The Tech Guy Episode 1932 Transcript

Please be advised this transcript is AI-generated and may not be word for word. Time codes refer to the approximate times in the ad-supported version of the show.

Leo Laporte (00:00:02):
Podcasts you love from people you trust. This is twi. Hi, this is Leo Laporte and this is my Tech Guy podcast. This show originally aired in the Premier Networks Sunday, October 2nd, 2022. This is episode 1,932 Hijo. The Tech Guy podcast is brought to you by ITProTV. If you're looking to break into the world of it, or if your IT team needs to level up, get the introduction you need with IT Pro tv, check out an ITProTV business plan by visiting itpro.tv/twit today. Why? Hey, hey, how are you today? Leo Laporte here, the tech guy, Time to talk computers and the internet and home theater and digital photography and smartphone and smart watches and all that jazz. 88. 88. Ask Leo. That's the phone number. (888) 827-5536. Toll free from anywhere in the US or Canada outside that area. You can still call, just use Skype.

Leo Laporte (00:01:14):
Okay. Okay. 88. 88. Ask Leo website, Tech guy labs.com. I have to a retraction, a very rare retraction. Yesterday Mike and I were talking about Bruce Wllis, the great actor who unfortunately has aphasia, which makes it impossible for him to act. And we had reported the story seen elsewhere that Mr. Willis had sold his likeness to a deep fake company out of where are they? I forgot now at somewhere far away. I wanna say Ukraine, but I don't think it was Ukraine. Anyway Ccho, Slovakia, Bulgaria, Estonia, somewhere out there somewhere. And his representative shared with the Hollywood reporter once he heard the story on, on the show, Will Willis' representative said, quote, He has no partnership or agreement with this deep cake company. So there Deep cake did make a commercial, which shared in Russia, featuring with permission featuring Bruce Willis' likeness.

Leo Laporte (00:02:31):
But that was a one off. That was a one off. They can do it. The commercial was last year for a Russian mobile phone carrier. They can do it. Willis said, according to the quotes on the deep cake site, I like the precision of my character. It's a great opportunity for me to go back in time. And we had had the story that they had scanned images of Mr. Willis from the 1990s, from his movies back then, and, you know, Die Hard. And fifth element and that we're gonna going forward license it to movie companies and other commercial makers. But apparently that's not the case. So, apologies, Mr. Willis. We are great fans. Great fans. So, nevermind Elon Musk showed his robot. So last year at Elon's event, they call AI World or AI 2022 or something.

Leo Laporte (00:03:31):
You know, AI is here to stay AI forever. Last year, and by the way, this event really is mostly to attract engineers to Elon's companies. They had showed a humanoid robot, except it turned out to be a dancer and a robot costume. Well, that's disappointing. This year they had an actual robot, but it couldn't really walk without <laugh>. A bunch of guys holding it up. It did a few things. It flexed its fingers, made a fish. Elon says it'll be commercially available for under $20,000. And in a few years now, you know, when Elon says under $20,000 in a few years, it means it'll be $50,000 in five years or something. You know, So don't get don't get your hopes up. I don't think anybody is. I don't think anybody that I know wants a human size man sized metal machine walking around their house.

Leo Laporte (00:04:33):
And honestly, is this the best robot form factor for his automotive factories? He already has a lot of robots. They're fixed in place. They're bolted to the ground. They're just one big claw that reaches out, picks up the Tesla, turns it around, things like that. Lifts it up, moves it, literally flips it over at one point. <Laugh>. It's that, they're that. I think it took two to flip it over. They're that strong. But they make sense. You know, you don't want like 15 humanoid robots come marching in and lifted up. Save that for the Queen of England or somebody that's not, that's silly. And anyway there are already better humanoid robots. Even scarier humanoid robots coming from a company owned by Hyundai called the Boston Dynamics. That's the one that does the dog that runs faster than a human. Yikes. And they have man sized robots that could do back flips, open doors, say things like, after you, my master, You know, it's terrifying. I don't think we want anybody wants these. Elon says, naturally, he tweets it. There will be a cat girl version of our optimist robot. Elon, I don't know what you're smoking, but you really, you should stop now. That would be a good time just to stop. To stop. Don't do it anymore.

Leo Laporte (00:06:04):
Stadia, have we talked about that yet? This is Google. This is Google in a nutshell. Three years ago, they announced a gaming service. Has Google ever done a gaming service before? No, but they said we could do it. This is very typical, by the way, in Silicon Valley to to know absolutely nothing about a subject, but be so cocky, so sure of yourself, that, that, Oh, well, it's just, you know, which is math. We could solve that. Remember when Google and Apple announced at the height of the Covid pandemic applications that would go on your smartphones, that would, you know, track your exposures and let you know if you'd been exposed <laugh>, they still are there. In fact, I've got 'em turned on, on on both my phones and I've had one alert. It was a, you know, it was after I already got covid from the person, I guess.

Leo Laporte (00:06:56):
But one alert, like three weeks after saying, Hey, you might have been exposed in, in Seattle. I said, Yeah, I think I might have been. I think you're right. I think I was. They just don't work. And this is a perfect example. Silicon Valley going, Well, oh yeah, we can come in. Well, let's step in and fix this pandemic problem. This is why, by the way, it's only a matter of time before Silicon Valley starts fielding. You know, Mark Zachary, I thought he'd run for president, but he's too unlikeable. But at some point, somebody's gonna step up from Silicon Valley saying, Look, we're technologists, we're technocrats. We know how to solve all the problems in the world. Just give us a chance. Just say no. Okay? Just <laugh>. Just don't, just go back to your little hoel in the, your 3 million hut in the San Jose and just stay there.

Leo Laporte (00:07:48):
Stay out of our lives. Anyway, Google created a gaming company knowing absolutely nothing about gaming. And guess what? Three years later, it's flopped. Oh, what a shock. Stadia, it was called. And I feel bad for people. I almost, I actually <laugh>, The good thing about Google is they were refunding all the money. Anybody paid. No, not the subscription fee. No, no. Sorry, that's not, Come on, please. That's going too far. But if you bought a game or you bought their special handy Dany controller, they were gonna refund the money, which I think, you know, that's the least they could do. Cuz they, you had to buy a special game controller and the games you had to buy from them, but you don't own. And actually, that's one of the problems with Stadia. They're shutting it down in January. Buy I don't think a lot of tiers are shut except for one guy who is a YouTube streamer.

Leo Laporte (00:08:42):
His name is it's Color TV with a U, so he must be British or Australian or something. It's color tv. Streams a game called Red Dead Redemption too. It's a good game. It's a great game from rockstar games. You, you play a cowboy, you ride a horse, you shoot bad guys, that kind of thing. He apparently, I don't know how he did this, has 5,907 hours playing the game. That's something like 242 days <laugh>, like night and day, like nonstop. In three years of the, of the, how many a thousand days In a three years, a quarter of those have been spent playing that game. Good Lord, <laugh>. Anyway, he's upset because when Google shuts down, stadia that character that he has 5,907 hours invested in p gone like the wind. P done p he says, You don't understand how seriously miffed I am. He used a different word miffed. I miffed for context. These hours are on Google Stadia. Today Google announced they'll be shutting down the platform. Rockstar Games. Please let us do a one time character transfer. I'm begging of you.

Leo Laporte (00:10:07):
So I'm hoping, we're hoping we'll all watch with interest to see if this PORs Schmo, who spent a quarter of his life for the last three years playing a game on Google. Mistake, mistake number one. I could have warned them. Google never sticks with anything for very long. You know, they knew nothing about gaming. And lo and behold, what a surprise. Now they're, they're killing stadia. I hope you don't have 5,907 hours invested in. I hope you do have 5,907 hours invested in the Tech Guy Show. Thank you very much. And we will continue to, to increase those hours in just a moment. Call 88 88. Ask Leo 8 8 8 8 2 7 5 5 3 6. I should calculate. This is episode 1932. What is three hours times 1,932? I'm pretty close to 6,000 hours of this <laugh>. Leon Laport d Tech guy

Leo Laporte (00:11:11):
In the middle of August 23 will be episode 2023 for the tech guy. So I've spent 5,796 hours. I've actually spent fewer hours in the last 15 years doing the Tech Guy show than this guy spent in three years playing that game. Now that's cuckoo right there. That just shows you how much. That's a lot of time. Yeah, I don't like it. Steam tells you how many hours, Val Heim, I think it's 800 hours in Belheim. But you know, that came out in February, 2020. 2020, right? Was or 2021 came out during the pandemic, I think February, 2020. So, yeah. And if reruns the substitutes, it's probably a lot less than that, huh? Yeah, man. It's time for Kim Shuffle. She's a full ninja. The Unbreakable phone. Hello, Kim

Kim Schaffer (00:12:16):
<Laugh>,

Leo Laporte (00:12:17):
Reggae Kim.

Kim Schaffer (00:12:18):
Don't think I can try and do

Leo Laporte (00:12:20):
That. Actually, I gotta find my hat. I got my

Kim Schaffer (00:12:23):
<Laugh>. Do you have dreads in

Leo Laporte (00:12:24):
There? I have a dreads hat. Yeah.

Kim Schaffer (00:12:25):
That would be awesome.

Leo Laporte (00:12:26):
Next time. Next time. Professor Laura plays that song. I'll wear my, my dreads. How are you, Kim?

Kim Schaffer (00:12:32):
I'm good. How are you?

Leo Laporte (00:12:33):
I'm good. Very

Kim Schaffer (00:12:34):
Good. How were the Illeagels?

Leo Laporte (00:12:36):
You knew that. How did you know that's where I was last night? Because you, you talked about it. Oh, did I? Okay. <Laugh>, there's no, I have no secrets. Yeah. I went to see a band last night. Danced,

Kim Schaffer (00:12:45):
Danced,

Leo Laporte (00:12:46):
Danced, danced to them. Oh, my wife. We gotta go home styling. I be the tech guy in the morning. Can we go home?

Kim Schaffer (00:12:52):
Because we've gotta be here so early at 11:00 AM

Leo Laporte (00:12:54):
11:00 AM Oh yeah, I do. You know what? I have a club goer schedule, don't I? Yeah. Go to work at 11 <laugh>. Go home at four. Life's easy.

Kim Schaffer (00:13:07):
It's not too bad.

Leo Laporte (00:13:08):
So Kim, who should I talk to today?

Kim Schaffer (00:13:09):
Let's go to Terry Seal Beach. He wants to share a travel mishap, something with a Google phone.

Leo Laporte (00:13:17):
Oh, okay. Thank you. Let's see here. What's going on? Thank you. Kim Schaffer and Hello Terry in Seal Beach. What's

Caller 1 (00:13:28):
Up going Lio

Leo Laporte (00:13:29):
Couldn't Atua and

Caller 1 (00:13:32):
1932. Ha. Yes. Did you know that's the year that the Sydney Harbor Bridge opened?

Leo Laporte (00:13:37):
Oh, that's a wonderful bridge. We wanted to cross it.

Caller 1 (00:13:41):
We, I I can't count the number of times I've walked over that bridge.

Leo Laporte (00:13:45):
Well, you can also though, did you know you can go up and over? You can go on the, on the

Caller 1 (00:13:49):
Yeah, but that's a couple hundred dollars and it's a little higher than I want to go when I can stay on basically term of term farra.

Leo Laporte (00:13:57):
You know what, you know what term? That's where I live term affair. You know that when you do that? Cuz we wanted to do it. We had, unfortunately our son was just under 18 and so we couldn't but we went up and got in line. They put you in an orange jumpsuit.

Caller 1 (00:14:10):
Yes.

Leo Laporte (00:14:10):
And they take away all your your phone and stuff, so cuz they don't want you dropping it off the bridge. Exactly. Yeah.

Caller 1 (00:14:18):
Anyway, before I get to my travel nightmare, I've been listening to you for years and I've decided that I wanna nominate you for a Peabody Award for unique achievements and broadcasting.

Leo Laporte (00:14:29):
Well, yes. Unique would be the word <laugh>

Caller 1 (00:14:32):
And Well, yeah. And specifically we're going back six months ago. You were, I've been listening to Elton John's Rocket Man for 50 years now. <Laugh> first released

Leo Laporte (00:14:44):
Have a hand on.

Caller 1 (00:14:45):
Well, even better than that, about six months ago as you were introducing Rod Pile, you actually clocked that song like a chicken

Leo Laporte (00:14:54):
<Laugh>. I did. Wow. I deserves a Peabody Award for sure. I did not. You're I did not. You just wanted to do that on the radio.

Caller 1 (00:15:05):
You were talking about chickens during the break before that. So it was, Did

Leo Laporte (00:15:08):
You have a bet? Did you have a bet with somebody? I can go on national radio and click like a chicken that you won that bet

Caller 1 (00:15:15):
<Laugh>. You did that? I

Leo Laporte (00:15:16):
Did that.

Caller 1 (00:15:17):
Really? And that's why when I say I'm nominating you for a Peabody award. I mean, Mr. Peabody and Sherman <laugh>.

Leo Laporte (00:15:23):
Yes.

Caller 1 (00:15:24):
Cause you also do an incredible Boris Badden off impression, which is in 2022, just as relevant as it was 60 years ago. I,

Leo Laporte (00:15:32):
Yeah. Right. Yeah. Well it is. I guess having the bad Russian accent still works. Yeah. Yes. Yes. I think per you have discovered a a truth, which is that I do this show in a trance. I have no idea what's gonna come outta my mouth.

Caller 1 (00:15:47):
Well, that's co cause I listen to your show and

Leo Laporte (00:15:51):
<Laugh> 6,000 hours in a trance-like state. That's me.

Caller 1 (00:15:59):
Anyway. You travel nightmare. Yes. I switched six months ago. I switched to Google and bought a Pixel five a 5g. Good choice, based upon your suggestion. I went to a remote island off the coast of Panama called Boco Toro, which I highly recommend. You would love it.

Leo Laporte (00:16:19):
I've never heard of it. It's the Bulls mouth.

Caller 1 (00:16:21):
It's traveling back 60 years in time. They don't even have running water in the entire area. It's sort of like the west end of Jamaica in the 1970s. Oh, that's nice. Everything I built up sounds wonderful. Anyway, two weeks after buying this phone on this remote island, it stops working. So I contact repeatedly text Google Tech support in India, which is terrible. Yeah. at one point I even had a guy who, I guess he, I assume he was working from home because he had a baby on his lap screaming.

Leo Laporte (00:16:53):
Did you hear chickens? Every once in a while. It

Caller 1 (00:16:56):
Wasn't, it wasn't clocking like a chicken. Every

Leo Laporte (00:16:58):
Once in a while you'll call out tech support, you'll hear chickens in the background. And then there I go again. And then you'll know he's working at home.

Caller 1 (00:17:06):
Yeah. And let me tell you, I have heard this expression so many times. I truly love Kim because never once have I ever heard her say, I am so sorry you are having this problem. Oh, let

Leo Laporte (00:17:19):
Me connect. But you heard that, you heard that from the chicken guy <laugh>? Yeah,

Caller 1 (00:17:23):
No, I heard that expression like probably 75 times. Is there script?

Leo Laporte (00:17:27):
So now when you said stop working, was it the, the carrier stopped working or the phone itself just bricked itself?

Caller 1 (00:17:33):
Well, I couldn't really tell. And after I got backstage, had

Leo Laporte (00:17:36):
You moved into Boka del Toro? Were you gonna stay there?

Caller 1 (00:17:40):
No, I was only there for about a week.

Leo Laporte (00:17:42):
Oh, okay. And so died there. But you came home and it still wasn't working.

Caller 1 (00:17:46):
Okay. Of course, Google refers me because this two week old phone is in warranty. They refer me to a place called

Leo Laporte (00:17:53):
I Break Use Fix. Yeah.

Caller 1 (00:17:56):
Or, well, I can give you an alternative to that <laugh>.

Leo Laporte (00:18:01):
They you bring, I break. They

Caller 1 (00:18:04):
Repeatedly kept trying to get me to buy their warranty service. No, no, no. And then finally when I said they understood the word no, they said, Okay, it's a broken screen. And I said, Well, how can it be a broken screen? It's not a broken, never left my pocket. So anyway, I was less than happy with the way that I was treated by, But

Leo Laporte (00:18:22):
It was a warranty repair. You didn't have to pay anything for it. Right.

Caller 1 (00:18:25):
I did, but luckily I had it on a credit card that reimburses me for good cellular phone repairs.

Leo Laporte (00:18:32):
You know, these things break. Look, they're they, you know, it could be, there's, you know, they make millions of them and you know, every few phones something went wrong and it might didn't break probably in your pocket. It probably was mismanufactured. Which is why Google should completely pay for it. 

Caller 1 (00:18:51):
Well, I agree. But you know, I never dropped it or anything, but Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:18:54):
Yeah. But the problem is they don't know that. So you have to prove, somehow prove the negative. It was never dropped. It's your fault. Thank you.

Caller 1 (00:19:02):
Yeah. Guilty until proven innocent. Right. Anyway, the bottom line is I dropped Google file like a bad transmission and went back to my old carrier consumer cellular, where all of their tech people are in Oregon. They all speak English. I've never had a baby cry in the background. But the problem is because I'm beginning to start traveling again and after this thing called the pandemic Consumer Cellular obviously has no overseas.

Leo Laporte (00:19:28):
No. And that's the advantage of GoogleFi. If you don't want Google Fi, try T-Mobile. But I gotta tell you, none of these big companies have great tech support. This is pretty normal. Sam and Bull Sam at our car guy coming up next. Yeah. I mean, I, I, yeah, I mean, I'm not surprised. Google has terrible tech support to be honest.

Caller 1 (00:19:48):
Well, and the problem with the, I just got back literally less than 48 hours ago from Spain. And I have bad news for you. There is no more Iberian ham left. What?

Leo Laporte (00:19:56):
You ate it all?

Caller 1 (00:19:57):
I ate it all.

Leo Laporte (00:19:58):
Oh, I am disappointed. <Laugh>. You didn't even leave one little bit. I

Caller 1 (00:20:04):
Signed up, I signed up for an EIM International SIM card. Yeah. But Pixel five a do not accept E sims. Oh, by a local SIM card. I'm getting ready to spend the month of December and Australia. Again, <laugh>, you don't have to buy a different sim card down there. The problem is I can get data, but I have no phone or text ability. Oh, well that's, I have a different phone number for that country and I had a Google Voice number, but I can't access it anymore. And I was just wondering if I sign up for a new Google Voice number, will it work overseas or do you have any alternative?

Leo Laporte (00:20:42):
No, in fact, well it might, but they say specifically, don't do this for overseas phone calls. It's okay for us to overseas, but don't, don't be in Spain or somewhere using Google Voice to call the us. They say specifically that that's not let's see if you Well, I take it back. No, no. There are some company countries that supports Canada, Denmark, France, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, in the uk. Hmm hmm.

Caller 1 (00:21:15):
Is there, do you have any alternative suggestions of how I could still access one of my own phone numbers overseas? Yeah,

Leo Laporte (00:21:22):
I think what you have, I mean, what, what people do is they get a carrier in the US cuz that's who owns your phone number, that works overseas. And then you'll either buy, if you get Verizon for instance, you'll buy their international day by day expensive plan. T-Mobile has a very good plan. That's why I had recommended Google Fi to you initially. And I, you know, I use Google Fi traveling all the time. And it's just like, you're not, you haven't left the country. The phone number's the same. And as you know, and the data's the same. I'm sorry you had a bad phone, but that's not really a reflection on fi No. You may not wanna deal with Google ever again.

Caller 1 (00:21:59):
Well, I also had problems with p because for strangely enough, after I poured it over my number to Google Fi text messages were going to my old phone that was still registered to my old carrier.

Leo Laporte (00:22:13):
Ah, that may be that may be an issue with the carrier as a, you know, the number porting, they don't like to do it and they may not have done it properly. I don't know if that's They didn't, Yeah, that's not a five,

Caller 1 (00:22:26):
Probably about five or six people who kept telling me they were so sorry I was having this problem before I finally got somebody.

Leo Laporte (00:22:32):
I'm sorry. Yeah.

Caller 1 (00:22:34):
Anyway. Can I recommend two books before you go to Sam? Certainly. And you may have read both of them. The first one is called 2034 A History of the Next World War written by Yikes. So written by Admiral Step, whose name I can never pronounce.

Leo Laporte (00:22:51):
Yeah, I know who you're talking about. Step. Yeah. It's a

Caller 1 (00:22:54):
Fascinating book. And it, one of the fascinating things is in there, it's so plausible. And one of the things in there that I thought about you when I read it is they talk about as the United States and China are going to war Vladimir Putin, who is in his eighties by this time sends out the Russian fleet and they cut the 10 G cables in Uhhuh Europe to the US

Leo Laporte (00:23:17):
Uhhuh. See, I don't think it's, we're gonna have to wait till 2034. That <laugh> that may come faster than we think happen

Caller 1 (00:23:23):
Before that.

Leo Laporte (00:23:24):
Yes. What a shocker.

Caller 1 (00:23:26):
I highly recommend that. What's

Leo Laporte (00:23:27):
The other one?

Caller 1 (00:23:28):
The other one is called Gangsters of Capitalism, Smedley Butler, the Marines and the Making and Breaking of America's Empire. Wow. Which is based upon a true story about this guy, Smedley Butler, who was a highly decorated marine in the First World War, who went to Panama, went to Cuba, got involved in all of these imperialistic 

Leo Laporte (00:23:50):
Oh, you know, this reminds me of something. Devork used to always recommend the confessions of a what was it? It was a guy who go from country to country and and encourage them to spend money with US corporations. This sounds very similar. I'll have to read it.

Caller 1 (00:24:05):
Well, that was the thing is in the 1930s after Roosevelt was elected, there was a cadra of high business interests involving the DuPont in that. Yeah,

Leo Laporte (00:24:16):
Yeah. Yeah. I have to run. Gotta run. Thank you though. It's great to talk to you, Terry. I'll look at both those books. The Tech I podcast brought to you today by my friends, these guys. I love these guys at it. Pro TV guys and gals. I've known it pro TV since they started back in 2013. In fact, they contacted us right away. They've been advertising ever since. They are the place to get your IT training, right? Much better than a classroom or a technical college. Much better than doing it on your own engaging instructors who make it interesting and fun because they're experts and their passion shows, Right? They really communicated. Now I mentioned ITProTV many times for IT, people wanting to get into it and IT professionals wanted to keep their skills up. But I do wanna mention also the ITProTV business plans.

Leo Laporte (00:25:11):
Because if you have a business and you have an IT team, you know, it's really important that that team keeps up to date. You want them to be up to date on the latest security, networking, desktop support, all of that. Itprotv is a benefit you can give your team that will pay you back again and again and again. And because the tech industry changes so rapidly, it's evolving. It's, it's constantly changing. Your team has to be trained regularly, right? When the new software release system upgrade or cyber threat phases, your business, ITProTV is on the spot. They have seven studios running Monday through Friday all day, creating the newest freshest content. So that 5,800 hour library of on-demand IT training is always up to date, always got the latest training. You get trainings and certs for your team all done in one place.

Leo Laporte (00:26:06):
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Leo Laporte (00:26:57):
You can access monthly usage reports. You'll see metrics like logins and viewing time and tracks completed. You can manage your subsets of users. You know, you too. You need to take this course or teams. You can give 'em customized assignments. Of course you can monitor their progress. You'll get reports. Beautiful visual reports, in fact on the usage of the platform, which is nice cuz then you can show the boss. I see their guys are really doing it. I think it pro TV is fantastic, whether you're an individual looking to get into it, an IT professional looking to re-certify or get new skills or a business looking to keep your IT team up to date. Give your team the IT development platform. They need to level up their skills and enjoy every step of the way. And that's, that's kind of important. If they're gonna do it right for teams of two to a thousand, go to IT pro.tv/twit today. That's it. Pro.Tv/Twit. And please do me a favor, use that address today. Know you heard about it from us. That's all I ask itpro.tv/twit. Thank you. It pro tv. It's time for Car Guy, Sam Abul. Sam our our car guy comes to us from Guide House Insights where he is a principal researcher. He also is a host of a fabulous podcast wheel bearings podcast@wheelbearings.media. And he's sitting in front of a beautiful, Is it an electric vehicle? What are you sitting in front of

Sam Abuelsamid (00:28:28):
It? It is electric. This is actually, it's a concept that Volvo revealed last year called the Recharge concept. But this is generally considered to be a preview of the next, the replacement for the current XC 90 which is their, their flagship their, their larger SUV flagship that they sell today. And over the last couple of weeks since we last talked Volvo has started trickling out some details about the EX 90, which is what they're calling it. That's, that's the first thing that they revealed is that the name will actually be the e X 90 given it's electric. So that, that kind of makes sense. And this is an all new platform that they're using for this. It's a dedicated electric platform. There won't be a gas or diesel engine version of this or a hybrid or anything like that.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:29:20):
Electrical only going forward for Volvo. And there's gonna be a lot of interesting technology in this. And one of the things about Volvo, the Volvo brand you know, for going back almost to its beginnings for, for many, many decades, Volvo has really been all about safety. And so there that that trend or that tradition is continuing with the X 90 and they're gonna be introducing a number of new technologies on this thing. They already last year confirmed that it will come standard with lidar as part of its sensor. Really? Oh, that's interesting. Safety sensor suite. Yeah. they're using a, a LIDAR from a company called Luminar their Iris LIDAR sensor. And it's mounted at the top of the windshield. Is that for self-driving mostly, or well actually before they get to, to self-driving, it's, it's probably gonna be at least another two or three years before they get to something that can be described as self-driving.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:30:20):
But they're, they're using it as part of their driver assistance system as part of, they're gonna use it, you know, to support their automatic emergency braking and, and other features. So it's really more about safety to begin with than convenience. They're still working on the, the automated driving components of this. And they won't, they'll release those as over the updates if and when they Volvo engineers are satisfied that it is actually safe enough to release to the public unlike, you know, rather than using the public to test their software. That's a good idea themselves. There is a good, Yeah. You know, it's, it's an odd concept. It's, it's kind of unique, but you know, it, it's generally worked for about a hundred years or so. So they they will be gradually releasing. They wanna, eventually, the goal is to get to automated highway driving a highway, highway pilot system they call it, where you can completely tune out.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:31:13):
You don't have to pay attention, you don't have to watch the road. You can take a nap, whatever. That's, that's the long term goal. But that won't be there when the car launches. Probably going on sale early 2023. They will be doing the full reveal of the production version on, or sorry, on November 9th. There's also a version a vehicle based on the same platform from Poll Star, which is a spinoff of Volvo, which we've talked about previously. That will actually be revealed on October 12th. And it'll have much of the same technology in it, if not all of the same technology. There's a couple of particular tidbits I wanted to talk about with e X 90. The first you know, they, like a lot of companies right now, like a lot of automakers, they're starting, Volvo is gonna start putting in infrared driver monitor cameras that look at the driver and, and look to make sure the driver's paying attention.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:32:11):
GM was the first to do this. You, you and I experienced this back about five years ago. Oh, Cadillac done? Yeah. On the Cadillac. You've got it in your, in your mock email. Well, I don't, someday I'm gonna Yeah, I'm sure. Well, you've got the sensors. I got the sensor. Maybe when you, when you take your car in for service, you know, they'll, they'll update the software for you and get you the the blue crews turned on. But actually, even, even when you're using lane centering I think it's, it should already be using the those infrared cameras to, to look for driver attentiveness. At, at any rate the, the systems that are in the market today, they're, they're only using these cameras to make sure that you're watching the road when you're using any of these driver assist systems, hands free systems.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:32:56):
And so if you look away from the road for more than a couple of seconds, it'll start to alert you and say, Hey, watch the road. Keep your eyes on the road. And what Volvo's doing is they're going beyond that. They are, you know, and during the presentation that they did a week and a half or so ago, they described that component as visual distractions. So if you are looking down at the screen or looking at your phone or looking at a passenger, they call that visual distraction. But there's also another form of distraction that they're going to be trying to detect, which they call cognitive distraction. And I'm sure that there have been times even, you know, driving just a conventional vehicle when you're driving, you're on a long highway trip. Yeah. You know, your, your eyes are on, technically on the road, but you are not really there.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:33:44):
Your mind starts to wander. Yeah. You know, if it's a long, boring drive, that's cognitive distraction. And they haven't revealed exactly how they plan to do this yet, but they are working on logic to use the camera to to detect that kind of cognitive distraction in addition to being able to detect if you're drowsy and if your, if your head's kind of bobbing around you know, then you might be tired or repaired. They're looking for those sorts of things. So all of these sorts of things. The other thing that they're doing in the cabin of the vehicle is they are installing radar sensors. And I think we talked to a few weeks back or a couple months ago about something that a concept that Toyota has using an imaging radar sensor from a company called viar. They put it in a Toyota Sienna.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:34:31):
And they're, they're also using it in the Sienna minivan that they're equipping for automated driving for companies like Aurora and Main mobility to detect if, if there's an occupant in the vehicle. But that's, you know, a development vehicle. The E X 90 will be the first production vehicle to have interior radar that looks for occupants left in the vehicle. And it can detect motions as small as one millimeter. So if there's somebody in the vehicle, you know, they can detect if that person's breathing, you know, so to, to determine, you know, determine if it's a living person there or, you know, a doll left behind or, you know, some other object left on the ba in the back seat. And what it'll do is when you, if it detects that there is a living person still in the vehicle, when you get out of the vehicle, if you try to lock the door, it won't lock the door. It won't allow the door to lock. So, you know, and it'll give you an alert that, hey, you know, somebody's being left behind. You know, make sure you check, check out what's going on here. And the what if it's just a backpack in the backseat? Well, a backpack is gonna be completely stationary. It's probably not

Leo Laporte (00:35:38):
Be breathing.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:35:39):
Okay. Hopefully it's not breathing. Yeah. And, and so if it's, if it's an inanimate object then they'll be able to distinguish that. Interesting. And they caning they'll ignore that. So Yeah. They're looking for living up living people.

Leo Laporte (00:35:52):
Is there, is this a really common thing all of a sudden that all the car companies are trying to protect us from ourselves?

Leo Laporte (00:36:02):
Cause my car has the same thing, backseat alert when I get outta the

Sam Abuelsamid (00:36:05):
Car. Yeah. And, and this, you know,

Leo Laporte (00:36:06):
I turn it off cuz I don't have children or dogs.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:36:09):
Right. Yeah. Well, and that, that's the thing, You know, there've been several hundred incidents over the last 20 years of excuse me, what they call hot, hot child syndrome. A child left in the backseat of the car on a hot day and it was puzzling sitting

Leo Laporte (00:36:24):
In the car. Car manufacturers fought seat belts for so long that all of a sudden they care. <Laugh>, I guess it's, it's good. It's good pr right?

Sam Abuelsamid (00:36:35):
Well, yeah, it's good pr but it's also, you know, it, it's a

Leo Laporte (00:36:39):
Good not against it evolution.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:36:41):
Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:36:41):
Yeah. Yeah. Okay. <laugh>, it seems like, how much do you think it costs to put all those systems in?

Sam Abuelsamid (00:36:48):
Not that much. Okay. It's not that expensive. Yeah. And, and this, you know, as, as we get scale, as we start to apply this across the board on all vehicles the cost will go down quite a bit. Yeah. so, you know, it's probably not more than, you know, a hundred dollars or so per vehicle right now. And it'll get a lot cheaper as, as we start to apply it standard across everything.

Leo Laporte (00:37:10):
I'm not against safety, don't get me wrong. It's just it's an interesting hill. They've decided to defend Sam Bull, Sam at Guide House Insights Wheel Bearings podcasts, regular right here. Thanks, Sam.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:37:23):
Thank you. Li 

Leo Laporte (00:37:33):
Th ladies and gentlemen, the Sam Bull Sam Show gets underway. If you could stick around.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:37:40):
Yeah, sure. So let's see. Grave graveyard tuba, It says square wheels are too bumpy. Yes. That, that is generally true.

Leo Laporte (00:37:50):
Yeah. We don't want square wheels. No, that's a bad idea. Yeah. Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:37:54):
Am Heist is asking about pricing on the poll Star three and the E EX 90. If it follows the XC 90, it will be really expensive. So we don't know pricing yet. This, this will not be an expensive car. Volvos and Poll Star are premium brands. They're luxury brands. So, you know, this, this car will probably start somewhere in the neighborhood of 60 to $65,000. And, you know, that's, that's comparable. You know, if it, if it starts at that price range that's comparable to a Cadillac lyric or something like the like a BMW ev. So we'll, we'll probably have a better idea of pricing later in the year. I don't think that they'll announce pricing when they announce the vehicles over the next month or so. It usually comes closer to the on sale date, but they, they might let's see Tedy says, No more children killed in hot cars.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:38:49):
Yeah. And that's, that's exactly the goal here. You know, there, there have been moves to regulate, to mandate some sort of technology to detect if children have been left behind in cars. There are a number of things that, that have been done by various manufacturers. One of the solutions that Nissan came up with a few years ago was and I think a couple of other manufacturers are using it now, is to track as doors are opened and closed on the car. So, for example if you open the rear doors on the car and close the rear doors, and then you open the dr the driver's door and you get in the car and then you get out of the car and close the driver's door, and you, you, if you don't open the rear door again, then it will honk the horn and, you know, give you an alert.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:39:39):
Say, Hey, make sure you take a look in the back seat, Make sure you haven't left anything behind. That's one approach. Some companies have actually used sensors built into the seats to detect if there's something, something in the you know, on the, on the seat. Again, the problem with that is you can't distinguish between a backpack that's been left there, or a child that's been left there, you know, may have been kid may have fallen asleep. You don't wanna wake, wake the kid up. So you leave them in there. But on a really hot day, you know, the car acts like a greenhouse and it gets very much hotter inside than the ambient temperature outside. And so the, the goal here is to try to alert parents that there's somebody left behind, whether it's a child or a dog you know, or, or any, anything alive, you know, to not leave it leave that, that person or animal in the, in the vehicle.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:40:34):
And one of, you know, one of the ways that you, you know, one of the things you can do, somebody mentioned, you know, Tesla has the the dog air conditioner, you know, and on the screen it'll display that the AC is on if you've deliberately left your dog in there. This is one of the things, you know, with the sensors you can detect, Okay, is there, is there something alive in the vehicle or someone alive in the vehicle? And then you can, it can automatically turn on the air conditioning. Especially because it's an ev it's much easier to do that. So that's that's one of the things you can do. What Toyota also did was do a cascading series of alerts. So first it'll send a text message to your phone, then it'll send a text message to other family members. It can put, put up a message, you know, on your Amazon Echo show. Or, and finally if nobody responds, it can send an alert to local emergency responders that can come and check it out and make sure there's nobody left behind in the car. I

Leo Laporte (00:41:30):
Predict this will not cut the number of children who die in a car down by one child <laugh>. And meanwhile, I'm paying for it. Yeah. <Laugh>. Unbelievable. The 1930s are here. You know, it's nice to know that thanks to Professor Laura and iHeart Radio or iHeart, whatever we called that now, some poor jazz composer from the 1930s is gonna get a check for 52 cents in the mail. We are in episode 1932. So I like this idea. Professor Laura is playing a song from that year and every time. Next, next time it'll be 1933, then it'll be 1934. Get it 1935 after that. How long before we get to the sixties? It's gonna be a while. I think 88. 88. Ask Leo the phone number. Eight eighty eight eight two seven five five three six to free from anywhere in the US or Canada. Karen on the line from Penan Hill, Is it Penon? Pinn Hills, California Pen. Penan. Penan. Okay. Thank you. I'm glad to know now I won't get it wrong next time. Hello, Karen <laugh>.

Caller 2 (00:42:49):
Hello. I'm having problems with my password for AOL on my iPhone. I, I don't know what I did.

Leo Laporte (00:43:01):
You didn't do anything. I've been getting calls like this for the last year. <Laugh>, AOL changed how you sign in, so it's nothing you did wrong. But you can't use your, you know, you have an AOL mail log in and password, but that no longer works on AOL mail. You have to get what's called an application specific password from a on aol you go to the AOL site. So you could still log onto your mail on AOL using your regular password. But when you use other people's applications, a lot of companies do this. Now, it's a security measure. You use a instead of giving, in other words, their fear is, Oh, we don't want you to give your password out to anybody. So instead of giving your password out to anybody, you generate on the AOL website a special password just for Apple Mail, which you use from now on. So this is, I'm

Caller 2 (00:43:55):
Not using Apple Mail, I'm using aol.

Leo Laporte (00:43:58):
Same thing. Okay. So I'll put a link to the help.aol.com page in our show notes@techguylabs.com. But if you just search for AOL space application space password, you'll get right to that page and they'll explain what you need to do.

Caller 2 (00:44:17):
Okay. And then I have another quick question on PDF and Word documents. Yeah. I have a Word document that when I try and bring it up in Word, I have to go from my my search, my search for a particular document, bring it up. Even though it says it's a pdf, it'll bring it up in Word. But when I save it in Word, it doesn't save it, it goes back to the old,

Leo Laporte (00:44:51):
The PDF format

Caller 2 (00:44:53):
For p it. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:44:54):
Yeah. So Word will open PDFs as a convenience to you. There are many programs that will open PDFs mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, but a PDF portable document format. This is something that was created by Adobe and is primarily supported by Adobe. Although, because it's so incredibly useful, in fact, I really encourage people when they're sending out documents not to send out Word documents. Cuz not everybody has Word, but as far as I know, every computer can read a PDF file and display it. The other advantage of a PDF file is in, unless you specifically allow it to be, it can't be modified. So it's a great way to send out contracts. You know, you could sign it and send it back, but you can't like, change the terms of the pdf. Pdf. And that's because a PDF is a picture, not words. Again, this will depend on how it's generated, but in this case, if it's been generated as a standard pdf, which is just a picture of a document, that's why you can't really open it as a Word file. You don't have access to the text of the

Caller 2 (00:45:51):
Document? No, I can open it as a Word file. I can't open it as a go. I can't open what the word file in PDF

Leo Laporte (00:45:59):
Is the extension on the file. D C D O C X or pdf. The thing after the doc, it's a D it's a Doc X file. Okay? Mm-hmm. <Affirmative>. So that's a traditional Word file and you're opening it. But

Caller 2 (00:46:13):
That's the extension. But it's not saving it as the word extension.

Leo Laporte (00:46:19):
It's saving it as what?

Caller 2 (00:46:21):
As a PDF

Leo Laporte (00:46:22):
Try. So, and you've tried Save As to change the file format. Yep. And it won't, it will only save it as a pdf.

Caller 2 (00:46:30):
Yes.

Leo Laporte (00:46:31):
But, well, and even though it's labeled dot Doc X, it sounds like it is a pdf, not a Doc X. You can change the extension word will say, Oh, let me open this Word file. Oh, it's not a Word file. Well, it's a pdf. I could open that. So it opens that, that's probably why it's not letting you save it as a as a Word file. It's not a Word file.

Caller 2 (00:46:51):
Oh. Oh. So if I send out I received a document, If I send the document back out, like I'd make some changes and save it. If I send it out, like if I email it to myself, I can't open it.

Leo Laporte (00:47:10):
Oh, interesting. Huh. Yeah. So here's a test to see if it's truly a pdf. Try opening it. You're on Windows, I take it. Yeah. Try opening it in Microsoft's Edge browser. That's the default browser on Windows these days. And it also opens PDFs. So so drag it to the Edge icon and open it that way. If it displays it's probably a pdf and it may be, you know, PDFs are funny and you can set it for instance, that it can't be modified. And so maybe is this a is this a, a document that somebody sent you? Like a

Caller 2 (00:47:49):
Yes, it's a resume file that I had a resume prepared. Oh, got it. Due for me and she sent it to me. 

Leo Laporte (00:47:58):
She blew it.

Caller 2 (00:47:59):
Both a, both a word and, and a pdf. Yeah,

Leo Laporte (00:48:03):
I think she, I think she blew it because I think she sent you what she thought was a Word document. What is the pdf? Cause you wanna modify your resume, obviously, unless she's being cagey and saying, Well, you can only modify it with me.

Caller 2 (00:48:17):
Well, I have I have, I know that she had change. 

Leo Laporte (00:48:29):
So I think, so there are programs that will take a PDF and convert it to Word, in fact, Adobe,

Caller 2 (00:48:37):
They have already sent out those resumes. All those resumes won't open up. Will they?

Leo Laporte (00:48:41):
They might open up as PDFs, but changes you made may not appear.

Caller 2 (00:48:47):
Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:48:48):
So the check, take the file that you were sending out and open it in edge and see if it is, if the changes took,

Caller 2 (00:48:56):
Okay,

Leo Laporte (00:48:57):
That's the first thing to do. Okay. And then words should be able to save it as a Doc X, but you'd need to explicitly in Word go, I don't know if it's an export command or a save as command, but you need to look at the file format as you're saving it and change it to a document. If this is only possible, if she made it, see she may have screwed up and made it so that you couldn't modify it. So that's, you know, you have PDFs can be locked and that's because you often use 'em for documents like contracts. So you don't want somebody to modify a contract surreptitiously on page 37 in the fine print. So it's, you lock 'em and she may have inadvertently, or perhaps this is her business model, inadvertently made it so that only she can change it. So just say, Hey, I need a plain word file, not a pdf, and all what I got here is a pdf. Even though it says Doc X, you should, you should be a, I mean, she should provide you with a modifiable file. That's very important.

Caller 2 (00:49:59):
Okay.

Leo Laporte (00:49:59):
Yeah. And if you cannot save it changed, then she has locked it.

Caller 2 (00:50:04):
Okay. All right. So there's no way for me to go and unlock it.

Leo Laporte (00:50:09):
I mean, I can't, I'd have to look at it. I think, you know, if it's not locked, if it's not explicitly locked, you can open it in Word and save it as a Word document. Word will convert it. But again, you know, if it's just an image, C PDFs can contain the text, but they can also not contain the text. There's all sorts of funny things

Sam Abuelsamid (00:50:29):
<Laugh>

Leo Laporte (00:50:30):
With PDFs mm-hmm. <Affirmative>. So you should be able to open it. If, if it's just a graphics file, it'll open as a graphics file in Word and you won't be able to get the text out. You'll have to use something called optical Character recognition to read the text. If it is, if the text is embedded in the pdf, then Word will open it and give you the text and allow you to edit it. But she, you know, ask her to send you a, a Word file format or an RTF rich text format file. That's something you can open and modify. And I think what she did is in inadvertently sent you a PDF in both of those files. I would guess that's what happened. That's my best guess. 88. 88 lio more calls right after this. It's cu it's cuz PDFs have varying capabilities. That's the problem. And it, you know, she might have done something weird. All right, Sam, all yours.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:51:31):
All right. So let's see. Big Island asked in the chat room why cars dedicate so much space on the dashboard to the RPM gauge or tech oter. It's known. First of all as we move to electrification, that won't be a problem anymore. You don't get attacked with, with an ev. But traditionally the, you know, the, the tack, you know, has been used as an indicator for the driver to when, when to shift gears. You know, for, for a long time actually, especially on American cars and the, from the sixties through about the eighties, lot cars didn't have a tachometer at all. And as we started getting more performance vehicles again in the 1980s they automaker started adding them back because more enthusiastic drivers wanted them. You know, you certainly don't have to use it.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:52:29):
One of the advantages with many modern cars that have a digital dashboard is you can usually reconfigure it. They, they usually give you multiple themes to choose from. So you can usually get you can, you can select, you know, from a more detailed you know, with all the gauges on there, like oil pressure and temperature and teter and speed and everything else. Or you can often shift to switch to a more simplified display that only shows you your speed and, you know warning lamps and turn signals and things like that. And doesn't, you know, doesn't really show you any of the ancillary information that you may decide you don't need. Is that, you know, this, this is something, this is a problem that's gonna go away over the next several years as we shift more and more to electric vehicles.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:53:16):
But yeah, it can, you know, it's, it's just kind of tradition has basically is what it comes down to. Let's see. Somebody also asked about cars are still available for the $7,500 federal tax credit plugin vehicles that are still eligible through, between now and the end of the year. So from the date that the internal, that the Inflation Reduction Act was signed into law a few weeks ago once it, once the law went into effect one thing that changed is that only vehicles that are assembled in North America, excuse me, only vehicles assembled in North America are eligible for the tax credit now. So that means that EVs from companies like BMW Hyundai, he numerous others that are built outside of the u outside of Canada, the US or Mexico, excuse me, are no longer eligible.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:54:21):
They're so any only vehicles that are still under the 200,000 sales cap, which is still in effect until the end of December and are also assembled in North America, are eligible. So that means Tesla GM vehicles are not eligible. Ford vehicles such as the F-150 Lightning, the Mustang Mae the EIT are eligible. Also some plugin hybrids like the Ford Escape Plugin Hybrid and the Lincoln Corsa Plugin Hybrid, the Jeep Plugin hybrids, the Chrysler Pacific the Grand Cherokee and Wrangler four by E models and also the Chrysler Pacific Plugin Hybrid are eligible. And a couple of BMW models. So BMW X five plugin hybrid, which is actually assembled in South Carolina. Those are eligible. And also Rivian and Lucid vehicles are also eligible. It's a fairly short list right now.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:55:24):
It's actually not going to be, probably not gonna be a whole lot longer in January when the, all the new rules go into effect because under the new rules, they vehicles have to be assembled in North America. And they also have to be, they also have to contain battery components and battery materials that are either sourced in North America or from a country that has free trade agreement with the us. And the percentage of that content starts at 40% in 2023 and ramps up every year by 10% every year through 2027 when it gets to 80%. So the number of vehicles that qualify is going to be fairly limited. But one of the things we're, we're, at least initially, one of the things we are seeing is the industry is moving aggressively to localize more and more battery production which will help.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:56:21):
So starting next year, some of the gm EVs like the the Chevy Bolt, which, oh, and I forgot to mention, the Bolt and Bolty UV are also they're not eligible right now, but they probably will be eligible in January because they do have North American built batteries. And the 200,000 sales cap goes away for Tesla right now. The only vehicles that might be eligible from Tesla next year will be the Model Y. Because starting in January you have not only the, the content rules, but also the price rules. The the base Model three actually uses a Chinese made battery from c a tl. So that one's ineligible. All the other model three variants are over $55,000. So they don't, they're, they're disqualified. The model Y currently uses us made batteries and is under $80,000, which is the price cap for SUVs and trucks.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:57:20):
So it's, it's all really complicated. Let's see who but other companies like Kia and Hyundai are shift moving to shift some of their plugin vehicle production to North America sooner than they had originally planned. And that will make some of those vehicles eligible again. Let's see. Web 31 39 asked about hybrids that don't track your speed. So I, I guess the, in terms of reporting your speed you know, any, any vehicle that does not have connectivity turned on wouldn't be able to report your speed anywhere unless you opt in for one of the insurance discount programs where they monitor your driving behavior. Most insurance companies offer this now, and they, they usually, they typically do it through a little adapter that you dongle, that you plug into your diagnostic port under the dashboard.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:58:22):
And it transmits your driving behavior data back to the insurance company. And as long as you're, as long as you don't speed too much or drive too aggressively, it will it will be it'll, it will you'll be able to get discounts on your insurance. However most a lot of companies are now shifting to getting that data directly through the manufacturer, through the connectivity systems, systems like GM's, OnStar, Hyundai's, Blue Link, and Ford's Ford Pass Connect System. The one way to get out of that is you can opt out of the connectivity. You can have the connectivity turned off and it's basically there's a cellular data modem in your car. You can have, have that turned off and then they can't track your information. The other option, of course, is to just buy an old car that doesn't have any of that stuff like I do.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:59:21):
So that's, that's, that's, that's another option. But for you know, for more and more new cars that, that connectivity is built in as standard equipment. So there's not much you know, all, all you can do is have it disabled, you, you know, it's, otherwise it's there by default. Let's see, what else. CR one says the tax credit is minuscule to the cost of a new electric vehicle. It, it, it's, the tax credits are modest compared to the cost of a lot of the EVs around the market today, but there are also more affordable EVs coming. There, there are, you've got the Chevy Bolt which is, which now starts at only a little over $26,000 next year. The Equinox EV is coming out, which will start at $30,000. So, you know, 75 up to $7,500 tax credit on that would be pretty substantial. You know, that gets you down into the low twenties or with a bolt under $20,000 potentially. Twisted Administer says just buy a BZ four x and drive it till the wheels fall off. That, that is an option. But of course, you can't actually buy it right now until Toyota fixes that wheels falling off. Problem.

Leo Laporte (01:00:31):
<Laugh>. Hey, can you hang on for our first call because yeah, she's got a car question.

Sam Abuelsamid (01:00:36):
Sure.

Leo Laporte (01:00:37):
Okay.

Leo Laporte (01:00:39):
Hey, hey, hey. How are you today? Leo LaPorte here, the tech guy, time to talk computers, the internet, home theater, digital photography, smart phones, smart watches, self driving vehicles, electric vehicles, and all kinds of vehicles. Eighty eight, eighty eight Ask Leo is the phone number. I say that because our, our car guy, Sam, has decided to stick around and help us out with our next caller, 88. 88. Ask Leah website, Tech guy labs.com. That's where the show notes go. There'll be links there to anything we talk about, so you don't have to write anything down. Now, let's see, I think it was Linda from Los Angeles <laugh>. Hi, Linda.

Caller 3 (01:01:20):
Hi Leo. And hi Sam. So your show producer wants me to rename myself Lead Foot in Los Angeles, <laugh>

Leo Laporte (01:01:29):
Lead Foot in la What, what? Why is that?

Caller 3 (01:01:32):
Well, I'm the one who posed the question about the car tracking our driving. Oh, oh,

Leo Laporte (01:01:37):
You wanna, you wanna drive real fast and you don't want anybody to know? Well,

Caller 3 (01:01:41):
No, let us say it differently. My first real love was my Dotson B two 10, you know, fantastic manual,

Leo Laporte (01:01:49):
Sporty little vehicle. Yeah,

Sam Abuelsamid (01:01:51):
Yeah.

Caller 3 (01:01:52):
It was fantastic. And I passed everything on the freeway, <laugh>, and in later years, adult years, I've been a leaser for 30 years of cars, you know, and three and four years stint. So I've had Integra and Lexus, and I'm in a car that I have a separate question about before we get off the call. But the reality is, you know, for decades I drove 72 miles an hour because that's how fast the car wanted to go matter, officer.

Sam Abuelsamid (01:02:22):
No. Tell me, how exactly do you manage that in, in the Los Angeles area?

Caller 3 (01:02:26):
<Laugh>. Bingo. Bingo. So now, now I have discovered everybody is driving 80, so I can go fine, at least I'm at the right speed, I'm in the pack. But the reality is, if I'm driving that fast later at night and I'm the only one for a stretch, I could be pulled over. And that's why I wanna know if like, the cops can not just hit you with their speed gun, but literally ask the car, how fast was this woman driving?

Sam Abuelsamid (01:02:52):
Yeah. No, they, they, they cannot get real time data from your car. At least not yet. So

Leo Laporte (01:02:59):
I imagine they'd love to though.

Sam Abuelsamid (01:03:01):
Yeah. None, none, none of that information is available. And, and generally it's not, you know, it's not even something that's tracked. 

Leo Laporte (01:03:10):
Tesla tracks it, but they would, they would not want to give up. Those are, those are valuable pieces of information. They'd have to be forced to give that information up.

Sam Abuelsamid (01:03:19):
Right? Well, I mean, if they, Well, the thing is, if, if an automaker is tracking that information then, you know, if they get a subpoena or a court order, they would have to give up that information, right. And generally they don't you know, they, they don't track that because it, it's not something that's typically useful. Now you know, I mentioned, you know, the driving data, you know, that is shared with insurance companies. You know, some auto makers are now doing direct partnerships with insurance companies, so that instead of using a little dongle in your diagnostic port, they can, they can get that data directly from the vehicle from the, from the telematics system and and, and share that. But that's not something that's gonna be in real time. That's not real time data. So a police officer's not gonna be able for, probably for the foreseeable future, a police officer's not going to be able to get that information and you know, use that to track your speed. And in fact, it's gonna be a lot easier for them to just use a radar gun to do it <laugh>. Yeah. Yeah. You take a lot less time.

Caller 3 (01:04:24):
So if you're in the middle of the pack, just stick in the middle of the pack <laugh>.

Sam Abuelsamid (01:04:27):
Yeah. Yeah. Just don't, don't try not to stand out too much. Now

Leo Laporte (01:04:30):
I know why my wife calls me and says, I drive like an old man. I drive five miles over the speed limit, Max never. I've actually, I usually set my car five months.

Caller 2 (01:04:38):
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Look, I have people who say to me, Oh, you drive really aggressively. I said, No, I drive like an assertive Italian <laugh>

Leo Laporte (01:04:47):
And that dots in B2 10. I love it. But,

Sam Abuelsamid (01:04:49):
But having, having spent time on the 4 0 5, I'm, I'm shocked that you managed to find a way to drive 72 or late at

Leo Laporte (01:04:55):
Night, late at night, or,

Sam Abuelsamid (01:04:56):
Or anything over about 27 on the, on the 4 0 5,

Caller 3 (01:04:59):
No, Sunday, Sunday morning, 9:00 AM you can experience it or, or on the the, you know, free, the 1 34, you know, <laugh>, these little,

Sam Abuelsamid (01:05:08):
I mean, once, once you get off the highway, you know, up into the canyons above Malibu or Angelus Crest Highway or something like that, you can certainly do it.

Leo Laporte (01:05:16):
Our speedometer. Accurate. by the way somebody in the chat room saying that they're inaccurate, they're about 10% over. Is that right, Sam?

Sam Abuelsamid (01:05:25):
It, it varies.

Leo Laporte (01:05:25):
Depends. I think mine's pretty accurate. Depends on the car. It's digital. I'm sure it's accurate.

Sam Abuelsamid (01:05:29):
Well, I mean, it's precise. That doesn't mean it's accurate. There's a difference between precision and accuracy. <Laugh>,

Leo Laporte (01:05:34):
That's what I told

Sam Abuelsamid (01:05:36):
The

Caller 3 (01:05:36):
Cop. I've got another question.

Sam Abuelsamid (01:05:38):
Okay.

Caller 3 (01:05:38):
And this one is completely off the rails. I am leasing a car. I will not name the maker or the model, but since the day I got this car three years ago, 93% of the time when I get out of the car and I reach for the door to close it, I get a shock. And I'm pissed, as you can imagine. But I have no idea what to do about it. So it's been three years of figuring out how to muffle my hand or my elbow or whatever. Cuz I literally get a shock. Well,

Leo Laporte (01:06:05):
There's his short somewhere, right?

Sam Abuelsamid (01:06:07):
That's, that sounds like it do, Does the car have cloth seats?

Caller 3 (01:06:11):
It has like a funny sporty thing. And I thought, Oh,

Leo Laporte (01:06:14):
You

Sam Abuelsamid (01:06:15):
Think it's static? It could, it could be static, I thought.

Caller 3 (01:06:18):
But, but the, here, it doesn't matter what I'm wearing, it happens.

Leo Laporte (01:06:22):
Well, you know, and static feels different than an electric shock, right? I mean, static is kind of a quick bus. Electric is kind of a weird lower frequency.

Caller 3 (01:06:35):
This is, this is a static shock. But you, god, every time you get outta your car, well,

Leo Laporte (01:06:41):
Maybe you're carpeting and your shoes are interacting <laugh>, maybe you should take those manolos off and just use your bare feet

Sam Abuelsamid (01:06:48):
<Laugh>. Just wear, just try, try wearing a rubber suit and and see what happens.

Leo Laporte (01:06:53):
So, so, you know, it's a static shock. Do you see a, a spark jumping sometimes? Oh,

Caller 3 (01:06:58):
I, I had a hell of a shock with blue spark, et cetera last week. Wow. It's like, okay, this is beyond ridiculous.

Leo Laporte (01:07:04):
Yeah. Do you have a, do you have a tendency to kind of move around in the seat a lot? <Laugh>?

Caller 3 (01:07:08):
No.

Leo Laporte (01:07:09):
That's your driving.

Caller 3 (01:07:10):
I do what I do, what most of us do, which is turn 30 degrees to put your first leg out and rise to get out of the car.

Sam Abuelsamid (01:07:17):
Yeah. That, I mean, that shouldn't cause a problem. So what it is possible that there's, there's an electrical short somewhere, but if that was the case, you would probably also find that your battery is dying prematurely.

Leo Laporte (01:07:31):
No, the other thing

Sam Abuelsamid (01:07:32):
I'd be very, That's not

Leo Laporte (01:07:33):
Happening. Gas stations, because this actually can, Cause

Sam Abuelsamid (01:07:36):
That's a good, good point.

Leo Laporte (01:07:37):
Explosions at gas stations isn't something to be careful about. Oh God. They do sell. And and computer folks often use this. You have to be in a dry climate to get this kind of shock. But which you are in, obviously they do sell any static sprays you could spray on the seat and the carpeting of the car, and I bet you that would help

Caller 3 (01:07:59):
Give that a try.

Leo Laporte (01:08:00):
It's, it's actually basically downy <laugh> or something like it

Caller 3 (01:08:03):
<Laugh>

Leo Laporte (01:08:05):
And, and it just reduces the static. And you know, if you, if you do computer repairs for instance, you'll use that on, you know, what you wanna do is ground yourself. But if, but you might use that, that also on the carpet. That's the other thing. You get one of those, go to a, go to a electronics store, get a grounding strap, attach it to the frame of your car, and then you'll never have this problem again.

Caller 3 (01:08:24):
What does one attach it the other end too? Just drags

Leo Laporte (01:08:27):
On the ground the framing of your car. That's a sufficient ground something

Sam Abuelsamid (01:08:31):
Something

Leo Laporte (01:08:31):
Metal off. Something metal. Yes. <laugh>. No, don't do that. Now you really have too much to explain to the CHP <laugh>. Well, yes, I I am driving a little fast, but it's because I'm handcuffed to the vehicle officer.

Caller 3 (01:08:45):
Right. It's like, Yes, officer, please open my door for me.

Leo Laporte (01:08:48):
<Laugh>. Yeah, you do it, you do it, you open the door. That's it. Just get your friends, Don't open

Sam Abuelsamid (01:08:53):
My guest officer. Yeah,

Leo Laporte (01:08:55):
<Laugh>. Oh god, that's an interesting problem. Yeah, try and, you know, believe it or not, they do sell any static spray that probably help.

Caller 3 (01:09:01):
Got it. And so just, just to close out the issue of speed tracking. If we have the connectivity turned off, meaning like you say, No, I don't want the subscription for a gold star, whatever the, these programs are. Or do you have to take it to the dealer and say, I need you to turn off the connectivity?

Sam Abuelsamid (01:09:18):
No, they can turn it off remotely. Okay. And you know, once they do that, once they turn it off remotely, if you do wanna turn it back on, then it, they have to have physical access to turn it back on, at least with all the systems I've ever seen. So they can't, they can't turn it on remotely. If once, once the the data modem's been turned off, they can't remotely reach in and turn it back on, but they can turn it off remotely.

Caller 3 (01:09:43):
Okay. And then the insurance company may want you to put a do hickey in or offer you a discount in your insurance. And all you have to do is say, No, I'm not gonna install that. Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (01:09:52):
Yeah. It's entirely opt in if you know, I mean, you won't, you won't get the discount, obviously, but yeah, that's, that's, yeah. You just say no.

Caller 3 (01:09:59):
Exactly.

Leo Laporte (01:10:00):
Linda, you're a,

Sam Abuelsamid (01:10:01):
You're a who. You just drive an old car like I do, which doesn't even have a diagnostic port to plug into. You're all

Caller 3 (01:10:07):
Good. How old a car? How old a car are you in?

Sam Abuelsamid (01:10:09):
My car's 32 years old.

Caller 3 (01:10:12):
1990. Darn it. Look, you find me a do B2 10 and workable order, and I'm gonna join you. They

Leo Laporte (01:10:17):
Are so cute. I, I

Sam Abuelsamid (01:10:19):
Check bring, if you check bring a trailer, you could probably find one on there. That's way too expensive.

Leo Laporte (01:10:23):
I could see you driving around. What color was your b2? 10.

Caller 3 (01:10:28):
My, well, it came in that horrible burnt orange and I it to Earl five and I gave them $99.

Leo Laporte (01:10:34):
99 95. You bet.

Caller 3 (01:10:35):
Exactly. They painted it midnight blue with like this sparkle effect. And it was a stunningly beautiful,

Leo Laporte (01:10:41):
Oh my gosh. Was it a fastback, was it one of the fastbacks?

Caller 3 (01:10:44):
It it was a hatchback.

Leo Laporte (01:10:46):
Hatchback,

Caller 3 (01:10:47):
You know, with a little triangular window. It was not a Toyota, it was a doctor. It's

Leo Laporte (01:10:51):
A Dotson. I remember those very well. It must have

Sam Abuelsamid (01:10:54):
Sounded, I I just found a, a 1977 B two 10. Yeah. Four speed that sold last December for $9,200 on

Leo Laporte (01:11:03):
Such a deal trailer. Such a deal. Yeah,

Sam Abuelsamid (01:11:06):
There's,

Leo Laporte (01:11:07):
Take it to car shows. Yep. You'd be a hit.

Caller 3 (01:11:10):
There we go.

Leo Laporte (01:11:11):
Linda, thank you for calling. I appreciate it. Sam, thank you for sticking around a little extra. No problem. I appreciate it. Leo Laporte, the tech guy. 88. 88. Ask Leo Moore calls coming up in just a little bit. Yeah. Here's one. 1977 beat two 10 hatchback in that beautiful mustard, yellow, $10,000. Bring a trailer Leola for the tech guy. <Laugh>. I love it. I love it. That is a good looking car. That's a good looking vehicle. Look at that. That's the color she had, I think.

Sam Abuelsamid (01:11:49):
Probably. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:11:50):
Wow. 1976. Look at that. Like a bad outta hell. Probably sounded like a sewing machine when it was at full speed.

Sam Abuelsamid (01:12:01):
It's probably un unfortunately, the, the, the downside of bring a trailer, it is at you can't drive away. It really caused prices on some of these old cars to just get totally ridiculous. Why? There is no way this car is worth $10,000.

Leo Laporte (01:12:16):
Why? By what does bring a trailer mean? It won't drive

Sam Abuelsamid (01:12:18):
It. It's not Well, it, it's a, it's a website. It's owned by Hearst.

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

Sam Abuelsamid (01:12:24):
And it's part of Hearst Autos. So the same group that owns Road Track and Car Driver. I get it. And you know, they, what they do is, you know, not everybody is allowed to list their cars on their, you know, they, they're selective about what cars they list for auction. And they you know, then they, they have to get, you know, really good photos. They make 'em look really good.

Leo Laporte (01:12:44):
I've watched the I've watched the car auctions on tv. Those I bet you have also braced

Sam Abuelsamid (01:12:51):
Prices. Classic car prices have just gotten

Leo Laporte (01:12:53):
Absurd. Yeah. Yeah. The best vintage and classic cars. Oh, this is what Henry wants. He wants oh no, he wants a not a Land Rover. He wants a Jeep or not a Jeep a do What's the thing? Bronco. Bronco. Yeah. I always wanna say, what's the thing OJ drove? He wants a broco.

Sam Abuelsamid (01:13:16):
Well, like the, the nineties Bronco or

Leo Laporte (01:13:18):
Yeah,

Sam Abuelsamid (01:13:19):
I think you, the old first generation.

Leo Laporte (01:13:20):
I, him, him Get, get the, get get the new electric Broncos when they come out. You'll be very, you'll be very happy.

Sam Abuelsamid (01:13:27):
And there's, there's a couple of electric Jeeps coming in 2024. Here's

Leo Laporte (01:13:31):
My next car. The Amfa car Model seven 70. Look at that. That's a,

Sam Abuelsamid (01:13:37):
Can drive it right through a Hurricane

Leo Laporte (01:13:39):
<Laugh>. It's about, it's a car. It's boat car. I love it.

Sam Abuelsamid (01:13:45):
Not very good at either one. Jack of all trades and master.

Leo Laporte (01:13:48):
Yeah. Master of zero. Yeah. But if, well you sure look good driving it around in, in the water. <Laugh>,

Sam Abuelsamid (01:13:55):
I guess.

Leo Laporte (01:13:57):
Scooter X. You, your friend has a Bronco. He's selling for one and a half million. No. Are you, are you teasing me? Let's, let me find a Bronco here.

Sam Abuelsamid (01:14:07):
Maybe a, maybe 150.

Leo Laporte (01:14:09):
Yeah. LBJ had an Amfa car, they'd drive. Oh, look at these. So what, what's the classic era? The eighties? Yeah, like the, the, the OJ style Bronco would be the one on the bottom left there. The Bronco or no, sorry. No, the, the one, the one above it. That's the Bronco two. That's early nineties. The second generation. Yeah. Well that, yeah, so that's, that was based on the, the first, the original Ranger pickup. The, the top row there. Yeah. Top the top left. Yeah. Now I need is a white one. Yeah. There we go. Well, they're not too expensive actually. I mean, they are, cuz they're 50 years old, but Yeah. So I, I wouldn't, I wouldn't recommend spending that kind of money on a Bronco. He probably wants, it's not that great. An orange. Look at that. There you go. He's a hipster. He's a hipster. Yeah. He just got a big book advance so he can afford it. Oh really? Yeah. Yeah. Good for him. Yeah. I'm proud of him. Thank you, sir. All right. I'll talk to you next week. Appreciate your extra duty. Take care. No problem. All right. Bye-Bye. Leo Laport, the tech eye. 88. 88. Ask Leo d phone number. I wanna talk tech with you if you've got a question or a comment or a suggestion. That's what we're here for. Pete's on the line from West Hollywood, California. Hello, Pete.

Caller 4 (01:15:35):
Hi Leo.

Leo Laporte (01:15:36):
Welcome.

Caller 4 (01:15:38):
Thank you for calling, taking my call. I listened to you since episode one.

Leo Laporte (01:15:44):
Wow. 1,931 episodes ago.

Caller 4 (01:15:47):
Yes. First was shock that I missed the other guy. And then I got in love with you because he You're much better.

Leo Laporte (01:15:56):
<Laugh>. Well, I really appreciate it. Yeah, the other guy Jeff Levy was a legend, of course. He's pass past a few years ago. But yeah I was I got the call in 2004 from kfi. They said, Jeff's going across town. We need a tech guy. Can you come? I said, I'll be there. I got my headphones. We'll, we'll broadcast. So thank you for listen to all that time. It's been a long time. Oh

Caller 4 (01:16:23):
Yeah. I listen faithfully.

Leo Laporte (01:16:25):
Thank you, sir. I appreciate it.

Caller 4 (01:16:27):
I have a problem. My wife's Instagram was hacked.

Leo Laporte (01:16:33):
Oh no.

Caller 4 (01:16:35):
And the email is changed and wondering if we can get it back.

Leo Laporte (01:16:43):
You have to go to Instagram and they're gonna ask if, you know, you ask you to prove that it's yours, cuz of course, you know, they have a problem because they don't want other people to come to you and pretend, you know, come to them and pretend they're you and say, Oh my, my account's been hack. Give it to me. So they change the email, which is your backup, right? Yeah. The, when, when this happens, they do send an email to the original email. So you might look in her mailbox from security.instagram.com and see if she got an email. Did this happen recently?

Caller 4 (01:17:24):
About two weeks ago? I've been trying. We we got emails. We tried it and now email is going to the other email. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:17:36):
But, but before they do that, before they change the email, Yeah. They will send this address email to the old address. Almost everybody does this saying, Hey just heads up, we gotta request to change email. We did. But if that's not you respond to this message. So that's the, the best thing to do if this happens, is look for in your old email, you know, her email address. Look for a mail from, it'll come from security@instagram.com. So look for something from Instagram that's security Instagram. And that will give you an option to undo it. Now, maybe too much time has gone by, but just in general, everybody listening should know when, when you request to change like that, almost everybody sends out a, an, an email to the old address just in case saying, Hey, we got, you know, a request to change this email.

Leo Laporte (01:18:30):
Is that okay with you? There are other ways you can, you can do this. You can contact Instagram support and they may say, Well, we're gonna need you to take a video selfie and confirm your identity. Maybe hold up a driver's license. That kind of thing. Because they don't want somebody else to come along and do that. Yeah. So I will, there's a whole page of stuff that Instagram tells you if your account's been hacked. If you, if you just search for Instagram hacked, it's, for me, it was a very first thing that popped up. And then below that, there's a how to recover a hack Instagram account. Ultimately, at this point, it's been two weeks. You're gonna have to go to Instagram, you're gonna have to conv, your wife's gonna have to convince them she is who she says she is, possibly with some idea stuff.

Leo Laporte (01:19:22):
But this happens a lot, unfortunately. So they should, they should help you fix this. The problem is, of course, Instagram's got a lot of users and it's, you know, it's, it's Facebook, it's meta and that means, you know, it's may take a while, but but it is, it there constantly under attack. So first thing to do is go through our old emails on our old, you know, our current address. Look for that email from Instagram security. Cuz if you got that, that's a very good place to start. Okay? Then there's a link on it that says, Secure your account here. That will help. And even if it doesn't work anymore, cause it's two weeks later, having that email that you can forward to them and say, See, look, this was the old address. Somebody changed it, it will have information in that email that they can use to see that that in fact happened.

Leo Laporte (01:20:17):
That this is the old email address that's really gonna be valuable to them From now on, tell your wife, and you should do it, and everybody should do it. Turn on multi, what they call multifactor authentication. You know, this, I mean, there, the, the most important security thing for most people they can do right now is get a password manager. Don't reuse passwords. Let the password manager generate completely random passwords, which it then remembers. So you don't have to. So the one mistake people make is they either use weak passwords that are too short, you know, my dog's name and my birthday. Or they, and, and they may do both reuse passwords. So they use it on 20 different sites. If any one of those sites has a security breach, the bad guys do something called a credential stuffing attack. They'll go to every site in the world and try that password.

Leo Laporte (01:21:11):
And if you've been reusing passwords, they're gonna get into some of them. So don't reuse passwords. Get a password manager that will generate long, strong passwords. And then on sites that allow you, and Instagram is one of them. Turn on what they call two factor authentication. What it usually means is you'll have to have an application in your phone. I use Athe, but they're Google Authenticator. Microsoft Authenticator, a lot of different authenticators. It generates a six digit code. Changes that code every 30 seconds. You get that ACA thing and you put that Instagram account in there. They'll give you a QR code, you add it to the authenticator. And then when you log in on a new machine and only on a new machine, it will say, Well, okay, what's the six digit code you enter that in. The thing is, the bad guys can't do it.

Leo Laporte (01:21:56):
They might guess your password, They might find it in a breach somewhere, but they can't get that two factored. And that's, that's really the most important thing to do. So, password manager, random passwords, don't reuse passwords. Two factor authentication. This guaranteed to protect you every time. Leo LaPorte Tech, Leo LaPorte, the tech guy, 88. 88. Ask Leo my phone number. Website tech guy labs.com. That's where links go. All the things we talk about show notes, they call 'em after the event, after the show's over, we also put audio and video from the show. A list of songs played by Professor Laura, our musical director and a transcript of the show that all goes up there. And it's free to use anytime Tech Guy labs.com and you'll know you're in the right place because this is episode 1932. On the line right now. It's Lyle Jackson. Is that, is that right? From oh, No. Lyle from Jackson, Mississippi. Hi Lyle. How you doing? I'm great. How are you? All right.

Caller 5 (01:23:05):
First of all, I wanted, you know, I'm legally blind and I have a Pixel six phone. Okay. And I just bought it eight weeks now. I've been having the phone the first five and a half weeks I've been working is hard. I'm self taught working the phone, my very first cell phone. Yeah. smart phone that is. And it stayed now. And I tried to get I called my, my provider that told me to take it to the at t store. My at t store told me my phone is still new under my manufacturer's warranty. Good. And I tried to call Google, Google. Do I have a working line for me to talk to a person? And they want, they want me to type it in on the computer. Ah, I do not have, Oh, I have access to it and I don't know how to get in contact with Google and I need to I phone complete.

Leo Laporte (01:24:04):
So did you buy it from at and t?

Caller 5 (01:24:06):
Yes, sir.

Leo Laporte (01:24:07):
Then they need to, That's, that's the store you bought it from?

Caller 5 (01:24:12):
I bought it from, I bought it on from the operator on at t.

Leo Laporte (01:24:16):
Okay. So it seems to me that at and t is responsible. They're trying to palm this off on Google. It is hard to get support from Google. You're not the first guy to call this show today and complain about Google. You can do it. Oh. You don't have a computer and you don't have a phone. There's no way for you to do it, is there?

Caller 5 (01:24:35):
Right.

Leo Laporte (01:24:37):
How frustrating.

Caller 5 (01:24:38):
And calling you. See, you might have connections as you Oh, my power.

Leo Laporte (01:24:44):
Oh, if only that were true <laugh> Lyle. But it isn't. I wish it were. Yeah. Hey I am gonna refer you to a guy who calls this show all the time. He's a wonderful guy. Julian Vargas is his name. Yeah. Heard of him. Have you heard of him? Tech jv.com. He is, he is blind himself. And he, and he loves helping blind and low vision users with technology issues. And I wouldn't be surprised if Julian could help you get this solved better. Better than I can because, and honestly, I don't have any connections at Google and it drives me crazy. And I, you know, I see all the time people having trouble with Google phones. The wonder Google is struggling for crying out loud. Honestly, I do think it's at t's you know, when you buy something from at and t Uhhuh they're responsible whether or not it's a Google phone, but, alright, so they're palming this off.

Leo Laporte (01:25:45):
Google. Google does have a disability support team. So I'm gonna give you, Do you, Well see. Yeah. You have to contact them on the web. Thanks. Disability Support team. You knit Witz. I'm, I'm clicking the, the thing it says, phone to connect with a specialist, choose a support option and follow the link. And I, and the link says phone. I'm gonna click the phone. What do I get? Let's see. When I click phone, I get a form. <Laugh> not a phone number. The heck with you. Google. Yeah. So let me give you Julian's phone number cuz I think this is gonna be and I bet you Julian's listening right now. How satisfied are you with your help experience? Very dissatisfied. This is not a phone number. You knit Witz. <Laugh>, you knit, you knit Witz. There's chat, but you need a computer for that. There's email, but you need a computer for that, right? Do you have well, you need a phone to have the Be My Eyes app, which is a great app. But you need a, you need a phone that works for that. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> they don't have a phone number on this page. And where you, when you click the phone thing, it gives you a form.

Caller 5 (01:26:56):
Right? And I talk to at and t, they may have a number it even to automation. And automation. Tell

Leo Laporte (01:27:03):
Me. Yeah. It's terrible. I'm just, I'm just livid. This is no way to treat people. Let me give you Julian's phone number. You want it?

Caller 5 (01:27:12):
Yes sir.

Leo Laporte (01:27:13):
8 1 8.

Caller 5 (01:27:15):
Okay.

Leo Laporte (01:27:15):
7 9 4. 9 5 5 4.

Caller 5 (01:27:23):
Okay.

Leo Laporte (01:27:24):
I am so sorry, Lyle. This stinks.

Caller 5 (01:27:27):
Yeah, it does stink. Real Save

Leo Laporte (01:27:30):
Money. You deserve better. Yeah. Are those church bells or your doorbell? I hear in the back.

Caller 5 (01:27:35):
My, my long panel in order goes off like, we know what's my open door.

Leo Laporte (01:27:39):
Well go, go get the door. Lyle a pleasure talking to you. All right, Thank you. All right. Take care. I feel so bad. You knit. Witz, <laugh>. This is their, this is their accessibility page, right? This is the page Google creates for people with disabilities. Let's say like, maybe you're blind. So it says contact the Google disability support page. Oh, team. Oh good. Oh, I can contact them. I can call 'em. Let's see. To connect with a specialist, choose a support option and follow the link. Okay. Phone talk to a specialist, Click the link. What do you get? You get a web based form and they call you <laugh>. So that's another thing you could do, Lyle, is go here and give them your phone number. At least.

Leo Laporte (01:28:37):
I mean, I can't say I give them high marks for that <laugh>, but at least they will. They say they will call you. And honestly, I think at and t is, is really passing the buck here. This is increasingly a problem, though. I've heard about this happening before where you buy something from a vendor and there's a problem with it to say not our, you know, no, sorry, you have to go to the manufacturer for support. We're, you know, we're not responsible. Well, excuse me, You got the money. I gave you my money. Maybe I should just, you give me my money back. I'll go give it to the manufacturer instead. You sold me the thing you don't, don't do, do consumer laws not not protect us here. Boy, you, you'd think they do a better job on their disability support page. I'm so sorry, Lyle.

Leo Laporte (01:29:41):
<Laugh>. And of course he's in a really bad spot because notice all these companies assume that you have a computer. You know, Oh, your phone's not working. Oh, just go online and we can help you. What if you don't have a computer? We, we gotta do better than this Silicon Valley. You gotta do better than, this is what we were talking about. Or at the beginning of the show. Silicon Valley is in a bubble. They don't, they're not real people. <Laugh> the rich as f Scott Fitzgerald said, are not like you and me. They're not. They live in this fluffy cloud line world where the sky is always blue and everything always works. And they don't understand. Well just get, Don't you have a computer? Go to your computer, fix it. Just go to your computer. Fill out the form, we'll call you. No, I wanna call you. I don't have a computer. Makes me angry. <Laugh> just makes me mad.

Leo Laporte (01:30:49):
Anyway, thank God for people like you, Julian. I know Julian listens. Tech jv.com. He does. He he's always, he's come on the show many times. His email help@techjv.com I gave at his phone number. He, he's, he's come on the show many times saying, No, no, I will help people. I will help line people, people with disabilities. I, I he loves doing that. So I appreciate it. The at and t National Center for Customers with Disabilities. Phone number, another phone number. (866) 241-6568. But you know, these companies, they just, they have a title on the door so that you think they care. They don't care. Leo Laport de techo.

Leo Laporte (01:31:35):
I'm just getting in the mood for Corey, Dr. O and Alex Karos this evening on Twi. I'm, I'm just getting in that, in that mind, my <laugh> state of mind. You know, Mike be the latest is the, the according to Mark Erman, of course Marcus is couching it in those terms that Renee warned us about. The I think he says that Apple will not have an event, but I also contend that he wouldn't say that so close to the date of an event if he weren't pretty sure, like he's saying, I think. But I think he knows is what I think. I think he knows. Grazing in the gas. It's a gas. That was in the days before we knew about greenhouse effects. 88. 88. Ask Leo the phone number. Let's go on with the show. Alex, on the line from Northridge, California, our next caller. Hi Alex,

Caller 6 (01:32:38):
How are you sir?

Leo Laporte (01:32:39):
I am well. How are you?

Caller 6 (01:32:41):
Great. Thanks so much for taking my call. My pleasure. Leo, so I don't want to use an external box for getting audio in and out of my iPad or an iOS device. I have those, or that I use an Apple camera kit that gives me usb. I can hook it up and it works fine. There's certain switch where I wanna be more mobile. So does anybody make, you know how Apple makes this dumb dongle, but you can use it for your headphones. In other words, dumb

Leo Laporte (01:33:15):
Dongle was so dumb. No, that's, that's another, another dongle. You want to plug a microphone directly into your iPad, Is that what you're saying?

Caller 6 (01:33:26):
Yes. Yeah. Or, or could be a line level. Doesn't have to be a microphone. It could be just a line level or in and out. So I wanna be able to connect into it and then out of it as well.

Leo Laporte (01:33:40):
So that's why you need a box. Cause it's a, it's, Do you, does your iPad have a lightning port or a type C USB port?

Caller 6 (01:33:50):
What? no, it's a lightning.

Leo Laporte (01:33:52):
Lightning. Okay. Yeah, that's, that's right. Cause you use the Apple camera connection kit. That's right. So that lightning has to have something made for the iPhone, an MFI device, Right. To connect to it. Yeah. And that device for you needs to have line out and line in, Is that what you're saying? Yes. Yeah. Yes. 

Caller 6 (01:34:17):
And just to add a bonus on that, if there is a way to control the digital game structure inside the phone, I know that might be a little bit pushing it, but basically I'm looking for a dongle, not a box, something small. Yeah. That connects to the lightning connection that gives me both in and out and if possible, to control the digital gain structure coming in.

Leo Laporte (01:34:41):
So you're connecting this, your desire is to connect this to what?

Caller 6 (01:34:47):
To very like to speakers, to to devices, basically that needs to receive a sync audio. So basically the first step is I record a sync signal. Okay. So I use the camera to, to capture video. And in the video, the instrument that I use, it sends a tic code out. Okay. That I need to record it as part of the video.

Leo Laporte (01:35:10):
The simp code is, is audio or It is, It is. Okay. Okay. Yeah. So Apple makes, I mean, for audio out it's easy. Apple makes a lightning connector is with headphone. The headphone dongle. Sure. Audio in. Yeah, sounds like you want kind of Yeah, I don't know of anything. That's not a box there. It's a, you kind of want a mixer. Yeah,

Caller 6 (01:35:36):
I've got these. I've

Leo Laporte (01:35:37):
Got these. You've got already got all that. You just want something that's not so hefty. Something you can, That's right.

Caller 6 (01:35:42):
Yeah,

Leo Laporte (01:35:42):
That's right. I'm just looking through the audio connectors. It's audio out's not hard. It's audio in and you want analog. It's simply analog or digital. It's analog. 

Caller 6 (01:35:53):
Well it's a digital signal, but it's recorded. Recorded. In an analog world

Leo Laporte (01:35:58):
It's sent out as Beep. Beep.

Caller 6 (01:36:00):
Exactly, exactly. Yeah. LTC VI C or itc, basically.

Leo Laporte (01:36:05):
Okay. Okay. So anything that could handle audio would work. Yeah. Fine. I think what you've got the camera connection kit or just a, I mean, there are certainly MFI devices that have lightning on one end and audio jack on the other and then USB or other lightning things on it. And I think that's what you're gonna need. It's the end That's gonna be tricky. It's the out's not hard. The end that's, Yeah.

Caller 6 (01:36:30):
The, the out is not a problem. I can always switch to the Apple camera. Right. Not camera kit. Right. But the headphones Dongo

Leo Laporte (01:36:38):
Saying, and this is a good device. The I rig might do that. Let me, you might already have this. This is, I have that. Yes. It's,

Caller 6 (01:36:45):
Again, it's

Leo Laporte (01:36:46):
A box. It's, it's a, it's a, it's bigger than a it's bigger than a connect cable. I think that's because it has to do, that's about as small as you're gonna get. It has to do some conversion because the lightning port's digital and analog line in is analog. So you, you've gotta have something that converts analog to digital. And that's not gonna be in a cable.

Caller 6 (01:37:08):
Well, it's the same way as the headphones. It's converting digital to Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:37:11):
It's one little chip, I guess. Yeah. the IRE is about as close to the smallest. And that's for musicians. Mostly. It's, it's a way of, you know, hooking your guitar up to your your iPad.

Caller 6 (01:37:23):
But as far as that dongle thing, you don't know of any,

Leo Laporte (01:37:26):
I don't know of any, No. No. And I, and I'm thinking it's because the electronics are more complex than just the headphone adapter. Yeah. Apple packs a lot of electronics into that headphone adapter. That's not a, it's a non-trivial piece of equipment. And the other problem of course is it's lightning. And that's an Apple proprietary port. So you gonna have some Chinese manufacturer coming along going, Oh yeah, we can make that. It's a special,

Caller 6 (01:37:53):
Special

Leo Laporte (01:37:54):
Connection. Yeah. Look for mfi. I'm searching MFI audio looking on Amazon and I see a lot of devices, none of them. Just the simple thing. The

Caller 6 (01:38:04):
Cable. Like a dump. Just a cable. Okay. Sorry.

Leo Laporte (01:38:08):
Sorry.

Caller 6 (01:38:09):
<Laugh>. That's alright.

Leo Laporte (01:38:10):
I's pretty good. I mean have you used that? Have you tried with Yeah,

Caller 6 (01:38:13):
I have one of those. I have one of those.

Leo Laporte (01:38:15):
Yeah. Sounds like you've tried all the other solutions. You just want something that's smaller. Yeah. Are you doing this for recording or?

Caller 6 (01:38:24):
So, okay, so I have this player piano. I think I talked to you last week. Oh,

Leo Laporte (01:38:27):
I remember. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Caller 6 (01:38:29):
Remember. So I have a player piano that sends a simp code out. Right. And I wanna use my phone. Really? It's a nice camera for recording video. Sure.

Leo Laporte (01:38:39):
To get. Sure it is. But you want the sync.

Caller 6 (01:38:42):
Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Actually a quick question then if I may ask. Do you know of a camera that has a line input to record instead of a microphone? I have several DSLRs that have a microphone input. And that microphone input has causing problems. When you're recording atic code, it messes it up and it doesn't play back correctly.

Leo Laporte (01:39:05):
So if it had line in, it would record the, as a separate audio track. That's what you wanna

Caller 6 (01:39:09):
Exactly. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:39:11):
I'm sure there is such, I'm sure there is such a thing. I just don't know off the top of my head, but I'm sure you know who would know all of this is our friend Alex Lindsay. He's one of the hosts of Mac Break Weekly. He has a thing he does every, every morning called Office Hours. It's for video production pros. And he'll usually have a dozen video production pros on this Zoom call. And they have a question and answer session they do every morning.

Caller 6 (01:39:40):
Oh, what's the name of it again, please? One more time.

Leo Laporte (01:39:42):
Website is Office hours.global. And you need to get if you fill out the form there, you can get a, the Zoom link and join that Zoom call. And they do have a q and A thing. So click the join us button@officehours.global, fill out the form and then you can get in there and ask questions. And I'll tell you what, you will get 20 good answers there. Probably somebody doing exactly that.

Caller 6 (01:40:07):
Yeah. Yeah. The

Leo Laporte (01:40:08):
Real, really if you look at just the videos they have@officehours.global, it's really amazing. It is. So there people from the film world, the TV world they do some amazing stuff and certainly a lot of audio experts in there.

Caller 6 (01:40:22):
Very cool. Appreciate that tip. Sure.

Leo Laporte (01:40:25):
Thanks. Alex. Are you gonna, are you gonna put your music up on YouTube?

Caller 6 (01:40:31):
Probably not <laugh>, but too busy for that.

Leo Laporte (01:40:35):
Oh, I was hoping you were recording it so we can listen. Oh, well maybe

Caller 6 (01:40:39):
That chat

Leo Laporte (01:40:40):
With you. All right, Alex, you call me when you do that. Alright, so I could tell everybody sound devices. Yeah, maybe Sound devices is very good. I mean, that's a box, but that's what a lot of us use. I have one at home. We have many here. This is a lot of professional production companies use sound devices for their audio recording and audio connections. Lots of stuff out there. Tuesday, Emerick, who is a regular in-office hours says Tuesday is the day for audio experts. So when you go to Office hours.global, get that invite so you can join the Zoom call and then tune in Tuesday. That's a very good, very good place to do it. 88. 88. Ask Leo. We do put links to the show notes up@techguylabs.com. In fact, I'll put that office hours link up there. Tech guy labs.com No signup required. We don't want your email, anything like that. Just a place for you to get that information. More calls coming up. Ultra Sync Blue. Thank you. Re con Ultra Sync Blue on iPhone. Now you can sync your phone. This is exactly what he wants.

Leo Laporte (01:42:06):
Wow. Well, I hope oh. He is. Alex is still listening. Time code systems.com. It's called the Ultra Sync Blue on iPhone. It feeds time code to iPhones over Bluetooth. Problem is you have SIMP coming out of the piano. This may may not work for you. It's an interest. So clearly somebody's doing this right. I'll put that in the show notes also. Interesting. Thank you. Brett Cotton, by the way, thank you for the wine that was very generous of me. Lisa wants you to know we haven't tried it yet. We're saving it. First special occasion. Yes. It's okay to send wine to your tech guy. It's allowed.

Speaker 8 (01:43:02):
No, it's,

Leo Laporte (01:43:03):
It's discouraged.

Leo Laporte (01:43:05):
Well, hey, hey, hey. How are you today? Leo Laporte here, the tech guy. It's time to talk computers, the internet, home theater, digital photography, smart smartphone, self-driving vehicles, robots, anything with a chip in it. Eighty eight eighty eight Ask Leo is the phone number (888) 827-5536 toll free from anywhere in the US or Canada outside that area. You could still call but you need to use Skype out or something like that. That'll let you call a landline from an internet thing, if you know what I mean. And it should still be toll free website tech guy labs.com. I say that so that you don't have to write anything down. If I mention, Oh, I'll put that in the show notes, that's where they go. Links things we talk about Tech guy labs.com. We put the audio on video from the show there after the fact. Also a transcript.

Leo Laporte (01:43:59):
And one of the most requested things, Professor Laura, is your playlists. The thing, the song. What was that song Laura played? That was so great. Well, good news. That also is there. We put it up after the show, obviously on Sundays. Laura sends it to us and then the ELs come in and they, they put it in there. Just takes 'em a little while sometimes. So come back on a Monday or Tuesday should be there. And of course for all previous shows, Tech i labs.com on we go with a show. It's next is Douglas in Pan Panorama. K is that right? No, Panorama City, California. Hello Douglas. How are you?

Caller 7 (01:44:42):
Hi Leo. It's really nice to have the opportunity to talk to you. Hi, thank you. This isn't so much about the problem that I mentioned to your screener. It's what happened is I have a flip phone. I'm disabled it, my phone for emergency. It's really important. So of course.

Leo Laporte (01:45:02):
Anyway. Yeah,

Caller 7 (01:45:03):
I didn't know that they were working on the cell phone tower to update it to 5G in this area. Yeah. And so I didn't get a good reception on my phone. And then I got no reception. So I got in my wheelchair, went down to Verizon. It worked when it got there. Well first they said, Oh, did you drop it?

Leo Laporte (01:45:30):
Yeah.

Caller 7 (01:45:30):
Yeah. And so <laugh>, so it worked. So I came home. It didn't work <laugh>. Cause they said it seemed to work. And then I went back and I had to buy a new phone. And it's not so much that I had to buy a new phone, it's just that I'm sure I knew my neighbors and others were having the same problem. And so I wonder how many phones they sold. Oh, anyway, I get the phone, the new phone because they no longer make the flip phone that I had. Right. And I come back home and it doesn't work. <Laugh>, they're still working on the cell.

Leo Laporte (01:46:08):
This is a nightmare.

Caller 7 (01:46:10):
Yeah. So anyway, I've finally got through to some high tech people at Verizon. And, and so they made it work. I don't know how. But I also was told that 5G is coming and that at the end of the year we're, we're gonna have to get another phone.

Leo Laporte (01:46:36):
So here's what, here's what all the companies are doing. 5G is coming, isn't really the right way to put this for. They're, they're, they're misleading you a little bit. The old three, remember 3G <laugh>, I remember that the old 3G towers are being, or or radios are being decommissioned. LTE still works. That was 4g. And of course 5g, they're moving everybody along. But Verizon has said by the end of the year, no more 3g. So this only applies to some phones. Phones that use 3G for making phone calls. Right. So those will stop working. Now, if you just bought a phone from Verizon, you're, there's no way they sold you a 3G phone unless, you know they went into the basement. <Laugh>, I mean Right. They must have sold you a phone That will work going forward. In many cases. The phone company, they did this with my mom. She, I gave her an iPhone six s some years ago. She loved it. So I couldn't convince her to get a newer one.

Caller 7 (01:47:45):
Mm-Hmm.

Leo Laporte (01:47:45):
<Affirmative>, she was on Sprint and Sprint sent her a new iPhone 11 couple of months ago saying, Hey, bad news, your phone's not gonna work on our network, but here's an iPhone 11 cuz we don't wanna lose you as a customer. And they did that for free, which I thought was pretty generous. So a lot of people will be getting some, some carriers have already switched. Sprint's already switched. But Verizon is the end of the year.

Caller 7 (01:48:10):
Mm-Hmm. <Affirmative>, what phone did you get? So I didn't get my money back for, I, I got part of it back, but not all of it. And, and I just feel that's so unfair.

Leo Laporte (01:48:19):
It is unfair. Cuz first of all, the problem wasn't your phone.

Caller 7 (01:48:23):
Right.

Leo Laporte (01:48:24):
And had they done their job, problem is, you know, the people in the phone store are not, as you've figured out, high level engineers with Verizon. They're just sales people. They did what their job is, which is <laugh> to sell you another phone. Now maybe you would've needed that phone anyway because of this transition. Right. And I suspect, how old was that old flip phone?

Caller 7 (01:48:49):
Old, Well, like three years old. That probably,

Leo Laporte (01:48:54):
Yeah. So there's a list on the Verizon site of phones that will no longer work anymore. And they would've sent you by now certainly would've sent you emails saying, Hey look, your phone's not gonna work cuz it's 3G only. Even some more modern phones don't work. So just cuz it's only three years old, you know, But all it's very possible you would've had to do this anyway. So if you got a partial refund and you had to buy a new phone anyway for next year, then I think you came out ahead. If you did not need an upgrade at all and that old phone would've worked just fine and it was their fault, then I think you call 'em, you say, Dudes, you sold me a phone when I need one. Cuz it was just, the tower was out.

Caller 7 (01:49:38):
Right. And, and everything's taken care of now. But I I I, they still owe me some money.

Leo Laporte (01:49:44):
But these companies are, you know, this has been this

Caller 7 (01:49:47):
Leo, what's bothering me, Leo, is that all this tech stuff is, is just not working. Like during, during Covid, I can't, I know they say use the computer. I don't have a computer. I call CVS to or Walgreens to find out, you know, when it could come in to get a vaccination. And then they, they say, Oh, call, call this main, main number and you'll talk to a person and then you call them and then they say, Oh, you have to go to a website. So, so I never can really arrange for the Yeah. Vaccination. And

Leo Laporte (01:50:30):
That's ridiculous.

Caller 7 (01:50:31):
And it's not just these particular things, it's just everything

Leo Laporte (01:50:36):
I understand. A hundred percent. And by the way, that's one of the things that happened during the pandemic. While the tech companies ra reaped in billions of dollars in windfall profits. It showed all the cracks in the system. All the places, the system doesn't work. And you have a very good example of that, especially if you're disabled. Even worse, right? We didn't, we didn't take care of a whole swath of our economy. And it's, and it's not any better. It's not getting any better and it's shameful. Exactly.

Caller 7 (01:51:17):
Life threatening. Yeah. It's, it's life threatening. It is

Leo Laporte (01:51:21):
To me. Yes.

Caller 7 (01:51:23):
Absolutely

Leo Laporte (01:51:24):
Agree with you. And I, and I wish I had an answer. All I can do is is commiserate. And you know, they call me the tech guy, but I think by now people understand I am not a cheerleader for technology. In fact, really the main reason I started doing this all those years ago was because I thought we as humans needed a defense <laugh> against technology that we need to understand it better so that it wouldn't steam roll over us. And unfortunately it steam rolls over people all the time.

Caller 7 (01:51:58):
I know. It's terrible. Oh, actually I don't know much about technology, but then I do. It's just, you can just sense and feel and realize that it's gonna break down at some time.

Leo Laporte (01:52:14):
Well, that, that's what's interesting. I, I agree with you. I have I just did an interview on on Thursday with a good friend named Cory Doctoral. He's written a new book called Choke Point Capitalism. And it's exactly his thesis, which is we have set it up in such a way, and it's not just in technology, it's in every aspect of our lives that these big companies of course Google and Apple, but also the music companies, the publishers, the book publishers, these big companies Oh yeah. Have managed to extract so much value. They're re raking, raking in millions, billions of dollars. But meanwhile, the people who work for them are making sub subsistence level wages. They're squeezing. Well,

Caller 7 (01:53:05):
I read that book.

Leo Laporte (01:53:07):
Oh, it's great, isn't it?

Caller 7 (01:53:09):
And, and I'm an artist and perfect. I know, I know how it's affecting the people who publish their own books online. So it's not worth them to do it. They're

Leo Laporte (01:53:20):
No, they're, And and Corey points out that as artists you wanna create, you're gonna create, you know, every once in a while I say, and I regret it, I would do this show even if they didn't pay me. They know that. They know that. And they take advantage of it. And so creatives are the, are among the people who are most squeezed. But you know what? If you work in a warehouse for Amazon, you know this. If you work frankly in a phone store, you know this. You're not making a wage you can live on. You have to live in an apartment with four other people and live on ramen. So Yeah, it's not working. You're exactly right. It's not working for us, Douglas. And and it needs to, and I think that's one reason we're starting to see you know, we saw the Occupy Wall Street movement. We saw, we've starting see unionization efforts at Starbucks. It's going so fast. Starbucks doesn't know what to do. They're freaking out. Amazon, same thing. Because people are fed up.

Caller 7 (01:54:15):
I think, I think somebody should suggest to them that they get together and they figure out how to solve the, these problems you

Leo Laporte (01:54:24):
Think they'd want to. Cuz otherwise they got problems. <Laugh>. People are gonna, people are gonna revolt <laugh>.

Caller 7 (01:54:33):
I know

Leo Laporte (01:54:34):
I asked Corey, I said, If this keeps on happening, he said, Well, it's happened before. Remember the guillotine <laugh>? And I said, Oh, you know, so I agree. I sympathize. I can't help you. I sympathize Douglas. It stinks. Stinks. it's good to understand what's going on

Caller 7 (01:54:51):
On the radio

Leo Laporte (01:54:52):
<Laugh>. Yeah. You don't, you don't normally hear this on the radio. You hear mostly people who are co-opted by these big companies and, and are making a lot of money to, to, to promote them. And honestly, it isn't. It's not right. And as the tech guy, I'm sitting here watching these, these big Silicon Valley companies just, just operate irresponsibly and and, and poorly. Yeah. And it's a, it's a, I don't think, you know, government regulations gonna fix it either, frankly. But we'll see. Maybe antitrust regulations, maybe, you know, Instagram will be forced to split off from Facebook. I don't know. I don't know. Is that gonna solve it? I don't know.

Caller 7 (01:55:32):
See, like the, the lingo for tech.

Leo Laporte (01:55:39):
Well, that's another thing, isn't it? It separates us, right?

Caller 7 (01:55:43):
Yes. Like, that's why I haven't gotten an iPhone.

Leo Laporte (01:55:47):
Yeah. It happens in every field where the people who know pull up the ladder, they start using acronyms, jargon, and abbreviation. Yes. So that you pour unwashed masses. Can't understand what we're talking about.

Caller 7 (01:55:58):
Exactly.

Leo Laporte (01:55:59):
It's just another form of control. Just another form of control is one of the reasons. And kick me if I do it. I try not to speak like a geek <laugh>. I try to try to speak English <laugh>. Hey, I'm really sorry that happened to you, Douglas. At least you got a partial refund. Let's look at the bright side. Maybe you needed that new phone. Now. You'll be good going forward. But it's, they should have done. That'll be okay. They should have done better by too. Thank you, Douglas. I appreciate it. Thank you. Leo. LePort, the tech I 88. 88. Ask Leo the phone number. Sorry. My I put my progressive hat on there. I'll take it off. We'll talk tech some more right after this. It does. I'm wearing a purple kind of suit here to little shiny material. Just write for this beautiful Sunday afternoon. Leo Laporte, the Tech I 88. 88. Ask Leo Andrew on the line from Ventura, California. Hi, Andrew.

Caller 8 (01:56:56):
Hi, Andrew. Leo, by the way, if somebody's ever called you.

Leo Laporte (01:57:01):
Hello? Oh, you're breaking up. You're breaking up. Your battery's dying. We're going down. We're going The th lithium crystals are correct. Captain, are you there, Andrew?

Caller 8 (01:57:14):
There we go. Oh, who I've got three questions for you. Has,

Leo Laporte (01:57:18):
Wait a minute, finish the sentence. Has somebody ever, ever called you? What? <laugh>.

Caller 8 (01:57:23):
Oh, that's, that's what my headset disconnected. <Laugh>. they should, It's, it is worth it. It's a, it's an E ride to listen to.

Leo Laporte (01:57:31):
Oh, hearing the stuff between the, in the behind the scenes stuff. Yeah.

Caller 8 (01:57:36):
Oh

Leo Laporte (01:57:36):
Yeah. We get silly in here. It's, you know, it's the chat room egg me on. That's why.

Caller 8 (01:57:42):
And you, the really strange thing is you're doing this and working every day and you're having a good time. It's sounds I am.

Leo Laporte (01:57:49):
And don't tell the boss.

Caller 8 (01:57:51):
<Laugh>. What a pleasure. Yeah,

Leo Laporte (01:57:52):
There's that. I would do it for free, but don't tell the boss. Okay.

Caller 8 (01:57:55):
<Laugh>. So I've got two questions, but before I do, I was also noticing when you were talking to Douglas, every time you were talking about the big companies raking in their

Leo Laporte (01:58:04):
I, it's hard for me to say that, right? Wasn't it? It

Caller 8 (01:58:08):
Came out rape

Leo Laporte (01:58:08):
Every time. Yeah. You know what I wanted to say, But that's Yeah, I meant, I meant raking in the profits. Yeah.

Caller 8 (01:58:14):
Yep. So, and the really exhaust question is, when you call in all these big companies, why does everybody have to have their music on hold blaring? Painfully loud. What? Because

Leo Laporte (01:58:25):
They want you to, Honestly, cuz they want you to hang up.

Leo Laporte (01:58:29):
It's, and that's why they added all those voice trees. You know, They, they finally got rid of that. They realized this is really too customer hostile. But they don't, it's very expensive for them, these support calls. That's why they outsource it to, you know, I mean, that's why they make it hard to do. They hide the phone number. It's expensive. And they, the what, partly what's happened, I'm, I'm giving them a little bit of a pass. We've pushed the prices of technology down so much that they don't have the margins they used to have in the good old days. I remember going down to Austin and seeing Dell's customer support pit, I guess the floor of the customer support area. And it was, it was all people who were, you know, employees of Dell and knew their stuff and they were famous for their support. But that those days are long gone. Yeah. They're long gone. And it's too bad.

Caller 8 (01:59:27):
What are some of my two questions? Yeah. First one is, I'm looking at buying a Hyundai Tucson, and they are incredible cars. Every creature feature you can think of nice on their eight, on their eight inch display. The Apple play is wireless, but on their 10 inch display, the upgrade option, it has to be corded. Huh? What's going on,

Leo Laporte (01:59:47):
<Laugh>? Well, I, I could only guess I have wireless CarPlay in my car. I, first of all, CarPlay is clearly the way to go in a vehicle because you're more likely to upgrade your phone more often than you do your car. So they, you get all the benefits of the upgrades to the smartphone. And, and frankly the smartphone software, these companies, in fact, there was a article in the washing Wall Street Journal I think this weekend about how Apple and Google are just gonna dominate the software market for automobiles going forward. Why is the big screen of acquire wires? I'm not sure. Maybe it's a higher resolution. There's more data, but much more likely the manufacturer just, you know, it's just a different system. And they, they put in a wired system. I think that the wireless CarPlay uses wifi, which means there's plenty of bandwidth. So I think it's just what that manufacturer is offering. I don't think there's any technical reason it has to be that way. Leo Laporte d tech guy, let's go to space with Rod Pile next. Yeah, I don't, I can't think of a technical reason That would be, I mean, you might say, Oh, there's more on this, but I don't think there is even a more data on the screen. I think they just make the icons bigger.

Caller 8 (02:00:56):
I think they got a deal on chips for somebody. That's what I think.

Leo Laporte (02:01:00):
Yeah. Yeah. I think that's what I think. Here's why.

Caller 8 (02:01:01):
Real question if you have time. Sure. I've got a sonology and I'm trying to move videos that I have purchased and own onto the sonology and all I get is a bunch is the VBS separately? Oh

Leo Laporte (02:01:14):
Yeah, yeah. There a way I So you can't just copy A D V D, I mean you could Uhhuh, but you need, in order to play back those VT s and VB files that are on the, you know, it's funny, a, a Blueray DVD or a traditional DVD is really just a data disc. And the files on there are just data files. VOB files are video and audio trans mus together. It's this file as you know, part of the DVD spec

Caller 8 (02:01:45):
Uhhuh <affirmative>.

Leo Laporte (02:01:46):
If you use Plex on your sonology, I think it will play them, but if not, then you want to convert it. And there are programs free. One that I recommend is called Hand Break.

Caller 8 (02:01:59):
I was gonna ask about that.

Leo Laporte (02:02:01):
Yeah, that you can rip that dvd. You'll have to download VLC Player in addition to hand break to rip the dvd cuz of the copy protection. And if you could put it in a format that will play just fine off your sonology MP four, MP five. You know, there is a reason to do that as well because you can control the bit rate required by that and make sure that you have enough bandwidth to go across your networker. But I think if you u what I would recommend is, look, take a look at Plex doesn't support Bob files. Wow. Wow. Okay. So never mind. Don't I was gonna say, take a look at Plex, which is a really great media player. You should, Anyway, but yeah, you're gonna have to confirm

Caller 8 (02:02:40):
This.

Leo Laporte (02:02:42):
Oh, okay.

Caller 8 (02:02:42):
Technology, if I recall. You've got a, So

Leo Laporte (02:02:45):
I have several. Yes. I love them. <Laugh>. I'm a fan. Well, I have one here and I one at home just upgraded the one at home. So I have two at home and one is being retired. And it's great. And I sync the one at home to the one at work that way. I have offsite backup. It's just fantastic.

Caller 8 (02:03:00):
What do you do with all the stuff that people come and lay at your feet?

Leo Laporte (02:03:05):
I give it away. <Laugh> good. I tell people don't lay things at my feet. I don't take goods from companies generally. I buy everything like the sonology, my iPhone, my pixel phone. I buy those Cuz I don't want to be beholden to these companies. Very rarely these days they'll offer us loaners for review. I generally do not take those. Some of my staff does, but we have very strict rules. They have to return 'em after a period of time. In fact, I have a boiler plate that I will send out. If somebody says, We want you to review this. I say, Fine, but you're gonna also send me a return packaging and a label. And

Caller 8 (02:03:40):
Well, not only that, but if you get a product for review, it might not be a production model.

Leo Laporte (02:03:44):
Right. I don't like Exactly. I like to buy it off the shelf and review it that way. And, and I don't want to hear from the PR people if they don't like my review. And I think it's important to feel the pain <laugh> frankly. People will buy these things. You know, why should I get it for free? And I never, never keep stuff. And so that's really important. And there are certainly journalists out there who do I I won't let any of my guys keep stuff.

Caller 8 (02:04:10):
There's not much room for your CPM 80 machine anymore.

Leo Laporte (02:04:13):
You don't wanna keep it. Trust me. If you're, remember John c Devork when he was at the top of his game? I went over to his house. He had a pile in the living room, a pile about four foot high of crap that he was trying to get rid of. He eventually rented a garage, a storage room over a gas station. He just, he'd open the door, shove it in, and slam the door shut behind it. He had laptops on every step going upstairs of his house. You, it's too much. It's too much. And I guess he never shipped it back. So it just piles up. I'm not a hoarder. I don't need that stuff, so I try not to get it. I hear you. Yeah, I buy stuff as you could see behind me, if you watch the video, I have a lot of crap. <Laugh> I don't need anymore. Hey, I gotta run. Thanks for calling. I appreciate it. Take care. Andrew, you wanna

Caller 8 (02:05:01):
Stand by a second? I, I know I got a story about Steve Waac. We

Leo Laporte / Rod Pyle (02:05:04):
Were friends. Oh, I'd love to hear it, but I gotta do Rod pile here. Hang on. It's time for our spaceman rod pile. Let me get the pile of pile books. Rod pile author Space 2.0 amazing stories of the Space age, inner planetary robots, true stories of space exploration blueprints for a battle star. And my favorite first on the moon. Lovely coffee table book with lots of pictures celebrating the 50th anniversary of Apollo 11. He also, Thanks sir. Is editor in chief of at Astra Magazine. You must get at Astro Magazine. It is the official publication of the National Space society@spacedots.org. Hello, <laugh>. If this, if this intro gets any longer, you won't have time for your segment. If this intro ever stops, we'll probably have to roll up Thes completely. So, hey, good. I love National Space Society. Everybody should join it.

Leo Laporte / Rod Pyle (02:05:59):
And we love you. It's a great for reason. It's a great thing. Rod also hosts, I didn't even plug the thing I do this week in space on our podcast network. So is there, and we had we had Steve Json on this week, which was great fun. He's a a venture capitalist investor who got into SpaceX in 2008 Tesla and I think 2006. Wow. And he is one of those guys that just, you know, he's got that golden touch. Oh, legendary venture capitalist. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Quite, quite somebody. Wow. So Artis, you gotta play like the Jeopardy. Did you win the be with the Te Mallek on the Well, sure. Almost. Except we're, we're now moving out of October. So is he, Or, or we're in October, but the launch has moved out of October, if there is one in November.

Leo Laporte / Rod Pyle (02:06:48):
So he, as he pointed out as I figured he would No, no, you said October. And I said, well, I implied October or later. And he said, Yes, but I inferred October. Oh, he's wheezing. So now that it's somewhere between November 12th and 27th because they had to roll the rocket back to the barn and the va b which, you know, that's not a good thing cuz you don't wanna rattle that thing back and forth too many times. I think it's rated for two more rollbacks after this, but this way, if they need to, they could check the range safety batteries and all that. So this gives them a chance to take another look at it before they go try again. This is, so this is okay. NASA boondoggle. That could have been done so much better, but, alright, fine. I mean, I wanna go to the moon.

Leo Laporte / Rod Pyle (02:07:31):
Let's go. Let's do it. It's, you know, a lot of people hate it. It's the, the moon rocket we've got. There's no guarantee anybody else is gonna build one. Although you could probably, you could do the mission with Falcon. Hes, if you lined up enough of 'em. But it's the moon rocket we've got. So you knows. Let's, let's GOs let's give them that. All right. It just, So now we're in November for the launch window. Well maybe <laugh> at the earliest. That's the plan as soon as. Very cool story. This week Jared Isman, who is the guy behind the Polaris Don missions with SpaceX, he already flew inspiration for, he's got four more planned up to and including flying in Starship has recently he and SpaceX signed an agreement with nasa. Now this is called a, a, a non-Reimbursed Space Act agreement.

Leo Laporte / Rod Pyle (02:08:23):
So there's no money changing hands yet, but it gives SpaceX and Isaac when the chance to study the idea that his second Polaris Don mission in a crude dragon will go up, tobo the Hubble Space Telescope into a higher orbit, which could give it another 15 minutes. That's cool. That is cool. Is the hub still valuable after web? Yes, because it's operating different wavelengths and you know, the, the more aperture you have up there of any kind, the better. So the last service mission was in 2009. That almost didn't happen because they were gonna cancel it after the Columbia accident, but they finally decided to go. So they replace batteries, they replace the gyros, it's got six gyroscopes, they service thrusters replace the data, data handling unit. But you know, it's an old machine. It's been up there 32 years and the gyros just wear out.

Leo Laporte / Rod Pyle (02:09:13):
They replaced it with three new designs in three refurbished old designs. So bottom line is it needs some physical replacement. So he'll if he does this, oh, and they added a grappling hook to it. So if this mission goes through, if Isaac man flies has screw up there, they'll at least reboot it to a higher orbit, which would give it probably another 15 years. Nice. Cause they want it up about 370 to 400 miles. But it would be really great if they could get their space walking chops together or take up an astronaut like story Mustgrave who, who's very famous service the thing and replace the gyros again and, you know, add the stuff cuz it's got a number of instruments that have either failed or are failing. So it's still valuable. But it would be great if they could replace some of that stuff.

Leo Laporte / Rod Pyle (02:09:59):
They could only take the small bits up. How dangerous is, would that be space walks? Are they, are they, is this something you want to not do if you can avoid it? So the dangers are, you're, you're depressurizing the cabin of the spacecraft and this is a shuttle where they had and airlock, but something I crew dragon, you have to open depressurize the whole thing and open the door. Mm-Hmm. <Affirmative> mm-hmm <affirmative>, at least at this point. You drift out there, you're usually on a tether, which is supplying your, your oxygen and keeping you, you know, attached to the spacecraft. That in itself isn't terribly dangerous. That's what we were doing in the sixties with Gemini and the Russian flights. But when you start working on something like the space telescope, you've gotta dock with it. You've gotta secure it, you've gotta go out there.

Leo Laporte / Rod Pyle (02:10:41):
Now you're going hand over hand on this big machine that can either get very hot or very cold, depending on which side you're on. It's got some sharp edges. You've got a cloth space suit on. So you need to be careful. And, and it's also very massive. So if you swing a door open or something, even though you're in weightlessness, the mass is still there. So if you swing a door wrong, you can slam it on your hand and cut your suit or smash your bones or whatever. So yeah, space walks are dangerous when you're fixing things. That's why they, the ones on the space station takes so long. Cuz you gotta be really careful when you're moving stuff around out there. Does SpaceX have better e eva suits, less stiff e eva suits or No, they're pretty much the same. Huh? Actually at this point, all they have are pressure suits, which is designed to keep you alive.

Leo Laporte / Rod Pyle (02:11:25):
If the spacecraft depressurizes, that's probably good enough to do a drift outside the spacecraft and look around and go ooh and ah, e Eva. But if you're working on something, I think they're either gonna need improvement of that or something like NASA's suits, which are, now we've talked about this pretty old, pretty old themselves. They're hard to, So they're getting work. They're stiff, they're, they're, you know, Yeah, they are. Especially the gloves. Yeah. The gloves are very, very stiff. But you know, we'll see the cool thing is at this point anyway, now NASA may decide, you know, this is a good idea, but let's throw a contract open and let everybody compete. And you know, that thing they did before with the lunar lander, but it base guys gonna, SpaceX is saying, Look, we, we won't necessarily charge you. Or if we do not very much.

Leo Laporte / Rod Pyle (02:12:08):
So if NASA did this with Orion and NASAs, you look at at $6 billion to keep the Hubble running. If they let SpaceX isman do it, assuming they can do the full smash by changing out some hardware and stuff, it might be 50 million bucks. That's cool. If anything I bet I bet you the scientific community would love this. Well, and just the generosity of this guy. Yeah, it's good public relations for SpaceX and all that, but what a right thinking guy. And you know, I mean, he dropped outta high school to start that, that credit charge credit card charging company and built that up. I mean, what humble beginnings for a guy who now has the largest private military air force in the world, unarmed and is now flying to space. It's just, it's it's the Air Force. The Air Force. Jared's Air Force is just cuz he likes to fly.

Leo Laporte / Rod Pyle (02:12:59):
Right. He's not, he's not planning to start a war anything. No. But he does lease them out for training to various militaries, including the us. Interesting. So he actually has contracts. He was the captain of the, the, of the inspiration force, SpaceX launch that we talked about last year when they had that. Cool. So would he pay for a degree bubble? Well that's, that's what they're saying. Wow. Yeah. Good for him. Isn't that something? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And how much time do we have left? Oh, well I, Or just seconds. Yeah, I don't, 43 seconds. Okay. other very small item. Firefly Alpha launched, we finally Firefly Alpha finally got an orbital rocket up. It's another one of these small launchers. The company's mainly notable cuz they launching outta the west coast of the United States of Vanderberg. And because they have been contracted to build engines from Northrop Grumman for their rocket.

Leo Laporte / Rod Pyle (02:13:52):
So it's just another way to get small things up into orbit. And next week I'll try to remember to talk about the two meteor showers we have coming up Oh, oh, soon, because those are fun. Yeah. Yeah. One's, one's in October and one's in December. All right. Stay tuned for space weather. We survived the big solar flare, didn't we? We didn't hit us, so I think we're, Yeah. But it kind of messed up that experiment MIT was doing up at my little Arctic Adventure Darnt. Oh, Leo Laport. Yeah. It's Rod Pile. Your tech guy. Did it. Really? Yeah. Oh. I think what what they're figuring out is that it, it everyth, you know, they'll be able to filter out, but there was interference from the oh and the activity from the sun. By the way, I was listening earlier. My most emasculating moment as a young adult was driving my notch, my notch back dots and B two 10.

Leo Laporte / Rod Pyle (02:14:46):
Why was that Emasculating? Well, for one thing, they were just, to me, in, no offense to your caller, but to me it was kind of a funky little car for another thing. It had been in an accident before I bought it, so it sort of skewed down the road like a crab a little sideways. Didn't have a lot. I had, so you could see how fast you were going. Kind of. But I had had mustangs, I had had a, a DOS and five 10, which was, you know, kind of sporty. I had had, you know, a Firebird and other stuff. And I just reached a weak point financially where I needed something reliable. I had had a Ford Granada for three years that was just a horrible car. <Laugh> looked okay. Just had this problem that it wouldn't run. So I bought this, used dots and, and the thing ran like a champ, but Nice. Every time I got in and I kind of pulled my hat down and cringed with this track crab walking down the highway. Well, it's kinda like driving a minivan. If you're a dude, you know, Rod, I would be happy with a Dotson B two 10 right now, <laugh>. Have a wonderful week and I will talk. Thank you. Next week. All right. Take care. Take care, Byebye. Bye. and I have not forgotten you, Andrew, from Venturas on the line with a Wozniak story right

Caller 6 (02:15:58):
There. Doing very wav somehow.

Leo Laporte (02:16:00):
Come on over to the phone. I I can't hear you very well.

Caller 6 (02:16:04):
Was that Andrew? Yeah,

Leo Laporte (02:16:05):
That's you.

Caller 6 (02:16:07):
Ah, Oh, sometimes I remember that. <Laugh>.

Leo Laporte (02:16:10):
Yes. Andrew, you're Andrew. You

Caller 6 (02:16:13):
Had, I was across the room.

Leo Laporte (02:16:15):
You had a was story. Yeah.

Caller 6 (02:16:18):
If you go to virtually any browser and type in HP 35 45, that's one word. And Andrew, you'll find hp museum.org Usually

Leo Laporte (02:16:31):
This is you. This is you. That's me. Oh, how cool. That's really neat. So is it open to the public or is it is it just online or,

Caller 6 (02:16:42):
Oh, no, it's it's totally open.

Leo Laporte (02:16:44):
Oh my goodness gracious hp museum.org.

Caller 6 (02:16:49):
Yeah. Oh, it's a fabulous website.

Leo Laporte (02:16:52):
<Laugh>, every HP product. Highly accessible. That's, that's what <laugh> return to the index, the Museum of HP Calculators. Wow. Yeah. What's the prized HP these days?

Caller 6 (02:17:08):
No idea.

Leo Laporte (02:17:09):
No, the 35.

Caller 6 (02:17:11):
No idea. Yeah. So the 35 was the first first calculator that I'm aware of. Right. Although they had some other desktop stuff.

Leo Laporte (02:17:20):
Oh, I remember this. Oh, so you've you've put together articles from a bunch of different people. That's cool. That's really cool.

Caller 6 (02:17:29):
No, no, no. The museum is not mine that

Leo Laporte (02:17:31):
Oh, this is your story. Oh, I see. Oh, you had the colorful and s a slide <laugh>. Yeah, but you got yourself an HP 35. I see. This isn't your site, but this is your story. My HP 35 45. Ah, you got it. Got it.

Caller 6 (02:17:50):
And that, that, that 35 cost $350 back in 1970, whatever it was.

Leo Laporte (02:17:57):
Wow. I remember was and job jobs sold their old HP calculated or raise money to build those first Apple ones. I wonder if this was the one he sold.

Caller 6 (02:18:08):
Well, anything that I had was, I bought the 35 retail, but Waz converted it for me into a 55, I think. Nice.

Leo Laporte (02:18:18):
With hand wired <laugh> circuits. Yep. And Waz Waz.

Caller 6 (02:18:24):
And I didn't know him at that time. Friend of mine knew him and so, but he collected three people who wanted the upgrade. So Cool. Was making 50 piece.

Leo Laporte (02:18:35):
I gotta run. Thank you though. What a great story. I'm read. That's awesome.

Caller 6 (02:18:42):
If you have question's.

Leo Laporte (02:18:48):
Thanks Andrew. Thank you for letting me be your personal tech guy, your guide to the ins and outs of the modern world. Thanks to Professor Laura, musical director. She does such a good job. You do a good job. Laura. Have I told you that lately? You do a good job. Such a good job playing the hits. Thanks to Kim Schaffer. Everybody knows Kim. She's a legend. She's a star. She's left the building. But <laugh>, thank you Kim. We're doing such a great job. Thanks to all of you. Most of all, we couldn't do the show without you. Really couldn't. I really appreciate your listening and your calling and, and the fun we have together every weekend. I hope you come back next weekend. Meanwhile, Richard is on the line. He's calling from Sterling Heights, Michigan. Hello, Richard.

Caller 9 (02:19:40):
Hello, Leo.

Leo Laporte (02:19:41):
Welcome.

Caller 9 (02:19:42):
Thank you for taking my call.

Leo Laporte (02:19:43):
Thank you for calling.

Caller 9 (02:19:46):
Been a long time, long time listener, but never able to get through, so I'm

Leo Laporte (02:19:50):
Oh, you made it. I'm so happy. Thank you for calling, for trying. Thank you. Yeah.

Caller 9 (02:19:56):
I have a community electronic recycling day coming up and I have four or five old Packard Bell gateways Shiva laptops and desktops that I'm looking to dispose of at the recycling day. But I'm curious about your recommendations on the best way to prepare them so we don't have security information.

Leo Laporte (02:20:21):
Yeah, yeah. Your hard drive has a lot, has probably years of stuff on there that you might not want somebody else to see. Do the computers operate these days or no?

Caller 9 (02:20:31):
<Laugh>, that's a question itself. I have not plugged them in or turned them

Leo Laporte (02:20:34):
On. So probably not. Probably

Caller 9 (02:20:36):
A couple decades.

Leo Laporte (02:20:36):
Yeah. So probably not. In future, there are a couple of ways to protect yourself. Modern computers almost all support hard drive encryption bit locker on Windows file vault on Mac. The variety of encryption, like luxe encryption on on Linux, always recommend doing that because then you don't have to worry about it because without the encryption key, which is your password for logging in, that's just gobbly hook on the drive. And if somebody were to get that drive, be useless. Obviously in the back in the day you didn't do that. No one did, no one knew about it. So the data is just sitting there in the clear for anybody who wants to, cares enough. Most people are not, you know, gonna, if you could boot the computer, there are programs you can run like Derek's Boot and N D D B A N which you could run on those drives and erase them permanently in such a way that nobody could recover.

Leo Laporte (02:21:34):
Dand.Org, none of that's gonna work for you. So one thing you could do is, maybe this is too much of a project, is open it up, take the hard drives out, okay. Donate the rest of them. The hard drives, you know, you can physically mess with 'em in such a way they not be usable. Open 'em up. They all have screws. As soon as you open 'em up, you pretty much make 'em unusable. Take the platters, bend them, what they do. In the British military, what I five does, or this is probably apocryphal, but according to urban legend is they take the platters out, they grind them down into a fine iron dust, which they then store in the basement of m i five forever <laugh> for eternity. Yeah, you know what it, there's a, a guy named Simpson Garfinkel, who is was an MIT graduate student many years ago, did a study. He actually bought a bunch of hard drives on eBay, found many of them were former ATM hard drives and had completely, were full of all sorts of information like ATM numbers, account information, all kinds of stuff. Wow.

Leo Laporte (02:22:43):
So scary. But, but then Simpson did an interesting thing, he said, But now we have these erasing programs like Derek's boot and New, we have the so-called, you know, military eraser, the do o d eraser, which is to override it and erase it and override it a number of times. And so he said, Do you need to do that? And he tried it. He said, No, you don't need to do that. Erasing it once is sufficient. Unless somebody really has some sort of sophisticated spy paraphernalia once that data is overwritten. But this is important. Erasing it by dragging it to the trashcan does not erase anything. It just tells the file system you can use it. So even any everything that's ever been written, that drive is still visible there unless you overwrite it and you can overwrite it just by, you know, spewing ones or zeros.

Leo Laporte (02:23:26):
That's what Dban does. And you only need to do one pass and you're fine. So I think that you're probably gonna be okay, cuz most likely they're gonna be ground down. Nobody's ever gonna try to boot those up or take the drives out. They'll probably just be recycled for their materials. But if you really were nervous you know, if you knew, oh, you know, this probably got years of banking information, I don't want anybody to get that. Or maybe you do as I do and you store your IRS tax forms filled out on there. I all my, my hard drives full of 10 40 a that wouldn't be good for somebody to get that that's got your social date of birth and your address on that would be bad. So that's at this point, because you probably can't boot those, you're gonna have to physically destroy 'em and it's sufficient to drill a hole in them or bend them.

Caller 9 (02:24:20):
Do I need to worry about removing any of the memory cards?

Leo Laporte (02:24:23):
Nope. All that's all that's empty now by now. They go off as soon as you turn 'em off. It's just the hard drive, the the physical permanent storage. And, you know, chances are if they're 30 years old, they're probably not working anyway. You probably, All right.

Caller 9 (02:24:40):
So if I remove the hard drive and put it in a separate enclosure is it possible that I would be able to see and maybe save the content outta my

Leo Laporte (02:24:48):
Current computer? Yeah, you know, you could do some archeology. Those are hard drives. Are I d e drives? Most likely. That's the technology no longer used. But you can buy i d e drive connectors. I get one from a company called Newer Tech. That's actually quite useful for anybody who deals with hard drives. Newer tech.com, they call it the UNI USB Universal Drive adapter. It has an IDE connector. You connect it to the old hard drive, it has a power juice connector. You connect to the old hard drive, and then it's a USB port on the other side. You plug into your modern computer. And you could try anyway, try to read it. It's gonna be a format your modern computer doesn't know. So you're gonna have to, you know, try some software and stuff. But yeah, there may be, they could do some archeology.

Leo Laporte (02:25:35):
There's probably some, you know, this is probably a new, a new branch of archeology, data recovery science. It'd be very interesting to see what you could get. I have, I have, you know, some old floppy discs, old zip disks, things like that. I have no way to read ology. <Laugh>. I have no way to read 'em, but I bet you there's stuff on there. I'd like to know what's on there. So yeah, with a little bit of hardware newer tech, Uni, USB Universal Drive adapters is Inex relatively inexpensive? I think it's 40 or 50 bucks.

Caller 9 (02:26:09):
Okay. All right. Very good. Well, I have one of those toasters that'll take Well,

Leo Laporte (02:26:13):
That'll do. Yeah. It just, it needs to have, Yeah, the modern stuff is sat, It needs to have IDE is what you're looking for. An IDE connector or what they used to call ata, might might be called ata. Either one.

Caller 9 (02:26:26):
So it's either IDE or a

Leo Laporte (02:26:29):
ATA is, is just a, a synonym for ide. Okay. Actually, there might be even older drives now, now my memory is being tested. It might be even older drives that if it's 30 years old, 1990s. Yeah. I think it's IDE or ata. Yeah.

Caller 9 (02:26:47):
Yeah. I'm thinking some of these are probably mid to late eighties and early nineties.

Leo Laporte (02:26:53):
Wow. I have a few of these in my museum behind me. <Laugh>, they're antiques now. Unfortunately. They're not quite old enough to be valuable. They're just old.

Caller 9 (02:27:05):
Okay.

Leo Laporte (02:27:05):
Somebody called me once and said, I have all these old laptops. You think I'm getting any money from 'em on, on eBay? I said, Yeah, five bucks maybe. I think recycling's the best thing to do. And you know what? Appreciate the fact that you're not just throwing 'em in the trash, You're doing the right thing. You're doing the electronics recycling.

Caller 9 (02:27:20):
Oh, excellent. Yeah, absolutely. That's been my goal is to make sure they're going somewhere where the materials could be used.

Leo Laporte (02:27:27):
Yeah. That's the right thing to do. There's heavy metals in there and stuff that you actually don't wanna put in the landfill. So they, they treat those specially. Same thing with batteries, cables, old TVs, all that stuff. Wait for the electronics recycling day or bringing down to your electronics recycling center. Hey, it's a pleasure talking to you, Richard. Thank you for caring.

Caller 9 (02:27:46):
Very good. Thank you, Leo. Appreciate the information and I'm gonna go to work on it this evening.

Leo Laporte (02:27:50):
Have fun. I remember my, my buddy Patrick Norton used to do a TV show with him. He, where we were showing people how to destroy the contents of a physical hard drive. He hit it with a hammer. Turned out was glass. Some of these are glass. Be careful, practically poked my eye out. Leo Laporte, the tech guy. Have a great geek week. We'll see you next time. Well, that's it for the Tech Guy Show for today. Thank you so much for being here. And don't forget twit, T W I t. It stands for this week at Tech, and you find it@twit.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, Security and Security now, I mean, I can go on and on. And of course, the big show every Sunday afternoon this weekend Tech. You'll find it all at twit.tv. And I'll be back next week with another great tech guys show. Thanks for joining me. We'll see you next time.