The Tech Guy Transcript 1915

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.

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Podcasts. You love

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From people you trust. This

Leo Laporte (00:00:08):
Is TWI. Hi, this is Leo Laporte and this is my tech guy podcast. This show originally aired on the premier networks on Saturday, August 6th, 2022. This is episode 1,915. Enjoy the tech guy podcast is brought to you by Melissa. Make sure your customer contact data is up to date. Try Melissa's API in the developer portal. It's easy to log on, sign up and start playing in the API sandbox. 24 7. Get started today with 1000 records. Clean for free at melissa.com/twit.

Leo Laporte (00:00:51):
Why? Hey, Hey, how are you today? Leo Laporte here, the tech guy, time to talk computers and the internet and home theater and digital photography and smart phones and smart watches and all the technology surrounding us that is changing the world. We live in, work in play in worshiping and all the other things we do in it. 80. That's what this show's all about. Wow. 88. Wow. That's a lot Leo. Yes, it is. That's why I'm sad that my sergeant's not here today. <Laugh> Mike has taken another day off. That's okay, we'll get 'em back. I promise. I like having the youth here to help me. 88, 88, ask Leo just me today. 88, 8 8 2 7 5 5 3 6. To reassure you. I have been doing this for almost 20 years. Well, actually more like since 1992. So what is that? 30 years, but, so I have some knowledge in this old skull of mine website tech, guy labs.com.

Leo Laporte (00:01:55):
When I spit some knowledge we'll, we'll put it there so you don't have to remember it and write it down. You can just go to the websites wide, open, free, no signup tech guide labs.com. There'll be links. There there'll be audio and video from the show. There'll be a transcript. Everything you need, Amazon. Wow. Amazon. They had been on a buying spree lately, right? It was just a couple of weeks ago that we announced that they had or were, are going to try to buy cuz you know, these things have to be approved a a medical primary care chain called one medical 3.4, 9 billion in cash. Nice to have a little pocket spending money, right? It's a 3.5, four, 9 billion in in cash. We're gonna keep that extra a hundred million. I think they should have just rounded it up, but you know now what do they get with one medical?

Leo Laporte (00:02:48):
Well for some reason they get they're in the they're now they're in the doctor business. Oh, but why do you think Amazon wants one medical? Well, because they also wanna be in the health data business, right? Suddenly all that health data that one medical has for all its patients. Now Amazon owns it. In fact, if you look at some of their other acquisitions in terms of data, see, I think people sometimes think Amazon is a storefront, a merchant. We sell stuff. Amazon would like you to think that we sell books. We sell toys, we sell shoes. We sell clothing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But what's their real business really? What's their real business. Well, you could say it's ad, it's an ad business and it's been a very successful ad business because along with all that selling, they also tell you, Hey, here's something cool.

Leo Laporte (00:03:38):
You should buy. Right. And they get paid for that. So that's a very lucrative ad business, but re and you know, and then some people say, well, what really Amazon's goal is? And Jeff Bezos, when he founded it, smart man had this in the back of his mind. I think it's even, he might even said, this is to take a small percentage, a tiny little fraction of every transaction ever like almost like a credit card company. And if you think about it, only half of what Amazon sells on its website, amazon.com is actually sold by Amazon. Half of it is other companies, third party sellers, half of it. So really Amazon's just there as a middle man. They're taking a little bit of every transaction. Doesn't have to be a lot penny or too here or there. And you know, it starts to add up.

Leo Laporte (00:04:24):
So I thought I'm very sophisticated. I think of Amazon as you know, that middleman taking it. But you know what the most sophisticated point of view is, Amazon is all about data. And if you start to look at Amazon's business, our business is under is knowing everything there's to know about you then, but you don't make money just having that data. Then you can monetize. You can make money on that data in a variety of ways, advertising. Yes. you know, knowing what to sell you, what to pitch you and when to pitch you, maybe even selling that data. Other third parties. That's the one I think a lot of people get funny about like Facebook knows everything there's know about you. If they were to sell that though, to other people, that's kind of not good. You kind of know you're telling Facebook, you know who grandma is.

Leo Laporte (00:05:13):
That's, that's part of the deal, but you don't want them to then tell, you know, Proctor and gamble who grandma is. Right. That's, that's more problematic. In fact, Facebook does sell advertising kind of like, well, here's, who's pregnant or about to be. <Laugh> like they can, they will sell that to Pampers. Here's about here's here. And they know, you know, sometimes they know people are pregnant before their family does, based on shopping habits, search habits, things like that. So data is very valuable. So Amazon, they bought the medical company. One medical. If you look back really, I mean, they also created Amazon's voice assistant echos to, to have a microphone everywhere. Oh, wait a minute. Some echos have cameras. Now they have a camera and the microphone everywhere in your house. Now this is gonna start to get conspiracy theory. Like, so let's take this with a grain of salt.

Leo Laporte (00:06:08):
But if you were an evil genius and you wanna know everything there is to know about your, you know, the people who do business with you, that would be a good way to put a microphone on camera everywhere. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> they also bought a wifi router maker company. I like a lot called Euro. Now. They now, wow. I knows a lot about everything. Right? You every, all your data goes through Euro's servers. Oh, you didn't know that. Yeah. Yeah. I says that's so we can find tune our our, the wifi, most wifi routers don't send data back to the company. Euro does. It's a mesh router. That's what it does. They bought ring. What does ring do? Oh, they put cameras on your doorbell and then in your house and then outdoors. Hmm. So let's say ring Euro, Amazon echo one medical. Maybe we're starting to see a pattern here of companies that collect data. They just announced, this is the, where the, this all leads that they're gonna buy iRobot.

Leo Laporte (00:07:11):
Yes. iRobot iRobot makes the vacuum cleaners. Those Roomba vacuum cleaners years, you know, they <laugh>. I have a, I have a love, hate relationship with the Roomba. Do not. We do not have Roombas in the house anymore. I'll tell you that story another time. But so what, 1.7 billion is it? Cuz the vacuum business is such a great business. Mm, no, not really. Hmm, but what does Roomba do? Oh, now here we go. Big time. Conspiracy theory. What does Roomba do in order to vacuum your house? How does it do that? It makes a map, a map. In fact, they, people got a little upset when they found this out a few years ago, it maps everything in your house, furniture, kitchen, counters cabinets, why it needs to right dog bowls, cuz it needs to know where to go. Mm. And interestingly, and this is where Roomba got in a little trouble a few years ago. They send that map back to the home office. Why do they need to use that? Just to the robot needs to know where the dog bowl is not the home office. Well, they do.

Leo Laporte (00:08:21):
In fact back in 2017, the CEO of iRobot said, you know, someday we think this valuable mapping data, we could sell this to tech companies, developing smart home devices and AI assistance. Well, here's the good news. You don't have to sell it anymore. Those companies that company owns you or will soon. Now remember all of these acquisitions have to be approved. And of course you could just say, well, Amazon's just building business. They're they're they're you know, they're, these are all things they can make money on and they will, they will. But it's very interesting. You know, Amazon has a technology. Maybe you've heard of this called sidewalk when you have an Amazon echo many am or ring doorbell, many Amazon devices unless you turn this off explicitly and I bet you don't even know it's there. You have to look through the settings to find it.

Leo Laporte (00:09:19):
Amazon will create a little network, a little, a little just, just little network. You don't even use it or know about it. Little network. You could go actually go. Amazon's not hiding this. You can go read about Amazon sidewalk. Just Google it benefits of Amazon sidewalk. Amazon sidewalk creates a low bandwidth network with the help of sidewalk, bridge devices, including select echo and ring devices. These bridge devices share a small portion of your internet bandwidth, which is pulled together to provide these services to you and your neighbors. And when more neighbors participate, the network becomes even stronger. Why would you want this? Well, what if you, your dog has a little sidewalk device on its collar or your keys have a little dongle on your keys. As you walk around everywhere you go. You're being mapped by Amazon's sidewalk. You lose your keys. They know where your keys are, by the way, they also know where your dog is. You are and everything else, your car, everything a so what is Amazon's business?

Leo Laporte (00:10:29):
Well, all you could say with all of these, well, there's a business they're gonna make money selling little doggle for your key chain, right? That's a good business. Yeah. Or maybe, maybe Amazon wants to know everything about who you are, where you are. What's in your house. What clothes you wear. Yeah. They sold a camera. They stopped selling it. I bought it. I was silly that you're supposed to every day, take a picture of what you're wearing and then it will tell then the benefit to you is say, well, that's a bad combination. <Laugh> oh no, treat you. Those pants are terrible. Like your wife would no, honey, you can't go outta the house like that. Your husband might say, honey, no, mm-hmm your kids might say, dad, what are you wearing? But now you don't have to have kids or a wife or a husband. You just have, Amazon will tell you what do they get from that? They know exactly what you wear. Look, I don't wanna be a conspiracy theorist. I don't wanna, I just think it's good for us to understand a little bit about what this might mean and why Amazon will spend 1.7 billion for a company that makes robotic vacuums 88, 88. A I'm just saying, I'm just saying eighty eight eighty eight. Ask Leo the phone number. (888) 827-5536. I know I stopped wearing yoga pants cuz of Amazon. It's a bad look, Leo. Leport the tech guy. Your calls next.

Leo Laporte (00:12:14):
There she goes. Is there a phone in there? Somewhere?

Kim Schaffer (00:12:18):
There she goes

Leo Laporte (00:12:19):
Again. Nope. No phone.

Kim Schaffer (00:12:20):
<Laugh> I'm just going.

Leo Laporte (00:12:21):
It's just now. We're we got we're reduced. We've run outta phone songs. We're reduced to she, to she, we go on play songs about she Kim sheer phone angel answers. The calls puts you on the air. Prepares you for your national radio show appearance. Hello Kim.

Kim Schaffer (00:12:36):
Hello? Are you still trying to get used to that?

Leo Laporte (00:12:40):
Yeah, I have to look over my little shoulder now. <Laugh> it's good. You're you're it's good. You should just

Kim Schaffer (00:12:44):
I'm in the room with you now. Yeah. <laugh>

Leo Laporte (00:12:47):
Kim is in cuz if you think about it, she's answering the phone the whole time. Right? She's making noise. So she has to be in a soundproof booth which is actually the big studio across the hall.

Kim Schaffer (00:12:57):
<Laugh> John has to listen to me

Leo Laporte (00:12:58):
The whole time. It ain't, ain't exactly a booth. It's bigger than my studio, but it means we cannot communicate unless we do. So using the modern miracle,

Kim Schaffer (00:13:08):
Sometimes I flail though Telephonics <laugh> I'm trying to get your

Leo Laporte (00:13:12):
Attention. You've never been in in here. Have you, have you ever been in this room? Yes. Oh,

Kim Schaffer (00:13:17):
You've been in there since 2016. I've been in there.

Leo Laporte (00:13:20):
<Laugh> I'll never forget. I think I told you this I was at a radio station. Won't say the name and where Michael Savage does his show. Oh yeah. An engineer. There's big sign on the door under no circumstances. Should anybody enter this studio engineer says, oh, ignore that. Come on in.

Kim Schaffer (00:13:36):
Yeah. Oh yeah. No, but you know a friend of mine, sorry. Mars. The program director used to have to go in and remove banana peels from his studio every day. Cuz he would complain about that. <Laugh>

Leo Laporte (00:13:48):
Well, no banana peels. Who should I start the show with?

Kim Schaffer (00:13:51):
Hey, let's go to David and Sandpoint. Have

Leo Laporte (00:13:53):
You been coming in here and removing in banana peels from my studios?

Kim Schaffer (00:13:56):
I don't know. Are you eating bananas in there?

Leo Laporte (00:13:57):
Actually I do. Yes. Thank you Kim. Hello David from Idaho standpoint. Welcome.

Caller 1 (00:14:05):
Hi

Leo Laporte (00:14:06):
Leo Laport tech guy. Yes.

Caller 1 (00:14:08):
A couple weeks ago you had the guy that puts on coat and goes into the ocean.

Leo Laporte (00:14:14):
Yeah.

Caller 1 (00:14:15):
Yeah. And you were, you were talking to him about you, you mentioned something about the GoPros and you were a little bit concerned about 'em getting in having problems with them in the water. Yeah. So I have, I do underwater photography trout, spawning, big trout.

Leo Laporte (00:14:38):
Oh that's cool. Trout

Kim Schaffer (00:14:40):
Spa,

Leo Laporte (00:14:40):
Trout spawning. Wow.

Caller 1 (00:14:43):
And I have, I have a 7, 8, 9, 10, and a low pro max and I have hundreds of hours underwater and never have any problems with the water.

Leo Laporte (00:14:54):
So in the early days of GoPros in the early ones, you had to get a an enclosure. You remember this of course a GoPro enclosure, but the modern ones starting with what seven you said are, are are waterproof. Yeah,

Caller 1 (00:15:05):
I think the black ones. Yeah. But the problem with the enclosures, I tried those, but they can get fogged up too.

Leo Laporte (00:15:11):
Yeah. I don't like the enclosures. So I think that was a great move. So now the other issue for him, by the way, I'm showing some video. Now, if you haven't seen him, he's on YouTube. He wear he's older guy. Who's kind of made fame for himself on YouTube by by throwing himself in the ocean wearing like clothing, like a big old black trench coat. And he, he called, he said, well I want a better video. And so he's using the GoPro now, but the issue also is sound, how does this sound now you don't care about with the spawning. You probably don't. You're not capturing

Caller 1 (00:15:43):
Sound. Yeah. The sound's kind of weird and lots of times, oh, I'll slow it down. And then the sound is really weird. <Laugh> that's one of the things I wanna do. I wanna next winter when have time in the summer, I don't have time. Cause I'm out there in the woods. This is my hobby.

Leo Laporte (00:16:00):
What a great hobby.

Caller 1 (00:16:01):
My hobby like his, he has a retirement hobby. This is my retirement.

Leo Laporte (00:16:05):
Yeah. I love that. How did you come to trout? Spawning? What was it about trout? <Laugh> that caught your attention? Did you fish for trout in the past?

Caller 1 (00:16:14):
I just, yeah. I fish for trout forever,

Leo Laporte (00:16:17):
But okay. So you were used to going out to those rivers and kind of hanging out?

Caller 1 (00:16:22):
Yeah. I fly fishing stuff. Yeah. And I get pictures. Of'em spawning and they're kind of cool. Bolt tr I don't know if you know what bull trout are.

Leo Laporte (00:16:35):
No, what's a bull trout. Endang

Caller 1 (00:16:37):
Is it like a, an endangered species? Oh,

Leo Laporte (00:16:39):
Okay.

Caller 1 (00:16:39):
Up here. And the male bull trout. They just, they love to fight.

Leo Laporte (00:16:45):
Oh,

Caller 1 (00:16:46):
I mean you get these 20 pound fish fighting over a female. Oh

Leo Laporte (00:16:50):
Boy. That's I bet that's cool. Where can we see? Do you put it on YouTube? Where can we see this?

Caller 1 (00:16:54):
Well, I made a channel, but I haven't put anything on yet. Please do. That's what I wanted to ask you. Sure do. Is YouTube the best place to find?

Leo Laporte (00:17:02):
Yes. So YouTube's a kind of a little modern miracle that we take for granted before YouTube came along. If you wanted to share your trout, spouting spawning videos, you'd have to have a website you'd upload it. And then your web host would give you some bandwidth for free, but mostly you'd end up paying a lot of money because everybody who views that videos downloading it from your site and that costs you money. Then along comes YouTube around 2004, maybe a little later. And and they say, oh yeah, just put it here. We'll pay for the bandwidth. The funny thing is the founders of YouTube knew that financially, this was never gonna work. <Laugh> in fact, I remember interviewing him in the early days and I said first of all, you're getting, you're getting sued like crazy. I was, I talked to, I, I think it was Chad Hurley, Steven Chan and Chad Hurley founded it.

Leo Laporte (00:17:55):
I said, you're getting sued, like crazy NBC hated it. Cause people were putting up Saturday night, live things. They're gonna try to put you outta business. And then there's this issue of you're providing bandwidth. When a video gets big, this could cost a lot of money. He said, yeah, about a month later, Google bought it. <Laugh> Google can afford it. They have more than two and a half billion, monthly visitors. They watch a billion hours of video a day. You don't wanna pay for that. What if trout spawning becomes the next, you know, big thing. So YouTube's a great start. I would look at TikTok and Instagram too, do all three Leo LaPorte tech guy and it's free. That's the beauty of it. So once you, so you've done the hard part, which you make the video, right. You're shooting it and editing it.

Caller 1 (00:18:41):
Yeah. I need to figure out how, what to do for sound. Because if you put it on there, you want some kind of sound.

Leo Laporte (00:18:49):
Yeah. Maybe. Yeah, that's an, so with TikTok, one of the, first of all, TikTok, you can get very popular if people are fascinated about what you do very quickly, more so than YouTube. My, and I know this cuz my son who does cooking on TikTok has more than 2 million subscribers to his channel. It just took off. He's huge. And, and as a result, he can make money doing a lot of other things. So TikTok has some real opportunities and here's the beauty part of TikTok, they license music. So they will let you put any kind of music you want and they've licensed almost everything.

Caller 1 (00:19:28):
What about just sounds

Leo Laporte (00:19:31):
You could get sounds you could put sounds

Caller 1 (00:19:33):
Of the babbling book or something.

Leo Laporte (00:19:34):
Yeah. If you record those yourself separately. Sure. I would. I, so, and on YouTube, that's what you're gonna wanna do. Cuz you can't put music on YouTube. You can only, you can do it on TikTok, but not YouTube. Instagram. It'll be interesting to see. They're trying to compete with TikTok there. I suspect they'll do the same licensing.

Caller 1 (00:19:51):
Well actually I found, I was looking at it. Youtube does have their selection of music.

Leo Laporte (00:19:58):
Yeah. Yeah. So they have a more limited. Yeah. The only reason I say music is anything, I would mix it up. Maybe have music and bubbling Brook. I mean, you know, you wanna make it appealing and sound people sometimes forget with video. Sounds really important. You've tried it without any sound and it's kind of not as good as it.

Caller 1 (00:20:14):
So you can have those like at the same time.

Leo Laporte (00:20:16):
Yeah, of course. Right. Yeah, of course.

Caller 1 (00:20:19):
Yeah. Just put 'em on two different tracks.

Leo Laporte (00:20:21):
Yeah. This is something great to play with. The thing that's cool about TikTok is you can you get immediate feedback, right? So if you know, in, in the comments and the follows and the views, if what you did worked, you know, if it didn't work and that's been for my son, a huge benefit, cuz he'll try different recipes and some rest, it turns out people really like the sloppy sandwiches. So he does a lot of those. It's really valuable to get that feedback loop. You get some of that with YouTube, but I think TikTok is more immediate, but the point is you don't have to limit yourself to one, do all do TikTok, Instagram and YouTube. Why not?

Caller 1 (00:21:02):
Yeah. But it'll probably be, can I call you back when I get it?

Leo Laporte (00:21:06):
Yeah. And then we'll give you a plug. Yeah. Get a get right now. Get an account on TikTok. You knowing spout man, sprouting, Troutman <laugh> or something, you know like that.

Caller 1 (00:21:20):
Yeah. It's not just not just spawning. It's jumping too. Cause they have to jump.

Leo Laporte (00:21:25):
Oh, it's so cool. I know

Caller 1 (00:21:27):
There's spots. Yeah. I just got some, a couple months ago where I ha I have a 15 foot pole. I stick down in the water and so I'm following the fish. That's jumping. Oh, that's neat. And so when it jumps, I take the camera up above the water. You get the picture of it above the water. And then when he goes back down, I get the picture of him coming back down.

Leo Laporte (00:21:48):
Isn't that cool? So, so you're doing the hard work. You're you're doing the hard work. You're getting the the video and you're doing the editing now. I think put it on all as many places as you can. Right. Get as, get everybody to know about it. That's the

Caller 1 (00:22:04):
Key. Yeah. I mean you get, you get two hours of filming and you got five minutes of good shots,

Leo Laporte (00:22:13):
Right? Yeah. That's a lot of work, but it's worth it. Right. It's a lot of work. It's worth it.

Caller 1 (00:22:20):
Oh yeah. It's just fun. It's a hobby.

Leo Laporte (00:22:22):
I love it. Just like trench coat, ocean guy. You can absolutely. You could be trotting sprout, man. I mean spawning, Troutman. <Laugh> Hey, I gotta run, but it's a pleasure talking to you. Please call back David and tell us about it.

Caller 1 (00:22:39):
Yeah. When I get it up.

Leo Laporte (00:22:40):
Yeah. Yeah. We'll give you a big plug

Caller 1 (00:22:42):
Time. Now

Leo Laporte (00:22:44):
I'll tell you. I'll tell you who's got good support. I'll tell you who cares about you and your business? Melissa. Melissa's actually a great company for any company to use so that you don't get in that situation where you're losing customers. You can't figure out what their email address is or their or their mailing address. Melissa is a data. The data quality experts, poor data, quality costs organizations on average, 15 million a year. And this is the bad news. Bad data gets worse every year, right? It's slowly erodes away. The longer poor quality data stays in your system. The more losses you could accumulate to be successful in business, your customer information has to be accurate. And Melissa is the, is the company that helps you keep the global data quality and address management and keep on top of it. And by the way, just as we were talking about this customer service is a, a big part of, of of accurate data.

Leo Laporte (00:23:47):
If, if you know a customer calls, they're frustrated and you don't have the right email address, you don't have the right phone number or the right mailing address. That customer is gonna get even more angry. You're not solving their problem. You're showing them, you don't know what you're doing. Melissa's identity solutions can fix that problem. They have real time, identity verification, including identity ID, document verification, age authentication, global watch list screening. So you also can enhance answer. Some of your compliance needs this way. If you, if you have to do AML or KYC compliance, you can establish customer identity using Melissa. Yes, you can easily tailor it to, to your specific signup process, to your risk management requirements. So you have fast onboarding or e-commerce checkup and still protect your organization against fraud. Melissa has an API, so you can actually build it into your shopping software or your customer service software.

Leo Laporte (00:24:44):
When Melissa, you reduce risk, you ensure compliance and you keep customers happy. You want don't. You want all three protect your data from decay. They've got 2.1 billion clean validated records. You can ensure compliance in areas of any money laundering, politically exposed persons, the bank's secrecy act. You can score and target customers with detailed demographic and firmographic data. Appends you can complete customer records by adding missing items like names, addresses, phone numbers, email addresses. In fact, they've got a database of email addresses that can help you have remove 95% of bad email addresses from your database. Like, Nope, that's not it. That's not it. That's not it. That's amazing. And your data is super safe with Melissa. This is really important, really important, cuz you're trusting them right with, with your data. They undergo regular audits from independent third parties to make sure that your data is secure, that their SOC two compliant, their HIPAA compliant, their GDPR compliance again, use 'em with confidence and their global address.

Leo Laporte (00:25:50):
Verification service provides verification for 240 plus countries and territories. They can even do it in real time. At the point of entry Melissa's data matching eliminates duplicates eliminates clutter. That's nice too. So your database doesn't have extra copies of the same thing, which could save you a postage save you mailing costs, save you embarrassment. I used to get four catalogs from a company <laugh> I only, I didn't even really want one but four that's that's way over, over the top. So you could do batch address, cleaning process and entire list of all at once for accuracy and completeness, you could do identity verification, geocoding enrichment. You can convert addresses into latitude and longitude, coordinates email verification and move up to 95% of bad email addresses from your database. They've got an app by the way, on iOS and Android called lookups. You'll love this.

Leo Laporte (00:26:39):
You can enter in some data, get it verified, cleaned up ones, Z Tuesday. If, if you want it's great for everybody flexible deployment options mean you can do it on prem. Depends on your preference, your business size, your budget. You can do it. As a web service, they have a secure FTP process, SAS, even an API, make sure your customer data is up to date. Melissa's APIs are available right now in the developer portal. So you can log on, sign up and start playing in the sandbox 24 7. And in fact to get you started 1000 records cleaned free, go to melissa.com/twit. M E L I SSA melissa.com/twit. Thank you Melissa, for the job you do and for supporting us,at twit and on the podcast. In fact, you support us listeners and viewers by going to that address. So they know you saw it here, melissa.com/twit. Now back to the show, which is already in progress, I'll tell you what's hip this cat right here, man. This guy is the hippest of the hipsters. He is Scott Wilkinson home theater geek. He is,you can see his,home theater geek podcast at youtube.com/avs forum. And of course he joins us every week to talk about giant TVs surrounds giant

Scott Wilkinson (00:27:57):
Tvs. That's

Leo Laporte (00:27:58):
Right. I replaced the Visio M sub sound barn and sub and surrounds with just a simple ELAC two speaker mm-hmm <affirmative> set up, got myself a little inexpensive audio engine sub.

Scott Wilkinson (00:28:11):
That probably sounds great.

Leo Laporte (00:28:12):
Sounds great. It's a good mix. But yeah, I, when I set it up for my wife, I forgot to tell the AV amp there's no center channel. Oh, so this morning, seven 30, she sends me a video. It's great. She didn't wanna wake me up. She said me. She said for some reason <laugh> I can hear the music, but I can't hear the people what's going on. Of course I immediately recognized I had set it up wrong.

Scott Wilkinson (00:28:35):
Yep. You tell the receiver, no center channel,

Leo Laporte (00:28:37):
No center channel. You can do that manually. Or I ended up just getting the Odyssey mic, plugging it in and letting it do all of its Odyssey. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> configuration. And that worked out that very well. Yeah. Yeah. Sounds good. You don't have a center channel now, but I guess you don't always, well,

Scott Wilkinson (00:28:51):
You have what's called no, you don't. You have what's called a Phantom center.

Leo Laporte (00:28:55):
Yeah. It's simulated. It is.

Scott Wilkinson (00:28:56):
Yeah. It's yeah. If something appears in the middle, then it's gonna be the same level in both the left and right speakers. And it's gonna appear to your ears. Yeah. Like it's in the center.

Leo Laporte (00:29:06):
Yeah. Works pretty well. Yeah. Yeah. I'm happy. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> anyway. I just thought I'd pass along that little.

Scott Wilkinson (00:29:11):
Oh, that I'm so glad you solved that problem. And it's unfortunate that the M series visit bar that you got

Leo Laporte (00:29:18):
Wasn't great. It's

Scott Wilkinson (00:29:19):
Not it. Wasn't great. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:29:20):
And you know what? I should, I should know better. You aren't gonna get a sound bar surrounds and a sub for 300 bucks and it's gonna sound, Ooh,

Scott Wilkinson (00:29:27):
I'm afraid. I'm afraid.

Leo Laporte (00:29:29):
So spent twice that and now it does sound good. And she listens it's in the gym. So she listens to music a lot. And so I want it to sound good for music.

Scott Wilkinson (00:29:37):
Oh. Even better, even more important than to have, you know, like a stereo pair of speakers and a little sub. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:29:41):
Yeah. We already, I already put an AV receiver in there, so it wasn't so hard. There you go. Plus, it's a lot less complicated routing. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> we get calls all the time for people say, now, wait a minute, I have the a C HTMI going into the sub to the sound bar. But then the sound bar goes back into the TV goes, it's so complicated. In fact from our last week's caller where we said, you very cleverly said reset the TV and then changed the settings. I, I said, ah, I know what I need to do. And I reset the everything, and then went through the settings and that's always the best way to, to do it. Yep. Start from scratch. Anyway. What do you wanna talk about today? It's your case?

Scott Wilkinson (00:30:16):
Oh, I want today. I want to talk about the value electronics, TV, shootouts. Oh

Leo Laporte (00:30:22):
Yes.

Scott Wilkinson (00:30:23):
19Th annual value electronics, TV shootout, which happened last weekend. And it was great because there were, as you know, this is a thing put on by value electronics, a retailer in Scarsdale, New York, I believe. And they set up all the best TVs in a row. And they feed them all the same content. They calibrate them all very carefully. So they're really being their best. They're showing what, what they can do. And they feed 'em all the same material. They even have a broadcast monitor there at the same time for reference. This is what the broadcast content creators see when they create their content. So let's see how these TVs compare to that. And so this year they had five and they even since last year, they now do a 4k shootout and an eight K shootout. And so this year they had five TVs in the 4k shootout, including the two quantum dot ODS QD OS that have just come out. This is the first new TV technology in a very long time.

Leo Laporte (00:31:36):
This is something we've wanted for a while is to compare ODS, which we both agree are the best quality picture with these new quantum dot O 

Scott Wilkinson (00:31:45):
Yep. Q led quantum dot OS. Yeah. Q, C, D O led is what,

Leo Laporte (00:31:49):
What, so it's still an O led screen, but it's using a new technology for

Scott Wilkinson (00:31:54):
The, for, for the color pixel color instead of a color filter, right? You have a blue O led material in the back light, right. That, that shines into these quantum dots and the quantum dots convert that blue light into red or

Leo Laporte (00:32:06):
Green. So I'm very curious to see if this is an improvement. You said it was gonna be, in fact, I remember before CES, you said, I can't tell you, but there's gonna be something

Scott Wilkinson (00:32:15):
That's right.

Leo Laporte (00:32:15):
That's right. It's gonna be transformative.

Scott Wilkinson (00:32:17):
Yep.

Leo Laporte (00:32:18):
Now we should say also this is fairly subjective also, first of all, in choosing which TV's to look at, and then you have experts eyeballing it. But I mean that's and I mean have

Scott Wilkinson (00:32:27):
Serious experts. Yeah. I mean, we're talking Phil Holland, who's a director cinematographer. We have David Medina. Who's the manager of production technology operations at Warner brothers discovery. Wow. I mean, these are serious people. And, and an exec executive from criterion and we have calibrators like David McKenzie, Jason dust. And so they calibrate all these TVs. They put 'em in a dark environment and then they invite all these judges in and they give them a scorecard with various criteria and they're gonna evaluate black level and shadow detail and color accuracy and motion motion, detail, that sort of thing. And they look at them with lights on, they look at them with lights off and they look at them with HDR, high dynamic range content.

Leo Laporte (00:33:18):
And as we mentioned last week, they also compared it to a very expensive studio reference monitoring. Correct. So they know what it's supposed to look like.

Scott Wilkinson (00:33:26):
Correct. Exactly. Right. Yeah. And so they looked, they, they had the Samsung QD O led. They had the Sony QD O led. They had the LG regular O led and a couple of mini L led D L CDs, one from Sony and one from Samsung now, which do you suppose won the 4k

Leo Laporte (00:33:45):
Hmm.

Scott Wilkinson (00:33:46):
Shootout.

Leo Laporte (00:33:47):
Hmm. Well, I'm very curious. Did the QO LEDs win?

Scott Wilkinson (00:33:51):
It? Did the Sony, the Sony Q led in fact, beat everybody else out

Leo Laporte (00:33:58):
Including the other QO lens,

Scott Wilkinson (00:34:00):
Correct?

Leo Laporte (00:34:01):
Hmm,

Scott Wilkinson (00:34:01):
Correct. Now the Sony, the retail price for the Sony is a thousand dollars more than the Samsung.

Leo Laporte (00:34:09):
And so that's the question, is it a thousand dollars better? And these guys may say, oh yeah, this has been, you know, better, but a little bit better. You may not care right. For a thousand bucks. Well,

Scott Wilkinson (00:34:19):
You, you might not, you might not, but I'll tell you this. Justin Jason rather, I talked to him after the thing. And he said, usually looking at a, a broadcast monitor and a, and one of these TVs, I can see the difference in like a few seconds. Yeah. He said it took, it took me five minutes to detect any difference between the broadcast model. Oh wow. And the Sony Kool

Leo Laporte (00:34:43):
Led. So it's very, very, very close to perfect. In

Scott Wilkinson (00:34:45):
Other words, it's very close to ex to exa, oh man, I want one bad.

Leo Laporte (00:34:50):
<Laugh> wow. Now Samsung doesn't offer Doby vision. Right? They have there, correct. That's problematic. Isn't it?

Scott Wilkinson (00:35:00):
I think it's problematic. That's one reason I would spend the extra thousand bucks. In fact, I am going to, I I'm gonna buy one of these SOS because we have a new, we just got a new house. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:35:10):
This is the time.

Scott Wilkinson (00:35:12):
And I'm gonna outfit a new viewing area. And I've had a Sony led for a long time. I have the first generation.

Leo Laporte (00:35:18):
Now don't be fool. This is not cued. This is Q D O led. Q led is an L C D technology. And that's not what you want. You want

Scott Wilkinson (00:35:27):
Q that's not what this

Leo Laporte (00:35:28):
Is. Let's say it again. Q D O L E D. Oh boy. Is this correct?

Scott Wilkinson (00:35:32):
Correct. All it's the Sony, a 95 K is the model number. And they were looking at 65 inches on all

Leo Laporte (00:35:40):
Of it. $4,000 for the 65, ER

Scott Wilkinson (00:35:44):
Yep.

Leo Laporte (00:35:45):
55, ER is only, I'm two, that's a thousand bucks. Less 3000. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> so maybe you don't. Well, but you want,

Scott Wilkinson (00:35:52):
If you want, if you wanna, if you want get a 55, I'm gonna get to 65. Yeah. Now the Samsung S 95, B Q D O led. Yes. Is the other one

Leo Laporte (00:36:02):
Is.

Scott Wilkinson (00:36:03):
And, and that measured very, that scored very

Leo Laporte (00:36:06):
Well, but no Doby vision, which

Scott Wilkinson (00:36:08):
Is, but no

Leo Laporte (00:36:09):
Doby vision, the technology you probably want.

Scott Wilkinson (00:36:11):
I definitely do.

Leo Laporte (00:36:11):
There are other HD. They do HDR 10, right. Or HDR.

Scott Wilkinson (00:36:15):
They do HDR 10 and Samsung does HDR 10 plus, which is closer to Doby vision. But Doby vision is much more ubiquitous.

Leo Laporte (00:36:22):
You want all three was what you want.

Scott Wilkinson (00:36:24):
Yeah, exactly.

Leo Laporte (00:36:25):
Exactly. And, and, and the Sony does all three.

Scott Wilkinson (00:36:27):
I'm not sure the Sony does HDR 10 plus. I'm not sure. I'd have to do, I'd have to do a little

Leo Laporte (00:36:32):
Research on that. Oh it, anyway, it does do the Adobe vision. So

Scott Wilkinson (00:36:35):
Yes, it does. Absolutely. Yeah. Now, before we run out of time, the eight K was three, three TVs and the LGO led, won that one.

Leo Laporte (00:36:45):
Oh, interesting. But there is no

Scott Wilkinson (00:36:47):
QD there, no studio led

Leo Laporte (00:36:48):
In eight K

Scott Wilkinson (00:36:49):
At eight K.

Leo Laporte (00:36:50):
Right. Scott Wilkinson home theater geek. You bring in the, bringing the dets. Thank you. <Laugh> what's funny is according to STO scroll and I think he's correct. Samsung makes all the panels, right?

Scott Wilkinson (00:37:05):
That's correct. Samsung makes the QD O led panels. Isn't

Leo Laporte (00:37:09):
That funny

Scott Wilkinson (00:37:10):
Now, but it it's Sam see like LG, Samsung has two divisions. One is the Samsung electronics, which makes the consumer products that people buy. Right. The other is Samsung display. LG has the same thing. They have LG electronics and LG display, right. And the LG display or the Samsung display is the company that makes the raw panels and they'll sell them to whoever wants to buy 'em. And so Samsung display makes the panel that goes in the Samsung QD, Oli, and also in the Sony QD, Oli, what distinguishes them? It's the processing. It's the fact that the Sony has supports Doby vision and Samsung has long decided we're not gonna pay Doby. Yeah. The licensing fee for Adobe vision. And instead, we're gonna implement this HDR 10 plus which is fine, but Adobe vision, there's so much more Adobe vision content that I want a TV that'll decode it and, and deal with it. Yeah. So it is worth, that's worth the extra money to me.

Leo Laporte (00:38:18):
Oh, well, after you buy this, I'm gonna, I want to get your your thoughts. Oh yeah. I'm not gonna buy it till you do. <Laugh> <laugh> once you buy it. Right. I'll be very curious

Scott Wilkinson (00:38:30):
Right now. I meant, I meant to mention I didn't on the air that next Tuesday's podcast will be all about the shootout.

Leo Laporte (00:38:39):
Okay.

Scott Wilkinson (00:38:39):
I'm gonna have, I'm gonna have Robert zone on he's the owner of value electronics and the founder of the shootout. I'm gonna have Jason dust from Meridia, who is one of the calibrators and David McKenzie, who was one of the judges, he's a compression who works on creating Blueray and ultra HD Blueray so they've got golden eyes, for sure. Yeah. And so we're gonna be, we're gonna spend an hour talking about the, the event and how it was, how it was set up and what happened. So it's, it's gonna be a really interesting show. I think. So

Leo Laporte (00:39:15):
I got a question for you, but

Scott Wilkinson (00:39:17):
Sure.

Leo Laporte (00:39:17):
Can I use the TV as a center channel

Scott Wilkinson (00:39:22):
In some cases?

Leo Laporte (00:39:23):
Yes. That would be kind of cool.

Scott Wilkinson (00:39:25):
It would be very cool at yes and no. Sure. It would be cool. But if the TV's speakers audio system is really crappy.

Leo Laporte (00:39:36):
Oh, well then it wouldn't be cool bar,

Scott Wilkinson (00:39:37):
Then it's not so cool.

Leo Laporte (00:39:38):
That would not be cool. <Laugh> right. <Laugh>

Scott Wilkinson (00:39:41):
Right. Plus the fact that some TVs have that capability, that they will let you in the menu specify that their sound system is gonna be the center channel.

Leo Laporte (00:39:51):
Yeah. Mine, I don't think does that's an old Panasonic VRS. So,

Scott Wilkinson (00:39:54):
But some don't.

Leo Laporte (00:39:55):
Yeah. It's pretty old. Exactly.

Scott Wilkinson (00:39:57):
Yeah, exactly. Now the Sony Sony TVs, and some LGS too, have developed a system whereby the entire screen.

Leo Laporte (00:40:07):
Ooh.

Scott Wilkinson (00:40:07):
Is a

Leo Laporte (00:40:08):
Speaker. Right. I remember you talking about that. This one doesn't do that. Doesn't it?

Scott Wilkinson (00:40:12):
I, I'm not sure. I don't my first generation Sony Ole does.

Leo Laporte (00:40:18):
Wow.

Scott Wilkinson (00:40:19):
Really? Really? Yeah. And it's actually for TV sound. It's pretty damn

Leo Laporte (00:40:26):
Good. Well, that's interesting.

Scott Wilkinson (00:40:27):
Yeah,

Leo Laporte (00:40:28):
Yeah, yeah. This new one does allow you to use it has a center channel. 

Scott Wilkinson (00:40:32):
It has a center channel. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. There you go. Now, if it does that same screen speaker thing, which I have to look and see, maybe if you have the specs right there, you might be able

Leo Laporte (00:40:44):
To see that I'm looking. And I don't see that I was trying to find the do, which HDRs it supports they don't. Ah,

Scott Wilkinson (00:40:49):
Right. Doesn't do

Leo Laporte (00:40:50):
HD 10 plus. Yeah. I'm trying to find that, but audio doesn't say how the speaker works center speaker in. Yeah. Hmm.

Scott Wilkinson (00:41:03):
I'll I'll look

Leo Laporte (00:41:03):
I'll well, we're gonna find out when you get one. All right. You bet. Top of the hour,

Scott Wilkinson (00:41:07):
You betcha

Leo Laporte (00:41:09):
Scooter X says from the Sony spec page for the a 95 monitor the winner of the value shootout, HDR, 10 HLG and Doby vision are supported, not HGR 10 plus, but that's fine. So I, Scott Wilkinson as you just heard, told us the winners, the results of the value shootout and value electronics shootout, and QD O L E D is a winner win a winner chicken dinner. I will, of course, you know, many do this for some reason, this one's gets lot, a lot of attention, I think because instead of saying, well, this one's good, this one's pretty good. This one might be a little better. They say, this is the winner. And people love that. You love that. Right? Which tell me the one don't gimme eye. This that tell me the one to buy. It sounds like we know the Sony a 95 K.

Leo Laporte (00:42:06):
And again, it's not Q O led or Q Q led, rather it's Q D O L E D is an OED screen with a QD technology. Very, very interesting. And Scott reminded me that he's gonna be doing on his podcast this week. He's gonna have all the results. If you really care about this stuff, you want to listen to his podcast at youtube.com/avs forum, because this week's podcast, won't be all about the value electronics shootout. Back to the phones. We go eighty eight, eighty eight, ask Leo Randolph next on the line from Greenville, South Carolina. Hello Randolph.

Caller 2 (00:42:47):
Hi. How are you?

Leo Laporte (00:42:48):
I'm great. How are you?

Caller 2 (00:42:50):
Good. Ashley used to listen watch you on tech TV. When I was a network manager. Oh, come home from working on computers all day, and then watch your show on.

Leo Laporte (00:42:59):
I always wondered if people who in the bus work in the business, why you would wanna watch more <laugh> when you get home. No,

Caller 2 (00:43:05):
<Laugh> we love it. I was a Microsoft certified systems engineer. I'd come home and watch you guys religiously.

Leo Laporte (00:43:11):
Nice. Well, thank you. I really appreciate that. That that's. That's great. That was a lot of fun. Those were the days I must say, what can I do for you today?

Caller 2 (00:43:20):
So I have a MacBook air that I got 11 years ago, a actually this month, when before I got married and I love because the, the key travel is very large. So it's like typing on an old IBM typewriter. Yeah. And now that they need to get a new computer, cuz this is basically on its last legs. It seems like every laptop by try even the new math book airs, they don't have any key travel. Yeah. And kind of freaks me out. I'm used to, you know, having my fingers, you know, actually move up and down.

Leo Laporte (00:43:51):
So Apple's gone, gone through a bad period with its keyboards at, you got the 2011 MacBook air in 2015, they abandoned those nice high travel. Cuz remember they're trying to make it a very, very thin high travel keyboard for something they called the butterfly key and they said, oh, everybody's gonna love the butterfly keyboard. This thing's greatest thing. People hated, it broke. It would, it was unrepairable. It was a, it was a nightmare, but apple, you know, they're they were very dogmatic. They stuck with it for years. They finally stopped shipping butterfly keyboards with the latest MacBooks and MacBook HES. Thank goodness. But yeah, like you, you and many others have noted. They're not still not quite as good as the old 2015 pre 2015 keyboards. I would submit if you still wanna use Mac, you should still go with that because the apple, Silicon processors are so remarkably better than the Intel processors. In terms of battery life, fan power usage performance is exceptional. I mean, yes, you could get a faster Intel processor, but the fans would sound like a jet taken off and it would overheat in your lap and the battery would die in a couple of hours. So I think that that there's a real, you know, how important is the keyboard to you? If you really want a good keyboard, there are still some laptops that make good keyboards, but they're all windows, Intel laptops.

Caller 2 (00:45:15):
No, that's fine. Getting a windows laptop. I, I mean, I'm an MCSE so I

Leo Laporte (00:45:20):
Kind of, oh, well you kind of need windows, don't you? Yeah. So I think, I think the, you should take a look at the Lenovo think pads. I think they're very good. I'm not, you know, again this is a very personal thing and so I can't judge, if it would be okay for you, Lenovo's famous for their geeky boards, some of their newer ones, like the ultra thin X one carbons have pretty short travel. A lot of times in the, in the specs for it, you can see what the travel key travel is, millimeter or more. You want more than a millimeter or more even, probably more even than one and a half millimeters. So you can look in the specs and narrow it down, but the think pad keyboards are famous. And if you get, you know, one of the bigger think pads, I think you're gonna get that those very nice keyboards I have in front of me at Dell XPS. And I think this is a very nice keyboard, but maybe the travel isn't, I, I can't speak for you. It may not be what you want. I wish you were easier to go try these, you know before you buy

Caller 2 (00:46:22):
Yeah, that's the problem you wa you can't really try 'em anywhere.

Leo Laporte (00:46:25):
Yeah. everybody's moving towards these short travel keyboards because they're yeah, it just, it saves space. So I just, I don't know, offhand, let me see if anybody has a, let me see if anybody has a table of keyboard travel distance, right? The standard distance of a full travel keyboard is four millimeters. Some apple keyboards are down to one millimeter and I'm guess so the that's the, I guess what you need to figure out is, well, what do I need? What, what do I, you know, how much travel do I need? A low travel would be anything, probably two and a half millimeters or less. So maybe you need three or four. I don't know. And maybe for you, the best thing to do would be by an external keyboard. You know,

Caller 2 (00:47:22):
I, I used to do that. Yeah. Also, one other thing you mentioned a couple weeks ago about Macintosh computers on college networks that they yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:47:31):
Remember those days you probably dealt with that, didn't you?

Caller 2 (00:47:34):
Yes. And I know what the problem was.

Leo Laporte (00:47:36):
What was it?

Caller 2 (00:47:37):
The prob the problem? It was a little bit apple. It was with what was doing the DHCP services.

Leo Laporte (00:47:43):
Right. They wouldn't release the lease fast enough for something. Right. They'd they'd grab him

Caller 2 (00:47:47):
Only, only if you used Microsoft servers. Oh,

Leo Laporte (00:47:51):
If

Caller 2 (00:47:52):
You used that, if the DHCP was done through a Nova server, no problem. Or through a or through a Cisco, a Cisco box, no problem. Whatsoever interest. If it, it was the Microsoft box, it wouldn't, they wouldn't get back. The IP addresses. It didn't matter what the lease was set for. And I worked in corporations where we'd have maybe 5,000 computers and 3000 of them would be Macintosh's. And I said, you don't use Microsoft servers. It's not

Leo Laporte (00:48:16):
Gonna work. They were banned apple laptops for, for some time or banned from some college campuses. Because if you have enough students with them, they're gonna eat up all your internet addresses <laugh> you won't have anymore <laugh>

Caller 2 (00:48:27):
They wouldn't give them back. Even if the lease was seven days, they wouldn't give them back.

Leo Laporte (00:48:30):
Really. So they were ignoring the lease time. Interesting

Caller 2 (00:48:34):
Ignored the lease time, but here, so, and the mobile servers would say, okay, that leases hours were taking it back. Yeah. Yeah. And they would chop it from their end. Whereas the Microsoft servers would it's too polite trust.

Leo Laporte (00:48:45):
It was too polite

Caller 2 (00:48:46):
Them to give it back. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:48:48):
Yes. You can't be polite when it comes to that. You gotta <laugh>. Hey, I'm glad you

Caller 2 (00:48:52):
Had a reputation for being polite.

Leo Laporte (00:48:54):
I had this dim memory of it and I, and I, I kind of knew it was an issue of not releasing those IP addresses, but I didn't know the details. So thank you for filling me in very interesting. And

Caller 2 (00:49:04):
Thank you for the info, the info on the laptop.

Leo Laporte (00:49:07):
They ended up fixing think they ended up fixing the apple computers so that they would respect the least times. I think that was the final fix for that. Good. And I hope, and you know, if you find one that you really like the keyboard, would you let me know what the best I'm? I think the reputation think pads have for best keyboard is well well earned, but not all of them anymore, because they're all starting to, you know, do what apple does, glue stuff in and make it thin. But I think the old, like P series think pads, the, you know, those are, those are gonna be still built like tanks with long key travel. I think, look on the specs. You'll at least be able to find out that way.

Caller 2 (00:49:45):
Okay.

Leo Laporte (00:49:46):
Info, Hey, appreciate the call. And we have, we'll put this in the show notes, thanks to Ray thought, Ray toss, Raymond J toss in our chat room, a 2018 article from the guardian. Are there any laptops with decent keyboards? Now this is a few years ago, but this was somebody complaining about the MacBook. And he does in fact say some of the older think pads. The other thing that was good about the think pads is and I think this is not true as much anymore either is you could replace parts. So, you know, with the butterfly keyboard with apple, you had to take, you basically had to buy a new computer to fix the keyboard with the think pads. You could all take out the track pad, take out the keyboard, modify, do all sorts of things. Leo Laporte the tech guy more calls right after this laptops are not very echo Airmic to begin with. Yeah. That's the problem. That's what your problem is right there. You know? Not sure boy. All right, Mr. Scott Wil soon. <Laugh> I shall, I shall achieve confirmation while you good before

Scott Wilkinson (00:50:58):
You, before you go. I have a quick question for you. Yes, sir. My, my wife's computer is starting to get a little wonky and we're thinking about buying a new one. She's a Mac person. We both are. And I wanted to maybe get a Mac mini. She doesn't need a lot and use the use the iMac as a monitor, but I'm not sure that's possible

Leo Laporte (00:51:19):
Some IMAX

Scott Wilkinson (00:51:19):
2015.

Leo Laporte (00:51:21):
So you could find out very quickly if it has what's called target monitor mode. I don't think the 20 fifteens it doesn't. Yeah.

Scott Wilkinson (00:51:28):
So it only that stopped in 2014.

Leo Laporte (00:51:31):
Exactly. New apple. Yeah. And, and then, yeah, and this is why I don't like IMAX and I think you're right to go for a Mac mini separates are the way to go because you can upgrade either or yeah. And you're not stuck. Now you have this beautiful Macintosh for the monitor. You just can't use. Yeah. Nothing wrong with the monitor. It's a very, very good monitor.

Scott Wilkinson (00:51:50):
Yeah. And I would like to use it. Yeah, but I'm gonna, I can't, I don't think it's possible. I was thinking maybe airplay

Scott Wilkinson (00:52:01):
From the Mac mini to the, to the iMac. I'm not sure if that would work though.

Leo Laporte (00:52:06):
I don't think you you can airplay into a Mac. That's a good question. Hello, chat room. Can you airplay into yeah, they don't. Yeah. So target display mode, but his does not support it. Could you airplay into a iMac? I think you're better off. I mean, honestly, monitors, get it Dell, get a good Dell. You know, this is, that's the setup I have here. This is the Mac mini M one Mac mini, and this is a $300 32 inch Samsung it's curved, which is unfortunate, but it's a great, and so I wouldn't get, I didn't know, it was curved and didn't read the specs carefully, but the price was right and it's a great HD monitor. So, you know, that's

Scott Wilkinson (00:52:47):
What I probably, probably what I will do.

Leo Laporte (00:52:50):
Oh, you can take your old TV.

Scott Wilkinson (00:52:53):
<Laugh> 65 inch, 21 inches too big for Joanna shoes. Oh,

Leo Laporte (00:52:57):
Come on. Just sit farther from it. Yeah. I love my 55 inch. It takes a while to get used to it. Once you get used to it though, you can't go back. Oh

Scott Wilkinson (00:53:05):
Man. Oh,

Leo Laporte (00:53:05):
It's nice. Oh, it's

Scott Wilkinson (00:53:06):
Nice. All we'll go get your coffee. Yeah. Thank you, sir. Thanks for yeah. Yeah, of course. No problem, Mike man, there's an app for that. I wonder. Is there really an app on the iMac that would make it turn that would turn it into a monitor? Itech asks is, is 4k future proof. Now that eight K has hit the market? Well, it depends on what you mean by future proof. I mean, ultimately probably not, but I honestly, eight K is on the market now, but it ain't cheap. It requires really a very big screen. For example, the three eight K TVs that were in the shootout this last weekend are all 88 inches or 88 in the case of the LGO lead and the cost of the Sony 85 Z nine K is $10,000. The Samsung QN 900 B is 8,500 bucks. And the LG 88 inch Z two O lid is $25,000.

Scott Wilkinson (00:54:20):
So it's gonna be quite a while, I think until eight K migrates into more affordable products. And even when it does eight K in a 65 inch TV makes no sense at all. It really doesn't because especially at a normal seating distance. Now, if you're two feet away, sure. Eight K in a 65 inch would be great, but you're not sitting two feet away from any TV. You're sitting eight to 10 feet away. And at which 0.8 K in a 65 inch TV, you cannot see the difference. The you now, there are those who will argue. And I do understand this, that eight K does give you some advantage, even if you can't see the difference in resolution, in detail, you, you, the some diagonal lines and the, and a few things will look slightly better. And then there's the issue of when are we gonna get native eight K content in the shootout?

Scott Wilkinson (00:55:33):
They, they evaluated the eight K TVs in two ways. They looked at native eight K content, which had to come from a computer, cuz there's no other way to get eight K content. I guess there is a little content on YouTube, but again, that's a computer, but more importantly, they looked at 4k content that the TV then upscaled to eight K. So I don't think 4k is going away anytime soon to tell you the truth. I think 4k is overkill on a 65 inch screen, but that's what you get these days. There's no getting around it. That's all they make. You can get 10 80 P TVs, but at the very low end of each manufacturer's lineup, virtually everything that I would wanna buy, even in the midrange and up is gonna be 4k. It's also gonna have smart TV functionality. You it's very rare to find a TV without a, some sort of smart TV platform. So I don't think 4k is going away anytime soon, anytime soon at all.

Scott Wilkinson (00:56:45):
Oh, mic a Sergeant. Ah, thank you, Micah. There's no clean way to do it. To, to get my iMac, to be a monitor. If the Mac mini is headless, it loses some airplay options. Oh man, you could set up screen sharing from the Mac mini and use the Mac you have with it, but then you're not getting the full power of the Mac mini since performance will be used in part to facilitate the screen sharing. Good point. Thank you, Micah. I really appreciate that. I'm sad to say that I've damn. I wish apple hadn't taken away. Target display mode. K woods. Yeah. Too rich for my blood too. Those, those eight K TVs. That's that's a, a bit much for me. 

Scott Wilkinson (00:57:34):
Tokyo, Tony ask wouldn't display as speaker, which is what the Sony does. Some LGS as well. Cause a lot of vibration on the screen. Yes. The screen vibrates, but the frequencies are high enough that you can't see it. It's invisible and this kind of technology doesn't use the screen for low frequencies. In fact, the Sony, I'm pretty sure all TVs that do this, have a separate sub woofer sub woofer in quotes because of course it's a TV, so it's not a real subwoofer, but it, it has a different speaker to reproduce the low frequencies. If you were to have the screen, do that reproduce the low frequencies, then yes, you would see that. And it would be really annoying. So they don't do it on the mids and highs on the, on the screen. You, you never see it. You, you simply can't see it.

Scott Wilkinson (00:58:29):
Let's see. Adrian Terry says, is there any practical use for eight K medical imaging? That's a big, a big application for eight K. Because obviously when you're looking at x-rays or cat scans or anything like that, if you can capture the con, if you can capture the image in eight K and display it in eight K, you've got a lot more information. The doctor can see it better. That's a really important application, military applications, much as I hate military applications. Eight Ks is good for that too. But for TVs for consumers, I honestly don't see it.

Leo Laporte (00:59:08):
Have you do you have Disney plus?

Scott Wilkinson (00:59:11):
I do.

Leo Laporte (00:59:12):
Oh, you gotta watch. You will love the industrial light and magic documentary. It's called light and magic. Oh, really? Highly recommended. Oh, one of the things that's really interesting about it is it starts with star wars course. So it starts with the founding of industrial light and magic and everything in star wars is practical effects. You know, it's, it's puppets, it's models, it's models and stop motion. Yeah. Yeah. And it covers the transition from that to digital. And I hadn't really thought about it, but all of those model makers, all of those guys, you know, suddenly they've been, they spent their life doing this stuff. Yeah. And then all of a sudden with episode one, it's all digital. Yeah. In fact, it started with Jurassic park they've are they outta work then the model makers they kind of are, did they transition? They transitioned for instance lipid, the guy who did was famous for a stop motion knew had dinosaurs moved. So he ended up directing the, the digital artists who were doing the stop motion. He said, oh, this is how it's got. And so it was, but it's really worth watch six episodes really worth watching. Oh, okay. Good 4k HDR. Very good. Yeah. Excellent. Thank you, Scott. My pleasure. See you next week. Next week,

Leo Laporte (01:00:34):
Eighty eight eighty eight. Ask Leo the phone number. If you wanna talk high tech with Leo Laporte I am your tech guy. I was talking with Scott in between the breaks about a new show on Disney plus fascinating show. So we talk on this show, we talk a lot about the transition to digital. I mean, everything really that has happened over the last 15 to 20 years really started with the widespread adoption of the internet, I think, mid nineties. So you could say the last 25, 27 years has been about the transition from traditional forms of doing things like newspapers, like books cassettes to digital forms and how that's really been disruptive in the long run. I think good in the most part for, for consumers and for content creators, but there's some negatives it's been certainly disruptive. In fact, that's the, the word that technology journalists use to describe this it's it's disruption.

Leo Laporte (01:01:43):
And I was telling Scott about a documentary that's on Disney plus right now that, that it epitomizes this it's called light and magic. It's the story of industrial light and magic George Lucas in the early days, very earliest days when he was making the first star wars was, was irritated by the fact that they had to have film <laugh> and they had to have, you know, edit film by cutting it and taping it back together again. And he said, we spent a lot of time, a huge amount of time going through bins of, of stuff. We'd cut out to be, get it back so we could put it back in. It was very annoying and he had, and it's really, I think now admittedly, this documentary is produced by Lucas film directed by Larry Caston, who is one of the off he wrote the screenplay for several star wars.

Leo Laporte (01:02:27):
I mean, there's very much a, you know, a, a George Lucas joint production. So it's very much to honor George, but I think deservedly. So he had this vision, he said, I wanna do it all digitally. Star wars was amazing for its time, 1977. You remember the very first shot, which is really the shot that establishes. It takes your breath away in star wars. You're watching you see a planet, the surface of a planet and this moon rising behind it. And then you see a ship firing just as we've seen before. And you know, many space operas firing lasers, it's being chased, right? This little ship goes off on the screen. And then <laugh> you remember this, the Imperial destroyer, which comes into view and takes over the whole screen and you get, you are awe struck by the scale of it, of really clever trick because of course the <laugh> the little rebel ship is the size of a pack of cigarettes <laugh> and the destroyer you know, it's maybe a few feet, six feet, but because of the way it's shot because of your expectation, the filmmakers brilliantly tricked you and you go, you have this awe struck moment where you go.

Leo Laporte (01:03:44):
That thing is huge. Everything in that in the first three star wars movies was, were, were what they call practical effects, puppets motion stop motion, animation models shot. And one of the things, one of the innovations industrial light and magic did was having the camera move, not the model, move the camera, moved around the model. Brilliant. They invent all of this stuff to make it work. And we're brilliant at it. One academy awards made perhaps the most successful movie franchise in history. I mean, they brilliant, but along comes, you know, but George says, no, no, I it's gotta be digital. And a couple of computer guys came along and they started hiring more and more of 'em George poured, millions of dollars into something that in, you know, 19 78, 79, 80 was really very speculative. Computers were not very powerful. Couldn't really do these graphics, but he poured money into it.

Leo Laporte (01:04:43):
He believed, and eventually they came up with something called the edit droid, which was a computer that could edit VI a film instead of they came up with digital cameras and they came up with digital effects, computer graphics, CGI, and it, and almost overnight transformed the industry. The first movie that really, you know, the, there were a couple of movies. You, you probably remember Terminator two with a silver Terminator robot, the liquid metal Terminator robot, or the abyss James Cameron's movie with the, the watery pod, very early computer graphics. But it was at the time of the making of Jurassic park, the industrial light and magic. They Stan Winston, the great Mo model makers already building a life size, Terra, SOS, Rex, it almost finished tip it, their their famous stop motion guy was building little models and, and, and testing movement of Tyrana sources.

Leo Laporte (01:05:46):
And the long come the computer guys is 1993 long come. The computer guys say we've been staying late at night in the off hours. And we've created a animated. T-Rex what, and and we're gonna show you a little film <laugh> of this. T-Rex running across a field and everybody, their jaws dropped. They said, you can do that in a computer. And all of a sudden, Harry Winston stops building the model and Tippit stops making his little puppets and and the entire industry <laugh> changes. Phil Tippi is a legendary stop motion guy. The entire industry changes and overnight all the people at ILM who have been making models and puppets and outta work computers have taken over. Now, the good, the really cool thing is Phil Tippit kept his job because he was the guy who did the little stop motion, you know, philosopher, Raptors and stuff in order to do those stop motions.

Leo Laporte (01:06:53):
He had to really understand how they moved. So he was, he kept his job. He told the computer guys, okay, now this is how it's gotta move <laugh>. So he became an expert in computerized character animation what a story, I really six episodes an hour long, but from the point of view of disruption, of how technology changes things in so many ways, and we we're pretty well aware of how, you know, slowly the frog is being boiled. You know, suddenly you don't go into the bank anymore. You using an ATM, all of a sudden your, your phone in your pocket. Isn't really so much a phone as it is a computer. You're always connected to the internet. Well, well aware of how all these changes have, you know, gradually crept up on us. But boy, I, I hadn't really thought about it in the motion pictures. I'm sure Scott Wilkinson does. And a lot of you, but boy, what a transformation and almost overnight in the, in the mid nineties, boom computer graphics. Whew, 88, 88 ask Leo, that's the phone number? Let's get a call in here before we take a break. Kevin is on the line from Las Vegas. Hello, Kevin.

Caller 3 (01:08:01):
Hi Leo. Yes. From the calling from the monsoon season of Las

Leo Laporte (01:08:05):
Vegas, is it pouring rain in Vegas?

Caller 3 (01:08:07):
Well, not right now, but it has been, and it will be this

Leo Laporte (01:08:11):
Week. Wow. You've got all these tunnels under the city that are for the water for the runoff and that just, they just fly.

Caller 3 (01:08:21):
Yeah. And it's not what they say. It doesn't really help us because they say we get most of it from the Colorado river. Oh. And yeah. And so lake Mead doesn't necessarily gain from it, but

Leo Laporte (01:08:33):
That's too bad. Yeah. That's too bad. Cause Mead needs it. Mars needs women. Mead needs water. So what can I do for you, Kevin?

Caller 3 (01:08:44):
Well, well, I'm trying to hook up my iPad probes to third generation, to my Dell new Dell monitored. I just got from my Mac studio, which is great by the way, except for the little joystick control is not really the best, but other than that, the hookup, I have it hooked from USBC. Dr.

Leo Laporte (01:09:06):
Do, do you have an adapter?

Caller 3 (01:09:08):
Yeah, I have what I have is a HDM I to USBC to the iPad pro. Okay. And I hook to the Dell monitor. I also have two other monitors. I, I have hooked to it. The Dell is the main, and then I have extended for a Samsung monitor and an RCA TV.

Leo Laporte (01:09:30):
The good news by the way is as soon as iOS 16 comes out, this is gonna get a lot easier.

Caller 3 (01:09:37):
Oh, okay. That's what I was hoping.

Leo Laporte (01:09:38):
Yeah. This is one of the features of iOS. 16 is you can run a big monitor off your iPad. So that's gonna be huge.

Caller 3 (01:09:46):
Yeah. I'm, I'm getting the video through the, the Dell, but not the audio.

Leo Laporte (01:09:52):
Interesting. So H D M I a does carry audio. Yeah. You'd ne it may be that you have an adapter that isn't passing the audio. That's only passing the video.

Caller 3 (01:10:04):
Yeah. Well, it's a direct cable. It's it's not an adapter.

Leo Laporte (01:10:10):
Well, it is, it is. It is though. I mean, it has to kind of be so it's gonna take the type, you have a iPad pro with a C connector. Is that right? Right. Which model you have the latest model iPad pro. And is it an M one? Ipad pro third.

Caller 3 (01:10:24):
It's a third

Leo Laporte (01:10:25):
Generation. Third generation. Okay. Yeah. And so that type C is actually not Thunderbolt on that one. It's USB.

Caller 3 (01:10:32):
Right.

Leo Laporte (01:10:32):
And then on the other end, you have an H DM I port, is that right?

Caller 3 (01:10:37):
Right. To the

Leo Laporte (01:10:38):
Dell, to the, and then the H then an H D I cable comes from the adapter into the Dell. Right. Okay. I would just say check the adapter to make sure that it passes audio. I think they don't all, and it may be a, because remember you're not using Thunderbolt on the iPad you're using USB. It may be, there's not enough bandwidth to pass both video and audio at the same time. I'm just looking who's whose adapter are you using?

Caller 3 (01:11:09):
Oh, I'm trying to remember who I got

Leo Laporte (01:11:11):
Check the, you know, look at, at the specs for the adapter you bought. I'm looking at one from right now, from CDW. It's us BBC to H D M I Multiport adapter. And it does only se deliver video. It doesn't deliver audio. It doesn't say audio in its spec. Oh. So I

Caller 3 (01:11:31):
Where's here. Here's the weird thing. I hooked it up to the RCA. H C I ports. Yeah. So let me try it on that. And I went into airplane. I had to go an airplane and change it to Mac studio and from the connector. But what happens is it goes, the video goes to the Dell monitor and I get audio through my secrets. <Laugh> now isn't that bizarre? <Laugh>

Leo Laporte (01:12:01):
Okay. Does it okay. Now I don't know. So, so the <laugh> yeah, so, so that sounds like the adapter is passing audio, but the Dell is not, the Dell is not receiving or seeing it somehow.

Caller 3 (01:12:15):
Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:12:16):
Make sure I don't even know, you know, this part of the problem is the iPad really isn't designed to do this. In fact, that's one of the reasons they're making such, Hey, on iOS 16, finally, you'll be able to use an external monitor with an iPad. They act as if you never could. Right. So you can obviously but maybe it doesn't, for instance, maybe the iPad doesn't send video out in a format that the Dell understands, but for some reason, the RCA does that kind of thing,

Caller 3 (01:12:44):
But why would it send the signal to the, the video signal to the Dell?

Leo Laporte (01:12:49):
Is, is the RCA connected or is it just airplane?

Caller 3 (01:12:53):
No, it's connected to I have it connected to the max studio with H CMI. So I have all three monitors connected to the max studio.

Leo Laporte (01:13:03):
I see. Oh, that's interesting. Yeah. I, this is a kind of a complicated layout and I'm not sure if I'm really visualizing it properly. That's interesting. I don't know, off the top of my head, I just know that in three weeks you won't have to worry so much. <Laugh> maybe a little more than three weeks. Apple's event in September will probably, oh, wait a minute. No, wait a minute. I take that back. Apple announced, or maybe it's a rumor, but they, I think the rumor is, is reliable that apple will not infect ship iPad, OS 16, at the same time as iOS 16, they're gonna do the phone iOS 16 in September. It won't be till October. And that they're having trouble with iPad OS apparently 16, but you might try, this is one thing you could do. They are, there is a public beta of iPad, OS 16.

Leo Laporte (01:13:54):
So I don't know if that third generation supports it. It may not because I think it's for M one specifically, but read the specs and C and if in fact you know, that external monitor support is there, you can run iPad iPad, OS 16 in the public beta I've been using the public beta. It's pretty reliable, pretty reliable. They said the problem with it is chiefly the state, what is it? Stage manager, the thing that the lets you have kind of windows and stuff, that's where they hung in the biggest problem. Yeah. I love that space that they shoot in. That's that's part of the they talk about that in the last episode of light and magic. And then I went because of that, I went and watched the documentary, the call, what Disney gallery or something? The documentary about the making of the man Lauren. I didn't really, I'm not a, I shouldn't confess this, not the massive star wars fan that many of my geek friends are, cuz I was an adult when it came out. So, but you know, after seeing this documentary, I got very interested. So I, I, I did start watching the man Lauren and you know what it's actually it's I, I didn't like it before, but I, I like it now. I

Leo Laporte (01:15:07):
Like it.

Leo Laporte (01:15:14):
I know. I know it's shocking. Isn't it? Yeah. It might be the apple adapter is the way to go. Oh, I love the Sandman. I have that very nice bound edition of the Sandman and I've of course listened to the audio book production. So I will be watching the Sam man. You bet. Yeah. The man. Well, the what's cool about the Mandalorian, especially once you understand how it's produced is it looks better than the movies. The special effects are dramatically good. Dramatically. Good. Yeah. It's funny. Even in the documentary, George says, yeah, I'm not very good at, at writing stories. <Laugh> I thought, wow, you fooled everybody.

Leo Laporte (01:16:02):
<Laugh>

Leo Laporte (01:16:05):
You fool us. Yeah. Strange new worlds is good. Oh, Howard, the duck was awful. Okay. There's just no excuse for that.

Leo Laporte (01:16:20):
<Laugh>

Leo Laporte (01:16:24):
I, when I have a family member who actually was in Howard, the duck and I still hated yeah. Cast Dan definitely was was good at it. That's why it's fun to see him direct the documentary. Leo you've got me on my knees. Leo, Leo. Leport the tech guy, Scott on the line from paradise, Texas. Hello, Scott.

Caller 4 (01:16:50):
Hello.

Leo Laporte (01:16:51):
Hello. Welcome to how Nick I am very well. How are you sir?

Caller 4 (01:16:55):
Doing well?

Leo Laporte (01:16:57):
What can I do for you to help you?

Caller 4 (01:17:01):
So two months ago, my wife and I moved from Southern California to Texas.

Leo Laporte (01:17:06):
You joined the great Exodus.

Caller 4 (01:17:08):
We joined the great Exodus and we're loving it. Good. looking well for us. Problem here though, is that neither one of our laptops wanna let go of the fact that we still live Southern California

Leo Laporte (01:17:24):
And how do you know that? Why did they think you're there?

Caller 4 (01:17:27):
I don't know, but locations for things put me at my own house, my old house, every time it sets, sets time zones to

Leo Laporte (01:17:37):
Oh, that's very annoying. Yeah. Who are you? Are you using a local internet service provider in Texas?

Caller 4 (01:17:44):
I am. And when I, you know, I, I ascertained the IP address and it, it puts me, it's a, it's a site to site big, tall antenna dish on top of my roof. But it, it places me well less than a mile away tomorrow. Oh

Leo Laporte (01:18:03):
Good. All right. Yeah. So this is a kind of a weak way to determine your location, but it's probably the most common it's called G O I P location using your IP address to say where you are, of course the IP address. They don't know where you are. Exactly. They only know where the ISP is and an internet service provider often will say, well, this range of IP addresses is in this town. So maybe you'll get you as close as a town, but it still shouldn't think you're in Southern California. And is the internet service provider at Texas internet service provider.

Caller 4 (01:18:36):
It

Leo Laporte (01:18:36):
Is. Yeah. Sometimes this happens on your cell phone for instance, because the cell phone company is in St. Louis or Kansas city. And so, you know, the IP address is identified as Kansas city, but you know, that's, you know, there are other clues that your computer could be using. Why is your computer not adjusting? So there are a couple of things you should check windows or Mac

Caller 4 (01:19:02):
Windows.

Leo Laporte (01:19:02):
Okay. So you wanna go into the the date and time control panel and check to see if the time zone is set automatically.

Caller 4 (01:19:14):
Okay. If I set time zone automatically, it takes me back to California. What <laugh>,

Leo Laporte (01:19:21):
Why I <laugh>, that's just wrong. I don't that's bizarre.

Caller 4 (01:19:28):
My computer right now says it's 1227.

Leo Laporte (01:19:31):
Yeah. Well it is, but not in Texas,

Leo Laporte (01:19:34):
Not here, not in Texas. Well, that is a very you know, that I understand if you're, if the computer isn't doing that properly you know, and so what you're doing is you're setting the time zone manually in the settings. But, but you wanted, the computer should know, hang on. I gotta take a break, Johnny, Jet's coming up, I'll talk with you off the air. We'll find out what's going on here. Leo LaPorte, the tech guy. That is really weird. I understand if it's if it's the other way around, you know, you're, you're, you're not syncing it and you still had, you know, I can set mine for Texas time. But why would it be, why would it be doing that automatically? So what windows does is it goes out and checks the time server and and it, and it gets the time. And then on mine, I just changed myself to Texas, put, set timezone automatically back on and it detected the time zone. So that's got to be something going on with your, your internet service provider, the computer doesn't have GPS. So all it can do, no. All it can do is check with the IP, basically do geo IP location. I think. Well

Caller 4 (01:20:56):
It's well, like either, either Bax maps or Google maps, what

Leo Laporte (01:21:00):
Do they

Caller 4 (01:21:01):
Say? I have location services on. Yeah. When I go to my location, it takes me to my next to my old next door neighbor's house.

Leo Laporte (01:21:08):
Gosh, darn it. It's really stuck

Caller 4 (01:21:09):
Every time. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:21:10):
It's really stuck.

Caller 4 (01:21:12):
And it's two and it's two different laptops. So

Leo Laporte (01:21:17):
Did you bring your router with you?

Caller 4 (01:21:19):
I did not.

Leo Laporte (01:21:20):
Okay. So you're using the the new wireless ISPs router. You it's a complete new, I, I S P how <laugh> boy. That is really,

Caller 4 (01:21:34):
Oh, and I have, I've been all through the the, the, the Google searches to you know, and, and it, it seems it's not an uncommon problem. Other people have,

Leo Laporte (01:21:44):
Well, it's, it's really common cuz of geo I P location, which is very imperfect, but

Caller 4 (01:21:50):
Well, even, even exactly what I'm experiencing here, I've, I've seen other, other people, you know ask questions about that and you know, in some of the different, you know, blogs or whatever you, if

Leo Laporte (01:22:01):
You try a different browser, do you still get the same mistake? Yes.

Caller 4 (01:22:06):
Same.

Leo Laporte (01:22:06):
I'm trying to narrow down. What, where is the information being stored? That's wrong. So even in a different browser, it's in fact download one, you never used before, you know, get Vivaldi.

Caller 4 (01:22:18):
Yeah. That I have not done.

Leo Laporte (01:22:19):
Just try, just try that. I'm gonna outta curiosity. If you get Vivaldi, you've never used Vivaldi, right? Probably nobody has good browser based on Google chromium, download Vivaldi. See what time where it, it thinks you are, it may be it. I'm trying to, we're trying, you see what I'm doing. I'm trying to figure out what is it that something is sticky about your location. And as a result that stickiness is, is communicating. Is it the browser? Is the browser cashing your location? I asked about the router, it's a brand new router from the local internet service provider. So right. It's their router.

Caller 4 (01:22:57):
It's, it's their router. And then I also, I mean, I, yes, yes. I'm using their router. And then I bought the Google because it's a little larger property, so I needed a little better spread. I've

Leo Laporte (01:23:06):
Got the wifi.

Caller 4 (01:23:07):
Okay. The buy the what? The nest or

Leo Laporte (01:23:10):
Nest. Okay. That's interesting. I wonder if the nest is,

Caller 4 (01:23:14):
Is I was doing it before I had that installed. Oh,

Leo Laporte (01:23:17):
And the nest you got in Texas

Caller 4 (01:23:19):
And, and the nest I bought while I bought it from yes.

Leo Laporte (01:23:22):
So it, it never knew your old address, so there's no way the nest knew your old address

Caller 4 (01:23:27):
Nor, nor nor did, nor did the the router that the ISP provider. Right. Right. Supplied me.

Leo Laporte (01:23:33):
So, so something has memorized your location. Could it be cool?

Caller 4 (01:23:37):
And it's down to my it's down to my old address.

Leo Laporte (01:23:39):
Yeah. Yeah, no, it's memorized your location. Try clearing the browser cash. I'm just wondering if the browser's cashing this,

Caller 4 (01:23:50):
Then that in fact I did a complete you know, the reset stuff, you know? Yeah. Redid the computer, but I, you know, I, you did all of

Leo Laporte (01:23:59):
That and it's still doing it.

Caller 4 (01:24:02):
And I, you know, I, I, I, I, so I, I did the, did the option where I retained all of my data and I didn't want to quite go through the, the pain of, yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:24:10):
I don't blame you

Caller 4 (01:24:12):
Flush and wash, but you know, that's gonna be my next option, I suppose. But it's, it's, it's two different.

Leo Laporte (01:24:18):
No, you shouldn't have to do that. No, no, no. Cause it's two different laptops. Something is telling it where it is and, and it, and it's something that you had in, in LA

Caller 4 (01:24:29):
<Laugh>. The only thing we had in LA were the two laptops themselves. Those are only two pieces that are identity and they're two really different Adele and a, and a surf and a Microsoft surface. Yeah. So

Leo Laporte (01:24:40):
I would try a different browser just to see what happens. I gotta run. Cuz Johnny's here. He's been everywhere. He's even been both to LA and Texas. He's in Southern California right now though. Our traveling guy, Johnny jet, Johnny jet.com. Hello Johnny.

Johnny Jet (01:25:00):
Hello Leo. How you doing?

Leo Laporte (01:25:01):
I am. Well, how are you?

Johnny Jet (01:25:03):
Good. I just scrambled to get back to the house, cuz I just took the kids to the century city mall.

Leo Laporte (01:25:08):
Oh fun.

Johnny Jet (01:25:08):
To meet, to meet Louey, which is an Australian cartoon. It's hilarious.

Leo Laporte (01:25:12):
Louey.

Johnny Jet (01:25:13):
It's

Leo Laporte (01:25:13):
On Disney and they're fans.

Johnny Jet (01:25:15):
Oh yeah. And I got invited to a media invite. They're having this big movie. Oh

Leo Laporte (01:25:19):
Nice.

Johnny Jet (01:25:20):
So they got the, take a picture with Louey

Leo Laporte (01:25:22):
And does Louey having a Australian accent?

Johnny Jet (01:25:24):
Yeah. He's hilarious. Actually. You'd actually like it <laugh> it's one cartoon. That is it's one. Isn't this

Leo Laporte (01:25:30):
Long. There's so many kids cartoons that are just as an adult, just painful. My kids loved Barney and I got so sick of who? Yeah. Love,

Johnny Jet (01:25:40):
You know what times have changed? It's AMA my, my kids, my son knows more than I do about animals and, and wildlife it's every day he takes, teaches me something. I'm like, are you serious and space? I'm like, where does he get this? There's so many educational shows out there. Louie's not one of them. But there are some amazing ones on campus. This good.

Leo Laporte (01:25:59):
Good. Well, I'm glad they like his show and travel

Johnny Jet (01:26:01):
Related by the way. There's a lot of travel related one. Nice. Which I

Leo Laporte (01:26:03):
Love. Well, remember where in the world is Carmen San Diego. That was great for kids. They learned a lot of geography. Yeah.

Johnny Jet (01:26:09):
They upgraded since then, but

Leo Laporte (01:26:11):
Yeah. Yeah. So everything's upgraded since then. <Laugh> yeah. So let's talk, travel, traveling better. I Lisa

Johnny Jet (01:26:19):
Said it's a mess out there right now, by the

Leo Laporte (01:26:20):
Way, it's a mess. Well, and I, Lisa said, we're not going anywhere until this COVID thing goes away. Cuz as you know, we cut COVID in our cruise. Not a mild case and you know, we're better, but 

Johnny Jet (01:26:33):
So shouldn't you be protected for the next 20 days, at least?

Leo Laporte (01:26:35):
Well, we're not thinking about so the next trip isn't until the spring.

Johnny Jet (01:26:40):
Let's see.

Leo Laporte (01:26:40):
But that's the problem. We didn't think this trip would be a problem. Right? We thought, oh my gosh, you know, July of 20, 22, it should be over by then. Right. Wrong, wrong. But I think most people now aren't wearing masks saying, well, I had it. I got it. I probably all right, there will be a new vaccine. Apparently this fall they say that will cover more variance. I think we're traveling. We're just gonna do it. Right? What? Yeah. People are

Johnny Jet (01:27:08):
Traveling almost 2.4 million people went through USA check TSA checkpoint yesterday. Nice. the in 2019 pre pandemic the same day was 2.75. So

Leo Laporte (01:27:19):
It's pretty much back we're

Johnny Jet (01:27:21):
We're we're close. We're very close. Yeah. And just keep in mind. The reason why we're not is probably because the airlines have all cut their schedules back because they can't handle it. They don't have the staff. Yeah. The airports don't have the staff. Yeah. And which is why the last few days have actually been a mess because of storms on the east coast today there's over 3,600 delayed flights within the us. You know, Southwest.

Leo Laporte (01:27:44):
It's not just losing your luggage. It's it's losing your flight.

Johnny Jet (01:27:48):
Yeah. Well Southwest yesterday had a computer glitch at Phoenix for a little bit or two days ago maybe. But American today has 460 delayed flights, 131 canceled. There's newer cuz at the top of the airports today for the most canceled and delayed in the world, most canceled 81 flights outta Newark. And it's early the thunderstorms actually. I don't think they're gonna come until tomorrow. Wow.

Leo Laporte (01:28:13):
So summer, travel's always a hit and miss though in the

Johnny Jet (01:28:16):
Us try and fly in the morning,

Leo Laporte (01:28:17):
Morning,

Johnny Jet (01:28:18):
Try and fly in the morning. Okay. Except if you're flying outta Toronto because in Toronto, if you're going to the us, those queues for the immigration are long, unless you have nexus and global entry, which make all the difference in the world. But Toronto's, you know, been ranked as one of the worst airports in north, in the world this year.

Leo Laporte (01:28:34):
I always try to stop a, not stop in Chicago in the summer. Cuz I feel like Chicago gets shut down by thunder storms every day

Johnny Jet (01:28:42):
Without a doubt. And Chicago is in is about number 12 today. Yeah. And it's, and it's still relatively early. So keep that in mind. Okay.

Leo Laporte (01:28:49):
But

Johnny Jet (01:28:50):
You know, if you can leave early book, the first flight, the crew's usually there, the plane's usually there and, but just keep in mind that the, there will be long security lines to try and get TSA pre and other things, but show up early, you gotta show up early because if you miss your flight, you're not gonna get on another one for a while because the planes are going out full.

Leo Laporte (01:29:07):
Some of those lines are long. We were blown away by the length of the TSA lines coming home from Seattle the sea TAC airport, man. It was the line went serpentine for miles. It felt like,

Johnny Jet (01:29:26):
Have you seen Maui's Maui's is insane. I just did a post on it this week. How to avoid it. So you really want to, for Maui, you wanna avoid peak hours, which they're saying is between 10:00 AM and I think two, 1:00 PM or one 30. So try and fly in the morning or, or the evening. Does the

Leo Laporte (01:29:41):
Ts SSA app help? Is that a useful?

Johnny Jet (01:29:42):
Definitely. So that's one of my tips. Get the, get the, my TSA app. It's a great app because it will tell you the history of the, of the wait times for the checkpoints, but it'll also tell you real time. So, and also you wanna get TSA pre TSA pre because at Maui you'll just, you know, they say it's less than 10 minutes to zip through. Otherwise you're waiting an hour and a

Leo Laporte (01:30:05):
Half in the line, but don't tell everybody that because it's too late, then everybody late have it. And then <laugh>, and then it won't be as good as it was cuz everybody will have it. You know what I'm saying? You know where

Johnny Jet (01:30:15):
I'm coming from. I, I definitely know where you're coming from,

Leo Laporte (01:30:18):
But if you're smart enough to listen to this show, okay, you get my TSA app and and then get TSA pre or I got global entry, which gives you pre 

Johnny Jet (01:30:29):
If you go to Canada, get nexus Canada. Yeah. Century for Mexico. Yeah. And, and nexus includes global entry and TSA pre and it's only $50 for five years, but you have to go to Canada, an office in Canada or on the border right now all the Canadian offices are closed for nexus. So it's, it's, it's difficult to get an appointment. Wow. And actually I just wrote a post that is gonna come out tomorrow. It's the secret site where users can find global entry, nexus and century appointments and I'll, and I'll share it with you now. So there's a Twitter handle called global entry now.

Leo Laporte (01:31:01):
Oh,

Johnny Jet (01:31:02):
Go to that. And it will, whenever appointment opens up, cuz people are canceling them. It, it will show up and it'll tell you where it'll tell you what kind of appointment cause it's for who's

Leo Laporte (01:31:12):
This guy, how does he know?

Johnny Jet (01:31:14):
You know, what he had, he must have wrote some kind of code

Leo Laporte (01:31:16):
He's doing so script

Johnny Jet (01:31:17):
To. Yeah. So, and it's for all three. And I had a nexus appointment this summer. I went to Niagara falls, New York with my daughter because she we've been waiting to get her an appointment. And people are like, how did you get that appointment? I actually did it. The, the old fashioned way I, I worked at it. I, I kept checking all the time. I didn't know about this Twitter handle. So, but I'm saving other people right

Leo Laporte (01:31:39):
Now. It's amazing that this even exists. This is not an official TSA. It's not thing, but somebody's figured it out.

Johnny Jet (01:31:47):
Definitely. So get in there. And if you, if you need to find an appointment, just log on and just keep it's, it's literally tweeting like every few minutes and all throughout the night. Wow. So have your I would have your login already to, to go into the to the government site. And that way you can just snag that up

Leo Laporte (01:32:06):
On the appointment. Like there's one at Miami right now, 11:30 AM. August 19th, run in there, get it. So even these are several are still a little bit you know, this is 13 days away.

Johnny Jet (01:32:16):
The summer I I'm last night was November, February, August, some summer. Some was for today. One was for today. So you could get a last minute

Leo Laporte (01:32:24):
Appointment. So somebody canceled, right? Yeah. Yeah. Nice. So

Johnny Jet (01:32:27):
Holy it's a great, it's a great hack. It really is.

Leo Laporte (01:32:31):
TSA pre doesn't. Isn't free. It's what a hundred? No,

Johnny Jet (01:32:34):
T TSA pre check is $85 for five years, but don't get that. Get global entry. That's a hundred dollars for five years. It includes TSA pre okay. Some premium credit cards cover it. So check with your credit card provider. They make sure you pay for that fee with it. And they'll reimburse you. But nexus, if you're going to Canada is $50 for five years. It includes both.

Leo Laporte (01:32:53):
Okay.

Johnny Jet (01:32:53):
And then C is like $122.

Leo Laporte (01:32:56):
Wow. Wow.

Johnny Jet (01:32:58):
So, okay. It, it makes all the difference in the world when you travel.

Leo Laporte (01:33:02):
Yes. And we, that's what this show is all about. Johnny jets segment all about traveling, better using technology. If you're gonna travel might as well might as well enjoy it. You know, I did, I got my global entry and I have to say having that global entry is nice, cuz you don't have to take, you know, you get, you don't have to take off your shoes. You don't have to take out your laptop. They're just, they're you know, you just get a little bit better treatment, which is good. And then the lines are shorter in many cases.

Johnny Jet (01:33:30):
Yeah. You know, I'm gonna post a picture in the chat room of, of my post in the main picture is a pitcher I took in Toronto airport. This summer of the global entry line. There's no one in it. No one

Leo Laporte (01:33:39):
In it. Awesome. Phil, go to Johnny jet.com. That's his website Johnny jet do com slash newsletter. He has a number of free, useful travel newsletters. He got a booking services, all sorts of good stuff on there. You can also follow him on Twitter and Instagram and join him every week right here. Thank you, Johnny jet. Save travels.

Johnny Jet (01:33:56):
Thank you. You too. Bye. Bye byebye.

Leo Laporte (01:34:00):
Wait, bye. Bye Johnny. Yeah. I was really mad at the when we were in Seattle cuz we got there really early and the lounge would only let us in three hours before our flight.

Johnny Jet (01:34:13):
Oh yeah. They got these new rules.

Leo Laporte (01:34:15):
So mad

Johnny Jet (01:34:15):
That was Alaska. Or was that Delta? That

Leo Laporte (01:34:17):
Was what I, that was no, it was Admiral American expresso. Oh

Johnny Jet (01:34:20):
American. Yeah. No, no, no, no American express.

Leo Laporte (01:34:23):
What do they call it? Centurian Centurian

Johnny Jet (01:34:25):
Okay. West American express city.

Leo Laporte (01:34:27):
Yeah. I mean it was a nice, it was a decent lounge, but we had to like go sit in the, sit around until three

Johnny Jet (01:34:31):
Hours, but you know what? They had to do that because,

Leo Laporte (01:34:34):
Because crowded

Johnny Jet (01:34:34):
They're insane. They really were. And you know, I actually gave up my American express platinum card during COVID well, that's

Leo Laporte (01:34:42):
What I was gonna ask you. And Lisa said, well, let's get rid of this thing cuz it's expensive. It's like 400 bucks a year,

Johnny Jet (01:34:47):
Five 50.

Leo Laporte (01:34:48):
Oh let's get rid of it and get something else. Is there something else that has as many travel benefits?

Johnny Jet (01:34:53):
Well, if you travel, it's worth it because it is, you get a two, two hun, you get all these, you get credit 200 credit everywhere towards whatever airline for extras. But you also get that. They'll also cover your global entry for you for a hundred dollars.

Leo Laporte (01:35:05):
And the reason I got it originally was cuz they helicopter you out. If you get sick in a foreign land and you know, I got it for, you know, that kind of thing, but 

Johnny Jet (01:35:14):
Well you wanna get med jet for that? Well I think med jet assist

Leo Laporte (01:35:17):
The platinum gives you some sort of evacuation.

Johnny Jet (01:35:20):
Well I can't remember, but you med jet will take you to the hospital of your choice.

Leo Laporte (01:35:24):
I love that.

Johnny Jet (01:35:25):
I think that I think the American express one will take you to the

Leo Laporte (01:35:27):
I'll take any hospital. <Laugh>

Johnny Jet (01:35:29):
Well, some countries you don't want any hospital.

Leo Laporte (01:35:31):
Well, that's true. So all okay. All right. What else? What else did I learn besides those long TSA lines? Well you just get there early, right? That's the key is get there early.

Johnny Jet (01:35:43):
You don't wanna get too early. Actually the airports, even heat throwers saying do not come so early because you're just causing more chaos. So check with the airport, wherever you're flying. If you're having, if you're checking bags, you gotta show up earlier. That's why I tell people not to check a bag. It will make a big difference. You know, you don't have to stand around and seems like an eternity to, to wait for your bag. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> but also to check it, the lines could be really long to check it. Mm. So yeah, I'll I'll put some stuff out in my newsletter and I'll share it in the chat

Leo Laporte (01:36:15):
Room. Thank you my friend. And Hey Jason, are you going anywhere in the near future?

Johnny Jet (01:36:20):
You know, I'm, I'm trying to stay home right now.

Leo Laporte (01:36:23):
I think I wanna stay, stay home. Yeah.

Johnny Jet (01:36:25):
I really we're staying local. Yeah. kids are about to start school

Leo Laporte (01:36:31):
And I'm and I'm trying to reassure Lisa that well, first of all, I mean, if, if it comes close, you know, to the trip in April, we could just cancel. But I, but I mean, I'm not gonna cancel now. Let's just

Johnny Jet (01:36:42):
Cross your finger, maybe everything. So which, which, which one what's

Leo Laporte (01:36:44):
Trip. This is a Mediterranean cruise. So it's LIBO run. Don't cancel

Johnny Jet (01:36:48):
Yet. Don't cancel yet. Unless you can get your money back in full right now.

Leo Laporte (01:36:52):
Well, the funny thing is this is the trip that we are taking because the other previous two cancel

Johnny Jet (01:36:56):
Don't Asia

Leo Laporte (01:36:57):
Two cruises can't. So I kept sh I kept shifting the money <laugh> I paid for this in 20, 20, 19 <laugh> so I keep shifting the money over and the insurance thank guy goes along with it. By the way, thank you. I don't know who the insurer was, but Jane, our travel agent, my mom briefly thought, oh, it'd be fun to go on that riverboat trip we're doing in a couple of years, but she'll be 92 then. So I had Jane, it was one room left on the Viking and it was the, you know, the handicapped room access room. So I thought, oh, that'll be great. I can wheel her in and out in a wheelchair. And we got the insurance and everything. The mom changed her mind.

Johnny Jet (01:37:34):
Did

Leo Laporte (01:37:34):
She? But the insurance, whoever it was. Thank you. Okay. They, they, they, we did it quickly enough. They, Jane had to talk him into it. Thank you, Jane. But they gave us the insurance back, which was 1700 bucks. So I was glad

Johnny Jet (01:37:46):
For that. Yeah. As your, as your travel agent about which insurance company for certain things, especially older people because yes, not every insurance.

Leo Laporte (01:37:52):
Company's really good on this. Yeah. I'm very grateful to her or ensure my trip.com is a good site for that too. Okay. Okay. But I, I also work with Allian so I never used to get, I think it was Allian I used to never get travel insurance never. And, and Jane says, oh no, no, no, you gotta have it. And you've convinced me of it. So I do now, even though it's expensive, it's it's a piece of mind, but it's. Yeah. Thank you, Johnny. Take care. Bye. Leo LaPorte, the tech guy, eighty eight eighty eight. Ask Leo. That's the phone number on the line? Steve from Corona, California. Hi Steve.

Caller 5 (01:38:29):
Hi Leo. Welcome. I had a question about recovering data off a Android cell phone.

Leo Laporte (01:38:35):
Oh, okay.

Caller 5 (01:38:37):
I had a cell phone, which is put it politely. That was taken without permission. Oh no. And I recovered physically got the cell phone back after about a year and wow.

Leo Laporte (01:38:49):
That's kind of amazing.

Caller 5 (01:38:52):
Yeah. Unfortunately, everything was backed up on it. So I was trying to figure out would be the best route to recover, maybe text messages or photos off the phone itself and then off the SIM card. Cause it still has the original SIM card or not SIM card, the SD card. It still has the original SD card that was in it when it was taken.

Leo Laporte (01:39:10):
So the first thing you can do and it's worth a try is just Mount the phone. Windows has drivers built in on a Macintosh. You have to use Android file transfer, but in both cases, the phone, when you connect it via a USB cable to a computer, the phone will say, oh, and it it'll say you have a choice. You can be MTP or you can be P is it PTP? You can either be. You could, the computer can see me as a camera and transfer the da, the photos off, which makes it easier to find the photos or see it as a USB drive, which is what you want. And then that phone will Mount as a USB drive. And that includes the SD card. You'll see a, a folder with all that stuff that may be sufficient for you. I mean, everything's there, you may be able to get everything you want. There are of course, third party programs that will do this maybe a little bit easier. They kind of understand the file directory structure and so forth. But if you just wanna try it right now, plug it in your computer, see what you see.

Caller 5 (01:40:15):
I have access to the phone. I know the data has been deleted off of it.

Leo Laporte (01:40:19):
Ah, you need UN erase.

Caller 5 (01:40:22):
Yes.

Leo Laporte (01:40:23):
Ah, all right. So there are a lot of programs that do that. I'm gonna recommend the one that's free to try anyway from a company that I've been recommending for a long time. I think they're very good. Ease us E a S E us.com and they have something they call mobi saver and it recovers, deleted as well.

Caller 5 (01:40:46):
Okay. Thank you very much.

Leo Laporte (01:40:48):
So I, there are other programs that will do this. But essentially all, all data recovery on all computers is the same thing. Computers don't take the time to erase the data. They just release it. They tell the directory, Hey, this, you know, there was a file here. You can use it for something else. And as long as it's not been overwritten, all the data is still there. It's it doesn't get erase. That's why maybe you've seen like these special erasing tools that really erase data. They overwrite it, but the computer erase you know, throwing in the trash and emptying the trash. Doesn't actually erase data ever. So all of these tools can go and look and they actually look at the sectors and say, oh yeah, I see the data there. And depending on the file system windows, for instance, just changes the first letter of the directory entry to what looks like an upside down E so they look for that and they go, oh yeah, I see a lot of files. They change the upside down E to some other letter and now they're there. So it's, it's a pretty simple thing to do this E us makes very good file recovery stuff. It's free. I certainly start there.

Caller 5 (01:41:51):
Thank you, Leo.

Leo Laporte (01:41:51):
You're welcome. I'm glad you you called and asked. I'm also glad you got the phone back. I feeling there's a story there doesn't feel like there's a year later. I got it back. Wow. I should asked. So that's something good to know though. Deleting a file, you know, dragging it to the trash, emptying the trash or pressing the delete key or whatever in, on, on Mac, on windows, on iOS, on Android. It actually doesn't, it's good. Know for a couple of reasons. One it's, it's good. If you accidentally delete something, you can, you can almost always get it back if you don't write something over it in the meantime. Right? So the first thing you should, you know, if you erase something by accident, stop, don't do anything else. Get a file deletion recovery tool. It's also good to know that if you're gonna, you know, sell a hard drive or whatever, it's not enough just to erase it, that data's still there.

Leo Laporte (01:42:46):
And that's why there are all these tools that are you know, secure erase. In fact, apple has that built into the operating system. If you right. Click on the trash, can you can secure erase it? What does that do? Well, it doesn't, it overrides the data, but don't do that unless you <laugh>, you're really sure that you don't wanna recover it ever. I don't know if windows has that built in. I don't, I don't see it if I write, click the recycle bin, but there's certainly tools that we'll do like Derek's boot and new DBAN on, we go to Mac in Laguna woods, California. Hi M

Caller 6 (01:43:27):
Hey Leo, how are you?

Leo Laporte (01:43:28):
Great, welcome.

Caller 6 (01:43:30):
So I got a Facebook two-factor authentication loop glitch,

Leo Laporte (01:43:36):
A loop glitch. Oh no, yeah. What, so you're going in there and it says, what's your two factor and you give it, and then it says, what's your two factor,

Caller 6 (01:43:45):
Worse, worse. So if you set up the two factor with like Google authentication or Facebook factor Uhhuh <affirmative> and then you have to reset your phone or if you, oh, call setting. Yeah. Or your phone number changes your two,

Leo Laporte (01:44:04):
Then you can't do the two factor anymore.

Caller 6 (01:44:07):
No,

Leo Laporte (01:44:07):
In most cases, I don't know about Facebook cuz I'm I don't use Facebook, but in most cases there's an escape hatch because this happens all the time where you can reset the two factor. You might have to jump through additional hoops. Obviously they, you would want to cuz the whole point is somebody doesn't have your authenticator, can't hack your account. But usually there's a way to jump through some hoops so that you can reset it. 

Caller 6 (01:44:34):
So the biggest problem is that they don't have any real people working. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:44:39):
So it it's free any

Caller 6 (01:44:41):
Yeah. With like an ID or they make you send in bills or your date of birth that's right wrong. When you set it up. That's right. There is no help. <Laugh>

Leo Laporte (01:44:53):
I'm looking at the Facebook health center. Thank you to our chat room for putting this useless link up. If you are unable to log in after trying various things, well, put this in the show notes so you can at least look at it. I bet you've already looked at it. You'll need to confirm your identity to log in. And that's what you're talking about. When you get to the point where it says, enter your two factor you'll you see a link there says need another way to authenticate you, click other options, get more help follow the onscreen instructions. But what you're saying is <laugh>, they're not much use,

Caller 6 (01:45:26):
You can do that till the cows come home <laugh> and if, if they don't approve your yeah,

Leo Laporte (01:45:35):
Well they're you understand, they're trying to prevent somebody from hacking your account, which is very widespread on Facebook, unfortunately. But in order to do that, they have to assume that you're a bad guy trying to get in until you prove otherwise

Caller 6 (01:45:51):
Agreed. So one of the things is like, if, if people have said stated their email address is compromised, that's one thing <inaudible> on the bucket said, okay, we sent you in this and that and documents. The email address is fine. Send, send the recovery there, but there's no people, I think they're all busy trying to outfit people with goggles or the

Leo Laporte (01:46:14):
Yeah. Well, if you have 3 billion customers, it's gonna be hard for you to give human responses and, and remember Facebook's free. So it's always a good thing to keep in mind when you have a free service, don't expect a whole lot of support. Yeah. There's, there's no humans,

Caller 6 (01:46:31):
But all our data. So they should be basically pushed to let us use, you know, figure out a way to make this right. Yeah. Our data isn't that kind of like giving them, you know? Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:46:46):
But you gave it to 'em <laugh> yeah. Yeah. I know. So really important lesson for anybody using any free service, a don't count on support. I remember we had a caller who went to the Google offices in Irvine and banged on the door. Hoping somebody human would answer the door, no one ever did. I think it's all robots inside anyway. So don't, don't expect great service and, and really follow the additional instructions. And if there's something stored on your account, you probably have a lot of photos and family history, all sorts of stuff you've been putting there for years go the extra mile to, to back it up to protect it. You know, when they give you recovery codes, print 'em and lock 'em in a safe go, you gotta go the extra mile because they honestly, they're not obligated to help you get it back. They really aren't. And obviously they're not doing a very good job. I'm sorry, Leo. Leport the tech guy. Yeah. This Facebook loop. There's a whole Reddit. We'll put this in the show notes. There's a whole Reddit link. The chat put is found. Thank you, scooter X with the Facebook authentication loop. And you're not the first person who's called with this. I mean, I've heard this many, many times. I, all I could say is just, you did do a backup. Oh hallelujah. Hallelujah.

Caller 6 (01:48:07):
But it's just mine business account people, people that advertise with get in. Oh, I know. On YouTube, there's a couple of videos on the, a guy with an English accent, a guy that advertising business that they're trying to work through this lawsuit. If, if they, I don't know what it's going to deal clipper.

Leo Laporte (01:48:31):
I mean, yeah. I don't, I mean, I hate to say it, but they don't owe anybody, anything. It's a free service and you know, I'm sure if you look at the terms of service they have absolutely look at, they can afford lawyers by the pound. Agreed. They've absolutely locked it down so that you can Sue all you want, but you got there's no, there really is no remedy. I'm so glad to hear that you backed it up. BEC and I think there are a lot of people who don't photos.

Caller 6 (01:49:01):
I agree. Part of it, maybe when you come back from break is to, you know, I backed it up, but I backed up my photos, you know, I do what you tell, you know, I have <inaudible> thank you.

Leo Laporte (01:49:11):
Oh yeah. People don't no most people don't and they just, and they trust and they assume and so it's really important to understand that these free services owe you nothing to screw

Caller 6 (01:49:24):
Up. I trusted them not to screw up two factor authentic.

Leo Laporte (01:49:27):
Oh yeah, you did. But that was a mistake.

Caller 6 (01:49:31):
You, you can't, luckily I don't, I don't have a lot of trust going around the tech community.

Leo Laporte (01:49:36):
No, it's really good to be a, I hate to say it, but it's good to be a cynic, an untrusting, you know, cynic. I hate to isn't that awful. They put us in that position.

Caller 6 (01:49:47):
You bet. But like most people just want to get by and enjoy the day. And Ugh, like I agree is becoming,

Leo Laporte (01:49:55):
This is

Caller 6 (01:49:56):
The way through set. This SMS is becoming a real nightmare.

Leo Laporte (01:49:59):
I've been doing this show for, you know, 30 years. And my primary duty is kind of being, you know, Facebook's support and Google's support because they don't support you. The industry doesn't support its users. They're there to make money. They don't really care about, you know, your, your problems,

Caller 6 (01:50:21):
Part of why just to make awareness for

Leo Laporte (01:50:24):
Yeah, no, I'm glad you did. Yeah. Yeah. It's an important drum to beat. Absolutely. Absolutely.

Caller 6 (01:50:30):
Appreciate your service and work

Leo Laporte (01:50:32):
On it. Thank you. And I'm glad you did have a backup Mac. I, I

Caller 6 (01:50:36):
It's. Yes.

Leo Laporte (01:50:37):
Good to remember. I keep

Caller 6 (01:50:39):
Beating the drum. Yep.

Leo Laporte (01:50:40):
<Laugh> yeah, I use, you know, if I, if I use a cloud service, I, I back it up three ways to Sunday and frankly, I don't have a Facebook account for various reasons.

Leo Laporte (01:50:59):
Whoa. Hey, Hey. Hey. How are you today? Layo LePort here. The tech guy, time to talk computers, the internet, home theater, digital photography, smart phones, smart watches, internet, whatever, all that stuff. Phone number eighty eight eighty eight, ask Leo 8 88, 8 2 7 5 5 3, 6, toll free from anywhere in the us or Canada. 88, 88. Ask Leo. I hope I don't sound unsympathetic. When people call with problems with Facebook, I, I am sympathetic. I really am, but it's honestly, I'm also very happy not to have anything to do with Facebook. I have an Instagram account and I'm, I, I hate Instagram these days. They're changing it from what used to be this great, you know, photo sharing thing that I loved it, cuz it was just people's pictures people. I knew now there's so much other stuff in there. They wanna be TikTok. So there's a lot of video, all of a sudden.

Leo Laporte (01:51:58):
And I don't know, do you notice this? But there's mostly stuff. People I don't follow. It's the Facebook way. That's what they're doing. They're Facebook, eing, Instagram by, by, by using algorithms, computers to decide what content you wanna see. See to me is why I left Facebook. To me, the deal I made with Facebook, the, you know, I it's an unspoken deal, but it's still a deal that is, I will give you information about, you know, who I know who's in my family, how old I am. You know, when my birthday is all that stuff. And in return, you will allow me to share my life with family and friends, people I follow, and they will share their life with me and will we'll have this nice little social circle and you'll give us this great place for it. And in the early days, that's what Facebook was.

Leo Laporte (01:52:52):
But they realized very early on, they could make a lot more money, not by showing me aunt Gertrude's jelly jars, but by sending me news stories that get me all head up or, you know, just stuff that I, that I didn't ask for the computer algorithm decides there's stuff that I know. It knows. If I see I will go who and want more you know, I like candy too, but if you start pushing candy at me, it's not gonna be good for me to eat all candy all the time. And that's essentially what Facebook does now. Instagram's doing the same thing. It's not showing you the pictures of the people you follow. Yeah. There's a thing you can, they hide it. If you click the, the word Instagram on the, it only works in the mobile app. You click the word, Instagram, there's a dropdown.

Leo Laporte (01:53:42):
You could only see the following, but it switches back immediately right after you look at it, cuz they don't want you to stay there. Same. You can do the same thing on Facebook. Oh, I only wanna see a chronological feed of people. I follow don't send me that stuff that I didn't follow, but it switches back immediately cuz they know you don't want that. You want candy. Well, don't gimme candy. It's bad for my teeth. I just, I, I got off Facebook and I'm only on Instagram because well I don't know why I should get off Instagram too. Mostly cuz I use it for work. You know, I have to kind of, I have to keep up a little bit and sometimes our people I'm talking to have Instagram photos and stuff. I wanna show I'm thinking, I gotta get rid of that too.

Leo Laporte (01:54:26):
Now Twitter's doing the same. They're all doing it. And it's interesting cuz what it really is, is it's a very much, is a big change in what these services are. And I think this has happened subtly. It's one of those things where you might not have noticed, but originally the original deal was, this is a social network, right? People, I follow friends and family college roommates, that kind of thing. High school, high school sweethearts, that kind of thing. It's my social circles that I'm following my social net. There a social network. It's what they were called the social network. But then along come things like TikTok and YouTube where oh look, they get so much more engagement. People spend so much more time on the site. Looking at content created by people. You don't know the content. That's exciting. That keeps you going. You keep swiping up on TikTok.

Leo Laporte (01:55:19):
Oh, gimme more, gimme more. Gimme, gimme more candy. Those are no longer social networks. Are they? That's what's happened. This is the social networks are dead. Yeah. You and I might want 'em too bad. You don't get it. What you're really getting is content just like watching TV, just like watching TV except oh it's even better than that. Because Facebook and YouTube and TikTok don't have to spend any money on the content. They don't have to make the content. They just, people give it to them. <Laugh> people like my son, they make spend hours. My son spent a whole day making onion soup, shooting the video, editing it up really tight, putting music behind it so that he could get views on TikTok. Gave it to him for free. What does TikTok do they go? Yeah, thank you. We've just created a TV channel for short attention span people and our computer algorithms will figure out what's the next thing to show you, cuz well, you've stayed a long time on that bikini video. So let's show you more bikinis or, or you stayed a long time in that cooking video. Let's show you more cooking and they're very good at it. They're very good at it. It's a candy dispenser, but it's bad for your teeth. Isn't it? And this is what's happened. It's happened on all the so-called social networks. They're no longer social networks. They're no longer friends and family. And what they're up to. They're TV channels. They're showing you content that you're gonna enjoy. When did that happen? I don't know, but it's happened. It's done.

Leo Laporte (01:56:56):
But I think some of us, I still wanna be able to know what's going on with family and friends. I want a social network and what's happening. It's interesting is people are starting to make their own. They're going to chat rooms like WhatsApp or discord and creating a family chat group and they're, and they're putting their pictures there and they're, what's ger Drew's jelly jars there instead. Cause we can't count on Facebook to showing show us that in fact they almost can count on them, not showing that right. You'll never stick around for aunt Gertrude's jelly jars, but we know you'll stick around for this, you know, car chase.

Leo Laporte (01:57:33):
So if we want a social network, we're gonna make our own, ultimately we're gonna make our own. But it's pretty clear that TV works right. Candy machine works and that's what all these companies have pivoted to. And that's the latest with Instagram. It pivoted it's no longer a social network. Instagram is now candy for your mind. Eighty eight eighty eight, ask Leo the phone number (888) 827-5536. I'm sorry, I I'm going on a rant again, but I, but I've noticed this. I don't know if you know, and I think it's what sometimes this happens in, in life, right? Things happen so slowly. You don't really notice the change until you do. I was talking earlier about ATM machines. How long has it been since you've been inside a bank, you don't need to go in anymore, but that was a big change. That was a big change, but it just happened. So gradually we didn't even notice.

Leo Laporte (01:58:25):
Website is tech guy labs.com. That's where you should go. If you hear something and you wanna link, we have lots of links. In fact, with our caller who was having trouble. What was it? Something we had, we found some solutions. Oh the time thing, right? He just moved from Southern California. His computer start didn't know somebody logged into the chat room and said, here's a solution. Let me see if I can find that. Cuz it, it, it looked like it might work and we will certainly put it into the into the show notes. But he had a I've forgotten what it was, but he had came up with a solution. Aw shucks. It was a while ago. I saw it in passing our chairman's irc.twi.tv. By the way, that's useful. If you wanna go in and help people, that's a great place to go. Just hang out with other people. Watching the show. Irc.Twi.Tv website is tech guy labs.com. Phone number is eighty eight eighty eight. Ask Leo there I've I've said everything. I've said my piece. I'm the only tech guy with a horn section. I think Leo Laport, the tech guy. Thanks to professor Laura, our musical director, eighty eight eighty eight. Ask Leos the phone number (888) 827-5536 to free from anywhere in the us or Canada website tech I labs.com. Columbus, Ohio. Paul is on the line. Hello Paul?

Caller 7 (01:59:56):
Yes. Me again, Leo. How you doing?

Leo Laporte (01:59:58):
<Laugh> hi, Paul. What's up?

Caller 7 (02:00:02):
I'm using an iPhone 13 pro and my wife also, and they're not huge storage. I can't remember what, what we've got, but the question really comes down to, I want to back up my pictures or pictures and I know we can do that to iCloud and, and the storage on with the iPhone. Yes, but I also for secondary backup and can use either Google or Amazon. So I don't, I know there's a setting that you can back everything up from your iPhone and save space and it just shows you the thumbnails. Right? You talked about that recent, right? Okay. But I have that set and I, and I still have the Amazon backup for example, is that Amazon back, gonna see those pictures before they get sent up to

Leo Laporte (02:00:59):
That is, you know, I never even really thought about that. What if you have iCloud photos turned on and you have it set to save space. So the way that works is it moves the original photo to iCloud, which apple charges you for, right. You know, charges you fee. And then it deletes the original and leaves, just a screen sized thumbnail on your phone, which for most, people's fine. If you want to send the original or edit the original, we'll download it. And and that's a really good way of managing space on your phone, but you raise an interesting question. What does Google photos see? Or what does Amazon photos see? Or Dropbox I'll have to verify this, but my guess is it does not see the original. It would have to round trip it, it would have to download it from iCloud, upload it to Amazon and then let iCloud delete it.

Leo Laporte (02:01:53):
I'm gonna guess it does take a little while for iCloud to upload the original. So I'm gonna guess maybe somebody is, can do the experiment for us and tell me that you probably wanna make sure that you get Amazon or Google or Dropbox or one driver, whatever it is you're using as a secondary backup. And by the way, if you heard our call earlier about Facebook, you know, never trust any one service for your vital stuff, even iCloud you always have it stored in several places. So you're absolutely right to do that. If you're an Amazon prime customer, they'll upload the originals, but they can only do that if the originals are available. So I think you're right. You wanna make sure they're uploading immediately before apple decides, oh good. We can delete that and just use the thumbnail. Cause otherwise they'll only have access to the thumbnail. So this is an important point. If you're taking pictures and you want those originals to be stored somewhere open that app, cuz the way apple works, an app, can't run in the background forever. So you need to open, open Google photos or Amazon photos or whatever, right quickly after you've taken those pictures to give it a chance to access the originals

Caller 7 (02:03:07):
Or just leave it open while you're

Leo Laporte (02:03:08):
Shooting. Well you could, but again app apple will let its own programs like photos run in the background, but it will not let third party programs like Google photos or Amazon photos run in the background. So as soon as it's, backgrounded, it's gonna stop uploading or shortly after. So you wanna kind of, what you really wanna do is you take the photos and before apple can, can upload those photos. That's I never thought about this. So I'm gonna try, I have to experiment with it. But I, my guess is that this, you know, cuz it, it would be, it would require the co cooperation of apple and I bet you apples. Isn't gonna cooperate. So I, my guess is you have to get Amazon photos open quickly so it can get access to the originals. So after you've done your photo shoot, open Amazon photos. How

Caller 7 (02:03:58):
About, how about this after you go out and shoot for the day, then you turn on your let it make sure it backs up to, to Google or

Leo Laporte (02:04:07):
And then turn on iCloud photo. Yeah.

Caller 7 (02:04:09):
On the,

Leo Laporte (02:04:10):
Yeah. That's another way to do it. That's a good idea. You know, I haven't been doing that. I should check and see what if Amazon has my originals now, cuz I haven't been doing that. I use so we just took a trip to Alaska, took pictures of glaciers and polar bears, whatever grizzly bears, whatever. I think you might have done something similar recently. And so what I did was and I've been doing this lately, I let decided, okay, somebody's gotta keep track of all the, the originals. So I'm gonna let apple do that. So when I get back, I put the SD card in my I, my MacBook and I upload it to apple photos. That way I have access to it on all my apple devices. And in theory, I'm backing it up to Google and Amazon at the same time cuz I run those on my phone. And once the phone sees the photos, you should do that. I, you, you raise a very interesting question though. Now am I getting, I think I'm probably only getting thumbnails when I thought I was getting the originals on Amazon. So yeah, you, you maybe the best way to do that is turn off that optimization feature in photos until you're sure everybody's got it.

Caller 7 (02:05:18):
Yeah. Cause I, we got enough room that we can certainly do quite a few photos and then, and, and be safe for the day and then yeah. Do it. Yeah. Something like that.

Leo Laporte (02:05:27):
Yeah. I think that's a, that sounds like a good practice. You got me really curious now <laugh>

Caller 7 (02:05:34):
When you, you said something too, that triggered another question and now it, it slipped by

Leo Laporte (02:05:39):
<Laugh>. Well, what's, what's funny is you know, I, I shoot in raw and, and if you're a serious photographer, you might shoot in raw as well. And I want those raws. Those are the real originals. Apple will store those for me, Google will probably not cuz you know, they now charge for that. But Amazon will. So I want those original stored in a couple places. So

Caller 7 (02:06:01):
That's nice to know Amazon stores, the all that's

Leo Laporte (02:06:03):
Cool. Yeah. If you're a prime member, unlimited free storage of photos, now videos it's limited. But, but, but not, which is great. That's huge. So yeah, I would take advantage of that. And if you have an Amazon prime account, absolutely have Amazon photos on your phone. And I think they probably have a desktop uploader too. In fact, maybe that's the right solution is cuz the iCloud photos does not, I don't think it optimizes for the desktop.

Caller 7 (02:06:31):
Okay. I know what it was. I was gonna say if you've got multiple eye devices, which we do, my always got an iPad, I've got a, I don't, I'm not using my older iMac for photos right now, but I've got, we both have the iPhones. Right. And if you, if you delete something on one, a photo on one device, it's gonna delete it from library. Right?

Leo Laporte (02:06:51):
Yeah. So in fact you'll even warn you.

Caller 7 (02:06:54):
Yeah. It'll warn you. But if you wanna not, if you wanna disconnect that a, a phone or iPad say you're getting a new one or you just there's a problem with it. How do you, what do you do to make sure that what you disconnect,

Leo Laporte (02:07:11):
You don't wanna, in other words, you're saying what you don't wanna do and you're absolutely right. Is go into photos before you get rid of that. Ipad, delete everything there, cuz it's gonna delete it everywhere. That's exactly what you don't wanna do. No, you, you just erase the iPad reset the iPad and that will not do that.

Caller 7 (02:07:28):
Okay. It won't actually

Leo Laporte (02:07:29):
No, that's, that's a different signal to iCloud this, this in order to get iCloud deleted everywhere. You actually have to explicitly delete it in photos. If you're just erasing the iPad, it's not the same signal I iCloud smart enough. Thank goodness. Not to do that. That would be a disaster

Caller 7 (02:07:46):
<Laugh> yeah, for sure.

Leo Laporte (02:07:47):
Good questions. And you made me think and I'm gonna, I'm going right now to my Amazon photos to see, do I have the originals? Good question. Leo Laport. The tech guy. I don't know. I'm logging in right now. It's really interesting. Thought,

Caller 7 (02:08:07):
Well, I didn't wanna get screwed and lose something.

Leo Laporte (02:08:10):
Yeah. Rightly so. Okay. So I'm on, I'm on Amazon photos. So the real test would be to look at, does it have, I know I shot a lot of stuff in raw. Does it have the raws or does it just have a JPEG and the JPEG would be a thumbnail? So let me go through here. I'm gonna try to find, took a lot of stuff with you know, this is the other sad thing I brought a good, very good camera, but ended up taking my best pictures with the phone.

Caller 7 (02:08:44):
Well, my wife doesn't want to carry around before the big camera we've got.

Leo Laporte (02:08:50):
Yeah. Nowadays. Absolutely. Yeah.

Caller 7 (02:08:54):
The new phone it's you know,

Leo Laporte (02:08:56):
These, this, this iPhone 13 you have is incredible. Lisa took, took great pictures with that. I'm trying to get past all of this is I had a Samsung S 22 and I had a iPhone 12 or the older iPhone. And most of my pictures were taken with the, with the phones, with the cameras, camera phones, not the Sony, a seven R four that I brought the 41 megapixel,

Caller 7 (02:09:22):
That whole case of lenses and cameras. You

Leo Laporte (02:09:24):
Exactly wasted time, Leo. There's a DN G but no, that's a DG from the Samsung. No, that's not it. Yeah, that looks like it did not. Yeah. So I'm looking at one that I know I talked took with the Sony and it's a 137 kilobyte JPEG, dark, dark Nat on the on Amazon. So I think your intuition was correct. It does not, if it doesn't have access to the raw, it's not gonna upload the raw.

Caller 7 (02:10:01):
Mm.

Leo Laporte (02:10:02):
So that's a problem.

Caller 7 (02:10:03):
Well, I'm personally, I'm not, I know you are and that's great, but I'm, I'm, I'm not messing with the raw at this point. I'm

Leo Laporte (02:10:10):
I'm well, the only reason I, I use that is cuz then I know that's the original that's not

Caller 7 (02:10:14):
No, no, no, absolutely.

Leo Laporte (02:10:15):
Yeah. If a JPEG wouldn't necessarily be, could be the original could be a, a reduced JPEG, I guess you could look at the resolution. Yeah.

Caller 7 (02:10:23):
Right. Well, if I had better vision and was able to do what I like, I'd be Susan there all too. <Laugh> is there any other way, let's say this iPad, what we've got photos on and is in the, is in the album and it's looking at the same albums on any, either any device, right?

Leo Laporte (02:10:40):
That's right. That's the beauty of it, right? Once it's on iCloud, as long as you're all on the same account. Well,

Caller 7 (02:10:46):
I'm on iCloud. Okay. So I'm just thinking, having, I guess if you everything's in iCloud you're okay. But if, if it's not, then if

Leo Laporte (02:10:55):
Then it's only gonna see what it's what's local. Yeah. So you have local storage and iCloud storage. Yeah. That's why iCloud photos is a great deal. Now you don't have to ever turn on that optimized switch. If you've got lots of space, maybe you don't want to turn that on.

Caller 7 (02:11:08):
Well, I'm just thinking if you've got an iPad that doesn't have a whole lot of space compared to your, a new iPhone on computer, how do you eliminate stuff on that iPad without,

Leo Laporte (02:11:16):
Well, there you can turn it on because the iPad isn't the source of the originals. Right? What, the only place that really you wanna be careful about is wherever you're gonna put those originals. And I guess that's gonna be on your phone in your case.

Caller 7 (02:11:28):
So yeah. Icloud or, or on the phone. Yeah. Okay. So we can turn that on, on the

Leo Laporte (02:11:33):
Everywhere else. Turn on optimize,

Caller 7 (02:11:36):
Optimize, except for the original source,

Leo Laporte (02:11:38):
Wherever the originals are. That's right.

Caller 7 (02:11:41):
Very good. Well, that

Leo Laporte (02:11:42):
Makes sense. Good question. And, and you know what, I wasn't even thinking of that and I'm looking and I thought, oh, Amazon photos should have all of the raw originals and it doesn't. So now I'm gonna have to upload those from a desktop, I think.

Caller 7 (02:11:59):
Mm mm.

Leo Laporte (02:12:00):
But you can do, I can do that. There's an Amazon app for the desktop so I can just do it that way.

Caller 7 (02:12:05):
Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Well, great.

Leo Laporte (02:12:08):
Hey, good question. Thank you, Paul. <Laugh> it's you just saved me something. Take care.

Caller 7 (02:12:13):
Great. Bye-bye

Leo Laporte (02:12:15):
This horn section is gonna have to be getting overtime. Now. I think we're gonna, this is that's a budget Buster, Leo Laport, the tech guy, 88 88. Ask Leo, did you negotiate with them, Laura? For all of this extra horn. Oh good. They're here until 9:00 PM. Oh good. All right. Thank you. Get 'em some lunch, Andrew, on the line from Johnson city, Tennessee. Hello, Andrew

Caller 8 (02:12:42):
Leo Laport. Oh my God. Believe I'm talking to

Leo Laporte (02:12:46):
You. Oh, I'm thrilled to be talking to you. How you doing?

Caller 8 (02:12:49):
Oh, just trying to Dodge the rainy weather playing a 13 year old birthday and living life, man.

Leo Laporte (02:12:57):
It sounds like it's a good life. Enjoy, enjoy

Caller 8 (02:13:01):
So far. So good. Yeah. Yeah. Between you and Scott Wilkinson. I, I really don't have a question just to want to too, your horn and, and shoe that I, I ended up about 2009, started my own business and home theater installation and got it all. It just the love of it between that and it and home theater and, and home tech and from you and Scott and I can't. Thank you two enough.

Leo Laporte (02:13:29):
Oh, I'll tell you. I, I won't speak for Scott, although I suspect this is true, but the most gratifying thing after what I've been doing this now for a few years is hearing from people who said, yeah, you turned me on to this subject and I got into it and it's my business now. I love hearing that. So that's wonderful. Thank you, Andrew.

Caller 8 (02:13:47):
I've always been techy, but, but I don't know. It, it, the way between, again, you and Scott and then Scott's old cast that he had on your network and everything you guys do with your network had just pushed me over that edge. 

Leo Laporte (02:14:01):
Well I'll and I'll give Scott a plug cuz yeah. He, for a long time he did the home theater geek podcast on our network. He's now doing essentially the same thing on YouTube, youtube.com/avs forum. And it's great. Yeah. Good. I'm glad you watch it. That's great. That's

Caller 8 (02:14:18):
Great. I've I've got an Andrew Jones pioneer five one oh nice system.

Leo Laporte (02:14:22):
Oh nice.

Caller 8 (02:14:23):
Because of,

Leo Laporte (02:14:26):
Well, I was telling Scott off the air this today I was, you know, getting fed up with the kind of bad sound and my wife has a TV in the gym and I got fed up. So I went out and Andrew Jones is this now works for a company called ELAC and they make amazing, excellent bookshelf speakers. And I just got a pair of those in a subway for, for her so she can enjoy her music in her gym

Caller 8 (02:14:49):
Recently left ELAC. He, I can't remember who he

Leo Laporte (02:14:51):
Is. Oh really? All right. Well that's good to know. Yeah. I wonder where he is.

Caller 8 (02:14:56):
I forgot.

Leo Laporte (02:14:56):
Yeah, he did it. So I'm sure that the ELAC debut bookshelf speakers that I got were based on his design, they're still, you know

Caller 8 (02:15:04):
Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. He

Leo Laporte (02:15:05):
He's unveiled, it says, this is from last year. Andrew Jones is leaving E L a C, which is a very good us speaker company. And let's see, where is he going? Where is he going? That's the question.

Caller 8 (02:15:21):
Yeah, I know that's I can't, I can't remember if if his may have said it to Micah when you were your crew. 

Leo Laporte (02:15:29):
Yeah, they have a new, so Och has a new Solano series, which was not designed by Andrew Jones. Maybe Andrew just retiring. I mean, you know, we all get to <laugh>. We all get to enjoy our golden years at some point what's next for Andrew Jones. This is an article from aholic.com. We don't know yet the most popular theory online is that Jones with help from some deep pocketed investors is starting his own loud speaker company.

Caller 8 (02:15:54):
Very interesting.

Leo Laporte (02:15:55):
Hmm. Well I will ask Scott and he can maybe do some detective work. And I tried

Caller 8 (02:16:02):
To call you clear today when he was on and after 204 dials of the phone,

Leo Laporte (02:16:07):
It's hard to get in. I know that's why we recently instituted a kind of a limit on how many times you can call in. I don't know if you've noticed that, but we had some regulars that were on all the time and I wanna make sure everybody gets a chance to get in. So I know it's hard, Andrew, but I'm, I'm glad you did get in and

Caller 8 (02:16:22):
Well that's and I, and I've been listening the past. Well, I listen all every week to you. I have since. Thank you 2009. Wow.

Leo Laporte (02:16:30):
Thank you.

Caller 8 (02:16:31):
You said that you're looking for new time first time college. Yes. And I mean, I'm I've I used to stay up and watch your 20 fours to new the new year.

Leo Laporte (02:16:40):
Oh, that was so much fun. I'm sad that we don't still do that. My wife put the KBU on that. She said you are not staying up all day in the all night to do a show. Can

Caller 8 (02:16:50):
I can't imagine <laugh> it was tough.

Leo Laporte (02:16:53):
It was so much fun. Oh man, we did TW the 24 hours of new year's. We did it two years in a row raised money for UNICEF raised 80 or $90,000 for UNICEF in the second year. We're very, very proud of that. Awesome. Yeah. Well, Andrew, I will, you don't have to say it to Scott. I will make sure that he hears this segment of the show and, and here's your your thank you. And I appreciate it. Well,

Caller 8 (02:17:17):
Pleasures mine again. I just, so to your knowledge and, and you know, I've got an eco tank because of you. I, I, I could go on

Leo Laporte (02:17:26):
Tell Epson they stopped advertising. <Laugh> tell them they should be back. I don't know what <laugh> that happens all the time. Advertisers come and go as you know, budgets change. Oh yes. But I am glad that you are a happy customer. Thank you, Andrew. I appreciate it. Have that great birthday party for that 13 year old.

Caller 8 (02:17:45):
Well, she's getting excited. So we're

Leo Laporte (02:17:47):
Oh, when is it?

Caller 8 (02:17:49):
It's her birthday was actually two days ago, but the parties today, so,

Leo Laporte (02:17:52):
Oh boy. Well you get up. What do you do? Get off the go pick up. You got other things to do. Andrew. Happy birthday. What's her name? All

Caller 8 (02:18:01):
Day Leo and her name is Morgan. Happy

Leo Laporte (02:18:03):
Birthday, Morgan. That's a big one. 13. Wow. Happy birthday. We're not supposed to do this. The FCC says no birthday greetings, but I'm gonna do it anyway. Thank you, Andrew. Appreciate

Caller 8 (02:18:14):
It. Take care. Take care. Thank you,

Leo Laporte (02:18:16):
Jody. On the line, Los. Hello, Jody.

Caller 9 (02:18:20):
Well, how are you? It's good to hear your voices always.

Leo Laporte (02:18:22):
Thank you, sir.

Caller 9 (02:18:23):
Hope you can hear me okay. On this earbud that I'm walking through.

Leo Laporte (02:18:27):
I hear you great. Trying

Caller 9 (02:18:28):
To make them up. My,

Leo Laporte (02:18:29):
Yeah. It's which earbuds are you using? That's sounds very good.

Caller 9 (02:18:32):
These are the the galaxy. They're probably two years old.

Leo Laporte (02:18:35):
I love the Samsung galaxy earbuds. They're they're affordable and they really work.

Caller 9 (02:18:41):
Yes they do. And I don't have the need to send a whole lot more money on AirPod pros or

Leo Laporte (02:18:46):
Whatever. I agree. I'm I'm a fan too.

Caller 9 (02:18:49):
Yeah, no complaints by the way. Unrelated topic. But my buddy, Charlie Hadlock, who is probably listening right now, Charlie was a producer and a correspondent at NBC network news based outta their Dallas bureau. And if you ever wanna see a home done right. In terms of technology, he would be the guy. In fact, I've asked him to please stop sending me updates of the new things you're doing at home because I can't

Leo Laporte (02:19:12):
Afford it. My favorite geeks are the ones and I get pictures too, from from listeners. Yeah. Have you seen my home theater? Look what I did with my wiring closet. Look how neat and tidy it is. It's yeah, I know those people and I love them. I'm not them, but I love them.

Caller 9 (02:19:26):
It's hilarious. So, so he's my, when you're not around, he's the guy I call, but I, I, we, you and I have spoken a few times and almost every time I does, he texts me and says, Hey, heard Joan Leo show sound.

Leo Laporte (02:19:36):
Oh, nice. That's

Caller 9 (02:19:37):
Great. Hello, Charlie for listening.

Leo Laporte (02:19:38):
Hi Charlie.

Caller 9 (02:19:39):
I'm having he he's great text.

Leo Laporte (02:19:41):
Yeah. Big old geek. You I'm happy. Yes.

Caller 9 (02:19:45):
I'm having big fun right now. I've got a 2018 MacBook pro that I am finally updating from Mojave to Catalina so that I can use the new version of the results as all 18. Yes. And that's minimum that's required for that. And I've been Googling and spending way too much time on my wife's computer, trying to figure out why it is stuck on estimating time relief.

Leo Laporte (02:20:08):
Oh, I hate it. When that happens, estimating

Caller 9 (02:20:10):
That it's been doing that for about 15 hours now.

Leo Laporte (02:20:12):
Oh yeah. It's done. Stop time. Time to give up. Yeah. Have

Caller 9 (02:20:17):
I, I I've stopped it. I've restarted. I've done a try to, you know, done it with the shift, a safe boot or whatever the heck it's called and I can't get it to do anything aside from just that same thing over and over and over. I can't even get it to open up and let me just work on it. Like it was.

Leo Laporte (02:20:34):
So there two things that could be going wrong. The most likely one is that the download is bad. And just so start over, you know, get a clean download of Catalina used to be the solution was actually you go to apple and download Catalina and put it on a USB key. I don't think they do that anymore. I think you have to do it the way you're doing it. But if the download gets damaged or corrupted, it's gonna get exactly this symptom. The other possibility is how

Caller 9 (02:21:00):
Do I do that? If, if the computer won't do anything, but just sit on this slack page with an apple logo, I mean, still

Leo Laporte (02:21:05):
Waiting the best way to do this. And I hope you got everything off of there that you need is to do the internet recovery. That's the latest later model machine, which means you can do the download of fresh copy of Catalina from the internet. And actually in this case, it won't download Catalina. Cause you haven't gotten there yet. It'll download the old whatever the last one was probably Mojave for you. And then do the Catalina. That'll be a fresh start. You'll wipe the drive. You'll be it's in effect, Ning it from space. And I think it's, I think it's command option R but you can Google it real quickly. What is the inter you want internet recovery for that Macintosh and that'll start from scratch the GIW Dick D Bartolo coming up. We'll also put how to create there is a, the article from apple on how to create a butable installer. So that's another way to do it, but I think the internet recovery is the right way to do it for you.

Caller 9 (02:22:03):
Is there a ne Al less nuclear option? <Laugh>

Leo Laporte (02:22:07):
Well, you can, you can probably back out of it and get the stuff off. The reason you wanna do that is twofold. One. I did mention it could be a bad download and this will be a fresh, complete, fresh download. The other could be, there's a problem on the hard drive. There's a bad sector or something right. Where it needs to, to to go. And if that, if that's the case, this this might help to do it. Is there stuff on that computer you don't wanna?

Caller 9 (02:22:36):
Yeah, there probably is. I think I, I mean, I'm pretty good at, at regularly doing continual backups, but it's, it's entirely possible that there is something on there that, that isn't fully backed up. I've got all my main stuff is on under drives. Yeah. That computer does have quite a lot of stuff on it. That's my work work.

Leo Laporte (02:22:51):
Of course. So option, option, shift, command R is the internet recovery, but you can also do option command R that might well, that's what you were doing, probably. Yeah. I think if you back out of it, can your computer boot cause I mean, or is it, did it,

Caller 9 (02:23:13):
No, it just, it does the same thing every time.

Leo Laporte (02:23:15):
Oh, you, you really hose it now. Yeah. I think you're outta luck. I think you have to do, I don't think you can get into it otherwise. Should

Caller 9 (02:23:23):
I take it over to the genius bar you think? Or they

Leo Laporte (02:23:26):
The same thing? Sure. If you don't mind doing that, they probably have ways what they will have for sure. It might be the solution is a bootable Mac OS, but we'll put a link in the show notes to how to make a bootable Mac. O S you could do that. If you had a different another Mac, if you could boot,

Caller 9 (02:23:42):
I would, we've got another Mac.

Leo Laporte (02:23:44):
Okay. So you can boot to an external drive and then get the data off the internal drive.

Caller 9 (02:23:52):
Okay. And then

Leo Laporte (02:23:53):
Do that and then do the nuke from space.

Caller 9 (02:23:56):
Yeah. Which I was sure. Hoping to not have to.

Leo Laporte (02:23:58):
I understand no one ever wants to do that, but this is

Caller 9 (02:24:02):
One, one more feature that I needed and resolve 18, you know, the chiro thing that I,

Leo Laporte (02:24:06):
I know a new podcast, I know

Caller 9 (02:24:09):
For one shot

Leo Laporte (02:24:11):
Is, are these personal videos or are you working in the biz?

Caller 9 (02:24:14):
No, it's yeah. It's it's work related stuff. Nice. You we've spoken before I worked on our five means death doing the first.

Leo Laporte (02:24:20):
Oh, I remember you.

Caller 9 (02:24:21):
Yeah. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (02:24:22):
Oh man. So you do the backgrounds. Yes. I just watched this industrial light magic docu documentary. I was just talking about this light and magic on Disney plus. And they talk about the how the Mandalorian, what do they call it? The, the space, the zone, the room that screen that you guys use. Unbelievable. Revolutionary. And to see it in operation totally is unbelievable.

Caller 9 (02:24:50):
I'm glad you got to do that. Yeah. Yeah. Every person I bring down and we had the CEO from Sigma lenses was in town and we took him down and gave him a couple of demos. So

Leo Laporte (02:24:58):
Cool.

Caller 9 (02:24:58):
It was just so funny. Seen his face just light up. He was walking up to the screen like inches away.

Leo Laporte (02:25:03):
Our flag is death. Jody's told us before is shot the same way the Mandalorian is on a background. That's a giant beautiful high-res screen. Very cool technology. Yeah.

Caller 9 (02:25:12):
Much higher res much. Our resident Mando is using actually.

Leo Laporte (02:25:15):
Oh really? Oh, interesting. Oh, interesting.

Caller 9 (02:25:18):
Yeah. They, they opted for something with a little less pitch and they're having to work farther away from it because you began to see pixels and more and so forth.

Leo Laporte (02:25:25):
Yeah. So oh, so are they eight? K? Are these eight K screens now?

Caller 9 (02:25:30):
No, these are like 20 K.

Leo Laporte (02:25:32):
Oh my God. Crazy. All right. I'm gonna call you when I come down to LA. I wanna see this, Jody.

Caller 9 (02:25:38):
No, seriously do. I'm dead serious about that. I don't know if you have a way to get my number. So I

Leo Laporte (02:25:43):
Can give it to you now. I'll put you on hold and and Kim will get it. Thank you, Kim. Yeah, I'll do it. Thank you, Jody. Thanks bud. Take care. Now I'm gonna go down and see this. I really wanna see this. What do they call it? The void. Now they have a name for it. The space. I can't remember. Very cool. Hey, Dickie D

Dick DeBartolo (02:26:04):
Hey Leo. How you doing?

Leo Laporte (02:26:06):
Wonderful. How are you? My friend. Good. Here we go. The volume, that's it. Yeah. You come with me, Micah. We'll do a long way. All the way from gland, baby. Dick D Bartolo, Mads Madis writer, and our gizmo wizard. We call him the GWiz. Hello? Dickie. D

Dick DeBartolo (02:26:37):
Lee, how are you doing pal? Oh,

Leo Laporte (02:26:40):
You can call me Lee. It's not, it's not really easy to shorten Leo. Is it?

Dick DeBartolo (02:26:45):
No, I took shorthand in school and it's coming back to me a little bit.

Leo Laporte (02:26:49):
<Laugh> what I mean, Dick is as short as a nickname can be, but do people ever call you D

Dick DeBartolo (02:26:54):
No. I or hello? Dead. I'm Dicky. Dicky. D Dicky, D Dicky

Leo Laporte (02:26:59):
D. Well, that's making it longer. Not shorter, but okay.

Dick DeBartolo (02:27:01):
That's true. Dick D Dick. It started out as Dick D

Leo Laporte (02:27:05):
It's D

Dick DeBartolo (02:27:05):
Bartolo. I got corrupted. Dickie D Dick.

Leo Laporte (02:27:07):
I like Dickey D yeah. Mr. Dickey D joins us every week to share some gizmo or gadget or something. What do you got from Leo?

Dick DeBartolo (02:27:16):
This, this is pretty neat. It's not a, a jokey gadget, but you know, my Verizon landline I've now had it, I think 45 years. <Laugh> okay. <Laugh>

Leo Laporte (02:27:27):
That's before it was Verizon.

Dick DeBartolo (02:27:29):
Yes. I think it was Edison. No,

Leo Laporte (02:27:33):
No, no. What was Verizon before? It was Verizon. It was out it was something at and T no, I I'll look it up anyway. You've had it for

Dick DeBartolo (02:27:41):
40 years anyway. Wow. Right. Okay. And, and Dennis has had his, now for 30 years and my line went out. So the guy came Ninex and it's New York XX. Yes, exactly. Ninex okay. And the guy, he was very knowledgeable and he said, you know, you, you know where your phone line starts. And I said, yeah, on west, on west end avenue, because yeah, not to go over there. It was, it was great. He ran back and forth and he said, listen 20 wires came into this building. I used a negative of one and the positive of another. And it's the last two wires in this building that worked, what,

Leo Laporte (02:28:19):
When was

Dick DeBartolo (02:28:20):
This? And this was about 10 days ago. And he said, now, if your phone goes out, it's forever. Okay. Because the lines go through the backyard.

Leo Laporte (02:28:31):
Can you imagine in a city, like New York, what? The phone system? And they're just these copper little copper wires.

Dick DeBartolo (02:28:37):
Yes, exactly. And, and so, and Dennis has no voice. He just has DSL because evidently DSL works on one wire

Leo Laporte (02:28:44):
Nowadays everything's data. Yeah. Yeah. They don't want you to have those copper wires.

Dick DeBartolo (02:28:49):
No. He said go to Verizon and, and tell them you want wireless direct.

Leo Laporte (02:28:54):
Ooh.

Dick DeBartolo (02:28:55):
I went to Verizon and yeah, the guy said, yeah. He said, it's a little white box. And he said, the box is a hundred bucks. What? And yeah, it's a 35, a $35 activation fee.

Leo Laporte (02:29:08):
And it plugs into what

Dick DeBartolo (02:29:11):
It will. First of all, your phone line has to still be live when you get the box. Okay. You take the phone outta the wall, Jack, and you plug it into this.

Leo Laporte (02:29:21):
That's to kinda let it know who you are probably. Right.

Dick DeBartolo (02:29:24):
Ex that's exactly right. Yeah. Okay. So it has a built in SIM card has a built in battery. It runs on AC, but if power goes out, the battery will kick in and then you can still use your phone.

Leo Laporte (02:29:36):
And then eventually you can unplug the cable. Yes,

Dick DeBartolo (02:29:40):
The course. Yes. Well, stupidly the instruction book is just four steps, which I did. Yeah. And it says, now you can make calls. Yeah. And I could make calls. Nice. And Dennis could make calls. Sweet. Except we couldn't call. No one could call us.

Leo Laporte (02:29:54):
Oh, well, that's not stupid.

Dick DeBartolo (02:29:55):
So, so I, I went online and found a video and found out that after you do those four steps, you have to call the Verizon transfer line.

Leo Laporte (02:30:08):
Oh.

Dick DeBartolo (02:30:09):
To find. So I call them up and it's, it's one in the morning. I get a real person. And I explain what

Leo Laporte (02:30:17):
Do you want? <Laugh>. Yeah.

Dick DeBartolo (02:30:20):
And don't call me this way. Do you know

Leo Laporte (02:30:21):
It time? It is <laugh>

Dick DeBartolo (02:30:24):
She said, let me look up your phone. And I said, my spouse has a line. So she I'll look, 'em both up. She said, oh, your, your phone will switch over on Friday. So you

Leo Laporte (02:30:32):
Keep your phone number. But yes, you're no longer connected to anything. It's just floating through the air air.

Dick DeBartolo (02:30:38):
Yes, exactly. So now this is all dependent on what the signal is for Verizon in your neighborhood. Now this

Leo Laporte (02:30:46):
Is your cell is now using the cell towers instead.

Dick DeBartolo (02:30:49):
Exactly. Yeah, exactly. And, and the repair guy said something very funny and it's true. He said, now plug your phone into this. You go out in the backyard in your fridge. You're not gonna hear your phone. Take it with me, carry your phone in this box. You want, you wanna go to the park?

Leo Laporte (02:31:04):
Nice. Do you have to put it in the window or anything for, for the connection or no, you

Dick DeBartolo (02:31:08):
Know, for me here, it's fine. On my desk. It said you should have at least two bars. And on my desk I have two bars and it fluctuates between two and three bars. This,

Leo Laporte (02:31:17):
This is the, we were talking at the beginning of the show about the disruption of how technology's changing. This is part of that disruption. My, my daughter has Verizon wireless internet access, same idea. It's a box. She pays 25 bucks a month gets very high speed internet through the cell towers. Cuz they're close by. She could get her phone that way too. But you know what? People under 30 don't have phone numbers. They just use the cell phones, right? No,

Dick DeBartolo (02:31:42):
No. So, and but

Leo Laporte (02:31:43):
You still

Dick DeBartolo (02:31:43):
Have on machine in the back. You wait

Leo Laporte (02:31:45):
A minute, wait a minute, stop. You do not plug your answering machine into this. Do you,

Dick DeBartolo (02:31:51):
If you want <laugh>

Leo Laporte (02:31:52):
You don't have

Dick DeBartolo (02:31:53):
Any first.

Leo Laporte (02:31:54):
This is by the way, Dick was the first person in his circle of friends, maybe in the us to have an answering machine

Dick DeBartolo (02:32:01):
<Laugh>

Leo Laporte (02:32:02):
But year was that many, many moons ago,

Dick DeBartolo (02:32:05):
Ma well, you know, I bought it for bill Gaines. It, it was two reels of tape. <Laugh> one reel was the message. And the other reel took the messages. I remember that. That's how far be, and it was like $400.

Leo Laporte (02:32:17):
Yeah. So now nobody has an answering machine anymore. Do they? They're voicemail.

Dick DeBartolo (02:32:23):
Well, you know what? I hooked one up for Dennis and Dennis, Dennis is a NuTech he's zero tech. And he, he came down and said, you know that thing you put in my apartment. I said, yeah. He said it rang this morning. <Laugh> I said, yeah, yeah. And he like a phone said, now it's blinking red. Oh. So I went up, he had phoned in to his doctor that he needed something. Represcribed and I said, Dennis, that's a message. Is it's a message TVs. That

Leo Laporte (02:32:54):
It's a message.

Dick DeBartolo (02:32:55):
Yeah.

Leo Laporte (02:32:56):
So the thing is an now can you get a fax on it?

Dick DeBartolo (02:33:00):
You can. It says you can hook your faxing machine to it. No data can be put through it.

Leo Laporte (02:33:04):
Oh, interesting. Yeah.

Dick DeBartolo (02:33:06):
It will revert to Verizon mail. Okay. It does everything. Your cell phone does. Interesting. The way you set up this device is the way you set up a cell phone answering machine. And it's 20 bucks a month. If you are already using Verizon and we were each paying a hundred for our landline. So this is going be, this

Leo Laporte (02:33:29):
Is a good deal.

Dick DeBartolo (02:33:31):
This is gonna be a great deal.

Leo Laporte (02:33:31):
This is, this is really the future. The phone companies do not wanna maintain. Imagine in New York city, all those copper lines, how, what a pain that is for them to crawl over fences and under bushes and around get to keep those things going. They don't want that. They want get 'em rid of 'em all. In fact, even in suburbs, very often when you get things like fiber internet, they'll, they'll take the opportunity to cut the copper. They're not supposed to, but they'll cut the copper. They don't wanna do the copper anymore. It's expensive. So they're replacing everything with wireless.

Dick DeBartolo (02:34:01):
Yeah. So if you're an older person with a landline, this is a way to yeah. Save money and make it more portable.

Leo Laporte (02:34:07):
Nice. <laugh> the idea that you just, how, how heavy is the box though? It's not

Dick DeBartolo (02:34:12):
Oh, it's it's it's light. I would say it's maybe

Leo Laporte (02:34:15):
Out in the yard.

Dick DeBartolo (02:34:16):
Eight ounces.

Leo Laporte (02:34:17):
Yeah. Take <laugh>. This is difficult.

Dick DeBartolo (02:34:19):
I should take this down to the park with my landline go, well, you know, I can't afford, this is the first cell phone.

Leo Laporte (02:34:24):
You can take it every it is. It's a cell, basically. It is. It's a cell phone. It's a cell phone, gwiz.biz. You can read about it. Just click the button, the GWiz visits, the tech guy, he's got a video. He is got all the information. He also has all the previous stuff he's talked about on the show. Plus the products he mentions on ABC's world news. Now, lots of other stuff. And the what the heck is a contest. A chance to win an autograph copy of mad magazine, the Poltergeist to cover, which I just got. Thank you. Dick had to go out and get a silver Sharpie. Autograph it he's here. Thank you. Dicky D have a wonder week buddy here next week. We'll talk to you later and thank you all for joining us on the tech guy show. Thanks to professor Laura, our musical director.

Leo Laporte (02:35:06):
Thanks to the horn section. Guys. Take care. Thanks to Kim Schaffer, our phone angel for answering the phones. Of course. Most of all, I gotta thank you because, well, it'd be silly for me to sit here, talking to myself in this empty room. Thank goodness you're listening and calling and participating. I'll be back next time. I hope you will too. I am Leo Laport. Your tech guy have a great geek week. Bye-Bye well, that's it for the tech guy show for today. Thank you so much for being here and don't forget twit T w I T it stands for this week@techandyoufinditattwit.tv, including the podcasts for this show. We talk about windows and windows weekly, Macintosh, a Mac break, weekly iPads, iPhones, apple watches on iOS, today's security and security. Now, I mean, I can go on and 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.