The Tech Guy Episode 1940 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 is Twi. Hi, this is Leo Laporte, Chief Twit and most of the tech. I show this this is my Tech Guy podcast. The show originally aired in the Premier Networks more than 200 radio stations, coast to coast on Sunday, October 30th, 2022. This is episode 1940. Enjoy. the Tech Guy Podcast is brought to you by OnLogic. Onlogic is helping innovators around the world solve their most complex technology challenges using on logic industrial computers engineered for reliability, even in environments that would challenge or destroy traditional computer hardware. Learn more and find out about OnLogic's 30 day risk free hardware trial by visiting onlogic.com/twit And by EightSleep. Good. Sleep is the ultimate game changer, and the pod is the ultimate sleep machine. Go to eightsleep.com/twit to check out the pod and save $150 at checkout eight.

(00:01:15):
Sleep currently shifts within the us, Canada, the UK select countries in the EU and Australia. And by Unify Meeting from MIMO monitors, Unify, simplifies your work life by combining your favorite video conferencing solutions into one reliable universal user interface. Visit unifymeeting.com and enter the Code Tech guy for 25% off a year subscription. Or use the same code to get 25% off any of Nemo's seven inch displays. Well, hey, hey, hey. How are you today? Or should I say, Hey, hey, hey. How are you today? It's Halloween Eve. Leo Laportee. No, I'm not gonna do that. All this show. Leo Laportee, the tech. I am wearing a costume though. See if you can figure out what it is. This is the show we talk about Tech 88. 88. Ask Leo is the phone number. If you wanna talk about tech 8 8 8 8 2 7 5 5 3 6. Whole free from anywhere in the US or Canada, outside that area.

(00:02:17):
You can still call, but you have to use Skype out or something like that to reach this number. Shouldn't cost you a thing. 88. 88. Ask Leah website, Tech guy labs.com. Tech guy labs.com. I mentioned that because if you hear something on the show and you say, Wait, what was that? I want to hear more. There will be more in the show notes, a link usually there's also transcripts of the show. Takes a while. Give us a chance to get that up there. Also, even audio and video. And the nice thing about the transcripts, they have time codes in them so you can search the transcript for the part you're interested in and then jump to that part of the audio or the video. Clever, Hey, Tech guy labs.com. Episode 1949. Wow. One thou. And people might say, Oh, you start that. That's what is that Season 19, episode 40?

(00:03:11):
Well, sort of actually could be, couldn't it? Almost. We do 104 shows a year, so it's very close. First show was January, 2004. So that'll be 19 years in January. So actually, yeah, I guess it could be season 19, episode 40. Although it's not. We just <laugh>. It's not tv. There's no seasons here. It's a continuously running show for 1,940 episodes. One, saving the world, one computer or smartphone or smart watch at a time. It has changed a lot since 2004. We didn't have a, we didn't have iPhones, which means we really didn't have smartphones in the way we mean today. Not quite. 88. 88. Ask Leo the phone number. Do I have to say anything about Twitter? I probably d don't need to. I'm really, you know, <laugh>, The problem with Twitter is that it's a big deal for a certain small group of people.

(00:04:19):
Media types, news types, geeks. There are various, you know, subcultures within Twitter that it's important to them, of course, because one of the things that Twitter does is so cool is it lets you have a voice. However, you know little, you had a voice in the past until, until the internet really in order to speak to the world, you had to get the permission of some great corporation. You know, they had, you had to convince some company to give you a chance on the radio or the TV or in a magazine or newspaper to write a book. You could self-publish. But, you know, it was pretty hard and it was very expensive. Those, those vanity books. And I guess you could, you know, as a lot of us did in, in our youth, you could mimeograph remember those <laugh> your own neighborhood newspaper.

(00:05:18):
Your reach was limited. Nowadays, thanks to YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, TikTok blogs and a bunch of other things, you can you can have a voice, you can have a national voice. And that's one of the things Twitter has done, especially for certain groups that have in the past not had a lot of voice. And so it will be sad to see Twitter decline. I think the decline is inevitable. I, I don't know, see a lot of people getting off Twitter. I I'm not gonna get off to, I've done it in the past. I've, I've, I've told myself I'm not gonna use Twitter anymore and I certainly don't use it the way I used to in the early days of Twitter. And I'm talking here, 2006. Yeah, I was already the tech guy by then. In 2006 I joined up. At first I was a little nervous cuz I have a podcast network and I had that for a couple of years called Twi.

(00:06:16):
Notice the trademark in the upper right hand corner, <laugh>. That's for real. We trademarked it in 2005 long before Twitter existed. And that's always been a little sore spot for me. In fact, I quit Twitter for about eight months thinking, I know I don't want to confuse people about what my podcast network TWI is and what Twitter is. And by the way, that's inevitable. And the worst thing that happens is a lot of people think I copied them. And there were there were podcasts called like Stock TWIs, which were based on twi. Now the good news is Twitter, in the early days, kind of knew this. They knew about us. They knew it was confusing. And so they asked people not to call their post tweets, but tweets much better. Cause it's a bird, it's a tweet. And you know, at the time when I came back to Twitter late I guess April, 2007, I quit it for a few months.

(00:07:12):
I joined in December, 2006, Quit rejoined. I was talked into it. I, Justine, bless her heart, she's now a huge YouTube star. Just at the beginning of her career, way back then, said, You gotta be on Twitter, Leo, You gotta be. That's where, that's where all the cool kids are. So I said, All right. You know, and for a while, I was the most followed person on Twitter. Now, that's my claim to fame from 2007. I should mention, at the time, I was the most followed person on Twitter with 5,000 followers, <laugh>, and wasn't <laugh>. You didn't need much. And then my friend Kevin Rose, who was at the time, kind of well known because of his podcast, Ignation, and he owned a broadcasting company called Revision Three. And he'd been on G4 tech tv. And so he and I were in a little race. He eventually beat me.

(00:08:03):
And then, you know, our 4,000, 5,000, 6,000 followers was quickly dwarfed when Hollywood discovered Twitter. I think it was Ashton Kutcher of all people from the seventies show, who was the first to really say, Ah hmm, this is good. And he immediately got tens of thousands. There was a time, I don't know if it's still true, probably less so, but there was a time when if you were a actor, a movie star, a TV star your salary and your ability to get work was very closely tied to by the number of followers you had on Twitter. Yes, believe it or not, because at the time, movie companies thought, Oh, well, if you've got a lot of followers, you can generate a lot of free publicity by tweeting. We've learned since <laugh>, most of those followers aren't even seeing what you're saying. The nature of Twitter means they're not most of the movie stars have left because Twitter has always been a somewhat toxic place for celebrities.

(00:09:01):
Why? Because then everybody has a voice. Turns out if everybody has a voice, some of those people aren't gonna be nice. Unfortunately, one of those people who's not very nice is a guy named Elon Musk who now owns Twitter. So I have to think that's not a, a great thing <laugh>, but we'll see. We shall see. He spent a lot of money on it. He's got a problem, right? He spent $44 billion on it. Twitter has never been able to show a, what they call a pass to profitability. Occasionally it'll make money, but almost always it loses money. Even though there's about 300, three 50 million regular users, monthly active users, they call 'em. That's, that's, that's over and above the bots and the spammers and people who don't pay attention. That's Twitter says about 300 million people who pay attention, which is dwarfed by the, what is it, three and a half billion on Facebook, et cetera, et cetera.

(00:10:01):
But that's, you know, 300 millions more than the living. What is the population of the US now? It's close to it. And, you know, it's like if everybody in the US on Twitter, that would be the number. Of course, it's an international thing. That's one of the problems Elon's gonna have, is now he has countries all over the world, including countries he's trying to do business in with Tesla, like China are gonna say, Hey, you know, if you wanna keep selling these cars, you gotta let us put a little propaganda up there on your Twitter. That's gotta be a problem for him. It's got a, he's got a lot of money invested. He's got investors, he's got banks with loans. And all of that is, you know, there's gonna be a lot of pressure on him, even though it's no longer a public health company.

(00:10:43):
No more stockholders are bored. But he's still, he's still gotta make some money back. You know, he's gonna lose his shirt on this. I think that's inevitable. Here's my prediction. Elon is gonna rapidly get a lesson in in social media and business and understand that he can't do anything he wants. He's gonna polish it up as best he can. And in a year or so, he's gonna do, he's gonna take it public again. He's gonna have an IPO and crossing his fingers that he'll get some of his $44 billion back. He won't get it all. Just crossing it. If he can really polish it nicely, put a little sheen on that old Twitter. Maybe he gets some of his money back and then he's gonna wash his hands of it. He didn't wanna buy Twitter. Almost instantly, he regretted saying he was gonna almost instantly tried to get out of it, realized he wasn't gonna get out of it.

(00:11:35):
So he bit the bullet, bought it. He'll now mess with it. The question is, can he control his impulses? Right? Cuz he's very, very impulsive, right? Can he control his impulses long enough to really polish it up and get <laugh>, get it out of his portfolio as quickly as he can. 88. 88. Ask Leo the phone number. It's, I'll tell you what, it's gonna be fun to watch. I promise not to talk about it too much. Just that much. Just as much as I just did. 88. 88. Ask Leo, we'll take your calls. Talk about something else next. She's our black magic phone call person. Fox <laugh>, ladies and gentlemen. Oh, I like you. You're a wolf today. Kim Scheffer. I'm more of a fox, but, Oh, you're a fox. She's a black magic fa hawks. Kim Sheffer. That's cute. Answers the phone and it's warm.

(00:12:26):
It does double duty. Double duty. It's gonna keep me warm for the show. An ice house in here. I like your, I like your costume kid. Thank you. This is the part of the show. We say hello to Kim Shaffer, who is the person who answers your calls and gets you on the air. I am ready now. Ready and willing, able to, to take Well, I, I'm ready and willing anyway. Are you able, able, Is another matter entirely? Let's try anyway, let's, well, let's try Pete and Amesbury Barry. He, he told me it's Barry like people. Barry people. Amesbury, Amesbury, <laugh>. B U R y. <Laugh>. Okay. But it's in Mass Halloween theme. You know, I think I'd think, you know, like in, in Massachusetts they say Peabody Pty. I thought it might be Amesbury. Oh, it probably is. Let's see. Let's talk to the, the man who knows Pete. Thank you, Kim. Hello, Pete.

Caller 1 (00:13:17):
Here I am Amesbury. It is Pete Peabody.

Leo Laporte (00:13:21):
Peabody?

Caller 1 (00:13:23):
No, Peabody

Leo Laporte (00:13:25):
<Laugh>. He's the one Massachusetts man that calls it Peabody. Peabody <laugh>. It's Peabody. I think the Peabody family calls it Peabody, but I don't know. How do you say Amesbury?

Caller 1 (00:13:39):
Amesbury.

Leo Laporte (00:13:40):
Amesbury. Okay. Like a berry.

Caller 1 (00:13:44):
But it's, it's pelt. Like you bury a body.

Leo Laporte (00:13:47):
Right, But it's pronounced Barry. Correct. Okay, Got it. Thank you. I grew up in Providence, but I, you know, as you can tell, I've,

Caller 1 (00:13:55):
I know your mom is here.

Leo Laporte (00:13:56):
Yeah, my mom's at Cranston. But as you can tell, I I somehow trained the accent outta me.

Caller 1 (00:14:03):
Well you know, I, every so often I bet there's something coming. Oh, it does.

Leo Laporte (00:14:07):
In a and my wife laughs at me when I call it an orange or I say, we're, you know, I, I'm gonna go to my room now. And she goes, What? You're we my room? No, it's room. Room. Yeah, that's what I said. And she goes, No, no, no, no. So there's a few, you're right, there are few words

Caller 1 (00:14:23):
That are, you would think after a million years you would give up on your

Leo Laporte (00:14:27):
Oh, no, she loves it. She, she likes having a little something <laugh>. You know what I'm saying? A little

Caller 1 (00:14:33):
Something, A little pet team to buy the award.

Leo Laporte (00:14:36):
Well, something she could well button. She can just, just a little button she could push. So what can I do for you, Pete?

Caller 1 (00:14:43):
Well, I was calling I, as I explained to the lovely angel bought a old Samsung phone. It was new open box. And what I found out from my own investigation was after so long when they send the new updates, it basically screws up an old phone. So you have to buy a

Leo Laporte (00:15:04):
New, Now that I, I don't think they're trying to do that, but it maybe it does happen.

Caller 1 (00:15:08):
Good business model. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:15:10):
<Laugh>. Yeah. They would get in a little trouble if they really did that. I'm, I'm, you know, but it may be that. So what they try to do is is stop updating phones that'll break, you know? Cause they don't want to keep checking and testing with all the older phones. How, what is the, which model of Samsung is it? I

Caller 1 (00:15:29):
I have a S 10 E.

Leo Laporte (00:15:31):
It's not even that old.

Caller 1 (00:15:33):
No. but like I said, it's one person said, Oh, it's probably five or six years old. Even though I've only owned it as

Leo Laporte (00:15:41):
A, it's not even that old. It was announced and came out in February, 2019.

Caller 1 (00:15:46):
Okay.

Leo Laporte (00:15:46):
So it's actually three years old. You should still be getting updates. But you're, you start, you're getting at the edge. Every manufacturer has a different rule of thumb. But Samsung has been pretty good about keeping phones up to date. 

Caller 1 (00:16:01):
So well, what, what's going on with that? That basically, I think it's gonna die at some point. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:16:06):
And battery's the first one to give out, by the way.

Caller 1 (00:16:09):
What's

Leo Laporte (00:16:10):
That? Battery's the first thing to give out. But if you say it's never been used, then, then the battery should be, you know, you're starting from whenever you started charging it.

Caller 1 (00:16:18):
Yeah. It still had the skin on the edges when Perfect.

Leo Laporte (00:16:21):
Good.

Caller 1 (00:16:21):
Yeah. Okay. So it was an open box somebody looked at and said, Oh, I want a much bigger screen than that.

Leo Laporte (00:16:26):
Yeah.

Caller 1 (00:16:26):
Yeah. Prefer

Leo Laporte (00:16:27):
A, That's a great way to get a deal, by the way. Because for a long time, companies would sell those as new and they, they were, the law changed and they found out, Oh, we can't, We have to we have to say it's used. Yeah.

Caller 1 (00:16:39):
Yeah. Well it, it's just like if you title a cop once, you title that cop. Exactly. Doesn't matter if it has one mile or

Leo Laporte (00:16:45):
Titled a what? A what title? A what

Caller 1 (00:16:47):
Title? That a a The only way I can hide that is say Miracle

Leo Laporte (00:16:53):
Vehicle.

Caller 1 (00:16:54):
I don't even know how to say it the other way.

Leo Laporte (00:16:58):
Ah, it's fine. No, I understand you. I speak I speak Massachusetts.

Caller 1 (00:17:01):
You speak New

Leo Laporte (00:17:02):
England? Yeah. Yeah. I speak New England <laugh>. That's mean. I'm sorry. I just love it, frankly. That's fine. I think Regionalisms accents should be preserved. Not all homogenized out of existence. That's what makes us interesting and unique.

Caller 1 (00:17:16):
Yeah. Well why do people travel? Right? It's not just to see what's

Leo Laporte (00:17:20):
There. Right, exactly. I don't want everybody to be like me anyway. To get back to this. So what's what's the behavior that's happening? What's going on? That's,

Caller 1 (00:17:28):
Well, what the phone has done twice lasts about a day is I'll turn it on. I can't, it appears to make a phone call, but it doesn't ring and it doesn't go anywhere. So I can't send a phone call or get a phone call. But they, if they call me, my phone doesn't ring. That's not, And they get the voicemail.

Leo Laporte (00:17:47):
And who's the

Caller 1 (00:17:48):
Carrier? I can get a text, but I, 99% of the time I can't send a text. But the internet works fine.

Leo Laporte (00:17:56):
That's weird. Who's the carrier?

Caller 1 (00:17:59):
I'm using Mint, which is,

Leo Laporte (00:18:00):
Yeah, I like Mint. They, they're a sponsor Actually. We know Mint. Well, I use Mint. Oh, okay, good. Yeah. Yeah. I like Mint. Good choice.

Caller 1 (00:18:06):
I'm glad I'm in a way supporting you. Yes,

Leo Laporte (00:18:09):
Thank you. You are. And of course Ryan Reynolds who needs help. Yes, yes. That's a weird behavior. It doesn't sound like it's a phone behavior unless, Then there's one thing you should check. Android has a lot of, and, and probably meant as well, have a lot of features to block robo calls. And one of the things Andrea will do if it thinks if the call is they think spam is, it will do exactly your, that behavior. Just send it right to voicemail and you'll never hear it

Caller 1 (00:18:40):
Ring's been calling me for years.

Leo Laporte (00:18:42):
Yeah. But but it just may be. So you should look in the settings and I would turn off any spam blocking in the settings. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> that's, that's certainly one thing because people complain like crazy about you know, spam calls the text's not going through. That's, that's not good. But honestly, I don't think that's the phone. I think that's more likely the, the carrier or somehow the carrier's relationship to the phone. And that goes down to the settings, what they call the APN settings on the phone.

Caller 1 (00:19:12):
A

Leo Laporte (00:19:14):
Apn the access point name is, believe it or not, smartphones have to have a, like a website to go to, to do, to interact. It establishes a connection between the carriers network and your phone. So make sure you have the right APN for Mint Mobile. You can Google that and they will tell you what it should be and where it should be set. That's another thing that can make a difference. Leo Laportee tech guy. So like for instance you're on T-Mobile with Mint, but you probably don't have it. T-Mobile apn. Let me just see what the MIN Mobile APN is.

Caller 1 (00:19:55):
Okay.

Leo Laporte (00:19:55):
Cause that can also, cause you know, sometimes, I don't know if you've seen this, every once in a while you'll see an update that says

Caller 1 (00:20:02):
Two and a half, two and a years.

Leo Laporte (00:20:04):
It just started going bad. Huh?

Caller 1 (00:20:06):
This just happened. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:20:08):
But remember as they update, as they update stuff

Caller 1 (00:20:14):
That's what I

Leo Laporte (00:20:15):
Would Yeah. But it's not necessarily that they broke it, it's just that the settings might have new, new features like spam call blocking might have been added, things like that. Oh, okay. So let me just look at what Mint Mobile's APN should be. Oh, here's what you do. Here's a way to do this. This might help text set S E T U P to the short code 6 7 0 6700. So you, you send a text message to 6,700 called this is Set. What that will do is give, send you notification that will install appropriate settings. That's nice. MI mobile made that nice to do. That's great.

Caller 1 (00:20:54):
Oh, that's, yeah, that will be

Leo Laporte (00:20:55):
Nice. That's specific to MIT Mobile. They

Caller 1 (00:20:57):
Will come in, I'll know it's either right or it's wrong.

Leo Laporte (00:20:59):
Yeah. <laugh> that's specific. Cuz their APN is weird. APN is Wholesale. <Laugh>. Oh, <laugh>. Okay. That's something T-Mobile probably did to them.

Caller 1 (00:21:11):
Yeah. So what I do like about Reynolds is he tries to have fun with the business. Oh,

Leo Laporte (00:21:17):
I love it. We love MIT Mobile. I mean, their price is incredible.

Caller 1 (00:21:21):
15 bucks for four gig. I

Leo Laporte (00:21:23):
Know. And it's, and it's T-Mobile. It's good. T it's the same service. The only negative is international. If you travel internationally,

Caller 1 (00:21:31):
Well again, you can buy from them. So it will work everywhere. Right. Whereas if you went, if you bought it through Team Mobile, they had that one plan that you, you really can't get without going into the store. Yeah. For $15 a month.

Leo Laporte (00:21:47):
No, I think you're right. I think mobile's fantastic.

Caller 1 (00:21:50):
Yeah. It came with less data and that wouldn't even, they wouldn't even let you buy something to use in another country.

Leo Laporte (00:21:56):
Right. Right.

Caller 1 (00:21:57):
It will.

Leo Laporte (00:21:58):
Oh, that's good to know. Oh, that's good to know. Oh, that's really good to know. Oh, that, that, cuz I have, you know, I have a phone I take internationally that's on Google Phi, but maybe I will take my MIT mumble phone next. That's next time. That's good. The

Caller 1 (00:22:11):
Other thing you can do from running here, I haven't tried it cause I'm not a fan of Facebook is, they bought that app that will let you use international, Your phone International. Huh? if you said it, I would know it.

Leo Laporte (00:22:24):
What not. Whatsapp?

Caller 1 (00:22:26):
Yes, that's

Leo Laporte (00:22:27):
It. Oh, WhatsApp. Okay. Yeah.

Caller 1 (00:22:28):
If you use that, that will let you make calls without paying Lymph note mobile.

Leo Laporte (00:22:33):
Right.

Caller 1 (00:22:34):
Or from what I

Leo Laporte (00:22:35):
Hear, right? Yeah. WhatsApp is data only. So in any event, try that. I think this is kind of cool, this texting setup to 6,700. See if that helps. And then the other thing to do is go in your settings, take a look at your, at your spam call blocking, which is new. Okay. And it may be when you got an update to the latest Android that feature got turned on cuz it probably, they leave it on by default. Cause people don't want those. But, but if it's blocking calls you want, that's not the what you want. So that's Turn that off.

Caller 1 (00:23:04):
Well, what I like about a phone is I can, you know, Yeah. I'm looking for this kind of money. Okay. Click block. Click. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:23:12):
Yep.

Caller 1 (00:23:13):
You get less and less every day.

Leo Laporte (00:23:14):
Yeah. Good. Yeah. <laugh> one thing you can't block any right now is election texts, but that's okay. It's almost over. Our long national nightmare is almost over <laugh>. Hey, have a great day. It's great to talk to somebody from Amesbury.

Caller 1 (00:23:30):
Yes. Thank you so much,

Leo Laporte (00:23:31):
William. Take care. Thanks Pete. Bye. Our show today brought to you by Ooh, brand new sponsor. Onlogic. On logic. You probably are no more than a few feet away from a personal computing device. Right? Something that's changed your life, made your life better. That's done so much for you. There's an entire hidden world of computing that you may not even see. It's revolutionizing things like sustainable agriculture, bringing smart cities to life, increasing manufacturing efficiency to improve the quality of our lives. And that's where you will find, if you look for them, if you know where to look on logic's, distinctive orange industrial and embedded computers, they say there's anyone I can't wait to get this on. Logic is the first choice in industrial computing for innovators around the world who need computing power that can survive and thrive where traditional hardware might fail on logic.

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(00:25:37):
You might see 'em, Dr. Mom in the hospital. You'll see on those distinctive orange on Logic computers, on carts frequently you might see them in a remote mining operation. I mean, they're all over the team. At, OnLogic truly cares about creating right fit solutions. Tailored specifically to solve your unique technology challenges on Logic partners with leading software companies, companies like a AWS to enable rapid evaluation and deployment of edge computing solutions. I was just talking about this the other day, that this is the future of computing. It's moving to the edge. Computers intelligence everywhere on Logic's line of aws, iot T Greengrass compatible computers have invented by aws. So, you know, you got the peace of mind. It's gonna work right out of the box. It's got all the security features of Greengrass. It's a good solution. If you need a computing solution that can be easily configured to your needs, supported by industry experts who are just a phone call away.

(00:26:38):
Or you could chat with 'em on the website. Of course, email delivered to you quickly. The team at OnLogic is ready to help. I wanna, you know, I wanna go visit these guys cause what they're doing is Grace, fantastic. To get started, learn more about on Logic's 30 day risk-free hardware trial visit onlogic.com/twitt onlogic.com/twit onlogic.com/twit. We thank 'em so much for their support and you support us too, by the way. Really important to use those special addresses I give out onlogic.com/twit. That's how they know you saw it here. Tell your friends, tell your family, tell your boss onlogic.com/twit <laugh>. Well, Leo Laporte the tech guy. I put a spell on you Halloween Eve, the evening of Halloween, cuz Halloween's tomorrow. But we can celebrate Halloween Eve. I mean look at, look at Kim's outfit. She's celebrating. She'd probably wear that all the time.

(00:27:45):
I think, you know, if she, if she could when it's cold. Yeah, you, you can keep those, those are, those are yours. <Laugh>. Wear them every day from now on. <Laugh>. Is this, Oh, so this is Devil's Night. Do you know about Devil's Night? No, this is the night before Halloween. Or sometimes they call it mischief night cuz this is when bad teenagers go out and, Cause I think that was more last night though, because that was Saturday night. Yeah, maybe. So yeah, maybe there's a whole lot of mischief going on last night. I'm glad I, I'm glad I'm not a teenager and I'm glad I don't have teenagers. Those weren't fun days. Let's go back to the phones. We've got Spa Sam almost called you Spam from Perdido Key Florida. Hi Sam

Caller 2 (00:28:30):
Bjo. <Inaudible>

Leo Laporte (00:28:31):
Bjo. You obviously can see my costume.

Caller 2 (00:28:37):
Maybe

Leo Laporte (00:28:37):
I am today.

Caller 2 (00:28:41):
Well, as far as my high school French goes. But I do have a question about the new, fairly new iOS feature for people who pay for little extra program from Apple that works sort of like a vpn. It's called Private Relay.

Leo Laporte (00:28:58):
Yeah, this is a, this is a interesting, both by the way, Apple and Google now starting to do a VPN on their pixel funds. I think the, these companies are saying, you know, we gotta help protect our our users. Private Relay though is not exactly the same as a vpn. So what's your question?

Caller 2 (00:29:20):
Well, does it really ob your activity per your internet service

Leo Laporte (00:29:24):
Provider? Yes and no. <Laugh> Yes and no from your I S P? That's an interesting question. So a vpn, which is software you run on your phone or your computer scrambles everything from the point it leaves your computer, computer. So your I S P can only see scrambled data. They can't see where you're going, what you're doing, any of that private relay is not the same thing. It's kind of a complicated dual hop thing. So what it's really hiding your internet searches and traffic from is not your internet service provider. They're still gonna see what you're doing. It's from the website you're going to, That's my understanding of it. So it's, it isn't quite as complete as an is p what what what private Relay does is you go out on the internet and the first place you, your, your, your request says you wanna go to yahoo.com.

(00:30:30):
First place the request goes is to Apple, it goes in the clear to Apple so your ISP can see it. Then Apple sends it along to another company called Lastly, and then, then it goes to the website. Yahoo. So let's see. Do, do, do you see? Yeah, it says, okay, I'm looking at Apple now. I'm trying to understand, I'm on the Fastly site trying to understand. It looks like the website you're going to is not visible to your I S P, however your IP address is, Apple can see it in your isp, can see it. Then Apple gives you a new address and the website name now becomes in the clear. So yes, it does protect you from, it looks like from your internet service provider seeing where you're going.

(00:31:25):
So website owners don't see your address. By the way. This is completely aviated. If you have logged your browser into Google or Facebook or any number of sites and then you go to a site that is using login by Google or you go to Google sites or you go to Facebook or Facebook sites that use Facebook's login, all of them can see who you are. They don't care about your IP address anyway cuz they know who you are cuz you signed into Google or Facebook or Twitter or any of these. So this doesn't work if your browsers, this is why Google has such an advantage incidentally cuz almost everybody, right? When you first get your computer set up, you'll, the first thing says, Okay, log into Google now and then you're logged into Google. And unless you take steps Tolog in every search you do on Google, everywhere you go that Google serves an ad to or whatever, Google sees you and they don't see your IP address, they see a, a, an actual cookie that says you are you. They say, Oh, hi Sam. So goo. That's why Google this what we call this. And by the way, Apple too, they call this first party data. First party data is the company that's doing it can always see who you are. The people have made a big deal about third party cookies following you around, but this doesn't fix that. So, boy, this is this is a complicated question. And I, I think unfortunately Apple and others use the shortcut, Oh, it's like a vpn. It isn't.

(00:33:06):
It's more like maybe a little bit more like tour where it's kind of routing your traffic through a couple of different things. Private re this is what Apple says. Private relay hides your IP address and browsing activity in Safari and protects your unencrypted internet traffic so that no one, including Apple, can see who you are, what sites you're visiting. So, okay, good. But remember if you're logged into Google and you do a Google search, Google knows it's you. They don't unlock you from Google. So it's kind of complicated, I think tr it's pretty hard to stay private. But what, what is your, what is your goal?

Caller 2 (00:33:46):
Well just wondering whether it would take the place, the vpn if you were like in a hotel and

Leo Laporte (00:33:54):
It does do that

Caller 2 (00:33:55):
Or, or doing those sorts of things. It

Leo Laporte (00:33:58):
Does do that if you're using Safari, but only if you're using Safari.

Caller 2 (00:34:02):
I use

Leo Laporte (00:34:03):
Safari. Yeah. Yeah. So the service encrypts your data as it leaves your device just like a VPN does so that no one can digitally eavesdrop your, your communication. So in that respect, it's like a vpn. Remember that's the also the case when you log into any secure website. So when you go to Amazon or your bank it's H T T P S, you'll see that in the browser bar. That means it's encrypted from your computer outward. So it's also protected. But there are sites that are not https that there are few and fewer of those. So it's become less and less of an issue. It's a complicated thing. I'll put it, there's a chatroom's, put a wired article up. How Apple iCloud privately relay works is probably more information than anybody needs to know. It is not the same as a vpn. In some respects it's better in some respect. It's worse. Depends what you're trying to do.

Caller 2 (00:34:59):
Leo, thank you so much. Normal days.

Leo Laporte (00:35:03):
Thank you for calling. I appreciate it. Sam, I'm sorry. I called you spam. Yeah, this is complicated and I like a lot of stuff on the on the internet and in the computers sometimes even reading the, the description of it and, and even for me, and I'm pretty technical, it's not completely clear what's going on. I guess here's what you should know. It's not a vpn. It's like a vpn. You have to use Safari on your iPhone, your iPad, your Mac. Actually it doesn't, Does it work on your Mac? Yeah, I think they have it on the Mac now. It will encrypt the data coming out of your computer so your ISP can't see it. So somebody in a coffee shop who's spying on you can't see it, but it, it, your location is known, it's slightly obscured. It only hides your IP address. And the most important thing to understand is many sites, Google and Facebook chief among them will still know it's you. If you, if you can use private relay and go to Facebook and not have to log in again, if Facebook doesn't go well, who are you? They don't. They go, Oh, hi, Come on in, Pete. Then it's not hiding your identity. Not only not from Google and Facebook, but any other sites that use Google or Facebook ads like buttons, logins, all of them. Leo Laporte, the tech guy.

(00:36:49):
In some respects, it's faster than a VPM because it isn't doing, it's not sending you, your traffic still is going direct, but it's not sending you through a server somewhere else. Well, it sort of is. It uses oblivious DNS over https. <Laugh>, I'm not kidding. Yeah, for for the loca, you're talking about location Joe, you get a choice of exact location or general location. Like are you co you could be coming from no location, Petaluma or I think you could even say down to the No, maybe not just so Yeah, because the IP address is used was used for location. So it'll still say you're in Petaluma. Or I won't say we're, you're Atal. It's spooky season. Leo Laportee the tech guy. When did we start calling it spooky season? When did that happen? When Halloween went from one evening a year to an entire month. When did that happen? And now I've, my wife tells me that immediately at the end of Halloween, we're putting up Christmas decorations, <laugh>. So then it'll be holiday season. Leo Laportee, the tech guy. We are gonna play spooky music today no matter what. Leonard on the line from San Diego. Hello Leonard.

Caller 3 (00:38:20):
How are

Leo Laporte (00:38:20):
You? I'm great. I

Caller 3 (00:38:22):
Anyone does not change Twitter. I'm on Twitter. You can talk to anyone. Even the governor of California.

Leo Laporte (00:38:29):
Isn't that cool? That's the advantage, right? You have a voice.

Caller 3 (00:38:33):
I'm just an average person. I don't even know if these people Twitter be twittering me back if it's an assistant or whatever. But

Leo Laporte (00:38:42):
I think it's not gonna change that much. I I, I will hope that for most of us it's not gonna be that different. But what, But again, you don't know cuz Elon's kind of unpredictable.

Caller 3 (00:38:52):
He's gonna try and get advertising on there, right? Right. So he can get some money that, you know, I guess he just fired the two CEOs and CFOs, but they walked away with millions of dollars. So, Oh,

Leo Laporte (00:39:07):
Actually that may not be the case. The latest is that Elon is going to claim they were fired for cause and cannot collect their severance packages, which for the ceo para agro wall is 40 million. So imagine that one's gonna go to court. How can you fire somebody for, Cause when you just took over, you don't even <laugh>. What, what did they not salute him when he walked down the hall? What's the cause? I'd be very curious to see more about that anyway. Yeah, you know, I'm taking a wait and see thing. I know a lot of people left Twitter. I'm gonna stick around. I'll take a wait and see attitude on this cuz it is. It's a, as you say, it's a great place. We tell people all the time, if you're having trouble with a company, tweet at 'em often works really well.

Caller 3 (00:39:53):
Same thing. I'll take tick tonk. I have over 2000 people following me on TikTok.

Leo Laporte (00:39:59):
What? You're a tick star. What, What do you put on your TikTok?

Caller 3 (00:40:04):
I don't have anything. I don't even have the videos on there. Oh, okay. And here's a guy from San Diego and I got over 2000 people following me. And they keep telling me, put on Leonard, put on video, video, video. There people on that that have millions of people that watching them.

Leo Laporte (00:40:24):
I know my son has more than 2 million followers on TikTok. He's a chef. So yeah, Tick's kind of amazing too. I li i's like short form tv, you know, it's like just a minute of something funny or silly or whatever. And then the next, and then the next, and then the next

Caller 3 (00:40:43):
You can get money. You can get, if you have like a million or something, you can get money on that. I don't know how much money is.

Leo Laporte (00:40:50):
Oh no, my son's doing quite well. He <laugh> he's doing quite well. He sells he sells products. He has an, I just saw an ad he did for Heinz Mustard and he makes spicy sandwiches. So he made us, I saw this on somebody sent it to me from Facebook. I think Kim did. He it was a video of, of him making a spicy sandwich and then he said, You're gonna need some Pepto with this. And he, it's an ad for Pepto and they thought, Wow. So yeah, I, he doesn't tell me how much he yanks. I don't wanna know, but I think he's doing okay. Plus he's got a book deal, like taking meetings with Netflix.

Caller 3 (00:41:26):
A lot of actresses that they put you in the, in their kitchen and they made cookies and stuff like

Leo Laporte (00:41:34):
That. Yeah. Follow look for salt. Underscore Hank Salt. Underline Hank your son. That's my boy.

Caller 3 (00:41:41):
Okay.

Leo Laporte (00:41:42):
You'll see some delicious, delicious food. <Laugh>. The only reason I don't like it is it makes me hungry. <Laugh>.

Caller 3 (00:41:50):
Yeah. How come? How come you gonna go on?

Leo Laporte (00:41:54):
I'm kind of unlike you Leonard. I'm old fashioned and I just I do this radio thing and I do a bunch of podcasts and, you know, when I started doing podcasts 15 years ago, it was the, it was the next big thing. Now it's kind of old hat. So I just, I just like what I do. And I thought about TikTok. I think we have a TikTok I think it's called Twit Talk <laugh> cuz my podcast network is twit, but I don't know what we do with it. <Laugh>. So, so I have people, I have people. Leonard, I have a, an entire marketing department.

Caller 3 (00:42:32):
I asked you one other question.

Leo Laporte (00:42:33):
Yeah, sure.

Caller 3 (00:42:35):
And tell her, are you where you live? Is it Amy makes soups or

Leo Laporte (00:42:40):
Amy's Amy's soups? Yeah, they're good. Do you like Amy's soups?

Caller 3 (00:42:46):
Terrific. Perfect. Do you know her?

Leo Laporte (00:42:49):
I know her daughter cuz my daughter went to school with Amy Berliner. Yeah, the Amy. I know Amy.

Caller 3 (00:42:55):
Is it a big operation?

Leo Laporte (00:42:57):
Yeah, it's pretty big operation. They're just moving into their downtown headquarters in beautiful Petaluma, California where we are. That took over the old big department store downtown. And they're renovating it. Yeah, it's a big operation.

Caller 3 (00:43:09):
Wow. But the, I I enjoy the soups. They're very good.

Leo Laporte (00:43:13):
I do too. My TikTok, I have a TikTok. My TikTok is tick twit. I'm sorry, my tick is twi talk. T W I T T k T W I T T k. And I, I didn't even know I had it, but unfortunately we only have three 40 followers. So if you would send us some of your followers, Leonard, I would appreciate it.

Caller 3 (00:43:40):
Okay.

Leo Laporte (00:43:40):
You've got more followers than I do. Cuz we don't put any, we don't, we need to put more things up on there. That's what I obviously we gotta do more stuff.

Caller 3 (00:43:49):
There's no new new things coming on all the time on that. Advertise on TikTok to competition with TikTok.

Leo Laporte (00:43:57):
Do you worry, do you worry as some do maybe even the White House does about the fact that TikTok is owned by a Chinese company bike dance? Do you worry about

Caller 3 (00:44:07):
That? Not it's the stupidest thing. The Trump tried it, they get 'em off. It's stupid. Okay. What's the difference here? Your phone, almost every phone is made in, in in, in China. Yeah. So if you wanna put a chip in there, they're gonna do

Leo Laporte (00:44:27):
It. You're sensible man. I like, I like you Leonard. You obviously got a good head on your shoulders. No wonder you have 4,000 followers in TikTok.

Caller 3 (00:44:35):
No. What, what happens is each one month. One month, Yeah. There's over a billion people on TikTok throughout the world.

Leo Laporte (00:44:44):
Yeah.

Caller 3 (00:44:45):
Which is pretty good. That's

Leo Laporte (00:44:47):
Amazing. It's amazing.

Caller 3 (00:44:49):
Small little guy like me, I can talk to somebody in, in Australia if I

Leo Laporte (00:44:53):
Want. I know. I love that. England. Don't you love that? I love that.

Caller 3 (00:44:59):
Who cares? Who cares if they're from ours? I don't care if

Leo Laporte (00:45:02):
They're from that. It's bringing peace on earth, Goodwill to men. Right? Because, and women, because we're all there and talking to one. You know, that's the solution to everything. Is it? Just talk to one another. Right? That's what we do here. Leonard, you're a

Caller 3 (00:45:19):
Sense When I'm on Twitter, I Gavin New, who's the governor of California one day he wants to be the president of the United States.

Leo Laporte (00:45:28):
That's right.

Caller 3 (00:45:28):
He comes on. I answer him. He answers me. You

Leo Laporte (00:45:32):
Talk with the gov. Isn't that awesome?

Caller 3 (00:45:35):
Bill Biden comes on my Twitter, the president of the United States Twitters me. I think it's terrific.

Leo Laporte (00:45:42):
Yeah. I think Leonard, you have a good head on your shoulders before we run outta time, cuz we're gonna do that in two minutes and 21 seconds. Do you have anything you wanted to ask?

Caller 3 (00:45:52):
Oh yeah, I'm sorry. 

Leo Laporte (00:45:53):
Oh, no, I don't mind. I I'll talk about whatever you, whatever you want.

Caller 3 (00:45:58):
<Laugh>. No, no, no. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I, I just was

Leo Laporte (00:46:01):
I'm just some schmo on the radio. It doesn't matter. Leonard, whatever. You got nobody else. I am here to serve you. Yeah, I'll talk to you anytime. I love talking to you. I'm here to serve.

Caller 3 (00:46:10):
I have a Moto G seven. Yes. my volume does not, doesn't come on. It's very low. If I put the into the jack, my, my plugs, I can hear and I ju it a little bit and I it comes on. What is my problem?

Leo Laporte (00:46:29):
Yeah, there is in, on Andrea, there is a setting in the sounds setting that will limit it to protect your hearing. So you wanna make sure that that setting is set as, as high as you want. You know, from years of headphone use. I like many radio folks I've damaged my hearing. I have a continuous ringing in my ears. And, and, and Google and Apple and others are trying to protect your hearing. So go into the from settings, choose sounds and vibration and volume and then you can choose how loud it'll be. That's the first thing to do for sure. Leo Laportee, the tech guy. More calls right after this. Ah, there you go. We'll put that link in the show notes. Leonard Scooter x i one, Motorola G seven power volume problems. Let me see what it says. I'm reading it kept changing the volume by itself. There's, there's no solution in this might be a physical issue, especially if you plug in the headphones and then it goes up and down. Yeah. There's no solution in that thread. It's just, I don't know. So I think Ty is starting to post stuff on our TikTok. That's nice. Thank you Ty. Cuz the, cuz the tick,

(00:48:09):
The, the last video posted here was July, 2021. Sarah and Burke bashing a computer.

... (00:48:20):
<Laugh>.

Leo Laporte (00:48:22):
And then and then all of a sudden, two days ago, there's another one. So I think Ty, Ty is, has Ty has decided to, to post for us. Thank you Ty. He's one of our mar our new marketing guy. Cause it was a lot of old stuff. So let's get that TikTok back in shape, huh? Let's, let's get this working. Some of this stuff was pretty pretty old. There's Mary Jo Foley visiting the studio for the holiday show. And Stacy and there's Lisa. That's cool. That's cool. So there's some historic stuff.

... (00:49:10):
<Laugh>.

Leo Laporte (00:49:11):
I like the hitting the computer with a hammer. I get, I don't know who was in charge of this.

(00:49:21):
Well, hey, hey, hey. Or should I say <laugh> Welcome. Leo Laportee here, the tech guy. Time to the Tech Guy show. We talk about computers, we talk about the internet and how it works. We talk about smartphones, smart watches. I just got the the new Meta Oculus Quest Pro. I, maybe they don't say Oculus anymore. I guess they should just say Quest. The Quest Pro VR helmet that meta announced a couple of weeks ago. 1600 smackers. But I bought it for you cuz I'm not into this, frankly. I'm not. We we, I I put in, I, you know, I hear the hype about virtual reality and I a little bit fall for it in the back in the day when Oculus was not owned by Meta slash Facebook. They had a Kickstarter to get started and I put in the money, I think the same, it was like a lot of money got the first Oculus quest, or it was Rift, it was called, wasn't it Oculus Rift.

(00:50:23):
And then they sold to Facebook, which irritated a lot of the people who put in money to support the company on Kickstarter. Cuz like, where's my, do I get Facebook money from that? No. So they said, Okay, sorry, well we'll send you the new one. So they, so I have two of those. And then I got the HTC vibe cuz that was repeatedly better. All of this gets handed down to my kid. Cuz he li you know, he li <laugh>, he and his buddies, he's 19 now. But, but a few years ago when he was, you know, 16, he and his bu buddies would come over and they'd, you know, they'd play virtual games and they, I guess they liked it. And I thought, well maybe this is the future for young people. Not for me. Cuz I, I just, it it slightly nauseated me.

(00:51:08):
And it, it wasn't, it was, it was, it was cool. It was one of, it was like a good technology demo. It was cool, but ultimately not that great. Did not get the quest to, because you had to have a Facebook account. I don't. But then they said, Oh, you can have a meta account instead. Which it turns out is the same as a Facebook account, I think. But anyway, I have a meta account now. I should try logging into Facebook with my meta account. I wonder what would happen. I have a count of some kind. And so I thought, well I owe it to, I not, I owe it to Mark Zuckerberg. I owe it to you to report back and say whether it's happening, whether VR is the next big thing. And one of the things they did with this $1,600 device, they put more cameras on it and they have two color cameras facing out.

(00:51:59):
So for the first time, even though you're wearing this opaque visor over your head, you can see what's around you. It's kind of ironic because the real world is a little fuzzy. Like it's a little virtual and the virtual world feels very real <laugh>. So I dunno if that's on purpose, but yeah, you can at least, and it's in color, so you could, you won't walk into walls anymore and if somebody's sneaking up on you, you can see them. Because you know, you, you could and you see 'em in color even. So that's good, I guess. And I played a lot of games. We're gonna, next Saturday I'm gonna bring it in. I'm gonna make Micah play a game called Richie's Plank. You go up in an elevator very, very high in a city. It's not super real, it's a little cartoony, but you go high and then the door opens and you're looking out and you're looking down.

(00:52:47):
It's, you know, 80 stories up and there's a little thin little plank in front of you sticking out. And the idea is go ahead, walk out on the plank. And what, it's a very good demonstration of how your body overrules your logical mind. Because I know I'm in my living room and I'm not gonna hurt myself. I'm not gonna fall. That plank is imaginary, but my body says, don't go. It don't dope. I could not bring myself to step out on that plank. I couldn't do it. No. Mm-hmm. I couldn't do it. It just, your my my my what? I don't know what my limbic system, I don't know what it was. My heart, my liva, something said to my brain, No, no brain, you're just wrong <laugh>. You're not in your living room. You're standing in the 80 story billing and you're gonna fall if you step out there. And it stopped me.

(00:53:46):
I guess you could get your brain to override it, but it's a lot of efforts. A surprisingly large amount of effort. So there is some, I mean there's something there. Really, these virtual rallies gotten better and better. The cameras are better, the screens are better, the software's faster. You're no longer attached by a wire tethered to a big computer. You're just moving around in space. So it's definitely improved. Is it the next big thing? Maybe, but I Not yet. Maybe. But not yet. Not now. Don't buy this. No, do not. Unless you're absolutely hardcore vr you know, freak. Cuz it's, it's cool. It's a great, still a great technology demo. Not yet useful. It's funny because meta announced this thing in hand, in hand with Microsoft. Like, you're gonna go into your teams meetings wearing this thing or you're gonna use Windows or office using this thing. I don't, it's not that comfortable. You don't wanna spend more an hour on it? I don't think so. I don't think so. Let's go back to the phones. 88. 88. Ask Leo. Davids on the line from Redondo Beach, California. Hi David.

Caller 3 (00:54:59):
Hi Leo. Can you hear me okay? I

Leo Laporte (00:55:01):
Hear you great.

Caller 3 (00:55:02):
Okay, great. So I'm the laptop Elf. We've talked a few times before. Ah,

Leo Laporte (00:55:08):
Hello laptop Elf

Caller 3 (00:55:11):
<Laugh>. Thank you Leo. We're, we're doing well. And I just wanted to say a big thank you to you for all the great service you do for those of us who use tech and Nice. For those of us who help others with their tech, really invaluable.

Leo Laporte (00:55:24):
It's, it's Mike, the

Caller 3 (00:55:25):
Need goes on forever.

Leo Laporte (00:55:27):
It's my great pleasure and thank you for what you do. He takes old computers and fixes 'em up, Right. For seniors and others, right?

Caller 3 (00:55:39):
That's that's right. For our nonprofits that help low income families and for public school teachers and some other groups. And wanted to tell you about so this year we, so probably we've given away over 520 computers. It's been our biggest year ever. And one of the things that's helped for computers that are too old for Windows 10 or Macx High Sierra, we're starting to use Chrome OS Flex and you're having a pretty good experience with it. Not excellent. There are still some older units that we, that Flex doesn't have the drivers for. And I still haven't found, I don't think it has the ability for power of our net, which is I think one of the great features of Chromebooks.

Leo Laporte (00:56:27):
So

Caller 3 (00:56:27):
Otherwise,

Leo Laporte (00:56:27):
In the past were you putting, what were you putting on there? Linux, Windows.

Caller 3 (00:56:32):
Yes. We were putting Linux on and, and the communities that we've helped, Linux doesn't seem to be a really good fit.

Leo Laporte (00:56:39):
Maybe too complicated or the software they want to use isn't there? Chromos Flex is Google's Chromos and you No, I highly recommend Chromebooks to people. They bought a company called Never Wear that took the open source Chromos and put it on Old Windows laptops. It's, you know, you know this, it's, it's really a, just a, a lockdown Linux that it's just a browser, Right. But people who use computers pretty much, you know, almost everybody now knows how to use a browser. So it hides the details of Linux and it's just a browser And it this, So they bought never where and now they offer this. And I, your experience, it matches mine where when it works it's great and there are a few systems it still doesn't work on. But I did not know that it doesn't do the power wash cuz that's too bad.

Caller 3 (00:57:31):
Yeah, I, I, I tried it most recently about a month ago and there was no functionality for it. You can always just reinstall Homos Flex, but you know, that's gonna be a little bit too techy for the folks. We give this truth, so I'm hoping they'll add that feature in the

Leo Laporte (00:57:45):
Future. Yeah. Reinstalling power wash is essentially reinstalling automatically <laugh>.

Caller 3 (00:57:51):
Right, right.

Leo Laporte (00:57:52):
Yeah, they should add that. I don't know what the comp, maybe they don't want it to happen by accident. You know, when you do it on a Chromebook, you have to jump through some hoops and maybe that's part of the problem. Is it be too easy to do it by accident?

Caller 3 (00:58:05):
Yeah, that could be. But anyway, it's been a great ad because almost everybody we helped can make good use of the Chromebooks. Sure. Chrome os flex laptop. And so it's really expanded the, the number of people we can give our refurb laptops too. Plus I wanted to give

Leo Laporte (00:58:21):
It, it runs on lower quality hardware very well. So you don't have to have eight gigs or AM or whatever. Give us your your web address. Do you do you publish a web address?

Caller 3 (00:58:32):
So I don't have a website, but if you look up the Laptop Health project on Facebook, you can contact me there. You can leave a message on it. You can just post you know, put a post on there. So the Laptop Health Project on Facebook.

Leo Laporte (00:58:49):
So cool. I'm so glad you do that. That's really great. Thank

Caller 3 (00:58:53):
You, Leo. Yeah. And we all, we all, all of us in the tech community really appreciate you and your fellow podcasters for all the great help and information we provide us every week. It's

Leo Laporte (00:59:02):
A good, it's a good, it's gotten to be a pretty good environment now. You know, you used to have to go to a user group, right? You have to find one in your neighborhood and go Now, now there's plenty of information. Youtube is loaded with information. Lots of ways to get that information.

Caller 3 (00:59:17):
My first personal computer was an always 41 gray case. Oh,

Leo Laporte (00:59:21):
I love those.

Caller 3 (00:59:21):
Back a few years.

Leo Laporte (00:59:22):
Oh, I wanted an Osborne so bad. <Laugh>.

Caller 3 (00:59:25):
Yeah. Came with a two inch thick manual. And that was your, basically, that was your tech help, right?

Leo Laporte (00:59:31):
That was it. Yeah. Yeah. They don't come, They come with a two inch diagonal pamphlet now, <laugh>.

Caller 3 (00:59:37):
Right, right. Go to this website.

Leo Laporte (00:59:39):
Yeah, you figure it out.

Caller 3 (00:59:41):
And, and for the better, I gotta say. And for the better. You can find any answer you need or text question on the web.

Leo Laporte (00:59:47):
Well, thank you for doing what you do. I'm so glad to hear from you. We haven't talked in a while. Laptop Elf. The Laptop Elf project on Facebook. And you know, you're, you're in the Redondo Beach area, so I imagine it's mostly people in your area that you help, but I think that's fantastic. I really do.

Caller 3 (01:00:05):
Thank you, Leo. Thank you

Leo Laporte (01:00:07):
So much. Thank you for the work you do. More importantly, thank you David. Leo Laportee, the Tech I 88. 88. Ask Leo little bit later in about 15 minutes, let's talk photography, digital photography with our photo sensei Chris Smart Court. Meanwhile, more of your calls coming up right after this. <Laugh>, please, Mr. Wol, please. Leo Laporte. <Laugh> the tech guy. Do you, I think, what do you think, Dr. Laura? Is Holly Halloween music better than Christmas music? Or is Christmas music better than the Halloween? Christmas is better. There's certainly more variety. Halloween music tends to be kind of old, maybe. So does Christmas music come to think of it? Hmm. Ada, I don't know. Deep. We, we, we cover deep philosoph questions like that on the show. 88. 88. Ask Leo is the phone number. Mike is next on the line from Gardnerville, Nevada. Hello, Mike.

Caller 4 (01:01:07):
Hello, Leo. Good to hear you.

Leo Laporte (01:01:08):
Good to talk to you. Thanks for calling first.

Caller 4 (01:01:11):
I've been listening to you for years. I just wanted to tell you that in 2007 I started up with Twitter because you guys kept talking about it. So

Leo Laporte (01:01:20):
2007. Wow. Yeah,

Caller 4 (01:01:23):
So I, so I tried, I didn't know what to do with it at first. So my name is Twi fan, and it has nothing to do with Twitter. I use that name is because this week in tech I did that. So that,

Leo Laporte (01:01:34):
Thank you.

Caller 4 (01:01:36):
Yeah. That confirms what you were talking about being the chief Twi. So,

Leo Laporte (01:01:40):
You know, Elon is decided, I don't know, he thought it was funny, I guess to call himself Chief Twit. Well, I've been the chief twit since at least 2007. It's on my business cards for crying out loud. So there's nothing I can, What am I gonna do? You know, it's, Elon gets to do whatever he wants. That's part of the problem, I guess. Yes, I'm senior. I'm senior. Twitter, Mike. That's great. Thank you. Yeah.

Caller 4 (01:02:05):
So, yeah, and I describe myself as the geezer geek. So I'm, so I'm always the one that has to help everybody with their technology. Nice. Yeah. I love it when it says, I don't know my password. And I go, Well, neither do I <laugh>

Leo Laporte (01:02:19):
Join the club.

Caller 4 (01:02:21):
So, it is so frustrating. It is so frustrating. It's unbelievable. So the, the question I've got is that recently I reported my number over from Spectrum to another carrier. And so after I did that, I started getting notifications from a couple of card companies saying that your number's been disconnected. You need to update your information. Oh, and what I'm asking, what I'm asking, is it common that they do that? I, I've googled the issue,

Leo Laporte (01:02:49):
And that's news to me. So the FCC mandates something they call number portability. That when you have a phone number and you decide to change companies, you can take that number with you. That I think is a really enlightened position. Your phone number, you don't wanna change it. That's how people get ahold of you. And so it's really great that they say you can move your phone number around. Now, of course, who doesn't like this? The phone companies <laugh>. Cause they wanna, everything they can, they do everything they can to lock you in, to keep you from moving to a competitor. It's against their business interests. This is a really good example, by the way, of what, how we have some mismatched priorities. I think in the world. The way we've set it up in business in corporates is our job in a corporation is to maximize value for stakeholders to make the most money possible.

(01:03:44):
Unfortunately, that very often means to not do right by our customers. I think in the long term, it, you'd be better to do right by your customers, but the stock market doesn't reward long term. It rewards quarterly results. So companies are strongly incentivized to make money at the expense of customers, customer service, quality, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. We, as a society, I think, and this is, you know, as whether you love or hate government, this is the role of government is a reflection of our desires as society. It's government's job to say, No, no, wait a minute. Yeah, I understand you wanna make money, you'd like to lock customers in, but you should be able, customers really should be able to move their phone numbers. There is a little gap between what the companies wanna do and what the government requires. However, and you've fallen into that gap because companies don't want portability, right?

(01:04:40):
So they'll drag their feet, they'll do it as slowly as possible. And I think what happened to you is that spectrum not wanting to lose you, eh, they gave the number to the new company, but maybe disconnected your phone a little early. And so those banks and whatever got bad numbers, wrong numbers, sorry, no, no number at this, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. It's also possible that these banks weren't using a normal phone system to, to send the text messages. They were very often, they used software based systems like Twilio to send, is it for sms, things like that. The, the two factor authentication?

Caller 4 (01:05:24):
No, what, what this was about is that the number got reported just fine. I had no problems. What happened is, when I log into a couple of accounts, there's telling me that your number has been disconnected, been reported by your carrier, been Oh,

Leo Laporte (01:05:38):
Thank you Spectrum. Aren't you a wonderful company?

Caller 4 (01:05:43):
Exactly, exactly.

Leo Laporte (01:05:45):
That spectrum, that's that gap between what they're legally required to do and what they really wanna do, and they wanna make it as bad and experience as possible. And they did.

Caller 4 (01:05:54):
I was a little angry. I was,

Leo Laporte (01:05:56):
Yes, rightly so.

Caller 4 (01:05:57):
Yeah. So I called them and I filed a complaint. Good. So they didn't return their call. They turned their call. So they pursued a passive aggressive move. They called me at five 30 in the morning.

Leo Laporte (01:06:09):
Oh my God, it really are nasty <laugh>. That is so nasty.

Caller 4 (01:06:15):
Yeah, it was unbelievable. And, and I said, Well, you're probably from back east. Oh, no, I'm from Arizona. So,

Leo Laporte (01:06:22):
Oh, she knew it was early in the morning.

Caller 4 (01:06:25):
Yes, exactly. Oh, you know, so I, I just unbelievable. And I would un unfortunately, internet-wise Spectrum is the only game in town. Yeah, yeah. So there, there's no other choice.

Leo Laporte (01:06:36):
There's another example. The telecom companies spend lots of money lobbying the FCC and the government to get them to do things that are good for business, but bad for us. And that's one of them, this regional monopoly that these companies have. Well, I'm sorry you fell under that crack, it sounds like. I think it sounds like you fixed it, but shame on spectrum really. Leo Laportee, the tech guy, Chris Maror coming up. Yeah, they, that was, that was so, you know, just like passive aggressive, wasn't it?

Caller 4 (01:07:09):
Yeah, yeah, exactly. Its like, and so the other question I find to ask about these M MD OS or whatever they're called do, do they get full access to it or they, or they just get part of their, their network, You see what I'm saying?

Leo Laporte (01:07:23):
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So they general, they get full access, but the rules are a little different. So for instance, if you're an M V N O, a mobile virtual network operator and you buy carriage from T-Mobile, T-Mobile in your, in their deal with you, and you won't necessarily know this as the customer, but in their deal with the MV nno, we'll say if for instance, if a cell site is congested, we, our customers take priority over yours. Okay. That rarely comes up, right?

Caller 4 (01:07:52):
Yeah. But it's really weird. Our area tell you about cell service with Verizon and with at and t and, and T-Mobile is, is no question. It's horrible here. And so I decided to go from Spectrum since I'm older. So I went to Consumer Cellular

Leo Laporte (01:08:10):
Good. Yeah. Cuz they have a senior thing. Yeah,

Caller 4 (01:08:13):
It was really good deal. Good. And and the thing is it's using at and t and receptionists have been absolutely beautiful. No problem. But then I've been reading locally on that neighborhood app or whatever it's called, Next door I think it's called.

Leo Laporte (01:08:29):
Yeah, Yeah. And

Caller 4 (01:08:30):
That at the same, that people have a horrible time with at t and when, I'm just trying to say,

Leo Laporte (01:08:34):
Oh, isn't that funny? You got a better experience with consumer cellular than those at and t people.

Caller 4 (01:08:40):
Yeah,

Leo Laporte (01:08:41):
Exactly. Isn't that interesting?

Caller 4 (01:08:44):
Yeah. So I was just wondering how that was all, I googled these things even about the privacy thing as well. And you know, you have to Google things just right to get answers. And I'm not always good at that, you know? Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:08:54):
Well, so I like it when you call me. That's good.

Caller 4 (01:08:57):
Yeah. Yeah. So I just wanted to report all that and Leo, you guys do a wonderful job that call before you, the, the gentleman helping with.

Leo Laporte (01:09:04):
Isn't that great? I love him.

Caller 4 (01:09:05):
Yeah, that well, I, I love hearing stories like that, that, that people reach out and help each other. That's just, it's just plain awesome. So you take care and I agree with everybody. You're an awesome individual and you take care of yourself. Okay.

Leo Laporte (01:09:20):
Thank you. I appreciate it. You too. Okay. I love your Twitter by the way. You and I see eye to eye, I'll just say that much <laugh>.

Caller 4 (01:09:29):
It isn't, it isn't much of anything. I have too much political stuff on and cause I didn't know what to do with it. So I have, That's

Leo Laporte (01:09:35):
A good thing. That's a good thing. Nothing wrong with that.

Caller 4 (01:09:39):
And so I used a, a four letter word yesterday on it, and guess what? I wasn't blocked. So Elon has changed the whole thing there.

Leo Laporte (01:09:49):
That's interesting. Yeah. We'll see what happens. Yeah, we'll see what happens. A pleasure, Mike. Yeah, thanks. I'll be following you on the Twitter.

Caller 4 (01:09:57):
Okay,

Leo Laporte (01:09:58):
Thanks. All right. Take care. The Tech Guy podcast is brought to you by eight Sleep. Oh, did I have a good night's sleep last night? It's funny, Lisa. Okay. I'm at Tall Little Tail on Lisa. Lisa likes to get up. She gets a pretty early, she likes to get up 6:00 AM She likes to, We have a little gym. She goes, she works out, she has her coffee, reads the paper, that kind of thing. She likes a little quiet time in the morning. This morning I'm up I think I got up at eight, you know, getting coffee stuff. She shows up like 9, 9 30. I said, Lisa, where have you been? She said, Well my, I I, I was gonna get up at seven. It's her day off. She should get up as late as she wants. But I, I was, I just, I turned up my EightSleep a little bit to get it more cozy.

(01:10:44):
Went back to sleep. Woke up at eight, turned up my eight. Sleep a little bit more. Get it cozy. Went back to sleep. She <laugh>, she, But you know what I said, Lisa, I'm so glad you did that. You needed that great sleep. And that's what do we love about our EightSleep? Eight sleep is a company that makes either, they make two different things. They make a mattress or a mattress cover. We have the mattress cover, they call it the pod cover. We have the original pod pro two. The pod pro three is that, I'll talk about that in a second. So EightSleep is the only sleep technology. You put it on your mattress that dynamically and get this, this is very cool. Cools and heats each side of the bed. So she's got her settings, I've got mind settings.

(01:11:33):
It doesn't just, it's not just like an electric blanket. It, it cools you as as low as 55 degrees or as high as 110 degrees and anywhere in between. Furthermore, they've got this great sleep doctor AI thing that's watching you toss and turn watching how you sleep and, and adjusting the temperature appropriately. Cuz it turns out, and I didn't know this, it turns out that when you get in bed, you want it to be cozy and comfy. But as you go into deep sleep, the most important sleep, the sleep that's clearing out the garbage in your brain and that's literally doing that. It, your body wants it to be cooler. It, as the temperature goes down, you go into deeper sleep. It's just, it's biology I guess. And so the AIDS sleep notices this and then it brings, so it brings, it starts, mine starts warm, cools down, stays, you know, not cold, but in the summer we had it cold.

(01:12:26):
By the way, it's great for a hot summer cuz you sleep cool. The worst thing in the world, wake up hot, right? And it's great for as winter comes and it's getting chilly. I notice we've been dialing it up. It's nice, it's so cozy and it's a very soft, comfortable, wonderful heat. Look, everybody knows good sleep is nature's gentle nurse. It's the most important, one of the most important things in that good health. You eat right, you exercise, but do you get a good night's sleep? 30% of Americans say they struggle with sleep. And the number one problem, a hot bed feeling hot, sweaty at night, if you ever waken up, woke up and you're sweaty, that's the kiss of death for sleep, right? There's evidence that good sleep can reduce the likelihood of Alzheimer's heart disease. It can lower your blood pressure, but you most importantly, you'll know you had a good night's sleep.

(01:13:20):
You'll feel great. I feel great. I bet you Lisa feels great too, right? Clinical data shows EightSleep users experience up to 19% increase in recovery, up to 32% improvement in sleep quality. And this is the one to me that makes most important 34% more deep sleep. And I noticed this cuz you get the sleep statistics when you wake up. And I get it, by the way, from a lot of things, <laugh>. Not just the EightSleep, my watch, my everything, I've got so many sleep thing, but all of 'em agree. You're getting another half hour to an hour of deep sleep. That is, that is more than just state of mind. That is for your health, very important for physical recovery, for hormone regulation, mental clarity. They, we have the pod two, they just launched the new pod three, which I, you know, you can get a mattress.

(01:14:10):
We loved our mattress, so we just put the cover over it. You, you get to choose. But the pod three enables more accurate sleep and health tracking cuz they've doubled the amount of sensors. So that's that sleep doctor where it's watching your heart rate, your movement, your temperature. It even monitors the temperature in the room. So it adjusts the temperature as the night goes by and even can adjust your overall settings. It's not magic. It feels like it. And I have to say, we were away from the house. We went to Las Vegas last week and I missed it. So I missed it so much. It's like I need my EightSleep. Go to EightSleep, E i g H t s l e e p.com/twit eightsleep.com/twit. You'll be sleeping cozy this winter and you'll save $150 at checkout on the pod EightSleep. Currently ships in the us, Canada, the UK select countries in the eu, Australia too. You're heading into a hot summer Australia. You want the EightSleep to sleep cool this summer while we in the Northern Hemisphere sleep toasty this winter. Eight sleep.com/twi. I cannot recommend it more highly. It's wonderful. Thank you. Eight, sleep. Now back to the show. It is time for the French Budo NZ German photographer to cross the imaginal line and say hello to Chris Marwat. <Laugh>. You see I have

(01:15:41):
Baguette and to you all. Chris is our sensei, our photo sensei, S e n s e i.photo choices everyone every week to talk about digital photography. I think I asked you this, You know, I, I saw the tragedy in South Korea was at a Halloween party. And I, I I guess Halloween is a, is a global phenomenon now. Used to be, I don't, I mean, I feel like it used to be Catholic countries were celebrating all hos Eve us turned it into trick or treat and now it's everywhere.

Chris Marquardt (01:16:16):
We have something along the, along the same lines, which is called anti dunk, which is thanking for the harvest, thanking Oh,

Leo Laporte (01:16:23):
Like that for the harvest thing. Yeah.

Chris Marquardt (01:16:25):
And I, I think, I'm not even sure how they are related, but they happen around the same time. And so I I would guess there is some connection there.

Leo Laporte (01:16:38):
Yeah. We all have to celebrate the days getting shorter, the harvest coming in. It's a way of preparing for the cold days of winter. Yes,

Chris Marquardt (01:16:50):
I think so. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:16:51):
And it's spooky season <laugh>.

Chris Marquardt (01:16:54):
Well, of course, I mean there's, there's, there's plenty of carve pumpkins over here. There's this dressing up and on and on. So there's, there's trick or tweeters around, So I'm, I'm I thought we'd talk about spooky photography and yay, a few ways of making things spooky in photography. So I've brought a few examples. The first thing, of course is always what is in the photo. And by the way, this is possible with all sorts of cameras. What is the content of the photo in this case? It's like a, looks like an old building with pointy roofs and old lanterns out there. Spooky, that fits in the spooky mood and it's a silhouette. And that makes it interesting because when you take the exposure down on something that has a bright background, you can create this stylized silhouette, the black outline in front of a brighter background. In this case, it's the sky that has clouds in it. So you end up getting nice detail in the clouds and that yeah, makes it a bit spooky. Silhouettes or silhouettes of ordinary things. This is a roller coaster and the silhouette of it makes it weird and different than what you would usually see.

Leo Laporte (01:18:09):
Isn't that funny? Cuz I mean, if you made that in color with plenty of light, it would just be a rollercoaster. But, but the silhouette is kind of,

Chris Marquardt (01:18:17):
Well, the silhouette and the lack of people. There's something unusual about this rollercoaster and that will play with your subconscious and give you a bit of a creepy feeling. So that, that's the first one. In general, making things monochrome is a good idea. And if you wanna color things you wanna throw in some color, then in this case we're looking at a path with the forest and it's all in blue light. And the blue light gives it some, well, some coldness, some, some cool feeling. And that might enhance a bit of the spookiness. So colors here's a picture of a tree and the photographer put a bit of a green tint on it. And that again, green, blue, those colors, we, I mean, you, you will, you will think that make it red and it's all spooky, but the green blue makes it cool and

Leo Laporte (01:19:14):
It's,

Chris Marquardt (01:19:14):
Yeah, frosty, it's chilly,

Leo Laporte (01:19:16):
You know? Yeah.

Chris Marquardt (01:19:17):
Yes. So that works really well. Light is of course also a good tool to make something spooky. What we're looking at here is some warehouse with windows and a light coming in from the outside. That's something you could do at home. You could set up a camera in a, in your living room with a tripod to turn off all the lights and then go outside with a long exposure and shine in the flashlight. And you would get something interesting looking and something spooky looking. And that of course works with different kinds of lights. We are looking at a forest scene here, misty forest, and the light coming at you and making this my favorite light, volumetric light, light that has a body that you can almost feel, See, this

Leo Laporte (01:20:05):
Could be spooky, but it also could be be the dawn of a new day. This could be very uplifting.

Chris Marquardt (01:20:11):
It, it depends on what mindset you're in. Yeah. I mean, if you, if you show a picture like this on a day like this, then there's good chance that people will assume it's a spooky

Leo Laporte (01:20:22):
Yes, that's true. You

Chris Marquardt (01:20:24):
Show it. If you show it, then you put some nice cheery morning music behind it, then it's a nice morning pick. So it really depends.

Leo Laporte (01:20:31):
That's an interesting conundrum for photographers, is that the, how people perceive your photos may well depend more on the environment they're perceiving it in than what you intended.

Chris Marquardt (01:20:41):
You never know what context your photo is going to be looked at in. Yeah. You will never know that context. Don't, don't. So the context is very important. Context is important. Make it unusual.

Leo Laporte (01:20:53):
That's

Chris Marquardt (01:20:53):
Creepy. Unusual having these bookies is this creepy, right? Where we're looking at a, at a brick building brownstone building and a kid with a big Easter bunny head on. It's just weird. It's really weird. That's

Leo Laporte (01:21:09):
That's definitely creepy. <Laugh>. You win on the creepy on that one.

Chris Marquardt (01:21:13):
<Laugh>. And then of course there's ghosts. Ghosts take pictures of ghosts. Easy to do. You can do, if, if your camera can do multiple exposures or if you have an app on your phone that can do multiple exposures that that's what you get, you get ghosts. Or if you do a long exposure and move the camera around, then in this case the lights horse the, the windows in the left are look like ghosts, going through a dark attic sorts. So that is pretty cool. And then the last thing that I find creepy are, have you heard of liminal spaces?

Leo Laporte (01:21:51):
Yeah, but I'm not sure what it means. What is liminal?

Chris Marquardt (01:21:54):
So a liminal space is a space that is a, it's called a space of transition. A space where people don't stay, where they move through like a, like a corridor, like a pathway of something. And those liminal spaces look it up. There's plenty of examples out there. Those liminal spaces photographed without any people in them haves. There's something creepy about them. There is something weird and creepy about them. So

Leo Laporte (01:22:20):
Yeah,

Chris Marquardt (01:22:21):
Liminal spaces. Yeah. <laugh> very creepy.

Leo Laporte (01:22:26):
Yeah, you are, you are not creepy. You are my photo sensei. You are by sunshine. My only sunshine. And

Chris Marquardt (01:22:34):
There you go.

Leo Laporte (01:22:35):
You have just given us some great ideas for taking pictures for our photo assignment for this month, because our word of the month is

Chris Marquardt (01:22:45):
Mysterious,

Leo Laporte (01:22:46):
Mysterious more. So this would be actually today and tonight and tomorrow would be a great time to get out there and take some mysterious photos. Although you could use these tricks that Chris was talking about, to take a photo of almost anything and make it mysterious. If you find one you like, and it doesn't matter if you've got a fancy camera or you're doing it with your, your smartphone, you could be using an instamatic a brownie if you want. We don't care. But if you find one you like, you do have to get it digital so that you can upload it to flicker.com. That's a wonderful free photo sharing site. We have a group there, the tech guy group. You'll know you're in the right place. 13,000 people in that group. It's a big group. And if you've got a picture you like, tag it, upload it to flicker, tag it tg mysterious, and then submit it to the tech guy group, Renee Silverman, our moderator will note that it's for the assignment. Add it to the assignment pool. And maybe next week, Chris, we can or the week after, we're gonna go, Yeah, I

Chris Marquardt (01:23:42):
Think, I think I think next week, maybe next week or not week after, we'll figure this

Leo Laporte (01:23:46):
Out in the next couple of weeks. Yes, you, we will you will go through all of the submissions, Pick three to talk about and do it on the show. And that's the only reward and prize, real reward and prize is you're getting out there and taking pictures and enjoying the beautiful world all around you seeing it. It's really about seeing stuff you see every single day with a fresh eye. And I love that about

Chris Marquardt (01:24:10):
Photography and with a spooky eye that, that spooky certainly, that certainly makes things

Leo Laporte (01:24:15):
Interesting. Are you trick or treating tomorrow night? Do they do that in Germany?

Chris Marquardt (01:24:19):
They do. They do, They do. We have some sweets ready for the do you

Leo Laporte (01:24:22):
Little bowl of candy? What kind of candy? Yeah. is

Chris Marquardt (01:24:26):
It the usual suspects? Nothing, nothing weird or something. Some American stuff in there,

Leo Laporte (01:24:32):
I guess. Oh, there's some good candy for kinder in in Germany. I think we, we want some of that. Thank you. Chris sensei.photo. Leo Laporte, the tech guy. We, I got where, where did I get that? Oh, a listener who's in Germany sent me some hardware that he had made. I can't remember what it was. Oh, it was that. I know what it was. It was a really cute raspberry pie case that looked like a Mac two fx and he threw in a bunch of German candy and it was great cuz Michael, who was a German Germano file he gets defenser, the German magazine <laugh>, he studies German. I said, Here look German candy just for you. And he was very excited. It's good candy <laugh>. It's good candy. Much better than the,

Chris Marquardt (01:25:22):
You know why, why I stumbled Because we don't have any candy here. Usually it's the only day of the year that we have.

Leo Laporte (01:25:28):
No, I agree. Unfortunately, Lisa and Michael both have sweet tooth, so there's candy everywhere. Every day I walk by the little thing of, of candy corn in ho in the Halloween time. Oh no. And it's really hard not to just go, Oh, just one. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. Oh, one more. .

Chris Marquardt (01:25:48):
Yeah, no, so, so I, I wouldn't even know <laugh>

Leo Laporte (01:25:51):
You didn't know. There's these,

Chris Marquardt (01:25:52):
This not up, not up to speed on

Leo Laporte (01:25:54):
That. There's a whole category of German Kenny, that's quite good. Anyway, as best you not know, pretend you never heard this. Thank you, Chris. Have a great week. We'll see you next week. Yes, Yes. We'll count. Thank you. See then, Take care. Bye-Bye. Just looking at our maed on server, which is getting it's fun. It's getting a little, a lot <laugh> busier all of a sudden as people move over from Twitter. I'm thrilled about that. Twi.Social open to all. Although there are a lot of spammers as, as you might expect. So I when you were asked, I have to prove everybody who joins. And when you're asked why do you wanna join, just mention the tech guy. And I will then go, Oh, yes, this is not a spammer, this is a, this is a real person.

(01:26:49):
So and if you do spam, I will, I I I kick him off. So we're pretty good about there's not a lot of junk in these in these macedon feeds. Macedon is a, what they call a federated version of Twitter, where you have a local server, in this case twi social, but there are many local servers and you can follow anybody on any of the local servers. I'm leo@leoattwi.social is my full profile. So you can follow me from any MAs on, on a haunted house. Doesn't sound that scary to be honest. Leo Laportee, the tech guy, eighty eight eighty eight, asked Leo the phone number. We're taking your calls and talking hi tech, and let's move on to Scott. He's on the line from Long Beach. Hi Scott.

Caller 5 (01:27:42):
Hi. Thanks for taking my call, Leo, I appreciate it.

Leo Laporte (01:27:46):
Thank you for calling. Welcome.

Caller 5 (01:27:47):
I have a an Android and if I decide to load an app it replaces my dialer, my my contacts app. It starts running in the background, it launches new function, and it's just like a spider. It gets into everything

Leo Laporte (01:28:05):
That is not good behavior. I would say that is malware. What's the name of the app?

Caller 5 (01:28:11):
Well, for instance, if you load Telegram, it will take over your contacts.

Leo Laporte (01:28:15):
Oh, okay. So that's not taking over. But this is a really important point. I'm glad you brought this up. Telegram, like many, many, many apps says in a seemingly friendly fashion, Hey, I would like to be able to access your contacts. So when somebody, you know, joins Telegram, I can let you know, and I can let you know all of the people you know, who are currently on Telegram and add them. So that way Telegram can be useful to follow people, you know, on the, on the face of it. That's a, that's a convenience. They're not taking over your contacts. And this, they, they're asking for the permissions because they're required to by Android to read and write, but they're just really reading it. They're not gonna modify your contacts. That's, that's an important point. But there is an issue with this because you're essentially doxing everybody, you know?

(01:29:08):
So I have in my contacts, for instance, some very well known people and they're very private email addresses and phone numbers. I'm looking at you, Elon. I don't, if I say to Telegram, Yeah, yeah, yeah, go ahead. Take, take, take a look at my contacts. I am now sending my entire contact list to Telegram. And in most cases they're storing it on their server, which means I am giving up information about people I know I am, I am as a third party giving information. They, and I, I wish people paid attention to this. It's why your email address, your phone number and all this stuff becomes so public. Cuz people are doing this all the time. So you're right to say, Wait a minute, Whoa, you're asking me for my contacts? They're not doing it because they want to take over your contacts. They're doing it ostensibly so that they can provide a service saying, Oh, you're, and by the way, Tele Telegram does do this. Oh, your friend Scott just joined Telegram. Send him a message. But I whenever possible, I strongly recommend you do not agree to that. It'll still work just fine. You won't be bombarded with messages about your contacts joining a service. You'll have to manually find your contacts on that service. It's not gonna do it automatically. But you're most importantly, not giving up the personal information of your friends and family to a third party. So that's a very important question you're asking. You're right.

Caller 5 (01:30:31):
Yeah. I find that if you don't give it location, if you don't give it certain access that it won't get, it won't give you the basic functionality that you're

Leo Laporte (01:30:43):
Seeking. Well, in some cases that's true. For instance, if you had a MAP app and you said, no, you can't have location, well that's not gonna be a lot of good <laugh>. So in some cases, and, and, and some of this is obscure by the fact that the permissions, the way they're phrased on iOS and Android, the permission they have to ask for, sounds like maybe they're asking for more than they really want. For instance, it's very common Telegram is one of them where when you're signing in, you say, Okay, I'm signing in. And they'll say, Good, we're gonna send you a text message. And then that text message pops up in Telegram and it says, Yes, it's you and logs you in. In order to do that, they ask to have to ask permission to send and read your text messages. So in theory, they have the permission to send messages all the time.

(01:31:30):
They don't do that. But that's the way Android, Android permissions are structured. They have to ask for the full permission. So it is important when you're putting an application on your, on your phone to really only get it from trustworthy, reliable sources. Telegrams fine. The location thing is more problematic because honestly, any app you put on your phone is suddenly a form of spyware, isn't it? And if the app says, I wanna know where you are at, at all times, and there's no good reason for an app to do that, Telegram doesn't need to know where you are, then the reason they're asking for it is so that they can collate that information and sell it to marketers. So you don't want that. If the functionality of the app Telegram doesn't need it should function perfectly fine. As an example, without location permissions, if it doesn't work without location permissions dump it, that's, they're, they're malicious.

(01:32:24):
Sometimes though it asks for location permissions, for instance, Google will ask for location permissions so that it can do, when you do a search for pizza, it can show you local pizzerias. Most cases you could say no to these and the functionality will be limited, but not completely destroyed. If you find an app that won't work when it's asking for permissions, you absolutely do not want to give it. Your only recourse is not to use the app. It's really important to understand people wanna get an app on your phone because that phone contains so much information about you. And, and oftentimes these apps monetize, especially free apps like Telegram, are monetizing by selling that information onto marketers. So it's, that's a very good point. And it, it depends on how private you want to be. And I don't, you know, I telegram, I I don't care if what it knows, I I won't docs my friends though. Telegram. I don't send them my contact information.

Caller 5 (01:33:21):
May I ask you another question? Yeah, yeah. There's a term called the Fenced Garden. Are you familiar with that?

Leo Laporte (01:33:29):
No, I've not heard that. What is a, I know, I know. The walled garden. What's a fenced garden?

Caller 5 (01:33:34):
Yeah, I think it's probably the same thing. Okay.

Leo Laporte (01:33:36):
Where

Caller 5 (01:33:37):
If you have an apple, you're kind of in the apple

Leo Laporte (01:33:40):
World. Yeah, Yeah. You're in the Waled garden world,

Caller 5 (01:33:42):
You can't go outside.

Leo Laporte (01:33:43):
Yeah. Yeah. It's like a, it's like living in a development with a gate, a gated community. It has its pros and cons. The pros are you're a little safer. The cons are Apple owns you,

Caller 5 (01:33:56):
<Laugh>,

Leo Laporte (01:33:57):
You get to decide what you want. Un unfortunately, increasingly there's nowhere to turn. Right? there there are very few choices. If you don't want to be owned by whoever makes your phone, si it's either Google or Apple <laugh>. Take your pick. And if you buy a Samsung, it's Google and Samsung.

Caller 5 (01:34:20):
Thanks for your help.

Leo Laporte (01:34:21):
Yeah. You're, you're right to ask these questions. I'm really glad you're thinking about this. Absolutely. Should be. We all should be, Scott. It's a, it's, it's, it's important to understand that if it's a reputable company like Telegram like WhatsApp and reputable, I put an air quotes cuz it's a sliding scale <laugh>. But if it's a relatively reputable company, a big name company, they're not gonna want to do their reputation damage. The hit that they would take if they, for instance, if Telegram asks for permission to read and write your text messages because it wants to use that to authenticate you, you could pretty well say, Well, I doubt very much. They're then gonna start sending out text messages on my account to promote Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine. If they do that, their reputational damage, cuz it will be discovered even if they send it, delete it and you don't see it, somebody's gonna notice a lot of people worried about privacy.

(01:35:24):
Some expert will say, Hey, you know, Telegram is sending, they're not, But if this were to happen, they would be saying, Telegrams, were sending out this stuff. And you would know it would be in the news. I would talk about it and they would suffer huge reputational damage and ultimately it would put them outta business, I think. So if it's a, if it's an unknown app from an unknown name, that there is no cost to their reputation for doing that. That's when buyer beware. Do not download apps that you don't know the company. You don't know the app, you've not heard of them before. You've gotta be very careful on both Android and iOS because it does happen all the time. Android just had to quash 16 different apps that were that were doing ad fraud Behind Your Back wasn't malware, but, Well, it was in the sense that you didn't install it ad were behind your back.

(01:36:19):
And there were apps like, you know map apps, stuff that you might reasonably want. I think they had huge, millions and millions of downloads because people thought they were real. Don't, don't go out and search the app store and download something from some Nona company that is a recipe for disaster. Stick with the big names. Leo Laportee, the tech guy. Well, hey, hey, hey, how are you today? Leo Laportee here, the tech guy, Time to talk computers, the internet, home theater, digital photography, smartphones, smart watches, you know, all that jazz. 88. 88. Ask Leo, is the phone number (888) 827-5536 toll free from anywhere in the US or Canada outside that area. <Laugh> outside that area. You could still call <laugh>. 88. 88. Ask Leo. Just use your Skype out. Something like that. Just you and the QR code. That's what the QR code down there on.

(01:37:21):
If you're watching the video, Yeah, we have video of a radio show. What, that's a concept. The QR code is down in the lower left hand, right hand, right hand corner. My left your right. And by the way, that's an interesting story and perhaps a cautionary tale. Perhaps you are tempted when you you know, want to put some information maybe in your, in your ad or on your business card and you want to do a QR code. You're perhaps tempted by the many, many websites that offer free QR code generators. You know, QR codes are those funny little weird square things that look like just a bunch of noise. But if you point your camera phone at it, it gives you a, a URL or information or whatever. I thought when they first started, you know, people started doing this, I thought, Well, this isn't gonna last.

(01:38:11):
This is a terrible idea. But now it more than lasted more than lasted. So if you have an iPhone or an Android phone and you port the camera at our QR code, it will pop up the phone number, right? Okay. But be careful beware, because when we first did this John, our studio manager went to one of those free websites, right? And got the QR code there. Beware, because those free website QR codes redirect you. They don't give you like the one I made here. And I'll tell you how you could do this easily. The one I've made here just pops up the phone number, that's all. And if you're on an iPhone, you click it, it will dial the number and et cetera, et cetera. And sort of that was the behavior of the one he got from the free website. Except not really because it would send a link through the website, which means of course they were tracking every single person who scanned the QR code and used every single one.

(01:39:14):
And well we didn't want to give participate in that. And you probably don't either. So if you make a QR code for your business car or your business or you know, or your radio show, <laugh> don't go through those free websites. There is software you can pay for that'll generate a QR code. But here's a, here's a little thing I found out. This is easy on a Mac. There are free Python programs that will generate q really pure no tracking QR codes. That's what we did for free. So on a Mac, I used a software called Home Brew brew.sh, which is a great way to install command line apps on the Mac and installed this Python QR code generator typed in the phone number, it created a little png, a graphics image file that I then gave John and he put it up on the, on the video.

(01:40:11):
It's free, it's no tracking. You're in total control of it. And it's easy to do. Now if you're on Windows it's a little more complicated because Windows doesn't come with Python. There's more stuff to install and so forth. Actually Apple no longer comes. They used to come with Python, doesn't anymore. So maybe it's a little more complicated than it used to be. On Windows. I'm hoping that, you know, Microsoft's doing Home Brew, which is a third party app for Mac and Linux is what we call a package manager. You can use it to install software, both graphical software. I use it to install Firefox, for instance. And Command line software, it's website is brew dot s h. And most Mac users most, you know, enthusiasts, tech techie Mac users will install it and have it. There hasn't been anything quite like that for Windows.

(01:41:06):
But Microsoft seeing the advantage of a package manager has, has started work on one called Win Get and it's from Microsoft and it's a little limited right now, but in the long run, I think Win Get is gonna make a lot of things like this, for instance, much easier on Windows. It's for the hardcore right now, enthusiast, techie people. But I think in the long run it's gonna be good. If you Google Wing get, you'll find a Microsoft page explaining how to use it and how to install it and so forth. It's a little command lining still. I think though they have a graphic. Yeah, they might have a graphic interface for it. And it's limited in the things it can install. I don't know if it can yet install a QR code creator like the Mac. Again, just a tip though.

(01:41:59):
Be careful. You know, there are apps and I think they are reliable on both Windows and Mac that will paid apps that will let you generate QR codes. But always check to see, is that QR code really doing what I think it is? Or is it one more way to spy on people? There's such a brisk economy now. There's so much pressure these days to gather information about people and sell it on. And I, you know, maybe you don't care. You know, I don't really, honestly, I'm, I'm not, I believe you have the right to privacy. I'm a privacy advocate, but I, for myself, I don't necessarily pursue some of these really extreme measures to protect my privacy. Cuz it is, you have to be kind of extreme. But I understand somebody wanted to do that and it's getting worse and worse. There's a book by a woman named Shohan Zubo took many years to write it.

(01:42:57):
Really put a lot of effort and thought into it called surveillance Capitalism. And, and her point is, you know, this is how companies work these days. They, they work by surveilling you. And it's not, it's not just big tech. Don't go say, well Google and Facebook and Apple and Microsoft and now it's every company, every company that has the means is gonna do this. You might not know, but there was a great article some years ago, I'll see if I can find it. I'll put it in the show notes by a woman who said Target knew I was pregnant before I told anyone else before I told my family because Target the drug store was monitoring what I was buying and knew it could tell based on what it was buying. And it was not some human looking at it, it was a machine saying, Well when people buy this, this, that and the other, they're probably pregnant. So that's a <laugh>. I mean that's a huge invasion of privacy. How did she know? Cuz she started getting offers right in the mail and online. Hey, you might wanna be looking at our special deal. Odd pampers. How do they know? All they had to do is watch what you're doing in the store. So it's not just big tech, believe me, they are using technology to do it. I will grant you that. 88. 88. Ask Leo the phone number. Alan is on the line from North Hollywood. Hello Alan.

Caller 6 (01:44:18):
Hello Leo. I have a problem. I lost my car. Fob

Leo Laporte (01:44:25):
Oh no. And have you priced a replacement?

Caller 6 (01:44:30):
200 and <laugh> to replace it? And there's a reprogramming. You know, there's a pro, isn't

Leo Laporte (01:44:40):
It? Appalling? Isn't that appalling?

Caller 6 (01:44:44):
Yes, it is. <Laugh> it it approximates the cost of the car almost. No

Leo Laporte (01:44:50):
<Laugh>. Well, it's not that bad, but yeah, no, I know that. And that's these modern car fobs and there are third party places you can go to get them cheaper. I've, I've never done this because I'm a, I don't know. And the worst thing in the world would be to, I know this happened to me the other day, be standing outside of your car, not able to drive it cuz the car fob didn't work.

Caller 6 (01:45:15):
Well, luckily we have two of them, but I was thinking about it when I go near the car the proximity to the d you know, the front door the door lights up. It's a Hyundai 2017 Hyundai. And when I go near it with the fob, you know, when I had the fob it lights up and it occurred to me that it that the car reacts to the proximity of the fob. So I was wondering, is there any device that you can use? Or an app or something on a phone, on the phone, Although I doubt that they're on the same frequency, but something or some trick like that to find the approximate location of the fob say in the house if it's behind a piece of furniture or outside, something like that so you

Leo Laporte (01:46:16):
Don't lose it again cuz it's so expensive. Well, look what I have my fob attached to. Now this is only good if you have an iPhone. I have it attached to Apple's air tag. And the, the nice thing about the air tag is it does exactly what you're talking about. It's a Bluetooth key find. Now there are other companies that make similar devices. The air tag works the best because it uses every iPhone and there's so many iPhones in the world. It works quite well. It also uses an iPhone chip called u the u uwb chip, the ultra wide band chip to do location within the house. So you can actually aim your phone <laugh> if it, you know, if it fell beneath the cushion, you can have it beep. You can have the general location, but then you can aim your phone and the phone goes hot, cold, warmer, warmer, cold, hot and gets you to the device. So air tags work quite well. Tile is another company that makes these, there are quite a few. If you search for Bluetooth trackers, there are quite a few. And, and you could see I, if you're looking at the video, I have my fob <laugh> and I have my air tag on the fob because I don't wanna lose this Ford charges me more than $400 for this.

Caller 6 (01:47:34):
Well I was wondering, since it has a native frequency that it, it's obviously putting out,

Leo Laporte (01:47:41):
Oh, I see. You were thinking maybe there'd be something that could sense it

Caller 6 (01:47:45):
Sense it short of taking my car door off <laugh>

Leo Laporte (01:47:52):
And the

Caller 6 (01:47:53):
One

Leo Laporte (01:47:53):
In the house. Yeah. Cause your car senses it. That's also Bluetooth. It's using. Well let me think about this. There, there are certainly, in fact this is one of the problems with these key fobs until recently many of these key fobs were the signal was unencrypted. And so you could buy for about 30 bucks on eBay. A little amplifier that would, So I'm sitting in my office, my car is out in the parking lot. I'm too far from my car right now to open the door and get in and drive off. But this amplifier, if a bad guy had one, he could stand next to my car. It would be strong enough to get my signal, amplify it, the car would think I'm standing right next to it. So it's, I'm sorry it's not Bluetooth. Greg Beton and I think he's probably right, says it's radio frequency. It's rf, not Bluetooth. Not sure how it works exactly, but there are amplifiers that will do that. I don't know if that's gonna give you what you want cause it's not exactly beeping.

Caller 6 (01:48:54):
No. it but, but something like, you know, on that basis that is not amplifying the signal. Yeah, but just sensing the signal. That's a

Leo Laporte (01:49:06):
Clever

Caller 6 (01:49:07):
Ideas a hard door. Yeah,

Leo Laporte (01:49:09):
That's a clever idea. And

Caller 6 (01:49:14):
You know, I I mean the technology is in the door, but I can't Yeah. Get it out to take it around the house.

Leo Laporte (01:49:22):
Yeah. What you want is a little box that would have the same sensor that's in the door that would, it'd have to be more sensitive than the door obviously, cuz it would have to see the key at a distance and then beep, beep, beep, beep, beep. I don't know of anything like that. If anybody does, let us know. Call, get in the chat room until then you can always get a Bluetooth tracker. Put it on your key fob. That's what I do. Roughly the same idea, right?

Caller 6 (01:49:49):
<Laugh>? Yeah, if I had it, I would certainly do it.

Leo Laporte (01:49:53):
<Laugh>, you still, so you haven't replaced it, huh?

Caller 6 (01:49:56):
Not not yet, No. Since it's the second one we're just sharing. I

Leo Laporte (01:50:02):
Know that drives you crazy though. When you look and you find out what the cost is. Look on YouTube, they're telling me, and I'm sure this is the case, there are people on YouTube who have figured out ways to fit. I don't know what to see. That would be another way to do this. You'd have to probably build your own, I don't know if there's anybody manufacturing these, but that would be another way to do it. You'd get an Arno and a receiver and a transmitter <laugh> and, and you could probably build your own as long as you understand how all of this works. And there are lots of people on YouTube with videos explaining how, not only how it works, but how you could perhaps program your own key fob. It's an interesting idea. Somebody says take the door off, get a 12 volt battery carried around the house. Done. Yeah. That's what you, that's exactly what you don't wanna do. Alan, what an interesting question. That's a great question. I love it. I, I don't know. Although it's, it might be a good reason when you get your next fob to put a Bluetooth tracker on it. And furthermore, well you see this is gonna defeat the purpose. Keep it in a fairday cage, a little wire enforced bag so that bad guys can't do the relay attack and get in your car. Well that's not gonna, that's not a good idea.

Caller 6 (01:51:22):
Yeah, that's the reverse of what I want.

Leo Laporte (01:51:24):
That's exactly the opposite. Alan, a pleasure talking to you. What a great conundrum. I don't know, maybe somebody listening will keep listening. Maybe we'll have that answer. If not, we'll put it on the website. Tech guy labs.com <laugh>. So it's interesting cuz Ford, when I bought my Mustang MA only gave me one fob and I was annoyed by that. And they said, No, no, you use your phone as a key. Right? And so you set up your, what they call it, pack phone as a key. I set it up on my phone just, just Friday. Okay. I'm, I'm down in Marin in my car, sitting in my car. It stopped working. I can't get the car started. I entered the password. I guess I misremembered it. I there's a password override. Couldn't get it working. I was stuck in Marin. The car started beeping, the alarm went off. It was a nightmare. So now I carry MYOB with me everywhere. And Ford j I noticed when we brought in the car for for a warranty service gave me a second f So I think Ford has realized that maybe this phone is key thing isn't quite working.

John Slanina (Jammer B) (01:52:34):
Yeah, my car's 20 years old.

Leo Laporte (01:52:36):
Yeah,

John Slanina (Jammer B) (01:52:36):
I can buy a blank one for like 20

Leo Laporte (01:52:38):
Bucks. So John says his 20 year old Volkswagen, he could buy a blank one and had but who programs it

John Slanina (Jammer B) (01:52:44):
And they can cut it for me, right? Yeah. And

Leo Laporte (01:52:46):
Then who programs it though? I did. You were able to program it open the

John Slanina (Jammer B) (01:52:50):
Door. Yeah. And you, you push, you, you, you open with the door open, you

Leo Laporte (01:52:55):
Open the, can you hear me? To open it? So he says you can program it from the door.

John Slanina (Jammer B) (01:52:59):
Yeah, with the door open. You open the door, you pull, open the door and you press on the, you, you press two buttons on that two. Then you press on the lock button

Leo Laporte (01:53:08):
And see, I'll show you, I'll show you. You have a key. Yeah. Actually cut into yours. This is what my key looks like. They never cut it. They don't cut it because it doesn't work. There's no key hole. So they don't even bother to cut the key on the Ford fob. Yeah.

John Slanina (Jammer B) (01:53:25):
So it cost me like $15 to have

Leo Laporte (01:53:26):
It cut, but that's a 20. How old's your car, Alan? Is it a recent vehicle or

Caller 6 (01:53:31):
Oh yeah. 2017 Hyundai. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:53:34):
It's not gonna work, but, but John's 20 year old. Voie. You sure can. Yeah, you sure can. That's hysterical. Saved him a lot of money. So are you gonna buy a new vehicle? A new fob from the dealer?

Caller 6 (01:53:48):
Either a new FOB or a new car? What

Leo Laporte (01:53:50):
The Yeah. One is cheaper. Yeah, there's a, so I do see on eBay, you know a $48 version of my fob, the Ford fob. But I think it still has to be programmed by the dealer, right?

Caller 6 (01:54:05):
I think, Yeah. And the dealer I think charges $150 to

Leo Laporte (01:54:10):
Graham. Yeah, they're gonna get you, ah, you might try a locksmith. It says must be programmed by a professional automotive locksmith or dealership. It may be if you went to a locksmith. So you, I would find a locksmith first <laugh> and say, if I bring you a blank. Could you program it for my Hyundai?

Caller 6 (01:54:33):
Oh, okay. The guy said that some of them may not be reprogramming. Oh.

Leo Laporte (01:54:39):
I, I hear what I hear your friends saying maybe it can't be.

Caller 6 (01:54:43):
Well, she said some of them are and some of them are not programmable. Interesting. He asked locksmith about that.

Leo Laporte (01:54:49):
Oh, good. So you've already pursued this. It is really annoying that they charge hundreds of dollars for these fobs.

Caller 6 (01:54:58):
I know. And they're, they probably cost about 20 bucks to make.

Leo Laporte (01:55:04):
Oh, I'm sure. If you can buy it for 40 bucks on eBay. So here's a guy in our chat room that says, My friend Joe Mendoza has created a website called eternity key.com, The last car key you will ever need. Oh, yeah. But it's still a key. See, I don't even have a keyhole in my car. <Laugh>. Yeah. So this is a key. I was showing John the fob that Ford gave me. The key's not even cut. The emergency key's not even cut. It's just a blank because there's no keyhole on the thing.

Caller 6 (01:55:43):
Yeah, Mine has a keyhole for the trunk, I think. But that's it.

Leo Laporte (01:55:48):
Yeah. Well, this mock has no holes at all. Hey, I gotta run. Pleasure talking to you, Alan. I hope you find a good solution. So scary. Leo Laportee, the tech guy. Somebody asked. So I, I was pointing out, talking to Alan about getting a replacement key FOB for modern vehicles is hundreds of dollars. The deal. Another way dealers didn't, We just have this conversation how companies are incentivized to make money not to serve customers. And often the two goals do not coincide. So if you were gonna serve customers, you'd make sure that it was easy to get into their car and secure, et cetera, et cetera. But no, we're just here to make money. I, you know, I don't, this is yet another arena in that area. Somebody so I was pointing out that I have a Maki, a Ford Mock, which has a tr comes with the traditional Ford K fob, which is made for all Ford vehicles.

(01:56:58):
And as you may know, your K fob has a hidden spare key right in the key fob. You could pop it out in case you know your key FOB battery dies or something goes wrong, you can use the key. But because the Ford MAEE has no key hole, this is useless. In fact, they don't even bother doing anything with the, So it's a blank key. It couldn't open anything. It's not cut even though it is in there. Cuz they didn't wanna make multiple key fobs, I guess. And somebody asked the million dollar question, What do you do, <laugh>? So, in other words, you have to use the electronic system to get in the car. And there are a variety of ways. There's actually a number pad on the door and so forth. But what do you do if the car battery dies? And incidentally, most electric cars, I think all electric cars have a 12 volt battery, a regular car battery in addition to the giant lithium ion battery that powers the motor.

(01:57:53):
And so the key and all that stuff powered by the 12 volt. What if you do with the 12 volt die? Well, it turns out you can't get into your car if the 12 volt dies. But there are, there is a hidden spot where you can put electrodes, you know, the jump start your 12 volt, there's a hidden spot. You could do that just for getting into the car. Cuz obviously if you can't get into the car, you can't open the trunk to get to the battery. So there is a spot on the external chassis that you can hook up you know, a charger, battery charger cables, so that you can get in the car so that you can then start the car. Crazy. It's crazy. <Laugh>, what a world we live in. Leo Laporte, the tech guy. Rod Pile, Spaceman extraordinaire. Just around the corner.

(01:58:46):
Oh no. I believe Rod has been captured by aliens. What will we do? Oh, what will we do? We're gonna talk UFOs today. Yeah, Yeah, I saw that. Your favorite subject. Yeah. Oh, you, that is a great I wanna say mask, but maybe it's not. Hey, that's not ver <laugh>. Yeah, I got that in Hollywood when they still had very expensive magic shops and things like that. Oh, I love that stuff. Fun prop. Yeah. Let me see if I can find my I have something similar. Let me see if I can, Well, I didn't have it out until I saw your, your mustache and your groovy beret. I have so many. Oh man, I gotta, Yeah, this

... (01:59:29):
World. Oh, oh yeah. There it is.

Leo Laporte (01:59:34):
Uhoh. Here

... (01:59:35):
It is. I'll have to take off my beret. Put it on

Leo Laporte (01:59:42):
<Laugh>. Oh, this is gonna be fun. Our show today, brought to you by mimo, you know the name right? MIMO Monitors. They do those great little USB seven inch and bigger monitors you can attach to your computer. They are also the global experts of video conferencing solutions. In fact, I think a lot of people use their MIMO monitor for video conferencing. Well, I got something for you. Some software MIMO makes no matter how you work, whether you're in the office at home, in your hybrid, you wanna get Unify Meeting, this is the software. It works with Zoom teams and Google Meet. So one of the problems I have is, and I bet you do too we meet with people on a variety of different platforms. Everybody's got something else. We in house use meet our hosts. We use Zoom. Premier uses teams.

(02:00:32):
So, and I always, the buttons are in different places. The way it works is different. And I always get confused and I always hang up by accident cuz I think I'm unmuting. Things like that. Unify Meeting solves. This is one in user interface that's universal to all three. A very intuitive software solution simplifies your work life. Combining all your favorite video conferencing solutions into one reliable universal interface, which eliminates a hassle, saves you time. All the buttons are in the same place. <Laugh>, all of the commands are the same. It's really kind of brilliant. You can navigate between your meetings easily. And what's cool when you're not in a meeting, Unify meeting goes into your calendar. So it has your calendar and it has your meetings and all you have to do in this little window, click the meeting and it knows what software that meeting's in.

(02:01:24):
And it starts the same Unify interface and logs you in your meeting. Couldn't be more simple. No more manual. You've gotta what, Okay, what conference software we're using gotta, Oh, do I have to update, blah, blah, blah, all this stuff. Now, the best way to use Unify meeting, if I might say, is on a second or third monitor, because then it doesn't take up any desk type real estate. You've just got, basically when you're not a meeting a like, get one of these mimo seven inch monitors, right? Plug it in. Now your Unify meetings on there. That's your calendar monitor. And then when you wanna join a meeting, you click it Unify meeting launches in the little monitor. And if you're on Zoom, the Zoom interface opens up in the Big monitor or Google Meet or Teams. So you have the full interface on the big monitor, but you've got your call in the little monitor.

(02:02:13):
This is a really a refinement for anybody who does a lot of meeting in your job. And I bet you do. This is such a great refinement. It makes your, those meetings so much easier. So much better. Unify meeting. It runs on Windows. It's PC compatible. It's $35 and 88 cents for a whole year. But if you buy a MIMO monitor, that little seven inch monitor, it's free. It comes with the monitor. Okay? So you can do the software if you don't wanna get the monitor, but I would suggest the monitor. So try unify. You could do it for yourself or your team. I think getting it for your team is a great idea. It takes a lot of the pain out of all these video conferences. U n I f y m e e t i n g.com. Video or audio by the way, doesn't have to be video unifymeeting.com.

(02:02:57):
Enter the Code Tech guy, you're gonna like this 25% off a year's subscription. Or use the offer code tech guy 25% off any of mimo seven inch displays. So in my opinion, that's the way to go get the seven inch display. You get unify, meaning you get 25% off and your whole life has improved in measurably. Simplify with Unify. That's unifymeeting.com. Unify meeting.com. The offer code is Tech guy. Thank you. Unify meeting for a great solution and for supporting the Tech Guy Show. And please, I beg of you, <laugh>, it's so important to us with all of our advertisers that use those offer codes so they know you saw it here, right? Unify meeting.com, offer code Tech guy, you gotta benefit. You get 25% off. Thank you. Unify. Now back to the show. It sounds like you're emptying out your supply closet. Oh,

Rod Pyle (02:04:05):
<Laugh>.

Leo Laporte / Rod Pyle (02:04:09):
I am not an animal. <Laugh>. This is somebody sold this actually. Yeah. Oh, is this for sleeping on planes? Yes. How did you know? Cuz why else would you wanna put your hands in front of your eyes? <Laugh>. Oh, there we go. I had it backwards. Wait a bit. Here we go. Now you put your hands in here. Yeah. And you sleep Holy mo or not an animal? Well, it's good that they have a little opening in front so you can get all the viruses in your face from the tray table. That's good. Yeah. I didn't really realize, but this makes it infinitely more useful. Now, can you imagine actually sitting on a plane and putting that on while people, I I believe I tried it once. Did you? Yeah. Somebody, I saw somebody on a plane that has kind of a more UpToDate version of this.

(02:05:01):
Yeah, I've seen inflatable versions of that, but I just, I don't know. Yeah, this is the original, What was this called? I forgot. Face pillow. No, Face hugger. Ostrich pillow. That's it. Oh, that doesn't make it any better. <Laugh>. Right? Let's see if I, I know I'm a Frenchman in my ostrich pillow. I'm still preserving. Oh, you could still buy one. Look at that. Oh, really? Yeah. <laugh>. I go to the website because who wouldn't want one? So now they're the ones that make, I guess the other kinds, the new, the new ostrich pillows. I wonder if you can get the original, Let's see. Wow. The original ostrich pillow. Now see, they, well, <laugh> they're getting close. Might this site possibly originate in Asia somewhere? No, no, no, no. This was a Kickstarter. This was one of many, Was it? Many, many things I bought on Kickstarter. Wow. It never really, You're a good customer. Oh, I should show you my list. Oh, I wanna see the Instagram purchases on Those are my favorite. So they had it. Somebody say, I just scrolled by it. I can't Oh yeah, there it is. They still make it son of a gun. Wow. Wait a minute. Let me let me, let me pull it up here. <Laugh>.

(02:06:35):
Yeah. Woo. That looks kind of arousing in a strange, strange way. Okay. It's time for Rod Pile. Our space man. He joins us every week to talk about space. He is, of course, the editor in chief of at Astra, the magazine, which is the official publication of the, of the National Space society@nss.org. He's also the author, many great books about space and the host of our very own space podcast. He does it with tec malik of space.com. So we've got the leading experts that of course is called Twist this week in space at twi.tv/twist. So I guess you're the chief twist <laugh> come to think well least nobody's gonna come poaching my mole like they did your I'm a little bit about that. I bet you are. Oh, me too. Yeah, but I don't think there's anything I do. The sad thing is we're talking about Elon Musk, who upon his accession as the owner of Twitter, changed his profile on Twitter to say he's Chief Twi which is the moniker I have had on my business cards for 15 years.

(02:07:52):
 It's what I use in a lot of my social media. But now I notice that, you know, MSNBC called him the Chief twit. He is now officially the chief twi. So I guess I'm just outta luck. Lawyers are expensive, but, you know, it might be a contingency case. Who knows? I I, you know, I, I talked to my wife, she says, we are not, he says, Leo, we are not suing the richest men in the world. Thank you very much. But think of the pr, the upside's good. The downside not so hot. Downside could be, but the upside. So the reason we are wearing alien space carb, You're wearing yours, right? Oh, no, not yet. Here. Put that back on. There we go. The reason we are now both <laugh>, yours is so much better than mine. I don't even have eyes on mine.

(02:08:37):
Yeah, but this was like 400 bucks, so, Oh yeah. This wasn't quite that expensive. The reason we are wearing that is because there is now ano yet another official commission investigating. Now do they call them UFOs? They're, they're doing the unidentified aerial phenomenon. A uaa a ua. P U p you a. Yeah. But it's the same as a ufo. It's an unidentified flying object. Which by the way, notice in the name has nothing about aliens. No. It just says it's unidentified. And that's the thing that we always seem to skip over. So this is NASA jumping into the fray. We've had these reports from the Air Force Department of Defense Congress. Hasn't Congress even done this? Didn't Harry Reed wanna do this? Well, he, he tried and, and they of course, you know, have to approve and pay for, for these things. Harry Reid, the official senator of Area 51.

(02:09:35):
I think that's right of her. That's just interesting. Her Nevada. Yeah. so October 25th, na announced they were starting this nine month study. And they are going to, and it's, you know, it, it's rumored to be about a hundred thousand dollars. So it's not a whole ton of money. It should probably be more, but it's less than an Air Force toilet. Come on. Yeah. It's less than six months. Pay for a civil servant Right. At that level. But you know, they make a good case. They said, Look, big part of our job is about flight safety as a priority in national security. Secondarily, although they're not officially charged with that. And part of this problem is figuring out how to better collect and analyze data because it's been done. And kind of a, they are saying between lines, I think kind of a haphazard or catches catch can way.

(02:10:24):
So they're gonna be looking only at declassified stuff. They did very careful to say there's no evidence that UAPs or extraterrestrial and origin and made the point. This is not part of any Air Force or Department of Defense study. This is just them. What I found most interesting though, is the composition of the team. So it's being led by an astrophysicist who is formerly the chair of astrophysics at Princeton. But they've got, Well, that's pretty good. I mean, that's pretty credible. That's a good start. Yeah. And they got professors of astrophysics, physics and engineering, some former FAA officials, a former NASA legal advisor, which I thought was interesting. But they included a, a freelance science journalist, which is something I wouldn't have expected. Cuz normally, you know, they don't want us hanging around these kind of things. Right. <laugh>. But if you're gonna be talking about maybe, you know, how the word goes out, if something is found.

(02:11:14):
That makes a lot of sense. Now those be clear. Something does not mean, again, aliens, It just means Right. This means we don't know what it is. Yeah. It could actually be swamp gas as project blue. Do you think they would be, do you think they would be they would like ever say, Oh yeah, it's aliens, some guy from Mars. Oh, nice hat <laugh> in a funny hat. You look like a pastry. Thank you. You know, I think it's hard to say. I mean, there's also been a question of, you know, if, if a government made first contact or something, who's imminent? Would they tell us? How would they tell us these things of, because they know people would freak out, Right? I mean, if this is, this is the stuff of every science first, what they call first contact science fiction novel.

(02:12:00):
It's, Well, and, and you know, how many of us would freak out and how many of us would go, Gosh, that's cool. You know, if they're hundreds of light years away, I'm not quite as concerned as if they discovered they're hanging out by Jupiter somewhere and, and they're aiming a giant laser at us or something. <Laugh>. But yeah. Yeah. I don't know. It, it's it's all, it's probably got more implications for philosophy and religion than it does for just immediate, you know, day-to-day concerns for most people. Yeah. they do also have an oceanographer and biologist, which I thought was fascinating. But so many of these things are spotted by Naval task forces. I guess that makes sense. Former under Secretary of Science and Tech at Homeland Security, a an astronaut medical strategic planner. And Scott Kelly, retired astronaut. So this is a pretty, pretty good group.

(02:12:54):
You know, and it's not that the other groups haven't been assembled of very smart people, but this one's fully public and transparent. When will they report back about June or July of 23? Okay. I'm gonna put not very long. Put a pin in my calendar. But again, you know about that we need temper our expectations because what they're really saying is we need a better way of, of looking at and classifying and sifting through the data. So I don't think we're gonna get the report that many of us would like. I mean, that's pretty careful language. Right. so how many days has it been since Artemis didn't launch? Oh God, <laugh> six weeks. Tara and I go back and forth, you know, every, every week on, on the podcast, I go Sigh Artis update. So the current schedule is November between the 12th and 27th, I think 14th.

(02:13:47):
Okay. And and te is betting what that it will or will not. Cause he went down. Poor guy went down to watch it Oh, couple of times. And he bet me his star. Well, I bet him for his Star Trek chair. He never agreed. But, but I bet a whole month later, I think he said September. I said October. We both lost. But you know, in my world, that's an incremental win towards the chair. I did wanna mention, though, we do have a scary Halloween story. Okay. So a new hazardous asteroid between 1,020 500 feet. Is it a planet killer? Well, it's, it's large. It's not a planet killer. And it's, it's gonna pass tomorrow by earth. But when I say by earth at 1.4 million miles, which is what, six times, you know, the distance the moon is. So it's, it's not close. But anything closer than about a hundred million miles is considered a potentially hazardous near earth object.

(02:14:40):
So it's something that, you know, they're keeping track of along with 28,000 other objects. A dinosaur asteroid was about six miles across. So it's much smaller than that. But it would still be enough to wipe out a county at least. And a county cause, cause a county, just a county and, and cause major disruption of, of the environment. So we don't like that. So, you know, that, that's always a cool story. You know, asteroid's gonna cross earth orbit, come close to the planet on this date. But the part I actually like better was the follow up to that on the clickbait column was that China is planning to do their own follow on to the Dart mission. But they're going to send, according to the story, 23 of their largest rockets. The long March five Yes. To divert asteroid benu, which is 1600 feet across close to the size of Didymo than the little Moonlet Dior Foss that dart hit.

(02:15:42):
And that may be a rubble pile asteroid. So that is interesting. You know, I don't know how, how true it is, how accurate it is. I've tried to track it down. I just spot it today. But it'll, at least your eyebrows up, just, we just our luck that we push it one way and they come and they push it the other way and end up hitting you. Holy cow. Rod pile spaceman. Thank you, Leo. Happy Halloween. Happy Halloween. The tech guy, there's a really hysterical 3D animation somebody made of what it would look like if an, as a big asteroid hit New York City. Have you seen that? Oh, there's a bunch of them. Yeah. We're constantly looking at 'em. Let me see if I can, They're pretty, pretty horrific. And then they have other ones where they have asteroids to different sizes hanging over Manhattan.

(02:16:29):
So you can see the comparison of the, the building size and all that. Yeah. And it's, you know, it's a little distressing when you look at it and when you think of how long we've been wandering through the, the solar system on this planet with relatively few hits and statistically, But let me ask, don't we have at this point, aren't we able to observe well enough that we can see everything or we can predict everything that might hit? It's not like something's gonna come outta nowhere. Well, you'd think that, but you know, there, these things are dark and so it's possible. There's one lurking around the back of Pluto that could hit us. I mean, it, it would take time to get here and you'd hope they'd spot it with a little more warning. And again, you need enough warning to divert it, which we don't even have the tech to do at this point.

(02:17:15):
So it's kind of a, a moot conversation. But that's why this research is important. You know, am I in favor of China slamming 23 large rockets into a potential rub pile asteroid? Not really. Cuz it just splits it into a bunch of smaller pieces that go anywhere they want. But if it turns out it's solid enough, which is still in debate, this is venue I'm talking about, which is not venue does not threaten earth until like 2178 or later. So it's not an immediate concern. You and I will be long out of business by then, but and our cost, it might be outta business a little sooner than that. Just think our costumes will be rotting away on our two stuff molding. But, but it's, you know, it's, it's something to, to bear in mind. Yeah. Just be looking at. But I just thought the idea of 23 rockets, I mean, there are countries, there are space powers that haven't launched 23 large rockets in their entire history.

(02:18:07):
So doing it, doing it in in a year's time, That's wild. Get them all to wanna ask right now that sounds more like, hold my beer than it kind of sounds like we're having a conversation about this. Well, and they love to put out these kind of click pity stories. Yeah. You know, remember, remember the Moon hut moon thing? Yeah. You know, that was, I think from everything I've read, kind of a deliberate plant. Yeah. By the way, I, I meant to mention, I forgot we're gonna be doing the ufo, UAP and NASA story on the podcast on Friday with oh, probably the most prominent space journalist of the last 30 years. A guy named Leonard David, who loves this stuff. Nice. So, so I'll write, This is true, Leonard David, and that's this Friday's twist. Yeah. 11:00 AM record. I think it goes up about two Pacific time.

(02:18:58):
So Good. Okay. Do you know what number episode number It is? It's 36, I believe. Okay, hold on. I can tell you I can go to twi.tv/yes. Episode 36. Okay, good. Yeah. I shall plug it when I return. Thank you so much. Thank you. And have a wonderful Thank you Halloween. You too. And do people come to your boat and ask for candy? I'm not on the boat. I'm, I'm back at the condo and it's, I don't think anybody's ever knocked on our door. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. We're in one of those old neighborhoods that's kind of back on a private road. Yeah. And yeah, we're in a cul-de-sac. We've never had trick or treaters either. You're in a cul-de-sac on a mountain top Right. Cul-De-Sac on a mountain top. That's exactly right. Actually we are in the mountain. We live in the mountain.

(02:19:41):
It's a kind of my evil La <laugh>. I like it. Yeah. Yeah. Hey, thanks Rod. Thank you. Have a great week. Bye. You too. Consider, if you will, a radio show host devoted entirely to talking about technology. A man who wears funny hats and talks to people about their printers. You've entered the tech guy's own Leo Laporte, the tech guy, wrapping it up for this weekend. I do hope you have a good Halloween. We've got a few more callers to get through before not get through. That's the wrong way to put it. Leo, it sounds like you're not happy about them to enjoy, to talk to, including David and Fresno. Hello, David.

Caller 7 (02:20:27):
Hey Leo. How's it going?

Leo Laporte (02:20:28):
It's going well. How are you?

Caller 7 (02:20:30):
I'm doing okay. Good.

Leo Laporte (02:20:32):
What's up?

Caller 7 (02:20:34):
I bought a, an anchor 11 and one USB hub.

Leo Laporte (02:20:40):
I like anchors stuff. Ann, k e r.

Caller 7 (02:20:44):
Yeah, so do I. Yeah. And here's, here's my problem. I bought it from my desktop and this hub has like a three inch cable on it.

Leo Laporte (02:20:54):
<Laugh>, that's not very useful. <Laugh>. Quite a minute. Minute. It's got a little tiny, It's like a tail, not a cable. Yeah,

Caller 7 (02:21:03):
Yeah. I don't know what they were doing. I was like, what? First of all, it's like, get cut off. What the heck

Leo Laporte (02:21:09):
After you <laugh>?

Caller 7 (02:21:10):
But it's extremely short. I don't, I've never seen one this short on, on a hub before.

Leo Laporte (02:21:15):
So what's the name of this one? I want, now I wanna find it. Is it the,

Caller 7 (02:21:19):
It's, I got it on Amazon. It's the anchor 11 and one.

Leo Laporte (02:21:23):
Yeah. 5 65 USB hub. Oh, I'm seeing it. Oh, you know why? Well, maybe not. I'm looking at one. It, it looks like it's not made for plugging into power, but plugging into a pewter that's for plugging into your iPad or your computer. And then you have, Right. And then you have on it A U S B C port designed for plugging into a plug. So you power it through that. And then the short little dongs designed for plugging into a computer or, or a laptop or,

Caller 7 (02:22:00):
Right. And I'm trying to plug it into my desktop. Yeah. So, so well I started to say, okay, well then I'll just buy an extension.

Leo Laporte (02:22:09):
Oh, so it it, so you yeah, I see what you're saying. So the, the, you're plugging into a port, let's say on the back of the desktop and it doesn't reach around far enough so you can access the We should, Yeah, I understand. So how would you extend that? I think maybe they intend it more for laptops than they do desktops. Yeah.

Caller 7 (02:22:24):
They do have USB extension cables. Yeah. And some say that they're charging, some say that they're data,

Leo Laporte (02:22:31):
Oh, this is one of the big problems with usb.

Caller 7 (02:22:35):
Will, will the data charge? Yes. The data cable charge. Usually

Leo Laporte (02:22:40):
If it says data, it means we do charging plus data. So the problem with u bc and if you, if you look up the spec, they're supposed to put a a little icon on these cables that says what they do. And nobody does this because US BBC says nothing about the capabilities. It just talks about the, the connection. Here's what the port looks like. Right. Here's what the connector looks like. But what is the wiring on that? That's what's important. Yeah. You want one that ideally, I'm thinking with this, does everything including Vidia. So USBC is capable of carrying power. It's capable of carrying data at a variety of different ways. You can even get USBC that can carry Thunderbolt for and USB four as well as, or it could be slower USB two, USB 2.1, Thunderbolt three, or no Thunderbolt at all. So that's the data portion.

(02:23:36):
And then some of them can also carry display port and video. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> and HT M i mm-hmm. <Affirmative>. You don't, I think, unless you're gonna connect video to that and that anchor may have an HDM I port in which case it it does. Yeah. So in that case, you want the best cable you can get. Here's what I would do. I don't know if Cable Matters is the company I like. I don't know if Cable Matters makes a USBC extension cable or not, but if they do, that would be the company to buy Whenever I need to buy a USBC cable or a type C cable that does it all. Yeah. They make an extension $12 and they say, let's see, we wanna look at the capabilities. I trust cable matters. They are braided cables are very high quality and if they say it will carry data and it will carry video, then you're gonna absolutely also carry a charge.

(02:24:29):
Okay. So, so this will on the Amazon listing, it will say what it carries. And that's, this is the problem with usbc. It's a universal issue. So you gotta look at the specs. So it does fast charge up to a hundred watts, USB 3.2 speed. So it's not a thunderbolt capable cable. It doesn't look like they don't mention video. So maybe it doesn't do video. So maybe that's not the one. Oh yeah, it does do video. So yeah, this looks like it'd be a good choice. I trust cable matters. In fact, when, you know, it's very easy to get a USBC cable that could actually damage stuff. There's a guy who works at Google, his name is Benson Leon. He actually listens to our shows. Love You Benson. He did the most important thing some years ago. He went out and actually tested these cables and then would go on Amazon in the reviews section and say, Don't buy this.

(02:25:21):
It'll fry your laptop. Or this one's okay. Cuz ca they not all cables are made alike. So you're asking exactly the right question. If it supports data, it will support charging usually. But you check and see, make sure and you want a hundred wat charging if you can do it, that's us BBC pd or power delivery. And and you want video too, it sounds like, for this anchor. So, yeah. The, the problem here is this is really intended for a laptop. That's why they put this little short <laugh> shorty tail tail on it. But cable matters does make extension cables and you're gonna wanna find one that does everything that you need it to do. And they sh I'm sure that they do cuz they're a good company.

Caller 7 (02:26:03):
Okay.

Leo Laporte (02:26:03):
Sounds good. Okay. Hey, thanks for the call. Good question. It's something I think a lot of us run into. It's a, it's a little bit of a problem. I like usbc. Apple is even said from now on, you know, starting, if not next year, the year after, even iPhones will drop lightning and go usbc USBC is the future. But they've gotta do something about labeling, especially now that we have Thunderbolt for and USB four over that USBC connector. What'll it do? Greg's next final call from Fort Collins. Hello Greg.

Caller 8 (02:26:36):
Hi Leo. Hey, thanks for taking my call. I, I've listened to you for 15 or so years and all those times I've had a wanted to call in as a, I managed a network operations center for a university, but now that I'm retired, I finally have a problem. I think that is appropriate for your, you're

Leo Laporte (02:26:53):
The expert. We should be calling you if you operated a knock

Caller 8 (02:26:58):
<Laugh>. Yeah, as a manager, I was good at selling, sending calendar invites, <laugh>,

(02:27:02):
All those years. I had a, I had an Android phone. It's a Samsung S two. I traded in from my trio at the time and, and I switched here in the last couple weeks to a, to an iPhone 14. And when I transferred the text messages over Apples kind of got that app that switched to switched to iOS or something that I used. And the text message just came in for the most part, you know, but, but the pictures didn't from the past. And, and I didn't know if you or somebody in the chat room had some advice.

Leo Laporte (02:27:34):
Where were your pictures? So on the Android device, they were probably stored in Google Photos, Is that correct?

Caller 8 (02:27:38):
Well, I'm sorry, In the text messages.

Leo Laporte (02:27:40):
Oh, in the text messages. I misunderstood. Didn't

Caller 8 (02:27:43):
Come across. Yeah. Do

Leo Laporte (02:27:44):
I, Yeah, so there is a setting which I always turn on to save photos that come in, text messages to your album. Too late to do that now. But that is going forward when you're looking at your iPhone, check that box that way when people send you a picture, cuz most of the time that's the case, right? Sometimes they're throw away, but you can easily delete them. But most of the time you wanna save 'em. My wife sent me a bunch of pictures of her and her girlfriend in their Halloween customs. I wanted those in my photo album. So I checked that box. So now what you need to do is get them off. They're still on the Android phone or did you give, get rid of the phone?

Caller 8 (02:28:20):
No, I saw have those.

Leo Laporte (02:28:21):
Okay. So then you gotta get 'em off the Android phone. If you're on a Mac, you have to use Android file transfer to do that. You put that on the Mac, it will see the phone as a USB drive. Then you could just look for your photos, copy 'em, and you'll have 'em. Or look for your messages, copy 'em, and you'll have 'em. If you're on Windows, you don't need any special driver. It should just pop up

Caller 8 (02:28:41):
And there's no way to get 'em back into those text messages.

Leo Laporte (02:28:46):
Oh, that's another question. I don't know. So you want to keep the text messages as well? Yeah, yeah, you can. So yes, absolutely. There are a number of Android apps in the Play Store that will save your entire text messages out to a file that you can then move over.

Caller 8 (02:29:01):
Oh,

Leo Laporte (02:29:02):
Okay. And they're, and if you search for SMS backup, you'll find a million of them. SMS backup, I think in fact is the name of the one I use. Hey, thanks for the call. Thanks for listening. Have a great Halloween. Leo Laportee, the tech guy, have a great week.

(02:29:17):
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'll find it@twit.tv, including the podcasts for this show. We talk about Windows and Windows Weekly, Macintosh, a Mac Break, weekly iPads, iPhones, Apple Watches on iOS today, Security and Security Now, I mean, I can go on and on. And of course, the big show every Sunday afternoon this week in tech. You'll find it all at twit.tv and I'll be back next week with another great tech guy show. Thanks for joining me. We'll see you next time.