Ask The Tech Guys 2005 Transcript

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

0:00:00 - Leo Laporte
Well, hey, hey, hey. It's time for Ask the Tech Guys, our last show of 2023. Coming up, chris Markwart will talk about how to take pictures of the northern lights.

0:00:10 - Mikah Sargent
Ooh, and I'm Mikah Sargent and we answer the age old question how do I take my VHS tapes and make them digital?

0:00:19 - Leo Laporte
Ooh, how fun, and then precocious. Two and a half year old what's a great electronics gift for him? All that and more coming up next on Ask the Tech Guys, our last show of the year Podcasts you love.

0:00:35 - Mikah Sargent
From people you trust.

0:00:38 - Leo Laporte
This is Tweet. This is Ask the Tech Guys with Mikah Sargent and Leo Laporte, episode 2005,. Recorded Sunday, december 17th 2023. Chaos Monkeys in My Rolodex. Listeners of this program get an ad free version if they're members of Club Twit. $7 a month gives you ad free versions of all of our shows, plus membership in the Club Twit Discord, a great clubhouse for Twit listeners. And finally the Twit Plus feed with shows like Stacey's Book Club, the Untitled Linux Show and more. Go to twit.tv/clubtwit. And thanks for your support. Well, hey, hey, hey. It's time for the last Ask the Tech Guys of the year In duper to play. Hello Mikah Sargent, hello Leo Laporte. Don't shake my head in the mustache.

My mustache is slowly but surely falling we had to do this because look how beautifully dressed Mikah is. You look like an Edwardian prince. Oh, thank you. I look like Captain Kangaroo after a long night out. But this is a show where you answer your tech questions, if you dare ask them, 8887242884. That's the phone number.

0:02:04 - Mikah Sargent
That is the phone number you call. You may also visit the URL calltwittv, which you can do on your phone or on your computer. We suggest the phone because it makes it very easy. You type in that URL. It takes you to this little screen where it says hey, join this zoom. And then you hang out in the zoom. Very important, there will be a button somewhere at the bottom of your screen. If you're on your phone or you're on your computer, that is a little hand and we'll say raise hand. You want to click or tap that button. That lets us know that you're not just hanging out in the zoom, but then that you indeed do have a question. You can also email us at twittv. You can send in text, you can send in audio, you can send in video. We'll get those questions and, of note, your questions today need not be holiday related, despite the fact that we ourselves are. But if they are bonus points in my heart from you.

0:02:58 - Leo Laporte
Absolutely Jolly good.

0:03:00 - Mikah Sargent
Mikah, micah, your mustache.

0:03:02 - Leo Laporte
Thank you.

0:03:03 - Mikah Sargent
Thank you.

0:03:06 - Leo Laporte
Anybody got any crazy glue I could use. All right. What else? What do we do this time of year? We do the stories of the year, do we? I threw you with that one.

0:03:19 - Mikah Sargent
Shocking.

0:03:20 - Leo Laporte
We actually we could, but we don't. No and we won't. We got best ofs. Next week we do, which will be fun. So that's the 24. That's Christmas Eve. No, we don't have a best of for us, though. We're taking the weeks off.

0:03:34 - Mikah Sargent
That's right. We should take the time off.

0:03:37 - Leo Laporte
We didn't make a best of. I don't know why, because I guess the editors said you know what, leo and Mikah there's nothing. Nothing was good this year, to repeat. So no, we're just going to take two weeks off. So this is our last one of the year and we will be back On the 7th.

0:03:51 - Mikah Sargent
January 7th.

0:03:53 - Leo Laporte
If my math, your math, is math Good job, but there will be a best of for Tweet on Christmas Eve, and actually Christmas Eve is our holiday show, which is the old fart, which is not good but there's a fire burning. So anyway, the old farts Christmas show with Jeff Jarvis, steve Gibson, rod Pyle and Doc Searles. That's really going to be fun, and me, the old timers talking about the good old days. But also, I think, and really importantly, because we've seen it all, what the future holds is. I think our context helps understand this, and then there will be a best of on New Year's Eve for Tweet. Many of our shows will have best ofs all next week, so you have holiday plans.

0:04:38 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, just the typical holiday plans of spending time with some family. Is there a wordle in your holiday plans? There's not, but I saw this story about what we've learned from wordle 515 million wordles.

0:04:55 - Leo Laporte
This is the New York Times word puzzle Solved in the year 2023. And it says for the first time, we've analyzed how players performed in half a billion wordle games and the results with strategies, the wordle bot I didn't even know they had a wordle bot. That seems like cheating. I don't think I want to use the wordle bot. I mean honestly, really, of the 30 starting words the most popular and this surprises me Do you have a starting word you use over and over on wordle?

0:05:21 - Mikah Sargent
I don't play it anymore. I used to use tiger.

0:05:24 - Leo Laporte
Interesting Because of course, you want to try E-T-A-I-O-N those are the most common letters in the English language and then SHRDLU. I use tears Because it has E-A-T, but it also has R and S and S, I feel like, and especially if you get an S at the end, that eliminates the possibility of plurals.

0:05:48 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, I thought there were never plurals. I don't know. I seem to remember someone telling me that Don't worry about plurals.

0:05:54 - Leo Laporte
Well, people have been using a ju, but guess what the New York Times says? It's terrible. I do not use a du or audio.

That's yours, john, yeah, audio is one of the most popular wordle starting words A, du, stare, slate, audio, raise, crank. So this is a word puzzle if you haven't played it and you're guessing. You have five guesses to guess a five letter word. But you get to start. It's kind of like mastermind you get to start with a word and then it tells you how many are right and how many are in the correct position. So the starting word really makes a big difference. So everybody likes a du for some reason. I mean it's 8%. It's not overwhelmingly the favorite. Mine tears is down here way in the less than 1% category. However, starting with a du or audio John puts human players at a disadvantage. And, by the way, what the hell? Who cares if it's not a human player? Forget the non human players.

I don't care about them. So if you start with compared to starting with slate, which apparently they think is a very good word A du will give you 132 extra guesses over a 12 month period. 10 extra guesses a month. This really feels like it's over analysis. What is that Naval gazing? Naval gazing it is, but you know what it made in the New York Times a lot of money it did indeed, their naval is full of gold.

0:07:20 - Mikah Sargent
It's a golden naval. That's why they're staring at it. I'd stare at it if my game were full of gold, if I looked down and suddenly there was gold.

0:07:26 - Leo Laporte
Whoa there's gold in them their navels. Did you see the story about Mark Zuckerberg's secret Hawaiian?

0:07:33 - Mikah Sargent
compound. Oh, my goodness, you can't talk about it, it's secret, but somebody is, apparently. I love the line in it. This was my favorite line and it's very near the beginning and it says oh, come on, where is it? Basically, it says oh, here we go. Almost anyone who passes compound security from carpenters to electricians to painters to security guards is bound by a strict non-disclosure agreement. According to several workers involved, who disclosed it.

0:08:01 - Leo Laporte
Yeah Well, they didn't give their names in their hope and they won't get fired, but people do get fired. It is on Kauai, the beautiful garden island of Hawaii. Hawaiians are not thrilled about it. He's blocked off the beach, which you're not supposed to do, and people are upset that. People who are native to the island say who is this robotic fellow? Some of the weird things that we learned. First of all, it is one of the largest building projects in history yeah, private, largest private Private. He bought the land, a lot of it, starting in 2014, and he kept buying properties, so it's a fairly big share of the island 1400 acres. The funniest thing is there is a 5000 square foot safe room or bunker that is underground, which means he's planning for the apocalypse, its own power source, its own water, food sources.

According to the wire, it'll cost 270 million dollars in the land alone, Anyway. So I think this is just a leak of what every billionaire is doing. We're just building a hidey hole, While the rest of us I don't know what's going to happen. Are we going to run out of food, water? Is the earth going to get too warm to survive? Who knows? But they're planning for it, which is just kind of awful. I mean, first of all, what kind of life are you and Priscilla and the kids going to have underground in a 5000 square foot bunker for years? That sounds awful.

And everybody up there is dead or sick or passing feet. I mean, that is you know. Would you want to do that? No, I'd stay up with the rest of the people, do what I could to help and if it, you know, if I starved to death, I starved to death, but I don't want to live in a 5000. That's crazy. It tells you a little something about the psychology. You know. Some of them are reconditioning old ICBM missile silos to be, you know, again underground. It wasn't the plot of silo that Apple TV shows. They're all living underground and who's that is? Oh, this is. This is my favorite fallout 76. Isn't it? I love this four. 74 four, fallout four.

Okay, that's your little robot friend. Did you play that game excessively? Is that why you? I played three, four was, and I like 76. Although I know people didn't like it, but I liked it.

0:10:38 - John Ashley
Yeah, it was. It was okay, but just wasn't the same.

0:10:43 - Leo Laporte
Anyway, yeah, it is like fallout, because you come out of a bunker and fallout, don't you? Yeah, and to the into the world which is somehow been destroyed by nuclear war or something. Anyway, let's not think about that. This is the holiday season, let's think jolly, jolly thoughts.

0:10:57 - Mikah Sargent
Oh dear, not about you're going to go where I think you're going. Oh no, you go there. I just I thought we were going to talk about pig butcher. I thought you might.

0:11:06 - Leo Laporte
This is a jolly thought. So do you know what pig butchering is? I had no idea.

0:11:11 - Mikah Sargent
I do now. We talked about the show.

0:11:13 - Leo Laporte
I just didn't know the term. You get those messages all the time that just say hello, no, hi. Or I get a lot of more complicated ones like hey, Joanne, I'm not going to be able to come into work today, I'm feeling terrible. Or yeah, I can't go to that party. You know they try all kinds.

0:11:30 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, I'm. Oh, it was so nice to meet you, stephanie, at that party the other night.

0:11:34 - Leo Laporte
It's always not your name, and it's often something that you would go oh gosh, I hope she, I hope she gets that flat fixed or whatever, Because what they want you to do is say, oh, this is not Stephanie, this is Mikah. I'm sorry you got the wrong number in which they say oh why, Mikah? I hope you're having a good day.

0:11:53 - Mikah Sargent
How are you doing? How are you doing so, after we talk for a little bit, here's a photo of me. What are you thinking about?

0:11:59 - Leo Laporte
So apparently they call it pig butchering Lord have mercy. Because they're basically. It's a scam. You figured that out, I think, a long time ago and they're trying to get money out of isolated and lonely people with the promises of friendship and love. They never offer me friendship and love.

0:12:20 - Mikah Sargent
Mostly they just want me to buy crypto, but anyway hours usually end up being crypto, but these, these are even slower burns. These seem to take a little while and they really try to kind of befriend you and essentially they end up making, yeah, as a lonely or isolated person, this person becomes your friend or convince you that they are in love with you and that you're in love with them.

0:12:40 - Leo Laporte
They use to have a name for this called catfishing.

I don't know why we need pig butchering, I know, I don't know why it happens to me, but I think that's federal prosecutors, because they say they have four indictments and two arrests have been made in an international pig butchering scheme that cost victims more than this is what's sad $80 million. Usually elderly, lonely people. They take their life savings. Four men have been indicted, two arrests have been made. I guess the other two probably are out of the US. Lu Zhang, justin Walker, joseph Wong all California residents conspired conspired with Illinois resident Heilong Zhu to launder the illicit proceeds of their scam. Pig butchering comes from the Chinese phrase Shaju Pan, so I guess maybe the Chinese invented it. It's cold messaging victims. Anyway, don't fall for that.

0:13:32 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, if someone messages you out of the blue whether they're talking to you or mentioning someone else's name. Just be aware and, as we always say on this show, we know many of you who are watching this show are sophisticated and understand the implications here. This is an opportunity to tell family members hey, if you get these messages out of the blue, it's not someone who's there to be your witness, it's not someone who's there to be your friend. It is something that you should not trust and it's not a wrong number.

0:14:00 - Leo Laporte
This is what really annoys me is they're playing off these people's generosity and warmth of spirit. Oh, I'm so sorry.

You know you've got to flat. Is there anything I can do to help? Oh no, but, by the way, can you give me a million dollars? That'd help? So, anyway, and I think there's a little cryptocurrency involved, of course. So sad, because cryptocurrency had all this promise and ended up just being a way for scammers to rip people off. Well, there's the news. That was Jolly. I mean like Jolly, I'm sorry I got off because I swallowed my mustache. Okay, you know what? I'm going to retire the old stash.

0:14:45 - Mikah Sargent
I think I will, In fact.

0:14:47 - Leo Laporte
I should retire this at Actually ripped that time, did it? It actually was stuck. It's stuck Of all the things you know, one at the fall off and then, when you do you can't 8887242884. We go to the phones as soon as my hat stops. Is it done? Are you done? All right, let us. Who should we?

0:15:12 - Mikah Sargent
John Ashley boy producer has thought we were agreeing that we only do the boy producer for one show. Do we agree to that? I think you did say that, hey old man.

0:15:24 - Leo Laporte
What's up?

0:15:25 - Mikah Sargent
Okay, old man, yeah, I'm the old man, you call me boy producer, so it's only fair. Let's pick up on a wireless caller.

0:15:36 - Leo Laporte
Let's press the button and see what we can get on the old horn. Get on, get on the horn.

0:15:44 - Mikah Sargent
Get on the horn. I don't know where that comes from. I think it's horn shaped, right. I think it's more like trumpeting your announcement. Yeah get on the horn? Oh, maybe because think about the old phones where it was kind of a horn that you spoke into. You know you hung it on the side. I had to roll the thing.

0:16:02 - Leo Laporte
Oh, martha, give me, give me Joe, call her press star six to unmute and say hello.

0:16:11 - Caller
Hello Leo, Hello Michael, Hi, what's your?

0:16:13 - Leo Laporte
name and where you calling from First name.

0:16:17 - Caller
This is Kenny from Cotton Town, tennessee.

0:16:20 - Mikah Sargent
Oh my good friend Kenny.

0:16:21 - Leo Laporte
Hello Kenny, cotton Town Kenny we call him. I don't know why. What's up, kenny?

0:16:28 - Caller
Oh, that's because I live in a city called that, but anyway, I have a, that's right.

Anyway, I got a Netflix question and a little IT story I wanted to tell you guys. So last Friday I was going around with at work you know we have a company agreement with HP to provide laptops to all the supervisors that I worked with, the managers and so forth, and one of them you know our company occasionally has, the IT group throws out like these software updates on occasion to update a system and apparently what had happened was that it accidentally bricks one of the older laptops that they had and we were trying to figure out what it was. And normally in the cases like that, when you have something like that, always has something to do with power and sure enough, it was low on power and thankfully I found a good power supply. Initially had usbc port, but it did not use it because it was an older one, from 2018. Or obviously couldn't just charge, and so thankfully we had a port where I could put it in there and we're able to get to where it could update and it works fine.

But this manager was kind of worried about it for a little bit because he didn't know why it wouldn't turn on. It turns out it was in sort of a hibernation mode. It wasn't totally turned off, but it just didn't have enough power to finish it because it just didn't have enough juice in the battery, as they say. So thankfully we've figured it out and now up and running, even if it is an older model. But I was able to kind of toy with it a little bit just to see. So I can keep getting my tricks with IT done, and along with printers, that's great.

0:18:11 - Leo Laporte
Had he not been charging it.

0:18:15 - Caller
Not really I don't understand.

0:18:18 - Leo Laporte
After four hours my computer stops working. You know, one thing that does is the case which is a little weird is way a lot of laptops work. The power goes through the battery, so the battery isn't like a secondary thing that it switches over to when it's not plugged in. The power is literally going through it in series and what that means is that when the battery stops working it's too old, it stops taking charge. Often those laptops stop working. So here's a little pro tip If your battery is not charging and your laptop won't come on, if you can remove the battery, because what that does is it takes the battery out of the series and now the power is going directly to the laptop. And often that's a way to get an older laptop working again, and it has to be an older battery. But it's up to remove the battery, frankly, sad to say. But removing those batteries and keeping it plugged in, you can at least use it. If you can get a replacement battery, all the better. What's your question about Netflix? Caught in town, kenny?

0:19:15 - Caller
Well, I don't know, you're familiar with Louis Rossman, right? Oh, I love Louis.

0:19:20 - Leo Laporte
Rossman, he's the. He's a guy who had a Manhattan repair. I think he's kind of given up his business, the Manhattan repair business and became an expert. Well, he moved to Austin, ah, okay, but he became an expert in kind of right to repair. He was a big right to repair expert, of course, youtube celebrity, you know, and he's got 2 million subscribers to his YouTube page.

0:19:44 - Caller
And I'm one of them. Yeah.

Yeah. So he's come out with several videos on Netflix in which the biggest gripe is that if you're trying to watch something on, let's say, 4k or 1080p like I did this morning, I was trying to watch something on Netflix and even without a VPN like I say, express VPN aircove routers I've used in the past because I'm surprised it won't work with it, but it just will not pick up anything 1080p or HD in real good quality. You know right off the bat, you know you have to wait forward to load and everything, and I used Apple TV for Netflix. It's almost like and he mentioned it in one of these videos that unless you like you play by their rules and use, like there's certain smart TV, you're not going to get like the full 4K, 1080p experience, and he kind of called it out on that per se. And I guess my question is to you is is there a reason why Netflix screams well on certain devices and not so nice on others?

0:20:49 - Leo Laporte
It used to be and maybe this has changed. I have a little problem with most of these YouTubers, including Lewis, which is they get views by being outraged, being angry, being there's something wrong so it's all about. You know that'll really worry you down after a while if you're angry at everything all the time. So I think that just like spending too much time on Twitter, spending too much time watching these angry YouTube videos, can really worry it down and make you think the whole thing has fallen apart and the crap checks going to hell and God and they, and it's pretty soon you become an old man yelling at the clouds. So just a word of warning you don't be like me. You know, watch some upbeat stuff every once in a while, but YouTube really kind of the algorithm kind of pushes them in that direction. In any event, it used to be and I'll have to check to see if it is that actually the best way to watch Netflix was on Apple, because so here's how.

Think about how Netflix's architecture is. You've got Netflix Corporation Home Office with all those movies on servers. Now they probably in fact I'm sure they use a CDN, so those movies, just like for us, are moved out to the edge closer to you on a CDN. Cdn has a copy of the movie and so the movie is going to play back from that server. Apple, because they wanted the best quality, and this used to be and I think it's still true said to Netflix.

Forget that will be your CDN for Apple TV users. They use Akamai and we will, because we want the experience to be the best on Apple TV. Cash all your movies and they won't be coming from you or your CDN. You won't be competing with other Netflix users. They'll be coming from Apple directly and that in the past has always given Apple the TV the best, I think, the best Netflix quality. Netflix quality does go up and down, depends on your bandwidth, of course, and this is the problem. It's hard to see where in the chain this is falling apart, but I've had good experiences with Apple TV.

0:22:42 - Mikah Sargent
I used to have this issue where it would take a while to load, and once I just plugged in with Ethernet with the new Apple TV 4K, I have no issues with Netflix loading immediately. Only in rare occasions where you hit that perfect time where everybody else in the vicinity is also watching will I get a blur from time to time. But outside of that, yeah and that was switching from using Wi-Fi to using Ethernet that really, of course, made difference.

0:23:12 - Leo Laporte
I do that on all of my TVs. You may remember, a few years ago we went and had somebody crawl around in the attic and drop Ethernet to all the places where TVs are, because always hardwired is better Always. But, and so that's one thing. Netflix quality itself, I think, has often been slammed for being over compressed. I think that's what Alex Lindsey has said. I haven't noticed that personally.

Yeah, I haven't had an issue with it, but maybe I'm just not as this is why it's hard to it's hard to assess because it could be Alex is watching on Wi-Fi. You know, we don't know. Yeah, we don't know what everybody's exact situation is.

0:23:47 - Mikah Sargent
And that goes back to your point, leo, with the YouTuber thing. I think I've seen this a lot with tech reviewers in general is a lack of what boils down to empathy, meaning that they end up believing that their experience is everyone's experience. And so if I had this experience, that means that this is the way it is globally and I'm going to complain about it in that way. And it happens to be the case that you identify that this was a problem that you were having as well, and so it works in this case. But simply because one person is having an experience does not necessarily mean that it's global, worldwide, and you're going to find people who say no, like I just did.

0:24:29 - Leo Laporte
No, I haven't had this issue, so yeah, I don't this is a problem we have and we always have to fight with, is our own tendency to say whatever's happened to me is happening to everybody. Yeah, that's human nature, and vice versa oh it never happens to me.

I don't know what's wrong with you, and so, yeah, it's human nature and it takes. It's one of the reasons experienced tech journalists often are better because they've spent a lot of time learning not to do that. In the past they used to have editors. Nobody has editors anymore, but they used to have.

I wonder I'm looking for Netflix network architecture because it is a very interesting architecture. They use ISPs, for instance, as also as their CDN. So big ISPs like Comcast will have a Netflix server on prem, which you're getting it from. Here's a let's see it looks like. Here's a network diagram on LinkedIn and it is crazy. But if you think about it, to me this has always been amazing is how the network architecture is for play massive operations like Facebook, netflix, google, what they must do. And really I hear people, including Lewis Rossman, saying Netflix has taken five seconds to load a YouTube video. It just cracks me up because I come from a time when five seconds wow. It would buffer for a minute before it would start playing back in the real days, the real audio days. So if Netflix I mean if Google's slowing it down, that's a different thing.

But this is an interesting article from techbit. It's called, inside Netflix, a deep dive into its cutting edge system architecture. I find this stuff fascinating. This one's from October, so it's not too old, which means it's probably a fairly recent. Let me see if I can open this image. Oh, now it's doing all the things everybody these days has to do to survive, including us popping up a newsletter thing, but this is an interesting architecture. We've got Open Connect, which is Netflix. In fact, there's a article about Netflix Open Connect. This is their system. This is kind of for doing this, and look at this crazy architecture. So I think it depends on so many things not just your home network, but your ISP, whether your ISP is caching Netflix for you, the device you're using. Somebody in our Discord saying they like Netflix best on Roku? That maybe it'll be, but who? But?

0:27:01 - Chris Marquardt
why is?

0:27:01 - Leo Laporte
that right. So all of this is very complicated because they are serving so much data to so many people for a long time. Maybe this is still the case. Especially if you had a cable internet. It would get slow around 7 pm every night. It was because everybody's watching Netflix, which is one of the arguments Netflix has for Comcast and others to have a Netflix server in their facility, because that speeds things up quite a bit. So I wish we could say we know categorically what's going on or what the best way to watch Netflix is. I don't think it's as simple as that. So many devices involved.

0:27:41 - Caller
No, no, that really is really a good example, really just how the internet itself works, regardless of whether it's Netflix or YouTube or even Twitter. I mean, it just takes a lot of effort to get all of this. You've heard us talk about Cash Fly.

0:27:54 - Leo Laporte
That's our CDN. Netflix Open Connect is their CDN. That's the one where they put servers in ISPs if they can. Not all ISPs go along with that. Most of them do because it's good for their customers.

0:28:05 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, exactly that's saving them customer support it's so complicated.

0:28:13 - Leo Laporte
They use Chaos Monkey, a tool that randomly terminates instances, to make sure that your system can tolerate failures. They're doing so much stuff and I have some friends who do this kind of thing for Facebook and other companies. You have a few.

0:28:29 - Mikah Sargent
Chaos Monkey friends.

0:28:30 - Leo Laporte
I have some Chaos Monkeys in my Rolodex and I have to say it is a highly paid position because you're doing magic. You are doing magic, but so much magic that it's almost impossible, Kenny, for us to know what the path from Netflix to you is. That path has a lot of moving parts.

0:28:54 - Leo Laporte
This is a good article If you want to read it.

0:28:56 - Leo Laporte
Techbitcom it's a tech blog and they've done a really good write-up of the Netflix architecture. We'll put it in the show notes. There's a lot of information in here and it really is. It's quite impressive. They also have ways you can ping it and so forth. If you'd like to check. You could spend some energy figuring out what's going on with your connection, if you really care. That's cool, yeah.

0:29:23 - Mikah Sargent
So yeah, maybe you should check that out.

0:29:25 - Leo Laporte
It's a good article. Yeah, I'm very impressed. Chaos Monkey is a tool developed by Netflix to randomly break things. It's a good name, isn't it? In conclusion, he writes Netflix architecture is an intricate blend of cutting edge technologies and strategies designed for global scale, fault tolerance and a high degree of personalization, making it a leader in the streaming industry. Behind every play button on Netflix is an intricate web of technologies and strategies. I think that's fairly fairly accurate. Yeah, I bet you, netflix has a white paper on this. I knew they do on OpenConnect. I bet you there's other places you can read more about Netflix Interesting system. Yeah, hey, it's good to talk to you, kenny. How's the, how's the work going? You liking it?

0:30:18 - Caller
Oh, it's going good. It's like you said about making magic. That's kind of how they feel about me whenever there's a issue with, like, a laptop or printers. You know, like it's like I was just saying to Mikah you know, I always hardwired the printers at our workstation yes, we can get things done fast and Wi-Fi. So that advice does go in effect, not just with printers or Apple TV, it's everything like that.

And I do want to say I did watch Oppenheimer on Apple TV yesterday and I know you guys were talking about Chris Nolan and how he uses audio and the sound quality. I didn't have that much of a problem with it when I watched it. That's because I probably have it hardwired. Surprise, surprise with a Sony speaker. In fact, everything I have audio and video is Sony and it is sad that you know Sony is kind of I don't want to say totally given up on TV, just the Samsung. You know Samsung's really kind of taking the market per se. But I've always been a Sony guy for many years and I've always felt like they make good quality and hopefully down the road they maybe will make good quality products as far as audio again, but it's a long trip for them to go if they want to challenge Samsung. But yeah, I always felt that like watching Oppenheimer and no problem with audio. I guess it just depends on what you use per se.

0:31:37 - Leo Laporte
Well, let's not forget, scott Wilkinson told us the best TV of the year in the TV shootout that they do every year, the value system TV shootout, was a Sony. So Sony's still making the best TVs, thank you.

0:31:50 - Mikah Sargent
Kenny. Thank you so much, kenny. Take care, you guys have a good day. Merry Christmas Merry. Christmas Happy holiday Cotton Town, kenny.

0:31:57 - Leo Laporte
Cotton Town Kenny. Why do we call him Cotton Town Kenny?

0:32:01 - Mikah Sargent
Why? Because he's from Cotton Town, oh.

0:32:03 - Leo Laporte
I thought nobody knew no. All right, so you know, I'm from Kondakint. It's not better, is it?

0:32:10 - Mikah Sargent
I mean, it's better Young and bright, that's great, yeah, actually, why don't I?

0:32:17 - Leo Laporte
answer an email. Oh my gosh, Now I think I might have misarranged this. I think so. You came around here and snuck around. Well, we were all so busy. Is Rob's the one I should start with?

0:32:30 - Mikah Sargent
Yes, Okay, so I need my monocle for this so I can read it, so you can actually see it yeah, rob writes great show.

0:32:38 - Leo Laporte
Thank you so much for the education. I still remember watching your show on cable. Yes, remember cable. I did Cable. I loved that. Clark Cable, I think his name was A voice therapist, stupid, sorry.

0:32:54 - Mikah Sargent
Clark Cable is so dumb.

0:32:56 - Leo Laporte
You call that a stupid joke. Sorry, Go ahead. A voice therapist says, Rob, he needs to take notes as I do voice exercises. Oh, he's working with the voice. He's going. Mommy made me match my MN names. My vocal cords are damaged. I'm sorry, Rob, the keystrokes are loud, my focus is distracted. I told the voice therapist there are keyboards that have quiet key clicks. The voice therapist says what I want to know what brand to buy. He loved the idea, but I couldn't find info on the internet that was reliable. What keyboard would you recommend? A mushy keyboard. So this is actually. You know, get us going on keyboards. You're never going to get us to stop.

0:33:39 - Mikah Sargent
You and John, I don't care what you're going to use. We love our keyboards.

0:33:42 - Leo Laporte
So this is a big question. Most modern keyboards are quiet, by the way, I should point out. So your therapist is using some old keyboard that he probably really likes, but is a clicky keyboard. The original IBM Omni-key Northgate Omni-key keyboards had what we called buckling springs. John C DeVorek used to sing the praises of a buckling spring keyboard. You can't get really buckling springs anymore. Where'd you put You're there? You can't really get buckling springs anymore.

But the good news is there are lots of companies out there that would make switches that are different, have different characteristics. Key travel is one of them. The bounce of the key is another one and the audible click is another. The buckling keys were very loud and you remember in fact you probably still hear it when you're on the line with airline reservationists or you're at the desk there, and it's because those are buckling keys. Those are old terminals that have big buckling key keyboards. I like them. They're good for a carpal tunnel because you're really working. It's not smaller, but apparently smaller movements are worse for you. So you're moving your hands more and you're working a little harder. So there's a couple of things to say about that.

Honestly, most laptops are pretty quiet. If you can hear it. I don't know if you're on a call or not. If the therapist's microphone is in the laptop, then you will hear it. You will absolutely hear it. We have this problem sometimes occasionally with some of our guests on our shows where they are not using a standalone mic. You notice we always try to use a standalone mic. They're using their laptop mic and you hear banging on it. Remember how Stacy you could hear her bang like crazy on the twig because she was a loud typist. So maybe your therapist is a loud typist or maybe you're on a zoom call. Your therapist is not using a separate mic.

0:35:38 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, and another thing along with that is, even if there is a separate mic being used, if it's on the same desk or table as that keyboard and they are a hard type then that will also go right through it. Yeah.

0:35:53 - Leo Laporte
Telephoneing, telegraphing.

0:35:55 - Mikah Sargent
Telegraphing that's it.

0:35:58 - Leo Laporte
So they've provided me with some fun keyboards. This is the keyboard I personally like, which is not a quiet keyboard, but this is the Key Chron you can spend. This is, I think, a $300 keyboard, which is crazy because you could buy $5 keyboards. The $5 keyboards are quiet, by the way, but this one of the reasons I like Key Chron. First of all, this thing weighs five pounds. It's very heavy. You could do some workouts with it. It also has some features that I prefer. It's a wireless, but it can pair to multiple Bluetooth key computers so it can easily switch computers with it. But the other thing is you could choose the keys, and now Key Chron has its own key caps that they use. There are a variety of companies that make different key caps. This is a tester.

0:36:39 - Mikah Sargent
I love that thing.

0:36:40 - Leo Laporte
I love it. This is so great. Is this yours, John? Yeah, this is a tester for a company called Cherry Keyboard. And, by the way, go to Reddit r-slash-r-slash-keyboard and you'll find your people.

Mechanical keyboards, mechanical keyboards, even better. You'll find nutjobs. You'll find people who really take this stuff seriously. I'm a little, I'm a dabbler, so this is what this is. Cherry sends this out. This is a sampler. If they're different, they have different switches. It's like a chocolate sampler. It's a sampler. So they have Speed, silver, black, silent, black, red, silent, red, tactile, gray, brown, silver, other, no, no, clear, green, blue and White. So you can try them. I'll try it. Let's see the Silent one. See how silent that is. That's silent.

0:37:29 - Dick DeBartolo
You want to hear a clicky one.

0:37:31 - Leo Laporte
Here's it. Hear how loud that is. Yep, oh, that's a good one. What is that? That's a Cherry Green, see, I like that, but it's not good on the radio or TV or for a sound, a voice therapist. So maybe try the Cherry Silent Black.

0:37:50 - Mikah Sargent
And I'm thinking too, this is the unique thing about a voice therapist when I was working with Joanna Scott Wilkinson's wife, who does voice therapy specifically, we had to turn off all of the noise cancellation features of Zoom as we were talking, so she could hear you, so she could hear me, and so that the little sounds that I was making that normally Zoom would make go away she could hear. And so, yeah, you have to have that stuff turned off so you can hear those little, they can hear those little sounds that your throat might be making, your vocal cords might be making.

0:38:19 - Leo Laporte
So, yeah, you would have this Cherry Blue. So that was this is really that. So here's Cherry Clear, here's Cherry Green, here's Cherry Blue, it's even louder. And here's Cherry White. I used to use Cherry Brown and Cherry Red. Here's Cherry Red.

0:38:39 - Mikah Sargent
I think I ended up choosing Cherry Green. If I was going to get one, I'd get the Cherry Green.

0:38:43 - Leo Laporte
I like the blue now Wow, that is clicky. They maybe have like a little clicker in there to make that sound.

0:38:52 - Mikah Sargent
There's a tiny little cricket.

0:38:53 - Leo Laporte
So that just gives you an idea. I mean here's, you know, 12 different keys with 12 different sounds, and that's just a fraction of what's out there. Cherry's not the only switchmaker, so you could tell them the cheapest, the cheaper the keyboard, the less the travel and the softer it will be. Those are mushy, they're plastic domes, they don't make any sound. So she could go out and just get a cheap keyboard. But I think, if you hear it, either her microphone's right next to it, because look, here I'll make, get that clicky keyboard, the clicky key, the Cherry Blue, right next to the microphone. Now I'll do it down in my lap. You can barely hear it right. So either her microphone is pointing at her lap or, I'm guessing, almost certainly, she's on a zoom call on a laptop, using the mic on the laptop, and that means when she types it is like thunder. You know what, leo? What you need to get you one of these? That's 70 bucks, that's 72 different Cherry keys, wow.

0:39:57 - Mikah Sargent
Just Cherry. It's a variety of different switches.

0:40:01 - Leo Laporte
And if you go to Macass R slash mechanical keyboard, you'll see there are new companies that make switches that people's prefer to. Cherry Cherry was a hot thing five years ago, not anymore. I love these key. I want to make their own Look at that Isn't that crazy.

0:40:15 - Mikah Sargent
I don't even care about the link. Yeah, because I love money for Christmas.

0:40:18 - Leo Laporte
I think key crime will send you the little ones for free, won't they, john? Now you have to buy them. You have to buy them. Well, there you go, you don't. You don't need to worry about that. Tell her to stop using her laptop microphone. Yeah, get her a $30 headset mic that won't pick up the key strokes. That's probably the real solution. Agreed, good question. All right, we have time for one more.

0:40:40 - Mikah Sargent
Let's do one quick, more quick, even before Dick. Oh yeah, dick will join us in about six minutes. I closed the email box.

0:40:49 - Leo Laporte
Oh oh wow, I thought we were done. I'm picking from the top. It's a long stack. We really got to do more emails. This is crazy. I did quite a few while you were out, did you? Good man? All right, this comes from Cherry. Oh wow, she's the. That's the woman. They named the key caps After Cherry from Oceanside. Hi, cherry, I used to live in.

0:41:12 - Mikah Sargent
Oceanside, California. Oh, I didn't know you live in California before before, way long time ago, I was five and six years old. You don't really remember In Missouri, no, I remember it quite well. Oh, that's why I didn't ever want to live in California, because I thought it was going to be like Oceanside, where it was hot all the time. Oh do you remember?

0:41:29 - Leo Laporte
Cherry, I don't remember. She remembers you. She says hi, micah. No, she says what's the best thing? She puts it in quotes to buy. So I could do it myself Do what yourself? Convert. Oh, it's in the subject Convert old home movies to digital. I have hours of tapes, slash movies, to convert. Well, that's two different problems. One's tapes, vhs tapes, and one is if you say movies, I'm thinking super eight or high. You know the film. What do you think, mikey?

0:42:06 - Mikah Sargent
So if you, she's your friend, if you know her. No, if you insist on doing it yourself, elgato is probably the company that I would use. Elgato makes a video capture device. It is. It has the standard, what is it? Coaxial options as well as an S video cable, if you can believe it, and then it just plugs in USB into your computer and then you play it back on your VHS into the video capture device from Elgato. It's available for just under $90 on Amazon. It's just called Elgato video capture I. I'm curious how you feel, leo, about doing it yourself versus just using one of the services that's out there.

0:42:55 - Leo Laporte
So if you don't have a, if you have either a lot of time or not, a lot of movies to convert, you could do it yourself, but it takes time. It takes the same amount of time as those movies are. Very few things will do it faster than the actual length of the movie. So if you have a thousand hours of movies to convert, it's going to take you at least a thousand hours and some expense. Just digitize them and then you might want to edit them, etc. Etc. Etc. So, honestly, what I would do is get a box together and send it to scan cafe or one of the many different companies that will just take your old movies. One of the advantages of doing that is if you have a variety of formats. So if some of your movies are on high eight video, some of them are on VHS, some of them are on film, you put it all in the box and they have. Their job is to have all the different ways of playing that back and digitize it. So, yeah, it depends on whether you have more time or more money. It costs you money to do it, but it saves you time to have them do it. But doing it yourself takes time. Now, I was just checking on Amazon because for a long time, about 10 years ago, they were selling VHS players that would take a tape on one side and they burnable DVD in the other. Just do it and you'd press play and it would just do it. And yeah, they're all now renewed, or, you know, I don't think anybody's selling them new and they're expensive, they're about 300 bucks. Here's a Magnavox, a Sony, a Samsung Wow, that's 500 bucks. So the whole idea of these is, you know they they're DVD burners, slash players, but they're kind of there. It's kind of an old technology. I knew when they came out with these 10 years ago. This is a interim thing Because eventually everybody who has a VHS tape is going to, is going to burn it up. So see, that side has a VHS player. I mean, if you need a VHS tape player and then that side has a DVD player, so we'll do both duty, but it would also record. I believe it will record and that's the. Yeah, this does the recording, recording, which is kind of nice. That's why they made this.

And now for the video, that that work if it's a VHS tape, but if it's a high eight, now you get to get a camera that will record high eight and play it back from the camera into the computer using the Elgato. And then, if it's film, then you got to get a projector, a super eight or eight millimeter projector, and project it on a screen and then use your camera to capture the video on the screen. They even make little boxes that are basically it's the same thing. You put a camera watching the screen backwards. You have a machine, you know, film player playing into the.

It's a, it's a crazy Rube Goldberg thing, and you're going to buy these things and you're going to use them once and that's that. I send it to Scan Cafe or somebody like them. They'll take good care of it. Since you're an ocean side, the LA area has a lot of companies that will do this locally, and that's good because then you don't have to mail your tapes, you could just carry it in to them and honestly, that's going to be the best way to do it. You don't want to do this, I agree, but if you're retired you got nothing but time.

0:46:05 - Mikah Sargent
I got nothing.

0:46:06 - Leo Laporte
You're going to need your family to you're going to need to, basically the concept. So you'll need three things. You'll need a thing to play it back, a thing to convert the thing that's being played back, which is analog, into bits and bytes, and then you'll need a computer that's connected to that converter to record. And now you have it on the hard drive. So analog player for whatever medium you have, digitizer that converts the bit, the analog signals, into bits, hooked up to a computer for editing and recording. That's conceptually what you need. The problem is you there's all these different analog type players depending on what your medium Exactly.

Yeah, lots of fun. Yeah, have fun, cherry, you should do it. You know I have a box in my office of old VHS tapes, old DVDs, old little hi eight. Do you remember those little hi eight video cameras, so cute, got a lot of that stuff and I know my kids are on there. And the question is how much do I want videos of my kids? You do a lot. That's how much I guess I have a few of when they were really little that I took on a really digital camera.

0:47:13 - Mikah Sargent
I've had a few. All right, I'll send it in, all right.

0:47:18 - Leo Laporte
All right. Some of them are like the old TV shows. I did, you know on the screensavers and call for help. Abby and Henry, when they were little like eight or nine or younger. Even Henry's, born in 94. So he had been four. Abby was born in 92. So she would have been six Came in and they did a review of some silly things. Oh, that's adorable. It would be cute to have. All right, I'll dig it.

0:47:39 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, cause I tell you what. There's one VHS tape that we would always play, um of me interacting with my grandpa and all this, and over time that VHS has lost its magnet.

0:47:51 - Leo Laporte
Oh yeah, digitize it. Yeah, we had, uh, jennifer had a uh recording of her grandmother. Every Thanksgiving she would tell this story about a turkey. It was a cute little kind of poem story and she had on a cassette tape and that's the kind of thing you want to get digitized, cause then then you can make infinite copies and it'll last forever. That those tapes will not, the analog stuff will not, is that you yeah.

0:48:16 - Mikah Sargent
That's the old call for help.

0:48:17 - Leo Laporte
Show they're showing in that scooter. It's found a GIF of the call for help show on tech TV. You know that was me doing what I'm doing right now. Nothing has changed. 25 years later, I'm on the horn. Uh, I probably could play that theme song if I could find it, cause, uh, I don't think anybody claims to the rights to that anymore, Do they?

0:48:40 - Mikah Sargent
We will be back after Leo finds his theme song.

0:48:42 - Leo Laporte
Let's take a break and then it's Dickie day. The giz fizz whiz, whatever he is.

0:48:51 - Mikah Sargent
Ooh, that's all rhymed.

0:48:57 - Leo Laporte
Oh, it's on internet. Archive you ready? I'm ready. Call for help. Show on TV Is this it? You have to download it.

0:49:09 - Leo Laporte
I think Where's the download option? Oh, there it is.

0:49:13 - Mikah Sargent
Ping Torrent zip Wait if it's just a PNG.

0:49:16 - Leo Laporte
I think it's just a picture of windows for some reason oh, somebody found it, joe found it. Oh, you're so good Joe. This is actually kind of funny if you, if you listen to it oh, it's on YouTube. We had a good company do these theme songs. Oh no, this is all I'm talking about. Oh no, this is all. This is not the right one. This is like later this I don't like this one at all. I hated that one. I was so dopey. Made me dance. It was so dopey.

0:50:03 - Mikah Sargent
That was you scouting at the end.

0:50:04 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, sorry it was not good. Where is it Call for help? Theme tech TV there's one with Chris Prillo, but it won't be the same one. Is this it? Yeah, go ahead, you could play this. Okay, here it is. That's it.

0:50:27 - VO
People can help me with my computer. Oh no, Ignition will be with you in four hours. You can upgrade for just $5,000. What?

0:50:38 - VO
Universal studio config board should be set to ID 6. I need that in plain English. Help, lay on the floor and call for help. May I help you?

0:50:46 - Leo Laporte
Is that your voice? Yeah, and here's the set. Hey, how are you? Good to see you Welcome. This is it? Call for help from 19. How, I'm sorry. 2001.

0:50:58 - Mikah Sargent
Your voice is aged like fine wine. I mean, that's sincerely in good way. The stuff.

0:51:03 - Leo Laporte
The computer industry doesn't want you.

0:51:04 - Mikah Sargent
Well, I'm talking higher. Yeah, you can you can empower geek. I think it's a little different. You said I'm glad you're here, we got a great show for you, a very special treat for people.

0:51:14 - Leo Laporte
Well, this is TV who like to play music on their computers, whether I don't have a big mouth. I like to download MP3s. Make their own. Mp3s. Record them to CD. Do you? Remember those days. Dick D Bartolo is here. The Giz Wiz. Hello, Dickie D, Welcome Leo how you doing? You remember those days you were on call for help and the screen savers. Well, you were definitely on the screen savers.

0:51:36 - Dick DeBartolo
Screen savers, I think, is where when I started. You're bundled up, is it?

0:51:40 - Leo Laporte
freezing in Giznyland. Did you forget to? Pay the heat. Yeah, there you go. Hey, happy Christmas, dickie D.

0:51:51 - Dick DeBartolo
We're the same to you guys. We got a very nice oh my mustache.

0:51:55 - Mikah Sargent
Oh, I love that necklace. Is it lighting?

0:51:57 - Leo Laporte
up. Oh yeah, of course.

0:51:59 - Dick DeBartolo
I was going by the Rockefeller tree and I thought there's so many lights they're not going to miss it.

0:52:05 - Leo Laporte
And then you're right, they don't. And what is the hat?

0:52:08 - Dick DeBartolo
The hat is something I'm going to talk about because I already sent a bunch of these out as Christmas gifts. So we've done a hat with speakers in it. We've done a hat with an LED. I found the hat with both speakers and the LED light and a microphone so you can take your phone call and you can. I like the fact that you can pop the LED out and if you have an emergency you can use it as a flashlight Nice. You're basically a walking toolbox.

You slide that off and you charge the LED separately and it's a little like getting it into a computer or and it is inexpensive For some reason. Ray, I bought this one. Gray was $13 and Navy and Black were, I think, 16 bucks. Wow, this is cool and I checked on Amazon earlier and you can get them in a day or two.

0:53:14 - Leo Laporte
So if you want a cookie, Not too late for a last minute Christmas gift. No, no or Hanukkah.

0:53:21 - Dick DeBartolo
You might even make it before.

0:53:22 - Leo Laporte
Hanukkah is over, wow.

0:53:25 - Dick DeBartolo
We missed that, wasn't it yesterday.

0:53:27 - Leo Laporte
Oh, maybe. Yeah, you're right, it might have been yesterday.

0:53:29 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah.

0:53:32 - Dick DeBartolo
You know, yesterday I was wearing candles and I thought you know, yeah, a menorah hat. This seems dangerous Wow.

0:53:38 - Leo Laporte
This is really cool. I like this. I'm going to go buy a dozen of them. So how's the sound quality?

0:53:47 - Dick DeBartolo
The sound quality is fine. I mean, you know, if you've been listening to earbuds you're going to be disappointed, but it's better than the transistor radio. Okay, okay, no, it's pretty decent for opening. And then I thought I'd find something that Mikah would like.

0:54:06 - Mikah Sargent
So I mean, I liked this, this is cool.

0:54:09 - Dick DeBartolo
Oh, this is good. Okay, well then I also have the flashing orb, oh, the LED orb, and I have so much junk on my desk here now.

0:54:19 - Leo Laporte
Can't even find it, can't eat. It's there somewhere. I have to turn it on it's on my website.

0:54:25 - Dick DeBartolo
I love it. I love it.

0:54:27 - Leo Laporte
You can't find it, you should see. By the way, if you've ever get a chance to go to Disneyland, you should see it. It's amazing.

0:54:35 - Mikah Sargent
So is the name the tick duck flying orb a ball Well yes, well, the Bluetooth beanie is the mox to you.

0:54:44 - Leo Laporte
Bluetooth beanie. These are random names these are random, random names.

0:54:49 - Mikah Sargent
I don't see the orb on Gizwizda. I clicked on. Ask the tech guys on the side.

0:54:55 - Leo Laporte
Oh, I'm looking at the front page, that's yeah, and then.

0:54:59 - Dick DeBartolo
So this thing I learned one of the tricks. First of all, every review I read said amazing, If you practice, practice, practice.

0:55:11 - Leo Laporte
That means it's hard. It doesn't work very well.

0:55:15 - Dick DeBartolo
This is a little practicing.

0:55:17 - Mikah Sargent
That's cool. Thank you, Dennis.

0:55:19 - Leo Laporte
I came downstairs and searched through the pile.

0:55:22 - Mikah Sargent
Found it. Dennis was practicing with it. Yeah, maybe that was it.

0:55:25 - Dick DeBartolo
Yes, exactly, but I love, I love like use it as a boomerang, throw it at a 15 degree angle.

0:55:32 - Mikah Sargent
Well, let me get my protractor.

0:55:35 - Dick DeBartolo
Yes, yes, exactly, exactly. But the good thing about it is it can crash into things and not break, because I think I had it hit pretty much everything at Disney, but it's great fun, so it's kind of like a little bit more expensive. Yes, there it is 3299 on Amazon. Yeah, but you know what, if you go to that Amazon page and scroll all the way to the bottom, it looks like they're all the same photo and they range anywhere from about $26 up to 36.

0:56:14 - Leo Laporte
Oh, that's hysterical because it's basically the same company.

0:56:17 - Dick DeBartolo
It probably is. Everybody went to China and now.

0:56:21 - Leo Laporte
I'm going to go to your GizWiz video, which is on YouTube, on the GizWiz channel, because I want to see you fly in this thing. Are you going to fly? Okay Is it.

0:56:30 - Dick DeBartolo
I did, and there's also a link on my website where you're on the page. You were just there.

0:56:36 - Leo Laporte
There's the orb, let's see. Let's see. All right, there you are. You're pressing the up button. Okay, there we go. Yeah, that side up. Oh, this would be great for airports. You could really confuse planes. I don't do that. Don't do that. It's probably illegal. Yeah, all right.

0:56:55 - Dick DeBartolo
Throw it dick. Nice, I know I'm scrolling a little more Are you going to throw it.

0:56:59 - Leo Laporte
Let's see, let's see, I threw it and it hit the motor.

0:57:04 - Dick DeBartolo
The motor shuts off.

0:57:05 - Leo Laporte
If it hits something, yeah, this is one trick I learned is start it.

0:57:10 - Dick DeBartolo
Start it, then hold it slightly above your. Oh, it's floating. Follow your palms, your magic. Suddenly, you will lose.

0:57:21 - Leo Laporte
It rolls down the hall and it's just. It looks like emergency services have arrived.

0:57:28 - Dick DeBartolo
It automatically shuts itself off if it hits anything.

0:57:31 - Mikah Sargent
I want to throw it out of.

0:57:33 - Leo Laporte
It's great. So there are, in theory, ways to make it do more than just this.

0:57:39 - Dick DeBartolo
There are a lot you can make it into a boomerang.

0:57:43 - Leo Laporte
If you throw it at 15 degrees, the reviews are great.

0:57:45 - Dick DeBartolo
But all every review says you have to practice a lot to get it to do the things that Did you do your did you do your practice.

0:57:52 - Mikah Sargent
Your daily practice 15 minutes a day.

0:57:54 - Leo Laporte
Did you dick? Did you practice your tic-tac today?

0:57:59 - Dick DeBartolo
Gee mom, I forgot to practice the tic-tac I forgot to practice.

0:58:05 - Mikah Sargent
Oh Well, you have a tic-tac solo coming up at school, so you better practice.

0:58:09 - Leo Laporte
It's your instrument. Little dickie, it's a tic-tac. I'm flying orb, uh-huh. If you go to gizwizbiz gizwizbiz, that sticks website you will see, of course, the link. We're talking about the gizwiz. Visit the tech guys and you can see those both the mox to you Bluetooth beanie and the tic-tac flying orb. No mox to you, no mox to you. But if you also go there, you can click a link called what the heck is it, and I think you're are you going to end in December 31st?

0:58:46 - Caller
I think we don't have a lot longer.

0:58:48 - Leo Laporte
This one's almost done. Yeah, like two weeks. Oh, I mean, this is obvious. This is what they put your kidney in when they're bringing it for transplants.

0:58:56 - Mikah Sargent
Oh yeah, yeah, If you have a tiny kidney, really, really tiny, tiny kidney.

0:59:03 - Leo Laporte
It's a, it's a transportation device for transplants organs yeah. Yeah, it's a doll transplant. So if you're playing doctor with your dollies, there you go.

0:59:12 - Mikah Sargent
When you rip your arms Transplant me Barbie.

0:59:14 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, transplant me. Barbie is big, yeah, yeah, oh, look what we're playing for. Ooh, this is the February, january, february Issue of Mad Magazine. You're mad here? Oh, I get it, get it. Well, good, good, mike. And what is? What is Dick's article in here? Cause he's got one every.

0:59:37 - Dick DeBartolo
I have two things in there. My favorite is a quickie. It's toward the end. Consumer, believe it or nuts.

0:59:46 - Leo Laporte
And do people remember Ripley's believe it or not anymore? Probably not Probably not.

0:59:52 - Dick DeBartolo
That's probably in the chat room they will.

0:59:53 - Leo Laporte
Yes, Cause they're old farts. I mean yes.

0:59:57 - Dick DeBartolo
Things that happen you can't believe, and these are consumer, believe it or not. Yale Tuvster, a college student, bought a computer to help with the school work. When he got home he opened the box and every cable, every connector and even the manual were in the box.

1:00:18 - Leo Laporte
I can't believe it. Believe it or not, you know what I remember reading this. When I was a kid, this has been. That was an ongoing segment, wasn't it?

1:00:28 - Dick DeBartolo
Yes, I love it it was. My other favorite is Mabel duck went to the supermarket with a bunch of money saving coupons.

1:00:38 - Leo Laporte
The supermarket had every item in the exact size and she was able to redeem every coupon or Eleanor Pomeranian of Cuthbert City, new Jersey, who bought a cordless phone that provided static, free, crystal clear reception in every room in her home. Believe it or not, that is very, very cute. Oh, I've you know what? Dix had a piece in every Mad Magazine for more than 50 years, right?

1:01:12 - Dick DeBartolo
Yeah, like 53 years, something like that.

1:01:16 - Leo Laporte
No one has. That will be called Guinness, because that record is never going to. That's the once, that's, and you can be a part of history for a year 53. If you get this Mad Magazine, you could of course buy it for 5.99 and the newsstand is cheap, or you have to subscribe. You can't even buy it anymore.

1:01:34 - Dick DeBartolo
You have to subscribe.

1:01:35 - Leo Laporte
No, no, a bunch of noble sells all the specials but not the and there is a spy versus spy special coming out which would be well, that'll be a bunch of that'll be.

I gave once. I gave Henry a Mad Magazine omnibus that I think was like it was maybe all of them. It was huge. They never made that, but I but it was and he loved it. He loved that was when he was little, he loved it. So go to gizwizbiz, click the what the heck is it? Contest. How do you win this Mad Magazine?

1:02:06 - Dick DeBartolo
Well, that's the one they're playing. That's, that is the one they're playing for.

1:02:09 - Leo Laporte
So, when you're playing for, there's 18, and they're autographed too. Notice you autographed it right there for me, which is nice. So there's six of them for the right answer, but you're more likely to win if you get the best wrong answer funny wrong answers. There's 12 of them for that, and that is the February 2024 issue of Mad Magazine and contest. This one ends on December 31st, but there's always a new one right New year's day.

1:02:36 - Dick DeBartolo
There'll be a brand new one. Keep it going. Even though Mad moved to California and it's down to one person, I'm still doing it.

1:02:44 - Leo Laporte
Too much stuff in Dick's gadget warehouse, not to. You. Can't move it. It's going to live there forever.

1:02:52 - Dick DeBartolo
It's easier to mail it. Don't move it, mail it.

1:02:56 - Leo Laporte
Thank you, Dickie D Thanks.

1:02:58 - Dick DeBartolo
Okay buddy.

1:03:00 - Leo Laporte
And don't forget, he does a great show every week with OMG Chad Chad Johnson. Uh, gizwiztv. If you want to see the gizwiz show, perfect, it's a lot of fun. Thank you, always a pleasure, mr D Happy holidays guys. Happy holidays guys. What are? You doing for Christmas Anything?

1:03:17 - Dick DeBartolo
I'm going to play with my hat and my orb.

1:03:20 - Leo Laporte
That's about it. I'm going to play with my hat and this is what happens. It gets very excited, wow.

1:03:28 - Dick DeBartolo
You know you should get a mouse trap and you can get rid of all the guys.

1:03:32 - Leo Laporte
There's something in here. I don't know what it is. Every year, Burke has to change the battery. That's all I know.

1:03:37 - Mikah Sargent
And by that he means take the old mouse out and put a new mouse out. Well, you know.

1:03:41 - Leo Laporte
Thank you, Dick.

1:03:42 - Dick DeBartolo
Okay, bye, Merry Christmas bud.

1:03:44 - Leo Laporte
Take care, bye-bye. Burlives Estate is going to sue us for this, but that's okay, let's get another call, or what do you?

1:03:54 - Mikah Sargent
say what do you say? What do you say? All right, let's pick up on Wes, wes.

1:03:59 - Leo Laporte
He's got his hand up. Quest Very patient. Fella Wes, come on down. Did I not do the right thing? I see Wes Pressing, pressing. Maybe my buttons don't work. It turned it red but I can't. That doesn't seem to send him to the breakout room.

1:04:24 - Mikah Sargent
Yep Wes is moving. Wes is on the move, he's on the move Just like my mouse Wes.

1:04:30 - Leo Laporte
Where's where you calling from the FW. Oh nice, dallas, fort Worth, area, where the West begins, where the West begins. They call it Fort Worth where the West begins, don't they?

1:04:43 - Mikah Sargent
Sure, I just where the West begins. Where the West begins, you said. You called a week ago.

1:04:49 - Leo Laporte1
A few weeks ago, I asked you about a studio display for my wife.

1:04:54 - Leo Laporte
Yes, I wasn't here for that. How did it?

1:04:56 - Mikah Sargent
Yes.

1:04:57 - Leo Laporte1
How did it go?

1:04:58 - Mikah Sargent
Are we happy or are you?

1:04:59 - Leo Laporte1
sad. I'm calling you from it right now.

1:05:03 - Leo Laporte
And you know what? That's a great picture. It's a good camera, sounds good. I'm impressed. Where's your wife?

1:05:09 - Leo Laporte1
It was an early Christmas present for her office, so she likes a lot.

1:05:12 - Mikah Sargent
Good, Good, I'm so glad to hear that. Yeah, we talked about, you know you had mentioned that you were thinking about the studio display, but you were, you know, perhaps looking at other options and basically because she wanted this all in one device right that had the speakers in it, that had the webcam, that had the microphone, to make it as simple as possible, ended up settling on that being the best option, even if many of the tech reviewers out there when the thing first launched kind of panned it as not being good. You know what I think I better buy this for my wife.

1:05:47 - Leo Laporte
She has at home, she has standalone monitors and she I gave her a fancy audience set up so that she plugs. You know she has a high LP or 40 and it never works. Yeah, that's true.

Every time we're trying to have a call it never works and she says this is why I want an iMac, but this is better than iMac, cause she can use her Mac studio. She's all right, I'm going to order one right now. I was too late for Christmas. She's been. She's been bugging me, so Wes you recommend it, she does.

1:06:16 - Leo Laporte1
So if the wife is happy, there's a lot of designs on her iPad and she actually likes that she's able to zoom in and see a blown up on a much larger screen and colors are accurate and everything's.

1:06:26 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, that was the other reason. Thank you for the reminder. That was the other reason we decided to go with that is because we knew that the color matching between an iPad and this studio display would be the same and that there wouldn't be a bunch of extra work whenever you were trying to share between the two devices. I'm really glad to hear that Now it looks like I at least see a printer back there and then what might be what? A photo printer or some sort of vinyl cutter. I'm kind of curious is your wife a crafter?

1:06:53 - Leo Laporte1
Oh, it's a Cree cut. She has a Nazi store.

1:06:57 - Leo Laporte
Ah, oh, and she uses a telescope to look for.

1:07:03 - Leo Laporte1
That is a cool Telescope yeah.

1:07:05 - Leo Laporte
OK, what's she selling her Etsy store?

1:07:11 - Leo Laporte1
She has a design she does. It's called nerdy science stuff. I'm going to wait a minute.

1:07:16 - Leo Laporte
Now we need to know. We need to know more. You just said the right words.

1:07:20 - Mikah Sargent
Nerdy science stuff.

1:07:22 - Leo Laporte
Is that the name of the store Right Nice?

1:07:25 - Mikah Sargent
All right, let's see. I need to find a store called nerdy science stuff.

1:07:32 - Leo Laporte1
We're still working on it. We're trying to attack all the different STEM fields. Aren't?

1:07:37 - Leo Laporte
you nice. We are you a scientist or she is scientist.

1:07:42 - Leo Laporte1
She's a laboratory scientist and microbiologist.

1:07:44 - Mikah Sargent
Nice, oh, my goodness, yeah, there it is. Dallas, Texas. Yes, for science nerds, oh, wow, how cool. Oh, mugs and and teas, and she hand draws all the designs. That's so cool. Oh, socks, now you're. Now you're talking.

1:08:01 - Leo Laporte
Is it nerdy science stuff? Is that the name of the store? If?

1:08:03 - Mikah Sargent
you go to Etsycom slash shop, slash nerdy science stuff all one word You'll be able to find it. I have markets.

1:08:10 - Leo Laporte
I'm going to change that for shop, because I think that's a search Otherwise.

1:08:15 - Mikah Sargent
Now, I did post it in the discord, if you just want to click the link there.

1:08:21 - Leo Laporte
No, I'm going to do it myself, because I am. You do it. I'm going to do it yourself, you're a go getter, I'm a go getter.

1:08:27 - Mikah Sargent
Pharmacology, microbiology, oh hearts, oh, the mugs are so cool.

1:08:33 - Leo Laporte
Oh, and I like the ones that says immune system, that is great. Hey well, west, that's wonderful. And congratulations on having a nerdy science wife.

1:08:45 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, so cool, that's really neat, yeah, and thank you for following up.

1:08:51 - Leo Laporte1
I also want to say Scott Wilkinson mentioned last week that he wished there was a place he could find all the different shows and where to view them.

1:08:59 - Caller
Yeah.

1:08:59 - Leo Laporte1
There is an app called Just Watch, if you guys aren't aware of it.

1:09:04 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, we someone actually ended up calling in to suggest that that day and we found Just Watch and we found another one. I can't remember what the other app was at this point, but we set it on Just Watch because it also has that Apple TV app that has all the links in it. So, yeah, for anyone who might have missed that, just Watch is a great app that lets you basically type in the title of a show, a movie, whatever it happens to be, and it'll display the different places where you can watch that content, and so that could be via Amazon Prime or on Netflix or wherever it happens to be. It shows you all the different ways you want to watch it.

1:09:42 - Leo Laporte
We were talking about it on MacBreak Weekly also. Jason Snell had a recommendation. I think he liked Just Watch. Channels I think was Well Channels he also liked it. That was a different thing. Yeah, yeah, I think Just Watch is very good. Thanks for the recommendation. We'll send that along to Scott too. Oh, I had a couple of questions. Oh boy, this is a bonus round. Go ahead. Yes.

1:10:04 - Leo Laporte1
Well, you guys have mentioned several times about the issues with connecting to public Wi-Fi and wondering how much of an I guess I should say. When is it an issue? Is it just merely connecting to it that becomes an issue, or is it actually a password to log into something?

1:10:20 - Leo Laporte
Generally, nowadays you're pretty safe because of Google's push for HTTPS everywhere. Almost every site you go to is encrypted and secure, and you can tell because it'll say it's HTTPS and there'll be a closed padlock. So that means that nobody else on the network can see your traffic, which is gonna protect you in that regard. So you can't go to a network that's not a password as long as you're on a site like that, or credit card numbers, and pretty much all the email sites do that, all the shopping sites do that, all the banks do that. There are very few sites now. Even our site is HTTPS. It doesn't need to be. You're not giving us any information, but at the same time, google pushes that and they say you search results will be better if you do that. So we do it. So I think that that part of it you don't have to worry about this.

There is a larger risk, though, that there's a network that other people can be on. So that's a coffee shop or hotel or cruise ship. It's open Wi-Fi at the airport, because you're on the same network as somebody else. If there is a malicious person on the network, too, there are tools they can use like there's a thing called the Wi-Fi pineapple to attack you. One common attack is to find somebody else on the network on the Wi-Fi pineapple to see what other Wi-Fi access points they have saved and been on. There's a way to find that out and they will look for one that looks like your house you know Wes's house and then they will impersonate it. Now your laptop is gonna say, hey, we're home. It's gonna say, forget the airport Wi-Fi, we're home and we'll join this impersonator as your home network. If the bad guy's really smart, he's passing the network through his machine, the internet through his machine, to your machine. So you may not even know that. The only way you'd know is if you looked at your Wi-Fi and you said well, we're not home, why am I on my own Wi-Fi at home? But once you're on that same Wi-Fi, now you're really at risk because there's other things they can do. They can't watch your traffic. So I think it's a minor risk.

It would require a bad actor with a hardware tool. These are widely available, but a hardware tool to do that, you know. That's why a VPN is often the right thing to do. You're protecting yourself if you're using a VPN, as with everything, when you're more secure, it's more inconvenient. It slows down your system a little bit. It's more inconvenient so it depends on what we call your threat model. How much of a risk is it for you and how much risk can you tolerate? If you're really worried, use a VPN. That'll solve the problem.

1:13:07 - Leo Laporte1
Does Apple's private relay help with this?

1:13:09 - Leo Laporte
Yes, absolutely Not quite as much as a VPN. It's not a VPN.

1:13:15 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah it's more about keeping you from being tracked than it is about completely obscuring what you're doing.

1:13:20 - Leo Laporte
But many. But you know there are VPNs everywhere. We have a sponsor, which is a very good one if you wanna pay for a VPN, but there are also VPNs out there in a variety. You know, like your Google phones now have VPNs built in, there's your various VPNs out there that you can use with the hardware that you have, so check that out. I like ExpressVPN. That's another one that you can use. That's our sponsor.

1:13:44 - Leo Laporte1
You know there's an interesting. I have a question.

1:13:46 - Leo Laporte
Okay, go ahead.

1:13:47 - Leo Laporte1
Oh sorry, this is in regard to iTunes, sure, so I'm usually pretty far behind on catching up with shows and movies, so I tend to buy them on sale and kind of take my time.

1:13:57 - Leo Laporte
Yes, smart, it's $20 to rent Taylor Swift's Euras movie. I don't wanna pay $20 for a rental. I'll wait, I'll wait.

1:14:06 - Leo Laporte1
So you hear that you know they can remove those at any time and I want to say downloading them and storing them and see what methods you guys recommend, and if there's any way to link that to an Apple TV for offline viewing, that is an interesting question.

1:14:21 - Mikah Sargent
So when it comes to something that you have straight up purchased, I don't know that I've ever run into an issue where I've full on purchased something and then had it taken away. It's only with the subscription services where I've been streaming something and then it was taken away. What you know in terms of the content that I have. A lot of times I actually have it turned off to store those copies locally because it just takes up space that I'm not using. But you might turn that off. So in on your Mac you have the settings in the storage settings to actually say no, don't automatically delete this TV show or this movie after I've downloaded it to my device.

As far as on the Apple TV, that's a little bit more complicated because the way that the Apple TV works is the highest quality version is not a downloadable version.

You'll notice that if you want to watch a 4K Dolby video don't excuse me, dolby Atmos version of a show or a movie, there's the option to play it. There's not that little cloud button next to it that you can click to download the whole thing and watch it later, and that is an annoying thing where Apple is trying to make things the experience easier for you by making sure that it's not taking up all of the space on your Apple TV, but also that it is something that you can start watching now if you're wanting to watch it. That's unfortunate, but yeah, I don't know, leo, I have. I don't know if you've had this experience. I've never had something where if I full on just said I want this thing and I'm purchasing it, that if the deals changed later then I no longer had access to it. It's only been with streaming services where that's kind of the agreement going in.

1:16:14 - Leo Laporte
You know, we hear stories from time to time about companies pulling stuff Usually it's books and other things but it happens. I bought a movie I really loved from Apple and I got it home, so to speak, and it was missing a major scene that I remember vividly because I guess in the later versions they decided the scene was too sexy. Probably Apple decided that. But yeah, I didn't get the full movie, wow. So I think this happens, and if you look at the license agreement, you're not buying these movies, you don't own them. So it is something to be aware of. I don't think it happens all that often. I still buy movies. You know, I'm like you too, wes. I wait for the 99 cent sales or 4.99 sales, and you can often get great movies cheap. But I wouldn't worry about it. The convenience outweighs it, I guess, if you really want to make sure you never lose it by the DVD or the UHD Blu-ray disc, yeah, and then you'll never lose it. That's the argument for physical.

Is that you do in fact own it at that point. I mean, we live in a world now, you know, even with a UHD player, they could technically revoke the license of the UHD player to play DVDs and UHDs. That's true. So we live in a world now where you're all kind of dependent on everybody else and their goodwill. I bought I just bought my wife a studio display. You saw that. Good for you, because that's going to be a holiday gift under the tree. But don't tell her. Yeah, I shouldn't have said that. But, wes, you gave me a good idea. Thank you, yeah, I wouldn't worry about it. I buy stuff. I buy Kindle books, I buy iTunes, tv and movies and you know, sometimes it does make me worried. When I bought the entire office license you know that was, I don't know, it was expensive, it was 100 bucks or something, and it was every episode of the office. But I knew I wouldn't want that. But I don't want it for now, I want it for 10 years.

1:18:13 - Mikah Sargent
Whenever I can't find it playing anywhere online, that's still available to me, although I do find myself just watching it on Peacock, even though I own it.

1:18:21 - Leo Laporte
The last thing you know. I've told the story before about my good friend who taped every episode of Cheers and had it in his closet on VHS tapes and of course now it's a waste of time. It's better quality on Netflix. You can watch it for free, so you know times change, I wouldn't worry about it, wes.

1:18:37 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, if it's something that you absolutely want to make sure you get to see later. You know, maybe you prioritize, you say, okay, this is something that I need to have and I will have physical versions of it so that I know that it never goes away.

1:18:47 - Leo Laporte
I do think it's going to happen more often, because we're already seeing stuff pulled off of HBO Max or taken from Max and put in a Netflix. These guys are messing around, we're in these very you know, everything's upside down these days, and because we transitioned to digital and I think that stuff will start to disappear more often, unfortunately.

1:19:09 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, but again, in those cases it's like I did not. I paid for HBO Max's subscription service and that is with the agreement that content is going to change on it, Versus me seeking out a specific title, buying it and then having it taken away.

1:19:24 - Leo Laporte
That's really annoying, but it does happen. Hey, thanks, wes. Happy holidays to you.

1:19:29 - Leo Laporte1
And the One last thing, oh my kids want to tell you something, oh well, Hello kids.

1:19:36 - Leo Laporte
Oh Aren't they sweet. What are their names? I'm Elena Hi. Elena, hi Eric, what's your name? Aldrick. Aldrick and.

1:19:47 - Mikah Sargent
Elena, Hello both of you.

1:19:52 - Leo Laporte
What do you want to say?

1:19:55 - Caller
I want to be world famous. I'm so.

1:19:58 - Leo Laporte
Already happened.

1:19:59 - Mikah Sargent
You are famous. Now You're on the show.

1:20:01 - Leo Laporte
You're internet famous. I'll be at the panel, you're gonna play it's also yeah, happy holidays.

1:20:11 - Caller
Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays.

1:20:13 - Mikah Sargent
Happy holidays to you. Thank you guys. Thank you so much.

1:20:16 - Caller
Merry Christmas Happy holidays Leaves you lots of when are you?

1:20:20 - Leo Laporte
Where are we Far, far away in Christmas land.

1:20:26 - Caller
Are you serious?

1:20:27 - Leo Laporte
No, we're in California.

1:20:29 - Mikah Sargent
We're in California, where it's very warm and there's no snow.

1:20:32 - Leo Laporte1
Oh, I was about to question if you were in Santa or in the the North.

1:20:37 - Leo Laporte
Pole. Well, if I weren't, could I do this.

1:20:42 - Caller
I've been so 2004.

1:20:44 - Leo Laporte
What it's been a long time. I know, Kids, we'll be right back with more of as the Tech Eyes Just a little bit Bye-bye.

1:20:53 - Dick DeBartolo
Oh, that was really sweet.

1:21:00 - Leo Laporte
That was amazing. That's really amazing. I like how it jiggles in here Christmas this year. Oh, it's lighting up too. I didn't even notice that Boy. That hat is the gift that keeps on giving. I've had that for a year.

You know, I was reading on Reddit. There was an interesting story. We were talking about hacking on the open networks. It was an interesting story on Reddit. He says I was at a Christmas party the other day and three quarters of the people's iPhones crashed. What could possibly be going on? And it's an interesting story. There was a hack that you could do. Remember I had the Flipper Zero. In fact, I gave it to Father Robert, which is probably a mistake. I should have said was there a priest there? But the Flipper Zero had an exploit that you could crash iPhones using Bluetooth. Apple has patched it in 17.2. But somebody did it at this time, somebody did it at this Christmas party. Somebody had in their pocket one of these little hacking devices. And that's the thing these devices are cheap, they're not illegal because they're used, you know, for testing purposes. So Apple, with its release of iOS 17.2, made that impossible. But that party.

1:22:15 - Mikah Sargent
And see, that's. The other thing that we have to be mindful of is that these devices that we have are a lot chatter than you might think at first glance.

1:22:24 - Leo Laporte
Oh, they're constantly talking.

1:22:25 - Mikah Sargent
They're talking all the time to other things and sometimes another thing shouts at them and makes them scared and then they die.

1:22:33 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, it was a Bluetooth exploit and in fact I think Father Robert actually put it into the Flipper Zero because he said I'm gonna bring you back your Flipper Zero with some extra new features. And this was an extra new feature. It can be modified with third party firmware. There was a particular firmware called Xtreme that did a Bluetooth low energy spam attack that brought within 50 meters, that's 164 feet. You can use a Flipper Zero, this little device, to crash iPhones and I think that must have happened at that party.

1:23:08 - Mikah Sargent
It spams it with Bluetooth.

1:23:10 - Leo Laporte
It causes it to oh wow, yeah, apple's fixed it Good news. This is one reason why you always want to do your updates. All right, it is half past the hour, roughly Coming up in 20 minutes. I did a do a break. In 20 minutes we're gonna talk with Chris Mark-Wart. Yes, we are His assignment update, review and update. Meanwhile, you can call us 888-724-2884 or zoomuscalltwittv. You know I feel so guilty about this stack of emails. There are quite a few emails. I feel like we should work our way through a few of them here.

1:23:47 - Mikah Sargent
Let's do it. Let's do it.

1:23:48 - Leo Laporte
All right, these are all carefully vetted by our crack team. The boy wonder himself oh, leica. Leica writes. I wonder if Leica's an LA from LA should be a LA, leica An LA.

I have been using Fast Mail our sponsor for six months now. I just can't seem to get the program that's a problem right there to open in mail. It only opens in the migration section and it's a click on the back to mail tab. How or what do I have to do to get Fast Mail to open in the mail section where I can check my inbox? Thanks for all the help you both provide.

I've been a fan of Leo since 2005. Give up, keep up the good work. I almost thought it said give up the good work because he's or Leica's missed that we recommended Fast Mail. So this is the problem with. I feel like this is the problem with Gmail and others. They're so easy to use. You just go to a website. You don't have to configure it, you don't have to do anything to it. It just works out of the box and it's one of the reasons people use free email. If you're going to use a non-free email server, you have to configure oh, that awful word your email in your email client Looks like Leica's using Apple Mail, because they said mail. But if you want, you can just do fastmailcom, log in and use their web mail interface. It will be just like Gmail. So there's your inbox right there. If you do want to keep using Apple Mail, you have to now go into the settings for Apple Mail and configure it.

What I'm going to suggest you do is go to Fast Mail's help pages. They have a very good page on setting up Apple email or whatever mail program you're doing. They actually have a page for almost for Outlook and for everyone. But if you go to fastmailhelp, here's the page Automatic Setup on a Mac. They'll also have it for iOS devices, they'll have it for Outlook and so forth. So you're going to need to go there and you're going to need to follow their setup guide and reconfigure your email to use to work now with the server at Fast Mail. So you're going to a server to download your email.

Now it sounds like you also want to keep your other email account working, and there are a couple of ways to do that. You can set it up to automatically. If it's Gmail, for instance, gmail will automatically forward to another address Every time something comes into your Gmail, you can have it be sent to your Fast Mail address. Fast Mail can go out and get your email from Gmail. You can actually connect it to Gmail that's what I do and automatically download all your Gmail. So that's an additional setup. But again, fastmailhelp has a lot of pages. They've done a really good job and they also have support. This is one of the real advantages of Fast Mail. You don't have to suffer for six months. There's actual people at the other end of the support, so they will help you get it working. I hope you do, but this is a little confusion over how email works. It requires that you connect to that Fast Mail server. It's a new server for your client. Well done. Automated setup on the Mac Another one.

Can I do another one? Let's do another one. 2fa apps asks Kent Hi Leo and Mikah Hi Mikah and Leo. Which free two-factor authentication app do you recommend? I'd like to use one that has the most pushability. Oh, he wants to use that tap or click on allow instead of typing a code. That's called single sign on or SSO. I'm aware of Google Authenticator, dual Mobile Authy and LastPass, and I use LastPass as my password manager. Yeah, it does make sense, kent, he says. I hope this makes sense.

So generally, authenticators work by providing you a six-digit code. That is your second factor, besides your password. It's a second, almost second, password that you need to get into a system. We recommend turning on two-factor everywhere you can, certainly with the important accounts, like your bank, your email, your credit cards, things like that.

Now, two-factor sometimes just comes in as a text message. Banks often do that because they don't have to explain how to set up a two-factor app for their customers and they don't want to spend any extra money on support that they don't have to. So that's not the most reliable way to do it. I'll tell you which two-factor app I use, but this is a separate thing from Single Sign-On, right? So, if you know, depends on what you're doing. Single Sign-On with Microsoft's free authenticator does the two-factor, the six-digit thing, but will also do Single Sign-On with Microsoft products, which I find really great. You don't need a password for Microsoft products, but that's kind of a separate thing from Two-Factor. My favorite two-factor app is Two-F-A-S, two-f-a-s and of course, I guess it doesn't like it that I'm wearing a Santa hat Jolly jolly hat.

Yeah, I'm gonna log in with the pin. So and you can see this. By the way, one of the let me explain how this works is TOTP time one-time, time-based, one-time passwords Every 30 seconds. These six-digit codes update Every 30 seconds. You see there's a timer on the right there that says how many seconds until the update. That's because these six-digit numbers come from a mishap mashup, mushmash of the time of day and a secret number that you get that's what that QR code is when you sign up for Two-Factor is a secret, long, secret number that the company, whatever it is, gives you, and so when they do that mashup, they know the long number, they know what time of day it is, they know what that six-digit code should be, roughly, because clocks differ. So I can show you these, because they're gonna change every 30 seconds. It's not gonna give you any help. Two-fas is free.

The reason I like it kind of like Authy is it will. You can use it on multiple devices and when you get a new device you don't have to go through the whole process again. But instead of saving it as Authy does on their servers, you can upload to iCloud or Google Drive and encrypted blob of your secrets. That's the thing that needs to be preserved. So it's very easy. As you might know, I'm always trying new phones, so it's very easy for me to move from phone to phone, so that was important to me. I also like how it presents itself. I think it looks good. I used to use the Authy and I've changed from it, but that and I think it supports single sign-on, but that's gonna depend on. Authy, for instance, supports it with because it's made by Twilio, with companies that use Twilio authentication. Microsoft supports it with Microsoft products.

1:30:54 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, oftentimes the services that do it Adobe, for example, you have to use it with the Adobe app itself, so there'll be an app that has two factor but also lets you do it. Yeah, and I'm trying to think of Duo.

1:31:07 - Leo Laporte
he already knows about Duo, that's another one.

1:31:08 - Mikah Sargent
Steam is another one that has its own.

1:31:11 - Leo Laporte
Yeah. So Duo is a good example, but it has to be. A company has to use Duo for its single sign-on and then you won't need to do the six digit two factor. That's the fallback. But something like 2FAS is really designed for two factor, not single sign-on. So there you go. You might end up having several apps on there. Frankly, if you wanna do single sign, passkeys support yep. And, by the way, everybody now is starting to support that, not only your phone, but I noticed that both are sponsored by Bithwarden and OnePassword now supporting Passkeys, which is great, and that may end up being the future of passwords.

I like two factor, me too. I want two factor, and you want two factor, trust me, you do. All right, I think that's enough email, let's take a call. Another break, you're just full of them today. We'll be right back with a call right after this. I've done three now. I know I have one more to do, but yeah, okay, I was gonna do it right before, chris, but I guess, yeah, that makes sense. All right, who do we take, mr Boy Wonder?

1:32:24 - Mikah Sargent
Jeremy, You're not gonna let me live that down. No, let's do Bonnie Bonnie a phone call.

1:32:29 - Leo Laporte
I see Bonnie and I see Jeremy, and I see Joey and I see Henry and I see Jeffrey and I see James Sounds like a book, and I see Neil. Did you ever do a romper room when you were a kid? No, that's why you don't know what I'm doing. Hello Bonnie, what's?

1:32:44 - Mikah Sargent
your name Star six Bonnie Press star six to unmute.

1:32:53 - Caller
Oh, oh yeah, I hear you.

1:32:55 - Leo Laporte
We keep calling you Bonnie, but you're not Bonnie. You're using Bonnie's phone, that's your caller ID.

1:33:01 - Caller
No, I'm using my phone, but yeah, it's better off. Is your name Bonnie?

1:33:08 - Leo Laporte
Paul Paul Well, your caller ID shows up as Bonnie. Hi, Paul, where are you calling from?

1:33:15 - Caller
I'm calling from San Diego, California.

1:33:18 - Leo Laporte
Lovely. What can we do for you?

1:33:22 - Caller
I'm using an S10 and a fingerprint S10 phone and the battery is running. Yeah, cause it's pretty old, so I'm looking for replacement. I'm trying to mention Bonnie. Bonnie and all our family uses iPhones, so I have a coin board. I go with another Android and it's so which one I don't like the S10 experience with that little button on the side and always throwing stuff on the screen. That I don't like. I think it either a play. Android experience, or maybe moving to the iPhone.

1:34:12 - Leo Laporte
Well, I mean, I agree, If you're going to get a Android phone, you should get a pixel Agreed, and I think the six A and the seven A is not out yet. So this, this is the seven. The seven A will come out mid year, Our excellent phones and I wouldn't get. I wouldn't get the seven pro because it's, you know, that's like 1,100 bucks, but I was absolutely not hesitate recommending getting a pixel six A and it'll be about three or 400 bucks, A lot less than an iPhone. So that's a pure Android experience. And, yes, I think I mean I like Samsung phones. I have the S23. I mean. But you know, if you don't, you know what the Samsung experience is like, and it is, it is Samsung dub. The Pixel phone is pure pure Google and I and I really like it I do think that there is an advantage to going all iPhone in your family as much as, as you know, Google would like not like me to say that We've been playing with this beeper program that lets you get Apple blue bubble messages out, and it's just not reliable.

I was sending you a message. Half of your responses were coming through, half weren't. It hasn't updated with responses from my wife since Thursday. So it's not. It's beeper, this beeper mini thing, Don't. It's not a good solution. It's not an alternative. At some point I hope this year, in 2024, Apple will adopt RCS, the rich communications services, which will make it work fine with. You know, Android phones, but if your whole family is Apple, one of the reasons you might pick Apple is because you can ask Bonnie and others questions. You can say well, I don't know what's going on here. It's going to be a very different experience at first, Right? Have you talked to a lot of people who moved from Android to iPhone?

1:36:07 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, that's a common thing that I hear and have questions about and you know, yes, it's going to take a minute to get locked in and to understand everything, but it's been my experience that everyone who's not, if you're, if you're super techie and you are just absolutely driven by all the customization that you can do on Android, then it's not as easy to make that shift. But if you're not, if you just are looking for a good phone that works reliably and is okay to be used, then in that case you it's been my experience, that it's been their experience that it's an easy shift from Android to iOS.

1:36:46 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, I mean it is a bigger shift than, say, from Mac to Windows. It's a. It's a lot different the way Android and iOS work, but you get used to it pretty quick.

1:36:54 - Caller
Yeah, I think so. Does it play well with Windows?

1:36:59 - Mikah Sargent
What do you need? What do you do with your Android phone, now that you would want to be able to do with your iPhone?

1:37:07 - Caller
I download and upload files to the phone directly.

1:37:11 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, Well, oh so, no, so I somebody actually called in about this Windows has this phone link stuff.

1:37:19 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, that works with iPhones sort of, and I've used it with. I can use it with the iPhone, If I can use it right now with the iPhone, but it works better with it. It works best with a Samsung phone. So the experience you're having with are you using phone link? No, oh, I just use plug it in with a cable.

1:37:39 - Caller
Just plug it in with a cable.

1:37:41 - Leo Laporte
Okay, yeah, that will not work with an iPhone. You'll have to use Apple's software to do that. If that's something important to you, then I would get, and, by the way, I am one off. This is a pixel eight. I've been living in the past. It's the seven a that I would recommend.

And I think they do still sell the six a, but those, yeah, you know what? If you really like Android, stick with that and get a Google phone. The other reason they get a Google phone over the dominant platform, which is Samsung, is that Google updates the security updates faster. They do feature drops that they don't do anywhere else. I think you just get a better experience with the pixel phones and, frankly, they finally started to make pretty decent hardware. They went through a bad period, but I think, starting with a seven a, you'd be fine. So, and it's also going to cost us like a lot less right? Yeah, absolutely, if you don't mind being a green bubble.

1:38:39 - Caller
Yeah, right. So now when someone says that, someone says they sent me something, I just go over to Bonnie's phone.

1:38:47 - Mikah Sargent
There you go. Just go over to Bonnie's phone.

1:38:52 - Leo Laporte
Are you on Bonnie's phone right now?

1:38:55 - Caller
Well, no, I don't understand that. I know why you.

1:38:59 - Leo Laporte
I know why it says Bonnie's name. Bonnie pays the phone bill. Yes, yes, so the phone company is identifying you as Bonnie. That's just your caller ID. Let me just look. I'm on the. I'm on the pixel store. They do sell the seven a. The six a is still available. That's two years old, but it's still a decent phone. And how much are they going to charge me for that? Let's get. Let's get it in. Oh, wait a minute. You would want it in green, wouldn't you? You like it in green. Michael likes everything in green green and 350 bucks.

If you get through AT&T, that's a pretty good price for a very nice phone. Okay, so you know, you know Android, you love Android, you do things with Windows that you can't really do easily with the iPhone. The iPhone and Windows don't get along quite as well. There is this on Windows. I think it's called it's on Windows 10 as well as called phone link. Yeah, and it's it's. I have to connect it to my phone.

1:40:03 - Mikah Sargent
There's an open source app that I recommend to everyone. I've talked about it before and we had someone call in and ask about it. It's called Land Drop. L? A? N drop dot app is the website Land Drop dot app and I have used this reliably with no issue between my blue suede Windows machine and my iPhone. It works across all different devices iOS, android, mac OS, windows and Linux and basically, as long as you are on the same Wi-Fi network with one device and another, you can do what look, what behaves like air drop, so you can take a file, drop it into this place and then it shows up on the other device. It's called land drop. So if you end up deciding, oh, I guess I want to become a blue bubble, then Land Drop works for you. It's an app you can get in the app store and you download it to your Windows PC and then you just put stuff on the Land Drop and it moves it right over to the iPhone, no problem.

1:40:59 - Caller
And you delete files on the iPhone.

1:41:03 - Mikah Sargent
Yes, absolutely.

1:41:05 - Leo Laporte
I'm pairing this Google phone to my Windows.

1:41:09 - Mikah Sargent
Oh, you mean so a file that you put on your iPhone? You want to be able to delete it using your Windows machine? No, you would just need to delete it on your iPhone itself.

1:41:20 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, you kind of with the iPhone. You should stop thinking about using Windows at all.

1:41:26 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, it sounds like Android is probably the right place for you to be if you're doing this thing. Where?

1:41:30 - Caller
you're using.

1:41:31 - Mikah Sargent
If you're using your phone as a flash drive, which is what you're doing, then you probably don't want to use an iPhone.

1:41:38 - Caller
Okay, thank you.

1:41:40 - Leo Laporte
I have all these phones. I am now authenticating with Microsoft on my iPhone, let's see, and the number is 30. The number is 30 because I'm setting up this Windows machine with the allow link to Windows to send in view SMS, allow it to contacts, allow all photos. It just works so much better with an Android phone. You could do so much more. It's very limited with an iPhone when you, when you pair up with it. But if you do use Windows with your Android phone or your iPhone, take a look at phone link, because that is a new feature that Apple has added. That makes, I think, makes a big difference in usability, because now, for instance, I could be on my laptop, my Windows laptop, and see messages and respond to them and so forth. So I think it's a nice feature. Select the task to start exploring. No, I'm going to skip that. I'm going to skip for now. Okay, so now I see my iPhone and my Android phone and I'm going to. But the Android phone really works a lot better. It does a lot of things.

1:42:49 - Mikah Sargent
It's kind of cool.

1:42:50 - Leo Laporte
Really. Yeah, it is, you can message with it. It's a desktop interface to your phone. Yeah, all right, one more call and then we're going to get Mr Chris Markward, our photo guy, on the hair.

1:43:06 - Mikah Sargent
On the hair, on the hair.

1:43:08 - Leo Laporte
You're on the hair. Oh, I get it. I looked like I don't have any, but I do.

1:43:11 - John Ashley
I thought I was horn, but I am going to pick up another phone call.

1:43:15 - Mikah Sargent
Neil Dutz will see Neil Diamond.

1:43:18 - Leo Laporte
Neil Diamond is on the line. Let's pick Neil up and say hello, hello, yeah, hello, neil. How?

1:43:30 - Caller
are you? I'm good. How are you, Neil?

1:43:33 - Mikah Sargent
Hi, we're doing well, thank you.

1:43:34 - Caller
Okay, I'm out here in Arizona. We've talked before Nice and I'm going to call you in to report back. I finally got a chance to try out the self-driving car.

1:43:45 - Mikah Sargent
Oh, that's right. You're in one of the places where you have access to one Waymo yeah, Waymo taxi.

1:43:53 - Leo Laporte
Not cruise, because cruise is basically giving up, but Waymo Nice, how do you like Waymo?

1:43:59 - Caller
Waymo. Interesting experience. I'm not sure you ever tried it yourself. I am not.

1:44:03 - Leo Laporte
I'm too scared to we do in San Francisco.

1:44:07 - Caller
I only tried it on my birthday. I had my birthday and I had to wear a go and I I'm going to try it out. It was interesting experience. They have really nice cars. They have like a Jaguar's looks like, yeah, that's right. The iPads yeah, they're very nice cars. It's an interesting thing because they don't pick you up. I call it, I don't drive. I haven't driven in like 30 years. But more to the point, I have a Lyft or a Uber. It comes right up to my right, in front of my place, and it picks me up right there. When you have the Waymo, for example, it kind of tells you where to go, in a manner of speaking.

1:44:44 - Mikah Sargent
Oh, so they only have specific pickup locations?

1:44:49 - Caller
And it literally guides you there. If you're not sure where it is, you can look at your, look down at your phone. I put it in my hand, I can walk out there. Okay, here, here, here, turn right. It's like one direction. You walk too far, it'll say to go back. And so I did that at one time when I called the car and it pulled up right where I just wanted to pull up and I had, and I gave it my destination. I already, if you put your, your program, it's like you would have a Lyft or a in terms of your trip where you want to go. But what was interesting about this, I suppose, was the. You have to unlock the vehicle with your phone. You know the doors are locked, you push the, you put the button on your app, it'll pop the door handle out. Now you can open the vehicle and get into it and then when you buckle up and you hit the start button in the dashboard in the car and off it goes and so really quick.

1:45:38 - Mikah Sargent
Were you in the front seat? Were you in the front seat or the back seat, back, okay, and there was a button for you to press. Does?

1:45:45 - Leo Laporte
it say that was easy. Is it a big red button? It says go probably.

1:45:51 - Caller
Well, it's not red, it was blue. But it's either the desk you could do it on your phone itself or there's a little panel in the back that you have access to. Got it Okay. So you're pushing out and I was going to pick up one of my cats with the door of the vet. So I had to go pick them up and and I chose the route. I told them where I wanted to go and what was interesting about this. It got there just fine. I just noticed one thing about about Waymo rides they take a rather secure route to what you might expect a human driver would do. It's going through a lot of residential area, things like that in order to get there. It got me here just fine. Just took a route that I wouldn't expect that it would take.

1:46:33 - Mikah Sargent
There's not a lot on the highway right. I don't think they're allowed to go on the highway no although it's interesting, I did, I did.

1:46:38 - Caller
I got an email the other day from them that said that, starting soon, or starting now, between 10am and 60am, they're taking they'll take a ride out to Sky Harbor Airport.

1:46:49 - Mikah Sargent
Interesting. So they've got some sort of provisional option. I'm curious how was the small talk with the driver? I can't.

1:46:57 - Leo Laporte
This is pretty quiet.

1:47:00 - Caller
When you get in the car it talks to you. You get in the vehicle and it says well, welcome, welcome Neil, and you know, tell me what's going to happen and so forth. And when you're ready to go and the button then off, it goes, it says your name. It costs the same money as the regular U-Boomer driver or Lyft. You know there's no tip or anything like that, but the same amount of money.

1:47:17 - Mikah Sargent
Are there locks on the doors, and did you hear it lock after you got inside?

1:47:24 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, that's a feature probably of the I-PACE. You're in the Johnny cab. That's probably a feature of the I-PACE itself.

1:47:31 - Mikah Sargent
My car does the same thing Just automatically locks the door as soon as I get to a certain speed it goes chunk to lock the doors for safety.

1:47:38 - Caller
I don't want you jumping out of the rainbow.

1:47:41 - Mikah Sargent
I just want to know about the full experience Is it scary. I think it would be a little bit for me the first time I rode in something that didn't have a driver for it to lock the doors.

Oh, you've done this, no no, no, I'm saying if I was going to for the first time I would get a little nervous whenever this robot, so to speak, locked the doors. And I understand that it's just the cars doing it, but it would feel a little bit like, oh golly, I'm in complete. You know I have no control over what's about to happen. I'm locked in this vehicle until it unlocks it. That would be a little bit worrisome. But you also had control over music and the. You know it wasn't too hot in the car, you could change the AC right.

1:48:21 - Caller
Yeah, you can control all of that. Like I said, it could be a buckle up. It took me through that. It was most more not concerning but more curious that it took an odd route. I can friend to a lot of residential area. It didn't take the most direct route that a human driver might have taken. That's interesting.

1:48:38 - Leo Laporte
That's a little telling. It was just a different route. Yeah, that's one of the things we saw a lot in San Francisco with Cruz and Waymo is they'd end up on streets that you probably wouldn't expect them to end up and a lot of the residential people complained about that because they were avoiding some of the busier places. Yeah, they're avoiding things like unprotected left turns, things that you know these cars don't do well.

1:49:00 - Mikah Sargent
Did you take it home afterward as well? Or did you use Lyft or Uber to or something else to get home from the vet? Because I'm curious if it has any sort of sensors in it to determine oh, you've actually brought two people into the car. In this case, there's a cat in the car as well. We're going to charge you double.

1:49:22 - Caller
No, it didn't do that. I didn't take the same route home, not because of that, but I did take another trip I'll go into that which is interesting as well, because now and I'll bring this up real quick here I had to go back from the vet. Different trips I had gone back and I'm going out and then had to go down a major street and then there's road work there. Now I have to deal with the road work. It's probably two lanes are going down to one. It doesn't like the road. How's it going to manage that? It managed it, but it started going through and then it decided, oh, I'm going to make a right turn over here and I'm going to start going around through the residential area to try to get around this road work.

1:50:06 - Leo Laporte
I think that you don't necessarily know, but it turns out I've read reports happens more often than you think there is a human at the central office who can control that vehicle, and it is not unusual for a human that that would be a case, for instance, where I think the vehicle would say hey, this is problematic, there's construction, this doesn't match my map, and the human may actually take over and override and say good, because I don't think the car is that smart, that would go, let's go around the construction, let's turn right here. But a human may have intervened and may even be driving the car, and I don't know if they tell you that. I think that one of the dirty little secrets of these, of all of these, is that humans take over more often than we know.

1:50:53 - Caller
So just to me, I thought the positive, I would take the right again.

1:50:56 - Leo Laporte
Sure, why not? You didn't feel unsafe at any time, did you?

1:51:00 - Caller
No, no, cool. No, I never felt unsafe. I was curious how it would handle these. Like I say, the road work things like that. I was kind of curious, yeah that's.

1:51:09 - Leo Laporte
that's challenging for these guys. Yeah, now they're on their own.

1:51:13 - Caller
That's not been mapped out. It didn't do anything wrong. You understand?

1:51:18 - Caller
It's just went to an odd round, I guess, is what I would say. So what's wrong? Yeah, cool.

1:51:25 - Mikah Sargent
Well, I am very grateful that you called us back to let us know how that went. Yeah, I've been super curious about it and it sounds like they're continuing to expand there, versus what we're seeing locally, which is that there's lots of contraction happening. So the fact that you got that, notification saying hey, we're doing more.

1:51:44 - Caller
Well, I guess we're going to go to the graveyard. You know, red-eyed, why I can take it to Skyhub or Airport now, but I'm not really, you know, trying to fly between 10 and 6 in the morning, but that's when they're at least they're trying to get that to think right about there, lovely.

1:51:59 - Mikah Sargent
Hey, thank you for calling.

1:52:00 - Leo Laporte
Take care.

1:52:02 - Mikah Sargent
My pleasure. Thank you for taking my call Great update.

1:52:04 - Caller
Happy New Year Happy.

1:52:05 - Mikah Sargent
New Year to you as well, take care.

1:52:08 - Leo Laporte
Cruz I'm on. The website says we have temporarily paused Driverless Service. They fired a lot of employees and they basically backed off completely. After the California regulators said, hey, we've got a problem here, you better stop driving temporarily, they decided to pull back completely. I think this is not working out quite as well as everybody's thoughts.

1:52:32 - Mikah Sargent
Not in the short term. Not in the short term.

1:52:35 - Leo Laporte
You know we're going to go to our great photographer friend and we actually have a question for him, right? I do, all right. So let's go to Chris Markwart, discoverthetopfloorcom, and he is suitably dressed for what is undoubtedly a cold winter's night. Hello, chris.

1:52:55 - Chris Marquardt
I couldn't hey how's it going. Everyone, I couldn't find my Santa hat, so I had to.

1:53:01 - Mikah Sargent
This is a lovely hat that you wear?

1:53:03 - Leo Laporte
Did you wear that in Svalbard?

1:53:05 - Chris Marquardt
No, no, I picked this up years ago in Siberia. Siberia Wow, that's the real deal. Very nice and warm, very nice and warm indeed. Yeah. Probably too. Let me take that off because it's kind of indoor You're going to start to sweat.

1:53:19 - Leo Laporte
So you, though, have seen Santa's reindeer. I know up in the north, of course I have, yes, because he used to lead expeditions. That was a crazy expedition because you were on a sailing ship sailing.

1:53:34 - Chris Marquardt
Around Svalbard, yes, wow.

1:53:37 - Mikah Sargent
That is, that's amazing.

1:53:38 - Leo Laporte
And some of your pictures of ice on the lines on the ship and stuff were just. It made me cold just looking at it.

1:53:45 - Chris Marquardt
Yeah, icing up ships. It's fun if you have to get the big wooden mallet out and bang against the side of the ship to make sure it doesn't freeze up too much. Wow, yeah, that was an adventure, a real adventure.

1:53:59 - Leo Laporte
Not the first trip on my list of trips to take, but are you? Are you? Are you planning to go back to Svalbard anytime soon?

1:54:09 - Chris Marquardt
No plans for now, but I do want to go back because just the Arctic is a wonderful place. It's cold in winter and the light up there that's what I'm interested in as a photographer. Absolutely. Just the way that there's the particles in the air and the mountains reflect the light and the snow it's.

1:54:28 - Leo Laporte
It's one of the most amazing lights on the planet that I've seen, Well, beautiful. We have an assignment from Mr Mark Warts that we are going to do our assignment review of the word of the of the week in the tech guy group. Actually, the word of the do we go two months? I think we went a long time on this one was unusual, I think I think so. Yeah, it was unusual.

1:54:53 - Chris Marquardt
Yeah, I have made a choice of three photos, as usual. Let me bring them up here on the screen. Thanks everyone for participating. This was not an easy choice. So lots of good stuff. Lots of unusual stuff, yes, yes, definitely. And the first one I chose is by Vibica Fries. It's a sculpture. I believe it's a Swedish artist who made it. It's a revolver with a with a knot in the in the barrel, and this one was painted by Paul McCartney. Oh really, oh wow. Very unusual kind of sculpture. Give piece of chance. I think it was for for John Lennon actually.

1:55:40 - Leo Laporte
So yeah, Vibica says it was created by Carl Reutersvald Wardersvard of Sweden as a tribute to John Lennon, who was, of course, assassinated by a lone gunman and I, and so the work was sent to many famous people who painted them, and this one was Sir Paul McCartney's. Wow, wow, that must have been for Paul quite a moving moment to paint, probably. Yeah.

1:56:07 - Chris Marquardt
Yeah, and, and an unusual thing for sure, absolutely Wonderful photo. Yeah. So second one by our regular Demi Lent it is Alien keyboard, exactly, exactly. It's unusual. So what we're looking at is a is an LED lit keyboard. Colorful, but something's wrong with those letters, because I wouldn't even know. I mean the X. I can see the X there, but what is the thing next?

1:56:35 - Mikah Sargent
to it. What is that in the middle?

1:56:38 - Chris Marquardt
So what is that thing in the middle? And of course it's an upside down XCV on a keyboard.

1:56:44 - Leo Laporte
He messed around with his keyboard as well. He did, or she did. Yeah, it's just a great idea.

1:56:50 - Chris Marquardt
Very clever.

1:56:51 - Mikah Sargent
It's really.

1:56:53 - Chris Marquardt
Sometimes it's super. It's super fun to take a photo, or take your camera and just turn it upside down, or take a photo and turn it upside down.

1:56:59 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, I think that's all. It is right, the keyboard's not modified, it's just an upside down picture.

1:57:03 - Chris Marquardt
It's just an upside down picture and that that sometimes changes the entire thing it does. It makes it alien. Yeah. Ooh. And then, last but not least, I like this one by Greg Gregory Chesney. Yeah, it's called doubles because what we see is a black and white street child. It's blurry, it's shaky, but that doesn't really matter because the content is so great. You see doubles. You see two women, two men and two letters. Two, two, two, yeah, the third gender letters.

1:57:33 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, I love it, I love it, and you could almost, you know, if you had just sort of glanced at this and looked away, you might think it was a double exposure. And then your brain goes no, no, no, those are just sets of things, that's so cool.

1:57:44 - Chris Marquardt
Yeah, the men are wearing something bright, the men are wearing something black and the letters are letters. So it's fun, fun.

1:57:51 - Leo Laporte
As with all street photography, the key is the moment, capturing the right moment, and that is quite a moment. Very nice, exactly. Thank you, greg. So well done, very cool, and I encourage people to go to the Flickr group it's the Tech Guy group, now 14,000 members strong and look at the other submissions, because I can see why you had a hard time, chris. There are really some great images.

1:58:16 - Chris Marquardt
Good selection of photos there.

1:58:18 - Leo Laporte
It's hard to say this one or that one, and we only have limited time, we can't do more than three, but there are so many interesting shots here. This one drew my eye. I don't know what's going on, but I that's. That's wild. Yeah, that's honorable mention to Mitch XX. All right, well, you know what this means. Time to go to the fish bowl.

1:58:43 - Chris Marquardt
Oh, here it is the fish bowl and we're going to, here it is. I have the word clean, clean.

1:58:57 - Leo Laporte
I love these. So here's how this works You're going to have four weeks give or take, depending on Chris's schedule to look at it, think about it and then go out. You got to take new pictures because you got to be pictures taken from today forward. Uh, that illustrate the concept clean, whatever that means to you. When you find what you like, tag it TG for tech guy clean, tg clean and uploaded to flicker. Tag it TG clean and then submit it to the tech guy group or moderator, the wonderful roommate Renee Silverman, who's been with us now for years, hasn't she, chris? Um great, a great photographer in her own right. We'll we'll welcome you to the group, if you're not already a member, and welcome your submission. This group's been around since May 2007. It's pretty, pretty amazing, and we will give you at least four weeks to submit some clean pictures up to one a week to the tech guy group on flicker. Now we have a question for you, chris, from our mailbag.

1:59:54 - Mikah Sargent
Yes, this question comes in from Bill. It says I will be checking off a bucket list item this coming February by going to a small island off the coast of Norway above the Arctic Circle at 70 degrees north, to see the Northern Lights. Since 2024 is in the middle of the 11 year solar cycle, I hope for outstanding success. I plan on taking my Canon R5 with an RF 1435 F excuse me, yeah, f four lens and a GoPro 11. I have an RF 16 F 2.8 and an EF 8 15 F four with an adapter for the RF. Should I take these lenses Also? I have a Canon R if I need to take it.

2:00:37 - Leo Laporte
It's a very specific question.

2:00:39 - Mikah Sargent
Yes, and then we'll start there.

2:00:42 - Leo Laporte
So the good news is, chris has been up there and has taken pictures of the Northern Lights and so forth. Oh yes, what do you recommend? Do you see any faster lens?

2:00:51 - Chris Marquardt
That's not a very fast lens, the 2.8 that he says there, the R 16, 2.8. That is a good lens for Northern Lights. The Northern Lights are, they vary depending on lots of things and of course the magnetic field of the earth and the strength of the solar storm and so on, and they can be from very slow and very faint up to really bright, like in a discotheque, and they go zoom, zoom, zoom, zoom, and sometimes they just swell up and down a little and they move slowly.

So it's hard to give you this one answer that covers everything, because you will be surprised at them for sure.

2:01:34 - Leo Laporte
How about a tripod? Is that useful with Northern Lights, or is it handheld?

2:01:39 - Chris Marquardt
Tripod is a good starting point, of course, because you don't want to move the camera. Sometimes you can get away with a short exposure, but usually you will expose for a bit longer.

2:01:49 - Mikah Sargent
Well, let me ask these next questions, then, because this kind of touches on that, I hope to set these up outside and remotely control them for photos and videos while staying warm inside. I'm planning on powering the cameras by wires running inside. Will this work?

2:02:07 - Chris Marquardt
Okay. I would advise against it because you will have to change settings on the camera depending on what these Northern Lights look like, how they express themselves. So you are going to be next to the camera and changing apertures and not even apertures, changing the shutter speed to regulate the brightness, maybe cranking up the ISO if they are too low. So I would say, be next to the camera. Sometimes they come out for just 10 minutes and then they're gone again, so you're not really gaining much by staying inside. Bring a warm coat. Bring a warm coat. Bring warm boots. That's even more important.

Your feet get cold, you're heating pads, little heating pads in the shoes, that will help you. But being next to the camera and having everything there at your fingertips is kind of the way to go.

2:02:56 - Leo Laporte
That's what works. Our good friend Svera, who's in Norway, our favorite Norwegian, is up in Tromsø, which is a very northern tip of Norway, and he says there's lots of. Northern Lights up there. He says there haven't been any for the last two weeks, really, so it's a little slow right now. That's the problem. It's unpredictable.

2:03:15 - Chris Marquardt
Well, and of course they have to come out. They don't always. And then of course, the sky needs to be open. You can have the best Northern Lights, but if there's a cloud cover it won't help you. So it's a bit of a gamble, and that's also why I recommend, if you go to a place to specifically shoot the Northern Lights, don't make it just a couple of days, make it a week A week, because that will increase your chances of taking good and now supposedly is a good time on Thursday, according to Sun activity.

2:03:46 - Leo Laporte
solar activity is very strong right now Most powerful solar flare in over six years, resulting in widespread radio blackheads, especially across South America.

2:03:55 - Mikah Sargent
That's what Rod Pyle was saying.

2:03:56 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, and this is from the Space Weather Prediction Center of NOAA.

2:04:00 - Mikah Sargent
And this is the last part of the question I have a plastic cover for the R5 and I have used dew heaters on my telescope. How do I protect the cameras from the elements like the frost, the dew, and will I need a dew heater for the lens?

2:04:17 - Chris Marquardt
These dew heaters are things that wrap around the barrel of the lens and are electrically powered and keep them warm. Those are really helpful if you are, if you have, if you leave the camera outside for I don't know, the entire night to shoot long exposures of the of the sky or something, for Northern Lights, I don't think that's really helpful. A plastic cover you have to be fast. With some of the Northern Lights you have to be fast. So a plastic cover has the chance of being in the way. I always have a here, one of these with me, one of these cloths microfiber cloths like from the kitchen in my pocket and I just wiped on the camera and a little bit of precipitation on the camera won't hurt it and if you wipe it off, you'll be just fine. The camera will be okay.

2:05:07 - Mikah Sargent
All right. Well, that was from listener Bill, and we thank you for your support, bill send us those pictures.

2:05:14 - Leo Laporte
I bet you're going to get some great ones. I want to see them, yeah yeah, I've never seen the Northern Lights. I always wanted to, so maybe I do have to go to Svalbard with you.

2:05:23 - Chris Marquardt
It's impressive.

2:05:24 - Mikah Sargent
It's impressive, it's a bucket list for my partner, so we'll all have to make it Chris Markwart.

2:05:29 - Leo Laporte
go to discoverthetopfloorcom to see what Chris is up to. You got some big plans.

2:05:36 - Chris Marquardt
Not for the holidays. We're going to pull the blankets over our heads and watch dinner for one right?

2:05:44 - Leo Laporte
You're going to watch that, yeah.

2:05:47 - Chris Marquardt
I think I've seen this too many times. Now it's getting over.

2:05:49 - Leo Laporte
We were talking before the show about how, for some reason, this old British comedic sketch, which is in English, has become the thing to watch around this time of year in Germany, of all places.

2:06:05 - Chris Marquardt
I used to love it as a kid. I think I've grown out of it over time. Fair enough, not that much into traditions.

2:06:15 - Leo Laporte
It's a very strange tradition. That's all I can say Watch out for the tiger head. That rug will get you every time. Thank you, Chris Happy.

2:06:25 - Caller
New Year, happy holidays, happy New Year.

2:06:27 - Leo Laporte
We'll see you in four weeks. Chris Markward, our photo guy, discoverthetopfloorcom, let's take a little break. Got a few more calls, a few more questions. Got a few more answers on. Ask the Tech guys who is our next victim? I see Sunday, the piranha.

2:06:50 - Chris Marquardt
I'm actually going to pick up on Jeremy. They've been hanging out in the call for a while.

2:06:53 - Leo Laporte
Oh, thank you for being so patient, jeremy. Let's go to Jeremy. He's got his hand up. Jeremy, press, whatever, and I don't know. Press whatever, do whatever it is you have to do to say hello, to Ask the Tech guys. Hey Leo, hey Mikah, Can you hear me? Yeah, Hi Jeremy. Where are you calling from? I'm calling from Dayton Ohio. Lovely Welcome. What's up?

2:07:25 - John Ashley
I have a two and a half year old son and a nine month old daughter. Well, at least for my son, he's very much into electronics already. Oh nice, I want a whole motivation stuff, color changing lights and all that stuff. He absolutely loves it. He really seems like he's got a knack for electronics and trying to get more and more into that. I'm just thinking ahead for the future. Do you guys have any recommendations for like things to get them started in computer programming and that kind of thing, or activities?

2:07:57 - Leo Laporte
Do you think he's more into hardware or software? I mean, he's only two and a half.

2:08:02 - John Ashley
It's not into anything, it's hard to right now. It's just been a question I've kind of had on my mind for a little bit.

2:08:10 - Leo Laporte
There have been some really cool and again he is really too young for this. But there have been very cool kits where you snap together. He might not be too young, with daddy's help. It's what we call a lap wear right, where you sit there and help him, where you snap together electric components. You don't have to solder them, you don't even have to get something. It's fiddly, it just magnetically snaps together and you can. It turns on lights. It makes motors work. It would be a busy box for an advanced, very smart. It sounds like he is a two and a half year old.

2:08:45 - Mikah Sargent
Let me see this is what I was thinking of. There's a company called KiwiCo, k-i-w-i-co, and they have STEM stuff for children zero to two, three to four, five to eight, nine to 11, and 12 and up All sorts of different STEM stuff. What's great about it is you can kind of it grows with the kid over time you can add more. They have different subscriptions. You get these little kits that have a bunch of different stuff made for your kid's age.

2:09:15 - Leo Laporte
These are, I think, the ones I was thinking of snap circuits but as I look at this, it probably isn't for a two year old. It certainly got parts you could choke on, but maybe in a few years it's nice because they just snap together. Remember, we used to have as kids, we used to have chemistry sets and Heath kids. There are all sorts of things for kids. I'll give you a couple more. Our friend, mike Elgin's son, does a really cool project that's based on an Amazon, but again, this is more for like a fourth, fifth and sixth grader, based on a Raspberry Pi. It's called Get. What is it? Chatterbox, thank you. Go to getchatterboxcom, you can buy it.

And the thing I like about it again, not for a two year old, I'm sorry, hellochatterboxcom, not for a two year old, but for a grade school or depending on how precocious this is being used in school curriculums to teach kids about AI voice assistance, so that they understand that it isn't some person in the box. They actually code it. And this is the kind of coding kids can do because it's drag and drop, little components. So you don't know yet, but you're wonderful, two and a half year old's going to be into. He's pretty little right now for almost anything. But I think watch carefully with interest and he'll give you some hints about what direction he's going in. I would also bookmark Adafruit Industries. They're a Raspberry Pi store but they have a lot of wonderful gifts. In fact they have a gift guide right now for this again is going to be older kids, but Adafruitcom has so much fun stuff and lots of little kids and as he gets older, are you kind of into it too Definitely.

2:11:22 - John Ashley
I mean, I was on Adafruit earlier looking at some of these stuff, or you know, projects at home.

2:11:28 - Leo Laporte
But if you're into it, that helps a lot because it's a great thing that you and your boy can do together as he gets a little bit older. And they have, and they have lots of beginner kits and you know, actually I'm looking at the young engineers section and I think there probably are some things that you could probably even do with a two year old at this point.

2:11:52 - John Ashley
Well, I'll be honest, that chatterbox when you mentioned earlier. That looks like a fun project for me that he could deserve.

2:11:59 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, exactly yeah you would have fun with it and, you know, in a few years the whole thing is, it's a great look. The most important thing you can do right now is spend time with him and love him up, and so, if he's interested in this stuff, have a few of these projects. You can be doing them at first yourself, and then, as he gets older, he'll want to get into it, and that's a great way to get him started. And if he has that kind of mindset, don't be disappointed. If he wants to be a ballet dancer, though, you know you got to, let him. Got to. Let him be what he wants to be, right.

2:12:30 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, the one I was talking about earlier by the way, kiwicocom. Yeah, it even starts with what they call the panda crate, and it has all of these tools for their three to six stage specific products. But then each of these teaches six to 10 developmental skills and then you kind of move along. After you finish the panda crate for someone zero to 36 months, ages three to four, they move on to the koala crate which makes it more.

2:12:55 - Leo Laporte
So they really do have young, very young, a young kid stuff. That's good.

2:12:59 - Mikah Sargent
And this is all STEM, stem stuff.

2:13:02 - Leo Laporte
So we'll put a link to all of this in the show notes, because I think there are a lot of parents who would love to do this with their kids. Absolutely yeah, it's. It sounds like a lot of fun. Thank you very much. You're very welcome. Merry Christmas. You're a lucky guy. You're going to have a good Christmas with two babies in the house. Two little ones how fun. Yeah, definitely.

2:13:20 - John Ashley
And I just got to say you know, follow the twit network for a long time, leo. I think I even watched you on tech TV. So when you were a little one yeah, a little bit.

2:13:29 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, that's wonderful. That's wonderful Well. Merry Christmas. Happy holidays. It's our pleasure and, yeah, spend time with both those kids and you know, if they want to play catch, play catch. If they want to, you know, go to the theater, take whatever. It is the most important thing. The one and only thing that really matters is the is the time you spend with them and they'll love you Give them and then everything else is gravy, but I think it's fun to do the idea of doing these if he's interested.

Yeah, you know that's really cool. That's really cool, sounds fun. Hey, I can't believe we're. We're through, we're done, we're out of time, but we're going to be back in three weeks. We're gone for a couple of weeks. We'll be back next year. Next year is our last show of the year. We're taking the next two weeks off. No best of from us. No holiday special. We're lazy and we just this is it. This is all you're going to get. We drank too much eggnog and we forgot our homework. And the dog ate the best of.

2:14:25 - Mikah Sargent
Boy producer John Ashley was getting tired of being called boy wonder producer. Oh, this is the payback.

2:14:31 - Leo Laporte
Okay, payback. So you know what? Well, okay, nobody suffers, except the people at home.

2:14:39 - Mikah Sargent
But okay, don't email John. It wasn't at Sundexley, true.

2:14:42 - Leo Laporte
It wasn't his choice, but we did. We do want to wish you a wonderful, wonderful holiday and we hope you come back January 7th and every Sunday thereafter we will be here answering your questions. Two to five PM Eastern. It's, 11 AM to 2 PM Pacific time, 1900 UTC. I mentioned those times because you can't actually watch a live stream of the show. We stream it on YouTube. So go to youtubecom slash twit. If you hit the bell there, it'll let you know when we go live. We go live when any show any of our given shows that we we put together, streams. We go live on YouTube. So that's a good place to see it. If you're a club member, of course, you can watch it in the club twit, discord and interact with us, and I really want to encourage you to become a club member.

You know, one of the things by this actually applies to our last caller too. One of the things that is I've noticed and maybe you have to, I don't know the last in the early days of technology it was very exciting. Every day it seemed like there was a new innovation, there was something new. That was very exciting. Last five years it's kind of gotten ho-home. Yeah, the new iPhone has a better camera, right right, it's not. The developments in technology have just not been as exciting over the last couple of years and frankly, I was thinking, yeah, maybe it is time to retire, maybe technology now is just part of the fabric of our lives and nothing interesting is happening. Then along came AI, and I am of the you know opinion and it's getting firmer every day that the next few years are going to be wild, that stuff is going to happen that we don't even imagine today. This is not the equivalent of the personal computer revolution or of the internet revolution. My opinion, this is more like first contact. This is more like a new species arising among us, something very different, very weird, that will change everything and that, while it's a little scary, perhaps also is very exciting. And it's given me a new reason to want to keep doing our shows. You know we're here to help you understand technology, so you can use it sometimes so you can defend yourself against it, but that's our job is to help you understand technology. And for a while I was feeling like, well, maybe we don't, maybe we're not needed so much anymore. I think the next couple of years are going to be wild ride and I think we do need to do this job and you need to have a place you can go, where you can get information you can trust about what it all means, how it works and what you can do about it. And that's going to be twit going forward.

But, as you know, it's been a very tough year for us and next year was looking like it was even tougher. We had to make some cutbacks, cancel some shows, let some hosts go, but we're in a good financial footing now. We want to stay that way. It's going to take two things. It's going to take good sales and we're working as hard as we can to sell ads on all of our shows. But it's also going to take your help Club twit. We started club twit two years ago because we saw this coming. This is going to be vital for our continued success.

Right now, just a little more than 1% of our viewers and listeners subscribe to club twit. We would like to get that. We need to get that up to two at least to survive next year. If we can get it to 3, 4 or 5%, then we can go forward and continue our mission and we want to do that. Seven bucks a month. That's all it costs $84 a year. There are family plans, there are corporate plans. It supports what we're doing. It keeps our shows on the air, keeps our staff employed, keeps the lights on and you get ad free shows. You get the club twit discord. You get additional content, like Mikah's hands on Macintosh. Ios today is moving into the club and I think you and Rosemary have some really great plans for it, but that's going to be a club exclusive Another reason why you need to join club twit.

So if you would go to twittv, slash club twit Look, I'll be honest with you. I could retire and I'd be perfectly happy, but I don't want to. I think we have a job to do. I think, micah, you're not ready to retire. You've got a job to do and I think if you tell us that you want us to do that by joining club twit, we will do it. But you need to do that. You need to tell us yes, micah, leo, rosemary, all of our hosts, we want you to keep doing what you're doing. We need that information.

I think this week in Google is going to very quickly become this week in AI. I think all of our shows are going to very quickly, including this one move in the direction of helping you understand AI, use AI. This is going to be a wild ride and we want to be there for you. Show us, you want us Go to twittv slash club twit. I promise you you won't regret it. It is going to be something you're going to be glad to have in the years to come. That's it for our show. You can call us at 888-724-2884 and leave a message if we're not live Yep.

2:19:58 - Mikah Sargent
You can also email us at twittv. Leave your text and we'll get that, or you can also leave audio or video.

2:20:04 - Leo Laporte
What are you doing with iOS today? Are you going to have a best of for iOS today?

2:20:08 - Mikah Sargent
There's not a best of for iOS today either.

2:20:09 - Leo Laporte
So it's going into the club. When's the first show in the club?

2:20:12 - Mikah Sargent
The first show in the club will be on January 4th, and we actually had on Tuesday. We had, was it this past Tuesday? No, it's this coming Tuesday. We'll have even more. No, no, no, it was on, that's right, on Friday, december 15th. If you were a subscriber to the show, you would have gotten it. You would have learned about it, and then we'll have a little bit more information too.

2:20:34 - Leo Laporte
So subscribe you can. By the way, this is a. All of our shows are, are, are podcasts, and since you can subscribe to them in a podcast player or on YouTube, each of them has a YouTube channel. So get that last episode in public, join the club, and then you'll get future episodes of iOS today and you've got some good play. I'm really excited what you're doing with it. Yeah, I think it's going to be really a great program, but again, it all depends on you. I'm Leo Laporte and I'm Mikah Sargent. I hope you have a wonderful holiday. I hope you had a great Hanukkah, I hope your Festivus is full of grievances and I and, if you celebrate Christmas, a merry Christmas to you. 2024 is going to be an interesting year. I hope it's joyous for you, peaceful and successful, and we hope you'll be right here with us all next year. Thanks for joining us. We'll see you next time. Happy new year. Bye, bye.

2:21:27 - Scott Wilkinson
Hey there, scott Wilkinson here. In case you hadn't heard, Home Theater Geeks is back. Each week I bring you the latest audio video news, tips and tricks to get the most out of your AV system, product reviews and more. You can enjoy Home Theater Geeks only if you're a member of Club Twit, which costs seven bucks a month, or you can subscribe to Home Theater Geeks by itself for only $2.99 a month. I hope you'll join me for a weekly dose of Home Theater geekatude.