The Tech Guy Episode 1944 Transcript

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

Leo Laporte (00:00:02):
Podcasts you love from people you trust. This is TWiT.

(00:00:11):
Hi, this is Leo Laporte and this is my Tech Guy podcast. This show originally aired on the Premier Networks on Sunday, November 13th, 2022. This is episode 1944. Enjoy. The Tech Guy Podcast is brought to you by, on Logic. Onlogic is helping innovators around the world solve their most complex technology challenges using on logic industrial computers, which are engineered for reliability, even environments that would challenge or destroy traditional computer hardware. They're pretty amazing. Learn more and find out about OnLogic's 30 day risk free hardware trial by visiting onlogic.com/twit. And by Code Comments, an original podcast from Red Hat that lets you listen in on two experienced technologists as they describe their building process and what they've learned from their experiences. Search for Code Comments in your podcast player. Why? Hey, hey, how are you today? Leo Laporte, the tech guy, time to talk, computers, the internet, home theater, digital photography, smart phones, smart watches, all of that jazz.

(00:01:24):
88. 88. Ask Leo is my phone number if you wanna talk high tech. 8 8 8 8 2 7 5 5 3 6. Toll free from anywhere in the US or Canada, outside that area. You should probably call using Skype or something like that. It should still be free. Skype out, you know, the thing that can call a a landline, some sort of internet thing. 88. 88 Leo website is tech guy labs.com. I mention that. So you don't have to write anything down. If you, if you're listening and you hear something and you say, oh, I wanna remember that, you don't have to, we will, we'll put it all up there. Links a transcript of the show, even audio and video from the show after the fact. It all goes@techguylabs.com. That's free by the way. No sign up. It's actually taking you to the tech guy page on our podcast site.

(00:02:17):
The podcast network. I run twi not Twitter. I don't care what Elon calls himself. Twi not Twitter. Tw i t.tv is where you'll be going actually, if you hit tech ilabs.com, and you'll see a bunch of other geeky shows there. Should you go through Geek Withdrawal during the week, Monday through Friday. I tell you, it's been a crazy week. Crazy couple of weeks between Elon Musk kind of destroying Twitter <laugh>. We may not see the full impact of it yet, but I think it's coming soon because now Word came out. So he's, he fired half the employees bought Twitter on October 27th, two weeks ago, fired half the employees a week later. Now comes where he's fired. 80% of the contract employees, those people are actually pretty important to any social network. Those are the poor folks. Usually low paid workers in countries where the cost of living is lower, who have the horrible job of, of moderating graphic content, things like that.

(00:03:33):
 So he had marketing teams. He had moderation. That's what they call moderation, moderation teams and others. Fired of the 40 5,500 of them fired, 4,400 of them. And they fired 'em in a kind of nasty way, cuz they're not employees, right? They're contract employees. You know, Silicon Valley loves hiring people for under 40 hours a week, so they don't have to pay 'em benefits, you know, they usually go right to the limit, which I think is 30, so they don't have to pay 'em benefits. And they, and one of the benefits they don't have to pay is severance. In fact, apparently <laugh>, they didn't even bother telling these people. They'd been let go. They just cut them off. They, they turned off their access to the company messaging systems, their email and this, whatever techniques, technologies they were using to do their jobs. Just, you know, stop working. Well, I guess I'm un unemployed now.

(00:04:29):
You know, maybe Elon's right? You know, smart guy, right? Not, not for nothing is either richest man in the world, but, well, at least he was, I don't know. Probably not anymore. But you know, he may, he's done well. And he's a, I presume he knows how to run a business. He must, right? So maybe he looked at it and said, oh, I can tell. I can just spot it with my nose. There's too many people working. I'm just gonna fire most of them. You okay, we'll see. <Laugh>, well, yeah, maybe, probably a lot of 'em. Were excess. You see that this week also meta fired. 11,000 people. Wow. I think it was what, 13% of the workforce is a lot of people. But remember what happened with all these companies during c was a boom time for them.

(00:05:25):
Not so much for the rest of us. Yeah, right? But during Covid, because we went to, we stayed home and we used technology really heavily. It was a boom time for tech companies. Stock went up, they made trillions of dollars in aggregate, and they hired people, right? They needed them. Well, now they're letting 'em go. And I think some of, you know, for instance, in the case of meta, there's still have more employees than they did before Covid, you know, so Twitter, not quite that case, but <laugh>. Anyway that's been interesting. And then there's the collapse of crypto, which is interesting. Only if you don't have any cryptocurrency. I pray that you do not. And, and I hope that you have, if you do, that you have gotten out, made yourself whole, because it's just, I think the fires are just getting lit <laugh> right now.

(00:06:38):
 If tx you might have seen that, that the FTX ads, you know, on sporting events, you maybe during the Super Bowl you saw Tom Brady and his wife, the supermodel, Giselle Bunin doing an ad for ftx. And, you know, they're in lounging in the luxurious home. And Tom says, I'm gonna make a trade. And she says, you're not going back to the Patriots. He says, no, no. I mean, on ftx, you might have seen those ads. You maybe, maybe you saw Matt Damon last year, a year, almost exactly a year ago with the ads you know fortune favors the brave. Remember that he's wandering and look at the Wright Brothers, and, you know, the whole crypto industry has really tried to create this impression that we are super smart. We have invented something brand new that's transformative, and you would be foolish not to get involved, except now it's looking more and more like it might have been a pyramid scheme. And, and, you know, if you create a pyramid scheme and you're the early people, what do you tell the new people? Oh, this is your big chance to make it big. And if you don't believe me, well, you're just, oh, a boomer, you're just old fashioned. You don't have courage.

(00:08:07):
Well, if you had the courage to buy a Bitcoin, let's say, when Matt Damon told you to, you'd kind of be unhappy. Right now, it's gone from $60,000 when that ad was out to $16,000 today, a year later. So I think anybody who bought at that time has lost, well, that's $44,000 per coin. And if you had put money into FTX or some of these other crypto exchanges, FTX was run by a guy who was lionized on the cover. Fortune Magazine. S bf, they call them, you know, you're a big shot when they, when you just call you by your initials. S bf Samuel Bank Friedman, who, young guy in his twenties, he'd worked for a hedge fund. And he said, you know what, I'm gonna start a crypto exchange ftx. And at the same time, and this is where he, I think he, I don't know, we're finding out he might have gotten a little trouble.

(00:09:09):
He also started a, a trading company called Alameda Research, which invested, it was funded by <laugh> FTX in a way that it had it been securities stocks would've been kind of blatantly illegal, but it was crypto and fortune favors the brave. And anyway, he's apparently he's being held in The Bahamas where he lives where the company's headquartered arrested, sort of, yeah. Sort of arrested. He can't leave. He was, you know, his private jet flew to Bueno airs. Everybody thought, oh, he's going to Argentina. And then the Bahamian, a author said, no, he is about to leave for Dubai where there's no extradition. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, that's interesting. With my money, probably, yeah, I don't know. But he was worth $92 billion when Fortune Magazine did that cover story on him earlier this year. You know how much he's worth today? Less than zero, which is fine with me, but I feel bad for is anybody who put their money in ftx ftx it all started when there was a run on the bank, ftx people who had stored their Bitcoin wallets or cryptocurrency wallet with FDX said, we want our money.

(00:10:45):
$6 billion worth in one day. And Fdx said, we, we have a, this is what they called a liquidity crisis. We don't have the money, is what they should have said, a liquidity crisis <laugh>.

(00:11:00):
 And now, apparently they've, they've filed for bankruptcy chapter 11, but we'll see. That's just the reorganization and we'll see. And then there's crypto.com. You see their ads everywhere. They just, they just renamed the arena in los angeles's crypto.com, marina, right? This is twice now. They've sent money to the wrong person. They admit they accidentally, accidentally sent 416 million to another crypto exchange. They got it back, <laugh> they got it back. But they, you know, you might worry h might worry about that a little bit. FTX says we were hacked and 600 million has disappeared. What do you bet <laugh> it was gonna disappear on a private jet somewhere. <Laugh>, what do you bet? An FTX account administrator wrote on the FTX support Telegram, FTX has been hacked. FTX apps are malware. Delete them. This is Fdx saying that, and don't go on the fdx site. It might download Trojans. The message was pinned by general counsel, FDX, general counsel, the head lawyer.

(00:12:25):
Mm. Yeah. So I I I'm not gonna say I told you so, although I did, I'm just, you know, mentioning that. But I hope, I pray you didn't get caught up in all of this. It's very easy, you know, and, and here's what I think happens. You, technology is complicated, hard to understand. Even, you know, pretty sophisticated technology gurus, and I'll include myself, found it difficult to understand what was going on with all of this. At some point though I came to the conclusion, I think many did that, you know, this is, this is just a pyramid scheme. And you shouldn't get involved.

(00:13:16):
 I think I told you this, when NFTs people were selling NFTs for millions of dollars I said maybe not. Ftx had that ad with the Larry, David, the guy from Curb Your Enthusiasm playing a Boomer, remember this. And the whole premise of the ad was, oie Don't be a, Larry said, don't be like Larry, who said no to everything. The wheel, the indoor toilet. He says no to everything. And he said, crypto, and I don't think so. Don't be like, Larry. Turns out, would've been a good thing to be like, Larry, that was a, Larry was, Larry was smart, and I hope Larry got paid in cash, not crypto, for his appearance in the ads.

(00:14:06):
 So what is the lesson of the last couple of weeks? One we should perhaps not lionize idolize billionaires. Sometimes they got there just by chance, sometimes by greed, sometimes by corruption, sometimes by Grif. But just because somebody's in the Three comma Club, you know, in their net worth, doesn't make 'em a genius. And you know, one of the good things about the way the internet plays out is, you know, I, you know, I suspect probably you go back in time. In fact, I think we know now a little bit that Thomas Edison was not the, you know, the amazing fellow we thought he was. He stole a lot of those ideas, including the light bulb that Henry Ford was kind of not a nice man, you know? Sure he invented the assembly line. That's worked out well for shareholders.

(00:15:06):
 But they didn't have to live in public. Nowadays, our billionaires choose to tweet and, and talk and put out ticks. And now we kinda know, maybe they're not such geniuses. The problem is because technology is complicated and obscure, I think a lot of people didn't trust themselves in their gut. They said, well, it seems like, how could that be? But you know what? It's technology. It's probably great technology. How could it, so have we learned a lesson here? Technology. Putting a thin coding of technology over something doesn't make it okay, doesn't make it work, doesn't make it better. We're seeing that with ai, thin coding of AI and everything. We're seeing a thin coating of crypto and blockchain and everything make it better. Doesn't necessarily make it better. And don't be fooled. Don't let your feeling like, oh, I don't get it. I don't get it. Give you too much courage. I don't know if fortune favors the brave. It certainly didn't favor Matt Damon. And again, I hope you got paid in, in cold hard cash. Eighty eight eighty eight. Ask Leo the phone number. (888) 827-5536 toll free from anywhere in the us You can, let's take some calls right after this,

Kim Schaffer (00:16:22):
<Laugh>,

Leo Laporte (00:16:24):
You will not hear that. If you call 88 88. Ask Leo instead. You'll hear the DCE tones of this woman right here. Ms. Kim Shaffer, our phone Angel. Hello, Kim.

Kim Schaffer (00:16:34):
Hello. You have DLT tones. I don't think I do.

Leo Laporte (00:16:37):
You have. No, you do. People love and they love your laugh. <Laugh>. They love your laugh.

Kim Schaffer (00:16:41):
My laugh. I have my mom's shrill voice. <Laugh>.

Leo Laporte (00:16:44):
No, you don't. You sound great. You know I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna just give you kind compliments or anything, but you're a very important part of this show here, because without you, people would just come on the air.

Kim Schaffer (00:17:00):
Well, it would be like, Larry what's his face? Larry? David? No, Larry King. Larry King. Hey, caller.

Leo Laporte (00:17:07):
<Laugh>. You know? So I wonder, did he not have anybody? He would just call and he'd pick you up.

Kim Schaffer (00:17:11):
I, I don't know how that worked. I think we've discussed this before. He would say, I don't know, the inner working

Leo Laporte (00:17:16):
Patoka Kada,

Kim Schaffer (00:17:17):
Yeah. Something somebody knew obviously from,

Leo Laporte (00:17:20):
They must have screened a little bit.

Kim Schaffer (00:17:21):
They screened it a little

Leo Laporte (00:17:22):
Bit. They had to

Kim Schaffer (00:17:23):
Yeah. <Laugh>.

Leo Laporte (00:17:25):
Anyway, well,

Kim Schaffer (00:17:26):
Hello. Hi.

Leo Laporte (00:17:27):
Happy Sunday.

Kim Schaffer (00:17:30):
Yes.

Leo Laporte (00:17:30):
Who should I you don't, you didn't have any money in FDX, did

Kim Schaffer (00:17:33):
You? Not in that. I bought a little doe and a little light. Not very much. But it's tanked <laugh>.

Leo Laporte (00:17:41):
Yeah. You know, I my daughter thousand dollars. Cause remember Abby said she

Kim Schaffer (00:17:46):
Wanted the Sheba iu.

Leo Laporte (00:17:47):
Yeah. The, the meme. They call those meme coins. And I said, well, don't, I think she did. And I asked her the other day, how's your how's your shin sh going? Your do? Yeah. And she said I don't know, but I had to declare it <laugh>. Well,

Kim Schaffer (00:18:03):
Don't you only, like, they keep asking me for my tax information in that Robin Hood app, and I refuse to give it to him because I'm not taking it out, by the way. You can just

Leo Laporte (00:18:11):
Sit there right way. Robin Hood was one of the companies that FTX saved along with Block Fi. These are companies that had currency crunches, liquidity crunches. And Samuel Bank Freeman came running in, said, I will save you. He, but it turns out, I think the whole thing was all to polish his reputation cuz he was saving people with this phony baloney fdx ft. Coin. So, I don't know. I don't know. Well, you know, this'll be one of those where you, you know, there'll be a HBO series about it. <Laugh>, what? Did we run outta time already? <Laugh>? I can't, I can't talk to you anymore. Sam Am Sam is coming up to talk cars. Then we'll take some calls. What have I done? Leo Laport tech

Kim Schaffer (00:18:57):
Guy. Yesterday we talked for a long time and that didn't happen. But today, I guess you must have been later on the other side.

Leo Laporte (00:19:05):
My clock must be all messed up. I need a new clock. Oh, Lordy. Well, thanks Kim. Bye

Kim Schaffer (00:19:15):
Bye.

Leo Laporte (00:19:18):
Hello, Sam.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:19:20):
Hello Leo.

Leo Laporte (00:19:21):
How are you today?

Sam Abuelsamid (00:19:23):
Good. Had a chance to ride a couple of e-bikes yesterday for the first time.

Leo Laporte (00:19:27):
Oh, aren't they fun?

Sam Abuelsamid (00:19:29):
Yeah. What, what kinda, do you have a RA power? Rad power?

Leo Laporte (00:19:33):
I do you I have the rad city step through and Lisa has the rad rover, the fat tire one. Okay. and did, you must have rid some new ones, right? Because those are old. Yeah,

Sam Abuelsamid (00:19:46):
I was, I was in Austin for electrify Expo. Oh, fun. I was doing a fireside chat with mark Bowl from GM Energy on Friday for the industry day. And so yesterday I came, I went, went over and checked out the public day for a little bit, rode a couple e-bikes rode a couple of bikes from company called Specialized that ranged between four and $6,000.

Leo Laporte (00:20:14):
Yeah, Michael has a specialized very expensive, but it looks like it looks more like a regular bike.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:20:21):
Yeah, I tried one from bulls with a new Bosch e-bike system, you know, powertrain system on there. $5,600.

Leo Laporte (00:20:32):
Yeah. They can be expensive, but even the red, you know, the red power bikes are like $1,500. They're much more expensive, the regular bikes, cuz the batteries are very expensive. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. But I love all man, I love our e-bikes. We, we just love 'em. Ride 'em all over the place. It's really fun. You have to worry about hills.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:20:52):
That's true. Yeah. We don't have a whole lot of hills around here, but

Leo Laporte (00:20:57):
Yeah. Even like a, you know, it's, it's fun. It's just fun. I really like

Sam Abuelsamid (00:21:03):
It. Might buy a couple of bikes for my wife and I next year. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:21:07):
Yeah. So we had, the first one I got was one that looks kind of like an old motorcycle, I think it was. Oh yeah. System 78 or something. 78. And it was, it's really cool.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:21:19):
Isn't that the Linux computer you had? No,

Leo Laporte (00:21:20):
That's system 76. What is the <laugh> E-bike? Let me see if I can find the name of that. It was an early super 73. That's what it was. Ah, okay. It was an early e-bike. But I liked it cause it looked like a mo it looked like, kind of like an Indian motorcycle. It was really cool. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. 

Sam Abuelsamid (00:21:38):
Yeah, they had all kinds of them there. They had all kinds of stuff with this Electrify Expo. It's kind of a combination of a car show and ride and drive event. Fun. We had a bunch of different electric vehicles ranging from Kia Ev six up to Volvos and lucid errors that you could drive. And then all kinds of e-bikes and scooters and, and even electric motorcycles from live wire.

Leo Laporte (00:22:02):
Nice. Yeah. Yeah. And Honda's got a moped, electric moped coming out, which looks pretty

Sam Abuelsamid (00:22:09):
Cool. Yeah. They've got a bunch of electric stuff coming. Yeah. electric two-wheelers, some moped and scooters and motorcycles. Variety of stuff. If scooters put Super 73 and

Leo Laporte (00:22:23):
Yeah, that's it. The super 70. Yeah. If I have to say if there, if there were somewhere to ride it safely, <laugh>, but you know, the roads around here, I just very nervous about riding a bike on the roads around here. I used to ride in San Francisco. I used to commute on a bike and breathe A lot of exhaust.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:22:46):
Yeah. Well, the e-bike would be great in San Francisco.

Leo Laporte (00:22:49):
Well, you need it for the hills. The hills, but the problem, you just, there's so much. I was coming in from the avenues. It was a ni it was good. I liked it. I really enjoyed it. But I just, I eventually, what happens, I get very nervous cause you have one too many close calls, you know, and mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, then you don't wanna do it anymore. All right, here we go. Our show today brought to you by OnLogic, you know, you, we were talking about the raspberry pie, which I, I just love that idea. It's a great little computer for kids and for hobbyists. And I gotta show you this cuz this, this reminds me of it a little bit. This is not for kids or hobbyists by any means. This is for industrial applications. This is an on logic

(00:23:39):
Personal computing device for industry, for tough environments. This is so cool. This is, I think the number one thing that if you, if you look at trends in computing, the number one trend these days is computing. Moving to the edge. Computing intelligence everywhere, right? In everything. You're, we're surrounded by computers now on logic makes computers that make things smart. You'll be amazed if you look around a little bit, you'll find these distinctive orange industrial and embedded computers everywhere. I hope you don't see one, but you might on a crash cart in the hospital, you might see one in a in a factory. They, they power advanced robotics, AI automation, digital media solutions. They're used widely in agriculture. Your neighborhood farm may well have in on logic running everything, right? It's the first choice in industrial computing for innovators around the world who need computing power that can survive and thrive where traditional hardware is gonna go.

(00:24:53):
Oh, nope, no way. On logic designs, these are amazing designs and creates computing solutions that can fit in the palm of your hand while powering everything from advanced robotics and AI to manufacturing automation, digital media solutions, smart agriculture technologies, because these are engineered specifically for reliability. Many of these computers, the ones I have here actually are are passively cooled. No fans see the fins. And so that means no air, no dust is sucked into the device. Many of these are ventless. So the internal components are protected from any airborne contaminants. But talk about power. I mean, these are this, look at this, this is four different wifi radios you can choose on this one. This is a nice little device. This one does have some vents of micro sim. It's got two USB two, two usb 3.2. Auto ignition watchdog, e D 4, 3, 2, and one.

(00:25:56):
Look at these LEDs, of course, completely programmable on the back. Dual 10 gig ethernet ports. You've got a display port. This is, these are in Incre. These are, man, some of these have I nines in 'em. It can have a variety of processors. It's really brilliant. They're engineered specifically for reliability. Many on logic computers are sitting in factory floors in, in farms where they've gotta be sealed, protected from dust and airborne contaminants. Also, because it's a completely solid state device, no moving parts. So it protects against shock and vibration. But, but there are many, many designs. That's the beauty of it. You can get a design that's just right for your particular application. Other design features and specialized components protect systems from extreme temperature from interference. They are extensively tested to operate reliably wherever they're needed. You'll see 'em in remote mining operations, as I said, on a medical cart in a hospital.

(00:27:04):
The team at OnLogic cares about creating the right solutions, tailored specifically to solve your unique technology challenges on Logic Partners with leading software companies like AWS to enable rapid evaluation and deployment of edge computing solutions they have on Logic has a line of AWS I t Greengrass compatible computers, vetted and approved by aws. So, you know, you got the peace of mind. It's gonna work right out of the box. If you need a computing solution that can easily be configured to your particular needs, supported by industry experts who are just a phone call, website, chat, or email away delivered to you quickly. The team at OnLogic is ready to help. You're gonna find a passionate, committed, enthusiastic team of individuals who, who want your application to sing. They're there to make it shine. To get started and learn more about on Logic's 30 day risk free hardware trial, go to onlogic.com/twit. That's on Logic O N L O G I c.com/twi. And they ain't getting these back. By the way, <laugh>, I've got all sorts of things I can do with these onlogic.com/twit. We thank you so much for supporting the Tech Guy. Don't forget you support the tech guy when you use that special address. That way they, they know you saw it here onlogic.com/twit. It's time for Sam aam. He's our car guy, principal researcher at Guide House Insights host of the Wheel Bearings podcast and a regular on the show here. Hello, Sam.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:28:41):
Hello Leo. How are you?

Leo Laporte (00:28:43):
You're a traveling guy. You're a, you go all over the place. You were in awe.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:28:47):
I just hit I just hit Diamond Medallion status on Delta for this year.

Leo Laporte (00:28:50):
Nice. I guess

Sam Abuelsamid (00:28:54):
Too much time on airplanes. Yeah,

Leo Laporte (00:28:56):
I, I don't miss I don't miss spending less time in airplanes. I have to say. I don't miss spending time in airplanes. I, I like nevermind. What's up in the

Sam Abuelsamid (00:29:05):
You like, you like the destination? Not the journey.

Leo Laporte (00:29:07):
I love the destination. I don't really enjoy, you know what, the airplane's not so bad. It's the airports. I don't like waiting in airports.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:29:13):
That's, that's true. Yeah. Although, you know, if you can get into the, the lounge, you know, one, one of the benefits of getting Diamond status is a free Delta Sky Lounge membership. So I was hanging out there for a couple hours yesterday before my flight

Leo Laporte (00:29:25):
Home. It's so bad.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:29:26):
Yeah. But the, the re the reason I was in Austin, Texas the last couple of days Yeah. Is I was there for Electrify Expo which is an event that is put on. They, they do five of them a year in different locations. I do one in Miami, New York, Seattle, long Beach and, and Austin. And there are other similar events. I know for example, my local utility here in Michigan during the course of the summer and early fall they did a series of these ride and drive events with EVs trying to get people exposure to EVs. Cuz one of the things that people realize one, one of the things they've found is that once, once people have actually been exposed to an ev they, they've either had a chance to drive one or ride in one. They are much more inclined to buy one.

(00:30:15):
 And so these kinds of events where you get a chance to, you know, learn about the vehicles and go for test drives in them are a great opportunity. So I'd highly recommend if you know, if you happen to be in one of these locations, we are doing an Electrify expo or some other similar event, or your local utility sends out a notice saying, Hey, we're gonna have some EVs available for you to try out you know, this Saturday. You know, sign up and come on down and, and check 'em out. Definitely take take a look, you know, go down and, and check it out. I think they said they sold, they sold out about 15,000 tickets for this event in in Austin over the weekend yesterday and today. That's amazing. They charge about 20 bucks.

(00:31:03):
Yeah. But it's much more than just, you know, electric cars and SUVs and, and trucks, you know, and they had everything from, you know, Kias to Volvos to BMWs and even the Lucid Air. You could take the test drive and El Lucid Air. But they also had it was, you know, kind of the whole e mobility spectrum. So you had electric bikes, electric motorcycles, live wire was there with some of their, their live wire motorcycles, their, their division of Harley Davidson. And e-Bikes scooters. And I, I got my first opportunity to ride a few different e-bikes yesterday, which was a lot of fun. Did you just write 'em around the show floor? Did they let you out? No, this was all outside. Nice. The event in Austin was at the Circuit of the Americas, the Formula One track.

(00:31:50):
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And so for the, for the scooters and bikes, they had a course set up on at the the carting track. So you could ride around there. And then for the vehicles, the, the larger vehicles, you actually actually got to go for a test drive out on the road. So it was a lot of fun. It's definitely, definitely worth it if you're interested in checking out some different EVs or different electric mobility options. And it was, you can and you, it's an opportunity to ask questions and learn and compare different vehicles from different brands. So kind of like, like I said, kind of a combination of a car show and a test drive event all, all rolled into one fun. But, but that's, that's not the the main thing I wanted to talk about today. Earlier this week, on this week weekend, Google on the Podcast network you guys were talking about software defined vehicles and announcement that came out between Reno and, and Google.

Leo Laporte (00:32:48):
Yes. You need to explain what that is to me.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:32:51):
Yeah. So when I started my engineering career in, in 1990, we were doing what kind, kind of the way they refer to it now as software enabled vehicles. And this, you know, software, having software vehicles is not news's been going on since the 1970s when they started putting electronic controls in for power trains and then abs and things. But those, that was all very low level embedded software. I mean, we were writing in assembly language, you know, and, you know, tiny little low power micro controllers. And once you put it in the vehicle, it was, it was there for the life of the vehicle. It never, never changed. No

Leo Laporte (00:33:30):
Upgrades, no over the year upgrades or anything like that. Was Tesla the first company to do over the year upgrades for vehicles?

Sam Abuelsamid (00:33:36):
They were the first to do it for safety critical systems. We've actually had OTA updates in vehicles for telematic systems since mid two thousands. I think GM was the first to do it with OnStar. And others have done it, you know, so they can update the telematics system the connectivity system. But actually updating other systems in the vehicles a little more complicated because of safety and security concerns. But, you know, what Tesla started doing was building hardware into vehicles. And you, you talked about software defined radios for ham, you know, where you, you have a, a you build in a certain base level of hardware and then you can turn features on and off with the software using OTA updates and flipping some switches. And so what we're seeing now is this migration changing the electronic architecture of the vehicles so that everything can be updated.

(00:34:35):
And in fact, e everything's been updateable for, for decades now. You know, going back to at least the late 1990s because you know, you could go into you know, a lot of times for recalls you would have to go into a dealer and, you know, they could plug in a tool into the diagnostic port and reflash the software in there. But what we're seeing now is this is being done over the air and that's where the security challenges come in and doing that. And last week I was driving a lucid error again for a couple of days and Lucid loaned me the car because they wanted me to try out the new UX 2.0 software. They just did a major OTA software update on their vehicles to fix some problems and add some new features. And this is kind of, you know, this is the thing that Tesla really pioneered, is adding new features to vehicles with software. So you have the hardware that's already in there and then you're, you're, you're turning things on with new software and def defining new functionality with the software, hence the software defined vehicle component of this.

Leo Laporte (00:35:45):
Yeah. So, but I mean, it's just like a still, it's still a vehicle

Sam Abuelsamid (00:35:49):
<Laugh>. Yeah. Yeah. Right. And, and you still, I mean, you still have to, you have to build in a minimum level of hardware Right. In order to be able to do these things. Right. and this is where one of the challenges comes in. Manufacturers want to be able to sell these features on demand, have subscriptions to features and you know, that's where the, the problem comes in. You know, they wanna increase their revenue streams by having customers subscribe to features.

Leo Laporte (00:36:16):
There you go.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:36:17):
But, but the problem is, if you, if you're building in, if you, you have to build in the hardware to begin with, which is gonna limit how, you know, it's, it's not necessarily a great value proposition unless you can actually reduce the upfront price of the car and then pick and choose the features you want

Leo Laporte (00:36:31):
It. It's also, and cuz I've seen companies already, I, I think BMW does this attempt is, and it really annoys customers. Like, I know I have heated seats, but I have to pay you 20 bucks a month to use them. Come on man. It really bugs people. I know that. But I have to say,

Sam Abuelsamid (00:36:47):
And again, like I said, it wouldn't be so bad if the BMW was cheaper to buy or any other vehicles cheaper to buy. Right. And then you could enable that when, when you want it.

Leo Laporte (00:36:55):
I really want, and of course the other problem is you can't make these vehicles so heavily dependent on their software that they don't, they're not safe if the software crashes. Cuz software doesn't always work. And so you gotta, there's a really,

Sam Abuelsamid (00:37:08):
I haven't heard that <laugh>, that software was perfect.

Leo Laporte (00:37:12):
I have

Sam Abuelsamid (00:37:12):
Learned it's working great for Twitter, isn't it? Yeah,

Leo Laporte (00:37:14):
Right. I've learned on my Mustang, there's actually a three fingers salute, a a reset combination to reset the, but it only resets the telematics. I could still be driving while I'm doing it. And I think that's really important. Sam Abs, Sam, principal, researcher, guide, house Insights, listen to his Wheel Bearings podcast, whoever podcasts, better podcasts are sold. And of course, right here every Sunday. Thank you Sam.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:37:39):
Thank you, Leo.

Leo Laporte (00:37:52):
I'm gonna let you have the control of this show if you would like, but only if you would like.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:38:00):
Absolutely.

Leo Laporte (00:38:00):
And then I

Sam Abuelsamid (00:38:01):
Show I I've been, I've been really liking Mastodon.

Leo Laporte (00:38:06):
Isn't it fun? I know. I see you on our instance. Thank you for your, thank you for

Sam Abuelsamid (00:38:10):
Your Yeah. I signed up on there and also got myself set up on Pixel Fed and so it's kind like old school Instagram, no ads. It's very old algorithms. Yeah. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:38:20):
You, you may find at some point there's an automotive ma on server. You'd rather be on it, but it's

Sam Abuelsamid (00:38:25):
Very, that's, that's what I'm looking for.

Leo Laporte (00:38:26):
Yeah. I'm sure there will be. Cuz the local instance has a personality and it's in your local feed. I sure love having you there, there and you can even have both. I mean, there's no reason you can't have multiple accounts just like you would on Yeah. On Twitter or anywhere else.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:38:40):
But yeah. And that's, that's what I'll probably end up doing. I

Leo Laporte (00:38:43):
Won't be hurt if you move to a car instance. I understand. Well, I,

Sam Abuelsamid (00:38:46):
I probably, I probably won't move entirely, but I'll probably follow people on a, on another one or, you know,

Leo Laporte (00:38:51):
That's what I do. I see. You know, I can't leave my own instance <laugh>.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:38:55):
Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:38:56):
But

Sam Abuelsamid (00:38:57):
But you could but that would weird. Yeah, <laugh>. 

Leo Laporte (00:39:01):
But I see like, so there's an emax masked on server. There's open source one. So I just go over there and you can, if you hit the, if you actually law go to the system and hit the explore button, you can see many of the best accounts on there and just follow them, which is an easy thing to do. And then that way you get the benefit of it in your, in

Sam Abuelsamid (00:39:18):
Your home. Yeah. I'm, I'm, I'm experimenting with it right now. I'm trying to figure out where it's new, where I wanna put the, where I wanna migrate the wheel bearings, Twitter presence to, there you go.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:39:27):
And I'm debating between Mastodon and Discord, you know, so We'll, we'll see what happens.

Leo Laporte (00:39:32):
That's great having a disc around too. I love our discord, as you know. Yeah, it's really great. Yeah. we do all the things

Sam Abuelsamid (00:39:41):
<Laugh>,

Leo Laporte (00:39:43):
Which is crazy. I had to, you know, for three years I've been running this Mastodon for 15 euros a month, and then all of a sudden, you know, I'm paying like 350 bucks a month because so many, you know, we had, I can't remember what it was, I think 15000% growth. O Yeah. So yeah, we went from, yeah, 15, almost 16000% growth in the new users, active users, 1500% growth interactions, 7000% growth. So, wow. Yeah. So we had to That's pretty amazing. We were, was stalling out. I had to, I had to buy more. I upgraded several times

Sam Abuelsamid (00:40:22):
To handle. Yeah. So it's it's, I'm really liking it so far. Good. I'm

Leo Laporte (00:40:27):
Enjoying. Good. Well we love having you in there. That's great. Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:40:30):
All right. So let me answer a

Leo Laporte (00:40:31):
Couple. Yeah. I'll give you a while. I run out into the other room. Okay.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:40:34):
Okay. So let's see. Web Short says he is had an Aton adventure that he bought a year ago. And it's great under $2,000. Yeah. It's, there's, there's e-bikes at a lot of different price points. I said, you know, one that I rode I wrote a couple of different ones. One from special, a couple different ones from Specialized, which were 4,000 and $6,000. And then there was one from Bulls which is you know, Bosch is not actually making the e-bikes, they're making the motors and control systems, things like that. So they had a bunch of different brands that were using their, their hardware. And the one I wrote was a Bulls copperhead Evo two which is about $5,600. Went about 20 miles an hour on that thing, on this short little course, which was pretty impressive.

(00:41:27):
 Let's see buying better Off Buying a Bosch dishwasher. I don't know about that. I actually had a Bosch dishwasher for a number of years and we had it kept frying the electronic boards and those things. Had to replace the electronic board a couple different times in about 10 years with that thing. And finally learned that you actually have to run the hot water, get the water good in the hot before you turn it on, cuz otherwise the in rush current would zap the board. So I will be back. I think Leo should be back here momentarily. I think the clock's counting down. And there we go. I'll be back at the top of the hour.

Leo Laporte (00:42:07):
Thank you. Yes, sir. He's a soul man. Leo LaPorte, the tech guy. I'm a tech man. Da da da. Eighty eight eighty eight. Ask Leo the phone number. Be go to the phones. Finally. Thank you for your patience, mark and David and Bob. David and David <laugh>. Hi, David from Sandpoint, Idaho. Good to talk to you. Thanks for holding on.

Caller 1 (00:42:38):
Oh, yeah. I called you a while back about my underwater pictures of spawning trout.

Leo Laporte (00:42:43):
Oh yeah. Yeah. How are the trout? Have they,

Caller 1 (00:42:47):
I got lots of cool pictures and I got not just trout, but like, I got a picture of a, there's a American dipper, it's a bird that eats in the water and it eats the about eggs. And I got underwater picture of one going down in the rocks and picking up

Leo Laporte (00:43:02):
An egg so you could see the beak going down. Oh, that's cool. That's

Caller 1 (00:43:05):
Cool. You can see the egg and it's beak. And I got a picture of a, I could finally, I took hours of watching, but I finally got a picture of one actually laying an egg. I see it lay the egg

Leo Laporte (00:43:18):
Neat. But I guess, but I finally <laugh> what? It's a little graphic, but, okay. <Laugh>. So what can I do for you today, David?

Caller 1 (00:43:27):
Well, I finally set up something. I did an in Instagram.

Leo Laporte (00:43:31):
Oh, good.

Caller 1 (00:43:33):
What's

Leo Laporte (00:43:34):
Your Insta That's what the kids call it.

Caller 1 (00:43:37):
Spawning trout guy

Leo Laporte (00:43:39):
Spawning all one word.

Caller 1 (00:43:41):
No, two, three words, separate words. Spawning trout guy.

Leo Laporte (00:43:45):
Okay, good. I will I will follow you so I can get my fill of spawning trout. I think that's really cool. You know, everybody should have a a hobby. And I think the more specific it is, the better.

Caller 1 (00:44:01):
Well, I looked around and I didn't find anybody else that, that was specializing. I found a few

Leo Laporte (00:44:09):
Videos. I out there, a whole lot of people spawning trout, people <laugh>. How do you shoot this? How do you what kind of camera are you using to do this?

Caller 1 (00:44:19):
It's a GoPro.

Leo Laporte (00:44:20):
Okay. So it's all, it's it's waterproof.

Caller 1 (00:44:24):
Yeah. And I have a pole called a dock, a pole that I can extend out 24 feet.

Leo Laporte (00:44:31):
Oh, cool. And and how do the trout feel about, do they feel like this is an invasion of their privacy? Do they, well,

Caller 1 (00:44:37):
They get, if you, you gotta move slow, but sometimes you scare 'em and then they, but they usually come back right back within a few minutes. Cool.

Leo Laporte (00:44:45):
It's like fishing

Caller 1 (00:44:45):
Doesn't bother 'em too much. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:44:47):
It's like fishing. You have to be patient, move slowly talking your quiet thing

Caller 1 (00:44:54):
That you don't realize you start doing is wifi doesn't work under water.

Leo Laporte (00:44:59):
No, no.

Caller 1 (00:45:00):
But they have a, they have a cable that you can get a 20 foot cable that hooks right onto the GoPro and then it has a box on the other end that sends out a signal to your phone or tablet.

Leo Laporte (00:45:13):
Oh yeah. Cause you wanna see what you're taking a picture of and you need

Caller 1 (00:45:17):
To, well, it would be nice sometime I'm too high or I'm too low and I have to just let it run. If I knew I was taking a picture, I could just wait and turn it back on. You know, with the GoPros you can just turn it on when you need to.

Leo Laporte (00:45:31):
Right. <crosstalk> this video of the Coen female cleaning red is beautiful, crystal clear, gorgeous. And they're beautiful fish.

Caller 1 (00:45:44):
Yeah. So co are are a landlock salmon.

Leo Laporte (00:45:47):
Yeah. They're quite beautiful. So sometimes you get a lot of scatter underwater Photographers know this is a, a problem, especially if you use a light underwater because it hits particles in the water. And I, I can remember some under working with an underwater photographer who spent days cleaning up theca the back scatter from the light in his underwater photography. But these cani, it's crystal clear. It's you, I guess it's a very clear

Caller 1 (00:46:14):
Yeah, yeah. Stream creeps are real clear and lot of times from your eyeball you think it's real clear and then you put your camera under water. Oh, it's not as clear as I,

Leo Laporte (00:46:22):
That's when you see the backscatter. Yeah. Yeah. <Laugh>. Well, thank you. I did, I know I asked you to call me back and I'm glad you did, David. It's it's easy to find if you just search for spawning trout guy. But I will put a link in the show notes as well at tech guy labs.com if you know, if you have an aquarium, if you like to watch Phish, you're actually a great photographer. This, the picture of these I guess they're pelicans on the lake is, is also gorgeous. Just gorgeous. So keep up the good work. It's nice to hear from you again. But I am gonna move on cuz we gotta, I gotta get some calls in here. Bob, on the line from Elmwood Park, New Jersey. Hello, Bob.

Caller 2 (00:47:05):
Hi, how are you Leo?

Leo Laporte (00:47:06):
I'm well. How are you? You here? Good, good.

Caller 2 (00:47:09):
So, got a question. I have been using my sling box for probably eight or 10 years and

Leo Laporte (00:47:17):
Last year Oh, you got an email? Yeah.

Caller 2 (00:47:20):
Yeah. So I'm wondering what is out there that's gonna give me comparable service?

Leo Laporte (00:47:26):
Nothing that I know of. Well, I, no, I shouldn't say that. I, I'll take it back. Let me first explain what this was. And we actually they were an advertiser back in the day because they had a great idea, which was you're already paying for cable tv at home and you go on the road. Why should you have to pay again? Shouldn't you be able to watch your TV at, at your, at your, you know, lake house or on the road or whatever. So you'd put this sling box in your house, connect it up to all your television stuff, and then you could watch your TV over the internet. You could even control it with a remote control and so forth. There's a great idea, but you know why it got superseded, because of streaming? Right. you know, nowadays pretty much every TV provider's already on the internet, you know, <laugh>, you know even your local channels, maybe I notice that peacock is starting to have some of the NBC locals as part of your subscription and so forth. And, and so I think probably their business, shrank Sling is in fact one of the companies that is now in the business of streaming tv. They have a what a lot of people really like sling TV is their streaming service. But do you still want some hardware in your house that you can connect to remotely? Is that what you're looking for? Yeah,

Caller 2 (00:48:46):
I mean, I'd like it because I've, I've got it on my iPad and, you know, when I'm traveling. Yeah. I can take it with me. And so

Leo Laporte (00:48:53):
Some of the cable companies are doing this. Tivo does this. Channel Master, I think does this, these are not quite as the nice thing about the sling box. You could put anything on it. So it was very flexible. But if, for instance, you have a TiVo you can put it on the internet so you can log into it. If you have a Comcast subscription, their X one box has an internet app that you can log into and see what's on your cable. Anyway. I, I don't know if any hardware that directly replicates what the Sling box does. If, and if anybody does, please give us a ring. Cuz you're not the first person to call saying, Hey, they're discontinuing the service. And and it does take their server. You have to go through their server. So if they turn the server off, is it, is it down now or is it, or or they just say they're going down.

Caller 2 (00:49:47):
I, I haven't checked in the last day or two. Yeah, it's, there were, there's a date on there. I think it's mid-November. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:49:54):
Pretty. Yeah.

Caller 2 (00:49:55):
And I know my local cable, I'm in the New York, New Jersey area. And optimum Online. You can watch it on an app, but the problem is it's only local on wifi. You can't access it.

Leo Laporte (00:50:08):
Oh, they won't let you see it on the public internet. Oh,

Caller 2 (00:50:10):
No,

Leo Laporte (00:50:11):
No. So here's a

Caller 2 (00:50:13):
Remotely in the house, it's fine, but not once you leave the premises.

Leo Laporte (00:50:17):
Scooter X in our chat room, found something. He says Yes, slingbox End of life. November 9th. So it's over. And so this is a, a company called wit, B W I TB e.net. They sell the Wit Box <laugh>. Now, I don't know how big it is because I notice on the website it says WIT Box is already a beloved Sling box alternative for dozens of our customers. Dozens. You've sold a do, you've sold dozens of them.

Caller 2 (00:50:49):
If this is, if this is the product that I think you're talking about, if you look at the price of the hardware, it's, it's ridiculous. Oh,

Leo Laporte (00:50:57):
That's, that's too bad.

Caller 2 (00:50:59):
A lot of money.

Leo Laporte (00:51:00):
Oh, it's cute looking. It's small. Yeah. You know, it could very well be that in order to justify the them doing it, they've gotta charge a lot. Because this is a tiny market these days. I'm sure that's why Sling got out of it. We'll, keep looking. Leo Laport the tech guy. Yeah, I like YouTube tv. I've been very happy with that. All it would give you is your channels. It's, it's also expensive though. It's 65 bucks a month. But you get all the live locals and you get some, you know, some of the other ch quite a few channels for that. It's kind of like a basic cable subscription and it would basically replace Optimum online. In fact, that's my plan is to replace Comcast. With that we're paying for both. So that's something else to look at is YouTube tv. I'm been very happy with that. Sam, I'm gonna bring you back in here. Alrighty. And to let you help me help them or something. Okay. All

Sam Abuelsamid (00:52:07):
Yours. So in the in the chat Aaron kLab asked about the car that's behind me. That is that's the Lucid Air that's the one I was driving last weekend. And that's the the dashboard in there. And I think later this week, in fact lucid is going to be announcing availability of new trim levels of the air. So right now, the only ones you can get are the Grand Touring model. The one I was driving was $154,000. There will be a couple of more affordable trim levels starting with the Pure Edition, which starts at about $87,000 with about a 400 mile range. Let's see. Big Island was talking to chat about chargers and condo complexes. And this is one of the big challenges with with EVs.

(00:53:02):
You know, so far, you know, EVs have been a, a very small slice of the overall vehicle market. And most of the people buying EVs up, you know, upwards of 80%. You know, most of the people buying EVs so far have been a little more affluent. Over 80% lived in single family homes, dedicated off street parking. Actually I think that that 80% is probably very low. It's probably closer to upwards of 90% live in single family homes with off street parking. And that's, you know, that's a great solution. You know, cuz then when you come home at night, you can plug it in charge, be ready to fully charged, ready to go the next morning. The problem is, you know, as we start to expand the population of EVs and EVs move into the used car market eventually.

(00:53:53):
Cause used cars represent about somewhere between three and 4% or three and four times the number of annual sales as as new cars. So in pre supply chain crisis times, you know, we're selling about 17 million cars a year in the us and about 60 to 65 million used cars every year. Most people don't actually buy new cars. Most people only buy used cars because they're more affordable. And along with that goes a lot more of the population of used car owners also live in places that are either rental properties or they live somewhere condos or multi-unit dwellings apartments where they don't have their own dedicated off street parking. Even in a lot of cities, you go into a lot of cities where even in a single family home, you often don't, you often have to park on the street park curbside.

(00:54:53):
And so of the total population of the us somewhere around 40, 45% of the population does not have dedicated off street parking. And so this is one of the reasons why there's such a big emphasis in the infrastructure bill on building out public charging infrastructure. And this is one of the things I talked about during the interview I did with the head of GM Energy at Electrify Expo is, you know, the, the EV ecosystem, you know, building out charging so it's accessible for more people. You know, cuz if you've got a car that has, you know, 200, 250, 300 miles of range you don't have to charge it every day. You can get by charging it, you know, for most people charging it a couple of times a week. And so one of the things that companies like GM for example, are doing, they have a partnership with ev go to deploy almost 3000 DC fast chargers at places like grocery stores, where you typically go once or twice a week anyway.

(00:55:53):
And you're gonna be there for 20 or 30 minutes. And so if you own an ev, you can go plug it in charge there. By the time you're done getting your groceries, your car's all charged up and you're ready to go again. And you know, there's other locations like that or also putting in curbside chargers putting in Europe in a number of places in Europe now they have chargers that are being built into utility poles because utility poles already have power. So they're putting in level two chargers built into the utility poles or doing other types of curbside solutions, which will be a big help. And you know, for those that live someplace where it's not possible to get a charger, a dedicated charger for your use these various public charging solutions are going to be a key component of enabling more people to drive EVs in the coming years.

(00:56:49):
 Web 99 99 asked about Ford's sidewalk scooters that they had announced a few years back. Back in, wanna think, I wanna say 2018, Ford bought a company called Spin. That was one of these scooter rental companies like Byrd and Lyme and a whole bunch of others. And they Ford operated it for several years. But the problem, like all of the other micro mobility companies is they couldn't find a pathway to profitability. You know, along the way Ford did develop a more robust scooter and they had different designs for scooters. Cause the early micro mobility scooters, ECUs were all basically off the shelf consumer products. They weren't very tough. You know, they had a in, in in shared use like that. They tended to have a very short lifespan, often as little as two to three months before they had to be scrapped and, and thrown away and replaced.

(00:57:55):
 Which is one of the reasons for the high cost and, and losses for these companies. So Ford and others were developing purpose-built scooters that were a lot tougher, that would be a lot more durable have better battery life be easier to charge. And they did deploy those in some cities, but the problem is that they still couldn't find a pathway to profitability for the shared scooter systems. And so Ford last year, maybe it was earlier this year, gave up and sold off spin to another company. And along the way they had also reduced service, you know, take withdrawn their service from a number of cities. They withdrew from the European market and they've since sold it to, to somebody else and gotten out of that business entirely. But I think, you know, you will see, you know, these more, more purpose built scooters proliferating in more areas in the coming years.

(00:58:54):
 Twisted Minister had comment about it being easy to build a hack proof system, which I assume was in reference to my discussion of software defined vehicles. Yeah, it's easy to build software that can't be hacked. No, actually not it's, it the more complex the system you have, it's, it's, it's impossible to guarantee absolute security. The best you can do is try to build the system to be as resilient as possible. And this is what the, the auto industry went. You know, they learned the hard way. You know, several manufacturers, including GM and, and Jeep learned that it is possible for hackers to remotely get into your systems, your telematic systems, and do bad things with cars. And so several years ago, back in 2015, they formed an information security and awareness center. It's called an ISAC called the Auto isac.

(00:59:48):
 There are ISACs in a number of different industry verticals and financial services and healthcare and aerospace where companies in that sector collaborate, share information about security, security challenges they're having and share best practices and, and other things. So the auto ISAC has been helping the industry to develop best practices. And automakers have been working aggressively to redesign their software systems, their development processes, their deployment processes to try to minimize the risk of hackers getting in and doing bad things to people's vehicles. And so far we haven't seen any new instances, any new incidents in the last few years that at least nothing that's been made publicly, publicly aware of. There have been some challenges with locking systems, for example Hyundai and Kiaa recently, BMW had some problems. And this is one of the reasons why automakers are shifting over away from Bluetooth towards ultra wideband, which is a much more secure process for communicating with vehicles. But yeah, it's, you'll never get a completely hacker proof vehicle.

Leo Laporte (01:01:00):
Mr. Abul, Sam, thank you so much. Thanks to you. I have a lovely, you're cup of coffee.

Sam Abuelsamid (01:01:08):
Well, enjoy your coffee. Enjoy the rest of the callers, and I'll talk to

Leo Laporte (01:01:12):
You next week. Talk to you next week. Thanks. All right.

(01:01:17):
Why? Hey, hey, how are you today? Leo Laport here, the tech guy, time to talk, computers, the internet, home theater, digital photography, smartphone, smart watches, the cloud. You know, I never say the cloud. Does anybody even know what the cloud is? We talk about the cloud connected cars. 88. 88, actually. Oh, there's the phone number. (888) 827-5536. That's tollfree from anywhere in the US or Canada. You can still call from anywhere in the world, but you have to use Skype out or something like that. To to reach us should be TOLLFREE 88. 88. Ask Leo. The website is Tech i labs.com free. No. Sign up. Just wander in. That's where we put links to things. I talk about we put a transcript of the show up there and audio and video from the show as well because it's a podcast too, you know.

(01:02:09):
 And this is episode 1944. Actually, you know, a little trip down memory lane. This was my first podcast back in 2004, 18 years ago, almost exactly 18 years ago. Podcasting started in the fall of 2004. Former mtv, vj Adam Curry told a guy named Dave Weiner, who was responsible for a technology called rss. He said, you know, it'd be cool Dave <laugh>, be cool if we could attach an audio file to an RSS feed a binary, you know, he said binary file, but it could be audio, could be a picture, could be video. Dave wrote it up. And Adam put out the first podcast, real, you know, RSS podcast. I heard about it a week or two later, and I know I'd been doing the tech guy show, but I just had been putting episodes of the show, recordings of the show up on the website.

(01:03:12):
So it's not that different, right? You go to a website, you download it. But I thought, well, I could do the podcast. I was doing it by hand writing it and typing it in, making an RSS feed of those. And that was the first podcast I did in October, 2004. Been a long, long time. So, so this, you know, when I say episode 1944, all of them I think even down to episode one, you can, you can get on the website, tech guy labs.com. You have to go back a few pages, <laugh>, but they're all there. 1,944 episodes. Wow. 88. 88. Ask Leo again the phone number. I'll go back to the phones I owe you. Mark Whitby, Ontario, Canada. Hello, mark.

Caller 3 (01:03:59):
Hello, Leo. How are

Leo Laporte (01:04:00):
You? I am well. How are you?

Caller 3 (01:04:02):
Good. Long time, no speak. I've called in a couple times and I was there in the studio with you, I think it was in 2019. I remember I was the guy who was wearing the Cher Noble T-shirt. And then you pointed out that it felt wrong,

Leo Laporte (01:04:13):
<Laugh>.

Caller 3 (01:04:14):
Yes,

Leo Laporte (01:04:16):
I

Caller 3 (01:04:16):
Do. I never realized that before, but I've been to the nuclear plant. But well,

Leo Laporte (01:04:20):
I, it's unfair of me to say it's spelled wrong, because of course it's really clic. So it's, however the clic is translated into the Roman alphabet, and there are many ways, you know, to say Moscow, you could spell it M o s k V A and that wouldn't be incorrect. So, fair enough. I'm sure Cherno, there are a variety of spellings. You got it in Cherno, right?

Caller 3 (01:04:44):
Yes, that's right. I did the tour of the, the nuclear, well, not the actual nuclear plant itself, but per and the whole town and so on. It was very cool.

Leo Laporte (01:04:51):
That's amazing.

Caller 3 (01:04:52):
I'm assuming, I'm assuming they're not doing that right now, unfortunately.

Leo Laporte (01:04:55):
But yeah, because it's been occupied by Russian forces. People forget Cherno was in Ukraine.

Caller 3 (01:05:01):
Yes,

Leo Laporte (01:05:01):
Exactly. So it's now, you know, being contested during this horrific war that Putin has created. So how do we, so did you have to have special permission to go in there?

Caller 3 (01:05:14):
Yeah, you have to. Well, technically, yes, but no <laugh>. So you basically sign up for a tour, and then they do the paperwork to be able to, you're considered a scientist going into the zone.

Leo Laporte (01:05:27):
Do you have to carry a little, a little radioactive detector <laugh>?

Caller 3 (01:05:32):
You can wrench them if you want. You

Leo Laporte (01:05:34):
Should have a badge. Did they give you a badge, an exposure badge?

Caller 3 (01:05:39):
No, but they would keep track and they told us how much radiation we were exposed to in that eight hours. So we, we absorbed as much radiation as you normally would in a 24-hour period in that eight hours that we were there,

Leo Laporte (01:05:50):
Or whatever it was. Oh, well, that's not horrible.

Caller 3 (01:05:52):
No. And and they you get more radiation flying in a plane,

Leo Laporte (01:05:55):
Then you do. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Most people don't realize that. What a fascinating historic thing to, to do. And then did you watch the the mini series on Cher Noble after that?

Caller 3 (01:06:08):
Yes, of course. And it was right before, it was 2016 when I was there. It was right before they put the new dome over top. So we got see what it looked like. Wow. Those dome went on. So

Leo Laporte (01:06:17):
Fantastic mini series. Really enjoyed it and learned a lot about what really happened from that. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. So what can I do for you now, mark?

Caller 3 (01:06:25):
Okay, I got two questions. Okay. I'm looking to first of all, I wanna record or save, there's one iMessage conversation. So I have an iPhone. I have a a pc, so I'm not a Mac guy. I wanna be able to either export it to a PDF so I can save the whole conversation from the last couple years. How do I do that? Is there an easy way

Leo Laporte (01:06:50):
Or, so you've been recording these conversations all this time?

Caller 3 (01:06:54):
Well, it's just that chat message that's been going.

Leo Laporte (01:06:56):
Oh, oh, oh. Not not voice, not not phone calls. No, no, no. Oh, yeah, yeah. Chats. So yeah, you can copy your your iPhone. It's, it's, of course easiest with a Mac. There are some really great utilities for backing up to a Mac. But on a PC and a Windows pc there are a number of tools. Ease us. Makes one. I remember, it might even be free. The one I use on the Mac is called Ima, let me just really quickly check and see if they make a Windows version of Ima. They do, they do. So this is the one I'd recommend. It's not cheap.

Caller 3 (01:07:36):
So I,

Leo Laporte (01:07:36):
I, it's I M A z I N g, like amazing with an I at the beginning. Yeah. Okay. Fantastic tool. I Micah recommended it. And I thought, well, I don't need to pay for this, but it's ended up being a really great way to back up to transfer music. To transfer photos. Yes. Transfer all your messaging as well. They have a free download, so you can try before you buy. Probably should, since I haven't,

Caller 3 (01:08:05):
That might just do what I

Leo Laporte (01:08:06):
Need. Yeah. Might be enough. And then it's 45 bucks a year, which is I think, ouch. Silly. Yeah. No, I guess not a year. 45 bucks for three phones. Or if you wanna do unlimited phones, 45 bucks, but I get that must. I don't know who would want unlimited phones. So yeah, 50 bucks a year 50 bucks, period. All in I bought it. It was, it's worth it. It's just the kind of nice tool to have if you use iPhones.

Caller 3 (01:08:31):
Yeah. So related to this also. So I've maxed out my iCloud five gigs, whatever they give you for free. Yeah,

Leo Laporte (01:08:39):
Of course you have. So, and now you get bombarded with messages from Apple. Why you need to upgrade, you need to upgrade, you want upgrade, you want some more.

Caller 3 (01:08:46):
So it goes this thread, and I don't believe I deleted it ever. So it goes to like January of this year. And then it seems to like, that's it. So would that be because iCloud, it's on iCloud and if I pay, then I'd be able to get more.

Leo Laporte (01:09:01):
Yeah, you might, even if you paid, it might even be there.

Caller 3 (01:09:06):
Okay.

Leo Laporte (01:09:07):
I mean, I'm not sure.

Caller 3 (01:09:08):
Cause it's only a dollar or $2 or whatever.

Leo Laporte (01:09:10):
Yeah. For 99 cents you get 200 gigabytes, which is Right. Probably enough for anybody. I do the Apple one subscription, so I get a terabyte, but plus Apple tv, all the bunch of stuff. But I'm a sucker,

Caller 3 (01:09:22):
Good tech

Leo Laporte (01:09:22):
Guy. I'm a sucker for Apple. I fall for all that stuff. 

Caller 3 (01:09:27):
So I'll try doing that cuz I just wanna basically save this message to a pdf, get it off my phone and move on with my life, basically. <Laugh>.

Leo Laporte (01:09:36):
Well, if that's all, yeah, yeah. That might be the, that might be then 99 cents instead of 50 bucks might be all you need. Yeah. I use iCloud backup for everything. My Mac, my phone and I really like the syncing messages cuz I have, you know, I wanna be able to get message on my phone and on my Mac and so forth. And so it's nice to be able to do that. Somebody, Joe in the chat room says there's a space saving setting that limits history to one year. And you, if you have that turned on, that might be another reason why it just stops

Caller 3 (01:10:07):
It, it does say never like, keep my messages forever.

Leo Laporte (01:10:11):
Forever. That's, yeah, I do that too. Yeah, I do that too. And just remember, I think everybody knows this, but if it's on iCloud, it's pub, it's not public, but it's a Apple. It's not locked, it's not encrypted. It's encrypted on your phone. It's encrypted in transmission. But as soon as it gets on iCloud if, if Apple gets a subpoena, they can hand it over. Just, you know, that's all. Everybody knows that. I hope it's not private.

Caller 3 (01:10:37):
If I delete it, then it's still in iCloud.

Leo Laporte (01:10:40):
Yeah, probably for a while. Yeah. Yeah. Just good to know about nothing.

Caller 3 (01:10:44):
It's nothing illegal, but I just wanna have the trip.

Leo Laporte (01:10:47):
Yeah, no, no, I, I'm not assuming that <laugh>, I'm not assuming that. Hey, a pleasure talking to you. It's great to see you, mark. Come visit us again.

Caller 3 (01:10:56):
I will for

Leo Laporte (01:10:57):
Sure. Actually, I'll make you a deal. I'll come up your way. I, I really miss going to Toronto every every month. Yeah, yeah.

Caller 3 (01:11:02):
You do that we'll. Definitely. I'll take you out for some food or something. Deal.

Leo Laporte (01:11:06):
Deal. All right. Great to talk to you. 88. 88. Ask Leo the phone number. Yes. rec con fives asking the jar, is Ventura ready for primetime? Absolutely. Haven't had a problem. No problems at all with Ventura. All my Macs are on it. The latest Mac os more calls coming up right after this. Oh, it's Chris Mawa. Well, hello Chris.

Chris Marquardt (01:11:40):
Hello. How

Leo Laporte (01:11:41):
Are you?

Chris Marquardt (01:11:43):
I'm doing good. How are you? Good.

Leo Laporte (01:11:44):
I like your your letter sweater, your jacket. Did you get that in high school? The whaf. That's what is that

Chris Marquardt (01:11:51):
Though?

Leo Laporte (01:11:53):
The word

Chris Marquardt (01:11:54):
Fran son who is fighting cancer and

Leo Laporte (01:11:56):
Oh,

Chris Marquardt (01:11:59):
Oh, well, it's Hodgkin's lymphoma, I think, dear. It's gonna be okay.

Leo Laporte (01:12:03):
Yeah. You know, that's what Paul Allen had and he had complete remission. He, he quit Microsoft thinking he was on the way out and lived another 30 years. So am I seeing you on the ma on, I feel like I'm seeing, I'm seeing you on the mato on. Am I, I can't remember. Yes, yes you are. That's what I thought. I

Chris Marquardt (01:12:24):
Am. We follow each other. Yes.

Leo Laporte (01:12:26):
Good, good. Do you, do you go back and visit the Twitter at all?

Chris Marquardt (01:12:32):
I'm on both. I'm on both.

Leo Laporte (01:12:34):
I, I don't post on Twitter. I look every once in a while, like a car wreck just to see. And then

Chris Marquardt (01:12:41):
Well I don't, I don't do, I haven't set up a cross post or anything, but in some things I think work better on Twitter. Some things are, are good for macada. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:12:48):
They're very different culture. Yeah, they're very different. Yeah.

Chris Marquardt (01:12:51):
It's culturally very different. So,

Leo Laporte (01:12:53):
And I really like the kind of warm, friendly, cozy nature of of nest. It's

Chris Marquardt (01:13:00):
Pretty laid back most of the time.

Leo Laporte (01:13:02):
Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Marquardt (01:13:03):
I mean, it kinda depends on what server you're on, what instance. You're very

Leo Laporte (01:13:06):
Much like, yeah, I'm aggressive. There's

Chris Marquardt (01:13:09):
That are rough for

Leo Laporte (01:13:10):
Sure. Yeah. I'm aggressive about banning and deeding. Oh. Yeah. I really encourage all my Oh

Chris Marquardt (01:13:16):
Yeah, you on your own,

Leo Laporte (01:13:17):
Right? Yeah. Yeah. We have a TWI social and yeah, I really, it's, you know, when I don't have a lot of rules, I just say keep it family friendly. And if it's not you gone, you go, man.

Chris Marquardt (01:13:32):
Do you, do you have any automatic motivation? Is there any automatic operation? There

Leo Laporte (01:13:36):
Might be. I don't have it. I have to spend, I spend a lot of time, especially lately, <laugh>, I spend a lot of time on it lately cuz I wanna make sure with this massive growth we had, just the growth is through the roof. You know, for, for three years I've been running this thing with fewer than 400 users. I get 400 new users a day now <laugh>. So it's, I would think so, yeah. I don't know if it's exponential, but it's definitely geometric. In fact, let me see if I've gotten new meet members to approve. I have to check about three times a day now to see, cuz I, I, you have to get approved. I don't just let people in here.

Chris Marquardt (01:14:14):
You turn back into an admin.

Leo Laporte (01:14:15):
That's cool. Yeah, I'm an admin. I'm an admin. Oh, only,

Chris Marquardt (01:14:20):
Oh wait, you have an email? Yes. and a topic. Good. And I will do the driving and I will do the showing.

Leo Laporte (01:14:26):
Excellent. All right. We'll talk in a bit. Thank you, sir.

Chris Marquardt (01:14:31):
Will do.

Leo Laporte (01:14:33):
Well, I guess I know we're in stereo <laugh>. Leo LePort, the tech guy. 88. 88. Ask Leo the phone number. (888) 827-5536. no, I, you're probably not hearing in stereo, but I am. Do you, so you send me, Laura, you send me stereo music. Yeah. If I want to. Yes, but we don't send it out in stereo, right? This is a, that's a good question. I don't know. Damn. Radio we got, you got one little speaker in the middle of your car dashboard there. That's it, right? Or am I wrong? Maybe we do. Maybe we do. There was a big thing about 30 years ago, 40 years ago, called AM Stereo and the fcc dragged their feet as, what a surprise. Right. And decided not to declare a particular technology, the standards. So no one did it cuz there were competing standards. I don't know if there's a is I don't know.

(01:15:27):
You'd think I'd know. Here I am in radio and I don't know. You'd think I know too, but I don't, and I really think you'd know. Am this is Wikipedia AM stereo is a term given to a series of mutually incompatible techniques. <Laugh> for radio broadcasting. Great. Mid to late eighties. That's when we, we were so worried about fm. Right. Taken over. We don't worry about that anymore, do we? No, we do not. 88. 88. Ask Leo. Let's go to Toronto. Yay. We were just talking about Toronto and David is on the line. Hi David.

Caller 5 (01:16:07):
Hi. Hi. How you doing?

Leo Laporte (01:16:09):
I'm great. How are you?

Caller 5 (01:16:12):
Hi in. Good talk about Am am I got a YouTube question, but talk about am stereo. Yeah. The streaming services here. Do Don broadcast the stereo on the streaming service? Yeah. The union station is to broadcasting stereo.

Leo Laporte (01:16:25):
Well, that's the beauty. That's the beauty now. And, and why it's kind of moot. So many people listen to the radio on the internet and you can have stereo on the internet. Right. No big deal. You don't have to change, you don't have to re rejigger the transmitter or anything. You just, you just do it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So I suspect that that's, you know, I mean, mono seems to be a kind of antiquated notion, doesn't it? Anyway. Anyway,

Caller 5 (01:16:50):
Yeah. Youtube.

Leo Laporte (01:16:52):
Youtube,

Caller 5 (01:16:54):
Yeah. I I I do, I was transferring some home movies. Yes. I home your home movies. Yes. And I'm having trouble with background music.

Leo Laporte (01:17:02):
Oh yeah. Oh yeah.

Caller 5 (01:17:05):
The only thing is though, I'm glad I'm off YouTube, which I've done there for years.

Leo Laporte (01:17:08):
Yeah, no, it doesn't matter. So YouTube, in order, they were, so YouTube from day one has gotten in trouble with what is euphemistically called Rights Holders the people who own the copyright to stuff. So in the early days before Google bought it, one of the things people did on YouTube is they put up Saturday Night Live sketches and NBC went ballistic, went crazy, tried to sue YouTube out of existence. In fact, it's one of the reasons I think YouTube was available for Google to buy for some 3.2 billion. Because the, the creators of YouTube, and I remember talking to 'em at the time, were just said, you know, we're gonna get sued out of existence. Once Google owned YouTube, Google's big enough, they could go to the right holders and say, look, we wanna make a deal. You'll notice, by the way, you can watch Saturday Night Live skits now on YouTube before the show even airs.

(01:18:05):
I, I want, I wanted to go to bed last night before before 1130. I know Dave Chappelle was on. I wanted to see his monologue. And yeah, there was on YouTube around nine cuz it had already aired on the East coast officially through nbc. So the rights holders could put music up there. In fact, music labels put their own songs or videos up there and so forth. But in order to appease copyright holders, YouTube created an automated system called Content id. And it bites us YouTubers all the time. If you put a home video up and in the background, the radio is playing Lens Steal my sunshine. I know the record company doesn't even have to do anything. Content. Id will hear it. Flag it. The, the rights owners have three options. They can exercise when they're notified that such a thing has happened. They can, well actually four, they can ignore it. Never do. They can monetize it. They can put ads on your stream and say, we want the money. Not, Doug doesn't get the money. David doesn't get the money. We get the money. 

Caller 5 (01:19:20):
I don't make any money on these

Leo Laporte (01:19:22):
Anything. No, of course not. But they could put ads on it. They can demonetize you if you had ads on it. They could put their own ads on it. They can take you down. They can even give you a strike. If you get a, you can only get three copyright strikes or YouTube will take your account off. They'll kill you. Yeah, I know. It's terrible. So, and the problem with content ID is it's automated system. So it's often irrational. We frequently, I, you know, I do a bunch of stuff on YouTube. This shows on YouTube. We take the music outta this show before we put it on YouTube cuz it'll get taken down immediately.

Caller 5 (01:19:56):
Well, live is, live is though, if music's on live though, I'm watching know now.

Leo Laporte (01:20:01):
Yeah. I don't know how, how do we get away with that? I don't know. Sh don't say anything. We, apple has taken down our live stream. Usually it's not the live stuff. Live stuff I think is a little bit, maybe content Id isn't isn't good enough to work on live. It's usually on the stuff where you people can watch it later. For instance we, we, I had, we were watching a launch. NASA puts, you know, these launch videos out public domain Us no copy, you know, the US gives it away because it's taxpayers dollar funding these launches. So I, we were watching a launch on one of, on one of the shows in between during the commercials you YouTube took it down. Apparently National Geographic had copyrighted the launch, so they took it down. So it's a terrible system and as somebody who makes, who tries to make some money on YouTube, we don't make very much. But a little bit it hurts us. We have to, what it's in effect done is it's made us be very, very cautious. You can <laugh>, you know, there's no rule that you can use three seconds or anything. You can't use any of it.

Caller 5 (01:21:07):
I really say

Leo Laporte (01:21:07):
Yeah there is copyright free music you can use. But, but you say what you're doing is you're taping your kids running around and there's music in the background.

Caller 5 (01:21:17):
Well, no, actually my mind are home video. So they your home movie? Yeah,

Leo Laporte (01:21:20):
Yeah, yeah. Then so there's mu well now if you put music on a same thing. Okay. Some songs are public domain, very few. But you can find royalty free music if you search for royalty free. Or Creative Commons is another label. Music. Yeah. Lot of podcasts we use, for instance and all radio stations do this. We have music that we buy, it's fake music. <Laugh>. It's not real music. It's not the Beatles, but it's fake music. They put behind commercials. They put in the breaks and stuff like that. So there's stuff like that you can get. But you got Yeah, basically YouTube says no, can't do it. And it's extremely frustrating. Cuz it's often wrong. Leo Laport the tech guy. You got me upset now <laugh>.

(01:22:11):
They are. And they may have soon a way of putting copyright music in. Cuz one of the things that's happened is TikTok eating their lunch. Right. And one of the things TikTok did that was so smart is, hey, you could put real music in there. We'll license it. And it's been huge for TikTok. So I think YouTube is probably working on getting a library of music that you could use. Let me see if they've done that yet. Have they done that yet? They do have. Okay. So YouTube does have a royalty free music library. It's probably not great.

Caller 5 (01:22:49):
No, I tried that. And it that too.

Leo Laporte (01:22:51):
It got banned too.

Caller 5 (01:22:53):
Yeah. I can't use it. Use it. It's always bm. I think it's BMG Music or something. It's always been that same

Leo Laporte (01:23:00):
Place. Yeah. Yeah. That's the, those are the rights holders. 

Caller 5 (01:23:03):
How do other people do it though? I've seen videos in there for years and years and

Leo Laporte (01:23:07):
Years. Oh yeah. Cuz content Id goes back and looks at old stuff. Sure. Oh, we get that. We get, I get shows taken down from, from five years ago all the time. Yeah. It's incredibly frustrating. So YouTube has announced, Joe's telling me that they will have a library of music you can use launching next year. So just be, and that's because Facebook does it. Tiktok does it. Youtube's gotta do it. So that's gonna come. And until then, I you just, I I don't know what to do. I you can't. It bites us all the time.

Caller 5 (01:23:41):
I know.

Leo Laporte (01:23:42):
Drives me nuts. So, John, do we or, or Beto do we don't stream the bumper music over the live YouTube live, do we? We do actually. Oh, whoops. Yeah. Don't tell anyone we take it outta the podcast cuz that would absolutely get it taken down.

Caller 5 (01:24:00):
Well the last one we had on there was your old call for help plus start, start thing.

Leo Laporte (01:24:04):
Yeah, that's okay. I think we can use that.

Caller 5 (01:24:06):
I don't Yeah, that's not yours. Yeah, it's probably

Leo Laporte (01:24:08):
Yours. Well, it's not mine. It's NBC Universal Comcasts, but maybe they don't have content ID on that. Yeah, I play that every once in a while. I wish it were mine. So I don't know. I really don't know. I I I don't know what the answer is. This is unfortunately the way copyright works in the us these guys have all the rights and you have none. It's probably true in Canada. I'm sure it is.

Caller 5 (01:24:38):
That weird. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:24:41):
Keep watching. Youtube will announce some music that you can use and it might, it'll be popular songs cuz that's what it's done so well on TikTok. You'll hear popular music on TikTok all the time. And it's great for the artists by the way, remember the guy who was drinking cranberry juice while he skated down the road in LA got millions of views and it put Fleetwood Mac Dreams on the top of the charts again.

Caller 5 (01:25:03):
Oh yeah. Remember? Yeah. Sorry. 30

Leo Laporte (01:25:04):
Years later. Fleetwood Mac was thrilled.

Caller 5 (01:25:08):
Yeah, I

Leo Laporte (01:25:09):
Know. They shouldn't be such jerks about it. They're jerky jerks. I don't like them.

Caller 5 (01:25:13):
I know

Leo Laporte (01:25:14):
<Laugh>.

Caller 5 (01:25:14):
I understand though. I don't

Leo Laporte (01:25:16):
Get it. I don't get it either, David. But it's the way it is. I'm sorry.

Caller 5 (01:25:20):
Okay. I know. Thanks anyway.

Leo Laporte (01:25:21):
Right. Take care. I hate it. Do you want Chris to talk about Wolf the wolf pack?

Chris Marquardt (01:25:33):
No, no, it's fine for me

Leo Laporte (01:25:35):
Just to wear it. I won't mention That's cool. Yeah,

Chris Marquardt (01:25:37):
That is

Leo Laporte (01:25:38):
Cool. And you don't need me to do anything. I just have the email as backup.

Chris Marquardt (01:25:43):
I am set with pictures and stuff. Yeah. All

Leo Laporte (01:25:48):
I have it right here. The subject.

Chris Marquardt (01:25:51):
We're going, we're going back to the early beginnings.

Leo Laporte (01:25:55):
Let's start over. Hey, our show today brought to you by a new podcast That is so good. You're gonna love it. It, if you like coding, you will love Code Comments. An original podcast from Red Hat. Well now you know it's good. Right? You know how it is when when you're working on a project and you maybe in the comments just put a little, you know, a little reminder at what the heck this is all about. Sometimes there's silly. Sometimes it's, I don't know why this works, but don't take it out. I've seen that comment. That's a code comment to help others learn from your work or just to tell yourself what you were doing when you come back to the code six months later. Code comments, podcasts takes that idea by letting you listen in to experienced coders as they describe their process.

(01:26:44):
Isn't that fun? This is great to get inside the mind. If people really know what they're doing, you can learn a lot. It takes a lot of work to take an an idea from whiteboard to a development to delivery. No one does it alone. The host of code comment, lifelong developer advocate. He's a Red Hatter community organizer. Bur Sutter, you might know his name if you've worked with a Red Hat before, you probably do every episode. Bur sits down with experienced technologists from across the industry to trade tales. Talk about what they've learned from their experiences. There are subjects, you know, all kinds of subjects. In fact, there's, you know, I do a lot of hobbyist coding, so I'm always fascinated by this. But then there's stuff I look at and I go, that is way beyond my pay pay grade, like deep learning, right?

(01:27:31):
There was a whole episode covering deep learning. That's fun cuz now I'm going, okay, well how do they go about this? And you really learn. You can get episodes of Code Comments anywhere you get your podcasts or go to red hat.com/Code Comments podcast. And there's links there. Code comments. Just search your podcast player for Code Comments. Actually, if you search for Red Hat, you'll see a whole bunch of great podcasts. They do. They've really been doing some great stuff. I like this new one though. Code comments, look for it in your podcast player. Or go to the show notes for today, tech guy labs.com and we'll put a link there. Thank you to Code Comments for your support. And thank you for supporting us by going to red hat.com/Code Comments podcast. I think you're gonna like it. Now. Back to the show. It's time to talk photography with my personal photo sensei. Mr. Chris. Mark worked. He is@sensei.photo publishes books about photography, does workshops about photography, takes some pretty darn good pictures himself. How about Chris,

Chris Marquardt (01:28:39):
Thank you very much for that nice introduction. How, how's it going

Leo Laporte (01:28:43):
Today? We love Chris. He also hosts the longest running photography podcast. I was talking at the beginning of the hour about my first podcast, which was October, 2004. And it was this show You

Chris Marquardt (01:28:54):
Beat me by six months.

Leo Laporte (01:28:56):
<Laugh>. So you were in 2005 is when you launched the tips.

Chris Marquardt (01:29:00):
April, April, 2005. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:29:02):
Tips from the top floor tf ttf.com and still going strong, right? Yeah. How many episodes

Chris Marquardt (01:29:09):
Still? I had almost a thousand. Yeah. Somewhere

Leo Laporte (01:29:14):
In that. See I have more than you because I do two a week. So of this show. So this is episode 1944.

Chris Marquardt (01:29:22):
No, when has started. I did three a week, but only for like a half a year. And then that wore me

Leo Laporte (01:29:28):
Out a bit. Yeah, I was hoping we'd get to my birthday. My birth here is 1956, but we won't We'll the last show this year will be 1955. <Laugh>. Dang. Dang, Nat. So what are we talking about today in photography?

Chris Marquardt (01:29:43):
I wanna, I wanna go back to, to some of the earlier things that we talked about years and years and years ago. But it's a very, very important concept in photography. And that is the subject. What is your picture about? And how can you help your picture to be about something? Cuz when you look at a picture, some of those pictures will jump at you. They'll go, you'll go, wow, I know exactly what it's about. And some of the pictures you'll go like, meh, what's going on? I don't know. So the subject is a very important a very important subject <laugh> about photography. And it helps to have a, a subject in your, in your photo. It helps to have one subject in there. And that should be very clear. That gives the photo kind of a, a clear message. So let's look at what makes good subjects. And of course let me bring up a few photos here that, ooh,

Leo Laporte (01:30:37):
I know what the subject is. A sailboat.

Chris Marquardt (01:30:40):
There you go. And why is it, why is it a subject?

Leo Laporte (01:30:42):
Because it's the only thing there <laugh>.

Chris Marquardt (01:30:44):
Exactly. The rest is just same in a bit of sky, bit of a bit of water. So yeah. Okay. That is makes it very clear. Yeah. If there's one of it, then it's the subject. Very simple. But if there's multiple of it, like on this, on this on its field with the, with the tree, with the roll of trees nicely contrasted against the yellow field. That's not just one of it, but it's a group of things. So you could say it's one group of things. And that is, again, very clear what that subject is about. If it's not as clear, then you can use other tricks, like focus, for example, if you like, here's a, here's a row of droplets on the twig, and one of them is in focus, that is the subject. The the focus has a double meaning. Right? You wanna focus on that because it's in focus. So

Leo Laporte (01:31:34):
That's beautiful. As

Chris Marquardt (01:31:35):
A photographer, you, you manage, you manage other people's attention and this is how you get their attention to go exactly where you want it to go. You

Leo Laporte (01:31:42):
Could have changed the focus on this shot to any one of those drops. Right?

Chris Marquardt (01:31:47):
And that would become the subject. Yes.

Leo Laporte (01:31:49):
Yeah.

Chris Marquardt (01:31:50):
Interesting. So very, very simple thing. If you have a camera that can do that, hey, use that tool isn't very important and good tool. I think, think with, with portrait mode on your smartphone, you can do something very similar. So focus helps. Here's an insect, a fly on a on a leaf. There's lots of beautiful color in the photo, but then there's one thing in focus and that's the fly that becomes the subject. Another thing to make a subject, a subject is, or to help a subject be a subject is to frame it. Mm. Right. You can put things around it that hold it in place, that, that give it something to lean against left and right. In this case, it's a person standing in front of a river or front of a lake and the trees on the left and the right and the top and the path on the bottom give it a good place to be in a picture. A frame doesn't really have to be all around something. There's a bird that's framed in some leaves. Again, nice place to sit in the photo. I, I'm really, I'm a fan of this kind of a framing. This one is, wow, wonderful picture. These eyes are looking through oil. They're looking through a frame that's made from a veil.

Leo Laporte (01:33:07):
This looks like a classic new national Geographic cover. It's not the same <laugh>. It's very, it's not similar. It's beautiful.

Chris Marquardt (01:33:15):
It's beautiful, it's very inspired. But, but it's very clear what the subject is. You wanna look at those eyes cuz well, first of all their eyes, we wanna look at other humans that, that's because we see ourselves in other humans. But then of course they are just nicely framed and that gives it the best place to sit. A frame doesn't really have to be, again, around something. It could be some shape in a room. This case we're looking straight down onto some lower floor and the person's walking and the person's framed in a, in the railing of another floor. By the way, that's also one of the reasons that black and white photos work so well because we have no distractions there. The frame, the shapes become, become their own thing pretty much. The frame doesn't really have to be around something. In this case, what we're looking at is an outer focus couple on a bridge. And behind that bridge the structure frames them. So it can be something in the background.

Leo Laporte (01:34:13):
That's interesting. Yeah, because the previous rule where we said, well, the thing in focus is the subject in this picture, it would be a board <laugh> on the bridge,

Chris Marquardt (01:34:23):
Which, which it doesn't work. But then, but then on the other hand, a human

Leo Laporte (01:34:28):
That's

Chris Marquardt (01:34:29):
True figure in a picture is so much stronger than humans. The board on the floor. Right?

Leo Laporte (01:34:33):
Yeah, that's

Chris Marquardt (01:34:34):
A good point. So they, they, the humans are, are, are the winner, the clear winner here. Lines use lines to your advantage, perspective lines or a curve like the, the, the pathway we see here. And let them lead to something. And that something will be the subject. Very simple. That's cool. A thing if you find a curve curving towards something. Yeah. could be a straight line. Could be a curve. A curve. I like curves. The S-curve is always mm-hmm. <Affirmative> a very nice thing to

Leo Laporte (01:35:05):
Mm-Hmm. <Affirmative>.

Chris Marquardt (01:35:06):
And then here's your guaranteed subject maker. It's the odd one out principle. If you have a lot of the same. And then one thing that is slightly different, that's an instant subject that'll just interesting pop into, into your there's, there's no doubt what the subject is in this one and last button at least we have one more. And that is what we call color key, which oh is when you have a black and white photo and just a part of it in color, like a red rose or the eyes of a cat in this in this instance. And again, it's, it's the one thing that sticks out. So that's why color key pictures work so well, because they are the odd one out type of

Leo Laporte (01:35:54):
Picture. There are camera phone apps that do that. Let you draw, you know, all black and white everything except for in this case, oh yeah, the green eyes of the cat. That's such such a cool thing. You know, you've, we've talked about this before and I really take it to heart. If I look at a picture and I don't know what the subject is, I usually say, well, that's not a great shot. Sometimes landscapes might be just a pretty landscape.

Chris Marquardt (01:36:15):
Oh, abstracts might work. Well, they might evoke something, but in general, a subject and a clear subject makes a better picture.

Leo Laporte (01:36:23):
Yeah. Yeah. All those pictures are in a gallery that Chris has set up on flicker. And I'll put a link in the show notes to that flicker.com gallery. So you can see the images he was talking about. Flicker is where we also put your photo assignment every month. Chris comes up with a photo assignment, some word adjective of which you are required to take a picture. In this case it is,

Chris Marquardt (01:36:49):
It is blue.

Leo Laporte (01:36:49):
Blue. I thought it for a minute. I thought I said Blaze, but no, it's blue <laugh>.

Chris Marquardt (01:36:54):
I can hold it upside down how

Leo Laporte (01:36:56):
That's blue. So this is fun. This is could be a color, but it might be a mood, you know, it could be anything you want it to be. But the way this works, take a picture, take a lot of pictures. Doesn't matter if you have a fancy camera. Smartphone's just fine. The fact these days is probably better than a lot of fancy cameras. Get that image. If you find one that says, oh yeah, this is great, it hits you right here. Upload it to Flicker and submit it to the tech guy group. Make sure you tag it. TG Blue. So Chris knows it's for the assignment. And in a couple of weeks we'll take a look at all the pictures uploaded and pick a few to talk about. Mr. Marwa is@sensei.photo. Thank you Chris.

Chris Marquardt (01:37:36):
Thank you very much.

Leo Laporte (01:37:45):
I love that subject. That's really a rule of thumb I use a lot is if I don't know what that photo's about, I go, nevermind. Nevermind. Put that one away.

Chris Marquardt (01:37:53):
It's simple. Yeah. Well in the end, if it, if it evokes emotion, the subject being a clear subject helps evoke emotion.

Leo Laporte (01:38:00):
Yeah. So, yeah. Yeah. Okay.

Chris Marquardt (01:38:05):
All right. Thank

Leo Laporte (01:38:07):
You Chris. You're gonna be here for the next few weeks. Are you traveling? Yes, of course. Okay, now

Chris Marquardt (01:38:12):
I'll be here.

Leo Laporte (01:38:12):
Stay here. Stay home. Stay warm. It's been freezing here. I hope it's, I bet it's pretty cold where you are too. Not

Chris Marquardt (01:38:18):
Too bad. Nice and sunny right now. Astonishing. Nice weather in November here. Nice.

Leo Laporte (01:38:24):
So well enjoy.

Chris Marquardt (01:38:25):
Yeah. Thank you. All right. See you later.

Leo Laporte (01:38:29):
Bye-Bye. Leo Laport, the tech guy and a pleasant Sunday. But if you do see any blue Monday, take some pictures and submit 'em to the tech guy group on flicker.com. TG for tech guy Blue for the subject. Let's go to line two. Josh on the line from Cameron Park, California. Hi Josh.

Caller 6 (01:38:54):
Hello Leo. How are you?

Leo Laporte (01:38:57):
I'm great, how are you?

Caller 6 (01:38:59):
We're doing well. We've been long time listeners and finally have a reason to call. I'm sitting with my 13 year old son here named Abraham. Hi

Leo Laporte (01:39:09):
Abraham.

Caller 6-1 (01:39:11):
Hi.

Leo Laporte (01:39:11):
Good to talk to you. What's up?

Caller 6 (01:39:14):
So Abraham is very interested in getting a VR headset and we're not quite sure. He's about to turn 13 if he's old enough. Oh yeah. Working on good screen hygiene.

Leo Laporte (01:39:30):
Yeah. Oh, as you should. As you should. Do you have screen time limits for for Abraham or,

Caller 6 (01:39:37):
We are, we're in the process of establishing that

Leo Laporte (01:39:41):
<Laugh>. Yeah. yeah, I mixed feelings about this. I was lucky cuz my kids now Abby's 28. I mean, Abby's 30, Henry's 28. So they grew up, you know, they had computers, but it wasn't like it is today. And what they didn't have was smartphones. And that's really a problem cuz you now you have a computer in your pocket at all times. Right. Does Abraham have a, a smartphone yet?

Caller 6 (01:40:05):
No, we, he has his first iPad and

Leo Laporte (01:40:08):
Oh, exciting. That's great. Yeah,

Caller 6-1 (01:40:11):
I, I helped

Caller 6 (01:40:12):
Pay for it. And he helped you

Leo Laporte (01:40:13):
Did? How'd you do that? Lawns?

Caller 6-1 (01:40:19):
I mostly saved up checks from

Leo Laporte (01:40:21):
Birthdays. <Laugh>. Perfect. Yep. Yep. Gotta you put that cash to good use. So, so VR is just another screen. I mean, it's not any different. It's not any more damaging probably. <Laugh> the stuff on vr is actually pretty fun. We have a 19 year old at home. My, my wife's son, my stepson and he has played all the vrs cuz I got, I got the first Oculus Rift when it first came out. And HTC Vibe right now, he has a Quest the Quest two. He doesn't play it all the time. It's not his preferred screen. Actually, when we first, and this is what happens with vr, when you first get it, it's like, wow. And the whole family, you'll play it. Everybody will play it, the whole family. And people will say, come here, you gotta see this. And they'll play it.

(01:41:14):
And then it kind of, the fun for most people kind of wears off. Most people it's not the preferred way. They'll, I'm sure he'll use his iPad more Okay. In the long run. So I wouldn't spend as a, I foolishly did $1,600 for the Quest Pro. That's silly. That's just dumb. But the Quest two is very good. Okay. And it's, it's a $300 right now, I think. Something like that. The whole family will use it. You probably want to have the same, if you have set screen time limits, it's a screen. It's no different than than anything else. You can look at the games, same thing. In fact, one of the things you could do with the Quest, which is nice, is he can stream the stuff he's playing onto a TV, so you could see what he's doing.

(01:42:02):
Oh, fun. And I would recommend that it uses, there's a variety of ways to do it. Chromecast, you could do it to a computer screen using wifi. So that's a nice thing. So he's not all alone in there. Right. I don't think there's any educational value to it, but there is an un unexpected value in terms of exercise. A lot of the most fun games you actually get a lot of movement in. So light there's a light saber game called Beat Saber where you have light, two light sabers and it's like Guitar Hero. The music's coming at you and you have to chop at the boxes as they come at you. You end up breaking a pretty good sweat <laugh>. But I, it's fun. That's actually our kids favorite game. He, he and his buddies will play that a lot.

(01:42:50):
There's also, and I think I would recommend this, they're cooperative games that I encourage them to play. They love, they have a good time playing these games where one person's wearing the headset and the other people are on his team helping him, for instance, diffuse a a a a bomb. Oh man. And there's, it's really the whole family will do this. You get a printed manual and it's, and and you've got this kind of, he'll be wearing the headset and he's got in his hands this kind of weird box. And you have to disconnect the blue wire and then find the triangle and press the thing. And it's so much fun. It's called something With Explode in the name. Let me <laugh>, let me, let me see if I can find this. Really fun game. Keep talking and nobody explodes. It's at Keep Talking game.com.

(01:43:46):
 I think that would be really a fun family game. And I think that one of the, of the things you'll find with the vr, because it is kind of isolating, you know, somebody's like, in their own world games like this are great because then everybody can be involved and you can put it up on the screen. Okay. In this case, you wouldn't want to, because you don't want the his team to see what he's seeing. So he's seeing it. You're not, and you have to tell him what to do from the Bomb manual. It's really fun. Oh,

Caller 6 (01:44:15):
That sounds great.

Leo Laporte (01:44:16):
Highly Rec. Oh, see, now I've done it. Do you have a PS4 or an Xbox or anything like that? Do you have any?

Caller 6 (01:44:23):
No, we have a Nintendo.

Leo Laporte (01:44:25):
Nintendo. Okay. Which is great. Yeah. So PlayStation has announced a new PlayStation vr that if you had a PlayStation four or five, maybe that would be the way to go. But if you don't, I think the Quest is probably the best thing to do.

Caller 6 (01:44:41):
Okay. That's perfect.

Leo Laporte (01:44:42):
Yeah, I think you'll have a lot of fun with it. And, and again, if you play Beat Saber it's great exercise. There a number of games that really get you moving and and are, and they're more fun because of it, you know it's really great. The switch. The Switch does have, keep talking. Nobody explodes, but I don't think it's as much fun on the Switch as it is in vr, <laugh>.

Caller 6 (01:45:04):
Okay.

Leo Laporte (01:45:05):
Keep talking game.com <laugh>. Hey, have fun. It's nice to meet Abraham. Now, one thing I would suggest also, dad, at some point, do you play, do you play Minecraft, Abraham Ever?

Caller 6 (01:45:18):
Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:45:19):
Get a raspberry pie there. But if you can get 'em, they're short supply. But when you can get 1 35 bucks you could put a Minecraft server on there and you can learn to program Python by playing Minecraft. And it's so much fun, huh. And Abraham, you're right at the age, if you like technology, you're right at the age where learning a programming language would be such a good idea. You may not, it may not be your thing, in which case no big deal. But if it is, that's a good skill to have in the 21st century, I think.

Caller 6 (01:45:52):
All right. That, that sounds cool.

Leo Laporte (01:45:53):
Thanks. Yeah, yeah. Python is perfect for you. I'll put a link in the show notes to a wonderful book from the no starch press called Learning Python in Minecraft. And it's really fun. And that's a raspberry pie, which means it's an inexpensive you know, it's a $35 computer. Learned to program with Minecraft is the name of the program of the GA book by Craig Richardson. Pretty cool. Yeah. Hey, nice to talk to you both.

Caller 6 (01:46:24):
Leah, I'm sorry. Can I ask one really quick question? Sure. Give a brief. So I currently have an iPad 11 inch pre m chip. And I want to get a 12 inch for the real estate. I play music I play oh, nice. And I like the screen for sheet music and, and I'm getting older and the 11 inch is a little small for my eyeballs. But the question is, I, I don't really need it desperately. And I'm wondering, do you think next year's model is gonna be a big enough jump that I should wait? Cause I hold on my iPads about two or three years.

Leo Laporte (01:46:59):
Yeah. As most people do now. And that's one of the things that slowed down iPad sales. I think Apple underestimated how, how these things would last forever. I love the iPad Pro. They just updated it with the M two chip, the 12.9. So it has just been updated. I think you could get the M one, you wouldn't notice a difference. You might might want to, in fact looked at their refurb store to save a couple hundred bucks. But the 12.9 is for a musician is a great, I think is a great idea. Really good idea. Okay. Yeah. Okay. Not just for sheet music. There's all sorts of stuff. There's Com composition tools, there's stuff that will take recorded music and, and, and write the score out on the iPad. There's all sorts of really great stuff. I think the iPad Pro, it's expensive, but it's a wonderful tool. I think you'll love

Caller 6 (01:47:48):
It. Oh, thank you for ation. That's great. Thank you.

Leo Laporte (01:47:50):
Sure, Josh. Great to talk to you both. Take care. Abraham Leo Laport, Atari turns 50. Wow. Wow. How could that be there? Started in 19 70, 19 72. Yeah. Cuz I didn't get an Atari thing. My first Atari thing was the 2,600 and I think I got that in 77, maybe 78. What did they do before they did the 2,600? Oh, they did arcade games. Of course, of course. That's right. In fact, that's why I bought the 2,600 is cuz they're, I was tired of putting money into our Atari arcade games. That's right. So for a while they were an arcade company pong played a lot of pong in my time. Had a friend who worked at Atari, he's very proud. He he worked on the Battle zone, which was my favorite game. He said, yeah, I did the I did the erupting volcano in Battle Zone.

(01:49:06):
I said, oh, he said, yeah, I was walking by one day and I said, you know, that mountain needs to erupt. And he rode a little code Dev the volcano, they put it in. Battle Zone was a great game. Why? Hey, hey, how are you today? Leo LaPorte, here I am, your personal tech guy, your concierge, if you will, to all the tech Apparat High in your life. 88. 88. Ask Leo, is the phone number eight eighty eight eight two seven five five three six toll free from anywhere in the US or Canada. You can call from anywhere in the world, but if you're outside the US and Canada, you should probably use Skype out so it doesn't cost you anything. Or, or something like that. Some IP based solution. 88 88 lia website, tech guy labs.com. You're welcome to join us in the chat room as well. Irc.Twi.Tv. Many ways to play. I always think of the IRC folks, the chat folks as as team tech guy.

(01:50:08):
They're my brain. Kind of extruded <laugh> to the internet because many of them have been listening for almost 20 years. Mike b I was talking about the first tech Guy show in January, 2004. Mike b said I was there. So many of them have been listening and they've heard me mention things in the past and when I can't remember something, almost always they go, oh yeah, yeah Leo, you're trying to remember this. I said, yeah, yeah, that's it. So very helpful. The team tech guy, thank you. And the irc, that's IRC dot twi dot t v. You'll find all that if you go to tech guy labs.com. Doug's on the line from the the Town Made famous by Rocky and Bullwinkle Chagrin Falls io o o Ohio. O i o

Caller 7 (01:50:55):
<Laugh>.

Leo Laporte (01:50:56):
Hello there Doug.

Caller 7 (01:50:59):
Hey Leo, how you doing? I am,

Leo Laporte (01:51:00):
Well I, for some reason I always think Rocky and Bullwinkle when I see Chagrin Falls. Really? Yeah. I don't know why that is.

Caller 7 (01:51:07):
Tim Conways from Sherin.

Leo Laporte (01:51:08):
Ah, you have the, you know what you sound a little like Tim Conway. He must have the Ohio accent.

Caller 7 (01:51:16):
Yes. I don't know. <Laugh>,

Leo Laporte (01:51:18):
You do, you sound a little, doesn't he sound like Tim Conway? Am I wrong? What can I <laugh>

Caller 7 (01:51:22):
Told me that years and years ago. Yeah,

Leo Laporte (01:51:24):
You do. Yeah.

Caller 7 (01:51:26):
What

Leo Laporte (01:51:26):
Can I do for you Doug?

Caller 7 (01:51:28):
I have an answer. I think for the person that called about the sling box a

Leo Laporte (01:51:34):
Lot. Yes. Oh, we're looking for that. Yes.

Caller 7 (01:51:39):
Dish bought sling box Right. A number of years ago. Right. And the, you can get the same result if you have a dish account, have a dish in your, on your house or in your yard. And it's the Dish Anywhere feature, which on the hopper cbr. So you can essentially take whatever you're whatever you're tuned to or you don't even have to be tuned to it. It's gonna take, use one of your tuners and you can send it somewhere yourself or send it to somebody else, whatever. The same as the sling box did.

Leo Laporte (01:52:19):
That's cool. Yeah. So they incorporated some of that sling technology into their hopper, which is their dvr.

Caller 7 (01:52:25):
Right.

Leo Laporte (01:52:27):
Do they still make the hopper?

Caller 7 (01:52:29):
Pardon me? They

Leo Laporte (01:52:30):
Still offer the hopper dish does. Yes. Good.

Caller 7 (01:52:32):
Okay. Yeah, I, I kind of question times how much longer, cause I think the dish is becoming obsolete. Yeah. it's with streaming, et cetera. But I have some friends, as a matter of fact, that that moved to Florida several years ago. And they they use it, they have my ID and password, et cetera. They use it to watch the Browns every Sunday. Cause the Browns telecast down there where we do here. So

Leo Laporte (01:53:01):
Isn't that nice for them?

Caller 7 (01:53:03):
That's

Leo Laporte (01:53:06):
Right. So if you, now of course that means you'd have to be a dish subscriber.

Caller 7 (01:53:11):
Exactly. So there's, you know, whatever the minimum package, if that's what you really wanna do with the, you know, if that's the main feature you want, you can get a a package or something fairly inexpensive. You don't have to get one of their top packages that has all the channels if you're not interested in doing that.

Leo Laporte (01:53:30):
Yeah, yeah. And you know, I think really the reason they stop making this, in fact eventually I imagine they'll stop offering a <laugh> satellite service entirely, is cuz streaming is really the way to go. Exactly.

Caller 7 (01:53:42):
Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. The Internet's taking over the satellite. I'm kinda waiting for that to happen. Direct TV's doing the same thing.

Leo Laporte (01:53:50):
Yep. Yep. I mean, there are certainly a lot of people in rural areas, and I'm guessing Chagrin Falls might be one of them that don't have fine enough speed internet to, to get streaming

Caller 7 (01:54:01):
Video. Well, matter of fact, we're a suburb of Cleveland. Oh,

Leo Laporte (01:54:03):
Alright. Well you're good then.

Caller 7 (01:54:04):
We're not, and as a matter of fact, I have a, a rural phone company, which is Windstream or Kinetic, which is not, don't have at and t et cetera, but they just put fiber on our street. Nice. I have a gig up, hand up and down.

Leo Laporte (01:54:18):
Oh, here I am being all snooty. And you got better in it than I do,

Caller 7 (01:54:22):
Which is fantastic. That's

Leo Laporte (01:54:24):
Awesome. I think it's Frostbite Falls that doesn't have very good internet. That's where it is. I <laugh>. Hey, thank you for that, Doug.

Caller 7 (01:54:34):
That helps the upstream for the dish anyway.

Leo Laporte (01:54:37):
Oh heck yeah.

Caller 7 (01:54:38):
When you're sending that out, basically a server.

Leo Laporte (01:54:41):
Yeah, that's right. You're faster than most other servers.

Caller 7 (01:54:44):
Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. Which

Leo Laporte (01:54:46):
Is pretty cool, isn't it? <Laugh>. Hey, it's nice to talk to you. Thank you for helping out one of our listeners. I appreciate it.

Caller 7 (01:54:55):
Appreciate it. Okay, thanks.

Leo Laporte (01:54:57):
Bye. Randy on the line from Huntingdon Beach, California. Hi Randy.

Caller 8 (01:55:02):
Good afternoon. Good afternoon. I couple months ago I bought myself a nice Leola Lenovo laptop I seven and I just bought a new monitor. An l new LG monitored some 32 inch ultra fine. D

Leo Laporte (01:55:19):
Those are very nice monitors. Yeah,

Caller 8 (01:55:22):
They are. They're beautiful. And I'm, I'm using it to run a program called Ableton, which is a digital

Leo Laporte (01:55:28):
Audio. Oh yeah. Ableton Live know it very well. Yep.

Caller 8 (01:55:32):
And whenever I plug in the monitor, Ableton slows down and then crash

Leo Laporte (01:55:36):
<Laugh>. No.

Caller 7 (01:55:38):
Yes.

Leo Laporte (01:55:39):
Well, that's not right.

Caller 8 (01:55:42):
I don't think that's right. I <laugh>

Leo Laporte (01:55:45):
I wonder if it's, cause it's 4K maybe, or fi is it, did you get the 4K Ultra fine or the 5K Ultra fine. Yeah. 4k. 4K. I wonder if Ableton has trouble with that resolution. It runs fine on the Lenovo as you know, the Lenovo screen as a laptop, huh?

Caller 8 (01:56:01):
Yep.

Leo Laporte (01:56:02):
Well it sounds like a bug in Ableton for sure.

Caller 8 (01:56:05):
Well, I was wondering whether it would be, there's some drivers A S I O for all which is supposed to install.

Leo Laporte (01:56:14):
Those are the sound. Yeah, the sound drivers. I don't,

Caller 8 (01:56:18):
And then I'm wondering whether it would make sense to try to run the video off of H D M I or US bbc.

Caller 8 (01:56:25):
I've got ports for both of those and I don't know which is preferred.

Leo Laporte (01:56:29):
So if you want, if you had 5k or you want high frame rate 4k, you could do either you'd have to have the right H D M I cable at 2.1 cable to do the high frame rate. The S B C. The problem with us BBC is it can be a variety of things. It might be thunderbolt over US BBC display port over usbc. That ultra fine you just got probably will work with display ports, which

Caller 8 (01:56:59):
It has display ports as well.

Leo Laporte (01:57:01):
Yeah. And I imagine that the, the usbc, the USBC would, would be if, if you knew it was display port, that would be the best way. Display port is to be preferred over H D M I. The other thing that might be going on that Ultra fine has speakers. Yeah.

Caller 8 (01:57:18):
Yep.

Leo Laporte (01:57:19):
I'm wondering if maybe the, a SIO driver is trying to play a sound through the speaker and that would probably, I I ah, yeah, I would, I would, you know, make sure you're not using, I, I presume if you're using Ableton, you're a musician, so you must have nice speakers, make sure that those speakers are driven by the Lenovo and that the monitor's not getting in the way

Caller 8 (01:57:44):
<Crosstalk>, that'll, I've got it all hooked up to a receiver with the speaker.

Leo Laporte (01:57:48):
Sure, of course you do. Yeah.

Caller 8 (01:57:49):
Channeling it. Sure. From the output from the headsets of yeah. Laptop to a receiver.

Leo Laporte (01:57:55):
Oh, that's interesting. You're taking the analog out, huh? Right. Yeah. I've, well, I think one thing you could do to improve that, by the way, would be to use a D and take USB out and then convert it to analog sound. It'll sound a lot better. Or I don't know if that Lenovo has optical out. If it does, that would be even better going to the AV receiver. And it might, it might, might eliminate this, you know, H G M I takes sound with it. Display port does not. So it might be if you use the display port, and I'm gonna bet on that Lenovo, the Thunderbolt does display port. Yeah, it's a, it's a pretty modern Lenovo.

Caller 8 (01:58:34):
No, I don't see any display port on the Lenovo.

Leo Laporte (01:58:37):
Yeah, no, but it could be out. The type C What, what year is the Lenovo?

Caller 8 (01:58:41):
Just

Leo Laporte (01:58:42):
Bought it. Just bought it. So almost certainly that's Thunderbolt four. And would probably support display port. You'll have to look at the specs. If it does, you'll get a type C to display port connector, or you could just plug a type C to type C. Actually, the LG would be smart enough to understand that it's display port coming in and because that doesn't transmit well, but then they might say, oh, but I'll get the audio from usb. I bet you anything, it's the monitor audio that's causing the problem. But I don't know. It could also be a video driver. This is you know, typical driver thing. And it's hard because you have, not only do you have the regular drivers, you have these special a SIO drivers.

Caller 8 (01:59:24):
Right.

Leo Laporte (01:59:25):
I would say if I, if I were you the really

Caller 8 (01:59:27):
Beyond my pay grade on all this stuff you know, Ableton is like being, you know, 50 yards under water and scratching up the surface whenever. Oh,

Leo Laporte (01:59:36):
It's fun though, isn't

Caller 8 (01:59:36):
It? Right. I I am. It's it's an amazing piece of technology. It's just

Leo Laporte (01:59:42):
Are you a musician

Caller 8 (01:59:43):
For people? I, I play music. I am really more my, my my wife is more of a musician. I play harmonica and keyboards. She's got a lot more musical knowledge than I do. But between the two of us, we've put together great stuff. Oh,

Leo Laporte (01:59:58):
That's awesome. Yeah. You

Caller 8 (01:59:59):
Get multi-tracks.

Leo Laporte (02:00:02):
Yeah. You got a production studio in your laptop. I am thinking and I think the chat room's concurring, you'd be better off getting a analog to digital convert or a digital to analog converter to take the audio. Not out of the headphone jack, but out of the USB port of that laptop. It might also simplify. You may not need a SIO at all. I cuz you'll be sending digital out instead of analog audio out. So you don't need the conversion. That's cool. I think that might weirdly, it certainly would make you sounded be 10 times better. And

Caller 8 (02:00:40):
A deck is, that's an extra piece of hardware I would buy. Or is it

Leo Laporte (02:00:44):
Download or, yeah, get a, they're suggesting a scarlet, that's what we use. Not expensive. Oh,

Caller 8 (02:00:49):
Audio interface.

Leo Laporte (02:00:50):
Yeah. It's called an audio interface. Yes.

Caller 8 (02:00:53):
Oh,

Leo Laporte (02:00:54):
It is a deck. It takes the USB data and turns it into something that the AV receiver can handle. Actually your AV receiver probably can do opticals. So it could turn into optical as well. And then there'd be direct digital connection to the AV receiver. Depend, you know, it, some AV receivers have very good digital analog converters. Ultimately you gotta convert it to analog or you won't hear it. And, and so minor detail, it's a minor thing. The, you better not to use the laptop stack. However I can't, I haven't solved your problem at all. I've just given you a lot of things you should buy. But

Caller 8 (02:01:29):
That's another one that you might be able, I'll, I'll look into that. I've been wanting to

Leo Laporte (02:01:32):
Get a, yeah, you should get an audio interface for sure. And then you could probably get rid of the A SIO drivers and that might even solve the problem. There's something going on with the drivers and the monitor. It could be that the monitor wants audio and now the drivers are crashing. It could be that it's 4K

Caller 8 (02:01:48):
Labeling. The, the speakers on the monitor.

Leo Laporte (02:01:51):
Just try that

Caller 8 (02:01:52):
If I can. Yeah, yeah.

Leo Laporte (02:01:53):
See that Or use display port only cuz Display port doesn't have audio.

Caller 8 (02:01:58):
Okay.

Leo Laporte (02:01:58):
Have fun.

Caller 8 (02:01:59):
The other,

Leo Laporte (02:02:00):
The other question, hang on, I gotta take a break, but I'll talk to you off the air. 88. 88. Ask Leo the phone number. Taking your calls, talking high tech Rod Pile Spaceman coming up in 10 minutes. Stay right here. Yes. Sorry about that. I had to play the music. You're still on the podcast, however. Yeah,

Caller 8 (02:02:25):
Yeah, yeah. You gotta you gotta run a business. I understand.

Leo Laporte (02:02:27):
I don't gotta, but they do. <Laugh>, I don't care.

Caller 8 (02:02:31):
Somebody's gotta pay the bills.

Leo Laporte (02:02:32):
I don't care.

Caller 8 (02:02:33):
Have a piece of, I I used to do a database that would dial an actual phone for me and it would track all my phone calls and all that kind of stuff. And I'm wondering, and, and, you know I started out with, with dBase and, and then moved on up over the years and it seems like the Microsoft products are pretty much out of date right now that nobody uses these personal databases. But I'd still like to do that and figure out is there a way to dial a cell phone from my cp my, my pc.

Leo Laporte (02:03:04):
Oh sure. The old days we'd get a modem to do that. Right. That's what a modem. One of the things a modem was capable of doing is dialing a phone. But you wanna dial your cell phone from your pc. Is it a Windows pc?

Caller 8 (02:03:18):
Yeah.

Leo Laporte (02:03:19):
Yeah. So easiest way to do this is with a Microsoft program comes with Windows 10 or 11. You have to download it from the store called your phone. So go to the store and look for your phone. <Laugh>. Or maybe they changed it to my phone. Oh, I'm sorry. Now it's called Phone Link. It used to be your phone. Now it's called Phone Link. And that'll link up to an Android phone. Doesn't do it with iPhones unfortunately. But it can use, you can then use your Android phone for phone calls. It works best with Samsung. But I have it working with my Pixel. It will work with a Pixel as well. And you can do a bunch of things. You can see text messages, you can make ins make an answer calls and you can do photos as well. Cool. Do you have an Android phone?

Caller 8 (02:04:08):
Yes, I do. You're in luck. Old lg in fact. Yeah,

Leo Laporte (02:04:11):
Because apple will never let them <laugh> do that <laugh>, but yeah, it works pretty well actually. Your it's, but you have to, the trick on phone length as they now call it, is you have a lot of permissions you have to approve on the Android device for it to work. So you gotta cut it less shakers. Yeah, yeah, of course. But it works quite nicely.

Caller 8 (02:04:32):
My male child is already over the age of 21, so I don't have to worry about that. Nice.

Leo Laporte (02:04:37):
<Laugh>. And then now they're telling me I'm an idiot that display Port does support audio. I didn't realize that. I don't of course send audio over my display port, so maybe that's not gonna solve it. But I certainly you you're doing the H D M I now.

Caller 8 (02:04:52):
Yeah. I would

Leo Laporte (02:04:53):
Just try Type C You need to have the right type C cable that passes the video through. But I would try it just to see if that solves it. It might just be, it's, it's almost certainly a driver issue.

Caller 8 (02:05:06):
That's what I was thinking too.

Leo Laporte (02:05:07):
Yeah. And whether it's a video driver or audio driver Yeah. Also a SIO drivers are terrible. Terrible. So getting rid of those would be Yeah. Would be a blessing.

Caller 8 (02:05:19):
And going with a Scarlet is probably the simplest way to

Leo Laporte (02:05:22):
Yeah. Scarlet's are great up

Caller 8 (02:05:23):
An interface.

Leo Laporte (02:05:23):
Yep. But they're, but I mean, boy, when you go down that rabbit hole, there's lots of choices.

Caller 8 (02:05:29):
Yeah. But I, I need one of those anyway, if we're gonna record

Leo Laporte (02:05:32):
Anything. Yeah, yeah. Get a cheap one. Well, okay, so you want inputs and stuff. Yeah. Scarlet would probably be the right thing to do. They're only a couple hundred bucks, I think. Cool. Yeah.

Caller 8 (02:05:40):
Yeah, I know. 2, 3, 400.

Leo Laporte (02:05:41):
It all adds up. How

Caller 8 (02:05:43):
Many <laugh>? Yeah, it sure does.

Leo Laporte (02:05:45):
It all adds up. Hey, a pleasure talking to you. Stay, stay in touch.

Caller 8 (02:05:50):
Thank you. Thanks

Leo Laporte (02:05:51):
Randy. Bye. Bye. Bye. Welcome back. Oh, wrong song <laugh>. Didn't that sound like the beginning of welcome back, Coter. Am I wrong? 88. 88. Ask Leo. Maybe <laugh>, maybe. I'm just hearing things. 88 8 8 2 7 5 5 36 toll free from anywhere in the US or Canada. Rod Pop coming up, but we got lots of time. Take your calls too. An old chef guy, my good friend from just up the road of pieces on the line. Hello? Old chef Guy

Caller 9 (02:06:21):
<Laugh>. You had me totally with the hello back. I was with you going Hello Connor. And

Leo Laporte (02:06:25):
Yeah, it wasn't, it wasn't just me. Was it?

Caller 9 (02:06:28):
What? No, no, I was totally there with you.

Leo Laporte (02:06:30):
Yeah. Weird.

Caller 9 (02:06:31):
So I have a, we have never talked about this part. I have a Ohio PR 40.

Leo Laporte (02:06:38):
Yes. Much like me. Yours isn't gold like mine though.

Caller 9 (02:06:42):
No, it is not. But my PR 40 is the result of listening to you for many decades. Oh, nice. And I have an ID 14 as my interface.

Leo Laporte (02:06:52):
We're talking by the way about microphones folks. Oh,

Caller 9 (02:06:54):
Sorry. Pardon? I didn't mean to go.

Leo Laporte (02:06:55):
I don't know what the ID 14 is though. What's that?

Caller 9 (02:06:58):
That's an audience product.

Leo Laporte (02:06:59):
Okay.

Caller 9 (02:07:00):
It's a high end. Really nice. Clean,

Leo Laporte (02:07:03):
That's it. But with no analog to Digital Convert. You do

Caller 9 (02:07:07):
It. Correct. Yeah. Thank you. And sound into the computer records beautifully. No, nothing. I'm attempting to take a air quotes a landline and plug it into a box called the Circuit Works Microtel, which might give you sweaty flashbacks to the radio days.

Leo Laporte (02:07:24):
I do. Yes.

Caller 9 (02:07:24):
That's where it was from. Yes. And I'm getting a hum. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (02:07:29):
So part of the problem is that the phone interface is not a balanced input. Yeah. That's where the hums coming from. In fact, for years, I haven't done this in a long time, but for years we used something called a Henry Box that would take the unbalanced phone in input and balance it so that you could then plug it into a mixer of any kind. I just googled Henry Box and I got some guy named Henry Box Brown. So it's, I don't think it's widely used anymore. <Laugh>. wow. Maybe I, maybe, let's see. Try Henry Telephone converter. I

Caller 9 (02:08:11):
Kind of thought that that was one of the things that the circuit works I supposed to do, but the problem, what I call the company is that they're way too nerdy for me. Hang on. Exactly. Having you hit the yet.

Leo Laporte (02:08:25):
So that's what you need to do, is you need, you know, it sounds like this audience thing might do it, but you need to take an unbalanced input and convert it into something that it can understand. Henry is Henry Engineering out of Sierra Madre, California. Cool. And they are at henry e n g.com. So I had a Henry for a long time.

Caller 9 (02:08:54):
Okay.

Leo Laporte (02:08:56):
Another, another term for it is a matchbox. Okay. So and I think that's where the buzz is coming from, is that you've got an unbalanced input. You're interfacing consumer electronics with professional equipment.

Caller 9 (02:09:13):
Oh, they hate

Leo Laporte (02:09:14):
That. And so the matchbox fixes that.

Caller 9 (02:09:18):
Okay.

Leo Laporte (02:09:19):
It'll take an unbalanced level and it'll convert it to a balanced level. Let me see how much a matchbox, Ooh, wow. $250. Yeah. I had one of these for years. That's how we connected the phone lines. I don't, what do we do now? I don't even know. Bonita. What do we do? It's all digital. I don't think we have like it's all digital. Yeah. We don't have phone inputs anymore. But they still sell the Matchbox. I think that's kind of what you need. I would think the audience would do it, but I don't. You have, which the

Caller 9 (02:09:51):
Audience has no kind of input. It only has XLR input. Ah,

Leo Laporte (02:09:55):
Yeah. That's balanced quarter jack. Yeah. It, so those are balanced inputs. That's why it's confused. So you just need something that will take the unbalanced low level, low quality from the phone and turn it into something that the the audience says, oh, I recognize this.

Caller 9 (02:10:12):
Yeah. The Circuit Works has a, has the RJ 19 or

Leo Laporte (02:10:16):
Oh interesting. <Crosstalk> in the back. Well, if it has an RJ nine in the back, it should,

Caller 9 (02:10:20):
Yeah.

Leo Laporte (02:10:21):
It should understand

Caller 9 (02:10:21):
Not balancing it.

Leo Laporte (02:10:23):
Yeah. Yeah. That's the buzz is typical of an unbalanced input.

Caller 9 (02:10:28):
Okay. I'm feeling a little unbalanced. Okay. <laugh>,

Leo Laporte (02:10:31):
Are you doing a radio show in your house? Old chef guy. What are you doing?

Caller 9 (02:10:35):
I

Leo Laporte (02:10:35):
Am, you're setting up going to competition, huh?

Caller 9 (02:10:38):
I've been doing a show for 10 years.

Leo Laporte (02:10:40):
Oh, nice. Where did we find it? Talking

Caller 9 (02:10:42):
Talk to me guy.com.

Leo Laporte (02:10:44):
Talk to me guy.com. Leo Laport, the tech guy space coming up. I didn't know that. What are you talk about

Caller 9 (02:10:54):
The crossroads of the envir health.

Leo Laporte (02:10:56):
The what?

Caller 9 (02:10:57):
The crossroads of the environment and our health.

Leo Laporte (02:11:00):
Talk to me guy.com. So that's what you're using this word cause you wanna take phone calls?

Caller 9 (02:11:08):
I wanna take phone calls. Nice. Mostly I use it for a backup when I, cuz I produce events for other people online. Yeah. I use this as a backup to monitor the audio feed. Cuz most of what I do is live to air like you,

Leo Laporte (02:11:21):
Hey, you didn't offer me a cranial sac roll head rub.

Caller 9 (02:11:25):
We, you know, you'd have to lay down on the aisle <laugh>, which might,

Leo Laporte (02:11:29):
I have no idea.

Caller 9 (02:11:32):
Yeah, yeah.

Leo Laporte (02:11:33):
Ooh, cortisol learning to master the hormone.

Caller 9 (02:11:37):
He's actually an interesting guy. He's a tech nerd, like a old school billionaire, you know, kind of guy from Silicon Valley. Huh? Responsible for Angry Birds.

Leo Laporte (02:11:47):
No.

Caller 9 (02:11:48):
Yep. Yep.

Leo Laporte (02:11:49):
Wow. So you, this is a episode you did interviewing him?

Caller 9 (02:11:54):
Yeah. Today. Nice morning at nine o'clock.

Leo Laporte (02:11:57):
Oh, Susie Bratton. I didn't know she was still around. Wow. She's

Caller 9 (02:12:02):
A bad, bad. Are we off

Leo Laporte (02:12:03):
Air? No, we're not. Don't talk about her. So now she's doing something else though. She's a, oh

Caller 9 (02:12:09):
Boy. Is she doing it?

Leo Laporte (02:12:10):
She's a character.

Caller 9 (02:12:11):
She is a, she's a brain act. She is serious. I've interviewed her a bunch.

Leo Laporte (02:12:15):
Yeah. She's very smart.

Caller 9 (02:12:17):
She's very

Leo Laporte (02:12:17):
Smart. I actually really, like, I've never met her, but I like her. I mean, I obviously it's a little, it's a little adult from me, but Yeah. Very cool. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Caller 9 (02:12:28):
No, and actually the, the,

Leo Laporte (02:12:29):
She's moved on. It looks like she's kind of moved on.

Caller 9 (02:12:33):
Well, yeah, she's moved on and dragged other things that she has always done. Okay. I was talking about health as a, you know, libido is a biomarker of health is how

Leo Laporte (02:12:42):
I would Oh, I think that's fair.

Caller 9 (02:12:44):
Yeah. Yeah. No, she's really good. I

Leo Laporte (02:12:46):
Think that's fair. Yeah. it's all her husband's fault.

Caller 9 (02:12:49):
Libi exactly. Is an interesting guy because he just is in the process of getting out a way to monitor your car. Cortisol. Yeah. Using saliva. Oh. And using the phone to read the huge saliva strip so you can then have in real time, in less than five minutes, you're doing your own at home cortisol

Leo Laporte (02:13:07):
Monitor. Cortisol is the stress hormone.

Caller 9 (02:13:10):
Yeah. Yep.

Leo Laporte (02:13:11):
And yeah, it's a big, it's a big issue for sleep and all sorts of stuff. Yep. Oh, that's really cool. Yeah. All right. I gotta run.

Caller 9 (02:13:19):
Okay. Thank you.

Leo Laporte (02:13:20):
Thank you Chef. Guy. Next time I want a cranial sacral massage, please.

Caller 9 (02:13:24):
Okay. I'll grab you.

Leo Laporte (02:13:27):
<Laugh>, I'm gonna listen to your podcast. This looks great.

Caller 9 (02:13:30):
Great. Thank you. Do

Leo Laporte (02:13:31):
You only do it live?

Caller 9 (02:13:34):
Well it goes out to all the world, but yeah, I, I do it. Produce it live. Yeah. Nice. I like live. It was a habit I got from

Leo Laporte (02:13:40):
You. It is a great I I love live. Yeah.

Caller 9 (02:13:43):
I love the cinematic tension that it adds the

Leo Laporte (02:13:46):
Perfect description. Perfect description. Yeah. Yeah. It's if as long as we can continue to afford it, I will continue to just live. It's a little pricey <laugh>. Yeah. As you know, you can

Caller 9 (02:14:00):
Go back to being in a cottage. Yeah, that would be

Leo Laporte (02:14:02):
Great. I could, I could. Great to talk to you.

Caller 9 (02:14:05):
Thank you. You too. Thanks

Leo Laporte / Rod Pyle (02:14:06):
Richard. Take care. Bye.

(02:14:10):
Haha. Ladies and gentlemen, that song tells you one thing. It's time for Rod Pile Spaceman Rod is the editor in chief of the National Space Society's official magazine at Astro, which you must subscribe to. It's a requirement, nss.org, <laugh> You must. And then he is written all these great books. I have the pile pile here of just a few interplanetary robots, true stories of space exploration, amazing stories of the space age. You, you must have liked pulp magazines, pulp sci-fi, when you were Oh yeah. A young man. Absolutely. Those are, those are pulp. Because in those days, you just kind of threw your suitcase in the rocket and, and went Right. You pushed the button that said up and everything was fun after that. But, you know, people should not subscribe to Ad Astra until after they've joined Club Twit. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

(02:15:04):
Okay. We wanna support the nss. Well, that's true. And this is, you get an actual magazine, which club? Twi. Yeah. Club Twi does not have an actual magazine. And I think we do a magazine for you. It's safe to say Never will. Oh, okay. I don't think we wanna get in the print business. This is my favorite. First on the moon, the coffee table book for the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 Moon Landing. Wonderful, wonderful. And you know what, I just, two weeks ago I got another royalty check for that book, <laugh>, I almost forgot what they were. Like, <laugh>. It's like, whoa, wait money here. Here's your 35 cents. Congratulations. No, it was a, it was a, it's a nice size one as it should be enough for three Henry boxes. Maybe <laugh> Rod also hosts this week in space, our podcast@twit.tv slash t i s, but most importantly joins us every week.

(02:16:00):
They to talk about space. They didn't, they decided that with the, with the hurricane coming, they decided to leave Artemis on the pad, and they made the right choice. It's fine. Right? It's fine. There's a little bit of stuff, but turned out it was fine. Good. And, and, and there's something that they, you know, that we all have to stay aware of, which is you can, as we've talked about, you can only roll that thing back and forth so many times. It takes rat trip, it's a rattly trip and it takes a long time. Right. And so they, yeah. So they just tweeted out, I think, think yesterday that it's good for 11 rolls. So there's that first rollout when you hope that the thing will go, you know? Right. And then it can go back and forth 10 more times. So they've got a couple left, but nobody wants that.

(02:16:40):
So they're supposed to launch Tuesday, November 15th. There's gonna be, we think, in announcement tonight to tell us whether it'll be the 15th or the 19th. So we'll see. You know, nothing, nothing really be said about that, except, fingers crossed. But I did wanna mention the San Diego Air and Space Museum down in San Diego is doing a live video cast on YouTube whichever day it launches. Which is not a big deal. You can get that from nasa, but they are having commentary by legendary flight directors, Jean Kranz, Terry Griffin. Oh. Both of Apollo and shuttle years. So that makes it really cool. Yeah. So that website is youtube.com/s d a sm. So that'll be a great place to be hanging out the day of with a, with a copy. Your favorite favorite. No kidding. Oh, I'd love to. Yeah. So nasa broadcasts, broadcasts these <laugh>.

(02:17:37):
Yeah. But they, you know, it, it's what you'd expect. It's, it's fairly low end income and it's, it's it's public domain. Yeah. Because it's, we paid for it. So anybody could take that video and do their own commentary. Is that what these guys are doing? Yeah. And, and I mean, you can try and get special permission, but there's no reason to. Cause as you point out, it's all owned by the public, but then you get these two incredible history historical figures in there to talk about it and what it, how it compares to launching the Saturn five and what's changed since then, and why we worry about rockets you know, flight and all that kinda stuff. I haven ever been to the San Diego Air Space Museum. I don't think I knew it was there. It's nice. Is it worth It's not huge.

(02:18:18):
Yeah. Yeah. Oh, it's very nice. It, it's one of those, it's laid out in a more experiential way. So you're walking through little dioramas and things, which makes it a lot of fun. Fun. Oh, next time I'm done. So I'll have to check it out. Well, after you come to the boat, yeah, I'll come to your boat and then I'll check out the Airspace Museum. My, one of my favorite museums is the Udar Hazy in Washington dc. Haven't been there. What? You know, I've been to the, to the big Smithsonian, you know, the main one. National Air and Space Museum two or three times. But I haven't been to Ubar Hazy yet. So that's definitely a, it's incredible. It's such a big, I think it's an old hanger. It's so big they have, you know, the space shuttle is inside. Yeah. Yeah. It's incredible. And we're about, in LA we're about to get our, our space shuttle.

(02:19:02):
They're working on the new building now. And that's the one that's gonna be mounted vertically with SRBs and external tanks. Nice. So it's gonna be a launch configuration. I wish they'd have steam coming off of it, but you know, you can only get what you can get. So we have another story though. Yes. There's a project called Lofted, L O F T I D that NASA's been working on for a while. And this is an inflatable heat shield. So when you're, when you're sending spacecraft to places like Mars, primarily robotic at this point, but eventually this could be applied to human rated systems. You know, heat shields at Mars, especially your problem cuz the atmosphere is thin enough to heat up and give you grief, but not thick enough to really slow you down. It's kinda the worst. It's kinda worst. Yeah. So that's why you get things I Sky crane, which is very involved, you know, it's got a heat shield parachutes, it's got repel down the ropes after it's head deceleration, rockets, fire and all that.

(02:19:50):
When they figure the perseverance and curiosity probes are about as, as large and heavy as that'll work for, they're about a ton. So they've been working on inflatable heat shields. JPL tested it twice back in the 20 fifteens. Didn't work out like they wanted. NASA just tested a new one called Lofted, which is one of those indecipherable acronyms on November 10th. And it worked. So it went up to 72 miles inflated, came back down, did what it was supposed to do. You've got it there. It's a funny Yeah. Burn. It is. But you know, it's incredible because now you know, rocket fairings until we get the bigger ones, generally about 15 feet diameter. And that's how big, you know, you have to have a heat shield smaller than that. But this means you can have something two or three times that size go up in that, that smaller rocket and still give you this enormous area.

(02:20:38):
So it not only slows down more, but it distributes the heat better. And it gives you all kinds of advantages that this was about 20 feet in diameter. And what's showing there is as it's coming down, it ejects a little black box. So you get all the telemetry data just in case it gets lost when it comes down to the ocean. But they are able to recover it. Can they reuse it? They did. Did they reuse it or No, that's not the plan. They, they might be able to, but but they don't wanna, it's tough trip coming down and these are fabric bags. Yeah. You don't wanna leave it line around in the ocean. So. Right. So after 3000 degrees of, of heat, I think it's probably just to build another one. The outer surface was made from woven ceramic and silicon carbide yarn, just like the terminator.

(02:21:21):
It's, that's incredible. Yeah. Then weaved into a denin, a denim type fabric. A couple layers of legislation behind that and gas barrier. So yeah, this thing's a beast. And the polymer that the inflatable bags are made out of is 10 and times stronger than steel by weight. So I thought that was all very neat because this, this really opens up the door to a lot of things. It'll help land heavier payloads on Mars. And then on places like Venus and the moon tighten where you've got thicker atmospheres, you could probably use this without parachutes or breaking rockets. Just this. And the Soviet Union did something like this with one of the Venus probes back in the seventies and eighties where they came down with kind of an inverted umbrella type thing. So it's, you know, it's, it's kind of a geeky story and I'm kind of a geeky guy.

(02:22:05):
I know. I love this, this opens up a lot of stuff. Sure. And I'm just saying, once they recovered, if they made blue jeans out of it, they could probably sell 'em for a good price and fund the next one. And then we could all buy Elon's flame throwers and we'd be safe and test our jeans and we'd be okay. We just need a shirt made to the same stuff. Yeah. Lots. No, you and I, what there's, there's potential here for a lot of, lot of money with these great product ideas we have always think to hack with, to hack with buying Twitter, you know? Yeah. That was, that was a mistake. And by the way, I, I jumped on Mastodon just to take a look. Yeah. Little bit of a learning curve there. It's not the same, but it's, that's one of the reasons we like it.

(02:22:45):
By the way, somebody is redoing NASA's Twitter stream on Macon, so you Oh, good. You can get all of the NASA goodness on ma. I think eventually a lot of brands are gonna say, should we really, do we really wanna be on this crazy site? Maybe there's other places to go. And you know, of course I'm a big fan of having a website. I think that's just a good idea in general. Yeah. And, and it's a shame cuz NASA got a lot of good penetration to the public mindset through Twitter. It's true. You know, when the discovery was talking and so forth. It's cool stuff. Yeah. Rod pile space.nss.org and TWI tv slash twists. Thank you Rod. Thank you Commander. Thank you for letting me be your tech guy every weekend right here. Really appreciate it. As a part of the show where we roll the credits, the audio credits, a thank of course Professor Laura, musical director who plays all the hits in between before and after commercials, that kind of thing. Thanks to of course our phone Angel, the wonderful Kim Shaffer, she gets you on the air, prepares you for your appearance on national radio pace, down the calix and everything. And then of course, thanks to you for listening and calling and participating. We really appreciate it. Couldn't do it without you. I think there's time for a couple more calls before we roll this thing up. Anne is on the line from Fullerton, California. Hello Anne.

Caller 10 (02:24:20):
Hi. Hi Leo. Thank you for taking my call. Oh,

Leo Laporte (02:24:23):
Thanks for calling. I

Caller 10 (02:24:24):
Have the, I have the opportunity to buy a new TV and I'm gonna be replacing our family's 32 inch, 2009 Samsung.

Leo Laporte (02:24:33):
Well, it's about time.

Caller 10 (02:24:35):
Yes. That's what everyone in my family has been saying.

Leo Laporte (02:24:38):
32 inches when we were young was huge.

Caller 10 (02:24:43):
Well, right. And it seems big to me, but No, my kids let me know that it's not

Leo Laporte (02:24:48):
It Mom

Caller 10 (02:24:48):
To upgrade.

Leo Laporte (02:24:50):
We have a TV at home. Yeah. it is time to upgrade. And the good news is TVs in the, in the intervening 13 years have really gotten good. Bad news is they're more expensive than they used to be. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. I is it, is it in a living room? Where is the, where is the tv?

Caller 10 (02:25:09):
It's, well, the TV's in the living room and so, so I've been doing some, some looking around, but it's, I'm just overwhelmed with all the

Leo Laporte (02:25:18):
Different Sure. And the, and the thing that choose, you choose the size of the TV based on how far away you're sitting. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. So how far away are you sitting?

Caller 10 (02:25:28):
Oh, probably 10.

Leo Laporte (02:25:30):
Yikes. How can you even watch TV on a little 32 inch <laugh>? It's this little postage stamp. So you're gonna, honestly, you're gonna wanna go get ready for this 55 inches at least. Okay. the kids will probably want 65, but 55 it's given where you're coming from is gonna be a big jump. The good news is the prices start to really go up after 55. 55 is a good size. Those are fairly economical, but it's still gonna be a thousand bucks.

Caller 10 (02:26:01):
Oh

Leo Laporte (02:26:01):
Wow. I know. What's your budget?

Caller 10 (02:26:04):
I was thinking more 500.

Leo Laporte (02:26:07):
Okay. Okay. No, we can do that. The, the key is gonna be you can't get the names like Samsung Sony the big names you can't get lg mm-hmm. <Affirmative>. But there are some very good names. First place I'd look is T c.

Caller 10 (02:26:28):
Okay.

Leo Laporte (02:26:29):
Tcl makes very nice TVs. They're a kind of a second tier Chinese manufacturer and I think they really wanna get in the market. So I'm looking at a TCL 55 inch for 300 bucks.

Caller 10 (02:26:44):
Oh,

Leo Laporte (02:26:44):
Perfect. And it's a nice tv. It comes with Roku built in so you can have your Disney, how old are the kids?

Caller 10 (02:26:52):
10, 15 and

Leo Laporte (02:26:53):
18. So you probably want Disney for the 10 year old Netflix for the older kids, that kind of thing. And it comes with that all built in because they support something called Roku. So I think those TCLs, this is what I got my mom. I think they're very, very good. You can get a fancier tcl. The six series is 6 89, but even the less fancy one would be fine. These are a little bit older models. They're not the latest, greatest day of the art. Let's see, here's a, well wait a minute now. Here's a class five TCL 55 inch, 2022 model. $419. I'm looking on Amazon. $419 on Amazon. So that is, that is probably what you should get. I think

Caller 10 (02:27:35):
That's perfect. Cause right now we, I have to undo red, yellow, and white cables to plug in like the, the,

Leo Laporte (02:27:43):
No, it'll be all digital now. It'll all be hdmi.

Caller 10 (02:27:48):
You say Mom, no one does this with,

Leo Laporte (02:27:51):
If the 18 year old is, is kind of kind of an incentive eyes to really get this thing fixed up. Let the 18 year old help you with the cabling and all that stuff. You may, the speakers on this are okay, but not great. They're not gonna be worse than your Samsung, but it's always nice to save a little money for a soundbar so you get a little bit better sound. TCL actually sends, sells soundbar bundles too. You can go to a big box store and look at these, you know, your, know your cost. Well,

Caller 10 (02:28:21):
My brother gave me a sound bar, but I didn't know what it was. Oh. So I just checked it in the box.

Leo Laporte (02:28:25):
Good. You're set.

Caller 10 (02:28:27):
And then my son said, mom, you can do Bluetooth. You can. So

Leo Laporte (02:28:33):
Your son clearly knows <laugh> what's going on and wants to help. So this is good. Yeah. I I would not hesitate to look at tcl. I am looking in, I'm seeing, you know, at Best Buy for instance, some pretty good deals. This is a Black Friday is a good time to buy a tv. You can get a very big Samsung, you're gonna want U H D. That's one letter you set you want. And hdr Samsung 75 inch, really big for 5 79 right now at Best Buy. Wow. So there are definitely some really good deals out there. This is, you know, black Friday time. So I would, yeah, I would go to big box store near you. They'll have 'em all out on display and you can choose, but t but keep TCL in mind. That's a very good low cost brand.

Caller 10 (02:29:27):
Well, thank you so much, Leo. I enjoy listening to your show. Thank you. My dad listened to you for years and years and years. Aw. And I sure enjoy hearing your voice in my kitchen. You, you remind me of him when I'm listening.

Leo Laporte (02:29:40):
Oh, what's, what's dad's name?

Caller 10 (02:29:43):
Robert.

Leo Laporte (02:29:44):
Well, we'll dedicate this show to Robert.

Caller 10 (02:29:46):
Oh, thank you so

Leo Laporte (02:29:47):
Much. Yeah, yeah. Thank you, Anne. I appreciate it. All

Caller 10 (02:29:50):
Right. Have a have a good afternoon. Thanks. You

Leo Laporte (02:29:52):
Too. Byebye. Enjoy your new tv. You're, you're entering a whole new world of entertainment. Alex, our last call today, I think from Northridge. Hello, Alex.

Caller 11 (02:30:03):
Hey, how

Leo Laporte (02:30:03):
Are you? I'm great. What's up?

Caller 11 (02:30:05):
Awesome. I have a few Mac Minis actually. Nice. They're Intel I seven and I nine and the OS on them is eight. I'm sorry, 10.8.

Leo Laporte (02:30:17):
Yeah. Because their intel and Apple has kind of moved on to their own chips.

Caller 11 (02:30:23):
Yeah. So how can I at least get it to the, you know, the latest version of of Mac

Leo Laporte (02:30:29):
Os. So they won't install Ventura. Did they say we won't install Ventura?

Caller 11 (02:30:34):
Well, I can't find it anywhere in order to do Ventura or anything. I have to get to ten nine. Oh

Leo Laporte (02:30:40):
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So you're, these are fairly old.

Caller 11 (02:30:43):
Yes.

Leo Laporte (02:30:43):
Yeah. Yeah, you can't get to Ventura if they're that old. So just do the updates as far as you can, but you won't get to Ventura. There, there are, yeah. There are backdoor, there are backdoor ways to install Ventura on older systems. I don't talk about it much because I, I'm, I'm nervous about updates and all, all of that. But you can certainly do it. There's a little driver that you downloaded. Put it on there. I would be, I would back up before you do it and be ready to go back to the old Mac Os. But lemme see if I can find the link to that. It's called the, I'm gonna,

Caller 11 (02:31:30):
I'm gonna reform the computer anyways.

Leo Laporte (02:31:32):
I don't, okay, so you don't care. So it's called the Open Core. I'll put a link in the show notes to it. But you can, you can, you can also search for it online, the open Core Legacy Patcher. And you put it on your Mac and it will allow you, even though Apple says, oh no, no, no, no, no, you can't install on that. It'll allow you to install the latest version of Mac os how it will work. I can't, I can't promise. You know, there's a reason Apple says no <laugh>. But on the other hand, I know a lot of people who do in fact do this and are very happy. So if you want the latest version search for open Core Legacy Patcher on Google, you'll find it. It's on a GitHub site. You can download it, install it, and then upgrade.

(02:32:15):
And you'll be able to get to the more modern versions. I think it, it doesn't necessarily support Ventura. I think they've only got it up to, is it Big sir? Maybe, maybe, or maybe even Monterey. But check, you'll see. Hey, that's it for us today. Thank you so much for being here. I will put a link to that and all the things we talked about on the show today, up in the show notes@techguylabs.com, tech guy labs.com. And well, I'll put audio and video in a transcript up there after the fact. And I will be here next week. I hope you will be too. Leo LaPorte the tech guy. Have a great geek.

(02:32:56):
Well, that's it for the Tech Guy Show for today. Thank you so much for being here. And don't forget twit, t I t it stands for this week at Tech and you find it@twit.tv, including the podcast for the show. We talk about Windows and Windows Weekly, Macintosh, a Mac Break, weekly iPads, iPhones, apple Watches on iOS today, security and Security now, I mean, I can go on and on. And of course, the big show every Sunday afternoon this week in tech. You'll find it all at twit.tv. And I'll be back next week with another great tech guys show. Thanks for joining me. We'll see you next time.