (01:31:08):
All right. Bye.
Leo Laporte (01:31:10):
Leo Laport, the tech guy, 88 88. Ask Leo. I have, I have to correct myself. Got a call from bill handle. He said Leo, Leo <laugh>. You can pick a poppy. What? Apparently I was misinformed. You are it is not illegal in the state of California to pick a poppy. It is technically illegal to pick any plant or flower in a state of federal park. Maybe that's where that came from. But if you've got poppies on your own property, you pick 'em go ahead. Pick 'em. It's funny. I think a lot of people in California though like me, I grew up. Oh no, no, you can't pick those. It's there's a law. There's a law cuz it's a state flower is a law. You can't pick it, huh? Huh? No, you can go ahead. Be my guest. Brian Charlestown, Indiana Leo Laport. The tech guy. You can't pick a Hoosier that's for sure.
Caller 6 (01:32:10):
Hello, Mr. Laport. Hello,
Leo Laporte (01:32:13):
Mr. Brian. Welcome.
Caller 6 (01:32:15):
I have a question about KVM switch software.
Leo Laporte (01:32:18):
Okay.
Caller 6 (01:32:19):
Okay. I'm currently running input director. It runs great across three computers. All right. Windows 10 is what I'm running it on, but I would like to run a KVM switch software on UTU or a code box or something like that. So
Leo Laporte (01:32:36):
You wanna run it, but not with hardware, just all of doing software. Is that what you're right,
Caller 6 (01:32:41):
Right. Yeah.
Leo Laporte (01:32:42):
Yeah. So the only, the one I I'm familiar with, which is open source works, cross platform, Linux, windows, and Mac raspberry. PI two is called synergy.
Caller 6 (01:32:53):
Yeah. But they, they, they want you to pay for it.
Leo Laporte (01:32:57):
I know that makes me mad. It used to be free prescription. Yeah. It was open source and free for a long time.
Caller 6 (01:33:04):
Yeah. I loved it
Leo Laporte (01:33:05):
In a company called symbol bought it, but I bet you that somebody must have forked the original synergy code. Yeah. In fact there is a program called barrier
Caller 6 (01:33:21):
Barrier
Leo Laporte (01:33:21):
Barrier, which is, I believe the fork, if it looks exactly like synergy, the fork of synergy to keep it because synergy was open source. So, you know, when you have an open source project product. Yeah. So it is on GitHub. D E is from DBAE D E B a U C H E E. And it's called barrier and it was fo it was forked from synergy core. So it's gonna be very similar to the program we know and love now I haven't tried it. I stopped using synergy a while ago. Not because of any problem, but it just was kind of finicky to set up. It uses the wifi network to do it and you have to open ports to allow it and so forth. This will be very similar. And it looks like it's under it's it's it's being actively developed. So certainly wanted to take a look at barrier
Caller 6 (01:34:19):
Barrier. Thank you so much. Yeah,
Leo Laporte (01:34:21):
You're welcome. Yeah. Remember cuz when I saw that seamless wanted to charge me <laugh> for program I'd used for free for literally 15 years. I was a little mad.
Caller 6 (01:34:32):
I don't mind paying for it either,
Leo Laporte (01:34:33):
But it's a subscription
Caller 6 (01:34:35):
Yearly subscription.
Leo Laporte (01:34:37):
No, it's not that fancy. You're being too fancy. Yeah. Yeah. So give that a try. Let me know how it works out for you actually. All right. I appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you, Brian. So that's one of the things I like about open source. You probably heard that phrase lately. You've been hearing it from Elon Musk who says we've gotta open source. The Twitter algorithm Elon, by the way, has shown in the past that he doesn't really understand what open source the technical meaning of open source is. The theory behind it is and this goes back to a guy named Richard Stallman and the canoe project. The theory is that software should be free, not free as in free beer, not free as no price, but free as in liberated <laugh>.
Leo Laporte (01:35:27):
And to, to Mr. Stallman, the idea of we'll call him RMS. That's how he likes to be known as his initials to RMS. The idea of free or liberated in this sense is you can get the, the original code that made the program that we call that the source code and modify it to your heart's content. And there's no prohibition against that. There are open source licenses that say for instance, depending on the license and there are a variety of these, but depending on the license, for instance if you modify it, you have to release your modified version, open source as well. So others can modify your version and on and on and on the term that's used. When you take an open source project like synergy and make it your own and start to modify it is forking it like a fork in the road I'm forking it.
Leo Laporte (01:36:18):
And that that's actually a, a useful description because you're taking that code at a certain point in time. Any changes from the original code creator synergy will not be mirrored necessarily in your version. You've gone a different way, but so somebody's taken synergy, forked it and made an open source project, which you could then fork. If you wanted to. The reason open source is great is because people can see what you're doing. There's no secret passageways back doors mysteries, but also that they can work on it. They can contribute to it. And they often do open source projects, usually have multiple authors and you can fork it. You can you can say, yeah, I wanna take this in and, and take it another direction. And all of that is encouraged. It's a, I think it's a great thing. Thanks to open source. We have the Linux operating system, which is open source, all the programs that run on it.
Leo Laporte (01:37:12):
Most of the software I use every day is open source, including by the way if you use Firefox browser, that's open source. The basis for Google's Chrome chromium is open source. That's why there are so many browsers that use the Chrome rendering engine, including Microsoft's edge brave Vivaldi. They're all using chromium, the open source project. They forked it to make it their own. Google has their fork. They call Chrome. So open source is a good thing. It is, it fosters innovation and creativity. That's a, it's a good thing. And by the way, most open source projects are also free as in beer. <Laugh> there's no, there's no restriction, no, no rule that you can't charge for it. But most of the time they are free as in beer max on the line from Leavenworth, Florida, Leo Laport, D tech guy. Hi max.
Caller 7 (01:38:12):
Hello, Maria. How are you? No talk.
Leo Laporte (01:38:15):
I am well, how are you max?
Caller 7 (01:38:17):
<Laugh> I'm doing, I'm really enjoying my days here. It's beautiful. 86 degrees sunshine. Perfect cloud. Just a wonderful day here. Ah,
Leo Laporte (01:38:26):
It's a beautiful day in Lakeworth. Now the last time we talked, you were getting spamed like crazy.
Caller 7 (01:38:34):
Yes, I sure did. I discovered the magic code, which I gave you. You did six T-Mobile
Leo Laporte (01:38:44):
Pound 6, 6, 4 pound on T-Mobile. Not only do I remember it, max, I did it on my T-Mobile phone. Mobile phone.
Caller 7 (01:38:51):
Excellent. And
Leo Laporte (01:38:52):
It worked. Thank you. It
Caller 7 (01:38:53):
Worked. Yeah. It worked beautifully. Then something interesting happened. Leo, what happened? I start getting calls from international call. Yeah. From international calls from Eastern Europe and Canada. I don't have, I don't know any of the people over there never had calls before. <Laugh> so apparently the bad people figured out.
Leo Laporte (01:39:14):
They figured it out calls. So there
Caller 7 (01:39:17):
Calling me
Leo Laporte (01:39:17):
From there. And I don't know if I mentioned this last time we talked, but I think those days are numbered. The FCC in the us had west has created what's an authentication system to, to combat robo calls. And I think it could also be used to combat texts right called stir shaken. But they, they, they didn't. And, and by the way, at T Verizon T-Mobile all support it. They're along implementing it. And the idea is that any call you get is authenticated. The caller's authenticated. They can't spoof the phone number. They can't say, pretend they're coming from your area code. They can't, you know, they, they, but, but the FCC didn't wanna move too fast because I don't know why. Right? So it's May 31st end of this month,
Caller 7 (01:40:05):
Last business season,
Leo Laporte (01:40:06):
The end of this month even those independent guys in Serbia and Canada have to stop and it's gonna allow the T-Mobile and rest of the world to say, no, I won't take those calls anymore. Let's hope this happens soon. Leola port, the tech guy, I think what's happening. Max is there is a, this, it is like last call. Last chance to rip people off because on May 31st, you're not gonna get to do it anymore.
Caller 7 (01:40:36):
Well, hopefully will happen Leo by the meanwhile I called T-Mobile and said, look, I don't wanna receive any international calls.
Leo Laporte (01:40:44):
Oh, that's a good idea,
Caller 7 (01:40:46):
Please. International calls. So the guy said, OK, we could Def international calling from phone, but receiving it will trick you. Let me go change some studies on your account, this and that. And finally he did his magic and then that was it. No more international.
Leo Laporte (01:41:01):
Ah, he tried to talk you out of it.
Caller 7 (01:41:04):
Yeah. Then I started getting calls from businesses in California because I before Have five businesses. And I said to myself, what the hell is going on? Because I told some of these, these bad folks figured, okay, if you call this guy from actual numbers, businesses let you answer. Of course I did not, but did not ask three of those calls, but
Leo Laporte (01:41:33):
It's so frustrating,
Caller 7 (01:41:34):
Died down so frustrating. And so far, my phone's very quiet, no international spa or scam on any of those calls.
Leo Laporte (01:41:42):
So that's a good tip. Call, call your provider and say no more international calls and just, you know,
Caller 7 (01:41:47):
That's exactly what you need to do. Yeah. Also, I was gonna tell you about the windows next time. Somebody call you with a windows question. Yeah. Should ask them for authorization code authorization code. Is this Neil let very carefully
Leo Laporte (01:42:05):
Okay.
Caller 7 (01:42:05):
P I T I For,
Leo Laporte (01:42:15):
Or It's an ID tent problem. An ID tent ever hear that one? ID one zero T or
Caller 7 (01:42:28):
Yes,
Leo Laporte (01:42:28):
Of course. Yes. PEAC. P E B. Yes. K C problem exists between chair and keyboard. <Laugh>
Caller 7 (01:42:37):
Exactly, exactly. But yes. To keep on the,
Leo Laporte (01:42:41):
I can't do that. I can't do that to our fine audience. I can't say that. I can't call them a petita <laugh>
Caller 7 (01:42:48):
Well, I know about this, but then they can Barco themselves. Right? <laugh> they know what that go.
Leo Laporte (01:42:54):
This, no, I would be out. I would be out of a job if I didn't help everybody. But we were joking about that in the chat room. Somebody said, you just tell 'em to get a Mac. I can't do that. <Laugh>
Caller 7 (01:43:04):
No, you can't do unfortunately after accommodate, right?
Leo Laporte (01:43:08):
Yeah. I have to help them. Hey, it's a pleasure, max. Always a pleasure to talk to you. Thank and always useful. Always useful. Thank you. Have a good one. Take,
Leo Laporte (01:43:22):
Well, Hey, Hey. Hey. How are you today? Leo Laport here, the tech guy, time to talk computers, the internet, home theater, digital photography, smart phones, smart watches. And why you get so many robo calls? Eighty eight, eighty eight. Ask Leo. That's the phone number? That is a good topic. Isn't it? 88 88. Ask Leo. Thanks to max. I had mentioned this before. I wanna reiterate the FCC a couple of years ago, mandated a new system called stir and shaken. Obviously a James Bond fan, somewhere in the FCC stir and shaken, authenticates the originator of a phone call. Spamers don't like that, right? Spamers never use their own phone number or their own email address. When they're sending you spam, they don't wanna be detected because what they're doing is often illegal. So they're being, you know, anonymous. They're very careful not to reveal their identity stir and shaken says, no, no, no.
Leo Laporte (01:44:25):
Phone companies have to apply this authentication system so that other phone companies will know, no, this call came from us. This is the subscribe, a subscriber we have. This is maybe doesn't pass along the name, but it passes along an ID and identifies them. And that is really gonna be the number one way to get rid of spam <affirmative> so everybody agreed. Yeah, this is good. We're gonna do it, but, but not right away. <Laugh> not well, not right away. Give us a chance to I don't know what con some people some more, I don't know. So the FCC FCC, even though stern shaken was, you know, implemented and the big carriers have it. They didn't require it.
Leo Laporte (01:45:13):
For the small guys. Now, of course, almost all the spam comes from the small guys, right? Those robo calls are not coming from T-Mobile Verizon and at and T they're coming from little, you know, digital carriers in the Caribbean and places like that. So the commission granted small voice service providers with a hundred thousand or fewer subscriber lines and extension until June 30th, 20, 23, next year, that means nothing's gonna happen because of course <laugh> the, spamers say, oh, that's a nice loophole. Let me find a small guy. And a lot of the companies that serve spamers are these small guys. Yeah. We only have five customers. The top five spamers in the world. Of course.
Leo Laporte (01:46:10):
So there are two kinds of small service providers, voice service providers. There are pure internet plays. That's the one spamers love by the way. And then there are really small phone companies, you know, Trinidad and Tobago S phone company probably doesn't have a hundred thousand subscribers just cuz it's a small island community. So the FCC is now said as of a December of last year, if you are not facilities based, if you're not a real phone company, if you're internet only phone company, you have to implement stir shaken by the end of June 30th this year. So what's happening right now is a lot of spamers are saying, oh boy, <laugh> we only got a month left month and a half left. Let's call as much as possible. Let's try to make as much money as we can because come June 30th, either those phone companies are gonna have to implement stir and shaken or if they don't then Verizon T-Mobile at and T can say, Hey, I'm not gonna accept that phone call because it's not authenticated.
Leo Laporte (01:47:23):
Now I'm hoping. And we're counting on all the, and I think they will, the big phone companies doing that saying, look, if it's not authenticated, we're not gonna accept it right now because of the FTCs FCCS delay, you're still getting them and you will continue to get 'em right up to June 30th, probably midnight, June 30th. <Laugh>. And at that point, all of the internet only voice providers either have to implement stir and shaken or will be rejected by the phone companies in at T T-Mobile, Verizon, the big ones. Good news. That means for the next six weeks, we're gonna be bombarded. We're gonna get a lot of spam calls, but it should stop on June 30th and then it will just be there's another year for, for, for, and I say, Ima, I have to say, I imagine there's some incentive for these little, you know, the Andora phone company, which has a facility, you know, as a real phone company, but with, but it's tiny.
Leo Laporte (01:48:23):
There may be some incentive for them to accept these spamers as well. We'll see right now the spamers love the internet based ones. It's completely anonymous. It's cheap. It's easy to do. It's a little more expensive if you have somebody with facilities. So I'm, I'm hopeful that by the end of next month, we'll start to see a drop off on these robo dials. These spoof calls. Now gotta point out. This actually is, is germane to Mr. Musk's attempt to buy Twitter cuz Mr. Musk says, well, we want the first amendment. If it's not illegal, we wanna allow it, but we're not gonna have any spamers. He does not seem to understand that spam is protected by the first amendment. It is. It is. So all those laws against spam are things like this. The FCC saying, well, you have to do stir and shaken.
Leo Laporte (01:49:12):
They're not blocking spam specifically. They're saying, well you have to do this. And then the phone companies are allowed to block spam cuz they're not government. They don't, they don't have to adhere to the first amendment because they're not government. Only government shall make no law. A bridging free speech. Spam is free speech. It does mean that we're gonna continue to get robocalls. If you've got an election coming up, many of us do, you're gonna be getting candidate robocalls, text messages, oh man, I'm getting a ton of text messages from candidates. Because it, those are protected. It's protected speech. They can't block it. It's political speeches even, you know, it's much more protected. So I don't think those are gonna go away, but at least you're the call saying, Hey, your auto warranty is expired. I, I think we're near the end. I pray. We're near the end of those. Rob's on the line from Leon New Jersey. Hello? Rob Leola, port the tech guy.
Caller 8 (01:50:07):
Hey. Hello. Thank you. Thank you very much for taking my call. I have a, hopefully a simple problem for you to, for you to remediate for us. All right. My grandson went on a trip out of the country and was being on the trip. He took a camera with him that had an SD card in it. Okay. They, they required the school required that it be a non wifi camera. So the camera doesn't have the ability to transfer photos from
Leo Laporte (01:50:45):
What was the school's rationale for not having a wifi camera?
Caller 8 (01:50:51):
I think they didn't understand what that meant
Leo Laporte (01:50:56):
On man. Most modern cameras are wifi.
Caller 8 (01:50:59):
Exactly. So when we had to get him the camera, we had to run around and find yeah. A camera that didn't have that built in.
Leo Laporte (01:51:08):
That's what a ridiculous restriction. So you found one though.
Caller 8 (01:51:12):
We did. Yes. Sony something there, other that. And then we actually, we found a new one which made it made, made us happier. Nice. We didn't want him to be away and yeah, not
Leo Laporte (01:51:26):
Work. Get a nice, yeah, he should have a nice camera. Where is he?
Caller 8 (01:51:29):
Exactly. So he took, he took about, I don't know, 50 to a hundred pictures on the, the camera. Nice. Yeah. And now supposedly the, the way to move those pictures off of the off of the SD card into where you wanna move them to is an iPhone.
Leo Laporte (01:51:54):
No, no, no, no. There's two ways to get 'em off the camera. One is with a, a card reader,
Caller 8 (01:52:01):
Right?
Leo Laporte (01:52:01):
Which you plug into your computer via the USB port. You take the SD card out, put it in the card reader and there's all the pictures. That's what actually a lot of us still do. Even if we have wifi, cuz it's by far the fastest, most efficient way to get your pictures the other way. And I suspect if you would make a camera that doesn't have wifi, doesn't have wireless connectivity, you're gonna make sure there's a USB port on the camera. So there's probably a port. It might be a proprietary cable, but it will have come with a camera that you can hook up to the computer, do the same thing. The camera, in other words can be the card reader.
Caller 8 (01:52:34):
All right. So it does have this proprietary cable. Yeah. That goes into a USB, you know, comes a U USB and I can plug that into my PC. Yes, correct. Yes. Now how do I, is there a simple way to move and I'm gonna now plug the iPhone 12 pro. So you also into the PC. Let
Leo Laporte (01:53:00):
Me, let me understand your, your question, cuz we're almost out of time. Do you wanna go directly from the camera to an iPhone or do you care? You just want those pictures on an iPhone.
Caller 8 (01:53:10):
I want to, I wanna get the,
Leo Laporte (01:53:12):
You wanna go directly to,
Caller 8 (01:53:15):
Directly to the iPhone
Leo Laporte (01:53:16):
Without an intervening computer?
Caller 8 (01:53:18):
Exactly.
Leo Laporte (01:53:19):
Okay. So apple sells a card reader for the iPhone. You have to go to the apple site, it's under accessories. There's two ways you can go. There's one that has a USB port type, a USB port that you can use that cable that came with your Sony to do it there. Or you can use, they actually call it, I think the camera capture or something like that cable. It has an SD card slot. So it has an SD card reader you could use either of those methods. Most of the time, that's not the way to do it. I guess if he's traveling, he doesn't have a laptop. He wants to do it that way. You know, the reason you probably would wanna put it on a computer first and then onto the iPhone, it's easier, but also O then you have a copy on a computer.
Leo Laporte (01:54:01):
If you're, if your only copy is on the iPhone, that's easier for that to be lost. I would at least make sure you, you put 'em on the, the iCloud photo sharing so that you have a backup of those, but yeah, that's easiest way to do it. Apple sells these for the iPhone the card connection or the camera connection cable, I think is what it's called. There's a co camera connection kit. Pardon me? A couple of ways to do it. And they have it lightning to USB three. They're not cheap cuz it's apple 39 bucks. And then you could also get the, they have an SD card reader I've had, I've used both of 'em they work great. You can go down the apple store. They'll have 'em in stock. Easy to pick up eighty eight, eighty eight ley, the phone number eighty eight, eight eight two seven five five three six, toll free from anywhere in the us or Canada. More of your calls coming up. Also Mr. Space are spaceman ride pile. Stay right here.
Leo Laporte / Rod Pyle (01:55:04):
Ah, hello file. Hey there. How are you? I am good. How are you? Well, I've had some computer drama. Not that you want to hear about that. What's your computer drama? My two year old MacBook probe, the video display crapped out. Oh my that's true. And I didn't have time to take it into the shop cuz I'm leaving for Norway tomorrow. So I ran out and bought a, I thought, okay, I'm gonna get the 16 at, at at Costco, right? Yeah. So I give them, they've got one left. So I give them 2,800 bucks. Yeah. Grab the box and I get home. It was empty. It's the I it's the I nine. Oh yes. The old one Intel. Yeah. Yeah. But the Intel shouldn't cost 3000 bucks. Should it? Yeah. <laugh> oh really? Yeah. They cause it runs like a freaking vault. It's ho it's horrible.
Leo Laporte / Rod Pyle (01:55:51):
I know. But yeah. It's because there's still people who want Intel. Oh. So they still that's why they still sell it. It should have been clearly labeled that's too bad that they weren't clear about that. Well, yeah. I, I, we were all at a bit of a, a kerfuffle, but yeah. I, well, they'll take it back. They'll totally take it back. But I tell you, man, that the M one 16 is a beast. It's thick. It looks like. Yeah. I don't know if you wanna get the M one. I mean, I know you want the M one. I don't know if we wanna get the M one 16, get the, get the MacBook, the air. It's just as fast. Yeah, the problem is I, I tend to do most of my writing work for eight hours a day on the thing.
Leo Laporte / Rod Pyle (01:56:35):
And sometimes you'll like side by siding the documents and oh, so you want a bigger screen? 15 inch screen. Yeah. What if, instead of what, if you save money and instead of getting the 16, you got an external monitor. Dell sells a 14 inch. I bet you, they sell a 16 inch external portable USB monitor. You just plug into it. <Laugh> they do. Okay. I'm gonna make an admission here. I'm kind of ashamed of this, but I like working in a recliner <laugh> oh, feed up is not awesome. That's I shouldn't say anything. I have a 17 inch old 17 inch laptop I use in my recliner. So I'm not saying yeah, I used to call it my breakfast computer. Yeah. Yeah. I had a Mac 17 when they were still around. Well it's same. It's the same price for an M one 16. The issue's gonna be getting it.
Leo Laporte / Rod Pyle (01:57:17):
Yeah. Cause supply chain. Yeah. And that's why they had the Intel. I bet you, they didn't have the M one. Yeah. That was the problem. Yeah. So, and it it's okay. Cuz you know, I, I just needed this for the trip cuz I didn't want to, you know, well how long's the trip? I have something. So I go to Norway for a week, give two presentations. Then I go to DC for a week and I give like four presentations there. So I really needed something. So then just run as soon as you get home, run over the app, the best buy and yeah. Say, yeah, it didn't work out. Yeah. How long did they give you? I think they probably give you at least two weeks. 90 days. Oh yeah. You're golden money back 90 days. And I believe so this is Costco.
Leo Laporte / Rod Pyle (01:57:55):
Oh Costco. Yeah. Costco's very generous. Yeah they are man. I love 'em. So what you do is you say, you know, I, I like this, but I realize it's Intel. I want the M one. Yeah. And they'll say, oh, well syrup. Sorry, we don't have the M one, but I want the M one. Yeah, but I knowm, sorry Sue. No, they won't say that. We're so sorry. They know they say who, but yeah. <Laugh> yeah. You should get, you should get the IMO for sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'll go back. Yeah. Anyway, 2000 bucks wine, a little bit. That's hysterical that they charge so much for the Intel. But I think that's, I think that's because there's still demand. Lot of people still want the Intel too, man. Oh, it's terrible. When you got used to the other one used to be like, woo, this is fast, poor Henry is still using his I nine 16 inch, which I gave him my old I nine.
Leo Laporte / Rod Pyle (01:58:43):
Yeah. And I, you know, I said, oh, you know, we're I'm I bought him a max studio ultra. Who knows when it's gonna come though. <Laugh> yeah. So the poor guys still gotta, you know, edit on his I nine. I feel bad for him, but yeah, but you're a good dad. I mean, good Lord. Well, I did get supply chain that comes to you. It was awesome. Oh my God. Even a good dad. Can't overcome the supply chain that's for sure. That's true. Okay. All right. Well talking in 10. All right, I'll be here. Thank you, sir. Leo Laport, the tech guy that you know, that Boston album great album. I think that must be I'm trying I'm racking my brain. The first time that a top hit album was made by a guy in his basement playing all the instruments. I think so. Right.
Leo Laporte / Rod Pyle (01:59:37):
You know, I mean, it was kind of an amazing story in this, in the seventies that Tom Schultz could, could, you know, have a studio in his basement record, a whole hit album. Sounds like a giant band. Do it all by himself. Nowadays with synthesizers and all the tools we have easy peasy. Schultz was a technologist as much of a musician. He went to MIT, so he knew, he knew a lot about recording studios and technology and was able to do a pretty good job in his basement, in his basement using analog tape machines. Yes. Cuz it was the seventies, eighty eight, eighty eight. Ask Leo the phone number back to the phones. We go John and Costa Mesa, California. Hi John.
Caller 9 (02:00:24):
Hi Leo. And this is Leo. Leport the car guy, right?
Leo Laporte (02:00:27):
Yeah. Right. <Laugh> yeah, sure. What, what can I do for you? <Laugh>
Caller 9 (02:00:33):
I've got a, an older X five BMW of 2016, which had the BMW connect, which was a 3g product. And when they, it
Leo Laporte (02:00:44):
Just stopped working, didn't it? Yeah,
Caller 9 (02:00:46):
It did. And I get lost a lot now <laugh>
Leo Laporte (02:00:50):
So a lot of cars have this problem because the phone companies, most of them depends on which, you know phone company was using. But I think T-Mobile and at and T have discontinued their 3g. Verizon, you have to, the end of the year, those towers are gone. And that, that that connection is gone. They've moved to LTE and a lot of cars that were based on 3g, no longer work. Now you should probably, I mean, I would say BMW should offer you some sort of solution. It won't be cheap.
Caller 9 (02:01:24):
Well, I I've been to the dealer and they, I, I thought maybe just a replacement of the SIM card would work. No, but of course that's too easy.
Leo Laporte (02:01:33):
Yeah. So here's what BMW says. As of April 22nd of last year, the upcoming disco, I should do it in a German accent. It's an upcoming discontinuation ag cellular technology will impact our BMW connected drive and assist services. You were notified by first class mail. <Laugh>
Caller 9 (02:01:54):
That's true. Yes. A year ago.
Leo Laporte (02:01:58):
BMW is in the process of assessing options. Currently service renewals are not possible because you had a one year plan. There's really there. You know what? I doesn't look like. They've got a plan for this. So what do you do? You get a phone That has, okay. LTE and use its GPS,
Caller 9 (02:02:25):
Right? Or you buy a new car
Leo Laporte (02:02:27):
Or you, your car. My friend is obsolete.
Caller 9 (02:02:32):
No, my car works fine. Think very much.
Leo Laporte (02:02:34):
<Laugh> it is pretty ironic. Isn't it?
Caller 9 (02:02:39):
Actually Leo, the, the GPS does work. It's just the traffic options and yeah,
Leo Laporte (02:02:46):
Cuz it was getting that over the air. And of course it won't get updated maps. Although your dealer may be able to update your maps for you, but yeah, you won't get traffic notifications, anything, you know, accident notifications anything that came through the connected driver BMW assist is, is gone. I'm glad the GPS still works. That's that's good news. Yeah. Yep. And if you did get, if you did, you know, this is BMW is funny because they also were the ones who wanted to charge a fee to use Apple's CarPlay in their newer BMWs. So you don't have obviously in an older car CarPlay, but you can at least connect your phone to the Bluetooth and have, you know, verbal directions. And if you're using ways or Google maps you'll get all of that. In fact, probably better information than you were getting from the BMW assist.
Caller 9 (02:03:38):
Good point. It was just easier to, I know,
Leo Laporte (02:03:41):
I know
Caller 9 (02:03:41):
Load directions in from my phone or
Leo Laporte (02:03:44):
Whatever. Yeah. Blame the phone companies actually don't blame 'em it's inevitable. This was gonna happen. Yeah, this,
Caller 9 (02:03:52):
Well, I appreciate your time.
Leo Laporte (02:03:53):
There's no fix for it and you're not, I guess if it makes you feel better, you're not alone. There are a lot of vehicles that have, you know, variety of services that use 3g and they are not gonna work anymore. And so that's good news, you know, it's things like OnStar where people are thinking, oh, I have emergency services. If you know, if I have a crash or I break down, I could press you press the OnStar button in my GM vehicle. And it will connect with OnStar services, except it won't <laugh> after, you know, all of this technology has been sunseted. So the, the good news is, and I think this is really the, what the, what BMW and other manufacturers expect your phone. And this is why they do CarPlay and Android auto. Your phone is getting updated. It's getting updated regularly.
Leo Laporte / Rod Pyle (02:04:44):
You probably buy a new phone every few years, much more often than you'd buy a new car. And so it makes a lot of sense for these manufacturers to put connections to your phone in, instead of using their GPS and their perhaps outdated maps and their traffic information use ways or Google maps or apple maps. And it'll always be up to date because it's getting it through the modern LTE and 5g networks. And you know, when we go to six G you'll get a new phone and it'll keep working Leo Laporte the tech guy, spaceman rod pile coming up. So rod, do you wanna talk about the UFO testimony in Congress? Don't have that yet. I was gonna talk about, we have a Ary clips tonight. Oh yeah, that's right. I forgot about that. That's a big deal. Talk about the eye of so on and the center of the galaxy that we image that new black hole, cuz that that's just too cool.
Leo Laporte / Rod Pyle (02:05:39):
And if you wanna mention, is it this week that the congressional, the first UFO I've lost track? Probably let me look, have to, I'll have to look at that. I feel like it's this week. Are we, you looking at fjords while they're doing this? <Laugh> Tuesday's hearing will mark. The first time Congress has convened a public hearing on UFOs mm-hmm <affirmative> since the air force oversaw an inconclusive investigation into 1969. Yeah. It's more of this. Do you remember when project blue book came out? Yeah. And, and we all, we all saw the news went huh. <Laugh> figured that it's exactly walk in the weather balloon. It's exactly what we thought it was, but people would love the idea that, oh, the aliens are being hidden from us. Well, and, and that that's been the idea for decades, right? I mean, if you listen to radio after 10 o'clock, especially on certain networks there's a lot of talk about that and, and it is exciting.
Leo Laporte / Rod Pyle (02:06:35):
And I have to say from what I've seen so far, the government in general and the military in particular has been a lot more open than that in the past. I gotta give 'em credit for that. It's a mistake for them to, to hide it because it just, yeah. It fosters that mindset. And I think they're still leaning towards, you know, we think this is foreign operators spoofing our radar and so forth, but at a certain point it's hard to overcome some of that visual evidence that there's explanations for a lot of it. But yeah, it's it's interesting stuff. So we'll have to keep, there are no aliens in our vicinity. Well, wouldn't it be nice if there were, especially if they knew what to do about climate change, unless they want to eat us. Unless now that you know what, unless it's a cookbook.
Leo Laporte / Rod Pyle (02:07:20):
Yeah. But look at your, look at the copy on, on the blue land ads, you know, if our bodies are gonna be 50% plastic by weight in the next and they wanna eat us. Oh, that's impressing. I yeah. Oh my, my God, those stats. Oh, what is it? By 2050? The ocean will have as much plastic mass as fishing. I know. Right? I know. Is it 2050 or 2030? I think it's 2050. Does it matter? No. Any day now. Yeah. I, we gotta stop using plastic. This is, I don't wanna be happy. Crazy soda bottle. Why do we think plastic was a good idea? Oh yeah. Yeah. Know the graduate, the bake light. Yeah. Bake light. Yeah. That, wasn't a good idea. <Laugh> what's bake light made out of anyway. I don't know. But they bays, I remember as a kid, you got toys that were made out of bake. Oh, they were Terra and they broken about hour. Yeah. Yeah.
Leo Laporte / Rod Pyle (02:08:11):
Let, just check here. It's oh, it's oh, it's oxyl, benzo methyl. Anglo Coanda hydride. It's a plastic and, and a greeting in Hawaiian. It's just a crappy plastic. <Laugh> yeah. It's a Thermo setting. Phenol for mile Dey resin formed from a condensation reaction of phenol with formaldehyde. Pat did 1909. Fantastic. Yeah. Put that in your thing maker and bake it. Yeah. It's because of bake Aite that we have plastic really? Because yeah. It was such a success that they said, well, there's gotta be a better way. Well, cause I think it was the first thing that you could use in an appliance or a radio or something that you could actually mold, but they were terrible. Yeah. They were crumbled. I mean, fiberglass was better. Yeah. That didn't really get going until there. Yeah. Well it's a hundred years old.
Leo Laporte / Rod Pyle (02:09:09):
My fi was made out of plastic. I enjoyed that. The bake like corporation was formed in 1922. Wow. A hundred years ago on this day in history. <Laugh> I think it's gonna be a long, long time before we get anybody better than rod pile to talk about space. He is our spaceman, the author of many books about space editor-in-chief of at Astra magazine, from the national space society space.nss.org cohost of this week in space right here on the TWiT network. Twi.Tv/Twists. Hello, rod hide. I didn't know. You could wear Hawaiian shirts in orbit. That's nice. Looks good. It's very attractive. Only when kicking back. Yeah. <Laugh> so just briefly, cuz I, everybody wants to talk about this. You and I are going, oh, but Tuesday Congress is gonna have the, the first public hearings on UFOs in 50 years since the blue book report of 1969.
Leo Laporte / Rod Pyle (02:10:13):
And I think you and I both have are of the same opinion that there's nothing to see here that you know, there aren't just art bell. Not withstanding <laugh> there are no aliens walking amongst us. Hey, they come, they came and they took art. So yeah. So that's done. Yeah. I'm sorry Jim Bohan. There's no, there's no aliens. <Laugh> anyway, I just, I mean I'm with you on that. So I do think it's, it's great that they're having more public hearings and I think they kind of owed us that because that report that did finally come out, I guess was about a year and a half ago now we only got nine pages, right? Yeah. The rest was redacted. That's the mistake. This doesn't they're making is redacting. It don't keep it secret. And so people are thinking, oh, they must be hiding the fact that there's aliens.
Leo Laporte / Rod Pyle (02:10:59):
That's not what they're hiding. I don't think so. I think what they're hiding, at least what they're admitting to hiding is national security concerns because there's a lot of smart people that think, you know, spoofing done by a constellation of drones or a submarine or whatever it's gonna be of a foreign power can look very weird on radar. Yeah. And I mean, if you're the enemy, if you're very an enemy of the United States potentially, and you want to see how our radar systems work and how our defensive nets work, what do you do? You'll wait till we're doing exercises off the coast of California or the east coast and you come and you ping it and you, and you get everything activated and see what happens. So there's, there's some consensus that, that that's a lot of it, but there's still weird stuff that you can't explain.
Leo Laporte / Rod Pyle (02:11:44):
And even their report to their credit said, there's some stuff we just can't explain. That's fine. There's stuff. A lot of it, we can't explain in the world, including a giant doorway on Mars that doesn't oh yeah. <Laugh> well, so giant. So the people I've talked to who look at this, this kind of, these kind of photos all the time, say, I think that's about maybe a foot. Oh, now I gotta admit it's real. A really interesting it's quite clean. Yeah. It's yeah. And you know, there would have to be substantial fracturing and shifting of that rock for that to happen. And my geology is also long ago. I can't tell you the mechanism other than weathering and seismology. However, we do know now that Mars has Mars quakes up to magnitude five, as we've seen unfortunately soon the insight mission, our Lander that has a seismometer will probably not go for more than a few more months.
Leo Laporte / Rod Pyle (02:12:35):
Cuz the solar panels got very dusty and it's losing power. We also lost the the helicopter. I hear no that was temporary. Oh they got it back. Yeah. So it went into safe mode for, for a number of reasons and but it's back and they figured they'll get a couple more months out of it. So I'm very happy about that. Okay. Definitely getting your money's worth on that boy. That was a good one. Maybe we could set it over to look at the doorway on Mars. More importantly. There's gonna be a lunar eclipse tonight. Yes. A super flower blood moon. Ooh. You know it's interesting. Yes. 10 years ago, you didn't hear all these describers, but they're such good click bait. Yeah. They're great that they're out there. Thanks to the internet. We now have the super flower blood moon, which is just a red moon from the solar or the lunar eclipse.
Leo Laporte / Rod Pyle (02:13:20):
Right. But if you haven't seen one or haven't seen one in a while, these are very nice. They're relaxing cuz they go on for hours instead of a couple of minutes, like a solar eclipse super just means it's a closer approach to the moon. The normal flower moon is one that occur a full moon that occurs in springtime when things are blooming and a blood moon just means it's a total eclipse and it turns red. So it's visible across north America and a lot of other parts of the world Europe, Africa, middle east Eastern Pacific and so forth starts at about 10, 15 Eastern time is when you start actually being able to see the penumbra, which is the gray shadow that starts gobbling up the moon's edge. And then about midnight, 12, 15, again, Eastern time. So much earlier out here, we'll start seeing the Umbra, which is the red central part.
Leo Laporte / Rod Pyle (02:14:06):
And that's red just because the lights refracting around the edge of the earth, through the atmosphere and the longest wave likes of red. So you're getting, so if you're standing in the moon, you'd see a red ring around the earth, which would be really cool. And if you're in an area with bad weather or you just don't feel like going outside or there's a building in the way, you can go to space.com or Griffith observatory.com and they will have they will have live viewing available, but it's, it's not as cool as seeing it. It's just a blood moon. It's cool. But there'll be a lot of pictures on Twitter. You can look there. Yeah. speaking of pictures, I didn't even know that there was a chaotic, super massive black hole at the center of our galaxy. Let alone see a picture of it.
Leo Laporte / Rod Pyle (02:14:53):
And so this is the second time we've seen this. The first one was an object called M 87, which is many light years away in another galaxy. So the image that one, because it was a little easy, ironically, even though it's far farther away, it was easier to see for two reasons. One, you're not looking through all the junk towards the center of our own galaxy. You're looking out along a, a more thinly populated area in terms of stars, but also it's much bigger and critically that orange ring, which is the dust that's being sucked in by this black hole and is being energized and, and being made visible is moving much more slowly at orbits. In a matter of days, the one in the center of our galaxy, which is called Sagitarius a, or a prime is moving it's orbiting in a matter of minutes.
Leo Laporte / Rod Pyle (02:15:42):
So it's really hard to image something that quickly and the way the image of this past day too, they're using telescopes from at least 60 different institutions, all the planet. Wow. And this combines, you know, if you have them, if you time it, right. So you've got one on each edge of the planet as seen from the target. You've got this, what's called very long baseline in interferometry, but basically it makes an earth size tele radio telescope, holy cow, cuz you, you, you know, combine extrapolate all these, these different data sets. So you get this huge aperture and you see this amazing dust cloud and that's millions of solar masses out there. What I think was I thought was more fascinating even though it's a black hole and they, they seem to be at the center of most galaxies. And there various schools have thought about that.
Leo Laporte / Rod Pyle (02:16:31):
Maybe just because they tend to be much denser star mass there. But one astrophysicist said if Sagitarius a are black hole and Milky way were a person, it would consume the equivalent of a single grain of rice every million years. Even though we see all that dust being devoured. So that's how diffuse that dust is as it's being caused to light up like that. How cool is that? That's amazing. I thought no light could escape a black hole. Well, once the, the manta gets in there, it can't, but as it's being sucked in, it gets amplified. And so we're not seeing the black hole, we're just seeing the effect of the black hole, the black hole's the center and it's black. <Laugh>, it's nothing, nothing can escape. You don't see it. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Just for the young people listening in the audience, we're not all gonna get sucked into that someday.
Leo Laporte / Rod Pyle (02:17:21):
Are we? No, it's really far away. We are out in the trailer park edge of the galactic rim. We're way out in a spiral arm. Nothing against trailer parks, but we're out, you know, in the, the some we're yeah. Let's put that way. Yeah. We're in the burbs. Yeah. Yeah. Way out in the burbs. Like in Southern California, we be well out past San Bernardino heading towards Arizona. So we got a long way to go. The Andro to galaxy is headed our way and we will eventually intersect, but we're talking billions of years. And even with organ replacement, I don't think any of us are gonna be around <laugh> I hope not. So it's it's trillions of degrees hot. This thing is yeah. I mean, how do you estimate these things, right? Yeah. Wow. You talk to these guys. They can explain, well, you know, with this instrument and then we would've put a factor of expon on it and you just go.
Leo Laporte / Rod Pyle (02:18:10):
Yeah. But how it's also, I mean, when it's, it's relatively close, it's 27,000 light years. It's I mean, it's, you know, it's relatively nearby. It's in our galaxy by, by intergalactic ING. Yes. It's very close. But by inner stellar distances, you know, with our nearest star being about how do you like the new star Trek? Speaking of that, do you like it? Haven't seen it yet. Oh, you gotta watch it. Watch it on the plane. Rod pile watching on the plane, go to space. Editor, inchi, ad asterisk space, dots.org, Leo in this perfect pitch. Perfect bitch.
Leo Laporte / Rod Pyle (02:18:53):
So I'll miss I'll miss next week. But the following week, even though I'll be at DC, I think I'll be able to get a quiet area if you want. We can, we can work on it. If it works. It works. If not, yeah. Safe travels do it from the four of our conference. Yay. That'd be great. Have you been to Norway? I have been to Norway. Any recommendations? Have the fish <laugh> yeah. You got a lot of that. You won't have much choice. Yeah. Where in Norway are you going? Olo or Southwest of Oslo. Okay. So yeah, Bergen is very, if you get a chance to go down to south to Bergen, that's beautiful. We were in Christian sun, which is on the west coast and is a big Cod fishing area. It's where all the baccala comes from. So there's a lot of li of Cod and that was, I'm not a, honestly a real fan of Norwegian food, but you know, if you are, you're going to the home, the home of Norwegian food, <laugh>, I'll probably be trying to have the occasional burger in the hotel.
Leo Laporte / Rod Pyle (02:19:57):
I do wanna go see the FRA that the Viking ship exhibit is closed. Apparently the FRA, which is that Arctic exploration ship. Yeah. Is Henry. And I went to see that the Viking ship in Oslo. That was cool. Yeah. Was it? Yeah. I took Henry with me when we went to the first time we were in Norway that was very cool. And then Lisa and I went back a few years ago for a photo conference in Christiansen. That was fun. Yeah. You're gonna have fun. They're wonderful people. It's a wonderful country and it's best time of the year to visit. Well, except that I was really, I got excited cause I thought, oh, I'll see the Northern lights and I wait Northern summer. No, no, it's not. No, I'm gonna be seeing the sun all night. Yeah.
Leo Laporte / Rod Pyle (02:20:37):
All night long. See yeah. Yeah. We were there the first time we were, there was a, it was like Midsummer. It was really, it was light late. It was cool. Yeah. It was really cool. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, you're gonna have a wonderful time. So this is your first time. Yeah. Yeah. First. And it occurred to me the other day by virtue of age. It might be the only time we'll see. No, these things happen. But well, there's a lot of places, very hospitable. That's the reason for me. Yeah. There's other places too, but it's very hospitable that people are very warm. That could take good care of you. You're gonna have a good time. Yeah. No, I think it'll be great. Yeah. And I, I don't have to learn Norwegian. And nowadays, I mean, I did a lot of round the world traveling when I was in my twenties.
Leo Laporte / Rod Pyle (02:21:18):
So in the eighties, but it's hard to get your head wrapped around the idea that you don't need local money anymore. Not really. No. Or maybe a little bit. It, we were talking about travelers checks the other day on twig. What's that what's that you don't need 'em anymore. You just go to the ATM and pick up some cer or whatever. Yeah. It's amazing. Yeah, it really is. Oh yeah. Everybody speaks English, which is nice. Scandinavia is amazing. Their English is better than ours. Oh my God. I'm so envious of Europeans cuz they speak five, six languages. Oh I know. I'm still struggling with my first. I know. I know. It's fun. You're gonna have a great time. I'm jealous. Now you, you studied Mandarin, right? Yeah. In college for a couple of years. That's all. I mean not enough to speak it.
Leo Laporte / Rod Pyle (02:21:59):
I tried Russian didn't stick. I tried Japanese. Russian's hard. Didn't stick much. Yeah. looking at Mandarin, but man, I it's just the tone. The tonal things. Yeah. I didn't have too much trouble with the tones. I like them. No. the written language is murder. It's it's it's a very simple language. There's no tenses. There's no genders. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> it's very easy spoken language. Incredibly easy. But, but to be literate, you gotta be able to make like 12,000 characters in graphy. Right, right. Yeah. Yeah. It's hard to be literate. Exactly. It's easy to speak as I watch my girlfriend type Chinese on her phone and I'm sure you've seen him. You hold the character and there's a popup and that's the closest thing you can get. It's astonishing. It's amazing. Oh good. So you have a Chinese girlfriend. You should learn Mandarin. Absolutely. It's the language of love.
Leo Laporte (02:22:46):
<Laugh> no, it's not. All right Chi. See you Ron Chicha. Thank you. <Laugh> thank you so much for letting me be your tech guy. Couldn't couldn't be more appreciative. I I'm eternally grateful. It's kind of boggles the mind that I get to do this every weekend. Thanks to professor Laura, our musical director. She finds some great music play for us every week. I always enjoy her picks. Don't you all the links to her songs will appear on the website. Tech I labs.com usually takes us a couple of days to get a get 'em all up there. But when you go to episode 1894, it's usually the Sunday episode at the bottom where it says links. There'll be another paragraph of links that say songs and all of her songs will be there. Thanks to Kim Schaffer, our phone angel, who does a wonderful job, preparing you for your appearance on national radio, in front of dozens of people. But thanks to the dozens of people, the more importantly, all of you who listen, are so important. I really appreciate the opportunity. Thank you. Well, let me be your geek today. Michael's next long beach, California. Hi Michael Leo Laport. The tech guy.
Caller 10 (02:23:54):
Hey Leo. How are you?
Leo Laporte (02:23:55):
I am well, how are you?
Caller 10 (02:23:57):
I'm I'm better than you. Apparently. I dunno if you're aware your, your auto warranty is about to expire in
Leo Laporte (02:24:02):
Your car and oh, I'm aware <laugh> oh, I'm aware my friend. Look,
Caller 10 (02:24:06):
You can, if you wanna send me like half a Bitcoin I'll I'll
Caller 10 (02:24:10):
I'll fix it up for you. It's
Leo Laporte (02:24:11):
Unbelievable. Isn't it? Oh, we all. The funny thing is that we all know that call who is making that call.
Caller 10 (02:24:17):
We well, normally, Hey, you'll offer warranty is about two X five.
Leo Laporte (02:24:20):
Fire me. There is some, there's a story behind that somewhere. I'd love to know somewhere.
Caller 10 (02:24:27):
Yeah. Yeah. So a quick question for you. I have a a raspberry pie set up is a Plex server. Nice. Get it about two years ago. Obviously I don't know, you know, George Goble, I dunno. We read about it. Johnny was in all the papers COVID so I wanted to find some way to get some entertainment going <laugh>
Leo Laporte (02:24:46):
I didn't know. George Goble talked about COVID that's interesting. That's a little historical. Tibi
Caller 10 (02:24:51):
All the papers. It was in all the papers
Leo Laporte (02:24:52):
You have to be, you have to be of a certain vintage to even know
Caller 10 (02:24:56):
<Laugh> I'm actually below that vintage, but I am very much an old school. Kevin
Leo Laporte (02:25:00):
I'm impressed. Michael George Goble and, and, and Johnny. Wow.
Caller 10 (02:25:04):
Oh, I I've got a great George Goble story. Maybe I'll tell you another time. He,
Leo Laporte (02:25:07):
He always made me laugh because he was just so quiet and sincere <laugh>
Caller 10 (02:25:12):
Yeah. So anyway, I have this Plex with, you know, USB attached drive. Yep. And I, you know, I got the Plex server working. I've got several TVs, fire sticks and Rokus. Everything is visible.
Leo Laporte (02:25:25):
Nice. Very well done.
Caller 10 (02:25:26):
Yeah. Yeah. The issue I have though is trying to get it visible as a drive on my network. And I tried, I, I, what I do do my research, you know, SMB was the way to go. Right. Got all these error messages. And finally, I just gave up like literally, like I gave up about a year ago, but I'm trying to figure, and I can like use like something like a, a VNC to remote into the,
Leo Laporte (02:25:51):
Oh, would you wanna make it easy to put media onto your drag it onto external
Caller 10 (02:25:55):
Drive on my network? Yeah.
Leo Laporte (02:25:56):
Yeah. I mean, of course, cuz it's a USB drive. You could just, you
Caller 10 (02:25:58):
Know, right. No, I'm just unplugging it and plug
Leo Laporte (02:26:00):
Fast. That would by far be the fastest, even if you had network access, but it's inconvenient. You have to unplug it, plug it back in again. I understand that. Yeah. So what is the operating system? You running Linux Rasin
Caller 10 (02:26:12):
Rasp. It's a rasp. Yeah, little raspberry, probably three point something. I think something like that.
Leo Laporte (02:26:16):
So you have to make sure that RA the, the operating system has SMB enabled, obviously mm-hmm <affirmative> actually you might look at there are other file systems, network, file systems like NFS and sifts. That might be a little easier to implement. You know, this is why people get by the way. And you're quickly realizing this network attached storage, like a Sonal.
Caller 10 (02:26:41):
Yeah. It said the footprint would not have worked in the location. Okay. I don't have it wired. That was the
Leo Laporte (02:26:46):
Issue, the raspberry pie. Isn't very powerful. So that means the transcoding that goes on inplex is not gonna be very good. Yeah.
Caller 10 (02:26:52):
It works. It works fine.
Leo Laporte (02:26:53):
But if you have the, yeah, you have the movies in the format you want and you iPlex is a great media
Caller 10 (02:26:59):
Server. The question of seeing it as a, as a shared dress.
Leo Laporte (02:27:03):
So I don't remember offhand how to turn all of this stuff on. I think you're gonna use sifts CIS, which is the common internet file system. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> that's, it's basically SMB SMB is Microsoft's as SOMBA, you know, there's server message block it's from land manager. It's an old school wave of networking, but it's become the, kind of the lingua franca for talking to these devices. Then you'll need a, and you're using a windows machine to, to, or try to map it Mac. Okay. So if you're using a Mac, you in fact may want to use the apple file system. Apple also has a network file system that may be better for this. I mean Apple's absolutely do sifts and NFS. That's an interesting question. I don't have a lot of experience on on mounting network drives across a network, but I have a feeling there's another thing that you might want to, well, you know, I don't, I'm short answer.
Caller 10 (02:28:13):
I, I totally get, yeah,
Leo Laporte (02:28:14):
Don't have a good answer.
Caller 10 (02:28:15):
Somebody in the, in the chat room,
Leo Laporte (02:28:16):
Maybe somebody listening will know you, you what's the best way. If you have Rasin, which is a Debian Linux running on the raspberry pie, what should he do to turn on network services so that he can Mount that external drive and see it on his Macintosh somewhere else in the house?
Caller 10 (02:28:37):
Yeah, no, I, I appreciate that. And, and everybody out there listening, you know, quickly, I know rod was just on and you know, Fred ward passed away the other day from who played Gus Grum and the right
Leo Laporte (02:28:47):
Stuff. He's so great in the right stuff.
Caller 10 (02:28:49):
Oh. And I went back and watched that last scene when Gordo Cooper goes up and he it's there's that thing, you know, God speed and go. Yeah. And Fred ward jumps up and says, go hot dog, go. And oh my Lord, what a heavily. Oh, so good. What a great,
Leo Laporte (02:29:04):
I, you know what, I should have brought this up. I know that a rod is a fan of the right stuff. Probably the greatest movie about space ever
Caller 10 (02:29:11):
Attendings of a movie. Yeah. And for the longest time, goo Cooper was the fastest pilot pilot anyone had ever seen <laugh>
Leo Laporte (02:29:23):
What a great movie. Oh, and a great book. Tom Wolf book. Oh yeah. Before that, but boy, the movie brought it to life. Completely agree with you. Taylor.
Caller 10 (02:29:32):
I Winkler was the producer. I heard him a couple years ago under the podcast. It didn't take when it came out, but obviously in the, oh,
Leo Laporte (02:29:39):
It's a classic now
Caller 10 (02:29:40):
Market. Really?
Leo Laporte (02:29:41):
It didn't do well. Originally,
Caller 10 (02:29:43):
No, he said it tanked. That's sad. Everyone Winkler from, you know, like towering in FNO. Oh
Leo Laporte (02:29:49):
Yeah, yeah. He was the great spectacle producer, but Philip Coffman directed it. And he, I thought he did, did a brilliant job. Oh,
Caller 10 (02:29:55):
It was fantastic. I loved it from the first day I saw it when it came out. So
Leo Laporte (02:29:58):
Yeah, me too. I bought the laser disc of it. That's how, oh
Caller 10 (02:30:01):
My goodness.
Leo Laporte (02:30:02):
<Laugh> how much
Caller 10 (02:30:03):
I, you remember the discs that were not labor before laser,
Leo Laporte (02:30:05):
The capacitive CEDS <laugh> yeah, they were basically just like a record player. They had a needle in grooves,
Caller 10 (02:30:13):
A friend of mine had his father had, you know, like hundreds of them and you just stick it in and <laugh> pull it like an eight track for move in,
Leo Laporte (02:30:20):
In the, in the time that we've been talking about this, the chat room has come up with a link to the raspberry pie forums that explain exactly what you want. If you go to irc.twi.tv, you can find 'em or I'll put it in the show notes. And we'll get those there for you since. All right.
Caller 10 (02:30:35):
Thank you very much. I've called you many times with podcasting help and other tech help. So I appreciate
Leo Laporte (02:30:40):
It. Thank you, Michael. I appreciate your, I appreciate your call and I appreciate your listening and yeah. Fred ward, one of the greats boy that had a cast, Sam shepherd, ed Harris, Scott Glenn, Fred ward, Dennis qua Barbara Hershey, Andon helm narrated it. That was a, that was a movie all about the original mercury astronauts. We are running out of time. I can feel the magic music coming up behind me. Yes. Kind of at the academy awards when I've gone to long thanking <laugh> all the people involved in the making of this show and we're running out of time, but I do thank you so much for being here. Tech guy labs.com. The website it's free. There's no admission. It's wide open it. Isn't I know as good as it used to be. We had to move it all to the podcast site.
Leo Laporte (02:31:33):
But the basic information is there, all the links that I've talked about, we put audio from the show and video from the show up after the fact we put professor Laura's playlists up there, so you can get those songs. And we also put a, and this is something new transcript of the show so that you can search for a topic and and there's time code on there and jump right to that part or read to the transcript and get the information you need. So that's that's I think a pretty complete show notes. Page episode, 18 ninety4@techguylabs.com. It's been a great week as always too short, but we'll be back next week with more to talk about Leo Laporte the tech guy have yourself a great geek week. Well, that's it for the tech eye show for today. Thank you so much for being here and don't forget twit T w I T it stands for this week at tech and you'll find it@twit.tv, including the podcasts for this show. We talk about windows on windows, weekly, Macintosh, a Mac break, weekly iPads, iPhones, apple watches on iOS, today's security and security. Now, I mean, I can go on and on and on. And of course the big show every Sunday afternoon, this week in tech, you'll find it all@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.
