The Tech Guy Episode 1923 Transcript

Leo Laporte (00:00:02):

Podcasts. You love from people you trust. This is TWiT. Hi, this is Leo Laport and this is my tech guy podcast. This show originally aired in the premier networks on Saturday, September 3rd, 2022. This is episode 1923. Enjoy the tech eye podcast is brought to you by it. Pro TV. Are you looking to break into the world of it? Get the introduction you need with it. Pro TV and you get 30% off when you sign up at it. Pro.Tv/TWiT, and use the code TWiT 30 at checkout. Well, Hey, Hey. Hey, how are you today? Leo? LePort here. The tech guy. Why? Yes. It's time to talk computers, the internet home theater, digital photography, smartphone smart watches. Oh, that jazz eighty eight eighty eight. Ask Leo is my phone number. If you have a question, a comment, a suggestion. If you'd like to talk high tech, this is your chance. 8 8 8 8 2 7 5 5 3 6.

 

Leo Laporte (00:01:14):

Toll free from anywhere in the us or Canada outside that area. Oh, just call using Skype out. You could still reach me 8 8 8 8 2 7 5 5 3 6 and it should still be free website tech, guy labs.com stores, all the links to all the stuff that you might be looking for. Tech guy labs.com links, audio video, all that stuff from the show, all that stuff. Tech guy labs.com. Mike Sergeant taking the day off. Did he say it's his birthday? I don't know. Maybe he's just preparing as one does for the big apple event on Wednesday, you know, you gotta, you gotta train up for that. Maybe that's what's going on. He's training for the apple event. I don't blame him. It's gonna be exhausting. Lots of <laugh>. I don't, I'm just kidding. <Laugh> lots of stuff to talk about. He'll be going down there to the apple campus. So we'll get a report from him next week about what he saw. Of course we think it's gonna be, we think you never know, you never know app. There are always these rumors, you know, from apple. And I think the thing that happens with apple sometimes is the rumor isn't wrong, the rumors, right? But apple changes its mind at the last minute.

 

Leo Laporte (00:02:47):

So you know, they could be sitting right now. They could be sitting on the you know, the iPhone 14 with I don't know, refrigerator built in. And and all the rumors would say, oh, they're gonna do a refrigerator this time. And then at the last minute, like right now, they could say, yeah, maybe not. It's not ready would be how they would put it. And so they don't do it, but the rumors are, I think this is all fairly likely that there will be an iPhone 14, an iPhone 14 pro an iPhone 14 Promax and then there's one more. I can't remember. <Laugh> the, there'll be two 6.7 inch iPhones, big ones, big ones. And then two smaller ones, each one in the pro line. So the 14, maybe the 14 max, maybe that's how they'll do it. We don't know.

 

Leo Laporte (00:03:53):

Nobody knows 14, 14 max 14 pro 14 pro max. That would make sense. And the, and the maxes will have, will be big 6.7 inches better cameras. <Laugh> a Periscope lens maybe, which gives you much better zoom, maybe. I don't know. Well almost certainly see the new watch, including the new apple watch series eight, including a pro version of the apple watch series eight, which will, I don't know if they'll call it pro extreme sport, but it will in some interesting way, be bigger, better, and much more expensive breathtakingly, more expensive AirPods as well. Okay. Boom. That's that? You know what? We'll talk about it on Wednesday, we will have the deeds on Wednesday and and Mike is getting to go down there. He got the invitation from apple, so he'll be getting a hands on experience with those. So I expect next Saturday, he will be back to tell us all about that.

 

Leo Laporte (00:05:00):

You know, the big to me though, the big story these days is not from apple. It's from the land of artificial intelligence. And I'm sure you've been seeing these images show up. I'm maybe you've seen them in magazines or the newspapers. The idea, these are new artificially generated images, and it all started with something called Dolly two D a L L dash E. And the number two Dolly two from Google, actually, I'm sorry. From open AI, not from Google, from open AI, although Google is part of the open AI initiative. They released in beta. It's a, it's an AI research company that was funded by Elon Musk and a bunch of other people. And they are doing all sorts of AI research, but the one that's really caught everybody's attention these days is this Dolly and Dolly two, which you can go to open ai.com and sign up for which I did ages ago.

 

Leo Laporte (00:06:07):

And there's a long waiting list. Although the people who get it play with it, and then they release their images and people go, wow, the way it works, you describe in text a image, an image, and then the AI draws you some samples, and then you can enhance it, expand on it. You can do something you can say, no, not that more, more of that. It's very interesting. And of course the people who are really good at this have learned. In fact, I think this is the new kind of programming. They've learned how to talk to the machine. That's what programming is, right? What coding is? You write a computer program, you're talking the machine and then the machine responds well, this is a new kind of coding. And in fact, as AI, as artificial intelligence expands, I think we're gonna see more and more of this kind of coding, where you learn to interact with the machine in a more organic way.

 

Leo Laporte (00:07:11):

So I'm looking at a beautiful image, which is on the front of the open AI webpage created by Emma catnip. <Laugh> the garden of Fior LORs. And this is the description. Now, you know, I, I will go in there and say a beautiful garden filled with roses on the planet. Mars. That's a pretty good prompt. That's what they call it a prompt and it would do something actually that would be pretty good, but the real talented people are getting more and more. They're kind of symbiotic with the machine and, and, and they're getting it and they're going back and forth and they're starting to learn the language. So the garden of FIM LORs by, by Emma catnip, this is the prop. The garden of Fior Phor is artwork from graphic novel, created for the band Plaid's upcoming release via warp records, a utopia here, I guess this is the prompt, a utopian planet hosting the biggest electronic music festival in the world in the universe to start with this piece, I started with an initial image I made beforehand that I hit, ah, see, that's one of the things you can do now.

 

Leo Laporte (00:08:18):

And this is interesting. Artists can draw something or provide a picture and then, and then say, okay, now elaborate on this. If you wanna see some of these images, so Dolly started it, but there's many others now that are playing the game. In fact, there's one you can download and use on your own computer. If you have enough horsepower enough, Hupa called stable diffusion. And if you wanna see some stable diffusion art, the best place to go is a search engine for, for stable effusion images. It's called Lexia, L E X ica.art, lexi.art. These images are remarkable. Maybe you saw John on Oliver's last week tonight, last Sunday, where he played with a, another popular AI art generation tool and ended up marrying a cabbage. It's a long, strange story, but that's what happened. <Laugh> and marrying a cabbage. It's very interesting to see what people are doing and it's, and it's absolutely good quality.

 

Leo Laporte (00:09:37):

I think here, I'm looking at a portrait of Jim Carey on stable diffusion, Jim Carey, portrait Shinai Mikado studio ley studio key. They're giving it prompts about styles. James gene, mark Simonetti, elegant, highly detailed digital painting. Art station picks IV, and the computer is using all of this going. Okay. Okay. I think I get your idea. Sometimes drawing something creepy and bizarre, sometimes something quite beautiful. There's a bit of a fewer, because an AI art creation recently won first prize. <Laugh> in an art show. <Laugh> the Colorado state fairs, fine art competition, a guy named Jason Allen. Who's a president of a game tabletop gaming company create created this artwork. And then and then submitted it. He won, it was in the digital arts. So it was digitally manipulated photography category. If you see it, it's quite a, quite a, a mystical, interesting piece, kind of a strange looking piece. He he was printed and then he printed on canvas. So maybe fooling the judges. I don't know. It's really made the art world upset, but guess what?

 

Leo Laporte (00:11:13):

Here I'll read from CNBC, Jason Allen was declared the winner, even though he himself didn't create the piece. This has enraged artists online, enraged them as Allen did not go by the traditional way or wheeled a digital paintbrush to create the artwork. Instead used another AI program called mid journey. Evan playing with that one mid journey to create the artwork based on a text prompt. He did take it, touched it up in Photoshop, upscaled it with giga pixel. So he did some work on it. He admit labeled his submission to the state fair, Jason Allen via mid journey. Of course the judges probably didn't know what mid journey was, cuz this is all stuff is all new, right? Is that art? Yeah, I think it is, but it's a new kind of art, a man machine or human machine created art. Now there's a new thing that Dolly can do, which is called out painting, which is taking an existing painting.

 

Leo Laporte (00:12:08):

The open AI folks use as an example of ver Ramirez's famous girl with a Pearl earring. And then they expand it to show the, what the rest of the painting could look like now, ver never painted that <laugh> but now we can see the room the, the woman is in, I mean, obviously completely fanciful, but it's all done in the style of Verre. It looks like it could be a continuation of the existing painting. That's called out painting. What's interesting about this is how fast it's happened. You know, we've been sitting here for literally decades saying AI, forget it, it, you know, Siri never understands what I want. Those self-driving cars keep plowing into other things. AI's not, you know, it's actually been reassuring. Hasn't it for us as humans, eh, AI, eh, it's not so smart, but now we're seeing the art created by AI.

 

Leo Laporte (00:13:12):

It's a little surreal, a little creepy and yet it's pretty impressive. <Laugh> and I think it's creeping people out. It's both fascinating. It's amazing. It's interesting. It's creeping people out and it's, I think here's the thing. The reason I bring it up a look at where we're headed with AI. It's not AI all by itself. It's a man human. I keep saying, man, man, or woman, person machine interface, that together creates something fascinating. And we're just starting to learn the language of the machines. Oh boy. 80 88. Oh boy. This happening fast folks. This is, this is out there now. Eighty eight eighty eight. Ask Leo the phone number, tech guy labs.com. The website, Leo LePort the tech guy, your calls next.

 

Leo Laporte (00:14:26):

Well that's, what's interesting. Our TFM about this. He says computers do exactly what you tell them to do. That's traditional coding. Absolutely. This is not ex. This is, and that's, what's interesting is you add AI to this and it isn't exactly what you told them to do. It's they're adding something. It is not deterministic as it used to be. They're adding some content, which I find very intriguing. No, no, no. Don't call that number. Don't call that number. I don't know what you're gonna get, but it ain't Kim. Scheffer our fun angel. <Laugh> hello, Kim. Hi. Hi. How are you? Good. How are you? Yeah. Yeah. Okay.

 

Kim (00:15:12):

<Laugh> not Beachwood. Four, five, seven, eight, nine.

 

Leo Laporte (00:15:14):

Don't call Beachwood four, five seven nine, call 8, 8, 8, actually eighty eight eighty eight ask yo, would somebody write a song?

 

Kim (00:15:21):

It's

 

Leo Laporte (00:15:22):

Not, it's not gonna be a good song, but would somebody write a song? You

 

Kim (00:15:25):

Don't know what kind of musicians we have in our audience. <Laugh>

 

Leo Laporte (00:15:28):

Paul some sugar on me. Tech guy.

 

Kim (00:15:32):

No, that's you want Def Lepard to

 

Leo Laporte (00:15:33):

Do it? <Laugh> it's in my head. You know why? Cuz I'm going to see Def Lepard Motley crew poison and Joan jet on Wednesday. Wow.

 

Kim (00:15:40):

Hairband central. <Laugh>

 

Leo Laporte (00:15:43):

Not my music, not my music's my wife's music. What happens

 

Kim (00:15:46):

When you marry a younger woman?

 

Leo Laporte (00:15:49):

Exactly. Exactly. Ah, yep. So it'll be fun. It'll be fun. 

 

Kim (00:15:56):

Well I wish I was going to see lady Gogo.

 

Leo Laporte (00:15:59):

Oh,

 

Kim (00:15:59):

On

 

Leo Laporte (00:16:00):

Thursday night. Is she in town? Yep.

 

Kim (00:16:01):

She's in San Francisco on

 

Leo Laporte (00:16:03):

Thursday. That's we saw her in Vegas. Yeah. It was quite a show. That's great show. Quite a show. So who should I pick up on the line?

 

Kim (00:16:11):

Let's go to Mexico. Wow. Lars is in port of IA. Oh, <laugh>

 

Leo Laporte (00:16:16):

Make me jealous. <Laugh> yeah. Thank you, Kim. Hello, Lars. In port of IA, PV, Lars, I'll call you. Welcome to the show. Hey,

 

Caller 1 (00:16:25):

Thank you so much, Leo. Thank you for taking my call. So I have a lax black box TVR for security cameras.

 

Leo Laporte (00:16:33):

Okay.

 

Caller 1 (00:16:33):

And for the first time, unfortunately this past week we had a burglary. So Yik take the files of the DVR and show it. And so I did a backup over to a thumb drive and I noticed the file format was start to six fall and then I thought, Hmm, how can I convert that to something I can view?

 

Leo Laporte (00:16:56):

You probably don't have to. I'm gonna guess so. I'm not sure why they call it dot two sixty four, but I, but I'm gonna guess it's saying we have encoded this in H dot 2 6, 4, which is a very, very common, probably the most common video KOD deck. So probably I would try this first rename the file, not dot 2 64, but dot MP4, which is the common extension for H 2 64.

 

Caller 1 (00:17:31):

Okay.

 

Leo Laporte (00:17:31):

So try that and see if it works. What are some other extensions for H 2 64? The S yeah. I'm I'm I feel like it LX should have in their manual.

 

Caller 1 (00:17:47):

Exactly. I call, I looked in their, the manual and I called tech support and they told me that my model L 8 0 1 4 0 0 0. Yeah,

 

Leo Laporte (00:18:00):

Yeah,

 

Caller 1 (00:18:00):

Yeah. Is now so old that there's no converter. I don't know. The file format that this DVI is generating.

 

Leo Laporte (00:18:08):

So the other, the other option is to download a player that doesn't care what the extension is. Some players, you know, a lot of dumb players, a lot of places you might play it back on your computer or your TV will say, well, I don't know what this is. If it's a, I don't know the extension, but, but there's a player called the video land client or V C that will play back anything by looking at it and say, well, what is this? Oh, I could play it. And it'll play almost everything. It's free from video land.org. V I D E O L a n.org. Yeah. Free and open source. It works on Android, iOS, Mac windows, it's Linux. It's everywhere. And it's actually very good at H 2 64. In fact, that may be in fact it's favorite flavor. <Laugh> okay. So I would, I, I would I would just first thing to do maybe is just download video land client VLC and open up the file and see if it plays. I bet it will. And I'm sorry about the burglary. Did they get a lot of good stuff?

 

Caller 1 (00:19:13):

They did not. Luckily we they just took some money. That was it. This all what they're interested in and

 

Leo Laporte (00:19:19):

Nothing. I'm glad you, I'm glad you have the video. Maybe you can catch, catch him. Great to talk to you. Leo Laport, the tech guy, Scott Wilkinson home theater coming up. Yeah. Money. They just wanted money, probably drug addicts. Right? They just wanted buy some, some stuff.

 

Caller 1 (00:19:36):

Leo, this is my first call and I am watch. I've been watching you and hearing you for so many years and I'm so happy I got through and thank you so much for what you're doing.

 

Leo Laporte (00:19:44):

Oh, my pleasure is now. Do you listen via podcast? Probably. Yeah. Yeah. I,

 

Caller 1 (00:19:49):

I, I, I, I listen to podcasts, but now, today I'm looking at your live here and the,

 

Leo Laporte (00:19:54):

Oh yeah. Well the live stream, we'll always do the podcast in the live stream. So if you're in Mexico and you don't have a radio station that broadcasts us, then this is the best way. Anyway,

 

Caller 1 (00:20:04):

That's my to go thing on my podcast. When I walk the beach down here. Oh,

 

Leo Laporte (00:20:09):

I'm so jealous. At least, I at least I'm virtually on the beach at PV. I love port of Iowa. Yeah, you are. Oh, we were, we were down there some years ago and I just, it was it's so pretty. Did you, are you native or did you move there? I'm guessing

 

Caller 1 (00:20:23):

I'm I'm originally from Denmark. I live in Southern California for 20 years and then I moved here years ago.

 

Leo Laporte (00:20:29):

Are you loving it?

 

Caller 1 (00:20:31):

I love it. It's couldn't be better.

 

Leo Laporte (00:20:34):

I'm so I'm so tempted. <Laugh> yeah. As you might know, Paul throt, who does our windows show has just bought a condo in a, in Mexico city, which I think would be really fun too, but I wanna be on the ocean. I want to be on the beach.

 

Caller 1 (00:20:49):

Yeah. Well it's

 

Leo Laporte (00:20:50):

Nice. Enjoy.

 

Caller 1 (00:20:52):

Thank you so much for

 

Leo Laporte (00:20:54):

Take care, byebye. Thank

 

Caller 1 (00:20:55):

You.

 

Leo Laporte (00:20:57):

I'll tell you. What's hip this cat right here, man. He blows a hip horn. He is Scott Wilkinson home theater geek. I love horn sections.

 

Scott Wilkinson (00:21:08):

I do too, man.

 

Leo Laporte (00:21:10):

Do they ever use a tuba in a horn section?

 

Scott Wilkinson (00:21:12):

Oh yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. in fact, the roots Jimmy Fallon's band uses a tuba stay human sometimes has a tuba.

 

Leo Laporte (00:21:23):

I love that's actually a great sound cuz it's that it's base horn. So it's a, oh yeah, it's a great sound.

 

Scott Wilkinson (00:21:28):

Hey, I gotta tell you somebody in the chat room just hit me to a new a musician. I didn't know who does incredible horn arrangements guy named Corey Wong. He's a guitarist, but man, oh man. He is so funky. I mean he's up there with tower of power and, and these great horn bands, they just, and they just play the bejesus out of it. It's great. <Laugh> really good. Highly recommended. I was listening to 'em last night on my walk.

 

Leo Laporte (00:21:58):

This is not though the wind instrument segment of the show. This is the home theater segment of, well, you might be wondering, cause I haven't said anything about this home theater geek, Scott Wilkinson. He does a great podcast for AVS forum on YouTube, youtube.com/avs forum joins us every week to talk about big screen TVs and surround sound. What's the latest Scotty.

 

Scott Wilkinson (00:22:21):

I wanna tell you I want to direct you to AVS forum. I recently posted my home theater of the month, which is really, really good. One of the best I've seen, not only because it's really high performance, but because the guy who built it did it all himself except laying the carpets. It's the only thing he didn't do with his own hand. So

 

Leo Laporte (00:22:46):

You've been doing this feature for some time.

 

Scott Wilkinson (00:22:48):

Oh, quite a while. Yeah.

 

Leo Laporte (00:22:50):

Yeah. And it's, it's all people who have built their own.

 

Scott Wilkinson (00:22:53):

Not necessarily, there are some who have contracted it out, you know, and hired people to build.

 

Leo Laporte (00:22:59):

Well, that's no fair.

 

Scott Wilkinson (00:23:02):

<Laugh>

 

Leo Laporte (00:23:03):

I like the people who do it with their bare hands.

 

Scott Wilkinson (00:23:05):

Yes. With their bare hands and even most impressive about this particular build his budget. What did he spend on it? I've I've done home theater of the months that are 75,000, a hundred thousand, $125,000. People spent this guy spent $25,000. See,

 

Leo Laporte (00:23:26):

That seems like a lot, but I'm much, it's much more approachable. Isn't it?

 

Scott Wilkinson (00:23:29):

It's much more approachable. Yeah. And when you look at the pictures and you, you see,

 

Leo Laporte (00:23:34):

Where are the pictures? Tell me where they're.

 

Scott Wilkinson (00:23:35):

Oh, right on the homepage of, of, of AVS forum.com. Right at the top. You'll see the July 20, 22 we're catching up on, on, on some lost

 

Leo Laporte (00:23:44):

Time. That's all. It's all right. You only missed it by a month.

 

Scott Wilkinson (00:23:47):

<Laugh> I, I got another two coming and then I'll be caught up. Yes. But in any event right there on the homepage, right up near the top, you'll see the July 20, 22 home theater of the month. And you will see, well, first of all, it's exactly my kind of home theater. It's

 

Leo Laporte (00:24:03):

Kind of, it's kind of not fancy. It's not like

 

Scott Wilkinson (00:24:05):

It's not fancy.

 

Leo Laporte (00:24:06):

Yeah.

 

Scott Wilkinson (00:24:07):

It's not got all the Fri of France bar. 

 

Leo Laporte (00:24:11):

You know, no, in fact it's, it looks like it's 30% gray. Everywhere.

 

Scott Wilkinson (00:24:15):

Yeah, yeah. And dark gray. Yeah, exactly. And that's my kind of theater. I want, you want this want functionality? I, I want to the, the room to disappear when I'm watching a movie,

 

Leo Laporte (00:24:27):

He's got carpet, he's got sound baffling. He does have at least very comfortable armchairs with cup holders.

 

Scott Wilkinson (00:24:34):

So

 

Leo Laporte (00:24:35):

<Laugh> that's that's oh,

 

Scott Wilkinson (00:24:36):

These are really nice. Really nice chairs

 

Leo Laporte (00:24:38):

Should be comfortable, but the movie should should be the center of

 

Scott Wilkinson (00:24:44):

Correct. Correct. And he, he converted an existing garage into this room that

 

Leo Laporte (00:24:50):

Actually size use.

 

Scott Wilkinson (00:24:51):

Yeah. It's exactly the right size. Eight people. It had. Yeah. Eight people. And so I've got pictures on there of, of how he framed it and how he, the riser for the second row of seats, he, he is basically empty and he filled it with acoustic treatment to make it a base trap <laugh> because

 

Leo Laporte (00:25:10):

In any, oh, nice.

 

Scott Wilkinson (00:25:12):

In any room, you know, you've got the base frequencies can be really problematic and you need to kind of tamp 'em down.

 

Leo Laporte (00:25:19):

Oh, it's it doesn't make it bigger. It makes it smaller.

 

Scott Wilkinson (00:25:22):

Correct.

 

Leo Laporte (00:25:22):

Okay. Shoot. Cuz I wanted to sit in the second row and feel the movie. Okay.

 

Scott Wilkinson (00:25:26):

No, no, no. Bass trap means it traps the base. Yeah. It reduces the amount of bass. Oh,

 

Leo Laporte (00:25:32):

Look at the size of these speakers.

 

Scott Wilkinson (00:25:33):

I know. Could you believe that <laugh> this, this guy's son who at the time was 10 years old is lying down in front of, of, of these gigantic speakers, which by the way he built himself out of kits.

 

Leo Laporte (00:25:45):

Wow.

 

Scott Wilkinson (00:25:46):

Those speakers are, do it yourself kits.

 

Leo Laporte (00:25:49):

They look like the clips horns or the, what do they call? 'em The sound of the movie theaters.

 

Scott Wilkinson (00:25:56):

Oh yeah. Yeah. Voice of

 

Leo Laporte (00:25:57):

The theater voice of the theater speakers. They look big. Yeah.

 

Scott Wilkinson (00:26:00):

Big. They are they're gigantic. Yeah. And they do use horns for the, for thet tweeters.

 

Leo Laporte (00:26:05):

So they call got three, three smaller speakers for the mid-range and the high end and then

 

Scott Wilkinson (00:26:10):

Two, well, those are the front. Yeah.

 

Leo Laporte (00:26:12):

The two giants subways.

 

Scott Wilkinson (00:26:16):

21 inch subways.

 

Leo Laporte (00:26:17):

Yikes.

 

Scott Wilkinson (00:26:18):

Yeah. Those, the smaller ones are the front left. Right. And center speaker,

 

Leo Laporte (00:26:22):

Even the surrounds look like pretty hefty speakers. Yeah.

 

Scott Wilkinson (00:26:25):

Nice. Yeah. They

 

Leo Laporte (00:26:26):

Are nice.

 

Scott Wilkinson (00:26:28):

So

 

Leo Laporte (00:26:28):

Is this better than a movie theater? You think?

 

Scott Wilkinson (00:26:31):

You know, that is a really good question. In general I would have to say yes,

 

Leo Laporte (00:26:38):

Well there's no kids in the eighth row throwing popcorn, your feet. Aren't sticking to the floor. But yes. As far as reproduction of the film, what does he have for a, what does he have for a projector?

 

Scott Wilkinson (00:26:51):

He has an Epson. I believe it's a relatively affordable projector, an Epson 50, 50 UB, as I recall, which is probably in the $3,000 range.

 

Leo Laporte (00:27:02):

No. Well that's a, that's surprisingly affordable. Yeah,

 

Scott Wilkinson (00:27:04):

Yeah, yeah. And that, that's a great projector. I myself would choose a JVC, but that's probably in the five, $6,000 range and

 

Leo Laporte (00:27:13):

Least, least one of the things that's good about some building this thing is you can have a projector properly positioned in the back. So you don't get keystoning. You don't have to compensate for that. Correct. Correct. You can dim it. I presume this goes completely to black. So the projector doesn't have to be as bright. So that saves you more

 

Scott Wilkinson (00:27:34):

As yeah. That right room. That room is a black hole, which is exactly what

 

Leo Laporte (00:27:37):

You want. It's not a, it's not a great distance. I would say maybe 30 feet from the, from the screen, something like that.

 

Scott Wilkinson (00:27:43):

Oh no. It's prob more like 2015

 

Leo Laporte (00:27:45):

Or oh, pretty close. Okay. Yeah. So again, you don't, you don't need, you know, a Runco high end

 

Scott Wilkinson (00:27:51):

<Laugh> flame thrower,

 

Leo Laporte (00:27:53):

Flame thrower, cuz it's a smaller room and it's completely black and right.

 

Scott Wilkinson (00:27:57):

That's great. Right. Exactly. Oh, it's, I'm sure it's a beautiful picture. Beautiful sound. He's got overhead speakers. So he's got a true at most.

 

Leo Laporte (00:28:05):

Well, Scott, I think you need to go there and see I, what <laugh> you can't just look at pictures and say how good it is.

 

Scott Wilkinson (00:28:13):

No, it's true. I would just have to fly to Louisville, Kentucky in this

 

Leo Laporte (00:28:17):

Case. Well, worth it go in may and you can see the Kentucky Derby. So he's using, it's interesting for his sources and apple TV and invidious shield, which is my, one of my favorite Android devices, PlayStation five Xbox yep. Series X. Yeah. A lot of gaming. He's even got a home theater PC hooked up to it for gaming. Right? So this would

 

Scott Wilkinson (00:28:38):

Be a cable, no satellite. Oh,

 

Leo Laporte (00:28:42):

Interesting.

 

Scott Wilkinson (00:28:43):

None. None of that stuff. He's he's a, in the, in that sense, he's a cord cutter. I don't think he even has a an over the air tuner. He's watching everything by streaming.

 

Leo Laporte (00:28:52):

I think all of us, cuz of COVID have created some sort of nest to watch yep. TV in most of us. Aren't gonna take over a garage and build it out. Yeah. Can you build a pretty good home theater in your living room?

 

Scott Wilkinson (00:29:11):

You can sure.

 

Leo Laporte (00:29:13):

He's skeptical.

 

Scott Wilkinson (00:29:14):

<Laugh> well, I guess be as good as this. You could somebody as good as a, as a dedicated, well, I

 

Leo Laporte (00:29:19):

Understand, but not everybody. In fact, I would say most people don't want to dedicate it. Can't do that whole room, do it and all that.

 

Scott Wilkinson (00:29:25):

So, so you can, you can do plenty in a living room. As long as you follow a few rules, like you don't want a bright light or a window, if you're gonna watch during the day directly across from the TV. And I would use a TV in a living room rather than a

 

Leo Laporte (00:29:40):

Projector. Yeah. You get blackout curtains, be more light, you

 

Scott Wilkinson (00:29:42):

Know, get some black outfit.

 

Leo Laporte (00:29:43):

Well, we wanna really enjoy TV. We go into our bedroom where we have an old led set up. Not for not, we actually have a little sitting area, so and an ice couch and we can completely darken it. And that's a great place to watch the old lead. We're only about five or six feet away. So it really is a cinema

 

Scott Wilkinson (00:29:59):

56, 50 inch or something

 

Leo Laporte (00:29:59):

70 inch. Yeah. So that we, oh yeah. It's like going to the movies and I make a hell hell of a good popcorn. So there

 

Scott Wilkinson (00:30:06):

You

 

Leo Laporte (00:30:06):

Go. Scott Wilkinson home theater geek. Watch his podcast, youtube.com/avs forum. All right, Scotty. I believe it's your turn

 

Scott Wilkinson (00:30:16):

All. Thank you. Cutting. Alrighty.

 

Leo Laporte (00:30:19):

Let's give you a clock,

 

Scott Wilkinson (00:30:21):

A clock. Thank you very much. Hello, everyone. So nice to see you. I see Mike man is in the chat room. Good to see you, Mike. We need to catch up sometime. It has been a while. What are you, what are you, what did you link here? Oh, the Epson the 50, 50 UB 4k pro. Yep, exactly right. Good projector. Really good projector. Yeah, for the money. I have a actually <laugh> after I was, after I left AVS forum, I did go to a CIA show right after that. And because I was not, you know, in the a, a member of AVS forum, well, I'm a member of AVS forum cuz I wasn't an employee. I wasn't the editor of AVS forum. I entered a drawing for a projector from Epson and I won <laugh> so I have this very nice Epson.

 

Scott Wilkinson (00:31:25):

It's the previous generation couple years ago now the 40, 40, 50, I think 40 10. I can't remember exactly. But I haven't had a place to put it in my new, in my new home, which will have a screening room. It won't be perfect. Like Leo said, it's, you know, most of us can't do what what Steve did there in that home theater of the month. I, I wish I could, but I am gonna have a screening room that I'm gonna paint dark MUN cell gray, and I'm gonna have at most sound in it. I'm probab actually I'm not probably not gonna use the projector in that room either. I'm probably going to get a new QD O led from Sony probably. That's the one that won the value electronics TV shootout. And so that's probably what I'm gonna end up doing.

 

Scott Wilkinson (00:32:23):

Web 73 50. No, I have not published my review of the new sound bar yet. Sorry about that. It has been taking me a little while, but I will get to it. I promise. So let's see here. Where am I? Oh, I to see the clock, I need to go to zoom there. It is about a minute 30 left. I did not see top gun Maverick FOMO. That's it's on my list. It, it's not, not high on my list. It's not that big a deal for me. Phoenix warp one. So for spousal acceptance factor aside, is black the best color for the walls of a viewing room or is it gray? It, it doesn't matter that much if it's dark gray or black black could get a little oppressive actually. So my last home theater, I did a MUN cell gray with 9% reflectivity, which is very, very dark. And I'll probably do the same thing in, in this new room. So

 

Scott Wilkinson (00:33:38):

I'm gonna jumbly somebody should give me that TV for free. Yeah. Well I don't think so. Hopefully they'll sell it to me at industry accommodations since I've been a longtime member of the industry. We'll see Keith five 12, have you got one of the new 42 inch LG flex TVs review? No, I don't. I don't know whether 42, I wouldn't normally review a TV as small as 42 inches. But I don't know what, what that is. Is it actually flexible? Mike man black is too reflective. Well, not if it's Matt, not if it's Matt finish is, or maybe I'm wrong on that.

 

Leo Laporte (00:34:27):

Leo LePort the tech guy, eighty eight eighty eight. Ask Leo the phone number back to the phones we go. And Barney is on the line from San Pedro, California. Hello, Barney.

 

Caller 2 (00:34:39):

Hello there. It's anyway, good to hear you. I've got a, I've got a, a, a, a disturbing kind of a thing come up. I got this alert on my email from Google and let's see, it said some of your saved passwords were found online. Some of you say that your Google account is not affected, but there's, they found a data breach from a site app you that I use. And I'm, I'm, I'm wondering how legitimate this whole.

 

Leo Laporte (00:35:13):

Yeah, it's a good question. So the first thing to do is not to do <laugh> I guess, is not to click any links in that email because boy, I cannot emphasis enough. And I, and I hear it happen so many times from smart people who are maybe a little too trusting or who have heard, you know, so many scare stories that they're, you know, very nervous. And so they get an email that purports to be from their bank, from Google, from Amazon, maybe they even get a text message. That's the newest attack factor, and it'll have a link in it. It says just to make sure, you know, everything's okay, click this link and check. So in an email, the first thing to do is to look at who the email came from. And if it's not from a legit Google address, forget about it.

 

Leo Laporte (00:36:07):

It's easy to spoof that though. So a really dedicated bad guy might make it look like it came from google.com. So you can, or Google's support. But I, but a lot of times you're just lazy <laugh> and it'll say, you know, it'll come from a Yahoo account or something like that. So that's check who the email came from. If there are no links to click in it, Google may send these things out from time to time, the best way to verify this. And, and I think it's worth doing it is to go to a website called have I been PED that's owned with a P P w N E D. Have I been ped.com? This is a completely safe, reliable site, but you make sure you go to the right one. Have I been P w N E d.com? And they N a D P w N like owned, but with a P the hackers, the silly boys, they, they, they didn't wanna say owned, I guess.

 

Leo Laporte (00:37:06):

So they say PED, have I been P w N E d.com? And you can enter in your email and see if that's been seen in a breach, but you, in this case wanna see if your password's been seen in a breach at the top of the page. There's a link that says passwords. Now, this is why it's really important. You go to this site, not any other site, because you're gonna give it your password. Now, in this case of this site, it's safe. They don't actually save the password and they explain how this works. But what they're gonna do is compare this hash of this password with passwords that have been leaked. And this is what Google's saying is it's not just that your email has been leaked or whatever, but we've seen in a breach. We've seen your password. Now, if you enter your password and it's, and clicked the button that says pound and it says, yeah, we've seen it in this breach.

 

Leo Laporte (00:38:00):

Is that cost for concern? It is. If you've reused that password and we say, well, I'm say I say this all the time. Do do never use a password more than once, never, ever for this very reason, because you might use this password on the, you know, a site you don't care about, right? You know, a weather, weather.com who cares if somebody hacks your weather.com account. But what if weather.com and I'm using this example, they have not been breached, but if they get breached and and that password was used also@yourbank.com, that's, that's a problem. So if you've been reusing passwords, this is AB and this is why Google might well have sent that email out. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> the, the, that's not an unusual thing. You can also go to my account dot, google.com/notifications, and, and see if that, you know, now you're at a Google site cuz it's google.com in there, right? Not Google dot.

 

Caller 2 (00:38:58):

Yeah. They're showing me that on, on here. That, that, that site you just mentioned. Okay.

 

Leo Laporte (00:39:02):

Appears be, be careful though. Cause a link in an email can say that and underneath it can be hidden a hacker site that looks just like that. So don't click the link in the email, never ever do that, type it into your browser by hand, I know it's a pain, but then look at the notifications and that'll tell you whether it was a real notification. Sounds like it was, they do send those out. Now you really want to make sure that those are those sites where you use that password, that you change it to a good, unique password. And this is where a password manager becomes pretty much a necessity. These days. We have to know so many passwords. You know, when you and I were kids, you knew your home phone number and your locker combination. And that was that. And you could keep 'em in your head.

 

Leo Laporte (00:39:45):

Now we have hundreds of them. So you need a password manager the way that works. And there are a lot of them. I'll give you some names in a second. But the way that works is it has a vault that, you know, the one master password to like your safe combination, you memorize that and it should be a good long strong one, but then it remembers everything else. Furthermore, it will generate a new password every time you need one that is long, strong. And, and unfortunately a good password is unmemorable. So you can't re you wouldn't wanna memorize all these passwords. Let the password manager do it for you. One password's very popular. Last pass is very well known, very popular. I use one that's open source. So it's free called bit warden@bitwarden.com. They're also a sponsor by show. So I like to mention them but I've used them since, before they were a, a sponsor.

 

Leo Laporte (00:40:39):

So those are three good ones. There are many of them. If you're using that, let it generate the passwords. They, these programs will also help you fix these ones because you can actually in, in the case of last pass and one password say go through all my passwords, find insecure passwords ones that have been seen in a breach, et cetera, and repair them. And it'll one by one, take you to those sites suggest new passwords, you know, the, the password change stuff. And so I think this is, you know, Google's does send these out, but so do bad guys. So the, the, the remedy always is to type stuff in by hand, never click a link, never click a link in text messages or emails, no matter how urgent they seem, how scary they seem, how real they seem. That's a recipe for disaster,

 

Caller 2 (00:41:32):

This particular instance here they're asking me that they say they want to, they want, want to make sure it's me. So what they're asking for, they want me to put in my, my to unlock my phone. That was what, that

 

Leo Laporte (00:41:51):

Was the that's. Okay. That's probably okay. Okay. I can, I can imagine an attack where they attack a site <laugh> and the site says, okay, now go to your phone and unlock it so that we can approve it. And you do that and you think that you're unlocking one site when in fact it's a bad guy unlocking. So I can, I can't imagine. I can certainly imagine an attack that uses that, but generally that is secure again, hand do it by hand is always better than clicking a link in an email.

 

Caller 2 (00:42:24):

All right. Well, thanks a lot. I'm

 

Leo Laporte (00:42:25):

Glad you called. It looks

 

Caller 2 (00:42:26):

Legit, but I just, I thought

 

Leo Laporte (00:42:28):

It will always look legit because it's very easy to copy that exact format and send you an email that looks exactly the same, except underlying that link to Google is hackers dot R you or right. You get it. Yeah. You don't see hackers dot R you see google.com/notifications, but it is. So that's why it's always risky to click a link. Links can be an email, can be obscured. What happens with text messages is they generally don't send the link out, right? They'll they'll use a link shortener. You've probably seen B I dot L Y there's a lot of link shorteners and tiny url.com, that kind of thing. And so they'll put that link in and you, it won't even be apparent what you're clicking very dangerous. The latest, the latest really is attacking via text messages because it's so immediate, you know, Amazon a message. It looks like it came from Amazon. We see some unauthorized account on your account on authorized activity on your account seems to be from over, you know, they'll really try to scare. You seems to be from Russia. We sure don't want this to happen. Click this link and log in to verify you click the link you log in it. Ain't it. Ain't Amazon. And you've just given the bad guys money. Leo port, the tech guy.

 

Leo Laporte (00:44:04):

Okay. Back to you, Scotty.

 

Scott Wilkinson (00:44:07):

Hey,

 

Leo Laporte (00:44:07):

Sorry about the abrupt termination.

 

Scott Wilkinson (00:44:09):

Oh, no, that's quite all right.

 

Leo Laporte (00:44:11):

Okay. I came running in with my coffee and I had to sit down and talk

 

Scott Wilkinson (00:44:15):

<Laugh>.

 

Leo Laporte (00:44:16):

Thank you for, thank you for doing this. I

 

Scott Wilkinson (00:44:18):

Appreciate it. Oh, sure. No problem at all. So hello everybody. I was just going to answer a question. Jaya's P I don't know if that's how you would say it. I was looking for a 48 to 50 inch TV and he could go up to a couple of grand for quality. So the obvious answer to me is an O led TV. And as it happens, O led, I'm gonna go look at O led TVs. And I don't want all these popups and I'm gonna go for, I'm gonna go for 55 max. I'm gonna go for 48 men.

 

Scott Wilkinson (00:45:13):

Oh, they won't let me go that narrow it that badly. Anyway. I would recommend the C2. You can't go higher than 50 inch. Fortunately. LG makes a 48 inch C2. I don't see it here. Hang on a second. It's gotta be here somewhere. Hmm. Well, let me, let me look elsewhere because that is the one I'm undoubtedly gonna recommend LG 48 C two. Let's see if I can find that. Yeah, here it is at best buy for 1300 bucks discount bandit and Walmart all are, are around $1,300. So yeah, that's absolutely what I would recommend. I'm looking at LG. Now, I'm gonna go to the 48 inch Evo O led TV, 1300 bucks. They don't make a 50. There aren't very many people who make 50 inch TVs. The, the one above 48 is 55. And most of the TVs in the 50 range or are actually 55.

 

Scott Wilkinson (00:46:31):

So I would definitely get the LG 48. I think Mike man has a 48 that he uses in color in his color work. It's a year or two older. It's not the C2, which is the most recent one. But anyway, that's, that's an easy, that's an easy answer. <Laugh> 48 inch LG C2, 1300 bucks. If you say you have a couple grand to go, that saves you $700. You get a really great sound bar for that. Mike man says he has the CX. Okay. Or the C 10, they used a <laugh>. They used a, a Roman numeral for, for that, I guess. Or is that the 20? I think it is. It's a 2020 model, I think. Cuz now we're up to the 20, 22 models and it's called the C2. So there you go.

 

Scott Wilkinson (00:47:35):

Oh, swamp rat says the Sony he bought was a 50 inch. Okay. So some people do make 50 inches web 67 97. Have I seen any of the new TCL TV's just released? No, I haven't. I would expect them to be good. I hope they are. Cuz I love touting them cuz they're really good valuer. They have been up till now. Joey G is, are there any wireless headphones that duplicate good surround headphones? There are a few that do it by themselves, but more to the point is getting a service that will send a surround signal for headphones. Sony does this, they have a system. I forget what it's called now. Real audio, something like the 3d real audio. I forget. Title has some, has quite a few titles title T I D a L has quite a few titles T I T L E S in this format and you can use it with any pair of headphones and it simulates around pretty well.

 

Scott Wilkinson (00:48:53):

I have reviewed it. You can go to tech hive.com and it's, you know, I reviewed it some years ago, so it's in there somewhere, but absolutely it, it can be done now. <Laugh> I have seen a couple of headphones that actually have multiple drivers in them that are intended to simulate, surround actually not simulate. It actually is surround. But those are quite expensive that I think they're more aimed at gamers. I don't remember the name of the company that made them but it's much easier to find something like, oh, there was one I reviewed recently. That was terrible. <Laugh> so I don't recommend it. JVC made a, a system called exo field and they had a special headphone special box processor box and it, it did not work at all. It was really, really quite bad. So I don't recommend that. But the Sony real audio, I think is that's what it's called. Oh, let me, let's see if I can look that up. Sony 3d, headphone audio, Sony 3d headphone audio. What is that called? 360 reality audio. That's what it's called. So it has to be the, the, the music file has to be encoded in that format, but like I say there are title has a bunch of titles. Here's something interesting. Amazon has Sony MDR, DS 6,500 digital wireless 3d surround headphones. Now that's kind of interesting MDR D and it's wireless too. DS six 50 digital wireless 3d surround headphones.

 

Leo Laporte (00:51:01):

Apple's AirPod max headphones use Apple's spatial audio, which is duly. Oh, do they? Okay. Yeah. Okay. And and they are on sale right now because I think apple might be announcing something new, but they're a hundred bucks off, which I, I bought 'em at five 50. I don't think they're worth five 50, but maybe at four 50 problem is this Bluetooth and I don't, you know? Yeah. You're not gonna get good audio quality from,

 

Scott Wilkinson (00:51:23):

You're not gonna get, certainly

 

Leo Laporte (00:51:24):

Do get the spatial audio. You get the surround.

 

Scott Wilkinson (00:51:26):

Okay. All right. And they don't

 

Leo Laporte (00:51:27):

Do it multiple drivers. That's a silly idea. You only have two years it's coming to the same location. It doesn't make any sense.

 

Scott Wilkinson (00:51:34):

Well, except that the, the, I, I tried these at a show once and they're huge. They're gigantic. They look like princess Leah's buns. You know what I mean?

 

Leo Laporte (00:51:43):

That's silly.

 

Scott Wilkinson (00:51:43):

It's silly. It was silly. I

 

Leo Laporte (00:51:44):

Think the way that S spatial works is basically like Boral used to work, right? Yeah. You got two ears. They're gonna use a synthesized sound stage to make you feel like you're

 

Scott Wilkinson (00:51:56):

Friends surrounding. Right. Right. They're they're, they're, they're using phase cues and delay cues to trick your ears into thinking that a sound is coming from one direction or another.

 

Leo Laporte (00:52:05):

There have been lots of, there was a, for a while, Adobe surround headphone standard,

 

Scott Wilkinson (00:52:10):

Correct. Doby, Doby headphone was what it

 

Leo Laporte (00:52:12):

Was called. Yeah. And I had some and they were great. And that worked great. Yeah. They were

 

Scott Wilkinson (00:52:15):

Great. Oh yeah. Worked great. I don't think it's in very many products.

 

Leo Laporte (00:52:18):

No, they went out. They killed it. Receivers. Yeah. They killed it.

 

Scott Wilkinson (00:52:22):

Yeah. It's annoying lake audio in Australia. Yeah.

 

Leo Laporte (00:52:26):

Pushing it. But

 

Scott Wilkinson (00:52:27):

They were, they were, but then it didn't go anywhere. So they killed it. Right. These Sony headphones on Amazon say currently unavailable. So yeah, that

 

Leo Laporte (00:52:36):

May be, it's like 3d video. <Laugh>

 

Scott Wilkinson (00:52:38):

Like 3d video. Yeah. <laugh> let's see here. FOMO. What's the second best TV technology out there? Well I think I think mini L E D L C D is probably the second best technology out there. I,

 

Leo Laporte (00:53:01):

Well, the best is O led. And then there's Q Q O led QD O led.

 

Scott Wilkinson (00:53:06):

Oh, QD O led is the best.

 

Leo Laporte (00:53:08):

That's the best

 

Scott Wilkinson (00:53:09):

O led now the second best <laugh>

 

Leo Laporte (00:53:12):

Now we're glad we cleared that up. Thank you, Scott.

 

Scott Wilkinson (00:53:14):

Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Have a great, okay. You bet. See you

 

Leo Laporte (00:53:16):

Next week. All right. Take care. Stay

 

Scott Wilkinson (00:53:17):

Cool.

 

Leo Laporte (00:53:19):

Well, Hey, Hey. Hey. How are you today? Leo Laport, the tech guy, time to talk computers, the internet, home theater, digital photography, smartphone, smart watches, all that jazz. 88 88. Ask Leo. He's got a chip in it. We'll talk about it. 8, 8, 8, 8 2 7 5 5 3 6. Toll free from anywhere in the us or Canada, outside that area. You can still calm, but don't have to use Skype out or something like that. 88 88, ask Leo website tech guy labs.com has links to all the things we talk about. So you don't have to write 'em down and also have audio and video from the show. And it transcript as well, takes a couple of days. Once that's all up there. It's kind of your ultimate resource for things you heard on the show episode, 1923, we've entered the jazz age.

 

Leo Laporte (00:54:12):

FTC has announced its reviewing Amazon's iRobot takeover. We talked about this a few weeks ago when Amazon announced they wanted to buy the robotic vacuum cleaner company, they make the Roomba. A lot of people concerned that Amazon <laugh> is just getting more and more information about your house, including now with a Roomba, a map of your house. I don't know, you know, traditional antitrust, isn't gonna work here. I think because there's is a competitive market. Roomba is not the only robotic vacuum cleaner out there. Everybody and their brother makes one, including Amazon. So I'm not sure they're gonna succeed in that. They're also investigating <laugh> Amazon really, really got, got a couple of shots across the bow this week. They're also investigating Amazon's one medical acquisition. They spent a lot more than that than the one point SI 7 billion. They spent on a iRobot that's 3.9 billion.

 

Leo Laporte (00:55:12):

The problem of course for Amazon is antitrust probes take a long time, like a year or two. So it slows down, you know, but I guess, you know, if you're a big company like Amazon, you know that you you've got lawyers, a stadium full of highly paid lawyers who can help you understand <laugh> what's gonna happen. I don't usually do breaches, but LA our last caller said, you got an email from Google saying your password's been seen in a breach that I don't usually talk about breaches, but there's, you know, every week there's a dozen or more break in. Samsung announced that late July 20, 22, somebody got into the us Samsung accounts. Many of us, I got an email, got emails from Samsung saying, you might wanna change your passwords. They didn't get, we don't think they got passwords, but they did get names, contact information, and product registration information. You might wanna change your passwords. They always a good idea. So that might be actually the breach notification that our last caller got 88 88 ask Leo marks on the line from grand rapids, Michigan. Hello, mark.

 

Caller 1 (00:56:19):

Hi Leo. How are you today?

 

Leo Laporte (00:56:21):

I am great. How are you?

 

Caller 1 (00:56:23):

Very well, thank you, sir. Hey, I have a, a, another tale of woe with a cell phone, but just a quick question on those breaches.

 

Leo Laporte (00:56:32):

This is the tale of woe show. So you came in the right place. Sure. What about those breaches?

 

Caller 1 (00:56:40):

Aren't those passwords encrypted where they're stored.

 

Leo Laporte (00:56:42):

Yeah, so nowadays most breaches do not include things like passwords in this case, maybe birthdays. But what you really wanna keep secret is social security number passwords. And then if they get your social things like birth dates and addresses, cuz those can be used for our identity theft passwords of course could be used to hack you're right. A good company will encrypt the passwords and salt them. That's what you're looking for, encrypted and salted. And the, you know, the reason is if, even if you get a bunch of encrypted passwords, if you were able to decrypt that maybe, you know, and you can use brute force on something that you've downloaded, maybe you could break into it, but if it's salted there's no, it can't be reversed. The ideal system and most good companies do this. They don't have your password. When you set up a password, they process it by hashing it and the hash gives them a number. That's not the password, but when you then go back to the site and enter the password, it's hashed again. And if the hashes match, then it's a match. So that way they don't even have your password, which is what you prefer and well run. Well secured companies, absolutely salted and hashed. You're safe. And it's easy to remember cause it's a good breakfast, a little, little hash with some salt, but

 

Caller 1 (00:58:08):

<Laugh>

 

Leo Laporte (00:58:08):

Many companies ha at least until recently have had poor security practices in there have been many breaches and years gone by where the passwords were not salted and hashed. And if that's the case, there is a risk in this case, Samsung says that you, they didn't even get passwords. So this is why I don't report on these anymore. There was a TWiTtter breach recently. There's I mean, there were in a lot of these breaches, but any company that's got decent security is not gonna have a password vault that has your password in plain text. That's just a, that

 

Caller 1 (00:58:39):

Makes sense. Yeah,

 

Leo Laporte (00:58:40):

Yeah. Yeah.

 

Caller 1 (00:58:41):

Well now it's to my tail of will. Mm-Hmm

 

Leo Laporte (00:58:44):

<Affirmative>

 

Caller 1 (00:58:45):

We have a cell phone in our house, one of them and on this cell phone, a link and a comment on a Facebook post was clicked. And now there's lots of virus notifications coming up with click here to clean that kind of stuff. So what I normally do in these situations is, is I just factory reset the phone just to make sure it's completely clean.

 

Leo Laporte (00:59:12):

Okay. That would work.

 

Caller 1 (00:59:15):

And then my own question is can I save the text messages from being deleted? Yeah,

 

Leo Laporte (00:59:23):

Sure. You can Android or iOS. You said Android, right?

 

Caller 1 (00:59:27):

Yes. Android. Yep.

 

Leo Laporte (00:59:28):

It's actually pretty easy with Android because you can connect it up to a computer and you should be able to see it as a hard drive. The phone itself will pop up a message thing. Do you want me to be a phone or do you want me to be a hard drive? Sometimes they'll say MTP, which is the phone pick not phone camera. Sorry. Do you want me to be a camera or a hard drive? If it says MTP that's camera, don't say that it usually say USB or USB mass storage or something like that. Click that. Yeah. And then it'll show up as a drive on your, on your desktop and windows and you can just copy them over. There are also many, many programs in the play store that will let you back up text messages. So that's easy to do. Okay. You probably can get rid of this without doing a complete reset, but it it's, maybe it's easier just to do a reset and it's certainly more prudent. Yeah,

 

Caller 1 (01:00:29):

I agree with that a hundred percent. Yeah,

 

Leo Laporte (01:00:31):

Go Google says they will back up your text messages. If you're using Android messages, I presume you are which message. This is the part of the problem with Android is <laugh> you can, there's a whole lot of message programs you could use. You can use WhatsApp. If you have a Samsung, you could be using Samsung messages. If you Google, it could be Google messages whose messages are program. Are you using? Do you know? Nobody knows.

 

Caller 1 (01:00:52):

I'm

 

Leo Laporte (01:00:53):

Looking at you're not alone. Nobody knows.

 

Caller 1 (01:00:56):

Yeah. It just popped up on the phone. Exactly.

 

Leo Laporte (01:00:58):

You just use whatever. What kind of phone is it? A Samsung?

 

Caller 1 (01:01:02):

Yeah, a galaxy, a 42.

 

Leo Laporte (01:01:04):

So probably using Samsung messages. So Samsung will back them up in the Samsung app. Samsung further muddied the waters cuz in the most recent Samsung phones use Google's and Android messages instead of Samsung's by default, but that old, a older, a 40, a, a phone will a series phone will probably use Samsung messages. So you can, I think Samsung with their backup will back up the messages. Certainly Google will with a Google messaging app. Let me just check. Okay. Backing up Samsung. Yeah, I think it's in the Samsung cloud. Yeah. Messages will go up to the Samsung cloud. What's nice is when you do, if you have that, when you do a full reset, it should restore from that cloud. So make sure in the backup in settings, you're, you've turned on your Samsung account and you're backing up by the way, Samsung just got a breach. So change your <laugh> change your password. <Laugh> oh boy. <Laugh> there, there are, if you even just Google, as I just did backup Samsung messages, you'll see lots of ways to do that. The galaxy phones, the a iPhones, all support backup through Samsung's own cloud just as the Google phones do that. But you have to know what's messaging program you're using. And no one knows it's not even obvious because Samsung calls theirs messages as does Google. Yeah. <Laugh> so it's almost impossible to tell yeah, just

 

Caller 1 (01:02:29):

Will the phone and it, you

 

Leo Laporte (01:02:31):

Can't tell you can't tell you can, you know what? You can tell the color of the icon, but I, for the life of me, I, I have a Samsung and a Google phone here. I could probably look, but it's, you know, you'll figure it out. <Laugh> yeah. Mark. I think we can get that. You could figure it out. Hey mark. A pleasure. Thank you for calling. I appreciate it. 88 88, ask Leo, Leo Laport, the tech guy. Somebody said if it's a day with a Y in it, someone got hacked. Yeah. There's been a every day. There's a breach every day. That's why you need a password manager, right? Leo Laport, the tech guy. All right, let me go turn

 

Leo Laporte (01:03:20):

That thing. ONOO ha ha. Where's the on, off button. Is that it? Is that it on? Yes, it is the on, off button. The on, off button, the on, off button.

 

Leo Laporte (01:04:01):

Panny plasma's graveyard tuba. I don't even know what you're talking about. Robo form. Yeah, I remember them. They're kind of a little old school. Huh? Better than nothing was probably the first password manager I used as well before AI. I'd like looking through robo form's website for more information about how they do it. They use PB KDF to, which is hashed with assault. If you're using robo form, make sure that they're doing many, many iterations of PB. K D F two, like thousands. Yeah. Those looks like it's comparable to everybody else. Aes 2 56. They don't store the master password. They have two F a, they use PBK DF two, which is really important. That's that salting and hashing we were talking about. Yeah, it looks very modern. So absolutely go with robo form. If you want, see if they've got any breaches, it's very cheap, which is nice. And they have a free tier. No, I haven't watched it yet. Mt. Pockets. I, I got your recommendation. I saw it the other night. We're in the middle of a bunch of stuff, including the Lord of the rings and the house of the dragon. Leo Laport, the head banging tech guy, 88 88. Ask Leo N on the line from Los Angeles. Hello, Ned.

 

Caller 3 (01:06:40):

Hi. How you doing Leo?

 

Leo Laporte (01:06:41):

I'm great. How are you, sir? Question?

 

Caller 3 (01:06:43):

Yes. Oh, I don't know. I don't know. I'll find out after you tell me what to do. Okay. Okay. My work computer is being updated. So they said if you want it, you could take it. Oh, nice, great, nice. Yeah. Which is really nice of them. Yeah. Trouble is. I don't remember the password that I put in it <laugh> so

 

Leo Laporte (01:07:06):

Well, how were you using it?

 

Caller 3 (01:07:09):

I was using it, but I had to change my password cuz we had to change it in.

 

Leo Laporte (01:07:13):

Oh, they're saying if you wanna take it home, you needed. Correct. You know, honestly, if you wanna take it home, the best thing to do, wipe it out anyway and start fresh. 

 

Caller 3 (01:07:23):

That, that is what I thought about that what

 

Leo Laporte (01:07:26):

I'm going and I'll tell you why, even if you didn't forget your password, you wanna do this because the work probably has put a variety of tools on there to make it easier for it to manage it. Perhaps they have tools on it that spy on you. You know, that's not at all unusual for employ employ employment. You know, works, works places of work, places of employee, your bus to put stuff on there to make sure you're working. Things like that. You just don't want that on there. And the good news is, is it what version of windows does that computer use?

 

Caller 3 (01:07:58):

Okay. it started with windows 10. Good. And they said, okay, no problem. Type it in. We'll clear it out. I said, fine. I couldn't remember the

 

Leo Laporte (01:08:09):

Password you don't need to. You can just start over, wipe it off.

 

Caller 3 (01:08:13):

So what they said was, okay, no problem. We'll do a factory reseller. Yeah. Which they did good. And it brought it to windows seven.

 

Leo Laporte (01:08:22):

That's how old it is. But good news. Microsoft remembers that you had windows 10 on it.

 

Caller 3 (01:08:29):

So exactly

 

Leo Laporte (01:08:29):

You can go download. There is a tool. Microsoft offers called the media creation tool. Make sure you get it from microsoft.com. Not anywhere else. Not anywhere else. Yep. You did. You download it. You put on USB key. You boot to it. You install windows and you can install 10 or 11. It doesn't matter because you have a license for 10, just by virtue of it being installed on there and authorized. You can continue to use 10 or 11.

 

Caller 3 (01:08:56):

I tried doing that, but I got an error message. Oh,

 

Leo Laporte (01:08:59):

What it say?

 

Caller 3 (01:09:01):

Zero X 8 0 0 7 2 F eight F

 

Leo Laporte (01:09:08):

I'm. I'm gonna stop you. Those numbers are not worth anything for anybody. And you know, <laugh> does it? <Laugh> that's what, what happened when, at what point did you get that error?

 

Caller 3 (01:09:21):

The minute I hit the video creation tool.

 

Leo Laporte (01:09:24):

Oh, okay. So it's just, it just didn't get created properly or it's a bad download or something went wrong. So try again. Okay. That's all

 

Caller 3 (01:09:33):

All get,

 

Leo Laporte (01:09:34):

Get a new copy. Get a new copy of it. Oh look, was it? Oh. Oh look, scooter X you're so good. Was it error code? Zero X 8 0 0 7 2 F eight F dash zero X two. Oh oh oh, oh, oh four FB. Anyway, I can go on and on and on. I think it was that one. Let's see what? Let's see what scooter X must have Googled it. As you were saying it <laugh> 

 

Caller 3 (01:10:01):

Three different,

 

Leo Laporte (01:10:02):

Some servers different. No longer. Oh, it's the old TLS one point. Oh, but windows still. So first run the easy fix. Okay. We're gonna, this is crazy. This is a very weird thing, but we, but, but believe it or not, there is a solution to this. Okay. Which is, which is interesting. So for some reason, your computer is trying to use an old security protocol to talk to the server,

 

Caller 3 (01:10:37):

Right?

 

Leo Laporte (01:10:38):

And that's that error message. I

 

Caller 3 (01:10:42):

Tried doing the, where you think the zero making into a one and then you restart. And it's the same error message.

 

Leo Laporte (01:10:50):

I think what you need to do. And I guess you haven't done this. You're still booting from the hard drive. You need to boot up to that USB key that you created.

 

Caller 3 (01:11:02):

Okay.

 

Leo Laporte (01:11:02):

So when you boot from the hard drive, you're booting that old window seven, which does have an effect by default uses an outdated security pro protocol TLS one. So, so don't boot from the hard drive. The USB key has a modern operating system on it that will have, will support TLS 1.2. And so it should work just fine if you do it booting from the USB key.

 

Caller 3 (01:11:29):

All right. So try to leave it from there.

 

Leo Laporte (01:11:31):

Yeah. Do you know how to boot to USB on your machine?

 

Caller 3 (01:11:35):

No. I've never tried

 

Leo Laporte (01:11:36):

It. It depends on who made the machine, but it it's very, you know, you've done this before, similar to going into the system settings. When you turn the machine all the way off and then you turn it on, you're gonna tap a key. Now the problem is it could be escape. It could be delete very commonly it's F 12. That's the first one. I'd try function. Q 12 or function. Key 11. Sometimes it's F seven. Sometimes it's F two, but there is, there are two menus you can go to by doing this one is the system settings. What we used to call the bios settings. But what, there's another one that says boot order that will tell it to boot to the, and then you can see the USB key and you say, yeah, boot to that, not to the hard drive. And then it'll start up the windows installer. That's what's on that USB key. And then from then on no more problems.

 

Caller 3 (01:12:23):

All right. I will try to

 

Leo Laporte (01:12:24):

Who makes the machine just so I, maybe I can get you the answer.

 

Caller 3 (01:12:29):

HP,

 

Leo Laporte (01:12:30):

HP, try escape.

 

Caller 3 (01:12:33):

Okay.

 

Leo Laporte (01:12:34):

Escape. So you, you shut the machine down and then you start it up and you tap that escape key <laugh> until it goes into the boot menu. Now, if it won't see the USB key, you will then have to go into the HP settings and turn on boot from USB. Sometimes that's turned off. All right. So that's, this is the trick. And that's why most people will just boot from the hard drive because you know, that's gonna boot, but the best way to install windows, a fresh version of windows is to boot to that USB drive that the media creation tool made. That'll boot up the install, our fresh, everything will work just fine.

 

Caller 3 (01:13:12):

Okay. I will try that. All

 

Leo Laporte (01:13:14):

Right, there you go. Another, another satisfied customer.

 

Caller 3 (01:13:19):

Yes, it is a long time listener.

 

Leo Laporte (01:13:22):

Hey, bless you. Ned have fun. Bye-Bye that's nice of them to give you the old computer. And they did, you know, they did exactly the right thing, which is they wiped it and installed. You know, they went back to factory default, then it's on you. Now it's a windows seven machine, which you don't want to use. Cuz that's insecure. That that means it was a pretty old machine. That's why they're giving it to you. But the good news is since they had already upgraded to windows, 10, Microsoft keeps track of machines that have re been upgraded to windows 10. They call it an entitlement. There's no, no serial number anymore. They just say, oh, I know this machine, we've got a database, I guess, of a billion and a half machines that have been upgraded to windows 10. Wow. And in that database they go, oh yeah, it's Ned's machine. Yeah. It was users and at work and they, the way they do that, they they make you know, a database of the serial numbers for the hardware and the Nick and all that stuff. They keep track all that and say, yes, that machine he's had windows 10. He's okay. He's good. Good to go.

 

Leo Laporte (01:14:29):

Is that not the case for windows 10 pro or that does it mean he has to upgrade to windows 10 pro so some, yeah. You know, that's a good point. He may have an enterprise installed 10. I didn't even think of that. Eh, that's a good point, Chumley. Well I'm glad we didn't. <Laugh> didn't go too deep down that rabbit hole.

 

Leo Laporte (01:15:05):

Johnny jet. Hey Leo, how are you? I'm good. How are you? Good. I dodged a bullet. I was exposed on Sunday. Oh. Hanging out with a guy had COVID drove to the restaurant, had dinner, drove back. He texted me the next day. I'm sick. So I've been I've been quarantining and TA and, and testing every day and I never got it. And I think it's cuz I got it a month ago and it's I still have some good antibodies I guess. And this is a time for you to be traveling. Yeah. Well this is a time for me to wear my ma my <laugh> my, my real, my vein mask, which I have been doing. And I, you know what happened? I got loose. I got relaxed. And so I'm not gonna, I'm gonna, you know, I'm gonna pretend it's 1999. No 20.

 

Leo Laporte (01:15:57):

I told you, man, we've been so careful. And then yeah, we sent Jack to, to nurse or not nurse school. Preschool. Sorry kindergarten. Yeah. The kids are going to school now. That's you're at a law, not one kids wearing a mass, not one teacher. No, no, you're gonna get it. And I'm like, man, man, man, for this new this new vaccine. Yeah. you said that one airline refused entry to a guy wearing a hard mask like that. Yes. I can't remember which one, but I think it must, I think it might have been, I think it was American. They probably learned by now though, right? This, this wasn't that long ago. This is a superior mask to to, this is only a two months ago. This is and 99.7. Listen. It all depends on the agents, the flight attendants. It all depends on the I've never seen anything like that before that can't be my friends.

 

Leo Laporte (01:16:49):

I have friends who are like, there's just two people wearing a mask on the plane. I, but others, depending on where they're going, they say 50%. Yeah. So, well I'll, I'll bring a paper if, I mean, we're not going anywhere till April now, but who knows what April bring let's hold this mess will be over. No, I've been saying that for two and a half years. Yeah. But it, I mean, you can't go on forever. Is that what you're thinking? Yeah. And you're wrong. <Laugh> I, and I absolutely can. Well, since I got this here and we're not on the air, you gotta try this sometime. I found it at a I think it was the Carlsbad farmer's market and I pay for it. They don't give me a deal or anything like that. Green. It's great. You know, this green juice fed.

 

Leo Laporte (01:17:33):

So we have a new I think they're gonna be a sponsor. I don't know. But we have a Lisa brought home some green juice. I've been drinking. It's good. It's a one that you add to your other drinks. Well, they only ship to within California. Oh well that's cuz that's and if you do over $90, it's free shipping. So I, I book like I get nine bottles. What's it called? A hundred green drink. It's called the Morningstar ranch. Oh. And they have either grapefruit orange. Have you visited the ranch or is it just no, but I've met 'em at the farmer market. It's it's a, it's a big industrial building in Receda Morningstar ranch. No, I don't think so drink, but I'm not sure if I'm gaining weight from this because I sudden I started gaining weight. I was like, well, it's a, if it's got fruit juice and it's got calories. Yeah. This might be a problem, but it taste so good. It is a real organic farm nestled in the Hills of valley center, California. It's really good. The morning, especially the, I love the lemon one. It's got grapefruit, organic blue agave, nectar. That's sugar. For those who don't know, that would be actually it's high fr it's fructose. That will make you fat. That's what that was. Must. Is it pretty sweet? Oh yeah. But it's so good. Yeah. You're it's a soda pop damn. <Laugh> all right, here we go.

 

Leo Laporte (01:19:02):

What'd you say John? You said, listen, you said you don't want me singing. <Laugh> he's been everywhere. I travel in guru. Lets us travel better with high tech, Mr. Johnny jet, his website, Johnny jet.com. He's got great newsletters there. You could search for travel fairs there. It's all free. He's also on Instagram and TWiTtter at Johnny jet. Well worth following on TWiTtter, check his lists cuz he has a lot of lists on TWiTtter. Hey, I'm now on MSN. Just this week. MSN, the Microsoft news service. Yep. So they're now taking my articles. So when I click in the lower right of my windows 11 and I get those MSN news feeds, I'm gonna get a travel feed. You might so please follow me there. I will. I will. Yeah. Congratulations. It's so far. It's great. Yeah. It's driving traffic. It's a real nice. Yeah. I'm happy.

 

Leo Laporte (01:19:52):

I bet it's traffic. That traffic. Yeah. You can't get away from it on windows 11. It's like, well, when I turn on my computer, I I've had MSN as my homepage for a while. Oh. And so finally got a nice a deal with them. So good news. So my friend also good news, by the way, the D O T as promised they rolled out their dashboard this week, D O Thursday dashboard. What is that? When it's at home? You know, I just wrote a post. That's why I was a little bit late. Log it on here and it's not published yet, but so they, and like layman's terms, they're showing the consumers what they're owed, if there's a controllable problem, or there's not, if there's weather and there's a graph. Let me see if I can. I just, I just uploaded it all.

 

Leo Laporte (01:20:39):

I, I just Googled it and found it. It's pretty quick. So it's real basic. Yeah. But it's good to have cuz it's your legal rights, right? Yeah. Well, first of all, your legal right is if a, if an airline cancels or delays your flight significantly, they owe you a full refund in cash. No questions asked, even if it's bad weather, they'll try and they might try and give you a voucher. This tells you what airlines are going above and beyond in doing right beyond legally required to well that's nice. Correct. So go, go on the airline with all the green checks is the rule. Yeah. The ones with the, the one, the furry with the worst. Well allegiance number one, which is not surprising. Also spirit and frontier. Frontier's not so hot. <Laugh> no, but jet blues is good. Green all the way.

 

Leo Laporte (01:21:25):

American green, all the way, Delta green, all the way. And United green, all the, all the way you still got, you still have to fight 'em and get it out of them. But they're not gonna, they're not gonna tell you this. So, but is labor day weekend up big? I mean, this is labor day weekend. Is it a big travel weekend? Big, big time because people get a day off. Not as, not as busy as 4th of July, but it's close. So it's gonna start slowing down. I'm looking at the numbers right now. So yesterday 2.1 million people went through a three years ago. Same thing, 2.1. And it, but on Thursday it was 2.3 million people went through and then 2019, it was 2.1. So, so we're actually ahead of it. We're ahead of pre COVID. And just imagine if the airlines didn't cut their service. I mean, so many of them had to cut about 15% of their flights cuz they don't have the staff.

 

Leo Laporte (01:22:16):

Yeah. That's that's weird. So it would be even higher. Yeah. The good news is at least in Los Angeles in your area it, it looks like COVID is way down. So maybe it's maybe it's safe. Knock on wood. Maybe not sometimes. Yeah. Don't say it loud. It's in kindergarten season. Oh yeah. The school school season, the fall we call it the fall COVID season. Yeah. Yeah. Well also the good news is the fair are dropping. So, you know, start pricing out flights for a week or two from now and you can find a really good deal. You could fly to Maui actually this weekend for, I think it was $300 round trip, three 50 round trip, you know, it's funny Lisa and I really want to go to Hawaii, but, but, well she's a little nervous about getting on a plane, cuz that seems to be a, a, I know you say no, but I keep hearing people getting sick because of a right after air trip.

 

Leo Laporte (01:23:05):

I'm not, I'm not saying no. If the persons sitting next to you has COVID you're gonna get it. Yeah. Most likely. And no one knows anymore because nobody cares anymore. Cuz you know, we're done. Right. But it's cooked. I, I just try and book the bulkhead or I try and use my miles to get upgraded and have less people around me. But you know, I've talked about fair alerts last week. I had a flight on hold from Maui to LA. It was, I think it was $125 each. It just dropped and I just, I booked it last night. So always set a fair alert and also set the fair alert for after you booked to see if that price goes down, cuz then you can get a refund or at least a, a credit. So are the problems that airlines have been having with rescheduling or canceling flights over are is, or is that still a problem?

 

Leo Laporte (01:23:50):

No, it's still a problem, but it's gonna be a lot less chaotic. Okay. Since there's not so many people traveling, but it was pretty bad for a while. Well, it was, this is definitely been the worst summer ever. Yeah. And they're talking that it could be the same for Thanksgiving and Christmas. If there's bad weather, it's definitely going, going to be. But if there's not, I think we'll be okay. But you know, when you're away on vacation, I mentioned a really cool app and I never told you about it. Well tell me about it. Don't keep it secret flighty. So the website's flighty app.com. Yeah. So they give you the first, your first flight for free and then it's 5 99 per month or $50 a year. Oh boy. It better be good. That's a lot of money. It is. So if you're, if you're not a freaking traveler, you don't want it.

 

Leo Laporte (01:24:32):

But if you are, you definitely want it because it will tell you everything in advance. They tell you when the flight, the PA, when the flight path is loaded, if the tail number changed, if your aircraft changed, let's say went from an a 3 21 to an, a three 19, then you know that, you know, they call there's gonna be less planes, less on a plane, like raid flight tracking, like travel like a pro. You get the weather, you get everything. I like that. This is what the pilots and flight attendants are using this. Oh really? Okay. Definitely. Actually they were in beta with them. So but I really like it. And they give, they give you everything. They tell you when the gate is a sign, they tell you when the pushback is. And so it's great for tracking your friends' flights too.

 

Leo Laporte (01:25:14):

If you're picking people up often. So you get, you can get it for free for a time. I think it's just flight flight. Okay. So maybe save it for that, that special flight. <Laugh> definitely <laugh> okay. All right. I'm willing to try. I know you're into all these little apps and this I to, I think you way I like it. So is there a free, I know it's not gonna be as good as this, but is there a free flight tracker? I mean all the airlines offer it. Yeah. So always sign up for their alerts. I, I do pay for trip it and TripIt gives me alerts. Me too. Trippi does a good job too. They just don't give you as much information. Yeah. And I don't know if you need all this information unless you're flying a lot. Right, right. So it's it's but I do.

 

Leo Laporte (01:25:58):

I like to know when my flight is changed. I also look let's, let's say I'm flying American airlines in their app. They'll tell you where your plane's coming from. I like to know that that also helps with these cancellations as well with weathers. So they're talking about how let's say you're flying LA to JFK, but the weather's perfect in both places. But if your plane's coming from San Francisco and there's fog there and delayed, that's actually considered a weather delay. Ah, even though you're not flying between San Francisco and LA you from LA to New York. So it's a little gray area. This is, this is really cool. It has the equipment, the tail number, how old the plane is. <Laugh> wow. Definitely. And these times you think are more accurate. Well, I could tell you they're more accurate than the times they tell you at the airport.

 

Leo Laporte (01:26:49):

Oh, we're having a little trouble here. Just to getting that the, the door unstuck. So give us an extra 15 minutes to board and three hours later. Yeah. Well we we, we, our flight crew is arriving from Dallas in another hour and yeah. It's just like, they drive you crazy. Well, the passengers are usually no more than the gate agents in terms of this. Cuz they don't. Wow. You know, they don't subscribe to these things. Yeah. So they're just getting the information from me. That's good. Say anybody have flighty, anybody? I mean anybody it's not just flighty trip it or anything. Even their own. I mean, you know how many times I've told the gate agents, Hey, our flight is delayed and they're like, no, it's not. I'm like, look and then they type a few things're oh my God. You're right.

 

Leo Laporte (01:27:24):

No, maybe they should give every gate agent a flighty. And then, well they should, they should give a gate agent, another agent to help them as they're overworked. That's right. They're busy trying to get you to check your bag and things like that. They got stuff to do, get to on and things like that. Mr. Jet, where are you going next? I'm going to take my kid to school. <Laugh> wear a mask. Yeah. In fact I have a whole body suit you can wear, you might, might, might want that or actually better yet. Put the kid in the suit, you know, just make sure you keep the oxygen flowing and and then come August next year. You could take him out of it. Yeah. Johnny, we are traveling. I'm just staying away from the planes right now, at least for this week. Smart man. Yeah. I think I'm gonna do road trips. I think that's not so bad. Johnny jet, Johnny jet.com. Get his newsletters. Follow him on TWiTtter and Instagram. Join him every week right here. Safe travels. John. Thank you.

 

Leo Laporte (01:28:35):

Ah, good job. Thank you. Yeah. I like flighty. I like this. You know, if I play Wordle, I don't world the world, the world. World goal. Yeah. You know, I have not played that in a while. You know why I play is qual. You ever play qual? No, what's qual. So it's like wor Wordle, but it's four puzzles at once, but you have nine tries and you gotta get all four and it's, I think it's a much better game than Wordle. Just wait for New York times to buy it. So check out portal qual and you know, everybody's thinking, oh, if I come up with a next great word game, the New York times will buy me. Oh. And they, the New York times got a deal on Wordle. Do you know? It was like, they said it was in the six figure. They said it was either one or two or 3 million, but their numbers have gone up. Oh yeah. It's been very time. Yeah. Washington post is kicking themselves. Q U a R D L E Q U O R D L E.

 

Leo Laporte (01:29:31):

Put your skills, four words at once. But you put, you put the same word in. So let's say you were you the word? Do the word place. P L a Ys. Oh my gosh. It's gonna show up on all four puzzles. It complicated. It is at first. But once you get it, it's easy. It's like snowboarding. <Laugh> I mean the first day is rough. So use the same word to start all four. Okay. And then the same thing. Oh, look at this for all four. Oh my golly. And, but what so, okay, so I'm getting more clues, but there's more words to solve and all four words are different, right? Yeah. They're all different. Oh, that's they're all different stinks. And how are you supposed to win? If you have to edit, enter the same word in all of them. You got strategy. I think it's why they give you a two or three more tries and world three more tries.

 

Leo Laporte (01:30:20):

You're you're gonna love it. Trust me. Just give it two days. <Laugh> the first day I was like what? My wife turned me onto it. All right. I'm doing, I'm doing another one. All right. Let's see what I got. Oh, I got, oh, this is tough. This is really tough. So I know it is it's OHS there, but I don't understand how you're gonna get the last word. This is gonna be different. I'll send you one of my, how do you get the last word? Cause how do you enter a different word in all four of them? Just keep, I use, try to use as many letters as you can. Yeah, no, I understand that. But how do you, when, okay. Say, so it's a four different words, right? Yes. Four different words. So how do you enter the mine tries? No, but when do you enter?

 

Leo Laporte (01:31:01):

The, every word I enter is the same. So how do you enter different winning words? Well, because when let's, let's say that bottom, the fourth one over there and let's see what that is. I can't figure it out yet. Let's say, you know what it is, you just type in, let's say it's donut. It's not, but let's say it's donut. Okay. So you would type in donut and then that puzzle's gonna be Xed out. And so then you work on the other three. Oh, oh that's what did that make sense? Yes. So you have to get at least one in six and then look at the keyboard. The keyboard shows you, you, I see with that. Which puzzles have, which words or letters? This is terrible. This is awful. No, you're this is you. You're gonna love it.

 

Leo Laporte (01:31:43):

All right, John, if you like Wordle, you're gonna love Cordle. I'm gonna make Lisas solve it. <Laugh> let me know how it goes. All right. Thank you. Have a good one. Have a good one. Take care. See you. Are you playing music that I'm gonna be hearing Wednesday? Is that what you're doing? Leo Laport. The tech guy. Oh, 88 88. Ask Leo. See, I don't. So Joan jet, I kind of know poison, no idea. Motley crew. I know one song Def Leppard. I know one song. This is gonna be so keep, I have to do an education lady. Laura, our, our musical director. She's teaching me the music I will be hearing on Wednesday. <Laugh> you know, I don't know if you've ever noticed this, but in shops for ladies' clothing where, when the women are shopping, the husbands come along, of course somebody's gotta hold your purse while you're trying clothes on.

 

Leo Laporte (01:32:47):

Those shops tend to have a chair, a chair for the miserable man, the guy who has been dragged along on this shopping excursion and has to <laugh> has to sit there. There's a wonderful Instagram account called miserable men that features pictures of guys who are along for the ride. During shopping, shopping expeditions, they're sitting in the chair, the man's chair, the husband bench <laugh> and it's just not just not happy about it. Just not, not enjoying it. <Laugh> one cotton pick and bit. The only reason I mention this is because I've been spending some time in this chair because we have to pick out outfits for <laugh> for the concert on Wednesday. <Laugh> if you're, if you have not followed on Instagram, miserable underscore men, <laugh> you you're miss you're missing out long suffering, shopping spouses. 88, 88 ask Leo. Michael is on the line from long beach, California. Hi, Michael. Hello, Michael. Oh, I gotta push this button. Go ahead. You're on now. Thank you. Girls, girls, girls,

 

Caller 4 (01:34:18):

Girls, girls, girls, Atlanta line up

 

Leo Laporte (01:34:21):

Sing. He's get used to it. Yeah. Get used to it. Apparently. we are sitting close enough that we are in range of Tommy Lee's camera. I'm

 

Caller 4 (01:34:31):

Hopefully you'll be able to pick up MCs if he falls off the dying for about 30 years. Oh

 

Leo Laporte (01:34:36):

Lord. Thank

 

Caller 4 (01:34:37):

God he alive.

 

Leo Laporte (01:34:38):

Oh, you know, it's it's amazing. These guys are still around.

 

Caller 4 (01:34:41):

Oh, especially Mars. They kept saying, oh, Mars is not, well, you got this chronic condition apparently,

 

Leo Laporte (01:34:46):

But they prop 'em up. Bring em out, I guess.

 

Caller 4 (01:34:49):

Yeah.

 

Leo Laporte (01:34:49):

Well I'm, I'm looking forward to it. It'll be, it's always interesting. Go see these, these concerts. What can I do for you, Michael?

 

Caller 4 (01:34:55):

Yeah. So I've got a quick recommend a quick recommendation on something that D D did. Okay. First of all, I wanted to say, you know, it's very interesting ever since you, you, I think you went in your Alaska cruise and Micah filled in for a couple weeks. Right? Ever since then, man. You like, I grew up in the eighties in Chicago and I don't remember Larry Lujack. Oh yeah. His sidekick little snot nose, Tommy.

 

Leo Laporte (01:35:20):

I don't remember Tommy, but I, Larry Lujack is a legendary Chicago DJ. You bet.

 

Caller 4 (01:35:26):

Oh yeah. He had little Tommy who was not to diminish Michael by name, but like just, Hey, they would do animal stories and you know, apparently a koala peed on the former vice president. Jimmy Carter <laugh> oh, is he gonna be all right? Is that kinda,

 

Leo Laporte (01:35:41):

Oh Lord.

 

Caller 4 (01:35:43):

But the back and forth has been so good. I feel like he's been energized.

 

Leo Laporte (01:35:47):

Oh, oh, with me and Micah. Yes. Well, you know, it takes a while for that kind of relationship to, to, to mature. And the more time I spend with him, Micah, we've always, we've always enjoyed each other and he's a lot younger than I am. And I thought it'd be nice to have a younger voice on this show, but I think he it's matured quite a bit. And 

 

Caller 4 (01:36:05):

You guys were going through like a sound like looking for like morning zoo song.

 

Leo Laporte (01:36:08):

Sound, sound effect. Yeah. All we need now is a female newscaster, maybe Kim, and can do that. And then, and then we'll have the morning, we'll have the morning zoo tech show. I will bring you your okay. Good.

 

Caller 4 (01:36:19):

The PCH is blocked up as usual.

 

Leo Laporte (01:36:23):

<Laugh> I'm out here on the Pacific O highway and nothing's moving uncle LA, the great DJs of the world. I, I, they, they, the, I think, I wonder if those days are gone the morning show guys who really owned the market, I guess bill handle still owns Los Angeles. That's absolutely true.

 

Caller 4 (01:36:42):

I grew up on like Steve doll and Gary,

 

Leo Laporte (01:36:44):

Steve doll, also Chicago, legendary. And Steve's still around. He's still doing shows. So

 

Caller 4 (01:36:50):

You get a podcast network. Yeah. Yeah. He, he was an early guy. You can say it's a subscription based.

 

Leo Laporte (01:36:54):

That's the smart thing to do if you're if you're in radio start a podcast network. That's all I'm gonna say. <Laugh>

 

Caller 4 (01:37:02):

So, anyway, so last week Dick de Barlo yes. As Madis writer had recommended some earbuds. Yes. Sound core eight forties

 

Leo Laporte (01:37:11):

From anchor. Yes. Those are, those are supposed to be very good. Yeah. Yeah.

 

Caller 4 (01:37:15):

They're a hundred bucks and you know, I've always, I've had like several pairs that could fit around like 40, 50 bucks, but these are, you know, active noise canceling. They're really, really good for a hundred bucks. I'm very, very impressed by them. And I went got the but if I don't make that to a

 

Leo Laporte (01:37:32):

Better, are you, are you using them now?

 

Caller 4 (01:37:34):

<Laugh> I'm not using them right now. Okay,

 

Leo Laporte (01:37:35):

Good. All right. I, whatever you're using, don't buy that.

 

Caller 4 (01:37:40):

<Laugh> no, I'm just on a phone.

 

Leo Laporte (01:37:41):

Oh, there you see. Very

 

Caller 4 (01:37:43):

Good. Very good sound.

 

Leo Laporte (01:37:44):

The sound cores are good. You know, sound core. I is a, a newer audio brand founded by anchor. And I think that they've done some really good stuff. And what, what it really brings home is how overpriced headphones are. Yes. Mm-Hmm, <affirmative>, there's a huge profit margin. Yeah. Apple spent 3.2 billion to buy beats. And honestly, I think they knew they'd make it all back in the first year because the, the profit margin on headphones has to be 90%.

 

Caller 4 (01:38:12):

Yeah.

 

Leo Laporte (01:38:13):

Anyway,

 

Caller 4 (01:38:14):

These, these are quite, and just a quick, mad magazine story. I was probably about 11 years old at midway airport in Chicago. Yeah. And I saw this guy walking into the bathroom long white hair, long white beard. I said, is that William Gaines? The publisher of mad magazine. Oh my. And he, you know, I don't know, walked. I was sitting at the gate and he walked out and he walked out, there was toilet paper, <laugh> in his shoe. And I said, yeah, that's all games.

 

Leo Laporte (01:38:40):

Definitely bill Gaines. <Laugh>, I'll tell Dick about it. Hey, a pleasure talking to you, Michael. Thank you for the endorsement. You know, it's always good to get a second opinion. Anthony's on the line from diamond bar, California. Hi Anthony.

 

Caller 5 (01:38:54):

Hey Leo. Happy labor day weekend. How

 

Leo Laporte (01:38:56):

Are you? I'm great. Happy labor day weekend to you too.

 

Caller 5 (01:39:00):

It's a scorcher out there. Stay quiet.

 

Leo Laporte (01:39:01):

What's it? What is it like in the diamond bar right now?

 

Caller 5 (01:39:04):

We're about 110 to

 

Leo Laporte (01:39:07):

That's. Unbelievable.

 

Caller 5 (01:39:11):

Was gonna do a smoker this weekend, but I think if I go outside, I'll be smoking.

 

Leo Laporte (01:39:15):

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. The more inland you get, I guess the worse it gets. And how has it been cooling off at night?

 

Caller 5 (01:39:22):

If you call 85 80.

 

Leo Laporte (01:39:25):

Oh man. Well, I hope you could find somewhere to, to douse your dos your heat.

 

Caller 5 (01:39:30):

Absolutely. Absolutely. Well, I appreciate you taking my call. I'm looking for a screen recorder. I cover high school sports in my area and unfortunately I can't get to out to every game to cover with my own personal camera. So I subscribe to a service. They stream the games and they've allowed me the opportunity to screen, grab the the game footage to create highlights out of them. And I'm just asking you to find out what would be either the best screen recorder, either free or paid. Doesn't matter. You're

 

Leo Laporte (01:40:05):

On, you're on windows. Yeah,

 

Caller 5 (01:40:06):

I'm on apple.

 

Leo Laporte (01:40:07):

Oh, you're on apple. Okay. Yes. I think QuickTime will do it. I don't think you need to buy, so what are you playing it back on a webpage

 

Caller 5 (01:40:19):

It's on their, on their sound like the mlb.com.

 

Leo Laporte (01:40:23):

So you've opened a website.

 

Caller 5 (01:40:25):

Yes.

 

Leo Laporte (01:40:26):

So you can, I mean, you already have a program called QuickTime that will make a video recording of the screen, actually, even the screenshot. So if you do shift command five, you know, shift command three, four, and five, do screenshots shift command five will let you record the screen. It'll even put up a little bar that says, oh, you don't want the whole screen. You just want a portion of the screen. I don't know if they'll let you go full screen. But it, it will then it will then, then capture it and record it. I don't know if there's a time limit. This is probably you what? A couple hours, right?

 

Caller 5 (01:41:00):

Well, I can go back and watch the game on demand. Oh, okay. Time code. So I can just go to certain spots that I want those highlights and then queue it up. And then, so,

 

Leo Laporte (01:41:08):

So that's the screen capture utility. If you have QuickTime player on there, it will also record the screen. Both of those are free and come with Mac OS. There's certainly many third party tools. That'll do this too, but I'd start with those. See if they do a good job, Leo Laport, the tech guy. Now it's a stream we had, I had to take a break, but it's a stream, which means you are in fact downloading it. The only difference between a stream and a download is it throws away the packets after it plays them on a stream. So there are programs that will let you CA as you capture those packets, save them. That will give you the exact file that they're playing back. Oh, so that's not even, that's not screen capture. That's downloading. I'm surprised you should ask them. Can I just download this? Sometimes the player will have a download button. Are, are they playing it back on YouTube? Or where are they sending it?

 

Caller 5 (01:42:07):

They're, they're using their own their own thing website platform. And they are actually developing a console where you can go in there and screen, grab and cut and take what you want. But right now, if

 

Leo Laporte (01:42:20):

They're using, if they're using something like JW player, which is what we use, there are a lot of good players out there. They can turn on downloads, but if they don't, then you can get a program that will do it on the Mac. It's not free, but it's great. It's called Downey, D O w N I E. And essentially what that does is you tell Downey, okay, here's the URL of the, you know, here's the, it's only 20 bucks. Here's the here's the file. I mean, the URL of the, of the video, capture it. And, and then, and then in, as you're streaming, instead of just throwing the packets away, it just saves 'em all and makes a video. You can play back any time and it it'll do it in 4k and everything. It works with YouTube works with almost everything. I would try downloading it and see if it works. You could try it for free. See if it works with that stream. And if it does, that's gonna give you the full quality.

 

Caller 5 (01:43:12):

Wow. That's perfect. They, again, they, they told me they're going to be releasing that feature soon. But

 

Leo Laporte (01:43:17):

Yeah, I mean, they, they're the ones who are turning it off. <Laugh> believe me, it's built in whatever player they're using. There's a checkbox that says you wanna allow people to download it.

 

Caller 5 (01:43:28):

Got it. So their, their answer was, oh, you can always just do a screen recording, but I'll try Downey and see if that works out. If not, I'll do quick time.

 

Leo Laporte (01:43:35):

I think Downey's a good choice. There's another, it's a little more expensive. Tector it makes a program called snag. It, that will do it. It's, it's much more expensive, but you know, there's some other choices. There's quite a few Snagit's 63 bucks. I've tried Downey. Everybody I know uses Downey. Anaco recommended that a few months ago on Mac break weekly. So that's the one I would try.

 

Caller 5 (01:43:57):

Awesome. Well, thank you so much again for your time and have a great holiday

 

Leo Laporte (01:44:00):

Weekend. My, my pleasure. Thank you. You too. Tech Smith. Did I say tech? Dirt? Yeah. Tech Smith, not tech dirt. I got tech dirt on the brain. That's what I get that tells you right now. Hey, you know, who brings us this show? I'll tell you who brings us this show? The great folks at it, pro TV, it pro TV. I met these guys years ago, Don Payette and Tim broom. They were, it trainers in a classroom traditional setting. And they said we would like to do what you're doing with TWiTt. We would like to do that for it training. And, and it pro TV was born and wow, <laugh> they have done what we did and exceeded it. They have, I, in fact, we've went out and visited their studio in Gainesville and they opened those up seven studios producing content Monday through Friday, 8:00 AM to 6:00 PM.

 

Leo Laporte (01:44:56):

What is it? 10 hours a day of content. Why are they doing so much? Because when you're doing it training, you gotta give people the latest and that's something you're not gonna get. If you go to a technical school or you buy books in a store, you go to the library, you're gonna get old content. Often it pro TV is it's part of their offer. That the <laugh> it's part of what they give you. They're always up to date. Content goes from the studios into their library within 24 hours. And they always have the latest training, the most current content and every area of it, it pro TV is sure like any it school designed for people who are getting into it so they can get those initial certifications so they can get that first job. But it goes much farther than that. It's also for it professionals who want to keep their skills up, get new skills.

 

Leo Laporte (01:45:49):

Re-Certify it is literally the best it training for your it career, whether you're just starting out or you're a long term veteran. And, and part of the thing that makes it so great is the people they choose to teach. These are experts in the field who are working it professionals. So they're up to date cuz they're dealing with this, right. You know, on the they're on the front lines, but they're so passionate. They love what they're doing so much that it makes it fun, entertaining. They even call 'em ed entertainers, virtual labs. Yes. So you can set up windows, servers and clients without having even a windows machine, just do it in your browser practice tests. So you can take the exam before you take the exam. It's the best way to get ready. They have classes in every area of it, Microsoft, Cisco, you know, the big certs, apple security, the certified ethical hacker training, 5,800 hours of up to date it training in their library.

 

Leo Laporte (01:46:50):

Every episode, you know, they'll do whole courses, but within the course it's episodes and every episode's just about half an hour, a little less sometimes. So it's very easy to watch it, you know, bit by bit at your convenience and you can watch it everywhere. They've got a app for a browsers. You can watch it in computer. You can watch a tablet. You can watch on your phone. You can watch on apple TV. You can watch on Rokus. You can listen to it. So you can, you know, at your convenience on a lunch breaker while you're going to work, that kind of thing, you can get, learn and learn and learn. It's really incredible. One reviewer said, it's easy to understand what they're saying. It's well explained. I'd agree with that. And the classes are very smooth along with their, the notes and the transcription.

 

Leo Laporte (01:47:31):

I forgot to mention that. So you don't have to take notes. You've got a transcription and all the notes, cuz they're not trying to trick you. They're trying to teach you right by wrapping their own experience in with the course, cuz they're pros. It makes it easier to comprehend. Even the hardest topics. They also make sure you feel confident enough to pass the exams. That's a review you can read right on the site. Also another reviewer says best website to study it and cyber security related courses. I like the part where they make a few courses free for a weekend. They're doing it again this month, Microsoft free weekend, September 17th and 18th, Microsoft free weekend, September 17th and 18th. So there's a variety of ways. You can see if you like it, but I'm telling you it's affordable. It's it's better than any other way of learning these skills.

 

Leo Laporte (01:48:17):

They have a free live webinar coming up on September 15th. That's a Thursday, all things, cyber security with Daniel Lowry and John strand. That's gonna be great. That's 2:00 PM. Eastern. If you wanna be there live it's nice. Cause you can ask questions, but then they make it available on demand for the rest of the month. So don't forget about your it team too. By the way, I should always mention this. We always talk about individuals, but they have team learning a great dashboard, great for any business and wants to keep their it team up to up to snuff and the teams love it cuz it's, I mean it's a great benefit as well for them get 30% off right now. When you sign up at it pro.tv/TWiT, use the offer code TWiT three, zero TWiT 30. And as you might expect, that gets you 30% off it. Pro.Tv/TWiT offer code TWiT three zero. Love these guys that'll work two for a business account. So mention that to your account. Exec TWiTt 30 it pro TV builder. Expand your it career and enjoy the journey. Thank you. It pro TV for supporting the tech eye. And don't forget if you're a tech eye listener. You support us by using that address. So they know you saw it here. It pro.tv/TWiTt. It's a TWiTt offer code. Okay. It pro TV slash TWiT. Now I'm back to the show.

 

Leo Laporte (01:49:40):

Well, Hey, Hey. Hey. How are you today? Leo Laport here, the tech guy gonna talk computers, the internet, home theater, digital photography. We talk a lot about cyber security. If you've got questions, if you've got concerns, if you want to know more, this is the place eighty eight eighty eight ask Leo is the phone number eight eighty eight, eight two seven five five three six. Toll free from anywhere in the us or Canada. If you are outside that area, you can still call, but you gotta use Skype out or something like that. It should be toll free. 88 88, ask Leo website tech. I labs.com. We put stuff there because you're listening. You're driving around, you're enjoying your weekend. And last thing I'd want you to do is have to pull over and write something down. Right? So that's why we put it up on the website. So you don't have to do that. Tech guy labs.com. That's free. There's no sign up, just head on over there. And you'll find all the links. You'll find a transcript of the show after it takes a little while we got, somebody's gotta write that audio and video from the show as well. Tech guy labs.com Joe on the line from Orlando, Florida. Our next caller. Hi Joe.

 

Caller 6 (01:50:58):

Yes. Hello, thank you. For taking my

 

Leo Laporte (01:51:00):

Call. Of course, Joe, thanks for calling.

 

Caller 6 (01:51:02):

I appreciate it. Yeah. Back to I run a telling the lady there that we run a program here at the university of central Florida for young middle school kids. We're kind of, we're teaching them Python by applying drones.

 

Leo Laporte (01:51:16):

Awesome. I wanna take that class. <Laugh> that's fantastic.

 

Caller 6 (01:51:21):

We have a website called B it's a nonprofit. We were a nonprofit group called V E T H G try tr I group G R OUP, p.com. And you'll see that there's a video there where we show the drones anyway, but it's for middle schools. Primarily we do have a few high schools where we kind of with the high school kids. They're so into social media and all the video stuff, and it's kinda hard to keep them engaged in the program though, with these middle school kids, we're actually gonna be giving them some awards and also some prizes later on, we do provide 'em with a drone they could practice at home

 

Leo Laporte (01:52:02):

With, oh, that's cool.

 

Caller 6 (01:52:04):

Small drones actually, they're using that. We're teaching. 'em How to use a drones to go up on the roof and check out solar panels to make sure there's no, you know, nasty seen or damage and so on. And so that's one, the applications they're gonna be using. And and we're where we live. There's 500 homes. It's community here and, and quite a few of 'em have solar panels. And that way these kids can earn some money by go going and maintaining some of these companies that the neighbors you with are

 

Leo Laporte (01:52:39):

Joe that's that's. So is this Joe Ramos?

 

Caller 6 (01:52:43):

Yeah,

 

Leo Laporte (01:52:43):

That's so cool. So you're, this is your, this is your company, the tr group, and right. I love this because you know, it's a great thing for kids to learn coding. It's actually a, a discipline that not only even if they don't ever go in the industry, that it like math teaches, 'em logical thinking process. It, it it's a good discipline. It's just a wonderful thing to learn. And, and, but the problem is it's a little dry. If, you know, you're just remember in in our day, the kids were learning turtle graphics with logo. They would make turtles draw.

 

Caller 6 (01:53:17):

That's when I started five, four kids with, with logo, I, when they were schools,

 

Leo Laporte (01:53:22):

Cause that gave 'em something fun and, and it gave them a, a physical reality with their coding. I think that's important for kids drones even better. <Laugh> I love that. I love

 

Caller 6 (01:53:33):

That my grandchildren, I got four, four children and grandchildren and my grandchildren were, were using robots going through maze, but that was fun at the beginning, but that while they got bored yeah, with a drone, we have an optical course about year at the UCF. This's an extension campus actually I'm a here about 20 miles west of Orlando in between here in Tampa.

 

Leo Laporte (01:54:05):

It looks like you teach these kids all kinds of stuff. I think this is wonderful and they're not just using Python, they're using Blockly and scratch other, other tools so that they can,

 

Caller 6 (01:54:17):

Yeah. Logo was the first one we started. That's what developed MIT.

 

Leo Laporte (01:54:22):

Right.

 

Caller 6 (01:54:23):

And then scratch is also from MIT. And so like I said, I taught my kids that and I, I, and I, I was at UCLA in 1969 when we were, we were became a systems analyst say wrong. Now I worked pro bono trying to help these kids. And and my kid and my four kids also contribute when they got time. One's a software engineer for Southwest

 

Leo Laporte (01:54:47):

<Laugh>. That's great.

 

Caller 6 (01:54:49):

My youngest son's one of the managers of Disney world. He, he was with the Pixar,

 

Leo Laporte (01:54:53):

He's an Imagineer, oh my gosh. The best job ever.

 

Caller 6 (01:54:58):

So one of the things about the, yeah, we tell these kids, look, here's what the future looks like. Our, our first step is trying to get him some basic coding that that's not our goal at inter for them to become programmers. Our goal is to teach em how to cybersecurity and and

 

Leo Laporte (01:55:14):

That's good cuz they can then teach their parents. They're probably okay. Cuz they grew up in this, but their parents don't know nothing. <Laugh>

 

Caller 6 (01:55:22):

The only, the only way we can enroll in the program and the parents has one of the parents has to be sitting there with the kid and bring the computer when we're going through this stuff. It's all done virtually online.

 

Leo Laporte (01:55:33):

Yeah. That's fair. Cuz you wanna protect their privacy and you know, all of that. So that's make sure the parents plus it's great if the parents are along for the ride they'll be supportive and they might learn a few things.

 

Caller 6 (01:55:46):

The kids get a lot more what, what they call it more engaged and more excited when they got the parents in. Right next.

 

Leo Laporte (01:55:55):

Yeah.

 

Caller 6 (01:55:55):

So it's we, like I said, I've been doing this as 1969 and at UCLA, that's where I started and and I've gone through this and I've done done a lot. The last 20 years I've been doing for bone work around the country, down at <inaudible> nation, in Northern Arizona and so on and so on. Anyway. So I've got a lot of experience dealing with young kids. I've got my own computer lab. If you look at that website, you'll see a poster first poster where it shows UCF being winning the they could compete nationally with major universities and, and the world later on.

 

Leo Laporte (01:56:32):

That's great. The tri group.com the T I group.com

 

Caller 6 (01:56:40):

Tr Ramo. I is my mother's initial Isadora who brought,

 

Leo Laporte (01:56:46):

So it's a tribute to Isadora your mom. Yeah,

 

Caller 6 (01:56:50):

My mom, we were, and we were, she was a single parent. My dad left us when we were young and of course that I'm being the oldest. I kind of forced me to

 

Leo Laporte (01:56:59):

You were the dad? Yeah. Yeah.

 

Caller 6 (01:57:01):

I really well in high school then of course, stress for, to UCLA, but there's a lot, lemme hear a little bit of history. Jeff Bezos was born in my, my hometown in Al Mexico. And that's where Jeff Bezos was born in 1964, his mother, Jackie and I were in high school at the same time, two different high schools, but I was architecture at high anyway. So then of course Microsoft started there in 74 with bill gates.

 

Leo Laporte (01:57:25):

That's right. That's right. And,

 

Caller 6 (01:57:28):

And that's not, so there's a lot of technology there in

 

Leo Laporte (01:57:31):

Albuquerque. Yeah.

 

Caller 6 (01:57:34):

God has given me some unique phases who Jackie later may married because JSON was a natural father and he left him when he was like, for

 

Leo Laporte (01:57:47):

Five. Yeah. He was apparently a circus performer on the uni cycle. <Laugh>

 

Caller 6 (01:57:54):

Was, well, he was 60 minutes back. About 10, 15 years ago. The interviewed in Jeff, where's your dad? I don't know. He left a long time ago anyway. So after that interview that the, the reporter went looking for his father. Oh wow. Phoenix, Phoenix, Arizona running a bike shop. Yeah.

 

Leo Laporte (01:58:13):

Yeah.

 

Caller 6 (01:58:14):

In the same Ted JSON. Anyway. So now he he's out, you know, Miguel injected. So they he's close to him here in Florida. He just passed away a couple of years ago. Ted RG.

 

Leo Laporte (01:58:26):

Well, I just, I, I just wanna thank you and, and, and congratulate you, Joe, cuz I think what you're doing is fantastic. That's paying it forward, taking the skills you learned over many years and and passing along to kids and what I love and by the way, kids not only grade school, but in college, but, but what I love is that you're making it fun for them. And and, and I, I have noticed people who learn about technology in a fun way are much better at it and stick with it compared to people who learn it, cuz they have to cuz they have to do a word process or a spreadsheet at work or whatever they go kicking and screaming and then they never really enjoy it. So I think making it fun for kids doing code camps, doing drones, learning it at any age in a way that that makes you enjoy it is such a good way to start. I think that's great.

 

Caller 6 (01:59:17):

You know, you know, couple, couple of years and we're at 25th in the world. So we tie in our programming, our coding with math. Yes, yes. We set up an obstacle course in the gym and then that, and then they'll apply the drones, visual and amount of control. And they say, it takes 50 minutes to go. The obstacles now we give 'em the specs on how that whole obstacle force is set up. So now they gotta program it. They gotta figure out how to add, you know, so on and take angles and so on and so on. So they're learning math at the same time.

 

Leo Laporte (01:59:49):

Absolutely. You're learning logic, you're learning how to work. You're learning skills that are beyond coding that are so fantastic. I think this is actually the future of math curricula in high schools is, is learning to code. In fact, there's some very good projects, including my favorite, one of my favorite programming languages, the folks who do racket have also a curriculum for high school teachers in, in getting 'em coding Joe well done. The T I group.com the T I group.com eighty eight, eighty eight, ask Leo that's the phone number more of your calls coming up just a little bit and yes, MAD's mad writer. Dick D Bartolo will be here too with another junky gadget. It's all I had stay tuned.

 

Leo Laporte (02:00:54):

Bootstrap is the the racket thing that I was talking about. And I think this is if you're a high school teacher and you're looking at curricula for teaching program or teaching math really as a math teacher using programming, this is a very, very good way to do it. And they have curricula, they have workshops, it's all free. It's bootstrap, bootstrap, world.org, bootstrap, world.org. And the idea is very much like what Joe's doing is get kids excited AB about this stuff, making it fun and interesting. And then it's a great way to learn math, rigor, logic, that kind of thing. Really neat stuff. Yeah. In this case, bootstrap world is is using racket to teach. It's a functional language. It's, it's a scheme. You Lego's good too. And there are, you know I interviewed and I've been promoting for some time learning Python using Minecraft. There's a great book. From the no starch press. I think I interviewed the author, learned a program with Minecraft. It turns out you can get a raspberry pie with Minecraft and a plugin that lets you use Python to do stuff in Minecraft. And it's awesome. <Laugh>, it's really amazing. Cause since kids are already, you know, really a lot of kids still very much into Minecraft. It gives them a way to do stuff in Minecraft using programming. So they get immediate feedback.

 

Leo Laporte (02:02:56):

It's real, it's really fun. And Microsoft, because of Microsoft's all about Minecraft and education, they offer a plugin, a Python plugin and so forth that lets you do this. There's lots of ways. It's funny that Joe started with logo. Of course those were the days. Yeah. I mean, ed tech is fantastic. Probably not, not a show for me or us, but that's the beauty of podcasting. You know, there are, I'm sure there are ed tech shows out there. Leah, I would better stop this right here. Leo Laport guy, 88 88. Ask Leo, Randy on the line from Huntington beach, California. Hello Randy.

 

Caller 5 (02:04:09):

Hello, Mr. Marrin. Oh Leo.

 

Leo Laporte (02:04:12):

Oh, I get it. Oh my you know. Yeah, that that's first time I've ever heard that. Very good. Congratulations. I think that's good. Well,

 

Caller 5 (02:04:20):

Well thank you. <Laugh> I have two questions and, and then I have a not very long and not particularly sorrowful story. Oh, but the, the first question is which laptop manufacturers give you the best bang for the buck. And secondly, which laptop manufacturers don't solder in Ram. Oh wow. My assumption is you can't add more Ram where it's soldered in. I figured it was gonna be an easy thing. I bought a, a Lenovo I five flex, a 15 inch screen. It's gonna NV me seventh generation. I seven the touch screen is not real responsive, but what I found is when I'm mixing music, I've, I've got a friend who's a producer who flies in periodically that we peeking the machine and the music starts crackling. And he says, you just need, the more you need to add more Ram. I'm like, well, I don't think I can. So, and, and it never did. That was, I have an I five that I was using with a lot more Ram. And 

 

Leo Laporte (02:05:16):

The reason that they solder Ram in these days is because we are demanding from them thinner, lighter, cheaper computers. Right. So yeah thinner and lighter is usually incompatible with upgradeable. So for years Dell used to have a little hatch on the bottom of their computer. You wouldn't even have to open up the computer to put in more Ram, then just open the hatch. And there was the, there was a place to put in more Rams sticks. Dell still sells some computers that have upgradeable Ram. I have a XPS 15 sitting in front of me this 20, 22 XPS 15. I believe you can add Ram to, it's not soldered in, but the XPS 13 I'm being told by a computer surgeon <laugh> sounds like he's done this. He says the XPS 13 does have the Ram soldered in. So even from the same manufacturer, sometimes, you know, you just have to check and see if it's Ram upgradable.

 

Leo Laporte (02:06:15):

You know, you might, the other place you could go probably is the Ram sites. Places like crucial.com where they have a Ram picker where you can figure out what kind of memory you can buy to put in your computer. And then if you're considering a model, just see if, if they sell Ram for it. Cuz if they don't, I bet you that's cuz it's not upgradeable. None of Apple's current laptops are upgradable. That's an even worse case. It's not soldered in, it's built into the, the chip, the dye the M one dyes and now the M two dyes have the, they call it unified Ram. And there's an advantage to that. The memories on the chip, which means it can be accessed much, much more quickly. Yeah. The disadvantages, it can't be upgraded. So there are trade offs, I guess. Generally nowadays if you

 

Caller 5 (02:07:03):

Manufacturers, right? Yeah,

 

Leo Laporte (02:07:05):

Yeah. Manufacturers, if you're buying a laptop, it's probably smart to get it with the configuration. You want not assume you'll be able to put more memory into it and that actually not just memory but storage as well, increasingly that's becoming hard. So you know, certainly it's the case within any apple product, buy it with the Ram and hard drive size you're gonna, you want because that's probably all you're gonna ever be able to do. Now you asked for the best manufacturer, the best bang for your buck. Everybody offers low cost stuff, Acer, a C E R has always tried to keep their costs really low. And I think they make decent products. You know, usually inexpensive means you're not gonna get the top quality components and so forth, but Acer, which for a long time did have a lowcost junkie line stopped doing that.

 

Leo Laporte (02:07:58):

They called it their consumer grade. Most, in fact, it's important. I think when you're buying laptops to kind of understand most manufacturers offer consumer laptops and professional laptops. Dell is a good example. The latitude is kind of their consumer line. The XPS is kind of their higher end pro line. And it's very much a price divide. I get in trouble because I have said many times saving money on technology is often counterproductive. Because you buy something too cheap, it's either not upgradeable or it's, it's just not well made. It's gonna fall apart. It ends up in a way costing you more, cuz you're gonna get another laptop in a year. So I don't know if you look at an it's a false economy to go too cheap,

 

Caller 5 (02:08:47):

MSI prestige.

 

Leo Laporte (02:08:48):

Those are very nice. My, my friend, aunt Pruitt, who does our photography show loves his MSI laptops. MSI is gonna be less expensive cuz they're not a huge brand name. They're known more for components. They make make motherboards and, and video cards, but they get recently gotten into the laptop business and I think they make quite good laptops. The prestige is very nice. The only thing I would say maybe to be aware of is I'm looking at the prestige 15. It is the 11th generation Intel processor, not the, the new 12th generation and that's probably for reasons of economy, but I, I, if you get in a laptop today, I might look for a 12th generation. This Dell XPS 15 in front of me is 12th generation Intel processor.

 

Caller 5 (02:09:41):

And this is a prestig 14. And I, it, I can't tell if the Ram is upgradeable or not. It's about 12, $1,300.

 

Leo Laporte (02:09:48):

That's not a bad that's, you know, I, as long as you see, when you say affordable, sometimes I think people want a laptop for three or $400 and you're not gonna get a good laptop at that price. I'm sorry, just not $1,300. Anything over a thousand, you should get a good laptop. That should be fine.

 

Caller 5 (02:10:05):

Does do touch pads vary in quality across manufacturers as well?

 

Leo Laporte (02:10:10):

Yes, very much so. That's another, that's a, that's a big component where a low cost laptop will have a plastic track pad that isn't very responsive or very good. The more expensive laptops will have glass track pads. Some of them will have haptic feedback. So when you click it, it buzzes at you. Yes, absolutely. Synaptics is the manufacturer for most track pads, but they have a low end line as well as a high end line. So yes. And that's, you know, anything you spend a lot of time using that's important, like your keyboard track pad, Leo port, the tech guy, MSI is not new, but they're new. I think they're new in laptops, but I, but aunt loves his MSI, so I would not hesitate to get a prestige. I think that's probably a good, yeah. And I don't know how you'd find out. Let me look and see if I can figure out if the prestige has soldered in Ram

 

Caller 5 (02:11:06):

Get prestige 14 Evo. Just

 

Leo Laporte (02:11:08):

Get, just get the just get the Ram you want <laugh> now, you know?

 

Caller 5 (02:11:15):

Yeah. This one I think has 32.

 

Leo Laporte (02:11:18):

Oh, that's plenty. You're not gonna want more than that. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, of course always, you know, as the years go by, you know, it becomes more common to have more Ram, but then there's other parts of it that are old and add date as well. So if you get 32 today, I think you're fine. I think you're fine. Yeah.

 

Caller 5 (02:11:36):

Yeah. I think the, the

 

Leo Laporte (02:11:37):

Prestigious in their business series. So let me look at the 14 Evo. That's why the it's Evo cuz that's a that's that's Intel's kind of business line, but this is a 12th gen, which is nice. So that's a good start. Right?

 

Caller 5 (02:11:53):

Right.

 

Leo Laporte (02:11:53):

Let me look and see it's so thin. I wonder if you're gonna have upgradeable Ram 32 though. You'll never need to upgrade that. I mean,

 

Caller 5 (02:12:04):

I'm not sure I need more than 32.

 

Leo Laporte (02:12:06):

No, no, no, that'll be fine. I

 

Caller 5 (02:12:07):

Wouldn't, I thought with an I seven 16 would be fine, but

 

Leo Laporte (02:12:10):

Yeah. And the 12th gens are good. You know, the idea of the 12th gen they've added these efficiency cores is in theory, they're gonna give you better battery life. This, this, this Dell XPS that I have is 12th gen. And I think it is actually better battery life, but I'm seeing also benchmarks that show. It's not. So I don't, I really don't know. I got an I five because I wanted better battery life and I knew the I seven would probably have worse battery life. So you have to decide that you always are deciding, you know, what, what are the trade offs? Every laptop has lots of trade offs.

 

Caller 5 (02:12:45):

Yeah. Back in the Meg Whitman days, I had a laptop and a desktop that were both HPS and both of them had motherboards that died.

 

Leo Laporte (02:12:55):

Yeah. I was not a fan of HP in, in that era at all. They also loaded 'em up with junk wear. I mean, they had more crap wear than anyone else in the business, but they've gotten much better since they split with HPE. No, no, I think they've got, I like the new HP laptops are fantastic. The, the elites beautiful. I had a specter for a long time. I really liked yeah. I don't know how you would find out is

 

Caller 5 (02:13:19):

That Beth than the evil

 

Leo Laporte (02:13:21):

The prestige mean, no, I think the prestige is a good choice. This looks good. Okay. Ann's been very happy with his MSI. I keep saying, are you still happy with it? And he says, yeah, that was, was his choice. You know, we were gonna, you know, he could get anything he wanted. Most of our staff gets max, but he he wanted a, a windows PC though. So he was very happy.

 

Caller 5 (02:13:42):

I had a good thing happen. I, I bought this Lenovo from Costco and it was kind of working, but I didn't like the, the touch pad. So I've used a mouse and then I learned that it's not upgradeable. So it's, it's a hundred, five days past a 90 day warranty at cost on. They said, just bring it

 

Leo Laporte (02:14:01):

In. They're so good.

 

Caller 5 (02:14:02):

You can swap it out.

 

Leo Laporte (02:14:03):

They are so good. I don't know how they, yes. I've heard this again. And again, they're very generous in their returns. So I think a good choice. You're not always gonna get the latest thing, but if they have this prestige and it's got the 12th gen.

 

Caller 5 (02:14:20):

Yep.

 

Leo Laporte (02:14:20):

Good place to get it.

 

Caller 5 (02:14:22):

Cool. Yeah. Thank you very much.

 

Leo Laporte (02:14:24):

You're welcome. I'm gonna bet it does not have upgradable Ram just looking at how thin it is. I I'd be very surprised if it does.

 

Caller 5 (02:14:31):

Yeah. With 32. That should do it. Oh yeah. One terabyte.

 

Leo Laporte (02:14:34):

Oh gosh. Yeah. You're not gonna put, you're not gonna put more Ram in it. No,

 

Caller 5 (02:14:38):

I imagine there's gotta be an NVMe, right? Oh

 

Leo Laporte (02:14:41):

Yeah, for sure. Yeah. So that would be upgradable in theory, if you can get into it.

 

Caller 5 (02:14:47):

Yeah. Go

 

Leo Laporte (02:14:48):

To, I fix it. Dot com. They, they will have you know, they have all the videos on repairability. They have repairability scores. This is brand new. They might not yet have it, but I wouldn't be surprised.

 

Leo Laporte (02:15:03):

Now this, this I can get behind. <Laugh> Leo Laport, the tech guy I've, I've seen Joan jet recently actually, but I'm looking forward to seeing her again, professor Laura is taunting me because cuz I'm going to a concert on Wednesday with my wife who loves these bands to see Joan jet poison, Def Lepard and Motley crew. And so she's been torturing me with her music all day <laugh> that's quite enough. Professor Laura, 88, 88, ask Leo DTE Bartolo. MAD's mad writer coming up in just a little bit, but first we go to Denver, Colorado to say hello to Bambi. Hi Bambi.

 

Caller 7 (02:15:43):

Hello.

 

Leo Laporte (02:15:44):

Welcome.

 

Caller 7 (02:15:47):

Thank you. I have two questions. One short. Okay. When you mention the iPhone's coming out, are they coming out with the 14 mini

 

Leo Laporte (02:15:56):

Ah, bad news for those of you who like little iPhones, no mini this year, the mini did not sell well in the iPhone 12. They continued to make it in the 13. I have a good friend who does our Mac break weekly show Jason Snell. He's six colors.com guy. He's a mini fan. He likes the little phones and like you, I guess he's not happy. No mini this year.

 

Caller 5 (02:16:21):

Aw. Aw. Okay.

 

Caller 7 (02:16:23):

Second question is I have someone that makes DVDs and puts photos on them. Nice. And we wanna make it so that it cannot be copied. She has a burner and, but she doesn't want it to be copied so that other, other people can just go and copy it. But

 

Leo Laporte (02:16:44):

She's outta luck

 

Caller 7 (02:16:46):

Software. So you can't do that.

 

Leo Laporte (02:16:49):

Well, I figure Hollywood had the biggest investment in not having their commercial DVDs copied and they failed. So I'm, I'm gonna guess that anything you could buy or do you're outta luck if she doesn't want those photos, you know, I have to say, this is a problem for all photographers. Is she photographer?

 

Caller 7 (02:17:08):

No, she's not,

 

Leo Laporte (02:17:09):

But are they her images?

 

Caller 7 (02:17:12):

Yeah. So they're, they're what she does is when someone dies, ah someone will put, someone will give her the pictures and she'll make a DVD. Oh that's nice. And they're awesome. Yeah. But some people are wanting copies of them and that's fine, but she doesn't want, she doesn't cuz she doesn't charge for this. So she doesn't want people to just go and make copies and copies and copies.

 

Leo Laporte (02:17:34):

Yeah. I don't blame her. She's willing

 

Caller 7 (02:17:36):

To give her that person. So we're, we're wanting to protect what she's doing cuz she's doing an awesome job.

 

Leo Laporte (02:17:41):

Well, yeah, but she's not charging for it. And it costs her money to make them, I would think she'd be happy if somebody would go out and make a hundred copies for everybody in the family. I mean, I don't want to talk her out of it, but it's very it's oh, it's not possible. Hollywood tried very hard to make, you know, when you go out and buy a top gun, D V D Hollywood has put copy protection on it, which was broken by a high school kid within weeks and has been ever since easily defeated. So you know, you could, I mean you C you, you can buy something. That'll make it hard. But if somebody wants to get a, make a copy of it, they can't, I guess it's just casual, casual copying. Okay. I mean, the problem with also with copy protecting DVDs is it's gonna add to her burden of tech support because some people are gonna say, oh I can't play this in player X, Y, Z, because of the copy protection and she's gonna have to help. And that she probably doesn't wanna do either. So you, yeah. I mean you can secure DVD but you know, buying something called CD shield or Crip key, she's gonna be out some money. It's not gonna stop a determined attacker and she's gonna have to support it if somebody can't play it back because that's on there.

 

Caller 7 (02:19:08):

Yeah. She bought one that you needed a password, but then you even needed a password just to play the thing.

 

Leo Laporte (02:19:13):

Yeah, exactly. And

 

Caller 7 (02:19:15):

She didn't

 

Leo Laporte (02:19:15):

Wanna do that. Yeah. All every copy protection scheme out there, every, every copy protection scheme out there has two major failings. One bad guys can get around it. They always can. They can figure out how to get around it. Two, it inconveniences honest users. So in my opinion, and I've said this so many times, but nobody listens, copy protections. It terrible idea because it criminalizes the people who are paying for your product, your honest users, it teaches them how to become pirates. And it doesn't, it's not even a speed bump for the real pirates they get around it instantly. And if you wonder, just Google copy D V D and you'll see how easy it is to get around it. This is true of all copy protection. So I would, I think it's a wonderful thing she's doing, she's doing it pro bono. Anyway, she's doing it for free.

 

Leo Laporte (02:20:14):

If somebody wants to copy it, the only people would want to copy it are, are loved ones, right. Of the be, you know, bereaved. So let them, you know, let them make copies. It takes a burden off of her. And the last thing she wants to do, send something out with a password or something that won't play in some players. So then she has to, you know, that's, that's no fun. That's no fun. But I, I honor her for what she's doing. I mean, that's, that's a really nice thing to do. I will put just you know, for completeness sake, I will put in the show notes how to copy, protect a DVD. <Laugh> how to make one. It requires a commercial product. Another way you could do this is if she didn't send out DVDs, these and she'll know better, her customers, her audience you know, D a lot of people don't have DVDs anymore. Computers aren't sold with DVD players. Most people now stream shows. They don't play back DVDs. It's an old and dying format. She may prefer to make these shows available on a USB key or even online.

 

Leo Laporte (02:21:28):

Now don't have the same problem, whether it's easy to copy, although you could, I guess if you didn't, if you wanted to, you could encrypt the USB key and say, well, you need a password to play it back. So you could effectively prevent people from playing it back, but it would be a annoying cuz everybody after to enter a password I think putting it online might be the best thing, creating a website. You can do all of the animations. She's doing the menus, the, all of that, the music she could do, all of that and put it online. And then you don't have to worry about being copied. It's available to anyone who wants it. Burke in our chat room says it's easy. Just label them. Do not copy. <Laugh> out of respect for the the, our dearly beloved do not. <Laugh> do not make a copy. You know, that that's probably just as effective. That's probably just as effective. Why wouldn't you want everybody to have it? I think, you know, if somebody cares about that person and and they want those images and you've made a beautiful thing that you want everybody to have why not let them copy it? This is a problem. In fact, in general, with copy protection is it's, it just doesn't work. The the story of the D V D is actually kind of amazing. 

 

Leo Laporte (02:22:47):

They released the DVD format with something called CSS. It's a copy protection system. Hollywood did not want, they were terrified if we put this, if we put top gun out on a DVD, you know, people are just gonna make copies of it and we're gonna lose all our sales. So they put CSS on it. A high school student

 

Leo Laporte (02:23:05):

<Laugh>

 

Leo Laporte (02:23:07):

Named John Le Johansson. He was Norwegian kid within, I think within a month of the release of the DVD format released DCSS a program to remove the copy protection, defeated it like instantly. He was taken to court for computer hacking. This is back in the early two thousands. He was prosecuted by the Norwegian national authority for the investigation and prosecution of economic and environmental crime. After a complaint from the D V D copy control association in the motion picture association the defense argued no illegal abscess was obtained to anyone else's information. He only broke the copy protection on DVDs. He owned himself. He was acquitted on all charges. They, they appealed, acquitted never, ever was convicted. So he's known ever since he's been known as D V D John. And it's a, I think an object lesson for people who try to put copy protection on things. There's a high school kid out there. Who's gonna break it in weeks. Leo. Leport the tech guy.

 

Dick (02:24:36):

Hello Dick. Hello, Leo port. Hello, my friend. <Laugh>.

 

Leo Laporte (02:24:44):

How are you today, sir?

 

Dick (02:24:45):

I'm good. And you,

 

Leo Laporte (02:24:48):

I am good. Now. You're not your, your heat waves over, right?

 

Dick (02:24:52):

Yes.

 

Leo Laporte (02:24:53):

Yes. Ours has just begun.

 

Dick (02:24:55):

Oh no. And how hot is

 

Leo Laporte (02:24:57):

Hot? Well, it's not hot right now here, but in Sherman Oaks. How hot is it Laura? In Sherman Oaks. It's like over a hundred, I think. Oh, it's only 89 here in the inland area of California. It's getting up into the a hundred tens. Oh,

 

Dick (02:25:16):

Oh my

 

Leo Laporte (02:25:16):

Gosh. I know. I knows 103 in Glendale. Yeah. So as you go inland, and it's gonna be worse, it's gonna peak on Monday labor day. So

 

Dick (02:25:29):

<Laugh> yes. Well, a thousand degrees in

 

Leo Laporte (02:25:31):

Hell. Yeah. That's pretty hot. Yeah.

 

Dick (02:25:33):

It's better. Yeah. Well,

 

Leo Laporte (02:25:34):

They're used to it down there. So

 

Dick (02:25:35):

They're used to, and also there's no humidity. It's a dry heat.

 

Leo Laporte (02:25:38):

It's a dry heat. It's very dry.

 

Dick (02:25:41):

That's a great, that's a great thing about the devil. He's

 

Leo Laporte (02:25:44):

He's a dry fella.

 

Dick (02:25:46):

He he's a very, gets a humor. Yeah.

 

Leo Laporte (02:25:51):

Oh,

 

Dick (02:25:53):

If you're extra bad, then they put you in the room with the humid, the humidity

 

Leo Laporte (02:25:57):

Room. Oh, the humidity room. That's a terrible, terrible F there's a F worse than death. Well you're

 

Dick (02:26:04):

Yeah. Yeah, exactly.

 

Leo Laporte (02:26:08):

Let's see GI whiz.

 

Dick (02:26:14):

Oh, and we're it's a new, what the heck is it? Oh,

 

Leo Laporte (02:26:19):

Oh, I wonder what it was the last time.

 

Dick (02:26:23):

Did you know what it

 

Leo Laporte (02:26:24):

Was? I did not.

 

Dick (02:26:25):

Oh,

 

Leo Laporte (02:26:26):

I did not. Oh, you are so

 

Dick (02:26:29):

Good to

 

Leo Laporte (02:26:30):

Come up up with crap. Oh, it's a toilet paper thing.

 

Dick (02:26:33):

Yeah. But you know what? I like it. I mean, you have to take down when company comes. Cause it looks ridiculous.

 

Leo Laporte (02:26:39):

What is what <laugh>, what

 

Dick (02:26:41):

Is it? It's a way to hang those mega rolls on your existing toilet paper

 

Leo Laporte (02:26:46):

Roll. No, no. Don't do mega rolls. What do you, what do you

 

Dick (02:26:51):

Mega? No, I bought them by accident <laugh> and, and they don't fit in anything. <Laugh> this little device lets them coexist with a regular paper. Mega

 

Leo Laporte (02:27:02):

You're making a statement there. Somebody uses your bathroom and you go, boy, there's something going on in here?

 

Dick (02:27:08):

Y yeah. <Laugh>

 

Leo Laporte (02:27:09):

He needs a mega roll. We we we have those those Japanese toilets. You don't even need toilet paper. Oh, oh,

 

Dick (02:27:20):

Okay.

 

Leo Laporte (02:27:21):

Yeah. And because we have a that's probably too much information, but because we have a we're off, we're a septic tank, you know, we have our own sewage septic tank. Oh, yes, yes. Right. We don't want to, you know, less toilet paper better, so.

 

Dick (02:27:36):

Oh, okay. Okay.

 

Leo Laporte (02:27:43):

Apparently I don't know if this is gonna be good news or bad news. There's a giant solar flare building up. If you go to space, weather.com <laugh> there's a giant K type solar flare aims straight at the planet earth.

 

Dick (02:28:03):

Oh geez.

 

Leo Laporte (02:28:07):

Wait a minute.

 

Dick (02:28:09):

Yeah, this can headed toward pet alone. Headed

 

Leo Laporte (02:28:11):

Toward a, this, this it's September 3rd. Oh, today on S third, a crack opened in the Earth's magnetic field and solar wind poured in

 

Dick (02:28:26):

<Laugh>.

 

Leo Laporte (02:28:28):

Wow. Sparking an unexpected G one class geomagnetic storm. Hmm. The storm is over now, but another could be this. This is

 

Dick (02:28:36):

Why I have no paperclips left.

 

Leo Laporte (02:28:41):

Here we go. Now this is music, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls. He's dancing in. Come on in Dick. It's okay. On our lighted floor, he's wearing his satin shirt, open to the waist. He's got the satin pants on and the platform. White boots, disco, Dick D Bartolo. Look at him. Spin. Hey,

 

Dick (02:29:07):

Dicky D come on

 

Leo Laporte (02:29:08):

In.

 

Dick (02:29:09):

Thank you. Whoa. Come out of breath. Woo.

 

Leo Laporte (02:29:12):

You are a dancing.

 

Dick (02:29:13):

I spinning. Otherwise my boots. Don't like <laugh> I

 

Leo Laporte (02:29:16):

Like the light up boots. Yeah. Dick besides being a disco, fool is mad. Magazine's maddest writer for the last five decades. He's been in every issue of mad magazine. He's also our very own gizmo wizard. We call him the GIW cuz he joins us each week to talk about a gizmo or a gadget. Did you hear earlier in the show guy called in big fan of yours? Big fan of mad magazine. He says when he was 12, I think it was in the Chicago airport. He saw a Roton fellow with a big white beard going into the men's room. He said, I think that's, I think that's bill Gaines publisher in of mad magazine and moments later, bill emerged from the men's room with toilet on paper, on his shoes. And he said, oh, now I know it's bill Gaines.

 

Dick (02:30:06):

<Laugh> oh, that's very funny. It's a good kid story.

 

Leo Laporte (02:30:10):

You wrote the definitive book about mad in its early days. Good days in mad and have lots of stories about bill Gaines in that. Is that still, do you still have copies of that on your

 

Dick (02:30:19):

Website? I, I, I have like think I have three copies left.

 

Leo Laporte (02:30:22):

Oh hurry. You're gonna don't delay. This is a great book to own. I have two copies of paperback and a hard cover. Thanks to, and I'm both autographed by you, Dick. Thank you. But if you're a man fan or you know, somebody who is three copies left, this is it. Get in there and get it. Dick sells it on his website, gwiz.biz. The other things. The other thing he does is our gizmo of the day, click the button that says the GWiz visit the tech guy. What do we have for today, Dick?

 

Dick (02:30:52):

Well we have two gadgets you may not know about.

 

Leo Laporte (02:30:55):

Oh no, that can't be, do

 

Dick (02:30:56):

You know about friction? Pens?

 

Leo Laporte (02:30:58):

No friction. No. Yes.

 

Dick (02:31:01):

Friction pens. This is not the new product show. And I, and I said to the lady, first of all, how do you pronounce that name? Because they spelled with X. She said, it's friction. Oh, and it's pens with a reasonable ink. And I said, well, oh, can I try that? You mean

 

Leo Laporte (02:31:17):

Like a pencil?

 

Dick (02:31:19):

Well, no, it's a, it's a ballpoint pen. It's from pilot. It's a ballpoint pen you write in, in ink. Oh. And then she said, now flip it over and you can erase. I drew my logo. She said, you can erase your logo and there will be no shavings or anything on the paper. Wow. And I said, well, how is that possible? And she said, it is friction. We use a thermal ink. And the heat from the eraser actually dissolves the ink. What? Yes, it works really well. I

 

Leo Laporte (02:31:54):

Like this idea. So there's no trace of the ink.

 

Dick (02:31:58):

No, no, no, no trace at all. What I'm, what I'm thinking of is next time I get into public transportation, I'm gonna have this Sunday crossword puzzle.

 

Leo Laporte (02:32:06):

Oh yes.

 

Dick (02:32:07):

Just fill in anything. You know, someone from afar is not going, not gonna know. And then when you get to the hotel, you can erase the things. They, instead that was just nonsense.

 

Leo Laporte (02:32:17):

Micah Sergeant, he says he has a ton of them. He loves them. Yeah. I was not aware of this. All right,

 

Dick (02:32:23):

Neither. And they make a marker that also uses the same technology. And they're depending on how many you buy mostly they're two bucks each, but if you buy like a big pack, it, it drops to about a dollar 60.

 

Leo Laporte (02:32:37):

Good. This will be useful for voting now, does it? <Laugh> does it fade over time? I wonder. I mean, how,

 

Dick (02:32:45):

You know, I have no idea. They're gel pens, which I happen to love because

 

Leo Laporte (02:32:50):

I like gel. They that's my favorite. Yeah. They're smooth.

 

Dick (02:32:53):

Yeah. That they ride very smooth. Yeah. so that's, and then I have one other gadget that I never knew of, you know, you know about the magnification lock for master lock <laugh> this

 

Leo Laporte (02:33:04):

Is okay. This is for the old folks going back to school. Yes,

 

Dick (02:33:07):

Yes, exactly. Exactly. so first of all, the numbers are bold. It's black on white. Yes. Okay. And then the it's a magnifying lens that magnifies from straight on. So if you're looking from the side, like someone's trying to see your combination, the numbers are very blurred, so you can hide the combination easily. Every number is a click. So you don't have to worry that you you're not hitting the number dead on. Now there is a downside. And I didn't know until I bought the lock, but I mean, it doesn't bother me is it comes with its own combination. Oh. So I, you can't

 

Leo Laporte (02:33:52):

Make up your own.

 

Dick (02:33:53):

No, you can't make up your own. I emailed master lock and I said, how many are there? I hope there's more than one. Yes. Yeah. We have about 6,500

 

Leo Laporte (02:34:04):

You know, bet different companies. Why they do that is when you have to program your own pad, like it's hard. It's kind of,

 

Dick (02:34:11):

Yeah. You know, you're probably right. Yeah. This, this is a, this is a very, and they make a little peel of sticker in the back so you can stick it somewhere. Don't put it on your laptop, put

 

Leo Laporte (02:34:19):

It on the bike. Yeah. That's good.

 

Dick (02:34:21):

<Laugh> put it on the back of your wallet. Yeah.

 

Leo Laporte (02:34:23):

That's a good idea.

 

Dick (02:34:25):

It cheap

 

Leo Laporte (02:34:26):

Because you know, you can't make it your birthday or something. You have to go with whatever. How much are they?

 

Dick (02:34:31):

Eight bucks. Oh nice. I $8. I looked directly before the show $8 an 18 cents.

 

Leo Laporte (02:34:38):

So I usually think when I think of combination lock for a locker for kids do do older people use combination locks. I guess maybe if you go to the gym, you might

 

Dick (02:34:48):

Going to the gym. If you have a job where, where you have a locker where you leave your uniform.

 

Leo Laporte (02:34:53):

Oh, I didn't even think of that. Sure. Yeah.

 

Dick (02:34:55):

No, no, absolutely. Yeah,

 

Leo Laporte (02:34:56):

Absolutely. So old folk, older folks like you and me, I don't mean to be discriminatory cuz we're both senior citizens. We, we also need to padlocks for various

 

Dick (02:35:07):

Things. Yeah. And, and this is, I like this a lot. I changed my, my lock at the warehouse to one of these.

 

Leo Laporte (02:35:14):

Wait a minute. You're using this at the gadget warehouse.

 

Dick (02:35:17):

Yeah. Just to

 

Leo Laporte (02:35:19):

It

 

Dick (02:35:19):

Safe. I mean, people are gonna go in into steal old stuff. <Laugh> yeah. You're right. In fact,

 

Leo Laporte (02:35:23):

If I had the gadget warehouse, I'd leave the door open and say, come on in.

 

Dick (02:35:27):

Yeah. Yes. Take something. Take something free. Come in, look around and take something. <Laugh>

 

Leo Laporte (02:35:33):

Dick's website is G I Z w I Z dot B Iz. He's the GWiz, the gizmo wizard. So it's gwiz.biz. As I mentioned, you can you can click the link to his mad memorabilia. If you're a mad fan, you, I think now's the time to get that book. Good days and mad three left. Do you autograph him?

 

Dick (02:35:55):

Oh yeah. Autograph to the person or whoever they want.

 

Leo Laporte (02:35:58):

Nice. I think that'd be a great you're planning ahead. Christmas. Isn't that far off be a great holiday gift. Absolutely. Nice. You also there's other stuff. There's the things you show on this show, that's the GI whiz visits. The tech guy products you show on ABC's world news now. And if you click the button for what the heck is it? You can find out what the gadget was last time. Because August 31st was the last day. How many, how many correct guesses did you get?

 

Dick (02:36:27):

Only three.

 

Leo Laporte (02:36:29):

What was

 

Dick (02:36:30):

It? Okay. But, but more than a hundred people said something about toilet paper. It is a little gadget that hangs onto your current roll of toilet paper. Yeah. To hold a spare roll of toilet paper <laugh> or a mega role that will not fit into the hole that is built into the wall in your hole. I don't honestly,

 

Leo Laporte (02:36:51):

In my house, if I had all these roles, giant roles of toilet, I think people would just assume there's something wrong with me. Okay. But if you need a lot of extra toilet paper, this would be a good gadget. Three people got it. Right. So those three got autographed mad magazines and then 16 people got just, you know, for clever, what was the, what were the clever answers like? Oh you hang us on the ears and you can hold the harmonica in front of your mouth. Yeah, that's good. Yeah. Harmonica worlds, smallest closet light people are very clever. People are very well. We got a new one. It's a bariatric chamber for a Smurf. No, I gave it away again. <Laugh> no, I don't know what it is. It's so good at this. It looks like some sort of you know, Michael Jackson anti-aging chamber, but I don't think that's what it is. Can you guess go to GWiz biz? There'll be six up to six mad magazines for the right answer up to 12 for the best wrong answer. And this is gonna go through the end of October through Halloween. So this is your Halloween gadget. Thank you. Dickie D. Okay buddy. See you next week please. W.Biz. Thank you all for joining me. Be back next time. I hope you will. To Leo LePort I am your tech guy have a great geek week byebye.

 

Leo Laporte (02:38:24):

Well, that's it for the tech eye show for today. Thank you so much for being here and don't forget TWiTt T WWIT. It stands for this week at tech and you find it@TWiTt.tv, including the podcast for this show. We talk about windows and windows weekly, Macintosh, a Mac break, weekly iPads, iPhones, apple watches on iOS today's security and security. Now, I mean, I can go on and on and on. And of course the big show every Sunday afternoon, this week in tech, you'll find it all@TWiT.tv and I'll be back next week with another great tech guys show. Thanks for joining me. We'll see you next time.