Ask the Tech Guys 1968 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.

Mikah Sargent (00:00:00):
Coming up on Ask the Tech guys, I, Mikah Sargent, have a review for you. Well, actually it's two reviews of some robotic vacuums that oh, hopefully won't break the bank.

Ant Pruitt (00:00:10):
And I am Ant Pruitt, and I'm gonna tell you why. Me, as well as several other people are quite angry with Google and Google Drive.

Mikah Sargent (00:00:17):
And we've got several questions to answer, including one question about LastPass security and a follow up about why Roku speeds just aren't what they should be. Stay tuned for Ask the Tech Guys

Leo Laporte (00:00:33):
Podcasts you love

(00:00:35):
From people you trust

(00:00:37):
This is TWiT

Mikah Sargent (00:00:41):
This is Ask the Tech guys with Mikah Sargent and Ant Pruitt, episode 1968, recorded Sunday, April 2nd, 2023. See you at the next CIA meeting. This episode of Ask the Tech Guys is brought to you by Lookout, whether on a device or in the cloud. Your business data is always on the move, minimize risk, increase visibility, and ensure compliance with lookouts Unified platform. Visit lookout.com today.

Leo Laporte (00:01:09):
Thanks for listening to this show. As an ad supported network, we are always looking for new partners with products and services that will benefit our qualified audience. Are you ready to grow your business? Reach out to advertise at quit tv and launch your campaign. Now

Mikah Sargent (00:01:27):
It's time for us, the tech guys. Fireworks, fireworks, I don't know, chain rattles, explosions, symbols, et cetera, et cetera. Woohoo. This is the show where you call in with your tech questions or email in with your tech questions, or I don't know, write in with your tech questions. And we the tech guys try to provide an answer. Leo Laport is on vacation. So joining me, Mikah, Sergeant, across the vast space that is the studio is Aunt Pruit. Hi aunt.

Ant Pruitt (00:01:59):
Hello, sir. How you be?

Mikah Sargent (00:02:00):
I be well. How about a How about you?

Ant Pruitt (00:02:03):
I am unbelievable as always. And we are in studio. This isn't a Zoom wall that I'm looking at. This is, this

Mikah Sargent (00:02:11):
Is real. This is real as far as I can tell. I could be. This is a virtual space that I just haven't figured that out yet. <Laugh>. But I think you're there. Yeah, this is the variety show I've, I've decided to call it. I think the closest thing that comes to this show mm-hmm. <Affirmative> is Twig. Yeah. that can be kind of a variety show, but we, well, you know, we like to talk about a lot of stuff. Yeah. here and, and also help people out with their gizmos and gadgets. And so while Leo's away I said, oh, we should definitely have an on the show. I mean, you've, you've hung out a few times, kinda behind the scenes.

Ant Pruitt (00:02:43):
Right. All I'm gonna say is, bless your heart, <laugh>. Cause man, you guys are so good. I, I've, I've sat back there behind the, the cameras and watched the show several times and just the energy between you two is, is unmatched. I, I'm, I, I can't even assume I'm gonna match it, but I'm looking forward to being here and having some fun and hopefully dropping a little bit of knowledge for folks that calls in or send in their questions. It's gonna be

Mikah Sargent (00:03:07):
A lot of fun. And speaking of which, if you do have questions, if you do want to call in you just go to call.twits.tv, call dot twit tv. There you will be connected to our Zoom and then you'll kind of hang out in the, the lobby and we will be able to take your questions live on air. It's funny, I'm looking at the Zoom right now, right. And it's pretty empty, but then I realized it's not even 1111 yet, which is <laugh> typically when we start the show, either 11, 11 or later. So I wouldn't be surprised if we don't start seeing people pop up until about 1130. So

Ant Pruitt (00:03:45):
That's how that works.

Mikah Sargent (00:03:46):
Yeah, that's exactly, we, you know, the show's 11. No, it's usually 1130 <laugh>. But let's get underway cuz we do have some great topics to kick things off. And I have to tell you, my mind is kind of blown mm-hmm. <Affirmative> by the first topic that I wanna discuss here today because it just seems like an all around bad idea. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, so gm general Motors, which makes a number of vehicles including Chevrolet vehicles mm-hmm. <Affirmative> is making an interesting decision with its electronic vehicles, or its electric vehicles, I shouldn't say electronic vehicles. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. They are planning to essentially forego what we know as kind of the main infotainment systems that exist as sort of third party infotainment systems. So the way that it works right now for many folks is they, they can use a projection system as kind of how, how we think of it.

(00:04:48):
Yeah. Your phone serves as this sort of computer that passes along the data to your inbuilt dash display or wherever it happens to be in your vehicle. And then depending on which system you're using, be it Android or an Apple iPhone, then you will get what is Android Auto and CarPlay respectively. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. And so I think that's, that's the first thing to understand is I, I've seen that a lot of folks who aren't steeped in technology, who aren't doing this every day aren't aware of the fact that it is actually coming from the phone. Right. That the system is coming from the phone as opposed to just, it, it being this thing when you plug it in, it like unlocks that part of the car. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> now this is a projection system. Your phone passes along that information and shows it on the display,

Ant Pruitt (00:05:40):
You know, now to some of the, some of the consumer's credit mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, a lot of that is poor marketing from the manufacturers, the, the different car manufacturers. Cuz they will say, and it comes with CarPlay mm-hmm. <Affirmative> and No, that's, no,

Mikah Sargent (00:05:53):
It doesn't, yeah, exactly. Yeah. That's necessary. Say it comes with Yeah. More it needs, it should say it supports CarPlay or it supports Android Auto. And up to this point, there are many vehicles that do I mean lots and lots of vehicles and if you don't already have it built in, then many third party systems, you can add aftermarket systems that will support it. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. But GM is planning to cut out support for these third party infotainment systems and instead for its future vehicles is going to be sticking with a Google infotainment, what they call experience mm-hmm. <Affirmative> that is actually then built into the car. And so when I first heard this, I thought, what, because if there's one one sort of category I've seen online a lot, I see ads for it, I see people asking about it a lot.

(00:06:53):
I see different it's trying to figure out a way to get a Tesla, which does not support Apple's CarPlay Right. To actually show CarPlay. Right. Because people who have iPhones, they do like CarPlay. I I like CarPlay. Yeah. I like being able to use my phone essentially in the car. Yep. So there are all these little dongo and other systems that you can use to do that. And I saw at the end of last year a study or sort of survey rather mm-hmm. <Affirmative> about people who are planning on buying vehicles mm-hmm. <Affirmative> and high on the list of reasons or of of things that they were looking at before they bought a vehicle was support for Android Auto and Apple CarPlay. And so this is something that is important to folks. Yeah. Right? Yeah.

Ant Pruitt (00:07:34):
For this day and age, with people doing a lot of long commutes, it, it used to be, you know, a decade plus ago your job was literally around the corner from where you live. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, that's not the case anymore. Now people are in the car in the excess of 30 minutes to an hour every day one way. Yeah. They're spending a lot of time in the car. So I could see why having the convenience and comfort of Android Auto or CarPlay being high on the list for your next vehicle.

Mikah Sargent (00:08:01):
Absolutely. And so I kind of started to think about this. Why in the world would the company choose to make this decision if right now it's such an easy thing mm-hmm. <Affirmative> to, well, relatively, it's an easy thing because almost every car is doing it to support this system. You don't have to worry about it. Yeah. You don't have to do updates for it. You don't have to futz about Yeah. All you have to do is make sure that the infotainment system can communicate with the device. Yeah. And because you've been doing it up to this point, you already know how to do it. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, so why change this? Well, this Verge article talks about exactly why <laugh> because they want the data

Ant Pruitt (00:08:39):
<Laugh>, I was gonna say, do you want me to go into a word

Mikah Sargent (00:08:43):
<Laugh>? They want the data. So they, by, by making it part of the system, then suddenly they can see your music listening habits. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, they can look at where you are planning on going regularly. They can see if, if the the infotainment system also supports things like your car speed. Right. And looking, they can learn so much about you. Yeah. And these, the current way of doing it, a lot of that is walled off. Yeah. And I will say particularly with iPhone, because that's part of Apple's sort of bottom line is Yep. We don't want anyone to have that data. And so this is a rich, rich field I think for general Motors and for others what they might outweigh it.

Ant Pruitt (00:09:23):
When I saw the, the, the, the headline for it, I, I thought to myself, all right, who's writing the big check? That was the first thing indicating my mind. And then I was like, oh, it's gotta be about data because that's cuz just gonna lead to another huge payday mm-hmm. <Affirmative> for somebody. And that's exactly what's going on here. Yeah. Mind, mind the data, mind the fact that it knows that every Wednesday I'm probably going to the Costco over on 1 0 1 to get some fuel and probably gonna try to figure out a way to promote some type of sales special going on at Costco. To me it's like, well since you over here getting some petrol, how about you go ahead and get a couple pounds of salmon while you at it? And how do you know I want salmon?

Mikah Sargent (00:10:00):
Yeah. How'd you know that? What do you know about me? It's like, well because you stopped at this store and bought some vitamin D and then you went here and stopped to get some, I don't know, an energy beverage. We know that your body is predisposed to needing the protein that comes from saying, what, how do you know so much about me? It's terrifying. But honestly, the other thing that the verge points out, that was also a little bit, it it, you know, that meme with Arthur from the cartoon? The the aardvark. Yeah. And that he has the little fist and he's 80 angry. Yes. They, they made me get the Arthur fist a little bit. Subscriptions. If you create these systems that are locked to the car, then in the future when you're feeling like you're not making enough money every month on your, your, you know, the person who buys the vehicle mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, there could be subscription products. You could say, okay, you get the basic infotainment system. But if you want to be able to see your fuel economy, if you wanna be able to see your speeds, if you wanna be able to see this other stuff, if you wanna check the engine Yeah. And understand what the check engine light is, that's gonna be $10 a month.

Ant Pruitt (00:11:11):
Yeah. I'll bmw didn't BMW do

Mikah Sargent (00:11:14):
That? I think so last year.

Ant Pruitt (00:11:15):
Yeah. Yeah. Put the seat warmers and things like that. Yeah.

Mikah Sargent (00:11:18):
It's

Ant Pruitt (00:11:18):
Mm

Mikah Sargent (00:11:19):
Again, Arthur Fest again, the seat you bought the car and it has them in there.

Ant Pruitt (00:11:23):
Yeah. Yeah. That's a luxury. But at the same time you bought the car because you knew it had seat warmers in there and you thought that was gonna be part of the stock experience. I totally get that. That shouldn't be,

Mikah Sargent (00:11:33):
That's what, that's what bugs me is I understand if it's, if you that, I mean that's always been the thing you there are different what trims, I'm probably using the wrong word here. No, you're right. Okay. Thank you trims. And you buy the trim that you can afford and that you want, that has the things that you want to have with it. And then you get all of the stuff that's in it. But to buy the vehicle and it's the trim that has this stuff in it and then not get to use, it's already there. That's my problem with it. <Laugh>, it'd be different if it was like you pay a subscription and then what you do is you take it into a dealership and the dealership installs the the heated seats. Yeah. And then you get to have heated seats. That's different. I un I could understand that cuz you're kind of like spreading out the cost of installing the heated whatever. But if it's in the vehicle, that should be mine to use. Right. Cause I paid for it. Right.

Ant Pruitt (00:12:21):
Right. Right. I I totally agree. But that's the, the age that we're in right now mm-hmm. <Affirmative> with everything being so computerized on cars and, and the, the market of subscription is everywhere we go. Whether it be Amazon, you're paying an annual subscription for that mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, whether it be Netflix entertainment subscription for that. Every, even if you're just trying to do work, you're paying a subscription to Google to work every year with people, work everything is subscription based. So it makes sense that, Hmm. Well we might as well jump in the game. That's

Mikah Sargent (00:12:51):
Exactly what it is we wanted. I it's the frustrating thing is it's different. I think if you start out with that being the agreement in place, but to just shift and sort of pull the rug out from under people. Yeah. That's where it bugs me because I've, I've seen that I pay a lot of attention to smart home stuff. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> and the few companies who have tried to change from, Hey, you bought this very expensive device and suddenly we're introducing a subscription service. It doesn't worked out well for them. Yeah. There have been a few companies that have all but closed down because they tried to do that. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, if you sell a new product and from the get-go, it's a subscription thing. Fine. Yeah. There's, you know, what you're getting into. Yeah. You know what you're getting into. And so we're both on the same page.

(00:13:35):
This agreement is here and that I think makes sense. It's, yeah. It's kind of a, an up and down, back and forth. I just recently got a new printer within the last year and cuz I, I, there are, there's some stuff that I do where I do need to have that kind of functionality mm-hmm. <Affirmative> and you had two options. You could either use it without the printer's special plus package that had like security updates and this and that and the other. But if you opted into it, then what it would do is you would get printer Inc sent to you regularly as you ran down on Printer Inc. Right. Okay. Which is great. It's a subscription service. You never have to worry about running out of Printer Inc. Okay. But they did it based on the number of pages. So the idea is like, after you get to that number of pages, if you reach that quota, then the printer will not let you continue to print. And then if you, even if there's still ink in the

Ant Pruitt (00:14:37):
Cartridge. Hold on, dude. Hold up. You telling me I can't use my printer when I want to use my printer

Mikah Sargent (00:14:42):
<Laugh> Yeah. If you do this service. Yeah. If, if you decide to go in on, on this way. And what was wild is that the printer that were part of this service, they were higher yield. And so you get more ink, you get like, it's the better experience. So they're really trying to push you over into it. Son of a, but they will lock it down. And what's wild to me is like if you leave the program and you have these cartridges that were a part of the subscription, you can't use those cartridges anymore. You have to then go buy

Ant Pruitt (00:15:12):
More DM

Mikah Sargent (00:15:13):
Cartridges. Yes. It's DM <laugh>, it's worse dms. It's crazy. So this all feels as part of that same thing. And I understand now, I we're practically old men shouts at clouds, but

Ant Pruitt (00:15:25):
Oldish

Mikah Sargent (00:15:26):
Yeah, <laugh>. Yes. It just, I, I like, like you said, it is the way of things, the way that things are going. I just, I think that this, I, I don't know. Do you think that General Motors is going to end up reversing, huh? Car pun is going to end up reversing its decision here? Or do you think they're gonna stubbornly just push

Ant Pruitt (00:15:49):
Through it? Oh no, they're gonna power through this. Yeah. They're gonna power through it. And for the record, I don't have a problem with subscriptions. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, as long as the subscription is, is giving me value. Yeah. I just don't want to, to be beat over the head and bullied into a subscription such as what this printer company is trying to do to you. <Laugh>, I don't care for that. But I don't, I don't mind paying a monthly fee for something that's just gonna work for me when I need it to work. Whether a car service or entertainment system or what have you.

Mikah Sargent (00:16:18):
Yeah. alright, let's I'll let my blood pressure go down if you want to tell us a story you've got in, in your life.

Ant Pruitt (00:16:27):
Well I don't know if this is gonna help your blood pressure because it's sort of, sort of bugged me when I saw it. On ours, Technica there's a post from Ron Amadio. We, we love Ron Amadio here at twit. Headline says, Google Drive does, does a surprise rollout of a file limit locking out some of its users. What the heck does that mean? Yeah. Well a couple of months ago, some folks had reported a, an error message or a bug stating that, you know I'm getting a warning that says I have too many files in my Google Drive and I pay X amount of dollars for such and such amount of storage. That's not possible. Well, that is possible because you can have too many files. Now, according to what Google is planning on rolling out, I believe it's a a 5 million record or something like that. 5 million file record, even though you not necessarily reached your data cap.

Mikah Sargent (00:17:24):
Wait, so even if you haven't filled it up Yeah.

Ant Pruitt (00:17:26):
Look at this dude's face. Get read Now. I love this <laugh>.

Mikah Sargent (00:17:31):
So even if you haven't, so you've, let's say you've got a hundred gigabytes of storage. I know it's probably more than that and you have 75 gigs that you're using, but be so you've got 25 left. We're doing all the math here. Yep. If you reach this file number cap, then they won't let you put

Ant Pruitt (00:17:50):
On it. They're shut it down. Yeah. They're shutting you down. Hey, hey, you need to clean this up, is what they're telling me. What

Mikah Sargent (00:17:54):
If I've got a bunch of text files that's, they're just like tiny little

Ant Pruitt (00:17:57):
Exactly the problem here. Because think about folks like Jeff Jarvis. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, you know, who, who's writing his well has written this book, his Gutenberg parenthesis book and all these, he just got a ton of notes, ton of text files. He doesn't have a bunch of photos in there. He doesn't have a bunch of videos in there, but he's got years and years of research and work stuffed on his Google Drive account and he's nowhere near his cap. But it's a lot of data in there that he's gotta sift through and he can sift through it. Why can't Google sift through it?

Mikah Sargent (00:18:28):
<Laugh>.

Ant Pruitt (00:18:28):
Amen. What, what's the problem here? You know? So this is something that's gonna be of a concern for not only just the, the regular mom and pop folks using it, but what about folks that are using Google Workspace at the enterprise level or s and b level. That's something to consider. People are doing a lot of backups. Hick, we could be storing our backups for the shows there. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. Granted some of our shows are big, you know, as we can have those three hour shows like on this, we in Google <laugh>, no comment. <Laugh>. but then there's also the times of things like HandsOn Mac, your shows are not that, that huge and file size, but we still want to have plenty of the archival backup options to us mm-hmm. <Affirmative> that we need, that we deserve and paid for

Mikah Sargent (00:19:14):
Google. That's that we paid for. Here

Ant Pruitt (00:19:16):
We go again. That's the thing

Mikah Sargent (00:19:18):
I paid. Look, there's the Artest that just came out. Oh

Ant Pruitt (00:19:20):
Gosh. Yeah. That, that I saw that on. Again, on ours. Technico, what

Mikah Sargent (00:19:24):
Did they say? What's, what's the reason? What did Google say? Why

Ant Pruitt (00:19:28):
Again, Google is dodging it. Just like another story I saw with him in is, yes, this was in the code, but there's no real rhyme or reason. It says Google's workspace, formal plans caps at five terabytes. But a quotes enterprise plan promises as much storage as you need, which is a direct hypocritical statement compared to what's been found in the code and found in these error messages that several people are getting now. So they're dodging it right now. I'm sure there'll be more reports in the coming days about this. Cuz Google's been in a little bit of hot water with, with this as well as some other things here recently, last couple of days.

Mikah Sargent (00:20:09):
Geez, Louis, that's frustrating. <Laugh>. I, yeah, I mean this, this means that someone's going to have to sort of come up with or create a new system if they've been if, if they've reached this cap because they've been using Google Drive as their method for saving all of this stuff. What, you know, I think of a lot of people who have these different processes in place for backup, as you mentioned, or file generation, I mean, any number of things mm-hmm. <Affirmative> and they, they've always relied on, we're looking at the amount of storage space that we have, and now it's a file cap, file number cap.

Ant Pruitt (00:20:48):
And, and it made me wonder about Google Photos because when Google Photos came out with the pixel line of phones, the, the carrot was you get a pixel phone, you get unlimited storage on Google Photos for all of your photographs and high quality on, on that. Are we gonna look at the same type of principles going to Google Photos? Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> is it, is it gonna be something that says, you know what? Hey, you got way too many pictures in here. Like Michael Sergeant does, not me <laugh>, but <laugh>. But is is it, is it gonna be something like that that pops up for Google Photos because it's still just storing data? Yeah. You know, when you look at it, it's not all tech stocks and it can definitely be a lot bigger, but yeah. What's gonna happen here? Because they've, they've already punted once with this and allowed you to, I think they went from, okay, so we're not gonna let you have full quality resolution, but we're gonna give you high-ish qual <laugh> quality resolution and unlimited versions of it. And so who knows when I wonder what, when the next punt is coming.

Mikah Sargent (00:21:49):
Yeah. We, we shall see. We shall see. Again, this is of course ask the tech guys if you have tech questions you want answered, you can tune in by go, well, you can call in by going to call.twit.tv, that url, we'll redirect you to our zoom where you can hop in and be brought on the air to ask a question that we will do our best, our very best to answer. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> we've suggested and think it's a great way to use your smartphone to, to call in. When you do that, then you're, we know that, that that camera that's there, that speaker and microphone that you've got built into your phone will kind of all work together to make for a, a good experience for you and for us to be able to hear you see you and answer your question.

(00:22:40):
And I do say see you, but if you just kind of want your voice on air and not your visual, that's totally okay. And any case, you go to call.twit.tv and that is how you can get in. I wanna mention one more little news story here, and I think we'll take a break. It's about the ftc. This is kind of interesting. So Amazon might be needing to <laugh> watch its back a little bit because according to sources familiar with the matter, <laugh> Politico says that the FTC is planning on bringing a case against Amazon regarding children's privacy. So with this case, essentially the FTC is saying that Amazon has gone against some privacy regulations that are in place with the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act because of the A L E X A mm-hmm. <Affirmative> Voice Assistant.

(00:23:46):
 And so because of the way that that device works and how it may have been used by children, then that data may be stored on Amazon servers. And so it's enough that they're willing to kind of go through with this. So if you think about it a lot of Amazon's devices before they started to get this Echo Kids version it is a little speaker and microphone and you say things to it and it hopefully gives you, you know, provides a response. Yep. And so in the time leading up to its introduction of the children's version, at any point if a child made a request play Baby Shark mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, and that please don't <laugh> that data was stored on Amazon's side and reviewed and all that kind of stuff, that is potentially a violation of the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act because the copa is kind of just a, a, a, a wide swath of don't save, don't collect, don't have data of children under a, a certain age and mm-hmm.

(00:25:00):
<Affirmative>, we have seen this in play in terms of there are lots of services where they will ask you your age and if you're under a specific age, then they'll just say, no, we don't want you using the service. Yep. because they don't want, they can't, they can't sort of justify the cost of trying to figure out how to not collect that data or, you know mm-hmm. <Affirmative> use the service in a different way. Yep. Limiting liability. Yes, exactly. Yeah. That's what it boils down to. Limiting liability. There is, according to Politico, a lot that kind of has to take place. The FTC has to first reach out to the Justice Department and say, Hey, this is something that we have a concern about, and they don't know kind of how long this is going to take. But then the Justice Department has the choice to bring that case forward within 45 days of the submission.

(00:25:51):
So once the FTC moves that along to the Justice Department, that's when we'll see movement kind of go forth. The different spokespeople have obviously set declined to comment and Amazon itself said that Amazon Kids is a way for this to not be an issue because it does require parental consent. And then after providing parental consent, it has this sort of dashboard where the, where the parent can control things. And that's exactly what COPA requires. Right. So I think the bigger concern here is leading up to that, how was data collected? And also according to Politico, the FTC has been kind of looking into consumer privacy violations with Amazon for a long time. And this could be just one of several going forward along with the ring camera and sort of ring security. So Yeah. This could result in a financial penalty of $50,000, which, oh

Ant Pruitt (00:27:03):
Boy, that's gonna hurt

Mikah Sargent (00:27:05):
<Laugh>, I laugh at $50,000 because for them, that's like, oh

Ant Pruitt (00:27:09):
Boy, that's gonna sting.

Mikah Sargent (00:27:10):
I didn't even feel that pee under my mattress. <Laugh>. but shm, I don't know,

Ant Pruitt (00:27:18):
I'm, I'm looking at this in, if this were a smaller company, smaller startup ish company mm-hmm. <Affirmative> mm-hmm. <Affirmative> going through this, I could really see this being a problem, but this is Amazon we're talking about. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, Amazon has a gazillion lawyers mm-hmm. <Affirmative> and every last one of those lawyers spending their time going through all of the potential layers of risk and having to advise regarding whatever the, whatever r and d they have going on at the times, Hey, look, this is your problem. This is where we need to take care of the risk and put this in the, in the contract and in the terms of service and yada, yada, yada. So I'm, Amazon's gonna be fine on this. They're going to, you know, every now and then you're gonna slip up and you're gonna have to pay your $10 fine. Which is essentially what this is to them.

Mikah Sargent (00:28:02):
You know, they should have a calculator online. You, they have those inflation calculators, you know, they should have a calculator online that sort of proportionalize it based on the company. That'd be great. <Laugh>. I bet Chad G P T could do that, but probably could. I'd love to. Yeah. So I'm Amazon, how much does this actually mean if, if I was an average person? Yeah, I'm gonna look into that. I'm, I'm curious about that.

Ant Pruitt (00:28:25):
Yeah. But, but this is, this is a good thing the FTC is, is stepping in because it's setting a precedence. Yeah. You know, with all of big tech out there. And, and, and don't get me wrong, I'm not the person that says big government has to come in and fix this and fix that. No, I'm not that person. But I do like the idea that big Tech is being held account accountable for things that they slip up on. It's only going to help make the tech that all of us here at TWIT use enjoy. You know, it's gonna be better. I

Mikah Sargent (00:28:52):
Think particularly if we've already got these acts in place, we don't want, if, if anything, we should at the very least and enforce these rules that have already been set. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, I, I can understand hesitance about different regulations going forward, but any sort of blatant violation of rules we already have in place Yep. That has to be enforced. Right. And I also think that in the long term, the more we get people in positions of power who are more aware of mindful and understanding of the way that tech and big tech in particular has an impact, then we'll start to see these fines, I think get a little bigger or at least change in how they're calculated so that it is more than just as we know, a $10 fine. Like I would, I would be Amazon money speeding on the highway in and out combo for this.

(00:29:47):
Okay. <laugh>, will you buy me a boy guy? All right. Let's let's take a quick break before we come back with more. We've got a great video question coming up that is perfect, I think for, for an to answer. And I gotta tell you the cinematographer who captured this video, <laugh>, I think our caller did a really good job. He did. I mean, the Meisen scene is excellent, <laugh> the great depth of, anyway, you'll see, you'll see. But let me take a quick break to tell you about Lookout, who's bringing you this episode of Ask the Tech guys. You know, this business has changed forever. We were just talking about commutes, but we were also, I mean, think about how now we've got some people working from home. We've got some people doing that hybrid thing and everywhere in between boundaries to where we work or even how we work are all disappearing.

(00:30:40):
That means your data is always on the move. It could be on a device, it could be in the cloud, it could be across networks. You may be sitting at the local coffee shop doing your job. While that's great for your workforce, it is a challenge for those incredibly hardworking folks in it. Security Lookout helps you control your data and free your workforce so that you don't have to say, you know what? You can't go sit at the local coffee shop and work, because if you do that, then we're going to have a security issue that's freeing them as well to work from where they need or wants to work. With Lookout, you'll gain complete visibility into all of your data so you can minimize that risk from external and internal threats and ensure compliance by seamlessly securing hybrid work. Your organization doesn't have to sacrifice productivity for security.

(00:31:32):
And Lookout makes it security a lot simpler. And think about that a lot. The the idea that we've thought that this was a trade off. You either got to have this high security or you got to have more productivity. Because if you're constantly putting up roadblocks in the way of someone being able to get something done because you're trying to maintain that security, it stops them from being able to do their job. We wanna have both. We wanna be able to give someone the, the power to do their job, but also make sure that it's being done while it's secure. Working with multiple point solutions and legacy tools in today's environment is too complex. That's where Lookout comes in with its single unified platform. It reduces it complexity, it gives you more time to focus on whatever else comes your way. Good data protection isn't a cage, it's a springboard letting you and your organization bound toward a future of your making. Visit lookout.com today to learn. I love that. It's so easy to remember lookout.com to learn how to safeguard data, secure hybrid work and reduce it complexity. That's lookout dot. Thank you lookout for sponsoring this week's episode of Ask the Tech Guys and look out cuz we've got a great question from a listener.

Caller Mark (00:32:48):
Hi, this is Mark, aka a data nut, longtime caller, first time listener. My mother is 92 and moving into an independent living place an apartment. And she's downsizing. So I'm gonna take pictures of all of her items that she's accumulated and wanna make those accessible to my siblings. And then possibly also organized those in a way if there's like an estate sale that I can have those available for a potential estate sale company. So I'd like to take a whole bunch of pictures and then have a way to label them and then make them accessible. And I was thinking there might be something I can do with my sci sonology NAZ that would allow me to put the vid the pictures up there and then be able to have some texts associated with different ones and then possibly somebody else could, I could make it so other people could maybe put some information in there. I don't know if there's a software or something I could look in or maybe some other solution. Thank you.

Mikah Sargent (00:34:11):
All right. So I thought this would be a great question for you because I was kind of floundering a little bit.

Ant Pruitt (00:34:17):
<Laugh>. Yeah. And the thing is with this, with this question, first off, yes, kudos to how great that video looked. And you've clearly done this before. I mean, he's looking at the camera, nice, beautiful frame. Wasn't a whole lot of headroom. Yeah. Yeah. It, he's thought about this. So nice work to you for that. But yeah, this question when I thought about it, there's a lot of different avenues you can go. And when you're thinking about trying to share out photos for people, the, the, the best rule of thumb, of course, is to try to keep it simple. And you clearly have enough capability to share some stuff out because you have a ology NAS number one and ologies are fairly easy to run or pretty much most NAS network attached storage are fairly easy to run. But there are some tools built into it for the more nerdy folks, more technical folks if you want to, that you can utilize.

(00:35:09):
But again, if you're sharing this out to the non-technical person, you don't want this to be a bit of a pain for them to access it. So a lot of it's going to take a lo take more work from, from you from a prep standpoint. All right. So you're literally gonna have to go through your file structure and organize your files the way you want them fit. Whether it be a folder for living room, folder for I don't know, brick or back or what have you. But then you're thinking about, well maybe I should tag them because a lot of online services allow you to use tags and search for things based on tag names. So you need tools for that tool I recommend is Lightroom of course, because I'm a Lightroom user, Adobe Lightroom user. I know most people don't subscribe to Adobe Lightroom, but it is a really great tool for managing digital assets.

(00:35:59):
 You can log into it, import whatever your files are and put tags in right then and there, exactly how you want 'em by date, by name, by color Lo location. And it's beautiful. And when it's time to go back and search for something, you literally just type in a tag and boom, it pulls 'em right up. So that is an option for as at least getting things organized. So now that you have everything organized, what's the next step? How are you gonna share it out? A couple different services. Your ology service is one option. Lightroom has another option. And then there's the tried and true flicker. Remember Flicker? Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> Flicker is still around. Flicker.Com is a photo sharing photo community service. I used Flicker for I don't know how many years and when I wanted to start sharing some photos out, I went to Flicker first and this was probably 20 years ago.

(00:36:52):
It's been that long. Wow. So even if you look up my Flicker profile, my Flicker profile doesn't even say my name, it says like, Pruitt Family <laugh> or something like that. Cuz that's how long ago it's been. And Flicker has a lot of the things in place to allow you to share things publicly or privately. The only barrier to enter with Flicker, Lightroom, or any of these other services is people have to sign up for it. Okay. That's the bad thing. So if someone wants to get into Flicker and do some additional commenting on the information that you shared, they're gonna need an account. Okay. Otherwise it's just view only, read only. And that may not be any good for you. So if you want them to be able to, to put additional comments and tags like that, they're gonna have to sign up for an account.

(00:37:33):
So sign up for a Flicker account or you can sign up for an Adobe Adobe account totally free. Or you can sign up for whatever sonology service is. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. But I wanna show on my screen here Flicker and just the process of it here. So right now I'm following a handful of people and I could set it to where the people that I follow have access to my information and data based on, you know, whom I choose. So I wanted to pick on Mr. Greg Coonrod, who I know happens to be a Club TWI member and I support appreciate him supporting us. So if I click on follow, it gives me this extra little popup here and it says I can mark him as a friend, mark him as a family, so on and so forth. So I'll click mark him as a friend and click follow. Now going back to looking at the different files in your flicker. So let's just go to my photo stream here and if I wanna share here in Flicker, just hit the little share buttons and you can go through the different options here. Whether you wanna put it on a website, this just makes it publicly viewable. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. But if I want to share it with a friend, where did it go?

(00:38:47):
Oh no, I lost it. Oh, it's in my albums. I'm sorry. I practiced this before <laugh>. It's so good here. So we'll go through a random album. Sorry about that. So let's take biscuits here. Shit. Oh no, I'm so sorry. And now it's disappeared. <Laugh>, I just did this last night. I see Nature shared. I'm signed in too. Oh, I'm so sorry. Well that's okay. So normally you should be able to share it. Yeah, you'll be able to see the different groups that you can share it with. You could share it with family, you could share it with friends, so you can keep it totally private. And even when you look at just individual images down here in the bottom right, it shows more of these sharing information. Oh. You know, so again, like you see, this is currently set to private commenting is only set to whoever you wanna set it to.

(00:39:48):
Oh, okay. So everybody can't just comment on it. They can view it, but they can't comment it. That's a tool that you can use right there. But then there's also a light room. So I pulled a little fake catalog in here for Lightroom and I just called it Hop Demo Uhhuh <affirmative>. And it's just two images here. And if I wanted to share it out, I ended up sharing it to basically the hop show. Okay. Go back, shared it. Oh, it's in the other window. But I shared it to the hop show and it allowed them to see just whatever it is in here. This is a whole different browser window. I'm logged in this somebody else and just tap through whatever they want to tap through to see the images. And if they wanted to edit, I needed to give them edit access.

(00:40:38):
Got it. Over here, I just go to that account and I could say allow allowed him to edit pop off of that, go back to where I was logged in as the hop account and it should give me a popup at the top that says, Hey, you now have edit permissions. But you notice over here on the L right hand side, you got all these extra options now mm-hmm. <Affirmative> to go in. Oh wow. And actually make those fine and those Yep. Those edits and add comments and all of that information is right there. And again, this is just a service. It all boils down to the barrier of entry. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> where getting an email address and have them set up an account. That's, that's the main thing. Whether it be your Sonology, Lightroom flicker, you're gonna have to have them lock in and after that it's up to you far as how complex <laugh> or how simple you want this process to be for your family.

(00:41:35):
 Again, just get started with the organization side of it first. Cuz that's gonna be the biggest part of your work. Going in and setting up your file structure on whatever computer you have. Windows, Mac, os, what have you. They all have some sort of search feature and some sort of tag and system that allows you to put in the information you want to put in for the metadata and make it easily searchable for your, your next project, what have you. But highly check, I, I highly recommend Flicker because no one is free. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> <laugh>, it's, it's free to use and you get up to, I believe you get up to a thousand images for free. So that's, that's probably worth a good look there.

Mikah Sargent (00:42:15):
Yeah. Especially being able to access it online I think is a big thing. I wanted to mention, and this is why I'm I like yours because from your perspective it is a <laugh>, a non-denominational, so to speak, solution. Yep. and I know that one of the things that if everybody involved is using iOS or you know, Mac os, iPad os mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, the thing that I would recommend is shared iCloud albums. Because when you create an album that is shared with other people, it essentially turns it into your own little private social media network. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, all of the photos are there. You can like photos that you like specifically and then it also gives you a little comment stream. And so then everybody could add those little comments and then everyone can take whatever photos are in that shared album and save them to their own personal library if they want to. But that is not platform agnostic, which was the term I was actually looking for. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>

Ant Pruitt (00:43:14):
It is. I was like you saying denomination, I forgot today's the Sunday sermon folks

Mikah Sargent (00:43:18):
<Laugh>. Amen. and so you, that's why I, I definitely wanted that take to, to kind of talk about how no matter what you're using, whatever device it happens to be. The thing

Ant Pruitt (00:43:29):
Is you mention photos on iCloud mm-hmm. <Affirmative> I thought about Google Photos, but Google Photos is, I haven't had a good experience with it, especially when it comes to a privacy standpoint. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, you know, you tell things I don't want to show location here

Mikah Sargent (00:43:43):
And sometimes it

Ant Pruitt (00:43:44):
Still is, it still is end up showing my location, my location as well as showing email addresses and things like that. Oh, that's no good. So I, I, I shied away from that and that's why I leaned on Flicker because with Flicker you just literally get a username up there. You know, we saw Mr. Greg Coon Rod's name showing up on the screen because that's how he showed his name to display mm-hmm. <Affirmative>. But you didn't see any of his private

Mikah Sargent (00:44:05):
Information. Exactly. You know, and that's big. That's, that's what we want with this, especially if you are sharing it with some people who are running in a state sale or what have you. Right. it's coming from different ways. So having that sort of profession more professional, more public minded aspect I think is what makes that an excellent

Ant Pruitt (00:44:23):
Option. You know, and the next step up from that, which I'm not gonna recommend, but it's the obvious step from it is having a website where it be like a smug mug that allows you to share images. That's what most photographers are doing anyway. But then it gets into the aspect of do you have them Right. Go in and get it to your content management system and changing tags and things like that. Yeah. You know? No, but that's like next obvious thing.

Mikah Sargent (00:44:48):
This is a hard problem to solve. Yeah. I I wouldn't be, I'm sure that there are some, in fact, I know there are some companies that do estate management who have their own systems specifically for this. Cuz my family, I remember, made use of one. And so the person they had someone who c came in took photos of everything and then it went into this, their site and then the family direct family got like a personal login. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, everyone could go in and do that. But that's all custom and it's

Ant Pruitt (00:45:14):
Proprietary. Yes, exactly. They're doing exactly what we're trying to do, paying for that. Yeah. But they've built a database essentially on your side that

Mikah Sargent (00:45:21):
That's what they, the people wanna do with it. So yeah, hopefully that helps. And of course we'd love to hear from you if you have some follow up on that. I just checked this the other day mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, you can email several ways we've been talking about using Ask the Tech guys at TWIT tv, but that's kinda long <laugh>. You can email ATG twit TV and you can email@ttgtwit.tv

Ant Pruitt (00:45:46):
Or you got cover

Mikah Sargent (00:45:47):
Ask the tech guys@twit.tv, all of that will get to us. So if you've got questions you wanna send that way via video or what have you, you can do that.

Ant Pruitt (00:45:55):
No. Before we move on, I wanted to bring up one more thing about that questionnaires. It made me think, and, and it's something that I hope everyone takes the opportunity to do, is yes, he's, he's doing a planning for an estate sale that could potentially happen, you know, but also let's think about just getting memories of our family members. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> and I was just speaking with someone here at the studio, I won't say their name and Ooc has, has mentioned it before on the show several times, but if you get a few minutes, take your phone and just record some conversations with these family members. Have that audio, get that audio, stick that somewhere on the cloud and back it up somewhere. Have that for down the road when you just want to share some memories with your loved ones. Cuz folks, it's, you never know it, it can happen to, to any of us at any time.

(00:46:44):
And it's always nice to be able to look back and have some things to reflect on. I still have voicemails from my dad. Mm-Hmm. You know, and every now and then I want to hear that Crazy Rascal's voice <laugh> and I and I have access to it. Yeah. You know, so yes, grab grabbing pictures and taking selfies with family members is one thing. But if you can just spend five minutes instead of holding it up to do a a photo, hold it up to do a video or hold it up to just record the audio and just have a conversation and that'll be a memory that you can pass along for years.

Mikah Sargent (00:47:16):
That's great advice. All right folks again, if you want to call in to ask a question, it's call.twit.tv and I believe we've got someone with their hand raised who's calling in to ask a question on the show. And I see a nice headset going on there. <Laugh> ready to rock and roll. Is that Gary? Is that what that says? Yep.

Caller Gary (00:47:39):
Hi, Gary. Me

Mikah Sargent (00:47:40):
Gary. Hi Gary.

Caller Gary (00:47:41):
Yeah, hi, how

Mikah Sargent (00:47:42):
Are you? Hey Gary, are you doing well? How are you

Caller Gary (00:47:44):
<Laugh>? I'm doing fine, thank you. Thank you for calling for asking. Yeah. So alright guys, real quick question to ask you. You know, we haven't talked about passwords, you know, since with last pass, but I've always heard you guys talking about the you know, like a passwords, you know, like to save like on the cloud and all that, but mm-hmm <affirmative>, what about like the Google Chrome passwords Firefox password managers. Oh, were those man, are they safe to use Actually,

Mikah Sargent (00:48:16):
Browser password managers? Browser

Caller Gary (00:48:19):
Password managers? Yeah, that's what it is called.

Mikah Sargent (00:48:21):
Yeah. So this is a great question, Gary, because here is the, the sort of base level I don't know, statement that I wanna put out into the world. And that's having pseudo random passwords for every site is the most important thing or one of the most important things that a person can do to manage their online safety. And I think for a lot of people using the built-in password manager in their browser of choice is a convenient way to make that happen. Many of these browsers, their password management systems are sort of within the companies. They're their own sort of portion of the company, their own team that is working specifically on that. And so they are well done. Safari in particular because it is essentially the password and pass key and iCloud keychain team that does that password manager in Safari.

(00:49:27):
 I know that Firefox also has a, a team that's sort of specifically trying to manage that and, and maintain security and safety there. And the fact that it can sync between devices and is is is going to conveniently, you know, work in every browser that you're using means that people are more likely to use it. And so in that way it is it's a great first choice, but much like email where the best email that you can possibly get is a company that is specifically focused on email that is specifically trying to make an email service that rocks, you're gonna get better email from that than a company that just has it as a third. That has it as an extra option and in many cases is using it as a data grab. So if you want the best features, if you want the most control, if you want to be able to make changes like we talked about with the, what is it, pbk D two settings, then that's where you want to do a password manager. But if you can't afford to subscribe to a password manager or if you have trouble with the process of getting that all set up or if you're trying to encourage family to make use of a password manager, and the easiest way to get them to do that is to use the one that's built into the browser. By all means,

Ant Pruitt (00:50:52):
That's a

Mikah Sargent (00:50:52):
Start. It is a start <laugh>. So it's not, you shouldn't have sort of, you know, in the back of your mind going, oh God, this is not you know, this is something that I can instantly be breached or something like that because that's not the case. I think the reason that I don't choose to use an in browser password manager, it's, it's twofold. It's, it's one that I know that by paying for my password manager and using a company that's completely just focused on that and that alone, I'm gonna get the best features and the best security and everything that comes along with that. And then the second one for me is that there, so if, if a person's use, you know, makes use of your machine if you need to, you know, if it's, if it's a public machine or a semi-public machine or a family machine, then a password manager that's a whole separate thing I think is a little bit more privacy minded than, you know, oh, I'm letting someone use my machine and I'm using Chrome to use, do my passwords, and then suddenly they just are, you know, auto-populating my passwords for different things using Chrome.

(00:51:58):
Yep. So that's something to keep in mind. And what are your thoughts?

Ant Pruitt (00:52:00):
Yeah, I I, I've been thinking about this and I love the fact that you brought up the convenience factor mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, because that usually means it's probably a problem if it's super convenient to be able to use these services. I, I pulled up from on the website here, keeper dot keeper keep security.com. This is just the first thing that popped up because I had heard this before, but you don't want to use a, a browser plug-in cuz number one, your browser becomes, if your browser becomes compromised, so do your passwords mm-hmm. <Affirmative>. and then there's also browsers are frequently remained logged. Exactly, yeah. You know, and, and I believe I heard Mr. Steve Gibson talk about this before in the past, that a lot of browsers, again, you just stay logged in and those cookies are everywhere and that tends to lead to other problems happening down the road. I lot the issue with LastPass and Plex and, and the sessions being captured mm-hmm. <Affirmative>. So all of that is just it's, it's convenient. It's nice to have that little plugin sitting right there on the browser and you click on it, it does what it needs to do. But you probably should put a little bit more friction there when it comes to using your passwords. Use the pa the different password managers that are out there and also use two fa

Mikah Sargent (00:53:12):
Yes.

Ant Pruitt (00:53:13):
<Laugh> in addition to that, you know, and, and I know that's a hard sell for most, most people out there. I struggle with my family with passwords absolutely. <Laugh>. And we, we've finally gotten used to it, but it took a while. It took a good year plus to get everybody used to doing, you know, a password manager as well as utilizing two-factor authentication because I would pick up a Hardhead laptop and it would have all of this stuff auto filled. Yep. And I'm like, dude, stop you, you

Mikah Sargent (00:53:43):
No could then pick it up and do that exact thing.

Ant Pruitt (00:53:46):
Just stop doing that. Yeah. And, and they've learned their lesson and you know, I did a couple tests and just to

Mikah Sargent (00:53:52):
Oh, nice.

Ant Pruitt (00:53:53):
Just to mess with them testing. Yeah. You know, just to mess with them a little bit. Yeah. And it was like, well your password was right here. You essentially just wrote it down and left it on the desk for me. Yeah. You know,

Mikah Sargent (00:54:02):
Gary, I think this is an incredibly good question. Not only, you know, and hopefully helping you answer it, but also for the people who are listening in. I think if we look at the ranking, because I wanna make it clear, I am not suggesting that we shouldn't use browser password manager systems because I think if that's what you can get someone to use, then that is so much better than having, you know, 3 21 Monkey as the password for every single site they're visiting. And if it's a personal machine and they're using it on their own, it's not going to be picked up by somebody else, then that is still a more secure solution than again, having 3 21 monkey is your password everywhere. So it's not as if I'm saying you either pick using the same password everywhere or you get a password manager and those are the only two options. No, there's certainly sort of a, a ranking system and having that password manager built into the browser is a step up from the lack of security that comes with just using the same password everywhere. So yeah, I really appreciate you asking this question because Yeah, I think it's something that's always been in the back of my mind too, where, you know, I launched Firefox or I launched Chrome and it says, Hey, you want me to remember that password for you? And I immediately go, no, cuz I use a password manager for that. But

Ant Pruitt (00:55:19):
You one and like 99% that does exactly

Mikah Sargent (00:55:22):
The opposite. Exactly. And so bro should feel comfortable at least having some form of pseudo random password generation mm-hmm. <Affirmative> to make it just a little bit safer.

Caller Gary (00:55:32):
I know that you can turn off those options like in Chrome and Firefox where you don't want them to actually tell you to go take and save these passwords. But yeah, I just was a question cuz I mean, like, I haven't heard anybody really say anything about the dis you know, the saying like, Hey, use the browser pa management password instead. So this just it just came to my mind over the last couple days here and like, hey, maybe I'll call in and find out what

Ant Pruitt (00:56:02):
Some of those,

Caller Gary (00:56:03):
The situation is here.

Ant Pruitt (00:56:05):
I believe some of those extensions stored, stored the passwords unencrypted in plain text too. That's a whole, that's

Mikah Sargent (00:56:11):
Ball. Yeah. Of course. That's something you have to be careful about. Yeah.

Caller Gary (00:56:14):
Yeah, the

Mikah Sargent (00:56:15):
Go ahead.

Caller Gary (00:56:16):
K Chrome does that. It's unencrypted, but now I know that the Firefox is, is encrypted now now Cause it asks you. Yeah, now it is. Yes. Cause it asks you to it asks where your windows password

Ant Pruitt (00:56:31):
Again to do it, it never been by default, you know, it

Caller Gary (00:56:35):
Should have been a long time ago. Yes.

Ant Pruitt (00:56:36):
But again, Firefox is a browser. That's what they do first. They are a browser, not a password manager. Yeah.

Mikah Sargent (00:56:45):
Gary, thank you so much for, for calling in and asking that question. And again, it, it is a helpful education for more than just than just you calling in. So we appreciate it.

Caller Gary (00:56:57):
All right.

Ant Pruitt (00:56:57):
Thank you. Thank you Mr. Gary. Yep.

Caller Gary (00:56:59):
Bye.

Mikah Sargent (00:56:59):
Bye-Bye. All right. Let us, and again, I wish I could see names whenever somebody has their video on Jocelyn. It's Jocelyn. Okay. Is that's the person above me in this video I'm looking at. Yes, yes. <Laugh>.

Caller Jocelyn (00:57:17):
Hi.

Mikah Sargent (00:57:17):
Hi Jocelyn.

Ant Pruitt (00:57:18):
Hello.

Mikah Sargent (00:57:20):
Where are you calling from?

Caller Jocelyn (00:57:22):
Oh, this is Zoom background. I'm actually in Elizabeth, New Jersey, but this photo was taken in Chapin, South Carolina.

Ant Pruitt (00:57:31):
I was gonna say that looks like Kki Laki. I know that. <Laugh>

Mikah Sargent (00:57:36):
South Kki <laugh>. Absolutely. so thank you for calling. How can we help?

Caller Jocelyn (00:57:43):
I am one of those people who had two factors set on Twitter, Uhhuh, <affirmative> using text messages.

Mikah Sargent (00:57:51):
Okay. Uhoh

Caller Jocelyn (00:57:52):
And just recently, they've only allowed that for blue check people. Mm-Hmm.

Mikah Sargent (00:57:57):
<Affirmative>,

Caller Jocelyn (00:57:58):
I can't get into my account to change it to any other thing without turning off the security. So I'm hoping that maybe someone has a suggestion.

Mikah Sargent (00:58:08):
Oh. So, so right now what's happening is when you try to log in, it's telling you that you need to have the, the code, but because they turned off the text messaging option, then you can't log in.

Caller Jocelyn (00:58:23):
So when I, and I admit I was logged in from before, so I, I missed possibly any announcement or information from them to tell me that I needed to do something. Okay. What I get is, oh, you have to turn off two factor because this is only allowed for people with blue checks. Uhhuh,

Mikah Sargent (00:58:41):
<Affirmative>.

Caller Jocelyn (00:58:41):
I don't really wanna turn it off Oh. For the few minutes that it would take for me to try to set up a encryption key or a authenticator.

Mikah Sargent (00:58:51):
Okay.

Caller Jocelyn (00:58:51):
Without, I can't get to the account to turn on the authenticator part of it to be able to turn off the text messaging two factor.

Mikah Sargent (00:59:00):
Right. So, so then to clarify, you, okay. So, and, and the, with the current way that it's set up, it is giving you the ability to still log in. It's not as if it's going in a loop. Cuz that's what I thought you were saying at first is like, do you wanna log in? But you can't log in because the two factors, so you are able to log in, you would just have to turn it off temporarily.

Caller Jocelyn (00:59:19):
So I will, by example, I'll show you. You're right. Yeah. I think that's what they want me to do. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, but I don't want to because I'm afraid of that.

Mikah Sargent (00:59:26):
Right.

Caller Jocelyn (00:59:27):
I was on my desktop, I, and it sent me a text to say, this is your code to enter. Okay. I entered that code and immediately it gave me the same, we're turn, we've turned this off. Yeah. So I'm blocked from doing anything in the account except turning off two factor.

Mikah Sargent (00:59:44):
Okay. So, okay. Now that we've got that out of the way Yeah. I want to tell you that for the two, three minutes or however long that it would take for you to set up using a, an app as your two factor authentication. Cause that's essentially what, what it wants you to switch to. Yep. Mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, you are going to be Okay. And the reason why is as long, well let me be clear. As long as you are not using a password monkey 1 23 that you're using on a whole bunch of other sites, <laugh>, then the, the password that you have is unique to this site. And so what that means is a hacker, a bad actor, a whomever, a, a, a, a, a bad, bad person, a very board person. Yeah. A very board person would have to know your specific username would somehow have to gain access to that password that you have.

(01:00:35):
And then in that very short period of time would need to log into your account and mess everything up in that short period of time. Right. The chances of that are so, so, so, so, so, so, so low. Right. That you are in, you're gonna be okay to, to make that change as long, I wanna make it clear, go ahead and make sure you know what app you want to use that you're gonna do to factor authentication with. Because think about the many, many years that we had usernames and passwords online and did not yet have two-factor authentication. Right. You know, that was a more recent technology that just adds even more security in place. But we've existed, you know, for a long time and there's still to this day some accounts where I don't have two-factor authentication and because I've created a password that was unique to that site, then it was, it was not an issue. Yep. now I gotta say, you know, I know you can't confirm or deny if you work for the CIA or the fbi then we've got a situation here where I understand you're like, oh, those three minutes, somebody from some other countries try to get in there. Yeah. But if, you know, you live your life normally

Ant Pruitt (01:01:43):
Their passwords that the CIA are gonna be pretty dagum

Mikah Sargent (01:01:46):
Strict, right? Yes. Yes. Exactly. Yeah. So you've already got, yeah. Some, some pa if you, if you are a CIA agent, you know, blink twice, then you probably have to have a password that is very unique to that site. So Yeah, I think what's awesome for what I'm hearing from you is that you are very security minded and you want much respect, want to make Yeah. So much respect. You want to make sure you're secure. So knowing that about you, that's telling me that you are being mindful on other sites. You're not, you know, seeing the, the email popup that says, I'll give you 12,000 Bitcoin if you send me your credentials. So because you're already security minded temporarily disabling two-factor authentication, they would still have to have your username, your password,

Ant Pruitt (01:02:35):
Which literally three minutes, like you said, it's three minutes, it is not

Mikah Sargent (01:02:38):
Terribly long that Yeah. It, it's like everything would have, there would have to be someone over your shoulder who saw you type in your password and knew that right at that moment you were logging in to do that. But I, I, I want to be clear too, again, so much respect for that mm-hmm. <Affirmative> mindset that you have of maintaining your own security and your own protection online. But yes, just to go in and make this change is it's so, so obviously I can't just go, there's no way it would happen because No. You know, and that, that, that, that's just not the case. But it's so, so, so, so, so unlikely. Yeah. I think I probably more likely to have a jet engine come crashing down into the studio right now. No, no. Watch out. Yeah. Oh gosh. <Laugh>. So if that happens before the end of this episode, do not turn off two factor two medication <laugh>

Ant Pruitt (01:03:30):
You, what, what two factor service you're looking at using, because we definitely need to get you off of s m s. That's the worst way to go.

Caller Jocelyn (01:03:40):
Which would you recommend? I was thinking of Google Authenticator. It's just cause I have it for other things. And then for work we use Microsoft,

Ant Pruitt (01:03:50):
I like to use Authy, ay myself because I'm someone that wipes my phone for whatever reason probably a couple times a year. And having that ahea account allows, allowed it to be stored securely. And when I get my phone back or what have you, it literally just pulls everything back in. I just unencrypted with my secured password and it gives me all of my authenticated keys. Right. Right. Back without a hassle instead of having to go back in and recreate 'em again on every service that I want to recreate 'em

Mikah Sargent (01:04:21):
On. I also like that Oy is independent of, you know, those companies. So it's Yep. With Microsoft, then it's also part of Microsoft with the Google Authenticator. It's part of Google. Yep. So the fact that Oy is its own separate thing. I like, I will say that I, the, the password manager that I use also has built in two factor authentication and it, so if, if, if you're trying to be as 1000% safe as you can be, then the recommendation is to use a separate two-factor authentication tool from your password manager. But since I don't work for the CIA wink, I just keep all of that in one password itself. Sure. You don't. Yeah.

Ant Pruitt (01:04:59):
He's part of the S E C Act.

Mikah Sargent (01:05:02):
<Laugh> <laugh>. So it, and that's honestly for convenience sake because then after my password gets popped in, then it can automatically suggest for me my two-factor authentication code. But I do have othe as a backup method and othe is fantastic. It's available across so many different accounts. Yep. and Asta saying, you know, no matter however many times you need to reset things or do whatever they're there. Yeah. but I don't want to complete, like if it's, if it's simpler for you and you already have stuff that you're doing in Google Authenticator, it's not bad to use Google Authenticator. The reason I just wanted to give you the reason why we're talking about Oy, I just like that it's independent from those big companies.

Ant Pruitt (01:05:44):
I used to use Google Authenticator and I migrated everything into Oy just because of what Mr. Sergeant says. I, I didn't want that connection tied to the Google account. I wanted everything siloed off.

Caller Jocelyn (01:05:56):
So can is athie tied to the device that I would initially use it on?

Mikah Sargent (01:06:04):
No,

Ant Pruitt (01:06:05):
Not at all.

Caller Jocelyn (01:06:05):
Oh, yeah.

Ant Pruitt (01:06:06):
It's, it's stored in the cloud,

Caller Jocelyn (01:06:09):
Right. Because I have something at work that I have two different authenticators on my work phone, Uhhuh, <affirmative>, and I can never remember which one it is for the thing that I want to get to.

Mikah Sargent (01:06:20):
Yes. You have to bounce into.

Ant Pruitt (01:06:22):
It's

Mikah Sargent (01:06:22):
So annoying, right? Yeah.

Caller Jocelyn (01:06:24):
I have

Ant Pruitt (01:06:25):
To, I remember those days.

Caller Jocelyn (01:06:26):
That kinda things. Yeah.

Mikah Sargent (01:06:28):
Yeah. So Oy has like a dashboard that you can use online, which would keep you from having to you know, go into that specific app. But what's great about Oy too is that depending on the service that you're using oy might have like a tie-in with that service. And so you'll actually get a notification that pops up on your phone. So you don't have to actively go into the app, it'll buzz you and say, this is your Oy code. So depending on what you're using, it can be great. And yeah, it's on iOS, it's on Android, it's on Mac os, it's on windows both 32 and 64 bit systems and on Linux. And then the dashboard online can give you access to that as well. It's run by, it's made by Twilio, or Twilio owned by Twilio. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> and Twilio is a long time com like the company's been around for quite a while. And so, you know that you've got kind of a robust system in place. And yeah, I know a lot of folks who, who make use of Athe for that. But again, don't wanna discourage you from using Google Authenticator if that seems to be what's easiest for you. So you're not bouncing between those different

Ant Pruitt (01:07:32):
Systems. I, I remember the days of bouncing in my, that my former job and having Google Authenticator and have an Okta. Oh,

Mikah Sargent (01:07:41):
Okta, wow.

Ant Pruitt (01:07:42):
It's like, yeah, there's gotta be an easier way

Mikah Sargent (01:07:44):
Fumbling for that. UBI Keys, like,

Ant Pruitt (01:07:46):
Which one is it? Which one is it? And finally I was like, yeah, I'm, I'm just gonna jump to ay and I just migrated every single thing over there. Now, the only unfortunate thing, and this has nothing to do with ay, is just or heck, it's, it's the people that you're logging into. Some of them don't even offer a two fa option like that. And that annoys the crap outta me. Yep. Same. You know, they're forcing me to get a code through email or forcing me to get a through a code through s sms like you were doing. I, I, I wish, I wish government would step in and say, Hey, y'all need to offer some type of two fa beyond this uhhuh this unsecured stuff, you know? But that's another rant for another day.

Mikah Sargent (01:08:26):
<Laugh>, we hope that we helped you feel a little bit better about, you know, logging into your Twitter account and changing it. And I will see you at the next CIA meeting. I

Ant Pruitt (01:08:37):
Mean, <laugh>

Caller Jocelyn (01:08:39):
The next coffee plus the

Mikah Sargent (01:08:40):
Next call. Exactly. That <laugh>, excuse

Caller Jocelyn (01:08:42):
Me. So my last name is long. So back in the day, I set up my Twitter with the name that every other day or every week or so I get a, Hey, do you wanna change your password? I'm

Mikah Sargent (01:08:53):
Like, no. Oh, yes. Gotcha. I've had that actually. Yeah. I've I had a friend who had a very common name on Twitter or whatever, and they were regularly getting those notifications as well. So that makes more sense why you had that concern there for a little bit. So yeah, I just, you know, in those three to five minutes while you're doing that, because you know, when you get that it is going to your email specifically. And so unless that person had access to your email and could then try to change the password or taking it, w i, the, I'm trying to think of a way where they could do this. Otherwise they would have to somehow figure out the phone number that they could actually call and get in touch with someone at Twitter, which we now know is even harder given all the people who've been let go from Twitter. Yeah.

Ant Pruitt (01:09:42):
Finally is harder.

Mikah Sargent (01:09:43):
And then it would take them, you know, at least an hour, if not more, to socially engineer the people on the other end of the line if they could get in to talk to somebody. So your, what you just said has given me a little bit more perspective on why you, you know, further had that concern about the two-factor authentication thing, but even still, it would take them a lot of time, which you would be able to get your stuff done before that happened. So yeah, it's, again, it's good that you're very mindful of that and that makes me feel comfortable about every aspect of what you're, you know, the steps you're about to take. So yeah, we wish you all the best and as I said, if you continue to watch, as long as there's not a jet engine crashing into the studio, <laugh> should be good to go. <Laugh>.

Caller Jocelyn (01:10:29):
No, you're not allowed to have that happen.

Mikah Sargent (01:10:31):
<Laugh>. Thank you. Thank you. All righty folks. Well, Google has decided to sign me out. So I don't know what's happening next, but we did get a great email that I wanted to bring up next on the show. So as soon as I'm able to log back into my account since Google's trying to be helpful then we'll talk about that email. So the person who wrote in

Ant Pruitt (01:11:02):
Adam, I got Adam, Adam from

Mikah Sargent (01:11:03):
Oklahoma. Yeah. You wanna read that up for us? Sure.

Ant Pruitt (01:11:05):
I got it here. Adam from Oklahoma says I just recently purchased a 14 inch M two MacBook Pro and do have some older accessories for my 2016 MacBook Pro. I'm curious if you have any good recommendations on some accessories programs and et cetera that works or made specifically for the M two max. And if you would recommend getting the extended warranty through Apple. I'm also a Club TWI member woo woo. And love the new content you all have produced. So thank you for that message. Mr. Adam. You are the en the M two Mac Pro. I'm still a newbie in this thing, even though I've had my Mac for a month. Dude, I'm, I'm still, yeah, that's another rant. <Laugh> carry on Sir. <Laugh>.

Mikah Sargent (01:11:51):
Adam, thank you for writing in. So what you kinda were talking about here is that you have some older accessories that work with an older device. And depending on those accessories and the ports that they have and the, the plug-ins that they have, there's not necessarily a reason to get rid of those accessories if they're still working. There is, apple does make a u s bbc which is technically in this case a Thunderbolt three to Thunderbolt two adapter. So if you do have those Thunderbolt do two accessories that kind of have the more squareish plug, then you can still make use of some of those accessories just by getting that device. I

Ant Pruitt (01:12:36):
Didn't even know that existed.

Mikah Sargent (01:12:37):
Wow. Yeah. So I did that. Apple does not currently make a u s BBC to Ethernet port of its own uhhuh <affirmative> Bekin is the one that makes the u s BBC to ethernet, but Apple used to make a Thunderbolt two to ethernet port and or adapter. And so at the time I wanted to keep using that Thunderbolt two to ethernet adapter that I had. So I had to buy a Thunderbolt three to Thunderbolt two adapter, and then the Thunderbolt two to ethernet adapter, I plugged into

Ant Pruitt (01:13:09):
It Daisy chain that much good. Yes. Grief.

Mikah Sargent (01:13:12):
And that the reason why is because there was a, at the time some sort of flaw with the bean adapter that's been addressed since then. Okay. Where it would renew the lease automatically for D H C P, but it would do it at inopportune times. And so Uhhuh <affirmative> right in the middle of doing something, it would just drop connection to renew that lease. Right. But using Apple's own adapter did not do that. That again has been addressed since then. So now I just use the third party. But if you spend a lot of money on those Thunderbolt two accessories and you wanna keep using those, I completely understand. And that's something that you can do. Outside of that, the things that I would recommend Cal Digit is a great company that makes some incredible Mac products.

(01:13:59):
They make a Thunderbolt dock, actually. They make a couple of Thunderbolt docks. There's the Thunderbolt TS three plus and the Thunderbolt, I believe it's called TS four. Yeah. I cannot say enough good things about these docs. They are so incredible. They are powerful. They're small, which I like. They truly work how you expect them to, meaning I plug one cable into the machine and everything that's plugged into it actually works. Right. And you don't really get that with like, even some of the best docking stations I've had, there's always something where you have to end up unplugging and re unplugging to get it to work or Yeah. Or isn't sending power like it's supposed to. I

Ant Pruitt (01:14:42):
Think that was the other big thing is the, the power output for if you want to charge something up charge your phone or pick some of 'em, even let you charge up another laptop cuz it's got that much juice on on it. Yeah. And I haven't seen that with anything inside exactly

Mikah Sargent (01:14:54):
Digit. They, and they, they very specifically have these, you know, power management firmware built in that is updated as it needs to be. And then so with these devices you're getting so many extra ports. If you go with the TS four, which is their most recent docket does Thunderbolt four. It has 18 ports on it. So you could end up plugging in two monitors. You can have, you know, a bunch of u s BBC on the back on the front are micro SD and standard SD and this is U H S two. So it has that extra like strip that's in there and audio. U S B C ports on the front U S B A port on the front on the back there are four U S B A ports that are 3.2 gen two.

(01:15:41):
So they're 10 gigabits per second transfer up to that much Thunderbolt four. And then Thunderbolt four with charging display port one point, I mean it's <laugh>, it's got all the ports you could need. Hmm. and even the TS three plus, which is now the older version has display port, it has U S B A, it has u s bbc, it has SD on the front. So if there's a sort of one port to rule them all option or rather one dock rule them all option, it is these two cal digit devices. Either of them I think would be great as an option for your M two device. They also make a few other products like the Element hub which I would recommend as well with the element hub, you get four U S B C, excuse me, four U S B A on the back and then three u s BBC on the front that are also Thunderbolt ports.

(01:16:38):
These Thunderbolt ports obviously one of them needs to go to the machine mm-hmm. <Affirmative>. So you can technically get two extra, but yeah, if you're just looking for a U S B Oh no, no, I forgot they put it on the side. So you do get three complete u s BBC on the back slash Thunderbolt on the back. So if you're just looking for extra places to plug stuff in this is where those can go. And Kyle, I wanna be clear Cal, it's not a sponsor or anything like that. I just have used their products and they've genuinely been so steadfast and true that I, I can't not recommend them. I

Ant Pruitt (01:17:09):
Watched your so great, I think it was a TS three that you demoed, did a review that one when I got my machine, cuz I was considering it, but I lucked out and found a doc in a closet amongst a bunch of other things. Nice. I found like a bunch of pictures and stickers of Twit and Leo in the same closet. Like where do this stuff come from? But I found a dock that that's working for now mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, granted it's not Thunder Boat four. Right. But it's giving me the additional ports that I need right now. Sweet. I would definitely, I'm definitely looking to upgrade to the cow digit just to get that more Thunder Boat four. 

Mikah Sargent (01:17:43):
Yeah, just, I mean if yeah, if you've got it, you wanna be able to use it for sure. So totally understandable. And then scooter X has shared in the chat and it is a really good point. I've talked before about Sati products and yes, I promise it's pronounced Sati. I get this question a lot. Yeah. but Sati, they make products that are designed very well to match your Apple devices. And they have several different docs, but also several different accessories. And there's a sale going on right now. I've covered a sati dock that also had builtin builtin solid state drive storage slot. Yep. And so you could use it as a dock and also more storage. And ants is bringing up on his screen a great Sati doc. What's, what's going on

Ant Pruitt (01:18:30):
There? This, this doc here is, is specifically for the Mac Mini and it, it fits perfectly. It looks like it was part of Apple's Yeah. Regular, you know, design and, and pull it off of their shells. But you get the u s bbc and U S B A as well as in two SD card readers on these things. That's good

Mikah Sargent (01:18:48):
For you. Right. Oh

Ant Pruitt (01:18:50):
Man. You know, why don't we get more SD card readers on, on devices these days? Most laptops don't have 'em anymore. Yeah. You know.

Mikah Sargent (01:18:59):
Yeah. It's, it's kind of sad that they, they kick that to the side because I mean, especially for photographers that are making use of those regularly, it'd be nice to have them. But yeah, that is some of the stuff, again between Cal Digit and Sati also when it comes to cables and adapters anchor is a great solution there. They make incredible cables and many of their adapters are cost effective and also do feature the proper firmware software that's needed to communicate between two devices. Recently my partner got a new display and needed to do H D M I to U s bbc mm-hmm. <Affirmative> and instead of using an ugly dongle or adapter that hung off of the side of the laptop, they make a anchor makes a cable. That is H D M I on one side, and then on the other side is u s bbc and the adapter technology is just kind of built into the cable, so it doesn't have to be this ugly thing hanging off the side. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, it just all works with a cable on its own.

Ant Pruitt (01:20:04):
Yeah. Everybody here is, is is pro anchor. Definitely.

Mikah Sargent (01:20:07):
Yeah.

Ant Pruitt (01:20:08):
I mean, we have anchor stuff all over this studio. Absolutely. I'm sure that's what Mr. Burke has the

Mikah Sargent (01:20:12):
Cables plugged in right now. I'm sure his anchor. Yeah. And I mean, it's great for Chart, it's great for charging, it's great for all sorts of stuff. So yeah, between Anchor Sati and Cal Digit, I think you'll be well on your way, Adam to finding what you're wanting to you know, invest in. And again, don't forget that Apple adapter, that if you want us, if you've made a huge investment originally and you wanna keep some of that stuff, you can use that.

Ant Pruitt (01:20:36):
Now, Adam, you also mentioned programming for you specifically for M two. And again, I'm a newbie on this still, it's only been about a month, but what I'm finding is for most, anything that you search for within the app store on your device, you're gonna be fine with it being compatible with the M two chips. Now, the other side of that, there, there are certain tools such as, like for me, Adobe Premiere Pro or Da Vinci Resolve, there may be some, some lag time on those third parties getting up to speed with the M two chip. Adobe is now granted Adobe and DaVinci resolved. They're good to go now. But I can remember a point in time when they were, they weren't quite ready and everything was sort of at a bit of a beta performance. But if you're not using things like that, you're probably going to be fine as long as you're just searching through the App store or, or is it called App Store? Is it the Mac store? What?

Mikah Sargent (01:21:29):
The Mac App store? Yeah, the

Ant Pruitt (01:21:30):
Mac app store. <Laugh>, if you search through there, you're gonna be fine with your current M two architecture.

Mikah Sargent (01:21:36):
There you go. Alright, speaking of the Mac, I think it's time for a check-in with Aunt Pruit because aunt you have switched from windows mostly to, to Macs. And in fact, we had you recently kind of talk about the issues that you had or the, the in in the growing pains, the changing pains, I guess mm-hmm. <Affirmative> and switching between systems. And we kind of went over that, but I thought it'd be great to check in with you and see how things are going and then if any other issues have popped up and kind of how, how it's going for you.

Ant Pruitt (01:22:13):
I, I, I thank love that machine. It's so, it's so fast, <laugh>. It's, it's so fast. Booting up is a second. Shutting down is a second if I need to shut it down because

Mikah Sargent (01:22:26):
Shutting down takes forever on a Windows machine.

Ant Pruitt (01:22:28):
Shutting down this DAG gum laptop takes a few minutes, <laugh> and it, and it takes the fans to fire up because apparently the chip gets too hot just to shut down so the fans will fire up. It, it's, it's such a weird experience. That

Mikah Sargent (01:22:42):
Is

Ant Pruitt (01:22:43):
Weird, you know, but I, I've, I've had nothing but, but a good experience from a performance standpoint on the M two Mac Mini Pro, whatever it's called that I have now. There are a couple quirks that I'm used to on the Windows side of things and, and I'm, I'm fighting through that. But then there's things like, you know, alt tab. Okay. So, you know, we talked about using Command Q and and so forth. And, and, but when I wanna do t tab to switch between the different apps that are on my screen at the time, sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. You know, as you get the whole popup on the screen, one you do t tab that shows what's open, toggle through to select it. There's a lot of times nothing happens once I select set application. So I end up having to just manually click on it in the dock to make it pop, pop up.

(01:23:32):
I don't know why that is mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, but I'm getting used to that. Minimizing windows you know, you have that beautiful, like a genie and a lamp animation or whatever. I go to minimize something and I'm thinking, okay, I need to go back and open that up. I click on it in the doc. Sometimes it pops up, sometimes it doesn't. It just interesting. Depends. It, it, it, some things it, some things just work really quickly. And then there's other times there's a couple quirks like that mm-hmm. <Affirmative>. but for the most part I'm very, very happy. Oh, I just forgot about something. Typing. You're doing a a, an email or working in a spreadsheet or what have you. I've found that sometimes delete in home doesn't quite do the same thing because I'm, I'm, I may type out of a sentence in an email mm-hmm. <Affirmative> and realize, oh, I need to add an extra word at the beginning of the sentence. So my logic says hit home. Oh. So it'll send a cursor back to the beginning of the line. Uhhuh <affirmative>, that doesn't work in everything.

Mikah Sargent (01:24:34):
I've never even used, I didn't know that that was a thing in Windows. When

Ant Pruitt (01:24:38):
Minute you write more than I do.

Mikah Sargent (01:24:39):
Yeah. We use, so for me it's option key and then the arrow buttons. So if you do option and Arrow, you can go back to the beginning of a line, ah, if you use option or Arrow left, it goes back to the beginning of a line option arrow. Right. So yeah. That's just a matter of a change in language. Yeah.

Ant Pruitt (01:24:54):
Home and end on the keyboards. Because the keyboard that I use, I used the Logitech MX Keys that's compatible with both Windows and Mac. You know, so there was no, I didn't necessarily have to worry about switching. So if I wanted to hit home, I knew exactly where it was without looking down and end is the same way. And every now and then, those little bits of functionality vary for me depending on what, what app I'm in. But it's, it's such a great experience to be on a operating system that just dad come works <laugh>. It just works. You know, my son Hardhead, he's also a photographer. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. So he hops on the machine and jumps into Adobe Lightroom to do his photo editing and management and so forth. And it was a bit of a transition for him as well to understand the file system. And I had to tell him, look, we were on a bad file system previously, this is much better. But muscle memory gets in

Mikah Sargent (01:25:51):
The way. Yeah, exactly. That's the big thing is the, is developing that muscle memory. I was trying to see if I could find a guide online and CNET has one from 2013 that would probably still apply how to make quick work of text navigation in OS 10. See that's how old it is. It's calling it OS 10

Ant Pruitt (01:26:10):
Os.

Mikah Sargent (01:26:10):
Wow. and so it's talking about how to use basically those arrow keys. Cuz see I even like, I select text using the arrow keys. Cuz you can hold down shift while you hold option to select a line or select different. And so yeah, I do that. The home button is not ever something that I thought of. But I'll share this guide with you.

Ant Pruitt (01:26:33):
That reminds me, you just said shift and Arrow. Let's say I'm in Finder mm-hmm. <Affirmative> and I'm looking at a group of files that are in the icon format, not the list format. And I want to select, oh, a handful of 'em on the couple lines on the window side of things. I could click on the first one, just one single click hold shift mm-hmm. <Affirmative> and go down to the next range or what have you and it'll grab them all. That doesn't seem to be the case. Yeah. On Mac os you literally have to drag drag

Mikah Sargent (01:27:02):
With

Ant Pruitt (01:27:02):
Your mouse unless you're in the list view. If you're in list view,

Mikah Sargent (01:27:05):
Then it'll

Ant Pruitt (01:27:06):
Work. Then it'll work. Yeah.

Mikah Sargent (01:27:08):
I don't know what

Ant Pruitt (01:27:09):
Holy apple, come on. Yeah. That's, that's some polish that I expect you to have there. That

Mikah Sargent (01:27:13):
Is, yes. The I So if there's a listener out there who does have, if there's, you know, you're supposed to hold down one more button or something, I just don't know that. But yes, I have had that same annoyance as well in icon view instead of list view, which I very rarely use Icon View unless it's for looking at photos.

Ant Pruitt (01:27:30):
I'm looking at photos and I'm looking at video files. It's, it's so much easier for me to see those little thumbnails. Exactly.

Mikah Sargent (01:27:36):
You know? Yeah. That is, that is annoying. I, I, I'm with you there. But

Ant Pruitt (01:27:40):
Yeah, I just got the stink guy from Mr. Jammer B as if I'm lying through my teeth. I'm not making this up. Mr. Jammer B try it. So now he's, it works for me. Lies this working for you? Lies lies life works fun. No, no. Go up, down, left, right? No, no way. No keys. It works fine. Keys.

Mikah Sargent (01:27:58):
We'll have to check on that after the show. Nick.

Ant Pruitt (01:28:01):
I, I will send a video to our, to our team Slack here, sir. Just, just, you just do later. <Laugh>, I can beat you to it cause I'm not doing a show. <Laugh>.

Mikah Sargent (01:28:11):
This should be interesting. Yeah, I I think a lot of this does end up coming down to once you, you learn those new sort of muscle memory mm-hmm. <Affirmative> methods of doing things and it gets a little bit easier, but mm-hmm. <Affirmative> there, yeah, there are certainly some quirks that I have dealt with for sure. 

Ant Pruitt (01:28:31):
Scooter mentions in the chat room, makos Quickview space bar is very handy. Yes. I love that. Because on the Windows side, I think I would just hit Windows Key and start typing. Now I'll just add an extra, oh

Mikah Sargent (01:28:44):
No. Scooter X is talking about how you can like select a document or an image or anything like that and just pressing space bar on it brings up this quick view.

Ant Pruitt (01:28:53):
Oh, that I haven't tried that yet. No, that looks,

Mikah Sargent (01:28:55):
I love that. So that's nice. What I'll do when I have a bunch of photos is if it's like a list of photos, I'll click on the first one to select it. I'll hit space bar mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, and then use the arrow keys to move through the photos. And instead of being a little icon, it basically just zooms up and is big on the screen, so.

Ant Pruitt (01:29:10):
Oh, I have to try that. Yeah, I have to try that. But first we need to get that selection down. Yes, apple. Put that, put that in this up in the next update.

Mikah Sargent (01:29:19):
Please do. Come on. Alright. there's a little check in on Mac os. We do have a little message from Leo LaPorte.

Leo Laporte (01:29:29):
Hey everybody, it's Leo Laporte the founder and host of many of the TWIT podcasts. I don't normally talk to you about advertising, but I want to take a moment to do that right now. Our mission statement at twit, we're dedicated to building a highly engaged community of tech enthusiasts. That's our audience. And you, I guess, since you're listening, by offering them the knowledge they need to understand and use technology in today's world. To do that, we also create partnerships with trusted brands and make important introductions between them and our audience. It's how we finance our podcasts, but it's also, and our audience tells us this all the time. A part of the service we offer, it's a valued bit of information for our audience members. They wanna know about great brands like yours. So can we help you by introducing you to our highly qualified audience?

(01:30:26):
And boy, do you get a lot with advertising on the TWIT podcasts. Partnering with TWIT means you're gonna get, if I may say so humbly the gold standard in podcast advertising. And we throw in a lot of valuable services. You get a full service continuity team supporting everything from copywriting to graphic design. I don't think anybody else does this or does this as well as we do. You get ads that are embedded in our content that are unique every time I read them. Our hosts read them. We always over-deliver on impressions. And frankly, we are here to talk about your product. So we really give our listeners a great introduction to what you offer. We've got onboarding services, ad tech with pod sites that's free for direct clients. We give you a lot of reporting so you know who saw your advertisement. You'll even know how many responded by going to your website.

(01:31:19):
We'll also give you courtesy commercials that you can share across social media and landing pages. We think these are really valuable people like me and our other hosts talking about your product sincerely and informationally, those are incredibly valuable. You also get other free goodies mentions in our weekly newsletter that's sent out to thousands of fans. We give bonus ads to people who buy a significant amount of advertising. You'll get social media promotion too. But let me tell you, we are looking for an advertising partner that's gonna be with us long term. Visit TWI tv slash advertise, check out our partner testimonials. Tim Broom, founder of it Pro tv. They, it pro TV in 2013 immediately started advertising with us and grew that company to a, a really amazing success. Hundreds of thousands of ongoing customers. They've been in our network for more than 10 years.

(01:32:15):
And they say, and I'll quote Tim, we would not be where we are today without the twit network. That's just one example. Mark McCrery, who's the c e o of Authentic he was actually one of the first people to buy ads on our network. He's been with us for 16 years. He said, and I'm quoting, the feedback from many advertisers over those 16 years across a range of product categories is that if ads and podcasts are gonna work for a brand, they're gonna work on Twitch shows. I'm proud to say that the ads we do overdeliver, they work really well because they're honest. They have integrity. Our audience trusts us and we say this is a great product. They believe it, they listen. Our listeners are highly intelligent. They're heavily engaged, they're tech savvy. They're dedicated to our network. And that's partly because we only work with high integrity partners that we have thoroughly and personally vetted. I approve every single advertiser on the network. If you're ready to elevate your brand and you've got a great product, I want you to reach out to us, advertise@twit.tv. So I want you to break out of the advertising norm, grow your brand with host Red authentic ads on twit.tv, visit twit.tv/advertise for more details, or email us advertise@twit.tv if you're ready to launch your campaign now.

Mikah Sargent (01:33:40):
All right. Back from the break. And now we've got another set of questions this time from John. John writes in to say I've got two questions here. First question, am I secure with last pass? If I use a yubico UBI key to access my last pass account after entering in my LastPass master password? I've been using LastPass for about two years. I currently have my password iterations set to 600,000, which LastPass now recommends, when I first signed up, it was set to 100,100. So this is a question that has to do with the LastPass data breach. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> and basically anyone who had a last pass account, no matter how you had two-factor authentication or what kind of two-factor authentication or how many forms of two-factor authentication, that did not matter because what that was doing was giving you access to your vault.

(01:34:45):
But what the bad actors who ran off with everybody's stuff had was access to those vaults independent of your login to that vault. So your two-factor authentication was only there to protect you when you or some other person was trying to access your vault using that login method. But if the vault, and because the vault was grabbed independent of your login to it, then it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter if you had to have a carrier pigeon send you your two-factor authentication code and you typed that in, like it doesn't no matter what. Yep. So you know, Leo has brought up a couple of times sort of jokingly, but also there is some truth to it. Anytime a company does face a breach like this, then you can almost go, this is, this may be even more secure than it ever was because the company's paying so much more attention now. Yep. They don't want, they don't wanna mess up again. Yep. So the fact that you're still using last pass, maybe you can rely on that. If you're asking me if a company has a breach like that, I'm done with it. I'm moving on. I'm,

Ant Pruitt (01:35:48):
I did not move off of last pass. Okay. And I thought, I thought long and hard about it and spoke with the family because my family is special. I will say that when it comes to tech. But what I ended up doing is because I knew those vaults were, were were compromised or what have you, I just changed passwords on everything. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> just went through through that all of it. Yeah. Changed passwords on everything I had already made sure last pass was squared away and updated with the proper security measures. It looked like it had already been updated when I went in there and looked to that 1 million mm-hmm. <Affirmative> pb, what is that? Long string letters

Mikah Sargent (01:36:26):
PB kdf two.

Ant Pruitt (01:36:27):
It looked like it had, it had already been updated, but I went ahead and just went through all of my personal accounts that, that I care about. And I just spent the weekend changing passwords. It was quite riveting. That's so much work. It was quite riveting just doing that, changing passwords and then letting everyone know in the family, all right, these passwords are changed. We're, we're, we're moving forward and I'm hoping <laugh> that I'm safe, but that was the route that I took. I didn't leave last pass.

Mikah Sargent (01:36:56):
Yeah. And, and as folks are pointing out yes, the, the vaults that they grabbed were encrypted, but because there's no, there's nothing in the way of them constantly sending the computer after it to try and break into it. And if you had a password that was potentially more easily guessed, then you are at more risk. So if you add an completely pseudo random password and it was a long password and the iterations were up and all these other, then yes, you're safe. But I don't, they still, they have the fault and they have the, the data and between now and when the sun crashes into the earth of the earth crashes into the sun or next week the Yeah. <Laugh> or the earth, the sun goes supernova and then turns into a neutron star. Like they could be sending machine a machine after it.

(01:37:50):
A computer after it. Yeah. And we're only gonna get more powerful. I mean, all of those, I I, I don't want to ex, I don't wanna live in a <laugh> in a space where I'm going, well, because of this, this, and this, I'm probably okay. They still have that data. They still have that. So you, what you've said is the, the big thing. And for the listener John, John, if you have not gone and changed all of your passwords, you need to do that still. Yeah. all of the passwords in that vault, you need to go on and change all of them. Yep. no matter how, what your UBI key was, even if you switch, if you switch away from last pass, you still need to go and change. They

Ant Pruitt (01:38:28):
Probably wouldn't change those passwords

Mikah Sargent (01:38:29):
Anyway, because those passwords were probably grabbed up in that breach. Yep.

Ant Pruitt (01:38:36):
Grab a beer and spend a spend a day on the weekend and just, just do it. It, it's put on some good music. You're gonna be there for a while. Just, just get it done.

Mikah Sargent (01:38:45):
Yeah. and then the second question from John which I, I love this because this was in the classic style of someone saying, I have a question and then I have, and then can I have a follow up? So the way that this is, when someone says this, the way that this is supposed to work is you ask a question and then the person answers it and then there's something in their answer that you follow up on. Yeah. So they say the sky, you, you ask them what color is the sky and what's your favorite food? And then they say the sky is blue and my favorite food is avocados. And then you go avocados. Huh? Why do you like that? That's a follow up. Yeah. Following up on their answer. Yeah. But what people do is they ask a question and then what they do for a follow up is they just ask another question, a whole

Ant Pruitt (01:39:32):
Random question after that.

Mikah Sargent (01:39:34):
So I love, and John, I'm not, I'm, I, I don't care. I think this is great cuz it's in that traditional or V8 s Yeah. <Laugh>. So the follow up question is just a whole nother question. <Laugh>. John writes, I stream with a Roku Ultra via ethernet with the home internet speed of 900 megabits per second. But I still get occasional pixelation when watching sports in and in particular, that's hockey, soccer, and football. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. And it was really bad when watching this year's Super Bowl. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, when I go into my Roku settings to check my speed, it shows it's connected. It shows that it's a wired connection. It shows my IP address, and then it shows that the internet downloads speed is 93 megabits per second. I can't imagine that Roku would cap the Roku Ultras speed below 100 megabits per second.

(01:40:24):
Can you and some of your techies shed some light on my issue or recommend a fix? So I want to tackle this. I've gotta follow up for you <laugh>, because I want to tackle this in two separate parts. The first part here is what you're talking about where when you're watching some games, there's pixelation where there's you know, some, some lag or what have you. It is not just internet, your own personal internet speed that is at play here. There are so many factors that go into mm-hmm. <Affirmative> for one, depending on where you live and how your internet is set up, you may be faced with local issues of, of internet connectivity. I can remember when I, there was a house I lived in in Columbia, Missouri, and it was an apartment complex. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> and that apartment complex did not have true separate internet connections for every

Ant Pruitt (01:41:21):
Home. Oh no.

Mikah Sargent (01:41:23):
And so they made it, they, they had like a deal with the internet service provider so that it was as if it was independent, but essentially every building Yeah. Had an internet connection that was then separated into all of the different homes. And so if everybody else was on the inter internet at the same time that bandwidth dropped and you would not have as much bandwidth to work with. The

Ant Pruitt (01:41:45):
Person closest to the pedestal had to best

Mikah Sargent (01:41:47):
Speed. Exactly.

Ant Pruitt (01:41:48):
Oh, that's

Mikah Sargent (01:41:49):
Horrible. And that was awful. Now, you know, where I live now that is not the case. And so I usually don't have these issues. But then you have that, then you have like local nodes. You have where the servers are that are serving up this data. You also have how many other people are connected. That's why the Super Bowl was probably bad for you. Even though I have a personal data connection that's one gigabit, you know, per second internet speeds. When I was watching the Super Bowl, it was laggy because not only was I using the free version of, you know, Fox that was streaming it, but there were gajillion d billion other people who were watching it at the same time. So it's going to have its lagging issues. And that's likely why you saw that problem. And then there are just so many other little factors that could be playing into why that's not happening. So Yeah.

Ant Pruitt (01:42:37):
Yeah. Sometimes serving it up is a little bit slower. Just just up up speed from the, the host. From

Mikah Sargent (01:42:43):
The host, exactly. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. So speed. Your internet speed itself, yes. The higher it is and the less jitter that you have and all of that magic stuff is going to make for a better connection. But it's not just you who's playing ball, it's also these other people that are as well.

Ant Pruitt (01:42:57):
<Laugh>, oh wait, wait a minute. Okay. We're gonna let you leave on that bad line. Thank your turn. Good grief, man. <Laugh>. All right. So let's oh,

Mikah Sargent (01:43:08):
Well, I, I bef I mean, before we actually, I do wanna there are some other suggestions that I do have here. So one thing that you wanna do John, is please run a speed test. I recommend Olas speed test. So run that on your local network and just see that you truly are getting, you know, somewhere near 900 megabits per second. Advice that I would typically give is to use a wired connection. You are doing that. Yeah. 

Ant Pruitt (01:43:33):
Because the first thing I looked at.

Mikah Sargent (01:43:34):
Yeah. So the fact that you have it wired there is good. And then another suggestion that I have would be to look at your network connection settings, like on your router and see if you've got any sort what's called bandwidth shaping. Yeah, yeah. Thank you. Quality of service stuff going on. Where it may just be misreading the Roku and not sending as much data as it's meant to

Ant Pruitt (01:44:01):
Sometimes check your actual physical Roku device. Heat may be a problem. Oh yeah. So make sure that it's getting decent airflow on them too. I know back in the days of the early Chromecast, remember when the Chromecast first come out and it was so awesome, but you could only use it for about 10 minutes. <Laugh>, cuz it would fry itself. Yeah. yeah, so check for, to make sure you have decent airflow on your device too. Cuz that could be a problem.

Mikah Sargent (01:44:28):
That's good advice. Yeah. yeah, their older Apple TVs would sometimes shut down or reboot because they got too hot. And yes, scooter x points out. It's a great idea to reboot the Roku. Cause I think a lot of times those set up boxes, we forget that they are also their own little sort of computing devices and they can be rebooted and should be rebooted. And yes. Remember to replace the air filters in your ac Also remember to drain your hot water heater once a year if you have a tank. And don't forget to brush your teeth before you go to bed. I

Ant Pruitt (01:45:03):
Love our chat room. <Laugh> <laugh>, our chat room is awesome. All right. Shall we move on to Mr. Daniels question? Yeah,

Mikah Sargent (01:45:11):
Let's do it.

Ant Pruitt (01:45:12):
All right. Daniel writes in. I have a question about Ring doorbells. I I have a ring on both the front door and one on my side door. I also have a, I have four Amazon dots. I'm not gonna say the full name. Hockey puck models. I brought the doorbell slash June and they have been working just fine. I have the doorbells linked to the dots. I have to be careful cause I know I've set out some things, which means when someone pushes the button at the front door, the dots announce that someone's at the front door. Okay. That's convenient, right? The announcement comes from all of the dots throughout the house, or at least it did until a couple of weeks ago. Now the side door only comes out of one of the dots. It comes out of the dot that is in my living room.

(01:45:57):
And it's always easy to hear. Demotion alert from the front door, still works properly, but not on the button. Press any ideas on how to fix the problem. So it sounds like everything's just starting to flake out. Yep. I have missed some of my, I've missed someone ringing my doorbell a couple of times and since this started, since this started happening, any help would be appreciated, says Daniel. Now these are all of the tools that you use. I don't use any of these tools and I have learned that they could be quite frustrating <laugh> at times. Yes. Which is why I haven't bought into 'em, because I, I hear stories like this quite often. Yeah.

Mikah Sargent (01:46:37):
So, I mean, there's so many things that can end up causing this. A lot of times your echo dot and echo is a less common trigger phrase, so I feel comfortable sending it. Oh, okay. See? So you can send all the email to me if you're mad about it. I don't say A L E X A. That's the pass you're getting. So these echo devices oftentimes have firmware updates or your internet might go out in the middle of the night and when they reconnect, something goes wrong. Or the ring device might get an update that then sort of unpaired temporarily the connection between. I mean, there's so much that can cause this. And so typically your best option, and I've shared my screen to airplay too, is to go back into your settings and make sure that everything is set how you want to.

(01:47:26):
So I've gone into the A L E X A app because this is where you need to make this happen. Daniel, you have set this up with Ring because if you're able to get chimes on your Echo devices, then that means that you have set this up and you find the name of the device. And this case mine's called doorbell. So I'll tap on doorbell and I'll tap on settings. And then in settings you can see some different options, including an option under announcements called Announcement Devices. So under announcements, the first thing that you wanna do is go down to doorbell press notifications. Doorbell press notifications of course, are notifications that the doorbell has been pressed. And if this is on as it should be because you are getting it on one device, toggle it off and toggle it back on. I know it's the turn it off and on again, but honestly it can help.

(01:48:21):
Dude, that was hard. Yeah. <laugh>. I know. And then the next thing you're gonna do is in the announcement devices tab. We're gonna tap on that. And here you're going to make sure that you have all of those echo dots selected. So it could, this is where you would notice, oh, it didn't actually have, it doesn't actually have those selected anymore. If it, if a check mark is showing next to it, you can guess what I'm gonna say next. <Laugh>, uncheck it and check it again. And sometimes that's all it needs to kind of kick things into gear. And I have to tell you, Daniel, thank you for sending in this question because I popped in here and I realized that I accidentally had the echo dot. I have sitting on the desk in the studio here on my desk in the studio here selected.

(01:49:12):
So that meant every time someone rang the doorbell at my house, <laugh> the echo in the studio was going, there's a doorbell being rung right now. This whole time <laugh>. So I'm sorry to whoever was here and ended up hearing that at whatever point, and you're going, oh, oh man, who's here in the studio? That's hilarious. Yeah. <laugh>. So thank you Daniel for having me check out these settings, <laugh>. Cause I was able to turn that off. How embarrassing. And then once you've done that, then go ahead and just check that the other settings are how you want them. You'll notice I have motion announcements turned off because these devices are constantly detecting motion. Yeah. I don't want that. Constantly going, there's motion detected at your front door. Yeah. Cause they would be doing that all day every day. My

Ant Pruitt (01:49:54):
Cameras do that and it, it's, it's quite annoying trying to adjust the sensitivity

Mikah Sargent (01:49:59):
And to just, right.

Ant Pruitt (01:50:01):
Oh gosh. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>.

Mikah Sargent (01:50:02):
Yeah. A lot of times these end up just being devices that raise people's blood pressure that rather than do anything that's helpful,

Ant Pruitt (01:50:09):
You know, and that, speaking of that, the, the whole security cam thing, I'm sort of like 50 50 on 'em mm-hmm. <Affirmative> because if I, if, if my camera captures someone doing a, a porch pirate thing mm-hmm. <Affirmative> trying to steal a package, it, it sees, it sends the notification to me. I get the notification I run down by the time I run down, it's too late. They're gone. You know, it's too late. Then there's the aspect of you're out having dinner with, with friends and family or whatever, and there's somebody with their phone staring at their camera just to make sure everything's safe, their phone the whole time. Yes. It, it is. You're like, you're just giving yourself additional paranoia. Yeah. And you didn't really need to. 

Mikah Sargent (01:50:52):
So that is, that is actually so I used to have indoor cameras and there was mostly, at least I've made the excuse it was for keeping an eye on the dogs. And in some cases, like if, if both of us are out of the house, then I do have one in there just so we, I can check in on the dogs mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, but I used to have one in the house at all times and I just, I had it all set up and firewalled properly where I wasn't worried about someone checking in or whatever. Yeah. But I did come to the realization that I didn't really need it and it was more of just this, this thing that I thought was something that I needed. So if I leave the house, like right now I don't have one on in the house cuz you know, just being at work and then coming back home, it's not a big deal.

(01:51:35):
Right. But it, it was whenever, you know that we only set it up for like going into San Francisco or something like that, we're gonna be gone for most of the day for a while. Yeah. but having one on and in the house was only just adding anxiety to my plate that I just didn't need. And in ended up not being something that was helpful. I don't begrudge anyone their choice to do so. But for me it was more of a, well, now I'm just gonna be constantly looking at this thing. Yeah. Every notification that pops up, I'm gonna be, oh gosh, what's so, yeah. More times than Knot. It hasn't, I mean, and that's how they have to sell these things is mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, it's, it's, it is a fear-based system. I mean, that's how they make the, the sale of security systems and cameras and everything like that. Well, don't

Ant Pruitt (01:52:17):
Get me wrong, I still want my camera. Yeah. It, it is, there's a reason I got the camera because there was some vandalism at the property mm-hmm. <Affirmative> a couple years ago. So I needed to be able to see what happened. Yep. Not that I can necessarily prevent it, but I could at least report it as evidence to law enforcement if I needed to. But the fact that I could be, I could be sitting in the home studio working and get the alert that somebody just tried to get on my front door. I better be pretty dagum quick, getting downstairs, getting out the door and then chasing them down and do what I need to do <laugh>. Right. It may be too late, you know.

Mikah Sargent (01:52:52):
Yeah. So yeah, I'm, I'm with you there too. There were a couple of times where things got stolen off of my porch, and so I was happy to have that doorbell camera specifically, but moving them from out of the house for the most part, I think was actually a beneficial thing to me. But yeah definitely check those and if those things did not solve your problem, let us know. Daniel, again, you can email us, atg twit tv, atg.tv or ask the tech guys at twit tv. Any of that stuff will work. We try to just, you know, be available. We'd love it if you send in video, if you send in audio if you send in text via email as these were, we've been answering those. And of course you can always call us call dot twit tv to be able to join us live for the show and answer or have your question answered there. But I believe it is now time for me to stand up and go over to Radio Corner mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, because I have some really exciting things to show off. Yeah. so I will,

Ant Pruitt (01:53:54):
Some of these things are so excited they tried to jump out and leave. They were excited to

Mikah Sargent (01:53:59):
Get a move on <laugh>, honestly, a little terrified. It's like this

Ant Pruitt (01:54:03):
Thing just grew legs. What <laugh>.

Mikah Sargent (01:54:07):
I am very excited to talk about some products from Ecova. So Ecova has made some robotic vacuums and I'm showing these off today. I've got before me. The dBot, let's see, this is the dBot T 10 Omni, this large Ecova robot. And then this is the T nine plus. So we're gonna talk about the T nine plus first, and then we'll talk about the T 10 Omni, because this is a monstrous massive contraption. So let's talk about the, the T nine plus. And with these these robots, Covax has done a great job of making some robot robotic vacuum cleaners that are cost effective, which I really like. Let me sit down my computer here really quick.

(01:54:58):
 They're cost effective, which I really like, while still offering a lot of the functionality that you would get from some of the, you know, the, the brands that are a little bit more expensive. So you get a lot of that same technology, but in a a robotic vacuum that doesn't break the bank at least as much. So with the T nine plus here let's talk about the robot itself first. So you've got kind of your, I mean, you've probably seen a lot of these. You've got your standard robot vacuum here where it can run across the, the carpets and be able, thank you to clean those. And so this has your standard roller brush and wheels. And these wheels are incredibly heavy duty. I've found them to be super grippy, which is great because I've got parts of the floor that are carpet, parts of the floor that are hardwood.

(01:55:50):
And then you get two of these kind of wheel brushes with it. And this has some great functionality built in that I have found to be quite delightful. Inside of the device, you've got a nice dust bin and this comes out so that you can clean it, but you don't have to clean it yourself very often. And I'm gonna talk about that in a moment. And I like to, let me try to get, there we go get that back in that it includes a little brush tool here. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> this is always nice, so you can kind of brush everything out, but then it also has this little slider and you're meant to slide that across the, the brush roll and it will cut away the hair <laugh>, which is really nice. If you have, like, I do some dogs that might leave some of that behind.

(01:56:36):
So with this, you do get the standard lidar that is built into the device at the top. And so there's a little thing spinning around inside of there that is sending out signal. And then it's looking for it to bounce back to determine where it is in the room. So this does do room mapping. It has, they call it true detect technology which is kind of a mixture of different types of sensors including, if I remember correctly, it does have on top of lidar, it also has some infrared technology that can help to not vacuum up things like Lego or if you've got cables in the way nice, then it, it devoids those. And I have to tell you, one of the things that I really like about this one that I can't say about the more expensive one is I don't, I don't know what they've done with this one, but the smarts in it are really smart.

(01:57:34):
I was able to place this and run it across vacuuming things, and it did not hit the dog bowls. Which is something that I've had with previous robot vacuums where it had knocked into the dog bowls, spill food and water all over the floor, and then it ended up cleaning up the, that's food and water. This didn't do that. It knew it saw them and it moved outta the way, which was really nice. Oh. So it didn't make more of a job for itself. Now on the front here, you can see this is the true detect technology where it is sending out and, and sort of being mindful of what's in front of it. It's got some sensors on the side as well. And then this is sort of a bump sensor. So if there is something that it's having trouble seeing for whatever reason, then it'll bump up against this and know, oh, I need to back away.

(01:58:18):
 And then on the bottom here, there are sensors running along most sides of it that keep it from going <laugh>, it's supposed to keep it from going off of ledges. Yep. I did have this sitting right near the edge, and so because I had a cleaning schedule set up <laugh>, it started, the cleaning schedule went right off the side of the very high table. So that was my bad. But it would have, if it had been able to come completely off of the, the sort of storage space that it's own, the most ambitious robot vacuum ever, it's like, please let me get started <laugh>, then I wouldn't have had that issue. One other really cool thing, so you can actually oh yeah, no, I guess it's over here. So I'll talk about that in a second.

(01:59:03):
One really cool thing is there are a couple of attachments. So it has one attachment inside right now on the front of it. And so you just click this button and then you pull out this slider. And here in the basic vacuuming configuration, you get this little insert that has kind of some fans inside that will press, that will suck air into the top and then send it out to the front. And the reason it does that is because you can buy these little air freshener pods. Oh, nice. And so this is Cucumber and Oak. You put the Oh, oh, it smells nice, smell like a spa. It smells so good. <Laugh>, you put that in there, it sucks air down in and blows it out the front as it's going around. And that way you get a nice air freshening scent as you Oh.

(01:59:53):
And it's, it's talking to me. It's letting me know that I put the air freshener sensor in. Now you could, you get to choose between air freshener or if you want it to be a mop as well. So this is the mopping attachment. It has a little lip here that you lift up and you can put water into it. So this is a manual option to be able to fill it with water. And then on the bottom it has this Velcro, or I guess I should say hook and loop fastener. And then you put the mopping pad onto this, on this surface, and you take the air freshener option out, and instead you slide this in. And when you slide it in, then it detects that you've put that in. And it's called the Osmo Pro, or not the Osmo Pro, but the Mopping Pro <laugh>.

(02:00:41):
 And that's a different device. Yeah. And now it can both vacuum and mop the floor. So it will go around and it will do them separately. It with those sensors that are detecting the stairs and also using the sensors on the front. It knows the difference between a carpet or a rug and the rest of the floor. So what's awesome is it will, let's say you've got a rug in like, in, in the middle of your house. Right. It will run up so that it gets up next to the edge of that rug while keeping the part of the device that actually has the mopping pad off of the rug. Nice. And will mop all the way up to the sides of that. And the way that this device mops is these are this device is kind of oscillating, so it, it sort of moves freely almost like a a, a a sanding device.

(02:01:33):
Oh, okay. So yeah, that kind of moves back and forth and will literally scrub the floor. Nice. then the one thing about this to be mindful of is you do have to wash these on your own. You know, it's manually, you take off the pad, you rinse it you can get two different kinds. There's a kind that is disposable and you get like 10 of them in a pack. So it's a little bit like using a Swiffer or something like that, a Swiffer wet jet, or you can get the kind that are washable. And so you just throw them in the wash after you're, you're done using them for a while and the, the apple actually alert you and say, Hey it's time to clean this out. So,

Ant Pruitt (02:02:08):
So using the, the, the wet features, if you will, with this robot mm-hmm. <Affirmative> far as getting it installed, seems like it could potentially be a bit hazardous to its health. Did you find it to be an easy process to just, you know, slide it in, fill it up, slide it in. It's not an issue. You don't worry about splashing. It looks like it has plenty of protection in place because accidents can happen,

Mikah Sargent (02:02:29):
Or, yeah. So the one thing it says is don't get the, so there's a little part where it pops in and that's how it gets the power that it needs and sort of can send a message to this mm-hmm. <Affirmative>. So if that gets wet, you just wait for it to dry or you can put a paper towel on it. But because of this sort of lip here, I just, I've got I've got a little water dispenser that has like clear or clean water, I guess mm-hmm. <Affirmative>. and so I can put that spout like right up to it. So I don't really get a lot of water all over the place. 

Ant Pruitt (02:03:00):
Oh, you fancy

Mikah Sargent (02:03:01):
<Laugh>. So as long as you don't get a lot of water all over the place, so you could just, even with a regular faucet, just turn it on Yeah. At a low stream because it, it, this tank doesn't hold too much water. Right. and then once you do that, yeah, it just slides right in. And I have not had any issues with that. It kind of has its own little guide as you're sliding it in to guide it in. Right. and once you put this on, it will notify that, hey, it's got the mopping option in there. And so then it plans to mop. The other annoyance I guess that I have with this one is it does not like to charge with the mopping attachment in. Okay. So it does say, Hey now that I've returned to the charging base, please put in the air freshener. Think that's

Ant Pruitt (02:03:42):
A safety feature.

Mikah Sargent (02:03:43):
I think it's if it's, I think it's a safety feature, but it's also a cleanliness feature. Okay. Because if the mopping pad is down to the ground, then it doesn't dry as well.

Ant Pruitt (02:03:52):
Yeah. Mold

Mikah Sargent (02:03:53):
And mold. So by making you take it out, you can set it. And what I just did was I just set it next to the base station and then it was able to dry in the air. And then when I wanted to rinse it, I could. Now I do wanna mention that when it returns to its base of course there are the, I guess I shouldn't touch those cuz it is plugged in. There are the two charging bases charging spots here. So this runs up onto the, the charging stand. And you let me bring that over so we can do an overhead shot again, because I wanna show you here this, these two spots, these are not just holes into the bottom of the stand. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, these are two air vents. And what happens is, and this is what makes this thing great as well, is when I, when this goes onto the charger and starts to charge, it will suck air, well, actually, I believe it blows through one and then can suck it out of the other one.

(02:04:56):
And so it will clean out the dust vent and send it up into a larger bag Yep. That sits in the top here. So unlike the less expensive options that are out there where you have to get down and get into here and open up and try to take those out, this is gonna do that for you. And then you just replace these actually it, it keeps track of how long it takes to fill it up. And then you just replace these, so it's got like a paper or a cardboard rather slide in that slides in, and then this gets filled with stuff from your floor. And then after a period of time you can go ahead and empty it out. Of course, there are all these sensors and things that are, or rather not even just sensors, but they are, it's a place where it's emitting a signal from the base, an infrared signal so that this knows how to properly align itself. And I will tell you, I've had problems with these in the past where it gets confused and doesn't quite go onto the, the, the spot as it's supposed to. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> and it's, it jostle around and it's troublesome. I've not had any trouble problems with this. They have a really good algorithm, it seems for figuring out the, the mapping process.

Ant Pruitt (02:06:12):
I, I demoed a dbo actually I demoed a couple robot vacuum several, several years ago. And one of 'em was a dbo and then they had an update, and I think this was back in 2015 or so. It's been that long. And I wrote about it and it was the dBot D 79. And I remember they introduced that feature that you're talking about. Well, once it goes on to the dock station, what have you, it does the self-cleaning for emptying out the canister mm-hmm. <Affirmative> and that, that, that totally blew my mind. It was like, wow, there's no more cleaning up the mess that I just cleaned up from <laugh>. Yes.

Mikah Sargent (02:06:48):
Isn't

Ant Pruitt (02:06:49):
That great? And it put it in this big huge canister. So it, it, you know, you didn't necessarily have to worry about emptying it right after that either. You could leave it in there for a couple days or so and, and then, you know, dump it out once a week or something like that. And that thing was so cool. And Debi, they, they've come a long way apparently just from what, what you're showing here on the, on the show.

Mikah Sargent (02:07:11):
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, so I have to say that is such a nice thing because you're you know, a, the vacuum cleaner that I have, the sort of upright vacuum cleaner that I have, I can vacuum several times before I ever have to empty that container. Yeah. And that was one of the sort of annoyances is I, maybe I did want to have a schedule of the vacuum regularly cleaning, but then I had to every time to go and empty it out, Matt,

Ant Pruitt (02:07:37):
It was so pointless.

Mikah Sargent (02:07:37):
<Laugh>. Yeah. So then it's like, I don't really wanna do that. And the other thing is the, you know, in a normal used household, especially one with that I, I have dogs and one of them is particularly fond of toys and likes to leave them strewn about the place. Then I had that concern that things were going to get zoomed up into the vacuum and then it was gonna be stuck in the middle of the floor, blah, blah, blah, blah. And this with its object avoidance does not have that problem. So it can just, okay, I see there's something there. I go around it, I don't get it sucked up into the vacuum. I've found that re I, they've, I don't know what they've done to figure this out, but they have a really smart system for Object one, you

Ant Pruitt (02:08:14):
Know, and, and this, this actually came from our discord. Take Taq. I'm, I'm hoping I'm saying your name correctly, but it, it, it is a good question. And, and I'm not trying to be crass, but I wondered about this with the whole, since I haven't seen a, a, a demoed one of these in damn near 10 years now. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> obstacle avoidance is one thing as far as not bumping into the walls, bumping into legs on chairs and things like that. Avoiding Legos. But what about,

Mikah Sargent (02:08:43):
I know where you're going.

Ant Pruitt (02:08:44):
Yeah. But what about dog poop? I mean, that is a, a legit concern because sometimes accidents do happen. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> and I have a friend that had <laugh> a robot. It clearly wasn't a dBot that yeah, it ran its schedule and it just, it did a cleanup.

Mikah Sargent (02:09:01):
Oh,

Ant Pruitt (02:09:02):
Buddy. But it didn't make it any better. I'll just leave it at that. Do you know if dbo and their AI has, has addressed issues like

Mikah Sargent (02:09:10):
This? So the T nine plus does not specifically call out poo avoidance. It does say detect and avoid unables like Lego car keys and move around those. But this one that I'm about to talk about does specifically ha it specifically calls out poo avoidance. Oh. It uses a more advanced algorithm and more advanced technology to be able to go around and, and do that. However, as I mentioned, I, I wouldn't be surprised if this did avoid poo this tine plus because of how well it was able to avoid some things that I have had trouble with in the past where it's Right. Bumping in and just spilling food everywhere. Right. I do wanna mention the T nine plus retails for $800. You can get on Amazon and Best Buy, but a similar vacuum like this from a more popular brand I guess, or more well-known brand is easily $1,800.

(02:10:13):
Yeah. Yeah. So that is actually quite a discount in terms of still having that functionality. And they also have within the app, they, every month they do these deals on the accessories that you can get. And so you get like a bunch of money off of the, the washing pads and if you want to get their their sense, you know, new kind of air freshener scent and all that they do a pretty good job of that as well. So that one's available for $800. Nice. Now moving along to the de bought two 10 Omni, this is kind of a Rolls Royce of vacuums because not only does it do the emptying of the dust bin, but it also will clean, dry, and empty and fill the mopping that's involved with this Dude. So

Ant Pruitt (02:11:09):
Let me, that thing has its own garage. Yeah. It's got, that's exactly,

Mikah Sargent (02:11:12):
It's a garage. It is. So you, yes. This, this is one of the things that I was worried about. I have, so in my kitchen, in my home there's like this little alcove that looks like it was for kind of like, that's where the family PC goes or that's where the, the, you know, you used to put the phone and so there's this open space underneath where normally like you'd put a chair there and then you would like type on top of it or whatever. So the, that open space, this fit very easily. I was worried this wasn't going to it, it ended up fitting. So it all worked fine. Nice. I like to have it kind of out of the way. Nice. And it comes out and does it. So let's, let me talk about this first. So it's about the same size as the dBot T nine Plus.

(02:11:55):
 In terms of overall sort of shape and size, the LIDAR sensor and the radar or the the, why can't I think of the term now? Infrared is, is similar. It also has that bump detection on the front and on the bottom you do get the same kind of detection for making sure it doesn't fall downstairs or anything like that. You'll notice that the brushes are very similar. The wheels are very similar, but instead of the separate attachment for the mop like you have on the other one, in fact I'll bring that back over. This is what slid into the T nine plus. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, this has two microfiber wheels, and these are magnet in

Ant Pruitt (02:12:39):
Ooh.

Mikah Sargent (02:12:40):
So there's just two magnets on the back of this, and it just pops on very easily. So that means they pop off. So if you want to clean them by hand Oh yeah. You're able to do that really easily. You like that?

Ant Pruitt (02:12:50):
Yeah. Yeah. Dude, I'm all about just, just practicality. How, how quickly can I just pop this off and do what I need to do and put it back? That's, yeah.

Mikah Sargent (02:12:58):
The dust bin is pretty similar. The one thing that stood out to me, you'll notice there's no brush in here. What's going on there? Yeah. This doesn't have a brush. So I was a little bit sad about that. I don't know why they didn't include a brush. Oh, actually I, lemme take that back. There was a brush in the bag, but it did not, there's no storage place for the brush. Okay. So you have to remember where you put it. You gotta store it somewhere. And I know these are all, okay, I'm out first. Yeah. <laugh>, these are all very first world problem complaints. But when you're talking about a device that's, you know, upwards of one K, these are things that you have to consider, especially when the less expensive one does have some of that. Yeah. built in now, the T 10 Omni, the first thing I'll mention is that it has a voice assistant built in.

(02:13:45):
You don't have to use it. And in fact, you'll notice I've got an orange light here. Well, it's probably hard to see, but this orange light means I don't currently have that turned on. The voice assistant is called Yuko, Y I K O. And you say, okay, Yuko, and then you proceed to ask it to clean, to do whatever you want. Now, while I have it turned off, because it was getting too many notifi it was, it was thinking I was talking to it too much. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, I understand why they've included this. And I think that it is overall a good idea. And that's because if you've ever added, tried to add a, tried to add a smart vacuum to your system, then you have noticed that it can be kind of difficult to get Amazon's voice assistant or whatever one you're using to actually do what you want it to do.

(02:14:36):
You have to like, give it a nickname. Sometimes you have to say, ask this app to do this thing. As opposed to me just going, okay, eco start vacuuming or, okay, eco vacuum, the living room. So without any extra setup outside of what you would normally do when you're using this vacuum, you can get those voice tools. That is pretty cool. Just for me it was, it ended up being too sensitive and that's why I didn't like it turned on at all times because it was going if you're trying to talk to me, da da da da da <laugh>, it's like, no, I'm not trying to talk to you right now. Ah. but it again, I think that over time that'll, this is the E ecos a relatively new thing for the Ecova system. So I'm not surprised that, you know, in its first iteration it could use some adjustments to the sensitivity.

(02:15:22):
 But let's talk about what's going on in the garage here. So I'm actually gonna put this down on a ground for a moment. And in fact we're gonna have it run here in a minute and we'll see some, some fun stuff. But let me put this down. Somebody make sure Lily's hidden away. Yeah. <laugh>, I guess you could chase it around actually. That'd be kind of cute. So what the, the garage is here is you get the, the docking station and inside there are chargers. And this actually has some like bumpers on the side that are helping to guide it in. But this has two things going on. Down at the bottom there are sprays to actually, it will fill basically down in the bottom with a water bath. And then it fills at that water bath.

(02:16:07):
And then the mopping pads will roll back and forth to clean them. And then it will suck that water out of the water bath up into the dirty water tank. And, oh dude then it's ready to go again. Down here you'll see this sort of opening here. If I hit this button underneath and it opens up this compartment, and this is the compartment here. Let me bring it around so we can show over the top here. This is the compartment that holds the dust bin. Okay. So the dust bin goes in the bottom, but the magic I feel actually happens in the top. And we'll do this from the front cause it's a little too close to the camera. Up here we have two tanks. There's the clean water tank, and then there's the waste water or dirty water tank.

(02:17:00):
And so the cold water tank goes on the one side and mm-hmm. <Affirmative> it will then, as I mentioned, take the water and put it down into the base and clean it out. And then that waste water gets sucked up and put into the dirty water tank. So after about a week, you have to empty the dirty water tank. But what's great is that right in the middle, it also comes with a compartment where you can put their own they have a, like a cleaning solution that you can add to the cold water, but also a really nice brush. And this brush is extendable. Okay, wait, let me see. There we go. So it can extend out and you're meant to use this inside of the garage to clean out that that water bath after a while. So, okay.

(02:17:43):
Once you know, every couple of weeks you clean that out and brush it clean to make sure that everything's good to go inside of there. And what I love about this is, well, a, I think that this these built-in accessories are great because it means that, you know, you don't have to, you furnish your own accessories mm-hmm. <Affirmative> in terms of how to clean it. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> it's kind of all built right in, so you just know what you're supposed to do. But then also this down here has some hot so it's, it's a fan and it is also, it, it warms. So what it'll do is after it runs, it will send heat heated air across those mop pads to dry them out. So you don't have that moistness just sitting there getting dirty, growing germs being nasty. It actually will dry them nice and nice, make sure that the pads are ready to go the next time. Because the, my biggest concern with this whenever I first was testing it is, is this gonna start going around and just spreading gross smells everywhere because those pads are gonna be mildewey or whatever and no, because it's drying it out. Yeah. It doesn't do that. Right. So, alright. 

Ant Pruitt (02:18:55):
Now I have a question for you. Yes. You, you, you say they mentioned having own solution for cleaning. I'm assuming that third party solutions are totally fine, or did they d RM

Mikah Sargent (02:19:06):
This? They did not D rm it? No, of course they, they suggest that you use the first party, but I have like Bissell makes a cleaning solution for, its different like floor cleaners and stuff Yep. That I've put in there. And it was just fine. I wouldn't use like a very soapy cleaner because of course then that's gonna like make a mess. But sort of light solution was AO Okay. And it worked just fine. And yeah, I did not use their first party solution with this. Now the other kind of cool thing about this this T 10 Omni is that it is not just a vacuum cleaner. And I'm going to, it's a Rolls-Royce, it's a rolls, you said it was a Rolls Royce. It is also a Rolls-Royce <laugh>. It does more than that.

(02:19:55):
So I'm going to go into the, so here you can see this is what it looks like for the t the T nine plus where you enter smart cleaning with, and there's also the T 10 Omni and there are two options here. Enter smart cleaning and enter video manager. So I'm gonna tap on enter video manager and then oh, can we sh turn this off for a second? I think I can remember my password. <Laugh>, you have to set up a pin in order to set up this feature video recording. And then, okay, now you can go ahead. What you're seeing here is the camera that is built into the front of the device. Now what I'm gonna try to do, I thought that there was a way to sort of joystick it around, but there might not be home patrol.

(02:20:45):
There we go. So it's gonna start patrolling around and we'll get, and there's, there's Lily. And so we'll get a view as it's right now it's just sort of figuring itself out. But it should start moving here shortly. Oh, it's trying to return home. So that is a little odd. There we go. So it's looking around for its home, which of course is way out of its view. <Laugh> <laugh>. So it's going, what in the world is happening here by your feet? Yes, and it is moving around right now and looking for its home. What you can do with this is you can actually, it has a built-in microphone and speaker so that you could send out a message. So if I was trying to get in touch, then I could do that. You'll see that it just saw that there were some wires that it's like, oh, I don't think I can go over those.

(02:21:33):
So it actually backed up and it's gonna go a different way now. And right now what it's doing is it's mapping out this new space. So you'll see in the top left corner there's this blue that is kind of filling out. And that is because it's going, oh, I'm clearly not where I thought I was. So what the heck is going on here? And look, this is it kind of panicking a little bit <laugh> as it's looking around. So yeah, here it is behind me going, where am I supposed to be going? I will I did not give it a fair chance. I will say that by telling it that it was not that, that it was in a new space. So it does think right now that it's in the old space. And I think that's part of what's making it a little, I like

Ant Pruitt (02:22:09):
The idea that it said, holy moly, this is a bunch of cables. Let me run away from them.

Mikah Sargent (02:22:14):
So this is kind of a cool thing where I can say, Hey, I want you to go to a different space. And so I can tap and say, Hey, go here. And then it will move to that designated location. So this is great if you have mapped out like a living room or yeah, <laugh>, I'm gonna, I'm gonna have it stop for now. What I want, could one of you maybe take it out to that area <laugh>? And then we can, we can show it actually getting some, giving it a fair shot. So anyway, outta the corner. Yeah. If, yeah, no one puts baby in the corner, in this case, that's the T 10 Omni <laugh>. If you had this set up in your home, you could say, Hey look I want you to go into the living room area and this is how I want you to to, to do that. Oh, now we've got Lily sort of sort of playing with it

Ant Pruitt (02:23:08):
<Laugh>,

Mikah Sargent (02:23:09):
But now it's kind of looking around and you could use this. I was thinking about how you could use this if you had a if you had pets. And so this would be one way that you could check in on them if they didn't run away completely because they're going, what is with this? So yes, along with the kind of radar technology that's, or the lidar technology that's built in this is the T 10 Omni which has that extra feature. And that is what I will say. And I think that's what kind of makes me wonder if they maybe traded out having more of the other sensors in the front to have that camera built into it. And that's why it wasn't as good. Cuz that's the one where I had these, the their metal food bowls mm-hmm. <Affirmative> and they are reflective. Right? And so I'm thinking it's not seeing that metal food bowl and because the metal food bowl isn't heavy enough, ah, then it isn't hitting the bumper sensors. So for some reason the T nine plus was able to avoid it, but the T 10 was not. And I wonder if it's cuz those cameras are in the front

Ant Pruitt (02:24:15):
And step That's an interesting trade off though. Yeah. makes you wonder, you know, what was their testing procedures on that mm-hmm. <Affirmative> I, I, cuz again, those bowls are not very heavy for whatever dog. A even if you have like a massive like mind, the bowls are still fairly lightweight and you just want to avoid it, so. Hmm.

Mikah Sargent (02:24:33):
Yeah. So, and, and this some of the, the newer technology that they have for the sensing is actually still in beta. Like they roll out new stuff all the time mm-hmm. <Affirmative> as they try to improve upon the algorithm. So I wouldn't be surprised if it gets better over time. So the T nine plus again retails for 800, the T 10 Omni retails for 1300. But again, if we look at comparable devices, they are far more expensive than that. And I don't know if I've seen one that also has a camera packed into it to give you kind of home patrol options if you want to check in on your home while you're away. So I think what they're doing is really clever and I was really happy to get a chance to try these out and see what they're all about. The T 10 Omni is like brand spank a new as of, I think late last month and then the T nine plus this specific version, the plus version of it also makes it brand spanking new. But the T nine has been out for a while. Both of them available like Amazon and Best Buy and stuff. But yeah, these are some really, I think, incredible robotic vacuums that don't, that you don't have to maybe break the bank for while still getting mm-hmm. <Affirmative> that sort of more advanced technology in place.

Ant Pruitt (02:25:52):
You gotta give them credit though. Again, I reviewed an Ecova dBot again, it's, it's been almost 10 years ago, and here they are still iterating on their previous designs and, and, you know, almost 10 years later says a lot.

Mikah Sargent (02:26:06):
Yes. So thank you for letting me take a moment to talk about those. Am am I, am I on? Yeah. Okay, good. I guess it's just super quiet in comparison over there, but yeah, I I've been wanting to, to talk about those since the embargo lifted. So it was great to get a, get the opportunity to do so. Nice. I believe that is gonna do it for us this week.

Ant Pruitt (02:26:31):
It is. Yeah.

Mikah Sargent (02:26:33):
Did time fly for you?

Ant Pruitt (02:26:34):
Does that mean I survived? You

Mikah Sargent (02:26:35):
Survived <laugh>. Take a breath. You made it.

Ant Pruitt (02:26:41):
Goodness, goodness, goodness. This was a lot of fun, sir. Good.

Mikah Sargent (02:26:44):
I'm glad. And thank you so much for taking some time out to join me today for Ask the Tech Guys, thank you to those of you who have called in to those of you who've sent in emails to those of you who have sent in videos and everything in between, thanks to those of you who just hang out in the, the Zoom.

Ant Pruitt (02:27:02):
Cool missing in people hanging out in the Zoom. That that's pretty cool.

Mikah Sargent (02:27:05):
It is fun. We are doing the show every Sunday. Next Sunday will be with Rosemary Orchard as my co-host, and then the Sunday after that will be with Scott Wilkinson. So looking forward to having them on as well. So, you know, get your, your automation and iOS questions ready for next week. Yeah. And the following week, if you've got home theater questions Scott will be here. Or you just got questions about how to laugh in such a way that it just makes everyone's stay better.

Ant Pruitt (02:27:37):
It's the best laugh on the internet. Mr. Scott Wilkinson, hands down. He is such a joy to talk to. And, and then when he, you get that laugh, it just makes you just feel warm and fuzzy on the inside too. He's such good people man. It does

Mikah Sargent (02:27:52):
<Laugh>. And thank you aunt for your expertise today and for hanging out and yeah, we will see you or I will see you at least next week for another episode of Ask the Tech Guys. Take

Ant Pruitt (02:28:06):
Care everybody.