Ask The Tech Guys 2022 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 Dick DeBartolo with not one, but two kooky gadgets, plus Chris Marquardt, our photo guy, with his photo review.
0:00:10 - Mikah Sargent
And I'm Mikah Sargenton Gasp, Scandalous: we answer a printer question. It was a hard one too.
0:00:16 - Leo Laporte
I don't know if we actually solved it. Plus, what do you do when you ask Siri to call your wife, and she says which wife? When you ask Siri to call your wife, and she says which wife? All that coming up next on Ask the Tech Guys Podcasts you love.
0:00:32 - Caller
From people you trust. This is Twit.
0:00:39 - Leo Laporte
This is Ask the Tech Guys with Mikah Sargent and Leo Laporte, episode 2022. Recorded Sunday, april 28th 2024. Which wife? Well, hey, hey, hey, hey. Hey, that's there is Mikah Sargent. Hello, leo Laporte. This is where we answer your computer questions on Ask the Tech Guys. Get it, ask the Tech Guys as you ask. We Try to answer, fumper around until we come up with something. 888-724-2884 is the phone number.
0:01:09 - Mikah Sargent
Yes, if you call that while we're doing the show, you will be able to ask your question live on air. If you call it while we're not doing the show, you'll be able to leave a voicemail. Nothing happens, oh yeah, yes, a voicemail happens. You can also get in touch with us by emailing us atg at twittv. You can send text, you can send audio, you can send video we have all of those options available and calltwittv is the URL that you can go to on your phone or your computer and when you do, you will be able to join our Zoom room. Now, importantly, when you join the Zoom room, look near the bottom of the screen for a little hand raise icon. It should say raise hand. You should click or tap on that. That lets us know that you do indeed have a question that you need answered. If you do not click or tap on that button, you will not be potentially brought up onto the stage to ask your question.
0:02:05 - Leo Laporte
Dick DeBartolo will join us in a little bit. The new mad magazine is out. Can you name all those comics? Uh, nope, nope, no. I can name a few of them. I can name a few of them as well, but, uh, we'll talk about that. Dick has a gadget for us also. Uh, he was postponed last week, but he's back missed because he's got internet now. Chris Marquardt will, uh, will, do his assignment review, for was it brilliant? Something like something powerful, powerful. I combine those powerfully brilliant and uh, we'll do those. Uh, some reviews and get to get yourself a new adjective to shoot. Now let's talk about what happened this week.
0:02:44 - Mikah Sargent
Oh, we've got nine months leo, they banned tiktok.
0:02:51 - Leo Laporte
It's like being pregnant, isn't it? Yes, you've got nine months in nine months at the end.
0:02:57 - Mikah Sargent
Let's see how can we compare. Chinese government says and I.
0:03:00 - Leo Laporte
You know what people say. Oh, they're just bluffing, bluff, it's all bluster. They said no, we're not gonna sell it bye. I completely believe them. Uh, and honestly, uh, even though there's tiktok immediately went to court and was trying to stay it. Uh, a, I don't think they'll be able to stay it and b? Uh, even if they do. This uncertainty hanging over it means advertisers will withdraw. Creators will move to instagram. Congratulations, meta. You, meta, you won. You couldn't buy it, you couldn't kill it by copying it, so they lobbied legislators and they got it killed. Wonderful, wonderful, well done, well done. Do we have comprehensive privacy reform? No. Does the Chinese government have access to Twitter and Facebook for propaganda? Yes. Can they spy information from data brokers about every American? Yes. So have we gained anything? No, have we lost something? Yeah, I think. A pretty amazing platform for creators. I've said it all. I have nothing more to say.
0:04:01 - Mikah Sargent
I just the one thing that I will say is not really a say, it is an ask, which is how are they going to truly implement this ban in nine months?
0:04:13 - Leo Laporte
that'll be interesting. What they'll have to do is go to google and apple and say you must remove tiktok from the app store. They'll cut off the servers, basically. Uh, we'll have to have you know how china has the great internet firewall that's what we're gonna and that's.
0:04:27 - Mikah Sargent
I hate that. I really hate that we're not china.
0:04:31 - Leo Laporte
This is the whole point. Yes, by espousing democratic institutions and free speech, we are better. By doing so, we, we make an example to the rest of the world. Yeah, screw the example anyway. I know there are quite a few people who think oh no, tiktok was a massive threat, and maybe it was, but you've done nothing to shut off any every other exact way every other chinese government influences.
so, uh, I don't know what you've succeeded at. You've done nothing except give meta a great big boost, because it's all the creators, including my son, who's a big, a big TikTok creator will go to Instagram. He's already moved to Instagram. Not all his followers moved, though. He had 2.6 million followers on TikTok and only one and a half million on Insta, so there's a million people still over on TikTok and I don't know if he'll lose them in the transition. It's a big deal. It's a big deal.
0:05:27 - Mikah Sargent
Weirdly did your apple id get reset. Thank goodness I was not one who had that issue.
I yes, there are many people, it seems, whose apple ids were randomly weird reset in the middle of the night and reaching out to apple support provided no answer other than oh yeah, somebody managed to make that's. That's really just a hand wavy sort of oh no, everything's fine. We don't really know as it stands what happened, but some people this is kind of. What was wild to me was how different the experience was for the people who had their Apple IDs reset. Sometimes it was as simple as just needing to wait an hour to log back in because they had the device protection set up.
But then some people actually had all of their app specific IDs reset as well, and that's annoying because that is a process that Apple uses, where, if you've got certain apps that need to log in with your Apple ID these are typically going to be kind of like mail apps or contacts apps, notes apps you generate a temporary password that is separate from your actual Apple ID password and then it kind of confirms with Apple servers you're able to log in, et cetera. Many people had to go and regenerate all of their Apple ID app specific passwords, and that can take some time. That's cray cray, a little cray cray, but what's most concerning to me, the most cray cray aspect of it, is that Apple and Apple support are not saying what's going on. So why did this happen and why did some users have it happen, but some some users did not? Are we going to see some sort of disclosure about what went down?
0:07:10 - Leo Laporte
yeah, it's a very strange, weird thing happening anyway. Well, you know, we'll keep you posted. Yeah, by the way, I forgot to mention if you weren't incensed by the ban of tiktok, which is political theater in my opinion, you, maybe this will incense you. The next step they're going to ban DJI drones in the US. Yeah, well, ok, so this is this is clever way to do it. There is legislation in Congress right now to tell the federal communications commission to block DJI on the country's communications infrastructure, to tell Verizon, t-mobile, uh, at&t and etc. Etc. You can't allow any DJI drones on your, on your uh 3g or your wireless. If passed and signed into a law, it would just base. Now, good news if you already have a dji drone which all of you do and I do who doesn't, including, by the way, law enforcement uh, if you already have one, they're not going to block existing models. It'll only apply to future dji drones and this is the same thing. It's made in china.
0:08:28 - Mikah Sargent
This so I here we go again. This feels like a ramping up, and that's what I don't like. It is a ramping up. What, what are? Are they gonna start banning most of my clothes too, because?
0:08:43 - Leo Laporte
frankly, all that comes from china is your iphone. Where's your iphone made?
0:08:46 - Mikah Sargent
I just yeah, where is that? I think, china.
0:08:49 - Leo Laporte
China, not india. Where's my laptop? Where's your laptop? China, it's see. I, I don't know. I don't know. I think it's theater um beijing could potentially exploit vulnerabilities in an app that controls the drone. You know, when you use a dji, you have an app on your ipad or your apple phone or your google phone to gain access to large amounts of personal information. Oh yeah, although a us official said there are no known vulnerabilities that have not been patched, so they are acting like.
0:09:22 - Mikah Sargent
This is about protecting individual users, but that's not. This is bipartisan support.
0:09:29 - Leo Laporte
Of course, DJI is lobbying like crazy. This has been proposed in the past and failed in the past, although the military is not allowed to use DJI drones, which is fine.
0:09:41 - Mikah Sargent
That I understand. Yeah, I would be okay with the military, which I think in many cases they are military not being able to be used. Would not be able to use TikTok Like. That's fine to me too If there's this huge concern. Yeah, I don't have a problem with that Sure.
0:09:56 - Leo Laporte
By the way, ukraine uses DJI drones against Russia. Oh, that's one of its most popular combat drones, even though they're not designed to do that. Finally, I'll do one more, and then we'll get to calls, because I think we really should get to calls. This cracks me up. It turns out that video podcasts are the next big thing, and the New York Times is on it.
0:10:22 - Mikah Sargent
Oh, boy and the New.
0:10:23 - Leo Laporte
York Times is on it. Oh boy, apparently, I had no idea. Let's find the article here. It's all because of YouTube, I think. With YouTube, booming podcast creators get camera ready and they quote, which is hysterical. They quote some guy who's, I guess, a big shot in podcasting not me. Who says the idea? It's Jake Coburn, a radio and podcast producer for the Globe and Mail and Vocal Fry Studios, the very world famous Vocal.
0:10:59 - Caller
Fry Studios.
0:11:00 - Leo Laporte
Definitely heard of them. He says it's like saying video radio. It's a fundamental understanding of the medium. Yeah, you know, we've blown it all this time. We've been doing video podcasts. What are we nuts? What are we crazy? What are we crazy? So, uh, the new york times really a real trendsetter has discovered that video podcasts are hot. When did we start doing video, john? 2009, 2008? I think the first quit was in 2009.
We were in the cottage, colleen, our wonderful engineer at the time I bought on eBay. I bought a bunch of uh Canon video cameras and she drilled holes in my desk and went to the junkyard and got a bunch of aluminum tubing speed rail they call it in the business if you buy it Uh, but we got, went to the junkyard and got speed rail. She set up the whole that little office in the uh in the brick house house. She set the whole thing up lights, cameras drilled, holds drilled in and we, we, uh streamed the shows from 2009 on in the cottage, then in the brick house, which is a beautiful studio I wish the times could have seen that and then here in the, the east side studios, but now. But now it's, it's hot, just as we're about to turn off the cameras. It's hot. We did uh, we're, we're.
You know, the studio is a big expense and one of the reasons we keep asking for money uh in the club is because it's very expensive. Uh, not not just the rent, and the rent we're gonna have to pay till the middle of 2026. That's the lease uh, but the the pg and e bill is almost as high as the rent. So we think we're probably just going to, in the next six months or eight months, move the whole operation into your house.
0:12:54 - Mikah Sargent
I hope you don't mind. No, it's ready. The shoebox is ready.
0:12:58 - Leo Laporte
We did. We've been playing with a software called StreamYard. We did Stacy's Book Club on StreamYard on Thursday. I thought it went quite well, didn't you, john? I loved how we could get the chat in there and stuff. So it won't be as beautiful as this. We won't have the lovely. Actually, we might, because I have a fireplace in my office, so we might actually have a real fireplace on the cold winter nights.
I think we can make it look as good as this and save quite a bit of money. So if you're not a member of the club, forget it, don't worry about it. It's fine, we'll be here, we may not. It is, and they do point this out in the New York Times. It's really a lot cheaper just to do audio. Yes, all your podcast other podcasts are audio. Yes, that is correct Clockwise.
0:13:40 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, I mean, that's the big. The big other one that I do Because it's that's smart. Well, yeah, and it's nice to not need to be presentable. To be honest with you, I agree and as.
0:13:53 - Leo Laporte
I get older and people go who's that old guy doing the show? I will preserve my credibility by sounding young without looking young. Right, I don't know. It's my thought anyway. I think that we knew from the very beginning that a podcast is not radio and a video podcast is not video radio. Sorry, Jay.
Video radio, video radio you mean TV, oh, okay, yeah, that's a pretty good medium. No, it's about community, and whatever builds the community best is, to my mind, the best way to do it. And that's one of the reasons we started doing videos, because you seeing us makes makes it more real. We're not just disembodied voices. I know most of the time people will listen just to audio, but every once in a while they'll watch a video you're talking about.
0:14:41 - Mikah Sargent
Right video is more or less important. So I know there are quite a number of young folks who like to have that video and in many cases they are not even listening at all. They're just reading the captions on screen with video in the background.
0:14:55 - Leo Laporte
So somebody found was hysterical, uh, a Kevin Rose video that he made. I think this was back in 2009. Sorry, I didn't mean to scare you. Back in 2009.
0:15:08 - Caller
I'm here behind the scenes at TWiT this week in tech. Wow, this is when I was up in the Garrett this has to be the most complicated setup I've ever seen in my entire life, and this is, I think, before we were doing video.
0:15:29 - Leo Laporte
This is actually we just completed our last time that we're going to do it here in the little mini twit office, my garrett office. We're in the attic of an old bed and breakfast victorian building, and I do the kfi radio show from here, and that's how we started with twit right, so it's kind of fun. It was just a little tour of the equipment that we have long ago abandoned, but but uh, I love that music that was his show called System Without the E. Kevin's going to be on Twitter this afternoon.
0:15:49 - Mikah Sargent
Has his hair changed at all? No, I don't think so.
0:15:52 - Leo Laporte
We'll see. It's cute, isn't it? Yeah, it's very of the time. Yeah, it was of the time, that's right. What is the date on this? I think it's 2009.
I remember when we were on tech TV he used to go in the makeup room and spike his hair up with a gel. I remember that I tried it once. Didn't work Not for me anyway, it wasn't, wasn't exactly my thing. Anyway, welcome to all of our new club members and for those of you who are not yet club members, your support is very important. If you're not yet a member, consider seven bucks a month. That's all it is.
twit.tv/clubtwit. You'll get all the. You'll get all. You'll get all the ad free shows. You'll get the shows in video that we do only for audio, like your hands on Mac, uh, in the public. We do you audio only in the public video in the club. Just thought I'd get that out of the way right up front.twit.tv/clubtwit. Thank you, yeah, I'll put a link. The old studio tour was actually in the general chat, but I'll put a link to that in our Club Twit Discord so you can see it. Not great Shall we do a phone call right up front and get something out of the way. Yeah, we can do a phone call and pick up on Joe Once I'm going to get him brought into the room. Hello, mighty Joe, joe, welcome to the show. Mighty, mighty Joe and your comic book collection that was almost as good as AI uh, yes hi.
0:17:41 - Mikah Sargent
Joe, wow, I love the set.
0:17:45 - Leo Laporte
Hello Joe.
0:17:47 - Caller
I'm on my iMac. I'm not sure why I'm echoing, but I just wanted to ask like what's the first of all? I'm new to Club Twit. I've been watching you guys for like 20 years 20 years, welcome, at least. I'm just wondering what the best offsite backup is. I back up all my stuff here. I'm just wondering if you could recommend something really good. It's fairly affordable to back up all my content, sure.
0:18:14 - Leo Laporte
And in future the solution to that is headphones. There he goes, because if you have open speakers, even with echo cancellation on in Zoom, it doesn't, it's not perfect. Yeah, there, I think I figured it out yeah, that solved it so good so we can talk back and forth. So the question was off-site backup. What do you do for off-site backup?
0:18:35 - Mikah Sargent
I use a little thing called backblaze personally, very popular with mac users.
0:18:40 - Leo Laporte
Yes, so, and I also works for everything.
0:18:43 - Mikah Sargent
I also use Dropbox, so I kind of back up to a couple of places with Backblaze. The way that it works is you install a little application on your machine. It's very price effective and essentially Backblaze just scans everything that's on your Mac and then uploads it to its offsite servers. And then uploads it to its offsite servers. It's very inexpensive to just back up. And then if at any point you need anything from those backups, it's also got versioning, which is great.
But if at any point you need anything from your backup, you can go online and you can grab it. Or, for a little bit of money, you can actually, if you needed to do kind of a whole restore, they will let you. I think it's like a rental fee. They'll send you an actual physical drive that has everything from it if you need it. So that's one way to go about it. Backblaze also has a way of doing even more with your backups, and I can't think of now what it's called, but it's essentially a more. There you go B2 cloud storage. So that is say, you have like a lot of external drives that you were storing locally, especially if they're network attached storage. Backblaze doesn't offer, with its standard option, backups for network attached storage. B2 cloud backup will do that as well that.
0:20:08 - Leo Laporte
That pretty much answers it. You know, you should probably use a local. I think it's always a good idea to have a local system and a cloud system. It's that part of that three, two, one backup, three copies of everything which could be the original the local backup and the cloud backup, two different kinds of media which I think when they first thought of it it was like hard drives and DVDs or something. But cloud and local is two different kinds, and then one of them should always be in the cloud, and that's because of ultimate disaster. You know, a nuclear bomb. Well, that's not a good disaster. Earthquake, earthquake, how about that? Where do you live, joe? Earthquake earthquake?
0:20:46 - Caller
how about that something? Where, what, where do you? Uh? Where do you live, joe? I'm about two and a half hours southwest of toronto, okay, a little bit of town called branford, which people would know is the hometown of wayne gretzky.
0:20:55 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, as soon as you said about, I knew you were in canada.
0:20:58 - Leo Laporte
So is in branford. So let's say, nuclear bomb hits toronto, but the shock shakes up things by the way inrent. I shouldn't say that it's terrible, no, let's.
0:21:07 - Mikah Sargent
But there's a, you know what If there's a disaster, a home, house fire, if a disaster happens?
0:21:10 - Leo Laporte
A flood. I bet you floods are an issue in your neck of the woods and you know your local hard drive gets flooded and it's no good anymore. The cloud is really that stop and that's one of the reasons cheap backup like Backblaze is offering is because you're probably not going to use it Exactly?
0:21:27 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, I don't think. In the history of having Backblaze, I think one time I used it and it was simply because I had deleted something and I had one year versioning history and so I was able to go back and find that other version because at the time I was using uh time machine, which is my local backup, which is supposed to do version network attached storage and the network attachment had failed, so the time machine was not completing the backup.
So luckily I had versioning. Yeah, normally I would just use the versioning via time machine, but I stopped using network.
0:22:02 - Leo Laporte
Uh time machine for a single file. Local backup is always the best. Yes, exactly, you don't have to do it For a disaster. Having a cloud is great.
Yeah that's where cloud should come in. So they say it's $100 a year per computer. There are other ways to do this. Obviously, there's almost a virtually infinite number of ways to do it. Almost any cloud system will do it. The nice thing about Backblaze is you don't have to think about it exactly it's. You don't have to have a file structure or anything, it just does it. It just does it all. I use, uh, if you have a nas, a network attached storage. Um, I use a network attached storage at home to back up everything using sync thing. So I've seen thing on all my computers. It synchronizes to the nas and then I have a duplicate nas here. This is a crazy solution my duplicate nas here, which the first nas syncs to the second nas and that way, uh, I have an offsite you should probably set one up at your mom's house.
0:22:58 - Mikah Sargent
So you have something that's geographically far away that's what?
0:23:00 - Leo Laporte
yeah, by the way, if an atomic bomb hit petaluma, I'm you, I know if it does you're also not going to be here. It's not going to be, it's not a big deal. So that's what Steve Gibson used to do. He used to mail the CDs this is how old it is CDs to his mom. Oh wow, she said what are these?
0:23:16 - Mikah Sargent
She said, don't worry, Just put them in a drawer Glad to hold on to all your stuff.
0:23:22 - Leo Laporte
Too bad he didn't put his Bitcoin wallet on there because that would be nice. Anyway, you're right. This is simple, easy. So the basic answer is that, but it doesn't take long before you can think of a thousand different kinds of cloud. Yeah, there are so many ways to do it.
0:23:36 - Mikah Sargent
If you use a Mac and you want a fast way of doing it, I just recommend Backblaze. Especially if you've got a nice, nice speedy internet connection, you can get it done pretty quickly. Backblaze does have kind of a built-in thing where the throttling will make it so that you can still keep using your computer and it doesn't get in the way of your up and down speed. But I crank anytime I've had to set it up new, I crank it all the way up overnight, let it do its thing and it's good to go. And then I did mention that I also use Dropbox, Because I do most of my file sharing over Dropbox. I save most of my files to my Dropbox folder anyway. So Dropbox is also technically another off-site backup that I have just by virtue of how I personally use my machine. So again, there are so many ways to go about doing this and Leo and I both use many a tool for photos, including our sponsor MyLeo, so that may also be another.
0:24:33 - Leo Laporte
Felton, suspenders is always okay. Yeah, and since you're new to the club, joe, go on into our live chat in the discord, and they have about 800 other solutions.
Yes, exactly, In fact the chocolate milk mini sips got a kind of nice story. Jason howlett recommended a uh, a android backup called fx file explorer some time ago. And uh, he says chocolate milk mini sip says he could not get the files off his pixel 6 pro but fortunately he had purchased this some time ago and he was able to get a 64 gig zip file. Oh good, download it and restore. And then another member of the club says dan says I've been on backblaze for more than a decade. Last year, get this. They sent me a drive of my seven terabytes when he had some missing files. It was such a huge amount. This is the problem with cloud is you're not going to download a terabyte of data. It takes too long. But in some Backblaze will send you a drive at a cost, but they'll send you a drive. And you know what? If you need your stuff, you really need it, right? And Adam the Phantom says if there is a nuclear bomb, good news, vault-tec will sell you a vault.
0:25:40 - Mikah Sargent
That is a good point.
0:25:42 - Leo Laporte
Good fallout.
0:25:43 - Mikah Sargent
Reference acknowledged Reference acknowledged.
0:25:45 - Leo Laporte
Thank you, hey. Thanks, Joe. Welcome to the club. Thanks for having me, guys. Great to have you.
Have a great day, take care. That's the phone number, 888-724-2884. Dick DeBartolo coming up in 15 minutes, mad Magazine's maddest writer. Let's take a little pause. That refreshes and then we will get back to your calls. Our show today brought to you by Mylio. I love Mylio. Let me open up my Mylio uh photo storage right now. We've mentioned it last week because Mylio uh is, uh, among many other great features, able to import um uh google takeout files, which makes it very easy, Mylio.
Let me see what the total number of um files I have here in my Mylio, it's quite a quite a huge 525, 600, is that how many you have? No.
0:26:42 - Mikah Sargent
That's how many minutes in a year, 5,000, 2,500, 6,000.
0:26:49 - Leo Laporte
I don't know. I have, I think, over 200, yeah, 210,854 images in my Mylio, I love it. Now, I'm a serious photographer sometimes, as is Chris Marquardt, so I have everything in here, not just the tourist photos here we are in Mexico and videos to notice but also you know the stuff I take for art reasons and so forth. I love Mylio. Mylio is a fantastic way to keep track of all your photos. We call it there's there's mom. We call it digital asset management and here's Bob. We call it there's mom. We call it digital asset management. And here's Bob, our peacock in the backyard. So digital. I could play the video if you'd like to see it. Digital asset management is awesome because it means you can keep track of everything you've done audio video, pizzas. That's good, yeah, but the thing I really love about this is you can also organize it not only by date, but by tags, geographically. You can upload it to uh, your uh, what is it? Which is? What is the um, the genealogy service that?
0:28:02 - Caller
they use the lds is genealogy service. That they use the LDS is genealogy service.
0:28:05 - Leo Laporte
Which is really cool for free, by the way A lot of genealogy services Plus. It automatically will order things by smart tag and look at all the tags Balance, beam, ball player, barbell, baseball, basketball. That's just the B's in activity. If you have pets, you'll love the ability to sort it by beavers, elephants, fishes, maybe I should just do cats. Let's see, we have lots of, even cheetah, cougar, egyptian cat, jaguar, persian tabby. Maybe I'll just say all of our cat pictures. And there's all our cat pictures.
Now, I did not categorize this. If you're a Picasa user, back in the day you may remember going through each picture one by one, tagging them, adding captions. This is done automatically, which is fantastic. It is the best way. Let me see if I have any camel pictures. Nope, no, apparently I have a beaver picture. That's maybe. Oh, that's just more cats, all right. Anyway, it also can organize it by people.
Now, what you do for that is you'll pick a couple of people, pick a couple of pictures and add them, and then it will go through all your pictures in the background and slowly but over maybe a few a week or so categorize everybody. Let's see if I have any pictures of Jammer B. Oh, I have to. So this is matching Jammer b, the cat. So let me turn off the cat part. There we go, and that would be pictures of john with his cat, but I don't have any pictures of you with your cat. But isn't that cool. You can narrow it down that way as well. You can look at all the people. This is all automatic, which really is fantastic. I mean, I can go on and on. What do you like about Mylio?
0:29:45 - Mikah Sargent
I know you use it honestly, though it is the, it's the smart tagging stuff, because I specifically remember, because how do I think about uh photos? I think about them as memories, and so when I think about my oh, my mom and I were on the beach and I remember us smiling while we were looking at the photo, so you can categorize mom and smiling and beach even, and then you get right to the three photos that you were taking on the beach.
0:30:09 - Leo Laporte
Isn't that awesome.
0:30:10 - Mikah Sargent
Without any extra work, exactly, and it had done that all by itself locally on device, which is so important because there are a lot of you know. I've really thought about how consent should factor into our photo sharing stuff and how, when we upload them to these online services, all this automatic face tagging is happening. This stuff is happening on device, and I think that's what makes it as extra specially awesome so let me tell you about the things that really matter.
0:30:36 - Leo Laporte
Just like you said, on device, it's private, it's cloud independent. You can even and I you do this I use my NAS to store my cloud backup, but Mylio also offers cloud backup, where you can use third-party cloud backup or not. You can keep it completely in your house on device All your photos, all your videos, by the way, documents too Android, iphone, windows and Mac. And here's the best part, it's free for your first computer. So if you just want to get organized and get it set up, just download it now on your favorite device iPhone, android, windows or Mac and you got it for free. Now, of course, both Mikah and I immediately sign up for the paid plan, which gives you automatic backups, syncing between devices. I have Mylio Photo on everything, so when I take a picture on my iPhone, it immediately goes to my Mylio catalog. It also has de-duping the best de-duping of of anybody. So if you've got duplicate pictures which you will if you import everything cause you can import for Facebook, instagram, google and on and on and on for nine 99 a month or $99 a year. You get all of that organized manage unlimited photos, unlimited videos, all devices. But, as I said, get started first for free. We know you're going to love it, so get started free with their basic version.
Take full advantage of the platform with Mylio Photos plus by using oh wow, our special offer. Wish I'd known about this. Get I paid the full price. Get 25% off your annual or monthly subscription. Right now to Mylio Photos Plus. 25% off. Go to M-Y-L-I-O.com/twit25. mylio.comtwit25. That's a really good deal. They have excellent support. By the way, you see those concierge plans. If you aren't sure exactly what you're doing or you just want some help. They're really, really good. Yeah, I don't. You know I still have Google photos and Amazon photos because I have the free versions of all of those. But Mylio is worth it just to have one central source of all of them. Tagged organized, does everything Google Photos would do, and then you can have it go out to your favorite editor.
So I have editors that I like to use. So you just right-click on it, select it and go to mylio.com/twit25. Don't forget that 25, so you get 25% off. All right, let's take another call. What should we do here?
0:33:08 - Caller
We're a little close. Starting with Dick, how about an email?
0:33:11 - Leo Laporte
Sure, because you don't think I could do a call in four minutes, do you? I can you know this is from uh-oh, court, hi Court. Can I give your whole name Court Pontiff? I think that's a made-up name court pontiff the court pontiff in house.
Pontificate my guy I have a sonos soundbar for tv and it's sonos to wireless speaker that connects to wi-fi so I can have tv in my kitchen. Worked fine for years. So now the only way I can get it to connect is unplug the router. When the router restarts, the speaker will connect and work for 15 to 20 seconds. Then it disconnects nothing restarting the router. When the router restarts, the speaker will connect and work for 15 to 20 seconds. Then it disconnects nothing. Restarting the router makes it connect again, and then again only for a few seconds. It's an optimum cable company router. Do you think it might be a router setting issue? Could the speaker have gone bad? Do I still have the doc martin shoes with the flames? I do. I'll put them on in honor of kevin rose. They're in my closet over here.
0:34:04 - Mikah Sargent
So, first and foremost, my recommendation is to see if there is any IP reservation option on your. Make it a static IP. A static IP so if you are unfamiliar. Basically, one of the things that your router does is it looks for devices trying to connect and when they do, it gives them a name, a phone number, however you want to think of it, and from that point on it could stay that way. But as you add new devices to your network and as some devices disconnect, that name or phone number might get reassigned to a different device that you connect, and some devices I have found just really like it if you never make them change their phone number, if you let it stay consistent.
Printers are a lot like that and sometimes these sound devices which you plan on keeping, running and working work better when that's the case. Now, it may be that for the reason why it's worked up to this point for so long is because you didn't have as many things on the network. But as over time you've gathered new Wi-Fi devices, you've gotten new things. That's what's changed. So check your router's settings or, if you need, to call the support squad for your ISP and ask them about assigning a static IP. If you could do it yourself, that would be great. If after that doesn't work, I would. I was going to say, see if you can do a firmware update for the Sonos.
0:35:42 - Leo Laporte
But now I'm realizing the very first thing, very first thing you should do with the Sonos is remove it and set it up again. John, is this I don't know what the Sonos soundbar is. Is the Sonos 2 part of the old Sonos or the new Sonos? By the way, sonos is now adding a third. It's new, okay, john's our Sonos expert, because we have Sonos throughout the studio, but we have the old Sonos One system, right? So that's the first thing is make sure you're using the right app for your system. It wouldn't work at all if you didn't. So I'm going to presume you are In that app. Remove those speakers.
I have to do this periodically, all the time, periodically, all the time. Is that a contradiction in terms? I have to do it pretty much every month. Sono to me I have sonos moves in the kitchen. My last sonos is I've slowly weaned us off. I got rid of the sound bar. Somebody got it here. It was part of a leo's garage sale a couple of months ago. I got rid of, uh, the little sonos, uh satellites. I got rid of the sonos sub. I get rid of sonos everywhere because I don't like Sonos anymore, because a of what they did with this change to Sonos two but B. I find them unreliable and see everybody in the world now does the same thing.
Ever since Google won its case against Sonos, they now can do party mode. Everybody can do party mode. Sonos claimed that they had a patent on party mode and nobody could do it. You know the idea that you have multiple speakers throughout the house all playing the same music. That's actually hard to do on Bluetooth or Wi-Fi even, because it's hard to keep them in sync. Sonos had figured that out some years ago. That was the reason they get Sonos we have. When you put on Humphrey's McGee John, when everybody has left he puts on Humphrey's McGee. Every room in the studio has umfries playing in sync.
If it can out of sync, you really hate it because it sounds like it's echoing. It's really a weird experience but everybody can do that now. When sonos was the only one in the world, okay, but everybody can do that now. Uh. The other reason I'm kind of going against sonos is the computers built into the speaker and this is what we experienced when they obsoleted version one is, even though that speaker is still perfectly good, because they're obsoleting the computer interface inside the speaker. The whole thing is no good anymore and I believe you should separate the two. So I'm more. I'm now a fan of having good speakers. I use ELAC, elac speakers and then attaching them to something that has the airplay or the Bluetooth or the wireless capability, because that way, when there's an upgrade to the wireless, you don't have to throw away perfectly good speakers.
0:38:20 - Mikah Sargent
Speakers should last a lifetime right Because, yeah, as far as we've seen they can, so let them last a lifetime. Right Because, yeah, they as far as we've seen they can, so let them last a lifetime.
0:38:27 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, so, uh, that's just my feeling on it. Uh, I, that's not an answer to this question. You gave the answer, but I would also say remove it and start over again. Sometimes, uh, that it just. They just get seem to get confused periodically, why? Is it. Why is the? So? It joins it, gets on the router's dropping it. Yeah, I think you nailed it. There's something going on with DHCP there, so giving a static address may just solve that.
0:38:55 - Mikah Sargent
That's what's worked, not specifically with Sonos, but with devices that were giving me those issues in the past. Giving it a static IP was what solved it for me.
0:39:06 - Leo Laporte
And that rhymes. So there you go, there you go. Uh, all right, get ready. It's time for the mad man himself, mad magazine's maddest writer and our gizmo wizard. We call him the giz whiz. He's the host of the giz whiz podcast at giz whiz dot tv and the giz fizz evening show every Wednesday also on gizwiztv. Hello, dick DeBartolo. Hey, how are you guys? Well, practical joke items guaranteed to put the fun back in funerals. That's Dick's piece in this month.
0:39:45 - Dick DeBartolo
I wrote that along with Frank Santopadre, so I have to give Frank credit. It's kind of fun. You know Kleenex tissues that give you a black eye.
0:39:55 - Leo Laporte
Remember when we were kids, always fun at a funeral you gave somebody a tube and you said look through this. I like this one Put a knife in the corpse. Oh, that's cute, right, especially for those open caskets. That's cute and puts a little soap on the handles of the casket. Slippery casket is so fun. Casket's coated with a clear, odorless, industrial-strength machine oil. Nowadays. When did you write this? These are all best-ofs now.
0:40:23 - Dick DeBartolo
Oh, these are all. Yeah, it's probably 30 years ago.
0:40:26 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, so nowadays you might use a silicone, a dry silicone.
0:40:30 - Dick DeBartolo
Yeah, absolutely yeah.
0:40:32 - Leo Laporte
This is very funny. This is the cover, which is a roast.
0:40:36 - Dick DeBartolo
I'm sure WD-40 has WD-40 for coffin handle. They do now actually.
0:40:52 - Leo Laporte
Actually, I use it on my, uh, my pilates equipment, but it's the same thing. He just, uh, he uses a dragon. So I know that's ricky gervais. Yeah, chapelle, yeah, um, I'm guessing the topless. She's not a good likeness, but I'm thinking that's sarah silverman, but I don't know I have a natasha amy schumer amy schumer. I knew I don't know the rest of these, though some of these guys cat williams is below chapelle, cat williams yes, this is fun, though he always has his shirt off.
0:41:13 - Dick DeBartolo
Is bert bert. Uh, carster, I don't know all the modern comics but this is fun, you know, I watched last night. I watched the?
0:41:21 - Caller
uh yeah, where's steve? He doesn't do roasts, that's why he's too nice, I don't think steve would ever do a roast.
0:41:24 - Leo Laporte
but I did watch the uh correspondence dinner last I watched. Last night I watched the. Yeah, where's Steve? He doesn't do roasts, that's why he's too nice. I don't think Steve would ever do a roast, but I did watch the correspondence dinner last night, which was kind of a roast, where the president roasts the former president and Colin Jost roasts the current president. It was interesting, not funny.
0:41:40 - Mikah Sargent
It was interesting.
0:41:43 - Leo Laporte
It was a little too on the nose for me.
0:41:48 - Dick DeBartolo
Yes, that's a perfect compliment, for I once saw a Broadway show that Mitch Miller had written and he invited us because he was on Match Game and I thought it was not good. So he said what do you think? And I said, mitch, I've never seen anything like it. Perfect.
0:42:10 - Leo Laporte
God you're good. I wish I had you like like Cyrano de Bergerac, I wish I had you in the bushes with me as I'm wooing Roxanne Patton Oswalt's Waffle House Hidden hash brown mess recipes. This is the menu you don't know about, emo Phillips, believe it or don't? So they had famous comics writing stuff.
0:42:31 - Dick DeBartolo
They did it they from time to time. They have done that.
0:42:35 - Leo Laporte
I love the Jim Gaffigan Jack and Jim Gaffigan's avocado toast 15 steps. Wow, if different comedians told the same, this is great. Lewis black, dane cook, dain cook. Whatever happened to dane cook?
0:42:52 - Dick DeBartolo
what did happen to him? He's so hot for a while, yeah people realized he wasn't funny.
0:42:56 - Leo Laporte
I think, uh, larry, the cable guy, bill, maher carlos manisha I you know he used to be, uh, my towel boy at the local club in San Francisco, the kid who handed out towels. Oh, literally, yeah, are you serious? Yeah, and then he became the Taco Bell dog. Yo quiero Taco Bell. And the rest is history.
0:43:19 - Mikah Sargent
I don't think that was him, was it?
0:43:20 - Leo Laporte
Wasn't that him? Maybe it was somebody else. Anyway, look it up, I'll. Anyway. Whoever did the taco bell dog? That was the guy who was my town boy. Uh, the monotonous mrs mason. Okay, very funny, very good, that's kind of current, that's fun anyway. Mad roast comedy. The new issue of mad it's the june issue on newsstands today. Uh, at comic book stores, oh, they don't put on newsstands anymore.
0:43:52 - Dick DeBartolo
Uh, no, just comic books and you can find yeah, and you can also find a lot of that material in the bonds and nobles specials oh, I love those. By the way, I I buy all of those, yeah, so those are great.
0:44:04 - Leo Laporte
Anyway, that was a little tribute to Mad Magazine, but now it's time for Dick's Gadget of the Week, which and this is always, I think, the challenge Can you get Mikah to buy it?
0:44:16 - Dick DeBartolo
Let's see, I think neither one of you need the first one, okay, and I think you both will love the second one.
0:44:24 - Leo Laporte
Sounds good.
0:44:29 - Dick DeBartolo
So this is for people who don't have a smart home but would like that. Sometimes the light in the lamp is soft, other times bright, so they can read. It's kind of an amazing idea. It's from Fate and I've never seen anything like it. It's an LED bulb where you dial the light you want on the side of the bulb. However, suppose you put the bulb in a ceiling fixture, You're never going to change it.
Quickly turn the light switch on and off. Oh, and if you do it very quickly, it will go through the five different temperatures. Oh, I love that Clever. That's pretty clever I have, and the one you end at will be the way the bulb comes on when you turn it on again.
0:45:16 - Leo Laporte
Oh, so you really have access to it. Even so, it's a semi-smart. It's half smart, it's half smart. Exactly, and it is LED, right I, it's half smart.
0:45:24 - Dick DeBartolo
Exactly, and it is LED, right, I mean that's the thing, that these days, it is LED. And Leo I, whenever we talk about LEDs, I talk about you, 18 years ago, telling me about the first LED bulb from CC crane, which was a hundred dollars a hundred bucks, he said they'll get less expensive.
0:45:42 - Leo Laporte
It was very expensive at the time, yeah.
0:45:45 - Dick DeBartolo
So these are on Amazon $2 for $7.99.
0:45:50 - Leo Laporte
Wow, $2 for $7.99. Wow, that's like. Is that like what an incandescent bulb would have cost? That's roughly the same.
0:45:59 - Dick DeBartolo
I guess they were a little cheaper, but given that this light bulb never burns out, no, and it's a 60 watt equivalent and I believe it's like eight and a half watts, so it's a great saving.
0:46:13 - Leo Laporte
That is really really nice.
0:46:15 - Dick DeBartolo
The other guy, leo, is an amazingly small travel lamp. Ooh that you can power it by USB-C. If you want, you can charge it by USB-C. But it has built in soft lighting three brightnesses, or bright lighting three brightnesses, or you can have them both on. It clips onto any book or shelf and I just happened to check Amazon today and right now it is on sale for $850.
0:46:53 - Leo Laporte
I'm going to buy four of them and then I can light my whole room. This is a pretty neat little gadget. It has a battery. Huh, that's cool.
0:47:00 - Dick DeBartolo
Yes, it has a built-in battery. It's pretty small for that. Yeah, at the very lowest power. The company says that it'll run for 18 hours.
0:47:10 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, I believe that I need a good book light because I like to read at night and I don't want to wake Lisa up. The one I have right now is really ridiculous. It goes around my neck and it has two lamps it's like headlamps.
0:47:22 - Mikah Sargent
I have that for crochet, that exact one. Yeah, it's like headlamps.
0:47:24 - Leo Laporte
I have that for crochet, that exact one, really bright, and it doesn't solve any problems. So this one, you clip right on the um, right on the book also.
0:47:30 - Mikah Sargent
Great if you're wanting to go as an angler fish for halloween. Oh yeah, you could just put it on your head.
0:47:34 - Leo Laporte
Head, yeah, I love it. So there's the uh. There's the uh video from from dix giz whizbiz site g-i-z-w-i-z dot b-i z. He's got videos for both the, the fight electric six-way light bulb and the glocusent. That is the worst name, yes mini willow book light uh glocus sounds like an avulning side.
0:47:59 - Dick DeBartolo
Amazon links to both.
0:48:00 - Leo Laporte
Yes, which means it's very easy, and if you buy it through the amazon, you get the advantage of giving Dick a little tip, which is nice, even though a seven buck lamp isn't going to give you more than a few cents.
0:48:13 - Dick DeBartolo
But seven cents can go. You know that's. He's a frugal fellow.
0:48:18 - Leo Laporte
Yes, so you can get coffee in New York. It's a coffee for seven cents, a nickel coffee. Where can you get? What can you get for a nickel in New York?
0:48:26 - Dick DeBartolo
It's a coffee for seven cents? A nickel coffee? Where can you get? What can you get for a nickel in New York city? Uh, um, I think you can get about three cents.
0:48:34 - Mikah Sargent
I was going to guess a middle finger.
0:48:38 - Leo Laporte
Uh, gizwizbiz is the website. Now, when you get there, there is a way to win yourself a copy of this brand new mad magazine, if I'm not mistaken. Click the website now. When you get there, there is a way to win yourself a copy of this brand new mad magazine, if I am not mistaken. Click the button fast, if you're fast, because it's almost over right and end of april. It's the march april. What the heck is it? Oh dear, oh my, I don't know what it is. I'm not sure I want to know what it is. I shouldn't say um, I think it's a pacifier for a moose or a pacifier for conjoined twins or conjoined twins yeah, I think there are two of them, but maybe they're joined, we don't know.
That's why it's fun. You have to guess what it is. Now there are up to six mad magazines for the right answer. Have you gotten any right answers yet? Oh, tons, oh, people know, people know. So go for the silly answer, cause there's there's 12 autographed mad magazines for the best silly answer. And you have to what? Just a couple more days till the end of the month, till a Tuesday night midnight. Tuesday night at midnight. And, uh, you'll be playing for Mad Roast's Comedy, which is a great issue of Mad Magazine. And it's not just any old Mad Magazine, it's personally autographed by this cat right here, dick DeBartolo. And, by the way, you have the best autograph I know. I agree. He says Madly, do you do that for all the winners too, madly?
0:50:02 - Dick DeBartolo
Yes, I do, I do I do all the winners too madly.
0:50:08 - Caller
Yes, I do, I do, I do.
0:50:09 - Leo Laporte
That's great, I have a complete set now 19 years of autographed magazines. That's pretty awesome, dicky d. Yes, sir, email your entry to gizwizbiz at gmailcom by midnight edt. Actually it's est no, itt. Right, we're on DDT. Yeah, ddt, april 30th 2024. Perfect, read the rules there on the website gizwizbiz. Thank you, dickie.
0:50:34 - Dick DeBartolo
D. Thank you guys. Okay, Take care. Bye-bye.
0:50:37 - Leo Laporte
Bye. I wonder if there isn't a legend for who's on the cover.
0:50:46 - Mikah Sargent
You just have to. Oh yeah, I think. Uh, dicky d sent us one. Did he explain who everybody is? Let's see left from top. Okay, dave chappelle, yep, ricky gervais, cat williams, cat williams is, is the black guy that's below dave chappelle.
0:50:58 - Leo Laporte
Oh, uh, oh, so they're going to the left hand side. Completely okay, on the top, yeah. And then ali wong, ali wong, that's, I recognize her. And then joe coy. Joe, can you show my uh over the shoulder?
0:51:09 - Mikah Sargent
thank you and then middle alfred e newman and uh, kind of crispy uh-huh. And then right from top is matt rife, amy schumer, tiffany haddish, oh tiffany haddish.
0:51:29 - Leo Laporte
Oh, burt kreischer, burt kreischer. And then natasha leggero. Oh, it's natasha leggero without the shirt. Okay, yeah, it didn't look like sarah silverman, but I just thought. Maybe the circumstances yeah okay, uh, mad roast comedy. Now this is gonna go on my shelf, my complete collection. This will never show up in leo's garage seal, so don't get your hopes yeah, so don't, even, don't even ask, and I do like this uh seinfeld parody called swinefield that's.
That's pretty good. That's pretty good. Uh, all right, let's take a little tiny break. When we come back we're gonna get another question in here. What do you say you're watching? Ask the tech guys. That's that. There's micah sergeant and leo laporte. I was thinking that is your barber shirt, like you're a barber. Oh yeah, a collarless striped shirt. I don't know why, or maybe no, not barber.
0:52:15 - Mikah Sargent
Barber shop quartet that's what it is. Corncob hats sweet adeline.
0:52:22 - Leo Laporte
Who should we talk to next, mr producer?
0:52:25 - Mikah Sargent
man, john ashley, I'm trying to pick up on a caller, but well, I hope she resists your attempt oh, okay, um, okay, okay, if you are able to pick up on the caller, we should let the caller know that you press star six to unmute yourself. They've got a flip a switch, turn a dial, touch a knob and milk.
0:52:55 - Caller
Maybe now.
0:52:56 - Mikah Sargent
Ah, hello caller, what's your name?
0:52:57 - Caller
and where are you coming from? Yes, yes, not so much, I don't know. If you're hearing me, I'm not hearing you. Uh-oh, we hear you. I want to do a know, if you're hearing me, I'm not hearing you. We hear you.
0:53:08 - Mikah Sargent
If you want to do, wave, if you're hearing me that's great, we can hear you, but you don't hear us, which is only halfway there. No, I can hear you now?
0:53:21 - Leo Laporte
Ah, what's your name?
0:53:22 - Caller
It's like a.
0:53:22 - Leo Laporte
Verizon commercial.
0:53:25 - Caller
It's old Chef, guy. Hi, old Chef.
0:53:27 - Leo Laporte
Guy From beautiful Santa Rosa, california, long way downtown Santa Rosa. They're a beautiful, beautiful city. If you ever get a chance, visit Santa Rosa. Great parks, great trade parks.
0:53:41 - Caller
I will say it is really quite stunning how out of sync the video is with the audio. Well, don't watch the video. No, I know it makes me nauseous, so I have a question about I make me nauseous too.
I don't mean you make me nauseous. Instagram, good old standard, whatever. Instagram been posting a lot of photos there for a long time. Recently I have taken a photograph, cropped it a little, went to post it and I get a notice at the top of Instagram saying photo can't be posted. What? With no, of course, no support or rationalization. Or I emailed you a copy of the image. Oh To the ATG email address.
0:54:24 - Leo Laporte
Let me pull it up so we can see what it looks like.
0:54:27 - Mikah Sargent
And you said recently so does that mean, this has happened more than once? Yes. And have you been able to post any photos since this started happening?
0:54:38 - Caller
I can post a thread, but not to Instagram. Now I see you're telling me you can hear me. That's excellent, I'll stop looking at you.
0:54:45 - Mikah Sargent
That's how I'll watch the video. No, I have not been able to that is really out of sync. Okay.
0:54:49 - Caller
That's really out of sync.
0:54:52 - Leo Laporte
Here's the screenshot of this. Photo can't be posted. Photo can't be posted. Photo can't be posted. Oh, it's different photos, so it's all of your photos, can't be well.
0:55:01 - Caller
Those are two attempts of each photograph a picture of a poppy and a picture of the sky, and neither of which I would say yeah, is either.
0:55:11 - Leo Laporte
Uh is in any way problematic.
0:55:13 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah um, are either of those photos, uh, hdr? I know that you can post hdr photos to instagram, but I'm trying to narrow things down a little bit.
0:55:25 - Leo Laporte
Well they might. Instagram will take hike photos, right yeah. It'll take any photo your iPhone can generate. I presume it should.
0:55:33 - Caller
This is from a Pixel Go 8 Pro.
0:55:36 - Mikah Sargent
Okay, I wonder if there's some. So then here are a couple of questions for you, because I've had something similar happen and then it stopped happening after a while. I don't know why it started happening, and so here's the rundown. I'm going to ask you all of the questions and then you at the end can say oh, I am doing that or I'm not doing that.
So, first and foremost, the question is are you using a VPN? The second question is are you using any DNS option like NextDNS? The second question is are you using any DNS option like NextDNS? The third question is do you use the Google's built in IP tracking or IP non tracking stuff? I can't remember what it's called on Pixel, but it's a lot like what iPhone does with no tracking. Are you using any of those kind of network filtering tools at all? Because I've had issues in the past with Twitter where Twitter would not let me upload a photo, and it was because of a network filtering thing that I was doing, and the way that I was able to kind of troubleshoot was I turned off my Wi-Fi and just use cellular data, and it was able to upload through my.
0:56:40 - Leo Laporte
AT&T Worth a trial, Jeff Guy, yeah.
0:56:44 - Caller
I haven't tried that. I'll try that. It's possible that I am using the Google One VPN or somebody's VPN. However, I will say my qualification to that is I haven't changed any settings on the phone and was posting photographs there on Instagram up until now.
0:57:03 - Leo Laporte
Let me ask one more. I'm testing an Instagram that until now Let me ask one more I was posting an Instagram.
0:57:05 - Caller
That's occurred.
0:57:06 - Leo Laporte
Let me ask one more question. Did you take the photo in Instagram or is it a photo in your photo library that you are then uploading to Instagram?
0:57:15 - Caller
It's the same process I do with all my photographs I take the photograph, I then take it into Snapseed, do some minor adjustments or cropping and then I upload it to Instagram. Does Snapseed do some minor adjustments or cropping and then I upload it to Instagram.
0:57:24 - Leo Laporte
Does Snapseed have a shared Instagram button? Or yes, it must. Yes, it does Okay. Yes, it does.
0:57:32 - Caller
Well, let me, let me, I can post, I can post it. Threads no issues.
0:57:38 - Leo Laporte
Oh well, that's the same company, isn't it? Yeah?
0:57:40 - Mikah Sargent
it is the same company, thank you.
0:57:42 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, yes, doctor, yes doctor, pretty much the same thing Instagram and threads If that hurts.
0:57:48 - Caller
Don't do that. Yeah.
0:57:51 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, I understand the observation you're making there and why you might think that you know well if I can publish to one, but you know that one company is newer.
0:58:03 - Leo Laporte
I would definitely try it mobile.
0:58:04 - Mikah Sargent
One company is older, yeah, the first thing I do is try cellular.
0:58:14 - Leo Laporte
When I was flying out here on JetBlue coming home from my mom's. They have a Wi-Fi on there and you turn on the Wi-Fi, select it and you go to their website and it just loads up and everything's fine Right, except I couldn't do it. Couldn't do it, couldn't do it. I talked to the flight attendant. Couldn't do it, couldn't do it. It was kind of embarrassing because the guy sitting next to me says let me look at it. You know I am the tech guy. He said let me look at it okay okay, you look at it.
He said you have a vpn on and he turned it off and it worked. So I'm embarrassed, but that was. I was using a next dns, as I do on all my devices, and I did have to turn that off to join the uh yeah, blue wi-fi so you, of course, said you made the mention that you've been doing it this way forever and, yes, it could be that just something has changed.
0:58:58 - Mikah Sargent
It could also be that it's something that has changed temporarily and enough people will complain about it and then it'll get unchanged or fixed, but it is one troubleshooting step to take to see if it is. I remember whenever that was going on with Twitter and that was while Twitter was still Twitter and not X for me it was maybe a couple of months that I would have that issue and then it suddenly stopped. So at some point, an app update fixed the problem with the image uploader. So, yeah, that's why I suggest trying the cellular option.
0:59:27 - Leo Laporte
It could also be that there's something in Google One if you are using that Google One's VPN that has been added, that is now causing the issue I bet that's the Google One VPN and the reason they do this now Twitter, I'd expect it to is because they want to make sure you're not posing as somebody else. You know, I am the Russian agent operating out of Moscow, but I pretend I come from Boston, new England, kind of thing. So I think, for security reasons, this is something Twitter probably is I mean, I'm sure is doing, and I wouldn't be surprised if Instagram has subsequently recently added that.
1:00:02 - Caller
So try that. I had thought it was possible that I was. I had thought it was a possibility that on the poppy photograph that there are curvy lines that could be considered to be like Edward Weston classic black and white.
1:00:15 - Leo Laporte
It does look like the back of a woman. So, but the clouds.
1:00:21 - Caller
I thought perhaps it was that, but the clouds is nothing. They're clouds, they look like chair, but the clouds. I thought perhaps it was that, but the clouds is nothing.
1:00:25 - Mikah Sargent
They're clouds. Yeah, they look like cherub butts I have trouble believing that. It's the old cherub butt problem that that would be the extent of the message. If that was the case, I think it would say something else rather than photo.
1:00:37 - Leo Laporte
Photocopy post is weird. Yeah, I don't use Instagram anymore so I don't know, but I'm sure this kid, because he's a young man, posts on social a lot, do you?
1:00:49 - Mikah Sargent
No, when I did this was something that solved the problem Once every eight months.
1:00:55 - Caller
If I wasn't on Instagram, I wouldn't be able to see Chris Michaels or Scott. I know there's some really good photographers. I can't remember his name now Some really brilliant photographers, but I can't find them anyplace else Scott Bourne.
1:01:06 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, I can't log into my Instagram right now. Oh, I didn't know that. Oh, I'll have to give him a ring.
1:01:13 - Caller
He's doing some beautiful work, though. Black and white work Really stunning work.
1:01:16 - Leo Laporte
He's an amazing photographer. Are they birds still, or has he gone branch? I guess he can't go out because he's slightly immobilized.
1:01:23 - Caller
Yeah, he's now. He went to did a really wonderful series at an auto museum in black and white see that's the beauty of photography.
1:01:33 - Leo Laporte
Uh, it really expands or contracts to fit your current needs. I love that. Scott, born, of course, a regular on mac breakak Weekly for many years. Wonderful guy. Sorry to hear that.
And a great guy you know, honestly, 15 years ago he thought he was a goner, he had cancer and he survived that. So he's done all right. He's, yeah, good for him. He's done all right. Yeah, thank you, chef Guy. Okay, chef Guy, I hope some of that helps and if anybody's listening and wants to call in with a similar issue, here is a link from ScooterX of course it does kind of have every answer, though I was looking through it and it's just coming.
1:02:13 - Mikah Sargent
Hey, tony, it could be this, it could be this, it could be that it could be that my Instagram can't be posted.
1:02:18 - Leo Laporte
And then a thousand reasons why yeah, and then a thousand reasons why yeah. One thing talks about the network stuff.
1:02:25 - Mikah Sargent
Also, your suggestion that it could be a content violation was mentioned, but again, I don't have any direct proof that that is the case.
1:02:36 - Leo Laporte
I think you nailed it. I think it's the Google One VPN. Try turning that off, or try just using your wireless carrier instead of your own Wi-Fi, just to see.
1:02:46 - Caller
Yeah, that's what I'm going to do. Right after I hang up, I'm going to turn off Wi-Fi and.
1:02:51 - Leo Laporte
Snapchat doesn't. I'm not Snapchat. Snapseed doesn't do any weird. Oh, you said Snapchat, no Snapseed.
1:02:59 - Caller
No, no, no, you did. Yeah, I said Snapseed.
1:03:00 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, Snapseed. No, no, no.
1:03:01 - Caller
You did. Yeah, I said Snapseed.
1:03:01 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, Snapseed doesn't do any weird format like a Snapseed file format or anything like that. You've done this before.
1:03:08 - Caller
Not that I know of.
1:03:09 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, instagram says photos should be no more than 1936 by 1936. Maybe it's too big, but I think that's old. This must be. That's's old, this must be that's. That's pretty old, I think we, I think it's pretty old. Yeah, I feel like they take anything now.
1:03:26 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, cause they can just change it right there on the fly.
1:03:30 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, so I would definitely say it's a VPN or some sort of security thing getting in the way. Yeah, okay, thanks, old chef guy. Great to hear from you, you, and good luck you too, thank you, thank you. They're closing down, I think, fourth street in santa rosa to uh, be pedestrian only, oh, which makes it a really nice kind of european city style.
Uh, walkable downtown. I really like that. Uh, all right, by the way, the big antique fair going on in petaluma this weekend yep, anybody could buy anyiques. I should bring my old tech gear down there. That's antique. It's antique. At this point, anybody want an Intel MacBook? That's an antique. 888-724-2884 is the phone number if you'd like to give us a ring. Should we do a voicemail, email or phone call?
1:04:19 - Mikah Sargent
Your choice. You know what we haven't done in some time. What's that?
1:04:23 - Caller
A video question, Hi guys, makai McKenna here from Costa Mesa California Club to it. Member, big fan of all the shows you guys do. I really really enjoy MacBreak Weekly. I think there aren't a lot of really good long-form discussions about technology, and even just the deep weeds we get into with every show is really something I think is lacking in tech talk. So really appreciate you guys and keep up the good work.
I got a question for you. I am always on the phone, I'm in the sales game, I send a lot of email, I leave a lot of voicemails and I've just recently realized I leave the same voicemail for a lot of different people. And I'm wondering if there is an iOS app, a Mac app, a way that I can drop in voicemails when I call people and they don't pick up. I can just leave a voicemail Without recording it. I know that's probably stretching, or maybe there's an app where I can just send voicemails to people's phone numbers, because it would save me a lot of time. So rack your brain around that See if there's a app you can recommend. And if you would tag me in Club Twit, I would love to hear your response if I miss the show. But thank you guys for all you do and I really appreciate you guys, and long live Club Twit.
1:05:44 - Leo Laporte
Thank you, Makai.
1:05:45 - Caller
Thank you, Makai, for being a subscriber.
1:05:47 - Leo Laporte
Very sweet, yeah, very kind things.
1:05:49 - Mikah Sargent
What was that service that we used to talk about a lot that would let you send text messages out? You can kind of set it up, oh, podium.
1:05:58 - Leo Laporte
Yeah yeah, it was for small business. The idea was I don't know if they'd let you send out audio, I mean that, so that would be one way to do it.
1:06:08 - Mikah Sargent
It's not a voicemail but there was one even before podium. Uh, that a lot of people that were developers. Twilio, twilio. I wonder if Twilio has a service.
1:06:16 - Leo Laporte
By the way, twilio is in the news. The founder and president and CEO of Twilio just bought the onion. Oh, that's right, not a joke. No, yeah, truly bought the onion. Yeah, twilio. So it is an interesting question. You could, of course, record audio and send it as a text message, but I don't think he wants to do that.
1:06:41 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, that's why I was thinking twilio, because you can make calls via twilio and then, when it went to voicemail, you should be able to leave because it's programmable voice I know it's got to be possible because occasionally I will get a voicemail from a somebody that never rang my phone.
1:07:00 - Leo Laporte
So I think the bad guys have figured out oh, you mean you.
1:07:04 - Mikah Sargent
You didn't get a phone call in the first place. I don't think I got a phone call.
1:07:07 - Leo Laporte
It just went straight to voicemail that that hasn't happened in a long time, but it used to be fairly common ringless voicemail ringless voicemail.
1:07:16 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah Ooh, I don't like the name of it, it's called sly broadcast.
1:07:25 - Leo Laporte
Okay, don't do that. That doesn't sound good at all. I think that may be part of the problem, is it? Well, but you're going to ring, you're going to call the person and hope that they answer. If they don't answer, you want to play something back?
1:07:39 - Mikah Sargent
You got to have a phone and a tape player. Hello, you got to have a phone and a tape player.
1:07:45 - Leo Laporte
Beep, beep. Hello, this is McKay. I would like to sell you something. Call me back. I don't. Yeah, that's. You want to inject that audio from somewhere? You know, ideally, press a button. I wonder if Google voice has anything like that. That's the kind of thing Google voice might add Uh, I, I. The answer is I don't know. Makai, I'm sorry, and uh, I know he's not watching. He's asked us to put a link into the chat, so we'll do that I. That's a good question. I don't know of any way to do that, and I think it may be kind of prohibited. Yeah, frowned upon. I don't know. It's just a guess. I don't know of any way to do that, though, so sorry, maybe if you do, you could call us Slide dial connects you directly to someone's voicemail, allowing you to leave a message when you just don't have time to talk.
That's it. That's what somebody was doing slide. Oh, you can even do it with a group messaging folk feature. Don't do that. That seems really. Here's how that works from retcon 5, our discord's uh hopping today, how to leave a voicemail without calling someone's phone. This is from ring over, ring overcom it says yeah.
1:09:07 - Mikah Sargent
So with slide aisle, it has an app. Sign into your account, choose a contact. The app will connect to or access the number and then connect your call. Once you leave your personalized voicemail, simply hang up. Oh, this still requires you to? I don don't think it has, so this one looks good.
1:09:23 - Leo Laporte
This is called Ring Over. It's for sales professionals. Can you send someone a voicemail without calling them? Yes, you could send a prospect a voicemail without calling them. You just need to have an RVM or ringless voicemail drop solution in your contact center. Normally, to drop a voicemail, sales agent needs to call the prospect first. If the customer doesn't pick up pre-recorded voice message, this is what we call a robocall. For the voicemail to be sent, your business center needs to detect an answering machine, not a live customer. However, rvm works differently sends the voicemail into the voicemail box. It's called pre-ring injection, without calling. I just made that up Without calling or ringing the line. Wow, so let's see what the pricing is on such a thing. This is intended, obviously, for sales people.
It's a cloud phone system, but will it? It's interesting. It's a cloud phone system, but will it? It's interesting. Will it work from a non to a non ring over solution? I don't know. Seems like they're implying it would, so I don't know. Anyway, there's there's something to look at. Ring over dot com how can you send someone a voicemail without calling them? Oh yeah, it works for at&t, verizon and t-mobile. Whoa. Ringless voicemails are a proven direct marketing strategy. There are many ways to send ringless voicemails. Here's how to leave a voicemail without calling or sending messages straight to someone's voicemail hold the key one and press two. Enter the recipient's number. Record your message. Press number to send.
1:11:06 - Mikah Sargent
You still have to record a message and then if you don't know, you'd have to ask your client. Do you use verizon t-mobile or at&t?
1:11:12 - Leo Laporte
yeah, huh, rvm software, wow, um, this sounds like probably a something that won't work for you, and B something skeezy, something that will annoy all of your clients.
Yeah, how can I leave someone a voicemail without their phone ringing? Well, at least I know now that that's what was happening. That's a thing. Ringing this voicemail oh yeah, sly Broadcast that's the one you were talking about Allows you to pre-record messages and track campaign success in real time. It's HIPAA compliant voicemail, of course it is. You're not revealing any patient information. That's just nonsense. You know this show is HIPAA compliant. Yeah, exactly. Send voicemails to mobile to landlines API access Okay, sly sounds like the way to go. Send voicemails to mobile to landlines API access Okay, sly sounds like the way to go.
1:12:06 - Mikah Sargent
Monthly and pay-as-you-go plans starting for $10 for 100 message deliveries Sorry about that For $0.10, you can do the prerecorded voicemail sent to up to 10 phone numbers at once.
1:12:18 - Leo Laporte
Do you know what the most used RVM solution is?
1:12:26 - Mikah Sargent
Drop Cowboy.
1:12:28 - Leo Laporte
Oh howdy there. Drop cowboy, yee-haw drop cowboy. There's quite a few of them bulking texting.
1:12:33 - Mikah Sargent
Why does it say bulking?
1:12:34 - Leo Laporte
bulking texting. Well, if you want to bulk up, now's the time we send you a voicemail. Yeah, stratix network. I'll call back. I'll be back. I'll call back. Yeah, um, wow, so there are quite a few ways to do this. It turns out all sales focused.
1:12:55 - Mikah Sargent
What a surprise yeah, who knew um which out mckay was?
1:12:59 - Leo Laporte
sales he was looking to do it uh. So, mckay, I know you would only do this to people that deserve it. This show is HIPAA compliant. Thank you, kai. Thank you for your nice words, and we're not making very kind words. I would be. I would be judicious in using this. I think what he just really wants to do is call somebody they don't answer, instead of having to record it, you know yeah, save the same thing yeah, just put it on your phone and play it back into the phone. That would work right.
1:13:29 - Mikah Sargent
It would, yeah, yeah or you could get one of those build-a-bears and you could record it into the build-a-bear ah, and so mo d and our discord is saying what hippIPAA compliant reason?
1:13:40 - Leo Laporte
it is HIPAA compliant Most physicians. It's a violation of HIPAA to have a physician with caller ID unknown number. Most people won't answer it and the physician is trying to call them and notify them. Or tests are in or the prescriptions.
1:13:55 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, mine never show up as unknown.
1:13:57 - Leo Laporte
Mine does, it just shows up.
1:13:59 - Mikah Sargent
It doesn't show up as anybody though, but it doesn't say unknown yeah, it just shows up.
1:14:02 - Leo Laporte
It doesn't show up as anybody, though but it doesn't say unknown.
1:14:03 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, I don't answer it, it doesn't. Yeah, it just has a number, but it doesn't. At least it doesn't say unknown number.
1:14:08 - Leo Laporte
There was a phone number, ok, well, there you go. We've learned a lot more about cowboy messaging than we really. Yeehaw, yeehaw. And then we really wanted to. Uh, you're watching. Ask the tech guys. Mikah sergeant leo laporte, we're answering your questions at 888-724-2884. What would you like us to do now, john? I want to pick up on this.
1:14:34 - Mikah Sargent
Uh caller right here welcome this caller hey, now hey, now what's your first name?
1:14:42 - Leo Laporte
and where are you calling from? This is dan. I'm in portland, oregon. Hey, now, what's your first name? And where are you calling from? This is Dan. I'm in Portland, oregon. Hey, now, dan, what's?
1:14:48 - Caller
up. Well, I'm on this walk today.
1:14:51 - Leo Laporte
It's beautiful rainy afternoon here in Portland, we're seeing Portland. It's as if we're almost, as if we're there, as if you're there I thought you were in front of a patch of kudzu.
1:15:03 - Caller
Earlier it looked like it was actually a beautiful trillium and I'd show it to you, but, uh, I'm not quite sure how to show a photo in this app. Nonetheless, beautiful pacific northwest lovely april showers brings what may flowers there?
1:15:20 - Leo Laporte
you go, and what do May flowers bring the pilgrims? Thank you, what can we do for you?
1:15:25 - Caller
Dan. So I'm on this walk and I say hey, siri, text my wife and it replies which one?
1:15:35 - Leo Laporte
Oh no, that's a dad joke.
1:15:38 - Caller
I wish it were. Luckily my wife was off shopping. Oh good, she didn't hear Wait, my wife was off shopping, oh good she didn't hear.
1:15:45 - Mikah Sargent
Wait, which wife was off shopping?
1:15:46 - Caller
Sorry, Well, in this case it's kind of wild because I know I've changed the setting before.
1:15:53 - Leo Laporte
Yeah.
1:15:54 - Caller
Exactly. Well, I have an email address and I have a phone number, and that's it. And they asked me do I want to text her at that email address or do I want to text her at her phone number? That's silly and I think it's rather obvious.
1:16:09 - Mikah Sargent
Oh, is that phone number or is that email address also her Apple ID? Yeah, that's why. So that's why that Apple ID is registered with iMessage and so it knows that it's an iMessage email and therefore you are able to text via that email address. It would be great if you could say I don't want to use the email. I don't need to. I've got the phone number, which is also registered with the Apple ID, but that's why it's probably doing that.
One thing I would suggest is, if it doesn't, for some people it'd bother them. But if you go into the contact and you label that email I don't know if it's set to home right now next to it If you change that to something, especially if you change it to fax I know it's not actually a fax that would probably trick Siri into going going. Oh well, I'm not ever going to think it's that um and would then default to the phone number. That might solve the problem. But yeah, because it's registered as the apple id. That's why it's thinking that you might want to send it there it's wild, I know right.
1:17:17 - Caller
In other words, it doesn't mean which it doesn't mean which wife, it means which, which, which contact? Yeah, and you know it's happened with my son before too. I'll say hey, siri, it doesn't mean which wife, it means which number, which contact. Yeah, and you know it's happened with my son before too. I'll say hey, siri, check that one, and it will say you know which I can't remember.
1:17:34 - Leo Laporte
So I just opened contacts. Which contact? Yeah, I just opened contacts. I don't know if this is a new feature, I've never seen it before. I just opened contacts because I was going to show you how I've indicated which of my three spouses are my actual wife. But uh, but uh, it said view duplicates 147 duplicates found, which is kind of. I don't remember that before duplicates. Yeah, well, yeah, so I have all these duplicates, so I'm going to merge them. That that would in in a way. I think that would help, right, because if you do have, if I have, multiple entries for my wife, the other thing is it thinks it's your wife, cause you've marked it wife, right?
Sure, yeah, so, mark only one of them as your, but if you only mark one as your wife, it won't ask you that question ever again, right?
1:18:17 - Caller
Well, the other one was offended Fair enough.
1:18:23 - Leo Laporte
I actually really liked that feature in apple's contacts which is you can. It's called the relationship. Say how they relate to you, and so I actually went through and I said daughter, sister, brother-in-law, son, wife, wife two, wife three, right that kind of thing, and I think it's a nice thing to have for all your relationships.
1:18:43 - Caller
Yeah, I use it for my mom and my sister. Yeah, exactly, and obviously you've used it for your wife.
1:18:47 - Leo Laporte
And it's just that you have two entries who are designated wife right. Probably this morning it changed after working for years.
1:18:55 - Caller
Yeah, you know, it's something I do on a daily basis, multiple times a day, and this morning it pops up and says which one she might have changed.
1:19:03 - Leo Laporte
something too right, Because doesn't contact, it's possible.
1:19:06 - Mikah Sargent
You get to choose how to you get to choose to what she may be messing with you contact option an iMessage can be sent to. So it could be that if she set up a new iPad or something like that, or recently updated, it would require a pretty serious family meeting for her to get into her settings.
1:19:27 - Caller
That's what I was so.
1:19:29 - Leo Laporte
No, she hasn't changed anything well, but sometimes it's almost automatic, like it says. Would you like to update this?
1:19:35 - Mikah Sargent
I get that a lot. She got that password reset thing when I texted, when I texted kevin rose because I haven't texted him in some time.
1:19:43 - Leo Laporte
It said it had a picture of me and my new picture and said would you like to send him your updated picture and information? And I said yes, similarly, when I go to you know, when I went to his, when I got his first text, it said, hey, would you like? This is a new email for Kevin. Would you like to add this email and that kind of thing? Apple's pretty smart about that, so it may have said to her this wouldn't require her going to settings at all. Oh, you want to update your information to a hubby? And she said yeah, yeah, yeah, keep it up to date. And it added a, for instance, an iCloud address, which suddenly confounded everything.
1:20:24 - Caller
I thought in siri settings, in voice control settings and contact settings there might be a checkbox. So you're designated, right as you know, your primary yeah yeah, I think you do that's right.
1:20:32 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, but if there are still multiples in there marked as wife, um, I could see how it would say which one. It doesn't mean which, which wife. Yeah, I could just delete her. Yeah, yeah, it's probably really not saying which wife. It's ambiguous. It's probably saying which contact, which number, which number or which email. How do you want me to do this? Not which wife.
1:20:53 - Caller
I'm going to try deleting the email address because I think I do.
1:20:56 - Leo Laporte
And Dan in future. I always have a separate phone for each wife, which solves the problem. Burners, I did watch the wire. No, that's terrible. Did you say you watched the wire? Yeah, burner phones, burner fun not have a burner, hey leo, yes, oh, believe me, I'm gonna.
He sold the owls to uh the board eight yacht club. But I'm gonna ask him how that all went. Went, he said I will make him apologize. He said I'm sure he'll do it on his own. He's a very sweet guy, I think probably. But he did say in his message to me I'm out of this whole web. Three thing I think he got. I think he kind of got burned by it all Uh and uh and didn't. I don't think he intentionally um, scammed anybody or anything like that.
1:21:44 - Caller
I think he, but I think Anyone thinks you're a billionaire, you know, and that could have been it.
1:21:48 - Leo Laporte
It just wasn't it. He was wealthy before then, so I don't you know. He was an early investor in Twitter, remember, and on the cover.
1:21:56 - Caller
I think it was an exciting thing.
1:21:57 - Leo Laporte
Every photographer was jumping in, exactly, I mean I was always suspicious, but that's just my nature, um, and I am not going to be the kind of guy that compiles a bunch of clips of me saying 3d movies are dead in the water, nfts and blockchain is dead in the water, the vision pro is dead. I'm not going to compile that Unless John Ashley you decide to do an extracurricular.
1:22:27 - Mikah Sargent
It's funny that you just mentioned that. Oh no.
1:22:32 - Leo Laporte
Oh no, did you actually make one, yeah, okay. Well, we'll find out someday It'll show up. You can also make one of all the times I've been wrong. That would be much longer. I'm sure we have that somewhere already. They're saving that for an important time. Anyway, great to talk to you, dan, and enjoy the rest of your walk and both wives. One more thing.
1:22:53 - Caller
Oh yes, One more, Baba Booj y'all. Oh, why I gotta?
1:23:00 - Leo Laporte
You know it's funny. I don't know if you saw it, but Howard Stern interviewed Joe Biden this week, who some people may remember, as the president and my wife said what the hell. And I said it's a new Howard Stern. He's the new kinder gentler Howard Stern these days. Hey, thank you so much. Take Baba Boy to YouTube. What should we do now? All the energy has gone out of it Do you want to do a voicemail.
1:23:39 - Caller
Yeah Hi, this is Ron, a happy member of Club Twit, calling from Baltimore. I just discovered that Bitwarden allows you to store JPEGs, pdfs, things like that, within Bitwarden, but the files are not opened within Bitwarden. They want you to put it into some place external, which, of course, could be a security problem. I'd appreciate your comments and any suggestions of workarounds that are secure for this, other than simply going to another app if Bitwarden doesn't work.
1:24:16 - Leo Laporte
Thank you. So you have to understand what it's doing. And, by the way, I take advantage of this. This is part of the notes feature of Bitwarden and I have my passport and my driver's license. In fact, I can show you right here. Let's see. Yeah, that shows my social. Let's not show that one. These will all show my numbers, but I guess you could do it blurred. Let me see if I can figure out a way to do this. It has, uh, the images in there for my driver's license and passport. Uh, both of them are pngs. One's a megabyte, one's four and a half megabytes and they're stored within they are in the vault and they are encrypted in the vault.
What's happening here is Bitwarden is not a picture viewer. They didn't put that in there, and rightly so, by the way. That would be certainly a nice feature, but it would also be a vector for vulnerabilities. As you know, many picture viewers, including Adobe Acrobat and others, have over the years had a lot of vulnerabilities. Steve Gibson's talked about this. Anything that takes data and interprets it is always vulnerable to attack. So Bitwarden, quite rightly, does not have a picture viewer built in. It'd be a nice convenience but for security reasons does not.
So what it does is it's storing that, like everything else, it stores, highly encrypted, very secure, in the vault. You can get to it and download it and just like anything else. As soon as you do, it's out of the vault and decrypted and then open it with a viewer. It is not a security flaw, because no one has access to that bitmap or ping or anything in your vault unless they have access to your vault. So this is intentional and it's fine. I mean my passport's in here, my driver's license is in here, my social security card, my Medicare information all of that's in Bitwarden because it's secure. It's encrypted. When I need it, I can take it out of Bitwarden and that's when I would open it up in a file viewer or whatever, but until then it is encrypted. So I think perhaps you're worried that because you can't open it in a file viewer, that it is available unencrypted. No, it's fully encrypted in the vault Right, and when you access it you're taking it out of the vault.
1:26:45 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, and it's not as if it's linking encrypted in the vault right and it's when you access it you're taking it out of the vault. Yeah, and it's not as if it's linking to a file that exists somewhere else on your computer it's not a shortcut or an alias.
1:26:51 - Leo Laporte
It is actually there in the blob, in the in the blob. Yeah, so, uh, yes, that's appropriate, that's how it works. Uh, it is not a security hazard. In fact, I, in my opinion, would be a security hazard if it had a picture, if built into Bitwarden. You wouldn't want that. What it is is it's storing the attachment, which you can. Then, in order to display it, you have to decrypt it and remove it from the vault, put it on the hard drive, display it.
What I do, if I want a picture of my driver's license or my passport, is I detach it, display it, send it whatever I want to do and then carefully delete the file that it has exported. In fact, if you're going to do it right, you would and Mac OS does this. I imagine Windows has a way to do it too Delete it in such a way that it can't be recovered. I can't remember on Mac OS it used to be you'd hold down your option key on the trash, can? I don't know what you do these days. I think it's the default these days. Yeah, I think.
Yeah, secure delete is Secure delete. So, yeah, I think it is. So I don't have anything in my trash, but I think you would want to secure, delete it, and that means merely that there isn't that data, that unencrypted data, sitting in your hard drive. It's been overwritten so no one can get to it. Good question, though I understand your cost for concern. It is secure and, in fact, in my opinion, that's exactly where you should put all of that private stuff is in your Bitward vault, Then it's only available to you until you decrypt it. Then it is now available to you, decrypted, thank you for the question ron.
Good question, really great question. What else we should we do? How about another email? How about it? Requires exercise though, so I'll do it. I'll take two this time, in case you ask for another one. Always interested in efficiency, do you, when you get to an elevator maybe this is just me and my kind of programmer's mind do you look at the elevator and sometimes say that's poorly coded, like it should have gone to this floor first and then come to my floor? Do you ever do that?
1:28:51 - Mikah Sargent
oh no I don't think so something wrong? I don't think I'm in elevators enough something wrong. I'm always thinking I'm always thinking algorithms.
1:28:58 - Leo Laporte
That's why issues connecting to a printer. Sam says thank you for reading my question. I have a canon image class printer mf236n just over a year old. 100 of our printing's done wirelessly. We print from a windows laptop on a Windows 11, an iPhone 15, an iPhone 11. Everything is up to date with the OS and iOS drivers. My problem is this iPhone 15 and the laptop connect and print with no issues, but the iPhone 11 will not connect to the printer. Regardless of whether I'm using the Canon printer app or not, the phone is on the correct network. After putting an hour on the phone, oh geez, with canon support, manually importing the ip address and several restarts, I'm still unable to print from the iphone. Thank you, sam. Interesting question. So he can print from a modern iphone, more modern iphone, the 15. He can print from his laptop, all wirelessly over wi-fi, uh, but for some reason the iPhone 11 is not working.
1:30:06 - Mikah Sargent
I mean, the first thing I could suggest is that the operating system and its bits and pieces, its firmware, are out of date for the printer. But that just seems like an odd.
1:30:22 - Leo Laporte
So I guess one thing that he didn't say, and I would wasn't sure if he was Apple uses a technology to print from this phones and tablets called air print, and I don't know if you're using air print or not. It sounds like you're using the Canon app.
1:30:37 - Mikah Sargent
Well, yeah, it sounds like, cause the specifically Sam said I have printed, including using the Canon app. Well, yeah, it sounds like, because the specifically Sam said I have printed, including using the Canon app. So I would suggest that they probably tried AirPrint first and then also try the Canon app. But, yeah, if you haven't tried AirPrint which is just kind of like, go in and choose print from the share sheet then it will let you print it's really a clever idea.
1:31:01 - Leo Laporte
You know, Google had something similar, which they discontinued.
1:31:04 - Caller
Yeah. Google Cloud.
1:31:05 - Leo Laporte
Print. I was very disappointed in that, but Apple maintains it. Let me just make sure that the Canon image class MF236N is compatible. I'm sure it is if it's an air print printer. Most modern printers are support air print, right, Because that's the way. Yeah, this is the way. In fact, the fact that it's working with the iPhone 15 tells me I might you might want to take the Canon software off.
Uh, that's by the way, something that Canon rep will not tell you right, they're not going to blame their software, so that's the first thing I would, uh there are just a lot of questions that I have still.
1:31:42 - Mikah Sargent
Uh, that's, I think, one of the reasons why printer style questions are a little difficult, because there's a lot of troubleshooting that could be done here. When you say it won't print, is the printer showing up whenever, as an option, whenever you're trying to use the air print functionality? Uh, if it is showing up, how long until you see that it's not printing to it? Is the printer starting to print and then it stops in the print spooling server?
1:32:07 - Leo Laporte
There's so many questions involved, so I have looked it up. In. Your MF236N image class printer is supported by AirPrint, so in fact, there you can see it. So I'm going to guess the first thing I would do is take the Canon software off In theory.
1:32:25 - Mikah Sargent
You don't need it, right, right? Yeah, because AirPrint works on its own, so maybe it's confusing it in some way. Yeah, that's a possibility.
1:32:31 - Leo Laporte
So remove the Canon software. You might want to set up AirPrint on your printer again to make sure it's connected to the network. You said you're on the same Wi-Fi network. Obviously you do have to be on the same Wi-Fi network.
I have that issue because I use VLANs to separate the you know the what do you call it? The iHome stuff, the IoT stuff. You know, the non-computer stuff is on one network and then the computers, which I included, the phone, is on another, and for a long time it was a problem because my printers were IoT devices. I considered them a security risk. I didn't want to have them on the same network as my actual computers. But that made it really hard to print because I would have to change the Wi-Fi network on the computer to see it. I suppose I could have set up rules, routing rules, in my VLAN setup. I'm sure I could have, but what I just ended up doing is putting the printers on the secure network and saying, screw it, let's just hope they don't get hacked, right? It is a good idea to have a virtual LAN in between your IoT devices and your your computing devices, but in this case convenience trumped security, as it often does.
1:33:45 - Mikah Sargent
yes, um, I have a, I think, a question that you can address pretty quickly that has cropped up. It's a kind of a breaking red and green socks. It is a breaking news question. Um, I am a member of club twit because I like viewing the video versions of the podcasts yes, On today's live stream, Leo said Club Twit members will not be able to have video going forward. Is that true? No, no.
1:34:10 - Leo Laporte
I did not say that. I did imply that perhaps someday we would buck the trend and get rid of video, but that is not imminent. In fact, one of the reasons we're looking at StreamYard we use StreamYard for Stacey's Book Club on Thursday is because it is a great way for us to do video and audio podcasts to let the club see it. Streamyard has its own chat, but it also integrates with Twitch and YouTube chat, which is kind of cool, and it had a really nice way of putting chat up on the screen. In fact, in some ways it's not as capable as a TriCaster and having a big studio, but in some ways I thought StreamYard was pretty good. We're waiting on StreamYard to improve the video quality Right now it's 720p. We're waiting for it to upgrade to 1080p, which they say is on their roadmap, and at that point we may start doing more shows. We did Untitled Linux show that way for the last couple of weeks. So what we're looking at is saving money, and this is all going to depend on club support and advertiser support. But what we don't want to do is get to the position come December where we're broke Right and we have to say thank you for your service so long we wanted and this is where I'm thank god we have lisa my, our ceo, and my wife, who is a brilliant financial person, because she's looking ahead right. So, uh, we did have to do.
I was very sad we had to lay off jason howell and aunt pruitt and victor bognot, one of our editors. Uh, it's been about six months now, but that was because she said you know, come june of 2024 we're not going to have any money to pay them and we're not even going to have money for severance. So we laid them off early enough that we could give them severance. We wanted to make sure they were taken care of. But presuming that we were going to based on ad sales and club membership because that's the only revenue based on ad sales and club membership, because that's the only revenue source right is ad sales and club membership that we were going to be able to make it to June. Well, that all worked out. The savings got us more runway Club has been growing, ad sales actually have been growing a little bit. So we're surviving and it may be that come the end of the year, if a lot of you join the club and everything, we can stay in the studio. That would be great.
But we have to have these contingencies because what we don't want to do is get there and say, oh no, we're in trouble. So what we're doing is we're looking at ways to sustain the network at a lower cost. Right, when revenue goes down, costs have to go down, because I don't have enough money in my purse to make up the difference. Actually, if the difference is small, we have been making it up, but at some point we can't. So when revenues go down, costs have to go down and we have to figure that out. And I'm just warning people we're not going to turn off video because we know you like video, although I did say when I get're not going to turn off video because we know you like video, although I did say when I get old, I might not want video.
1:37:06 - Mikah Sargent
I think. But you're always going to be young. So right, there's the good news. I think that is what. So, to the club twit member who was planning to panic cancel their membership because they thought they were losing video, we have just addressed it.
1:37:17 - Leo Laporte
It's you don't cancel your membership. That's the best way to ensure that you'll lose video. Yes, get your friends and family to join. Uh, video does cost us extra. I will admit that, so that is possible. You know it's not enough. It's not on the roadmap right now, there you go.
1:37:32 - Mikah Sargent
It's not on the roadmap.
1:37:32 - Leo Laporte
Right now there's the don't cancel your membership now, unless you want to hurry it along. And it's and, honestly, because there's things like StreamYard, which costs us, I think it's about a thousand bucks a month to use StreamYard. That's, you know, a tenth of what it costs to do the studio. So because of things like that, I think we can continue.
The New York Times says video is the next big thing. So I think we got to do it, we got to keep doing it, and I like doing video. I think, even though a small fraction of you watch it no more than, say, 10 or 20 percent depends on the show. But so it's a. It's a small number, uh, but we believe that the people, when you do watch it, you, you, it's good, yeah, you really like, and so we think that maybe what's happening is not that only 10 are watching, is that for every 10th show you watch the video, and and then after that you can kind of imagine what my socks look like, and so I don't know, I don't, we don't, I can't promise anything, cause you know, it's life, it's a money, it's a sad, but it takes money to do this and I can't promise anything.
But as long as we continue to get club support. As long as we can continue to get advertising support, uh, we should be able to operate, uh, I think, at a good level, including video, um, and, and you know, we want to keep micah, we want to keep our team, we really like our team, so we're, you know, we have a very smart financial person doing the best she can, although I know she's losing her hair it's like going uh, being a president for four years.
It's a yeah, you age, don't you? Yeah, yeah, uh, no, she's doing a great job. I'm very impressed. Speaking of breaking news, did you see this? The uh we're going to do may 7th is apple's ipad announcement. We are not going to stream it because they decided to do it at seven in the morning our time, unless you want to get up?
1:39:23 - Mikah Sargent
I didn't realize we weren't streaming it. Do you want to get up? Leo, do you want to get up?
1:39:27 - Leo Laporte
I will yeah I'll do it because you know it's nothing to stream. They're releasing a video.
1:39:35 - Mikah Sargent
Oh it's not a live, it's not going to be just a pre-recorded video like the uh one back, uh back.
1:39:39 - Leo Laporte
Let to put this okay, and the funny thing is and I'm not taking this personally but I didn't get an invitation, so I'm not allowed to watch it.
1:39:49 - Mikah Sargent
I think you didn't get the one to the pre-recorded video even oh what they really don't like me.
1:39:55 - Leo Laporte
So anyway, okay, if you want to get up, we can do it. It's silly because any and and it's a's a Tuesday, so MacBreak Weekly will be at 11 am, a few hours later, and we will cover in depth. In fact, join us on MacBreak Weekly. You will be covering it on iOS today, right?
1:40:08 - Caller
Yes, yeah.
1:40:09 - Leo Laporte
And the rumor is that not only will there be iPad Pros, but Mark Gurman is now saying something that I was poo-pooed for saying two on Mac break weekly. It might be an M four, an M four with additional AI features. So that's interesting. I, when I mentioned that on Mac break weekly, uh, I think both Jason and uh Andy said no, that's, they're not going to do that, They'll do an M three. Well, I guess we'll see, We'll see. But German is now saying an M four. That's a big deal. Yeah, that's a big deal. Yeah, that's a big deal.
It will mean that the fastest, bestest computer in Apple's line will be an iPad.
1:40:46 - Mikah Sargent
It will be an iPad, and it also speaks to something fascinating, which is that usually at WWDC what we see almost exclusively is updated software that will run on the hardware that we already have, but if the new bright and shiny is only reserved for that iPad and then the iPhone that will be announced in September. That's interesting, because usually Apple only holds a couple of things for the new hardware that's announced in September, but if it's all AI all the time, that's going to be most of the new stuff that gets announced only being for the latest version of its hardware. So we shall see it does.
1:41:26 - Leo Laporte
I can see why the macbook weekly panel said no, no, that can't happen.
1:41:30 - Mikah Sargent
It doesn't make any sense right, but it does whenever they're scrambling to be part of this gen. Ai, uh, yeah, they don't want to be missed out.
1:41:39 - Leo Laporte
In fact, that's the other rumor is that not only they're talking to google about use of their gemini ai, they're now talking to open ai. Yeah, I saw that, which I thought was very interesting. Uh, what would we do now, besides taking a pause that refreshes?
1:41:52 - Mikah Sargent
is it time for our second oh, my god, it's chris Marquardt.
1:41:56 - Leo Laporte
All right, we'll be right back with chris Marquardt, camera guy, but first you're watching, ask the tech guys micah sergeant and leo laporte. Here he is all the way from the viewfinder villa, mr chris Marquardt, our photo guy. Hi, chris hello, hello.
1:42:13 - Chris Marquardt
How are you, gentlemen?
1:42:14 - Leo Laporte
you got your internet back excellent.
1:42:16 - Mikah Sargent
Yes, so glad you got the fiber oh, what happened?
1:42:20 - Chris Marquardt
Well, they put in a new fiber for the neighbor and the guys who installed it thought, oh, what's that other fiber? And just snipped it and then took a total of nine days to get back to the old one. That's heinous. I was on vacation for five of those days. Oh well, that's good.
1:42:38 - Leo Laporte
It wasn't quite as bad, but holy hell no I would go on vacation if it weren't from, if I lost my head.
1:42:47 - Caller
I'd be like I'm out of here. I gotta get out of here, yeah right well, anyway, we're glad you're back.
1:42:53 - Leo Laporte
That's why you missed last week. That gave everybody one more week to take a lovely picture. Powerful is a straight powerful assignment.
1:43:04 - Chris Marquardt
Here we go and uh, here's the pictures that people submitted. Oh, look at that bunch powerfully oh good, we got a bunch did you get?
any powerful ai pictures uh, no, no ai pictures this time around. I'm very surprised, but these are serious photographers. This is about real photography. There is something about being the one who captures the photo and catches that moment. It's a bit of a hunting thing going on there, I guess. Yeah, and pride it doesn't work and pride yes. So I have made a choice of three pictures, as usual, and the first one is by Gerald Wiley, and he's a powerful animal, oh.
1:43:52 - Mikah Sargent
I love that. It's like fire. That cat looks like flames.
1:43:57 - Chris Marquardt
Exactly. It's in front of a black background and the sun seems to be shining in through some blinds and it's got this stripey light and it's a very, a very power.
1:44:08 - Mikah Sargent
It's a powerful picture, yeah that is outstanding and it would make a great iphone photo too. You could see the clock up at the top. You know what I mean. It'd be positioned perfect iphone background. I mean like an iphone wallpaper.
1:44:19 - Chris Marquardt
Hey quick, quick, everyone, quick, everyone make a screenshot. Yeah, exactly.
1:44:25 - Leo Laporte
Or go to Flickrcom. Join the tech guy group and you'll find it in full quality at Flickr. Wow, gerald, very nice picture that is a really cool photo. I wish there were some info about it, because I would love to know how he took it and so forth.
1:44:38 - Chris Marquardt
There's no EXIF data. I've looked and I haven't seen any EXIF data. It looks like daylight.
1:44:43 - Leo Laporte
It doesn't look like he used special lighting. It looks like daylight. It's very beautiful.
1:44:47 - Chris Marquardt
Well, if you know how you can simulate daylight, that's true With a flash or something. But then how do you get the cat to?
1:44:54 - Leo Laporte
simulate the feather thing, and that's the question.
1:45:02 - Chris Marquardt
This is just. This is just excellent timing. Very nice, gerald, all right. Picture two I bet I bet gerald took a bunch of pictures to get that one. That's usually what you do. What a beautiful all right.
1:45:08 - Leo Laporte
Oh, gorgeous caddy all right.
1:45:10 - Chris Marquardt
Next up by smith j88. Uh, beauty of spring I think, is that magnolia, magnolia blossoms.
1:45:19 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, it's gorgeous.
1:45:21 - Chris Marquardt
So this one's taken with an iPhone. You don't need a big, expensive camera, you have one in your pocket iPhone 13.
1:45:29 - Leo Laporte
Not even the latest iPhone folks.
1:45:32 - Chris Marquardt
Even that, and the thing that makes this powerful, I think, is it's shot with the wide-angle lens and that allows you to get close to the subject, and then the subject becomes really important and in this case, the petals in the front, the flowers in the front, really stick out. Lovely. It's nice, nice colors.
1:45:56 - Leo Laporte
See, even a magnolia can be powerful in our group Nice.
1:46:01 - Chris Marquardt
And if you look, it has the three primary colors in there red, green and blue. So it kind of covers the entire spectrum and that makes it a very satisfying picture to look at. Lovely, thank you, smith. All right, and the last one is by Gregory Chesney Batteries for Life, and I was a bit stumped first looked at it and I was like what is going on here? But I'm pretty sure it's about the sun being our life source and what we're looking at is a very like OK, it's an indoor situation, lights coming in through the blinds, the sun is shining in very low and it's reflected in a mirror and it has that movie feeling. You can make up like a dozen different stories in your head of what's going on here and there's a lot of stuff in the dark, which means that you, as the viewer, you have to get active and fill in the blanks and make up your stories.
1:47:07 - Leo Laporte
It helps you make up your story, so this is a good example, I like the addition of the mirror, because then you have the shadow of the lamp plus the reflection of the lamp.
1:47:18 - Chris Marquardt
It really makes it, and the streets of the light reflection of the lamp. It really makes it and the streets of the light see that see that lens for the horizontal streak of the light, which which which is reminiscent of like what jj abrams does in his movies. He always has these lens flares in there, so it feels a bit like a a still from a movie.
1:47:34 - Leo Laporte
Very nice wow, three great pictures. Thank you, gregory, for that. Very nice. Thank you for naming it too. We like it when you name your pictures, right?
1:47:43 - Chris Marquardt
Yes, If you learned anything from the I don't know how many years I've been on here. It's name your photos. It's really nice if they have titles.
1:47:53 - Leo Laporte
Chris doesn't like JPG03. By the way, we've crossed 14,000 members now in the tech guy group. That is a great number. Thank you, renee silverman, our moderator, and thank you, chris, for creating this group all those years ago and, uh, and making it very active. 7 700 photos and all of them that's a pretty amazing feat. Yes, yeah, well done. Well, all right. I think that means we have to go to the fishbowl.
1:48:23 - Chris Marquardt
We do we do, we do. Let me pull one out. Oh, here we go. Oh yeah, oh yeah. The next one is tough tough, tough.
1:48:35 - Mikah Sargent
From powerful to tough, I've got a steak in the fridge.
1:48:38 - Leo Laporte
That might count, all right, oh tough, what could that be?
1:48:42 - Chris Marquardt
that'll be fun well I mean, I mean from a photography point of view, I would. I would think of like harsh light, dramatic light, contrast, sharp angles, like maybe a strutalist set of brutalist image possible, possible yeah I love it. Or or tough steak yeah, I love it. Works, works for me it works for me.
1:49:06 - Leo Laporte
Well, ladies and gentlemen, you have your assignment now here. How's this works? You've got a month, four weeks, and you're gonna go out three. Oh, that's right, because we kind of gained time last week. But okay, so three weeks from now, chris will come back. He will look at this pool of photos in the tech guy group on Flickr. How do you get in that pool? He's going to pick three that he likes. But how do you get in that pool so everybody can enjoy it? You take a picture it's got to be new photos, photos taken from now on, illustrating the word, the concept, the idea tough. When you upload it to Flickr, you have the option to tag it. So please do tag it T-G, tough, so that we know and spell it T-O-U-G-H. Unless, chris, you'll accept alternate spelling.
1:49:50 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, please don't do T-U-F-F.
1:49:55 - Chris Marquardt
Tough. You know what he'll figure it out. Let's try to keep it at one or maybe maximum of two spellings. Let's try to keep it at one or maybe maximum of two spellings.
1:50:02 - Leo Laporte
That'll make the automatic search a bit easier. Upload it, tag it. Tg Tuff and Renee Silverman, our moderator in the group, will thank you for the photo. If you're not a member of the group, of course, join the group as well. Add to that big number it's really blown away by 14,000 members Join the group. All of this is free. By the way, flickr is a free photo sharing site. There are some limits on the free account. We all have pro accounts, but there's but. You can do it for free and upload it. You will not. We will not judge. You upload it, and then Chris is going to pick three in three weeks. Three and three. So that's exciting. That's great. Thank you so much. Uh, so that's exciting. That's great. Uh, thank you so much, chris Marquardt. It's always a pleasure you got any uh, any uh expeditions planned for the near future.
1:50:46 - Chris Marquardt
Well, another, another Eastern European road trip in September. So, um, that is in the books and some local stuff here, some workshops here.
1:50:56 - Leo Laporte
Where should people go if they want to find out more about your workshops?
1:51:00 - Chris Marquardt
Where should people go if they want to find out more about your workshops? The usual place discoverthetopfloorcom. That's where you find out.
1:51:05 - Leo Laporte
Discoverthetopfloorcom, and there's links there to all of the other many enterprises that Chris participates in, links to his photos, links to his workshops. His books he's got some really good books. You're working on a new one. You said last time we talked yes, I am yes. His books he's got some really good books. You're working on a new one. You said last time we talked.
1:51:22 - Chris Marquardt
Yes, I am, yes, I am. It'll come out probably in the holiday season this year.
1:51:27 - Leo Laporte
Do you want to tell us what it's about, or is it a surprise?
1:51:30 - Chris Marquardt
No, it's for beginners and it'll be out in German first. Unfortunately, it needs to be picked up by a publisher in the US, which will hopefully happen. It's the book that I would have liked to have as a beginner, and it's a map to the breadth of photography, because if you start off, you have a bunch of things that you learn from videos, from forums and so on and you don't really know what's out there. So that's the goal of the book book to show you the breadth of photography. Nice.
1:52:05 - Leo Laporte
Discoverthetopfloorcom. Chris, I love your books. I have them all, and I will get the new one as soon as it's in English, because my German is not very good, although my son is a German speaker. He's going with his German tutor and his father I'm just a stepfather to Germany in October to turn around and to practice his German. He's very good, it's kind of cool, awesome. Send him here, I will. I'll happily speak German with him, I will. They're planning all the places they're going to go visit. Thank you, chris Marquardt. Thanks so much. Thanks for having me take care always a pleasure. Discover the top floor dot com. Okay, let's see, we've got enough time, I think, for one or two more calls you have an email in the hand, though I do, I have one right here.
1:52:54 - Caller
An email in the hand is an email in the hand two in the inbox from howard.
1:52:59 - Leo Laporte
I recently moved to florida and subscribed to xfinity cable, the only provider in this community, by the way, that's pretty much the case everywhere in the country you have one. Usually it's one phone company, one cable company. If you're lucky, you have two providers. Geez for high speed internet. I'm experiencing a marked degradation in the sound quality from streaming services netflix, amazon and other channels through Xfinity, versus my Dolby Digital 11.1 capable DVD player. I have to increase the volume by 2X and the surround sound is almost non-existent when tuned to the Xfinity input.
Service tech replaced the HDMI cables in the Xfinity box yeah, you would want to have the latest HDMI, I would think Service tech and then even switched the DVD cables with the Xfinity cable, all to no avail. So I don't know and left. I suspect Xfinity is compressing their signal, but they won't confirm this. Well, that's for sure. True, that's one of the reasons you get a physical media player is you're going to have the less compression. Thus I'm considering purchasing an apple tv or roku box to achieve my goal of parody with the dvd audio. New samsung 85 oled tv with one connect box feeding the audio and video to a morantz preamp, separate amplifier and 5.1 speakers around my room. Will the apple tv fix it?
1:54:25 - Mikah Sargent
we can't say for sure, we, that's. That's a hard thing to say. Uh, anytime you're doing streaming and comparing streaming to something that is playing locally, you're almost always going to be disappointed.
1:54:37 - Leo Laporte
Now, it's unclear if, when he says xfinity, if he's talking about sounds like an xfinity, uh data yeah yeah, I it's.
1:54:46 - Mikah Sargent
To me it sounds like, uh, because that's streaming versus optical. Yeah, and, and xfinity has its own set top box that people can get.
1:54:55 - Leo Laporte
I can't remember what it's called um, that's what's confusing to me, because he says it's, he's the xfinity box, so he's using their streamer. Is that, that's what I?
1:55:04 - Mikah Sargent
think, yeah, get rid of their streamer, that's that's definitely the case it is definitely not going. I you're probably, you're probably right that it's not going to be as good. But if you are comparing it between a hard uh blu-ray, an actual physical, I mean, uh, blu-ray versus what you're going to get over streaming, you're not going to be happy. Even with an apple tv, that's not going to be as good. It'll be close enough, it'll be better.
1:55:26 - Leo Laporte
I have to say, you know, because scott wilkinson told me to, I went, I've got a uhd blu-ray player, yeah, and I got dune and oppenheimer and yes, they sound amazing and they look amazing, but it doesn't make me sad when I stream off my apple tv I feel like I'm getting so. Some of the issues are the center channel. Make sure that the xfinity box is giving you full five one. He says it is?
the x1 box is apparently what it's called yeah, um, and he has a center channel, I think. Yeah, five one speakers. Make sure that you're getting a center channel from the xfinity box, because that's where all the vocals are, and a lot of times when people complain about audio, what they're really saying is I can't hear the dialogue and that's a center channel problem. But I think an apple tv will be far superior to the x1 streaming honestly almost certainly yeah.
1:56:18 - Mikah Sargent
So if you're not super picky, I just I don't like the. I can't remember what the final question was uh well, just roku or apple tv.
1:56:25 - Leo Laporte
Will that make it better? Oh so yeah my goal. Um, he tried different cables. That was a smart move because, yes, you have to have modern dvd cables.
1:56:35 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, and they will do their best to give you crummy ones, if they can.
1:56:38 - Leo Laporte
So weirdly, hdmi cables have different versions. Um, I had an x1 box. I got rid of it almost immediately and I prefer the apple streaming solution. The ui is better. Uh, I don't know if the quality is better, but I would bet it is.
1:56:54 - Mikah Sargent
I would bet it is. Yeah, it's more front of mind, because that X1 box's primary purpose is not to because you're. I don't even know if you pay very much for it, if at all.
1:57:05 - Leo Laporte
No, it's part of the.
1:57:06 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah well, you probably do because they want money from you sort of secretly do.
1:57:09 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, it's part of the deal. The only reason I use the Xfinity X1 was for 4K back in the Olympics four years ago, because that was the only way to watch it you had to get through. But what I'm not clear about is if that's a true over the top box or if it's all internet, or if it's getting it through the oh, that's a good question cable or is it some sort of hybrid thing?
I guess, if you're streaming with it, netflix with it, I you know I don't like it. It's it's low power, it doesn't have a big that's the thing it's low powered yeah um it's more. Your, your apple tv is a better investment yeah, keep the x1 if you want the dvr um, but I would get the apple tv.
1:57:54 - Mikah Sargent
Roku will be okay, but apple tv be better yeah, and with the way the roku's going with all of its ad stuff lately, I don't think I'm starting to get to a place where I'm not recommending any of that anymore. Yeah, because they they even want to go as far as with roku tvs. They're experimenting with even if you, if you plug an xbox into your roku tv, right, and you're playing a game, they want to push ads into the hdmi stream while you're playing a video game on your xbox.
1:58:22 - Leo Laporte
Sorry, no, yeah, no no, apple tv is more expensive, much more expensive, more than twice as much but it's not.
1:58:28 - Mikah Sargent
It's not subsidized, right, so that's can be better good question now what?
1:58:36 - Leo Laporte
I got another voicemail ready to go. Okay, let's do it, let's hear it another voicemail ready to go.
1:58:44 - Caller
Okay, let's do it, let's hear it. Hi, this is paul from duluth, minnesota. Good old question about uh, is it time to replace the imac from 2017? Yes, with the new mac mini pro 2 and uh, just curious, you know, with the new m4 chips probably in the making if now would be an okay time to still buy that M2 Pro Mac Mini. So if you give me a shout on that, I'd sure appreciate it.
1:59:08 - Mikah Sargent
That's a great question. Yeah, by the way, this was not planned. I did not plan that question Sure, you didn't yeah, because Well?
1:59:17 - Leo Laporte
you want to get rid of the Intel Absolutely. But he's not asking that question he because, well, you want to get rid of the intel, absolutely so that. But he's not asking that question.
1:59:23 - Mikah Sargent
He's really saying is now a good time to buy versus versus waiting a little bit certainly I would wait for wwdc.
1:59:27 - Leo Laporte
I don't think they're gonna. Well, we don't know. You never know. Yeah, that's the thing. I would wait till june. What is it? June 7th for a wwdc?
1:59:34 - Mikah Sargent
because the mac mini is currently on m2 and so that's very old.
1:59:39 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, they're due to announce the m3 may even jump to the m4.
1:59:43 - Mikah Sargent
That's what I'm wondering, confusing what's going on because we've got the m3 macbook air, the m3 macbook pro, so the what m3, I think, for the mac studio even who has the um, who, uh?
1:59:56 - Leo Laporte
who is it which? Which apple site has the?
1:59:58 - Mikah Sargent
oh, is that um? Is it nine to five rumors, I think, or is it? Which Apple site has the? Oh, is that Mac Rumors, I think, or is it? Mac. Rumors. I think Mac Rumors has the buyer's guide.
2:00:04 - Caller
They have a wonderful buyer's guide.
2:00:07 - Leo Laporte
It is Mac Rumors that tells you how long something has been available and whether it's a good time to buy or not. So go to Mac Rumors and the buyer's guide and let's take a look at the iMac and see, because it was great, well, but they're wanting to switch to the Mac mini oh okay, mac mini is fine too.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So let's look at the Mac mini. It says caution approaching end of cycle. This is the information you wanted, 467 days since it's been updated. So now the the average is 700. So we aren't really you know, we're getting close, but not necessarily really close. Here's an article from a couple of days ago Apple likely planning to skip M3 Mac mini for M4 refresh in late 2024. Again, apple says nothing. Of course, yes, and so all of this is pure speculation. It is possible.
I would wait till the WWDC to buy anything with a Mac in it and then see what they say then.
2:01:11 - Mikah Sargent
But I think it's probably the case that we are waiting till late, till fall October maybe, before they update the iMac, the Mac mini, the Mac pro and the Mac studios, Because it's my belief that M4 is going to serve as the basis for what Apple decides to do with gen AI, and so they're going to want a bunch of hardware that is as capable as possible for what they're planning to do with gen AI, because they want to do as much as they can locally. Yeah, so I think we're going to see a complete hardware refresh of everything by the end of this year, uh, but that means waiting until late 2024 for some of it. So if you're in absolute dire need, go ahead, but if you can wait until late 2024, at least as it may still be an m3 and yeah, it could end up being an m3 they might not skip now all right, no, no, we've given you the proper answer.
2:02:08 - Leo Laporte
Now let me give you the real answer. You can't tell the difference between m1 and m2 and m3. You can't, can you? No, yeah, no, I can. When I look at you know, for instance, when I write my advent of code, code challenges in Lisp, my M1 max is not as fast as my M3 max, right, you know, it's, maybe, in fact the code will run maybe twice as fast, but that's, I can't feel it Right, I can't tell yeah, I can't tell yeah, and it's just irrelevant because there's so many other factors how fast something loads from the drives, how much RAM you have, software, et cetera, et cetera. I'll be honest, none of the Apple silicon. Is there that big a difference that you would go? Oh, thank God, I waited until the M3 or M4.
So if you need a Mac mini, I think you do, because I think you need to get off that Intel Mac. It's too bad that. Imac's beautiful and, frankly, the 24-inch iMacs are not the direction you should go. You're right, get a Mac Mini with a nice screen. You're much better off. You can get a 27-inch or bigger screen. You can't get that on an iMac anymore. I would say go ahead and do it. An M2 mac mini today is not going to be appreciably slower than even an m4, unless you're like me and micah where you go, oh, but I don't have the most but I want the new one so if you know it's just, I think getting off intel now is probably a good, a good move yeah and get, and get a Mac mini today.
You'll be very happy with the M2. I think I don't. I don't think you'll feel.
2:03:46 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, there won't be too much FOMO. Exactly You're. You're going to be impressed.
2:03:52 - Leo Laporte
I, I. I decided that I was going to use this is the M3 MacBook Air and I gave John the M3 Max.
2:04:00 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah.
2:04:01 - Leo Laporte
And I gave John the M1 Max studio because I figured, well, I should just connect this to my big screen and use this as my desktop, since I have it. But honestly, I couldn't tell the difference. I really like these Mac studios Me too, that would be. That's what I have at home. Yeah, if, instead of getting an iMac youac you wanted to get a, a desktop with a screen, it might be worth looking at the mac studios. I really think they're a little bit bigger because they have more uh space for cooling. They can run a little faster, lots more connectivity. Look at all the things on the back and the front, although the minis are pretty good, but they don't have these extra ports on the front. They don't have the uh the camera card slot and stuff like that.
2:04:44 - Mikah Sargent
I I don't know, you're the mac guy- yeah, tell me again I, I think, no matter what, you're going to be impressed because you're coming from intel, baby. Uh, so that's gonna be so much better. And if you, that's 90 of the improvement exactly. Just give give the mac a glance is what I'll say and then decide. If it's priced with what you might want, in which case go for it, and if not, then the Mac Mini is going to make you happy.
2:05:13 - Leo Laporte
How you doing baby. You miss me. John, treating you good Is everything okay. You want to go back home? No, you like John. Okay, you want to go back home. No, you like John? Okay, you can have it back. I had to check. Actually, I changed it because I thought well, look, I've got this laptop. I should just connect this to my big screen and use this when I'm home and then, that way I don't have to copy stuff back and forth.
That's true, it's all there, it's all my main computer. This actually has more storage and more ram than the mac studio did, but I didn't see any big jump, only when I compile my code and then it's okay. Yeah, it's four milliseconds instead of eight milliseconds. Yeah, twice as fast.
2:05:54 - Mikah Sargent
Noticeable, not at all because that that difference is not. It's not a big difference hey, we're out of time.
2:06:01 - Leo Laporte
Uh, we've got a very big twit coming up. If you're watching live, stay tuned. Uh, we will go back on youtube. Uh, we stream live during the show for non-club members at youtubecom slash twit. So in about half an hour we'll go back on the air. Uh, with kevin rose. Uh, did, did we? Uh, do we? Dan patterson, kevin rose, amy webb, perfect, so padre, oh, okay, so we're not sure it's going to be at least amy webb and kevin rose, which actually is plenty is plenty. Uh, that's funny because kevin came to me at the last minute. I said, well, maybe padre, I'll move. And then it turned out somebody else dropped out and then I don't know if we can get Padre back. So it's a very confusing situation.
2:06:45 - Mikah Sargent
So we'll stay tuned, yeah it's exciting it's the middle of the night in Rome. We'll see what it is when it's time.
2:06:50 - Leo Laporte
Who knows what's going on, but we'll at least have Kevin Rose and Amy Webb show. That'll be in about half an hour from now. We do this show every sunday. It starts 11 am. Pacific 2 pm eastern. Goes to about this time 1 30 pm. Pacific 4 30 eastern. So uh, tune in around 1800 utc. Uh, youtubecom. Slash twitter if you want to watch live. The advantage of watching live is you can call in 888-724-2884, but of course, if you call in before or after that time, you can always leave a message. We love the voicemails. Email us too, atg at twittv. That's always great. We like the videos we saw. We had that great video. That was really, really nice. We'd love to hear from you. Mikah Sargent will be back Tuesday with iOS Today.
2:07:42 - Mikah Sargent
And he's going to be in 7 am on may 7th you want to do that for the ipad event do you want? To do that I'll think about it recorded. I feel like all of them are recorded technically I guess that's true.
2:07:50 - Leo Laporte
I'll, if you come at seven, I will. I'll be my jammies, but I'll do it for my house at seven. It's up to you. I'm gonna put it in your, in your lap, all right? He'll also be back for Tech News Weekly on Thursday, that's when.
Hands on Mac gets published as well. Hands on Mac, which is his show. That's audio outside the club, video inside the club. So again, if you're a club member, you get to see a lot more, including the video of us setting up the studio right after this. Please join the club, it helps us out immensely. Youtube, I mean sorry, twit.tv/clubtwit, and we thank you in advance for that. That really is a big, big deal for us. Um, what else? Anything else you want to say no?
that covers it do you, uh, do you want to thank your, your mother, your father, your you want to? Do you want to say hello to, uh, your aunt, missoula, anything at all? I have no aunt in missoula, okay, well, at all. I have no aunt in Missoula, okay, well, that simplifies things quite a bit. Thank you for joining us. We appreciate it and we will see you next time on. Ask the Tech Guys and what do we say at the end of every show? Have a great geek week.
2:08:52 - Mikah Sargent
Bye-bye.
