The Tech Guy Episode 1954 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 the last Tech Guy Show. The show originally aired on the Premier Networks on Sunday, December 18th, 2022. Now, when I say last, I don't mean the last forever, just the last on the radio. We have a best of coming up. And then starting January 8th, Mikah Sargent and I, we'll continue on this same channel. If you're already getting the podcasts as you clearly are, keep subscribing, you'll keep getting it. Brand new show, ask the tech guys not on the radio, just on the internet. It'll be a little different, a little bit more relaxed, I think. A lot more fun, a lot of great content. So I hope you will continue to listen. But for now, to my radio audience, thank you and so long. This is episode 1954. Enjoy. The Tech Guy Podcast has been brought to you all these years by cash Flying.

(00:01:06):
Cachefly is the only CDN built for throughput, delivering rich media content up to 10 times faster than traditional delivery methods, and 30% faster than other major CDNs. Learn how you can get your first month free at cachefly.com. Thanks for listening to this show. As an ad supported network, we are always looking for new partners with products and services that will benefit our qualified audience. Are you ready to grow your business? Reach out to advertise@twi.tv and launch your campaign now. Well, hey, hey, hey. How are you today? Leo LaPorte here, the tech guy for the very last time. 88. 88. Ask Leo the phone number. I guess we're gonna retire that. Rich says rich On Tech. His new show, which starts January 7th, will have his own dedicated number. That's awesome. Be silly. If he was using mine, <laugh> 88. 88, ask Leo. The website will stay.

(00:02:06):
Will stay. Yes. Tech guy labs.com that will point and has been pointing for most of the year to the podcast site where I will continue to labor during the day. My day job twit.tv. If you go to tech guy labs.com, it will link to the new Ask the tech Guys show that Mikah Sargent and I will be starting in the new year, January 8th. So really, you, you're not gonna lose anything. You're not lo <laugh>, you're not losing a tech guy. You're gaining a rich, so rich on Tech on Saturdays. And I hope you'll join me on Sundays for the Ask The Tech Guys show. Meanwhile, 88. 88, ask Leo, is the phone number (888) 827-5536. No, tearful, farewells please. Not necessary. I'm not going anywhere. What's going on in the world? Wow. Wow. Well, I guess, I guess, did you watch Laura? Did you watch the the World Cup final? Yes, I did. Okay. No spoilers. Was it exciting? Of course, you know, I'm watching ENMA on, I'm watching all the people, you know, cheering and, you know, and I watched it and I'm watching all the excitement and I'm thinking, yeah, this is okay. This is okay. This is, is not as exciting as not one, but two of the football Gridiron American football games from yesterday, which were really exciting. <Laugh>.

(00:03:34):
So, you know, I guess different strokes, what can I say? Speaking of football looks like Apple, which was hot and heavy to acquire the NFL Sunday ticket from DirecTV has backed out of the negotiations. This is a tech story because DirecTV, which had it for what, three, four years, was spending an outrageous billion and a half dollars for this NFL Sunday ticket, which I don't, I don't have direct TV yet. I'm not sure, but I gather is like all the games on Sunday, right? Like, you know, cuz Sunday's a big day for NFL football. So all the games and of course DirecTV bought it because they thought it would drive subscriptions to DirecTV, not just from US individuals, but from bars and restaurants and places that wanted to show football games. But they were losing a lot of money and it really, it was an un they couldn't justify it.

(00:04:28):
So they gave it up. Starting next year in 2023, apple said, oh, we'll yeah, we'll take it. How much? I don't know what the amount was, but doesn't really matter. Apple has a little bit of money. <Laugh>, they have a little bit of cash just lying in the drawer of the size. It's in the sock drawer on the left underneath the Argyles right there, there's about, I don't know, 200 billion I think it is dollars. US American, 200 billion, not even crypto, like real money. And I think they probably said, Hey, here, you're NFA N NFL have 10 billion. Why not? Right? They had bought the rights for the next 10 years to Major League Soccer in the US M L s, which probably didn't cost that much money. NFL football must have been more expensive. But I don't think that was the problem.

(00:05:17):
I don't think it was about money. The NFL didn't want to give up control. And of course, you know, apple, you know how Apple is about control and we want it all our way or the highway is their motto, their secret motto. But you know, they weren't. So, I guess that's what, where they came to loggerheads as, as <laugh> as the old folks say. They came to Lo, I don't even know what Loggerhead is, but they came to loggerheads. And apparently it's, I mean, still, this is all just sort of rumor from Dylan Byers at puck News, which is an excellent site, and Dylan's very connected, so I think he's probably accurate. The problem was that the nfl, apple wanted to give it away. Apple wanted to just be, oh yeah, an Apple TV plus subscriber. Great. You have NFL on Sunday, and the NFL said, what?

(00:06:07):
You cr you can't do that. That'll devalue the games. It'll hurt ticket sales, whatever. I don't know. For, for some reason they didn't want it. Now, just cuz Apple's outta the running doesn't mean like N b nbc, CBS or anybody else's interested, they're not too expensive, you know, they like, yeah, we'll just take you know, Amazon has the, I wanna have the Thursday games, just, you know, we'll just have those, you know. But apparently Amazon and Google are still in the running. What is, what, what is, what are what are in common between Amazon, Google, and Apple? Well, they don't, they're not in the TV business. Exactly. They have tv, Amazon Prime, YouTube tv, they have that stuff, but they don't, it's not their primary business. Is it? It's always good to remember what a company's primary business is. Google's primary businesses ad advertising, you know, yeah, you might think they're a search engine, but really they're only a search engine to the degree that they could sell advertising against the search results. Amazon, you might think, well, that's just a big store. It's a book, it's a bookstore, right? No <laugh>, Amazon just wants a finger in every transaction in the entire world. Seriously. That's their, that's their goal. And then apple, you'd think, well, that's the iPhone company. It is. But the problem for Apple is they don't know how long this nice iPhone business, this legacy business of the iPhone will last. So they wanna add to, in fact, all three of them are trying to add to arpu.

(00:07:31):
I don't know what loggerheads is, but I know what ARPU is. Average revenue per user. A R P U, which is the current, like the hot thing on Wall Street, arpu, you gotta have arpu. And if you think about Apple, you know, they can only sell iPhones to so many people before everybody has an iPhone. But what they can increase is the average revenue per iPhone user. That's what they want to increase. The arpu, how do you do that? By getting 'em to pay for services like Apple tv, right? Oh, same thing for Google. Same thing for Amazon. Increase the average revenue per user. And so the way you do that is with candy, in this case, the candy, the Tasty candy. We're not talking candy Corn here. No, we're talking the good stuff. The bond bonds, the hot chocolates is football N nfl, Gridiron football.

(00:08:25):
And so we'll see. We'll see what happens. We'll see what happens. I don't, I don't want to talk about Twitter. I don't like talking about Twitter, but I'm gonna have to talk about Twitter just briefly. This will be a quickie. This will be a quickly, Elon is going out looking for new investors, <laugh> and and all he's asking is $54 and 20 cents this year. You know, maybe that's why he was at the World Cup today, standing next to Jared Kushner, who has a couple of billion from the Saudis. Maybe that's why Jared, maybe Jared will kick in a little, little, you know, get by a couple of shirts. Jared. he's got money looking, you know, I don't think, excuse me, ELAM, but I don't think you're going to succeed with that <laugh>. I don't think anybody would be crazy enough. The newest thing Twitter's doing is, is blocking. You cannot in on Twitter, put a link out or send a link to any competing social network. Not Facebook, not Instagram, not, not mastered on. You can't, you can't put a link in. It's against their terms of service. You can't put a link to your Instagram account. Doesn't, I'm sorry, but I, I seems like that was a big part of what Twitter was all about, I think. I don't know. I don't know. Virtual reality's going just great.

(00:09:46):
Poor, poor Meta <laugh> or Mark Zuckerberg put all his chips. He, he, you know, he had all his chips on social and realized that wasn't going so great. So he is moved all his chips over. He put 'em all on red. The Metaverse 10, he lost 10 million last year on the metaverse. Thousands of engineers working on the metaverse. And the guy leading the charge for Meta was John Carmack, who was a legendary programmer game developer and was at Oculus, where the technology that meta uses was started. And of course, meta bought it. And and with, with buying it, they bought John Carmack, who is now gone. He's quitting 52 years old. He's been criticizing Facebook. He says let me see. Meta, which is in the midst of transitioning from a social networking company to one focused on the immersive world of the Metaverse.

(00:10:46):
This is the New York Times rating. Can you tell? Was operating at half the effectiveness. And quote has a ridiculous amount of people and resources, but we constantly self-sabotage and squander effort. It's been a struggle for me. He says, John Carmack, I have the, a voice at the highest levels here. I can, I can knock on Mark's door and say, mark, you got a minute. I want to talk. He says, but it feels like I should be able to move things, but I'm evidently not persuasive enough. In other words, whatever, whatever, whatever reason, it's not going the way he wanted it to. So he's out of there. He's outta there. 88, 88. Ask Leo, I am out of here, but not for another three hours. So you call me <laugh> and let's talk tech. 8 8 8 8 2 7 5, 5, 3, 6. Website, tech guy labs.com. Sam Abel, Sam, car guy coming up your calls. Next. What, where did you, where did you get that? Dan Mall. That's hysterical. I don't know if that even looks like me. Is that what I looked like back in the day? Back in the, the old days? <Laugh>? I love that. I don't think I, was I ever on the computer chronicles? I don't think so, but if I was, I would've looked kinda like that. I don't, I don't remember ever being on the computer Chronicles. Hello Sam.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:12:27):
Hello Leo.

Leo Laporte (00:12:28):
How are you my friend?

Sam Abuelsamid (00:12:30):
I'm doing well. Speaking of stuff you were on before. Yeah. This morning my wife was saying, so today's the last tech guy, right? And I said, yep. And I said, when, when did you first see Leo? Or you know, listen to Leo. I said, well, actually the first time it was before I knew who Leo LaPorte was. And I started telling her about Aval. Oh. And she didn't remember the site. Yeah. and so I pulled up, I grabbed my phone and pulled up a clip on YouTube of dev Nall talking with Soledad O'Brien, and showed it to her. And she got a good laugh laptop.

Leo Laporte (00:13:07):
That was Leo, that guy,

Sam Abuelsamid (00:13:09):
That jerk.

Leo Laporte (00:13:11):
Oh my God. I j I got from the producer of the site very kindly, he mo he was moving out of his you know, palatial estate in Napa David Borman, and he's moving to Palo Alto. And he said, you know, I have this big, the original site sign, this big lit sign that hung over the set that we've made at great expense for nbc. Would you like it? And I said, yes, I would. So we have it. The problem is,

Sam Abuelsamid (00:13:39):
You know, to put it,

Leo Laporte (00:13:41):
No, I have somewhere to put it. I'm gonna hang it over the, over my head, but <laugh> like a sort of dam, but it needs to be repaired quite a, it's in kind of, oh, it, it's kind of in a bad shape. It had fluorescent, specially made the whole thing must have cost a hundred thousand dollars. I don't know whether has specially made curve fluorescent tubes to light it from the inside. And they were all kind of broken and smashed.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:14:06):
No

Leo Laporte (00:14:06):
Bummer. David said, oh, I think the ballast has gone. No, no, the tubes were smashed. So

Sam Abuelsamid (00:14:11):
Just rip 'em out and put in some l e d, like

Leo Laporte (00:14:13):
That's exactly what we I was gonna do. Anyway, so that's, that's the process Berks in the process of doing that. And then the other problem is that it's a big glass piece of glass that had screws into it and it was cracking the glass. So we have we're gonna figure out a way to Burke

Sam Abuelsamid (00:14:29):
Is build a frame around it or

Leo Laporte (00:14:30):
Something. Yeah, bill has a frame around it, but the frame is held in by the screws. Burke is nervous about drilling the glass, but I think he's gonna have to do that. So anyway, any who the site lives on, yes, we will talk in a

Sam Abuelsamid (00:14:45):
Few thanks to YouTube. <Laugh>. Thanks.

Leo Laporte (00:14:46):
Yeah. Well, just a little bit of the site. Yeah, David said he had, he has all of his, all of the, the tapes of everything he's ever done, including the site. So Wow. Somebody's got it. He wa he said, now you're only, the sign is only on loan to you. I wanted to go to the Computer History museum when you're done with it. So Yeah, it's pretty fair enough heavy. Yeah. So it, it will be a, as long as they accept it, a exhibit, he says they have all his papers, so I guess they'll want it. No, Stanford has all his papers anyway. Anyway. All right. I see you on the Mastodon. Don't put a link in your Twitter cuz that's too late. It's already there. Yeah, mine is too. I'm just waiting to see if he, if they take me down. Cuz that's all I've got on Twitter now is a link to my MAs on. And I'm wondering how long before they kick me off? I shouldn't say that out loud. I shouldn't say that out loud. <Laugh>. All right, we'll talk in a few. Thank you. All right. How many years have you been unbreakable? Kim Scheffer,

(00:15:55):
How

Kim Schaffer (00:15:55):
Long have you did, did, did fill in with Heather since 2013, early 2013. In early 2016 we started doing her Saturday. Me. That's

Leo Laporte (00:16:05):
Right. Sunday. Yeah,

Kim Schaffer (00:16:06):
I remember that. And then in early 2017, I took over shed the whole thing

Leo Laporte (00:16:09):
To black. Yeah. Yeah. So you've been here 10 years? Almost.

Kim Schaffer (00:16:13):
Almost. Yeah, it would've been in August. <Laugh> next year. Nice. Nice. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:16:16):
Nice. Well, I I'm glad to hear that you will be continuing on with a new show. So that's, that's great news.

Kim Schaffer (00:16:22):
But I will miss you. I will miss you. This is,

Leo Laporte (00:16:25):
Oh, you don't have to lie. No,

Kim Schaffer (00:16:26):
I'm

Leo Laporte (00:16:26):
Not lying. I'll miss you.

Kim Schaffer (00:16:27):
Yeah. If I, if I didn't like doing it, I would not give up every

Leo Laporte (00:16:31):
Yeah. Because God knows they don't pay you much. No,

Kim Schaffer (00:16:33):
You

Leo Laporte (00:16:34):
Do not.

Kim Schaffer (00:16:34):
It's still radio the whole time.

Leo Laporte (00:16:36):
Yeah. <laugh>. Yeah. So I love radio. I'm sad about radio, but you know, I, I've had a great 46 years in radio. 19 of them, almost half of it is your tech guy. And yeah, I just, I want to go out on a high note, you know, I don't want to be a like Tom Brady. I want to go out a winner, so. Yeah. Yeah. I thought it was better to do that than the fade away.

Kim Schaffer (00:16:59):
Well, and when it's your choice, it's always better too. Yeah. <laugh>. Yeah. Because so often it's not

Leo Laporte (00:17:05):
<Laugh> Yeah. And radio, right? Yes, that's right. So we are still taking calls. We are, please tell callers I don't want any tears.

Kim Schaffer (00:17:12):
I can't make any promises with that <laugh>. I'm, I'm gonna try not to break myself.

Leo Laporte (00:17:16):
No, no tears <laugh>

Kim Schaffer (00:17:18):
By the end of this show I'll be sobbing,

Leo Laporte (00:17:19):
I'm sure. Yeah. And we're still, and as I said, I'm still podcasting. I'm still podcasting. So that will continue until until I can't do that anymore. And then I'll say goodbye to that too. Yeah. It's not hard to retire. It's hard. I thought it'd be harder. I thought I'd really be upset

Kim Schaffer (00:17:37):
Today. I think you will be when you give it all up

Leo Laporte (00:17:39):
The last, the last words. But you're still gonna dribble out of my mouth and I say, yeah, you're

Kim Schaffer (00:17:43):
Still goodbye. You're still gonna have a microphone in front of your face. So Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:17:46):
<Laugh> people still have to listen to me as Weld.

Kim Schaffer (00:17:49):
Yeah. Thank <laugh>.

Leo Laporte (00:17:52):
Thank you, Kim. Who should I start with here? Well, you know, for your servant, you,

Kim Schaffer (00:17:55):
I have had an offline conversation and told Mike b that he must still keep you on task and make you do your commercials.

Leo Laporte (00:18:02):
He's the guy who makes me do my spots on online threes. Mike from Piscataway, new Jo. Thank you Kim. Mr. Michael B

Caller 1 (00:18:11):
Hello, Leo.

Leo Laporte (00:18:12):
Hey Mike. B

Caller 1 (00:18:13):
I was there for show number one for your radio. So I had to make sure I was here for, were you really Final radio? I was one of your original ch channel moderators. Don't forget that.

Leo Laporte (00:18:24):
Yeah. That was January 2nd, 2004.

Caller 1 (00:18:28):
Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:18:29):
Very cow. Yeah, you were there at the beginning. And we have, we've always had chat. I've had chat even before I was the tech guy. I like having <laugh> Kibitzers in the background. <Laugh> telling me what I'm doing wrong. I like that. Believe it or not.

Caller 1 (00:18:42):
So back in, in 2004 there was no video. There was a, was it like a Threecom net cam?

Leo Laporte (00:18:50):
I had a, I had still pictures setting out every 30 seconds. Fresh.

Caller 1 (00:18:54):
Exactly. So we would watch the, the picture refresh every 30 seconds where we would listen to the stream. Cuz you were still local back then. Yeah. On on kfi. That's

Leo Laporte (00:19:03):
Right.

Caller 1 (00:19:04):
So we would hear all the ads and, and everything. Yep. And have little fun with the ads <laugh>. And it was, it was, it was a lot of fun back then. It still is now. 

Leo Laporte (00:19:15):
Is it different? I can't really tell and I don't, unfortunately I don't, I don't really know. I guess I do have recordings come to think of it. I have the very first show, but yeah. Is it different? Do you think?

Caller 1 (00:19:26):
It's a little, the format changed only slightly cuz I think in some ways you're kind of bringing the, some of the format from tech TV onto the radio show. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:19:37):
Yeah.

Caller 1 (00:19:38):
And over time it evolved.

Leo Laporte (00:19:40):
Yeah.

Caller 1 (00:19:41):
Evolution is always, I believe always for the better. I remember way back when you would have like a poll question of the day we the channel moderators to try to think of a poll

Leo Laporte (00:19:52):
Question. Oh, I remember that. Yeah. Yeah. <Laugh>

Caller 1 (00:19:54):
Way, way back when

Leo Laporte (00:19:55):
If you go to archive.org, you can find those old website pages. 

Caller 1 (00:20:00):
Yeah. And you might need will players in order to listen.

Leo Laporte (00:20:02):
Yes, exactly. <Laugh> actually we put the, the first episode is on our website. I guess we lost episodes two through nine for some reason. But the first episode is at twit tv slash ttg one is the very first episode. Yeah.

Caller 1 (00:20:19):
Yeah. And I was even mentioned on the very first. Were

Leo Laporte (00:20:21):
You, I don't you can prove that. You can prove you were there. Cuz I talked about Mike B.

Caller 1 (00:20:25):
Yeah. I I don't remember what it was, but yeah, cuz I, I know I had to think of Paul question and you were always telling people back then never send emails with attachments. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:20:36):
Still say that, by the way.

Caller 1 (00:20:38):
And one of my jobs was to send you an email

Leo Laporte (00:20:42):
With an attachment for the chat room <laugh>.

Caller 1 (00:20:46):
So I was one of your worst offenders in, in doing that directly to you,

Leo Laporte (00:20:50):
But it was always text, so I didn't worry too much. You didn't send me PDFs or, or doc files. So it was okay. I still say it's funny, you'd think we, in 19 years, we'd have come some a little farther along, but spams still a problem. Malware's still a problem. Attachments in the email. Still a problem

Caller 1 (00:21:05):
Still. And phone spam and it's

Leo Laporte (00:21:07):
Yeah, it's gotten worse. It's gotten

Caller 1 (00:21:09):
Worse. Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. internet, like any, any technology is both good and bad. And again, I want to remind all of your listeners and viewers who are watching your radio program as and our sentence that, that may be that you're not, again, you're not going anywhere. Thank you Mikah. You're just not gonna be over Analog Airways. People are still, there's gonna be a, a show 1955 in a few weeks. Yeah. And

Leo Laporte (00:21:37):
Fifties five will be the best of podcast. And tech guy labs.com will have a brand new show with Mikah and me. I thought I'd bring in some youth. 55 is tomorrow and 56 is 55 is tomorrow. No, it's not tomorrow. What do you think tomorrow is bonito? I'm not being gonna be here tomorrow. <Laugh> Bonito <laugh> said. Oh yeah, we'll do it tomorrow. We'll do it 55 tomorrow. No, that'll come out next Saturday. The best of if you're listening to the radio the wonderful professor Laura, who is also continuing on with Rich on Tech Rich tomorrow we'll do a Best of Poor Woman has to come in Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, new Year's Eve and New Year's Day to put together best of, so they'll still be more of this show. We're gonna go out with a whimper, not a bang.

(00:22:25):
And then and then Rich starts his 19 years. And I made him promise, by the way, that he'd do this for 19 years on January 7th. He is roughly the same age I was when I started and has kids the same age I had. That's one of the weird things for me is I, when I started doing this Henry was how old was Henry? He was nine years old and Abby was 11 years old and now they're 28 and 30 <laugh>. So, so it just, it's interesting how time flies when you're when you're not paying attention.

Caller 1 (00:23:00):
Leo, will any of his listeners and or viewers get him to shave his head like we did for

Leo Laporte (00:23:06):
Oh yeah. One New Year's Eve. Not a, that's how, you know, you had a good new Year. When you wake up the next morning, your head is shaved and you have a tattoo on your butt tattoo.

Caller 1 (00:23:15):
Exactly.

Leo Laporte (00:23:15):
But in this case, it was a good new New Year cuz it was to raise money for unicef. And we did, we raised I think $80,000 for a

Caller 1 (00:23:22):
Un, some of the best money I ever spent.

Leo Laporte (00:23:23):
Oh, Mike, be Thank you for your years of service. Are you gonna retire now?

Caller 1 (00:23:28):
I don't know. I may still still tune in from time to time. I

Leo Laporte (00:23:31):
Hope you will. Thank you Mike b Thank you. I really appreciate it coming up. Sam at Bull Salmon. Yeah. There'll be some actual content in the show. <Laugh> my hooker by crook. We're gonna talk cars when we come back. Thank you, Mike. That's very sweet.

(00:23:58):
Yeah, we have to, I have to get thank you for that web archive. Yeah. I mean, all of the shows are, I guess we still have Patrick said the reason that nine two through nine aren't on the website is because they're f they were divided into three parts. And so we, we gotta, but if he's, if we'll figure it out, we'll get 'em up there. It's weird that we never put them up. It's not so hard to take four mp3 s or three mp3 s and make it one. It isn't. We have the technology. Oh. Oh, Mike had a question. Oh, well that was probably more proforma, right? He was just pretending to have a question. It's a hard computer science problem is, right. So did you watch the the World Cup today, Sam, this morning?

Sam Abuelsamid (00:24:58):
I did not. I don't have any any services where I can watch live tv. Oh. And I don't really, I don't watch live sports except for except for some auto racing, which I stream.

Leo Laporte (00:25:12):
Interesting.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:25:13):
Yeah. We, we dropped our cable about eight years ago, seven or eight years ago. And haven't had anything since then. Although this morning as I was heading out to walk Daisy I saw three trucks from G T e, our local utility. Yeah. They were finally coming around to put in to replace a hundred year old utility pole. Oh my God. By my neighbor's house. Which was necessary in order to get my at and t Fiber hooked up at and t finally ran fiber in my neighborhood. Oh. And they came around a few weeks ago. Oh, door to door. That's exciting. I ordered it and a couple days later, the guy came up to do the install and said, yeah, I can't do the install because I stuck. I saw the bottom of the utility pole was rotted and I stuck my probe in there and went halfway through the pole and said, I'm not going up that pole. And so they had to call D D T E owns the pole. They had to get d t E to do it. So they, they actually brought out a new pole and laid it out in the front yard of my neighbor's house for the last three weeks. Jesus. And then finally this morning, the truck came around to to actually do the installation. You until the pole up. Now

Leo Laporte (00:26:20):
Can, here we are in the 21st century and we're still sticking wooden poles in the ground to hold up wires.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:26:28):
I know. It's

Leo Laporte (00:26:30):
Amazing. It seems pretty

Sam Abuelsamid (00:26:31):
Antiquated. Primitive.

Leo Laporte (00:26:32):
Yeah. Yeah. 

Sam Abuelsamid (00:26:35):
But at least I will have symmetrical gigabit fiber hopefully within a few days.

Leo Laporte (00:26:41):
Oh, you're gonna love that. That's where

Sam Abuelsamid (00:26:43):
For with, with no no data caps and hopefully, and it'll be for about the same as what I'm paying Comcast now to get 700 down and 25 up.

Leo Laporte (00:26:53):
Nice. Yeah. You're gonna really love that. That's a big improvement. Yeah. Yeah. Big improvement. We have gigabit,

Sam Abuelsamid (00:27:02):
I'm not crazy about signing up with at and t. I know. You know, the, the other local fiber company stopped doing their buildout about three blocks away from me. And, you know, hasn't hasn't continued. And so I'll take what I can get. Yeah,

Leo Laporte (00:27:18):
It's primitive. Come on. It's ugly too. Yeah. the alternative, of course, is doing underground, but that's expensive, so Yeah. They, they don't do it. But it's pretty darn primitive <laugh>. It's ugly. I mean, we're just used to it. Right. We're we, for a long time we were used to seeing those big television antennas on roofs. Oh yeah. But if you, it really is ugly. I didn't know. As a photographer, I'm always editing out lines and wires and telephone poles. All right, here we go. All right. Our show today brought to you by those great folks at Cachefly. When I say brought to you by Cachefly, I mean literally brought to you by Cachefly. Cachefly is our Content delivery network or cdn. That means whenever you download the show, whether you do it in your podcast player or from our website, you're getting it from a cash fly server close to you.

(00:28:11):
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(00:30:59):
Cachefly with more than 3,500 clients in over 80 countries. 50 points of presence organizations like us consistently choose cash flow for their scalability, reliability, unrivaled performance, cash flow. The only CDN built for throughput. Delivering media rich content up to 10 times faster than traditional delivery methods. Up to 30% faster than other major CDNs. Learn how you can get your first month free@cashfly.com. C A C H E F L Y cash fly.com. Thank you. Cachefly for all these years of supporting the Tech Guy show. I really appreciate it. C A C H e f l y.com. Back to the show. He is our low riding car guru, Sam, AB Sam, principal researcher at Guide House Insights. He's at Wheel bearings.media and his last appearance on the Tech Guy show is right now. Hi Sam. Hi Leo. And it's an honor to be with you today.

(00:32:01):
On your last day on the radio. You and I will continue to work together and so I'm not, I hope so. I'm not saying goodbye to you Of course. Just our listeners. But and maybe and one, one thing I haven't found out, most of them will come along too. Yeah. And I'm, I, I don't know yet if Rich is going to bring some of our contributors over. He says he's interested, so he hasn't yet. Let me know whether he wants to do that or let you know whether he wants to do that, but I hope he does. He's got a few weeks. He's, you know what Rich is doing? He's enjoying his last few weekends with his kids <laugh>. And I think that's a really good thing to do. I would be doing it too if I Well, I'm sure that's probably why he is only doing Saturdays. Yeah. Yeah. Well, exactly. I made the, the mistake of doing Saturdays and Sundays. In fact, when I first started doing it, I was doing seven days a week cuz I was working on tech TV Monday through Friday and doing the radio show on the weekends. That was an oh well,

Sam Abuelsamid (00:32:51):
<Laugh>

Leo Laporte (00:32:51):
Time. Well, I, it's no time for regrets. We're, we're here we are, 19 years later. So Sam, you're sitting in front of a very large display there on that Toyota. What is that?

Sam Abuelsamid (00:33:03):
I am, that is the Toyota, new Toyota Tundra that I was driving last week. And the reason why I've got this particular image up over my shoulder here is earlier I was checking in on the the discord and saw there was a, a question that had been posed to me and for the life of me now I cannot find it again. So I can't credit who asked the question. I searched, I

Leo Laporte (00:33:26):
Don't know. That's okay. Find they who're. Thank you for the question, whoever you are. Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:33:31):
Anyway, the question was about you know, basically hacking the audio systems newer cars, is that something, you know, like replacing, replacing the audio systems in new cars, is that something we're gonna be able to do? Or are we gonna see the car audio departments of stores and, you know, car audio shops go away in, in the, the near future? And so, you know, this is an example of a typical modern vehicle. The Tundra has got a 14 inch touchscreen display sitting up on top of the dashboard with their new their new infotainment system in there. Which by the way, is vastly improved from the old Toyota infotainment system, which was, let's just say not good. But the, the new, the new system is much better. You can say, Hey Toyota and it'll do, you know, do all kinds of stuff for you. And it also has support for Apple CarPlay and, and Android Auto

Leo Laporte (00:34:29):
Wireless. That's, to me that is kind of table sticks. I gotta have that mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, in fact, that's one reason I stopped using driving a Tesla. I'm one of many, but I'm, I, I liked having Apple CarPlay or Android Auto in there. I I think they're really good systems.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:34:44):
I, I, I agree. And, you know, I think it, it's nice to have the flexibility to do that. And going forward, that is probably the only flexibility we will have. You know, for, for a long time, for many, many years vehicles had standardized, at least in terms of the form factor, had a standard form factor head unit for the audio system in there. It was known the, the, the slimmer ones were known as a single den. It was, it was a European standard for the size of the, the head unit to fit in the dashboard. The, the slim ones were singled in and then there was also double den. So the taller ones, it was basically just double height, a double height version of the same thing. And so you could go and buy, you know, a single din or a double den head unit from any of dozens of different manufacturers and, you know, rip out your old head unit and put in a new one that had more features or more power, additional speakers, you know, all kinds of other features. More recent years in the last six or seven years, they've started offering aftermarket units that have car plan Android Auto built in for older cars that don't have that. And it was really nice because it was that it was a standard form factor. It was generally very easy to install in just about any vehicle. Unfortunately, these newer vehicles, pretty much anything built in the last four or five years and, and almost everything going forward has got a built-in touch screen, you know, that are getting larger and

Leo Laporte (00:36:19):
Larger. Yeah. How big is that Toyota? It looks like 27 inches or something. That's huge.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:36:22):
That one, that one's 14 inches.

Leo Laporte (00:36:24):
14. It just feels big in a Kard dashboard.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:36:26):
Little, little, yeah. A little bit bigger than the than the big iPad Pro. Yeah. yeah. And you know, so, and it's a big, and that there are bigger screens out there. The Tesla model s and X have 17 inches. The the Cadillac Escalade, you know, I mean they actually have three separate displays that are, that they, they just add up. The total is 37 inches, but you know, it's actually like a 17 inch infotainment display in the center. And the thing is, you can't replace these with any kind of aftermarket system. Because the, the dashboard design itself is not designed to accommodate any kind of aftermarket system. So if you buy a newer vehicle, you're basically stuck with what's in there. But the only thing you might be able to do is perhaps upgrade the speakers you know, which are mounted in the doors and, and other places you might be able to put better speakers in. But most modern vehicles have pretty good high quality speakers in them anyway, so you don't really need to do that. And to, to be fair, you know, on the plus side, you know, because you do have car plan, Android Auto, you've got flexibility there, at least in terms of the user interface. Most newer vehicles have decently powered infotainment systems. So you've got enough volume to, to do damage to your ears. 

Leo Laporte (00:37:48):
So, but it is kind of the way of the vehicle these days mm-hmm. <Affirmative> that there are no user serviceable parts inside. Yeah. you, I used to do tune-ups in my old Volkswagen <laugh>, you can't

Sam Abuelsamid (00:38:00):
Do that. <Laugh> countless, countless tuneups and stuff. I changed the other, my old

Leo Laporte (00:38:06):
Plus, I guess you could plus the oil on a, on a gas vehicle.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:38:09):
Yeah. Aside, aside from oil changes, most modern vehicles don't really need any engine service, you know, for many tens of thousands of miles. Right. many of them, you know, apart from oil changes, you can go pretty much a hundred thousand miles without Wow. Really doing anything to the engine. Wow. Except that oil changes and air filters, those are the two things that you wanna

Leo Laporte (00:38:32):
Do. Oh, let's not forget wiper fluid.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:38:35):
Yeah. Well, I mean, where, where, where items, you know, things, things like wiper fluid, wiper blades. Yeah. Wash wiper blades, things like that. You know, tires, you know, but I mean, in terms of actual anything, any actual service on the engine, you

Leo Laporte (00:38:47):
Can't get

Sam Abuelsamid (00:38:47):
In there. You don't, you don't need to replace spark plugs or anything like that. Same thing with no points. Frankly. It's

Leo Laporte (00:38:52):
Same thing with TVs. You, you mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, there's nothing to service inside a modern TV used to be TV repair shops on every corner of Main Street s usa and now there's nothing they can do, you know?

Sam Abuelsamid (00:39:02):
Although you know, I, I actually have done service on a modern TV a few years ago. Oh, really? Yeah, our, our Visio tv we had a 55 inch vi. And one time I was way on a business trip and my wife calls me up while I'm at dinner with some folks from Jaguar and she says, I can't turn the TV on. I, I said, well try pulling the plug out and wait a second, wait a couple seconds and pl put it back in. You rebooted it that did that, that didn't work. Yeah. I said, well, there's not much else I can do right now. When we got home, we went to Costco and bought a new 4K tv. I put the other one in the basement, and then a few weeks later started doing a little research and found that with that particular vi there's, there's basically four circuit boards inside. And it turns out that sometimes the the solder joints on the the connector between the main power board and the main logic board would crack. And so I just opened up the back, took out that power board, re you know, got my soldering iron out, reflowed the, the solder connections on there, plugged it all back in, worked fine. Nice. So

Leo Laporte (00:40:05):
Aren't you handy now? Try that with your try that with your Thanks Miata and see what happens. Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:40:11):
<Laugh>, you can still, unfortunately the meat, you still do. The Miata doesn't need stuff like that, <laugh>. But to back to the original topic of the audio systems, one thing I did wanna mention is there are 290 million registered vehicles in the United States. Average age is over 12 years old now. So there's still, you know, couple hundred million cars on the road that do have standardized den or doubled in audio systems that if you wanna upgrade those, you can, you know, you'll be, there will be a market for aftermarket audience.

Leo Laporte (00:40:44):
It does explain though, we used to have a, you know, car stereo, aftermarket car stereo place uhhuh down here, and it went out of business a couple years ago. Now I understand why there's not, you can't do as much as you used to. Sam and Bull Salmon Guide House Insights is his day job is podcast wheel bearings@wheelbearings.media. Sam, it's been a, it's been a joy. Leo la

Sam Abuelsamid (00:41:04):
Thank you. Leo,

Leo Laporte (00:41:09):
Do you wanna stick around for the rest of the show? All the time, every day, all the time. Sure. At least through the top of the hour. All

Sam Abuelsamid (00:41:17):
Right. Cold and gray out. There's not nothing else to do. So

Leo Laporte (00:41:20):
Yeah, winter, winter has come.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:41:22):
Yeah. Doug, Doug m says, always change your blinker fluid, <laugh>. Yes. Well, actually, speaking of blinkers, I think I was listening if it was twig or one of one, or maybe it was twit from last week you guys were talking about the sound of the blinkers yeah. On on some modern car, on some, it was some modern car. Yeah. and yeah, it, it was mentioned that, you know, the traditional clicking sound when you turn on your, when you put on your insurance signals or your hazard lights comes from the fact that in older vehicles there was a mechanical relay, an electric relay that was in the wiring that basically open as soon as you turned on the, you know, press the the stock and triggered it, it would send current through that relay, which would cause the relay to open and close.

(00:42:16):
And that was what the clicking sound was from your blinkers that turned the lights on and off. And modern vehicles, because all that stuff is solid state, those relays are all gone, so you don't need any of that. But they still wanted to provide some feedback, some sort of haptic feedback to drivers about what was going on, you know, to, to let them know, you know, in case they weren't glancing down at their, their instrument cluster, let them know that their turn signals was were on. And so they've, they've had to come up with sounds, different sounds for this. Did they used to be actually

Leo Laporte (00:42:49):
Physical clickers in the early days?

Sam Abuelsamid (00:42:52):
Yeah. Well, it, it was, it was a relay. It was a, it was a, just a, so it was actually simple mechanical relay. The

Leo Laporte (00:42:56):
Relay was clacking.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:42:57):
Yeah. Yeah. Yes. So the sound you were hearing was actually the switch inside the relay opening and closing. Yeah. as, as it went down. Not anymore. And so <laugh> Yeah. So now, now they've had to come up with synthetic sounds to give you that same kind of feedback. And I was at an event last year with with Volvo for a drive program for the new Volvo C 40 ev and one of their designers was talking about the sound design and, and sound design with EVs is very important because EVs don't make any much, you know, they don't have an engine sound that masks everything else. Right. and so they have to come up with sounds for the various things. Pleasant <laugh>. Yeah. Well, they're pleasant or, you know, give various types of, my mustang monkey is of feedback,

Leo Laporte (00:43:45):
Musical it not with a clicker. Yeah. The clicker is a normal clicker, but the, but the, when you turn it on, it goes,

Sam Abuelsamid (00:43:51):
It's really well for silly, for the, for the turn signal. You know, they, they said their sound designers had, were walking through the woods in Sweden. Oh, geez. Looking for sound, you know, with a, with a recorder looking for sounds. That's awesome. And one of them stepped on a twig and the snap of the twig, they thought, oh, that's a cool sound. Perfect. And so they, they recorded that's a, and that if you get a modern Volvo you know, that's a plug-in hybrid or battery electric vehicle. That's what it actually has as the sound of the turn signals. Wow. It's actually the sound of a twig being stepped on in a Swedish forest. Wow. <laugh>. So, wow. You know, and, you know, some sounds are, are natural sounds like that others are completely synthesized. Sounds like, I think I've talked before B m W for their EVs, they hired Han Zimmer to create sounds to, to compose sounds that they use for their EVs for their modern EVs.

Leo Laporte (00:44:46):
Of course. Yeah. Yeah. You wanna stick around for the top? Sure. Ohey dokey. We'll talk in a few. Mr. Sammy Abul. Sammy, actually, I, I guess I cut you off early. You got 23 seconds. Oh, say something quick.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:45:02):
All right. Well, I, I do agree that BMW does require wallet lushes on a regular basis.

Leo Laporte (00:45:07):
<Laugh>. I like that. That was pretty funny. Mr. Mr. That was a good line. I like that. Yeah. All right. I actually well, I'll talk to you in a bit. Okay.

(00:45:18):
It is one of my favorites. Yeah. Who told you that? Oh, two years ago I mentioned I like this song, and now I'm gonna hear it every Christmas. No, I guess not. Thank you Professor Laura for playing some nice holiday music as I mentioned next week, of course, Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. Do you have to come in to do those, Laura? Yes, I do. She will be working, playing old clips, <laugh>, the, we like to think of it as the best of the tech guy show. Same thing for New Year's Eve and New Year's Day on mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, I am sorry, but who else could do it? No one else can do it. Only you can do it. Only me. Yeah. So you have to do it. Thank you, Laura. I appreciate it. Perry on the line from Glendale, California. I'll be thinking of you, Laura, when I'm drinking eggnog on Christmas Eve, I'll be thinking about you. What can I do for you, Perry?

Caller 2 (00:46:13):
Oh, good afternoon. And I was thinking of an analogy of you shifting your, your profession. I was thinking that you were moving from a, from a truck to a car that was on the Jetsons.

Leo Laporte (00:46:26):
Yeah, kind of, kind of more modern, the internet. You know, it's interesting you compare radio on the internet, because the internet is global. It's pretty much free to do a podcast. No, nobody you know, you could put it almost anywhere. Youtube and other places for free, and anybody all around the world can get it. There's no tower, no license, no transmitter. It's a really, it's a very different medium. But the difference, the big difference is in cost. Because with a radio show, a radio station, you put up a tower and a transmitter, that's an initial cost. But then a, a million people listener, a hundred million people, listen, doesn't cost you anymore. They don't use more electricity. Whereas with the internet, every single person who downloads a show or listens to the show is is potentially costing you money unless you, you're on YouTube or somewhere like this. It's costing somebody money, let's put it that way. So there's a different business model.

Caller 2 (00:47:18):
Well, well that the best of you moving forward. Thank you, sir. I know, I know. You're gonna gain some different, different kind of wings, if you will.

Leo Laporte (00:47:26):
<Laugh>, I've earned my wings on radio <laugh>. Oh, oh, I love that.

Caller 2 (00:47:32):
Reason I'm calling is, I was my, my issue had, had shifted a little bit while I was waiting and to, to try to make this very quick. I had disabled my, my pin. I, I had Windows 11 disabled, my password, and I wanted to eliminate all of that. You know, if, if my screen sta saver goes off, then all of a sudden I have touse my pin again. Well, I went ahead and I dismantled both. And then I, all of a sudden I realize that when my screensaver comes on, you know, and then I go take my mouse and I jiggle it to make it come back. Yeah. I'm back to the,

Leo Laporte (00:48:08):
You need a pin to

Caller 2 (00:48:09):
Get a pin <laugh>. And I was like, whoa. Well, what happened? And then I was realized the change also an an added layer of the issue was when the screen goes black, I cut, it comes in, I jiggle, it comes back, and then now it, once the password, I do a password and then it once the pin, and then I thought, I disabled all of that. So

Leo Laporte (00:48:33):
There's, there are, there are places to do this. I'm glad you didn't actually get rid of your pin and password, cuz as you can see, there are times when you will need it, but you can disable the pin and the password. You can even go into your settings and your screensaver and say, I don't want to have to log back in. That makes sense. If you're the only person who has access, physical access to your machine or you know, you're not worried about the other people living with you then that makes sense. Why, why log in every time and it doesn't make you more secure to, to bad guys particularly. So there are several things to do and some of them are a little obscure, for instance. But I am gonna put a link to the Microsoft page that describes all of this and I'll put that up in the show notes.

(00:49:21):
Okay. But if you, if if you Google involved, yeah, if you, if you Google let's see, what did, what, what would be the best terms, let's see, windows 11 without password. Try that. You should probably find those articles right away. There's also one the chatroom found on make use of, that's turn off password on Wake. So if you Google turn off password on Wake Windows 11 or turn or Windows 11 without password, there's a set of steps that Microsoft doesn't make Completely obvious, but you can do it. And I don't think there's anything wrong with doing it. There's perhaps if somebody had, let's see, how could, yeah, no, there's, it's only to local attackers if that makes any difference. Somebody on the internet is still gonna have to get into your machine. So I think you're good on it, right? Yeah.

Caller 2 (00:50:08):
Oh, okay. Okay. Yeah. Well, perfect. And then one last note. Sure. Did a little bit of success months ago I called you, I asked you about a, you know, a middle of the road phone and you had given me, I think it was a Motorola. And then I decided to pull the trigger and I went from a to a 53 G I love that phone.

Leo Laporte (00:50:28):
That's actually there. That's the one I would recommend if you asked me today. That's, that's pretty new. That's great that you got that good. The A 53 from Samsung cuz you're getting 5g, which is nice. And how much more expensive was it wasn't very expensive, right?

Caller 2 (00:50:43):
Well, it was on sale at a retailer, I probably shouldn't say, but I, I I did get it a hundred bucks off. They were doing a promo. I was in and out of there in a half an hour. Nice. I love it. Yeah, it's absolutely wonderful. I mean, I, I did, you know, come from the Flintstones to the, you know, modern world with my, I had my S four, which I loved. Which was, which was, yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:51:06):
So you're Samsung guy, so yeah, this makes sense. Yeah. The, the A series Samsungs are their mid-range mid-price phones and they're perfectly perfectly good. I, I have a little soft spot for Motorola, for historic reasons. I think they make very good phones. The newest Motorolas are kind of impressive. But yeah, Samsung is the king of the hill. They, they sell more Android phones than anybody. In fact, I think they probably sell more phones than anybody, including Apple. So it's, you can't go wrong with that. I'm glad to hear that worked out for you. No,

Caller 2 (00:51:35):
No. It was, thank you. No, I, I think I, I'm, I'm glad I was able to pull the, pull the trigger and save a hundred bucks. Yeah. So that was, yeah, that was

Leo Laporte (00:51:44):
Good. So, so it was like around $200 the

Caller 2 (00:51:46):
Insight. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:51:47):
Yeah.

Caller 2 (00:51:47):
I be a big

Leo Laporte (00:51:48):
Pardon. Ended up being around $200, something like that. Yeah,

Caller 2 (00:51:51):
Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I, that was, that. That's, that's what it was. Well, thank you. Thank you very much. And again, the best, the best to you. And then we see if it can shake this password pin.

Leo Laporte (00:52:02):
I think you'll be able to from my life. Yeah. Just do a Google until, cuz it takes us a while to get the information up on the webpage. We'll get it up there by later today for sure. Our editors put those notes up. I don't, so it'll take 'em a little while. But if you just Google Windows 11 without password, you'll see this. This is a good link. It's on the Microsoft community site. So it's a, it's a trustworthy link. But there are a few things to do. It's not immediately obvious what you do. John, on the line, our friend from Portugal, how's your retirement going there on the beautiful Algarve of Portugal?

Caller 3 (00:52:40):
It's going well.

Leo Laporte (00:52:42):
<Laugh>. I I always think of you with envy John <laugh>.

Caller 3 (00:52:47):
Just as Sam said, it's an honor to be with you on your last terrestrial radio show.

Leo Laporte (00:52:52):
That's a good way to put it. Yes. And yeah.

Caller 3 (00:52:54):
Yes. I have been listening to you spanning four decades. Wow. I first heard you on a show called Leo Laport and

Leo Laporte (00:53:05):
Company And company Laport and Company. Yeah.

Caller 3 (00:53:08):
On K N B R. Yep. And I was working on my house in Santa Cruz. I'll never forget it.

Leo Laporte (00:53:12):
Oh, holy cow. You

Caller 3 (00:53:13):
Had, you had like some lawyers you were interviewing?

Leo Laporte (00:53:15):
Yeah, we would I did interviews just kind of general interviews, not technology stuff. Yeah. Back in the, back in the eighties. Little

Caller 3 (00:53:23):
Clip of you like interviewing like Dr. John, he has a, was having a show

Leo Laporte (00:53:27):
The night.

(00:53:28):
It was so much fun. I got to meet everybody who came to San Francisco. I'd get to meet everybody. I counted it up and I think I did 5,000 interviews in a few years. Wow. Yeah, it was great fun. I really enjoyed that. It was not great ratings. And K N B R called me in probably was around 89 or 90 and said maybe 88 and said you know, there's this, not this new young guy coming outta Sacramento named Rush Limbaugh. We're giving him your show <laugh>. And that was that <laugh>. But it worked out very well. You know, it's one of those things it's probably a good lesson for everybody. One door closes, another opens. That was the, that was when I said maybe I should just, my hobby is, is is technology computers. Maybe I should just focus on that instead of this general talk, cuz I'm not doing so well as a general talk show host. So that's when I started focusing on computers and that's worked out pretty well. I would say it was a, as they say, baseball been very good to me.

Caller 3 (00:54:30):
You had the, you had the DJ voice.

Leo Laporte (00:54:32):
Yeah, I had the voice, but I didn't have the skills.

Caller 3 (00:54:35):
You were like, okay,

Leo Laporte (00:54:36):
That's good. Yeah, I know. I talk like that <laugh>. Thank you John and Portugal more with the tech guy after this. Do you really remember that? My voice sounded like that. That's hysterical.

Caller 3 (00:54:50):
That's great. I remembered that was from the clip that I looked up that that's on the

Leo Laporte (00:54:54):
Article. Yeah, it was a little more of a, we call that a cer <laugh>.

Caller 3 (00:54:57):
Yeah. Yeah. You really, you're yucking it up like Oh good. Yeah,

Leo Laporte (00:55:02):
I've come a long way since then. I hope.

Caller 3 (00:55:06):
Remember you list like interviewing some lawyers and I always think of K N B R as sports format.

Leo Laporte (00:55:12):
Yeah, but it was before they went sports. That's why it was before they went sports. And

Caller 3 (00:55:16):
I remember you, I fully remember that I was working on my house in Santa Cruz up in Boulder Creek.

Leo Laporte (00:55:21):
That's so cool.

Caller 3 (00:55:21):
And Leo Laport.

Leo Laporte (00:55:22):
I loved doing that. It was really a great job, but it wasn't great ratings. So there you go. It's cuz it was somebody different every 15 minutes. I only these were short interviews. You were probably thinking of Steve Moscowitz the tax lawyer who was Yeah.

Caller 3 (00:55:38):
It was like lawyers on the line or something was

Leo Laporte (00:55:41):
Like, yeah, I did a, mostly it was just rendition came to town, so it was book authors, it was mu musicians and it was great for me. <Laugh> not, not so great for the station. And so I only got to do that for a few years. Hey, hey John, I'm sure I'll talk to you again. Enjoy. I really, it's, you're a, you're an inspiration. I want to end up next door.

Caller 3 (00:56:04):
Please come visit <laugh>.

Leo Laporte (00:56:05):
Okay. Take care, John.

Caller 3 (00:56:07):
And when the studio opens, we'll come and see you and

Leo Laporte (00:56:09):
Yes, please do. Okay. Yeah. All right. Take care. All yours, Sammy. Oops. Why don't I hear you? Because you're muted on your end, that's why. Oh, there we go. I had you go hit, I had hit the mute button. My

Sam Abuelsamid (00:56:22):
Fault. Thank you so much. So yeah, just to follow up on the sounds a little bit, somebody in the chat was mentioning about the fart sounds that Tesla offers. Just that is a real thing.

Leo Laporte (00:56:35):
Yes. It's very Elon, isn't it?

Sam Abuelsamid (00:56:38):
Oh, it is. So Elon. Yeah. but yeah, you can, I think you can actually assign that to the horn sound as well as the turn signals. Yeah. I

Leo Laporte (00:56:47):
Did it. You know, when I had a Model X and I thought, oh, the kids will enjoy this. They hated it.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:56:52):
<Laugh>. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:56:53):
You can even do it

Sam Abuelsamid (00:56:54):
Externally. It is like the worst, the worst dad joke.

Leo Laporte (00:56:57):
Yeah. It's terrible. Yeah. So I only did it briefly. The funnest thing, and I used to post this every Christmas, is it would do this whole Christmas lights and music display.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:57:07):
Oh yeah. That, I mean, that's actually, that's pretty cool. Kind a cool thing. Yeah. One of the, one of the neat little things you can do, you know, when you have a software updateable vehicle like that, and that's the direction that every manufacturer's going. In fact I was at a Ford event earlier this week, and Jim Farley, the c e o said, yeah, we just was just today, earlier today, looking at the prototype for our next generation electrical electronic architecture for their EVs that's fully updateable, you know, front to back ev everything is updateable, o o over the air. And that's using a a, a zonal, they call a zonal architecture. So it's a central compute system. Yeah. Cause don't couple zone controllers in the corners. Yeah, yeah. Well one of, one of the big things about it is that it dramatically reduces the wiring content and modern vehicles have, it's all software Yeah. Speed to four miles of wiring. Right. And, and when they, when they compared the the model Y to the Mae, they f they found the ma the Mae had a full one mile more of wiring in it than the, than the than the, the Tesla. Wow. And they've, they've eliminated that in their new system. So, okay. New, new vehicles will have a lot less wiring in there. It should be more reliable as

Leo Laporte (00:58:24):
Well. Right. Wiring is unreliable. I you know, I, my car had a fault, a funk fault. I mentioned I brought it in and they updated, they fixed it. They were on the fort hotline all day, apparently, and fixed it. But they didn't put blue crews again. And, and she said, yeah, that's, that says that takes 14 hours. You have to, that you'd have to bring that. And I don't really need it. But it's weird cuz I, I thought I, I know I have the capability it comes with a

Sam Abuelsamid (00:58:51):
Yeah, you should be able to do it ota.

Leo Laporte (00:58:53):
That's what I thought. But it's never done at ota. So I don't know. I have automatic upgrades turned on and it's always within wifi it working at home. And I still doesn't update, so That's fine. I don't, it's just weird. That's the problem with OTA updates is you don't know what you're getting.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:59:11):
Yeah. Sometimes they work, sometimes they don't. Right, right. But yeah some few other things in the chat. Somebody was talking about Macintosh audio. And this is not, you know, an Apple computer in your car. This is, Macintosh is a different brand, spelled differently. There's no a in Macintosh Labs. And they've been a high-end home audio system for a long time. And one of their distinctive features is they have this blue backlighting on the meters on their, on their amps and receivers. And last year when they launched the new Jeep Wagoneers Jeep did a deal with, with Macintosh as, as most automakers do with for the premium audio systems in their cars with various brands. Lincoln does revel. There's a bunch of vehicles that have bang and oleson. There's Bowers and Wilkins.

(01:00:07):
 I think Volvo uses B Bowers and Wilkins and Jeep selected Macintosh. And one of, you know, so Macintosh helped design the, the speaker setup and the amps and everything. And one of the cool little features they have is one of the apps, cuz this, this, the infotainment actually runs on Android Automotive. And so they have an app on there that emulates the look of the classic blue Macintosh meters. So you can have that on your center screen in, in the, in the, the Jeep Wagoneers and the Jeep Grand Cherokee, and soon in other Jeeps. So if you'll like that look, you can get get a, a new Jeep. And it's, it's, has that look in there. Mongo asked about the value of a a 20 year old Ford van with 28,000 miles on it. And I just did a quick look up on kbb.com.

(01:00:58):
It's a good place to look for pricing, you know, what the value of older vehicles is. And a a two, a 2003 Ford de Conno line passenger van an E one 50 with 28,000 miles in very good condition, they say is worth about seven to $8,000. Which seems like a lot for a 20 year old van. But I guess so graveyard tuba was talking about sinking carbs, sinking carburetors on like on an old M G B, this is something I actually learned how to do in high school in auto shop class. My teacher had picked up a, an old a triumph t R seven from his brother that wasn't running. And I spent a lot of time working on that card during my high school years. And one of the things I learned was how to balance the carburetors.

(01:01:46):
When you've got multiple carburetors on there, they have to be balanced to the engine will run, right? And the way we did it, take a, a 12 inch long piece of garden hose and a screwdriver and stick the, stick the hose into the carburetor and run the engine. Rev the engine and just listen to the other end of the hose, kinda like a stethoscope and adjust the, the carburetor and then put it in the other one and adjust it until, until they all sound about the same. So you're getting the same flow through all the carburetors. Not very high tech. But it worked. I had gotten a message I think last week from Mikah, from Maine on on Twitter when I was still looking at Twitter about AM radio and how a lot of newer EVs are ditching AM radio, which, you know, maybe makes it a good time for Leo to be getting out of the radio business.

(01:02:38):
 And Tesla was one of the first to do this to stop, include, you know, to not include AM radio in their vehicles. A few others have done it since then. Most, most EVs still do have AM radio. But it is more challenging to do it am I guess am tuners are a little more susceptible to electromagnetic interference. And of course, when you've got a big honk and battery under the floor you may have some, some challenges with with E M I. And, you know, that can, that can impact electronics. And so rather than try to shield everything properly, some automakers are just saying, yeah, you know, there's not as much demand for AM radio, so we're just not gonna bother anymore. And so I think, you know, it's some, for, for now, most vehicles still have AM Radio GM still does it.

(01:03:30):
Others others still do it. But in the future, we will probably see fewer and fewer vehicles with AM radio in there, which for those that are fans of it. Yeah. user 39 28 asked if mom has a a Toyota rav4 leases up next summer. She wants to get a BZ four x that's Toyota's first ev Want to know what other SUVs you'd recommend for her to consider? I would recommend pretty much any other current ev I am the BZ four flux is okay, but it's just kinda meh, you know, it's not short. The slowing the charge is, the charging is slow range is okay. It's not great. I would look at the VW ID four the Hyundai Ionic five the Hyundai Kona ev, and the Kia Niro. And if she can wait till the fall, the Chevy Equinox, ev as well is gonna be another good one.

Leo Laporte (01:04:21):
Yeah, I'm looking at that myself. Don't worry, we will have Sam back all the time on the new show. But thank you, Sam, for your years of service. Thanks, Leo to the tech guy. I really appreciate it. Have

Sam Abuelsamid (01:04:33):
A great day. All right. I'll talk to you soon. Bye-Bye. Have a great holiday. If I don't talk to you too before then,

Leo Laporte (01:04:39):
Well, hey, hey, hey. How are you today? Leo LaPorte here, the tech guy, time to talk, computers, the internet, home theater, digital photography, smartphones, smart watches, you know, all that jazz, the stuff that's, that's changing the world all around us. That's what we've been talking about here for the last 19 years. And it, it has changed a lot, has changed a lot over 19 years. But it's still, I think, eternally fascinating both wonderful and horrific at the same time. It's been a, it's been a, it's been a very interesting 19, I think it's gonna be a very interesting 19 to come with rich Demarro. Rich Ontech starts January 7th, Raymond in San Fernando Valley. You're next. Leola Port the tech guy. Hi Raymond.

Caller 4 (01:05:25):
Hi. How you doing, sir?

Leo Laporte (01:05:27):
Hmm? I'm doing great. How are you?

Caller 4 (01:05:30):
Fine, fine. Hey make a long story short. My mom's 85 years old. I wanna get her a 36 inch TV for her nursing home room. Nice. But I need a, but I need a TV that when you turn it off, it still stays on the, and you turn it on, it stays on the first same input that was turned off at night.

Leo Laporte (01:05:48):
You know, I want that for my mom too. It drives her nuts. 

Caller 4 (01:05:53):
My mom's already nuts, <laugh>, I gotta help her.

Leo Laporte (01:05:56):
My mom's a little older than yours, but as that drives her nuts too. She's I have to explain to her, no, mom, you have to get the remote. Push the button and go to m she says it keeps part. And the reason, by the way, this happens with so many TVs now, is it's advertising. They, the, they, they don't leave you like the old TVs you were watching Channel five. You don't turn it on in Channel fives there. They wanna put their interface up and show you all the wonderful things in that tv, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So I think that that is, you know, unfortunately, probably how things are gonna happen, Joe, in our chat room says he has a T C L eight series. Now, Joe, here's the question. It's not that it's changing from H D M I one to H D M I two, it's that it's not still on that channel. You know, mom goes to bed watching channel five, she wants to turn it on and Channel five is on when she turns it on again. Is that No,

Caller 4 (01:06:53):
No, no, no, no, no. She, when she wants, I gotta stay on the same input. You know, you got input one, input two.

Leo Laporte (01:06:59):
Oh, so, so it is switching inputs. Well, that's terrible. No, no,

Caller 4 (01:07:02):
No. I got a Roku tv. It says, which input do you want? And you gotta click, oh, I want my first input.

Leo Laporte (01:07:10):
Yeah, it should, it shouldn't, it should just assume that you wanna stay on the same input. That's

Caller 4 (01:07:15):
No, I mean, I got a Roku tv. You turn it on, you know, go to bed, turn on, it says, and they give you choices of wet input. You go to home, you go to input, and you put it, which on, I need something for my mom, when she goes to sleep, turns it back on. It's still an input one.

Leo Laporte (01:07:33):
Well try tcl. The nice thing about TCLs, they're very inexpensive. What I would do before you buy though, is go somewhere where they have one on and try it <laugh> and make sure that you can turn it off and not, Joe says you could set the default input on power on in the TCL menu. So it will, it will do that every time. Tcls actually a good choice. Those are inexpensive. You probably won't spend more than a hundred bucks for a small tcl. The reason is, it's a Chinese company, TCL and high sets, both who were watching what happened with Samsung and lg. You may not remember it. Some people do. LG used to be the TV Lucky Gold Star you would buy. It would be in the back of the drugstore. The cheap TV in the back of the drugstore. That quality were the Japanese TVs, the Sonys right of the world.

(01:08:26):
The Sharps, Samsung and LG made a concerted effort about 20, 30 years ago to become a quality brand to revitalize their brand. And they did it so successfully that Sony's been struggling. Sharp's, <laugh> gone. I think, are they out of the business? I think they are. And the dominant brands now are LG and Samsung. Well, the Chinese companies were looking at that and saying, Hey, we could do that too. So, tcl L and Heen. Now this is a good thing because for consumers right now, tcl l and Hyen are still struggling to get the name recognition. So they are aggressively priced, very aggressively priced. So I think a good tcl, that's what I, by the way, that's what I got my mom. She's got TCLs in the living room and the bedroom. So TCL four see, this is interesting. We're getting conflicting information from the chat room.

(01:09:22):
Vic, in the chat room says, my TCL four series, when you turn it on, asks what input to default to. Oh, but does it then remember it, Vic from then on? Like, does it stay there? Joe has given me a link to TCL support that says how to set what your tcl Roku TV displays on Power on. So this is, this is the information you choose. What, what your, what screen your TCL Roku will display on when powering on, by default, your TV set display the home screen, right? We don't wanna see that. So you go in, I'll put this in the show notes, press the home button, scroll down to settings. Right arrow, right arrow. You want to go to the Power on setting. And there is a menu item you could choose. Home screen last used TV input, H D M I 1, 2, 3. Oh, that's nice. That's exactly, that's exactly what you're looking for. That's exactly what you're looking for, Raymond. So I'll put this link in the show notes so that you can verify it. But this looks like this is something you could said in all of the TCL Roku displays. Now you could say, whenever I turn it on, I want to do this. Clearly your mom's not the only one who wanted that. Yay, Dave and Temecula's next. Hi, Dave. Leo Laport, the tech guy.

Caller 5 (01:10:45):
Hey, Leo. Merry Christmas. Happy

Leo Laporte (01:10:47):
Hanukkah. Thank you. Merry Christmas. Happy Hanukkah to you too. First night of Hanukkah tonight.

Caller 5 (01:10:52):
Yes

Leo Laporte (01:10:52):
It is. I have a special song for rod Pile, our space guy coming up in a couple of hours. A special version of Rocket Man. I'm gonna play for him just for Hanuk. Anyway, <laugh>, what, what's going on in your world, Dave?

Caller 5 (01:11:06):
So, I'm, I'm wondering if you might be able to bail me out here. I've got a Google phone. It's a pixel foray. Love the phone. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> and I have meant mobile service, love service. Everything's

Leo Laporte (01:11:18):
Good. They're a sponsor. Ryan Reynolds. Phone company, company. Yep.

Caller 5 (01:11:22):
Right, right. <Laugh>. So I, I lost some very important texts and I'm wondering, oh, is there's any way or any type of program to recover 'em?

Leo Laporte (01:11:38):
Hmm. Mint Mobile probably has access to them, so you might call them, but of course as a low price phone company, who knows what kind of support they're willing to give you. But they certainly have access to it. If, if for instance, if law enforcement called 'em, they would, they would hand him over right away. Cuz it goes through their system. But I don't know of any way if, if it's, if it's been deleted from the Android device. I mean, there is you know, it's worth a try. In the Google Play Store, there is an s m s backup program called SMS Backup and Restore that does this. I think my guess is if it's, if the, did you delete it? How did it, what happened to it?

Caller 5 (01:12:22):
Yeah. You know, just says she goes through and you clean up messages. I deleted it and then I realized I really needed it. And I know I'm not law enforcement and they're not gonna give it to me. And I don't wanna have to murder somebody to get it. <Laugh> no.

Leo Laporte (01:12:37):
Law enforcement can get it. But can you, I don't know. So try, so SMS backup and restore is free. You can try it. I, my guess is it's not gonna restore anything that is already deleted, but sometimes that stuff is saved. For instance, Samsung has backups. Google probably, if, if you turned on your Google backups has some backups. It might be, especially if you do it quickly. You know what, because this happens so often, a lot of companies do, is they wait 30 days to really delete it. So they put, you know, that's, that's the old, put it in the trash can and let it sit for 30 days. So there's some possibility, there's some possibility that that's, that that's happened. And, and again, mint mobile, if you, if you call 'em Mint Mobile almost certainly has access to it.

(01:13:26):
If it was sent via s m s, which it probably was they almost certainly have access to it. Look and see if Google has backed it up it depends which Android app you're using for your SMSs. It may have a trash can, you can look and see, but once it's deleted and emptied and the trash is emptied, I know of no way to get it back. It's not like a file where the deletion leaves the file data on the drive. I think it's a, it's a different system. It's more like if you delete email. But if somebody knows better, well, let me know. 88. 88. Ask Leo is the phone number. Chris Marqui a photo guy coming up at the bottom of the hour. Lots more of your calls too. Don't forget the website we put, put all this information there. Tech guy labs.com.

(01:14:20):
 Joe says, we do not have access. MIT mobile says we do not have access to call content or text message content at all. Oh. Our network provider T-Mobile, assumedly has access for legal reasons, but we cannot inspect the content of the messages. So Mint Mobile is not the person to go to. T-Mobile is, but I don't know. You know if because you're using an M V N O, it's a T-Mobile sub, not subsidiary, but they buy their by traffic from T-Mobile. T-Mobile has a copy, but not MIT Mobile. But would T-Mobile give it to you? Cuz you're not a T-Mobile customer. Probably not. Thank you, Joe. That's, that's very interesting. Hello, Chris?

Chris Marquardt (Off Microphone) (01:15:04):
Hey. No, how

Leo Laporte (01:15:06):
Are you? I'm good. You are off, Mike?

Chris Marquardt (Off Microphone) (01:15:10):
I am.

Leo Laporte (01:15:11):
Yeah.

Chris Marquardt (Off Microphone) (01:15:12):
Okay. Can you hear me? Oh, oh, oh, you should be able to hear me.

Leo Laporte (01:15:18):
I can hear you. But through your laptop or whatever. Some other microphone. Not the one. You're not the one your mouth is touching.

Chris Marquardt (Off Microphone) (01:15:26):
Hold on.

Leo Laporte (01:15:32):
Yeah. Sms unlikes a WhatsApp doesn't really have a backup system.

Chris Marquardt (Off Microphone) (01:15:44):
Microphone, microphone. Micro. You're not hearing me through the microphone. Talking to

Leo Laporte (01:15:49):
No,

Chris Marquardt (Off Microphone) (01:15:50):
Something weird. Hold on, hold on, hold on.

Leo Laporte (01:15:56):
As they say in the chat room. Sounds like you're down the hall in the bathroom. <Laugh>.

Chris Marquardt (Off Microphone) (01:16:02):
Is this better? There

Leo Laporte (01:16:03):
It is. Yay.

Chris Marquardt (01:16:05):
Alright.

Leo Laporte (01:16:05):
Yeah, you fix it. It

Chris Marquardt (01:16:08):
Ah,

Leo Laporte (01:16:09):
Yeah.

Chris Marquardt (01:16:12):
I just updated to Ventura. Maybe that's,

Leo Laporte (01:16:16):
Oh yeah, sure. Everything got messed up. <Laugh>. Everything got messed up. Hey Bonita, when you, so when you put well you're gonna put Chris back there, but when you take him down, could you put a fire in the fireplace for me? I like having, it's so cold in here. I like to have a

Chris Marquardt (01:16:33):
Fire. So Leo, you do have an email? I have a tiny little thing, not a goodbye thing, but I wanna look at cameras from 2006 cuz that's when we met.

Leo Laporte (01:16:45):
Oh, how fun. Oh, how fun. I see it here.

Chris Marquardt (01:16:52):
And that'll put a, that that'll tie a nice bow around everything.

Leo Laporte (01:16:55):
Oh, a bow around it. Yes. All right.

Chris Marquardt (01:16:59):
And, and Renee Silverman says Hi. And congratulations.

Leo Laporte (01:17:02):
I saw the email from her. I didn't realize she was a quite an accomplished professional photographer.

Chris Marquardt (01:17:08):
Oh yeah. Oh yeah. She is.

Leo Laporte (01:17:09):
Yeah. Yeah. That's cool. So oh yeah. One, one of the questions is, let's keep it going. Yeah, yeah. I don't Any reason to stop it.

Chris Marquardt (01:17:17):
Yeah. One, one of the questions was what's gonna happen to the Flicker group and that kind of stuff.

Leo Laporte (01:17:22):
Yeah, that's what I was saying. Let's keep that going. And then yeah, I'll send her an email. But perhaps what we should do is have you on once a month to give us a new assignment and to review. I'm happy. Would you like to do that? So that way totally. I can't do you weekly cuz cuz they have six regulars in only one two hour show. Yeah, no worries. But <laugh> it would be all regulars, but I think if we had you on once a month, how would that be? I

Chris Marquardt (01:17:45):
Could totally do that. Okay. I could totally

Leo Laporte (01:17:46):
Do that. So let's plan on doing that. I'll email you, but probably our first show is January 8th. Let's plan on maybe doing that on the 15th, which would be one month from, from now.

Chris Marquardt (01:18:07):
That would be

Leo Laporte (01:18:07):
Cool. Yeah. I will email you and if that works for you. And then you can give us an assignment and and review it a month after that. So like, on the 15th, like halfway through every month on the odds of every month

Chris Marquardt (01:18:20):
Are, are we talking similar timing? 

Leo Laporte (01:18:23):
Yeah, but it'll be Sundays. Yeah. We almost exactly the same time. Yeah. Or earlier we started, we'll start at 11. And actually the beauty of this is you could do it pre-recorded too, when we could drop it in. It's kind of up to you anyway. We'll talk, talk. Yeah. We'll, we'll figure it out. Yep. Is this from top Gun? Is this the, the, this is the love theme from Dirty Dancing. Yes. Yes. But you've had the time of your life. I have had the time of my life. <Laugh>. Thank you. Thank you Professor Laura <laugh>. I confuse. What is the love theme from Top Gun that's similar, isn't it <laugh>, all these movie songs, they all sound the same, don't they? On we go with the calls. Bill and Goleta. California's next. Hi Bill.

Caller 6 (01:19:10):
Hi Leo. How are you doing? I'm wonderful. On your last day?

Leo Laporte (01:19:14):
My last day I get the Gold Watch tonight they're gonna have a little dinner for me. The Gold Watch and signing up for Medicare tomorrow.

Caller 6 (01:19:24):
Okay, well I just got an email. My D link switches don't work anymore after the 30th. What recommend Automation? Oh, I've had 'em for quite a while.

Leo Laporte (01:19:35):
Oh, all right. So you're using them for home automation, you said?

Caller 6 (01:19:39):
Well, yeah, they turn the lights off. Oh, got it. I also have a camera that goes away too, cause Wow. Haven't been able, where they don't update 'em. So that's, that's what you

Leo Laporte (01:19:48):
Recommend. That stinks. So the first thing I would recommend is to look for a system, any kind of system that has on the box on the specs Support for Matter. M A T T E R Matter is a new consortium of home automation with all the big players involved. And one of the reasons you want to go with matter is so that it'll be interoperable no matter which hub or which device you buy. So you're not locking yourself into one manufacturer anymore. And that's nice. Within Matter, there are of course many choices. What do what do you use for a phone? Do you how do you An iPhone. An iPhone. And do you, and do you control the lights your de-link right now with your iPhone or with your voice? Or how do you control em?

Caller 6 (01:20:37):
Yes, the iPhone and then I don't really care about using Google to turn 'em off for one. Just the iPhone's handy and then you can go and push them. Yeah,

Leo Laporte (01:20:45):
So Apple is a, apple participates in the matter standard. And of course they have their own, apple has their own home automation certification that you probably want to use because I mean, it, it's a little bit more limiting. If you go to store.apple.com and you look in the home automation stuff, you'll see what they recommend and it's stuff that they support. So, and then that way your phone can be a hub, an iPad can be in Hub, and Apple TV can be a hub. This locks you a little bit more into a more limited ecosystem, unfortunately, because, you know, you, you now you're using the Apple standard. But I think a lot of people agree that that's a good standard because it's gonna be secure. It's very likely that it will be around, unlike the Delink stuff. So they, it, and it all starts with the Apple Home app. You can control lights you can control everything that you'd control with home automation, your thermostat, garage doors, blinds, you know, ceiling fans. So I would, I would, that's, you know, a good place to look. I will tell you what our home automation expert, Stacey Higginbotham says, she's a big fan of Lutron, L U T R O n switches. They work with Matter, they work with Apple's home kit. So they're completely compatible. They also work with Amazon's Echo and Google Voice if you do decide you want to use Voice,

Caller 6 (01:22:15):
What about Wise?

Leo Laporte (01:22:19):
I like Wise, but <laugh>, why wise is very inexpensive. So I, you know, actually I would not hesitate to recommend Wise. They got in a little bit of trouble because their first generation camera turned out to be insecure and they said, we're not gonna fix it because it's too old. It's kind of not so different from what you're going on with going on with your D link. It's too old. We don't wanna support it anymore. I think WISE is actually a pretty good ecosystem. So this is the problem still with home automation. It's been this way for two decades. It's a tower of Babbel. It, everything is a different language. One thing doesn't talk to another. And so when you buy into one ecosystem, like the wise ecosystem, you're kind of join, you're kind of buy, you know, you're, you're kind of, kind of committing into the wise. But I don't, but Wise is very affordable. I think they're good people. Their smart home stuff has lighting, it has keys, it has a thermostat, it has even has a vacuum. They just added a vacuum cleaner. So yeah, I wouldn't, I wouldn't hesitate recommending Weiss w y z e.com, if you like, wise the price Sure is. Right. and, and it, and I think it, I, I don't think it's matter, but maybe that doesn't matter.

Caller 6 (01:23:37):
Well, price is always a problem.

Leo Laporte (01:23:38):
Price is the big, the big thing, isn't it? Yeah. Let's see if Wise is a member of The Matter Alliance. I don't know if it is Matter Support, I'm just checking that. Mm Yeah. Oh, no. Wise is not going to support the matter standard, at least as of now. That's not necessarily a problem. <Laugh>. 

Caller 6 (01:24:06):
Well, as long as it works, then I can turn the lights off.

Leo Laporte (01:24:08):
Yeah, you don't really care. It's really more for somebody who wants to build a giant castle of Home Automation, <laugh>, you know? And Yes. And and if you just wanna turn lights on and are off, yeah. It's not as important. I, my general advice to people going forward is to, you know, to kind of stick with matter, but because Wise is so less expensive I, you know, I think it's probably safe, safe to go to go

Caller 6 (01:24:34):
With it. We have to pay for that privilege to use matter.

Leo Laporte (01:24:38):
Oh, of course. And that's one of the reasons it's less expensive, is they don't go along with stuff like that. Let me see what Stacy said. If you have a matter device that needs thread, senior director of technology services is Wise, said some ecosystem players, I dunno, I'll put a link to Stacy's article, what we know and don't know about matters. She does talk, she's a wise fan too. And I will ask her. I'm talk to her on Wednesday. I will ask her what she thinks. If, if you're not, if you're just doing lights, I guess, I guess it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter, you know?

Caller 6 (01:25:12):
Yeah. Just lights.

Leo Laporte (01:25:13):
Yeah. Yeah. So go ahead and get Wise. I like Wise's stuff. And I think that they have learned there, there was a minor issue. They, you know, people were upset because their cameras were insecure and they said, well, you know, we're not gonna fix it. Just get the new camera. And that wasn't upset for a lot of people. I was a little disappointed. I thought Wise could have done better with that. But that's, that's one, that's just a small strike. Well, that's a one yellow card. They're, they're okay. Still. They're, they're okay on my book.

Caller 6 (01:25:46):
Well, have a good Saturday.

Leo Laporte (01:25:48):
Thank you. You too. It's Sunday, but I did have a good Saturday. <Laugh>, you know what's confusing? We had football yesterday. It was very confusing, but it is Sunday <laugh>. We will continue. You know what, if it's Sunday, it must be Chris Marquardt, our photo guy coming up in just a little bit. He wants to take, this is gonna be fun. He wants to take a trip down memory lane. Chris and I have known each other and been working together since the mid aughts, and he's been doing a a podcast or a photography podcast, tips from the Top Floor since about then. And he's been on this show for as practically as long as we've done it. So Chris and I, a trip down memory lane, the cameras of yester year, <laugh> next on the Tech Ayesha first episodes January 8th, Chris, January,

Chris Marquardt (01:26:42):
January 8th.

Leo Laporte (01:26:44):
Yeah. But we, I think we'll talk to you on the 15th. Let's make that, let's, I don't want to get you on the first show. 15 is gonna be perfect. It's a mess. It's gonna be a

Chris Marquardt (01:26:52):
Mess. <Laugh>. Yeah, totally. <Laugh>. No, I'm, I'm totally fine. 15Th, give me, gimme a time.

Chris Marquardt (01:26:58):
I don't know yet. I'll do the first one live and then

Leo Laporte (01:27:00):
We'll see. I'll say, I'll say let's make it the same time. 1230.

Chris Marquardt (01:27:05):
All right.

Leo Laporte (01:27:07):
And good with me. That's perfect. Hey everybody. Leo LaPorte here. I am the founder and one of the hosts at the TWIT Podcast Network. I wanna talk to you a little bit about what we do here at twit because I think it's unique. And I think for anybody who is bringing a product or a service to a tech audience, you need to know about what we do here at twit, we've built an amazing audience of engaged, intelligent, affluent listeners who listen to us and trust us when we recommend a product. Our mission statement is twit, is to build a highly engaged community of tech enthusiasts. Well already you should be, your ears should be perking up at that because highly engaged is good for you. Tech enthusiasts, if that's who you're looking for, this is the place we do it by offering 'em the knowledge they need to understand and use technology in today's world.

(01:28:03):
And I hear from our audience all the time. Part of that knowledge comes from our advertisers. We are very careful. We pick advertisers with great products, great services with integrity, and introduce them to our audience with authenticity and genuine enthusiasm. And that makes our host Red Ads different from anything else you can buy. We are literally bringing you to the attention of our audience and giving you a big fat endorsement. We like to create partnerships with trusted brands, brands who are in it for the long run, long-term partners that want to grow with us. And we have so many great success stories. Tim Broom, who founded it Pro TV in 2013, started advertising with us on day one, has been with us ever since. He said, quote, we would not be where we are today without the Twit network. I think the proof is in the pudding.

(01:29:01):
Advertisers like it Pro TV and Audible that have been with us for more than 10 years, they stick around because their ads work. And honestly, isn't that why you're buying advertising? You get a lot with Twit. We have a very full service attitude. We almost think of it as kind of artisanal advertising, boutique advertising. You'll get a full service continuity team, people who are on the phone with you, who are in touch with you, who support you from, with everything from copywriting to graphic design. So you are not alone in this. We embed our ads into the shows. They're not, they're not added later. They're part of the shows. In fact, often they're such a part of our shows that our other hosts will chime in on the ad saying, yeah, I love that. Or just the other day, <laugh>, one of our hosts said, man, I really gotta buy that <laugh>.

(01:29:53):
That's an additional benefit to you because you're hearing people, our audience trusts saying, yeah, that sounds great. We deliver always overdeliver on impressions. So you know, you're gonna get the impressions you expect. The ads are unique every time. We don't pre-record them and roll them in. We are genuinely doing those ads in the middle of the show. We'll give you great onboarding services, ad tech with pod sites that's free for direct clients. Gives you a lot of reporting, gives you a great idea of how well your ads are working. You'll get courtesy commercials. You actually can take our ads and share them across social media and landing pages. That really extends the reach. There are other free goodies too, including mentions in our weekly newsletter that sent to thousands of fans, engaged fans who really want to see this stuff. We give you bonus ads and social media promotion too.

(01:30:45):
So if you want to be a long-term partner, introduce your product to a savvy engaged tech audience. Visit twit tv slash advertise. Check out those testimonials. Mark McCreary, who's the c e o of authentic, you probably know 'em, one of the biggest original podcast advertising companies. We've been with him for 16 years. Mark said the feedback from many advertisers over 16 years across a range of product categories, everything from razors to computers, is that if ads and podcasts are gonna work for a brand, they're gonna work on Twitch shows. I'm very proud of what we do because it's honest. It's got integrity, it's authentic, and it really is a great introduction to our audience of your brand. Our listeners are smart, they're engaged, they're tech savvy. They're dedicated to our network. And that's one of the reasons we only work with high integrity partners that we've personally and thoroughly vetted.

(01:31:44):
I have absolute approval on everybody. If you've got a great product, I want to hear from you. Elevate your brand by reaching out today at advertise at twit tv. Break out of the advertising norm. Grow your brand with host red ads on twit.tv. Visit TWIT.tv/advertise for more details. Or you can email us, advertise@twit.tv if you're ready to launch your campaign. Now, I can't wait to see your product, so give us a ring. It's time to talk. Photo fee with Mr. Chris Marwat, professional photographer and longtime photographic podcaster. His lovely expeditions are at discover the top floor.com. Discover the top floor.com. And he has been joining us every week for some time to talk about

Chris Marquardt (01:32:30):
Photography sometime. Yeah. Yeah, you could say that.

Leo Laporte (01:32:33):
How long? I don't know how long

Chris Marquardt (01:32:35):
It's been. 16 years. What I, I've looked it up in in a 2006. That's when we

Leo Laporte (01:32:41):
Holy

Chris Marquardt (01:32:42):
Cow. First time ran into each other for the first time. And I thought, why not Look at the cameras from 2006 and see, oh,

Leo Laporte (01:32:50):
Like,

Chris Marquardt (01:32:50):
Wow, things have changed, maybe or maybe not. So I brought five three still cameras and two more video related ones. One you will, well you'll probably recognize all of them, but one has a very special place. So let's start with the Nikon. D a d. Again, came out in 2006.

Leo Laporte (01:33:13):
I had a D 70 and boy, I love that camera. That was my fir probably my first digital s so r

Chris Marquardt (01:33:21):
An InBody focus motor, which is something that Nikon had back then. So the, the auto focus lenses would, would be powered by a motor in the, in the camera body <laugh> 10 megapixels, C c D. So 10 megapixels scoops kind of was bit of the standard back then. It could do multiple exposures in camera. So had a bit of trickery function in there, so to speak. U SB 2.0 high speed. That was pretty cool back then. And 230,000 pixel L C D on the back. Two and a half inches. Fairly tiny, but 

Leo Laporte (01:34:01):
Big compact flash cards for memory. Only been one <laugh>. Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Marquardt (01:34:07):
So, so that's the first one. Second one that I found interesting was come, because I was, I was firmly in the Cannon camp. Oh, that's funny.

Leo Laporte (01:34:16):
Cause I was, I was still Nikon. I moved to Cannon later, but I was still, that's why I had a D 70. Yeah, yeah.

Chris Marquardt (01:34:22):
So 400 D in Europe in the US digital Rebel xt. Again, we're talking 10 megapixel. The

Leo Laporte (01:34:28):
Rebels were huge. This was the big popularizing camera. They advertised it, remember they were advertising it. Who was it? Some, some tennis player was Advertis would take pictures with it. And they were a avatar. There's a great action camera. This, this, and it was inexpensive. The rebel was the, I think the camera that pushed a whole bunch of people into digital. Very, very important.

Chris Marquardt (01:34:51):
This is also, this is also the camera that introduced the sensor cleaning system, like where they had the, the sensor wiggling back and forth. Very high frequency to shake off dust and that kind of stuff. Nine point autofocus and today's cameras, they have like, every pixel is an autofocus pixel. But yeah, that was, and you

Leo Laporte (01:35:11):
Could tell this was a consumer interesting camera, cuz it still had a flash built in

Chris Marquardt (01:35:16):
<Laugh>, the one that would pop up at the worst time possible. Yeah,

Leo Laporte (01:35:18):
Yeah, yeah.

Chris Marquardt (01:35:19):
Absolutely. another system that was introduced back then in 2006 was the Sony Alpha system. Really, really top of the entire system. They, they had bought Minolta's camera company camera parts in early 2006. And then, yeah, they introduced the Alpha system. I did

Leo Laporte (01:35:39):
Not, which has, I didn't realize this. I'm a now a Sony Alpha shooter, but I didn't realize that they got into this so early. Was this also mirrorless?

Chris Marquardt (01:35:49):
The, I think the, the initial ones were DSLRs. They, they went mirrorless, like the next system, the Sony neck system came out in 2010, I think. Oh, that's right. The But that was the early, the early ones here. Yeah. Alright, so that's the still cameras on the video side. Because these cameras didn't shoot video. Right. These were, now, now every camera does everything, but these cameras were strictly still cameras. I think the first D S L R that actually added video was later, which was the 90 by Nikon. They were the first ones to kind of give you a proper big sensor and a PSC sensor, but a proper bigger sensor with video. But there was another camera that came out in 2006, which is this one. Do you remember the

Leo Laporte (01:36:36):
The flip? I had a flip. You know, that was such a success. Everybody had flips. They were doing video blogging and, and it just, it just died. It just died suddenly. Like it just

Chris Marquardt (01:36:48):
Disappeared. It just, but wasn't I, I mean, so, so the thing is the early flips shot VGA 640 by 480,

Leo Laporte (01:36:57):
It actually didn't look so different from a camera phone. And I guess that's really what killed the flip is once the iPhone came out and people could use their phone to do this, nobody was gonna buy a right separate device.

Chris Marquardt (01:37:08):
But it, it brought, it brought H 2 64 compression MP4 files. Yeah. it brought this, this ingenious flip out SB plug. So you, that's why they call them flip. You could flip out a SB plug and just plug it straight into your computer and download the files. And up to that point, I think most of the others were a bit more convoluted and you had to use their software and convert stuff and so on. And this was pretty much ready to put on the computer.

Leo Laporte (01:37:36):
Boy that, that is an example of a flash in the pan product. Right. Just, it just disappeared.

Chris Marquardt (01:37:42):
What a, what a flash in the pan. They were really good for a very short while.

Leo Laporte (01:37:45):
Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Marquardt (01:37:47):
So last but not least, and this <laugh> this is, this is a special device cuz that's the device that brought us together. Together. I

Leo Laporte (01:37:55):
Have it still.

Chris Marquardt (01:37:57):
The Nokia N 93. Amazing. So this, this has a, this has a 3.2 megapixel camera. It's a phone, but it's also a camera. It has three times optical zoom unheard of in a Nokia device up to that point. A ize lens built in.

Leo Laporte (01:38:15):
You interviewed me with one of these.

Chris Marquardt (01:38:17):
Well, so the thing is, back then when they introduced it, they introduced that in, in Europe first. And it wasn't out in the States yet. And it's

Leo Laporte (01:38:29):
Funny cuz it has a screen on one side and a mirror on the other side. So the person you're talking to can see themselves <laugh>.

Chris Marquardt (01:38:38):
So, so, so the, the two of us were both at the, at the podcast expo in California.

Leo Laporte (01:38:44):
Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Marquardt (01:38:45):
And I was there, I was actually sponsored by Nokia to bring this to, to shoot video with this phone at the podcast expo. And the, the interesting thing is that it was even possible to edit video on that device. We are talking 2006, that's one year before the iPhone. So

Leo Laporte (01:39:05):
See that's the key because as soon as the iPhone came out, both the flip and this just

Chris Marquardt (01:39:10):
Died. Oh, they were gone.

Leo Laporte (01:39:11):
<Laugh>. They were gone. They were gone. This, so this was a phone, you know, it was like a flip phone, but then it had a, like a video camera on it. What a crazy device.

Chris Marquardt (01:39:21):
So I, I I remember trying to convince the device because, so I, I wanted to produce the entire thing on this phone. So that was an intro video minute.

Leo Laporte (01:39:31):
The actual mine still has a memory card in here. What do you think's on this one? Gigabyte memory cards. Ooh. I dunno. It's mini sd. I don't think I have anything. I can I can connect it to <laugh>. How funny.

Chris Marquardt (01:39:45):
Wow. So it was, it was, it was, it was an interesting exercise to shoehorn this thing into being able to edit a show together with an intro a bit, an outro. Did you do that? Did you edit? I did. And I uploaded that from the device to a server where it was then taken care of. But just, just finding out what video format to put on there for the intro on the outer I was on the phone with a, with a Nokia engineer trying to figure that out. So it was, I was an adventure.

Leo Laporte (01:40:14):
Carl,

Chris Marquardt (01:40:14):
Especially Lens

Leo Laporte (01:40:17):
Three x

Chris Marquardt (01:40:17):
Especially looking at how simple all this is now. Yeah. 16 years later. But that was kind of the beginnings of the mobile video production. Wow. Thing.

Leo Laporte (01:40:27):
Wow.

Chris Marquardt (01:40:29):
There we

Leo Laporte (01:40:29):
Go. Now, now I've, I didn't, you know, it's funny. I should go through all my old stuff. I have a museum behind me. I didn't realize there was a memory card in here. This is gonna be memories. Maybe there'll be pictures of you from 2000. No, I didn't have this yet. I bought didn't you didn't have this. I bought it cuz of you. You

Chris Marquardt (01:40:44):
Want, you wanted one

Leo Laporte (01:40:46):
<Laugh>. I said where did, where did you get that amazing toy? I must have it. And then the iPhone came out a a year later and everything disappeared. It became a slab of black glass. And that's, that's history. Chris is gonna continue on with us as I think our, most of our regulars on the new asked the tech guys show. I've even booked him for January 15th because we need our assignments. So assignments will begin again. Take the holidays off. Enjoy your holidays, us back. I'm glad you didn't sell the fishbowl. And we'll see in a month. Thank you Chris. Discover the.com more calls after this. This is hysterical. Now I gotta figure out, I think I could just use the phone as a, as a card reader probably, right?

Chris Marquardt (01:41:41):
If you find a plug that fits the pH well it says USB, right? Doesn't it? No, I

Leo Laporte (01:41:46):
Don't think, oh, it's proprietary.

Chris Marquardt (01:41:47):
No, it's got a proprietary thing.

Leo Laporte (01:41:49):
Oh dang it. I I might have to buy a mini SD card reader cuz there's gotta be something on here. Wonder damn

Chris Marquardt (01:41:59):
It. That's can send it into a data rescue company. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:42:02):
Well I should really go through all this old stuff cuz I, you know,

Chris Marquardt (01:42:06):
I, you know, I do this with film cameras. I, I buy used old film cameras and then sometimes there's still film in there. So I had this, I had film from like 70 years ago in a camera once.

Leo Laporte (01:42:19):
Oh look, here's an all-in-one u sb three card reader plug and play. Apple windows compatible u SB supports cf. S D S D H C, SD X C M M C M M C, micro <laugh> I think think it, it'll support this. Yeah. It'll

Chris Marquardt (01:42:35):
Tomorrow Want to see what's on there?

Leo Laporte (01:42:36):
I think I do. Is that crazy?

Chris Marquardt (01:42:41):
No, it's not. Of course Doug.

Leo Laporte (01:42:42):
I have no idea though. 2006 what could be on here.

Chris Marquardt (01:42:45):
I still, I still have a couple of eight megabytes CF cards, so I should probably <laugh> check if there's something on them. Eight

Leo Laporte (01:42:53):
Megabyte. This is, this is the original card cuz it says Nokia on it. So this is the one that came with the the phone. Wow. Wow. Chris, what a pleasure. It's been a great long run. Thank you so much. Glad

Chris Marquardt (01:43:08):
For glad it's for making that possible. Yeah, I'm, yeah, I'm looking forward to the new thing. Yeah,

Leo Laporte (01:43:14):
It'll

Chris Marquardt (01:43:15):
Be a lot of, and and happy holidays.

Leo Laporte (01:43:19):
You too. Have a great Christmas

Chris Marquardt (01:43:21):
And a happy New Year and I'll see you next here.

Leo Laporte (01:43:24):
All right. Take care. All right, bye Chris. So this now this is not a standard SD card. This is some weird mini sd, but you think it would, I need a mini SD to SD to read in iCard reader. Right? But I think I found one. I'm gonna buy it right now. It says mini sd, the smart queue. It's only 18 bucks and it reads everything including mini sd. So I'm just dying to know if there's anything on here. I can't turn on the phone because I can't power it because it has a non-standard connector. That's one of the things that changed was we finally got standardized connectors. This, this has this weird connector. What's that though? That might be a power connector actually. Maybe that's, this might be data. I bet that's data. That's probably RS 2, 2 32 or something. <Laugh>. And then this, this, this looks like a little tiny power plug. The problem is, I don't sure. I don't have the That's hysterical.

(01:44:43):
Now that's not my attitude at all. In fact, I think perhaps when I called the boss five months ago to tell her I was leaving, I think there were tears shit on both sides. No, you told 'em. Shove it. I did not say take this job and shove it. I did not. I did not. In fact I wasn't thinking it either. It was a hard decision to make. I love doing this. It's a lot of fun. And you know what, I, I think I'm much reassured by the fact that rich tomorrow's taking over. I mean, that's, that's exactly the way it should be. The young good looking guy taking <laugh> taken over Ed's on the line from Indian Trail North Carolina. Hi Ed,

Caller 7 (01:45:28):
How are you today? 

Leo Laporte (01:45:30):
I am very well my friend. How are you?

Caller 7 (01:45:34):
Oh, I'm, I'm pretty good. I'd like to say, first of all, I've enjoyed your show over the years and I, my big regret is, but I'd never listened to it more, it'd always turn it on somewhere in the middle, you know, in the car and say, oh, I

Leo Laporte (01:45:45):
An hour. See, see you shoulda listened for all three hours every weekend.

Caller 7 (01:45:50):
<Laugh>. Now let me ask you this question. When you miss shows, because we get preempted with basketball games and other stuff. Sure. I still do 'em down tier stuff. So how do we how do we catch up or catch up on?

Leo Laporte (01:46:01):
So here's the good news. Every show I have done, all 1,954 of them are on the website Tech guy labs.com. And you can go back in time and if you missed a show cuz of, cuz of an exciting basketball game, and I hear you have a few in North Carolina no problem. You can go back and listen and in fact don't tell the boss, but we even cut the ads out. So it's it's two hours instead of three. So <laugh>, it's a little, it's a quick, quick listen. And a number of podcast players will let you play it back at twice as speed. So then it's only an hour. So you could catch up quickly. And as I mentioned, we're gonna continue to do podcasts. So we've, this is actually, this show was my first podcast back in 2004. Podcasting just got started in fall of 2004.

(01:46:50):
I was always putting the shows up online on a website, tech guy labs.com as it turns out. But it wasn't a podcast until a, a young guy named Matt Bischoff, I think he was 14 or 15 called, and Matt, I'll never forget it. He said when are you gonna do a podcast with this show? And he said, what, what's the podcast Matt? And he explained it and I did it. And that was our first podcast back in October, 2004. So we have 'em all, you will never miss a show. And in fact we're gonna add to that stack starting with 1956 January 8th. So the, the numbers will continue to grow as long as I, as long as I don't fall off this chair, I'll be here.

Caller 7 (01:47:30):
Okay. I I have a question, and I dunno if this is a simple answer or not. Okay. I have some old VHS tapes that they're not convenient to

Leo Laporte (01:47:39):
Watch. Of course not. I

Caller 7 (01:47:40):
Wanted to have pro a program to convert it to a D v and this way if you want to go to the beach and take a player or whatever you wanna do, it's more convenient. You can't be dragging a VHS player. But some of these programs some of these shows may not be recordable or right re you know what I'm saying, transfer from vhs.

Leo Laporte (01:47:59):
Yeah. Let me, let me ex this is well worth doing because those tapes are magnetic tapes and they're degrading over time. And at some point, the Ferris material that's stuck under the Mylar on that tape of an all reel to real tapes and VHS tapes, it's the same, will start flaking off and they will be unplayable. So now is the time if you want to save them, now is the time to save them. They're stored on that tape in an analog form. And as you may know already your computer, your player, your phone, they need digital. They need ones and zeros. So you have, the thing you're gonna get is an analog to digital converter. Now there are, and they, they're continue to be, they're very expensive. Now, they used to be less expensive machines that take a VHS type and one side and a D V D recordable DVD on the other side, <laugh>, he press play and it would just record it to a dvd. That's the easiest. Amazon still sells 'em, but I see it's around 600 bucks. So I don't think that's the best way to do it the other way. It sounds like you still have a VCR r

Caller 7 (01:49:07):
I have, I do. But it's just more like for kind of reviewing or

Leo Laporte (01:49:10):
Yeah. Well, if you have it, you can use it. You, you'd have to play it back. So you put the tape in, you play it back. As long as you can play it back, you can record it. The back of the VCR has those connections for the tv, the red, the white, and the yellow, or red, black and yellow connections for the tv. Right. So those connections you hook up to your Go ahead.

Caller 7 (01:49:32):
Yeah. I, I don't mean I don't mean a regular VHS tape. I mean one that when you put it in, it might say something like, this isn't recordable, or this isn't you can't copy it, or I, I

Leo Laporte (01:49:44):
Don't know. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So there is copy protection on commercial VHS's. So if you went <laugh>, you could do it. Now, if you, if you find a an old blockbuster going outta business, there's actually only one left in the country up in Oregon. But if you find an old, there's one that's been here for years. Just a couple of years ago, had the $1 sale where they got rid of all their tapes. So let's say you stocked up on commercial, VHS tapes, movies, things like that, right? Right. you can convert those, but they are protected with a technology called Macrovision. So you need something that will remove the macrovision. I will be honest with you, right. By the time you buy that and then by the box that you're gonna need, that's gonna take the analog and convert it to bits and record it on your computer, you'd be much better off just buy <laugh> buying it on Apple's, iTunes or Prime Video or, or one of the, one of the services.

(01:50:40):
Buy a downloadable copy. The, the quality's gonna be better. It's gonna end up costing you less cuz you're not buying all this equipment and it's certainly a, a lot less of a, a headache. The result you're gonna get, converting these is not ideal, but you do need, you do need something that's gonna take the macro vision protected VHS tape and, and remove the protection. That might be a little harder to find because it's technically illegal. You know, for y as long as I've been doing this show, this has been always the quandary, the Copyright Act says you cannot reverse engineer copy protection. It's not allowed. And you c you certainly can't sell a product that does that, but you can't, even if you knew about it, you can't even tell anybody how to do it. You, they just don't want anybody to, to, to tell you.

(01:51:33):
You can figure out how to do it on your own. And as long as you don't tell anybody, it's not illegal. I think there is a difference between the, the letter of the law and the spirit of the law. The spirit of the law, of course, is to prevent you from taking that one tape you have of dirty dancing and making a thousand copies of it, spreading a blanket on your lawn and selling it. They don't want you to do that, in my opinion. And I would imagine any sensible court, but I can't guarantee you, I'm not a lawyer. If you're making a copy of a tape you purchased because that tape is falling apart and won't last forever, and you want to put another form, no one's being harmed. You bought that movie, you're not reselling it, you're not putting it up on the internet.

(01:52:14):
You're not, you're just doing it yourself in, in my nonofficial I non-legal opinion. That's fine. And, and I can't imagine that the copyright police are gonna come to your door <laugh> and say to you, how dare you? So I think you're all right. But in order to do this, you have to buy a product that is illegal, that is removing the copy protection. So you're not gonna just be able to look on Amazon for macro buster <laugh> or something like that. You might have to do a little digging. I I think honestly, by the time you get through this, you'd be much better off just getting the movie in a digital format. You can buy it, you could buy it as a D V D if you really had to. I think nowadays, this is, you know, I, I've tell this story and I'll, this'll be the last time I'll ever tell this story, but I have a good friend who loved Cheers.

(01:53:11):
He loved Cheers more than anything. It was his favorite show, recorded everyone on vhs, dutifully set his recorder recorded. He had a closet full of VHS tapes. Every Cheers episode, flash forward to today, you can watch 'em all on Netflix and it's much higher. It's HD quality, much higher quality than that vhs. And because it's on Netflix, all you need is a Netflix subscription. It's, it, I think we've gone past that age now where you want a physical copy of something. There are still, unfortunately, there are still movies that are not digitized. So that would be the one time you'd wanna do that. But you have to, you have to ask yourself, is it worth spending a few hundred dollars on hardware to do this, hours and hours of your time to get a low quality copy of that movie? If it is, that's how you do it. Leo LaPorte, the tech guy.

Laura (01:54:13):
Well, I will be saying, shove it

Leo Laporte (01:54:15):
When I leave. Take this job in. Shove it. I ain't working here. No, I, I called him. I, I actually I sent Julia an email saying, can we talk tomorrow morning at 9:00 AM She said, uhoh, <laugh> <laugh>. And I said, you know, I, I hate to do this, but I think the time has come. The contract required me to give 'em 120 days notice. I think I gave them more than that. I gave 'em 150 days. Cuz I didn't want them to, you know, be well in advance cuz they have to sell ads. They have to tell the stations, they have to find our place. There's a lot of work to do. So I wanted to give them the minute. I, I, I, I decided I was up in the air about, but the minute I decided, I, I called them, told 'em, because I don't, I didn't want 'em to. So, you know, there are some who think I was fired, and I can prove that that's not the case. Because what happens when you're fired from a job? Do they let you stay on the job for months at a time with a microphone, <laugh>?

(01:55:22):
They're not, they're not, they're not gonna let you on the air if they fire you ever again. So this was absolutely my choice. Well, hey, hey, how are you today? Leo LaPorte here, the tech guy last hour of the tech guy show 88 88. Ask Leo the last chance to call. Please give me a ring. I'd love to hear from you. 8 8 8 8 2 7 5 5 3 6. Toll free from anywhere in the US or Canada outside that area. Portugal, for instance, you can use Skype out or some sort of voiceover internet to call should be free. The website, and do keep this in mind is tech guy labs.com. We want you to keep that because we will put links up there from things that we talk about on the show. But all the shows are there. 1,954 episodes. They're all there as a podcast, audio and video.

(01:56:17):
We put transcriptions up now, which is a great way to search for something you're looking for. And as I said, all the links, professor Laura's music playlist, all of that stuff, tech guy labs.com, it's free. There's no sign up. I don't want your email. There's no money. I don't want your money. It's there as a service for you. So please take advantage of that Tech guy labs.com and starting in the new year, that'll be the place to find the new internet only version of the tech guy. We're calling it. Ask the tech guys. It'll be two of us, Mikah, Sargent and I answering your questions. It'll be a little bit of a looser format because you know, there's no radio clocked adhere to, a little more relaxed. And we will continue to take calls. I think we're gonna use Zoom for a lot of 'em.

(01:57:03):
We'd love to be able to see you. But we will make it possible just to use your phone so you don't have to be seen if you don't want to. And many of our regulars will appear on that show. Chris Marwar Samal, Sam Scott Wilkinson and I hope Rod Pile, our space guy who's wearing a funny hat right now. We'll be joining us soon. You could take the hat off for a while, rod, you got a little time back to the phones. We go. <Laugh>. It doesn't look that comfortable. Josh, I'm sorry, Joel on the line from Sacramento, California. Hi, Joel.

Caller 8 (01:57:35):
Hello, Leo. It is, it is really nice to get to talk to you. I've driven by Petaluma, but I've never stopped in. And that's

Leo Laporte (01:57:42):
A story I hear a lot, <laugh>.

Caller 8 (01:57:45):
Oh, but it, you know, and really I got, I think I speak for a lot of people saying we really respect what you've done for through the years. Thank you both with, with the radio show and, and I, and if, if people who are listening on the radio right now have not tuned into your this week and tech podcast, I network I, I listen regularly to your programs. Thank you Mac, like security now, twit, windows Weekly Excellent podcast with the most knowledgeable people. You can find journalists on the subject. So thank you. And wow, you're gonna continue to do that for some time.

Leo Laporte (01:58:15):
I did not pay him for this, folks. I <laugh>

Caller 8 (01:58:18):
No,

Leo Laporte (01:58:18):
No, no. Thank you, Joel. I appreciate it. That's very kind of you. Yeah, thank you. But,

Caller 8 (01:58:22):
But you know, I really am going to miss this radio program because, and I've talked to other people about this too. It is very different from twit because you're, it is talking to people Yeah. People who, who maybe aren't experts in a technical subject and you're helping them. Yeah. It, I have learned a lot on how to help, just to average people. How to help your mom, your dad, the, the people you work with, with technical problems. And so I wanted to ask you this, you've been doing this for years decades. What are some gems that we can learn? We're all somebody's tech guy or tech gal. How do you patiently, helpfully help somebody when they've got a tech problem?

Leo Laporte (01:59:07):
It's challenging, especially and I'm gonna assume, Joel, you're, you're a geek for us geeks, the people that people go to, to say, well, how does this work? It's very hard to be patient because we get it, we understand it. And it's often the case that we wanna say, well, you just, what are you talking about? You see, right there, you press that and it'll work. And it's hard for us to remember that. I don't know what it is. I've often wondered this, is it a gene? Is it is it like math ability that just, some people have it, some people don't. I don't think that it is. I think technology anybody can use. But some of us, I think really comes down to whether we enjoy it or not. So those of us who really like it and are interested in it spend the time, perhaps unconsciously to learn it.

(01:59:58):
And those who aren't gravitating towards it, who don't find it exciting. You know, if you love, well, we just had the World Cup final today. If you love the beautiful sport, football, soccer you maybe have an appreciation for what goes on the field more than I do. As somebody who's not a soccer fan. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, to me, it looks like they're just running back and forth for hours for no reason. So I think that that's kind of, that's the analogy I would make, that, you know, there are those of us who get it and tho and then many who don't. The hardest thing in the world is for, for those of us who get it, have sympathy or understanding for those who don't. So remember, they're not dumb. Number one. This, I not only know this cuz it's hard for me to remember it too. And my wife will testify to that. She'll say,

Caller 8 (02:00:45):
<Laugh>, there's, there's countless ways they're going to be superior to us. And

Leo Laporte (02:00:48):
Exactly. Experience. Yes. Yeah. Just you know, when I ask her, is this magenta or purple? And she says, what are you talking about? Same thing. Right? She gets it. I don't, so, and actually she's very good with technology. I shouldn't use her as an example, but you, you get the idea. There are people in your life who just, they, it's not, it's not their thing. They're not dumb. They just have a different way of looking at the world. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> it's hard to understand how to communicate to them without a sounding like you're talking to a five-year old. Okay, honey,

Caller 8 (02:01:18):
Condescending,

Leo Laporte (02:01:19):
Let me, let me explain this to you. It's a little hard for you as you need. So I always try to, you probably, this is certainly how I've done the radio show, is I always try to remember this person is, is is a smart, and I even sometimes say it out loud, you're smart, you can do this. They're smart, they're intelligence. Not that, it's not that They're just not, not soccer fans, you know? So, so that's the first thing to remember. The other thing is I, I doubled down on my enthusiasm for the subject. I love it so much. And I think that's probably what made me good at this, that in my downtime, I read manuals. I try stuff. I, I I I, I spent a lot of time working with technology. And that helps because I have a, you know, much broader experience. If you're one of those people, you know, your experience will help you a lot. The final thing, the most important thing, and I think you probably know I do this, if you don't know, say you don't know. Because the worst thing you can do is say, oh, yeah. I, I know that as you flip through the manual real quickly you're much more likely to give them bad advice than good advice in that case. So it's okay to say,

Caller 8 (02:02:27):
Just want your doctor to do that. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (02:02:29):
You don't want your doctor to say, oh yeah, I know what's wrong with you buddy. No. If you don't know, say you don't know, there's no shame in that. And then that's a great opportunity to take somebody and say, well, let's figure this out together and kind of give them maybe some skills in future. The worst thing, and I see this all the time, and I'm often tempted to do it, there's a website called, let me Google that for you, where you can enter in a <laugh> if somebody asks you something and you know, look, it's one Google search away from the, the answers one. Just you people will often go to, let me Google that for you. Enter in that address and send it to them. And it's the worst thing you can do. Don't do that <laugh>. It's tempting. It's funny. But don't do that <laugh>.

Caller 8 (02:03:08):
Well, I think we glean, I think I gleaned from this to summarize, stay enthusiastic, make it fun rather than a problem. Yes, that's right. Because it is for us. It's

Leo Laporte (02:03:16):
For us. It's not for them. It's annoying to them. Yeah.

Caller 8 (02:03:20):
Yeah. Listen to them. Don't be condescending. That, and, and it makes a lot of sense. Well, thank you Leo.

Leo Laporte (02:03:25):
Oh, I'm glad you asked. That's a great, it's a great question. And I am very ggl grateful that you've been listening all this time, Joel. And I hope we'll see you on the on the podcast side going forward.

Caller 8 (02:03:35):
Will

Leo Laporte / Rod Pyle (02:03:35):
Do. Thank you. Techguylabs.Com. It's gonna keep working. It doesn't stop. 88. 88. Ask Leo will stop working Rich tomorrow, taking over the show starting January 7th. He will have his own phone number. <Laugh>, we talked to him yesterday. He said, I don't know exactly what it is, but he something like 88. 88 Ask Rich. Probably not that, but you know what you're gonna have to do? You'll have to tune in January 7th and flying out. How about that? As will I our spaceman rod pile coming up in 15 more of your calls right after this.

(02:04:21):
 I'll find it. I can find it. It's in a different bin, right? I just op, I do the open thing. Check the bins. Oh, there's a sound side. Oh, Hollywood Sunset Incent fe Simplify audio. Okay. Is it, is it in the Dropbox? Oh, I should go back to that bin. No. Doesn't matter. Okay, all, let me, let me get out of this whole, oh, there it is. For Leo from Rod. That <laugh> Rod took off the hat. Now he's just wearing the lights. What's wrong with you? Dude, I, I, I, my headphones kept falling off and, you know, I was trying to look festive, but I think I looked more like a bad prop. You look like you looked like a Lincoln. You look space. You looked like a Lincoln. I don't know what the hell you were doing. I dunno. It was the festive supposed to be festive here. Now I just look like a short circuit. So this is it's two minutes, two two minutes and 58 seconds. You don't want me to play this in the show, do you? No, no, no. Sides of lyrics are really hard to understand. Unfortunately

Singer (02:05:43):
For two radio.

Leo Laporte / Rod Pyle (02:05:48):
Hey, who wrote this ladies? I commissioned it.

Singer (02:05:55):
You work. So

Leo Laporte / Rod Pyle (02:05:57):
I set you a lyric sheet. Where do you get something like this? Made song. Glorious com. They do nice work. You sweet. And by the way, thank you.

Singer (02:06:17):
The

Leo Laporte / Rod Pyle (02:06:18):
Hall.

Singer (02:06:23):
You

Leo Laporte / Rod Pyle (02:06:23):
Make me cry. You should make me cry. That's me. Sorry

Singer (02:06:27):
To bring talent. Everyone has been so lucky to have you together. We'll keep tuning to anything you

Leo Laporte / Rod Pyle (02:07:01):
That's so nice, rod. Thank you. Oh, you bet. Yeah. It's long <laugh>. Well, you, you, you got the deluxe package. Yeah.

Singer (02:07:15):
Windows existence this next. So

Leo Laporte / Rod Pyle (02:07:33):
I'm not dead yet.

Singer (02:07:35):
Content

Leo Laporte / Rod Pyle (02:07:35):
For the world

Singer (02:07:36):
To hear. Goodbye guys. Thanks for all you'll do. Been so lucky to have you Leo Hero together. We'll keep tuning to anything you create. Aw,

Leo Laporte / Rod Pyle (02:08:04):
Rod. Why do you do that? It's really sweet. You deserve it. Aw, we'll post this. Earned it. I'll post. Post it. Yeah. Yeah. That's really, yeah. They gave us, they gave us permission. Oh, that's so nice. And then I have a song for you. <Laugh>. Uhoh. I bet I know what it is. <Laugh>. You've heard it before. You've heard it before. All right. Stay tuned. <Laugh>. Now it, you shouldn't. That's not, I'm not gonna cry. So don't even, don't even attempt. Don't even attempt it. Leo LePort. You're tech guy. 88. 88. Ask Leo. They're trying. They're trying. I think it's a game they play. Steve's on the line from Belinda California. Hello, Steve?

Caller 9 (02:08:48):
Yes. Hey Leo,

Leo Laporte (02:08:49):
Welcome to the show. What's up?

Caller 9 (02:08:51):
Yes, thank you. Long time listener. First time caller or not. And I've been listening to you probably for the past 15 years. Wow. I have visited you at the brick house with my two kids and wife, so

Leo Laporte (02:09:02):
Oh, nice.

Caller 9 (02:09:03):
In person two times.

Leo Laporte (02:09:04):
Yeah. I hope I was, I hope I was pleasant. <Laugh>.

Caller 9 (02:09:07):
Yes. Very. No, very pleasant. Oh, good. Very personable. And it was, it was a pleasure meeting you. Thank you. I'm just, I have to call for this special day today. Thank

Leo Laporte (02:09:14):
You. Yeah. Brick Brickhouse was our old beautiful studio in downtown Petaluma, which we got evicted from because they they sold it and the new owners wanted to triple the rent. And we said, well, maybe not. We moved to a less expensive, but I think a very nice little studio on the east side turned out those new owners were scammers. And the building is now in federal receivership. And the owner is doing hard time for 300 million Ponzi scheme. So oh, geez. I think we would <laugh> we would've been forced out one way or the other. Anyway, so I'm glad we moved. Yeah, that was a, that was too bad cuz we love That was a beautiful studio. Really amazing. Beautiful.

Caller 9 (02:09:55):
Yeah. Beautiful neighborhood. We've even talked about maybe in the future when we retire to move up to Petaluma.

Leo Laporte (02:10:00):
Yeah. We love it. Yeah.

Caller 9 (02:10:02):
And yeah, we hope hopefully Yeah. We'll get a chance when you open your, we open your doors, get a chance to see their new That'd

Leo Laporte (02:10:08):
Be nice, Steve. Yeah. Yeah. We're not not yet. In fact, we just closed them down a little bit more cuz everybody's getting sick. Yeah. And I don't want to get the flu for Christmas. So we no, no <laugh>, I'm in my hermetically sealed studio, which we every morning John comes in here with a bunch of sage and and disin <laugh> disinfectant by burning sage and saying out, spirits out. And I don't think, think that works, but it's, you know, it's worth a try. Steve, do you, did you have a question you wanted to ask about?

Caller 9 (02:10:39):
Yes. Be besides, like I said, calling the special day and wanting to, you know, thank you. You know, thank you. Talk over the good old fashioned, good old was it Pots a plain old telephone line and

Leo Laporte (02:10:48):
Pots remember that? Yeah. Yep,

Caller 9 (02:10:50):
Yep. I just, the main question was just this have a Galaxy Samsung Ultra 22, also known as the Note 22. Love

Leo Laporte (02:10:58):
That. It's a beautiful phone. Yeah, I was a note fan from day one. Disappointed they discontinued it, but the, they might as well. Cuz these new galaxy phones are just as big. So what do you need a note for? I love that. S 22. Nice, fun.

Caller 9 (02:11:12):
Beautiful. The only thing is that I wanted to see, there's a workaround as far as getting timestamps because if I have the phone off, or let's say I'm airplane mode, I'd like to know when I received a certain text or like a phone call. I know with Google Voice you're able to do that. It just wasn't completely satisfied with that. So I wanted to see if there's a workaround or, or some way in the settings where you can receive those timestamps regardless of the phone was off or, or charging or,

Leo Laporte (02:11:36):
So I'm looking at, I have a I have a pixel si seven phone and I'm using Google's messages, the Android messages, and I see a timestamp on the right for my messages. So mm-hmm. <Affirmative> and they are at the top of the message. So what are, you must be using the Samsung, the Samsung app for messages. Yes. Right?

Caller 9 (02:11:59):
Yeah. I'm using the, the stock. Whatever's a stock.

Leo Laporte (02:12:01):
Yeah. So I thought Samsung changed with the S 22 to using the Google and it, it's confusing because it's called messages. Both of them are messages. There's Samsung messages and there's Google messages. So it's kind of confusing as to which one you're using. But if you go into the settings on your phone and you look at default apps, you can see which you're using for SMS and you want to use the Google messages, even though it doesn't say Google messages as opposed to the Samsung messages. I would think Samsung's messages would have that. But I, the only reason I'm saying this is cuz I am using Google messages and I do see timestamps on every, on everyone. There's actually a cool thing on the on the iPhone. I didn't know about it. I think it was it was probably I'm guessing it was Mikah who showed me.

(02:12:51):
But you can you can, if you wanna see timestamps from let's see, who should I, who should I call? Show? I don't wanna show anything too personal. How about this? You can slide it over to the right. This is a wild thing I didn't even know about. There is a menu command to show timestamps, but you can also just drag to the right and you'll see the gutter will open up on apples messages and show you timestamps for everything. So that's another on an iPhone how to do it. But on your goo on your Galaxy, I think if you're using Google messages, it's just there. It'd be my guess that's worth, it's a try. Right? The only difference as far as I can tell between <laugh>, Samsungs and Googles is that the Google icon is blue and the Samsung icon is green.

Caller 9 (02:13:38):
Right. <laugh>. Yep.

Leo Laporte (02:13:39):
Otherwise it's, it's very similar. So maybe just try make sure you're using the Google. I think the Google one's better for a variety of, of reasons. Right. I would just, just make sure you're using the Google one. And I do see on the Google one, I am seeing timestamps all the way across the board. So yeah. That's something you want. And it's not when it came in it it is, it is. I mean, it's not when you opened it, it's literally when it, when it came in. Steve, come up and visit us in the new studio. As soon as we reopen I'll let you know. Maybe you could sit it on a ask the tech guys show our new show starting next year. Spencer Astro nerd on the line from Charlotte, North Carolina. Hello Astro nerd.

Caller 10 (02:14:17):
How you doing there? Leo

Leo Laporte (02:14:19):
<Laugh>? I am Great. Did you see that? Was it the PLE eighties? This this week?

Caller 10 (02:14:24):
The ple

Leo Laporte (02:14:25):
Pleis? Was that the there was a beautiful,

Caller 10 (02:14:28):
You're talking about the meteor shower?

Leo Laporte (02:14:31):
Yeah. What was it?

Caller 10 (02:14:33):
I didn't get to see that meteor shower. Cause it was cloudy here.

Leo Laporte (02:14:36):
Oh, it was a, it was a beautiful one, I'm told maybe the best of the year.

Caller 10 (02:14:42):
Yeah. Oh, well a very good meteor shower this time of year. Yeah. So what, what I called you about was last time I talked to

Leo Laporte (02:14:51):
You s I'm sorry, the Geminis. Yeah, yeah,

Caller 10 (02:14:55):
Go ahead. Okay. Yeah. Last time I talked to you, I was talking about the weather along the eclipse path. Yes. And I found a map for you. Oh. that shows the

Leo Laporte (02:15:07):
Because we don't want cloud cover, we don't want the thing that kept you from seeing the Geminis this week. We definitely don't want, in two years when we go see the solar eclipse. And you were telling me Niagara Falls might not be as good as Austin, Texas. This this time.

Caller 10 (02:15:22):
Yeah. Go to a website called eclipse file.com/ 2024 ts e And it has a series of maps on there that take about 20 years worth of data and average 'em down and show, ah, median, a median cloud amount for those United States along that eclipse path.

Leo Laporte (02:15:47):
Well, isn't that cool? Medium cloud fraction. And that, and you wanna see the, you wanna see a, obviously a blue sky, a median cloud fraction of zero if you can. And so this is the prediction. Yeah. It doesn't look good for Niagara Falls, I must say. Texas is, is is not the lowest. The west Texas is better. It's better. Yeah. Better it's green. Better

Caller 10 (02:16:15):
Chance, better chance of getting a clear sky.

Leo Laporte (02:16:19):
And actually the best place to see it would be to go down to Durango or Mazatlan or somewhere in Mexico and see it. Cuz that's gonna, that's blue. That's the, that's the most likely clear skies.

Caller 10 (02:16:30):
I went to Malan in 91 to see that total eclipse, and it was socked in at Molan. See. And we, we had to convince the, the ship, the guy, the captain of the ship, to go out into the see of Cortez. So we could see that almost seven minute eclipse. Wow.

Leo Laporte (02:16:47):
So cool.

Caller 10 (02:16:48):
But if you wanna see, if you wanna see what happens with a cloud cover back in 1970, cbs b s News was in Valdosta, Georgia for that eclipse. Yeah. And if you search YouTube for 1970, total solar eclipse or cbs, total Solar eclipse, you'll see that. And along about 18 minutes in that video the cloud cover over that college just gets black.

Leo Laporte / Rod Pyle (02:17:20):
Well eclipse, so file.com is, the website will talk to you in April, 2024. Rod pile space guy Next.

(02:17:33):
Rod was dressed for the occasion, but he is now stripped down to his Hawaiian shirt. Yeah. <laugh> had to give up on the hat. It was just too on Caley. Hey, and thank you. Thank you for this too, by the way. Oh, yeah. Had you ever seen it before? No. So this was one of the first shuttle documentaries done by one of the covets of imax. A wonderful guy named Graham Ferguson, who I, I only knew briefly, but it's narrated by Walter Cronkite. It's an 84, so it was pre challenger, so it's very rah rah. The shuttle can do anything, so Yeah. Yeah, that's fine. It feels a little dated, but it is just wonderfully produced real, I don't know if you call it tear jerker, but it really plucks at your heartstrings. I will I'm gonna watch it on our I left it here so I could remember.

(02:18:18):
Cause I knew if I took it home, I wouldn't be able to remember to show you <laugh>, but I will I wish I could see it in imax, but I'll play on our L G O light. It'll look pretty good. That's the only TV in the house with a DVD d player. You're right. And I wish they had done it in Blu-ray, but it's just, it's so old now. Yeah. You know, it's not for an inventory. They weren't doing that in the year. I was lucky to find that. But it really is so wonderfully done. Well, scored. Thank you. It's very generous. And thank you for the song. Oh, you bet. Oh man, that's, you weren't getting outta here unscathed today. I'm sorry. Oh, you know, I was, my biggest fear was Lisa, I didn't expect it coming from you. I, well, <laugh>, it's not her fault.

(02:18:57):
Okay. <laugh>. Now I, that was worrying me. Well, I will I won't put that song somewhere. I'll put it on our website or something. I, oh, I wonder what's waiting for you? You get home today. Oh, God, I don't even know. <Laugh> probably a choir on the front lawn or something. She says she's taking me away after Christmas to celebrate our, the retirement. So Isn't that great? Yeah, we'll do something fun. I don't know what, but yeah, she said, just pack your bathing suit, that's all you're gonna need. I said, that sounds good to me. That sounds tropical. Okay, good. Sounds good. Yeah. Yeah. Sounds good. Yeah. I'm thinking, you know, ma la or Hawaii, but yeah. So did you see the Geminis? I didn't. It was cloudy here. And I had, I had sat out in a hot tub in the desert for the Perseus and I thought, you know, I don't need to be out.

(02:19:40):
You see one meteor show, you see. Well, no, I See. Here's the thing. In 1966, the Leonards, I think we've talked about this. It was a record year. And I happened to be out, out back watching the sky that night in Pasadena. And it was famous because it was like, God just dumped a salt shaker in the atmosphere. I mean, there was thousands of in the hour. Wow. It was terrifying and amazing at the same time. So I love meteor showers, but they just don't live up to that. Right. Yeah. I watch 'em on tv. That's good enough for me. <Laugh>. There's a always a YouTube video of a meteor shower. Yeah, that's true. It condenses the time of it, doesn't it? I'm just impatient. All right. Remember, I'm gonna play this song this time. Okay. Yep. I got a special rod pile. Okay. Okay. Just for Rod, standing by. Just for Rod to celebrate this special day launch. Hold. What? Is there a launch today? Nah, I'm just mouthing off making noise. Just making noise as usual. That's me. My clock broke just in time for me to give it to Rich tomorrow. <Laugh>, do you mind if I pitch the holiday special podcast? No, no, no. Mind you must. Okay. Yes, because we got a really great guest.

Singer 2 (02:21:03):
Think I've been waiting all here. Have a real good time. Play this. I'm

Leo Laporte (02:21:36):
A luck man. A lock man is here.

Singer 2 (02:21:38):
If you liked

Leo Laporte (02:21:38):
Your lucks, run

Singer 2 (02:21:40):
Laka

Leo Laporte (02:21:41):
Fan.

Singer 2 (02:21:42):
<Laugh>

Leo Laporte / Rod Pyle (02:21:43):
Rod file is here. Author Space 2.0, editor-in-chief of Ad Ostra Magazine the space dots.org. National Space Society publication joins us every week to talk about space. And I wanna thank you. Before we did go e any farther, I want to thank you for this IMAX DVD v d that you gave me. The dream is alive, Walter Cronkite, nor writing a history of the Space shuttle. You bet. Cool. I haven't listened to it yet, but I watched it yet. But I will and I will help me get my my, my cronkite down, so that's good too. <Laugh>, that's good too. Rod is the newest addition to our tech eye team. So you know, we don't have long memories together, but he does do a wonderful podcast for us. So we're gonna continue to work together called This Weekend Space. And in fact, you have a holiday special coming up.

(02:22:39):
Yes, we do. We have an Apollo eight holiday special, and we we're lucky to get Apollo Flight Director Jerry Griffin Oh wow. For an interview for about a half hour of that. And then towards the end, we got an Air Force Colonel to come on and talk about NORAD Santa Tracker. Well, maybe that one can be your first all video this weekend space, because we'd like to move that from audio only to video. You're graduating, you could put on your big boy pants. Any pants at all would actually be welcome. And and we will turn on the video. Maybe that'd be a good time to turn that video on is for that special. That's exciting. Leo. All, all my pants are big boy pants. <Laugh>, unfortunately. <Laugh> Oh my gosh. When will that be? Is that this, this week, Friday on 23rd. The 20 third's episode.

(02:23:26):
All right, good. So that one was a lot of fun. T WT TV slash T Ws. Yes, sir. Now what is going on in the world of space, Mr. Pyle? Well, you know, we had a big headline towards the end of the week that has kind of receded a bit. But on the 14th, the Soyus capsule, which is docked to the iss, along with one of SpaceX's crude dragons, sprung a leak. And so for the next 18 hours, there was this spray of ice particles coming out the side, which basically emptied out their cooling system. And, you know, this is the Soyus had been reliable for decades, and then over the last five to seven years, it's, it's been having a series of problems. This one's one of the worst because they rely on that to get the Russian astronauts home. And they rely on crude dragon to get the American astronauts home.

(02:24:17):
And neither one of those is big enough to bring back all seven people that are up there. So if they have a problem, and assuming that thing won't be functional to come back, which it looks like it's probably not there could be some people stuck up there for a while until we get something up there in a hurry. So the Russians are talking about this amongst themselves. They're gonna have a meeting at the end of December. I don't know why they're waiting that long to decide whether they should rush their next Soys, which is supposed to go up in March. And, you know, given the track record, it might be a little risky to do that. Or NASA could always turn to SpaceX and say, how soon can you have something ready to go? And there's, you know, there's probably contingency planning going on of how many extra astronauts can we stick in the crew dragon if we have them lying on the floor.

(02:25:01):
How dangerous is that for their backs when they splash down? You know, it's scary stuff. But, you know, the Space station is basically a big metal room surrounded by explosives, <laugh>, geez. Space capsules that surround it. And if something were to go wrong, a meteorite hit or a fire or something like that, they can retreat to some part of it that they can lock down. But, you know, stuff can happen. And we, we saw that with the Russian mirror station for kids ago. Yeah. What was that? It was leaking something. It was looked like stars coming out of it. What was it? Yeah, it was, it was the coolant system. But of course the second it, it goes into space, it turns into ice particles. So that's what we were seeing. But it was, I mean, that was a pretty dramatic show.

(02:25:43):
It looked like a cheesy visual effect from a science fiction movie. So yeah, very, very concerning. And maths actually, was that, did that end up breaking anything? Well, it, it emptied out the cooling system, which they have to have functional reenter. Yes. It's hot otherwise. Right, right. So, so they're variety of reasons. Yeah. Okay. So, you know, they thought, well, can we fix it? Probably not. So there's a lot of chit chat going back and forth. NASA says one thing, rose Cosmos says another, but the bottom line is it's probably not guessing. We're guessing it's probably not fixable in, on, on site. And that's presents another problem, which is they gotta get that thing out of there. So they gotta uncouple it and then force it to deorbit and burn up. Good. Not good lord. Yeah. Yeah. Are they blaming an American astronaut for drilling a hole?

(02:26:32):
Not yet in it. <Laugh>. I <laugh> I knew. Yeah. It's like, oh, some hysterical American astronaut wanted to get home cuz they'd have to go outside to do that. You know, they're suggesting a media micro meteoroid strike. You know, it's possible. But they've had some workmanship errors going on with both the capsule and their rockets. So, you know, it's hard to say. So there's no immediate danger, you know, unless if that thing starts to heat up while it's sitting there, they could have shorts and, and problems and, and hopefully not, but I suppose potentially an explosion. But if they, you know, if they saw that temperature escalating rapidly, they'd just decouple the thing and send it on its way. We just forget. It's, it, it, it's so amazing. It's touchy up there, man. It's so amazing. The safety record is so good. We forget how incredibly dangerous this stuff is.

(02:27:20):
Yeah. And how thin a layer protecting the people inside from the outside that is. And you know, it's, it's a very amazing thing that people do. Very brave. It is. And, and those spacecraft are pretty lightly built. You know, they look big and sturdy, but when you, when you get close to 'em, you start knocking on 'em with your knuckles. It's steel, it's it's gotta be thinner and lighter than that. It's thin aluminum. Yeah. And let's face it, it's, there's spam in a can as <laugh> as John Glenn once said, as was famously said. Yeah. <laugh>. So one of the things they're gonna have to do, the Russian engineers are suggesting that they maneuver the space station to keep that thing in the shade so it doesn't heat up when it's on the sun. That's why you need the cooler. Right.

(02:28:04):
The sun heats it up quite a bit. Yeah. Oh, big time. Yeah. Like 250 degrees Fahrenheit. Yeah. Plus, you know, so there's a lot of solutions in, in under consideration, but I think at this point it's kind of a wait and see thing, but it's kind of scary. Hmm. Yeah. How many people are up there right now? Seven. And some Russians. Some Americans. Yeah. And we're back to the swaps, you know, here in the middle of the Ukraine war, we're still, we, we just finished an agreement to do astronaut swaps again. So an American astronaut flew up in the last sos was supposed to fly back in it. Apparently that's not gonna happen. So, you know, it's good that relations are still solid with them during this time of intense political Yeah. Geo geopolitical pressure. But, you know, if they can't provide safe spacecraft, this is kind of worrisome, you know, this, there was a time years ago when people were afraid this would be the case of SpaceX.

(02:28:58):
You know, the, the old old guard aerospace industry was saying, oh, they can't do it. It won't be safe. You better look out and, you know, look at their record. So are we gonna, do we have to do an emergency evacuation, stack 'em up like sardines in the vehicle? Or is that just a that's a contingency. Yeah, that's if something were to go wrong in the station, I mean at this point we still have enough capability to get them out. Yeah. It'll just jer around the crew rotations a bit. And people have had to stay longer on there before. So this isn't unprecedented, you know, for one reason or another, you know, launch delay or something, people have had to stay over their allotted mission time on the space station. Is Commander Kelly the still the record holder for that? I don't think so.

(02:29:38):
Think we remember who a new record was actually. Yeah. He was there a year. Yeah. And the records are kind of weird cuz it's like, you know, a year one long spread is one thing and then there's other people that go up for six months in seven months if you come home and you go back. I don't count that. I mean, none. Ah, jeez. Tough guy beginning to end the whole amount of time. That's what I care about. That's how you set a record. And you'll notice now, you know, he didn't wear glasses all the time before he went up. That's one of the things that happens in your, your eyeballs. Gravity, young. Yeah. If you're a guy, it doesn't seem to affect women. It only affects men. Which is weird cuz they thought it was intercranial pressure, but they're saying, well, you know, men's eyes and women's eyes are structured kind of the same.

(02:30:17):
So what is this? Wow. So they don't really know. It's a mystery. Very weird. It's a mystery. And by the way yes. Per your earlier stroll down memory lame for cameras. I started out with a Cannon F1 in 1973, then I switched over to Annik Icon in the nineties. And then my first digital camera was a D 70. Just like you. Yeah. Yeah. I think I have D 70 somewhere still. They're Rod Brown. It's been a pleasure working with you. We'll see you on the new show. Speak Mike Wise dots.org. Leo Laport, the tech guy Mimi, Jason Heiner. Larry Maggot and Mike Elgan on Twitter. Thank you Mr. Pile for that wonderful song. I just tooted it. Thank you. Are you on the adon? I I signed up, but I haven't really taught myself how to use it yet. I'm ashamed to say <laugh> because it's a little different.

(02:31:09):
But I did, and I'm old enough that it's like, oh, the interface is different. I did do this. Oh, look what Rod p commissioned for me. So there's the whole thing on Is that an AI rendering of you? Yeah, it's pretty good, isn't it? Looks just like me. You look very har heroic. I know it's cute. I know <laugh>, I post, I have a, I have 200 of those and I just I go through different things and so forth. I did Mike be, I gave my old camera equipment to to solve Hank. And that's how he got his start. He's with his, oh, he was using my, all my cannon, all my cannon stuff, my 5G Mark four. Oh, about $15,000 worth of lenses. Still uses it. Yep. How much? A lot <laugh>. 15,000, something like that. I had the complete set.

(02:31:54):
Yes. Wow. See that's my l lense too. They were good lenses. Oh my God. See where I went with Annik icon was you could, you know, you could retrofit those things forever. So anything will use f Well the nice thing now on the mirrorless is because the, for some reason because the sensor is so close to the surface there, it's easy to have adapters. So you can really, on any mirrorless, use a variety of lenses. I kind of wish I'd saved some of those at really fancy lenses that I gave. Had them back. Well, no, you know what, he's a kid, you know. Well, I could, but honestly he's using them for some, he's doing really well. So I actually kind of feel happy about that. Yeah. But you know that that six millimeter l $5,000 lens you gave him probably isn't part of his podcast.

(02:32:37):
I kept my best lens, which is a, like a, I kept, so I'm Oh, you have Leica stuff too? I have a beau I have the best. It was at the time, they said the best lens ever made and like a 50 millimeter. And you had to have it. Of course. You know what's funny is I, I put it in the shopping cart. I wasn't gonna buy it cause it was so expensive. You bought it new? I accidentally Oh. Bought it and I didn't realize it. Wait, air quotes. Actually no, no. I did. I thought I just put it in the shopping cart, but I didn't. But somehow it arrived and I thought, oh, well, I own it now. And how much was that? It was eight, if I may ask. It was about 8,000. Hey Lisa, did you hear that? Oh, she knows. She uses it.

(02:33:20):
She loves it. In fact, the best picture, one of the first pictures I took with it was a beautiful image of her and her son in the hot tub, which she cherishes. It's a, it says he was a, you know, that was very tactic. 11 or 12 tactically cagey of you. Oh, well, I'll show you the picture. Let's see if I can find it. It was, but brilliant. How smart is that? Yeah, it's like, oh. Oh, Lisa expensive. But look at this picture I took. That's right. Well, we have a good relationship. We have our own money. I don't have to beg her and she doesn't have to beg me. And sh she likes it that way because she has a thing for a jewelry. Ah, okay. So it's fine. It all works out. It all works out. Yeah. No, my like a all my best pictures, many of my best pictures were, are shot with that lens.

(02:34:07):
That's an amazing lens. Mm, yeah. Really, really Never had a, like a had a lot of ca i about 25 cameras. I never a like two, which is a great little point. And shoot, 28 8. It was fixed lens. 28 millimeter. Yeah. Yeah. A little rangefinder, right? Yeah. It's really, it's not a rangefinder. No, it's a no no, because I've tried the Rangefinders. I can't use them. I do not really. I can't. They're just too hard to use. It's hard to line up. I can't, yeah, it's takes too long to focus. Hmm. So no, this is a digital with very fast auto focus actually. Okay. It's a newer one. Yeah. Yes. It's the q2. Yeah, I know. I do have a, like a m one film camera that I bought that's as old as I am. Yeah. Yeah. Long time ago. That was a, that's a wonderful story. People still swear Simon, but they're kind of pain in the butt and using film anymore, you know? I know it is. Chris Marqui talked me into it. I regret it. <Laugh>. All right, rod. We'll talk soon. Take care. Take care. Thanks for everything. It's been great. You're welcome. You're welcome.

(02:35:07):
What are you talking about? I got another three hours, don't I? No. <laugh>, Leo Laport, the tech guy. Such a pleasure being your tech guy for the last 19 years. What a privilege it has been. I mean, I am not insensible to that. When I first started working in radio at the age of 20 back in 1976, I, I dreamed someday of having a nationally syndicated radio show. That's the, that's the height, right? That's the peak. You can't get any better than that. I was very fortunate back in 2004, I was working on tech tv, doing a TV show for the cable channel. Cable channel was starting to fall apart. We knew it was for sale, and I was a little worried about my future. I had two small kids, nine and 11, and the family to support. And I was a little nervous about what was, what was happening at Tech tv.

(02:36:00):
And a woman who is to this day, still a good friend and a mentor. Robin Bertucci I knew her at K G O in San Francisco. And then she was at k a in Denver, and she was a program director at K ffi. She said, we need a tech guy. <Laugh> tech guy is moving across town to another station, Jeff Levy. And she said, would you like to do a weekend radio show for us? It didn't. I don't think I hesitated. I'll have to ask Robin. I don't think I hesitated. I think I jumped at the at the chance and said, well, yeah, sure. This was January, 2004 for a while. I was doing five days a week on TV and two days a week on the radio. Still the best fun I've ever had. We went to ces, covered that live in the third show, <laugh> the third and fourth show a few years in I think, I think I was trying to quit as that.

(02:36:57):
I remember, as I remember saying, eh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't wanna lose my weekends anymore. And I think Robin said to me well, what if I could talk premier our, you know, part of our company, iHeart. If I wonder if we, if I could talk them into syndicating it, would you be interested? Well, now that's that's catnip to a radio host. I said, well, yeah, <laugh>, I guess I would. She did. Craig Kitchen was running Premiere at the time. We talked him into, it actually was thanks to the sponsors on the K F I Radio show. Chiefly the go-to folks go to meeting go to what was the other go-to? I can't remember. Go to my pc and the, and, and Michael Guerre, who was running their marketing effort. We went to lunch and Michael said, all right, we're in, we'll, we'll buy ads on your new national syndicated show.

(02:37:53):
And that was all it took. We started that show in 2007, stayed the tech guy, was originally the tech guy on K F I C at rhymes, but stayed the tech guy. And it's been ever since a wonderful journey. I think Robin, who's continued to be a mentor and support through all of this. Bill Handel, also a K F I, who's very generous and kind When I arrived took me to lunch and said, Leo <laugh>, how can I use the internet to find porn? No, he didn't say that. And <laugh> and thanks especially to Julie Talbot, who's of course the current person in charge, CEO o of the Premier Radio Network's. My syndicate has been a wonderful 19 years. We loved doing this. And I will continue to do podcasting, but my heart will forever be in radio.

(02:38:39):
Thanks to Professor Laura. You are a wonderful musical director. You do a, a fantastic job. And I know you're gonna continue on with Rich Tomorrow and do an even better job for him. He's not gonna ask you to play the old songs from 1954, anything like that. He'll have nice, fresh, current music thanks to Kim Schaffer. She's been answering the phones. Kim, you've been a wonderful person to work with. And I know you and Rich will get along just fine. Can I ask you though, on his first show, if you can have Christopher Miami call <laugh> and Mikah from Maine. I'm

Kim Schaffer (02:39:13):
Gonna have them all <laugh> and I'm gonna

Leo Laporte (02:39:16):
Torture your hands. You Yeah. Have them all call him. And if, if there's any printer calls, put those right at the front of the line. Would you do that for me? I'm to do that and I'll get fired day one. <Laugh>. No, no. You'd be nice to Rich, rich is a great guy. Rich on Tech will be taking over from K T L A Rich tomorrow. He filled in for me for many, many times over the past few years. And so he's, he knows the show. He's familiar with it. And he'll be a great tech guy for you starting January 7th Mormon. I have time to take a few more calls before we have to turn the lights out in the studio here and, and, and lock it up and head for home. Let's go to Henry on the line from Prescott Valley, Arizona. Hello Henry.

Caller 11 (02:39:53):
How are you doing there, Leo?

Leo Laporte (02:39:55):
I am well, how are you?

Caller 11 (02:39:58):
I didn't appear in the obituaries this morning, so I'm

Leo Laporte (02:40:03):
Fine. <Laugh>, you get to a certain age, Henry, when you start to read those, don't you? And you tell me if you do this cuz I do. I always look at how old they were when they passed.

Caller 11 (02:40:13):
Always, always

Leo Laporte (02:40:14):
<Laugh> to to know. Do I have some more time? <Laugh>? Well, Henry, you and I are both here. What can I do for you?

Caller 11 (02:40:23):
Well, I just wanted to say I'm sorry that you're leaving the radio, but for the past five years I've been streaming your show anyway, so I know how to do it. And 

Leo Laporte (02:40:35):
That's the magic of the internet

Caller 11 (02:40:36):
On Sundays. Yeah,

Leo Laporte (02:40:38):
Yeah. Well, there'll be one fewer shows. Rich is gonna take Saturdays. I'm gonna take Sundays. Mine will be internet only. But I hope people could figure out how to listen. You just go to tech guy labs.com. It's right there.

Caller 11 (02:40:51):
I started with you on kfi the first day you were on. Wow. And I've been there all the time. And I've called you countless times before. I'm, I'm the guy who goes to the folk music gathering with 

Leo Laporte (02:41:09):
Oh

Caller 11 (02:41:09):
Yeah. Air Show Guy every, oh

Leo Laporte (02:41:12):
Yeah, no, I know who you are, Henry. Yeah. So you talked to Heather Hamman back in the day, and of course Heather has been Oh yeah. A great help as well through the show. Yeah. We, there's so many people. I can't, you know, Michael Coio and Big Peewee and all the, all the board ops and so forth. There've been so many people. I'm sure I'm gonna, you

Caller 11 (02:41:28):
Can't remember everybody.

Leo Laporte (02:41:29):
I can't remember anybody. I just, I didn't have it written down. I'd be I'd be outta luck. But I do remember you Henry and I appreciate the fact that you've been here all this time. Now, you, are you a ham? Are you an amateur radio guy?

Caller 11 (02:41:44):
No, not yet, but I am going to be. I first wanted to be a want, got the ham bug. Oh, good. In 1956 <laugh>, when I read the Hardy Boys book, A Short Wave Mystery

Leo Laporte (02:42:02):
<Laugh>. Well, you've been waiting a long time. I think now, 66 years later might be a good idea for you to, here's where I would suggest starting, which is my good friend Gordon West, who is my Elmer. They call the, your, your elder ham operator who gets you, gets you in the game as your Elmer Gordon was my elmer Gordon West radio school.com. He still does it. He's wonderful. His books are the best way to prepare for the courses, but he also has lots of a whole resource center of products. For instance, he recommended, and I would recommend to you to start with a handy talkie because they're very easy to get started with. And you don't need a big old rig. And what you don't also don't need is a big old antenna and and these little handy talkies, you're just like, they're just like walkie-talkies, except they're, you need a license stop rate 'em, they're ham radio and he has a whole page on, on the walkie-talkies and where to get them from so you don't have to program 'em yourself and so forth.

(02:43:06):
 I highly would highly recommend those. There are a number of very good manufacturers. I have a Kenwood, but I have to say nowadays it's the Chinese manufacturers who are kind of taking over as they are with everything else, taking over the ham radio hardware market Uhhuh <affirmative>. But you know, I, I have some strong opinions on that <laugh>. But Golden, go to Gordon. He's the expert. He was my teacher. He will help you. And it's about time you started all those years ago. You got the Hardy Boys Sure. Wave Radio book. Maybe it's a good time. That kind of nice way to end this show is to talk about the amateur radio operators who have been good friends, like Bob Hle and Gordon West. We did a ham show for them for many years of podcast called Ham Nation. That was a lot of fun. So oh, is it time to say, Hey, hey, hey, goodbye. Is it, is it that time I hear the music coming up behind me, Laura, what are you gonna do without me to tease <laugh>, you have to start teasing. Teasing, rich. He's, he's a good guy. I don't think he'll give you a hard time <laugh>.

(02:44:18):
 I don't, I don't know. I'm not crying. You're crying. Thank you for letting me be your tech guy for 19 years. Have a great geeky week and year in life, and happy holidays, everybody. Byebye.

(02:44:31):
Well, that's it for The Tech Guy Show for today. Thank you so much for being here. And don't forget twit, T W I t. It stands for this week at Tech, and you'll find it at twit.tv, including the podcast for this show. We talk about Windows and Windows Weekly, Macintosh on Mac Break, weekly iPads, iPhones, apple Watches on iOS today, security and Security Now, I mean, I can go on and on. And of course, the big show every Sunday afternoon this week in tech. You'll find it all at twit.tv, and I'll be back next week with another great tech guy show. Thanks for joining me. We'll see you next time.