The Tech Guy Episode 1896 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 on the premier networks on Sunday, May 22nd, 22. This is episode 1896. Enjoy The Tech Guy podcast is brought to you by Peloton. Right now is the perfect time to try out Peloton. The Peloton bike plus is now $500 less. That's its best price yet, including free delivery and setup. And there are more game changing prices available in the original Peloton bike and Peloton tread. Visit onepeloton.com to learn more and by Acronis. Keep your digital world safe from all threats. With the only cyber protection solution that delivers a unique integration of data protection and cyber security in one Acronis cyber protect home office, formerly Acronis true image. Go to go.acronis.com/techguy. Why? Hey, Hey, how are you today? Leo? LePort here. The tech guy. Yes. Yes. It's that time you all dread the time a geek gets his own radio show and talks about geeky things, computers, the internet, home theater, digital photography, smart phones, smart watches. I will endeavor in every moment to speak English, but I can't promise I will succeed.

Leo Laporte (00:01:33):
I'll just try. Okay. I'll do my best if I, if I get too geeky, you know, just say, Hey, you're too geeky, man. You're too geeky. Eighty eight eighty eight ask Leo is the phone number (888) 827-5536. Toll free from anywhere in the us or Canada outside that area. Well, you could still call, but you have to Skype or something like that. Some sort of voice over the internet, du Hickey, 88, 88, ask Leo after the show. The website has everything that we talk about on the show, including a transcript takes us a couple of days, but yeah, we got a full transcript, audio and video from the show transcript has what they call time code. So you can jump to that part of the show. If you see something you're interested in all of that and that's all free and no charge, no admission fee, no sign up tech guy labs.com, tech guy labs.com.

Leo Laporte (00:02:33):
Good news. <Laugh> from the department of justice. They're no longer gonna prosecute security researchers. What? Yes, apparently the computer fraud and abuse act, which is, you know, a, a very kind of strict law is often used against legit security researchers. I know a few I know one guy's gone to jail for nothing more than probing his company's system and then telling the company, Hey, you got a problem. See, that's the thing companies don't like to hear that they ought learn though, right? If you've got a flaw on your system and somebody discovers it, you ought to say, Hey, thank you. In fact, you might even wanna cut 'em a few bills and say, we appreciate it because you've been saved from a fade worse than death. Data breach of course is a very well known and beloved figure in the community who actually was prosecuted using the C F AA computer fraud and abuse act for doing nothing more than liberating academic documents that he had legitimate access to publishing them.

Leo Laporte (00:03:51):
Because you know, that's kind of a little scam that's going on. These, these academic papers, which are of great value to us as a society in many cases are often hidden behind expensive pay walls. Even though in many cases, we paid for the research through government funding Aaron Schwartz, who did many great things liberated a few of them. And the feds went after him. He ended up killing himself because he was facing a million dollar in fines. And 35 years in prison, two counts of wire fraud, 11 violations of the CFAA.

Leo Laporte (00:04:36):
He was offered a plea bargain that would've given him six months in federal prison declined it. This is back in 2013, very sad, very, very, very sad. He was arrested by MIT police, MIT police. So this is actually a big story you would think. Well, yeah, we shouldn't prosecute people who are doing legitimate security work, but it has really put a chill on security research. People are afraid of going to jail or paying millions of dollars in fines for simply finding flaws. It is very important that this happened. Deputy attorney general, Lisa Monico said in the statement computer security research is a key driver of improved cybersecurity. Well, yeah, the department has never been interested in prosecuting good faith, computer security research as a crime. Some may dispute today's announcement promotes cybersecurity, but providing clarity for good faith security researchers who root out vulnerabilities for the common.

Leo Laporte (00:05:43):
Good. We'll see. But good, good. I think a lot of a lot of what goes on in the society really comes from a fear of technology and the new is scary. And so because it's scary, we kind of maybe overreact sometimes for instance the New York state attorney general is investigating Twitch discord and other social <affirmative> and other social media because the evil, evil person who committed those atrocities in Buffalo posted tried to post a video of it as he was doing it in Twitch Twitch, shut it down as almost immediately. I think only 40 people saw it on Twitch. He had a, a discord, which is a chat kind of system. We have a discord chat for the show for all of our shows. It's very easy to, it's free. It's open. It's very easy to create a chat room. He apparently, before he did it, it created a chat room with as many as 15 people joined to to, to say, here's what I'm gonna do now. Admittedly should go after those 15 people cuz they knew ahead of time what he was about to do. Yeah, absolutely. But is it is it Twitch's fault or discourse fault because he used those platforms and if it is, if you think it is, what are you gonna do?

Leo Laporte (00:07:07):
What are you gonna do? I mean, look, this was a horrific thing, but it is not discords fault or Twitch's fault. But the New York state attorney general has launched an investigation. <Laugh> launched an investigation. Okay, fine. I think the first amendment protects, you know, the regulation of speech by the government. However, that's not gonna stop government from trying to regulate speech. The EU is proposing and probably will adopt a very strict law for very, you know, for noble reasons. This is how it always is though, right? They come up with a noble pretext. So you can't say anything about it. And then they end up using it to Snoop on us. The noble pretext is what we want to ch stop child sexual abuse material. So the EU is saying that all service providers, all service providers have to monitor all traffic, looking for both child sexual abuse, material pictures and things and grooming behavior.

Leo Laporte (00:08:16):
They, and now the problem is that a lot of providers, including Facebook messenger, WhatsApp signal messenger are end to end encrypted. They're designed intentionally to preserve the privacy of people on these messaging systems that would, if this law becomes you know, becomes a fact, if this proposed law becomes a fact in the EU, all of these companies would be responsible. And by the way, the EU specifically says, doesn't matter if it's encrypted, you still have to look into it. Well then it's not encrypted. Oh, only you might say, oh, only the company can see it. Well guess what? <Laugh> that doesn't last long. If there's a back door, if there's keys to encryption, eventually the bad guys, get it.

Leo Laporte (00:09:00):
No, nobody's gonna say, and I'm certainly not gonna say, oh, you know, we don't need to go after child sexual abuse material or, or groomers. No we do. But, but law enforcement really doesn't like it. They call it going dark. They don't like it, that they can't see every single thing that's happening everywhere all the time. And they act as if they have that, this, this new thing called encryption is gonna make it impossible for them to do their jobs. But of course, if you think about it, technology has given law enforcement far more tools than ever before. Location materials being sold about, about us all the time to law enforcement, without a warrant all the time. Law enforcement has actually a very good picture of what's going on much better than the pre technological era, you know? Yeah. Before technology, you know, you could call somebody and plan a crime.

Leo Laporte (00:09:59):
Oh guess they could do a wire trap. Well, that's fine with the warrant. Okay. But then you could go over to his house and talk about it or maybe stand out in the field and talk about, there've always been ways to communicate without the snooping of law enforcement for law enforcement to say, well, we can't allow any, any communication between people without our being able to watch it is a problem is a problem. And they're gonna use, you know, excuses like, well, we gotta stop child abuse, cuz nobody's gonna, nobody's gonna say, oh yeah, no, don't, you know, that's a, everybody's gonna applaud that motive. But as a, as Ronald Reagan used to say, watch your wallets. <Laugh> well, it's not about wallets. Watch your communications cuz really what they want is they want a perfect picture of everything the citizenry is up to at all times. And that is not, that is absolutely not the intent of the founders, the intent of the fourth amendment, the intent of any democracy and yet that's what they want and watch cuz it's gonna happen in the EU. And I predict well it's always been moose to make it happen here. Just something to be aware of. So good. I'm glad they the feds say, well we're not gonna prosecute legit security researchers. We'll see.

Leo Laporte (00:11:16):
We'll see. And I don't think, you know, investigating Twitch and discord is gonna do anything to prevent mass shootings. They're not CRI or for Chan they're not critical to this. It's that's not, that's not the direction to go to stop it. What do you think? Do, do you deserve a modicum of privacy? Eighty eight, eighty eight, ask Leo the phone number (888) 827-5536, toll free from anywhere in the us or Canada. Coming up our car guy, Sam bull, Sam photo guy, Chris Marwar space guy, rod pile. It's gonna be a great day. Stay right here, Sam. No rod today. Okay. Who messed up your car?

Sam Abuelsamid (00:12:00):
<Laugh> that is the Tesla that belonged to Joshua Brown, the first known fatality of autopilot. Oh God. And I wanna talk about the the new documentary that the New York times has just published. It's it's on Hulu. Oh, streaming on Hulu.

Leo Laporte (00:12:17):
They won't watch it

Sam Abuelsamid (00:12:17):
Tonight called Elon Musk's crash course.

Leo Laporte (00:12:19):
Oh geez. What a name?

Sam Abuelsamid (00:12:21):
Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:12:23):
Somebody called yesterday and was talking about George hot's you know open drive com.ai said he loved it. Yeah. Have you ever tried it?

Sam Abuelsamid (00:12:33):
I have not. He said

Leo Laporte (00:12:35):
It's really good. It's level two. It's not, it's not attempting anymore.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:12:38):
Yeah. It's not even really that. Yeah. I mean it's barely that. Yeah. yeah, it, it does lane centering and I don't know if it can control the brakes or not. I can't

Leo Laporte (00:12:51):
Remember. Yeah, it does adapt to cruise control, but only if the car does it really, all it's really doing is controlling this steering wheel and

Sam Abuelsamid (00:12:57):
Yeah, I I'm, I'm not inclined to recommend such a system for, to any, for anybody to install such an aftermarket system.

Leo Laporte (00:13:07):
All right. Okay.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:13:08):
All right. Hey I have got some updates on my vehicle schedule my test vehicle schedule. Yes. I'm gonna have the F150 lightning coming up in a couple of weeks.

Leo Laporte (00:13:21):
Ooh fun. And

Sam Abuelsamid (00:13:23):
I also got confirmation the other day that I'm gonna get the Rivian R one T Ooh. And I'm actually gonna have both of them overlapping for a couple of days.

Leo Laporte (00:13:32):
Nice.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:13:33):
I sent you an email the other day. I don't know if you saw it. I don't know if you're interested in, you know, doing a, a, a comparison test as a, as

Leo Laporte (00:13:42):
A, well, you be in the bay area or you just want, oh, you wanna do it yourself? Yes, of course. We're interested. Totally, totally, totally. Okay. I didn't see your email or I would've immediately responded. I'll look through my, okay. My mail. Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:13:54):
I'll I'll I'll shoot, I'll shoot video with both of the trucks and, and, you know, have him side by side and do some comparison and nice.

Leo Laporte (00:14:03):
And

Sam Abuelsamid (00:14:03):
I'll put it up and send it over to Anthony.

Leo Laporte (00:14:06):
Nice.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:14:07):
You guys can cut it together and put it on club twit.

Leo Laporte (00:14:11):
Very nice. Thank you, sir.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:14:15):
No problem.

Leo Laporte (00:14:16):
The phone song on the weekend. Introducing ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, children of all ages, the wonderful and talented Kim Shafer, our unbreakable phone angel. Kim don't take no Shafer. Hello, Kim. Hi. How are you? Good.

Kim Schaffer (00:14:32):
How was your dinner?

Leo Laporte (00:14:34):
Oh, how did you know? I went to dinner.

Kim Schaffer (00:14:36):
You told us yesterday. And I looked at the menu and I was, I am so picky, but I was salivating all over that sample menu. There's nothing on there that I wouldn't

Leo Laporte (00:14:43):
Have eaten. <Laugh> we have a new restaurant, I think because Petaluma is in the kind of, not quite, but almost in the wine country. Yeah. It's kind of like in the in the border of the wine country, just like Napa, the town of Napa is in the border of the Napa valley. We're in the border of the Sonoma valley. I'm thinking maybe this is gonna be an up and coming destination for GOME travelers. Anyway, this restaurant is better than anything we've had here forever. So

Kim Schaffer (00:15:11):
I think they're trying to be like that state bird provisions in

Leo Laporte (00:15:14):
The city. Well, that's my question. What the heck? So their name is the worst name ever. Table culture provisions. <Laugh> I can't even, I can never remember it. Yeah,

Kim Schaffer (00:15:22):
But state bird for provisions in the city, I guess there's a long waiting list for,

Leo Laporte (00:15:26):
Yeah. That's a good restaurant too, but I, you know, I think it's like the internet they've run out of good names. So like Google, like they're coming up with weird. Just doesn't have anything to do with anything names,

Kim Schaffer (00:15:38):
But as long as the food is

Leo Laporte (00:15:39):
Good, well, Lisa says you want to go to that restaurant that we never can remember the name of and I'll go, yeah, that sounds good. <Laugh>

Kim Schaffer (00:15:45):
Let's

Leo Laporte (00:15:46):
Make a plan. So let's make a plan. Who should I talk to?

Kim Schaffer (00:15:49):
Let's go to Bob and Marietta. I like his question, cuz again, it's one. I don't think I've ever heard before.

Leo Laporte (00:15:54):
That's a rarity. How many years have you been doing this with me?

Kim Schaffer (00:15:57):
Since 2013.

Leo Laporte (00:15:59):
Holy moly. Nine years.

Kim Schaffer (00:16:01):
Totally full time since 20. Seventeen's amazing. But before that it was Heather and I

Leo Laporte (00:16:07):
That's amazing. Yeah.

Kim Schaffer (00:16:08):
Switching back

Leo Laporte (00:16:08):
And forth. Well, anyway, you've heard most of the questions, so this will be good. A lot of them, this will be good. Hi Bob. Thank you, Kim. Leo Laport, the tech guy welcome.

Caller 1 (00:16:17):
You certainly are. How are you?

Leo Laporte (00:16:20):
I am great. How are you on this fine day? Memorial day weekend coming up.

Caller 1 (00:16:27):
I wanna get some expert advice. No pun intended. Actual fact. I wanna get some very good advice from you. This is regarding my doctors. They've come up with, I got an email a couple days ago. They're setting up a portal,

Leo Laporte (00:16:43):
A portal just for you.

Caller 1 (00:16:45):
Yeah. Well for, for their entire customer base.

Leo Laporte (00:16:48):
Oh, one of those Facebook portals.

Caller 1 (00:16:51):
Well, I don't wanna go Facebook. Oh,

Leo Laporte (00:16:53):
Well what is it? What are they setting up? I don't wanna put words in your mouth. I'm sorry.

Caller 1 (00:16:57):
It's kind of setting up your medical history. They want your contact information. Oh yes. Insurance and medications. Yeah. Fast history. Yeah. So this I'm I'm really, I think they're making a big mistake cuz what they said was how to do it. You enter the tva.ema.med into your search engine. Yeah. Then you enter your email address as your username. Okay. That's fine. So far now for the password, they're telling me what my password is supposed to be, which is my two initials and birth date.

Leo Laporte (00:17:39):
Well, everyone knows that. Now can you go in and change your password?

Caller 1 (00:17:44):
That's nothing about that. That's why I'm

Leo Laporte (00:17:46):
Oh, that's terrible. How hard is it to figure out what a person's initials and birth date are? That portal will be open to anybody who wants to look at it.

Caller 1 (00:17:57):
Bingo.

Leo Laporte (00:17:58):
Oh no, that's terrible. Probably also you might mention to them, there's this thing called the health insurance privacy and something act HIPAA. H I P a a that no, H I P P a health insurance, privacy and portability act that protects that medical information like Fort Knox.

Caller 1 (00:18:19):
Exactly. That's what my wife has been telling me. And I said, well, before I embarrass myself in front of somebody at the doctor's office, who's gonna tell me that. I don't know what the heck right. I'm talking

Leo Laporte (00:18:30):
About. Well, get a recording of this. <Laugh> play it for 'em. So you know, the idea of a portal is a great idea. Everybody's doing electronic medical records. My my health insurance is through a company called Kaiser insurance, Kaiser permit entity. They have a, and I use it all the time. I log into my portal. I see what inoculations I've had. I can get my blood work. I can see what the results were, that kind of thing, very convenient. But that needs to be totally secure. And your email, birthdate and initials <laugh> are pretty much, you know, discernible in a variety of ways. For me, all you have to do is go to my Wikipedia entry and you get all of that. But I mean, I, I think there are other ways for anybody to get that information. That's terrible. Now, if you go there and they say, that's your initial password? You know, cuz you know, sometimes when the, the, it, people will set up a, an account, they'll make the password, change me. And then to remind you, that's a temporary password so you can get in and now you should change it. So you might, before you put any private information in there, go log in and see if there's a change password field. I bet there is. I,

Caller 1 (00:19:39):
There is. Well, hopefully you're and, and I'll take your advice, but here it gives the tells you what to do on the, on the email here. It gave me the example of how to do it before your next appointment. Click on, click on each category in my health. Yeah,

Leo Laporte (00:19:56):
Yeah. Do all that. But, but what'll happen. Have you gone to the site yet?

Caller 1 (00:20:01):
No, my,

Leo Laporte (00:20:01):
I think the first time you go there and you'll log in with your email and your birth date and initials, before it lets you put anything in, if it's properly designed, it will say, okay, good. Now let's come up with a good secure password for you.

Caller 1 (00:20:18):
I, I agree with that, that effect.

Leo Laporte (00:20:20):
I think that's how they're gonna do it. I'm gonna guess that's how they're gonna do it because otherwise you're right. It's not safe.

Leo Laporte (00:20:26):
Yeah. But I, but that's not an unusual thing to do. You're but your instinct though, never ever use anything like that for a password because it's, it's easily discernible by a bad guy. Your password should be a long, you know, as long as they'll let you make it 12 characters, at least assorted numbers, upper and lowercase letters and punctuation of all kinds. And it should be completely random. Ideally it shouldn't be something you think you could even memorize, but that's why you have to use a password manager that has a vault where it stores that stuff so that you don't have to remember it. So, absolutely. And my, my fear is that people are gonna not change that default password and that it better not let you keep it cuz that's no good. Sam's coming up. We're gonna talk cars right after this. Yeah, that, that I I'm gonna guess if it's especially cuz of hip medical oh, he's gone. Oh, well I was talking to him, but no one's listening, but medical sites like that are very, very highly protected. I

Sam Abuelsamid (00:21:41):
Was. Yeah. And usually feel like you said, they'll, you know, they'll,

Leo Laporte (00:21:44):
You're gonna make

Sam Abuelsamid (00:21:44):
Him change password like that and it's, it's only good one time. Yeah. And then as soon as you log in, it'll exactly immediately prompt you to change it to something else.

Leo Laporte (00:21:53):
I never use. E I got the site the other day said, this is, you know, here's a suggested password, which is reasonable, I guess, for them to cuz people don't make good passwords. But in this case I ne I never even use those, even if they're clearly, you know, random, cuz I don't think anybody should know and I have a good password manager, so I let it do it. I love bit warden now will let you create a random email as well as password, which is great. Oh, so you can yeah. Now it's really good. Now it's really good. Okay. We're gonna talk about crashes. That is a, that is a horrific accident.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:22:34):
Yeah. Well, and there was another one, a couple of years ago that was almost identical. And it also happened in Florida. 

Leo Laporte (00:22:42):
But I have to point out, I mean, accidents happen in all vehicles all the time. I mean

Sam Abuelsamid (00:22:46):
They, they, they do. But the, you know, the, I think the, the, the difference here that, you know, has people concerned is, you know, that Musk keeps talking about this as a system that, you know, well, first of all, they sell it as full self-driving.

Leo Laporte (00:23:02):
Yeah. That's a mistake.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:23:03):
Yeah. You know, and, and then, you know, he keeps demoing it, you know, with his hands off the wheel and yeah. You see, you know, there's all kinds of videos of him and, and he will retweet videos that other people post showing them driving with hands off the wheel and, you know, talks about when their, when their cars are suddenly gonna transform into robo taxis. And so you know what I mean, what I wanna talk about more today though, is, is this specific documentary which has some flaws, you know, it's not bad, but it, it has some flaws. And, you know, I think one of the things that it really, that they really missed an opportunity was to really look at what happened with NITSA and why NITSA hasn't done anything. Yes. particularly with the Josh brown crash.

Leo Laporte (00:23:47):
Yes.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:23:48):
And, you know, they had, they had one ex NITSA staffer that they talked to in the film. And they, but they also talked to a couple of people from the NTSB Robert Sumwalt, the, the chairman of the NTSB and, and one other member of the NTSB who's been involved in a couple of these Tesla investigations and the NTSB has made some excellent recommendations and NITSA has done nothing to push automakers to actually implement that.

Leo Laporte (00:24:21):
<Affirmative> yeah. So is it a bad documentary you think, or

Sam Abuelsamid (00:24:30):
It's not bad, it's just not as good as it could have been. I think it's a missed opportunity. You know, it does, you know, I mean, if you watch, I think it's, it's worth watching because you do get some information, you know, certainly some history of what's gone on, but I think that there, you know, there's a, there's a there's I think there's some people that they should have talked to that they didn't people like Dr. Phillip Cooman from Carnegie Mellon university. I actually talked to the to the director. I, she interviewed me back last October. And you know, that, you know, that wasn't used, but, you know, and I don't know if she, you know, even talked to some of these other people, but I think that, you know, there's people that should have been included in there, like, like Phil Cooman. I, I also pointed her at a lawyer named Jennifer Karski who is an expert in a lot of this stuff. And I think you know, that it would've been worthwhile to have some of these other people included in there to, to look at, you know, what what's gone wrong from a regulatory standpoint,

Leo Laporte (00:25:39):
Right? Yes. Our show today BR oh, I'm so excited brought to you by Peloton. I'm kind of a, you probably heard me talk about my Peloton a little bit, kind of a Peloton buff that would be understating the case. I got my Peloton bike, the original Peloton bike several years ago and I was using it all the time. It's my favorite thing ever. And it gets better all the time. We'd love <affirmative>. We love our Peloton. You know, you might not feel motivated to get up and get moving. You might not feel like you have time to fit the workout into the day. Workout classes fill up. Sometimes you don't really want to go to the gym. It's easy to get shut out. That's why you want to try Peloton. Oh, so time. So I love glasses. I really did, but the schedule didn't always fit my schedule.

Leo Laporte (00:26:37):
I wanted the idea. I really loved the idea of doing it when I felt like it on my own terms and on my own time, that's why I got the Peloton bike. It's got a nice big screen. It's got great. It's some of my, I love Cody. I can watch 'em live. Be part of a large group doing the class all at the same time. They'll even shout out they'll say hi or you can do on demand. They've added a lot of nice features. You can go on a nice ride through the countryside and they have a game now, which I play a lot. I really like it. It's kinda like rock band or light saber. You're turning the knob and trying to keep time with the music. It's it's a great way to exercise. Have fun while you're doing it. Their instructors are so great.

Leo Laporte (00:27:18):
They're there whenever you want. You wanna get up in the morning, three in the morning and, and ride, you can do it. They're highly trained fitness pros. You probably saw Cody on dancing with the stars, man. He's a, he's amazing. They're all wonderful. They motivate you through every workout, whether you're a regular at the gym or someone who's new and getting back into working out, they don't just teach. They motivate. They get you feeling good and you end every class. I love Emma Lovewell. She says live well, love. Well at the end and you, you end the class and you just going. I feel good. I feel good. And I try, I always try to remember that feeling cuz you know, sometimes you get up, you don't wanna work out. You don't wanna do anything. Peloton has treadmills. Now I, I use one at my trainers barn that he has the Peloton bike and the treadmill.

Leo Laporte (00:28:00):
And I use the treadmill all the time. Nicest treadmill ever. They have stretch classes you can do before or after you use the gear. They have, they actually all sides of strength, training yoga. Now you can try new types of movement. No one's looking down their nose at you. You're on your own. You can do it at a level in a pace that feels good for you. It gets you moving and that's the point, right? Make every workout a good time with Peloton. You can do whatever you want with the music too. That's so the other thing I like, I, I just did the game with what was it? Lady rockers of the nineties. I think it was well, I loved every song. It was so great. So great. Whether you're looking for a 10 minute upper body stretch between calls a 40 minute run before bed or just a light bike ride in the country.

Leo Laporte (00:28:53):
It's got it all. All on the same Peloton. You'll never have an awkward encounter in the locker room again. <Laugh> I just, I just, I love my Peloton. I use it all the time right now is a great time to try a Peloton. P E L O T O N. They've reduced the price. The Peloton bike plus is $500 less. That's the lowest price they've ever offered. It includes. And you definitely want to get this free delivery and setup. And by the way, like I said, I've had mine. I think I've had it for four or five years. I got it when they first started and it is perfect. Perfect. Never had a problem with it. Lots of game changing prices available. Now, if you've ever looked before and gone, well, I don't know, go back. Peloton bikes and treads. I just love 'em visit onepeloton.com to learn more.

Leo Laporte (00:29:41):
I it's funny. I'm I'm, I'm lifting weights with my trainer and he says, okay, time for a little Tabata on the Peloton I get on there, man. I tell you it's hard, but I feel so good afterwards. It really makes a difference. I am. I am. We've been trying to, ever since I bought my Peloton, I've been saying you should advertise. I would love to tell people about this Peloton. I'm telling 'em about it. Anyway, it's the greatest thing ever. One peloton.com is the address. One peloton.com. This is a revolution I think in, in in exercise, doing it on your own on your own time as you want. Anytime. I love it. Love you Peloton. He's our low riding guy, car expert, Sam AB Sam joins us every week to talk about cars. He's a principal researcher at guide house insights. Does the great will bearings podcast@wheelbearings.media. Hi Sam.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:30:40):
Hey Leo. How are you

Leo Laporte (00:30:41):
This week? I'm great. I certainly hope that that trashed car behind you is not your Miata.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:30:46):
No, thankfully mine, mine came was built with the roof removed. <Laugh> right

Leo Laporte (00:30:51):
From the, yeah. That one had its room removed. Somehow not, not voluntarily. I'm thinking.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:30:57):
Yeah, no, this, this the, the car behind me, if you're watching the stream is the car, a Tesla model S that was owned by Joshua Brown, who was the first known fatality. Oh dear. While using Tesla autopilot. Oh

Leo Laporte (00:31:11):
Dear.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:31:12):
And this was, this was in may of 2016. As it turns out, it was actually, it was about a week before, the first time I got to drive a, a model S with autopilot. And at the time when I drove it I, you know, the, this this crash had not yet become public. It, it was not published anywhere. You know, the local authorities knew about it. The national transportation safety board knew about it and, and NITSA knew about it, but, but it was not, it had not been reported anywhere. And what happened in this particular instance was that brown was using autopilot. He was driving down a, a, a highway in Florida. It was not, it was not a limited access highway, like an interstate and a truck, a tractor trailer turned left in front of him. And it had a white trailer and the system failed to recognize that this was a

Leo Laporte (00:32:08):
Truck. Oh, I remember that it was across the road. Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:32:11):
He was not paying attention. And his car basically ran under the, the track under the trailer tragic and sliced the roof off. And it was a fatal crash. And, you know, there was another very similar crash in 2019 in Florida, also on a very similar kind of road, same, almost exact same scenarios with a model three. It was a newer generation of autopilot and it still did the exact same thing. And the reason I bring this up today is there's a new documentary that just came out on Hulu on Friday. It's directed by a woman named Emma Schwartz. It was published by the New York times. It's called Elon Musk's crash course. Right. <Laugh> and that

Leo Laporte (00:32:59):
Gives you some idea of what it's gonna

Sam Abuelsamid (00:33:01):
Be about. Yeah. Wow. It, I mean, it, it, it, the overall topic of the, the film is to take a look at the, the development and problems of autopilot and, and full self-driving at Tesla. And it's, it's not a bad film, but I think that it was, you know, I watched it, I got a screener of it, and I, I thought it was kind of a missed opportunity. You know, they spent, you know, the first portion of the film, you know, looks at the, the, the origins of Tesla and the DARPA grand challenge, you know, the, the beginning of developing automated driving systems. And then it gets into Joshua Brown and it spends personally, I think, an inordinate amount of time on brown himself on who he was, you know why he was so interested in, in testing autopilot talking to some of his friends.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:33:56):
And I, I think that, you know, that was, you know, some of that background is, is fine, it's useful, but I think it, to the, to most viewers, it would've been more useful if they spent more time looking at the issues of why, you know, what, what are the problems with, what are the real problems with autopilot and, and Tesla's full self driving approach. And why have regulators not done anything about it? They did talk to one former NITSA staffer. ITT says the national highway traffic safety administration who one staffer who was involved in this investigation, he's no longer with NITSA. And they also talked to a couple of members from the NTSB, including Robert Sumwalt. Who's the chairman of the national transportation safety board and the NTSB and, and NITSA are two different agencies within the federal government that are both tasked with with trying to improve transportation safety, but from different perspectives.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:35:02):
The NTSB is an investigatory body that has no enforcement or regulatory authority. So when crashes happen, not just with vehicles, not just with cars, but with trains, aircraft shipping, any kind of transportation accident, they go in and investigate and make recommendations. And that's all they can do is make recommendations. So they'll issue report and make recommendations. And they're very well respected. And then it's up to, in the case of ground vehicles NITSA to actually look at, okay, how do, how do we take these recommendations and make pro get reg regulations to make roads SA roads safer? And given that you know, we just had, that's a just issued the preliminary findings for 2021 traffic safety. When we reached almost 43,000 fatalities last year, that's a 10.5% increase from 2020. And the highest number of fatalities we've had on our roads since 2005 you know, it's important for us to be doing more, to improve traffic safety.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:36:15):
And I think that they, you know, NITSA has really fallen down on the job when it comes to automated driving. They've started to do more in the past year with at least data gathering, but back in 2016, when they had this investigation, the NTSP put, put out a really good, really thorough report on this crash that NSA did nothing with they, in fact you know, they issued their own report that included some data that they got from from Tesla directly, which was later debunked, you know, that claimed that cars operating on autopilot got into 40%, fewer crashes than those without autopilot. And that, you know, once somebody actually you know, somebody spent a couple of years trying to do FOYA requests to get the actual data that was given to NITSA that this claim was based on. And they once they actually got it and started going through it they found that it was the claim was complete nonsense.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:37:17):
In fact, cars with autopilot were actually getting into more crashes. And I think that the, the, you know, the director of this film probably should have put more emphasis on why are reg, why have regulators not done anything to at least, you know, to do things like have more robust driver monitoring systems in, in vehicles to, you know, to mandate that if you're going to have any kind of partial automation systems like this. And actually next week, I wanna talk about driver monitoring systems. Cause I got a really good demo on Friday. I went to Magna a major auto parts supplier and got a great demo on, on what they're doing with this. But you know, Tesla among the companies that are doing these more advanced systems, they're the only ones that aren't using active driver monitoring systems. And I think, I think that, that, I think it would've been,

Leo Laporte (00:38:15):
They make you hold the wheel though. Isn't that active driving?

Sam Abuelsamid (00:38:18):
Well, they, except that they don't really have they, they tell you to hold the wheel, but they, they don't really enforce it very well. Well,

Leo Laporte (00:38:26):
They do on, they did on my Tesla man, at one point, I'm driving down the road. They said, you no more FSD for you, <laugh> you didn't, you didn't respond. And they turned it off. So I didn't have my adapted cruise

Sam Abuelsamid (00:38:38):
Control. They're they're using a torque sensor in the steering wheel. Yeah, exactly. Which is not a very reliable oh, okay. Means of measuring if your hands are actually on the wheel.

Leo Laporte (00:38:47):
My Mustang uses though. I don't have blue crews yet. Yes.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:38:49):
Yeah. Yes. Your Mustang does, your Maki does use the same system once I get, I have talked to Ford about and complained to them about that, that approach as well. Why

Leo Laporte (00:38:57):
Is that dangerous? I mean, it does show, you're interested. You're paying attention.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:39:02):
Well, not necessarily. It shows that there's torque input on the steering wheel, but it's very easy to fool that I could tires line. You can find the, yeah, you can, you can stick an orange or something in between steering wheel spokes. Why would, and that'll be enough. That's

Leo Laporte (00:39:17):
Self that's stupid.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:39:19):
Yes

Leo Laporte (00:39:20):
<Laugh> but people will do dumb things. And I guess that's

Sam Abuelsamid (00:39:22):
The point they will.

Leo Laporte (00:39:24):
And I love, I didn't ever had FSD, but I loved my you know, lane keeping and mm-hmm <affirmative> I never did want on the Tesla to use the lane changing though. It seemed to be very aggressive and not in a way I was comfortable with Samal Sam guide, house insights. Thank you as always,

Sam Abuelsamid (00:39:41):
Thank you.

Leo Laporte (00:39:49):
Still waiting for a blue cruise, but you know, I don't, I'm not in a hurry. I don't really mind not having it

Sam Abuelsamid (00:39:54):
Right away. You you're not, to be honest, you're not really missing much. Yeah. Yeah. You're better off with just the lane centering and

Leo Laporte (00:39:59):
The that's fine. And I do use that every, every time I'm on the freeway and it's very convenient and I like it. So yeah. Okay. do you wanna stick around as usual?

Sam Abuelsamid (00:40:10):
Yeah, absolutely.

Leo Laporte (00:40:11):
Okay. I'm gonna give you control of the con

Sam Abuelsamid (00:40:15):
Here. All right. So just to to elaborate a little bit on this whole torque sensor thing in the steering wheel the reason why it's not a very good system is what it's doing is it's looking for for input on the, on the steering wheel. So it's assuming that as you're driving down the road, if your hands are on the wheel, there's gonna be a little bit of motion from your hands, and you're gonna have some, some motion there. Right. and you know, when it, when the system is making steering corrections, it's also assuming that you're gonna have, there's gonna be some reaction torque, you know, so your hands are perhaps not gonna move quite as aggressively as, as the steering wheel. And so when it's seeing that reaction torque, it, it, then it assumes that your hands are on the wheel. And the reason why things like, you know, this idea of sticking a water bottle or an orange, or there was, there was a company for a while that was selling a little weight that you could clip onto one

Leo Laporte (00:41:10):
Of those

Sam Abuelsamid (00:41:11):
Unbelievable steering wheel. Why

Leo Laporte (00:41:12):
Would you do that? So stupid?

Sam Abuelsamid (00:41:14):
You know, so when, when the, when the system, you know would automatically turn the steering wheel, it would feel that weight and assume that it was your hands on the wheel, which was not. And so so there's that, and then there's the, there's also the opposite side of that, which is something that I've experienced on some Ford vehicles, which is false positives. If you actually drive down the road, and if you're driving straight down the road and you have your hands on the wheel and you hold the wheel very steady, then it assumes that if you're holding the wheel steady, that there's nobody touching the wheel there. It's, it's, it's assuming that everybody's going to have a little bit of shake on the wheel, right. And so that's, you know, that's not good either. Cuz then you end up getting a lot of false positive alerts to put your hands back on the wheel.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:42:01):
So, you know, if, if what you wanna do is actually measure is somebody, does somebody have their hands on the wheel? It's better to do that in a more direct way and the way that some auto makers, including general motors and Stant and BMW and Mercedes-Benz and Audi is they put capacitor sensors in the steering wheel, inside the steering wheel. So when you, when you are physically touching the wheel, you know, it's like, like touching your, your phone screen, you're touchscreen, when you are physically touching the wheel, it will sense that. And so you don't have to actually move the wheel, you know, just touching it, you know, having your hands on the wheel is sufficient. So that there's that. And then the other thing that you want is, you know, to look at the driver's eyes because all of these systems are designed to be you know eyes on systems, you know, where you are still watching the road.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:42:52):
And so what you wanna do is you wanna be watch looking at where is the driver looking? And so one of the things, you know, you'll, you'll see in, in your Maee Leo, even, even if you have even without the blue crews it will actually, if, if you are looking away from the wheel, I, I think on yours, if you look away from the, the road for more than about four or five seconds, it will start to alert you to put your eyes back on the road. Yeah. If you're using the adaptive cruise control and you know, that's the kind of thing that you want, you want, you know, if, if you're relying on the, the human driver to be the supervisor, then you, you want to actually look, you, you want direct, you don't want derivative signals like a torque sensor. You want direct signals look at where the driver's eyes are pointing, look at where they, their, you know, measure where their hands are actually at, you know, are they actually on the steering wheel? And then, you know, then you can have a more reliable system.

Leo Laporte (00:43:52):
Leo Laporte the tech guy, eighty eight, eighty eight, ask Leo the phone number on, we go with the show, say hello to Gary. And look two Gary in Laguna, Miguel, California. Hi Gary.

Caller 2 (00:44:04):
Oh, I'm doing pretty good. Good. Well, anyways, I, I just wanted to comment about what Sam and you were talking about. Okay boy, this autonomous driving. Oh my God. I, I can't think of anything more dangerous than autonomous driving

Leo Laporte (00:44:19):
For, you know, we've been saying for a long time, I remember the very first grand DARPA challenge many moons ago, maybe 20 years ago, the idea the grand DARPA challenge was a challenge to create self-driving vehicles. And I think in 2004, they started it. And I remember the first grand DARPA challenges. They couldn't go 10 feet with veering off the road, these robotic cars, but we've made a lot of progress. But as with many things in computers the first 80% was pretty easy. And the last 10% is almost impossible, whether it's voice recognition, handwriting recognition, or self driving, it's that last bit that gets you every time. And I feel like this may ne we may never get there about it. Go ahead.

Caller 2 (00:45:14):
But Leo, what does Sam think about it? Because Sam like me, he's a true car guy. You know, Sam has a lot more knowledge on, especially writing articles and things like that. I just have a lot of knowledge working on the cars. You know, we store in my 67 Camaro. Yeah. And trying to keep my Jeep grand Cherokee working cuz the Toyota RAV4 I bought was bought back and

Leo Laporte (00:45:36):
<Laugh>

Caller 2 (00:45:36):
And I just,

Leo Laporte (00:45:37):
That grand Cherokee's a classic. You keep that running. That's that's a, that's a plus.

Caller 2 (00:45:41):
Well, the problem is Leo it's it's a 1999. That's got 251,000 miles on now.

Leo Laporte (00:45:45):
Oh man. Put an electric motor in there. Just no self-driving

Caller 2 (00:45:49):
No, no, no, no. Well you obviously know how I feel about electric.

Leo Laporte (00:45:52):
<Laugh> see. I love electric vehicles. Oh. And unfortunately I think the idea is, well, we're innovating there. We should innovate in every respect to the point where the model three doesn't even have, you know, physical buttons for the, for the lane change indicator and stuff. Sam is actually still on the line. Let me ask, let me ask him your question. Sure. We were, we were talking to the chat rooms. Elon announced again just a couple of days ago that we're only one year away from full self-driving vehicles, vehicles that can have we suddenly gone back in time to 2016? He's well there's and then I found a super cut video of him announcing that in 20 14, 20 15, 20 16, 20 18, 20 19 every year for the last eight years, Elon has said no human drivers next year,

Caller 2 (00:46:41):
What we need is manual transmissions

Leo Laporte (00:46:43):
<Laugh> then you have to have a human I, so I wouldn't, I don't disagree with that.

Caller 2 (00:46:48):
Sam, Sam, you told me about this. Sam, you have a Miata. You obviously have a manual transmission in when you are driving that vehicle. I mean, tell me if you don't have a hundred percent donated from your thought to your right foot, to your left foot, to your right hand and went shifting, be, see, this is a problem I see with modern vehicles. Now this is just another opinion from a person like me. I'm 64 years old. I have a lot of experience with cars. Also a lot of experience photographing the wildlife, but the way I look at cars nowadays, cars are so automated cars are so dangerous the way they are. If you look at manual,

Leo Laporte (00:47:29):
But wait, but wait a minute, wait a minute, Gary. Cuz I do feel like historically cars have been killers since, you know, day one. I, I feel like there's maybe safer now. And, and we know humans, especially in the day of of smartphone are horribly inattentive regardless of the ability of the car to drive itself. So a little bit of driver assist, I don't think is a bad thing.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:47:57):
You know? I, I,

Leo Laporte (00:47:59):
What do you, what do you

Sam Abuelsamid (00:47:59):
Think? You know, and I think you know, when you actually have to be more engaged in the process you know, then you tend to be more attentive. You know? I mean, if you are shifting manually you know, one thing we never we've never, ever heard about is cases of sudden unintended acceleration with a manual transmission. <Laugh> it's only with automatic trans right? Sam, thank

Caller 2 (00:48:21):
Thank you.

Leo Laporte (00:48:22):
Oh, let's, let's go back to cranking the car. Cause if you have to go all the way around the car to crank the engine, you're gonna make sure there are no toddlers in the way let's go back. Well, in fact, let's bring back horses. Nobody ever got, well maybe mean nobody, but a lot fewer people got run over by horses. Yes. And nobody, nobody ran a stop sign with a horse.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:48:42):
<Laugh> you know, I will say

Leo Laporte (00:48:46):
Gary, you've got a real nostalgia for the good old days. I think. I think automatic transmissions are here to stay. I really do. Yeah.

Caller 2 (00:48:53):
Well here let's look at earlier today, the Spanish grand period was on. I watched the entire race. Now when you watch formula one,

Leo Laporte (00:49:00):
Don't tell me the winner cuz I haven't watched it yet. Yeah, go ahead.

Caller 2 (00:49:03):
Okay. Now here's the thing. When we watch what happens in auto racing passes over to the passenger cars. Now even with the transmissions, the way they are in formula one, you still have to let out the clutch and then you have the paddle shippers, you know, up for the right and down for lift, you have to manually shift even race

Leo Laporte (00:49:24):
Cars. And the really good news is there. Hasn't been a formula one fatality in a couple of years now. So there has yeah. Yeah. <Laugh>

Caller 2 (00:49:32):
Rojo had a really, really

Leo Laporte (00:49:33):
That was a bad one. Yeah. Don't tell me who won today. Cuz I haven't watched it yet. I'm I?

Sam Abuelsamid (00:49:38):
It was a car with four wheels and a couple of wings. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:49:40):
<Laugh> absolutely, absolutely. So you know, I understand what you're saying Gary, but, but time does move on. Ultimately I I, as I mean, look, we're look, nobody's gonna force everybody to have a stick shift. Do

Caller 2 (00:49:55):
You, but it's so sad. You can't even get a stick ship in most

Leo Laporte (00:49:57):
Modern. You can't buy one yeah.

Caller 2 (00:49:58):
Muscle cars.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:50:00):
Well that that's because most, most customers don't wanna buy them. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think, I think the, the real issue here to what Gary's saying is, you know, that we, with some of these more advanced systems, you know, I think there there's a lot of benefit to systems like in keeping assist blind spot monitoring,

Leo Laporte (00:50:15):
You still have to drive. And that's

Sam Abuelsamid (00:50:17):
The problem. Yeah. With these more with these more advanced systems we're starting to get into an uncanny valley where, you know, as they become more capable cons the drivers are not good at supervising the automation. You know, when you actually have to drive you know, then you're better. But if you have to supervise a partially automated system, it becomes if it works most of the time. Yeah. It's very easy. Become complacent. It love, which is why you must have more robust driver monitor systems point to make sure the driver stays engaged

Leo Laporte (00:50:51):
Because people

Sam Abuelsamid (00:50:51):
Will,

Leo Laporte (00:50:53):
Will, if you give them a chance, they'll start sending Instagram photos. And so you gotta, you gotta make sure. I, I honestly, I hope we get to full self-driving sooner than later, cuz in the long run, if every car on the road had full self-driving software, I think it would be a much safer environment. Problem is we are, as you said in that uncanny in between time mm-hmm <affirmative> where drivers are still required. But imagine, imagine a future where every single car is a living room on wheels with no steering wheel, no brakes. And they're talking to one another, I think there would be few if any accidents, because now you might not get to your destination as fast because they, as we've seen in Phoenix and elsewhere, they're very patient to a fault. I think that's gonna be a safer environment. How many people die every year in the auto accident? Sam is it it's over 50,000

Sam Abuelsamid (00:51:46):
Last, last year. It was just shy of 40 3043.

Leo Laporte (00:51:49):
That's a lot of people.

Caller 2 (00:51:51):
That's a lot of people dying unnecessarily there,

Leo Laporte (00:51:53):
Guys. You mean if they all had stick shifts, they wouldn't die.

Caller 2 (00:51:56):
Well, I'm not saying,

Sam Abuelsamid (00:51:57):
Well, there'd be a lot fewer people driving <laugh> but so there probably would be fewer fatalities.

Leo Laporte (00:52:03):
No, you know what happened during COVID fewer people driving more fatalities, right? Because people SP

Sam Abuelsamid (00:52:09):
Yeah. From 2019 to 2020, the numbers went up quite a bit because there were more, more people driving too fast and driving recklessly. Yeah. And so we did have so

Leo Laporte (00:52:20):
Fewer people on the road does not necessarily mean fewer fatalities.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:52:24):
Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:52:24):
In fact we know it doesn't cuz it didn't in 2020. Yeah, I I'm a radical on this and then Gary, you're gonna hate me when I say this, but I think personal car ownership should end as soon as possible. No,

Caller 2 (00:52:39):
No, no.

Leo Laporte (00:52:40):
I know. No. As soon as possible cars have been the single worst invention of humanity, they've polluted the airs. They've polluted the environment. They've polluted the streets. They make it impossible for people to walk and bike cities where cars are banned are much more livable, much better environments for human beings. The air cleared up in the that's one thing that did happen during COVID the air cleared up because of fewer vehicles birds and animals came back. I know you love birds, Gary. I honestly think personal car ownership is the worst thing that happened in the 20th century. Leo Laporte the tech guy. I'm sure everybody disagrees with me when I say that.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:53:20):
<Laugh>

Leo Laporte (00:53:24):
All right, Sam, your turn.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:53:26):
I, you know, I, I would say that certainly personal car ownership in urban areas.

Leo Laporte (00:53:31):
I'm not saying cars should go away. Personal car ownership.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:53:35):
Should have we need, we need, we need transportation. I mean, you know, our, we need, we need,

Leo Laporte (00:53:39):
We need trucks. I'm not saying that world.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:53:41):
Yeah. Our world has evolved, you know, in a way that we do rely on transportation to get around. But that doesn't necessarily mean that we all need to own our own

Leo Laporte (00:53:51):
Vehicle. It's made our cities inhumane, honestly. Yeah. I know. I totally agree. It's created the suburbs which were, which are a bad idea. I mean, I think it's, I think it, when we look, when people look back in history, if we ever have, if we have history at some point they will say, boy, that was a bad idea. That was a bad idea.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:54:14):
Yeah. I mean, you know, it, there, there were benefits, but there was probably on, on a net basis, there's probably more harm than good from, from vehicles, especially from internal combustion, you know? And, and the, the funny thing is if you go back to the beginning of the 20th century, there were actually more electric vehicles on the road than there were internal combustion because there was no gasoline fueling infrastructure. But you know, as soon as that gasoline fueling infrastructure started to evolve, people made the switch from electric to gas because it was so much more convenient. Because you know, the batteries of the era had so little capacity, so little range that, you know, they, they, those vehicles weren't as useful as they could be. And, and now, but now what we're starting to see is a shift back in the other direction is battery technology has evolved.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:55:09):
We're getting more and more charging stations installed that is, is changing. And I think, you know, we will, you know, we're going to see, you know, over the course of this decade, you know, a real shift and we're already starting to see a dramatic shift towards electrification. And in a lot of regions, like particularly in Europe, you know, a lot of automakers have said in Europe by 2030, they don't plan to sell internal combustion engines anymore. You know, several auto makers, especially premium auto makers, but even even mainstream like Volvo Audi Ford and, and others, you know, have said that by 2030, they will not be selling any internal combustion vehicles in Europe anymore. And so, you know, this is, this is a, a significant shift that will, will have a, will make a difference. But, you know, we also need different transportation options, especially in urban areas.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:56:04):
You know, we, we need, you know, we need to get people, more people into micro mobility, mass transit you know, and then in smaller vehicles you know, that are better suited to the use case. And, and the thing is if you don't own the vehicle then you have a it's, it's easier to make that shift to having the right vehicle for each trip. You know, when, when you have to own a vehicle, you know, you, you tend to end up buying the vehicle that you need for your worst case. <Laugh> use case. You know, so you buy an big SUV or a pickup truck, you know, because you need to tow a boat to the lake a couple of times a year. And that's, you know, that's not a, you know, and then the rest of the year you're under utilizing that vehicle.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:56:56):
So, you know, ideally what you want is to have the right vehicle for every trip. And you know, if you, if we make that shift away from personal ownership, then you know, that would be better or, you know, just get everybody to to own smaller vehicles and then just rent, you know, if you, for those occasional times, when you need a larger vehicle, then rent something that would, you know, that would also be a better solution. But let's see look at the chat here. Somebody was asking when I thought FSD would become a reality. When do you think we'll, we'll get yeah, Chevy guys said, when do you think we'll get, get to FSD cars? You know, I think it's going to be quite a while before we have vehicles that we can buy that truly have you know, true self-driving, you know, automated driving capability.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:57:49):
You know, I think what we're going to see first for consumer vehicles is vehicles that can do almost complete driving task on things like highways, where it's a more limited operating domain where you don't have intersections, you don't have pedestrians and cyclists. That's gonna be the, the first thing you see for consumer vehicles. But right now, actually we're starting to, you know, see more and more auto, true automated vehicles, you know, expansion of those kinds of deployments. Just this past week Waymo announced that they're expanding, you know, they've been running driverless, robo taxis in the suburbs of Phoenix for a couple of years now on, on certain limited, certain limited areas. They're expanding that area where those vehicles can operate into downtown Phoenix Argo AI, which is majority owned by Ford and Volkswagen announced this week that they are starting driverless testing.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:58:52):
You know, they've been doing testing in, in a number of cities for, for about five, six years now. But they're gonna, they're launching driverless testing in Miami and Austin, Texas and what they're doing first, they're following a similar pattern to what Waymo did, where they have their, they have, they, they've actually got vehicles operating as robo taxis on Lyft in Austin and Miami with safety drivers, much as motional does in Las Vegas with Lyft. And then Argo also has their own ride hailing and dispatch platform similar to Lyft or Uber. And they're using that with employees right now for full driverless tests in DC and Miami. So if you work for Argo or sorry in Austin, in Miami, if you work for Argo in either of those cities, you can use the Argo app and, and sum a ride from one of the Argo vehicles without a safety operator in there.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:59:50):
Crews and Waymo are also both running driverless vehicles in San Francisco and carrying members of the public. They're not yet allowed to charge for those rides. They're free rides cause it's still a test program, but they are carrying members of the public in driverless vehicles. So you know, they're out there today. It's expanding in China there's four or five different companies in about half a dozen cities that are doing driverless operations. And we will continue to see more and more of that. But the, the, the key to all of this is these are all vehicles, you know, systems that are designed from the ground up to be fully auto automated. They have multiple types of sensors that, you know, are very robust and much more robust computing power than what you will find in any production vehicle today.

Sam Abuelsamid (01:00:43):
So, you know, they have, you know, typically multiple types of LIDAR sensors, multiple types of radar, multiple cameras in some cases like the the crews and the Wemo vehicles, they've also got thermal imaging sensors. So they're, they're, they have a much more complete picture of the world around them in all different kinds of conditions, which is the, the, the problem with what Tesla's doing, you know, with relying on cameras, you actually can make that work in certain conditions. But it's, it's never going to have the fail operational capability that you need, you know, so if something goes wrong with one of those cameras, you need to have you need to have something else that can back it up and verify what you're seeing. And, and because machine vision systems are not perfect. They don't always recognize things exactly as they are.

Sam Abuelsamid (01:01:38):
And cameras in particular are not good. Especially the way that Tesla's using them. They're not good at measuring distance. They're using inference to, to try to measure how far away something is and how fast it's moving. And that's not a reliable approach. You know, they're, they're good for classification, but you know, you need active sensors like radar or LIDAR to get accurate distance measurements and orientation measurements, and orientation is really important because you need to measure the trajectory of all the targets around you so that you can predict what they're going to do, which is another key piece of this puzzle. So it's a lot more complicated than just vision. And

Leo Laporte (01:02:20):
I feel like if, if all car, like, if you could flip a switch, which you can't, but if inner car communication were enabled and all cars were autonomous, it'd be a lot more likely to work. Right. I mean, part of the problem is we've got humans in the mix.

Sam Abuelsamid (01:02:38):
Yes and no. You know, it's actually good that we have humans in the mix because the software that we have is still not in many ways, still not as good as the

Leo Laporte (01:02:46):
Human brain. So at some point point though, when the software we need the software be better and then we just need to pull a, but it's a long way to go. Yeah. That's the unfortunate part. Thank you, Sam. Yeah. A great one. We'll talk next week, right? You did bye. Well, Hey, Hey. Hey, how are you today? Leo Laporte here. The tech guy talking computers, the internet, home theater, digital photography, smart phones, smart watches, all that jazz. Eighty eight eighty eight. Ask Leo the phone number (888) 827-5536. Toll free from anywhere in the us or Canada. Pat on the line from Monrovia, California. Hi, pat.

Caller 3 (01:03:24):
Hi, just sort of bong there. It startled me a

Leo Laporte (01:03:26):
Little bit. Oh, sorry. The bong is the signal that you are on. <Laugh> wake up. <Laugh> sorry about that. I don't control the bong. If for me, it'd be a nice little flute tone, but I don't have any control over that

Caller 3 (01:03:37):
Long time. No, C I, I talked to pre pandemic and wow. I had the internet radio station, which we're trying to very moment.

Leo Laporte (01:03:47):
Oh, you still are still working on.

Caller 3 (01:03:49):
Yeah, it's still electrical-radio.com, but it was gone for two years.

Leo Laporte (01:03:54):
Why was that?

Caller 3 (01:03:56):
The company that handled our rights management went out of business.

Leo Laporte (01:03:59):
Oh, the and you know why they went out of business cuz the music industry does not like the idea.

Caller 3 (01:04:05):
Yeah. They got it. Dust up with ASCAP is the main

Leo Laporte (01:04:08):
Reason. Yep. ASCAP, which is the licensing. ASCAP. BMI is the licensing agent for music publishers. And they don't like the internet. We don't like the internet. It's a Deni thieves, thieves. I tell you,

Caller 3 (01:04:23):
I will try and keep it going at least for the rest of this year and, and see what good all music, no commercials at the moment. And I plan to keep it that way.

Leo Laporte (01:04:30):
Nice. Say the address again, electrical,

Caller 3 (01:04:36):
Electrical-Radio.Com,

Leo Laporte (01:04:38):
Radio.Com, electric eclectic music that, oh, that's clever. That rocks. Nice.

Caller 3 (01:04:44):
So we try and dump drop little odd oldies and obscure music in with more, a lot of new and a lot of old

Leo Laporte (01:04:53):
I and I shouldn't say this out loud, given that my I'm currently an employee of here at media and premier radio networks, but the I miss the days of radio where you had these little eclectic stations, like KFA out of Gilroy, California, that just would play stuff that you just don't hear on mainstream radio. Of course there's probably no way to make money doing that, but I sure miss it, it was a great way to hear music and to hear from people who love music. You know, they're still out there I guess and their record collections.

Caller 3 (01:05:27):
Yeah. I'll plug our, our local college station too. 88, 88, 5 fm.org from Cal state Northridge. Yeah. No commercials in all music.

Leo Laporte (01:05:37):
So where I got started college radio is a great thing. I'm glad we still do that anyway. So what can I do for you pat?

Caller 3 (01:05:44):
This is a question that cannot be answered, I guess, in an internet search. It's I guess it's a discussion, but I had an old well it's old now Toshiba 32 inch L C D TV. And you know, I had money in thanks to COVID one of the few things that did good for us. I had money in the bank, so I bought a new O L E D. Nice LG. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:06:08):
Buy. Yeah.

Caller 3 (01:06:09):
And I noticed that occasionally I'll, I'll be streaming something and the sound and the picture will be out of sync, which never happened with my old one. I wonder if that happens more often in bigger screen sizes?

Leo Laporte (01:06:23):
No, the problem is that is compression. Decompressing video is slower than decompressing audio cuz the video files are massive and everything's sent compressed in some form. So the TVD compresses it if it's got a slower processor, you'll notice it more. Or I guess in a way, what you said is true. If it's a bigger video picture, if it's a 4k picture with carrying a lot more information, that's gonna take more time to decompress. So almost all TVs, AV receivers, many other devices that play audio and video will have a way of slowing down the, the audio to match the video.

Caller 3 (01:07:07):
So my strategy lately is if I, if I'm gonna have friends over and want to see a movie just in case I download it first <laugh>

Leo Laporte (01:07:15):
Yeah, that will be better for sure.

Caller 3 (01:07:17):
Yeah. What happens about 10% of the time?

Leo Laporte (01:07:19):
What what device are you using that you have trouble keeping the sync

Caller 3 (01:07:24):
I'm using an apple TV connection. Apple

Leo Laporte (01:07:26):
TV.

Caller 3 (01:07:27):
Okay. L G, C, 10.

Leo Laporte (01:07:29):
See the apple TVs are pretty good in that regard. I think they have, they must have built in some sort of mechanism for keeping synchronization going. You, we first started seeing it with satellite TV, direct TV dish, because they had a heavily compressed to send it over the satellite. And as a result, the decompression, you know, sometimes took a while and, and, and of course our human brains are so well attuned to even the smallest difference. Even a few milliseconds, you start to notice it. So this,

Caller 3 (01:08:00):
Yeah, I was, I was watching, you may remember the old film. It's a John Ford film, I guess the, the quiet man.

Leo Laporte (01:08:08):
Oh, what a film? What a movie. Yeah,

Caller 3 (01:08:10):
There's a scene where the character played by John Wayne is chasing his lady friend through the Irish countryside and they, they splash their little Creek <laugh> and the, and you see them,

Leo Laporte (01:08:22):
The steps are off

Caller 3 (01:08:22):
And then three seconds later you hear it. <Laugh>

Leo Laporte (01:08:26):
See. That's funny cuz that the qu you know, that's not a 4k video you're getting there.

Caller 3 (01:08:31):
Well, there may be, well, I don't know what the

Leo Laporte (01:08:34):
Transfer is. There may be upscaling it, there may be all sorts of things going on. Yeah. So I, I'm not gonna suspect the apple TV. You should look in the settings for your LG. I don't remember offhand. Yeah,

Caller 3 (01:08:45):
But I mean, it only happens on occasion. I don't wanna change the settings for everything. I don't think

Leo Laporte (01:08:50):
How are you playing back the sound?

Caller 3 (01:08:54):
It's going through it goes through the TV and then into my stereo system, HD

Leo Laporte (01:08:58):
I case. Okay. So that's also adding some latency, obviously try your, your TV and your stereo, both have an optical connection. That's separate from the HDM. I, so H DMI carries both audio and video. And so you can have the, you know, the arc channel, the audio return channel, which will take audio created inside the TV. Let's say you're watching Netflix on LGS, smart TV platform. It will pass it out to the stereo. And in that case, you do wanna be you know, you know, you understand you want the arc, but it all these TVs now have a little optical port and most stereos, if it's an AV receiver, it will certainly have an optical in. I would try the optical in that. Believe it or not, might be more reliable

Caller 3 (01:09:47):
Maybe. Yeah. Yeah. It's too bad. Apple TV doesn't have that directly

Leo Laporte (01:09:50):
Anymore. Yeah. Yeah. I know. Yeah, cuz it is coming from the apple TV over the H D M I I'm just wondering, I, I honestly think it's the, I think it's the TV at this point. That's either that or the audio chain, there may be some latency being introduced by the audio chain. So that's why I thought maybe optical would be better.

Caller 3 (01:10:11):
One other question, if you boosted, if I had faster internet speed, you think it would be less likely to

Leo Laporte (01:10:16):
Happen? No. Okay. Cause the files coming down as a blob

Leo Laporte (01:10:22):
And yeah, the blob great. The thing, the blob it comes down as a blob and that includes the audio on the video in one blob. So you're, they're getting there at the same time. It's the decompression. Somebody's telling me, LG does have lip sync. They call it lip sync, adjust in their sound setting. So I would take a look at that. You can, you can adjust it by a frame or two and it might be that it's, you know, it's funny that it's worse and sometimes is it always does the quiet man always do that.

Caller 3 (01:10:53):
I tried it on a couple of different occasions. I, well, I, I know when I was watching and I stopped it, stopped it for a few minutes, started again, it kept doing it. I finally gave up. Yeah. But it never happens on anything I've downloaded. And most of the time it doesn't happen. It's just once in a while,

Leo Laporte (01:11:07):
I'll watch the quiet man on my apple TV mail, my LG and C it might well be that it was encoded poorly. I mean, is an old movie. It might be that when, when they, you know, it can't happen in the, in the creation thereof. And at that, at that point, the, the delay would still help, you know, you're fixing the original source material. 

Caller 3 (01:11:28):
Yeah, you gotta go in there and,

Leo Laporte (01:11:28):
But you gotta go in before you play the quiet man. You gotta go in, you gotta set the adjust, the no so forth. 

Caller 3 (01:11:36):
Seems a bit dangerous.

Leo Laporte (01:11:37):
Yeah. Yeah. I, so that's, it can happen all along the chain. It can happen in coding. Once it comes down from the internet more internet speed won't well, if it, if it doesn't buffer, does it

Caller 3 (01:11:53):
Oh no, not

Leo Laporte (01:11:53):
Anymore. No, no. If we're buffering, maybe that would cause some UN you know, desynchronization, but as long as you have, you know, 50 megabits down or better, I think it's not gonna be an internet speed thing. I think it's,

Caller 3 (01:12:05):
I'm gonna stick to my stick to my current strategy,

Leo Laporte (01:12:08):
I guess, but you now know, but as long as you know what what's causing it, now you can kind try different things around it. Yeah. It, it fundamentally comes down to the, the audio coming in too quickly because it's working on the video still and even a couple of, you know, a frame would be enough for you to notice it. For sure.

Caller 3 (01:12:25):
Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:12:26):
Hey, a pleasure talking to you. I hope you keep the radio station going.

Caller 3 (01:12:30):
We will try it.

Leo Laporte (01:12:31):
Thanks a lot. Electrical-Radio.Com,

Caller 3 (01:12:35):
Eclectic music and rock music, all mixed in there. It's fun, everybody. It's fun.

Leo Laporte (01:12:39):
It's fun. And apparently some cheesy jokes too. So

Caller 3 (01:12:44):
It possible Matthew cheese. Yeah. Matt. Geez. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:12:47):
Pleasure talking to you, Matt. Have a great day.

Caller 3 (01:12:49):
You too. So on.

Leo Laporte (01:12:50):
Thanks. Eighty eight eighty eight. Ask Leo the phone number. Chris mark. It's getting ready for his segment in about 15 minutes. Our photo guy will continue to take your calls, continue to talk tech, Leo Laport, the Tech guy who hates cars. I would love to give up my car.

Leo Laporte (01:13:18):
I want a bicycle to work every day, but it's, I'm scared to death of all the vehicles on the road. There's no safe way to do it. Thank you, Mike B. I don't think I get any credit for it though, but I'm glad you did glad you did. They stopped advertising at the end of the year. And I don't think they have any plans to come back. It's probably a good thing though. If they see that offer code, they'll go. Well, it could go either way. It could go, oh, see, we don't really need to advertise. People will still sign up for it or it could go, oh, we should get back on that show. We really did well with that show. <Laugh> oh, I'm sure it still works. <Laugh> I I did, for a long time, I did bike to work.

Leo Laporte (01:13:59):
I love my e-bike, but after the, the bridge that I go over, which has no bike lane to speak of after a guy got creamed, there there's a ghost bike on the bridge where he was killed by an errand driver. I I said, you know, this is, I need a big, a steel thing around me to go down these roads, which is very sad. That's the problem. And you know what you buy into cars, you create a an addiction. You create a need because people move far away. You got the suburbs, people live, you know, live their lives. If is this as if transportation is cheap and easy promise it isn't really cheap. Hey, this portion of The Tech Guy show brought to you by a great company we've been using for years Acronis. You've heard me talk about Aron's true image.

Leo Laporte (01:14:54):
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Leo Laporte (01:15:51):
So they've added protection for your data, cyber security data protection, all in one with Acronis, cyber protect home office, everything you need to safeguard your device. And I love this because it's not just windows. It's windows, it's Mac, it's Android, it's iOS back up what you want, where you want locally to the cloud, restore your entire system or individual files. You can restore it to the same hardware or new hardware. It's a great way to move to a new PC and take all your applications with you. You can create cloud to cloud backups too. This is something new. I love this of your Microsoft. 365 account. Get your entire outlook mailbox backed up your OneDrive and you don't have to download and upload it. It just side loads. It cloud to cloud from Microsoft's cloud to the Acronis cloud. This is brilliant. Plus the best advanced cyber security stop.

Leo Laporte (01:16:43):
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Leo Laporte (01:17:36):
Your data is safe, accessible, private, authentic, and secure. It's yours. Man. Keep your digital world safe from all threats with the only cyber protection solution that delivers a unique integration of data protection and cybersecurity in one Acronis, cyber protect home office, formerly Acronis, true image visit go.acronis.com/techguy. That's go dot Acronis, a C R O N I s.com/tech guy. Thank you, Kronos for supporting the tech guy show. And by the way, you support us when you use that address. So they know you saw it here. Aros.Com/Tech guy, Leo Laporte tech guy, 88, 88. Ask Leo photo guy, Chris mark waltz. Ready? We'll be talking to him in just a few minutes. Let's take some more calls though. Before now, before then Paul on the line from Columbus, Ohio. Hello, Paul.

Caller 4 (01:18:29):
Hey Leo. Good to talk to you again. It's been a while. Well,

Leo Laporte (01:18:33):
Welcome back.

Caller 4 (01:18:34):
Thank you. I've got a pretty high speed internet. That's fairly consistent. It's used to be from wow. Wild. Oh yeah. Way out west. And they they've sold the company and now it's breeze line or something like that, but

Leo Laporte (01:18:50):
It's wireless

Caller 4 (01:18:51):
Massachusetts. No. No. Okay. Now it's it's it's cable. Okay. any anyway, so we've had pretty good service with them before, before they change ownership. And since except that on some couple apps like sling and Hulu during the evening, middle to late evening, we started having problems where it's buffering more and actually losing connection with the app. And we didn't have it to that degree at all before. And I'm just wondering, and I'm checking my speed. I'm using arrows. And it shows that it's up at least like in the 600 range down

Leo Laporte (01:19:33):
So that you have gigabit, you have gigabit connection with Bri line. Yes.

Caller 4 (01:19:37):
What they call gigabit. Right.

Leo Laporte (01:19:38):
Okay. So that's a good speed, but I'll tell you the symptom is not unusual because that's when everybody in your neighborhood is also streaming,

Caller 4 (01:19:49):
Right?

Leo Laporte (01:19:50):
And, and it really comes down to breeze line, putting in enough infrastructure into your neighborhood, the way cable systems work, everybody in a certain area is sharing a, a pipe back to breeze line. There's a, a head end somewhere in the neighborhood. And then all of you are coming off of that head end. And so the total amount of internet to that whole area is determined by that head end. And really the quality of your internet is gonna depend very much on how much the company is putting down into that head head end. And if they don't do enough, it works fine. As long as there are only a few of you online, but the minute everybody's watching Netflix at the same time, it says, I can't, I can't keep up.

Caller 4 (01:20:35):
Yeah. Well, I would understand that. And except that, except, and, and I know what you're saying. I totally agree. It's just frustrating that in the last couple of weeks or few weeks, since they bought it, it's Dr. It yeah. Changed

Leo Laporte (01:20:48):
Matic. So that's, I'm almost certainly what happened, which is that wow knew that that had end cuz you've got 32 neighbors or whatever needed, you know, a total of five gigabits in they, maybe they even had, they probably had a fiber connection to it. And then breeze line said, well, that's so expensive. Let's <laugh>, let's not do it now. You can, even, sometimes you can even do a test and it looks like the speed is still good. That's another trick ISPs play. Sometimes they call it burst mode where the first some packets, you know, the first hundred megabits megabytes come in very quickly, but the sustained throughput is considerably lower and speed tests will often miss that. So it may and sustain is what you care about. You're continually downloading. If you're watching a streaming TV, you know, 25 to 50 megabits now a gigabit connection, you should not be buffering.

Caller 4 (01:21:43):
Yeah, I know. Well, if it doesn't get better, I'm, I'll complain to the company. A lot of other people are having the same complaint in the area.

Leo Laporte (01:21:50):
It will be your NA all of your neighbors will have the same problem. Exactly. <laugh>

Caller 4 (01:21:54):
We'll just go back to spectrum for a year and a half until they raise the price again. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:21:59):
The other, the other thing is, you know, it may, it would be worth a call to breeze line, cuz it may well be that in the transition something's going on, that they plan to, they, they, they know certainly that that's happening cuz they can see it. So they may be say, they may, if you call 'em they say, yeah, yeah, yeah. We know I'm so sorry, but we're, we're arranging additional fiber connection from another company. We had it from, wow. But now we're going somebody else. And in the interim it's gonna be a little slow, but I promise you it'll get better in a week or whatever. They may have something to say about that.

Caller 4 (01:22:30):
Yeah. We'll keep our fingers crossed the,

Leo Laporte (01:22:32):
But you know, now, you know, what's going on and this is, you know, all internet is shared for a while. The telephone company was using this in their ads against the cable company. You know, they were calling, talking about bandwidth hogs because they said, look, it's shared internet and that's true. But it, the phone company is shared. It's just shared farther upstream at the phone company itself. And everybody, I think now realizes that the phone company's technologies over copper are, are gonna always be slower than fiber and cable fiber be the best. If somebody offers fiber in your neighborhood, then that's the way to go. But you're getting gigabit you know, either breeze line is can't SU support gigabit <laugh> and should stop selling it or they should fix it.

Caller 4 (01:23:19):
Yep.

Leo Laporte (01:23:20):
Righto. Yep. So now you, at least, you know, and now you're, you know, you're armed with that knowledge. I'm sorry it's happening. It's just, it's a pain. It's terrible. That's annoying. Randy Huntington beach, Leo Laport, the tech guy.

Caller 6 (01:23:36):
Hey there. Hey Randy, I'm wondering if search is broken.

Leo Laporte (01:23:42):
Well, what do you mean <laugh>?

Caller 6 (01:23:45):
Well, it seems like search is no longer designed to provide results, but to provide ads that are marginally related.

Leo Laporte (01:23:53):
You're talking about Google search particularly.

Caller 6 (01:23:55):
Yes. Yes. Well Google you know, I, I use duck dot go. I use Firefox and I'll put in, you know, minus Amazon black plus men's plus a hundred percent cotton socks. The first 2, 3, 4 results, five results are Amazon.

Leo Laporte (01:24:15):
Are they ads particularly? I mean, can you tell that they're ads, They're not labeled ads. They're just, that's what comes in,

Caller 6 (01:24:23):
Right? Yeah. I do it on a different computer. The first two are ads. The third one is Amazon. Fourth. One is Amazon. The fifth one finally gives me what I was looking for. So my conclusion is that search is intentionally broken, not to provide results for search anymore, but to, you know, try to force off products. You may be marginally interested in,

Leo Laporte (01:24:43):
Well, welcome to America, my friend, what do you have against capitalism?

Caller 6 (01:24:50):
Honesty.

Leo Laporte (01:24:50):
<Laugh> I I'm with you. I, I think Google, Google went a straight long ago when they started featuring you know, YouTube videos, their own stuff ahead of other people. And they excused those well. That's what people want, by the way, if you go to them today and said what you just said, they said what that, yeah, but that's what people want. They want Amazon. We're just giving you the search results you want. So really the problem isn't Google Randy, it's you because you <laugh> are not, you know, part of the, you know, you're not, you're not playing the game, right. You know, you go to Amazon, you know, that's, that's kind of, their rationale is we're giving you their goal is to give you the search results that most, that make will make most people happy that keeps 'em in business. That, and the fact that they're an advertising business, Google has tried so many things, all of which well, most of which have failed, except yeah, they don't, they don't have to succeed because they make so much money in ads. So they are an advertising company posing as a search company. Not much of a surprise, to be honest, it's Leo Laport, the tech guy. I, I don't know what the answer is. I mean, you tried duck do go, the problem is duck dot go, and they're working on this, but they don't have a very good database of links, you know? So they use a lot of Google links. They use Bing links and, and if you're using Google and Bing, you're gonna get all that, you know, ads

Caller 6 (01:26:17):
My best to ban Google and, and Bing and as much Microsoft as I can. And I'm trying to get away from the, the big five Eagle corporation. Good for you.

Leo Laporte (01:26:26):
Good for you. You're I mean, you're a smart user you do is in the plus and the minus and all of that. It doesn't work. Yeah. It's just, you, you think minus amazon.com would work. It may be, you know, and the other thing Google has done is if greatly simplified all those, we call those bullying search terms. They've, they've eliminated a lot saying, well, people don't use them, but again, I always suspect Google when they say, you know, we're just giving people what they want. Cause it coincides amazingly well with their business model.

Caller 6 (01:26:57):
It sure does.

Leo Laporte (01:26:58):
Yeah.

Caller 6 (01:27:00):
I had, I have another question. I have, have been unable to download windows 10 version 21 H one for a Lenovo laptop. Hmm. And it it's, my computer tells me your device was missing important security and quality fix.

Leo Laporte (01:27:16):
Well, listen to them because you, you know what you don't want it is to install it. And it doesn't, it doesn't work <laugh>. Yeah. They are, they, you know, we were talking about this on windows weekly on Wednesday, Microsoft said 21 H one is designated for broad deployment, which means, in other words, it is now the widely D deployed version of 10 you know, the standard version of 10, because most people, most incompatibility issues have been solved, but not all. Yeah. And, and you may have a driver that's just, or a piece of hardware. That's just not compatible

Caller 6 (01:27:54):
For. It could be for 21 and you may have, it works great. Except for this update. I don't understand it.

Leo Laporte (01:27:59):
Well, you get, are you getting the, the critical security updates cuz that's really the most important thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Caller 6 (01:28:04):
I thinks something else downloaded and functioned except for this one. And I've tried going direct for it and it it, it says it downloads, it says it installs and then it doesn't then it says, Hey, you're missing important security and quality fixes.

Leo Laporte (01:28:18):
And it doesn't, and it's not specific as to what you're missing.

Caller 6 (01:28:23):
It gives me where is it? It gives me a, there's an error as well. Let me see if I can find the error cuz a little hex error, which I'm not sure anybody can ever translate. I mean, is, is there a, a, a rationale behind the X error?

Leo Laporte (01:28:38):
No, no, those are useless to anybody, but the developer I'm gonna put in the show notes, I just pasted it into chat, a link to a computer world article by a woman who styles herself, the Microsoft patch lady who talks about issues, the 21 H one. This is a year old, but there are, there are some specific things you may want to that you may find that you can fix. The other thing to do is I think wait, and it will eventually clear itself up usually.

Caller 6 (01:29:10):
Yeah. That's what I thought I was doing. <Laugh>

Leo Laporte (01:29:12):
Yeah. Last year. Yeah. 21 H one is last years. Yeah.

Caller 6 (01:29:15):
Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:29:17):
You might you know, well, I mean short of, I mean you could, you could do a windows reset that and that might fix it. Sometimes the updates get blocked by a failed update. That's getting in the way, things like that. That's why if we could figure out what's blocking, you might be able to fix it. The other way to do that is do a, do a reset, which is now available to you. Yeah. And see if that fixes it.

Caller 6 (01:29:42):
I just bought another, I bought a laptop finally. And with windows 11 and I, it appears from my reading is that with windows 11, you can install Android apps. Yes. Is that real,

Leo Laporte (01:29:59):
Very limited subset of Android apps, but yes, ah, there and they come from the Amazon store, which you're gonna laugh. Yeah. I gotta run. Isn't that ironic? It all comes back to Amazon. It's time for our photo guy. My personal photo sensei, Chris mark watch@sensei.photo. He joins us every week. A great photo coach, great photographer in his own. Right. And an inspiration to all of us to get out there and take some pictures. Hello Chris,

Chris Marquardt (01:30:32):
Hey, how's it going

Leo Laporte (01:30:33):
Today? It's going very well. How are things in your neck of the woods?

Chris Marquardt (01:30:39):
It is beautiful. We had such a sunny day after a couple of days of Springs. I think, I think Germany, Germany did have a tornado of all things, which is very unusual for Germany. Yeah. Someplace spring is I was wild, but

Leo Laporte (01:30:55):
In areas where it gets icy and cold, you really appreciate the the change in the

Chris Marquardt (01:31:00):
Seasons. Yeah.

Chris Marquardt (01:31:02):
And it, and it drives me and others out to take photos. And of course of course that, that brings me to one of the basics of photography that we wanna talk about today and that is focus and bouquet because that is kind of important. I mean, but the, the simple thing about focusing and, and your camera will do that for you. It'll most cameras just do that, but if you' a bit more photography inclined, you might wanna control that because sometimes the camera gets it wrong. And the, I mean, we've all seen these photos here about, let me put one on the screen of something in focus, in something out of focus, right? There's the focus is very well. It's very helpful to separate the important from the less important in the picture. And usually the out focus stuff is the stuff that is not as important in this case, someone's holding a flower and that one isn't focus and everything behind that is out focus. The further way it is. The more out of focus it is.

Leo Laporte (01:32:06):
I always think of that as a, as a key attribute of professional photography. You know, if it's a portrait and your face is in focus and the background's all blurry, I go, oh, that's a pro

Chris Marquardt (01:32:19):
That's. What, what used to be the, the prerogative of professional cameras? They have bigger sensors, they have bigger lenses. They can do this easily. And the smaller cameras with the smaller sensors had a bit of a hard time. Now today, smartphones are simulating this with what's called the the portrait mode. So you have that now in different kind of phones that didn't really used to have that. So that focal plane, this is a, like, like a plane in, in the, in, in space, parallel to the camera. And then the further away you go from that, the, the more out of focus it goes, and that has to do with aperture. Like how big is that aperture? The, the bigger that hole in the lens is the aperture. The, the more out of focus the background goes also has to do with the focal length.

Chris Marquardt (01:33:09):
If you have a telephoto lens, that's easier to throw the background out of focus, as opposed to a wide angle lens. And then the distance, the closer you are at something think macro, right? You're really up close to something. The closer you are, the more the background goes out of focus. Now there's different. Interesting things about focus are about the bouquet, the stuff that's out of focus. And that is the shape of the BIE. And that is determined by several things. One is where in the, in the frame, it is, you can see this here on the, on the shot. There's like little BKI discs in the background and the ones towards the edge of the frame, they look like, like, like, like squashed circles, right? So you

Leo Laporte (01:33:53):
See you're in Germany, depending lens. You don't know those look like footballs. Okay. Footballs,

Chris Marquardt (01:33:59):
No, you know what? They look like. They look like lentils <laugh>

Leo Laporte (01:34:02):
And

Chris Marquardt (01:34:02):
That in Germany in, and the reason I'm saying this, because in German lens and lentil is the same word,

Leo Laporte (01:34:09):
Lenticular, Solen

Chris Marquardt (01:34:12):
Particular. Exactly.

Leo Laporte (01:34:14):
Oh, so that's interesting. It's a lens

Chris Marquardt (01:34:17):
Saved. Yeah. There's, there's weird. Yeah. There's weird lenses that do that make really crazy bouquet. This one is called a swirly bouquet. Some people modify lenses to exaggerate that,

Leo Laporte (01:34:28):
See, that looks that's trippy looking. And of course you got a mushroom in the foreground. It is. So it's perfect, but <laugh>,

Chris Marquardt (01:34:34):
It,

Leo Laporte (01:34:34):
It isn't fit. I like the little dots better than the swirls to me. Just aesthetically.

Chris Marquardt (01:34:39):
Yeah. The, the swirls and, and then some, some of it. Oh, that's okay. Well, the there's discussions about aesthetics of it's too. It's too Dotty. This one you've well, it, it has sharp edges, even that the edges are, are kind of brighter than the center of those discs, the out focus discs. And some people don't like that, cuz it makes the background more busy looking. This is

Leo Laporte (01:35:01):
Caused by the, the, the structure of the lens. Right?

Chris Marquardt (01:35:05):
Exactly. The design of the lens, how that is put together, how many elements are in there, what the aperture looks like and so on. Here's an example of like a Boca, like lenses are known to make very soft and greeny silkies smooth. Boke

Leo Laporte (01:35:20):
Love my Lius. Yes. That's why. Yeah, not perfect. Boke

Chris Marquardt (01:35:24):
It's it's generally perceived as nice bouquet, but it is expensive Boke as well. Yes. You pay for it.

Leo Laporte (01:35:30):
Why is it because they have more leaves in the shutter? Is that why it's so

Chris Marquardt (01:35:36):
Crisp? No, it's it's it comes down to the lens designed it's to the, to the precision of the lens. There are other, by the way, there are non like lenses that are as good, but they are harder to find. Yeah. Yeah. There's a donut shape. Bouquet. In this picture, you can see the background being little rings.

Leo Laporte (01:35:53):
The problem with this is it's distracting, right?

Chris Marquardt (01:35:56):
It is very distracting. Yeah. And that comes from, from mirror optics. There are certain lenses that work like telescopes. So mirror optics will create donut shape buckets and nothing you can do about it. So those are usually used like as a telescope to, to shoot stars. But that person tried to shoot a bird with it. And the bouquet is, yeah. I would say <laugh> quite distracting to be honest. And then of course the bouquet typically is, is the area behind the subject. That's in focus, but there's also a front bouquet, like stuff that's in front of the subject. Usually it looks nicer when the foreground is not that visible, but now there's a trend where people put more and more things in the foreground. And I, to be honest, I kinda like it. So nothing wrong with that. And then B okay.

Chris Marquardt (01:36:52):
And focus. They have of course a function as well. And that's to make, to make it clear what the subject is in the photo. The thing that's in focus is typically the thing that people are gonna give attention to. So it's an attention management device. Bre out focus backgrounds can be used to declutter the background. Like if it's very busy and distracts from your subject, then throwing it out. Focus is a good idea. And then the shape of the aperture in your lens will also reflect in the B here's. What is that? He HETA hexagonal. I don't know.

Leo Laporte (01:37:33):
1, 2, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7. Sectagon I dunno.

Chris Marquardt (01:37:36):
<Laugh> and if you, if you put a little piece of cardboard in front, your lens with a little heart cut out, you can make heart shaped. Oh, okay. So there it is. Boke is is something to learn about and to play with, if you have a bigger camera with a bigger sensor and a lens that can have a, a bigger aperture, like a 1.8, 2.0 2.8, then that's a, that's a playing field. That's a, that's a nice area for experimentation

Leo Laporte (01:38:04):
Nowadays. Cameras with lots of computational capability. Like your smartphone will fake bouquet. They'll figure out what's in the foreground. And then they'll blur in software. They'll blur the background imperfect because it's not perfect at figuring out what's the foreground. So sometimes, you know, your ear will be in blur and blurred out while the rest of you is clear, but you see that now you're getting better. An unconference call software like zoom. You used to see a blurred background. And I hate it cuz I, what I can, I can tell immediately it's synthetic. And I don't like it. Real B's is amazing. That's but synthetic bouquet, eh, what is our assignment for the month? The pictures we're supposed to be all out, taking

Chris Marquardt (01:38:47):
It is colorful,

Leo Laporte (01:38:49):
Colorful, colorful, colorful. So what does that mean? It means go out, take a picture that means colorful to you. We're not gonna tell you what that means. In fact, there is some supposition that a black and white photo might even fit, but we'll, you can figure that out on your own. If you find something you like

Chris Marquardt (01:39:06):
Bonus points or black and white photos that work for that assignment bonus, for those

Leo Laporte (01:39:11):
Upload it to flicker tag it, TG colorful with an O or an OU we'll accept both spellings Renee Silverman. Our moderator will thank you for your submission to the tech guy group. And we'll review 'em in a couple of weeks. Thank you, Chris. Mark Mart sense. Say not photo. If you want some help. He's the greatest. How could you illustrate colorful with a black and white photo?

Chris Marquardt (01:39:40):
I know a couple of colorful characters.

Leo Laporte (01:39:42):
<Laugh>

Chris Marquardt (01:39:46):
That's such interesting. I'm Leo. Oh,

Leo Laporte (01:39:50):
You're not gonna be here. Are you? I can tell already.

Chris Marquardt (01:39:53):
Yes I'm

Leo Laporte (01:39:54):
Yes.

Chris Marquardt (01:39:55):
I'm I'm I'm next week. I'm actually earning money. I'm good. Off to my annual Abbey workshop in Southern Germany and that's over one week deal. So I would be gone for two weeks in a row, unfortunately

Leo Laporte (01:40:09):
Making it outta that, John. So cuz I'll forget, but no Chris for the next two weeks, tell Kim

Chris Marquardt (01:40:17):
I'll I'll I'll shoot a quick,

Leo Laporte (01:40:19):
Write it down

Chris Marquardt (01:40:20):
Mail to make sure. 

Leo Laporte (01:40:22):
Yeah, that's fine. We got it. Have a great time. What Abby do you go to?

Chris Marquardt (01:40:27):
It's the CIN, which is pretty much at, in the DUP valley. Very, the D is very shallow there and it's it's a nature preserve and it's an old ABI. It's not it's it's it's now kind of an educational thing.

Leo Laporte (01:40:44):
Kim's writing it down right now. Five <laugh> sounds wonderful. I'm

Chris Marquardt (01:40:48):
Jealous. I'll be back on the 12th. Nice.

Leo Laporte (01:40:51):
We will see you then tech, do you have a question for Leo? Have a good time and thank you so much. Yeah, I'll see you next. I'll miss you. I'll miss everyone. You're gonna have a great time. Yes I will. <Laugh> all right. Thanks Chris. See ya love to then take care. Leo Laporte tech guy, actually, that was the last good picture I took <laugh> it was a Billy idol. <Laugh> I come to think of it. 88, 88, ask Leon. I did it with my smart phone. So there yep. You don't need to have a fancy camera to take great pictures. Eighty eight eighty eight. Ask Leo that's the phone number. If you wanna talk high tech with me website. That's where I'll put, you know, I'll sometimes I'll say, oh, I found a good link. I'll put it on the website. That's tech guy, labs.com, tech guy labs.com.

Leo Laporte (01:41:40):
And that's the place to go. If you if you hear something on the show and you just wanna, what was that link? We put 'em all up there. Thanks to our team. That's doing that. Mike, a Sergeant and and John Ashley and, and all of the folks. If you go to episode 1896, you get all the links. On Sundays we put the links up to the songs that the professor Laura has played through the weekend. So all those links will be there transcript of the show. So you can find something you'll search through the text, transcript, jump to that part of the audio video. That's also there. It'll all be up there. It takes a couple of days to get everything, but it'll all be up there in the next couple of days. Tech guy labs.com episode 1896 there. What are we gonna do? When we get, get to episode 20 22, 20 23, then it will be then, then I don't know what, I don't know. We'll have to pause. We'll have to start over. <Laugh> eighty eight eighty eight. Ask Leo that's the phone number? Eight, eight, eight twenty seven, five five thirty six toll free from anywhere in the us or Canada. And on the line next, Bruce from Oceanside, California. Hello, Bruce.

Caller 7 (01:42:54):
Hello? I've told that before Leo I'm known as the Oceanside, correct? Quote guy,

Leo Laporte (01:42:59):
The ocean. Oh, you're the guy. Okay. For anybody who doesn't remember, you got the you got the camera and you wear a trench coat and you go into the ocean. <Laugh> and that's pretty much the, the whole thing. It's a YouTube video and it's remarkable. And you've got fans all over the place. When they see you in the beach, they go, it's the trench Coke guy.

Caller 7 (01:43:22):
Pretty much.

Leo Laporte (01:43:24):
That's

Caller 7 (01:43:24):
Awesome. I want you to know that I couldn't solve the sound hero. Ken came out and that solved the sound.

Leo Laporte (01:43:34):
Yes. I love these heroes. And you, did you get a did you get a closure for it? So if it gets wet it's okay.

Caller 7 (01:43:44):
Actually I don't go to the to that guest because I only go wage cheap. So I,

Leo Laporte (01:43:50):
So it doesn't get wet.

Caller 7 (01:43:52):
Yeah. Well God, but guys go below the, the guest line.

Leo Laporte (01:43:56):
Got it. And it's designed, I mean, it's a, these are what they call action cameras. The heroes are really good. And you got the new one. That's really cool.

Caller 7 (01:44:04):
Yeah, the can the can yeah. And,

Leo Laporte (01:44:06):
Well now wait a minute. Now there you are lying in the surf. It looks like it's gonna get pretty wet. Looks like it's gonna get pretty wet, but, but you say it's okay. Huh?

Caller 7 (01:44:15):
It is okay. <Laugh>

Leo Laporte (01:44:19):
You are, you are so great. So I, I don't remember what I recommended, but I, I think I probably did mention that the heroes are good for this kind of the GoPros are kind of good for

Caller 7 (01:44:27):
This stuff. Yeah. Well, I had the, at the time I had the, I had the eight and the nine. Yeah. And the difference between the nine and the 10, it's a big difference. It's much clearer and you don't get the funness in the 10,

Leo Laporte (01:44:42):
So, and you want that. You want that nice crash of the ocean waves and and the sounds of the surfers going, what the heck and all of that. So I think, yeah, you need good sound. You also put it on a selfie stick, right? So you don't have to have a camera person. You can just hold a camera yourself. Right?

Caller 7 (01:44:59):
Right. I, I use the I use the ground game, the, the cat some go

Leo Laporte (01:45:05):
From, oh, so they make their own. Okay, cool. Do you record everything? Do you record something every every day? Do you go out there?

Caller 7 (01:45:15):
I try to, I, I don't succeed every day, but I try to.

Leo Laporte (01:45:18):
That's awesome. What, who do 80 years ago? How you're not in your, you're not how old are you? I'm 75, 75, 60 years ago. You wouldn't have, you wouldn't have thought yourself to be the Oceanside trench coat guy. Would you, I mean, who would've thought this would, this would be, this would be in retirement. Your great, your great passion. <Laugh> thank goodness. Youtube exists. Right?

Caller 7 (01:45:44):
There you go. But I was, I was gonna ask, I switched I have a can five D mark four.

Leo Laporte (01:45:51):
Very nice camera. Fancy camera. Nice. Yeah, don't take that in the ocean. You'll regret that. Oof.

Caller 7 (01:45:58):
I, yeah, I don't do that. I do everything in raw. Of course I can't be holding it. My friend holds it for me and takes the fiction.

Leo Laporte (01:46:06):
Okay.

Caller 7 (01:46:06):
But for some reason or other, when you take it and download it to your, to my Mac Facebook does not like raw.

Leo Laporte (01:46:15):
No, no, no, no, no one likes raw. Let me explain what raw is. Raw is a, a data file that contains every bit of the information that came off the sensor. And by itself, raw does not look like a picture it's black and white. It's weird, but you need to process it to turn it into something that looks like you saw. So when you import it into a, a Macintosh you're using, you'll be using, depending on which program you're using. If you use Apple's photos, you'll use apple camera raw, you use Adobe Lightroom or Photoshop. You'll use Adobe camera raw. You use capture one, but you'll be using their interpreter. Each of these programs has a program built in that when you import it, interprets it. And so what you're seeing on the screen is actually not the raw data, but something much more akin to the JPEG.

Leo Laporte (01:47:11):
Your camera takes JPEGs. And raws in fact, you can. And I usually do when I'm shooting with a camera like that, turn on JPEG plus raw. So it'll take two images. It'll take the camera's interpretation of the, the raw plus you can download the raw, raw is intended for you to process. So you need to open it in photos or light room or camera one or some other program and, and process it so that it looks like an image. Then you'll save it out as a ping or a JPEG or a TIF or the variety of formats. Most of those formats Facebook will take, it's not gonna take raw because it's unprocessed. It doesn't know what to do with it. Plus they're very big. And every camera is raw is different. In fact, even within manufacturers, the raw file formats change. So it, yeah. Facebook's never gonna do it. Yeah.

Caller 7 (01:48:02):
Yeah. Well, my only solution was to to drop it over to my iPad and then publishing on

Leo Laporte (01:48:09):
It's exactly. You know, what's happening. The iPad is processing the raw, turning it into a JPEG and then you can upload it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. If you, the reason people shoot in raw, it's big, you know, I mean, it's as big as your sensor. If you on that camera, you have a 41 megapixel sensor. It's a 41 megabyte file. It's huge, huge file because it's every bit of the data from that sensor. You could, that's why I say should JPEG plus raw. The camera itself does a very nice JPEG of the raw. If you don't wanna do any processing, you can upload that JPEG. If you wanna do processing open it in light room or capture one or Apple's photos, the whole point of that is so that you can then have the maximum flexibility in processing it. You can make, you know, you can, you can change the, the, the, the cut what they call a color temperature from a very warm tone to a very blue tone. You might wanna do that and make the ocean look colder. For instance, you could process little bits of it. And because you have everything the camera knew about it. You, you can do much more when you turn it into a JPEG, you're stripping out data. And so the changes you can make are more limited.

Caller 7 (01:49:15):
Yeah. I use it when I'm doing sunset so that I can exactly. Sometimes when you look at the picture that you cook, it's not what you actually saw, right? So when you go in and int you can take

Leo Laporte (01:49:26):
And make it look like what you saw. Rachel Chen in our chatroom has a great analogy. She says raw is like getting all the ingredients for a cake, not the cake. You can't just eat it and expect it'll taste like cake. You have to cook it. <Laugh> there you go. That's a gr Rachel, thank you. Perfect analogy. So, but a lot of people want the ingredients cuz they wanna make a home cooked cake. Some people say no, no, no. Just, you know, just gimme the cake.

Caller 6 (01:49:53):
So I guess I'm gonna have to stick for the solution I already found of just transferring it. Those that I want to the iPad and then slipping a month. Well,

Leo Laporte (01:50:02):
The, yeah, I mean the reason you can there's number of things you can do. I would suggest taking raw plus JPEG. That way you'll have a JPEG when you download it that you can upload to Facebook and you'll have the raw photo. If you decide you wanna mess with it, that's kind of the best of both ones. Leo Laporte the tech guy. 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, all that jazz. Eighty eight eighty eight ask Leo is the phone number (888) 827-5536, toll free from anywhere in the us or Canada, outside that area. You can still reach us, but you'll have to have to do it with Skype out or something like that. 88 88. Ask Leo. Let's say hi to Ray. Iny California. Hi Ray.

Caller 8 (01:50:56):
Hello Leo. Hello?

Leo Laporte (01:50:59):
Okay, let me help you.

Caller 8 (01:51:01):
Okay. When I go to my bank, it doesn't recognize my computer.

Leo Laporte (01:51:06):
Ah, man, what does that mean? What does it say?

Caller 8 (01:51:11):
It says it says we do not recognize your voice and it wants me to go through there, right?

Leo Laporte (01:51:17):
It's two factor

Caller 8 (01:51:18):
Complet and put it in a new password. Right. And when I, I do it, it works that time when I get it bought in. But when I go to do it again, it doesn't recognize my computer. So, oh, I believe the computer is not doing something that's supposed to do.

Leo Laporte (01:51:37):
I'll tell you what it is. And you can see if it's something you turned on, it's not saving the cookie.

Caller 8 (01:51:45):
Oh, so that's what, or it's not saving cookies.

Leo Laporte (01:51:49):
Okay. Yeah. A lot of people turn off cookies for a variety of reasons. Sometimes you go to the, a website, I'll say, Hey, we keep we store cookies. Is that okay? And you say yes or no? That by the way, was the most misguided regulation out of the EU that is now kind of spread like a plague throughout the world. And it does nothing because you need cookies, cookies. Aren't a bad thing. Cookies are how the bank knows you've been there before on that browser. So if you ever clear cookies or if you have your browser set to not accept cookies, maybe you have some security software on there, blocking cookies, all of that will require you to do that whole process every time. And that's the whole point of a cookie is to, to it's like a little you know, when you save, when you save settings a little save settings thing that says, yeah, yeah, this is this, this is Ray. You know, Ray, let him in. Yes, you still have to enter your password, but you don't have to do the two factor stuff.

Leo Laporte (01:52:48):
Every bank would at least always require a password. You know, Facebook, you wouldn't have to re-log in again. If you go to Facebook and every time it says, it's you that's cuz Facebook saved what they call. It's a cookie. They call a token that represents you and you alone. And and, and that's how it knows. Oh, he's back in every 30 days or 60 days or some time period, it'll say, Hey, just let's reauthenticate make sure it's still you. A bank though, has to have higher security cuz pay your money's there mm-hmm <affirmative> so they should li what they're doing, I would think is they're always asking to log in, but it's that two factor, that second factor where they give you a text message or something like that to enter. That's the thing that's not remembering. Yeah.

Caller 8 (01:53:27):
Yeah. Now. Yeah. How do I turn on my cook keys?

Leo Laporte (01:53:30):
<Laugh> well, it's normally they're on. So what browser are you using?

Caller 8 (01:53:37):
I'm right now I'm using the Microsoft

Leo Laporte (01:53:40):
Using edge. So I would look in the settings to see if you have turned on high security settings or turned on cookie blocking. Do you run any security software or on the browser or on the system? It as a whole?

Caller 8 (01:53:56):
No. I mean, I used to use web root.

Leo Laporte (01:54:00):
Okay. 

Leo Laporte (01:54:01):
You know, if you've taken it off if you took it off thoroughly, it would no longer do anything, but sometimes viruses don't antivirus programs. Don't like to be removed cuz then a bad guy could do it. So they make it a little trickier and it might have left some stuff around. It may also be not nothing that you did in order to save cookies, it needs to have access to the hard drive to save them. Sometimes that area gets damaged or corrupted. So if you didn't, if you didn't turn on any kind of security to block cookies, and again, I'd say I'd look in your browser settings to make sure. Then what you will do is you'll want to go into your browser and refresh it, clear the clear the cookies, clear the data, clear the cash, cuz sometimes it gets corrupted. It's just a, a damaged cash. And I think that could be the other, other problem.

Caller 8 (01:54:49):
Okay.

Leo Laporte (01:54:50):
If you want, you could, you could reset Microsoft edge. The only, the only problem with doing that is all the cookies from all the sites will be gone. You'll have to do that again, everywhere, but in, in edge there's a setting under the three dots up there in the right called reset settings to their default values. If you can't figure out any way, other way to get rid of this, you could do that. You will, the next time you go to the bank one last time have to enter in that, that six digit code. But it shouldn't ask you again for a while. Usually it, it, it asks you every 30 days.

Caller 8 (01:55:26):
Okay. I'm still trying to okay. Browser settings. Is that where

Leo Laporte (01:55:32):
I look? Yeah. there's the three dots in the upper right hand corner. Just, you know, look at your security settings in particular. 

Caller 8 (01:55:42):
Open windows security, open windows security.

Leo Laporte (01:55:45):
Yeah. It I'll tell you what there I'll, you let's first go right to advanced settings. So settings advanced view, advanced settings, there is a cookie settings there and you can just make sure that you haven't turned on cookie blocking. So that, that is something you can do in browsers. People who are very paranoid, <laugh> very privacy focused might do that, but that adds a lot, a lot of extra work on your part because it's not remembering you from time to that's how a browser remembers you is with cookies, cookies.

Caller 8 (01:56:21):
Okay. I got advance settings and it's a delivery optimization.

Leo Laporte (01:56:26):
No, no, no, no. Look for cookies.

Caller 8 (01:56:29):
Okay. Let's look for cookies.

Leo Laporte (01:56:33):
They're also extensions. You can stall, install and so forth. 

Caller 8 (01:56:38):
Okay.

Leo Laporte (01:56:41):
I, I, I don't want to use up the whole call just walking you through this, but that's, you'll find it. That's what you need to find. And if that doesn't work, there is also in that settings menu reset browser cookies were invented way back in the early days of the worldwide web by the folks at mosaic, which was, you might remember one of the very first browsers and it makes sense they had to solve this problem. You visited the site once before or many times before. How can the site remember your previous visit, perhaps save the last page you visited or your shoe size. If you buy shoes there, that kind of thing. And of course, one way to do that was for the site to keep track of it. But sites have tens of millions of users, many more. In some cases they don't wanna keep all that information.

Leo Laporte (01:57:33):
Plus there's a security concern with them keeping the information. So instead they let you save it. It's your computer, it's your browser. And it's just like when you save settings, you change your settings in Microsoft office and you save them. It saves it on the hard drive. Mosaic called them persistent client side, state information, P C S S I. And if you break it down and you think about it, that's what it is. Persistent. Doesn't go away client side. You're the client, that's you instead of server side, that's the site. So client side state is what we're saving. We're you're the state of the world. The state of play, the state of what's going on, who you are, you know what shoe size you are. That's all the state information, obviously. So PC SSI, I think they should have called 'em Pixies. I think they missed a bet, but they didn't wanna call it P PC SSI.

Leo Laporte (01:58:25):
They thought, well, we need a, a catchy cute name and they call 'em cookies. And I think it comes from, you know, the probably Hansel and Gretel. Remember they left bread crumbs as they, as they went to the witches house. So they could find their way home. It's kind of like that. It's crumbs from your visit that are left behind. The name took. And unfortunately there is one potential security risk with cookies. It's it's not really the biggest privacy issue out there by far, but it's the one everybody's aware of. And it comes from something called third party cookies. When mosaic created the description of cookies and what cookies are for, they said something really important. They were kind of aware of the privacy thing. Only the site you're visiting can read its cookies. You know, they didn't want you to go to the Starbucks site.

Leo Laporte (01:59:13):
Starbucks saves your favorite drink. And then when you go to Pete's coffee, have Pete know what your favorite Starbucks drinks is. So they said in the specification, and it's still the case. Only the site you're visiting can read that cookie. So only Starbucks knows what your favorite drink is. Pete's can't tell Pete's, can't even tell you've been to Starbucks so that, you know, you, you, you know, they don't want you to go to Pete's and Pete's says, Hey, well, I'll see, you're a Starbucks customer. Let me offer you certificate a coupon. No. So, so they, and very good rules. Unfortunately, companies like Facebook figured out a way around the rule. You ever see the Facebook like button? Well, that little like button is coming from Facebook. That like button is Facebook. It can set a cookie and it knows where it is. So when you go to Starbucks, even if you don't click the like button, that's a little SP hole for Facebook.

Leo Laporte (02:00:03):
And they say, ah, I see you're in Starbucks and they save a cookie. Now Facebook knows you've been to Starbucks. Facebook can share that with anybody else. If they have a like button so on and so on. So on that was a little leak that of course Facebook figured out, they call those third party cookies. So the cookies Starbucks set, when you visited Starbucks, those are first party cookies. Those are okay. The problem is third party cookies. And I do recommend you disable third party cookies and in every browser, cuz that's all that is. It's just, it's just a, a, a little bug on there. And you notice there are lots of them now, little bit of, you know, image or whatever on there that comes from another server that gives that that's the loophole that lets that server keep track of what you're visiting.

Leo Laporte (02:00:46):
You don't want them to follow you around on the web. You wanna disable third party cookies. Unfortunately, when the EU made a law against cookies <laugh> they didn't understand that. And they, and they required in the in the E E privacy directory, the EU cookie law, they required that every site notify you was saving cookies. Yes it is. Every site uses cookies. If a site, if anything is gonna persist from visit to visit on a site, it's gonna have to do it in cookies. So it's, it's a complete waste of your time, your cognitive energies to put those cookie banners up. That's it's solving the wrong problem. Incredibly annoying.

Leo Laporte (02:01:34):
If you go to my personal blog, I have a kind of snarky <laugh> snarky cookie thing I used to say, yeah, like a lot of other sites, I use cookies, get over it. I, I have finally got rid of that cuz you have, by the way, you gotta put up this announcement. If you want visitors from the EU. So now I say, Hey, I use a cookie. I use one on my personal blog. There's only one cookie that's. So you can say whether you want it in light mode or dark mode, the only way I can do that is by saving a cookie. That's how I remember what mode you like when you visit my site. So, so now I say, Hey, I do use cookies for your light and dark mode setting. And then I follow the law. I have a button that says, learn more, just takes you a page.

Leo Laporte (02:02:15):
It learns all about cookies and then a button that says, okay, you know, hide this banner. So I don't see it again, by the way, you know how it knows <laugh> that you say okay or not. Okay. It sets a cookie. Of course it does. 88, 88. That drives me nuts. 88, 88, ask Leo cookies are not bad. They're not, they're a necessary part of the internet. More of your calls still to come. Well, that's a good question outta sync. And rather than find out, I just put the banner out there. <Laugh> it's annoying. I mean there, we have to do all, we get email from, if you're a company, you get email from all sorts of scammers, basically who say, look, we're gonna you know, you gotta do this or you or you you're gonna be dribbling mean on TWiT. I think it's a total scam, but we got somebody saying, you'll see at the very bottom add choices on the TWiT page and you'll see somebody see this whole big thing that we have to do with ad choices. And that's cuz some attorney somewhere emailed us, you know, saying, well, you gotta do this. And Leo Laport, the tech guy, eighty eight eighty eight, ask Leo the phone number. If you wanna talk high tech with me, website tech, guy labs.com. George is next from Santa Monica. Hi George.

Caller 9 (02:03:42):
Good afternoon, Leo. Hello,

Leo Laporte (02:03:44):
Welcome.

Caller 9 (02:03:45):
I have a problem with my PC downstairs, the computer. Somehow I went to a website. I was looking for a streaming service and I wanted to look at the information about this. A guy told me about the streaming service that has great movies and stuff on it. So I went to the site and started looking and then my computer crashed <laugh>

Leo Laporte (02:04:10):
Yeah, no, but

Caller 9 (02:04:11):
I have, I have a windows 10 USB rescue.

Leo Laporte (02:04:16):
Good

Caller 9 (02:04:17):
That you plug in, but I can't even boot my computer anymore. It won't go to the boot setup to, to even turn on. Right. So I can't download anything off that USB thing.

Leo Laporte (02:04:29):
I think it's not the site that did it. It's just using your computer. Your computer died and you know, it had to die sometime. It was probably gonna die when you used it. And so it's easy to die, but yeah, I think it's pretty dead. <Laugh> oh,

Caller 9 (02:04:43):
I, I keep pushing F nine to change the boot

Leo Laporte (02:04:48):
Up. Well, let me ask you a couple of questions here. So the machine right now, it's quiet. It's like a piece of rock, right? Cold, quiet and silent. When you push the on button at the

Caller 9 (02:05:00):
Bottom of the sea.

Leo Laporte (02:05:02):
Yeah. When you push the on button, does the light come on?

Caller 9 (02:05:05):
Yeah. Everything turns

Leo Laporte (02:05:06):
On. Okay. Hold on, slow down. Do you hear fans? Come on? Yes. Okay. But the screen doesn't do anything.

Caller 9 (02:05:15):
I, yeah. I see stuff on the screen.

Leo Laporte (02:05:17):
You see stuff on the screen? Yep. And then what happens?

Caller 9 (02:05:21):
Well, I, I go to F

Leo Laporte (02:05:24):
Nine. Well, wait a minute. Before you go to F nine, tell me what happens. Is it beep

Caller 9 (02:05:30):
I think so. Yes.

Leo Laporte (02:05:31):
Beeps. Okay. And, and what do you see on the screen?

Caller 9 (02:05:38):
Let's see, what do I

Leo Laporte (02:05:39):
See? Let me explain what I'm doing here at George. So you understand? Yes. It's dying. It's something's wrong obviously. So we're trying to figure out where it's failing. What's going wrong. Oh, so the first question I asked is to kind of check, to see if the power to the computer is gone or the power supply is dead. If that were the case, you wouldn't hear fans, you wouldn't get beeping. You wouldn't get any lights, right? Sometimes a computer. If, for instance, a, a Ram, is it a laptop or a desktop?

Caller 9 (02:06:08):
It's a laptop laptop. No, no. It's a desk.

Leo Laporte (02:06:10):
It's desk desktop, sometimes on a computer. If for instance, a, a Ram comes in little daughter boards, little small sticks. And if it works its way loose and there's no memory, the computer can't go on, but it can turn on. You can see stuff on the screen. And normally what you'll get is some beeping from the computer that if you decode, it says I don't have any Ram man. And it can't go past that. So we're trying to figure out how far it can get. Cuz that's gonna tell us a little bit more about what's going on. So something comes up on the screen. Does it, for instance, show your hard drives if it does and it can see them. It sounds like though, because you can't get into the bio setup, right? It sounds like maybe that has failed. You're sure that F nine is the right key.

Caller 9 (02:07:00):
Well, that that's one. I wonder on the, I my iPad and did a tutorial about how to start your app desktop.

Leo Laporte (02:07:09):
It's different for every computer who makes your, who makes your computer

Caller 9 (02:07:13):
It's? HP.

Leo Laporte (02:07:14):
Okay. So it's different for every computer. Okay. So let me just see what the setup key. What, what HP model is it?

Caller 9 (02:07:23):
Oh, I don't remember. Okay.

Leo Laporte (02:07:26):
So on some computers, it's the escape key. Some computers it's on HP, for instance, it's usually F 10, not F nine. Sometimes it's the delete key. So really, and even within HP different models have different keys. So, so the keys you almost always are. It's gonna be one of these escape delete F 10, 11, 9, 12. <Laugh> okay. Those are five. Just hit all of one after the other. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. And hope that it, it it works now. Well,

Caller 9 (02:08:04):
When, when something comes on the screen, it says it's looking does a diagnostic test. It says good. And then it comes and says, it comes back and says this problem will be it. It might take an hour to correct itself.

Leo Laporte (02:08:24):
Ah, it's a hard drive error. Okay. Oh yeah. So how old is this HP?

Caller 9 (02:08:32):
That's probably seven years old. Are,

Leo Laporte (02:08:34):
Are all your pictures on this HP?

Caller 9 (02:08:37):
No. Good. I

Leo Laporte (02:08:37):
Got

Caller 9 (02:08:38):
'Em my mind

Leo Laporte (02:08:38):
<Laugh> oh, good. That's a release support. Yeah. Yeah. So I think, I think the hard drive that's by the way, the first thing to go on computers, I think the hard drives probably failed Leo Laporte the tech guy. So all of this information is kind of you know, a diagnostic to figure out what's, you know, what's broken when, when you say it's gonna take an hour to fix, that means the operating system wants to scan the drive and fix any errors. Have you, I presume you've let it sit and do that. Right.

Caller 9 (02:09:08):
Yeah. And it, but it,

Leo Laporte (02:09:10):
It never

Caller 9 (02:09:10):
Fixes on an hours time. Yeah. And it doesn't do anything.

Leo Laporte (02:09:14):
Yeah. So, I mean, it's gonna try to fix it, but sometimes things can't be fixed.

Caller 9 (02:09:19):
Right.

Leo Laporte (02:09:20):
Okay. Pretty certain bet. New hard drive. Yeah. Well, yeah. And let's, let's talk about that. So have you ever opened this thing? Yes. Okay. So

Caller 9 (02:09:29):
I dunno how to change those.

Leo Laporte (02:09:31):
Oh, nice.

Caller 9 (02:09:31):
A new hard. Yay.

Leo Laporte (02:09:34):
And is it a spinning drive? Probably is huh.

Caller 9 (02:09:37):
Or is it

Leo Laporte (02:09:38):
Solid state?

Caller 9 (02:09:40):
I think it's a solid state one. Okay.

Leo Laporte (02:09:43):
Those off rarely fail. But yeah. And, and, and so if there's two kinds of solid state, there's some that are like the memory cards that, that you little daughter boards that go on the motherboard and some are actually look like hard drives. So you want to get one that's compatible, you know, replace it the properly. And I wouldn't throw out the old drive. I would Mount it on another machine via USB and see if there's anything on there. And it probably a lot of data's on there. Is there anything on there you don't wanna lose?

Caller 9 (02:10:17):
No, there's nothing that's really important at all.

Leo Laporte (02:10:21):
Yeah. I mean, it's hard for me to be sure. But based on that, oh, we're gonna fix this. It's gonna take an hour. That's a message that comes up when the hard drive has failed and not necessarily dead failed. It may be usable, you know? I mean, yeah. This is one of those cases where my friend, Steve G you know, Steve Gibson's yes. His program spin. Right. You could run it on there and, and, and based on what you're saying, it probably would fix it. It might not fix it that you didn't have to reinstall windows, but it might fix it. So it's usable. But the problem is his program's 90 bucks replacement. Hard. Drive's gonna be $50

Caller 9 (02:11:00):
<Laugh> oh yeah. Yeah. But I, I can't even go in to go to his site to

Leo Laporte (02:11:05):
Download. Right. You'd have to do it on another computer anyway. Yeah. Right,

Caller 9 (02:11:08):
Right.

Leo Laporte (02:11:09):
I'm not gonna, I don't want you to waste money, George. But I'm gonna say, I'm gonna say at least 80% that that's a failed hard drive.

Caller 9 (02:11:19):
Okay. Well, no, no problem. With the money I found out I had agent orange. So now the government's gonna send me some, is that

Leo Laporte (02:11:26):
True? Is that true? Yeah. I'm so sorry.

Caller 9 (02:11:30):
In the, in the Navy, we were over off of Vietnam during that time. And our ship was in the waters when all that stuff was being sprayed on all the,

Leo Laporte (02:11:42):
Oh my God.

Caller 9 (02:11:43):
Everybody on our ship is exposed to

Leo Laporte (02:11:46):
Agents. Oh, I'm sorry. Have you had health problems ever since

Caller 9 (02:11:50):
The, the one thing it caused? I, it caused my diabetes. Ugh. And that's one of the requisites of getting benefits. So,

Leo Laporte (02:11:58):
Well, I, you know, I, for a long time, they were refusing to acknowledge it. I'm glad to hear that they're acknowledging it, but

Caller 9 (02:12:04):
I know. Well, it was president Trump that got us benefits for that. It's called the blue water area. Thank Goodness that were in the blue water area.

Leo Laporte (02:12:14):
Good. Well, don't spend all your agent orange money on a hard drive, but it shouldn't cost you more than a hundred bucks to get a new hard drive.

Caller 9 (02:12:21):
No, I can, I can afford to hard drive.

Leo Laporte (02:12:24):
<Laugh> yeah. Get a hard drive and I'm sorry. I'm but otherwise you're okay. Cuz we know we love you. We don't wanna lose you.

Caller 9 (02:12:30):
No, I'm I'm 79. So I'm gonna be gone soon. Anyway.

Leo Laporte (02:12:37):
<Laugh> I know, I'd say that. I feel

Caller 9 (02:12:38):
Fine. I'm

Leo Laporte (02:12:39):
You're good. I'm good. Doing good. Good George. Yeah. Well, we really appreciate everything you do. And I,

Caller 9 (02:12:44):
Well, thanks for helping me with this problem. I I'll get a, I'll get another hard drive. That's no problem.

Leo Laporte (02:12:50):
Okay. And call me if there's any issues and I will, we'll get it working and I'm glad that they finally are playing the benefits. That's great. Yeah. That's great. Thank you. All right. Take care, George.

Caller 9 (02:13:01):
Thank you very much, Leo.

Leo Laporte (02:13:02):
Sure. And he always a pleasure. Bye. Okay. I'm gonna make this, my new theme song. I love it. <Laugh> it's so Jesse Leo Laport, the tech guy, eighty eight eighty eight, ask Leo the phone number. Yeah, he's hard. You know, I mean, I'm <laugh>, I'm sitting at some distance from you. And so it's hard for me to reach out through the radio, put my hands on your computer and diagnose it. But sometimes, you know, there just, there's just signals clues that computer's trying to tell you what's wrong. And sometimes I think we can, I think we can figure it out. I can't promise. And I hate to have people go out and spend money on something and it doesn't work. But I think for George getting a new hard drive is gonna fix that. That of course is the first thing that fails on most computers, power supplies, often fail cuz they got hot and cold and you know, they expand and contract and hard drives. Those are the two things that go. And so usually my diagnostic questions as they were with George, we'll start with the power supply and then move on to a hard drive. And I think we got that one. I hope we did Anne in Newport beach. Leo Laporte D tech guy. Hi Anne.

Caller 10 (02:14:14):
Hi. I'm so glad you're there.

Leo Laporte (02:14:16):
Hi am glad I'm here too. Beats the alternative

Caller 10 (02:14:19):
To share my, I wanna share my desktop with you, but that wouldn't really make this radio project with it.

Leo Laporte (02:14:25):
Yeah, I can imagine me going. Hm mm-hmm <affirmative> mm-hmm <affirmative>

Caller 10 (02:14:30):
And I'd

Leo Laporte (02:14:31):
Be ah, ah <laugh> ah. That's why so far? No one does Freudian therapy on the radio. So what <laugh> this is

Caller 10 (02:14:39):
Gonna be this is gonna be so easy for you though. Okay. Or your, your team or your room and it's just been driving me nuts for a few days. Okay. So someone left TV, an LG 22 L N 45 10. Okay. For my building's lobby free to a good home.

Leo Laporte (02:14:55):
Nice.

Caller 10 (02:14:55):
Perfect. There's the sec. Oh second monitor. I need for my work laptop.

Leo Laporte (02:14:59):
It's the small monitor, but it's good. Yeah.

Caller 10 (02:15:02):
Oh it totally worked for me. Okay. So bear in the laptop one, right? Yep. So, so far I've got HP ProBook. I've got the LG. Okay. I have an HD on my, to HD on my cable. Perfect. I went ahead. I ordered a remote from Amazon because I was having trouble guiding through the inputs on the TV, but it's connected, but nobody wants to talk to each other.

Leo Laporte (02:15:23):
No <laugh> so on the back of the TV, what kind of connectors does it have? Multiple HTMI ports in the back?

Caller 10 (02:15:32):
No, there's one H D I just one and then there's there's just one and then next to it, I'm not sure what you call it. It has a, like the screws on the left and the right and the little grid with holes. Do you call that a

Leo Laporte (02:15:42):
Yeah. So that's not a TV. It's a monitor.

Caller 10 (02:15:45):
Well then why is it not talking to Mike?

Leo Laporte (02:15:48):
I know <laugh> so that is an old monitor cuz it has a VGA connector. So that's, or it might have a DVI connector, but it's pretty old connector on the back. That's old. Give me the model number again. LG 22

Caller 10 (02:16:03):
L N L N 4 5 4 5.

Leo Laporte (02:16:07):
I'm just gonna look that up.

Caller 10 (02:16:08):
I even went on their website and pulled down the manual and it says yes.

Leo Laporte (02:16:11):
Oh it does say it's a TV 24 inch 10 AP TV. It's weird. Those connectors on the back. I guess it's cuz it's kind of old. And does, does, do you get a picture at all? Do you get anything?

Caller 10 (02:16:26):
Oh yeah. Yeah. I mean, I don't have it connected to cable, but,

Leo Laporte (02:16:30):
But you could and, and you could watch TV on it. Yeah,

Caller 10 (02:16:34):
I sure could.

Leo Laporte (02:16:34):
So of course that's the first question, is it okay. But it sounds like it is okay. It's pretty, it's pretty old. Let me just see the connectivity. 

Caller 10 (02:16:44):
It's so young either. <Laugh>

Leo Laporte (02:16:45):
That's perfect. Then AV input. It's got an antenna input. It's got USB three and two. It's got AV and H D M I H DCP and in D so it's got what you need. It's got exactly what you need. And on the, when you use the remote, you are setting it to that. H D M I input, right?

Caller 10 (02:17:10):
Yes. Uhhuh <affirmative>. Okay. So if I go to my <inaudible> choices, there's H, D M I and it's selected and highlighted perfect. Now something in the manual said, if you do that, you have to go down to this little red button where it says input label. Oh. And so I go there, then it chooses input label. Yeah. AV component, our GP HDM. I, and that's also on HGM. I okay. So I should, oh, but wait, I just did a right arrow and I get a choice. Oh, BCR, D V D set top box satellite. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (02:17:43):
That's just for the label. You don't, that's not important. That's just so when you look at it, instead of just saying H D M I it'll say your computer or your set top box or

Caller 10 (02:17:51):
Whatever. Oh, it's a PC.

Leo Laporte (02:17:53):
It's just a label. Yeah. It's not, but it doesn't help it help see what's going on. Darn it. And you're,

Caller 10 (02:17:58):
Here's my answer. You thought

Leo Laporte (02:17:59):
I, I solved it. I've solved. It <laugh> well, I don't know. I wouldn't get any credit if you solved it yourself. Then on the laptop, it has an H D M I port

Caller 10 (02:18:11):
Mm-Hmm <affirmative> connected.

Leo Laporte (02:18:13):
And tell me again what laptop it is.

Caller 10 (02:18:16):
It's a H HP ProBook.

Leo Laporte (02:18:17):
Probook. You said that. Okay. Mm-hmm <affirmative>

Caller 10 (02:18:20):
But I also have a pavilion and I tried it with my personal. Okay.

Leo Laporte (02:18:23):
You tried it with both of you? Nothing.

Caller 10 (02:18:25):
Yeah. And I also you know, I took both, I took the pro book to my Samsung TV in the living room and used the same cable and it, and

Leo Laporte (02:18:36):
It worked,

Caller 10 (02:18:37):
No, it did not.

Leo Laporte (02:18:38):
It did not work. Oh,

Caller 10 (02:18:41):
It's cable

Leo Laporte (02:18:41):
Issue. Good. Well, we've narrowed it down a little bit. Yeah. It could be, could either be the cable or it could be the laptop. I don't think that laptop, but you, you might want to go into the settings, you know, when you first started up and it says, press F 10 to get into settings, you might want to go into the settings and make sure that that HT I port is enabled. Sometimes they don't, you know, they don't enable the the port. So just make sure that that's enabled. I'm really glad you tried it with another TV cuz now we know, I mean, cuz first thought is, well of course it was in the lobby. It doesn't work, but it didn't work with a TV that, you know, works. So that's a, that's that's a good diagnostic. <Laugh> I mean, it still may not work, but at <laugh> at least, so least we, we have, we know that that laptop's not sending out an HDM. I signal, it sounds like. So I would, I would look,

Caller 10 (02:19:32):
I, if I'm at settings from settings, I choose outputs devices to check the HDM. I to see if that's active.

Leo Laporte (02:19:39):
So you're actually in the settings already. Wow. You work fast. Yeah. 

Caller 10 (02:19:44):
Always ready for this.

Leo Laporte (02:19:46):
You'll wanna look in the so this is not the windows settings. This is the, in the set. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. So you're actually gonna shut down the computer, power it back on and hitting. This is what the problem we're having with George. It depends. I think with HP, it's usually F 10. So you're gonna be hitting the F 10 button until it goes into what we used to call bio setup. Now it's just the, the setup for the computer. And you wanna make sure that that H D I port is enabled that the, that and, and you also probably wanna make sure it's outputting a 10 ADP signal because that monitor is a 10 80 P monitor. So you wanna make sure it's not outputting something that the monitor can't understand,

Caller 10 (02:20:29):
But let me throw this in there then, because I did the same thing with my personal laptop and I know my personal laptop, I know that HDMI port works or is enabled because I've had it hooked to.

Leo Laporte (02:20:40):
And did that work with, with the LG that you found in the lobby?

Caller 10 (02:20:44):
No.

Leo Laporte (02:20:45):
No,

Caller 10 (02:20:45):
Not with the LG I found in the lobby.

Leo Laporte (02:20:46):
So it is, I mean, completely theoretically possible. Can you try that other laptop with the HPD found in the lobby and it didn't work.

Caller 10 (02:20:56):
Yep. And I have that laptop,

Leo Laporte (02:20:57):
But it does work with the TV in the living room.

Caller 10 (02:21:00):
No, it did not.

Leo Laporte (02:21:02):
But something does,

Caller 10 (02:21:04):
It's not,

Leo Laporte (02:21:04):
<Laugh> some, you have some device that does work. The H C I port does work.

Caller 10 (02:21:09):
Oh yes. The H C I port does for sure. On

Leo Laporte (02:21:11):
That other computer.

Caller 10 (02:21:12):
My, yeah, neither of my laptops or the television have been able to detect connect to the LG. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (02:21:21):
Okay. Okay. And if you, can you connect that other computer to the LG, just to see,

Caller 10 (02:21:27):
Yeah, I've done that. And I have that in there right now.

Leo Laporte (02:21:29):
And the LG works.

Caller 10 (02:21:31):
No, LG does not. The LG, the TV's on the LG itself is on it's. But right now it says check signal cable.

Leo Laporte (02:21:39):
So I'm just trying to figure out, you could have it's completely possible. Mul multiple things are wrong. Like the reason that was in the lobby is it stopped working

Caller 10 (02:21:48):
Story in my life. No, she was moving. I, I, oh, okay. Figured out who the one was.

Leo Laporte (02:21:53):
What I'd really like to do for diagnostic purposes is somehow get that LG working just so we know, okay, it's working and it's working with this cable, then we can narrow it down. Cuz we really wanna figure out what's failing. If it's the laptop again, going to the setup and, and making sure that that HMI port is enabled will help. Normally you don't have to in a laptop, the HDM, I should just work, but you know, maybe you have to on this one. But so I guess my advice would be, find something that has H D M I out a Roku, an apple TV, something that you could put on the LG, just to see if it works. Leo Laport, the tech guy. So many places it could go wrong. You thought this was gonna be an easy one didn't you?

Caller 10 (02:22:36):
Oh, absolutely. <Laugh> free. You got even wanna buy a cheap monitor and this just is gonna,

Leo Laporte (02:22:44):
Well, it might be fine. It might be fine. So that's the, do you have anything that has HT M I out that you could plug into it to see

Caller 10 (02:22:53):
Other than the two laptops?

Leo Laporte (02:22:54):
Yeah. Neither of them work, right?

Caller 10 (02:22:58):
Well, I, when you say work, I guess,

Leo Laporte (02:23:01):
Does the, does can have you ever seen this picture on that LG monitor?

Caller 10 (02:23:05):
Yeah. There's picture on the LG monitor. Absolutely. But nothing from the laptops that I connect to

Leo Laporte (02:23:10):
It. So how well, I mean, can you connect something to it in the LG monitor where the TV works?

Caller 10 (02:23:15):
I know it does. Cause like, for example, if I go to, if I change the input to,

Leo Laporte (02:23:20):
Yeah. You'll see something on the screen, but that doesn't mean necessarily that the HGM I poured on is correct and stuff like that. So you, okay. You know what I'm saying? You wanna, you wanna actually verify that you can plug an HTM. I, something into that monitor and see it <laugh> once, once you've done that, then, then we can say, good. I know I have a working cable and I have a working monitor. So we can now focus on the laptop as the, as the problem.

Caller 10 (02:23:44):
Okay. To be continued. I'll probably talk to you in a week though.

Leo Laporte (02:23:47):
Okay. <Laugh> go. So you got two assignments, one, find something you can plug into that monitor. Make sure it's working two. Yeah. Do the bio setup on that H HP laptop and make sure that you have enabled the H D M I port.

Caller 10 (02:24:00):
You got it. I appreciate your help. Have a great, oh, good.

Leo Laporte (02:24:02):
Have fun. Have fun. Take care. <Laugh> thank you for letting me be your tech guy this week. Thanks to Micah. Sergeant tech guy too. Who's here every Saturday. Thanks to professor Laura, our musical director, doing such a great job. Putting in the bumper music, pushing the buttons, all that stuff. Our phone angel, Kim Schaffer preparing you for your appearance on national radio. Thanks to all of you who call. Thanks. Most of all, to all of you who listen, because if no one listened, they would fire me tomorrow. Eighty eight, eighty eight, ask Leo the phone number during the week twenty four seven, you can always go to the website, tech guy labs.com. That's where you'll find the show. Notes, links, previous episodes, audio, and video, and all of that tech guy labs.com. This is episode 1896. John Paul is on the line from Roseville, Oregon. Hello, John Paul.

Caller 11 (02:24:55):
Hi, Leo.

Leo Laporte (02:24:55):
Welcome.

Caller 11 (02:24:57):
I have trouble with my, my laptop Chromebook in the the, the browser Pfizer Firefox.

Leo Laporte (02:25:05):
You're using Firefox on a Chromebook. No, you're not. Yeah. How are you doing that? Are you using Linux on your Chromebook?

Caller 11 (02:25:16):
No, I, I haven't yet. Problem I have is that

Leo Laporte (02:25:20):
It's not Firefox it's Chrome. The whole point of a Chromebook is, is that <laugh> from Google's point of view is that you have to use Chrome. So what's the problem

Caller 11 (02:25:29):
Is Chrome. Yeah. There's it's it auto left whole screen with the red. Oh,

Leo Laporte (02:25:35):
That's not good.

Caller 11 (02:25:36):
And all the images

Leo Laporte (02:25:37):
Text too,

Caller 11 (02:25:39):
And it, sorry,

Leo Laporte (02:25:41):
Text two, the text, everything, or just the background,

Caller 11 (02:25:47):
Just the background. And, and it seems that it starts at the top. If I move the mouse up to the top, it follows on the way back. Oh

Leo Laporte (02:25:57):
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So that's not right. I'm not. So I think you probably have a hardware problem, but there's a quick way to, to fix that, by the way, people are pointing out that you could be using Firefox. If you're using the Android version of Firefox on there, but Chrome is Chrome. OS is designed to, to run on Chrome, cuz you know, it's Google and they want you to use Chrome. That's why they call it Chrome Moise. So it sounds like a hardware problem actually with a display, but here's a way to find out if it's hardware or software, there is a feature in your Chromebook called power washing. It's one of the reasons I recommend Chromebooks it's in effect resetting the Chromebook to its factory state. Now the only caution I would make, if you have a Chromebook and you want a power wash is it will wipe everything off the hard drive.

Leo Laporte (02:26:49):
It is literally gonna put that Chromebook back to the way you got it from the factory or from the store. So if you have been saving stuff on your Chromebook hard drive, you're not supposed to do that. It's why it's such a small, hard drive. Google expects you to keep everything on Google drive. But if for some reason you have been saving something onto the internal drive on your Chromebook, you should copy that stuff off onto an external drive, a USB key, something else. There probably isn't much. If you have been the way Chromebooks work is, you know, everything's saved in the cloud, it's a cloud computer and that's the beauty of power wash. You can power wash a Chromebook log into your Google account and boom, everything's back. What you just described, kind of this going red, especially as you move a mouse around, sounds more like there's a hardware error in the monitor, the connector to the monitor.

Leo Laporte (02:27:41):
And that does happen frequently. Laptops. If you think about that laptop hinge, that's, that's bending back and forth. Every time you open the laptop, there's a ribbon cable in there that connects the base of the laptop. The, the guts of it, the memory, the processor, the drive to the screen, the display that cable gets spent a lot and sometimes fails falls out or, or breaks. And if one pin of the cable got broken, for instance you'd get exactly, you know, if the blue got turned off in the red, green, blue you'd be getting everything red, you know, it would look all, look reddish, cuz there'd be no blue. So it could easily be a hardware error. So the way to diagnose that is first of all, let's let's eliminate any possibilities with software. You can find when, when you call tech support, they often will say, all right, well, the first thing we're gonna do <laugh> is reset your phone or reset your computer.

Leo Laporte (02:28:35):
That's their way of eliminating any possible software problems and focusing on the hardware power, wash your Chromebook first, make sure you got it all backed up. The power wash will put it back to its factory state. There are the way to power wash varies. So it's probably a good idea to look online at that particular Chromebook model and see how you power wash it. It's usually a setting once you power wash it, it'll go through the whole cycle of wiping out the hard drive, starting all over fresh, a completely new operating system. It'll erase anything you've installed. It'll just be completely cleaned. You'll then log in with your Google login. It will download anything that you installed and saved on Google drive. That'll all be visible. So it'll be, should be back to the state. It was in, if that red has gone away good news, it was something weird that was going on.

Leo Laporte (02:29:26):
Some bug, a software flaw. If it persists, then it is that second problem. It's the, it's a connector to the monitor. And that really that's a hardware issue. The good news on a Chromebook is they're pretty inexpensive. But because they're inexpensive you know, components, aren't the highest quality it gets thrown around a lot. People don't treat it elegantly <laugh> carefully like the ju is. And so you do get failures. You might have to get a new Chromebook, I guess is what I'm saying, but try that power wash first to diagnose Karen from pinion Hills, California, Leo Laporte, the tech guy. Hi Karen.

Caller 12 (02:30:05):
Hi. How are you?

Leo Laporte (02:30:06):
How are you? I'm great.

Caller 12 (02:30:07):
I'm great too. Good. listen, I've got frontier communications and I have dish. Do I need both of those?

Leo Laporte (02:30:16):
Well, depends on how you're using 'em frontier is an internet service provider, but they also offer TV service. Dish is mostly a TV service. You can subscribe. Dish has a internet service from it as well. If they're overlapping, no, you don't need both of them. Oh, okay. Yeah, you, you can have one or the other if, if it were me if you do want to use it for internet, I'd stick with frontier cuz they're land based, not satellite based. So it's gonna be a much better internet experience. TV wise probably be better too.

Caller 12 (02:30:50):
Okay. Yeah. All right.

Leo Laporte (02:30:52):
Great. So if you wanna get rid of one of them, don't tell dish. I told you <laugh>, but I'd probably get rid of dish frontier in some areas actually sells dish. And this may is probably why you have both frontier in areas where it doesn't offer TV service will say well, but get our dish and you'll have TV service. Truthfully. Your question may be the kind of the question of the year. People are asking these days, which is if I've got fast, reliable internet, why do I need a TV service provider? And that's one that you're gonna have to answer for yourself. A lot of people are doing it. They, they call it cord cutting. And the reason is almost all television is now available over the internet, not through a dish satellite or a TV antenna or a cable provider, but it's gonna come down to what you wanna watch because you're gonna have to pay for all those things, a LA carte.

Leo Laporte (02:31:49):
Now. So if you're thinking about cord cutting, if you're thinking, well, I don't really need dish, cuz I can watch my shows over the internet on the frontier. This is what you want to calculate. First of all, how much that Internet's gonna cost. Okay. That's the first part of it. And then how much is it gonna cost to get the channels I want, if you want locals, for instance you're in pin Hills, maybe I don't, I'm not sure what the locals would be for you. You could subscribe to Hulu or YouTube TV there variety of other services that will give you live locals, your local channels. I use for instance, YouTube TV. And that gives me all the live locals from the nearest Metro, which for me is San Francisco. So if I wanna watch a live football game or something like that, I can see it on YouTube TV, but that's 65 bucks a month.

Leo Laporte (02:32:36):
Add that to the cable for the internet. <Laugh> now we're probably over a hundred bucks a month then do you want HBO? You're gonna pay for that. Do you want NBC's peacock? You're gonna pay for that. So court cutting is not necessarily a way to save money. You're gonna have to actually figure out what you want, what it's gonna cost then compared to what you pay for dish. It may be cheaper to get dish, but, but only, you know what you wanna see. Hey, that's it. I'm out of time. I had a lot of fun. I hope you did too. And I hope you'll come back again. We'll do this all one more time. Well, at least one more time. Next week I will be here. Live for Memorial day weekend. We can have a barbecue. You and I. Okay. Leo Laport the tech guy.

Leo Laporte (02:33:16):
In the meantime, please have a safe geek week. Well that's it for the tech guy show for today. Thank you so much for being here and don't forget twit. It stands for this week@techandyoufinditattwit.tv, including the podcasts for this show. We talk about windows and windows weekly, Macintosh a Mac break, weekly iPads, iPhones, apple watches on iOS today. Security and security. Now, I mean I can go on and on and on. And of course the big show every Sunday afternoon, this weekend tech you'll find it all at twit TV and I'll be back next week with another great tech guy show. Thanks for joining me. We'll see you next time.