Ask The Tech Guys 2020 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. Coming up Car Guy Sam Abuelsamid. It'll talk about how they use AI to generate cars designs. We'll also use AI to generate our own theme music and music on hold.

0:00:14 - Mikah Sargent
It's quite nice. I am Mikah Sargent, and we also talk about how it's never a good idea to host your own game server.

0:00:23 - Leo Laporte
and is it safe to shop AliExpress. All that and more coming up next on Ask the Tech Guys.

0:00:30 - VO
Podcasts you love. From people you trust. This. Is TWiT.

0:00:36 - Leo Laporte
This is Ask the Tech Guys with Mikah Sargent and Leo Laporte, episode 2020. Recorded Sunday, April 14th 2024. Flat Mikah. Well, hey, hey, hey, how are you? Today it's time for Ask the Tech Guys. I would be Leo Laporte and I would be Mikah Sargent, except he is what? So you're not subjunctive, you're subjective. Ladies and gentlemen, this is the show where we answer your computer questions at 888-722-. But wait a minute, why am I saying it? Yeah, when I could let the AI-generated music tell you everything you need to know. We've been playing with, as many of you have, two new AI music generators. One's called Suno S-U-Nn-o I think suno is from the open ai people I can't remember now and one's called udio u-d-i-o, and we've asked them to make a little song about you and me, our new theme song. Would you, would you like to hear our new theme? I am so excited to hear our new theme song.

0:01:43 - AI
Ladies, gentlemen, the tech line troubadours hey there, michael leo, on that tech line stand with every call. They lend a skillful hand, dial them up, they'll guide you. Man, everybody, 888, that's their chain 888, he only.

0:02:05 - Leo Laporte
That's the only part, yeah. All right, that's one. This is from Udio, which I realize now is studio without the ST.

0:02:15 - Mikah Sargent
Oh, it's not audio without the A. No, oh Well, it is also. It's both. It also happens to be.

0:02:23 - Leo Laporte
It's both. Yeah, I didn't even think of that. Uh, these are both free to use in a limited fashion, and then you, you can pay for it. Actually, uh, the we're not supposed to play these commercially without uh paying for it, so I'm going to pay for it retroactively and then that'll make it okay. They're always on my side. Well, let me start at the beginning.

0:02:48 - Mikah Sargent
Let me start at the beginning. He's got a problem with his laptop.

0:02:51 - Leo Laporte
folks, Joe hates this, by the way. It rubs him the wrong way, does it rub you the wrong way? No, no Get ready.

0:03:11 - Mikah Sargent
Got a good build to it.

0:03:15 - Leo Laporte
See, it's got the number.

0:03:20 - Mikah Sargent
Even if it's a quarter past four. No, we won't pick up the line after a quarter past four. Well, it depends what time it is. Sue those tech worries away. Mm-mm-mm. Fixing all the bugs in my tech behavior.

0:03:51 - Leo Laporte
It wrote that in less than 30 seconds.

0:03:55 - Mikah Sargent
It's good that so much of what music is, and even music theory, is mathematics.

0:04:00 - Leo Laporte
right, that's a good point, that does help, although I have to point out I use Suno, right like that's a good point. That does help, although I have to point out I use suno. We were playing with it because it's uh open ai. Microsoft has it as a uh plug-in for uh what they? What do they call that thing, copilot? Yeah, the plug-in for copilot and uh, so I played with it. It was not that long ago, six months ago, on windows weekly. It was terrible, it was awful, truly it was like okay, obviously, a machine that knew nothing generated this.

The progress they've made in six months is mind-boggling. Imagine a year from now or two years from now, or is there a limit? Is there a ceiling as far as it can go? I have to say at this point my feeling about all of this ai is it's adequate for a lot of stuff, but not as good as a human, and there is something a human does that's unpredictable, that's weird and different. That makes it interesting, and so it isn't as interesting as human written, but it is absolutely as interesting. At every damn theme song we bought on tech TV for millions of dollars and that took months to generate and many back and forth meetings. You know that's better than the call for help theme, almost.

0:05:11 - Mikah Sargent
I just feel like we are living as I had expected for the last six months in unusually interesting times, very interesting times, yeah, and the the progress that is being made on all of these fronts is mind-boggling, as you've said, and I wonder how it's going to change how we value media in general.

0:05:35 - Leo Laporte
So somebody in the Discord Mr Met is no, not Mr Met One Brian is saying imagine all the musicians out of work. And you know who's out of work? The Muzak guys. Muzak, yeah, the people who write generic wallpaper music. The machine does a better job of wallpaper music. I don't think the Leonard Coens, the Guy Clarks, the Bob Dylans, the Beyonces of the world are out of work because what they do is so human I don't think a machine can even imitate it, right does that make sense?

0:06:09 - Mikah Sargent
I, yes, absolutely. And if they, if it is an imitation, it's very clearly an imitation, right. So I, I'm with you, I don't.

0:06:17 - Leo Laporte
I do think there's no joni mitchell music. That a machine. I could ask it in joni mitchell style and it would sort of be like joni mitchell style, but it wouldn't be joni Mitchell.

And I think we're very good at telling the difference. That's my I mean, because what's really at this point? People are really worried that they're out of work, like we could be out of work. Right, I think we're so unpredictable that no machine could do that Right, exactly, exactly. And you know the difference and I think there's something deep within that we could tell.

0:06:55 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, I see it's sort of an uncanny valley situation that will always be there. Even if the valley is microscopic, there's still the valley Right.

0:07:05 - Leo Laporte
You know, maybe that's uh whistling uh past the graveyard. I don't know, we'll find out. Uh could be, but I, I feel like, uh, I'm. I'm actually more excited about this. I'm a uh. I have gone from being a complete skeptic and and boy, if you listen to what suno created six months ago, you would have been you exactly, in fact. I'll find that you too.

0:07:25 - Mikah Sargent
It was awful, not, uh not, it's like oh, I'm not worried, no problem here.

0:07:30 - Leo Laporte
But and the same thing off by the way, with ai art. Uh, you know, hands were eight fingered, there were weird limbs, there was stuff missing, there was.

0:07:39 - Mikah Sargent
But it's gotten better and better, but it's still I don't think it's ever going to be human no, I mean you zoom in on some of those photos and it's like, yeah it's, it's gross, it's still it's uncanny.

0:07:51 - Leo Laporte
Yes, it's very, very uncanny and that's why we have that. It's a biologic. I believe it's a biological trait to protect us from doing eating things that would be dangerous or going to somebody who's ill. You know, we stay away from somebody's a little weird because they could be ill and we could catch it, and I think that's deeply rooted in our genes and that gives us that queasy feeling when we see stuff that's not quite right. There's something off about this we go.

Well, I'm staying away from that. I don't want to catch whatever that is. Catch the AI disease. Anyway, these two programs this week made huge news and I thought we should play with them and I think, if you hear it, you go yeah, that's as good as 50 of the crap that's out there. Yeah, absolutely, and I underscore the word uh, crap because it only replaces the, the mediocre, I believe at least as far as it stands. Taylor Swift. You're safe Depends on how you feel about Taylor Swift.

0:08:51 - Mikah Sargent
I guess yeah.

0:08:52 - Leo Laporte
No, but I think Taylor Swift literally is safe. Did you see what Apple's doing? Her new album, the Dead Poets Society? No, something like that Comes out this week, April 19th. It's called the Tortured Poets Department.

0:09:06 - Mikah Sargent
Oh, it's the sort of sister site to Dead Poets.

0:09:11 - Leo Laporte
Society. It is yes, she's going to stand up on a desk and sing her songs. Apple loves her so much that they have been doing stuff which actually drives me crazy. Ahead of the launch this week, they've started dropping clues in apple music. So swift worked apple music. I'm getting this from apple insider to curate five different playlists that are related to heartbreak okay, well, that's not so bad here's your heartbreak playlist.

Then, every day, beginning yesterday, one song in one playlist had one change made to its lyrics. They capitalized random seeming capital letters in the middle of the words, the six letters hidden for one day in one playlist. Version of glitch, for instance, spelt out the word get ready hereby, why? I don't know, I don't understand.

0:10:06 - Mikah Sargent
Maybe that's the name of the next song I was going to say. Maybe Taylor Swift's people can tell us what you know.

0:10:11 - Leo Laporte
they know Swifties have a bent for looking for Easter eggs.

0:10:14 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, they find all the Easter eggs right. She was inside that Topsy Popcorn thingy right? Remember that Really? Oh, we don't know.

0:10:22 - Leo Laporte
Was she that really.

0:10:22 - Mikah Sargent
Oh, we don't know she actually was, but everybody was. All the swifties were convinced so funny, isn't it?

0:10:26 - Leo Laporte
yeah, uh, that's the new thing, isn't it? That hbo, when they make shows, they bury stuff in them, knowing that redditors will find them and no normal human watching the show would see it. Maybe that's the difference between human and ai generated. Humans will do easter eggs, that's true. I don't think well can ai? Be taught to do easter eggs. I wouldn't put it against it. With enough training it could. It doesn't do jokes very well. No, I think that's a very human thing.

0:10:53 - Mikah Sargent
Humor yeah, I agree.

0:10:55 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, humor is very hard for it, you're right so I don't think now we've got, by the way, we've got everybody in the discord making oh, no, not a printer song, not a printer. That's my nightmare. The worst of both worlds. Let's see what else is news. So now you know that Taylor Swift's got a new album.

0:11:13 - Mikah Sargent
Basically, I mean okay. So we have seen Apple Music works with different artists when they're about to release new music, and occasionally we'll do different things. For example, dominic Fike uh released an album. It's been a while ago now, and leading up to dominic fike's release of his new album, he had a live session that played over apple music, and so there was a takeover in apple music where you uh saw dominic's line of work, and then finally, the actual uh show happened, and leading up to that there was a video interview with Zane Lowe, and so they've done the kind of banner they love. If it's going to be a big album for them, yeah, they will promote it, they will promote the heck out of it. But to go as far as to change lyrics and stuff that's interesting, yeah, but I'm sure again the Swifties were eating it up.

0:12:06 - Leo Laporte
I'd love to talk to a brahra alhiti about it. See, if she's, she's a huge swifty. So why am I? You know it's? It seems to be young women. It's interesting because maybe I just don't have that gene, uh.

0:12:12 - Mikah Sargent
Or the chromosome, because, uh I was gonna say yeah, you're missing the, the proper chromosome yeah, they um well, they're missing the proper right, it'd be the reverse, wouldn't?

0:12:20 - Leo Laporte
they uh, there's something that she's it's. It's not that she's bad. I like her music. Yeah, she sounds good, but there's nothing that grabs me, you know, like a leonard cohen or a joni mitchell, or. But maybe that's because it's my.

0:12:33 - Mikah Sargent
I can appreciate that she is a good artist.

0:12:37 - Leo Laporte
I'm just not into her work yeah, she's the ai of popular music as far as I'm concerned. So there, okay, I said it I don't yeah I said it. Good luck with your email, for I am in deep trouble with the swifties. No, I love the swifties, uh, because who wouldn't love the swifties?

0:12:52 - Mikah Sargent
or else, or else you know, I remember a long time ago christina christina warren and I she's a swifty too. Um, she and I used to do a podcast together. It was called Cartoon Cast and on it we besmirched apparently the good name of Josh Groban, and I have never received so many emails about a person than I did. Whenever we said something really harmless about Josh Groban, I was caught off guard. I didn't know there were still so many Josh Groban fans out there.

0:13:23 - Leo Laporte
I love Josh Groban. Oh, no, sam Bull Salmon up in. Uh, what an hour and a half, 90 minutes. Yes, am I correct? Yes, uh, noon, oh noon. I thought it won. No noon noon in half an hour. Yeah, so we better get to some calls. 88, as the troubadour says. 888-724-2884, 888-724-2884. If you call right now, you can get in the queue and we'll put you on. You press star 6 to unmute. There's the Zoom call too at calltwittv, and then we have a bunch of emails. We have some voicemails. If you call during the week, you'll get the voicemail. You can leave us a voicemail. Are you ready, Mikah? I am so ready ready.

You feel good, I feel great. Let's do one commercial and then we'll go to the first call of the day. Actually, I want to do this because you installed it the amazing Eufy video smart lock e330. A lot of people getting doorbells with pit cameras right these days. A lot of people also getting door locks that you can open when you get close with your phone. This combines those two into one thing ¿Por qué no los dos? ¿por qué no los dos? The both of them, and watch Mikah's going to do it with a single screwdriver. There are a couple of things that I particularly love about this Eufy. First of all, there's no subscription. Ding, ding, ding, ding Really love that. Your videos stay local, either on the lock or, if you get the hub that goes with the entire Eufy home system, you could store months worth of videos. Look how easy, that is.

I also like it because there's a key. I love that feature, yes, hidden underneath the switch there. And, oh, that battery, easily charged, removable, lasts around four months. Let's you know when the battery's low and if it does run out. There's still a key, which is huge. Opens with a fingerprint, as well as with your phone. You can give somebody the passcode so they can get in. It's a great camera. Here's the fingerprint Watch. Watch that. Less than a second. It's about a 0.3 second. Fingerprint recognition and it unlocks within a second. Look at that, the.

0:15:33 - Mikah Sargent
There's the key I think that's huge. That's so important, because what happens if the battery runs out? What happens if you forget your pass? It's just a backup.

0:15:40 - Leo Laporte
What happens if you've got gloves on or you don't have a phone with you, or whatever, whatever it might be Remote control, 2k, clear sight, two-way audio, enhanced night vision so everything you'd want with a camera on your doorbell. I just think this thing is incredible and it comes from Eufy, which you should know the brand name it's Anker's home system. So we love Anker. We've been Anker fans for years. They have Eufy and Soundcore and this is part of their Eufy entire whole home automation system. But you get it standalone.

The Eufy video lock recording stay local. You never pay for storage. You never pay. Now that looks like it's $27,999. It is not Go to Amazon and see, but it's roughly 280 bucks $799. It is not Go to Amazon and see, but it's roughly 280 bucks. Eufy Video Lock search for that on Amazon or you can go to Eufy on the website Eufycom. Eufycom. 18-month warranty, great, 24-7 professional customer service. Eufy is a really good company. We really like these guys and they have made they've answered all my issues with a smart lock, no subscription. It has a key. Your videos stay local. The Eufy video smart lock E330. Check it out on Amazon. Just search for Eufy video lock and, uh, and you get three in one security. Everything you'd want the, the camera, the lock, all in one I love this, I love this. We installed that.

0:17:10 - AI
That was, uh, the engineering room yes, so now burke can't get in. We've been trying to keep him out for years.

0:17:16 - Leo Laporte
No, no, burke has the fingerprint like that. So cool, very cool. Thank you, yuffie, for supporting the tech guys. Now let's ask our esteemed producer, producer john yes who should we talk to?

0:17:29 - John A.
uh, we're gonna talk to this caller when I bring up on the screen once I hit this button right here. I gotta do all this.

0:17:34 - Mikah Sargent
I got, he's got me, yeah I shouldn't be talking to him twists and twirls this caller right here, pop it hey, he popped into our stargate.

0:17:44 - Leo Laporte
What's your first name? I'm mike. Hi, mike, where are you calling from? Orlando florida, beautiful orlando. Welcome mike. Thanks, what can we do? And hello Mikah, hello Mikah Mikah, yes, I'm.

0:17:58 - Caller
I had a question. I had a question about editing hdr video. Um, I shoot some on the iphone and I've been shooting a lot of um events I go to and I'll put together just like an hour long just video of what I've shot, just to kind of have a remembrance of it all. And the only device I have that's hdr capable is a mac pro laptop. I'm editing on premiere and it takes an hour. I'm sorry, it takes a week to export an hour's worth of hdr video no, no, you're not, you're not exaggerating one whole week one whole week and because, from what I understand, premiere only does um software encoding, not hardware, I was wondering.

I was wondering if an ipad, like an ipad pro, that has hdr, uh, and using maybe something like final cut, would that be faster, do you think? Do you have any idea?

0:18:55 - Leo Laporte
what are you?

0:18:56 - Caller
you're reporting on a mac currently I, when I do stuff like that, I'm doing it on premiere on a mac pro, on a macbook pro.

0:19:03 - Mikah Sargent
Okay, good, a macbook pro, yeah um, so I can say with all, almost all certainty yes, it would be so much faster. Uh, that is, that's a failing at premiere that is absolutely I, I literally have worked with. I don't think I've had an hour of hdr footage, but I've certainly had up to 30 minutes of hdr footage.

0:19:24 - Leo Laporte
You because you have premiere. You probably have a subscription. Do you have Lightroom as well?

0:19:30 - Caller
I have access to it, but I'm a video producer of my company so I'm not really using Lightroom.

0:19:33 - Leo Laporte
I understand, but if you import it in Lightroom, it might be faster because Lightroom is part of the clouds, Creative Cloud. So if you import it once, you might even try Bridge to see if it does a better job. It seems like that's a failing of Premiere.

0:19:47 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, that's very strange, that's wild that the export chews on it for so long it used to be. It's kind of funny that you bring this up back in the days of Intel.

I would do kind of the last part of my video export on an iPad Pro instead of doing it on the computer because it took so long. So you're familiar with it. Yeah, it's just it would chew on it, and this was you know earlier days. Now, yes, with uh, the Mac studio that I have, even with this uh M two MacBook air, it would export it so much faster than it would if you were doing it. It's a shame that premiere is only doing software how big are your?

0:20:28 - Leo Laporte
you said one hour. How big are those files? Oh, once they're exported, yeah, no, just uh.

0:20:35 - Caller
You know on the phone how big are they oh I I'd have to go back and look because there are a bunch of individual files I'm streaming together to make one hour, so it's at least two gigabytes per Probably. Yeah, I'm shooting 4K, 60 in HDR on the iPhone, so it's probably something like that, wow.

0:20:55 - Leo Laporte
Boy, I think certainly ProRes would do it, prores RAW would do it. Do you have Final Cut?

0:21:04 - Caller
I don't. Like I said, I've been using the premiere suite, uh so, but that's something I'd be willing to try and learn is final cut and doing that.

0:21:12 - Mikah Sargent
I wonder if you can get a pro res raw um I test many, many years ago subscription uh, people always laugh at me when I say that because I'm not that old. But um, many, many years ago for me, I started in premiere and then I started working at a company that worked in final cut, and so I moved over to final cut and I found the transit transition pretty easy. Um okay, so I don't think you'll have too much issue with that if that's something that you really feel like you don't really need to use final cut if you don't want to, because you can use the pro res raw importer that comes with final cut.

0:21:50 - Leo Laporte
I'm wondering if apple offers that as a free download, but because that, by the way, the point being that, does use the gpu, so encoding should be faster yeah, but you were talking about uses the gpu versus shooting no, no, no, there isn't.

There is, um, there is an import app. Let me see, wait a minute. Oh, I see what you're saying. Okay, as a compressor, there's an import app that will import the ProRes compressor. Yeah, it's $50. I wish Alex Lindsay were sitting over my left shoulder here, because this is his Bailey wick compressor and I just wanted to do it because it's kind of I would call it casual editing.

0:22:33 - Caller
I just want to. Working on the iPad would be something where it'd be doable and maybe even you'd even be happier, frankly.

0:22:39 - Leo Laporte
But yeah, so you can download compressor for 50 bucks. I, unfortunately, I don't believe Apple offers a trial. That is what Final Cut will use to import the video and I would imagine Compressor is going to be faster than Premiere because it's made for the Mac and it's going to use the GPU. It will take HDR video. It will give it to you in a variety of formats if you want. It'll do P3, d65, pq 2020, hlg 2020, pq for HDR10. So it gives you a variety of formats.

I'm sure Premiere, uh, at least some of those, if not all of them. It's 50 bucks. It's not that you're not, you're still editing in premiere, but, um, I think this is the solution for you. It's it's their, it's their importer. It works with Final Cut Pro and Motion and I'm pretty sure well, boy, I wish again, I wish Alex were here I'm pretty sure it will import directly from the iPhone. That's really the main thing that it has to do, right? Advanced encoding for Final Cut Pro, support for industry standards, pristine format. Does anybody anybody in the discord have an idea of? Uh? So you, you want to take the iphone hdr video and import it into your mac so you can edit it absolutely as Mikah says, the ipad will be easier.

0:24:23 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, to clarify, I thought you were saying that it's the export that takes a week, not the import.

0:24:30 - Caller
Correct. Oh yeah, importing is not a problem, it's when he's transcoating. Import is exporting.

0:24:34 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, not on import?

0:24:37 - Leo Laporte
Well, this compressor will work on the export as well.

0:24:40 - Mikah Sargent
If you but you can't from Premiere, Premiere won't plop it over into Compressor to have Compressor. Do it Because Premiere only works with its own. Yeah, Premiere works with what is Adobe's.

0:24:53 - Leo Laporte
Media Encoder yeah, Media Encoder. So Media Encoder takes a week. Is that our?

0:24:57 - Caller
experience. You said you were hi, this is John. You said you were doing this through. How are you encoding it exactly? It was through.

0:25:06 - Leo Laporte
Not through, but he's using an iPhone to shoot HDR. Are you doing hard?

0:25:09 - Caller
I'm shooting on an iPhone. I'm shooting on an iPhone, importing into Premiere, editing that HDR footage on a MacBook Pro in Premiere and then exporting using Media Encoder.

0:25:19 - Caller
Are you hardware or graphics? No, because you're doing it through the MacBook.

0:25:22 - Caller
Yeah, it's only does software encoding. From what my research has found, premiere doesn't support hardware encoding for exporting, so that's why it takes so long Can you use something like Handbrake?

0:25:33 - Leo Laporte
Is there a third-party solution that can read Premiere? What is the Premiere file format.

0:25:40 - Mikah Sargent
That's a good question.

0:25:41 - Caller
Well, I mean, I can export in various formats but I gotta make would take so long, though, right yeah, right, and I had to make it work for youtube, so I was putting out, I think, an mp4 format.

0:25:51 - Mikah Sargent
Your macbook pro is an apple silicon macbook pro? Yes, it's an m1 because I'm reading that premiere does do hardware accelerated decoding how to enable hardware encoding, but you have to have. It has to be an H.264 or H.265, which is HEVC format, which is what you want. Yeah, which is what you would want to have, and it does HEVC HLG.

0:26:14 - Caller
Okay, I must have missed that, because I was looking around for that.

0:26:17 - Leo Laporte
Here is the Adobe page.

0:26:19 - Caller
Yeah, we'll include a link.

0:26:20 - Leo Laporte
GPU accelerated rendering and hardware encoding decoding. So I apologize for wasting everybody's time. Edit that part out where Leo is just an idiot or write a song about it. Mercury playback engine so it looks like it can, and there's a whole page on how to do this, including Apple Silicon supports hardware accelerated decoding and encoding of H.264265, including 10-bit 422 decoding, hevchlg. That's pretty good, so it sounds like it does it. Um, but yeah, we'll put a link to this particular page or you could just google adobe gpu accelerated rendering and hardware encoding decoding.

0:26:59 - Caller
And this is. I must have been googling wrong google foo is very important.

0:27:03 - Mikah Sargent
Yes, sometimes that happens, but also listening.

0:27:06 - Leo Laporte
Leo, listening is very important. Export import there's a difference, ok so, all that said, start here.

0:27:16 - Mikah Sargent
Try and see if you can turn it on. If you can't, your original question of would Final Cut Pro export faster these files? The answer is yes, it would.

0:27:25 - Leo Laporte
It should final cut pro. Export faster these files? The answer is yes, it would. It should, uh, for adobe premiere pro, go to file project settings, general video rendering and playback. Set the renderer to the mercury playback engine, gpu acceleration, which supports metal. Yeah, because that's how we do it here. It's set.

0:27:39 - Caller
Yeah, that, because if it took a week to get this show out, it literally when I'm encoding, when everything's exported to video audio it, it literally takes a combined like maybe an hour just to do all the exports we need to do.

0:27:52 - Leo Laporte
So it's less than real time.

0:27:53 - Caller
I just thought HDR was adding in a complication. No, I don't think so.

0:27:58 - Leo Laporte
So it's just getting it to use the GPU and that is a setting. Again, settings general video rendering and playback.

0:28:04 - Caller
I still want to investigate editing on an iPad, so I may still do that I think editing on an iPad is great.

0:28:09 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, and by the way, I think if. I don't say this. Joe's going to have a conniption fit, because Joe mentioned it about 15 times. Luma Fusion is a great app for editing video on the iPad. I've actually Joe's not the only person to say this. I've heard from several people, including and now his name escapes me. He's on MacBreak Weekly sometimes and he was on during a power outage one time Steven Robles.

Steven Robles, I know, uses LumaFusion on the iPad. Matthew Cassinelli, who was a former host on one of the shows on the network, uses LumaFusion. So it's got a lot of people out there and I think you can use it for free for a lot of it. So, or no? No, rather, there's no subscription. That's what it is, so you buy it once and do it, so that might be a choice for you. I know a lot of people who like to use the pencil as an editing tool Right, and enjoy that experience over using kind of the keyboard and whatnot.

0:29:07 - Leo Laporte
And just to make sure HEc does that support hdr, because I understand that's the issue here is is getting that hdr?

0:29:10 - Mikah Sargent
I think at h265 it does, yeah yeah, because we don't do hdr. So our thank goodness I don't even see that much contrast you would be able to see what's in our fireplace.

0:29:19 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, yes, you wouldn't the secrets we have in our fireplace. You wouldn't want that.

0:29:23 - Mikah Sargent
The secrets we have in our fireplace. You wouldn't want that. That's where we keep the codes to the national treasure.

0:29:27 - Leo Laporte
Yes, yeah, this is a good page. It's a very thorough page on Adobe's site, so I think you'll probably find what you need.

0:29:34 - Caller
Great, I appreciate it, thank you, great question. Hey, we have a really good question.

0:29:38 - Leo Laporte
Is this your first time calling in?

0:29:41 - Caller
No, I've called him before and I've actually visited you way back at the cottage. You're kidding Mike. No, wow, at the cottage and then at the brick house.

0:29:52 - Leo Laporte
Wonderful. Well, it's nice to see you again.

0:29:54 - Caller
And I'm a member.

0:29:55 - Mikah Sargent
So thank you for your support, thank you.

0:29:57 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, we really appreciate our club members. They make it possible at this point.

0:30:02 - Caller
That's the only thing making and I'm glad to see you're getting an audience again. I'm sorry I'm now. I used to be in southern california, but I've been here a couple years, so I'm too far away.

0:30:09 - Mikah Sargent
Then you would have been to all the studios I know, I know that's great mike we'll print off a photo of you and just have you take you to a chair like elijah.

0:30:19 - Leo Laporte
This is mike c. We keep it up. Thanks, mike. Thanks so much. All right, thanks so much. We do have an open studio next sunday. I don't know if it's full, uh. Uh, you should go to. What did they do if ticketstwittv?

0:30:33 - Caller
ticketstwittv, if you want if you want to show, just just just just register. It's fine, we're not gonna say anything.

0:30:39 - Leo Laporte
What happened was last time last week, a number of people couldn't make it, so we had extra seats, and now I understand why the airlines overbook, you know, because people don't show, and so just go there and then we'll let you know if we really can't let you in before you come.

0:30:56 - Mikah Sargent
I think yeah, but that's why you have to register. Don't just show up at the door Right, do register.

0:31:00 - Leo Laporte
So it's this Sunday, and I might as well add this Lisa keeps saying this is the last one ever she does. Yeah, I don't know why she says that, but she says that. So and she's the boss, so she says it. It must be true. I my suspicion is that, well, first of all, she has to come in on our day off to do this. We bring in people who are not working to do this. That's, it's expensive, but I I also think that she thinks we're not going to be in the studio that much longer. That's my guess. She. She doesn't tell me I listen when she's sleeping.

See if she'll oh, that's smart yeah, and all I hear is last chance, last chance, april 21st, last chance. So you, you have to read the tea leaves on that one, but we would love to see if you come. It'll be a lot of fun. I'm going to be flying. I'm going to see my mom tomorrow, that's right. Early morning. I'm going to be in Providence for the two shows, for the four shows, rather Tuesday and Wednesday, and then I'm flying back Saturday night. So, god willing, when the cricks don't rise, I will be here Sunday, april 21st. If not, you're going to be signing all the autographs and wearing the big fez.

0:32:07 - Caller
We'll have a couple of red bills out for you. I will be here.

0:32:10 - Leo Laporte
No, no, it's not. I get in at like 10 o'clock at night. It's not too late, oh that's not bad.

0:32:14 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, no. Did your kids do Flat Stanley?

0:32:26 - Leo Laporte
No, Flat stanley was post was, did you? No, this was a. I think my youngest sibling did. That's why you make a flat thing that you should I do it. You know what andy does? He has a rubber, uh, holstein cow that he carries around and puts the cow in different places. Yeah, yeah I.

0:32:35 - Mikah Sargent
I've always thought that. I've always thought that was delightful. But it is so cute, stanley's, I that part always I thought why can't I just make a flat, whomever? Mica yeah, flat mica, you should have a flat mica flat it's.

0:32:46 - Leo Laporte
You know, it's all because somebody wrote a book, yeah and uh, then that person got picked up, it's the same thing as elf on a shelf right. Oh god, modern rituals don't seem as good to me because they're. They're not like.

0:33:00 - Mikah Sargent
We haven't been doing them for 100 years right, yeah, it's almost like uh trying to falsify nostalgia or something.

0:33:06 - Leo Laporte
Well, I mean.

0:33:08 - Caller
I guess. I mean, I guess, if you think about it, Santa.

0:33:10 - Leo Laporte
Claus was invented by Coca-Cola in the late 19th century.

0:33:15 - Mikah Sargent
So at the time it could have been arguably falsified nostalgia, but that's real nostalgia. There was no jolly with the thing in the who do you think invented the tooth fairy? Was that big tooth Big?

0:33:26 - Leo Laporte
tooth. Who do you think invented the tooth fairy? Was that Big Tooth, big Tooth, big Tooth invented the tooth fairy? There have been lots of theories. Let's see what the folklore During the Middle Ages Really that far Superstitions arose around surrounding children's teeth. Oh, I don't even want to go into this. Witches, fear of witches. So the tooth fairy is traced to a 1908 household hints item in the chicago daily tribune from lillian brown tooth fairy. Many a refractory child will allow a loose tooth to be removed if he knows about the tooth fairy. If he takes his little tooth and puts it under the pillow when he goes to bed, the tooth fairy will come in the night and take it away and in its place will leave some little gift.

0:34:14 - Mikah Sargent
To encourage because it can be kind of well, it's painful and it can be frightening for some kids. So yeah, to encourage them?

0:34:21 - Leo Laporte
Did your parents let the teeth fall out naturally, or did they uh?

0:34:25 - Mikah Sargent
they would have preferred that, but I did not allow it. You didn't like having a little thing.

0:34:30 - Leo Laporte
I liked getting them out yeah, did you tie a string around and tie it to the?

0:34:33 - Mikah Sargent
I never did the doorknob but I did tie floss around it and go, like this burke did that. I did a yank down because I for some reason I understood how it made it didn't make sense to me to do it where you pull that way, but to pull down yeah, I'm glad my teeth don't fall out.

0:34:49 - Leo Laporte
I'm getting to the age now where they're going to start.

0:34:50 - Mikah Sargent
Oh no, it all comes back around.

0:34:53 - Leo Laporte
I'm going to have the tooth fairy. But the tooth fairy better leave something better than a nickel tchotchke under my pillow have you seen the x-rays of a child skull where you can see their teeth?

0:35:06 - Mikah Sargent
Oh my word, it's frightening. Humans are gross. Anyway, I know, so can we not talk about it?

0:35:12 - Caller
Yeah, how about we shift away from the subject and pick up?

0:35:15 - Mikah Sargent
on. I was just trying to do enough time so that we could wait for our dear friend to do this.

0:35:20 - Caller
Well, how about this caller that I have lined up ready to go? Oh, you have a caller.

0:35:23 - Leo Laporte
Hello caller, Welcome. Thank you, producer.

0:35:28 - Mikah Sargent
To Ask the Tech Guys Remember star six?

0:35:36 - Leo Laporte
to unmute Must be the tooth fairy. Come take a teeth. Hello, hey, welcome. What's your first name? My name is Bill. Hi, bill.

0:35:47 - Caller
Where are you calling from? I'm calling from Fall River. Welcome, what's your first name? My?

0:35:49 - Leo Laporte
name is Bill. Hi Bill, where are you calling from? I'm calling from Fall River, massachusetts, fall River. I'm going to be out your way tomorrow.

0:35:54 - Caller
I'm going to be in Cranston.

0:35:55 - Leo Laporte
Yes.

0:35:56 - Caller
We're famous for the Tariq and Chow Mein here, oh man.

0:36:00 - Leo Laporte
Andy Anako is going to take me out to his favorite diner while I'm out there. I'm really looking forward to it.

0:36:07 - Caller
What can we do for you, bill? Well, I have a Samsung Ultra 23, and I have not received any updates since October Uh-oh, security updates, and I haven't received the new UI 6.1. I was wondering if there's something I can do, or something I'm missing, to get the update.

0:36:28 - Leo Laporte
That's a really interesting question. You should have gotten an update since October on the S23. The S23 is only a year old. It's not the. You know. The S24 just came out.

0:36:39 - Caller
Right, I got the phone in October and right away there was an update. Yeah, I have not was an update. Yeah, I have not received any updates since then.

0:36:48 - Leo Laporte
Okay, that's problematic because you really want those updates and, yeah, you want the One UI 6.1 update. What could be? Who's your carrier?

0:36:59 - Caller
Well, I'm on the. It's called Truecaller and they're on the T-Mobile network. It's a subsidy from the federal government.

0:37:10 - Leo Laporte
Okay. So I'm wondering if, because the carrier has to, it goes through the carrier, it doesn't come independently of the carrier. So now I'm wondering if maybe Truecaller is slow to do its updates, there is a way around that. You can, I believe, go directly to Samsung and get the updates. Now I'm racking my brain here. It's been a while, in fact. The Discord is telling us that Samsung is in fact pushing out its updates to the S23, or has pushed out updates to the S23 that you should have had by now.

0:37:51 - Caller
Yeah, that's what I'm seeing. Other people have at least seen it. Yeah.

0:37:54 - Leo Laporte
Dr Mom has put a link to a YouTube. Galaxy S23 won't update. Here's how to fix it, so this might be worth looking at this YouTube. I'm wondering what they uh suggest. Looks like maybe they're doing what I was going to say, which is get samsung to do it directly.

0:38:15 - Caller
no, this is oh, this is an ad directly yeah, I believe you can, um he's checking he's checking battery.

0:38:23 - Leo Laporte
He's checking all sorts of silly things. This YouTube video is not that useful. I think that's what you want to do so.

0:38:31 - Caller
I did do a live chat with them and they said to me this was about a month ago. They said that it's like not to worry about not receiving security updates or updates because I have Knox security through them.

0:38:46 - Leo Laporte
Yeahx is good, nox is built into all the galaxy phones, um, but they're that's a little bit of them kind of hyping their technology beyond really what they should. Let me see, um, right, uh, I think you can get it directly from Samsung, but I'm trying to remember how I used to do that. Maybe it's going to the Samsung site, I don't know. So you talked to them and they said oh, don't worry, you got Knox, you're safe.

0:39:23 - Caller
Not exactly true right, I mean like. And then I saw a video online where somebody's receiving security updates and I'm going, well, I'm not even receiving those.

0:39:35 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, yeah, no, you should be. You want Samsung Now. Android does monthly security updates and if you have a Google phone, you'll get those pretty quickly, but then in order for Samsung to do it, they have to get the update from Google. Vet it, process it. Make sure it works with all their software Carriers do the same thing. True Caller might be a little slow on that and then it gets pushed out to you. So Samsung is usually a few months behind.

I don't have my S23 here, or I would look, but it shouldn't be that far behind. It should probably you should, let's see October. Well, you know what you might start getting that soon. I want to see how we can get the updates directly, though that's what I really want to do Download S23 updates. I usually go to get this kind of information. Oh yeah, See, the problem is it is through your, your carrier. A lot of carriers don't like these updates because of the bandwidth uh issues. Um, you know it saves them money to be slow on these updates and because it's a subsidized phone, they might be less anxious to get the updates.

0:40:47 - Caller
Well, I was wondering if, like because they're on the, their provider is T-Mobile. Is the update coming through T-Mobile or is it coming through?

0:40:57 - Leo Laporte
Truecaller. It's coming from T-Mobile but it's still coming. It has to go. I guess it goes. If Truecaller is owned by T-Mobileobile, then it would come from t-mobile, but I think is true caller using t-mobile as an mvno. That's a good question. Um, maybe you cannot get it from.

0:41:29 - Caller
I did read somebody wrote like take out your SIM card and take the SIM card out, restart and try to do it by Wi-Fi. Are you on Wi-Fi? Well, no, not right right now, but if you get wifi, you should certainly do it on wifi for sure.

0:41:53 - Leo Laporte
Android central, let's see. Yeah, they put out 6.1 in November. This has always been a problem where the carriers get in the way. They're part of the issue. It's one of the reasons why Google and Apple both started doing updates in their stores. Google moved more and more of the software into the store so that they could push Android updates through the store updates. So you certainly should do your store updates. That'll update the google subsystems stuff on your samsung phone. It won't update the samsung stuff, but it's a. It's a. It's better than anything and it's one of the reasons google did that is because they didn't, they weren't getting updates very fast from the, from the other guys. Um, I am, uh, I am looking and looking and I don't you should. There was an April update which you should, you should, which was going out yesterday. So I'm yeah, but that you won't get for a few weeks.

0:43:01 - Caller
Yeah, so I go to Samsung's member program and it says that I'm on a one ui beta program oh, that's one.

0:43:11 - Leo Laporte
That's a big problem.

0:43:12 - Caller
Get off of that the beta will now, how do I get off of that?

0:43:16 - Leo Laporte
well, I don't know how you're on it. That's probably in the settings somewhere. Look in your firmware update settings and see if there's a switch for being in the betas. You definitely don't want to be in the betas, you know, one would think that's going to make it faster, but it's going to hinder the real updates that you really want. I would not be in a beta if I were you. That's weird that it thinks you're in a beta.

0:43:41 - Caller
Yeah, so I don't know how to get out of the beta.

0:43:47 - Mikah Sargent
I've found a page that we'll include in the show notes. It's rather involved, so there will be some To get out of the beta. Yeah, you have to apply for withdrawal through Samsung members application.

0:43:57 - Leo Laporte
You shouldn't have been ever been in the beta. Maybe that's an error, I think that might be spurious. Yeah, it's a little involved. I think maybe you aren't in the beta and that's just a that's it could be. Yeah, it could be inaccurate. Um, thinking that you are, I don't really have a good answer for you. I'm not sure why it's getting not getting updated. My bet is it's true caller and you say you talked to true caller. No, you talked to samsung I would call the carrier.

I would call the carrier on this and say, hey, I'm not getting the update and see what they have to say, because that's who who's probably that's who's got to deliver it to you. And I think sometimes, um, they're a little slow cause it's caused some bandwidth. They're hoping, they're hoping that they can do it all at once. You know, oh, we don't want to do the April one, maybe the May one will be better. So, yeah, you definitely want those updates. Again, google will update a lot of the critical stuff in the App Store. So make sure everything's up to date in your Google stuff. Just go to the Google Play Store and make sure everything's up to date. That actually helps a lot. The UI is not going to fix any security issues. Those are the monthly security updates and that's what you really need more than anything else.

0:45:18 - Caller
Right, yeah, that's why I was concerned about not even getting a security update.

0:45:23 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, you're right to be worried about that. The 6.1 UI is not going to fix anything, it's just going to look different.

0:45:31 - Caller
But those monthly updates. The reason why I bought the phone is that they guarantee updates for three years. Yeah, yeah.

0:45:38 - Leo Laporte
This is a little frustrating. I'm going to keep looking for a way to update your phone without going through the carrier. I may be wrong on that, but I'm pretty sure you can do that. Keep listening and I'll see if I can find it.

0:45:53 - Caller
Bill all right, thank you, leo.

0:45:56 - Leo Laporte
I am sorry we haven't been much help.

0:45:58 - Caller
You would remember. I remember you would pack it norton and oh yeah, the good old days.

0:46:04 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, do I look older? I don't, do I?

0:46:08 - Caller
No, you look the same to me. How did you age?

0:46:12 - Leo Laporte
I'm going to get some Grecian formula. Bill, it's great to talk to you, thank you for saying that Take care, take care.

Yeah, this is an interesting conundrum. You're kind of at the mercy of you and this is why I asked him what his carrier is at of the carrier, so it goes from google to the manufacturer, to the carrier, maybe even separately the manufacturing carrier. They have to all approve it and then the carrier has to actually push it and that's usually where the the hitch is. That's why apple is very smart. They don't those updates come from apple. Yeah, we're not. We're not having that in. Yeah, they don't do that. Because of that problem, and google, knowing that's a problem with all android phones, has started to move a lot of the critical stuff out of, uh, the system and into the app store, the play store. Uh, I think it'd be a good time to pause?

no, we'll do a break and then to talk to Sam Abuelsamid, our car guy, our car guy, our show today, brought to you by Zscaler, the leader in cloud security. It's no surprise cyber attackers are it's inevitable right using ai and very creative ways to compromise users, breach organizations. We had this story a little while ago where that poor guy who worked for a company was invited to a Zoom meeting with a CFO and all these bigwigs and he said write us a check for 25 million. And he said yes, sir, okay sir, except it turned out they were all deep fakes. It wasn't real. It wasn't real. Ai they were all deep fakes. It wasn't real. It wasn't real. Ai is is a real threat, from high precision phishing emails to video and voice deep fakes of ceos. Maybe you've seen the celebrity deep fakes really annoying a lot of celebrities. Now they're all over Twitter.

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0:49:56 - Sam Abuelsamid
How about if I press the cough button? Good to see you guys.

0:50:02 - Leo Laporte
No coughing, hey Sam. I always like to ask Sam this what are you driving this week?

0:50:08 - Sam Abuelsamid
This week I have the Subaru Crosstrek Wilderness Edition.

0:50:13 - Leo Laporte
Now, Mike is a Subaru guy. I do like Subarus. There's a certain type of person. My kid's a Subaru guy. They call them Subis. Right, yeah, they do.

0:50:21 - Sam Abuelsamid
You like it, it's fine. You know it is what it is. I mean, it's not my particular cup of tea, but for what it is, what it's intended for the intended audience, it's perfectly good. You know it can do a little bit of very light off-roading. And, by the way, if you're watching the video, the car behind me is not a.

0:50:41 - Leo Laporte
Subaru. I can tell by the interior that that is a Tesla, I'm thinking.

0:50:45 - Mikah Sargent
I think it's BMW. What is it? Yeah, I can tell, by the BMW. That is the.

0:50:52 - Sam Abuelsamid
BMW yeah, that is the BMW Vision Noia Class X concept.

0:50:58 - Mikah Sargent
Sorry, that's a name, but this is the concept.

0:51:00 - Leo Laporte
I remember they showed this recently and I was very impressed and I thought, oh, I want that, but you can't get it yet.

0:51:07 - Sam Abuelsamid
No, it's coming out the second half of 2025. It's going to look very much like this concept. So Neue Klasse is literally German for new class. So this is their new EV-only platform that is launching next year.

0:51:20 - Leo Laporte
I have to say I could not be happier with their current EV-only i5. It is a wonderful car. Really really happy with it.

0:51:29 - Sam Abuelsamid
I'm glad you like it. Yeah, the difference, though, is the car that you have, the i5, the 5 Series platform is actually a flexible platform, so BMW makes versions of that same platform that are all electric, like yours. They have versions that are plug-in hybrids and versions with internal combustion engines.

0:51:47 - Leo Laporte
You know, I know this because there's a place in the back where the exhaust pipes would go. But actually it was one of the reasons I wanted this car, because it doesn't look like an EV. So you're just driving down the road and people don't know that you're. You know stealthily all electric. It just looks like a normal sedan, which I like. Yeah, this does not the Nui, this does not the Neue Klass does not.

0:52:11 - Sam Abuelsamid
Yeah well, I mean, it's not that it necessarily looks particularly like an EV, but this is the new design language that BMW is going for Cleaner design. You know the interior, you know across in the photo, the image in the background, the screen in the background. You can see if you're again, if you're watching the video.

0:52:30 - Leo Laporte
Look how clean that is in the interior.

0:52:32 - Sam Abuelsamid
It's just a big central screen and then there is a panoramic heads-up display that stretches spans across the entire top of the dashboard, and then, on the center screen, you can drag widgets on there to get the information that you want displayed up there. So it's there all the time.

0:52:55 - Leo Laporte
You know, the irony of this is the EU NCAP said that you have to have physical controls to be safe, and I kind of agree with them. Tesla's gone way too far in the other direction, where everything's on the screen. That's a look. What do you think? Does this have physical controls? It doesn't look like it.

0:53:08 - Sam Abuelsamid
It has some, but I, you know, I think the production version of this. Again, this is the concept. Um, you know, the production version is coming about, uh, 18 months from now, uh, and it will probably have more physical controls on there in order to accommodate those, those new rules.

0:53:24 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, in fact, uh, elon had to do a software recall on Teslas because the flasher icon was too small or not obvious.

0:53:32 - Sam Abuelsamid
Yeah, I think there's requirements for readability of certain warning lamps and things like that.

0:53:38 - Leo Laporte
Flashers should be physical and very obvious and easy to hit because you need them Especially for being a wheel driver.

0:53:45 - Mikah Sargent
They need to know where they are.

0:53:46 - Sam Abuelsamid
They need to know where they are, and you know, the interesting thing is a trend. A lot of automakers that had gone more and more into touch controls are now, even before this change of rules in Europe, are starting to shift back towards physical controls. Interesting Hyundai and Kia are just, at the New York Auto Show last month, announced some refreshes of some of their models that go back to more physical controls. Volkswagen is doing the same thing, and I think BMW will have to do a bit more of that on the production version of this car. So this is just the concept, but the overall look is what it's going to be. What was interesting, though, in addition to seeing this vehicle, was we also got to visit the BMW DesignWorks studio in Santa Monica while we're out there, and DesignWorks is a subsidiary of BMW that does a lot of advanced design work for BMW brands for BMW Rolls-Royce Mini but they also do work for a variety of other clients, like they've done aircraft interior design. They have designed tractors for John Deere. They do all kinds of interesting projects, and the one of the the theme of what we talked about when we visited DesignWorks was how they're using AI, generative AI tools, and you know we talk a lot, you know, with ai about uh, hallucinations, um, and it was interesting.

A couple of weeks ago I was out in california for nvidia, gtc and uh. During uh, the time I was there, it was a they as part of gtc, nvidia puts on a program for analysts, uh, and we had a Q&A session with Jensen Wong and he talked about how, when humans learn things, we go back and we reflect on those lessons and make connections to other things that we know and what could happen with those certain actions. And he described it as, in fact, we simulate scenarios and we generate in a similar way to generative AI, combining elements that we've learned into something new. And then he goes on to say so you're now simulating these multi-step, multi-multi-step scenarios and you're doing it completely in your head, and then you do that enough times, and then what happens? It becomes reality to you, said Wang, it becomes your reality. Now, that reality if you go on too long, if you're like in a padded room and you just sit there and you do this and when you come back out, you're insane and now? Why is that?

because you were never grounded in truth. So this is, this is what causes the hallucinations, is that lack of connection, and I think this is one of the problems we're going to run into going forward with with gen ai. If we start feeding in the previously generated stuff into, as training material, into the models, this is what causes, starts to cause, hallucinations and stuff. The flip side of that, though, is, for most applications, we don't want hallucinations, but there are some where we do, and this is where the designers actually like the hallucinations, because if you've ever been into a design studio, one of the things you'll see inevitably in there is you'll see mood boards. You know, when they start start on a new design project, they will.

The designers will take some time, and they'll go through books and magazines and websites and all kinds of things. Then I'll find images and words, passages that they think you know are give, give them the theme, the mood, them the right mood for the product that they're about to try and design, and they put all this stuff up on a mood board. Well, what the designers at DesignWorks are doing and I suspect that most other design studios are doing something similar is they're starting to generate their mood boards, using gen ai tools like mid journey and stable diffusion, and using that to create and you know now on behind me, if you're again, if you're watching the video, you can see some of the images they create have the the gen ai create these wild images that they're now using that for their mood boards, for inspiration. So every time they you know they're getting something completely different you know from what designers in another studio might be getting or the designer next to them might be getting.

0:58:00 - Leo Laporte
This is, to me, always the best use of AI is human AI collaboration. There was an article today in TechCrunch about a company called Neural Concept which does AI aerodynamics and, in fact, formula One four of the Formula One teams are using it because aerodynamics are so important, and I imagine this is going to be the same thing for EVs Aerodynamics are so important, but what they're doing is they're not having the AI design the aerodynamics, they're having an AI work with designers to suggest, just like this that you're talking about, to suggest ideas. The designer says, oh, let's try that and let's see, and it's a good collaboration.

0:58:39 - Sam Abuelsamid
Yeah, so they're using this to get inspiration for colors and materials and textures to use, you know, as well as you know for inspiration for shapes to use, as well as for inspiration for shapes the shapes of the vehicles, and so there's all kinds of crazy things, and one of the things the designer doing this presentation talked about. He said we actually want the Gen AI to hallucinate more. Yes, we want something original and wild and crazy that gives us inspiration when we sit down to do our design work.

0:59:11 - Leo Laporte
That's exactly what Neural Concepts is doing. He started it as a French student in the Coldplay technique for bicycles. He designed aerodynamic fairings for land speed records on bicycles and they're now doing it for automobiles Same idea. I think this is where I think AI is going to be very transformative, to be honest.

0:59:33 - Sam Abuelsamid
Yeah, it's not a replacement.

0:59:34 - Leo Laporte
No.

0:59:35 - Sam Abuelsamid
It's just another tool in the toolbox.

Yeah and then, as they go along, they're taking the images, the still images that are generated from a stable diffusion or mid-jour, and they are in fact using both of those and other tools Interesting and then feeding that into other tools to, to animate it, to create animations based on this, these still images you know, to generate something completely new. You know new animations and then also experimenting with using it for marketing materials. So once you've designed the vehicle, then take some of the inspirational images and combine that back in as collages and in different ways to, to create new, new things with the, with the stuff that they've designed and the, the generated uh materials.

1:00:27 - Leo Laporte
I was thinking that today actually thinking, well, my cars is. Bmw's design palette is fairly dull, let's face it. That's probably part of their sales pitch, right, except for some of the high-end, you know cars. But uh, but the sedans like the 5 series, very boring looking and the reason I chose it is because it just looks like a. It doesn't attract attention exactly, but I imagine the next generation of, so you don't want to flaunt your wealth?

1:00:53 - Sam Abuelsamid
then is what you're saying?

1:00:55 - Leo Laporte
it wasn't that expensive, uh, but I, you know, I hated the early Priuses which looked like teardrops or something, because they were so obviously weird looking, uh and it seemed like a marketing thing but now I'm coming back.

1:01:08 - Sam Abuelsamid
It was. That was part of the appeal, though for a lot of prius drivers is that uh, virtue signaling?

1:01:14 - Leo Laporte
yeah, yeah, see I'm driving a say a better car the ionic is my favorite.

1:01:19 - Mikah Sargent
It's beautiful. That's a beautiful vehicle actually, and selling very well, so cool so.

1:01:23 - Leo Laporte
But then I'm starting to think. Maybe you know that it would be cool to have a car that didn't look like any other car that that that was coming. Remember buckminster fuller's um the dymaxion car which was actually literally a teardrop shaped and bucky was a was one of those guys who thinks outside the box and uh, didn't sell well because it was perhaps a little ahead of its well, yeah, it was never.

1:01:50 - Sam Abuelsamid
It was never, it was never manufactured it. I think there was. There may have been one or two prototypes. Yeah, what ended?

1:01:55 - Leo Laporte
up happening with the dymaxion cars. There was a fatal crash and people decided, oh, this thing is not, uh, safe. I don't know if it was unsafe, but it was aerodynamic, which is super cool. Uh, here's a video of the Dymaxion car.

1:02:11 - Mikah Sargent
It kind of looks like the VW bus that John is going to be getting.

1:02:16 - Leo Laporte
I think it was a trike. Yeah, it was a three-wheeler.

1:02:18 - Sam Abuelsamid
Yeah, it was a three-wheeler, yeah yeah, I'd ride in that.

1:02:21 - Leo Laporte
That looks fun. I think it looks cool. Yeah, but anyway so good. Maybe we're going to get some interesting designs. I like this cloud bubble car design.

1:02:34 - Mikah Sargent
Are we ever going to float around in bubbles to our next?

1:02:36 - Sam Abuelsamid
destination. I wouldn't hold your breath on that one Darn. But DesignWorks is working with an eVTOL company that is one of their clients. Yeah, so you know the electric multi-quad copters, right, very cool, yeah very cool.

1:02:52 - Leo Laporte
Those should look like clouds. They should look exactly like cirrus clouds yeah, so they don't.

1:02:57 - Mikah Sargent
So that way it doesn't uh sort of disrupt the landscape yeah yeah yeah, very cool.

1:03:02 - Leo Laporte
Sam, samable sam, it is our car guy, principal researcher at guidehouse insights. Uh, he also is does a wonderful podcast called wheel bearings at wheel bearings dot media with nicole and robbie, and, uh, I love that show. Listen to it if you like cars. It's a great show to listen to and I get all my uh auto buying inspirations for the last few generations, I think from you, sam. So you've been very good, I see. Now, by the way, I see uh machis everywhere me too. Those Mustangs have taken off. They have.

1:03:31 - Sam Abuelsamid
Ford. Yeah, yeah. Well, it's amazing what happens when you slash the price.

1:03:35 - Leo Laporte
you know all of a sudden people are very price sensitive.

1:03:37 - Sam Abuelsamid
Okay, no, yeah, yeah, and you know I mean we're, we're, we're in an environment where interest rates are high. You know. So if you most people, most people find don't buy their cars with cash, they finance them or lease them and you know, when you've got high interest rates, that means you're going to have a high monthly payment and you know it's beyond the means of most people to buy most new cars.

1:03:56 - Leo Laporte
Are you one of those people who I think are right but I don't listen to who say never buy a new car?

1:04:06 - Sam Abuelsamid
No.

1:04:08 - Leo Laporte
But well. I mean financially speaking, you should buy the car after its massive depreciation. In the first year, get a used car that's relatively new.

1:04:18 - Sam Abuelsamid
I've often given that advice, but I rarely listen to my own advice, especially when it comes to financial things. Yeah, so you know we usually buy new cars. I mean, we don't buy that many cars, but we tend to keep our cars for eight to 10 years. That's OK, so the depreciation is not really an issue for us, right? But you know I, like you know, from every few years, you know, get something new. You know something with a warranty on it, and you know it's, for the most part it's worked out fine for us.

1:04:50 - Leo Laporte
Reliability is probably more important to me than the economy, although I hear you can get this car, uh, for very cheap right now and look at that 30 miles per gallon of gasoline for the teardrop car, so can you switch?

1:05:05 - Mikah Sargent
showing it there.

1:05:06 - Leo Laporte
There you go. Good deal on this car.

1:05:09 - Sam Abuelsamid
It's a slightly used but that, by the way, a little more crumpled now but 30 miles per gallon is in what was this 1930.

1:05:20 - Leo Laporte
That's actually impressive, right? Yeah, it was very impressive, and it was all because of the aerodynamic.

1:05:24 - Mikah Sargent
And also because he's peddling it.

1:05:26 - Leo Laporte
It's not actually gas power.

1:05:31 - Sam Abuelsamid
It, and also because he's pedaling it, it's not actually gas power, it is a human gas hybrid. So there is that. Thank you, sam. Have a wonderful week. We'll see you soon. My pleasure, guys, take care, have a good one, bye-bye.

1:05:38 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, I love that Dymaxion car.

1:05:41 - Mikah Sargent
I just the thought of showing up with that at some place. Hop in everybody, we're going for a ride. It's so fun to me, it's so fun.

1:05:49 - Leo Laporte
You know it reminds me of this show we were talking about before the show, the new Fallout series.

1:05:54 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, amazon Prime yeah.

1:05:57 - Leo Laporte
Which is a combination it's kind of a quirky combination of I call it retrofuturism, that's a good word for it. It's exactly what it is the past.

1:06:11 - Mikah Sargent
And that's what this is retro, it's like 60s diners mixed with yeah futuristic technology.

1:06:13 - Leo Laporte
I like how this looks me too that's pretty cool. It's fun. Yeah, he looks happy driving it too. Yeah, uh, all right, what should we do? Let's do something new and different I have so many callers.

1:06:25 - Mikah Sargent
Okay, let's do a call, I'm gonna, I'm going to pick up on it's new and different.

1:06:29 - Caller
It's Dan, I'm going to pick up on you, Dan.

1:06:32 - Leo Laporte
Hey, dan, welcome to Ask the Tech Guys Mikah Sargent and Leo Laporte.

1:06:40 - Caller
Can you hear me? We hear you.

1:06:41 - Leo Laporte
Dan, what city are you calling from?

1:06:43 - Caller
Okay, I'm from Montclair, New Jersey.

1:06:45 - Leo Laporte
Beautiful Montclair. What's up?

1:06:50 - Caller
You caught me in the middle of trying to get some super glue off my fingers.

1:06:55 - Leo Laporte
How many times has that happened to me? It should only happen once, by the way.

1:06:59 - Mikah Sargent
But many times.

1:07:01 - Leo Laporte
I've glued my fingers together.

1:07:03 - Mikah Sargent
I always keep a bottle of acetone in my pocket.

1:07:06 - Leo Laporte
Does the acetone dissolve? I just pry my fingers apart and take the consequences. That's actually.

1:07:12 - Caller
It says yeah eventually it wears off, but I prefer not to. Yeah, and it's the internet says to use olive oil or butter, so I'm working on that right now, though, do you have your fingers in the? Butter in the butter what's up.

1:07:28 - Leo Laporte
What can we do for you, if you want to? If you want to, we could put you back on hold, if you yeah no, no, that's okay.

1:07:33 - Mikah Sargent
Okay, well, actually his button his fingers glued to the hold button right exactly what's up for you?

1:07:41 - Caller
this is like a question you've been asked a million times, but now I'm gonna ask it for myself. Um, I've got some couple of old dvds I ordered from the you know third parties because they don't make that movie anymore. Yes, you know, they don't sell it. Even in the. Nobody really sells it except the previous owners. You know, 1938, tom sawyer. I loved. I saw that movie when I was a little kid. I loved it. I wanted, but I want, to rip that thing and uh, I've. I only get so far with handbrake. And they want me to do all kinds of uh fancy, uh footwork to kill, to kill the uh copy protection copy protection.

1:08:24 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, this was handbrake used to go work through that and then they decided they did not want to face the ire of the Motion Picture Association of America.

1:08:33 - Mikah Sargent
Right, so they took that out.

1:08:36 - Leo Laporte
But you may remember in the history of DVDs that it was literally a couple of weeks after the release of the DVD that a high school student we call him DVD John now cracked the copy protection CSS that was used by DVDs, literally cracked it, and it's been cracked ever since. The reason is that in order to play back a DVD, a DVD player has to store the encryption key in memory. So the way Handbrake now works is you use a program to play back the DVD. They recommend the free VLC. As soon as you start playing the DVD. In order to play it had to load the key in memory and that memory location is known and Handbrake goes. Thank you very much. I'll take it from here and you can stop playing the movie and Handbrake can decode it. Have you tried doing all that? Have you used VLC? No, I don't. And handbrake and decode it.

1:09:30 - Caller
Have you tried doing all that? Have you used VLC? No, I don't, I just put the D. No, I have not done that. I put the DVD in the DVD player and it pops up on my Mac, on my Mac, and then I aim, I aim the handbrake at it and say go for it, and then it'll stop after a little while.

1:09:48 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah. So yeah, the first thing you got to do is get VLC, which is available. Yeah, I got it, yeah.

1:09:54 - Leo Laporte
They may. You know it's been a while since I've used Handbrake. When they first did this, they had a big announcement on the screen that says we aren't going to decrypt DVDs anymore. But here's how you do it. So let me just I'm looking at their documentation. This is a free program, handbrakefr because it's french, and uh, let's see, troubleshooting common issues. Um, see if it has anything about dvd decryption.

They may be so scared of of the MPAA that they no longer tell you how to get around it. I think that may be the case. This is technically illegal in the US due to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which basically made it illegal to circumvent copy protection of all things. To circumvent copy protection of all things. But you own the DVD. You bought that, tom sir, fair and square, and so I think, from the point of view of even of the maker of the movie, as long as you paid for it, putting it in a different format shouldn't be a big deal. Yeah, they seem to have taken all of the information about VLC out of it. That's really interesting. I guess they got scared.

1:11:18 - Caller
So you start to play it first with.

1:11:20 - Leo Laporte
VLC. Yeah, play it with VLC and then pause it, and at that point you should be able to open handbrake, unless they've taken this capability out. Right, point, you should be able to open handbrake unless they've taken this capability out. Right, you should be able to open handbrake and uh, and it should run from that point on, just fine. Uh, yeah, I don't see anything. Well, what about?

1:11:40 - Caller
what about the commercial? You know that's the freeway, then I. But of course when you search for that ripping dvd there's like wondershare, I think or a bunch of other.

1:11:50 - Leo Laporte
These are all companies most of them in the caribbean because they're again avoiding prosecution. Here is a complete guide on how to rip protected dvds with handbrake on windows and mac. This is from a site called dumbo Fab. It's dumbofabcom. Install Handbrake. Oh, you also have to have the LibDVD CSS, which is a library that you need to download. Maybe that's what's happening, and then did you do that?

1:12:24 - Caller
Maybe that's what killed me. I think that's the point where I was like I don't want to do this.

1:12:30 - Leo Laporte
It's a library that they can say well, that's at arm's length, we don't make that library. I have no idea what you're talking about. But again, to address the ethics of this you bought it, you own it. You're copying something you own, you're not distributing it. Something you own, you're not distributing it and you're not. Yeah, no jury, no police, no executioner, no executioner is going to do anything because you bought it. What they don't want you to do is is to is to buy it and make copies and sell them on your front lawn. Uh, or, you know, go to fairs and sell them. So don't do that. But making a copy for personal use is uh, and I I think it's. It's not technically legal, but I think it's what they call de minimis in the. In the legal sense, it doesn't matter, it's not a big deal and nobody's going to come after you.

1:13:23 - Mikah Sargent
So, um, yeah, dump this tumbo fab sells their own dvd ripper, which is hysterical, so I've, I have successful, or someone I know has successfully done this, uh, within a couple of weeks, uh, because someone I know I mentioned has been getting a lot of dvds sent to their house lately, yeah, and so ripping them to digital um, vlc and handbrake, and it works flawlessly.

1:13:51 - Leo Laporte
Another one that's free that we mentioned last week is Make MKV, which really is what most people use to make rips from DVDs. So I think go get Make MKV, which is also free and available, and one of the things it will do, which is nice, is it'll keep the um, all the, all the menus and all that stuff, so it's just like the dvd that you're playing it from your hard drive. Very good go ahead.

1:14:21 - Caller
Can I one quickie, one more quickie question? You got time? Yeah, it's, it's about ero. I'm changing, I've got some slower Eeros, but I just want to see if they work. I bought like four of them a couple of years ago and, somehow or other, walmart accidentally sent me eight. Ooh, love that I know. So when I got a house, we have renovated it. The walls are incredibly thick, I mean, and so I think I need one on every floor at least. Okay, and the. But then I read that you could have too many.

1:14:59 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, I was just going to say only use as many as you need.

1:15:03 - Mikah Sargent
In other words, add them slowly, but don't just say I'm going to plug all eight in, because, yes, they will start to cancel each other out, kind of as sort of how they interfere with the crowds. Yeah, they interfere what was the tool that you? You mentioned this. It was a. It's a mapper like a.

1:15:18 - Leo Laporte
Well, I think, yeah, there's, there are plenty of wi-fi mappers that you can see where the dead spots are and see what the signal strength is. I think the ero app will allow you to add them one by one. Yes, it will. And I think what you, you could just do it by, you know kind of by rule of thumb add it, then go till it doesn't work anymore, and then right come back 10 feet and then put another one in and you just kind of slowly expand it.

I bet you won't need all eight. I'm sure you won't need. I bet you won't need all eight. I'm sure you won't need all eight. No, I won't need all eight. Yeah, go ahead. If you do, then that's okay if you need them, because it means they're not interfering with each other. You've got such thick walls that they're not interfering you kind of. Just here's how to think of this. I got this, I think, from Netgear's Orbi of this. I got this, I think, from Netgear's Orbi. No, no, no, it was from Plume.

They said think of Wi-Fi as a lamp. You have a lamp in your living room. You wouldn't try to read a book in the bedroom from that lamp. So it's a lamp with a little bit broader reach, but not infinite. So think of it. At each access point. It kind of a lamp.

You want to get to the edge of the uh, the spectrum and then put another one in. There's another way to do it, depending on which euros you have. Some of those euro beacons have ethernet, don't they? If, if the ones you got have ethernet on them, then the better way to do it would be to use Mocha like Mikah does, Mikah likes Mocha, mocha for Mikah, or power line networking to kind of maybe get to the most distant area, the one that's hardest to reach, and then use that networking and Ethernet to plug into that Eero and that extends in a nice way, extends it to a distance. But there are ways to play with it. I'm trying to remember the Wi-fi analyzer. I think it was called um. There are a number of wi-fi analytic analytic tools that will.

1:17:16 - Caller
Your wi-fi analyzer is for windows, uh wire shark is I was just going by speed test you know like, how fast is it? You could do that, you know this is it.

1:17:27 - Leo Laporte
The idea of this is actually measuring the signal. Now the issue is that iPhones won't do this, because iPhones don't let you see the signal strength, so you have to either do it on an Android phone or a Windows machine. I think you could do it on a Mac. I think Macs let you see that, so you need to use a device that can see signal strength, and then, I mean, that's what a pro does. In fact, we had somebody do that in our house to go around and actually make a map of wifi signal strength and then, using that map, intelligently put the access points in. He ended up putting five access points. Nice.

So, uh, it's a. It's about a 4,000 square foot house. So, and there's one in the garage, which often is the case because garages are well insulated from the main building for fire reasons. Having one in the garage means those external cameras, the garage door opener, all the things that use wifi outside the house can work. Yeah, it's, it's a bit of a project, but it's a fun project and I have to say, if you do it right, you'll you don't worry about wifi ever again say if you do it right, you'll you don't worry about wi-fi ever again, which I really like.

Yeah, that's nice. Yeah, we did this okay during covid and, uh, we just haven't had to worry about it. So, yeah, just do it by hand. You don't even have to use a speed test. You could use that. But you know, honestly, just, uh, you know you could just make a zoom call. There you go that's pretty challenging make a zoom call and when it starts that's pretty challenging Make a Zoom call and when it starts to break up, they put in another access point.

1:18:54 - Caller
It's like the main beacon is in the like by the top floor, like the third floor.

1:18:59 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, they're never where you want them.

1:19:01 - Caller
Yeah, yeah, and then they also it heads. So the only way the signal almost travels is almost like down the stairs that. So the only way the signal almost travels is almost like down the stairs. That's the only thing that's open, right, you know? I mean, alexa is going to go through these thick walls, right, so it's.

1:19:15 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, so think of it as a lamp, and the lamps don't get through the wall but they maybe bounce down the corridor and around. Yeah, exactly, you know, think of it like light, because it is in fact electromagnetic radiation, and it's just you. Just if the walls have metal in them or you know they're thick enough, they really won't go through walls. So you got to go around corners and stuff like that. It's a, it's a art. It's not a science, it's definitely an art, okay thank you very much, make mkv is.

the is probably the simplest way to do this. It is also free, it's very much like handbrake and it is really totally designed about to rip not only regular dvds but blu-rays. Wow, does blu-rays? Yeah, yeah. And so apparently, whoever made making mkv is not worried about, yeah, the motion picture association of america, which means they're probably in Russia. Exactly, makemkvcom. I laugh in your face. Your one-click solution to convert video you own very important you own into free and patents unencumbered format. Okay, all right.

1:20:23 - Caller
Hey, thanks for the call, thank, you very much From Zuni Pin Software.

1:20:27 - Leo Laporte
I think it sounds Chinese yeah.

1:20:29 - Caller
Maybe Chinese very much, okay, pin software.

1:20:30 - Leo Laporte
I think it's. Probably it sounds chinese, yeah, maybe chinese, yeah, they. I remember when I visited beijing in 2009. You'd go in a department store and in the basement they would have the best collection of pirated dvds you've ever seen every movie. Wow, that's incredible. They would do the album, the art would look, but they were all pirated. None of them were legit and they just don't care. They just don't care. Uh, what should we do next? Should we do another ad? Yeah, let's do another ad. Don't complain about ads, leo. Okay, I won't.

This episode of ask the tech guys brought to you by ZipRecruiter. Have you ever set your phone alarm to buy tickets the minute they went on sale? I have right, trying to beat those bots. Or maybe you buy tickets months in advance? Sure, when you want the best, sometimes you got to take extra steps. You got to act quickly because there's always somebody else out there. It's a tough market. Same thing with great employees, right, there's a huge competition. If you're hiring for your business, you want to find the most talented people for your open roles and you want to do it before the other guy scoops them up. So that's why we use ZipRecruiter. Ziprecruiter has some really nice features that make you stand out. They find qualified candidates fast, right now. By the way, you don't have to take my word for it, you can try it free yeah, free at ziprecruiter.com/twit.

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1:23:31 - Caller
He could. I could, but I won't you know what you could do, though, what? Stretch your arm out a little bit.

1:23:37 - Leo Laporte
Email Email time. Email stretch Email time. Oh there's a song. Go through all of the emails now in one swell foop. We try to do that but we always get caught up.

1:23:49 - Caller
Well, it's probably a good thing. I want to put a couple in.

1:23:52 - Leo Laporte
Kirsten in Orlando. Okay, is AliExpress safe?

1:23:57 - Mikah Sargent
Yes, it depends, right it's.

1:24:01 - Leo Laporte
China. Here's the only download in Baliway. Aliexpress is Alibaba, which is a big company in China, but there's others now who are competing, like Timu In general have you ever ordered anything?

1:24:12 - Mikah Sargent
I have. It takes a long time.

1:24:13 - Leo Laporte
It takes a long time. That's the difference. Yeah, maybe like a month or two are some stories about people who've had sellers who didn't send something.

1:24:20 - Mikah Sargent
So in those cases, you know, because you're working through aliexpress, you will be able to get a refund through. So that's my only hesitation there. That's why I said it depends um, which is, I think, just like ebay. Right, there are times where you end up getting someone who doesn't and luckily, since it's all through paypal, you can uh dispute something if it doesn't come through. But but yes, it can take a lot of time.

1:24:47 - Leo Laporte
I always enjoy just visiting AliExpress because it's so silly. Oh, I could use those Juicy Fruit pants. Juicy Fruit panties or $1.99 AirPods Don't those look just like AirPods? Now, here's the only thing, Kirsten, I would say is those are not real AirPods. They look just like them, but you're not going to get real AirPods for $1.99.

1:25:11 - Mikah Sargent
What's the shipping on those?

1:25:13 - Leo Laporte
$1.99, but then, okay, it says deliver by April 22nd to 25th. So maybe I don't know, maybe that's to China, I don't know. My experience has been it's sometimes as long as 90 days, so don't go. My experience has been it sometimes as long as 90 days, yeah, so don't go. If you're in a hurry, don't. But there's some silly fun stuff. There's stuff you might even want. Who doesn't want a?

1:25:32 - Mikah Sargent
tongue scraper. Occasionally there's some stuff you might actually want if you want a stainless steel tongue scraper, you know dear Santa.

1:25:41 - Leo Laporte
The idea is, you go here because it's cheap and you go here because it's fun to browse and you can occasionally.

1:25:45 - Mikah Sargent
If you're a maker, a tinkerer, you can occasionally find some great little components and stuff like that. That's where I've actually purchased. I needed some pogo pins and I couldn't find the right size anywhere else except with.

1:25:59 - Leo Laporte
AliExpress and I would not expect great quality necessarily. Yeah, you know you get what you pay for A $1.99 pair of AirPods. You're going to get what you pay for. But you know that, kirsten. Yeah, the question is is it safe? Yes, it's safe, it's safe. Answer that was one that was quick, good work. I'll give myself four minutes to do all these until 1250.

Pc game server hosting. Query from Gordon, or aka Mr Bungles. Oh hi, mr Bungles, I'm trying to set up a public Valheim server for my 13 year old son via PC Steam. By the way, valheim is the greatest game ever. It's got too hard for me. I'm too old. The mist lands terrible, terrible. But moving on, I know how to get server headless via bat file.

However, that's for a private server for people who are close friends, and a trusted yes, because you're hosting it, don't host it. Don't host it. He's got a dilemma I've been posting I I've been posed with was trying to make the server public for anyone to join. Don't't host it. Given that I don't want our IP address broadcasted out there, how do I protect mine? Don't host it. There are ways that you could have a don't host it. No, don't, don't. I'm not going to even answer that question. Here's what you do Search for Valheim servers. There are game servers. It's on their service. There are lots of reasons it's better to host it there. You don't have to count on your bandwidth, you don't. You know, power goes out. Whatever they handle all that, they manage the server. It's a few bucks a month. It's not expensive. Use a Valheim public server. There are quite a few. I don't have one to recommend. He really wants to host it at home.

1:27:46 - Mikah Sargent
Don't host it. And, by the way, don't host it.

1:27:52 - Leo Laporte
We used to use something called Hamachi for this, and that actually would solve the problem. Hamachi is now owned by LogMe and I'm not sure that I would recommend it, but the idea is very good. I think Tailscale will do this as well. The idea is basically people who are not on premises with you can join your network as if they're on a local network. They use a special address. They're going to have to have your IP address. I don't know any way around that. No VPN will solve that, but this is a really good solution that's secure. You know, you could try it. It's free to try. That's a good choice. I'm trying to remember what other Hamachi like. What is it? Zero tier? Is that what you use? Tailscale? I think, yeah, zero tier is free, okay. So zero tier is that what you use? Tail scale? I think, yeah, zero tier is free, okay. So zero tier is a free hosting solution. It's people are always tempted to host services locally. Um, it's very rarely a good idea.

1:28:56 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, I just oof opening up the floodgates uh oh, zero tier.

1:29:01 - Leo Laporte
Okay, this, this is also like. This is the successor, I think, to hamachi.

1:29:05 - Mikah Sargent
Maybe zero tier, not t-e-a-r I'm immediately sold because of those circles.

1:29:12 - Leo Laporte
It's just telling me it just knows what it's doing um, yeah, recommended by our discord zero tiers for the eat. The oligarchs says use zero tier. So this would be you would still be running the server on your at home, on your uh, on your own computers, but you would have peer-to-peer. It's called peer-to-peer networking and I think this would protect you much better than just saying here's our ip address, hey, come, hang out. I used to run a minecraft servers from for michael on our home server, but we run them here now. Let's see, we got time for another one. Yes, we do, michael mobile alabama. I've been looking on amazon for a good video capture adapter for my mac mini. I don't know which brands are good quality and trustworthy, budget friendly recommendations. I want to capture the video out on my raspberry pi and windows computer on my mac. We're going to pretend we didn't read that last sentence.

1:30:06 - Mikah Sargent
Recommendations for Budget friendly. That's my problem, because I almost exclusively recommend Elgato's devices for video capture.

1:30:16 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, and I think Elgato has always worked best with Macintosh, so Elgato is a very good choice.

If you're on Windows, I would recommend Hupog, which is a very good choice if you're on windows, I would recommend hop hog, which is a city on long island with an unspellable name, but for some reason this company decided that's a great name for our company, h-a-u-p-p-a-u-g-e. I would have said hoppage. It's pronounced hop hog, like you're hopping over a hog, hop hog or hop hog. Uh they, you're hopping over a hog, hop hog or hop hog. They have a variety. These are actually. They make very good Windows captures, but these are all for Windows, I believe. I don't think they have anything for the Mac. Elgato is the hop hog for Mac.

1:30:58 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, and I just don't. I don't know about anything that's less expensive. Is Elgato really expensive? No, but our version of what's expensive.

1:31:08 - Leo Laporte
You don't want to do some people's version of expense. You really don't want to go cheap.

1:31:10 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, you don't um, because you're going to get all sorts of issues where you uh the the formatting is wrong. It only does four, three it. It uh doesn't do the frame rate.

1:31:22 - Leo Laporte
This is for 4k 4k is gonna be expensive, right, yeah, um, but this is 229, which is, yeah, it's expensive. So this is their most powerful usb card. It lets you plug in an hdmi cable, uh, into a device and then capture it at 4k at 144 frames a second. So, yeah, that's what you pay for hoppog. I'm sorry, elgato got purchased, uh, a short while ago by corsair a couple years ago and but corsair's done a good job with them. In fact, we use their stream deck, uh, which is really great, uh, and they uh, their key light is really fantastic. They make a lot of stuff for, uh, for podcasters and so forth. And, oh, look, they have the fallout special edition. Oh, that's a streamcast fallout edition. That's, that's hysterical. So, yeah, I like their video capture stuff. So, if you go to uh elgato this is for the mac, there really is, there really is nothing better. Let's see the cheapest we can get um 179.99, I think. Honestly, anything you get is going to be that inexpensive, that expensive, don't you think?

1:32:32 - Mikah Sargent
yeah, I do I think, unless you go to alibaba.

1:32:35 - Leo Laporte
Right, right, if you're not in a big hurry, go to alibaba wait two months, find out it doesn't work.

1:32:41 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, then what do you do then? Gotta send it back, and that takes three months. So five months down the line, then you'll hop over to hop on video capture.

1:32:51 - Leo Laporte
See what, what they've got on alibaba. Oh, look at that they do. Here's one for a dollar. Oh good, the one thing, the one reason I like these john will back me up, I think, jammer b is because they're coming from China. Almost always, these strip off copy protection.

They don't say it, but they do, and so if you have, if you're, if that's something to consider with video capture, if you're capturing a DVD or if you're capturing any commercial content from a TiVo, anyway, almost always there's copy protection on there that will prevent you from recording it, unless this one's born for gaming and it's only 99 cents I can't with these.

This is so silly it's an hdmi compatible usb 3 game video and audio grabber card full 1080p, 30 frames. You know what it might be worth. Just you know if you can wait a little while this, actually wait a minute. Human hair lace, front wig oh, I've been looking for one.

1:33:55 - Mikah Sargent
I've been needing yeah, I've got plenty of synthetic but human hair and it's. Does it spell the h-o-o-m-a-n or something?

1:34:04 - Leo Laporte
I'm in here Because I don't believe that. Look at all these video caps. Here's one. Okay, go for the expensive one $5.53.

1:34:12 - Mikah Sargent
I don't know that's getting too pricey for me Ultra HD, baby John.

1:34:17 - Leo Laporte
Have we ever bought anything like this? No, we get them from Amazon.

1:34:20 - Caller
Amazon does sell some that are inexpensive $20, does sell some that are inexpensive 20 bucks, 30 bucks, maybe go that way. Well, it's crazy is the ones like you buy on alica if you go back up to the top. Yeah, that, that one there, I think, the very first one. You could probably buy that for like 30 in amazon. It's literally the same one.

1:34:35 - Leo Laporte
That's the same one and that's the. This is the thing. You're getting it directly from the source. Oh, here's 35, what? But it's a navsaker. Oh, that's why. That's why it's a way.

1:34:49 - Caller
Tomorrow you dropped by about almost four dollars drops to oh, there's a deal tomorrow.

1:34:53 - Mikah Sargent
I didn't know, they did that they said tomorrow there will be a deal. Come back tomorrow all right.

1:34:59 - Leo Laporte
So, yeah, you know what? Those would probably work just fine. Yeah, if you, if you have the money and you want something you know is going to do a good job, elgato or hopag if you don't don't have the money?

yeah, then nancy wants to change your email. After more than 20 years I've changed email companies. Is there an easy way to notify all contacts businesses that I deal with of the new email address? No, yeah, uh, what I always do is I keep the old address live for a while and and I have a thing on my email that responds. It says hey, just so you know, I've changed my email address in future, and then it just goes out automatically to anybody uses that address. Will anybody pay attention? No, that's why there's no good way to do this. Yeah, humans, you got to kind of keep the old address. Let's hope it's free. All right, I'm, I'm over this. Yeah, humans, you got to kind of keep the old address. Let's hope it's free. All right, I'm over time.

1:35:47 - Mikah Sargent
Maybe it's the last one.

1:35:48 - Leo Laporte
But I've got to the bottom of it. Roberto and I like the email address he uses. I don't want to say it out loud, but it's good. Look at that, that's good. So this is where he sends email that he wants to die, to die. He has created a gmail address that's like junk mail. Throw it away, I don't want it. Dot g at gmailcom that way. He just uses that when he emails us like he thinks we're gonna bombard him. Yeah, we won't. I promise you, roberto, we won't. He sent this on april fools, though I'm nervous.

Recently I was looking at ebay and facebook marketplace for secondhand mesh routers like your Eero. There are so many people selling these because they've upgraded. That's right. That's probably a good idea. I give mine away, but I have upgraded many times and my neighbor has my old Orbeez. Oh, I went over to his house and said let me set you up At some point I start wondering how safe is it to buy secondhand routers, nasa's and pcs this way? How easy it is to put some rogue firmware on orbis and eros? What could be put on a pc that would survive a clean install? Just wondering. And what's your current recommendation for mesh routers? I'm trying to replace a first generation orbi we like ero right, yeah, we do again.

1:37:04 - Mikah Sargent
Whenever we talked about the mesh routers, uh, the one mesh system I do not recommend is the google system. I've way too many issues that I have heard, both on the show and off of this show, from people who have just had bad experience and I'm not a big fan of the low-end ubiquities I.

1:37:25 - Leo Laporte
I use a higher-end ubiquity, but ubiquity has a consumer-grade mesh that I'm not really crazy about. So don't get Google, don't get the low-end ubiquity. But I think Eero is fine. I think Orbi is fine. Orbi is good. You're absolutely right. People sell their old one because they're upgrading. I think it's safe. Of course you're going to want to reset it, yes, and so every one of these almost all of them have a reset button. You might have to use a paperclip to push it in, but go online and read the process. You can reset Orbeez, you can reset Eros and do a full reset. Some of them like the old Plume system. They had to release it, oh, and that's potentially problematic because if they don't then there's issues. So make sure that this. See if the seller's trustworthy, if it's a neighborhood guy or something, and just say hey, I need you to reset it because I I've given away all of these, including plumes, and you just have to make sure you reset them yeah, ask yourself are you the head of the fbi?

1:38:24 - Mikah Sargent
if you are, then don't take any third parties. Nobody's going to put.

1:38:28 - Leo Laporte
I think it's too hard and it's not worth it. Exactly, it's not worth it. There's other ways if they really want to go after you, and that's our email cleanup.

1:38:36 - Caller
The box is now empty. Well, it's like I designed that on purpose.

1:38:41 - Mikah Sargent
Oh, so you're saying there are more emails.

1:38:43 - Leo Laporte
We got a few days back Do you want more.

1:38:46 - Caller
I can get you more emails right now.

1:38:47 - Leo Laporte
ATG at twittv is the email address.

1:38:51 - Caller
Well, I have to say I'm very impressed by that, leo, and you know what your reward is and what everyone's reward is Candy. Well, maybe later, but a refreshing pause.

1:39:04 - Leo Laporte
A pause that refreshes. You're watching. Ask the tech guys. Mikah, sergeant leo laporte. 888-724-2884 is the phone number, but I know I'm saying it and I'm thinking every time I say it. It would be so much better if I let a cowboy sing. It did we play them?

1:39:22 - Mikah Sargent
all I can't remember. We played two of them. We didn't't play the first one. Yeah or the last.

1:39:28 - Caller
The middle one. Was it the Johnny?

1:39:29 - Leo Laporte
Cash version. Let's do the Johnny Cash Trouble With my Laptop? No, that's not it. That's a good one, though let's stop that one. I think the Johnny Cash came from Udio Udiocom. Here we go, the TechLine.

1:39:50 - AI
Troubadours Mikah and Leo are on the line today. They got the answers. Won't lead you astray, hey. Hey, call up the number, don't need to implore 888-724-2884. Hey there, tech buffs. With your screens gone dim, chips are frying, but don't you give in.

1:40:19 - Leo Laporte
The only thing wrong with that it's too short, but don't you give in, don't you give in. And a computer generated that in less than 30 seconds it's. We are living in weird times. I didn't say great, I didn't say bad, just different it's amazing.

1:40:39 - Mikah Sargent
Oh, that dog is drinking beer.

1:40:40 - Leo Laporte
That's awful don't let your dog drink beer. Watch the discord. Hey, are you a member of club twit? Yet? If you are are a member of Club Twit, you could go into the Discord and you could see a dog drinking beer right now. But if you're not, why aren't you? Wouldn't that be the reason to join Club Twit? No, it would not be. Let me give you other reasons. It helps us keep on the air, keep doing what we love.

We think our I personally feel very strongly I've been doing this 19 years now that what we do on Twit is very, very important, especially as we enter the age of AI, to give you solid, reliable oh nothing to nobody information about technology. That's what we do here, Mikah and I and all of our hosts on all of our shows, and we think it's really important. We have to say, though, that podcasting is suffering. So many shows have gone away, so many networks have dropped out of business. We don't want to be one of them, and what we realized is, with ad support dwindling for podcasting in general, in our shows in particular, we need to go to you, and that's what we're doing with our club. Seven dollars a month means we can keep doing what we do. You get ad free versions of all of the shows, ad free, tracker free, privacy forward. You also get access to the discord and the pause that. That refreshes you also, which, by the way, this is a great place to hang out, even when shows aren't on. I'm always in there chatting. Uh. You also get a special content we don't put out anywhere and video of everything we do, including Mike is wonderful hands on Macintosh show which is free to listen to for audio. But if you want to see Mike actually doing it same thing with hands on Windows Untitled Linux Show Scott Wilkinson's Home Theater Geeks you got to subscribe Seven bucks a month. It seems like it's worth it. I agree.

Twittv slash club Twit, stay away from that. Bud Light says that dog, the Discord's fun. It's full of fun, interesting people, but you don't have to use the Discord, you don't even have to listen to the ad-free shows. Sometimes people write to me and say but I like the ads. No, you can listen to the ads, we're not going to stop you. Yeah, we won't stop you, but we do need the money because we need to keep the lights on. We need to keep this wonderful team employed and, frankly, that's the only way we're going to be able to do it. So please join the Nuff said, nuff said. Did I say? Well, one more thing Twittv slash club, twit. I don't think I said that, yeah.

1:43:08 - Caller
Let's take another call. All right, caller star six to unmute please.

1:43:15 - Leo Laporte
Hello. Oh, there we are. Hello, welcome. What's your first name? Is this me? I don't, that's you. What's your first name, sir?

1:43:25 - Caller
eugene from long beach hi eugene from long beach.

1:43:28 - Leo Laporte
Welcome to the show. What can we do for you?

1:43:31 - Caller
well, all time listener.

1:43:32 - Leo Laporte
I'm from jeff levy time 90s yeah, yeah, it's been a long time on beautiful kfi 50 000 watt blowtorch of Southern California.

1:43:44 - Caller
Yes? If I yes, I have a pretty simple question. I've been using for five years data in my iPhone via dongle, connected to HDMI, to watch Netflix, oh, which is offered by T-Mobile. Yeah, worked great, never had any issues. Format itself, sound image, everything looks very good. Only on iPhone. Other phones didn't seem to work Well. About a month ago stopped working. It says device not recognized. Contacted T-Mobile they said oh, netflix changed their policy or something Dongle not supported. Contacted Netflix they said oh, t-mobile changed their premium Netflix to basic with commercials.

1:44:45 - Leo Laporte
Dongle not supported. You have to pay for premium to get dongle support. Yeah.

1:44:51 - Caller
Pointing fingers at each other. I don't know who did what, but we have also Apple TV Plus and Hulu, which works with dongle fine, no problem at all.

1:45:04 - Leo Laporte
Yeah it's up to the streamer whether they're going to let you do that or not. They can actually stop you using. We were just talking about HDCP. They could say no, no, no, it's no streaming allowed.

1:45:19 - Caller
Well, I here's what I'm going to suggest.

1:45:23 - Leo Laporte
This actually is a great way to do it. It is a one-time cost. You stream it to your TV, right?

1:45:32 - Caller
Yeah, they say some kind of mirroring, the best way to do this is with a Google TV adapter.

1:45:40 - Leo Laporte
They're not very expensive. They call them Chromecast $30. Plugs into the HDMI port of your TV and then you can do. Actually, if you want 4K, they even have a 4K version for $50. You can then Chromecast to your TV. Now I have to tell you, if netflix isn't letting you do it via dongle, they're probably not letting you cast it either. That's the low-end netflix. T-mobile decided they didn't want to pay for the premium version of netflix, so this may or may not solve your problem, but the nice thing about the chromecast is it does work with netflix. So, uh, now you're gonna have to pay for a netflix account, though the t-mobile free netflix is only on the phone, and that's, by the way, that's how netflix does it, intentionally, because they don't want you to not buy a netflix.

Exactly they're like we're gonna offer this, it's just a tease, right tease major league baseball uh, last couple weeks ago offered a free year-long subscription, mlb tv plus, but it's only on the phone. You can't then cast it. I personally think this is a great way to get the contents of your phone onto your tv the chromecast now, if you have an apple tv you can do that with an apple tv, but that's much more expensive. The Chromecasts are so inexpensive, that's why I like them.

1:47:07 - Caller
Yeah, and to clarify, it doesn't require Wi-Fi, right? How is Wi-Fi?

1:47:15 - Leo Laporte
Oh, it does require Wi-Fi.

1:47:21 - Caller
Do you not have Wi-Fi? No, I use only data in the phone. I see.

1:47:24 - Leo Laporte
God. So this is forget. I take that off the table. Just say, leo, what? No, yeah, you need wi-fi. I don't think you're going to solve this. This is so you're saying basically, I want to use the free netflix that t-mobile has offered me as a customer and I want to use a dongle to connect to the tv and stream it, but what they're saying is no, we no longer allow that with the base team mobile netflix subscription, so you'll have to either buy?

yeah, of course, but that's why they stopped it yeah, they said all right. So you'll either have to upgrade to a full paid netflix subscription or watch the little tiny screen like that. I'm sorry.

1:48:11 - Caller
Well, I use, for example, maybe other people do too. It's called KeyDoc. It's like little gizmo where I plug my headset in and it goes into Bluetooth my cell phone, for example. I can walk around and listen to it. So it's like external Bluetooth connector. Do you have anything external can connect, like TV, maybe to cell phone without wire or something? That's what I thought might work.

1:48:46 - Mikah Sargent
Not without Wi-Fi. You, if you had, if you had a wi-fi network at home, you would be able to, but without wi-fi you don't.

1:48:52 - Leo Laporte
I'm I'm assuming, eugene, you don't have an internet service provider that your internet comes. No, it comes from your phone. It comes with t-mobile on your phone.

1:49:01 - Caller
Yeah, it's unlimited data and it works fine.

1:49:04 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, it's fine, nothing wrong with it. Yeah, great, nothing wrong with it. Yeah, it sounds like Now there is Nathan in our Discord, says he is able to do it, that he has that version of Netflix. But maybe either, nathan, you paid for an upgrade or T-Mobile has yet to downgrade you. It sounds like when Netflix added the ad tier, the lowest tier T-Mobile said, yeah, we'll take that one, and that one unfortunately does not allow you to do what you want to do, eugene, and Bluetooth wouldn't do it because it's just not fast enough.

1:49:41 - Mikah Sargent
There's no way to do video.

1:49:42 - Leo Laporte
Oh yeah, I think any adapter you put on the iphone that the the phone is going to say, yeah, you can't, you can't. Basically, what team? What netflix is doing is saying nothing can come out of that hole, nothing, no video comes out of that hole at all.

1:50:02 - Mikah Sargent
yeah, though maybe you could get the apple adapter that it depending on how, if your phone is lightning um, they have a usb adapter to hdmi adapter.

1:50:15 - Leo Laporte
You could try that, but again, I bet you as leo saying yeah, they probably don't allow it, says no, no video out of that hole.

1:50:23 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, none, zero, zip nada zilch, yeah, so you could try it and then return it if it doesn't work, but that's the closest you're going to get, I think. And again, that's wired, not wireless, so that's not quite what you want to nab it. It's a shame when they change their pricing and also their offerings shame. One of my least favorite things is when a company offers something and then takes it away afterward. Yeah.

1:50:51 - Caller
It was working great for years, but I never even thought about it.

1:50:54 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, I wonder there's nothing you can do? As far as I can tell, yeah, there's no workaround, because this is specifically what they're trying to prevent. They're thinking of you, eugene. They're saying you know that guy in long beach. He's been watching netflix for free. Cut him off cut him off.

1:51:15 - Caller
Well, there, you know what.

1:51:18 - Leo Laporte
Here's the problem and it drives me crazy. But both t-mobile and netflix are trying to make money. Wow, what is wrong with them? What are they doing? They're profit-making corporations and you know, for a while t-mobile, I'm sure, said to themselves we're gonna, we, to get people to come to t-mobile, we need to offer some. And they do. They offer quite a few bennies, disney, plus netflix and so forth. But then you know, it worked. But then maybe it was costing too much or netflix didn't like it, or whatever they said change, they're just going to change the rules and that's just the way it is.

I don't, I don't know of any way, and the reason is they're just not letting the video come through the port. Uh, you know, you can watch it. They're making intentionally and they do this. There was a startup that died very rapidly called Quibi. Remember that. That was short videos on the screen, and they did the same thing. Oh my Lord. They said no no, no, no.

You can't watch this on your TV. So if you some tried any method of all, it would just be a black hole on your TV where the videos they said no, no, no, this is meant for watching on the phone and nowhere else. That's what netflix has done. If you want to do it better, you're gonna have to uh, you're gonna have to pay.

1:52:36 - Mikah Sargent
I'm sorry, I don't blame you one as a follow-up, our listener in the discord who had said that they had this and it was working. They just checked and nope, they also were disconnected from their netflix account, discontinued as well. So, oh, nathan, I'm sorry, we we made you break it.

1:52:55 - Leo Laporte
That's hysterical. He said, oh, I guess you're right. Yeah, yeah, they must have just changed the rules. He says, oh, you're right, wow, it's discontinued. I'm sorry, nathan, he hadn't noticed, so you brought this up.

1:53:09 - Caller
Yeah, oh, I apologize, I have a quick question, leo, if I may. You mentioned in passing recently was some kind of podcast about SSDs with somebody and I couldn't find it on your website A podcast about solid-state drives. Ssd. Yes, solid-state drives, where some expert was talking.

1:53:37 - Leo Laporte
Oh, you're thinking of the Twit from a couple of weeks ago with Alan Malventano, who works for a company called Phison. Let me just go to it's twittv and I just have to. I'll tell you, uh, tell you which episode. Towards the end of the episode he gets very, gets in very deep, uh, talking about how ssds work. He is a wizard of ssds. I mean, I really uh, he is my hero when it comes to ssds and let me just find the love to listen okay, all right, I'm gonna find.

Yeah, well, it's, uh, it's a twittv. And then the episode is trying to find which episode alan was on. I'm looking at him right now. I want to say last week, but it wasn't 972-971-970. Yeah, it was a couple of weeks ago. You know, we really should put who was on the show in the show description. Oh, I see, there we do it 973. 973. 973. So the shortcut to go to is twittv slash. Let me see if this works.

1:54:57 - Caller
He was also back in 964.

1:55:00 - Leo Laporte
No, no, this was the most recent one. Twittv slash, twit T-W that will take you. That's a shortcut that I sneakily put in there 20 years ago and they've never fixed. Uh, it was the inverted goldilocks zone and it's towards the end of the show. Alan kind of starts really getting into it on. Uh, fison's ai adaptive and uh and, uh and ssds and how they work. I'm not sure if that's what you're looking for, but if you said it was somebody on our shows recently talking about ssds, he's our guy yeah, I'm using them.

I'm kind of curious oh, he said he's an expert on them. In fact we like to have him on uh because he really knows his stuff. He works at fison, which is a very high-end ssd company. Thanks, eugene. Yes, thank you for the call and I appreciate your listening. All these years I was on the kfi for 19 years. I thought, I thought about that recently and I thought, thought that's actually a long time 19 years is a long time it goes by like that, but it's a long time.

Our 19th anniversary of TWIT is April 17th. That's pretty soon, isn't it? Like three days. Yep, the very first episode of this Week in Tech was April 17th 2005. And I don't look a day older. That's the amazing thing.

1:56:29 - Mikah Sargent
How does he?

1:56:30 - Leo Laporte
do it. It's incredible. It's the rainbow socks.

1:56:34 - Mikah Sargent
Rainbow socks and kombucha.

1:56:35 - Leo Laporte
And kombucha that's my secret. And tai chi. I live on kombucha, tai chi and thin air. Another call, or what do you want to?

1:56:45 - Caller
do Jonas, we actually haven't done a voicemail yet.

1:56:47 - Leo Laporte
So I think we'll do this voicemail right here.

1:56:52 - Caller
My name is Maddie. I'm calling you from Oman, all the way in the Middle East, oman, jordan. I had a question. I am trying to move from an iPhone to the Pixel 8 Pro, am trying to move from an iPhone to the Pixel 8 Pro. I'm having trouble moving the WhatsApp app. I use a tool that's built in WhatsApp to transfer WhatsApp chat. So when it's trying to import it into the Pixel 8 Pro it would fail at about 84%. It's trying to import and then it freezes, kicks me out, and then I start again and start again. I've tried it so many times and I just can't get it to work. So I would really appreciate your help if you could guide me in the right way. How can I transfer all my chats from the iPhone to the Pixel 8 Pro, the WhatsApp chats I'm talking about? Thank you so much. I would appreciate it.

1:57:52 - Leo Laporte
I've been to Oman. It's not in Jordan, it's down there. I don't know why I said Jordan, but I've been to Oman and it's a fascinating country. I've even got one of the outfits that they wear. I should wear that in someday. See, here's how I move WhatsApp. Maybe this is kind of a unique situation. My WhatsApp number is a Google voice number and so I could put it on any phone and I just log in with that number and it sends a code to the Google voice number, which I then enter in and it has all my chats. Oh, cause you've, you've got the cloud backup, right, yeah, so I'm not sure why. Maybe he's changing phone numbers, is that?

1:58:40 - Mikah Sargent
is that possible? Yeah, this is interesting because what I'm seeing this is direct from Google is that in WhatsApp there is an option to do a local chat backup that you can then bring over to the new one via.

1:58:54 - Caller
Wi-Fi.

1:58:55 - Mikah Sargent
And then what you did was.

1:58:56 - Leo Laporte
You were sort of in the cloud. So I'm in my settings here for WhatsApp and I go to chats, to chats and then chat backup, and I suspect that's what he did. Um, so the last. So it's doing, it's doing this automatically. It's 30 megabyte backup backup your chat history and media to icloud. Now I have to point out one thing you should be aware of, and I don't know if it matters to you or not, but that will not be encrypted. In fact, they've just recently added and you should turn this on if you want privacy, end-to-end encrypted backup. You see, mine was off and for a long time WhatsApp did not do that, so turn that on. You have to create a password, but I would say, maybe, that it didn't take the export and do another one, do another one.

1:59:53 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, yeah, try to back up again.

1:59:55 - Leo Laporte
If it's failing, it's just maybe that it was corrupted or damaged at some point. It doesn't take very long. I just did a 30 megabyte backup. Of course, 30 megabytes maybe isn't a huge amount. I have an auto backup. Uh maybe don't include uh videos. That's another thing you can turn off, and I would absolutely turn on end end encrypted.

2:00:14 - Mikah Sargent
They just recently added that, which is really nice yeah, and it does say if you are switching phone numbers, um change your phone number on your old device to your new phone number before you transfer it to your phone phone. That makes it easy, Because you cannot transfer your WhatsApp data to a new phone number. So yeah, if you change it first on the old one, then the phone number is the same.

2:00:33 - Leo Laporte
Then copy it and then change your phone number and will you keep all your previous chats?

2:00:37 - Mikah Sargent
That's what this says. Oh, that's interesting. We'll include a link.

2:00:49 - Leo Laporte
I shared it so that we'll have this link to the support, and it's wonderful to have you listening in oman. Thank you. Yeah, that's awesome. I think I was thinking of something else when I said jordan. We, uh, we did that in april of 2019. We did, we traveled uh it was amazing went through the suez canal, visited petra in jordan, went down through the gulf and stopped on on the way, those days, those those we, what innocent, uh starry-eyed people we were back in those days.

Would you like to hear our new on-hold music generated by Udio Mm-hmm, Mm-hmm. It's Kenny G on the saxophone. I swear See, if I were Kenny G I'd be worried. If I were Josh Groban, I might be worried. The problem is if it's just average, just wallpaper music.

2:01:35 - Mikah Sargent
Are you calling Kenny G's music wallpaper music? I'm going to get in trouble now. Yes, I like this whole music honestly, it's great.

2:01:45 - Leo Laporte
All right, that's one. Here's melod. All right, that's one. Here's melodic interlude. Let's try that one Melodic interlude. Oh, it's not ready. Oh, still working on it. It says it's not ready. Oh, moderation error. Motivation error. Moderation error. It's not motivated. It doesn't like it.

2:02:04 - Mikah Sargent
Just like a human being. It said you know what?

2:02:06 - Leo Laporte
I'm not motivated to do this right now well, the first one was fine. Yeah, it's called waiting waves. Oh yeah, write some hold music for the tech guys in the style of the girl from ipanema. And that's what I got waiting waves. Now there's a remix button, there's an extend button and there's a publish button. Oh, look at that, you can extend it. You can. This is fantastic. That is pretty cool. If you're, I would be very worried if you were kenny g, kenny g should worry. Remix means you could just change it. You can. You can make it much more different. You can write your own lyrics. They're really, they're like this is. It's a new world, ladies and gentlemen, it is a whole new world. Let's do some more questions.

2:02:52 - Caller
I think we have time for one more. Caller Says you oh, I recognize.

2:03:02 - Leo Laporte
It's Douglas, Come on down Hello.

2:03:10 - Mikah Sargent
Leo and Mikahah hello, my good friend douglas. How are you today? We are well.

2:03:13 - Caller
Thank you for asking what's up so I got a question and some comments for you. Okay, I'll start with one of the comments. A couple weeks ago you were talking about uh, this week in google and people were making fun of it. I said why not call it this week in giggles?

2:03:30 - Leo Laporte
I dig it. There is a little bit of giggling going on in that show. I hate to kind of promise giggles when there won't always be giggles, but good, I like sometimes there will be. We tried this week in general, uh, but there was too general I don't know geriatrics, I heard geriatrics oh, that's nice yeah paris this weekend.

2:03:49 - Caller
Giggles might be appropriate.

2:03:51 - Leo Laporte
I'm gonna try it. I'll try it out on the paris, um, anyway, the.

2:03:55 - Caller
The question I have is and I don't know if you're gonna be able to answer this or not I have, uh, last summer I converted to mac and um. I've set up um, a virtual machine, using a thing called utm, and I loaded up the um, the windows arm pools, and I'm trying to run a program and it's telling me failed to initialize 3d view. At least open gl 1.3 is required. Oh yeah, Any ideas on that.

2:04:26 - Leo Laporte
I'm guessing UTM is really not designed for M1. Does it say no, it is. It is yeah, there's no OpenGL on M1 Max. Okay, so that's going to be your problem, right there. Okay, that there is a problem.

2:04:48 - Mikah Sargent
Utm lets you run windows 10 in fact, in the uh sorry, the mac os subreddit specifically, people are talking about 3d acceleration and utm and it says you straight up, can't. Utm does not currently support gpu emulation or virtualization and therefore lacks support for 3d acceleration.

2:05:05 - Caller
Okay, is there another? Is there another virtualization solution?

2:05:08 - Leo Laporte
yeah, I'll show you what I'm using and I really like it. It's called parallels. Have you ever tried?

2:05:14 - Caller
parallels? No, I haven't.

2:05:16 - Leo Laporte
That costs money, though, right yeah uh, and that's the problem, isn't it? Uh, you're gonna always have um. Uh, you're gonna always have um. Uh, when you don't pay, there's gonna always be some limitation. Yeah, I understand, and what you can do um parallels is well worth it.

2:05:36 - Caller
Let me um okay uh, I just have one program I'm trying to use. Well, I understand that. Uh, it's like an animated software.

2:05:54 - Leo Laporte
The problem is the M1. Kimu and VirtualBox. A lot of the common choices for virtualization on Apple Silicon just don't work very well. This is I'm on a Mac. I'll prove it. I'll go like that. I'm on a Mac and this is Parallels on the Mac and I think it's really incredible. Look at this. I'm going to use Edge.

2:06:17 - Caller
Maybe I'll give that a try. The problem is.

2:06:19 - Leo Laporte
It's not a great choice for just one. You know it's expensive, but boy, I mean it's. It's expensive, but boy, it's sure it's real. I mean it's snappy uh, you would never even know it's running in emulation. I feel like it's just really.

2:06:32 - Caller
It's really might be better just to keep my one of my old windows machines around for this there you go.

2:06:37 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, there you go. Yeah, I'm extremely happy with the parallels, okay. The other problem with that, of course, is you have to have a license for windows. I mean it's, it's a windows machine.

2:06:48 - Caller
It didn't ask for a license on this, so I didn't run it that long either, yeah.

2:06:54 - Leo Laporte
So you were running it in a in trial mode and eventually you'd get, you know, pestered to death about that. Yeah, uh, vmware fusion. So people fusion, people are saying works and that's free. So, um, vmware fusion is not free, but there is a fusion fusion where I guess, a free player. So you might, for now at least, yes, try the fusion player.

2:07:16 - Caller
Yeah, I'm hearing from a lot of my customers who use vmware. They're not very happy with broadcom. So, um, yeah, anyway, um, so a couple weeks. I tried to get on a couple weeks ago so I could tell you about it ahead of time, but we just had in new jersey we just had the 48th annual trenton computer festival, which is now the oldest continuous running computer festival. Um, it used to be huge. We used to have a, a flea market that filled three football fields, um, but the flea market's not as much as it used to be. But all of the talks we had.

This year's theme was AI. Um, I spoke on, uh, mid journey. Um, but they had. They had other topics too, like they had a talk on, um, um, what was the thing? Again on an introduction to Mastodon and the Fediverse? Oh, good, yeah, and so all of these are actually online now through their YouTube channel. So if you just go on YouTube and search for Trenton Computer Festival 2024, you'll see all the tracks from this year and from previous years as well. So I was in track nine, if you're hunting for it. What was your track on? It was on AI-generated images using MidJourneyBot.

2:08:41 - Caller
Oh, fun, very cool. I had about 25 people.

2:08:44 - Caller
I had about 25 people in my talk. Oh, very cool, I had about 25. I had about 25 people in my talk oh, how fun. And they had a. They've had really interesting talks. They didn't have one this year. On my YouTube channel I have a copy of the talk a couple of years back that a guy from the from one of the museums did on the Apollo guidance computer. Oh, I have a picture of that on my wall.

2:09:10 - Leo Laporte
Well, he had one.

2:09:12 - Caller
He actually had one there. Yeah, it's remarkable what they were able to do. And then they also had a talk one year from a guy who worked on ENIAC. Oh wow.

2:09:20 - Leo Laporte
So how many people attend the Trenton Computer Festival?

2:09:23 - Caller
About probably 200 or 300. Wow, it used to be a lot bigger when they had the huge flea market. I mean, like the flea market took up three acres out. I mean three football fields outside and you could find anything there. The flea market now just pretty much barely fills one room.

2:09:41 - Leo Laporte
People bought all the good stuff.

2:09:43 - Caller
Well, also I mean one year I did really good. In 1996, I managed to buy a 486 laptop for $300. I'm thrilled.

2:09:53 - Leo Laporte
It says the Trenton Computer Festival is the oldest and longest running tech fair in the world, sponsored by the College of New Jersey and Ewing. Yeah, and there it is tcf-njorg. You can see all of the um, all of the talks. It looks like what happens is people like you enthusiasts, just say yeah, I want to talk about e-bikes, for instance. Yeah. Or yeah, I want to talk about mid-journey and uh, and you just give a talk. That's wonderful. Was it virtual or was it? Was it live?

2:10:22 - Caller
they did it was hybrid, so they did live and and virtual um. The other thing they did was the other thing they do is um the kids who are seniors in the engineering program which trenton trenton, the university in the state, the college of new jersey, which used to be called trenton state um now really has a really excellent engineering program and the um seniors go and present their senior projects, some of which are very interesting you know, I'm looking at the videos and and there's so many videos on ai, it's very clear what what people are excited about these days well, that was, that was the focus this year.

But they had talks on like there was a talk on e-vitals. I'm not familiar with that, but I'm sure like electric, electric vertical takeoff and landing, oh, vtols yeah yeah, yeah, eevee falls, eevee tolls.

2:11:10 - Leo Laporte
I have to get used to that term.

2:11:12 - Caller
Yeah, and they um. You know, I was kind of watching one on electric bikes past, present and future yeah, one of the one of the things. The guy the guy that talks about electric bikes actually builds his own history of e-bikes and their current evolution.

2:11:25 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, I'm a big fan of e-bikes. That's a that's and the other the other.

2:11:28 - Caller
The other interesting thing is if you go there, you can. You can go to a ham cram and get your license in one.

2:11:34 - Leo Laporte
Oh that's. I love ham crams. That's such a great idea.

2:11:36 - Caller
Um, that's such a great idea to get people into the sport they have one track that always runs all day, which is on is on basically object-oriented programming Nice. And they have another track that runs for like two or three sessions on Arduino, and it's a hands-on.

2:11:55 - Leo Laporte
I wish we had something like that out here. You'd think the San Francisco Bay Area would have something like that. What a good thing. I might have to go to Trenton next May and check it out.

2:12:04 - Caller
Yeah, it's actually Ewing. Yeah, close enough. But it used to go to Trenton next May and check it out. Yeah, it's actually Ewing. Yeah, close enough, but it used to go to a different college they called it, the Ewing Computer Festival.

2:12:13 - Leo Laporte
Nobody had nowhere to go right.

2:12:16 - Caller
It started at Trenton State and then it moved to another college because it got too big. There was one year they actually had Bill Gates speaking, wow, and the traffic was just horrendous that year well, that's where you have your ev to all fly in and, yeah, drop you off.

2:12:31 - Leo Laporte
Hey, it's so, we're gonna run because we're out of time. It's a pleasure talking to you, thank you for the tip.

2:12:37 - Caller
I can. I can show you some pictures again later on, but all right, it was a. One year there was an emasi there, nice, an imsci, yeah, imsci, yeah, nice. But um, and, like I said, they had the guy with the yes, with the apollo guidance, and one year there was an Amasi there, nice, an IMSI, yeah, an IMSI, yeah, nice.

But like I said they had the guy with the Apollo guidance computer. But I tried to get into the show ahead of time to tell people about it. But I couldn't get in because you had a backlog.

2:12:57 - Leo Laporte
We will know next time. And the nice thing is, as you point out, you can watch all these on YouTube.

2:13:07 - Caller
Yeah, right after the year they canceled the year of the pandemic, but the year after the pandemic was completely virtual. And then the following years they decided to do hybrid because they had a lot of people watching online what is in the orange juice in trenton.

2:13:20 - Leo Laporte
I tell you, this is really, uh, very, very cool. Hey, thank you, appreciate it. D Douglas, one more quick question.

2:13:26 - Caller
One more quick question. Okay, are you going to bring back app caps?

2:13:31 - Mikah Sargent
Oh, are you, the person.

2:13:33 - Caller
Yeah.

2:13:33 - Mikah Sargent
You got rid of that Nobody ever answers me yeah, we're talking about it. You don't have to, we're talking about it. I don't think the caps will be part of it, but certainly the idea of having a pick every week is, I know, valuable.

2:13:46 - Leo Laporte
Oh, you stopped doing picks.

2:13:48 - Caller
Yes, I know I asked about it a couple of times, but nobody ever answered me.

2:13:54 - Leo Laporte
Well, we get a lot of email. I apologize, Doug, but I'm glad you didn't ask.

2:13:57 - Caller
I put it on the Discord.

2:14:01 - Leo Laporte
Maybe they didn't want to talk about it.

2:14:03 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, it's one of those things where you don't want to say yes or no if you're not for sure and Rosemary and I have to chat about it. But yeah, I think you're not then the only person who's reached out to say, oh, we miss having a pick every week, so we're talking about bringing it back.

2:14:17 - Caller
I know some people didn't like them, but they're fuddy duddies.

2:14:22 - Leo Laporte
Well, I want my hats back if you're not doing that. They're already back oh good.

2:14:28 - Caller
I mean, I love iOS today, and when you were looking for supporters, I put it up on my blog.

2:14:33 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, we thank you for that. Thank you so much, Douglas. It really is a good show.

2:14:37 - Caller
They did a great job and when I did my talk last year, I did a talk on shortcuts and that's on the YouTube channel. We'll have to find that as well. I mentioned you in the talk Bless as a place for people to go to learn.

2:14:50 - Mikah Sargent
Thanks so much, all righty. Well, that is going to bring us to the end of this episode Of the episode Ask the Tech Guys.

Twitter is just around the corner. We're getting ready for that, yes, and if you would like to get in touch with us again, you can head to calltwittv while we're doing the show to be brought up into the zoom room. You can call 888-724-2884 during the week while we aren't doing the show, to leave yourself, to leave us rather a voicemail, or email us, atg. At twittv you can send audio, you can send video or you can send text, and then it'll pop up and be piled over there in the little mailbox.

2:15:25 - Leo Laporte
Well, there's no pile now, so let's start a new one.

2:15:28 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, we've got to get some more in. I'm sure, though we've got, yeah, plenty.

2:15:32 - Leo Laporte
No, no, no, no, I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding John.

2:15:34 - Mikah Sargent
Yes, we've got plenty of emails, but please send in yours as well. Send in your questions. Don't forget to have even more of you. You can catch Leo all week on every single show ever, and you can catch me on Thursdays for Tech News Weekly. Of course, this show here on Sundays and my other shows which publish on Thursday Hands on Mac and iOS today are, of course, available on those days as well. Anything left, I think we've, we've, we've hit them all.

2:16:13 - Leo Laporte
We do this show every Sunday, two to five pm Eastern Time, that's 11 am to two pm Pacific, that's eighteen hundred UTC. The stream for all the shows we do live is on YouTube YouTube dot com slash twit, so you can watch it while you're calling and on hold and so forth, and of course, after the fact the show's available on the website.

And we'd love it if you subscribe. Get your pocket casts and subscribe and that way you'll get it the minute it's available. Techeyelabscom still works to go to the website if you want show notes or links or all that stuff that. There is Mikah Sargent, he's on Tech News Weekly, ios Today and this show and, as you pointed out, I'm on everything else. Kind of works nice that way. Yeah, we've got it, and in some cases we overlap, like this one. Thanks for joining us. Everybody. Have a great week. Bye-bye.