Ask The Tech Guys 2017 Transcript

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

0:00:00 - Leo Laporte
Well, hey, hey, hey, it's me Leo Laporte with Mikah Sargent. Time for Ask the Tech Guys. Dick D Bartolo is coming up with not one, but two crazy gadgets and a way to win a mad magazine.

0:00:10 - Mikah Sargent
Ooh, and I am Mikah Sargent and we talk to a listener who has a question. What service should I use to set up a one page website?

0:00:18 - Leo Laporte
And then we get a really interesting question how much does your ISP know about what you're doing on the internet? It's all coming up. Next, ask the Tech Guys.

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0:01:22 - Leo Laporte
This is Ask the Tech Guys with Mikah Sargent and Leo Laporte. Episode 2017, recorded Sunday, March 24th 2024: 18 Tons of Wax.

Ask the Tech Guys is brought to you by my email provider, Fastmail, a leader in email privacy for more than 20 years. Make email better with Fastmail. One of the reasons I love Fastmail. They use open internet standards, the Cyrus server and they're moving email forward by supporting the Cyrus server and new internet standards and open source innovations. A lot of other email services use it, but Fastmail originates it and you're going to love Fastmail. You can use it in any of your email programs, but they also have great iOS and Android apps and their webmail is second to none. With quick settings, you can choose themes, you can switch between light and dark modes, change text size, generate massed email addresses, auto-save contacts, set default reminders and more. It's powerful. You can even now add a domain name to Fastmail or even buy it from Fastmail so that you can use your own domain name as your email. They'll set up all the records for you.

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Hey, hey, hey. Thank you, Mikah Sargent, for filling in last week. I'm Leo Laporte. I'm back. You're back, baby Rested, ready to answer your questions and full of vitamin D. Full of vitamin D. Am I a little darker? You're a little darker, yeah, yeah, I'm actually darker than you, now, not quite Almost 888.

0:04:08 - Caller
Get in there 722.

0:04:09 - Leo Laporte
I could have been. Yeah, I bet you could have. Lisa, I want to come back, darker than Mikah, not a good idea though. Oh bad, 8887242884 is the phone number. Yes.

0:04:19 - Mikah Sargent
You can call that during the show to be brought up and to be able to ask a question. If you call during the week, though, you can leave a voicemail, and then that voicemail can be played back during the show. There are a few other ways to get in touch with us as well. There's an email atgatwittv. When you send in text, it goes behind Leo, and, yes, we've got a nice stack of emails ready for you, but we also will accept video and audio sent to that address as well, which can be played back during the show. And then the other way to get in touch is by heading to calltwittv on your browser, on your phone or your computer, wherever you want to do it, to be able to join us in the Zoom room. You will hang out in the Zoom room waiting to ask your question. That V Zoom room, not V Zoom room, the Zoom.

0:05:10 - Leo Laporte
Yes, did you get the email?

0:05:11 - Mikah Sargent
No, I didn't. Oh wait, oh wait, is it the, the? Oh, that's interesting. I had a person who taught me about broadcast journalism who was very much a stickler. Excuse me on the versus the, but anyway, when you join the Zoom room the Zoom room you will need to look toward the bottom of your screen where you will find a raise hand button. Tapping or clicking on that button lets us know that you have a question, that you've raised your hand and that means that you've raised your hand. That is how you get brought up onto the stage where you will be able to ask your question.

0:05:47 - Leo Laporte
Yes, that's all good and well, but we'd like to ask one more thing. We get a lot of repeat callers and I know for those of you trying to get in that's frustrating. So we want to, just today, let's let's get all new callers first time, long time kind of people. Okay, absolutely. So we want to make sure that way, everybody gets a chance to get in. Did anything happen? Well, I was gone.

0:06:12 - Mikah Sargent
Many things of a few things.

0:06:14 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, you know, it didn't happen. Apple did not release new iPads.

0:06:17 - Mikah Sargent
No, they would happen. Yeah, there was a chance.

0:06:20 - Leo Laporte
Department of Justice did so. That did happen. Wow, that's a big lawsuit and it's 85 pages. I spent the weekend reading no work, no work. I worked we all did because we want to kind of figure out, well, what is the DOJ upset with, and mostly I thought I'm going to have to have an opinion on this Exactly.

0:06:44 - Mikah Sargent
You need to come back and I don't really have an opinion at the ground running.

0:06:47 - Leo Laporte
Steven Sonofsky wrote a great piece. He said there's going to be two kinds of people. There's going to be people, people who believe that the government should, should keep companies from getting too big, too powerful, who will be very happy that the Department of Justice is actually pursued and antitrust Sherman, antitrust violation lawsuit against Apple. Then there will be the Apple fans who say, but what's wrong with Apple? I'm very happy Apple isn't making me buy an iPhone. I love my iPhone.

And so these are, you know, the people who either will say, well, the government shouldn't get involved because they don't know technology, or they just happy Apple users. And I'm kind of in both camps. I don't. I think the government should weigh in when these companies get too big. And it's frankly. I'm more worried about Google. I think you know I'd like to see much more control of Google, because they're so powerful by controlling the search space that that really makes them the most powerful company in tech. But all right, you know the government could do more than you can walk and chew gum. So they're going to pursue. They're going to pursue Google, I'm sure, and they have to some degree. But this one is a big one against Apple and there's a real question is Apple even a?

0:07:58 - Mikah Sargent
monopoly, that is, yeah, that's a conversation that I continue to see being brought up, and that is where I find myself in two camps. Right, it's. It's an ongoing kind of conversation about what? Exactly where is Apple's place in all of this and what? What can? What is considered a monopoly in this new way that the government is looking at?

0:08:23 - Leo Laporte
That's the problem because they they had to Apple's monopoly quote. Monopoly in smartphone sales in the US is 50, 60%. That's not a monopoly, buddy, buddy. You know it's almost half and half. But they say in this new category they've invented which is like premium smartphones, they're 70%. Still not a monopoly, buddy. And I think you can really make a strong case that nobody's forced to buy Apple.

Now there is a case to be made that Apple, by pursuing its walled garden strategy, once you're in makes it hard for you to go to leave but or, even more importantly, makes it hard for others to participate. So they had a strong case, for instance, about the Apple Watch not working on Android. Apple says, by the way, apple was ready, apple was prepared. They had responses galore and one of them was no, we worked for three years to make the Apple Watch work on Android. We just never could. We could never get it working. Whether you believe that or not, it is the case that Apple has a walled garden that once you're in it and many of us I think you and I are included in this are happy in our walled garden. Yeah, somewhat.

0:09:35 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, I mean because the things that it provides that genuinely, if I look at any other company that is more open, less walled garden, can't make the same promises, or if they try to make the same promises, can't hold up to them. The interoperability that I have among my devices truly is unique to Apple as far as I'm concerned, and so in that way I am happy with that. But at the same time I have found myself wanting some of the stuff that the EU has made possible because of the DMA right. That has actually some of the force changes for Apple there. I think some of them are good and it'd be nice to be able to pick and choose, but I know I can't have my cake and eat it too.

0:10:26 - Leo Laporte
I'm a fan of open right. You know I like I prefer open systems to proprietary systems. But there are benefits that you gain from proprietary systems and here's the real problem that DOJ is going to face. Apple customers choose Apple because they like those benefits and they don't really feel disadvantaged that they are. You know can't message Android people. You know that the grain bubble issue doesn't bother iPhone users and I don't even think it bothers that many Android users. To be honest with you especially outside of the US.

0:10:54 - Mikah Sargent
Nobody outside of the US really cares about it at all.

0:10:56 - Leo Laporte
If you do care, you can use WhatsApp in the US or many other choices which will solve all of those problems. I think it's going to be an uphill case, although you know, here's an article in the Verge that says it's even stronger than imagined and he trusts it. They talk to a bunch of experts. They say, even though it's an uphill battle, it's a strong start. How much so I?

0:11:19 - Mikah Sargent
talked to Jennifer Paterson Tui of the Verge about this. It had just broke on Thursday morning, or had gone official on Thursday morning, and she and I were discussing the difference between this and back when Microsoft was facing the same issue, and at the time I kind of tried to, I guess, not compare but contrast the two. At the time, the people who were concerned when it came to Microsoft it was the company itself, and then, if we think about it as a circle, the core was the company itself that was concerned about it and then outside of that core was a larger group that were the businesses that all used Microsoft technologies like the software, and that was pretty much it, the government and those parts of the circle. But now, because of the interconnectivity of all of us and the way that all of this kind of spreads, I feel like there is a larger group that has more concern about it. Even if we look at the core, which is Apple, and then haha, that's a pun there right outside of the core, which would be the businesses and the technology that's involved there. But then we increase the circle even more for us these sort of pro consumers, slash journalists, slash bloggers even if it's just that group.

It's still a much larger group of people that have more concern this time, and so I wonder how much of what's happening here will be shaped by public opinion, whereas I don't know if there was as much as many people shouting about and caring about what was happening with Microsoft at the time, and so if you didn't have any kind of public opinion having any role at the time, it really did just come down to what the government felt and could prove and what the company felt and could prove.

But this time it feels like you have back to back to back. You know Spotify complains about what Apple is doing, then Spotify tells its customers how it feels about it. You have Epic Games complaining about what Apple's doing, but then Epic tells its customers about what it and you get these kind of larger armies that are helping to push. That may play that role. So maybe, when it comes to what the Verges experts that they quoted are talking about here, you know that it's a stronger case, how much of it is actually a stronger case and how much of it is that public opinion is not on big tech's side like it maybe hasn't. You know it didn't play a role before.

0:13:47 - Leo Laporte
That's one of the things Steven Snopsky said which I disagree with is that this is a political prosecution, and I don't agree with that. I think that the I think it's important for both the FTC and the Department of Justice to pursue antitrust to do their jobs, yeah to do their jobs.

There's one flaw in capitalism is that when a company becomes big enough to assert a monopoly in one market, it can use that strength to then enter other markets and really destroy competitiveness. And one thing that really makes a free market and capitalism work is competition. So that's the fundamental question. It to me is and it applies to both consumers and other companies is Apple doing something that makes it hard for competitors to exist, for innovation to happen, and that benefits us as users, as well as other companies? This is going to be a very hard case for the government to prove. I think, of course, it's going to go on for years. And then the other question is what's the remedy Now?

In the case of Microsoft, by the way and I covered this in the late 90s, it was, you know, we were doing tech TV and we covered it deeply, and I am of the opinion that that was a justified prosecution and the government won. They didn't break up Microsoft. That might have been their initial goal, but what they did get is Microsoft to change its behavior, which was, from all accounts, completely, you know, predatory against other companies, and they got an ombudsman to sit in Microsoft and watch their behavior and from all accounts including Steve Sinovsky's Inside Microsoft, it chased into the company and it made things like Google possible. So I think that that was a that was an example of a successful prosecution that achieved its goals, did not break up the company, but got the company to change its behavior in such a way that competition was improved. So the history of that is very, I think, very positive. Now, how long did it take? 10 years, yeah, and it's this is going to take that long as well. The other difference is Microsoft had a 90% more than 90% monopoly and desktop computing Apple does not, and I think that's going to. I think it's very possible A court will look at it and say you know, you don't have a monopoly here, you don't have a case, because if you don't have a monopoly, there is no violation.

The whole premise of the Sherman anti trust act is that a company uses its monopoly to enter new markets. There's also something Corey Doctro and Rebecca Giblin talked about in their choke point capitalism book, which was it has become of more interest of late which is something called monopsony, and this is something that I think the FTC is very interested in. I know Lena Khan is very interested in the idea that there's one buyer of services. Amazon becomes a monopsony when it's the only company that's buying books, right, and so a monopsony is another thing that they might look at. Apple has is a monopsony in its app store, although interestingly, unlike the EU, the DOJ didn't really go after the app store particularly, which is so maybe that I don't know what.

I don't know what their thinking is. I think it's. You know, everybody who knows this stuff and I don't I'm no lawyer, I'm no expert in this thinks it's a well written case. Later today on Twitter, kathy Gellis, who's an attorney and a specialist in this, we'll be talking a little bit about this as well. I think this is going to be a very difficult case for them to win. I think there is even a possibility it will be thrown out immediately by a court that says hey, it's not a monopoly. There's also some dumb stuff in there. They say that car plays an attempt by Apple to take over car computing systems.

0:17:42 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, that feels just like they don't have an understanding of that aspect.

0:17:46 - Leo Laporte
Well, they may, and they may have, we'll see. They have to, you know, prove the case, but they may have internal memos. They have a lot of documents that say Apple says in its deals with car makers oh you, by the way, you can't have anything else, but do they have enough market power to to? I mean, there are car makers like Chevy who said you know, that's fine, we don't need carplay. So GM said that I think they back down a little bit. Customers want carplay, so that will be an interesting. I think that that's a little far fetched, that carplay is an attempt to take over the car computing market. It'll be very interesting.

Corey Dr O does, of course, weigh in on this. He wrote an article on his plural pluralisticnet farthest vlog name to say the antitrust case against Apple. One of the things he does say which is very interesting is the cult of Apple, the cult of Mac, believes that they are, despite the fact they're buying products from a $3 trillion company, a member of an oppressed minority yeah, you do see that and that any criticism of the corporation is, in effect, an ethnic slur. They also believe that Apple's a virtuous company, that Apple would never, never do anything wrong. It's, it's, it's unlike any other company in the world in that they want to be good, they want to be private, they're doing everything they can to make the best possible products, and that is the marketing. That's, yeah, that's what they push.

But I don't think it's the case no, and you know there.

0:19:16 - Mikah Sargent
There certainly was a time many a year ago where I fell into that, and over time Did you get the cult of Mac Apple logo. I came very close In your haircut. Yeah, I came very close. But yeah that I and you see that and it's very frustrating because at that point it doesn't kind of matter what you say or how good of a point you're making. The person's not going to hear anything other than.

0:19:41 - Leo Laporte
Corey raises another issue which actually has nothing to do with the DOJ lawsuit, which is Apple's behavior in China, where, when the Chinese government said, hey, no VPNs, apple said oh, yeah, yeah, of course not. And of course, tim Cook just did a tour through China, in which he announced, by the way, vision Pro will be available in China. This is a big market for Apple and it is is absolutely the case that Apple does bad things for the Chinese people in response to the Chinese Communist party. That is not in dispute, nor is, nor is it part of the lawsuit Right.

But if you think Apple is a benign company, just remember they're not there. They have a duty to their shareholders to make money and it's always a balance, as Corey points out, every company between alienating the customers, because you need customers to make money, and making more money for the shareholders, and every company kind of weighs this, and Apple does the same. Apple does not favor the consumer, its users, over its shareholders. Don't think that you are the reason Apple exists. You are not. So we'll see. You know there's going to be. We're going to have 10 years of fodder out of this.

0:20:47 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, oh, absolutely. Whether we'll be here for 10 years, you'll be here.

0:20:51 - Leo Laporte
I may be long gone but at any event, there's going to be. I remember with you know it started in 1998 on tech TV. It was still going on when tech TV went out of business. I think it'll be the Microsoft suit, so I think it'll be kind of like that it's going to go on for a long time. I don't think they. The remedy is not to break up Apple. There's no point in that. Microsoft made a little more sense because they had different divisions, Apple doesn't. I think maybe the remedy is just Apple, knock it off. And and I would love to see it Frankly, let's just talk about whether the lawsuit is marinadis, no, but let's talk about what we would like to see. Wouldn't you like to see an open, open ecosystem? Yes, when there could be app stores from other companies, where there could be other companies offering compatibility with iMessage?

0:21:37 - Mikah Sargent
Yes, I mean, we wouldn't we like that? Yeah, that's what I meant by wanting what the EU has forced Apple is doing. I'd like to see a lot of that coming, and I don't.

0:21:45 - Leo Laporte
I think Apple is going kicking and screaming with malicious compliance to the EU. The EU is not going to let that set. I don't think we'll see. No, I don't think so either. But I think now Apple needs to be told no, knock it off, be. You got to be a little more open. You can pursue your strategy, you. You can continue to make the best products and win fairly in the marketplace, but you've got to let the competition compete. Spotify is a great case against Apple, right? Because Apple says to Spotify you can't. You can't sell your stuff on our platform without giving us a third of it, and but we can. Uh, apple music, we can do whatever we want. We come in preinstalled.

0:22:21 - Mikah Sargent
We can pop all these little notifications up and encourage the user to subscribe and do all this other stuff.

0:22:27 - Leo Laporte
I mean, look, this is so it's going to come down. I know between people who who favor government regulation and think antitrust law is good and really want to break up all big tech and Apple fans. What the hell are you doing? This is a great company, successful company. This is exactly what the American capitalist system is supposed to be doing.

0:22:47 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, I can pretty much already map out the Mac break weekly arguments. You know, you know who's you know who's going to be yeah, and I and I'm somewhat, and you're somewhere in the middle. Yeah, in the middle, I don't.

0:22:56 - Leo Laporte
I don't know what the right answer is. I really don't. But but you and I agree, and I think that the sane heads will agree more open would probably be a good thing and it wouldn't hurt anybody. I 100% agree with that. It probably wouldn't even hurt Apple's profits, to be honest.

0:23:09 - Mikah Sargent
In many ways it might open it up even more they could see jobs, did not want to make the iPod available on Windows.

0:23:17 - Leo Laporte
He did not want to ever do that. This is all comes from Steve, by the way. This has always been his fortress mentality, and his saner heads inside Apple said no, steve, we got to make iTunes available on Windows. That's the majority of users they did, and that's when the iPod became a huge success, and so openness is not a bad thing, it's an opportunity. I think Absolutely All right. Enough of us talking about the news. What should we do next? Should we do you want, would you like? But I want to take a. I kind of feel like we should take a call and then we'll do, because Mikah did a whole thing in the other. He did a whole, he installed a whole new thing, and I want to talk a little bit about that. But first, John Ashley.

0:24:00 - Caller
All right, I see a gentleman hanging out outside enjoying himself.

0:24:06 - Leo Laporte
I see a silhouette of a man outside with his solo stove Solo, hello there, bring him in. Welcome to the show. I don't have a name. Hello, what's your name and where are you calling from?

0:24:22 - Caller
Andrew from Pennsylvania, not not Australia, like you thought. But yes, you are correct. You you know, in honor of your, your flaming coffee, I have my solo stove here. Right, it's a beautiful starting to get warm weather out here.

0:24:41 - Leo Laporte
You had a late breaking winter storm back east. I know Cause, yeah, but but but it's warming up. That's good news.

0:24:50 - Caller
Especially with the solo stove. That definitely gets you. Oh, I love those.

0:24:54 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, I think great and they generate a great. Yeah, well, nice, I'm glad you enjoyed the day.

0:24:59 - Caller
Yes, I measured mine with my temperature gauge. The max I could do is a thousand 50 degrees and it was off the. It was off the scale which means it is when I get this thing going. It's probably over 1100 degrees.

0:25:17 - Leo Laporte
It's the power of the sun in your backyard. It's not using fusion and just using very rapid oxidation of wood particles. So what can we do for you, sir?

0:25:28 - Caller
So I happened. I was just listening and realized oh wait, it's Sunday and you guys are live, so I am a first time ever being in. We love that, yay, thank you. Thank you Actually, Mikah, you had something on your I S, your iOS show, where you talked about these chips that we could program for lots of different things Timers. You had one example of being able to use it to have guests use your wife on FC, yeah, yes, and I. I was so thrilled. I had so many ideas to do with that.

I ended up going and buying a bunch of chips. I could not get it to work at all with with my uh Wi-Fi. For sure, I have Eros Uh-huh, and so I couldn't get it to work with that. Um, I got frustrated and they're giving up I I. The only things I was able to do like one of the things I wanted to do is we have guests that stay over in our house and I really love the idea of being able to just have them clicks a NFC chip and D arm my alarm system so they could go downstairs.

And I could do that through a shortcut, yeah Right, and I couldn't have how to do some of the things without me creating a shortcut on their phone.

0:26:48 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah.

0:26:49 - Caller
So this so I'm. I really love the idea of being able to get the them to just tap something and get connection to my Wi-Fi, but I couldn't get that to work. Uh, the idea of timers was neat and so I need help. How did you actually do it? Because I tried Googling it. It looked like it couldn't be done through an iPhone, but you could do it on Google to get it to do the Wi-Fi thing.

0:27:16 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, so that should be possible. Um, first and foremost, yeah, when it comes to something like running a shortcut, basically what your iPhone does is it scans the, the NFC chip, and it uses that NFC's unique identifier. To kind of say, when this unique unique identifier is scanned, that is paired with a shortcut on my phone that it then runs Okay. So it is not actually taking and writing that whole shortcut to the NFC chip, it's referencing what's already on your device. So you, you are correct in what you were thinking, where you would have to share that shortcut to your friends and then also probably have to have them have the, the apps and all the stuff set up in order for the security thing to work. Unfortunate, that's not as easy to do, but with Wi-Fi, that is something that you should be able to do. There's an app Uh, it's funny because one of our listeners has posted this app in Discord called NFC tools, and it's yeah, and I, I did use that one, okay.

0:28:26 - Caller
So I saw you guys use that. I tried that and I didn't know if it was a problem with the heroes that was causing the issue. It should.

0:28:33 - Mikah Sargent
I didn't know if it's something it shouldn't be, because, essentially, what you have to do is make sure that the encoding is correct for the specific type of of Wi-Fi that you're using and the Wi-Fi record is correct. There is a chance. Do you remember? Did you buy? Uh, when you went to buy the tags, did you use it from our link or did you kind of go and find your own? I have had some NFC tags that did not have the proper um encoding in order to do that, and the iPhone looks for more modern tags, Uh, and that could have been an issue. But if you used tags that we suggested, I'm not sure why it's not working. I'd have to do some more research.

0:29:19 - Caller
Yeah, I tried five different tags, so, uh, I did go with the cheaper ones at first, but then I eventually did go with the ones you recommended, and I still could not get that working and I had trouble getting the timer to work as well.

0:29:34 - Mikah Sargent
So I mean if it's a problem with NFC or is it a shortcut problem.

Well, so if you are trying to do a shortcut, so if you, if you, for example, created on your phone, you said, when I scan this NFC tag, start a timer, right, and then you, you went through the process and you set up the NFC tag Again, it's referencing the actual shortcut on your device. It is not referencing any code that's been sent and written to the NFC. So when you're doing that, all it's doing is saying when I read this specific number, run this shortcut on my phone, that starts a timer. Um, so you yourself should not have had an issue with it starting a timer, but if you did, then there's something else going on. I would need to do some more research to see. It could be that iOS has updated and that there's something at issue here, but as far as the Wi-Fi thing, I have not had an issue with that.

So this is another. This is one of those cases where I think a uh, let me follow up on that is the best bet, um, and so I would suggest if you could, uh, send us an email at G, at twittv, so that we know who you are. So a QR code, would that be? A QR code Absolutely works. Yeah, a QR code is another. Again, this is for Wi-Fi.

0:30:54 - Leo Laporte
Um, because the irony is here. By the way, one of the things the Department of Justice is suing Apple over is the NFC access. Now they're talking about pay for pay for pay, but but does Apple? For a long time, Apple did not give you full NFC access, right, it is?

0:31:09 - Mikah Sargent
fully allowed. It is now. Yeah, I have been able to. Yes, I, it does work.

0:31:13 - Leo Laporte
That only happened a few years ago that they opened that up.

0:31:16 - Mikah Sargent
Yes, the good thing about a QR code is that right it doesn't require and and that's the thing about NFC is that if the phone that's trying to do it for some reason is in low power mode or if, uh, it needs to be I mean, just the other day I had, uh, live activities stop working on my iPhone. It's cause I needed to restart. Sometimes things just fail, so it could be that situation. The good thing about a QR code is it doesn't require anything other than the camera and you would know if your camera is not working, because with NFC, you might not know if there's a background process that's not working.

0:31:46 - Leo Laporte
So you can trigger a shortcut with an NFC.

0:31:49 - Mikah Sargent
You absolutely can.

0:31:50 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, one of the things I was thinking about. We're gonna. You know, we're opening our studio next month for two Twits uh, almost full, I think, on one of them and completely full on the others. So if you're a club Twitter member, make sure you fill out the form and come out and see us. But we have Wi-Fi available to our guests and we're going to make a QR code that we put on the door when people come in so they can scan it and quickly join our Wi-Fi. We don't have to give them out the password and all that stuff, and you could do the same thing, right With turning off the alarm system, right, a shortcut could do that, yeah. Yeah, now they'd have to have an iPhone, obviously, for the shortcut to work, but there are similar capabilities on Android devices Tasker and others that would allow you to do the same thing. So, um, maybe a QR code would be easier. You wouldn't have to buy any additional hardware. You could use these buying in case you'd understand little stick-ums, right, that you put on things that have an NFC chip in it and you could program it to trigger.

When this first capability first happened, we were over in the old place, the brick house. I put those all over the place. It was fun, but it never, nobody ever, used it. So I think QR codes, as ugly as they are, are now much more ubiquitous and much more accepted and kind of understood that, oh, you scan this and something happens. Every restaurant we went to in Mexico and I think it's still probably the case in a lot of places in the US because of COVID they have QR code menus and everywhere has QR codes. Now, instead of a menu, which you know means you have to have a smartphone, but most people do so I kind of like the idea of maybe using a QR code instead of NFC.

0:33:31 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, okay. So now I'm thinking that I this must have been at a time when I was doing it on a beta, because everything I'm reading is exactly what you've said here that Apple does have the NFC locked down. This is what they're getting sued over kids and this well, okay. So let me be clear it is not locked down for everything else. You can use NFC to do all of those scans that we were talking about to do to run a shortcut, but specifically with Wi-Fi, apple cites it as a security issue where you would maybe accidentally NFC tap something. So I will say this Use a QR code. Qr code. They don't have that locked down because it requires more work from the user.

0:34:11 - Leo Laporte
In theory, People who use VRBO or whatever to rent their house as a vacation home will do this. They'll put the QR codes up. When we have people staying at our house to take care of the kitty cats, we'll put a little QR code on a piece of paper that they can use, right next to the instructions on how to use the 15 remote controls to watch TV. Exactly.

0:34:32 - Mikah Sargent
So, yes, use the QR code. You can go to the website that Leo was talking about, and generate QR codes.

0:34:39 - Leo Laporte
The one I was showing is from Bitly, but yeah, you just Google it, there are a million of them. Bitly, I like Bitly, but they probably track stuff, so yeah, they might, there are open source privacy forward QR code generators. It's easy to find Just search for open source QR code generator there you go.

0:35:00 - Caller
Yeah, I love the idea of the NSD chip being able to just kind of hide it behind the. I know it's super cool.

0:35:06 - Mikah Sargent
It should Again. I am gonna look into this because there are a few ways that you could technically have a website open up that you have that, then has. Yeah, then lets you connect so again, but they won't do it with Wi-Fi.

0:35:21 - Leo Laporte
But, they won't do it directly with Wi-Fi, which means I bet you they won't do it with turning off an alarm. Oh yeah, definitely. That seems like a real security issue.

0:35:27 - Mikah Sargent
Unless you share the shortcuts, but do send again, send us an email that I'll see. That way I can get back to you with some follow up.

0:35:35 - Caller
Yeah, sure, so we're sharing the shortcut. If I was to go that, because the shortcuts work, but sharing the shortcut, they have to have that app and they'd have to have the They'd have to have an iPhone.

0:35:46 - Leo Laporte
Any modern iPhone has a shortcut. Yeah, they have to have the security app as well.

0:35:49 - Mikah Sargent
Oh, but they'd also have If the shortcut is being done through the third party. Yes, it's really, it's not. That part is not designed. What would be good is if that third party whatever security system you're using had some means of setting that up within the app where it says go to this URL and that just say but see, that's just not something that's possible. So, yeah, it would. It'd be a lot to make it do it. The best thing that you could maybe do is have the tag. I'm trying to even think of how this would work. Yeah, no, I don't think it'd be easy to do. You'd have to do a bunch of custom kind of coding and stuff to make it happen, cause I was thinking you could have it prompt you when they scan the tag to disable the security system. It's a great idea and I'd love if that worked, but without some deep support from that third party that makes that security system it's just not possible very easily on the iPhone. Here's another argument for more openness.

0:36:52 - Leo Laporte
Uh-huh, you're making the argument right there. Yeah, it is. Imagine if your solo stove could only burn branded wood from the solo corporation. Right, that would be a problem.

0:37:05 - Caller
Yeah, I mean, the NFC tags were just really, really neat. I saw one, I agree.

0:37:13 - Leo Laporte
The solo stove has burned up all the connectivity and we've lost him. But it was great to talk to you. Thank you, stay warm and Philly in the Pennsylvania. I remember when this first became possible and I literally bought dozens of these and they're a little. You can buy them in a sheet, those little things, and they're programmable. They don't come with any programming and you program them with your phone and then you can put them all over, and I had them all over the. Do you remember that, burke? All the? I have them on the tables, on the chairs, everywhere. Nfc chips. I don't think anybody ever scanned them.

0:37:50 - Mikah Sargent
I've got one under the desk in my office, and what?

0:37:53 - Leo Laporte
it does yeah. Nfc code.

0:37:55 - Mikah Sargent
All I do is I buzz. I just take my phone and go like this and it turns on work focus.

0:37:59 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, that's nice. It does a few other things. That's a good idea.

0:38:02 - Mikah Sargent
And then I've got one at home in my office that when I scan it it triggers a home scene that turns on all the lights in my office. That's really cool. And then we've also got one in the shared space that can specifically set lights to like a movie mode, so do so it doesn't matter which one you buy, right the NFC chips.

Don't. I would say this it sort of matters If you go for the least expensive one. There's so little space on them that a lot of them will not, they don't have a lot of memory.

Yeah, so try to not just get one that's not the cheapest as my. I know that's like weird advice, but as long as it's not the cheapest I don't know because there are different kind of NXP two, zero, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah blah but basically as long as you get one that's not the cheapest. That's been my experience that they work pretty well.

0:38:51 - Leo Laporte
Here's $12 for 50. Is that the cheapest or no?

0:38:55 - Mikah Sargent
No, that's not the cheapest, so it's pretty good.

0:38:57 - Leo Laporte
You can get, you can go less. Okay, these are little.

0:39:00 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, see, it's the NTAG rating and I don't remember off the top of my head NFC 215.

0:39:06 - Leo Laporte
NTAG 215 is okay, okay, so that's good. So you do know that that one's okay. And then you have to have an iPhone, because you need shortcuts, it has to trigger an action and on the Android again, I think you could probably do it with Tasker or a similar.

0:39:19 - Mikah Sargent
Exactly. Or, if you want to, with NFC, with an iPhone. If you write a website to it, for example, if you write a contact to it, those things are able to be used with an iPhone. It's just specifically the wifi code that Apple will not read. Oh, interesting, For sake of you know, for security there.

0:39:43 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, yeah, this has 504 bytes of storage, which, I guess is enough.

Yeah, it's plenty for one thing, remember, it's just gonna be a URL, or it's well, actually it is a URL, even for the shortcuts, and they say you can read and write over 100,000 times, but not suitable for use in a strong magnetic environment. So if you're magneto, do not use these. Okay, here we go. It's time to show you this new thing that my friend here, Mikah, has installed in our engineering facility as the tech eyes is brought to you by Eufy Video Smart Lock 330. Now you know we've talked a lot about anchor. We love anchor equipment. Eufy is anchors, a kind of home security brand, and this is a new smart lock that does something that I think is really cool. It combines the camera that you might have from, you know, a doorbell, with a lock that will unlock your door. Best of both worlds one installation. Now I'm gonna let you talk about it because you did it, yeah.

0:40:49 - Mikah Sargent
So here I am installing it. It was a very simple process, like I've just got a screwdriver there and that's all that was required. That's all you needed. It's all I needed. You slide in the deadbolt that comes with it. You install that part and then you put the front face and the back face on. It comes with a battery that's rechargeable, usb-c, which we love. And, yes, the thing that was so amazing to me about this device is that it is an all-in-one. It is a lock, it is a doorbell. This thing has a fingerprint reader on it.

0:41:22 - Leo Laporte
I love the fingerprint thing.

0:41:24 - Mikah Sargent
There's the battery that you plug in. It has a code. You can, you know, put in a bunch of different types of codes, so you could temporarily assign a code to somebody. It was very easy to set up. We were just talking about QR codes. That's how you set this up in the Eufy app, and it also has and this is a feature that I think is so amazing, because you don't see this with a lot of these third-party systems If all else fails, if the battery has run dead, if the code you can't remember, look at that you swing this open. There's a key. It's got a key.

0:41:56 - Leo Laporte
It's got a key. You know what? That's number one. My number one concern the battery on this is 10,000 milliamp hours. It goes four months thereabouts and it'll give you a warning before it gets low, so you don't have to worry about that. But having a key? Oh look, you could see somebody trying to get into our engine Engineering center.

0:42:12 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, here's Burke saying can you let him in? Let me in, please Can you let him in? I said, okay, you can go in. Oh, my goodness, and I was able to let him inside very easily. This thing, I think it's really well-designed too. It's got some heft to it.

0:42:25 - Leo Laporte
I think this is really cool A 0.3 second fingerprint reader. One second unlocking self-learning chip, they say, becomes more accurate. But here's the most to me, besides the key, which I think is really important. I won't get a lock that doesn't have a key. It doesn't upload anything to the servers.

It's local and costs you nothing. There's no subscription. Once you buy it, obviously you have to buy it, but there's no monthly fee. Everybody else charges a monthly fee for their doorbells. This is a lock and a doorbell and a camera with no monthly fees. No uploading to the public. The internet Thumbnails are stored, but not the actual video. I think this is brilliant 2K clear site, two-way audio, enhanced night vision. You will enjoy an 18-month warranty, 24-7 professional customer service. A great product with a great price. Just search Eufy Video Lock on Amazon or go to Eufy: e-u-f-y.com. This is a really cool product. I love it. Thank you, ufi.

We've been big fans of all of the Eufy products and all the anchor products all along. In SoundCore too, they do some really neat stuff, and this one is especially compelling. E-u-f-y.com. Or search for Eufy on Amazon, they told me. I said well, how do you know if it's people who watch our show? They said, well, they will know. Okay, don't know how they would know that, but actually what they're gonna track is how many people search on Amazon for Eufy video lock. So do that, even if you buy it somewhere else, cause you can get this at your local hardware store. But even if you just search for Eufy video lock, yes, please, please, take that search, that's how they're gonna know.

That's the metric. I love it All right. All right, Dick DeBartolo's coming up in about a minute. Woof, before we go to the giz wiz, should we do one email.

We'll try to get an email in Just to see if we can. Website template suggestions From Sean. Hello Sean, I'm a long time listener and watch your dating back to the tech TV days when I was a mere child. Now, in my late 30s, I'm an independent contractor. No, he was in high school An independent contractor for a living, and I would like to set up a more professional space for promoting my work online, especially stuff I've done. That's nice, that I'm proud of past work. My goals are simple Now needing only one main page to serve is the home of a domain I already own. I have an online community all set up at. So he's got the domain, he's got an online community. He just needs a page to demo his stuff.

I've looked at Squarespace. I'm wondering if there are any standout recommendations. I want to balance a professional design, customer service from the company, attractive pricing. There's three that come and leap to mind Squarespace is one, wordpresscom is another, and then there's one that maybe you have not thought of and I wouldn't have thought of, except that they became a sponsor last year Wix. And I thought, oh, wix is just for commerce sites and stuff like that they have. They're real. I was. I think I'm gonna move my stuff over there. That's pretty cool. I was blown away when. I started playing with it.

So I would look at Wix as well. Let's see what are-.

0:45:46 - Mikah Sargent
I have a fourth recommendation. Yeah, what's one of the ones? But I did want to reiterate that.

0:45:50 - Leo Laporte
I was so surprised. I thought wow, this really, this is very modern.

0:45:54 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, it is my virtue of them being a sponsor that I was able to see more of what they were able to do. Yeah, that's the part where we're being honest is like I wouldn't have gone and looked, but there was, and so I see these new things that you can do and I thought I want to make a website.

0:46:08 - Leo Laporte
just as fun, I did too that was my reaction exactly.

0:46:11 - Mikah Sargent
So that's why we're talking about Wix, not just because they're sponsored, but genuinely got us both excited. But the other website I would recommend and this is a website that I've used to create simple quite literally, it is for one page designs. It's called cardco and that's C-A-R-R-Dco. I have a one page design through them.

0:46:30 - Leo Laporte
It just depends how much like if you wanted a whole photo album or video of your previous bills and stuff. Okay, that's probably not the best place to do that.

0:46:42 - Mikah Sargent
Right, yeah, this is it's more like a business card. It's a business card. It is purpose built to be those you scroll through. You see this. Can you have images there? You do what you want. It's different website.

0:46:56 - Leo Laporte
I went to a Honda website. How did? That happen? C-a-r-d-d no.

0:47:01 - Mikah Sargent
C-A-R-R-Dco.

0:47:04 - Leo Laporte
Oh, I went to cardco and I got Honda. Okay, C-A-R-R-D, there we go. That's C-A-R-D. John asks these waving things.

0:47:13 - Caller
Oh no, that's not it.

0:47:15 - Leo Laporte
Choose a starting point. Okay, so this is a one page. It's quite. Yeah, you could have images, but I think it's more a business card.

0:47:23 - Mikah Sargent
Because if you go to micaart M-I-K-A-Hart, M-I-K-A-H and I'll be honest, this is a project that I have not gotten back to. This was made with card and you can click on those images. They become full size. Okay, so you can see.

0:47:38 - Leo Laporte
So he may be. If it's just stills of your cabinetry or whatever, he might be happy.

0:47:44 - Mikah Sargent
Look at you and I have not updated this with my latest stuff.

0:47:47 - Leo Laporte
I like your mousse.

0:47:48 - Mikah Sargent
I kind of forgot about this.

0:47:49 - Leo Laporte
Oh, is that your new niece? Yes, and I was a bee I made for her. She's so precious, what the hell is that. It's a trap. Oh, it's a trap. It's Admiral Ackbar in crochet and you gave me this Linux penguin. I really love my Linux penguin. You'll see him on Windows Weekly all the time. Yes, this is hanging out. This is a versus of crochet.

0:48:11 - Caller
Yeah, exactly, linux, linux, linux.

0:48:13 - Mikah Sargent
But, yes, there are many options out there with different prices. And this is free. No, no, no, it's free, but it's very inexpensive. I think it was like $14 a year or something. So yeah, if you're looking for just a one page site, you know what I like about this.

0:48:27 - Leo Laporte
It doesn't have any card branding on it. It's like you couldn't tell that it wasn't. It says copyright Microsurgeon, but you can't. It's very white label, which is good, and you'd have to pay for that. Some people would say well, look at Blogspot. Google's blogger is free but it has ads on it. It's a little less professional looking because it's got. You know, this is created by Blogspot and stuff like that.

I think cardcawrdco for a simple page with some images, a few images. And then maybe look at Wix as a kind of surprising dark horse candidate. I think what's happened is you know, wix has like 250 million sites. It's only bested by WordPress, which is about a third of the Internet. Squarespace only has a couple of million. So I think that tells you something about overall usability and customer satisfaction. You know I'm running a site over here in this corner with my own server and it cost me nothing, except you know, obviously, the power and the Internet connectivity to run and it works quite well. So if it depends how technical you are but Leofm is my own site that should still be up if the power hasn't gone out.

Yes, and I think honestly this can be. This could also be easily if you're technical. But see, he wants something that's a little bit easier to use, right? That's my secret, I don't tell anybody about it. All right, ladies and gentlemen, I have been given word that I am allowed to show something I don't have, which is the new issue of Mad Magazine. Joining us right now Mad's Maddest Writer and our gizmo wizard, Dick DeBartolo, The Giz Wiz. Welcome.

0:50:28 - Mikah Sargent
Hey, Dicky D.

0:50:30 - Dick DeBartolo
And also, leo, you don't know this, but Mikah crocheted me an electric car, definitely.

0:50:38 - Mikah Sargent
Where do you put the batteries?

0:50:40 - Dick DeBartolo
It runs on more everywhere 16,000 AA and they're all hand crocheting. I don't have to pocket, I just roll it up and bring it in the studio. It's great.

0:50:53 - Mikah Sargent
But it's hand wash only. That's the only problem I like it, I want one.

0:50:57 - Leo Laporte
Make me one. How many balls of yarn did?

0:51:01 - Mikah Sargent
that 300 skeins. Quite a few skeins, yeah.

0:51:06 - Leo Laporte
Anyway, I do a photo. Oh, you sent us a photo, let's see it. Yes, let's see it.

0:51:10 - Dick DeBartolo
I autograph the new issue to you guys.

0:51:13 - Leo Laporte
It's on its way, but we do have a picture of the new.

0:51:16 - Dick DeBartolo
Oh of it, yeah, exactly.

0:51:18 - Leo Laporte
And there it is, yeah, a treasure trove of trash, volume one, and it's got a little leprechaun because it was St Patrick's day a couple of days ago and instead of pot of gold he's got his treasure trove of Got a bad Got a bad.

0:51:34 - Dick DeBartolo
Anyway, it comes out April 8th and I just needed to get permission and they pulled early today and said yeah, you could be the first.

0:51:42 - Leo Laporte
No, no, is there just one. There's only one person you told me in LA that's doing.

0:51:46 - Dick DeBartolo
There was one person, and that's who I was waiting to call me.

0:51:49 - Leo Laporte
So Ethel, you call it where you email Ethel and say hey, Ethel, can I show this? And it's Susie, it's Susie.

0:51:56 - Dick DeBartolo
Can I show the cover today? And she said, uh, let me find out, let me look up on the noble, oh yeah.

0:52:03 - Mikah Sargent
It uh. So Susie has people, susie has to call to get permission and by the end of it it's all the way up to the president who says all right, dickie D can show the.

0:52:11 - Leo Laporte
Now, there's a reason why we mention all this because you are playing the. What the heck is? It? Contests the for March and April identify. Oh dear, oh dear. This is, this is for couples Is this, is that?

0:52:27 - Mikah Sargent
what did we not say? Is that?

0:52:30 - Leo Laporte
what we're thinking, randy, I know what it is. I know what it is, uh, you know how sometimes, when you're turning pages, you lick your finger right, uh-huh, and you turn a page and that's unsanitary.

0:52:42 - Mikah Sargent
It's gross.

0:52:43 - Leo Laporte
So this is a page turning finger that you don't have to lick. It's self-witting. Send that in. Page turning finger Page turning finger and to throw us, you put it in front of a mirror, so it looks like there's two of them, which I don't put. That Don't, don't put him.

0:52:58 - Mikah Sargent
He's not past him, he would do that I think this is a medical apparatus for removing marbles you have stuck into your ears.

0:53:06 - Leo Laporte
That would be good. Yeah, it's a little ear suction cup I like it.

0:53:10 - Mikah Sargent
I like to send that in. I like it.

0:53:13 - Leo Laporte
So if you can identify what it is, you're in the running for that new mad magazine that Susie just put together. Uh and uh, and there are six copies for the right answer. So don't get it right, because there are 12, twice as many for the wrong answer, as long as they're funny and cute. And we just gave you several examples of the wrong, wrong answer. Very wrong answer. Yeah, so Dick usually joins us every month to talk about some fun thing he's found, uh, online or elsewhere. What do you got for us?

0:53:44 - Dick DeBartolo
Uh, I have two things. One is one is kind of interesting, hey, dennis hi, dennis, you can't get by, dennis.

0:53:50 - Leo Laporte
No sneaking through. Oh, he's trying to sneak through the studio there. Uh, what is he up to? Is he vacuuming?

0:53:57 - Dick DeBartolo
What is it it does? No, he was looking for a copy of that magazine.

0:54:02 - Caller
Oh, okay, he's helping out, he's helping out to you.

0:54:04 - Dick DeBartolo
Okay, so I was looking for a new laptop and, out of the blue, asus sent me an email saying we showed a brand new Zen book duo laptop at CES. This is the. Nuttys laptop. We have some product samples if you'd like to try one. They did and I've been this thing. When I first opened it I thought it oh, it's a real nice laptop. And then the keyboard comes off and there's a second 14 inch monitor. They're both 3K, and 3K is what? 380.

0:54:38 - Leo Laporte
It's halfway between 2K and 4K, is 3K yeah.

0:54:42 - Dick DeBartolo
The math skills are unbelievable.

0:54:45 - Leo Laporte
Hey, by the way, uh, in your famous one take video, uh, the Dennis shot. We get to see your studio from the other side, Right. Look at all those uh are using it now, right now, or using it to talk to us right now. Oh no, that's Chad's new studio. Oh well, where's the Zen book? Oh, here it is, oh there.

0:55:10 - Dick DeBartolo
Yeah, the other thing is I. I was had a laptop on a big stand. This has a stand built in the back.

0:55:17 - Leo Laporte
This is kind of this. I could see a market for this actually.

0:55:21 - Dick DeBartolo
Yeah, and when the keyboard disconnects, then the other monitor is under there.

0:55:27 - Leo Laporte
What the?

0:55:29 - Dick DeBartolo
what? Yeah, and you'll see in the next shot this is for day traders who want to go to.

0:55:33 - Leo Laporte
Cabo San Lucas? I guess yes, yeah, look at that.

0:55:37 - Dick DeBartolo
Oh, that's saying the great thing is on Amazon. I see it's back to out of stock. It's 1499 with the ultra seven chip and comes with a digital pen. Oh, so it's touch screen and a little laptop case. Nice Well, and soon there's coming. There's a version with the ultra nine chip coming out? Oh it's, it's a terabyte of solid state drive.

0:56:05 - Leo Laporte
Wow, so it's gotten so inexpensive. That's amazing, because you know I live in Apple land and Apple land That'd be 5000. Right, so, okay, that's really cool. You know I'm revising my opinion it's not for everybody, but if you need a mobile solution, I love it that it's got a stand built in. I think that's kind of cool. Yeah, that helps.

0:56:28 - Dick DeBartolo
That helps a lot. Yeah, that sells it to me.

0:56:31 - Leo Laporte
Zen book duo. Zen book duo.

0:56:35 - Dick DeBartolo
Okay, now we have something for Mike is nieces and nephews and it is new from while we, and it is called a sweet oh a sweet A sweet, a sweet tweet.

0:56:50 - Mikah Sargent
Sweet tweet. Oh, I got a click. I thought. I thought a putty tat.

0:56:54 - Dick DeBartolo
It goes on your finger. It goes on your finger and it recognizes you how it. It has two separate functions things it can do on your finger and then things when you hold it in your hand.

0:57:15 - Caller
I don't ask the takeout, it's the disroute.

0:57:20 - Dick DeBartolo
Wow, it's repeating what you're saying. It can repeat what you're saying up to eight seconds. You can put in secret messages and then hand it to a friend, and only he will be able to smell like a monkey's butt.

0:57:36 - Leo Laporte
You know how it's going to be used.

0:57:38 - Dick DeBartolo
The neat thing, it's under 10 bucks. Oh, I like how the feathers go down. Oh yeah, you click, you got the feathers. Oh they like pop up, the credits go up and it lights up.

0:57:51 - Leo Laporte
It's very cute, you know. To paraphrase Joe in our discord, I'm like companies still make crappy products. They're fun. They're fun. They're fun how much.

0:58:01 - Dick DeBartolo
And it just came out last week, just in time for Easter, oh yeah.

0:58:04 - Mikah Sargent
Only $9.99. Put this in your Easter basket $9.99.

0:58:08 - Leo Laporte
Oh see, the kids will love this.

0:58:10 - Dick DeBartolo
Yeah, there's a pink one and a blue one, so there's two different versions.

0:58:14 - Leo Laporte
The pink ones for boys, the blue ones for girls. Let's make sure, yeah, you do it.

0:58:20 - Dick DeBartolo
And when I first put it on my finger it said, wow, you're an old person, did it really? I said yeah you little.

0:58:25 - Leo Laporte
They have the last few they did monkeys right. And then this year they did monkeys, last year yeah exactly.

0:58:33 - Dick DeBartolo
The monkeys are still available, but the sweet, but they're so old hat.

0:58:38 - Mikah Sargent
Everybody's. Everybody's got monkeys on the finger.

0:58:41 - Dick DeBartolo
Do you remember when people cared about smartphones and if you got a new phone, everybody gathered around you oh God, not anymore. Yeah, yes, yeah, no, not anymore. And then I said yes, and a guy walked by and said isn't that the so-and-so? And I said yeah, and he said that's six months old. I was on the airplane.

0:59:06 - Leo Laporte
A guy put on a vision pro, cleared out all the rows around it.

0:59:08 - Mikah Sargent
Everybody moved, so it doesn't have to worry, he's going to suddenly start punching the same appeal that it used to have?

0:59:15 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, it might have been because he was in an exit row on a 737 max, but it had been also yeah.

0:59:22 - Dick DeBartolo
I was just going to tell you one of the articles that is in here. I did it with Frank Santropadre and it's kind of funny. It is a practical jokes for funerals. Putting the fun back in funerals, oh dear.

0:59:37 - Leo Laporte
How dare they call that trash?

0:59:39 - Dick DeBartolo
Yeah, that's exactly that's the play. Next tissue is that give you a black eye, oh Lord.

0:59:48 - Leo Laporte
Now, how does this work? Do you? Do you write the copy, all the copy, and then send it off, and then he illustrates it? Is that how it works?

0:59:56 - Dick DeBartolo
Yes, Well well, Frank Santropadre and I would both came up with a silly thing about funerals, so they combined them into one super super, and then they edit them and then they send it out to the artist. But all of this is material from the past, so none of the writers or artists could take anything. Do you remember when?

1:00:15 - Leo Laporte
you wrote this how old were you?

1:00:19 - Dick DeBartolo
I think I was in high school, Leo. I was at Blynda Noble yesterday and there's a new Star Wars book out and I was there with Dennis and I said, oh, this is interesting. Who wrote this? Oh my God, I wrote it. No, seriously, after writing there for 55 years and reading stuff, you forget some of the stuff.

1:00:44 - Leo Laporte
Sure, and people think maybe I was joking, but you did in fact write your first piece for Mad Magazine when you were in high school.

1:00:50 - Dick DeBartolo
Yeah. So again I finally got my diploma. I forgot to mention that. Oh, congratulations.

1:00:57 - Ant Pruitt
How long does that take.

1:00:59 - Mikah Sargent
It was stuck in the mail for you.

1:01:01 - Dick DeBartolo
I got it Wednesday, so I can't do the math and I'll do one more. Funny bumper stickers from funerals and it goes on the bumper of your car and it says if you can smell formaldehyde, you're driving too close. Oh my.

1:01:20 - Leo Laporte
God, that's horrible.

1:01:20 - Ant Pruitt
Dick, oh, my God.

1:01:23 - Leo Laporte
But you know, we got to laugh. We got to laugh, right. Yeah, If we didn't laugh, we'd cry Exactly. Of course it's a funeral, so it's probably okay to cry.

1:01:29 - Mikah Sargent
No, because you're going to get a black eye.

1:01:32 - Leo Laporte
Oh yeah, Don't use the tissues.

1:01:34 - Mikah Sargent
I love the slippery casket. That's hilarious.

1:01:37 - Leo Laporte
What is the casket? Slippery, so people can't carry it.

1:01:40 - Mikah Sargent
I think so so that you can't carry it right. That's what it looks like, dick. Are you going to have?

1:01:43 - Leo Laporte
some of these at your funeral.

1:01:44 - Dick DeBartolo
Yeah, what are you going to do? Oh, you know, I'm not, I'm going to be creamy. Then decide I'm going to be cremated and dropping the Hudson River.

1:01:51 - Leo Laporte
Oh, do they let you do that, or is you're going to have to do that by?

1:01:53 - Dick DeBartolo
night Probably they don't. Years ago, you and I, when we were, you and I were doing the gizmos, I found maybe they're still around I found the sea urn. It is a biodegradable urn, so this can be thrown with your ashes? Yes, but in about an hour the entire urn will dissolve.

1:02:20 - Leo Laporte
So if they say you can't throw ashes in the river, you say no, no, I'm just throwing the ashes in the ocean.

1:02:26 - Dick DeBartolo
It's okay, yeah, I'm feeding the fish. Yeah, there you go, there you go. I'm feeding the fish.

1:02:34 - Leo Laporte
When we were in Cabo San Lucas, somebody waited out into the ocean to throw the ashes in the ocean yeah.

1:02:42 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, they can't. It's kind of hard to regulate that right.

1:02:44 - Leo Laporte
Yeah.

1:02:45 - Mikah Sargent
I think it's.

1:02:45 - Leo Laporte
I think you're supposed to get three miles out before you do that, but right now there's some I can't swim.

1:02:51 - Mikah Sargent
I don't want to be that far out.

1:02:52 - Leo Laporte
I don't think you can go that far out in the Hudson. There's no it doesn't. Yeah, it doesn't quite work, it's not like you go three miles up river and it's okay, you got to go three miles away from shore.

1:03:02 - Dick DeBartolo
Three miles away from shore.

1:03:04 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah.

1:03:04 - Leo Laporte
Well.

1:03:05 - Mikah Sargent
I'm sure, yeah, yeah, I'm sure too.

1:03:09 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, Dick DeBartolo, Mads Maddest writer. The GizWiz show. He does two. Now there's, of course, gizwiz.tv. You can watch the GizWiz show, which is every. You do that on Every Thursday, thursday, every Wednesday, the day before he does the GizFiz which we used to do here after TWiG, same time. But you go to Gizwiz.tv to watch the GizFiz, right, that's an 830 after you guys, you do you.

1:03:33 - Dick DeBartolo
Thank you. This this weekend, I wouldn't want to be competing with the GizFiz we don't compete. That's why I pushed it off to 830.

1:03:41 - Leo Laporte
I know my limits and I can't, I wouldn't, I wouldn't, wouldn't dare of it, wouldn't dare yeah.

1:03:47 - Dick DeBartolo
Well, Mikah does an incredible job when you're away. I mean.

1:03:50 - Leo Laporte
I'm all. Thank you. Yeah, we got very good feedback on the twig that you did on Wednesday. People loved that episode. It was a very I think we should have you on twig all the time. In fact, Dick, I told Mikah he should be on all my shows and then I'll start taking vacations and I'll slowly just drift away into the background and it'll be Mikah. No, you could be his substitute. I'll fill in for Mikah. Yeah, there you go Actually that's the deal.

I'd be glad to do that. I'd be happy to do that every few you know, months Actually. Mikah never goes on vacation.

1:04:23 - Dick DeBartolo
We'd have to get him to… Then your career is over.

1:04:26 - Mikah Sargent
You have to force me to go on vacation.

1:04:28 - Leo Laporte
You have to go on vacation. Leo needs some airtime. Dick, it's always a pleasure. You're the greatest. We love you and it was nice to see Dennis.

1:04:38 - Mikah Sargent
Yes, yes, and happy Palm Sunday. Oh yeah, thanks guys, it's great fun I know, that matters to you Get going to church.

1:04:45 - Leo Laporte
Oh yeah, he's a good Italian boy. Thank you, Dick. Bye-bye.

1:04:50 - Dick DeBartolo
See you next month.

1:04:51 - Leo Laporte
Okay, bye. All right, you're watching. Ask the Tech Guys Mikah, sergeant, leo Laporte, we're going to get back to the phone.

1:04:57 - Mikah Sargent
We should have brought some fronds in. We should have for Palm Sunday.

1:05:02 - Leo Laporte
I don't want to mock it, no, no.

1:05:04 - Mikah Sargent
We…. Yeah, maybe I need to know what exactly we do. Why there's palms involved? Yeah, I would want to read about it first. Yeah, we don't really know much about that, but next week we can lay eggs.

1:05:14 - Leo Laporte
By the way, the Discord is weighing in and they say more Mikah on all of the shows. Well, that's very kind of you.

I agree with them 100%, 100%. If you are not in the Discord, you're wanting…. What is the Discord? That is the club we call Club Twit. It is the least exclusive club in the world. Anybody with seven bucks in their pocket can join and the benefits are great. All of our shows add free video for all the shows that we do, many of which… I mean everything we do is available in public, but a lot of it's audio only, like iOS Today, hands-on Macintosh, hands-on Windows. You get the video too if you subscribe on Title Linux show. You also get additional events, like Stacey's Book Club that we do from time to time in the club, and access to the Discord, the chance to chat along with other viewers Actually, I was in the Discord during vacation because it's more than just a chat about the shows.

It's a chat about everything geeks are interested in. We've talked a lot about coding when I was there because we have some smart people in there who help me. If you are not yet a member of Club Twit, we would love to have you visit twittv. Club Twit $7 a month, $84 a year. There are company plans. There's also family plans, and the real reason to join is to give you that heartfelt feeling that you're supporting the work we're doing here. We want to be here in 10 years when the Apple DOJ lawsuit is settled, but the only way that's going to happen is with support from you or our audience. Lisa and I because we were on vacation together I hope that's not a revelation Our CEO, who happens to be my wife we were on vacation.

We talked a little bit about what we think of as the future of podcasting and, like the future of all media. You know it's grim. Ad supportive media is struggling, and podcasting along with it. Of course, there's some big shows, like Joe Rogan's show and you know, call her daddy that are surviving, but this is what happens. This is what happened to blogging too. The little kind of niche shows are struggling a little bit more, and we're not alone in that. We want to keep doing it, though, so, with your help, maybe we can. Twittertv slash club Twitter. I am ready for another call. How about let's? Do this voicemail right here.

1:07:51 - Caller
Hey, I am Robert from Charleston, south Carolina. I quick question about UB Keys. I'm a diligent listener, steve Gibson, and while most of the stuff was over my head, I did want to ask how I might be able to use the UB key for different applications. I've tried to read through their notes and, like for Windows, when I tried to use it to log into my Windows account, it asks me to create a pen, but some accounts don't need a pen. And then when I tried to use the Microsoft pen, it tells me that that's the wrong pen and to create a new one. So it's kind of confusing. Is there any way you can show me how to set that UB key up, especially for my Microsoft account, but maybe for other accounts like Google or some such? Thank you for, thank you again for all you guys do Great question.

1:08:45 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, quickly, before we answer that, I do want to say arguably one of the best couple of episodes I'm sorry you were gone of security now took place these last two weeks, because it was all about two factor authentication with passwords versus the future, which is past keys, and how Steve Gibson made the argument that past keys alone are far more secure than any other technology that we have right now and it result. That was the first episode where you sort of made that statement, and the second episode was following up with what people were talking about, but we talked about how the UB key is essentially the precursor to what past keys are.

1:09:30 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, essentially, the whole idea of all of this is there are basically three ways to prove that you are who you say you are, and one of the ways has been completely dominant for the last 30 years, which is the password. That's what we call something you know, okay, something that you have in your head. And if I challenge you, Mikah, and I say, Mikah, are you the real Mikah? You might say, well, I am, and I could prove it because I know something. Only Mikah would know that you were under where made out of baloney. And then that would be, that would be something you know. That'd be one way you could prove that challenge. It's a challenge and the password is, of course, not. I'm wearing underwear made of baloney.

1:10:13 - Mikah Sargent
Although that would be a good password. Baloney underwear 547. Yeah, add a little something. Maybe your old childhood phone.

1:10:20 - Leo Laporte
So that's one way. The other way is something you are, like your fingerprint or your face ID. That's pretty secure Iris. You know sometimes that you'll use an iris, or you see that in science fiction movies. Actually, claire uses iris, the government uses iris, and global entry things like that. So something you are, a biometrics. And the third way of identifying you is something you have, something physical that you have.

Now, of course, the one way to do this has been around for a long, long time, and you might even remember those football dongles that would generate six digit numbers. You remember those, maybe not. I used to have one for PayPal and you every press a button and would give you a new number and you'd enter it in that. That's turned into. Of course, the authenticator which you have on your phone, yuba keys, came along. In fact, steve was one of the big proponents of Yuba keys back in the day when he met their CEO, stina, at a conference. These are little hardware devices, do the same thing as your authenticator device. They generate a time based, one time password, a six digit code that will then identify you are who you say you are, the way you be keys worked was quite clever was instead of having to read the code and type it in in the early days of the football. This actually emulates a keyboard, so when you stick it into your USB port and press the button on it, it types out and it's more than six digits. But actually if you look at the digits, it's typing out the first. Many of them identify the Yuba key. There's a lot of information in there, but essentially it is a one time code and the Yuba key has enough compute power to generate a new one Every 30 seconds of that kind of thing.

Now, of course, when you're talking about past keys, it's still something you have. You may not kind of realize it, but the way past keys are stored is in a secure enclave, whether it's on your computer, in your password manager or, more commonly, in your smartphone. So it counts as the third form of authentication, which is something you have. We've talked a lot about two step or two factor authentication. It's having two out of those three something you know, something you are, something you have to identify you.

Steve likes past keys because it is both something you have and something you are, because on almost every case you'll have authentication that is secondary, a secondary channel of authentication face ID or touch fingerprint recognition or a password, sometimes on your computer, that then unlocks that past key. So it is giving you a second factor as well as your password. And in many cases with past keys you can replace passwords, but passwords are always there as a fallback. So I you know, I'm not sure I would say I would agree with him that past keys are superior to a Yuba key. They're functionally very similar. There are little. The reason I'm not as fond of them is well, there's problems with both. The problem with past keys right now is it's tied to whatever device you created it on Right, and so if I make past keys on my iPhone, I better, I better stick to Apple.

1:13:34 - Mikah Sargent
That was the biggest thing that Steve said right now. Is that he? He knows that, of course, if I was working on a portability, I'm not convinced they are.

1:13:41 - Leo Laporte
they didn't write that in on purpose because they thought that was a security issue. The idea that you could say, well, I want to move to Android, so I'm going to take all my past keys with me, is a security.

1:13:52 - Mikah Sargent
So you think they might not ever they didn't put it in on purpose. That's scary, because that's what keeps me from using past right now.

1:13:58 - Leo Laporte
Now you can use one password or bit warden.

Many password managers will eventually support past keys. They will become something you have, but because, by virtue of the way they work, you'll be able to have them on all your devices. So I still think there's a lot to be said for a YubiKey. Now here's what's the negative of YubiKey it's damn hard to figure out, and that's what you were talking about our voice mail. This is a YubiKey. What the way it generally works, is when I create an account that supports hardware authentication let's say my Google account they support it. They really promote it. I will enter a password, I'll log into my account and then I can go into the security settings and add a second factor. Now that second factor can be an authenticator. It can nowadays be a past key or it can be a hardware authenticator, like this YubiKey.

Here's a couple of the drawbacks. If you just have one and you lose it, you're in trouble. So you're going to have to own two and you're going to have to keep one in a safe deposit box or somewhere that's absolutely safe. So that you notice, I reached back to get my YubiKey off my keychain. I carry this with me everywhere, but you better be sure I have another one at home. So if I lose this one, I can get into my Google account. So that's one drawback. The other drawback is, you know it's techy, it's complicated. So our caller asked an interesting question, which is how can I tie it to my Windows login? And that requires some pretty interesting machinations. Windows Hello is the authentication, the PAM, as it were, module for Windows. So you need to support a YubiKey in PAM. I think Yubico, the company that makes these, has software that you would download and install on Windows to make that work, and generally they do have a pin because they want a fallback method.

Frankly, I have an article that will give you an example of how ridiculous it is. This is a configuration cheat sheet for YubiKey's came out a year ago from debuggingworks, which is a personal blog, and he's given a bunch of ways to do this, including time-based, one-time passwords, which are the authenticator things. So it's worth. I'll put a link in this. This is worth having universal second factor SSH with FIDO2. It ends up being and this is the real reason Steve likes Pasky's the harder something is to use, the less likely to do it, and so I use this on my most secure stuff because it's worth it to me to keep it secure, but it's not easy. I think it's possible to do. I know it's possible to log into a Mac with this. I know it's possible to log into Windows with it machine with this. It's going to take some effort.

1:17:02 - Mikah Sargent
I set that up one time and it was a nightmare because it was difficult to when. I said actually I don't want to do this. It was difficult to undo it. You have to do a lot of terminal commands to get rid of it.

1:17:16 - Leo Laporte
I'll put a link in the show to this article just so you can see what's involved. My strong suggestion honestly, microsoft made it as easy as possible to log into Windows using the Microsoft Authenticator. In fact, you can do it passwordless with the Microsoft Authenticator. You'll go to your Windows, you'll enter your email for your Microsoft account and then it'll say okay, I'm going to send a, I'm going to push a notification to your Authenticator. If this is correct, enter the number and it'll tell you 92 or whatever, and you go to your phone where the Authenticator is. That's two-factor, right, something you have and it's very secure and it's within the Microsoft ecosystem. It's their Authenticator.

I think this is by far the best way to log into Windows or to any Microsoft account. So that's what I would recommend Instead of using a YubiKey, use this. Oh, and it uses, by the way, face ID, so it is on the iPhone and it would probably use fingerprint or face on an Android phone as well, so it's pretty secure. You still have to have the phone. The good news is, because it's a Microsoft account, there are fallback methods. I think it's well done. Strongest recommendation for both Mac and Windows is to use their built-in systems rather than a third-party YubiKey.

1:18:32 - Mikah Sargent
And the question about the PIN. That is something that I've had an issue with in the past. Make sure that you did not accidentally create a PIN with the YubiKey itself and that you're not using that PIN when you're trying to type in the PIN for Microsoft, because those are two separate PINs. I recommend using personally the YubiKey without that extra PIN and then just use that Microsoft PIN as the PIN, if that makes sense. So this is specific to the caller. Leo's advice has been very general for anybody using YubiKey, but specific to the voicemail. You mentioned the part where you were having trouble with a PIN. Yubikey lets you set a PIN for the YubiKey. You may be getting the two of them confused.

1:19:14 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, that's right. There's a Windows PIN that's separate from the YubiKey PIN, by the way. I thought, oh, the best thing would be this YubiKey with a fingerprint reader. That's even worse. Don't do that. I actually stopped using this YubiKey. At their website, Yubicocom has the steps that you wouldn't have to go through to secure Windows using strong authentication. I personally think the way Microsoft has set it up is probably the best way to go. It's very secure. They've done a very good job with the authentication.

1:19:43 - Mikah Sargent
Secure and convenient, and it's cool that you could do both. I think Steve's point is well taken, which is this is a technology that is rapidly becoming obsolete, thanks to PASKIES, yeah and with PASKIES and this is the thing that I love about what he said part of the reason why we like to use these little things is because it's kind of cool and it's a little bit high tech and sort of spy like and bonding, and so whenever we're faced with something that's so quick and convenient, like a PASKIES, we immediately have suspicion?

Yeah, this is too easy this is better, and yet all signs point to it absolutely being a very secure thing. So I really will be more follow up on.

1:20:25 - Leo Laporte
I'll show you what happens. Let me go to log out of it, but go to my GitHub account and sign out and show you what happens when I have I'm just gonna sign on my GitHub. When I go to GitHub I have it set up to go with PASKIES, so I sign in and of course, I have my password, which I'm going to use from Bitward and sign in, and then it says OK to factor authentication. When you're ready authenticate, use the button below. This is why we geeks go. I mean, use the, click this and I click it and then look what happens Bitwarden, which has your password. My password manager has not only the password but has the pass key for it. That is, that is all it takes. And now I'm logged in and so.

I like that. I've GitHub and put it very, very nicely.

1:21:14 - Mikah Sargent
They do, and that's where I am currently using PASKIES only as two factor, not as just my login. I'm not ready to move to that yet.

1:21:23 - Leo Laporte
Notice it did give me that option.

1:21:25 - Mikah Sargent
Yes, you could have just logged in with PASKIES.

1:21:28 - Leo Laporte
I think that you know PASKIES are great, it's not going to be universal.

They're going to be plenty of sites. Look, your bank still makes you get a text message on your phone which we know is not secure. And that's not because the bank doesn't know it's insecure, but because the bank's customers are normal people who don't understand all of this fall to roll. Well, because of that, you're going to see passwords, probably as long as you're alive. It's just not going to be phased out for PASKIES. Paskies are just going to become another thing, and that's the problem. What is that? That's the old XKCD comic about standards. The only problem with standards is it generates more standards. Yeah, more standards. All right, what else should we do? John Ashley, what do you want us to do now? We should probably do it. Let's do another email. Okay, I got emails. I got email. Wait, wait, this is the one I did. I think yeah.

1:22:25 - Mikah Sargent
And, by the way, you can call in at calltwittv that's the website you go to or 888-724-2884.

1:22:34 - Leo Laporte
And this is from the Willow Woman, hi the Willow. I like the Willow Woman, lisa, the Willow Woman, willow, willow, willow, lisa, from Austin, formerly from New York, prad, new York. Can you tell? Yeah, I can tell from your accent Lisa.

I've taken the plunge and I'm getting rid of our cable TV, hulu TV. Here we come. Now I want to take control of my home network. She probably doesn't talk like that. We have spectrum 500 megabits per second upload speeds and I'm happy with that. That is good for upload. That's very good. She's probably on fiber.

But since I'm the tech support for my household, I'd like to get more control over our modem and router and stop running them from spectrum. You're right, they're rightly so. That's the right thing to do. Can you give me a recommendation for these devices? I am tech proficient. I can handle an installation and setup PS. I will eventually upgrade to spectrum one gig.

So whenever you get your internet from a cable company like spectrum, you have to get there. You have to get something to demodulate the signal coming in over the coax Mm-hmm If it's coax. If you don't have fiber but you're getting coax, you can buy your own cable modem and spectrum will have a list of cable modems that recommends that you can use, and that's a good idea. I think I always separate and I think you agree with me the modem from the router. Yes, right, so you really need two pieces of hardware Now if you're getting fiber from spectrum or any company, they're going to have a fiber box and I would recommend the, the terminal adapter that they use.

I would recommend sticking with that. Don't get a third party one, but you can get your own router. So if you're on cable, you can get your own cable modem. If you're on fiber, stick with the OT that they provide you, but then you, in both cases, you can get your own router. And that's really where the rubber meets the road right. All a cable modem or an OT is doing is converting, converting that signal into ethernet, something you can use, whether it's coming in over coax or through fiber. It's doesn't, it's not ethernet. So it's converting that to ethernet that you can use, and then any router will work with it. You use an Eero, I use Eero's.

1:24:49 - Mikah Sargent
At home I have family members who use Eero's because it means that I'm able to help them with theirs. I've had them now for years, have upgraded from one Eero system to another. I've stuck. I've stuck with Eero because it does what I needed to do and it also means that my partner, who's not as tech minded per se, can also troubleshoot if need be. Whereas if you would like more control, if you are a bit more nerdy, if you do want a bit more fun, there are other options out there that have a lot more configuration that you can do on the back end.

1:25:22 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, spectrum on their website if you are a spectrum cable customer has authorized modems to use on the spectrum network at spectrumnet slash modems and that's super important because they will give you the run around.

1:25:38 - Mikah Sargent
If you try, they won't be happy work. Yeah, they say won't work. Some of them would work, but they just, yeah, just make sure you get one that is on their list. We like the air is right, we do like the air is, and the what is the neck gear makes one as well. The neck gear is very good.

1:25:53 - Leo Laporte
Other good one I think I use the neck gear CM one thousand. I think I use the one that's on the spectrum. One thousand, I believe, is what I use you have on my cable system.

1:26:06 - Mikah Sargent
Yep, you have to yeah, cm one thousand for sure, and then yes, the.

1:26:11 - Leo Laporte
Motorola, we found out last time, is getting out of the business. So get it from Aris or net gear. My recommended big nation be the net gear CM one thousand. But again, you want to make sure that it's something they recommend, which they do, by the way, and that it's dox is three point one. Okay, very important, not three point. Oh, that's one of the things you're going to want is a three point one. Dox is you're going to see it's not cheap, but how much a month are you paying the spectrum to use their equipment? This way you're getting more modern equipment. Honestly, if, if spectrum is giving you this, which I think they might be, or something comparable for four bucks a month, that'd be worth it.

1:26:50 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, and you can always just use their modem, slash router combo and then just the modem. Turn off the router and use your modem, especially if you're proficient, I mean you know how to use that there are a lot of choices on routers.

1:27:03 - Leo Laporte
The year is nice because it's mesh and it's pretty easy to set up and easy to configure. Easy to configure. I've used the Orbe in the past. That is a very good router. That's from net gear. Currently I use ubiquity gear.

1:27:17 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, I think the only mesh system I would not recommend at this point is Google Wi-Fi. Yeah, not far enough. There are too many people with too many complaints about it which is too bad, because there was some real promise.

1:27:28 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, they came out with that, but yeah, I gave mine away.

1:27:32 - Mikah Sargent
They make too many compromises on things and if you go to ubiquity.

1:27:36 - Leo Laporte
When I recommend ubiquity, I'm not recommending their their consumer Wi-Fi stuff which I have used and didn't like very much. I'm recommending their prosumer stuff like the ultimate dream machine, the UDM and things like that. It's for a more expensive, more kind of semi-pro setup.

1:27:58 - Mikah Sargent
So yeah, if you feel like fiddling around with it and I guess if you're the willow woman likes to fiddle. Yeah, and if you're okay with she's a fiddler, anybody else at your house not being able to know what to do with it that's what you want.

1:28:11 - Leo Laporte
Well, you know, and this is why I went with ubiquity and I've told this story before but we got somebody to wire the house because it was during a pandemic and we were all working from home and I wanted to make sure we had very good, responsive Wi-Fi as well as wired. So wired to all the TVs, wired to all the workstations where the computers were, and then high quality Wi-Fi throughout the house. And that was a ubiquity prosumer system with the ultimate dream machine and a switch and big PoE switch and it's really over the years Sorry about that it has proven to be quite good, quite reliable and nobody's complained. Joe is reminding us in the Discord that's what that noise was. Joe is very persistent that he likes the Synology DSMs. The Synology routers are quite good. I remember Father Robert really liked his. So, yes, some very good choices out there. Okay, you know what time it is.

It's time to pause and refresh and enjoy the Zen You're watching. Ask the Tech guys, Mikah Sargent and Leo Laporte, let's do. I don't know, what do you want? I feel like we should. We should talk to somebody. Is there somebody to talk to? We blew it because we said only new callers and everybody hung up.

1:29:28 - Caller
Well, no, we had some callers, but a lot of them. They must have not been able to stick around. Yeah, they weren't able to stick around. I know John has been on the pass, but I know he's been hanging out for a bit.

1:29:37 - Leo Laporte
Let's take John, I don't want to be rude. Hello John, where are you calling from today?

1:29:53 - Caller
Hello.

1:29:59 - Leo Laporte
Can you hear me? I hear you, John. Welcome to the show.

1:30:02 - Caller
I'm glad to finally get a hold of you. I've been trying for a couple of months or I don't know a long time. Well, welcome. I remember of the club Tweet, of course, thanks. I, I, I, I do I spend too much time listening to your podcast. There's no such thing. I know it's really ridiculous. I have two questions. One is about OTP off, which is which I really like. I save all my codes in there and secrets and whatnot. But sometimes the face ID doesn't work and it asks for a password that I do not have and then when face ID comes back again which it will eventually and I want to change the past password it wants the old password, which I do not have.

1:30:56 - Leo Laporte
So are you running this as a server in your uh on a home server? No, this is my iPhone. Okay, so it's an app for the iPhone, right? All right, so you're making an OTP off on GitHub and that is actually something that uses no JS, and you would run Uh, yeah, but that's not the one I guess you're running. You're running.

1:31:17 - Caller
I might look at it, but that's not the one.

1:31:19 - Leo Laporte
No, no use that. I'm going to tell you what one to use. At least it's the one I use, and face ID works with it. It's very reliable and, john, you'll like this. Although right now face ID has turned off, it has really big numbers, which makes it easy to read. It does it in alphabetical order, if you want. I used to author for a long time, but author, you know, there's a couple of problems. I use voice over. I use oh, that's right, I remember, john, you're your voiceover user. That's why you like OTP off. Um, I don't know how this would work with voiceover. I would think it was fine actually.

1:31:55 - Caller
Oh good, you've tried it. But what I'm saying is, if face ID doesn't work at testing for a pester, which I don't have, and when I try to then go back, eventually face ID will work when I go back to to I want to set a password. It says what's your old password?

1:32:15 - Mikah Sargent
Have you tried getting in touch with um with? Let me see, I just was looking at it with the developer, whose name is Roland Mowers.

1:32:25 - Caller
Oh, I think I did write him one time and never heard. Never heard back. Yeah.

1:32:29 - Leo Laporte
Hmm, so this is, uh, an app based on the open source version of it that Roland has put out.

1:32:38 - Mikah Sargent
It says okay, I forgot the password needed when opening OTP off. What can I do? It says unfortunately, there is not much that can be done besides remembering the password. It's used to encrypt your accounts. They can't be restored without the password. The only option is to restore the accounts using account backups. Whose past?

1:32:53 - Caller
I do have that. I do have backups. I do back it up every now and then I have. So I've seen the backup where it's on the, on the my uh, I cloud, you know, uh on the uh, it says the process there is to.

1:33:10 - Mikah Sargent
If you have a backup that doesn't have a password on it, delete OTP.

1:33:13 - Caller
Well, no, it does have a password.

1:33:15 - Mikah Sargent
Then it's always had a password, you just don't remember it. I know what password.

1:33:18 - Caller
it is A DAC. Pass that password. I know what it is the password for the backup itself.

1:33:24 - Mikah Sargent
Oh well, that's good then yeah, then you can restore from then.

1:33:28 - Caller
Well, so then, what so? So what is it saying to do? Delete the app.

1:33:31 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, you're going to reset, delete it from your device, reinstall it open and let it finish the initial setup process. And then it says this time make sure you save the password in a safe place. And then it says restore, uh, using the import the account option, or you can also use restore from the backup.

1:33:48 - Leo Laporte
Oh, and by the way, I'm reading the reviews of OTP off. This is why I know Roland Maher's name. I'm an avid fan of Steve Gibson's podcast security. Now, this is the one he recommends, so maybe that's where you got it, john Um maybe it is yeah, and.

1:34:06 - Caller
and now I have another question about I'm amazing, which I know.

1:34:10 - Mikah Sargent
Oh yes.

1:34:11 - Leo Laporte
I'm amazing he's. He's the amazing guy. He's guy got me to use. I'm amazing.

1:34:15 - Mikah Sargent
Tell me what your question is, friend.

1:34:16 - Caller
Well, my question is this uh, after a while sometimes it won't work. I back up via wifi, and so every night the silly thing, of course it, apple has. It's something you have to enter your password every time you back up from. Uh, from the iPhone to your Mac, which is really kind of dumb, but all right, they want to do it that way. Uh, and that's fine, but after a while, sometimes it will actually stop working. Sometimes, if I reboot the Mac, it'll come back. Sometimes I have to to to use USB. It gets to be really annoying and I don't know what that does sound annoying, Um I will, by the way.

1:35:03 - Leo Laporte
I just want to say this is why it's so. You know, if you are blind, for instance, and you want to use technology, you got to go through 10 times more work than sighted users do. Well, you do, and I admire you, John, because you re, you really. You don't give up, you work hard at it and you're, and you use technology, which is great.

1:35:24 - Caller
And I've done it for very long time In the old days I had, I can tell you, I had, you know, different applications ever since the 1980, I use something called UUPC in 1992. Yeah, it's my internet. Yeah, I connect.

1:35:46 - Leo Laporte
UUNet yes, it's news groups.

1:35:50 - Caller
And.

1:35:51 - Leo Laporte
I still use it yeah.

1:35:54 - Caller
And you're an old timer.

1:35:55 - Leo Laporte
If you use UUPC, that's awesome. That predates the worldwide web.

1:36:00 - Caller
Oh yeah, so that was the first thing and I had it on my I love it DOS modem and everything is really props to you.

1:36:10 - Leo Laporte
Just props to you. Uh, thank you. You know, I know you work twice as hard, 10 times as hard as people were sighted to use this technology, but you don't give up and you do it and bless you. I don't give up.

1:36:25 - Caller
I mean, just the other day it was, it was some something, uh, and I, it was some technology, I forget what it was even now but I just wouldn't, I just wouldn't, I just kept doing stuff, doing stuff and just finally I got it. You know, I mean, it was just, you know, I beat it to death until it squeaks.

1:36:50 - Leo Laporte
Very well done. I like that. I think that's great. Do you have an amazing solution for it? So I don't?

1:36:56 - Mikah Sargent
I don't have a solution for you. Uh, unfortunately the old, so there's a you know there's a possibility as to why it's doing this and, uh, my guess is connected via wifi Right.

It appears as if it's still connected by a wifi, via wifi, but what I think is probably happening is it needs to re okay. So when Apple is triggering that uh process of doing a backup, your backups are, of course, uh, you know, securely locked, and I think that it's probably an authentication thing, and I don't know if I'm asing, as you know it can't get around that.

It can't get around that that authentication. So I'm wondering if what's happening is you uh plugging into USB after a while is kind of reauthenticating and allowing that to happen.

1:37:48 - Caller
Sometimes that works, sometimes it does, sometimes I have to reboot the max to get it to work.

1:37:53 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, and see that's, that's too much. So what I'm going to recommend that you do is go to supportimazingcom and submit an uh I amazing request.

1:38:04 - Caller
The team is very responsive, I found and that's very difficult to do because they make you give your keys and I mean it's just horrible.

1:38:17 - Leo Laporte
Again. See, we don't.

1:38:18 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, as cited users easier for us.

1:38:21 - Caller
We don't experience these troubles Uh and we think it's easy but it's not, is it? The thing they make it, the stuff they make you do to get a support request is you have to give your serial, your numbers, and it's really pain in the touch and I can do it, but I kind of hesitate.

1:38:40 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, you were wondering if we had a quick answer for you, which I wish we did, but I have. Yeah, unfortunately.

1:38:47 - Caller
So you think I should try to contact their support I do and see if they'll have anything.

1:38:52 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, because this sounds like there's some sort of buggy thing going on in the system and, honestly, it does sound like an authentication error. What is good about the show, though, is that when people call in and they have these issues, our other listeners have some other people exactly, so. I'm. Maybe someone will reach out and let me know.

Oh yeah, because, I have not had that issue. You know, if I had, then I would have probably submitted a support request myself. It's a little bit easier for me to do. So yeah, I apologize that I've not seen this personally, but hopefully we'll get an answer. And, of course, always free to reach out in the future, if you do hear back from my amazing with the solution, because we love to have answers on the show just as much as questions.

1:39:33 - Caller
All right, Well, thank you very much. I really appreciate that, and you guys are terrific. When Leo was away, it was very nice though.

1:39:45 - Mikah Sargent
I think great. Thank you so much. He does a good job. Thank you, John. Thank you, John. We appreciate you. John, I love you.

1:39:52 - Leo Laporte
We've talked many times before and I just hats off to you.

1:39:56 - Mikah Sargent
You're amazing, you're doing the dang thing.

1:39:59 - Leo Laporte
You're amazing as they would say yes, hey thanks, John Take care. We should explain what I'm amazing is it's for iPhone users.

1:40:07 - Mikah Sargent
Yes.

1:40:08 - Leo Laporte
It is our recommended tool for getting stuff off your iPhone.

1:40:12 - Mikah Sargent
Absolutely All sorts of stuff, and in fact it is a tool used by many a what do they call them court researcher.

1:40:20 - Leo Laporte
For forensics. Yeah.

And you know it was funny, I want to save a long I messages text thread and I was looking well, how do I, how can I do that? Does Apple have a way of printing out like the whole thing as a PDF? And in fact they do. But that's crazy. And then I realized, oh, I'm amazing, I can download the whole thing as text and have it, you know, as a, as a history. In fact, what we often are recommending I amazing to people who've lost loved ones, who want to save text messages or voicemails, you know, and there really is no easy way to do that through I Apple zone facility. So I amazing is a great choice Mac or PC, and it's for iPhones. I'm showing it. But I guess, have you lost my? Oh, I am a Z I N G dot com and they deserve a nice little plug because they've saved my bacon.

1:41:19 - Mikah Sargent
Yes, windows, and yeah, I like that, that's nice too.

1:41:23 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, cause you know what? I bet there are more windows using iPhone users than there are Mac using iPhone. Yeah, do you think?

1:41:31 - Mikah Sargent
Cause there are more Windows users in general.

1:41:34 - Leo Laporte
As a result, let's take a little. What are we doing? I don't know what we're doing. Oh, I haven't got a phone call. I lined up. Oh well, let's talk to the phone caller. Lined up. Hello phone caller, Welcome lined up.

1:41:45 - Mikah Sargent
What's your name? Where are you calling from, I guess?

1:41:47 - Caller
it's Tim from Niagara Falls. Hi, tim, what can we do for you? Welcome?

1:41:53 - Leo Laporte
back, leo, thank you. I had a nice vacation and it's always nice to know that I've left the keys of the car to a young person who is not going to drive it above the speed limit.

1:42:03 - Mikah Sargent
Exactly.

1:42:05 - Leo Laporte
And, uh and, and so I think Mike is always.

1:42:06 - Caller
It's really nice to have Mike around as a backup, as as it were yeah, yeah, I did a great job last week, so did the vendor Hardware and hosting.

1:42:15 - Leo Laporte
Twitter. He was wonderful. Yeah. Jason Snell hosting Mac break weekly. Paris did her own this week in Google for the first time, which is great. So thanks to all of them, they did a great job.

1:42:25 - Mikah Sargent
How can we help you, Tim?

1:42:29 - Caller
Yeah, I was lucky enough finally to find you now the airpouch pro two, Nice, I've been with the noise canceling and it really changed my world. It's like literally like doing a bath tub and you just sink below the water.

1:42:45 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, that's a good analogy.

1:42:47 - Leo Laporte
That's a really good analogy. That's good, I like it.

1:42:50 - Caller
The words just disappears. I can't believe it, but I had a little trouble with them and I hope it's not the major. I have Apple TV as well and usually I did have power beats and when I would when I'm able to do it would see my power beats and say you know you want to connect and hit the TV button and I didn't have the. I didn't have the recognized AirPods sitting on the Apple TV but for some reason it doesn't see these. They literally have to go into settings each time to pair them.

1:43:19 - Mikah Sargent
Okay.

1:43:20 - Caller
And there's that, there's that issue. And then I had one other question before I go.

1:43:23 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, so basically what you're saying is you've been used to where you put on those power beats and then up on the TV in the top right corner, you see the little banner that pops up and it says hit the TV button to connect these power beats. You are not seeing that with your current AirPods, correct?

1:43:42 - Caller
Yeah, correct, and it powered them both up and down. Just check the settings. It does say it's suggesting nearby AirPods and the Good Menu and the control panel.

1:43:53 - Mikah Sargent
Let's turn that on, but it's not doing it the next the next thing I would ask you is when you set up your power beats, do you have the same iCloud account as you did when you set up the power beats? I do, okay, that's good to know that. That does make a difference. I would. And since you've gotten the AirPods, you said you tried again with the power beats and they they popped up the banner. Yeah, they do, okay, yeah, okay.

So there are a couple of suggestions that I have for you here. The first suggestion that I have is to, if you haven't done this already, go into and I know this is a pain, but go into your Bluetooth settings on any of your devices that you've used with your AirPods, so your iPhone, if you've got one, your iPad, if you've got one, your Mac, if you've got one. Go into the Bluetooth settings, hit the little I icon and completely remove the AirPods entirely. And then also go to the Apple TV and make sure that they are not in the Bluetooth connection anymore, because iCloud is technically supposed to. When you do the removal on one device, it's supposed to sync across all of them, but sometimes it doesn't. And then here's a little thing that you have to do as well Make sure you need to go into the Find my app on your iPhone or other device and you need to go to Devices and you need to find your AirPods there as well and make sure that they are removed from there as well. You can again it's in the Devices list. You tap on the AirPods and you choose Remove this device, and once that's once it's gone from all of those, then you take your AirPods Pro, you make sure they're both inside of the case, you flip the case open and then you turn it around and you press and hold that button on the back.

I think it's like for 10, 15 seconds, something like that, to completely factory reset them and then go through the process of pairing them again.

Only after you've made sure that it's truly, it's truly been removed from all of the devices, then you pair them again, and then I suggest that on your Apple TV, the first thing you do is go into the Bluetooth settings and pair them that way and then see if it works. Now, the reason why I'm saying all of this is because I had an issue where my AirTags were not working properly and I came to find out that for some people, airpods that were still stored in Find my, even if they were removed from Bluetooth, were causing some authentication errors with other Bluetooth devices. So while it may seem like it's extra work that doesn't need to be done to also remove them from Find my or to make sure that they're gone from Find my, I'm telling you you want to do that as well. So it's kind of a big old troubleshooting nonsense, but by doing all of that I'm hoping that will jostle loose whatever is keeping them from appearing, because yeah, that's annoying that they're not showing up, and once you get it working it's pretty reliable right.

1:47:16 - Leo Laporte
Yes, I mean, I haven't had to do any of this.

1:47:18 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, mine has worked nonstop. I don't know why you're having that issue. You can always if you haven't. This is why I didn't suggest this at first. I imagine you did this toggle off and on that setting that says suggest nearby AirPods.

1:47:33 - Leo Laporte
And also reboot your iPhone.

1:47:35 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, reboot the iPhone, reboot the Apple TV. It should be done regularly.

1:47:39 - Leo Laporte
Apple TV needs to be rebooted almost weekly for me it's very unreliable so once you know how to get to the that little utility screen where you can see them right. You press the top what is it? The top two buttons on your remote and then it comes down and you can actually choose your AirPods there. It's kind of like the control center on your, on your iPhone or your Mac.

1:48:02 - Caller
So you know, that Okay, okay. Yeah, that's all great. It's going to be a little time consuming and then I guess, once I have been paired with the TV, and then I go to the other devices and reconnect them, including turn back. It's kind of annoying.

1:48:18 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, but you have to start over. Yeah, yeah, yeah, you want to turn back.

1:48:21 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, I would connect it before you connected to the Apple TV. Go ahead and do it the normal way with the iPhone. You know how, when you first got them and you flipped open the top and then the little thing popped up on your iPhone and it said connect these.

1:48:34 - Leo Laporte
start there then do the Apple TV. In theory, the iPhone is supposed to tell all your other devices, right, so you should only have to do that once.

1:48:40 - Mikah Sargent
You should only have to do it once.

1:48:41 - Leo Laporte
And the Apple TV goes oh yeah, yes, my AirPods.

1:48:44 - Mikah Sargent
But again it should do that that's, you know, that's where there might be errors.

1:48:48 - Leo Laporte
So yeah, that I love your analogy getting in the tub. I wore my AirPods on the plane and it's amazing. You put them in and all that jet noise goes away. It doesn't fix the crying babies, it only fixes continuous background sound.

1:49:04 - Mikah Sargent
If only babies all cried at the same frequency always.

1:49:07 - Leo Laporte
But it. But it makes a huge difference in terms of flight fatigue If you spend time in the air. That's why you always see. You know, when Bose came out with their first noise canceling headphones, everybody had them. Because it makes such a huge difference.

1:49:21 - Caller
I think, while I could ask you one more question.

1:49:24 - Leo Laporte
Sure, of course.

1:49:26 - Caller
Yeah, I'm just I'm using these. I almost was, and this is a feature. They first introduced the store expense and we share a little longer. I literally have trouble with the new controls just finding the spot that you actually turn up the volume and up and down and using it correctly If they hold it with your thumb on one side and the thing on the other and I sometimes ended up just knocking them out of my ear when I tried to use it. I think the I think there's a special team at Apple that actually Concentrate on making things more slippery and more hard to use.

1:50:00 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, yeah, my friends, my friend, steve, said you know, I got the new iPhone and wow, it's even slipperier than before and made a glass. It's, yeah, yeah, it's, I think it's the aesthetic of high tech. Too many science fiction movies.

1:50:19 - Caller
Yeah, what so? So what's Air tech is in the batteries and putting the batteries back in the air.

1:50:25 - Mikah Sargent
Oh my goodness, yeah, and you're trying to twist it. My recommendation there they make rubber bands that are pretty thick and I'll take the rubber band and put it between it, and then it's got grippy on one side and grippy on the other, and so I press it between my palms with the rubber band on either side, and the rubber band helps to grip both sides of it and then undo it. Yeah, I've had that issue as well.

1:50:46 - Leo Laporte
I just replaced the batteries in my air tag and my luggage before the trip. That's good that you did before the trip. Yeah, yeah.

1:50:54 - Mikah Sargent
I as far as the air, the ears go. Yeah, there, I don't have a easy solution for you there. There's probably some person out there who'd be like you know. What you could do is you could they make. They use a dremel on it and you could make it a little rougher or something.

1:51:09 - Leo Laporte
They used to make little latex sleeves that would go over the whole, you know, because it's got a tip on the on the air pods, but they would go over the whole air pod to make. But I don't know if you could still get those, but I remember we used to recommend those on Mac break weekly when they first the first air pods came out, way back, way back when the good old days, yeah.

1:51:30 - Mikah Sargent
Great advice guys. Hey thank you. Thanks for calling in.

1:51:34 - Caller
Thanks for your questions and we wish you luck. I just wanted to add just wanted to add happy club to a member and highly recommended. So, much you guys offer. Thank you so much. Thank you, I really appreciate it.

1:51:48 - Leo Laporte
Thank you so much. Take care here from Yahoo Finance, actually, from Lance Yulinov, writing for TechRadar. He used to be the PC magazine editor in chief. Good friend, he has an air tag battery replacement trick. Let's see what he's got here. This is Apple's instructions and you see how slippery it is. You press down with your thumb and you can't open the darn thing. Let me see what he recommends. He probably recommends your trick, which is the rubber band trick. Right, I don't know. Let's see. He says I found that opening air tags a two hand job. Oh, rested across. He says use both thumbs. But maybe he has sticky thumbs.

1:52:32 - Mikah Sargent
He's got those thumbs like the tongue of a cat.

1:52:35 - Leo Laporte
This is how I've opened them, because it's important. It's good to know that it does twist to open. Yes, yes, like as a first. You go well, nothing's happening?

1:52:43 - Mikah Sargent
Do I pry it? What do I do here?

1:52:44 - Leo Laporte
No, it twists, so you twist to open it's almost on screws and then you can replace it. I can't believe Lance got an entire article out of that tip, yeah.

1:52:52 - Mikah Sargent
Wow, that's like so many, so many paragraphs.

1:52:55 - Leo Laporte
So many paragraphs on using his two thumbs to open his air tags. That's hysterical, all right. What should we do now? About one last refreshing pause one pause that refreshes.

And then Patrick Della, handy, and our engineer, who is a brilliant man, says I didn't even know. People tried with one hand. Of course she used two thumbs two thumbs to open it. Yeah, of course you do, of course, but don't do it after you put on hand lotion. Okay, save the corn husk. As for after you change the battery You're watching, ask the Tech guys. That's Mikah Sargent, and I know it's hard to tell us apart now that I have this deep tan. I'm Leo Laporte. I did not set out to tan, by the way. No good, I slathered myself in sunscreen, good, but you spend enough time out in the sun. Even with sunscreen, you will get to tan. You'll get a little brown. Let's continue on. What do we got here? I'm going to pick up on a phone caller. I'm surprised. Nobody said anything about my shirt. I thought Leo, what's that shirt.

I thought this would attract some attention. Normally I wear a. Oh, I was supposed to wear my seaweed sweater today, but I'll wear it next week. Got to wear this. Got my seaweed sweater. They say it's going to be a little tight when you get it. Oh, it's okay, just wear it. It will adjust to your body, it will ease into it. It feels a little strange, does it? Yeah, but not like seaweed.

1:54:29 - Mikah Sargent
Does it feel like it's suctioning to you? Yeah, or it's getting slimy.

1:54:33 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, who? What? Hello? Hello, right here, hello caller, hello. Hey, what's your first name? What city you're calling from?

1:54:44 - Caller
Leo, you know who this is when I tell you Mick DeWick.

1:54:48 - Leo Laporte
Hey, mick DeWick from Athens Ohio.

1:54:52 - Caller
Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's where we we've met the last time we always in Athens.

1:54:57 - Leo Laporte
Yep, you live in the little south of Athens. Yeah.

1:55:01 - Caller
We call them.

1:55:02 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, I'm in.

1:55:02 - Caller
Senecaville. So yeah, where are you? I'm in Senecaville, ohio, by the lake Senecaville. We met when you Some of it is cool yeah, you, you came here to Athens, ohio, ohio University and spoke with that symposium what, 20 years ago, probably kind of feels like a long time ago.

1:55:20 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, the Ohio State University. But make we call them make the wick, because you still make candles.

1:55:28 - Caller
Oh yeah, I still make candles. Yeah, I sure do. I have a house designated specifically from making candles. Yeah, it's a serious high, but well, houses are pretty cheap here in the part of Appalachia.

1:55:43 - Leo Laporte
So it's, it's a bar, yeah it's a but you and you buy wax in the in like giant cubes.

1:55:54 - Caller
Actually, yeah, yeah, 30 years ago, I told my. When I retired, I told my wife I'm gonna make candles and get more people and see what happens. And she says okay. So I had this truck pull up. There was 18.

1:56:13 - Leo Laporte
You really oh my now where do you get the wicks oh?

1:56:28 - Caller
I buy those from. You know different outlets. You don't make your own way different places, oh no, no, you could make a lot of tight string, but the ones that you make are much better. So, yeah, you know, they make they work a lot better.

1:56:42 - Leo Laporte
Mick is a dear, dear friend. We did meet many moons ago probably yeah, you're right at least 20 years ago, and has been a friend ever since and has given me so many great tips and and we just so many great candles. Or you know what? Have you ever sent me a candle, mick?

1:57:01 - Caller
Actually, when you were in Athens, I gave you some and I I asked you to give some to your wife and daughter and your mother and they were actually. They were actually powders that I ground off a candle because I knew you were flying and you know they like to cut into stuff when you get on the damn airplane. I, yeah, yeah, yeah that's cool. And I sent you cheese just cuz I'm in Ohio every year.

1:57:38 - Leo Laporte
The big package cheese once he said it at the post office box and it was sat there for a little while. But you know what, Mick? Most of that cheese is fine. I stayed away from the summer sausage, but the cheese was Fine. Cheese ages well. Yeah, always a pleasure to talk to you. What's up, mick? Yeah?

1:57:58 - Caller
Let me. Let me tell you this way I never did tell you this, but back when you were a young pup and you were a DJ on the radio, you were, I'm not gonna say Wolfman Jack, but you were kind of known as a, as a wild broadcaster keeping people awake in the middle of the night. And I had a buddy named the mojo man and he broadcast in North Carolina and he also broadcast the whoa up in Toledo and he told me that he used to listen to your clips and he gets some tips from you On how he could make his show even.

1:58:37 - Caller
Late night radio.

1:58:39 - Leo Laporte
Oh, I love it, oh, I love it.

1:58:41 - Caller
Yeah, you know, go ahead. He was from Florida when he retired and he passed away a couple years ago, but he's the mojo man on YouTube and he's got a air check on there.

1:58:59 - Leo Laporte
I'm gonna check out the mojo man, awesome.

1:59:02 - Caller
Yeah, he was a buddy of mine back in the 50s, in the 60s and he really enjoyed. This is in the year show, so you know, I know I take you back a little bit.

1:59:12 - Leo Laporte
Oh yeah, you know it's funny when I think about it. You know, I fell in love with radio in the 70s when I was in college and Pursued a radio career for almost 50 years very close to 50 years and I kind of, when I think about it, I kind of was it the presided over the decline and demise of radio.

It's dying medium Because it's been, from the most part, replaced by internet based audio, whether it speaks spoken word or music. Most people that's how they listen to the radio now. They listen to stuff, they download it or they stream. But I love radio. I love the idea of talking to somebody Miles away just through a microphone in the air and it's kind of a magical, magical medium I really love and loved was very grateful for a career radio. It's so nice to hear from you, mika, just really appreciate it yeah.

2:00:11 - Caller
Kind of a sad thing that will be losing a m radio, but that's Way goes.

2:00:19 - Leo Laporte
It is kind of yes, sir, I.

2:00:23 - Caller
Just got just picked this up yesterday and I never heard of this. I on my phone, I got a message saying if you want to know if the police are monitoring your cell phone, type in star pound to one pound. So I said well, you know, I'll give a shot and see what happens. So I did that and the phone number came up. This is like three o'clock in the morning, I'm not sleeping. So I thought about it and I, you know, I bet that some Person who wants to monitor my phone oh, it turns it on, yeah, turns it out and sends it to their number.

Well, I'm not gonna ask you to repeat it, because I was.

2:01:07 - Leo Laporte
Go ahead, star Pat, wait a minute, let me tell me. Tell me again, star pound.

2:01:12 - Caller
To one pound, and then if I don't know if there's other codes for that I'm gonna see.

2:01:18 - Leo Laporte
Please. Says this way I. What kind of idiot am I? I'm doing it, yeah.

2:01:23 - Mikah Sargent
I don't know why you're doing it, but setting interrogation succeeded. Usa today, in July of 2020, dialing this code does not show if your phone was tapped.

2:01:33 - Leo Laporte
Look at, can you see this over my shoulder, john Ashley? It says setting interrogation succeeded, voice call forwarding and all calls disabled. What the hell is that?

2:01:47 - Caller
And how did they do it? Now that you punched that into your phone, it just shows that there is a code you can punch in and turn that off. What's that? I don't know what that code is. You got a Google ad. This is.

2:02:05 - Mikah Sargent
This is how people determine if call forwarding has been enabled on their device and it is not enabled on my device and that's what it's saying.

2:02:13 - Leo Laporte
Thank, you for googling, that I don't have to do anything more right now, because you don't have call forwarding now. She's Louise. No scared me, but now I'm gonna play for your benefit. Barry Friedman, ladies and gentlemen, I give you the mojo man. There you go. I like his hat. Did he always wear that?

2:02:39 - Caller
Oh my.

2:02:52 - Leo Laporte
From WOHO radio. Toledo, ames. This is from Christmas 1969. Late boys and girls this is what radio used to sound like.

2:03:15 - Mikah Sargent
It's moving so quickly.

2:03:18 - Leo Laporte
Children today you, young people.

2:03:21 - Mikah Sargent
Couldn't even understand. Yeah, I'm like that. Are there subliminal messages being delivered at this moment?

2:03:27 - Leo Laporte
I that's. I miss that more than anything. Is that crazy?

2:03:31 - Caller
They used to call it boss Jock Radio the great stuff oh yeah, yeah he was a boss back in 1969 Mojo man had on his radio on whoa. He says all right, I'm sending this one out to Mick and Marv right here in Toledo and the song is Bobbie, I love how you love me. And 50 years later I told him we got married just cuz he played that damn song.

2:04:01 - Leo Laporte
And how? How many years have you been married now?

2:04:03 - Caller
Oh, We've been. We've been married three happy years. Three my wife what? Yeah, my wife wants to know what the hell three I'm talking about, but over 50, thank you the great at three happy years, make three happy years.

2:04:24 - Leo Laporte
Mick, we had a little medical scare a couple of years ago. We thought we were gonna lose you. We all said goodbye in the chat. I talked to you, but you're still going strong and I'm not surprised. You've got. You got heart man. You got a lot of spirit. It's great to talk to you. Thank you, Mick. Yeah, thank you for all the years of entertainment You've given us. Thank you, Mick.

2:04:45 - Caller
You guys are. You guys are a lot of fun Like you're. You're serving your public very, very well. We really so much make all you do and of course you Excuse Leo. The doctors gave up on me like two years ago and they say good luck, and the best we can do is give you a handicap parking sticker so you don't have to watch the damn well.

2:05:08 - Leo Laporte
We're just so glad you're still with us. I have to say we're just. We're just. I feel grateful for every extra year. Thank you, Mick.

2:05:16 - Caller
Yeah, the doctor said, doctor said, don't miss church on Sunday.

2:05:24 - Leo Laporte
Okay, okay.

2:05:26 - Caller
Yeah, you're doing yourself and love the big court and you guys are doing a wonderful job, love to you and Mrs Wick and everybody in Senecaville.

2:05:33 - Leo Laporte
It's great to hear from you.

2:05:34 - Mikah Sargent
May you have at least two happy years two more happy years of marriage.

2:05:41 - Leo Laporte
Take care. So nice to talk to. I see somebody familiar in our.

2:05:47 - Caller
Yeah, I'm kind of I'm gonna be a little biased here and kind of want to pick up. I mean they're kind of fussing around with their stuff, but I'm gonna put them on spot.

2:05:57 - Leo Laporte
He looks a little familiar. I don't know. I feel like Maybe it's just that it's the Clemson Tiger, it's some weird orange thing where maybe that's. That's what it is. Let's see who's who's gonna show up in our, in our magic. What do we call this? The Stargate. Oh my god, it's Aunt Pruitt as I live and breathe. Hello, aunt.

2:06:20 - Ant Pruitt
Why is mr John a giving me grief man?

2:06:23 - Leo Laporte
Oh, we love you so much and we miss you so much. Tell us what you've been up to.

2:06:29 - Ant Pruitt
Just just tinkering around and just doing the freelance life and join it and you know, as I tell people just going around trying to shake the money tree.

2:06:40 - Leo Laporte
Well, how can we help you do that? Of course, go to your website at pruittcom. Great photography on sale there. You sent me a 1000-piece jigsaw puzzle, your best photos, a thousand pieces, and you've got. You think I, you think I'm smarter than I am. I have to say I miss your push-ups here in the studio. Can't do quite as many he was getting us all to do push.

2:07:16 - Ant Pruitt
I wanted to chime in because You're looking at me on the Vajatec Mevo core cam and I was wanting to get your take and see how I look and how I sound well.

2:07:27 - Leo Laporte
I'll tell you one thing you're getting the microphone. You're using it as the microphone, aren't you?

2:07:32 - Ant Pruitt
Right, yeah, right. So, and how does that sound to you? It's, it's for a Zoom call, to be fine.

2:07:38 - Leo Laporte
Yeah. It's not as good, as you have that great microphone in front of you and you know you would sound better. In fact it's so funny We've trained the chat, the Discord folks are all saying you're on the wrong ant mic. You're on the mic, they all know. But but he's doing it on purpose. But I have to say the picture is the picture is fantastic.

2:07:57 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, it looks so crisp. I mean, there's even some bouquet going on a little bit, which is nice. But yeah, as far as the sound, I would say eh it's, it's giving you know laptop microphone yeah.

2:08:12 - Leo Laporte
Back to my battery sounds on the good mic.

Yes, but the difference is the reason is is, as you know, any, any camera that's on your laptop is going to have to have an omni directional mic. It's a somewhat of a distance from you. Omni directional so it could pick you up no matter where you are in the room, and so you're going to get a lot of room tone. That's what we call it, that kind of echo-y feeling. That's, that's to be expected. I'll be honest with you. I hear it on on nationwide news broadcasts. It sometimes sounds like that.

2:08:40 - Ant Pruitt
If you watch, does it not annoy you? It annoys the grass. When I turn on these professionals in their video and audio is crap, Tastic. I'm like come on, I know your budget's way bigger than that yeah.

2:08:55 - Leo Laporte
They could sound this good. But no, they, they. They wear these lav mics and sometimes they put omnis on them Cause the. We used to do that to a tech TV, because people will move their head and if it's a directional mic, they, they move off like you can't hear them. They're over here and so you have to use an omni and then it's picking up everybody. It's. It's the worst on the panel shows like Meet the Press, where everybody's got an omni on them and it just sounds terrible. It sounds like echo chamber.

2:09:21 - Ant Pruitt
So yeah, but I didn't want to take up all your time. I just I, I was tinking around in here in my studio and I said let me see how it sounds, and and and just sort of give team twit a hard time. I have that, I have the camera plugged into the ATM, Even though I don't necessarily have to do that.

2:09:38 - Mikah Sargent
Oh interesting.

2:09:40 - Ant Pruitt
This is a comparison Like this is my Canon. Yes, he, I think it looks as good as your camera. I mean, hold on, wait a minute, hold on. This was this is the Mivo.

2:09:49 - Caller
Oh, you were on the Canon no wonder it looks so good.

2:09:52 - Leo Laporte
I was on the Canon the whole time, there we go, but that's good. No, that's nice.

2:09:56 - Ant Pruitt
It's 4k, it's pretty good and I can tap and focus and all of that stuff and really zoom out because it's got a micro four third sensor. It doesn't have any tiny webcam. That's a huge sensor for a webcam, so it's it's. It's better than I expected.

2:10:15 - Leo Laporte
Mevo, is that how they spell it?

2:10:17 - Ant Pruitt
Right, mevo, I'm going to do a a first look in a review for it on ZD netcom, because I am now also freelance contributing with this At ZD Nice, so they sent this to me like two days ago and I hadn't had time to really it is not inexpensive, it's a $400 webcam Wow they they must have bought.

2:10:42 - Leo Laporte
There was a company called Mivo. In fact I have the original Mivo camera for streaming to Facebook. They must have acquired them. That's correct, sir, that's correct. So one of the cool things about the original Mevo, it was a 4k camera that could pan and zoom without moving because it would do a 1080p signal out of that 4k. So it had a. It had the ability to kind of follow you around and stuff. I still have that Mevo camera.

2:11:07 - Ant Pruitt
This thing. It looks good and and, like I said, the wide shot. I don't really need this wide shot. Yeah, I don't need to see my whole dad gum space.

2:11:15 - Leo Laporte
But that's the point is, they can. They can zoom in on a little portion of it and give you some, and it still looks pretty good as a PC. Yeah.

2:11:23 - Ant Pruitt
You know, and I did all of that just from my phone, I have to tell you.

2:11:27 - Leo Laporte
It's excellent at orange.

2:11:30 - Mikah Sargent
Yes, it is. It's like I was tuned for that.

2:11:33 - Leo Laporte
Oh, off the white balance.

2:11:35 - Ant Pruitt
Yeah, the white balance on it was a little bit off. That's probably got something to do with it too, so let me dial that back here. There we go.

2:11:45 - Leo Laporte
No, I think it looks good. Don't mess with it and it's a little bit better. Anytime you want to test the camera, you just call us. We'll be glad to give you the feedback and we'll look for that article on zednetcom. That's great.

2:11:58 - Ant Pruitt
Yeah, hopefully we'll get that out this week. I'll start writing it tomorrow morning and just as a first look, and then I'll do a straight up review review of it in a couple of weeks, because I don't believe in just grab his stuff and saying here's my review of it at the two days.

2:12:12 - Leo Laporte
Yes, you need to spend some time, I agree with you and you still sound as good as ever. Man, you sound. You keep that good microphone because you sound good. I miss you so much and we love you so much and.

2:12:27 - Ant Pruitt
I'll make a comment about your avocado shirt I had, I thought it was this morning.

2:12:32 - Leo Laporte
Yay, and we got John Ashley doing the pushups pushups yeah. He did about five and then collapsed.

2:12:44 - Mikah Sargent
He tried to do the more, but that's the way it started right.

2:12:50 - Leo Laporte
You started with a few at a time and then you build up the time.

2:12:53 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, when he was still on the womb, he started with a few at a time.

2:12:58 - Leo Laporte
Thank you. Thank you, love to the family Take care. Oh, mr Orange, clemson fan for life. You can't. You can take a guy out of the country, but you can't take the Clemson out of the guy. That's for sure, that's that's the phrase.

2:13:18 - Caller
So sounds a little weird, doesn't it? Do you want to take one more? Okay, I'm going to pick up on Brett Brett come on down.

2:13:28 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, the next contestant on the price is right, johnny Olson, one of the great announcers of all time. You know, the guy who does the announcing for Jeopardy, johnny Gilbert 93. He's been doing it forever and ever and he does it from his house. Really yeah, but they but there. But there was just a documentary about him and a impressive guy. Let's play Jeopardy. I wish I could have gotten that gig, hello.

2:14:00 - Caller
Welcome. Where are you calling from? I'm calling from Seashell, British Columbia.

2:14:05 - Leo Laporte
Beautiful. How's the weather now?

2:14:08 - Caller
in the Seashell it's clear, sunny, we're out from the rain. Yeah, I live just down. Well, not just down the street, but your Windows weekly guy Richard.

2:14:21 - Leo Laporte
Campbell.

2:14:23 - Caller
He lives up in Madeira Park, penn Harbor area, so it's a beautiful area yeah. I thought I'd say Seashell, because everyone says it wrong when they see it spilled out. You're probably seeing it spilled.

2:14:34 - Leo Laporte
Everyone wants to say something, Just remember, she sells she sells in British Columbia. Yeah.

2:14:44 - Caller
So question I when explaining to family members about VPNs and things like that, I find that I can do that pretty easily. But when I get the question about what exactly does my ISPC, when I'm using something like the 1.1.1 or 9.9.9.9, you know, an encrypted DNS setup on your browser, what exactly does my ISP still see? I know?

2:15:12 - Leo Laporte
it's not a VPN. That's a great question.

That's a wonderful question. So you know I'm going to have to explain how the internet works. How much time do we have? Yeah, as you, probably no, no, no, no. This is great, as you, I'm sure. No, when you enter in a web address like yahoocom, you're not entering, you don't? Your browser doesn't know what to do with that. It first has to find out what the phone number is. Same way, if I want to call Mikah, I can't just say call Mikah, sorry. Well, I can't nowadays, but it would look up a phone number right.

So we don't have phone numbers in the internet. We have IP addresses, internet protocol addresses. But it's pretty much the same idea, this dotted quad. You know the 192.168.1.1. That's the address. Every single computer on the internet, every single server, is supposed to have a unique one. Now that's a problem because there aren't enough addresses to go around. So when you're in and that's one of the reasons you have to use a router you have a unique IP address assigned to you by your internet service provider. But inside your network you might have multiple devices. They all have local addresses, but they all emerge onto the internet with that one IP address provided by your internet service provider.

They do the phone number look up through something called a DNS server or domain name system server. It's a big phone book. The actual phone books are 13 canonical. They call them servers all around the world that contain the canonical address matching with the websites. That's managed by a non-governmental organization it used to be the U? S but it's now an international body called ICAN, the internet corporation for assigned names and numbers. So when you go out and buy a domain name you're buying it from a registrar who is chartered by ICAN to sell them. You say I want Leocom and they say okay, that'll be 9.95. And then they send the information up to those 13 servers. You're now in the big phone book in the sky and every domain name server will eventually get a copy of partial copy of that so that when you type in Leocom on your browser it can find that 132.7.5.2.1, whatever that unique address is. So that kind of in a nutshell, is how it works.

When you're using 1.1.1.1 or 9.9.9.9 or my preferred DNS server, a next DNS or open DNS or go on and on other companies DNS is you have to use some domain name server. Sometimes people run their own. Most of the time people use the one provided by the internet service provider. Oh, and there's where the privacy issue comes in. When you log you know onto a website, you're sending the name of that website to the domain name server that the internet service provider runs. They go oh, he's going off to yahoocom, got it? And then they send your browser that number. You never see this but just the browser. The number of the browser then contacts the outside world.

So instead of asking the phone book owned by the ISP, you're asking a phone book owned by another group, like quad nine or 1.1, which is cloud flare, or, you know, 8888, which is Google or Verizon, I can't remember or next, dns, somebody else's. They get the same information your ISP would get. Now the traffic still has to come through the ISP. So the ISP it depends. Most servers, most servers now, are encrypted. They're HTTPS. So the ISP won't see anything on an encrypted transaction. They won't now. They no, no longer. No, not only don't see what you're saying, they don't even see the address. I don't think that's a good question.

2:19:07 - Caller
That's a good question, yeah.

2:19:08 - Leo Laporte
That's a good question. So what happens is you go out, you say I'm going to yahoocom. Okay, this is the number. You then go to yahoocom's number and you establish an encrypted communication with them. Yeah, your ISP doesn't see anything of that. So that's the point. There are other benefits. Quad nine, for instance, protects you with ad blocking and malware blocking stuff, because it basically says, well, you can't go to that site, nope, not going to let you go there. So it it? It uses a blacklist to keep you from going to bad sites. It's cause it's seeing all that and it can block that. That's all it's doing, really. No, I don't know the ISP. I have to think about this. But the ISP, once you, if you're unencrypted, they see it all. But most everybody's encrypted. Now, with HTTPS, they're using SSL to to talk back and forth, or TLS now to talk back and forth. No, I don't think they see anything. I don't think they know who you're having a conversation with.

2:20:03 - Mikah Sargent
You're saying, if you're using a VPN, if you're not a VPN, so you're saying, without a VPN, they still wouldn't see.

2:20:09 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, so, so here's the only way they were seeing before is you were contacting their phone book. Oh, because you were using their DNS. And when you contacted their phone book they said, oh, Leo's going to Yahoo, but because you're not using their DNS, they know you're talking to Quad nine. Do they know that?

2:20:29 - Caller
Cause it's encrypted?

2:20:30 - Leo Laporte
I don't think so, yeah, I'll have to ask Steve. This is a good one for Steve. He's the expert on infrastructure, internet infrastructure, it is. Let me look and see. Maybe somebody in the discord has a better sense of this. But my sense of it is because nowadays and this is why Google pushed this we're using an encrypted communications medium with all of the servers. None of that's available to the ISP is. The real question is do they see? Yes, they do. You know what? I take it back. They have to. So when you're sending a packet, it still goes to the ISP. The ISP, if they're inspecting those packets, we'll see the address that it's heading to. They'll have to, and so they just don't do the lookup.

You're, but they're not doing the lookup, but they're not, but they're not, but they're going to see the uh, the IP address of the packet, because they have to, they have to route it.

2:21:24 - Mikah Sargent
Right. So by using a VPN, you're routing it all to one. Ip that is, or you know one place, and then it's taking care of it on the other end. So then, yeah, your old, your ISP, is just going to see you connecting to that same uh IP over and over and over again.

2:21:40 - Caller
So this was the problem I was having explaining to family members, because we would go back and forth. Well then, why would I need a VPN? Because all I ever decided to go to is now encrypted with HTTPS. And then the if I'm doing one dot, one dot one, do a little lookup, if my. Isp doesn't see that I'm requesting a lookup. I mean, then why do they need a VPN? Then I tell them well, but that's where I was confused.

2:22:05 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, it's a little concept. They have to because the packet as you're, you're, you're having an encrypted conversation with the other server, but they have to route it. And on the packet of data that you're sending out, even though that packet is encrypted, there is a little attachment that says oh, this is going to one sixty two, that's because they got to know where to send it.

2:22:22 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, they got to know the phone number, so yeah they do see that.

2:22:24 - Leo Laporte
Now there, there are other things that you can do. Paul Greg in our discord says if they're using split tunnel then they wouldn't, but almost always uh, they're seeing it. Uh, your ISP knows even more if you use their DNS, but it's not like they're completely out of the picture unless you use a VPN.

2:22:46 - Caller
So using a cryptid DNS service like nine dot nine dot, nine dot nine, um they, I just I don't know. I don't see the advantage of it because they can still yeah, I'm doing an encrypted lookup with you know, quad nine, but my ISP then still gets sent back. We'll take, take Brett there now, right.

2:23:08 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, and they can. Yeah, they can look up what that IP address goes to.

2:23:13 - Mikah Sargent
The reason that I've done DNS in the past, uh, specifically, was because the built in DNS from my provider at the time was so stinkin slow, and so that's why I made the switch to uh, you know, a different DNS in the first place.

2:23:27 - Caller
Then we also blocking service.

2:23:28 - Mikah Sargent
Yes, and then you have the benefit of ad blocking and the other things that you're able to do, like what Leo does with next DNS. Um, I never saw it first and foremost as a privacy edition anyway. Um, so, but I can understand how someone would maybe think that that was the case, and yeah, there's got to be something going on.

2:23:47 - Leo Laporte
Very much a difference between a VPN which does hide every all your traffic, including who you're talking to from the ISP, and a third party DNS server. There are still many, many advantages to a third party DNS server speed, of course, but also it can do some blocking and other security stuff.

2:24:06 - Caller
Right, I just remembered the story of them, the ISP providers in the UK, complaining, you know, crying they, you know, because everyone was starting to use uh, yes.

2:24:19 - Leo Laporte
There is one side effect it turns you sideways but other than that, no, I do remember though. Yeah, they didn't. They didn't like that, did they? Um, and I? I think that's a good point. Maybe they were, maybe they were crying crocodile tears, maybe they're. Maybe they were saying, oh, we can't see you, yeah, yeah, yeah yeah. They have to see it now that I think about it, otherwise they wouldn't know where to send those. What do we do with this Right Somebody thought to?

we've always said this uh, about VPNs is is that you're just kicking the privacy can down the road? Cause the VPNs right. The same thing in ISP sees is going to see everywhere you not the contents, but just where you're talking to. Yeah, but as you know, often who you're talking to is as valuable as what you're saying to them, right?

2:25:09 - Caller
Right. And lastly, does my ISP know that I'm using a VPN in the first place? Yes, they know they would. Okay.

2:25:16 - Mikah Sargent
Especially, depending on your VPN, how often they're switching out their IP address. Um, and I mean, yeah, just just by default they just know, cause they can't see?

2:25:27 - Leo Laporte
Yeah.

2:25:28 - Mikah Sargent
Uh, they're not. You know, going to that same IP over and, over and over again. They're not able to see anything else. They don't see anything.

2:25:35 - Leo Laporte
They just know well they. He's having a conversation with somebody. We know who. It is right, cause we have to route that packet, but we don't know what's going on there. Yeah.

2:25:42 - Caller
Right, no, I, I mean I, I don't live my life on a VPN but because, living in Canada and I've used a lot of services in the U S, a lot of times I need to have a? U us IP address. I'm richly from Seattle and I've moved up here and nice.

2:25:57 - Leo Laporte
They call it the sunshine coast, but uh, is that really yeah?

2:26:03 - Caller
It's more of uh, it doesn't have as much. We're in the rain shadow for Vancouver Island, so we're quite dry, oh good.

2:26:11 - Leo Laporte
So what is the sunshine coast?

2:26:12 - Caller
Good, yes, uh, it's more of. We don't get the rain, but it'll still be overcast.

2:26:17 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, well, that's what I see. That's the overcast coast. See, yeah, that doesn't have the same ring to it?

2:26:22 - Mikah Sargent
No, it doesn't it kind of no, no, no, it's a rain. What do you?

2:26:25 - Leo Laporte
want. Hey it's great to talk to you, yeah.

2:26:28 - Caller
So all right, Well, thanks. Thanks for that.

2:26:30 - Leo Laporte
Really good question. I had to actually had to think about a little bit. It was a thinker. Yep, it's a good one. I appreciate it.

2:26:35 - Caller
All right, have a great day and see shop now, I know how to say it yeah, you felt you felt you're right.

2:26:40 - Leo Laporte
When I look at the spelling it looks like so help bless you? Yep, I guess that the art fairs I go to selling my work they always say I do incorrectly, it's derived from the name of the uh, the first nations people who settled there gave it, which was I can't pronounce that either Sheshasha nahelm, something like that.

2:26:58 - Caller
Sheshel, I believe.

2:26:59 - Leo Laporte
Sheshel Nice, yeah, yeah. It's a beautiful name. Actually I like it.

2:27:05 - Caller
Yeah, uh, we're, uh the proper. The land that the city, the downtown core, is on, is only a kilometer wide, so there's water on both sides. It's an isthmus. It's an isthmus.

2:27:14 - Leo Laporte
Now you say that three times fast. Yes.

2:27:17 - Caller
It's an isthmus Very nice.

2:27:21 - Leo Laporte
Hey, great to talk to you. Thanks, for you're our last caller of the day. We appreciate it Very good.

2:27:25 - Caller
Nice to end on a high note. I'll be listening to Twitter.

2:27:28 - Leo Laporte
Thank you. Yeah, going to be a big one. We've got lots to talk about. And Kathy Gellis will join us, uh, our, our, our resident attorney, to talk about it. So we'll Brianna Wu, that's going to be a lot of fun. And, uh, I know his. I know his name, but I can't pronounce it. Yeah, is that how you say it? Pogaro, rob Pogaro will be here. No one knows how to pronounce it. Rob actually has on his website a video that tells you how to pronounce his name. Rob Pogaro is Robin studio and Kathy's here too. Wow, we're going to have some fun. We better get going here.

You've been watching the best darn podcast in the world. As the tech guys with Mikah Sargent, leo Laporte, we do the show Sundays, two to five PM Eastern time, 11 to uh, 11 to 2 PM. Uh, west coast time. Uh, because we are now on sun, a summertime, thank goodness. Finally, on daylight saving time. Uh, you will be able to start watching us at 1800 UTC. And where do you watch us? On YouTube, youtube.com/twit. We stream all of our shows. Uh, in studio now, but just on YouTube. Uh, unless you're club TWiT member, then you can also watch us in discord If you're not a club to a member. Don't forget to it that twit.tv/clubtwit. Very important to us Uh that. That really makes a big difference uh in terms of what we can and cannot uh do. After the fact, on demand versions of the show available at the old site, techguylabs.com, which turns out to be the new site, twit.tv/atg. You can also subscribe to Ask the Tech Guys any where finer podcasts are stored and distributed using the resources of the worldwide internet.

2:29:13 - Mikah Sargent
Are we anything you want to say. Just get in touch with us. Call that twit.tv during the show. 8887242884 during the week to leave a voicemail. atg@twit.tv. The email that you can send text voice and video.

2:29:25 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, send us a video. Yeah, well, that'd be fun at atg@tv. Mikah will be back on Tuesday for iOS, today on Thursday for tech news weekly and, of course, every Sunday right here and, uh, you know where to find me. Thanks for being here. Thanks to John Ashley, our producer, Burke McQuinn, our studio manager today. John's got the week off, John Slanina. Uh, we will see you next time on. Ask the tech guys. Bye, bye.