The Tech Guy Episode 1941 Transcript

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Hi, this is Leo Laporte and this is my Tech Guy podcast. The show originally aired on Saturday, November 5th, 2022, with my co tech guy, Michael Sergeant. This is episode 1941. Enjoy. This episode of Tech Guy is brought to you by ITProTV. Join a community of IT learners who access 5,800 plus hours of IT skills at training courses and interact with each other and subject matter experts to better themselves, better their organizations, better their careers. Get 30% off when you sign up today itpro.tv/twit. Don't forget to use the code. TWiT 30 at checkout. And buy Cachefly. Deliver your video on the network with the best throughput and global reach, making your content infinitely scalable. Go live in hours, not days. Learn more at cachefly.com. Hello? Hello. Hello. Hey. Hey, hey. It's me. Leo Laporte, the tech guy with Mikah Sargent, your tech. I too. 88. 88. Ask Leo if you wanna talk tech. What is Tech?

Mikah Sargent (00:01:19):
Tech? It's stuff that has stuff. Electronics in IT.

Leo Laporte (00:01:24):
Stuff. We all have stuff.

Mikah Sargent (00:01:25):
We all have. Yes. Stuff. We all get swag. Yeah. And stuff. We all tech swat. I don't

Leo Laporte (00:01:33):
Know stuff. We all Tech <laugh>. I like it. We're probably not gonna adopt it, but I wanna say well done. Thank you. Good effort. Thank

Mikah Sargent (00:01:42):
You.

Leo Laporte (00:01:42):
It is about computers, the internet, home theater, digital photography, smartphone, smart watches. And a little later on, I'm going to strap my companion here into the latest Mark Zuckerberg joint. <laugh> a visor. You're gonna get two little handset and we are gonna make you walk Richie's plank. Walk

Mikah Sargent (00:02:02):
The plank.

Leo Laporte (00:02:03):
Yesterday or last week, I guess we were talking about this new Oculus Pro Quest. Is it Quest Proi? I guess they dropped the Oculus, the Quest Proi, which is Meta's new $1,600 advisor. Now you have the Quest two.

Mikah Sargent (00:02:19):
I do. Yes.

Leo Laporte (00:02:20):
So I think it's, First of all, I would like to know how, if this is worth, how much was the Quest? 300?

Mikah Sargent (00:02:26):
Yeah. 300 for me. Now it's 3 99 to 4 99.

Leo Laporte (00:02:29):
Is it worth four times more is the first question. <affirmative>? Second question is, can you walk the plank <laugh>? Because this game, Richie's Plank, it's called it. It's just a little game. It's not, There's other things. I've been dancing with my light sabers and stuff, but this thing, you go up in an elevator in a high rise, it's not even super realistic. It's kind of cartoony. And then there's a plank. The door opens and you're looking out over the city and there's a long way down. And then there's this little skinny plan and you're supposed to walk out on it. And even though your brain says, Oh you perfectly safe here in the studio, Leah will catch you. If you fall <laugh>, your body goes, I ain't walking out.

Mikah Sargent (00:03:15):
Not for

Leo Laporte (00:03:15):
Me. Nope.

Mikah Sargent (00:03:17):
Not today.

Leo Laporte (00:03:19):
Not gonna do it. <laugh>. So I'm just curious if your mind can overcome your body. But the thing to me, whether or not, I couldn't to be honest with you, but Lisa just went, What do you mean? I just walked around. So my wife is very good at this, but then she got nauseated.

Mikah Sargent (00:03:34):
It's

Leo Laporte (00:03:35):
Belief. Yeah. Yeah. But then she got nauseated. So

Mikah Sargent (00:03:37):
That's my concern.

Leo Laporte (00:03:38):
Maybe there's a tie in anyway. Oh,

Mikah Sargent (00:03:41):
That's a good point. Because if you don't get nauseated, then your brain is in theory more likely to believe that you are in situ. More

Leo Laporte (00:03:49):
Pliable. Yeah. Yeah. I don't, I guess I have a pretty pliable, not brain body. I, it's my contention that your mind, your rational mind knows you're safe.

Mikah Sargent (00:04:00):
<affirmative>.

Leo Laporte (00:04:01):
It's just some visceral kind of body reaction that keeps you from walking out there.

Mikah Sargent (00:04:05):
I think people forget that the nervous system is not just the brain, it is all parts of your body communicating.

Leo Laporte (00:04:10):
Or it could be part of your brain. Like the lizard brain. Yeah,

Mikah Sargent (00:04:13):
The underlying <laugh>. Yeah. That's how B lizard sounds. And

Leo Laporte (00:04:17):
Your higher brain goes what? It's perfectly say <laugh> could be having a coffee. You tell me. You're gonna tell me. We're gonna do that a little later on in the show also. I'll let you know. Yes. Know Sam right this week. Cuz Sam's on the road.

Mikah Sargent (00:04:32):
He's on Sunday anyway.

Leo Laporte (00:04:33):
Oh yeah. Right. Is Scott here? I think Scott's here.

Mikah Sargent (00:04:36):
Scott's here. As far as I,

Leo Laporte (00:04:37):
Somebody's not gonna be here. I don't know Johnny Jet. No, he's here. Dick d Bartolo, our Gizmo guy. Yes. He's here And I'm here. And you're here. Yeah. 88. 88 Asko. Nothing happened this week. Worth reporting.

Mikah Sargent (00:04:50):
No, honestly.

Leo Laporte (00:04:53):
Unless you work for Twitter. Yeah.

Mikah Sargent (00:04:55):
A lot of people got

Leo Laporte (00:04:56):
Laid off. Yeah. I'm so sorry. I am so sorry. Although the New Yorker had an interview with one person who didn't get laid off. Who said, I wish I had, I kind of wish I had.

Mikah Sargent (00:05:05):
Did you see, I saw some or some new reports. And again, these are just, I heard from sources about how the layoffs happened and how it was structured based on code submissions. And people are saying if you lay off the people who did not put in as much code,

Leo Laporte (00:05:22):
That's dumb.

Mikah Sargent (00:05:23):
You're maybe laying off the people who are working on the harder problems.

Leo Laporte (00:05:26):
Yeah. No, I can't. I don't can. Well, so we don't really know what

Mikah Sargent (00:05:29):
Exactly, That's what this is.

Leo Laporte (00:05:30):
It's pretty clear that if an owner comes in on Thursday and fires half the staff on Monday <affirmative> or Friday or whatever the following week, how could you possibly know who's good and not at that point?

Mikah Sargent (00:05:42):
Right. It's too soon.

Leo Laporte (00:05:43):
And you can't trust the people in the company cuz they're gonna say, Well I don't like him. He's no good. Get rid of him. <affirmative>. That's not necessarily the way to judge. And you can't do what apparently Musk did, which is bring in engineers from a different company entirely

Mikah Sargent (00:05:58):
Using different code bases and

Leo Laporte (00:06:00):
Different, working on a different problem. And they'd come in and judge. So I don't understand how you could do this. The Warrant Act in California prevents him from just, you're outta here. If it's a layoff, a mass firing, he has to give you warnings. So those people were locked out. They said, don't come in on Friday cuz many of you will be gone. You're gonna get an email. Everybody open that email. It's like a party favor. Some of you, the email will say, Congratulations, you're fired.

Mikah Sargent (00:06:28):
You're so here. Oh yeah, exactly. <laugh>. I guess it depends.

Leo Laporte (00:06:31):
And the others will say, I'm so sorry you still work for Elon. But those people were fired, were immediate. There were stories of people in a conference call on just disappearing. Yeah. They were disappeared. But the good news is they get 60 days of pay. They don't have to work.

Mikah Sargent (00:06:47):
Got it.

Leo Laporte (00:06:48):
They don't have to do anything. But their paycheck will keep coming for two months to honor the warrant act.

Mikah Sargent (00:06:52):
That's because it's a California company. The It's the law. Yeah. Okay. Gotcha.

Leo Laporte (00:06:55):
I don't know what it's gonna happen to Twitter employees all over the world. There are many <affirmative> and I don't think we really know until the smoke clears how bad this is gonna be. Right.

Mikah Sargent (00:07:05):
Jack, did you see Jack tweeted

Leo Laporte (00:07:07):
Mr. Dorsey, one of Mr. Doy, the former ceo. Yeah.

Mikah Sargent (00:07:09):
Former CEO tweeted. He said that he understands why people are mad at him and he takes responsibility.

Leo Laporte (00:07:16):
Oh, thank you.

Mikah Sargent (00:07:17):
Because he says that it is his fault because he

Leo Laporte (00:07:20):
Pay my rent Jack.

Mikah Sargent (00:07:22):
He grew the company too quickly is what he says. And so that's why so many people are being let go because he grew the company too quickly.

Leo Laporte (00:07:30):
It's very possible that there were too many people. That happens <affirmative>. I just don't know how you could know that in less than a week. And just risky to do that. It seems bad management to do that, to be honest with you. Now, I don't manage a little company, not a big company, but it seems like just a bad idea all

Mikah Sargent (00:07:53):
Around. I think about the, I don't think L know. I mean, Elon cares about <laugh>

Leo Laporte (00:07:58):
That we're gonna call him. I like it. I

Mikah Sargent (00:08:00):
Hell no. That's what a lot of people on Twitter are calling him to keep themselves safe from the line stands.

Leo Laporte (00:08:06):
Yeah. Yeah.

Mikah Sargent (00:08:07):
And so I got confused there. But that, I don't think that he cares about morale, but I think that as a leader, it is important to care about. And I think that firing half of the people who were in companies,

Leo Laporte (00:08:19):
There's a long tradition of this in business a private equity company, or in this case a private individual comes along and takes a lot of debt. Elon's got 13 million of debt, a billion dollars a year in interest payments alone. So called a leveraged. They're leveraged. They didn't spend their money, they borrowed money to do it. But that puts a lot of pressure on you. These private equity companies. There was a guy named Chainsaw Al Dunlin,

Mikah Sargent (00:08:50):
Okay.

Leo Laporte (00:08:52):
Some years ago who became famous for this. They come in, they buy the company, they fire people, they cut ruthlessly, cut expenses. They sometimes sell off bits of the company. Their mission number one is to pay off this debt maybe because they want to keep running the company down the road. But most often what seems to happen is they just chop it up in a little. It's like if somebody steals your car, <affirmative>, do they wanna drive the car? No. They wanna chop it up and sell the pieces and make some money on it. And that's, there's a long history of private equity coming in and doing that. We see it over and over again, happened with newspapers, happened with radio stations, happened with all the stuff that the internet kind of put a kibosh to. This is the first time I can remember it happening to an internet first company.

(00:09:46):
Maybe we're coming to that point in time where the internet first companies are now old companies and need to be chopped into little pieces and sold for parts. I don't know. It can't be good in the long run for Twitter. The thing that concerns me and a lot of people most is we have an election in a few days. <affirmative> almost said a week. Nope. Three days. And this was a trigger, was a very popular place to put up misinformation, election fraud stuff, all sorts of stuff. And they fired, I think a lot of the people who will be watching that <laugh>. So anyway, it's just interesting. It's just an interesting development. And honestly, I'm, I'm fine. That's how I feel about it. It's just a company at the end. Yeah, it's just a company. I think one of the things though that we have to realize is just because somebody's in the three comma Club, they have billions.

(00:10:48):
Doesn't make them smart. Doesn't mean they were smart to get there. <affirmative> honestly, <affirmative>. And I think you're seeing an example of somebody who bit off more than he can shoot. He tried to get out of it. It's like a dog that caught the car, chased the car, and then the car stops, the dog goes. And then somebody said, Well now you gotta bite the tire. You caught us. And he doesn't, I don't wanna bite the tire. You gotta bite the tire. You caught it. I don't wanna bite the tire. Finally. Okay, I'll bite the tire. And then chaos suits. Yeah. So I think where we are right now, 88. Anyway, just some thoughts. You are you a big Twitter user?

Mikah Sargent (00:11:27):
No, not these

Leo Laporte (00:11:28):
Days. Yeah, I used to be. I'm one of those people with a half million followers. Whether those are real people, I don't know, but I don't mind We'll take your calls next. Leo and Mike and the tech guys. I don't care. It's okay. I don't mourn its loss.

Mikah Sargent (00:11:47):
Increasingly, I'm just a person who doesn't interact with anybody. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:11:54):
Okay. So now I'm just saying <affirmative>, this is what happens when people first get in the public eye. They kind of go crazy a little bit. I got followers, I got fans. And then they realize this is not all it's cracked up to be <laugh>. And then they slowly, gently, gradually withdraw. And I'm, I've long gone, long ago. Long ago, become

Mikah Sargent (00:12:16):
That. I've been in the public eye since 2012 when I was a new 10

Leo Laporte (00:12:21):
Years at a decade.

Mikah Sargent (00:12:23):
And

Leo Laporte (00:12:24):
How long did it take you before you realized it's not all?

Mikah Sargent (00:12:27):
So I would say in four years of doing that it, that's when I realized that the, that's was the first realization, which is there are a lot of weird people out there. And then probably six years was whenever it was like, Yeah, I don't think I need any of this.

Leo Laporte (00:12:45):
<laugh>. Yeah, <laugh>. Yeah. It's just, it's brings you down, man. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Mikah Sargent (00:12:50):
Which

Leo Laporte (00:12:50):
Is too bad because of course the ideal would be to interact with people. Mean what we've done here is we've narrowed the scope. So we have the irc, which you're seeing right now. We have the discord, we have small,

Mikah Sargent (00:13:08):
These little

Leo Laporte (00:13:08):
Communities, cadre, smallest communities work Well.

Mikah Sargent (00:13:11):
I agree. And I wanna be clear, I, I love the folks that are in these communities and enjoy those conversations. What I'm talking about is the larger, because you exist in many different places, then you get these drive-bys that just make it not fun to participate. And Yeah, I had that realization a long time ago and I, I think I do go through waves of more interaction and less interaction. But for the most part, yeah, I occasionally scroll through Twitter, but I rarely, very rarely tweet anymore.

Leo Laporte (00:13:47):
I only tweet commercial promotional things, not personal things. And it's kind of become that way with instead too where I just But you promote posted your cactus costume.

Mikah Sargent (00:14:01):
That was that tweet or that Instagram post was the first one in a while. When we

Leo Laporte (00:14:06):
Travel, I like to post pictures just cuz people, I think family and friends want to keep up.

Mikah Sargent (00:14:10):
Yes. And that's kind of what I still is for friends. I for friends showed my cactus costume. Cause I wanted to show my friends who would think it was funny. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:14:17):
We enjoyed it.

Mikah Sargent (00:14:17):
Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:14:18):
It's now everybody knows. And you're gonna have flood of cactus haters.

Mikah Sargent (00:14:21):
Yeah. All of you out there who've ever been poked by a cactus can get and say, how could you post

Leo Laporte (00:14:26):
A cactus song? Oh my God.

Mikah Sargent (00:14:27):
Did you not think of

Leo Laporte (00:14:28):
My a did not think, Oh my God.

Mikah Sargent (00:14:33):
I was trying to do an easy costume and then it took forever. Cause

Leo Laporte (00:14:38):
You have that looked like

Mikah Sargent (00:14:38):
A, you have to place all of those.

Leo Laporte (00:14:40):
Oh, you thought it would be easy and it didn't. Yeah. Cause you put the pipe cleaners in by hand. Hot

Mikah Sargent (00:14:44):
Glu. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:14:44):
Pipe cleaners. You hot cleaned them. Yeah. You didn't push 'em through the fabric.

Mikah Sargent (00:14:47):
I didn't push them through the fabric.

Leo Laporte (00:14:48):
Ah,

Mikah Sargent (00:14:49):
Interesting. I was hoping to be able to make use of the sweater afterward. Just as a sweater

Leo Laporte (00:14:52):
As green. Oh yes. I love that. Cause you don't want a lot of holes.

Mikah Sargent (00:14:54):
But I can't get the hot glue off. So

Leo Laporte (00:14:56):
<laugh> it. Well, which would be more damaging A hot glue. Well now you have a cactus forever. I do cactus sweater

Mikah Sargent (00:15:01):
Time. I need

Leo Laporte (00:15:02):
To be forever. Did you crochet your cap?

Mikah Sargent (00:15:04):
I did not. No, I just bought that too. Okay. It was last minute. <laugh>.

Leo Laporte (00:15:08):
Lisa's out buying a Christmas tree right now. I'd early.

Mikah Sargent (00:15:12):
Yeah, a little

Leo Laporte (00:15:13):
Early. We took down the Halloween costumes. We put up a few Harvest festival items. But really the nutcrackers are also a

Mikah Sargent (00:15:21):
Live

Leo Laporte (00:15:21):
One. No, no. The days are gone now. Now that Michael's an adult. We used to get giant life cuz we have a cathedral ceiling in the living room. And we used to get like 20 foot, I don't know, it can't be 20, maybe 15 feet. Huge trees.

Mikah Sargent (00:15:39):
I just can't, I've said this before, I can't believe the California allows us to have real live trees. And I'm not saying no Christmas trees, if they're fake, fine. But real life trees, when they dry, they're such

Leo Laporte (00:15:53):
A fire. Oh, it's such a fire hazard. Yeah. Cheese. Our candy girl. Oh wow. Yeah. In fact, Candy Girl. Yes. They did a whole ad for you over New York City. What yesterday? Me? Well Candy Crush. That's your, You're my crush. And it's Candy <laugh>. So I think that's you. I don't know the game. Yeah, the game. That old game people were so mad. People are still playing game. It was a well, well, Candy Crush folks wish you would. So they put 500 drones up in the night sky over New York City forming the worst candy crush. Oh. And there were a number of surprisingly large number of people who were very, very irritated. But anyway, I'll have to pick that up. No one's irritated by our candy girl, Kim Shaffer. Oh,

Kim Schaffer (00:16:39):
Don't be too sure of that. <laugh>.

Leo Laporte (00:16:41):
Yeah. Well, when you say no, no, you can't be on the show. Exactly. <laugh>. No. Then maybe you know

Mikah Sargent (00:16:48):
Who you are. But we thank you for doing

Leo Laporte (00:16:50):
We Thank you for your service, Kim. Kim Shaffer, the unbreakable phone angel. She's the one who answers your phone. Here's the Well, I can't, Can I show you the picture? Oh, I can. No I can't. But there is a picture in our discord of the backlash after 500 drones light up the New York sky.

Kim Schaffer (00:17:12):
What were people mad at

Leo Laporte (00:17:15):
That

Kim Schaffer (00:17:16):
The sky was

Leo Laporte (00:17:16):
Lit up? Yeah. Or just it's our sky. How dare you? Their drones <laugh>. Well, okay, here, I'll give you an example. We were all excited cuz Elon Musk was going to put internet in the sky so that everybody in the world would have access to inexpensive internet. And it turned out to be really expensive Internet <affirmative>. He just announced there's gonna be a one terabyte a month cap usage cap, which makes it pretty much useless for anything but the simplest applications for 129 bucks a month. So it's just really not, And it's blocking the sky. And astronomers are really upset. You wanna be upset?

Kim Schaffer (00:17:58):
Oh my. Oh, it's kind of cute. It's cute. I

Leo Laporte (00:18:01):
Like it. I'm showing the picture of the, I would've taken pictures,

Kim Schaffer (00:18:04):
Videos, I would not have been

Leo Laporte (00:18:05):
Upset. No. And it's, that one's temporary. The problem with Starling is it's permanent. It's forever, at least until the satellites start to crash into the ground. Kim, who should we talk on that bright and chipper note? Who should we talk to? Let's

Kim Schaffer (00:18:21):
Go to Jackie and Eugene. Help her set up her website and blog, please.

Leo Laporte (00:18:25):
Oh yeah. That sounds like fun. That's what every, See if you're thinking, Oh, Twitter, I don't wanna be with you anymore. Set up your own thing. Right. All right. You can go your own way. Jackie, go your own. Hi, Jackie. Eugene, Oregon. Welcome to the Tech I Show with Mikah and Leo.

Caller 1 (00:18:43):
Thank you Leo. I appreciate that. I've listened to you a long time. Oh, wonderful. And I'm looking on the internet, but I get so overwhelmed by all the options. And I've heard you talk about Squarespace, which I was on their side a minute ago, and somehow something happens, but I don't know what happened to them. Oh, there they go. You're what I'm trying to do. I wanna have a blog, but I wanna have a website too.

Leo Laporte (00:19:12):
Well, that's kind of the same. Yeah.

Caller 1 (00:19:14):
Okay, so they are the same. Sure.

Leo Laporte (00:19:16):
You could have, for instance, what's the website for? Is it for your business?

Caller 1 (00:19:22):
Well, it's sort of a nonprofit support. Okay,

Leo Laporte (00:19:25):
So it's a thing. It's an entity. Yeah. <laugh>. So you have a couple of choices. It's easy to have two blogs, that's not a problem. Or you can have multiple pages on your website. One is for the nonprofit, that's the front page maybe. And then in the menu at the top it says, And for my blog, go here. And that could be another page. So that could all be the same place. The only negative on that is sometimes people in their blogs are talking about personal stuff that maybe doesn't match the mission of the business or the entity. So sometimes you wanna separate your personal life from your public life. That that's fine too. So the easiest way to set up a blog or a website is to go to one of the companies that does this as a business. And there's quite a few <affirmative>. There's word wordpress.com,

(00:20:18):
Which is, in my opinions, the best. There's Squarespace, which is also quite good. Google has something called Blog Spot that's very easy to set up. That's the old blogger that Google bought some time ago, by the way, created by the guy who started Twitter. He took that money and created Twitter. And then there's things like Tumblr, t u m b l r.com. Tumblr and Blogger are free, but there may be ads on your site, which you may or may not want, but they are free. So if you wanna pinch Pennings, if money's tight. I think Tumblr, what do you think, Mike? Tumblr, blogger. I

Mikah Sargent (00:21:02):
Didn't even think about Tumblr. But yeah, Tumblr's a great place. If you just wanna do a blog. Yeah,

Leo Laporte (00:21:05):
It's good for a personal blog. I wouldn't put a business on Tumblr. Absolutely. Especially now that Tumblr has just announced that they're going to allow nudity, not sexuality, but nudity like art photos and paintings and stuff. <affirmative>. So that may be somewhere your nonprofit doesn't wanna live. If you want to control it in a way that there's no ads and it really, WordPress dot com's a great choice. I mean many, many big businesses use WordPress. The White House runs on WordPress of the United States. That one. Okay. Yeah. So it's capable of handling a lot of traffic of looking. It's your personal site. <affirmative> generally with Squarespace and WordPress people end up hiring somebody to do it for them. <affirmative> only because to really make it, it depends how technical you are, how confident you are. Jackie, in doing this <affirmative>, it might be just for fun, it might be worth diving into.

(00:22:04):
Both of them have sought a site builder tools that you can use <affirmative>. But sometimes they're a little confusing, even for a technical person. But it's certainly worth trying. And then both WordPress, Squarespace have many, many contractors who will help you. My suggestion is you set up the domain, you set up the site, so it's all owned by you on your credit card. And by the way, you could set up a domain with all of these WordPress and Squarespace will do that for you. You know, just say, I want to create a domain and then I want it to point to my site. That might be the easiest thing to do. And then if you hire a contractor, you give them the keys and say, Okay, but I want to, Sometimes contractors will hold your sight from Ransom and stuff like that. See, you kinda wanna own, you don't know these people. You wanna own the site before you let them work on it.

Caller 1 (00:22:55):
What does that typically cost to have a contractor doing that?

Leo Laporte (00:22:58):
Well, it really depends. Some sites it's just a hundred, couple hundred bucks. You can price it out. There's a big market for these people. We were informed a few months ago that in order to update our site would be a quarter of a million dollars <laugh>. So it The range is broad. Yeah.

Caller 1 (00:23:13):
You can afford it.

Leo Laporte (00:23:14):
<laugh>? No, I can't. No. Scott Wilkinson coming up. Leo and Mic. You're tech guys. <laugh>. Oh, I wish I could actually, it was two sites and the tech guy Lab site was, we decided to fold into the other site so we wouldn't have to do two sites. And I think we were able to get a deal. So it's down below 200,000. But yeah, it's a big commercial site. A professional site is expensive. But you're not, It depends what you wanna do. But you're not doing something like that. No,

Caller 1 (00:23:44):
No, no, I'm not. And what is the difference with MailChimp? Do you ever,

Leo Laporte (00:23:47):
MailChimp is not a website. MailChimp is a newsletter.

Caller 1 (00:23:52):
Oh, that's all they do. Okay. Yeah, I saw that. One of the newsletters I get uses them and which is, yeah,

Leo Laporte (00:23:58):
So that's a newsletter company, which

Mikah Sargent (00:24:01):
I wonder if they make a landing page

Leo Laporte (00:24:03):
For, I don't, I'm not sure. They're own buy Toit now. Oh, that's right. I'm not. There are other ways. Constant Contact is probably maybe a another one you might look at if you wanna do a mailing list. Mailing lists are problematic. Cuz nowadays there's so much spam people, I don't know if people really

Caller 1 (00:24:18):
Right. Pay much you talking about, I probably would wanna do something like that eventually, but Okay, so WordPress doesn't offer that. It would have to be something, Oh,

Leo Laporte (00:24:27):
I they might actually, You mean a newsletter? Yeah, I

Mikah Sargent (00:24:30):
Know Squarespace does

Leo Laporte (00:24:31):
Word. I bet WordPress

Mikah Sargent (00:24:32):
Does Squarespace. Yeah. So I'd imagine that WordPress does, They're often in Pardy.

Leo Laporte (00:24:36):
So both WordPress and Squarespace kind of want to be an all in one thing. Then if you're selling stuff, there's companies, I didn't even mention Wix, which is like Squarespace and WordPress, W I X. Oh that. Yeah. And then if you're selling stuff through's, Shopify and Big Commerce, there are a bunch of sites that are designed to be websites that have stores on them.

Caller 1 (00:24:56):
Okay.

Leo Laporte (00:24:56):
So it depends on how

Caller 1 (00:24:57):
Possibility too. Yeah,

Leo Laporte (00:24:59):
It depends on how

Caller 1 (00:25:00):
Go to the founda to the organization. Yeah. Yeah. Okay.

Leo Laporte (00:25:03):
I think you, a lot of this you could do yourself. The thing about that's nice about Blogspot and Tumblr is you definitely can do it yourself. You just choose a theme and there you go. The bad thing is there's ads on it. Kind of limited in what it can look like. And it's pretty obvious you're using Blogger and Tumblr, you're not. So

Caller 1 (00:25:20):
I think I'd avoid the ads

Leo Laporte (00:25:22):
And if you wanna look more professional. Now you said it's a nonprofit, so there may not be a lot of money on this, but depending on how hard you wanna work and how much you want to study it, I think WordPress is probably do very doable as a personal thing.

Caller 1 (00:25:38):
Okay. All right. Well that's great feedback. That's very helpful. Thank you so much. Sure.

Leo Laporte (00:25:43):
Jackie, I think it sounds like fun. How much time do you have?

Caller 1 (00:25:46):
So <laugh>, Well, I don't know, but I think I'm gonna try it myself and see.

Leo Laporte (00:25:52):
Yeah, there is a free tier for WordPress, which is ad supported that you could just try and then it's easy to pay for it and remove the ads.

Caller 1 (00:26:00):
Okay.

Leo Laporte (00:26:01):
That's probably the way to go. And somebody's mentioning Weebly, that's another one. They're quite a few places

Caller 1 (00:26:06):
And they're all cost to have the domain name, right?

Leo Laporte (00:26:09):
Domain name's cheap. Yeah. If you'd have a.com, it's usually about, it's less than 15 bucks a year. Yeah.

Caller 1 (00:26:14):
What is

Leo Laporte (00:26:15):
A.com is usually 15 bucks or less a

Caller 1 (00:26:18):
Year. Oh, okay. Cause I'm looking at Square Pace Squarespace and they're saying 20. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:26:23):
Then they keep the extra 10 or whatever. 20 a year isn't awful either, right?

Caller 1 (00:26:30):
No, no it's not. Yeah, I'm just as curious. Okay. Being,

Leo Laporte (00:26:33):
You just don't want to get to the point where you have to fire half your staff in order to pay for the

Caller 1 (00:26:37):
Site. Well I'm, I am the staff

Leo Laporte (00:26:39):
<laugh>. Well then especially

Caller 1 (00:26:41):
I don't wanna fire me.

Leo Laporte (00:26:42):
No. Hey, a pleasure talking to you, Jackie. Have fun. And if you have more questions, call back. Yeah, please do. Thank you. I will. All righty. Have a great day. Thanks. Hey Scotty. Hey Leo. Hey Mikah. Hello. Hello. Why don't you do Scott?

Mikah Sargent (00:26:57):
Okay. Can do that. And John when you have that twit bug up on the Scott screen, it keeps shifting between the trademark one and the non trademark one.

Leo Laporte (00:27:10):
Oh yeah. Cuz it's a slideshow. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's a slide. There was one slide without trademark, they put made another one and then it's back It. Yeah, that happened and also happened on Wednesday. Our show today brought to you by ITProTV. Love it. ITProTV. These are good friends. Tim and Don. I call 'em I met them in, I think it was almost 10 years ago now. I met them at na, the National Association of Broadcasters. They were Tim Broom Donette. I'm seeing them now in front of me. And I've seen them actually come up to me at nab cuz we did a panel saying we do it training in the classroom, but we really like the idea of putting it on the internet. And I said, that's a great idea because it would make it accessible to more people. You could make it more affordable, you could keep it up to date it.

(00:28:03):
ITProTV was born. I take full credit. No, Tim and Don get all the credit. They've done such a great job. In fact, they built a beautiful facility. Lisa and I went out to Gainesville to see it some years ago with seven studios. They're running all day Monday through Friday creating new content. Cause it turns out that's the key with IT training. You gotta have up to date content at all times. It is a wonderful business to be in. If you're new to the IT field, you want to get that first job, You gotta get those IT Pro TVs a great place to go. If you're an IT professional, you're already working in it, but you wanna re-certify, get new certifications, get new skills. Again, a great place. And most of the people who join IT pro TV to get started stay because it's fun, it's great.

(00:28:54):
You learn virtual learning solutions for everyone. They have IT training videos with every vendor, every skill, either to start or advance your IT career. It's kind of a, it's like what we do, it's kind of a talk show format. There's chat going on. You can watch live, you can watch their on-demand 5,800 hours of on-demand training. And like I said, they have all those studios cuz they keep it up to date. Every course is about 20 to 30 minutes. So you can watch it at your convenience. They also have interactive virtual labs. So you don't even need a Windows machine to set up a Windows server, Windows clients to do all of it. And if something goes wrong, cuz it will, when you start, you close for me, you close the tab, it's just a tab and a browser and you start over again. It's a hands on approach.

(00:29:37):
They also have IT certification practice tests. So before you take the real test, you can practice. I think that's probably the number one recommendation I'd have. Take the test before you take the test. Great online community. As I said, people stay at ITProTV, they're 220,000 people now in their online community. So there's great people to talk with, to learn at. And the instructors are in there too. They're the best instructors. They're all pros in the field who are actually working professionals, but they have a passion for the field that communicates, that makes you excited about it. If they have cybersecurity podcast for November 9th, 2:00 PM Eastern Daniel Lowry welcomes Gerald Auger. He's a PhD of Simply Cyber. November 17th, 2:00 PM Eastern the ITProTV Turkey Bowl. They do this every year for Thanksgiving. Live games gift giveaways for the holidays. It's a fun place to be.

(00:30:31):
They've got social channels on LinkedIn and YouTube and Facebook too. Tim says, I think says it the best himself. We wanna make life easier for people who want an IT career. Do it, do it for yourself. Get 30% off when you sign up at itpro.tv/twit, please use that address so they know you saw it here. The offer code TWiT 30, 30% off. Sign up at itpro.tv/twit. Offer code TWiT 30 ITProTV. I love these guys and I love what they're doing. Build or expand your IT career and enjoy the journey with ITProTV. And now back to the show.

Mikah Sargent (00:31:11):
Welcome back. Welcome back to the Tech Guy Radio show. The show heard round the world. Joining us right now is Scott Wilkinson, the home theater geek. Hello, Scotty.

Scott Wilkinson (00:31:25):
Hey Mikah. Hey Leo. How you guys doing? We're

Leo Laporte (00:31:28):
Great.

Scott Wilkinson (00:31:29):
How are you? Glad to hear it. Yeah, I'm good. All is well in Santa Cruz.

Mikah Sargent (00:31:34):
Nice. Nice. And how is it going over on AVS Forum and your podcast? youtube.com/avs?

Scott Wilkinson (00:31:42):
Oh yeah, there you go. It's going great. We're we're getting a lot of good guests this coming Tuesday. I wanted to point out the show, it's gonna be very interesting. It's several people from a company called Six P Color. And you might wonder what the heck does that

Mikah Sargent (00:32:01):
Mean? I do wonder, <laugh>, I

Scott Wilkinson (00:32:03):
And I shall tell you <laugh> how in video, almost virtually all video basically to get a full color image, you combine red, green, and blue components to get a full image. But that never, no matter what colors of red, green, and blue you choose, that never gives you the full range of what humans can perceive of the range of colors that humans can perceive.

Leo Laporte (00:32:35):
They call it the gamut, right? The color, the

Scott Wilkinson (00:32:38):
Gamut. Correct. Yeah, the color gamut. That is correct. And it's a little difficult to visualize, but you might have seen this kind of elongated horseshoe shape. Yes. With all the colors in it from blue through green, yellow, red, magenta. And that's the full range of colors that humans can see. But then within that strange horseshoe shape, there's a triangle. And the triangle has its vertices, <laugh> at blue, at red, green, and blue. And the colors that fall within that triangle are the colors that can be reproduced on the television, on the video display. So what this company has decided to do is to look into the possibility of using more than three primaries. You ain't red triangle, you're there ain't no trap. You're a trap zone trap.

Leo Laporte (00:33:35):
Yeah. Yeah, baby.

Scott Wilkinson (00:33:37):
That's right

Leo Laporte (00:33:38):
Baby, you. I saw that song Baby. You are a Trap. Oid <laugh> love that song.

Scott Wilkinson (00:33:46):
Anyway. Yes. So this company is looking at the possibility of representing color not as red, green, and blue but as more than those three colors. And in fact, you have, in color theory, you have three primaries, which are called red, green, and blue. You also have three what are called secondaries, which are yellow cyan and magenta <affirmative>. And if you were to be able to represent all of the colors that the display could represent, could express or display using those six primaries, you could actually form a hexagon and encompass much more of the color range that we can see.

(00:34:33):
And so that's what they're working on. They're working on a system that actually doesn't even use the six primaries. It just expresses color as the co coordinates within that horseshoe. So is this a hardware thing, a software thing, a firmware thing? Where is this working? All of the above. It's taking the cap. It's taking the image that's captured by a camera. And it's important to note that modern cameras and even film can capture much greater range of colors than what is in that triangle of red, green, and blue. But then when it's color corrected up till now you have to bring those colors into that triangle or they won't even be seen. So what they're doing is they're, what's coming off the camera in what's called raw format, you've probably heard raw camera, raw <affirmative>, <affirmative>. So that's just all the colors that the camera can capture.

(00:35:30):
And most cameras today can capture almost all of everything we can see. And so they take that and they represent it mathematically in a way that you can then apply or represent it with more than three primaries. And that's where six P comes in. Instead of calling three primaries and three secondaries, they're calling it six primaries. So you can represent the colors that are coming off the camera with a greater number of primaries, and therefore get a more accurate representation of what the camera captured. And in fact, what you can see in the real world.

Mikah Sargent (00:36:10):
So this means redesigning the pixel because pixel displays right now are rgb,

Scott Wilkinson (00:36:17):
Right? Are all rgb. That is correct. Wow. And so now the good news is you can take this greater color gamut and then squeeze it down into RGB for current displays, <affirmative>. But they are also working on developing displays that have more than three primaries. They've got direct view, l e d. So these micro L e D video walls, they've developed some prototypes that have an extra cyan in them. So they are four primary displays, red, green, blue, and cyan, which is kind of between blue and green. And so you have then a four sided figure that's capturing 150% or displaying 150% or so of what a red green and blue display can capture or can display.

Mikah Sargent (00:37:11):
What's the excitement around this mean? Is this still very Is there industry interest in it? What do we

Scott Wilkinson (00:37:18):
Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. No, there's definite industry in interest. The problem, the inertia, The problem is inertia, right? All the display companies have red, green, blue displays and telling them that, well now we wanna make a display that has Ayan pick a cyan subick and a yellow sub pixel and a magenta pixel. They will kind of go, Really? We're gonna have to redesign our displays.

Leo Laporte (00:37:43):
Does anybody make panels with these extra

Scott Wilkinson (00:37:46):
No colors? No, not yet. Not yet. It's just

Leo Laporte (00:37:48):
A thought. In other words, it's just an idea.

Scott Wilkinson (00:37:50):
<laugh> this. Well, it's a good idea. It's a good idea. But the point is that even if you don't have a display that can do it, you've captured the data and archived it with this extra color so that in the future, someday when we do

Mikah Sargent (00:38:09):
Have six P color. Right?

Scott Wilkinson (00:38:11):
Exactly. Exactly. They're gonna be able to re-release all the <laugh> stuff that has been recorded in film anyway. You can re-scan it if it's been captured in digitally rgb, there's probably not a way. I'll have to ask them this on tv. Are there

Leo Laporte (00:38:29):
Any cameras that can capture

Scott Wilkinson (00:38:31):
This? Oh yeah, most of them can. Most

Leo Laporte (00:38:33):
Can.

Scott Wilkinson (00:38:34):
Yeah. So it's the ARI Alexa, the Sonys, the Cannons and all.

Leo Laporte (00:38:38):
And are they shooting in six P

Scott Wilkinson (00:38:40):
Or Yeah, well they're shooting in what's called their raw format.

Leo Laporte (00:38:45):
Oh, raw will have it, of course.

Scott Wilkinson (00:38:46):
Yeah. Raw will have it. Yeah,

Leo Laporte (00:38:48):
Yeah, yeah.

Scott Wilkinson (00:38:49):
Translated so to speak.

Leo Laporte (00:38:51):
They strip out stuff, get it, They

Scott Wilkinson (00:38:53):
Strip out a bunch of stuff or they scale ca colors that are outside the triangle, back into the triangle. Where

Leo Laporte (00:39:00):
Does Mr. Avatar, Jim Cameron, James Cameron stand and this, That's a good question.

Scott Wilkinson (00:39:04):
He's the one that's a

Leo Laporte (00:39:05):
Very good pushing high frame

Scott Wilkinson (00:39:08):
Envelope

Leo Laporte (00:39:08):
And higher resolutions and

Scott Wilkinson (00:39:10):
All that. Yep. Yep. I don't know. That's a very good question. I'm gonna ask these guys on Tuesday. In fact, you have given me a great,

Leo Laporte (00:39:16):
Make a note of that.

Scott Wilkinson (00:39:18):
I shall make a note of that. <laugh>. Where does Jim Cameron stand on this, or Ang Lee is another

Leo Laporte (00:39:24):
Director, Ang Lee. He shot his last movie in 60 frames per second.

Scott Wilkinson (00:39:29):
120.

Leo Laporte (00:39:30):
120. Wow.

Scott Wilkinson (00:39:31):
Wow. 120 frames per

Leo Laporte (00:39:33):
Second. It was kind of terrible. <laugh>, by the way.

Scott Wilkinson (00:39:36):
<laugh>.

Leo Laporte (00:39:36):
It was a little too vivid. It was like watching tv.

Scott Wilkinson (00:39:38):
Well, I didn't think so. I thought it was great. And I've heard a lot of people express your opinion that no, it was, it was too real. And that may be a problem with this new six P color system. People might say, Oh no, that's too real. A high frame rate. They say the same thing. I want it to look like a movie has looked for the last hundred

Leo Laporte (00:40:03):
Years. Of course, the problem with an Lee's film, Billy Lynn's Long halftime Walk was you couldn't see it in that format, except in a handful of theaters in the US that's certainly not at home.

Scott Wilkinson (00:40:13):
That's correct.

Leo Laporte (00:40:14):
Scott Wilkinson, AVS forum, utu.com/avs forum. Thanks for joining us.

Scott Wilkinson (00:40:19):
You bet. Act actually at home you can see Billy Lynn in 60.

Leo Laporte (00:40:36):
Yeah, I think I've seen the 60. Oh, I thought you said 60. That's how I saw it. Because I bought the, Yeah, I didn't see the theaters. I bought the UHD disc.

Scott Wilkinson (00:40:45):
Right. And that's at 60.

Leo Laporte (00:40:47):
And that was as close as I can get. I met. And that's part of the problem is a lot of people who saw it didn't see the real deal.

Scott Wilkinson (00:40:57):
A lot of people, I actually went, there was, of course, there was a theater in LA that was showing it at one 20.

Leo Laporte (00:41:04):
Right? I think there were, Was it like two theaters in the country? Three, I

Scott Wilkinson (00:41:08):
Think three theaters in the country there were showing it at one 20. But this, there were a lot of theaters that were Don't be cinema was showing it at 60. 60.

Leo Laporte (00:41:16):
Yeah, yeah,

Scott Wilkinson (00:41:17):
Yeah. So that's still quite a bit faster. A higher frame rate than 24, which is

Leo Laporte (00:41:21):
What we're used for. Highlights though. The problem of proposing a new format.

Scott Wilkinson (00:41:25):
Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:41:25):
No movie theater in the country can display it yet. Right. No TVs that you can buy can display it. Did they show you 20? No, I'm talking about the six P. Did they show you six P? Well

Scott Wilkinson (00:41:37):
They have some prototypes of four P displays

Mikah Sargent (00:41:41):
With the C.

Scott Wilkinson (00:41:42):
Right. Red, green, blue, and cyan. Right. I don't know if they have any prototypes of true six P. Yeah. But again, it's making sure that what you capture is the full range of colors that humans can see and storing it that way. So

Mikah Sargent (00:41:58):
They're almost just encouraging, Hey, make sure you've got these for in an eventual future.

Leo Laporte (00:42:02):
Is this a company that's trying to monetize this? Or is this an industry group?

Scott Wilkinson (00:42:07):
No, no, it's a company. The initial research was done in collaboration with Baylor University in I think Waco, Texas. I think that's where Baylor is. But no, this is a company that's trying to make this an industry standard and encourage the development of expanding the color gamut by using additional primaries. And these are very smart people. I know these people and they're very smart.

Leo Laporte (00:42:39):
Well, I don't want to poo poo their efforts, but it's a little quixotic.

Scott Wilkinson (00:42:43):
<laugh>. Well, I liked looking at the future.

Leo Laporte (00:42:48):
Yeah, no, I think if people didn't propose stuff like this, nothing would ever,

Scott Wilkinson (00:42:52):
Ever happen.

Leo Laporte (00:42:52):
Yeah, right. Exactly. It's just always, I think it's always unlikely, but doesn't mean you shouldn't try.

Scott Wilkinson (00:43:01):
Yeah, exactly.

Leo Laporte (00:43:02):
Yeah,

Scott Wilkinson (00:43:02):
Exactly.

Leo Laporte (00:43:03):
And if I'm a filmmaker especially since this, Is this gonna double my storage?

Scott Wilkinson (00:43:09):
No, it's not gonna increase your storage at all.

Leo Laporte (00:43:12):
Well, not of the raw but of the final.

Scott Wilkinson (00:43:16):
No, I believe not. Because they have, part of their system, which I didn't get to talk about here is called data rate reduction and they're actually able to compress it.

Mikah Sargent (00:43:25):
Oh, kinda like

Scott Wilkinson (00:43:26):
Level. That's

Mikah Sargent (00:43:27):
H e, what is it? H E I C H E vc. Yeah. H e VC and H. Yeah.

Scott Wilkinson (00:43:32):
Yeah. And H e I s I think. Yeah. That's good of theirs. So they're able to compress it so they're not using more bandwidth

Leo Laporte (00:43:40):
Or storage. Oh, that's good.

Scott Wilkinson (00:43:42):
So and it fits within the existing production and post production infrastructure. I

Leo Laporte (00:43:49):
Could see a TV company saying, What if we did a video file TV and we sold it that way. There are people absolutely. Who would say, Oh, who would buy? It's got the full color gamut. Oh, I'll take two. Yep.

Scott Wilkinson (00:44:00):
Yes. And they'll pay top dollar for it

Leo Laporte (00:44:02):
Too. Yeah, well they'd have to, cuz you'd have to build a whole new factory.

Scott Wilkinson (00:44:05):
<laugh>. Right Now I did, one thing I didn't mention and we'll talk about in the podcast on Tuesday, Sharp has done this already. Oh, remember years ago they did something called the Quaran

Leo Laporte (00:44:17):
And how did they that go

Scott Wilkinson (00:44:19):
<laugh>. It didn't go very well because that had an extra yellow sub.

Leo Laporte (00:44:24):
I remember that.

Scott Wilkinson (00:44:25):
Yeah. But the problem was that the signal it was getting

Leo Laporte (00:44:29):
Didn't have only had rgb and so it was actually had a makeup feel pushing. It was, Can you stick around to the top?

Mikah Sargent (00:44:36):
Sure. Thank you, Scott.

Leo Laporte (00:44:39):
I used to have a producer named Eileen, and every time I sang this to her, she punched me. She's very annoyed. Yeah, she was very annoyed. Just something I learned. If somebody has a name that's in a song, don't probably, Roxanne, you don't want to sing it. Roxanne. Every time she walks in, that's terrible. Terrible. 88. 88. Ask. That's the phone number. (888) 827-5536. Hopeful free from anywhere in the US or Canada. You are listening to the tech guys.

Mikah Sargent (00:45:07):
What's that song? There goes Ma, Leo, watch him as he goes.

Leo Laporte (00:45:13):
There is no song with Leo in it or Mikah. So we're safe. Yeah. Who we're safe. Although I chatroom probably come up with something.

Mikah Sargent (00:45:21):
<laugh>. Yeah. They'll be like, Oh yeah, there's this Cambodian song has mic. What about that?

Leo Laporte (00:45:27):
Back to the phones. We go 88. 88. Ask Leo website Tech guy labs.com that, Yeah, that's the quarter million dollar website. So please use it. <laugh>, we spent all that money on it, please use it. That's where you'll have links to the stuff we talk about. You'll have a audio and video from the show. You'll have a transcript. We're trying to make it useful for you if you're listening and say, Well, what did they say? What were they talking about? Next, Mark in Los Angeles. Hello, Mark.

Caller 2 (00:45:57):
Hello Leo. Long time listener. This is my first time calling.

Leo Laporte (00:46:01):
We love our first time callers. Welcome. Welcome.

Caller 2 (00:46:06):
I hope to help me avoid getting in trouble with my wife. These concerns are wifi connection,

Leo Laporte (00:46:17):
<laugh>. I'm sorry, I shouldn't laugh. I've been through this. Okay. Okay.

Caller 2 (00:46:22):
I have an ASIS gaming.

Leo Laporte (00:46:28):
Very nice. Those are good routers. Yeah.

Caller 2 (00:46:30):
Router, Yeah. Is the AX 5,400.

Leo Laporte (00:46:34):
Okay. Very nice router. Yeah. What's the problem? Is your wife not getting good connectivity?

Caller 2 (00:46:42):
Our bedroom is about 20 feet away and she was having a lot of dropping issues. So I got an extender. It was a

Leo Laporte (00:46:59):
That's okay. Could we can stop you right there. Yeah, yeah. <laugh>,

Mikah Sargent (00:47:04):
Depending on what you're rocking. If it's an extender or a repeater

Caller 2 (00:47:08):
That it was dropping especially when she was on Zoom. So then I got her a Netflix thing. She could plug into her computer. The net gear Nighthawk AC 1900. But she's still complaining that.

Leo Laporte (00:47:30):
Yeah. So here's the problem, by the way. You got a great router. The Nighthawk six does wifi six. It's very fast. The the AX, 5,400 is an industry standard for how many bands it has and how fast it is. And it's very good. And it even says, I'm looking at the spec, 2,500 square foot coverage. So you thought reasonably 20 feet down the hall should be fine. But wifi is, I always say that radio frequencies of black art, it's voodoo <affirmative> and it does weird things. For instance, and I think you can fix this without the extender. The extender is not helping you.

Mikah Sargent (00:48:13):
Exactly. Yeah. The extender. So because of the way that wifi works, you can actually end up messing up your connection by putting too many wifi points in your home because they start to compete with one another, they start to cancel each other out and it can lead to a whole host of issues.

Leo Laporte (00:48:30):
Plus the extenders only are half speed. Yes. Because they spend half the time talking to you, half the time talking to the router. So they're gonna immediately cut your speed in half. Zoom is dropping frames because it, you're not giving it enough bandwidth probably. There may be other things. So going on, there may be competition in the house, as you said, if you have extenders all over the place you may be watching Netflix in the living room and she's trying to zoom in the bedroom. That's a problem. This is why often we recommend mesh, but I don't, Before you do mesh, the ear or the orbi neck ear makes an orbi, which is a mesh router. There are many, many mesh routers. Google just release their updated wifi six E mesh router. Before you do that though, try repositioning the nighthawk.

Mikah Sargent (00:49:13):
I was going to say, just last week I was having all these internet issues in my home. I've got arrow, I've got mesh, and normally it's not a problem. And I went upstairs to where my arrow is, and lo and behold, I had put something metal by accident while I was doing other things in front of my I router metal.

Leo Laporte (00:49:33):
The

Mikah Sargent (00:49:34):
Signal was not getting to where I needed Jesus of death. Exactly.

Leo Laporte (00:49:37):
So are humans, by the way.

Mikah Sargent (00:49:38):
Yes. Us water bags,

Leo Laporte (00:49:39):
Big bags of water are not good for wifi or other living things.

Caller 2 (00:49:44):
Got, I've got my router in the living room right next to the sofa.

Leo Laporte (00:49:51):
Raise it up. Raise it up. So the first thing to do is get it above the heads of the humans. That may be all you need to do if the walls in your house or the doors have metal in them.

Caller 2 (00:50:06):
Not likely. Yeah,

Leo Laporte (00:50:07):
It's not typical. The older,

Caller 2 (00:50:10):
Cheap wooden doors. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:50:12):
Good. Cheap, wooden's good. Sometimes I kind of liken this to having a lamp in the living room and trying to read a book in the bedroom. Wifi is, it kind of propagates like lamplight. And if something's in the way, it'll block it. If there's a door closed, it might block it. It's better than light going through a door, but it doesn't really designed to be line of sight. So repositioning a router, making it higher up often helps a lot. Just turning. It sometimes helps. You gotta play with it. You might wanna do a wifi assay in your house. If you have an Android phone, you can, There are a variety of wifi tools you could put on there that will map your wifi in your house and tell you where there's weak spots. And that's a handy thing to use as you're repositioning your router.

Caller 2 (00:51:06):
Okay. So do you have a good app for that one?

Leo Laporte (00:51:10):
I use a variety of them. My favorite, I think is wifi analyzer. That's free on the Google Play store. There's also one called wifi heat map. That's really handy because it then will give, you can actually do a layout of your house <laugh> and you can see where there's problems. And because you can't do it with an iPhone, because iPhone Apple will not let the app have access to the signal strength, but Android does. So

Caller 2 (00:51:41):
Having Android, that's fine.

Leo Laporte (00:51:42):
Yeah. Yeah. It's one good. Or a Windows laptop would do it as well. So there's some good choices. There's a one called net spot for Android. In fact, net spott has an article how to create and read an Android wifi heat map. Remember that your phone has different characteristics than your wife's laptop, but it'll give you some idea of the strengths. There may also be somebody, a neighbor. You live in a standalone building or an apartment.

Caller 2 (00:52:11):
Apartment,

Leo Laporte (00:52:12):
Yeah. So I bet you on the other side of your bedroom wall, your neighbor has wifi <affirmative> and that may be interfering in your bedroom where it doesn't in the other parts of the house. So the wifi analyzer will give you some idea of what other channels there are. You have technically 11 wifi channels for every frequency, but you will find that really there's three basic channels with side channels. So knowing which channel your neighbor's using and which frequencies your neighbor's using might help. For instance, your neck gear supports the 5G band, Get your wife on the 5g. It doesn't go as far, but you're only 20 feet away, but it is less interference prone. It actually doesn't go through walls as well. So if it's your neighbor causing the problem, your neighbors, her wifi, going through your bedroom wall, 5G will might fix that unless she's on 5G <laugh>. But even if she is, the wall will stop it. 5g? Yeah. So there's all sorts of ways to play. I'm sorry, did I say neck here? You have an asus. I'm sorry. Same thing though. It'll do the 5g. So she's already on the 5g?

Caller 2 (00:53:23):
Yes.

Leo Laporte (00:53:23):
Yeah. Then that. Then try other ones. <laugh>. It's why it's voodoo. It's trial and error and it's not necessarily logical.

Scott Wilkinson (00:53:32):
Okay.

Leo Laporte (00:53:33):
Just like you Mikah, when you realize, Oh, I put some metal in there. Yeah,

Mikah Sargent (00:53:38):
Yeah. I mean there's just so many things. If you use one of those LAP stands for your laptop, if that has metal. Good point. That could be blocking

Leo Laporte (00:53:47):
It. Oh yeah. We have metal lap stands, don't we?

Mikah Sargent (00:53:48):
Oh, they can sometimes block the wifi router or wifi connection inside of the laptop. It's, It's hard to tell.

Leo Laporte (00:53:54):
Yeah you have a brand new excellent router designed for a large area. So I would not necessarily go out and get a new one. I would try playing with it. Leon. Mic your tech guys more to come stay here. Do ladies or gentleman how to create a wifi heat map with Scott Wilkinson? No. <laugh>. No, I won't do that. No, no, I won't do this. Not

Scott Wilkinson (00:54:24):
My area of expertise. Although it's very interesting, isn't

Leo Laporte (00:54:28):
It? Yeah, yeah. I'm sorry, I have such a little counter here. I apologize.

Scott Wilkinson (00:54:33):
Oh, that's all right. Can see it.

Leo Laporte (00:54:35):
Okay, I'll

Scott Wilkinson (00:54:36):
Try to, I actually have I, all I'm using is the Xfinity box with the wifi in it and it extends through my house just fine.

Leo Laporte (00:54:44):
Yeah, that's the thing. It's not, so you might say, Oh, I need this or that, do hickey. But that's not necessarily

Scott Wilkinson (00:54:52):
Necessarily

Leo Laporte (00:54:52):
The answer. Yeah.

Scott Wilkinson (00:54:53):
By the way, you were referring to 5g, did you mean?

Leo Laporte (00:54:56):
Oh, gigahertz.

Scott Wilkinson (00:54:58):
Five gigahertz. Yeah. Yeah. Not 5g.

Leo Laporte (00:55:00):
Well, this is what's confusing.

Scott Wilkinson (00:55:02):
I know

Leo Laporte (00:55:03):
It's 5g, H S Z, but what on the routers? They call it 5g. So 5g, it's very confusing. Very confusing. Hey, I'm gonna get a cup of Joe.

Scott Wilkinson (00:55:13):
Okay. So get a cup of Joe,

Leo Laporte (00:55:15):
I'll

Scott Wilkinson (00:55:16):
Be glad to hold down the

Leo Laporte (00:55:17):
Forest for you. Please do. Thank you,

Scott Wilkinson (00:55:18):
Sir. Ah yeah. So, hey everybody, nice to see you. Empty pockets is asking me how many colors are there that can't be seen naturally. And is it possible to see these colors with a computer? The answer is second part of the question. Yes, it's possible to see these colors with a computer. How many colors are there that can't be seen naturally? Trillions, <laugh> color or light is part of the electromagnetic spectrum, which extends all the way from radio waves up to gamma rays. And light, visible light is a tiny, tiny fraction, a little sliver out of that vast spectrum. And so visible light, I've always found this fascinating it human perception for sound. We can hear 10 octaves of sound. We can perceive 10 octaves of sound. Of course there are sounds above what we can hear, which dogs can hear. It's called ultrasound. And there are sounds below what we can hear called infr sonics. Similarly, we can only see a small range of visible light, but instead of 10 octaves as we can with sound, we can only visually perceive one octave of light.

(00:56:46):
So light color is a much more complicated thing in the brain, and so we can perceive much less of it. And interestingly, just like sounds above, what we can hear are called ultrasonics light above. The frequency we can perceive directly is called ultraviolet. That the highest, the short, the shortest wavelength we can see is ultraviolet or is violet. Longest. Wavelength we can see is deep red and below deep red is infrared. So just like infr, sonics are below what we can hear. Infrared is below what we can see. And just like ultrasonic is above what we can hear, ultraviolet is above what we can see. Now, as I mentioned in a post there to Mt pockets the James Webb telescope, this new space telescope that's up there, it records images. It captures light in the infrared region. So we can't see it directly. We don't perceive it. So what they do, speaking to the second part of his question is because they show these great images on TV and on websites and oh, look at this great new James Webb image, which are fabulous. They're beautiful, but they have to be processed and bring that infrared energy into the visible range just so you can see it. So it's not precisely what James Webb is, has recorded, but it's processed so that we can see it and marvel at the beauty of the universe. It's really quite amazing.

(00:58:35):
Hey, Dr. Mom, Grandma, good to see you. I just got my Covid booster two days ago and it kinda laid me up for a day, but I'm much better now. And loquacious always good to see you. How do you hope you're doing well? Yes, Dr. Mom, Grandma, you can see infrared and ultraviolet with special sensors. But again, not directly. You cannot perceive them directly with the eye. Some other animals can I forget which ones now. Maybe insects, maybe bees can see into the ultraviolet. And in fact, this is a very interesting thought experiment about what aliens range of free of electromagnetic frequencies might aliens be sensitive to. Maybe they can see into the ultraviolet or down into the infrared.

(00:59:34):
And Dr. Mom, you are exactly correct. You can get infrared goggles or scopes, right? Heat scopes that you put on. And you can see that green, that greenish color. It's not actually green, but the scope or the sensor is translating the information. And by the way, infrared is another name for heat. But you can then see heat signatures. You can see where things are hotter or colder, but the scope moves them into the actual green range so that we can actually perceive them. Dr. Mom, Grandma, Yes. Mazeltov. Indeed. I did get my flu shot a couple weeks ago actually, so I got that ahead of time Anyway. So yeah, deer maybe can see in different ranges, different animals can see different ranges. But it's important to note that we as humans, and in fact, all animals really can only see a small portion of the entire electromagnetic spectrum. And it's important to realize or understand that light. What we see is simply electromagnetic radiation. And people hear the word radiation and go, Oh, ooh, scary. No, it's not scary. I mean sure. Atomic or nuclear radiation. Yeah, that's scary. But electro light is just radiation. Heat is radiation. X-rays are radiation. And they're all on this electromagnetic spectrum, which spans a vast, vast range of which we can perceive by site only. A tiny, tiny, tiny part.

(01:01:31):
Oh, Mike Ice. Hey, how you doing? Oh, and you're sending me a simpy t-shirt. Thanks, man. Virtually my whole wardrobe, by the way, is manufacturer and industry organizational, which I love. So Mike, thanks so much for grabbing one of those for me. It's simp empty. Sorry, I couldn't make it. Although I must admit, I'm still nervous about Covid even with all the boosters and everything that I've gotten. One of my guests at Next Tuesday's podcast just came back from, I think it Wasti, was the show that you were at. And he got covid, even though he is fully boosted. So I'm still nervous about it. I gotta tell you, of course with and stuff, if you get it, it's not as bad. It's not as severe. So there's that Dr. Mom, Grandma, yes. Be nervous. Be very nervous.

(01:02:34):
Let's see, Stimson says, Why is a master monitor of an I IPS type and not a VA type LCD panel used in the pro world? Is this because IPS has more color, accurate? No, both are, both can be extremely color accurate. Probably the answer is with an I P S panel, you maintain color accuracy across a wider range. And so if this is what's called a client monitor, and it probably is where the client, the director of the movie or the producer comes in and wants to see your work, they don't have to be directly dead on center. They can be slightly off center and still see an accurate image. Whereas VA panels stands for vertical alignment. That angle is much narrower. So that's probably why. But I think most post production and coloring houses don't, don't use LCD at all. They use olet. Now the new Sony mastering monitor is L C D. I don't know whether it's I Ps, or va, but it's really, it's only 30 inches and it's really meant only for the colorist to sit directly in front of Dr. Mom. Grandma. How does Pantone decide what the color of the year is? Boy, I don't know. That's a good question. In my opinion, some years it's pretty icky <laugh>. Well, color is,

(01:04:06):
No, it is what it is.

Mikah Sargent (01:04:13):
Hello?

Scott Wilkinson (01:04:14):
Yes, hello Mikah.

Mikah Sargent (01:04:15):
Hi. Welcome back to Tech Guy Radio Show. Leo Laport is on. Ah, he's here. He's here with us. Okay. Yes, he's here. And it is time to head back to the phones, <laugh> and talk about tech. That's what we do here. 88 88. Ask Leo. That's the number you call. Yes. If you have your questions. Yes. Bobblehead, he's

Leo Laporte (01:04:39):
Oh, whoa,

Mikah Sargent (01:04:40):
<laugh>. There, there. Now we've got your microphone on. Oh,

Leo Laporte (01:04:43):
That's too bad. I have a bobblehead that when you hit it, it answers questions. Maybe we'll have to do it this

Mikah Sargent (01:04:48):
Time. Yeah, I guess. So. Let's see who's next. Up on the line. It looks like Scott from Hisperia, California. Hey, joining us. Hello Scott.

Caller 3 (01:05:00):
Hello Mikah. Hi Leo. Thanks for taking my calls. Good to talk to you again.

Mikah Sargent (01:05:05):
My Hey, Leo's gonna get his headphones plugged in and it is good to talk to you too. What can we help you with

Caller 3 (01:05:11):
<laugh>? Well if Leo is there several, I don't know, years ago, maybe on one of the shows on twi, you interviewed the guys who did the helm email server.

Mikah Sargent (01:05:24):
Okay.

Caller 3 (01:05:25):
And I got an email from them earlier this week. They're going out of business.

Mikah Sargent (01:05:31):
Oh no. Helm is going out of business. The email server that used to be sponsor

Leo Laporte (01:05:35):
On the network. Oh, we used to do their ads. They're going outta business. Yes. Now, does that affect your, Cause you basically have a piece of hardware in your house that is their server. Did they say there's any way to keep continuity of service?

Caller 3 (01:05:51):
Well, if I understand what they said in the email, they're trying to develop, write some sort of Linux app where you could run your own server.

Leo Laporte (01:06:04):
Yeah. So you have a server, which is a nice, that nice triangular piece of hardware you bought. Oh, I'm feeling really bad about this right now, cuz we did, I have one too. The problem is really not Helm's exact fault. I'm sorry that they weren't able to make a go of it, but that

Caller 3 (01:06:27):
They said it was a supply chain. They just, they

Leo Laporte (01:06:29):
Couldn't, Yeah.

Caller 3 (01:06:31):
Yeah, that makes sense. Hit about the same time they switched their manufacturing to China just before Covid or around then.

Leo Laporte (01:06:41):
I know these guys and they're very conscientious and they're gonna try to solve, I'll tell you why it's a problem for them. Email is broken. <laugh> is the reason. So in order for you to run an email, you could, in theory, on any Linux box, any computer, put email servers, software, postfix or something on there and run your own email server. But the problem is, because spam got so bad, nobody, your email would bounce to everybody. Gmail would reject you. outlook.com would reject you. They'd say, Well look, you're sending this from a residential IP address. We don't know. It's not spam, so we're just gonna reject it outta hand. It's gotten to the point, and this is kind of the way of the world where these big companies will only accept email from other big companies, <affirmative>. So what Helm did, which was quite clever, they gave you the hardware, You are running an email server, but in order for your email to work, they would route it through their servers at Helm because they went out and they would buy IP addresses, a block of IP addresses, and then precondition them, go to all the different email companies and make sure that that email would go through, They would polish them up, so to speak.

(01:08:04):
Weren't in a residential block. A lot of residential blocks are just blocked out. They weren't in a block that has already been Black hole. That has been determined by their variety of email services out there, that email providers use to say, No, no, this is an address that Spam came from. And the problem is spammers are so, they're like cockroaches, they're everywhere. So many email addresses have been tainted by this. So Helm went out, they got these addresses. So in order for this to work, you had to use your own email server. But then I would have to go through Helm and there's specially crafted IP addresses for Gmail to accept it. So if Helm turns off a service, you'll still have an email server. It might even still try to send email. But unfortunately Gmail's gonna go, I don't know who you are. So I'm not taking it. So what somebody's gotta do, and may, it wouldn't be a hard thing to do, somebody's gotta do is create a service to support these helm users. And I would hope the helm guys are very technical, very nice. I really like them. I'm very sad to hear that they're not gonna make it.

Caller 3 (01:09:08):
Yeah, they're very responsive with technical support problems. I'll send them something 11 o'clock at night and have an answer when I wake up.

Leo Laporte (01:09:17):
They really cared. They were trying to respond to this idea. In the old days, many moons ago, anybody could have an email server in their house but there became all sorts of problems. In fact, your isp, your internet service provider may prevent you from out sending outbound mail from your house. In fact, almost certainly does. Cause they don't want spammers to camp on their systems. So it's all because of spam. This is why we can't have nice things <laugh>. And it's a shame. The only hope you could hold out is that Helm will come up with and kind of open solution.

Caller 3 (01:09:55):
And it sounds like they're trying to do that. But I don't know that I like tech stuff, but my life is pretty full. I don't know that. Yeah, you don't need to do this my own email service. You don't need to do this. So

Leo Laporte (01:10:05):
What I, I'm so sorry. I really like it. I apologize cuz you probably bought it Cuz I told you to. Huh? I feel bad.

Caller 3 (01:10:11):
No, well no. I heard about them because, Oh,

Leo Laporte (01:10:15):
Okay.

Caller 3 (01:10:15):
<laugh>. I made my own choice and I asked them before I bought it, Well what if you go out of this? How do I get my stuff off? And they said, Oh well we'll help. We'll do it.

Leo Laporte (01:10:23):
You have your email, you haven't lost anything. You just don't have the ability to send email.

Caller 3 (01:10:28):
Yeah. But what I really wanted it for and use it for is you've always said, well get your own domain name and then when you sign up for a service like Verizon, you can sign up@verizonmydomain.com or whatever. And so I've kind of done that and I have my own domain that I pay.

Leo Laporte (01:10:50):
So if you have your own domain, you're golden. Because the

Caller 3 (01:10:54):
Question

Leo Laporte (01:10:54):
You just, instead of having it go to the Helm server, you go with another service provider.

Caller 3 (01:11:00):
Well, and that's what I wanna ask. I've got all of these email addresses now, which if I had to, I can combine down to four but I have to have those four. And

Leo Laporte (01:11:13):
Here's what I would do, and this is what I do. I actually don't use Helm for my main email. I ran it for a while and liked it, but I use fast mail.com. So you go Fast Mail. If you have a fast mail account, it's a paid account. It's not free. You can set it up to I Yeah, you could set up to work with your domain. I have about 20 domains there. They don't limit the domains and they don't limit the number of email addresses at that domain. I love that. The alias is, you can send, Yeah. So let's say I have a leo.email as an email address. I can go in there and I say, I want all mail leo.email to go into my FastMail inbox. And you can filter on it cuz it will still say it was to Verizon leo.email. So you can still filter it. It doesn't matter what names you've used, they'll all work. You don't have to set them up one by one. Just the fact that the domain is hosted on fast mail means it will all go into your fast mail inbox.

Caller 3 (01:12:10):
Okay. I guess I don't understand Alias about, I think part of my problem with that will be two of the email addresses. One belongs to my wife, one belongs to my son, and I don't wanna see their email.

Leo Laporte (01:12:23):
No, of course not. So you could set up a rule to automatically, the minute it comes to those addresses, put it in their inbox somewhere else.

Caller 3 (01:12:32):
And when they send email, it's not going to come from

Leo Laporte (01:12:35):
No, that's up to their email client. All email clients, including Gmail, let you set up a personality or an alias that says, No, no, it's not coming from you. Scott. Scott, that's it. Scott, I'm looking for your name. It's not coming from Scott Scott's email.com. It's coming from Scott's wife@verizon.net or whatever. Okay. So it's completely independent of that. That's the email client that does that. And FastMail also has good support. So if you're having trouble with this whole process, they'll help you. I have really good support. Literally probably a dozen email domains set up at Fast Mail and they all end up in my fast mail inbox so I don't have to worry about what the email address is. And as you said, you probably heard me say that when I signed up for a Verizon account, it was Verizon leo.email.

Caller 3 (01:13:27):
Right, Right. Okay. All right. I'm

Leo Laporte (01:13:31):
Sorry that this happened. It's a beautiful little pyramid shaped server. You can probably, what they should do is let you get into it so you can at least make it a server of some other kind web server or a file server. Interesting. They have support next cloud. So you probably just use Next Cloud on it and then yeah, you have your home file server and just do email at FastMail. I ended up doing that because ain't nobody got time to run an email server.

Caller 3 (01:13:58):
Yeah, yeah. I was talking to my wife about that last night and

Leo Laporte (01:14:03):
It's a nice idea, Scott,

Caller 3 (01:14:04):
Time to run a

Leo Laporte (01:14:06):
Server. I ain't got time for that email server. They know got, Trust me, people who run email servers, they're regretting it. Yeah. <laugh> the worst. Let somebody else list it. Worst. That's why Helm's kind of a neat idea. But ultimately Fast Mail, and there are other companies like this. This is the one I use. Fast Mail is so good, so professional, They do everything right. Things that are tricky, like D Kim and spf, these are the email authentication protocols. They're tricky. They're hard to do. They do. So your email will go through from Fast Mail and that's the nice thing.

Caller 3 (01:14:45):
And you have good customer support. So

Leo Laporte (01:14:48):
They're Australian. So if you don't mind, I Hey mate, what's going on <laugh> Now they're great. Honestly, that adds to, I'm a big fan actually. And I should get them to advertise cuz I give them free plugs all the time. Yes, you do. Yeah, I really like them.

Caller 3 (01:15:02):
The first place I went.

Leo Laporte (01:15:03):
Good. Yeah, I mean, I'm sure there are others. If you want encrypted people like Proton mail and stuff like that. Email is not inherently encrypted. It's like sending a postcard. It's just the nature of email. And don't send private stuff through email.

Caller 3 (01:15:18):
I just, even that fast mail, it would've been two $20 a month for those four addresses. Oh, I mean a year. A year. Not a month. And that's not the end of the world. But

Leo Laporte (01:15:33):
Don't you register one address, Alias, Just one address, and then you can have all your domains hosted there.

Caller 3 (01:15:40):
Okay.

Leo Laporte (01:15:40):
It's much easier. I only have one address at Fast Mail one account. That's all you need. It'll do it all.

Caller 3 (01:15:47):
And then you use aliases for No, you

Leo Laporte (01:15:49):
Just, you'll see. And once you sign up for sign the, I think they have a free trial sign up for the free trial. And then under domains you can attach your domains to Fast mail and all your MX records to Fast mail. All the mail goes through them. And then you can just do whatever you want. Yeah, you don't need more than one account. One account does it all.

Caller 3 (01:16:05):
Oh, oh, okay. Okay. Cool. All right, Well you gotta

Leo Laporte (01:16:11):
Try. Well I feel a little better. <laugh>. I'm sorry. Yeah, tell your wife Leo. Sorry,

Caller 3 (01:16:17):
<laugh>.

Leo Laporte (01:16:19):
Scott. It's a pleasure. 88. 88. Ask Leo. That's the phone number. (888) 827-5536. Leo and Mikah, we switched seats just for now. How do you like it? No, no. And I'm gonna get the Leo Bobblehead working and then we won't have to do anything at all. <laugh>. We just let it answer all the question more calls right after this Used to be, you could tap its head, what did it say? And it would say stuff. Mr. Dandy made this Mr. Electric Electronics by Jorge Sanchez. It's 6 28 Design painting by Robert Martin Jr. Design and Sculpture by James Cola. And yeah, it's nice cuz the head just comes right off.

(01:17:10):
Mike has been sitting next to this all this time. I'm amazed that you never played with it. By the way, what does this say at the bottom there? Chief Twi? I should send this to Elon. Maybe he could use it. All right, I'm gonna go in the other seat. You could always sit here if you want. Used to be. Just tap his head. But I think the batteries have died. Oh. But in the memory there was, Hi, this is Leo Laporte. <laugh> and things like that. Oh, that's fun. Yeah, it was really it. So cute. And I forgot it says Chief Twin and I should take a picture of that and make it my Twitter avatar. I don't do anything on Twitter now. I'm the chief tutor now on Mastodon. That's Oh, that's funny. Chief tutor. Yeah. Yeah. But I said I don't wanna promote Macon too much cuz I don't really want everybody on Twitter to move to Mastodon. That's not, That will just make Mastodon more bad. Like Twitter. Yeah. Mato. Cool.

(01:18:11):
How much time do we have? You have no, no time that, That's meaningless. You have a couple minutes? Okay, go ahead. Then I can make mine. Go ahead. Yeah, it's already warmed up. Maybe if I do this in portrait mode. Oh, stop it. See, I feel like I could play the organ like that. It's all Leo Laporte. Mikah, Sergeant, your tech guys. 88. 88. Ask Leo. We found, well Scooter X our A chat mod. Found a good document on what to do if you have a helm server. And we're gonna put that into the show notes, alternatives, things you can do to make it better. Things you can do to make it better. 88. 88. Ask Leo back to the phones we go. By the way, I should mention you can dial 88. 88. Ask Leo. But you can also, if you, for completeness sake, you can also dial 88. 88. Ask Leo and Mikah that actually we tried it. It works. John, on the line from Thousand Oaks, California. Hi John.

Caller 4 (01:19:19):
Hey guys. How you doing Leo? It's such a privilege. Thank you for taking my call.

Leo Laporte (01:19:24):
Thank you for calling. I appreciate it.

Caller 4 (01:19:26):
Yeah, I got a strange one for you. I've been listening to you forever and you're always great. But this is one I've been trying to tackle on my own.

Leo Laporte (01:19:34):
Well, we love puzzles. That's good. Give us a pu, you're So we have a caller who moved to Portugal, so I have some

Caller 4 (01:19:41):
Expertise. No, I'm going to move to Portugal. Good. And what I'm doing is I've been going through all the travel sites. Yes.

Leo Laporte (01:19:48):
We actually, I'm saying we have another caller, in fact, I think his name is John, you might like him. He lives in Portugal now. Called me couple of years ago saying, I'm just like you. I'm moving to Portugal. So what can we do to help?

Caller 4 (01:20:01):
Well, on the travel sites, Expedia, Priceline, Hot Wire, you go to all of 'em and ev,

(01:20:06):
All of 'em have different prices for

Leo Laporte (01:20:08):
Different things. Don't use those anymore. I am now, I should have said something about this. I was trying to book a flight for my daughter to a all places Lisbon. Okay. Went to probably one of those Expedia, Travelocity, Kayak, whatever, and <affirmative>, whatever. Mm-hmm. And found a price and I clicked the link and without me really understanding what happened, it sent me to a different site, which was kind of a scammy ticket aggregator site. It wasn't the airline. And I bought a ticket and then I looked at reviews online. I thought, oh my gosh, I may have been conned. I was able to get my money out of them but I do not, I no longer trust the links on these big travel sites. So if,

Caller 4 (01:20:57):
Okay, so what

Leo Laporte (01:20:58):
Do we do? Yeah, Well good question. I mean, Google still, Google bought the big company, I A T P I think was the name of it that that actually has the back end of all of this stuff. And they now have a pretty good flight search tool. And they're not actually selling anything. They don't have affiliate relations as far as I know, at least so far. Itta, Itta. That's it. Thank you. <affirmative>. And so I would just, So you want to, let's say I'm looking for LAX to Lisbon. Lisbon, Yeah. Yeah. Just Google it. The very first thing you'll see is flights from Los Angeles to Lisbon. Actually, Johnny Jet is here. Johnny. Oh good. We can ask him too. Yeah. He's gonna be joining us in a few minutes. Do you mind if I put you on a little early,

Johnny Jet (01:21:53):
Johnny? I'm on now. Let's do

Leo Laporte (01:21:55):
It. So am I wrong in saying those travel aggregation sites like Expedia, Travelocity are no longer the place to go?

Johnny Jet (01:22:04):
Well, you are a little bit wrong. I would say always price it out there. But I wouldn't book there.

Leo Laporte (01:22:09):
Don't The reason why

Johnny Jet (01:22:10):
You wanna, That's right. The reason why you wanna use Expedia or Travelocity is because they're really good at package deals. You don't want just buy a flight direct,

Leo Laporte (01:22:19):
But then you're going through a packager instead of the airline. And that's where your troubles

Johnny Jet (01:22:23):
Well, but you can save money because the airlines do discount their tickets to them if you really wanna save money. But if you wanna avoid all headaches, you should first of all get a travel agent or an advisor and they will help you with that. That's not a bad, Yeah, they will charge 25 to $40 depending on their deal. But if you really don't wanna have any hassles booked directly, use Itta or use Google flights, do a search and book direct. And that way if there is a problem, if you need a refund or change your ticket, you don't have to deal with the third party.

Leo Laporte (01:22:58):
So this is a way to kind of look at what's out there, see what the prices are roughly.

Johnny Jet (01:23:04):
But set a fair alert. Always set a fair alert.

Leo Laporte (01:23:06):
And where do you set that, Johnny?

Johnny Jet (01:23:08):
You can do that on Google Flights. You can do that on Kayak. You can do that on a fair compare Hopper. There's a bunch of them that allow it. So you, And they're free. And I always set 'em even before or after I book a ticket. That way you can find out if the price drops or goes up and then

Leo Laporte (01:23:26):
Rebook. Okay. Johnny, you gotta go back in your box now. <laugh>. No, he's coming up next. Yeah, hold on, You hang on. And I will talk to you off the air. Leo Laporte, Michael Sergeant, the tech guys, when that music comes on, we are gone. John <laugh>. But you're still on with us on the podcast, so that's okay. Continue. That's

Caller 4 (01:23:52):
Okay. Yep. Well, the thing was, a friend of mine told me about something called access development is where all these guys go or something like that. And he sent me a website called Saving Money Every day.info. So I went there and they have everything. They have the cars, the hotels, the flight.

Leo Laporte (01:24:09):
That's a packager just like Johnny, right? Johnny is, Do you know that?

Johnny Jet (01:24:13):
I never, what's it called? Saving money every day.

Caller 4 (01:24:17):
Yeah, saving money every day. Dot info. And I was gonna sign up because they have a thing, a refundable 30 day thing. And my friends' been using it for a month now and he loves it. And I'm like, I'm, I'm, what do you call it, Gun shy guys?

Leo Laporte (01:24:32):
Yeah, you should be. I would be. On the other hand, I mean, so buyer beware. Right?

Johnny Jet (01:24:38):
But if your buddy says he loves it and you trust your buddy. Yeah, he does.

Leo Laporte (01:24:42):
Yeah.

Johnny Jet (01:24:43):
You can give it a shot. But I would

Leo Laporte (01:24:45):
From that's what they call it from that, it's a discount buyers club. So it's a membership benefits program. There are advantages sometimes to group buying. And I've seen this before and I think that's what these guys are doing. They're doing group buys and of course then you have some clout. If you go to a manufacturer and say, I'm gonna buy 400 vacuum cleaners, the best price you can give me. You may well get a better price in retail, but,

Caller 4 (01:25:11):
Oh,

Leo Laporte (01:25:12):
Interesting. Yeah, that's how these guys work. It's a group purchase and they do it for everything, not just travel. Right?

Caller 4 (01:25:19):
Yeah. Well if you look at a site, I mean, he's got everything.

Leo Laporte (01:25:21):
Yeah, you can buy tires from these guys.

Caller 4 (01:25:24):
Yeah. I mean they have a me telemedicine. I was thinking, well that might be good

Leo Laporte (01:25:28):
To have. Oh, a little nerve. I'm always nervous. Especially if it's got a.info domain. This, I mean, I a little bit telemedicine. Wow. I'm not sure I wanna discount on my doctor, but maybe

Caller 4 (01:25:39):
<laugh>, maybe. Oh, how about the one tele pit below it? I was like, Oh, okay. What else?

Leo Laporte (01:25:44):
Oh yeah, saving free legal consultation. Oh, consultations.

Johnny Jet (01:25:49):
Have you looked for reviews? Look at the bb and b. Better Business Bureau.

Leo Laporte (01:25:53):
Yeah. See what people on Reddit say. Reddit's always a good place to find out what people really think.

Caller 4 (01:25:59):
Yeah, I haven't done that yet. Like I said, I'm just, I just wanna get the Portugal guys, if you can help me there. <laugh>. You don't wanna get, Well,

Leo Laporte (01:26:06):
I mean, honestly, you're gonna fly tap, right Johnny? It's pretty much taped.

Johnny Jet (01:26:09):
So buy a round trip a one way might be more expensive, even though you might not use the return, Price it out as a round trip ticket because a lot of times it's a much cheaper to buy a round trip ticket. Yeah. So price that out. Just change the date by a day or two. Leaving on a Tuesday or Wednesday could help <affirmative> avoid holidays.

Leo Laporte (01:26:32):
So Johnny has newsletters too. The points guy has newsletters. There's a lot of places. I always look at somebody who's not trying to make money off of you. <laugh>, which

Johnny Jet (01:26:46):
Day are you looking, by the way?

Caller 4 (01:26:49):
Oh, I always know the book. Tuesday or Wednesday, middle of January. And if I have to, I'll push it to February.

Johnny Jet (01:26:54):
I'm not, You should have no problem finding a cheap flight.

Leo Laporte (01:26:57):
It's not too expensive to fly Lisbon.

Johnny Jet (01:26:59):
Actually, that's the cheapest. You can go. Well, cheapest time. Yeah. Well, is this

Leo Laporte (01:27:03):
Gonna be like your move flight or this just flying out to check it out?

Caller 4 (01:27:06):
Well, basic. Well, you can do go. I'm going. I have friends that live there and everybody's told me the same thing. You go there for 10 days and check it out. Yeah. I'm European anyway, so that's stuff. I dig it. Plus it's 35% cheaper. The healthcare this way to go. Right?

Leo Laporte (01:27:21):
Oh no, I want do this too. I can't convince my wife, but I would move to Portugal in a heartbeat. It's beautiful country.

Johnny Jet (01:27:27):
6 34, 6 round

Leo Laporte (01:27:29):
Trucks. Nothing.

Johnny Jet (01:27:30):
You can't, Can't beat that.

Caller 4 (01:27:31):
Yeah. Can't beat that. Yeah. But you go for 10 days and then you make up your mind. Then you go there and stay there for three months, you

Leo Laporte (01:27:38):
Get an Airbnb. Exactly. That's what I would do. That's that's smart.

Caller 4 (01:27:43):
And you go up and down and check everything. And most of the guys are doing Algar. I was looking at the Silver Coast and all these places I want to go. But in 10 days, what do you do? So that's why you move back and do the whole nine yards. I can always, Which airport?

Johnny Jet (01:27:57):
Which airport are

Leo Laporte (01:27:58):
You leaving? Oh, we gotta run do this guy named Johnny Jet.

Johnny Jet (01:28:02):
Forget that guy.

Leo Laporte (01:28:04):
<laugh>

(01:28:07):
Tech Eye podcast brought to you this weekend. Every week, frankly, by Cachefly I mean quite literally. Brought to you by our Content delivery network, our cdn cachefly.com. We love cash. I've been using 'em for more than a decade to make it easy for you to get the show. So when you download a show from our website, when your podcast client downloads a show, they're all getting it from a server that's near you, thanks to Cacjef;u. They've got servers all over the world, 50 plus points of presence. So it does a little calculation. It says, Ah, you're nearest the Vienna server and it downloads it. I think that's pretty cool. But Cachefly Lives more than just a content delivery network. Cachefly is amazing. They now have something called ultra low latency video streaming. Alex Lindsay says, Yeah, I'm gonna try this. He's been using, and I'm sure most of you have web RTC for streaming.

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Johnny Jet (01:32:08):
Hello. Sorry

Leo Laporte (01:32:09):
About your Yankees.

Johnny Jet (01:32:11):
Oh, don't be sorry. Are

Leo Laporte (01:32:12):
You rooting for the Phillies now?

Johnny Jet (01:32:14):
Definitely. I do not like the Astros.

Leo Laporte (01:32:16):
Yeah. I'm root for the Phillies too. I

Johnny Jet (01:32:18):
Think the whole world is But they're in trouble.

Leo Laporte (01:32:20):
Hey, they're not in trouble.

Johnny Jet (01:32:22):
Not yet. They're in trouble. Not yet. In Houston. In Houston with two. They have the best pitchers.

Leo Laporte (01:32:29):
I know, I know.

Johnny Jet (01:32:32):
It's a problem. I'm not even watching a game. I can't watch it unless Phillies are,

Leo Laporte (01:32:36):
It must been Thursday for anybody living in Philadelphia or Texas. Definitely. Because you had a football game and a World Series game between

Johnny Jet (01:32:44):
They won with

Leo Laporte (01:32:45):
Football. Yeah. Yeah. Well the Phil Eagles are hard to beat know. Anyway, we're not here to talk sport ball. No

Johnny Jet (01:32:54):
<laugh>

Leo Laporte (01:32:55):
Here to talk all sorts of stuff. Our friend moving to Portugal he wanted to fly out there to check it out. And then he was gonna do an Airbnb to live there for a little while. And then if he still likes it, he was gonna move there. Which I think is a good plan.

Johnny Jet (01:33:11):
It's definitely a good plan. Yeah. Also, he said he is leaving. You really cannot find cheaper fairs to go to Europe than mid January. So that's a great time to be going.

Leo Laporte (01:33:21):
If you're gonna judge a locale in the northern hemisphere, go in the dead of winter just to see what it's like and then go in the dead of summer.

Johnny Jet (01:33:29):
Well, you don't want dead of summer. You don't want to be in Portugal or Spain in the middle of summer. Is it

Leo Laporte (01:33:35):
Really hot? Yeah. See, it's good to find these things out ahead of time, right? Yeah.

Johnny Jet (01:33:39):
You really want to go in May and September, October are my favorite times of

Leo Laporte (01:33:44):
The, He wants to live there, so he is gonna have to be there year round. So yeah,

Johnny Jet (01:33:47):
Get a taste. Yeah. Except Northern Europe. You want to go in the dead of summer?

Leo Laporte (01:33:52):
Sure.

Johnny Jet (01:33:53):
Scandinavia.

Leo Laporte (01:33:53):
Scandinavia. Which is yeah,

Johnny Jet (01:33:55):
Where my grandfather's from. Oh really?

Leo Laporte (01:33:57):
Where

Johnny Jet (01:33:58):
In which one? Grandfather. One grandfather from Denmark and another grandfather from Southern Italy.

Leo Laporte (01:34:02):
Oh, perfect combination. You get the ice cold, rational blood with the hot Latin temperament. You combine that together and it's Luke warm.

Johnny Jet (01:34:13):
I'm a little bit more than Luke warm

Leo Laporte (01:34:15):
<laugh>.

Johnny Jet (01:34:16):
See,

Leo Laporte (01:34:17):
You could tell what's what's, what's

Johnny Jet (01:34:18):
The news in traveling of, speaking of Europe, I was doing a news nation the other day and they're asking me, where are the deals for Thanksgiving? And I said, you know what? Go to Europe at Thanksgiving because flying in the US during Thanksgiving is expensive. And it's about the same price to fly to Europe. And obviously they don't celebrate Thanksgiving. And our dollar is so strong. You'll get some great deals. There won't be huge crowds. It won't be too hot, it won't be too cold. So consider that.

Mikah Sargent (01:34:47):
Can I ask you about that? Actually? You travel overseas. Sure. And you're obviously using a different currency. Do you have to, You go to your bank and only have cash. Can you use your card while you, How does that all

Johnny Jet (01:34:59):
Work these days? Yeah. So you know, used to go to a currency exchange and change your money. But you used to, I don't even, You

Leo Laporte (01:35:05):
Used to get American Express traveler

Johnny Jet (01:35:08):
Checks Exactly that. Don't before my time. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:35:11):
No I did. I used to do that. And you get ahold of, I've done it before. Chief of them. And you hide them in your money belt. Yep.

Johnny Jet (01:35:17):
Holy The nightmare <laugh>.

Mikah Sargent (01:35:19):
But these days you

Johnny Jet (01:35:21):
Go, you just use, make sure not even just use your credit card. Make sure your credit card has no foreign foreign exchange fees.

Leo Laporte (01:35:28):
Are there credit cards that don't have foreign exchange fees? That's the next question. Cause mine sometimes they could be high, right?

Johnny Jet (01:35:34):
Well they used to. Most of them. Now they don't charge a

Leo Laporte (01:35:37):
Fee. It may not be a fee, but they wanna make sure the exchange rate's good too. Right? Cause that could, They could use that to get you.

Johnny Jet (01:35:44):
Well one of the scams by the way, is let's say every time I've gone to herds in London, right? When I give 'em my credit card, they're like, Oh, they swipe it and they see that I'm American. They're like, Would you like to pay in US dollars or would you like to pay in pounds? Oh, always pay in local

Leo Laporte (01:36:00):
Currency, pay in pounds.

Johnny Jet (01:36:02):
Well, and if it's your Euros, the same question.

Leo Laporte (01:36:05):
Euros. Why

Johnny Jet (01:36:06):
Always pay in the local currency? Because they charge a higher rate. So they're making money. They're the middle man.

Leo Laporte (01:36:12):
They're no fools.

Johnny Jet (01:36:14):
So the best way to do it is just by using a credit card that first of all, you pay off in full every month. If you can't, then don't use a credit card and then just use cash. But if you can make sure you have one that doesn't charge a foreign exchange fee. And I rarely even go to the atm. And if you do go to an atm, ask your bank in advance if they have any partnerships with whatever destination you're going to banks. And then take out enough money for that and make sure no one's watching you to go to indoors to one its name is here in the us. You don't wanna just go to a drive up these days, especially in LA or anywhere New York with people seeing you. Take a lot of cash out and don't count your money in the street. <laugh> and things like

Mikah Sargent (01:36:58):
That. <laugh> one pound.

Leo Laporte (01:37:00):
I like to count my money in the street just to show how much I have. That's $100. That's 200. That's good.

Mikah Sargent (01:37:07):
Yeah. Yeah. Don't do that.

Leo Laporte (01:37:09):
Don't do that. <laugh>. And my ATM number is

Mikah Sargent (01:37:12):
<laugh> five.

Johnny Jet (01:37:14):
But you said you never been international. I really want to travel with, I wanna be the person to take you.

Leo Laporte (01:37:19):
You've never been out. Have you been to Mexico? No.

Mikah Sargent (01:37:21):
Canada? No,

Johnny Jet (01:37:23):
No. I think we need to take 'em on a plane and go to either Asia or Europe.

Mikah Sargent (01:37:26):
Oh my God. I'm down. Johnny,

Leo Laporte (01:37:28):
We should go to, Do you have a

Johnny Jet (01:37:29):
Passport? You have

Leo Laporte (01:37:29):
A passport? You have a passport?

Mikah Sargent (01:37:30):
Oh shoot. Okay. I'm gonna get a passport. I've already got the documents. I can get them filled out. I'll get a passport and then I, Let's

Leo Laporte (01:37:37):
Do the show from

Mikah Sargent (01:37:38):
Tokyo. Our guest blog.

Johnny Jet (01:37:40):
Let's do, let's go for a long weekend.com.

Leo Laporte (01:37:41):
What's the cheapest overseas flight right now that we could get?

Johnny Jet (01:37:45):
Johnny Japan is actually a great time to go right now because they don't have a lot of tourists. They're our dollar. They

Leo Laporte (01:37:51):
Just reopened, right? They were closed. They

Johnny Jet (01:37:53):
Just reopened. Yeah. Yeah. And although actually the prices have been good and they're flying zip air. We talked about it a few weeks ago from San Jose. Okay. It's a low fair carrier. They do it from LA as well. Let's just go for the weekend show from there.

Leo Laporte (01:38:08):
Let's just go for the weekend.

Johnny Jet (01:38:08):
Live flat seats for cheap. Although again, with low fare carriers, you gotta make sure you know what you're getting into. They're gonna charge you for everything, including food and baggage.

Leo Laporte (01:38:19):
Do they put on the seat a sign that says you can lie to 60 degrees, but for an extra 50 bucks you can lie flat. Yeah,

Johnny Jet (01:38:24):
You gotta put a quarter in. Put a quarter. Then the seat will go back. Magic.

Leo Laporte (01:38:28):
Magic fingers in the seat. That's good. If

Johnny Jet (01:38:31):
You put two quarters in, it will shake. What's

Leo Laporte (01:38:33):
That called? Zip? Z I

Johnny Jet (01:38:34):
P. Z I P.

Leo Laporte (01:38:36):
And they fly to Tokyo.

Mikah Sargent (01:38:37):
Zip Air. Yeah,

Johnny Jet (01:38:38):
It's, It's a Japan Airlines offshoot. So zip Air San Jose. They're starting to fly in December. Are

Leo Laporte (01:38:49):
You looking up the fairs? Yeah. First you gotta get

Mikah Sargent (01:38:51):
The passport. I know. I was gonna say, I'm filling out my passport stuff today. Yeah.

Johnny Jet (01:38:55):
So get on that. Yes. And actually I wrote a tip today for my newsletter about the real id. So if you're flying domestically, you're gonna need to have your real ID by May 3rd. Oh, I've known that for a while. Yeah. You've been hearing it. But they, they're saying this year they're really gonna follow through.

Mikah Sargent (01:39:11):
Oh no. Was trouble

Johnny Jet (01:39:12):
With a

Mikah Sargent (01:39:13):
Passport for a while. I have had mine for a while. I was Oh, you have the number of people who don't have their real id. Yeah,

Leo Laporte (01:39:18):
I don't For in California, when you go to the dmv, you get a choice. You can get a regular driver's license, but you have to have more proof of documents. Oh,

Johnny Jet (01:39:27):
You

Mikah Sargent (01:39:27):
Don't currently have one?

Johnny Jet (01:39:28):
Cause he has a passport. No, I use

Mikah Sargent (01:39:30):
A, Okay. You're used to use

Johnny Jet (01:39:31):
But I went to get one and I forgot my WT form. You

Leo Laporte (01:39:35):
Have to have all these things. Things'

Mikah Sargent (01:39:37):
As a know, passport haver. That must be why I was so encouraged. That's to

Leo Laporte (01:39:42):
Just go for the real. I have the real id. I also have a passport. And when I ordered a passport, I got a passport card, which TSA informed me can also double as a real id. Oh, nice. Us. Yeah,

Johnny Jet (01:39:50):
Definitely. And I have one in as well. Just in case I lose my passport, I need to drive to Canada. You can at least drive across the

Leo Laporte (01:39:57):
Drive to Canada or Mexico or

Johnny Jet (01:39:59):
Get a

Leo Laporte (01:40:00):
Cruise. You can walk with that <laugh>.

Mikah Sargent (01:40:02):
I'm starting off today heading to Canada.

Johnny Jet (01:40:04):
<laugh>. I've walked to Canada before.

Leo Laporte (01:40:06):
Yeah,

Mikah Sargent (01:40:06):
That's cool. Yeah,

Johnny Jet (01:40:07):
That would be from Buffalo.

Leo Laporte (01:40:08):
You drive somewhere and then you walk, You don't walk. The whole way

Johnny Jet (01:40:10):
Falls.

Leo Laporte (01:40:11):
It's a long way to walk from here. But

Johnny Jet (01:40:13):
I've walked across the bridge. It's fun. Yeah,

Mikah Sargent (01:40:15):
That would be fun. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:40:16):
Yeah. My daughter do that in Mexico. Cuz she had lost her passport. She had the passport card. Couldn't fly into Mexico with it. Oh yeah, I remember you said. But, so she flew to San Diego or wherever the closes Tijuana to Tijuana and took a

Mikah Sargent (01:40:27):
Walked

Leo Laporte (01:40:27):
Across, took ado. No, she walked across the bridge. That card works there. And then she took a flight from Tijuana on. Yeah. Cause they

Johnny Jet (01:40:35):
Had that airport, new airport right. In Tijuana. Which is great. Especially you're flying.

Leo Laporte (01:40:38):
Should Mikey get global entry on his? He doesn't. He's,

Mikah Sargent (01:40:41):
I have a known traveler number thingy. The TSA pre,

Johnny Jet (01:40:44):
Well that's for TSA pre. How'd you get that interview?

Mikah Sargent (01:40:48):
I just did the interview thing. Oh

Leo Laporte (01:40:49):
Well it should be easy to get global entry then, right?

Johnny Jet (01:40:51):
Yeah. But to get an appointment is not easy. You need to fly well in advance. Yeah. So

Leo Laporte (01:40:56):
Yeah, you can't just show up unless you're traveling internationally. Then on the way back, you can do it when you come in the country, they can give you on the spot interview. Oh hey give you that stealy eyed case. Thank you Johnny johnny jet.com.

Johnny Jet (01:41:09):
See you later. Bye bye.

Leo Laporte (01:41:15):
So that's how I did it. I applied and then months later when we went to Mexico a year ago, in fact I was coming back into the country. And they let you do that, right John? I think that's how it works.

Johnny Jet (01:41:29):
One more time. I missed that whole thing. So

Leo Laporte (01:41:32):
I was in Mexico. I didn't have global entry yet. When I came back into the country, even though it was like midnight when I was tired because I'd already applied and they said, Okay, now you have to get the appointment. I just, There's a special line, you go in, the guys are <laugh> and then you get it.

Mikah Sargent (01:41:49):
What does global,

Johnny Jet (01:41:50):
You did the interview? Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:41:52):
On the way back into the country. In some airports you can do that

Johnny Jet (01:41:56):
Spontaneously. Yeah. Midnight they did it. Sure. That's, that's shocking cuz it's a 15 minute interview.

Leo Laporte (01:42:01):
Yeah.

Johnny Jet (01:42:02):
Okay. I, I'm shocked to do it that late at night but Well you

Leo Laporte (01:42:05):
Should check it ahead.

Johnny Jet (01:42:07):
But what global, It's the

Leo Laporte (01:42:08):
Same guy by the way. It's the same guy that's letting other people in. But there's a couple of them that are like, oh yeah, he can do the global and a special global.

Mikah Sargent (01:42:16):
He's got the tattoo, he's

Leo Laporte (01:42:18):
Got special number. Yeah. And so no, I don't know you have to be senior or whatever. But it was the same. But then after he is done with me, he's letting other people in too.

Johnny Jet (01:42:27):
You sure I was there? Yes. He's like you. Global entry

Mikah Sargent (01:42:34):
Is a fraud.

Leo Laporte (01:42:36):
<laugh>. Well wait a minute, it's a paper card. It

Mikah Sargent (01:42:39):
Says, Now did you hand over,

Johnny Jet (01:42:41):
How do you

Mikah Sargent (01:42:41):
Spell global? Do you have to flash a bender?

Johnny Jet (01:42:43):
You look global.

Mikah Sargent (01:42:44):
Yeah, Global

Johnny Jet (01:42:45):
<laugh>.

Mikah Sargent (01:42:47):
Leah's got the special global.

Johnny Jet (01:42:48):
I got the special card. So global entry is good for five years. It costs a hundred dollars.

Leo Laporte (01:42:54):
But American Express refund you.

Johnny Jet (01:42:56):
Yes. Some credit cards will some credit, some premium credit cards will. So you always pay with that. What special when you returning to, So when you return to the US, you can go to a kiosk, scan your eyes. You don't have to wait in these long immigration.

Leo Laporte (01:43:09):
I still have to talk to somebody though.

Johnny Jet (01:43:11):
Well not really. Cuz once you scan your eyes, then they give you a form and then you just hand it to the person. Sometimes they'll ask you questions,

Leo Laporte (01:43:17):
But you have to see, usually they don't. The rule is you have somebody has to look you over. Is

Johnny Jet (01:43:21):
It like they'll look at you? Yeah. Like customs. Yeah.

Mikah Sargent (01:43:24):
Are you just expected to know the rules of like, Oh you can't bring that snail you found in.

Johnny Jet (01:43:31):
Oh yes. Cause they'll take that, take away your global entry card. They

Leo Laporte (01:43:34):
Still ask. They still give you the thing. Uhhuh,

Johnny Jet (01:43:36):
You gotta make sure you don't have, I'm

Mikah Sargent (01:43:38):
So worried I'd accidentally break a rule.

Leo Laporte (01:43:39):
Don't break any rules.

Johnny Jet (01:43:41):
They take it away. Caterpillar,

Mikah Sargent (01:43:42):
Take a cart away, jumped on my back or

Leo Laporte (01:43:43):
Something. Or you got $10,000 in cash. Just you forgot.

Mikah Sargent (01:43:46):
In my money belt,

Johnny Jet (01:43:47):
Delta Airlines gave a passenger, they served apples on the plane and one passenger put it in her bag, forgot about it. Went through customs. Hey that's like a $5,000 fine right now.

Mikah Sargent (01:44:00):
That's so frightening.

Johnny Jet (01:44:02):
But

Leo Laporte (01:44:02):
They gave it to me on the plane and you should have eaten it on the plane. You fool. You feel I'm

Mikah Sargent (01:44:08):
Allergic to apples. Too bad.

Johnny Jet (01:44:09):
Let's do, do this

Leo Laporte (01:44:11):
Trip and don't carry.

Johnny Jet (01:44:13):
Where do you wanna go? You wanna go to Asia? You wanna go to Europe?

Mikah Sargent (01:44:16):
It is on my bucket list to go to Japan. So if Japan,

Leo Laporte (01:44:19):
You would love Japan.

Mikah Sargent (01:44:20):
My problem is my partner has tattoos. And isn't Japan, is it Japan or is it somewhere else that tattoos are Oh, you

Leo Laporte (01:44:28):
Just can't be buried in a Jewish cemetery. That's all <laugh>.

Mikah Sargent (01:44:31):
I remember reading about tattoos.

Johnny Jet (01:44:33):
They

Leo Laporte (01:44:33):
Don't look for tattoos.

Johnny Jet (01:44:35):
No, you can.

Mikah Sargent (01:44:36):
It's a different

Leo Laporte (01:44:37):
Place. You know why? Cuz in Tokyo, I mean in Japan, if you have tattoos, you're Yakuza.

Mikah Sargent (01:44:41):
Yeah, I remember we

Leo Laporte (01:44:43):
So they might look funny at him, but I'll be honest with you. Doesn't look like acu.

Mikah Sargent (01:44:47):
No, he doesn't. That's true. He very much does not.

Johnny Jet (01:44:51):
If

Leo Laporte (01:44:51):
He's,

Mikah Sargent (01:44:51):
He's like, he's shocking. Nice

Leo Laporte (01:44:53):
Yakuza. Yeah,

Mikah Sargent (01:44:54):
He's like the ones you talk to.

Johnny Jet (01:44:56):
It depends. No, I've never heard that before. But

Leo Laporte (01:44:58):
Maybe there's some tattoo

Johnny Jet (01:44:59):
Too that you have that is offensive. Possibly. But don't

Leo Laporte (01:45:03):
Screwed Japan.

Mikah Sargent (01:45:04):
He no bad.

Johnny Jet (01:45:06):
Yeah. Or just remember. Don't know where it was spell

Mikah Sargent (01:45:09):
Wrong. Yeah, it was like some restaurants, they would be weird about you coming. Well they

Leo Laporte (01:45:15):
Might. I think that's that

Johnny Jet (01:45:17):
So many Japanese people have

Leo Laporte (01:45:18):
Tattoos. I think nowadays it's

Mikah Sargent (01:45:19):
Got it. You don't have to worry about it. Got it. Yeah. Yeah. Japan sincerely is one of those places I've always wanted to go.

Johnny Jet (01:45:26):
I love Japan. So clean. People are so friendly. My wife's like the most stylish people. It's a great place to go.

Mikah Sargent (01:45:34):
All right, well we're working on it. Work on Leo and then I will keep you updated and I'm dead serious. I'd love to get the passport guest blog in your site. You're

Johnny Jet (01:45:45):
Welcome to anytime.

Leo Laporte (01:45:46):
Because there's not many people you could find like him Virgins. Yeah, that's

Mikah Sargent (01:45:50):
True. Yeah, that's true. Hey,

Johnny Jet (01:45:51):
That'd be a great story.

Leo Laporte (01:45:53):
This is a band. Before Paul McCartney had wings, he had a band. Not just four guys.

Mikah Sargent (01:46:00):
But this is the band.

Leo Laporte (01:46:02):
Yeah, it was called the Beatles. This

Mikah Sargent (01:46:03):
Is the Beatles. Is it live? Is that why I'm not recognizing it?

Leo Laporte (01:46:06):
It's called, it was an album that came out probably cuz you were like 1967. I mean your grandfather wasn't even born yet. But it was a very popular album in the summer of 1967. I remember in college campuses, all across the country, people would put their turntable in the window with a speaker and play the album cuz it was So it was called Sergeant Pepper. Sergeant Pepper. Now 65 years old. Is that right? No, 55 years old. Actually, there is a tech angle to all of this. Would you like to hear it?

Mikah Sargent (01:46:39):
Yeah, I

Leo Laporte (01:46:40):
Would. So they just released Revolver. That's also a Beetle. The Beatles were a very popular band before your time. And Revolver was one of their, I think, important albums cuz it was the transition of them from your four lovable mop heads, singing love songs into something a little bit more interesting that they'd been to India and Harrison started playing the Satar and stuff. So it was very interesting album. They had all hand The masters were four tracks. But the Beatles were very innovative in the recording studio. They would have many, many more tracks. What they would do is they would record something and bounce it with another track. And so they'd reduce what was maybe 16 tracks down to four tracks. But those were the masters, <affirmative>. They didn't have the previously bounced tracks. They didn't save most of that. Really? Peter Jackson made a wonderful documentary, which I think everybody if you have Disney plus, you should try and see it before it.

(01:47:38):
I guess it'll be there for a while, Who knows? But he made, It's very long. But it was about the Beatles making of the Let It Be. Let It Be. Yeah, they'll let it be album. The one where they played the roof and all that. And it's wonderful cause you see them as they really were working and making music in any event. And those film that he used for that would had been made by a documentarian. But they didn't mic the Beatles when the film was made or it never. And it never did get made. But when it was shot, they were more interested in the music. So the instruments were, well Mike, but they didn't have the Beatles conversations. Peter Jackson created a technology, computer technology using AI to isolate the voices and amplify them so you could actually hear the conversations where you couldn't on the film.

(01:48:27):
So he came back and he's done the same with Revolver. He's taken those four tracks and isolate the previous older bits and pieces. So you can hear how that album was put together. I think it's six CDs including a remix stereo remix, I think the original Mono, and then a bunch of studio sounds. And it's really quite an impressive technical feat to do that <affirmative>. And I've been enjoying listening to it. If you've ever heard of The Beatles, you might thank you before Wings. That's all I'm saying. 88. 88 <laugh>. Ask Leo. That's the phone number. I'm just, I like to tease the young. Yes, he's tea. They're so teas. Joe on the line from Dalton, Georgia. Hello Joe.

Caller 5 (01:49:11):
Hi there. Just looking for I'm trying to buy some computers that have a coffee and spilled it.

Leo Laporte (01:49:19):
<laugh>. I have one. I have a laptop for you. <laugh>. Actually, we've already taken it apart. You've of course, referring to my sad, sad story of pouring coffee into my old M one Mac.

Caller 5 (01:49:33):
Yeah, the, It's one of those things. My wife works with a laptop and she spilled water on 'em a couple times and stuff like that. And the time was when it was less expensive to have a desktop machine. So you spill water on the keyboard or

Leo Laporte (01:49:50):
Anything. Right then it's very unlikely you're gonna spill into the tower. Yeah,

Caller 5 (01:49:54):
Yeah. <affirmative>. And I'm wondering, are laptops now cheaper than desktops by?

Leo Laporte (01:50:00):
Oh, that's an interesting question. No, they're not. Unfortunately. The compromises you have to make to build a laptop usually mean they're gonna be a little bit more expensive. In my experience. You can get a $500 laptop, you can get a $500 desktop. The desktops I mean,

Caller 5 (01:50:20):
I would like to get another desktop, but I've been, you know, can get 'em. Laptops,

Leo Laporte (01:50:24):
You can get, I mean think desktops are probably same exact. See the problem is apples and oranges because a laptop chip, for instance, the processor and a laptop is generally not used in a desktop because the heat constraints in the laptop mean you can't use quite as powerful a chip. You can't have as much power draw cause you've gotta have a battery. So the constraints are off when you put it in a desktop. You can have a bigger chip, a hotter chip, a chip that uses hundreds of watts instead of sipping 45 watts. All of that means that desktop is a very different beast. If you like desktops, get a desktop. I think the price, as I said, the range, you know, can spend 20,000 on a desktop. You can also spend 500 on a desktop. It doesn't have to be expensive. And I think in, I'd have to look, but I would guess in general, desktops are less expensive than laptops for the same.

Caller 5 (01:51:19):
I would hope so, but it's been hard to find them for some reason.

Leo Laporte (01:51:23):
Well go to Dell. Dell makes very good ones. HP makes very good ones. What are you looking for? A Windows machine?

Caller 5 (01:51:32):
Yeah, pretty much. And what something I was thinking about though is I had a Mac Mini at one time and I had AppleCare and some things Apple Care covers and some things it doesn't. And I'm just curious, in your particular situation,

Leo Laporte (01:51:47):
I did not have AppleCare. In fact, the guy shook his head, So you got AppleCare? And I said no. He said, Oh, if I had, So this is something I found out from a friend of ours, Doc Rock, who used to be a genius at the Apple store. He said the interesting thing about AppleCare is it's a different line item. A different cost to the store, then sending it to Apple and repairing it very often. If you've got now there, and I'm gonna let Mike explain this cuz it's too complicated for me. There are levels of AppleCare, but if you have the AppleCare plus that pays for you've, in this case, had I walked in with this at warranty laptop, but I'd had AppleCare, I probably would have a new laptop <affirmative> at no cost. Now all I have is a motherboard that smells like fine Java. I

Mikah Sargent (01:52:34):
Think they do their best to try to make it as valuable as possible. So you buy it because then more people buy it and never use it. And that pays for AppleCare and also gets them the money that they want. And

Leo Laporte (01:52:44):
On my new laptop, I spent the, whatever it was, 250 bucks to get AppleCare AppleCare plus. So there's different levels. They try to sell you the highest level, right?

Mikah Sargent (01:52:54):
Yeah. So the reason they do different levels is if you pay for the highest level, then it also covers theft and loss

Leo Laporte (01:53:00):
And accidental damage. And

Mikah Sargent (01:53:02):
In this case the accident damage. Yeah, the coffee damage

Caller 5 (01:53:06):
Accidental, I'm sure. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:53:06):
Yeah. Well, I pour it on purpose. <laugh> <laugh>.

Mikah Sargent (01:53:10):
I don't like this laptop. I want a new MacBook Air.

Leo Laporte (01:53:13):
You can see. So we had our repair guy, Burke, take a look at it and he said, Yeah, this is why you had to spend 1300 bucks. This is the motherboard I have in my hands. And there's a chip you could see right there on it. That's melted. The first half of the plastic is, Yeah. Wow. That's because it's short circuited. The problem with modern laptops, you can't take the battery out. Actually, if you spilled coffee in a tower case and you unplugged it immediately, you might be all right. The power, the short circuits what? Fry stuff, right? So if you could pull the power and let it dry out, you're probably gonna be all right.

Caller 5 (01:53:48):
But yeah. Spilling coffee into a case like you say now. Right now what she's using, she's working for aaa and they sent her an hp not hp, they sent her a Lenovo think center. Those

Leo Laporte (01:54:02):
Are nice. What'd you think?

Caller 5 (01:54:04):
It's a little, Well, she can't use it for anything but aaa. So there's no real way to <laugh>. It's locked down. You're not gonna Yeah, yeah, yeah. Do

Leo Laporte (01:54:13):
Anything else? Yeah, it's her work computer. But does it feel all right to her? Cause you can buy a think center there. That's another Lenovo, Dell and HP are the kind of no brainers. There are a lot of smaller guys that make gaming PCs or make custom PCs. They're gonna be a little bit more expensive. But you can specify, I got my last desktop I got from Dell because they buy the parts in great quantity, so they're more likely to have the parts that are hard to get otherwise. And I've been very happy with it. And I didn't get the extended warranty on the Dell. I, I'm getting it on my laptop and my phone from now on. Leo Laporte. Mikah, Sergeant. Your tech guys more to come next. Oh, we're gonna get Mikah in the helmet. So I'm gonna run, I can't, can't keep talking because we've got work to do. <laugh>, I gotta get you in the big studio and walk in the plank. Let's see. I'm going to Okay. Some routing is coming. I'm gonna go with you.

Mikah Sargent (01:55:21):
Is it possible to bring this closer to my eyes so I don't see out of here?

Leo Laporte (01:55:24):
No. In fact, they have a little rubbers that you can put on it for that.

Mikah Sargent (01:55:29):
Oh, these are a lot heavier.

Leo Laporte (01:55:30):
Are they? Yeah. They got cameras in them. Interesting. All right, now you're in a room.

Mikah Sargent (01:55:37):
Not yet. Okay, let me st now I am. Yeah. Yeah. Whoa. I'm in the elevator.

Leo Laporte (01:55:41):
Oh, you're in the elevator? Yeah. Okay.

Mikah Sargent (01:55:43):
And there's the east, what is it? Easter Island head? Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:55:47):
Yeah. Okay. And the butterflies flooding around on your right

Mikah Sargent (01:55:51):
Is a bell.

Leo Laporte (01:55:52):
Yeah. No, don't,

Mikah Sargent (01:55:53):
Oh, don't touch the bell.

Leo Laporte (01:55:54):
That means you'll get in Santa's sleigh. You

Mikah Sargent (01:55:55):
Don know. Okay. I should have known. Oh,

Leo Laporte (01:55:59):
Right. There's an, there's

Mikah Sargent (01:55:59):
Playing the top hero academy. Sky, brush, and ground. All right. And then there's a nice car that says toasty.

Leo Laporte (01:56:09):
I'll go. Bye. Are we chromecasting?

Mikah Sargent (01:56:12):
I don't see it. Okay, let me, So

Leo Laporte (01:56:15):
Here's how you get the Chromecast

Mikah Sargent (01:56:16):
Menu. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:56:18):
On

Mikah Sargent (01:56:18):
This one. Okay. Oculus. Yeah. There you

Leo Laporte (01:56:20):
Go. And there's a little cro cat. What? I don't

Mikah Sargent (01:56:23):
To say my, Yeah, it's, it looks exactly the same. So I should be good to go here. All right. Settings. And cuz I can't see it on here. Can you

Leo Laporte (01:56:34):
Hear?

Mikah Sargent (01:56:34):
Hear me? Yes, I can hear you. Okay, now I can hear you. How do I do it on here? Cause I am not seeing it.

Leo Laporte (01:56:39):
What are you trying to do?

Mikah Sargent (01:56:40):
Still trying to cast it to the chrome cap.

Leo Laporte (01:56:42):
Oh, so you press the settings button. You're still in the plank room, but you get settings. Yes. And then there's a weird icon.

Mikah Sargent (01:56:49):
Is it the sharing icon?

Leo Laporte (01:56:51):
No. Okay. No, it's a funny looking icon. You can't tell it's a cast icon. Okay. Just hover over each one. It tells you what they are.

Mikah Sargent (01:56:58):
Is it in the quick settings?

Leo Laporte (01:57:00):
Yeah, it's in quick settings. Okay.

Mikah Sargent (01:57:02):
Reset view, microphone night display. Do not disturb. Voice commands, Bug report. Pause. Eye tracking. Pause. Neural.

Leo Laporte (01:57:11):
Oh, no, no, no, no. Nevermind. It's not, I guess it's not in the quick settings. Exit out of that.

Mikah Sargent (01:57:16):
Okay.

Leo Laporte (01:57:18):
It's in the settings for the game. You do it from within the game. Oh,

Mikah Sargent (01:57:21):
Okay. Okay. Okay, then I need to do this. Oh, there it is. Found it. Thank

Leo Laporte (01:57:26):
You. Oh good. Okay.

Mikah Sargent (01:57:27):
Okay. So available devices are Chromecast Ultra 360 3.

Leo Laporte (01:57:30):
Yeah. That's the one you want? Yeah. Oh good. You're good at this. That's good. You have a quest because Yeah, that helps. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know what the hell I'm doing in

Mikah Sargent (01:57:38):
There. All right. Headset casting has begun.

Leo Laporte (01:57:40):
Okay. So John, are you seeing it so he can see it? But we haven't switched it yet. So you see where you are. Are you in the elevator?

Mikah Sargent (01:57:51):
I'm in the elevator.

Leo Laporte (01:57:52):
Have you gone up

Mikah Sargent (01:57:53):
Yet? No, I haven't gone up yet. Should I go ahead?

Leo Laporte (01:57:55):
Yeah, go ahead. Well yeah, go up. Might as well start there. You don't go out on the plank yet. All

Mikah Sargent (01:58:00):
Right. I've pushed plank and now I'm going up the elevator.

Leo Laporte (01:58:02):
Yeah, it's got little music. It's kind of weird, huh?

Mikah Sargent (01:58:07):
Uhhuh. I can't help but think that it would be a little better if I couldn't see outside of

Leo Laporte (01:58:14):
The Yeah, you're supposed to. Yeah. You could turn the lights down in the studio, John, if you want. It's a little bright. That would help. There's a little rubber piece that they give you, and you can actually buy third party. Oh, that works. That works. Okay. Okay.

Mikah Sargent (01:58:30):
Wait. Cake, donuts, and spider

Leo Laporte (01:58:32):
Cakes. Yeah. You don't need to do that yet, but see that plank ahead of you. I do. Just go and look out the door a little bit. I'm gonna rock

Mikah Sargent (01:58:38):
Up. Oh boy. Yeah. Okay.

Leo Laporte (01:58:41):
<laugh>. You get what I'm saying?

Mikah Sargent (01:58:43):
Yeah, that's pretty far too.

Leo Laporte (01:58:45):
Oh, okay. Don't go out yet. Oh, now. See, you blinked off, John. So this is the blinking you were talking about. Hi, John. Yeah, that's all right. I don't mind if it blinks off a little bit. All right, Just hang on. We got four minutes still if you want.

Mikah Sargent (01:59:00):
Oh, there's a rope over there.

Leo Laporte (01:59:02):
Yeah, there's a fun game. You could put rockets on your hands and fly around the city. Oh, that'll make me, That one didn't. Well now it's funny. That one did not scare me as much.

Mikah Sargent (01:59:14):
Oh, hot air balloon.

Leo Laporte (01:59:15):
Yeah. Yeah. You can actually go up to it. You can go to the Ros of the other buildings. Go back down. We should probably start on the ground floor.

Mikah Sargent (01:59:27):
Oh, I don't wanna get hit

Leo Laporte (01:59:28):
By that. I love the music elevator. The elevator music.

Mikah Sargent (01:59:31):
I like that there's a little crack in it so you can see.

Leo Laporte (01:59:33):
Yeah, yeah, yeah. You can see the world going by.

Mikah Sargent (01:59:37):
Yeah. So what I'm noticing so far is the responsiveness of the head movements are a lot better on

Leo Laporte (01:59:42):
This. Okay. Is a resolution about the same? I think it

Mikah Sargent (01:59:45):
Probably resolution looks very similar. Yeah, for sure. But as I'm moving my head around, it is perfect in,

Leo Laporte (01:59:51):
Do you have a hood you could put over his head?

Mikah Sargent (01:59:54):
Oh yeah. If there's like a blanket or something. Even one of those. Oh,

Leo Laporte (01:59:57):
What I could give him. You know what I could give him? Can give him the Wait a minute.

Mikah Sargent (02:00:02):
Oh, the ostrich thing? What'd you say? The area that's lit. Oh, got it. Whoops. I'll put that back on.

Leo Laporte (02:00:19):
<laugh>. Hey, put the hat back on. No cheating. I fell off. It fell off. Oh, it fell off. Okay. <laugh>, this is the funniest thing ever. Okay. A minute and a half. I was watching the video of me playing this.

Mikah Sargent (02:00:37):
Oh, that's always

Leo Laporte (02:00:38):
Funny. And my voice went up like three octaves. Oh, I can't go.

Mikah Sargent (02:00:44):
I can't do it. Nervous.

Leo Laporte (02:00:45):
I can't do it

Mikah Sargent (02:00:47):
Like that. Yeah. I wonder here. Yeah. I just can't cover.

Leo Laporte (02:00:51):
Kim's gonna help. Oh,

Mikah Sargent (02:00:53):
You can't cover that? No. Cause that's got cameras.

Leo Laporte (02:00:55):
Oh, that's the problem. I get it. Can you fasten it underneath?

Mikah Sargent (02:00:58):
Oh, I could put it on first. Yeah. Let me do that. <laugh>, if can't come, I'll put it on Undo.

Leo Laporte (02:01:06):
He's gonna work. He's, It's not worth 1600 bucks. Maverick. And actually, one of the reasons we're doing this, which is good, is cuz Mikah has the quest too. So he has the $300 predecessor. I don't know if this is gonna work. Mikah. Oh,

Mikah Sargent (02:01:24):
I

Leo Laporte (02:01:26):
<laugh> hat not included. Oh, now you have to start over, I guess. There we go. Yeah. You have to click the safety thing.

Mikah Sargent (02:01:39):
All right, There we go. Yeah, that's a little better. <laugh>.

Leo Laporte (02:01:47):
Well, hey, hey, hey. How are you today? Leo La I'm Mikah Sargent. Your tech guys here. 88. 88. Ask Leo the phone number if you wanna give us a ring talk tech. We've got Mikah suited up now in the other studios in the big room. Cuz you need a lot of room. We're gonna try out this new Quest Pro. This is the $1,600 virtual reality visor that meta sells. And the pro, I don't know what the point of the pro is. The pro is so that you can, I don't know, do anyway. Mikah are, Can you hear me?

Mikah Sargent (02:02:20):
I can hear you. Leo.

Leo Laporte (02:02:22):
In order for Mikah to do this, we've had to actually put him in a soundproof hat. <laugh>. He has to wear a winter hat. He's playing this game that we were talking about earlier called Richie's Plank, which is a kind of simple little game. He thinks he's in. You think you're in an elevator, right? In a city?

Mikah Sargent (02:02:40):
Yeah. I'm walking into the elevator and there's a sign that says, Hey, consider any health conditions. But there are buttons on the side.

Leo Laporte (02:02:47):
Yeah. Go up in the elevator. Go up to the plank. Okay,

Mikah Sargent (02:02:49):
So I'm gonna tap on the plank and it gives me a little haptic vibration and Oh,

Leo Laporte (02:02:54):
And there's the elevator music, which is appropriate. Now you're going up, Here we go. We're going up in, You can kind of see through the crack in the door that you're, You're going up. You're going up in a skyscraper in a city. Oh. And there you go. Now you have a view of the city. I'm gonna describe this for the radio audience. There's a helicopter going over birds. You're pretty high up.

Mikah Sargent (02:03:13):
I'm very high

Leo Laporte (02:03:14):
Up. And there's a little teeny weeny plank just coming right off the elevator. Do you feel Okay. How do you feel right now?

Mikah Sargent (02:03:21):
Okay, so as I'm looking out, I, Okay. I will tell you, as we were testing this, I was not feeling that apprehension <affirmative>. But I think with the addition of the flaps, it is making it a little bit more

Leo Laporte (02:03:33):
Realistic for him. It's darker now for him. He can't see that he's in a room. You feel like you're there. Right? The

Mikah Sargent (02:03:38):
Palms are a little sweaty right now. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (02:03:39):
So this is the test was because it was my contention at the beginning of the show that your rational mind knows you're in a room. We can see the room you're in you're on a carpet, you're not gonna fall. But your body, or some part of your mind believes this virtual experience that

Mikah Sargent (02:03:56):
Lizard brain.

Leo Laporte (02:03:57):
And it's so hard to walk out on this plank. Go ahead. And you feel like you

Mikah Sargent (02:04:00):
Might, So I'm gonna take a step. Okay. But what I hate is that as I'm starting to look out, it's making these creaking sounds. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (02:04:07):
They, they're the plank creeks

Mikah Sargent (02:04:08):
That is not very nice.

Leo Laporte (02:04:10):
Also, you can't see your feet, which means that it's a little harder to Whoa.

Mikah Sargent (02:04:13):
Yeah. <laugh> the shadow. I can see the shadow of my body. Okay. This is, Yep. Okay, here we go.

Leo Laporte (02:04:21):
He's walking out on the planes. It's a, Yeah, my voice went up about three octaves when I

Mikah Sargent (02:04:26):
Did this. <affirmative> <affirmative>. Yeah. I could see the clouds below me. <laugh>. Okay. Don't like this <laugh>.

Leo Laporte (02:04:35):
So if you can imagine this, his view is like he's on a tiny little board. I don't know. 80. Oh my goodness. Did you fall? It was gonna make me fall. Oh, you fell. That's horrible. Oh, you didn't hurt yourself though. Did you just land on the sidewalk?

Mikah Sargent (02:04:50):
It does vibrate the hands at the very end there.

Leo Laporte (02:04:54):
You just had a near death experience. I think I see the light at the white light.

Mikah Sargent (02:04:58):
Yeah.

Leo Laporte (02:04:59):
You're back at the back down at the bottom floor. Back

Mikah Sargent (02:05:03):
At the bottom

Leo Laporte (02:05:03):
Of the elevator. Okay. You don't have to do anymore if you don't want to. But

Mikah Sargent (02:05:06):
I'm, I'm just gonna

Leo Laporte (02:05:07):
Kinda tell me what me about your,

Mikah Sargent (02:05:09):
Yeah, so I'll tell you about the experience. Yeah. Because I do have the Oculus, or excuse me, the MedQuest two, which is the updated and it is the less expensive version. As I was telling Leo in the break, this is a much more responsive headset than I expect with the

Leo Laporte (02:05:27):
Question. So you're, when you turn and move, I

Mikah Sargent (02:05:29):
Turn my head. Even the micro movements that I'm making it is perfectly tracking the environment, which is the quest to sometimes, especially with little movements, has a bit of a judder. And because of that I end up getting a little bit more nauseated. Yeah. This right now I can feel that it would maybe take a lot longer for me to feel nauseated.

Leo Laporte (02:05:50):
That's one of the causes. The nausea is latency and it's what the people make these things say. I think there are other causes as well. But yeah, the latency isn't

Mikah Sargent (02:05:59):
And I also noticed this one's a little bit different. It's hard to explain, but they try to give a certain what's the term for when something in front of you is either blurred or not blurred? Especially when you're aperture the like

Leo Laporte (02:06:14):
Focal length. Yeah. Focal

Mikah Sargent (02:06:15):
Length. Thank you. Focal length. Yeah. The focal length is better on this because you can be not too close to an item in the Quest two and they start to blur it out. Yeah. This has, I dunno if it's because of the resolution or what have you, but it feels more realistic to what my

Leo Laporte (02:06:32):
Try another can do. Try another button in the elevator. What else can you, I'm

Mikah Sargent (02:06:35):
Gonna try here.

Leo Laporte (02:06:36):
Oh, wait a minute. No, no, no. Don't do that. Ring the bell. See that Salvation Army bell right outside the door. Go ahead and pick that up and ring it. Okay,

Mikah Sargent (02:06:44):
I'm gonna grab it by pulling the

Leo Laporte (02:06:45):
Trigger. Yeah, you, you're pretty good at this. And ring it. Yeah. Somebody's gonna come by and give you money. No. Oh,

Mikah Sargent (02:06:51):
That's too bad. They didn't animate it.

Leo Laporte (02:06:53):
<laugh>.

Mikah Sargent (02:06:55):
All right, we're going somewhere.

Leo Laporte (02:06:57):
Yeah, you're gonna become, you're Santa Eser on and you're gonna have to deliver some presents. So start it by ringing that bell and watch the reindeer are gonna take you for a little ride. I

Mikah Sargent (02:07:08):
Don't have all of them. That's just, let's see.

Leo Laporte (02:07:11):
Well you got Rudolph

Mikah Sargent (02:07:11):
Comet, Cupid, Doner, Blitzen and Rudolph.

Leo Laporte (02:07:14):
Yeah. Yeah. Very good. I'm impressed. Okay, here we go. You could tell a reindeer.

Mikah Sargent (02:07:17):
I can tell the reindeer from their tur.

Leo Laporte (02:07:19):
<laugh> from behind. You're gonna go up. Oh, how's that feel? You're flying through the air

Mikah Sargent (02:07:24):
Now. If I see, when I was looking for

Leo Laporte (02:07:26):
It, I was flying. You're trying to whip.

Mikah Sargent (02:07:27):
But then I looked down and it's little, It's not as bad. I'll tell you as being

Leo Laporte (02:07:31):
On the plane now they're gonna come and stop by chimneys and you have to throw presents down the chimneys. That's the game. Okay.

Mikah Sargent (02:07:37):
So we're coming out of the North Pole now and just as the North Pole works, the city is right outside of the North Pole. A giant city. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (02:07:45):
Yeah. Well Santa's got magic capabilities moving. Very, Yeah. Sort of like look at that moon's beautiful moon. That

Mikah Sargent (02:07:50):
Is pretty, Yeah. He actually brings the moon closer on Christmas.

Leo Laporte (02:07:54):
That's true. For lighting purposes. Yeah,

Mikah Sargent (02:07:56):
Exactly. He needs to see it.

Leo Laporte (02:07:58):
Nice. This is a very, It is an inexpensive, silly game. In fact, my friend Gary, who is a VR guru, he's been doing this for 20 years gifted it to me because it said, he said it cured him of his fear of heights. Oh,

Mikah Sargent (02:08:09):
Okay.

Leo Laporte (02:08:10):
Did not. It actually gave me

Mikah Sargent (02:08:12):
You didn't happen before you played the

Leo Laporte (02:08:14):
Stage. That's

Mikah Sargent (02:08:15):
Terrifying. It also added a fear of reindeer.

Leo Laporte (02:08:17):
Well, in addition. Yeah. <laugh>.

Mikah Sargent (02:08:21):
So are we coming up?

Leo Laporte (02:08:22):
Are you having fun? I

Mikah Sargent (02:08:23):
Mean, do I like this? This is a lot more fun than the morning,

Leo Laporte (02:08:26):
I'll tell you that. Yeah. This is a game. You get points for every present you get down at Chimney

Mikah Sargent (02:08:30):
Now I just crouched down and I like that it came with me.

Leo Laporte (02:08:34):
Yeah. You have more cameras on this in more places. And one of the other things that's really different about, There you go. So you can get that in the chimney. This

Mikah Sargent (02:08:43):
Is a Oculus quest for

Leo Laporte (02:08:45):
Jimmy. Oh, you got a

Mikah Sargent (02:08:47):
Point. Is it just one? Yeah,

Leo Laporte (02:08:49):
You have to, There's a lot of press.

Mikah Sargent (02:08:50):
I mean, Yeah cuz look, I don't know if I have enough. Oh,

Leo Laporte (02:08:52):
They keep, Can I put, can I give you a tip? Put? Okay. When you throw 'em, they more comeback. Oh good.

Mikah Sargent (02:08:58):
<laugh>. I'm just gonna put these up in the front.

Leo Laporte (02:09:00):
So Santa has an endless supply.

Mikah Sargent (02:09:02):
That's part of the magic, right? Yeah. Okay, here we go. This is a toothbrush for Ally.

Leo Laporte (02:09:09):
Nice shot Santa. Two points to Santa Woo. So this is a silly little game. There are other better games on there. I enjoyed some of the dancing games like Light Sa, Beat Saber, it's called. Oh yeah. And there are actually gamey games. In fact, there was an evil dead game that was actually kind of scary. But honestly not as much fun as a game you'd play on your pc. I agree.

Mikah Sargent (02:09:34):
Console because they've got to Oh, that's actually started.

Leo Laporte (02:09:37):
Make me busy. You missed

Mikah Sargent (02:09:39):
When I was looking down at that, that made me, Yep. Nope. Can't do that. <laugh>. This buzz in the back of my brain. That's kinda like sickly feeling.

Leo Laporte (02:09:46):
Nope. You're gonna, Yeah, you feel like you're flying through the air in a

Mikah Sargent (02:09:49):
Sleigh. Oh no. I need to pass this on. Oh, that's a podcast microphone.

Leo Laporte (02:09:54):
Very nice.

Mikah Sargent (02:09:56):
Karen.

Leo Laporte (02:09:56):
Karen has aspirations. Yes. Well I thought we'd play with this a little bit. How do you feel if you told, I will tell you it's four times more expensive than your Quest two.

Mikah Sargent (02:10:07):
It's that I feel is a little much, I will say that. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, I'm gonna pause so that the audio isn't too loud. I think that's a ridiculous price. <laugh>. But I will say I do think that it's at least worth more than the Quest two that I

Leo Laporte (02:10:23):
Have. And what me is pushing in conjunction with Microsoft is productivity software, which I have not I bought, but I haven't done yet. That you could do Windows, you could do office, you can do Word. That game was called Richie's Plank. It is a great thing to show people if you have a Oculus and you want to show people what the challenge of it is and the reality of it is, it's a great game for that but not a deep game. You're not gonna play it for very long.

Mikah Sargent (02:10:50):
And I noted to Leo that the controllers are a lot heavier than the one that's

Leo Laporte (02:10:55):
Interesting.

Mikah Sargent (02:10:55):
So really you're just paying for the lead weights inside of the controllers for the

Leo Laporte (02:10:59):
1400 is more stuff. <laugh> it com. Did it tear down of the Quest Pro and they said it is virtually unfixable, some very interesting technology. There's some missing technology too. There's a slot for something that they thought might be for depth perception that's not filled in. It's just an empty slot. So maybe there's more they can do with this. But there you go. That's our mini review. <laugh>.

Mikah Sargent (02:11:26):
How does this do pass through?

Leo Laporte (02:11:28):
And we're watching it on the Chromecast. You can also cast it to a web browser on your computer so others can see what you're doing the pass through. If you exit the game. Okay, I'll exit. And there's some games where you can see. Yeah cuz you wanna see That's the big difference is you have a color. That's how it looks. View of the room. Now you're in your kind of my main special place.

Mikah Sargent (02:11:52):
Maybe I can activate pass through. Yeah, there we go. Pass through.

Leo Laporte (02:11:55):
And now you'll be able to see the studio. We can't unfortunately. But you

Mikah Sargent (02:11:59):
Can't. Oh that's right. Cause

Leo Laporte (02:12:00):
It doesn't go through the Chromecast, but you can see the room around you. It's in color right

Mikah Sargent (02:12:04):
Now. Yes it is. Wow. Okay. This is, this right here is much better, A lot better than the Quest two. And that way I can see that if you're trying to do the productivity stuff, then in this case, this would be helpful because what I love about the Quest is that you can scan in a desk and you can make your keyboard appear in this mixed reality space and then have as many displays as you want. So if with us in color, it'd be a lot easier to get that set up. It would be a lot easier to use that to play around in that. And that's what you mentioned is that you've got these different games

Leo Laporte (02:12:39):
For that and office and so forth. I've obviously meta Microsoft and even companies like Apple and Google trying to find the next big thing. Think that this perhaps, perhaps is the next big thing.

Mikah Sargent (02:12:54):
I think AR is the next big thing, not vr.

Leo Laporte (02:12:57):
So VR is where you can't see the world. AR is what you've got right now where you can see the world and there's stuff superimposed on the world. And I think you're right. That's probably from a productivity point of view, it's not gonna make people as nauseous. What game are you gonna playing out? I

Mikah Sargent (02:13:10):
Was just clicking on synth riders.

Leo Laporte (02:13:13):
Okay. That's a really fun game. But set it uneasy. Oh. Oh, no <laugh>. It didn't normal. Have fun, Mikah. 88. 88. Bye bye. Bye. 88. 88. Ask Leo. Leo, Laport, Mikah, Sergeant, more of your We'll do some work calls. We wanna do a little review play some synth rider. Oh, come on. I lost. Yeah, go to the easy please. <laugh>.

Mikah Sargent (02:13:35):
It's warm in here.

Leo Laporte (02:13:37):
It's fun, isn't it? Yeah, it's fun. There's a Lizzo on Beat Saber. I bought some Lizzo music. If you wanna, It's kind of fun to do this to Lizzo.

Mikah Sargent (02:13:48):
All right, I'm gonna come out of this. Okay. It's

Leo Laporte (02:13:51):
Hot. Okay. <laugh>. Is it jumping the shark? That's the question from redacted. It's fun. I still have a week to return it. Oh, I can't decide.

Mikah Sargent (02:14:05):
Well you should let me borrow it for a couple of days and then you can

Leo Laporte (02:14:10):
Return it. Oh, I should have, I didn't think of this. Should have brought the charging plate

Mikah Sargent (02:14:14):
Only recharged via the plate. Or is there USBC or something?

Leo Laporte (02:14:18):
There's usbc. I don't know about the controllers. Look at the controllers. See if they have a USBC port. There is a USBC port in the helmet.

Mikah Sargent (02:14:25):
Let's

Leo Laporte (02:14:25):
See about the, Yeah cuz you could totally borrow that. I don't mind at all. Oh, I forgot. I should have thought of that and brought you the charging.

Mikah Sargent (02:14:32):
I guess the controllers do have to charge via the

Leo Laporte (02:14:34):
Plate. Oh, that's too bad. Well I'll give it to Sebastian on Tuesday. On Tuesday? Yeah. Yeah, take him. Oh

Mikah Sargent (02:14:42):
Yeah, tomorrow he'll be in tomorrow.

Leo Laporte (02:14:43):
Okay, good. Take him. Okay. And I'll bring the charger tomorrow. Sweet.

Mikah Sargent (02:14:46):
Thanks. Yeah, I'll give it a real try. What I wanna do is play Beat Saber on it and on mine.

Leo Laporte (02:14:51):
Yeah, that's a good one. Compare that. And you'll like the Lizzo. Yes. You have the Lizzo at home. I

Mikah Sargent (02:14:56):
Think we do have Lizzo on those.

Leo Laporte (02:14:57):
Oh yeah, yeah. I know you're a Lizzo fan too. And there's nothing better than shooting down bricks with

Mikah Sargent (02:15:05):
Lizzo in the background.

Leo Laporte (02:15:06):
In the

Mikah Sargent (02:15:06):
Background. Yeah. He's like cheering you on

Leo Laporte (02:15:09):
Baby. How you doing? I feel so

Mikah Sargent (02:15:11):
Using Anheiser to like monitor the audio right now. It's nice.

Leo Laporte (02:15:17):
Yeah, we did a good job. I

Mikah Sargent (02:15:19):
Feel like I can just run around the place. Yeah, we'll have to use these for our future

Leo Laporte (02:15:22):
Place. Yeah, we could do the whole show like outside. Yeah, yeah. Hey, we should do that. Sometimes when it spring or summer in the weather's. Nice. Spread a blanket.

Mikah Sargent (02:15:32):
Oh my goodness. Picnic with Leo and

Leo Laporte (02:15:34):
Mike. We could do the show outside <laugh>. There is a camera drop right out our front door so we can do that. Actually we've have, we used it John, We've used it I think. Yeah.

Mikah Sargent (02:15:45):
Oh my hair is such a mess. Dad. They're the

Leo Laporte (02:15:48):
Music. Leo Laport, Mike is sergeant. Your tech guys. Ats. We got Mikah out of the VR helmet just in the nick of time here.

Mikah Sargent (02:15:57):
Indeed. I'm back in the saddle and out of the headset.

Leo Laporte (02:16:00):
So you can take that home, you can play with it, Try it,

Mikah Sargent (02:16:02):
Compare it to the Quest

Leo Laporte (02:16:03):
Two, compare it to your existing thing. I think that's a good idea. Will

Mikah Sargent (02:16:07):
They make me

Leo Laporte (02:16:07):
Nausea? I think it's pretty clear though that nobody should spend 1600. You'd have to be

Mikah Sargent (02:16:12):
I. Yeah, no, I think I really do think that they're trying to market this for

Leo Laporte (02:16:16):
Companies, professionals. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Professional. What? I don't know. Yeah. <laugh> 88. 88. <inaudible> is the phone number. Kim in our Gena, Illinois. Thanks for being so patient. Well we messed around Kim

Caller 6 (02:16:31):
<laugh>. No kidding. <laugh>. You so great, Leo. Thank

Leo Laporte (02:16:35):
You. We did mess around a little bit. We we're kids in a candy store basically. So

Caller 6 (02:16:42):
Hey, I'm the same way. Good. I have a serious beef with TV and movie producers. I am 70 and most of my friends are above 60 <affirmative>. And we have a hard time, well not a lot of us have a hard time listening to movies and television shows because the audio is so damn loud what is going on? And I don't know how to control it. And that's really what my call was about, is seeing if you knew a way to separate the yes music from the voice,

Leo Laporte (02:17:19):
We have a fix, but we also know why it's this way. In fact, I'm gonna put in the show notes@techeyelabs.com, a great article from some months ago in slash film. And the title of the article by Ben Pearson is Here's Why Movie dialogue has gotten more difficult to understand. It's the dialogue, it's the spoken word that it's hard to hear. Is that right?

Caller 6 (02:17:41):
Yes, absolutely. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (02:17:44):
Because well there are a number of reasons. I mean the fix has to do with one of the reasons, which is that these days movies are mixed for surround sound in the theater. And many people in their home theater also have surround sound, which means they have not just the speakers and the tv, they have left, they have surrounds, they have a subwoofer and most importantly they have something called the Center channel. And they mix these movies and TV shows when they mix 'em for surround for the center channel. That's where the dialogue is. If you had a system that was a surround sound system, all of them offer a way to turn up the volume in the center channel. I keep mine cuz I'm 65, be 66 in a few weeks. I keep my center channel up about five db. Actually I was watching the World Series <affirmative> and they are aggressively mixing the World series to surround sound.

(02:18:39):
They want you to feel like you're at the ballpark. So the announcers are talking in this giant roar of a crowd the whole time and I can barely hear them. So I turned up the center channel there about to 10 db, which is a, it's a significant amount louder and I could hear it. So that's one fix is to see. And for your friends who have multiple speakers to see if there's a setting for the center channel, if you are just listen, Are you just listening on the TV speakers or do you have a sound bar?

Caller 6 (02:19:11):
No, I don't have a soundbar. Yeah,

Leo Laporte (02:19:14):
So a soundbar might help because then you can turn up the center channel. Soundbars have center channels as well but the TV speakers are not very good. And now you've got a bigger problem because there are other reasons why it's so bad. Directors like Christopher Nolan who directed the Dark Night series and Interstellar <affirmative> does it on purpose. Does it on purpose. In fact, in our generation, Robert Altman was famous for doing this. If you watch McCabe and Mrs. Miller, there's a lot of mumbling and <laugh> people. They're saying something and we're used to the actors saying something. That's part of the story. We be able to hear it. But directors like Nolan say, No, no, no real life. You don't hear everything. People mumble to say things in their, it drives me crazy. But that's one problem. Is this an aesthetic choice? The other problem is actors often these days are trying to be more naturalistic. Marlon Brando pioneered this, remember he mumble.

(02:20:21):
He would sometimes. And that's more real. But it's daunting to an audience that thinks everything you're saying is important to the story, which it often is. Also according to slash film, sound isn't well respected on sets. We had a sound guy call us a few months ago and I asked him and he said, Yeah, if you're the sound recordist and you're on a set of a TV show or movie, if that dialogue is gonna be there, but most of the time the director won't listen to you. If you can't, don't feel like you can say, Hey, you know what, we gotta do another take. I couldn't hear it, I couldn't hear the dialogue. The director is not gonna be open to that. It's too expensive. They wanna move on. And they often will say, Oh, we'll fix it in post. We'll fix it later in the editing, we'll bring in a, what they call ADR to rerecord that bring the actor in.

(02:21:13):
But often they don't do that. So it's very common because of budgets and schedules and because unfortunately the sound recorders are not as honored as they might have been <affirmative> that they just don't record it. Well now there's nothing you could do if it's an actor's mumbling or a director doesn't want you to hear it. If it's Robert Alman, he doesn't want you to hear it. Or the recordist isn't getting his way. The only technological thing is to go in there and turn up the center channel. And if you don't have a sound bar, that's gonna be hard to do. Leo and Mikah, you, you're tick guys <affirmative> that way. So hang on because I had to end that because it's radio <laugh>. But we could still talk. Okay, so do read this article cause you

Caller 6 (02:22:01):
Recommend

Leo Laporte (02:22:02):
For soundbar for Yeah, Yeah. There's some

Caller 6 (02:22:05):
Either one surround or the

Leo Laporte (02:22:07):
Putting in a surround system's complicated cuz then you have to get a lot of equipment. So you're gonna have to get an AV receiver and you're gonna have to get at least four speakers, if not six or eight or nine speakers <laugh>. So it gets expensive and complicated. That's the ideal way to do it. I have at home a surround A it's a 5.1 surround, a subwoofer center channel left and two surrounds. And to be honest, <affirmative>, even when I turn up the center channel on the World Series, I couldn't hear it.

Mikah Sargent (02:22:40):
What about these modern soundbar that have that special vo voice boost

Leo Laporte (02:22:44):
Thing? They're doing the same thing. Yeah, they're boosting the center channel. Center

Mikah Sargent (02:22:47):
Channel.

Leo Laporte (02:22:47):
So that's probably the best thing to do. Scott Wilkinson likes the Visio Soundbars, V I Z I O. You can get those on Amazon or any stereo store or even Target will have, they have a broad range. The least expensive ones are not, are like $130. They're not great. I would look at mm-hmm <affirmative> something. It depends on how much you can spend. So they have an M series, which is more expensive. The nice thing about the, I got the M series I wasn't thrilled with it, but it does have a center channel in the soundbar and then it also has surrounds and they're wireless, which is nice. So can actually, the wireless part is the subwoofer, which the surrounds connect to. But those can be another part of the room easily.

Mikah Sargent (02:23:38):
You, it's common among young folks these days.

Leo Laporte (02:23:42):
As a young folk, would you speak

Mikah Sargent (02:23:43):
For them? I would speak for them in this case especially, we all like to have closed captioning turned on for everything

Caller 6 (02:23:50):
And my son is like that. Yeah. My son does that.

Leo Laporte (02:23:55):
And that goes to the part of it being intentionally like you can't hear it.

Mikah Sargent (02:24:00):
Right.

Leo Laporte (02:24:01):
So in fact, I find often with the subtitles turned on, you hear, I know, I couldn't hear that. But for some reason they put

Mikah Sargent (02:24:09):
It your brain and the

Leo Laporte (02:24:10):
Subtitles <affirmative>. So you'll get a lot more out of a lot of shows

Mikah Sargent (02:24:14):
When people are whispering. Especially

Leo Laporte (02:24:15):
Yeah. Background actors who aren't really part of the scene saying something and you go, what? <laugh>? Yeah. And you would never have heard that. So it's no shame to turn on the subtitles. Not at all. I do that, of course. Okay. Everybody does it now, right? Yeah.

Caller 6 (02:24:32):
Yeah. It's terrible. Young kids with their headphones too. They're gonna damage their ears.

Leo Laporte (02:24:37):
Oh, I have tinnitus from a long, long career in radio with headphones that are too loud. And before that, as a kid just sitting next to speakers and

Mikah Sargent (02:24:48):
I've got protections turned out on everything so that it never gets

Leo Laporte (02:24:51):
Too loud. I was at a ACDC tribute band last night in my watch, which has this very nice feature kept saying, she kept shouting me. It's over a hundred db, it's over a hundred db gonna, your ears are gonna get damaged. And that's a great thing that the Apple watch I had earplugs in so I wasn't worried about it. You're good. Yeah. But

Caller 6 (02:25:07):
Oh that was

Leo Laporte (02:25:08):
Good. The whole concert was way too loud. And that's pretty common. So yeah, I feel bad for kids and I don't think they know. And you know how it is when you're a kid, you think your knees will last forever, your ears will last for I know your shoulder will last forever. Yeah, exactly. <laugh>. Exactly. You have no idea <laugh>. Yeah. So I don't know what the best, I really appreciate. Oh, at least you're not alone. It's, It's a very common thing. We'll put this article from slash film in the show notes cause it's really an interesting read.

Mikah Sargent (02:25:42):
Where do you find in the show notes?

Leo Laporte (02:25:44):
Tech guy labs.com. Did I already put the link for you? You did. I did. Okay. Tech guy, Mikah does those. He works really hard on 'em, so I probably should tell you. Okay. Hey, thank you. It's a pleasure talking to you Kim. Yes, yes. Thank you. Yeah, take care. There are nowadays I think you're gonna see more hearing aids, things like

Mikah Sargent (02:26:05):
That. Yeah. Cuz they're OTC now

Leo Laporte (02:26:06):
Over the counter and you're gonna see them. For instance, I wear my Apple AirPods with an Apple TV <affirmative>. And it will let you, I love that. Improve the sound and understand what's going on. And

Mikah Sargent (02:26:17):
A lot of the, It's interesting, a lot of the budget tech TV tech has those boost the vocals features.

Leo Laporte (02:26:23):
Yep. Leo Laport, Mikah Sargent. Yeah. That's Yoko singing. Sure. Leo Laport. Mikah Sargent, This is the tech guy show 88. 88. Ask Leo. It's really a universal thing. And as you pointed out, Mike, a young people <affirmative>, there was just an article in the New York Times about this, almost invariably use the subtitles, which used to be for almost an embarrassing thing for me as a

Mikah Sargent (02:26:48):
Senior, really ashamed to it. Yeah. These days, on the rare occasion that I go over to someone's house and they are watching a show and there's no captions, I'm like, what is anyone saying? How does someone watch this <laugh>? I don't know what, How

Leo Laporte (02:26:59):
Did that happen? Is it cuz it TikTok?

Mikah Sargent (02:27:01):
I honestly don't know. I have been doing it for a long time. And for me it was specifically because I wanted to hear what was going on it. It's what you talked about where you said sometimes there'll be someone in the background saying something and you don't pick up on it. I had that happen enough times that I'm like, there is value in getting these captions here so that I can hear by reading everything that's being said. And for me, that's all it took. But I think that you're right, there is a level of social media. A lot of people will scroll through stuff and they'll read what the video

Leo Laporte (02:27:30):
Is. I don't have the audio turn on TikTok because it's the middle of the night. I don't wanna wake up my wife. But the tech, in fact now Android and iOS both have automated captioning <affirmative> for everything. So you're watching YouTube video, it'll just put captions on and they do a pretty good job. And there's no shame to turning on subtitles. Not at all. It's a little distracting. I mean, I don't really wanna read the subtitles. I wanna watch.

Mikah Sargent (02:27:53):
Once you do it enough, it really does become kind of second nature where it doesn't distract me. It's it, It's weird how I then consume that media because it's almost like I've got one eye focused on what's going on and the other is reading. Yeah, it just

Leo Laporte (02:28:07):
Works. That explains why your eyes are

Mikah Sargent (02:28:10):
So yeah, why my eyes are, Yeah.

Leo Laporte (02:28:11):
88. 88 as we will in the show notes@techguylabs.com put this great article from slash film that explains the whole thing. It explains it all part. The other one that I didn't mention is there's this syndrome of, I've heard this scene, I've been, this is the 15th take. I know exactly what they're saying. So you don't realize, So you don't, the director, the sound guy, nobody realizes, Nobody can understand what he's saying, just you just know what he's saying. <affirmative> let's go to Vicky on the line from Rancho Palace Verde, California. Hi Vicky.

Caller 7 (02:28:43):
Hi, this is Vicky.

Leo Laporte (02:28:44):
Welcome. You're on the air.

Caller 7 (02:28:47):
Thank you. I have two questions. Okay. The first one is I just got a new math book pro and I was really, really happy with my old one. And I had office 2007 on my old one. And when I brought everything across to my new MacBook Pro, it worked pretty seamlessly. But my office, it says that it's old and it won't open it up. And I was wondering if there was any way to make it work because

Leo Laporte (02:29:20):
It's too old and it's a 32 bit app, which means you need to get a more recent version Office 2019 and up support your new MacBooks, Apple silicon chip. But even a little bit older would still work because there is a emulation layer. But if it's really old, it's not gonna work. Cuz And that's really, that's 15 years old. That's really old. So it's a 32 bit app. And Apple started with Catalina said, no, your apps have to be 64 bit. So there's a few choices here. Do you really need office?

Caller 7 (02:29:56):
Yes.

Leo Laporte (02:29:57):
Okay. For work or whatever. Because remember Apple comes with a word processor called pages a spreadsheet called Numbers. And they all open the Microsoft Office documents and write office documents. <affirmative>. And I think for many, they're better, frankly, Better programs. There's a presentation manager instead of PowerPoint you'll use Keynote, which is excellent. So that's one option. Microsoft has an online web based version of Office that's free@office.com. That will work. And for basic office use, that's a good free choice. But you can also, and I did this, I bought office, they have a subscription now and the personal version of Office is about eight bucks a month. It's a lot less than going out and buying a new copy of Office. I'm sure that's why you're still using 2007. It's so expensive. Right?

Caller 7 (02:30:47):
Well the whole subscription model is not my favorite.

Leo Laporte (02:30:50):
Yeah. Well I hate to tell you <laugh> a future the way of the world. It's not my favorite either. I don't like it. But that's how Microsoft does it. And if you look at the cost of buying office outright, they call it the perpetual license versus the monthly or yearly cost. It really is less expensive to just buy it a year at a time. It's like 86 bucks a year. Oh, Scooter X and the chat found a deal for the 59 99 for Office Home and Business Lifetime license two pack. Well that's a good deal. So we'll put that link. It's from stack social.com. Makes me a little nervous. Sometimes these companies are reselling those cards you get in your new computer that give you a year's license to office. So I'd be careful. But if it's a real copy of office, that's a good deal. Six 70 bucks a year for office if you do the subscription. And I think that's a lot more important. The other choices are there's Google Docs. There are a lot of online office solutions besides microsoft's office.com that for many people fit the bill as well. And I should also mention there's a free open source office clone called Libre office L I B R e office.com that a lot of people like it Reason writes Microsoft documents and it's absolutely free. So there are other choices, but if you really want office, you're gonna have to upgrade

Caller 7 (02:32:19):
And I'm gonna have to dig the, Okay, I can do that. Okay. The question is just an annoyance to me on I use email and also other pages that a lot of times the links aren't working on Safari. And this is a brand new computer right out of the box. But I also had the same problem on my old math book Pro. But the problem crept up within the last less than a year. And so I have to do a copy and then paste and go in order to circumvent that problem. But Link should work.

Mikah Sargent (02:32:58):
So you're saying when you click on the link, it's not going to the page that you're trying to get it to go to?

Caller 7 (02:33:03):
No, it get gets me to the search Marky when I click on on it.

Leo Laporte (02:33:09):
Oh, that's interesting.

Caller 7 (02:33:10):
It doesn't get me to the link.

Leo Laporte (02:33:12):
There are a couple of possibilities. It's always risky to click links in email because what looks like it's going to yahoo.com, that's the text you see on the email. It's going to hacker dot and it's hidden underneath. So it may be a security thing that Apple's doing to keep you from clicking the link in the email. If you type it in or you cut and paste the text and paste it in, that's safe. Cuz you're actually going to yahoo.com or a legit site. You're not going to the underlying hidden hacker site. So that's the first thing I would say.

Caller 7 (02:33:48):
But also when I'm at another site and I click on it, it also does, a lot of times inconsistently won't go to

Leo Laporte (02:33:59):
And it goes to a search page. Yep. I'm worried that you may have an extension. Yep, that's what, it's a malicious extension installed that makes money every time you go to that search page. What search does it go to? Google?

Caller 7 (02:34:12):
No, it goes to something called Search Marque. There

Leo Laporte (02:34:15):
You go. Bingo. <laugh>. You got a browser hijacker on your system. Okay, how do I get rid of it? Look in the go into the,

Mikah Sargent (02:34:25):
If you type in Search marquee on Google, the first result is remove search marquee virus from

Johnny Jet (02:34:30):
Mac

Leo Laporte (02:34:30):
<laugh>. Clear your browser, cash open Safari, click the developed tab in the top menu and then empty cas and then clear History. Finally click Safari from the top menu, Navigate to preferences, privacy manage website. That's a complicated thing. I'll we'll put a link. link@techguylabs.com. There's several steps. Yeah, you have a brow. It's called a browser Hijacker object or bho. And search Marque makes money every time you load that site. So that's why that's happening. So get rid of that and you'll probably go back to the normal operation

Mikah Sargent (02:35:09):
Head, the tech guy labs.com and we'll have a great link for you from Trend Micro that

Leo Laporte (02:35:12):
Talks all the, Yeah, that's a good anything company. But I should point out that's why it's dangerous to click links and email cuz that's how you got it in the first place. So it's still better to hand type in those addresses in the address bar. That's exactly how you get it. Gwis Dick d Bartolo Mads mad writer. And our gizmo wizard coming. I'm next. Everybody get out your whistle. Gotta do some dancing. Oh, I like those white disco boots. Dick d Bartolo. MAD's theist writer <laugh>. And your GWiz is here. Hello? Dickie D Oh, are you? Oh. Oh, push the button. Wait a minute. What's going on? He's getting something. Oh, you need a microphone? So let me tell you something about Radio <laugh>. What's your microphone doing over your head? <laugh>?

Dick DeBartolo (02:36:10):
I had it. I was trying to look at my background before he went on air and I lifted it up and I forgot to bring it background.

Leo Laporte (02:36:17):
He's talking, but nothing's happening.

Dick DeBartolo (02:36:20):
Oh my gosh. It is now.

Leo Laporte (02:36:21):
Great to see you, Dick. Every week he joins this with a gizmo or a gadget that I try very hard and usually fail not to buy. What do you got?

Dick DeBartolo (02:36:33):
You're not gonna buy this. Oh this is, Yeah. No, because it's beyond stupid and

Leo Laporte (02:36:40):
I love that

Dick DeBartolo (02:36:42):
You Oh yeah, you're you'll,

Mikah Sargent (02:36:44):
You'll be fine. Leah.

Leo Laporte (02:36:45):
This one's fine. John says, My studio manager says that's never stopped you before. Okay, go ahead. Go

Dick DeBartolo (02:36:50):
Ahead. Okay. They're called Finger chop sticks

Leo Laporte (02:36:53):
You I have, I have them. Yep. <laugh>. I already have them for eating Cheetos. <laugh>.

Dick DeBartolo (02:37:00):
What?

Leo Laporte (02:37:01):
Oh, that's the

Dick DeBartolo (02:37:02):
Silliest thing. Oh, okay. So Mikah gave me a little hint and said, Oh, Leo's gonna love these <laugh>. He actually uses them. The wild thing about this Leo is like three times a year for abc, I do a thing called Gadgets you may not know about. Yeah. And I did these thinking they were dumb. And OMG Chad, the co-host of GWiz told me about him. People loved them.

Leo Laporte (02:37:26):
Oh, I love mine. You know why when you eat Cheetos, your hands get all orange and then you've got on your you've Al Canara Michael on your, Oh, Windows laptop

Dick DeBartolo (02:37:40):
Is Alcon there

Leo Laporte (02:37:42):
Al Al is the best, but unfortunately he attracts Cheeto dust. So it's a really good thing to have something to keep the Cheetos off. The Alcon. I actually

Dick DeBartolo (02:37:53):
Exclusively type

Mikah Sargent (02:37:54):
With these. I don't even use my fingers, I just use these

Leo Laporte (02:37:57):
Chopsticks. Well let's show this dick because you can type while the chopsticks are on. Cause your fingers are free. Yeah,

Dick DeBartolo (02:38:04):
Your fingers are free. And I'm thinking maybe ships should have these at buffets. Amen. So if you want olives or something like that. Oh, could just pick them up without <laugh>. And I bought a bunch of them from different manufacturers and they all seem to be the same product. So I found them eight for $8. So that's just a bucket piece.

Leo Laporte (02:38:30):
Okay, that's good. But do you really need eight of them?

Dick DeBartolo (02:38:33):
Well, no, I got seven strangers in just to

Leo Laporte (02:38:37):
Try them. <laugh>.

Dick DeBartolo (02:38:38):
I mean, I spent eight of the things. It's such a deal.

Leo Laporte (02:38:42):
I bought eight of them

Dick DeBartolo (02:38:43):
Worth of

Leo Laporte (02:38:43):
Food. You only got two fingers. Well, I guess you could put 'em on every finger, but that's silly. That's silly. Eight for $8. Where is that on Amazon?

Dick DeBartolo (02:38:53):
That's on Amazon. And I believe Amazon has a sale. I know you might buy this. I just bought 300 chopsticks AAA batteries for $25.

Leo Laporte (02:39:07):
I need them because when the clock falls back as it will tomorrow, Are

Mikah Sargent (02:39:11):
You sure they're not just models of AAA batteries?

Dick DeBartolo (02:39:14):
<laugh>? No, it's, I believe they're Amazon brand.

Leo Laporte (02:39:18):
Oh, that's a good brand. Buy those. Yeah.

Dick DeBartolo (02:39:21):
And they are 300 for $25

Leo Laporte (02:39:24):
Does seem like. But the clocks change tomorrow. And you know what we're supposed to do when the clocks change? I

Mikah Sargent (02:39:30):
Don't even know which one

Dick DeBartolo (02:39:30):
Is it. Jump go backwards. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (02:39:33):
No, we fall back, but we're also

Dick DeBartolo (02:39:35):
Supposed to. Oh my goodness

Leo Laporte (02:39:36):
Though. You didn't believe it, did you? I have the same exact.

Dick DeBartolo (02:39:40):
Oh my words.

Leo Laporte (02:39:41):
No, but <laugh>. No, we're doing a duet. Would you like a pair? Yeah. Yes. Thank you. <laugh>. You post we could make, Oh

Mikah Sargent (02:39:52):
My fingers don't really

Leo Laporte (02:39:52):
Make, Well you, you know what, you'll get stronger. I got Oh, there as you use these, you're,

Dick DeBartolo (02:39:57):
Yeah, Yeah. The learning curve is usually the therapeutic tool. Actually

Leo Laporte (02:40:02):
Now. Okay, let me finish my thought. Yeah, please go ahead. Change the batteries and your smoke alarm. I was talking stop it. Change the battery and your smoke alarm tomorrow you're supposed to do it every time the clocks move.

Mikah Sargent (02:40:14):
Oh. Oh, okay. That

Leo Laporte (02:40:15):
Way you always

Dick DeBartolo (02:40:16):
Don't triple a's in there. A nine bolt

Leo Laporte (02:40:18):
Some. You know what, I have smoke alarms that use Triple A's not use. Double A's though. Oh yeah. Oh, okay. Do they have a deal on nine bolts? Cause most of 'em use nine bolts. You're right. Yeah.

Dick DeBartolo (02:40:30):
So, okay, well, don't know if that's clear. You have these

Mikah Sargent (02:40:34):
<laugh> <laugh>

Leo Laporte (02:40:36):
You're saying don't put this in my mouth. I'm

Mikah Sargent (02:40:37):
Saying don't put it in

Leo Laporte (02:40:38):
Your mouth. What's the point?

Dick DeBartolo (02:40:40):
Well wait a minute. It's a tiny now. I thought we were be, Were being very hygienic here. Not

Mikah Sargent (02:40:45):
Anymore <laugh>. It just goes right. Put it mouth

Leo Laporte (02:40:50):
<laugh>. Well what I'm like a child. It's either that or the nose. Right.

Dick DeBartolo (02:40:55):
Notes of people visiting twit after covid. Do not use

Leo Laporte (02:40:59):
The finger. Chop chopstick. I don't know where these have been. John just ran them in. Yeah, but <laugh>, I use these for, like I said, Cheetos. Or better yet, those planter cheese

Mikah Sargent (02:41:16):
Balls. Yeah,

Leo Laporte (02:41:16):
Cheese balls. They're just right for that <laugh>. Oh, okay. Yeah. And so you could still type with the chopsticks on your fingers. You

Johnny Jet (02:41:24):
Can leave them

Leo Laporte (02:41:24):
On. You just leave 'em on. You never. And so you type, type, type, type. Have a cheese ball.

Mikah Sargent (02:41:29):
Type four. If you make tea afterwards, you lift the tea teabag. You

Leo Laporte (02:41:33):
Could take the teabag out. There are 1,000,001 uses, so maybe you should buy

Mikah Sargent (02:41:37):
Yeah, one for each thing. I've got my tea squeezer, my nose grabber, my tongue depressor, my ear cleaner. My post-it picker upper. And the one button,

Dick DeBartolo (02:41:52):
Two for spit, two for spares

Mikah Sargent (02:41:53):
And two for sp. Exactly.

Leo Laporte (02:41:55):
Yep. If you wanna know more,

Mikah Sargent (02:41:58):
You

Leo Laporte (02:41:58):
Surely do. And I know you do. Go to gwiz.biz at Dick's website. Click the blue button says the GWiz is the tech guy. And you can find the link to these. They're all the same, aren't they?

Dick DeBartolo (02:42:10):
They're all, yeah, as I said, I, I ordered them from three different places and they all came exactly the

Leo Laporte (02:42:18):
Same. Well, I don't know, Do yours have ribbed insides so you can really rip

Dick DeBartolo (02:42:23):
Yes. Near the

Leo Laporte (02:42:24):
Tip. Oh wow. Maybe they are all the same.

Dick DeBartolo (02:42:28):
I believe

Leo Laporte (02:42:29):
They are. Might as well get eight for eight. Eight bucks at Amazon. Yeah,

Dick DeBartolo (02:42:33):
I

Mikah Sargent (02:42:34):
Just bought it. Did you really? Yeah. Cause I didn't have any already. And I think they're fun. <laugh>. I don't really eat anything that'll need it. But maybe popcorn.

Leo Laporte (02:42:41):
Mine are two tone. See they have little, Yeah, it's part, Well

Mikah Sargent (02:42:44):
It's just, it's like a magnet. It's

Leo Laporte (02:42:46):
Style. It's just style. It's a little little. Put a little leather inset there.

Dick DeBartolo (02:42:51):
You

Leo Laporte (02:42:52):
All yours have that?

Johnny Jet (02:42:54):
No. You mm-hmm. <affirmative>. Oh, you bought the leather bound.

Leo Laporte (02:42:57):
I get the luxury. Luxury finger. Chopsticks. <laugh>. While you're at gwiz.biz, you might also want to click the button that says, What the heck is it? Because,

Dick DeBartolo (02:43:06):
And it's a new

Leo Laporte (02:43:07):
Game. We have a new game. It's time. So what was the last two? Oh, it was a nice, real was It was. No, it, that is one of the hilarious you stuff veggies in, This is the thing. Tiny veggies. It's only for cherry tomatoes to cut them in hat. It's got horrendous reviews because it, someone said, by the time you fit four little cherry tomatoes in there and close it up and put it back on the base. I would've never guessed cocktail onions or slicing grapes. The kitchen IQ veggies slicer here. Wow. And a number of people, including Gordon Ramsey. Got that. Right. So they got an autograph copy of Mad Magazine. Exactly. Now we've got a new Gizmo Gadget, it looks like, I mean, I'll be honest with you, I think I had this in my hamster cage. I was gonna say it's a blender for hamsters.

(02:44:05):
Yeah. Yeah. They can make margaritas. They can make everybody, I guess it was just too easy. Yeah. <laugh>, try harder next time. Will you go to Giz biz Play the contest. You're running, You're, You're playing for an autograph copy of Mad Magazine Autographed by this cat right here. Dick d Bart. Yes. He has a wonderful podcast at GIZ tv and he joins us every week. Thank you. Dickie D. Okay buddy. See you next week. All right. Bye bye. Thank you, Mikah. Sergeant, great to have you in the house. So much fun. Always a good time. We'll get you in some other gizmo or gadget next time. <laugh>, thanks to Professor Laura, our musical director who plays those fun songs in between and with her band. Of course. Yes. I never forget, I never mentioned the band, but thank you Laura and the Dominoes. There we go.

(02:44:51):
Yeah. And of course, Kim Schaffer the phone angel. Most of all, thank you for being here. We'll see you next time. Leo Laport, Mikah Sargent. Have a great geek week. Bye. Well, that's it for the Tech Guy Show for today. Thank you so much for being here. And don't forget twit, T W I T. It stands for this week at Tech and you find it@twit.tv, including the podcast for this show. We talk about Windows and Windows Weekly, Macintosh, a Mac Break, weekly iPads, iPhones, Apple Watches on iOS today, Security and Security now, I mean, I can go on and on. And of course, the big show every Sunday afternoon this week in tech. You'll find it all@twi.tv and I'll be back next week with another great tech guys show. Thanks for joining me. We'll see you next time.