Ask The Tech Guys 2030

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 why you should never go to Leicester Square after midnight.

0:00:08 - Mikah Sargent
And I am Mikah Sargent, and we talk to the Giz-wiz himself, Dickie DeBartolo, about a way to take your coffee with you on the go.

0:00:16 - Leo Laporte
And then Lisa's going to love that one, and then I'll explain why I'm wearing this silly hat as we explain why mesh does not always mesh. Ask the tech guys. Is next podcasts you love?

0:00:32 - VO
Podcasts you love. From people you trust. This. Is TWiT.

0:00:35 - Leo Laporte
This is Ask The Tech Guys, with Mikah Sargent and Leo Laporte, Episode 2030, recorded Sunday June 23rd 2024. From Whence Do You Hence? Well, hey, hey, hey, how are you today? It's time for Ask the Tech Guys. That there's Mikah Sargent. He's Tech Guy number one.

0:01:00 - Mikah Sargent
There's Leo Laporte, tech Guy, also number one. No, I'm number two.

0:01:04 - Leo Laporte
If you're number one, I'm number two. Okay, okay, can I be zero? That works. Steve Jobs famously did that Employee zero, right, yeah. Apple later in their life, after a few years, decided that they had to have employee IDs, which means you had to have an employee number. And they gave Woz number one and then said, steve, you're number two. And he said, no, I'm zero. That is so silly. That's a Steve Jobs.

That's very in a nutshell what do we do on this show besides selling silly anecdotes? We take your calls at 888-724-2884. You can call on a regular phone. Now it's a little weird because when you do call you'll be put in a zoom room with others.

0:01:47 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, but well you know you hang out and uh, chill, chill and remember that if you are calling us via that phone number, you press star six. If you're brought up on air to unmute, unmute yourself and talk with us.

0:01:59 - Leo Laporte
You can also zoom us directly, call.twit.tv, and we also have some emails we've gathered over the last week atg@twit.tv coming up at noon, the Giz Wiz. That's uh noon our time, which is 40 minutes from now. The Giz Wiz, Dick DeBartolo, with a couple of great gadgets. But uh, first a look at the, as we are want to do a look at the news. I used to call it my sunday sermon, where I would pick a subject and get angry.

0:02:29 - Mikah Sargent
But I'm a mellower kind of guy. Oh, he's a Yale man, I'm a Yale man.

0:02:34 - Leo Laporte
Oh, he must be a Yale man. Sweden, as you may know or may not know, was way ahead of us in a number of things, including they were the first really cashless economy. They went all digital. According to Bloomberg, it faces soaring fraud as a result. Sweden is an important test case on fighting cashless crime, because it's gone further, bloomberg says, on ditching paper money than almost any other country in Europe and, of course, the US. We love our paper money. One of the reasons people like paper money is because it's totally anonymous, even more so than Bitcoin, certainly more so than any credit card or any debit card or any form of digital transaction, all of which are closely tied to your person. If I go in and pay $12 for a sandwich which is, by the way, ridiculous, right, but probably accurate.

But if I count out a 10 and two ones and then put in another one because I'm a generous person as a tip, it's pretty pathetic. Then no one knows it was me who bought this ammo, right, there's no way of tracing it. You're an ominous, unless there was a camera.

0:03:42 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, unless there was a camera. Yeah, um, but you all didn't realize jokes on you because he was wearing a ronald mcdonald costume, so you never would have known it was him. I wish you hadn't told them. Oh sorry, sorry.

0:03:54 - Leo Laporte
Now, how many people walking around in ronald mcdonald costumes are buying 12 sandwiches. That pretty much narrows adding a dollar tip. By the way, you've just demonstrated fingerprinting, oh, which is a technique a lot of sites use because they can't, they or they're. It's harder for them to place third-party cookies now, so instead they just go. Well, is he dressed like ronald mcdonald? Okay? Did he buy a 12 sandwich? Okay? Did he leave a one dollar tip? Okay?

it's leo, probably leo yeah but in this case, of course, they ask your browser what is your resolution? What extensions are there? Lots of ways of fingerprinting you. So you just demonstrated unwittingly. I didn't mean to, I meant to. That's right. Online fraud and digital crime in Sweden have surged.

0:04:36 - Mikah Sargent
I thought that Sweden was just a perfect bastion of goodwill.

0:04:41 - Leo Laporte
I always thought that too. Amber MacArthur used to just love Sweden. She just said that sweden, everything's perfect in sweden. Criminals took 1.2 billion kroner I don't know how much real money that is in 2023 uh, doubling from 2021, and all because of this digital stuff.

0:04:58 - Mikah Sargent
So just a little a word of warning what do we do about it, though I don't know yeah, I don't know.

0:05:05 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, I don't know. Uh, do you, did you watch um julia child's cooking shows? You're probably too young to remember?

0:05:12 - Mikah Sargent
no, I yeah. Did you ever watch this old house?

0:05:15 - Leo Laporte
oh my god, yes, with my grandparents loved that show, wasn't that great it was. And then maybe, shortly after this old house uh, you might have watched the crockett's victory garden.

0:05:24 - Mikah Sargent
About planning I don't think I had.

0:05:26 - Leo Laporte
I know I never watched that all three were created by one guy who just passed this week, russell warash, not well known, but we owe him a lot. He was the king of do-it-yourself tv. Wow, he invented this old house. He started with julia child in 1963 and then thought you know what's next? After 10 or so years, in 1979, he introduced this old house. He the idea came to him when he was fixing up his house with his grandpa. Oh, and he said you know, this might make a great tv show that's what led to me fixing up houses with my grandparents.

You know I loved this old house because that's that's why they got into the like buying houses and fixing them right did 30 years of julia child uh in 1975, teamed up with jim crockett to do crockett's victory garden um the new yankee workshop. With that was norm norm. Norm was the uh, you know the sidekick on this old house. He then had his own show.

So Russell uh, more ash uh one of the greats he worked at WGBH in Boston and, uh, that's where he met Julia child. One of the greats there is. Uh, this is this old house filming season 25 in Bermuda. You can identify him as the only one not wearing Bermuda shorts. Russell Moresh passed away at the, I'm sure, a ripe old age, but I don't see it here.

0:06:54 - Mikah Sargent
Well, we thank him for his contributions.

0:06:56 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, yeah, yeah, survived by his wife, marion, who was Chef Marion in Crockett's Victory Garden. So there, let's see. There's lots of stories I could talk about, but Apple being a little bit of a peevish child, so, you know they're about to any minute.

Now the EU is going to slap them around saying, hey, this does not comply with the Digital Markets Act. Your idea of how to do a third party stores Apple will face a fine unless they remediate. So they'll fix it Right. They're doing the minimum and then seeing what happens. But in retaliation, apple's announced it's going to withhold Apple intelligence from the EU.

0:07:42 - Mikah Sargent
Should we couch that by saying although it's pretty clear that's what's happening, they say yeah, apple isn't in their newsroom saying in retaliation.

0:07:52 - Leo Laporte
I just want to make that clear they're saying oh, the same digital markets act that won't let us have, you know our way with you somehow prevents us that. Well it, you know it's hand-waving, because they say it's a security concern. I'm not sure what that means, because it'd have to be interoperable. Yeah, I don't. Well, you know it's hand-waving because they say it's a security concern. I'm not sure what that means, because it'd have to be interoperable. Yeah, I don't. This is very Apple, very hand-waving. So they're going to block Apple intelligence, that really cool iPhone mirroring thing, which I thought was really great, shareplay, screen sharing, all from the EU. All because they say the Digital Markets Act forces it to downgrade the security of its products and services. What's the downgrade? Interoperability.

0:08:29 - Mikah Sargent
And, as Gurman points out, that iPhone mirroring thing was one of the biggest exciting features for people who are big Apple In the ecosystem. Yeah, love the Apple stuff. Or in the Apple ecosystem, and those people tend to be the loudest in the ecosystem. Yeah, love the apple stuff. Or in the apple ecosystem and those people tend to be the loudest uh, in the group.

0:08:49 - Leo Laporte
So to see that not be included suggests that that could sort of uh bring forth the militant nature that exists there mark german at bloomberg says it's not clear how the features might violate the dma, but withholding the technology threatens to irk consumers in the region. 27 European nations, which might potentially put pressure on regulators. They're going to irk you and then it's your job to irk the regulators. That's a good word. Irk, irk, i-r-k. Where does that come from? Irk? Who knows? No one knows it's a mystery. From irk? Who knows? No one knows it's a mystery. Uh, so, apple, good job, apple, on really pushing the boundaries of of corporate behavior. I have to, I have to, I have to yell at them. Now.

You remember we had a caller a few months ago who was mad as heck, saying at&t has requested the California Public Utilities Commission let it turn off phone copper service. They are technically what's called the COLR, the carrier of last resort, which requires it to provide landline telephone service to any potential customer in its service area. They don't want to provide copper line telephone service. So they went to the cpuc say your rana, can we not be the carrier of last resort? The cpuc on thursday dismissed the application with prejudice. Wow, with prejudice. With prejudice when you okay, I don't, I don't know what it means, yeah, in in regulatory terms, when I do know what it means in regulatory terms. I do know what it means when you're a hit man, but I don't know what it means in regulatory terms.

Our vote to dismiss AT&T's applications made clear we will protect customer access to basic telephone service. Our rules were designed, of course, they were to provide that assurance. At&t's application did not follow our rules, so the caller who was worried about that and upset about that good news this California Public Utilities Commission has told AT&T no, no, you can't, you're not allowed, you have to stay. Sometimes big government's a good thing. I'm just saying government of some kind is a good thing. As big government's a good thing, I'm just saying government of some kind is a good thing. And now the final story amazon is mulling a upcharge for uh, for an intelligent amazon, alexa by the way, with prejudice means that they can't refile the same claim later.

0:11:17 - Mikah Sargent
If you do it without prejudice, then you could refile the same thing later looking at it doesn't mean kill them, right?

0:11:23 - Leo Laporte
okay, that's extreme prejudice and and that's not. They don't usually do?

0:11:29 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, exactly, that's very rare. They don't bring out the stocks and all that.

0:11:34 - Leo Laporte
So we remember that Amazon was losing. What was it? $10 billion, a bunch of money, a bunch of money. So they're going to try to make it up by charging you. It's unknown, but the rumor is, according to reuters, five to ten dollars a month. Can we talk?

0:11:48 - Mikah Sargent
about how this is wild when I'm already paying a prime membership they're not, they're people.

0:11:55 - Leo Laporte
Just gonna turn off echo.

0:11:57 - Mikah Sargent
Yes, just gonna turn it off yes no one's gonna pay that people are only using it as a stinking timer, right now anyway how smart do you need your timer to be? It to be any better than that. I I mean, look, I I would. I would love to see this somehow succeed, because it would baffle me, and I like it when things baffle me. There's I just don't. How are they, first of all, how are they going to show people that it can do?

0:12:24 - Leo Laporte
so much more I can answer that question. They're going to name it Remarkable, alexa. Oh dear God, it's remarkable. Now, how much would you pay?

0:12:34 - Mikah Sargent
Because they've already got the devices in their home. And yes, amazon can pop up those little ads on your Echoes, but those ads don't. There's not enough time to say say, look at all of the things it can do. Now.

0:12:47 - Leo Laporte
I just don't see how they're going to get anybody to hop on this unless they're new to the game well, also there's competition because you've got uh google's voice devices uh, which currently do not charge you for the voice, and you've got apple's uh s-i-r-i siri devices. By the way is very I'm sorry, I just probably triggered it. It gets triggered all the time we're watching tv and if somebody says I'm seriously upset, she goes yes yes, and, by the way, with this, people will be able to use the.

0:13:20 - Mikah Sargent
You'll still get the dumb alexa.

0:13:22 - Leo Laporte
You have to pay $5 for remarkable Alexa. That'll come sometime in August, according to eight people. I think Reuters has some good sources.

0:13:32 - Mikah Sargent
A whole eight Whoa. That's because that's all that's left working on the team All eight people. It went from like thousands, I think, at one point. Yeah.

0:13:44 - Leo Laporte
Well, you know what I think. See the problem with AI chatbots and I don't. You've played with them a little bit. Is there chatty? It's the last thing. You want.

0:13:51 - Mikah Sargent
A speaker to be yeah, I don't need it like, stop talking now.

0:13:54 - Leo Laporte
I got my answer now, shush I want to be able to say things like good morning, a word. And it opens the curtains right, turns on the light, starts, the coffee maker, reads me my news. I want to do things like that. Maybe that's what it'll do. Well, you could technically do.

0:14:10 - Mikah Sargent
You could do that home automation. It's a lot. It's a lot of work but you can right.

0:14:14 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, maybe that's what ai would be useful for seeing that's.

0:14:18 - Mikah Sargent
That's actually what, uh, jennifer pattison too, a guest co-host on tech news weekly, has talked about before that. That is where she sees these assistants actually ending up being useful is true awareness of how you use your smart home and then providing these scenes automatically. Because I don't know about you, I don't really use those scenes that activate a bunch of different stuff, because it's always it's never what I want when I want it, and so I ended up turning on a scene and then I'm like but this time I want the lights to be 50% darker than I normally would with this scene. So it's very rare that I do any of that automation stuff. I just go in and adjust each light or whatever individually.

But in a truly aware system I could, yeah, say I would understand what it is and I wouldn't even know Exactly. I wouldn't necessarily even have to say anything that it would intuit after a period of time. And it goes every time. Mikah walks into his office at this that would be even cooler Always turns on these lights and I can look. It looks at the calendar and it says, oh, and when his show is over 30 minutes after his show is over, those lights are always turned off. Then it starts doing that stuff automatically and suddenly I'm going holy cow, I don't have to worry about this anymore.

0:15:31 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, that's the promise of it. Of course, you know what would really happen. It happens here. The lights turn off in the middle of the show and then yeah it's I.

0:15:40 - Mikah Sargent
I can't wait to be proven wrong, but I remain skeptical.

0:15:43 - Leo Laporte
You really? This is the show where Mikah wants you to prove him wrong. I want just prove me wrong, yeah.

0:15:48 - Mikah Sargent
Make it because right now I don't talk to any of these people on any of my devices.

0:15:53 - Leo Laporte
Really, I don't trust them to do what I need them to do and you don't do the boomer thing which you just pretended to do Right, which is talk to your phone like this Don't do that, don't do that I was. I was walking behind a woman the other day downtown she I could hear the whole conversation. Oh, she's talking to someone else on the phone.

You know, here's the way this happened. It started with keeping up with the kardashians oh really, in order to do reality tv, you need to hear both sides of the conversation. So they would always talk on their phone like this, and that wasn't because they were deep, it was or they didn't like to hold the phone up, maybe they didn't want to ruin their quaff, I don't know, but I think it was. So the producers could catch the audio. But now we all have. Wow, I never thought about that.

0:16:34 - Mikah Sargent
A lot of people watch that show. That's totally where it came from. This is how one uses a phone, and all reality shows do that, yeah. This is not how one uses a phone. Unless you're on reality tv, then you do what you want. Wow, that's a really good point. That's what. That's my theory. I think I'd like to be proven wrong. You know what really grinds my gears?

888-724-2884 I hate how in movies, in almost every movie. Well, there are two things I hate in movies. One all of the tech always has to be making beeping chirping sounds. Every computer.

0:17:06 - Leo Laporte
Well, it's a movie. You want to hear it, right?

0:17:07 - Mikah Sargent
No, I don't, I don't, care. And then also, every time they hold the phone up to their face, the screen stays on. That drives me nuts.

0:17:15 - Leo Laporte
That's, by the way, if you're watching a reality show and they pretend they're talking to Norma and you see the screen on, they're not talking to.

0:17:23 - Mikah Sargent
Norma, you know that they're not actually talking on the phone at that point. It's like, oh, they had Captain Sandy re-record that. Oh, you watched that show.

0:17:29 - Leo Laporte
Heck, yes, you knew who Norma was. Norma's never mind. What's this?

0:17:34 - Mikah Sargent
show again. What do we do here?

0:17:40 - Leo Laporte
This is what we do at this point in the show do.

0:17:44 - Mikah Sargent
At this point in the show, we asked john ashley what the hell you want us?

0:17:46 - Leo Laporte
to do now and he did a breaking motion. All right, then I'd like to talk about Wix Studio. You know it's unfortunate. I could go on and on about wick studio but they said, leo, do you got 60 seconds? Wow, what I said. I can't talk about wick studio one minute. To tell you about wick studio, the web platform for agencies and enterprises. Okay, let me see if I can do this.

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All right, my time's up, but this is the time for you to check out Wix Studio. If you haven't seen it lately, I was blown away. Visit Wix Studio. Step into the Wix Studio and see for yourself. Go to Wix.com/studio. W-i-x.com/studio, or click the link on the show notes and you can learn more. Wix.com/studio. Thank you, Wix. That was a lot of talking for a very little period of time. You did well. Now, john Ashley, should we take a call?

0:19:27 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, I'm going to pick up on Mark. Hey Mark, hey Mark.

0:19:31 - Leo Laporte
Hey how you doing. I'm well, mark. How are you, mark?

0:19:35 - Caller
Well, good, except for you were muted in the beginning.

0:19:38 - Mikah Sargent
Well, we're not now.

0:19:39 - Caller
Yeah, no, that's anyhow. I have a question. I have two things. I'm thinking of some kind of smart watch, because what I want to do is I've been starting to hype.

0:19:50 - Leo Laporte
So hold on hype. I gotta, I gotta read let's pause. I gotta read your hat. It says dad humor and then loading and then lol, that is a. Did you get that for father's day?

0:20:00 - Caller
uh, I got it actually for christmas for daughter. She made it. I've also got one says fun on the river. It's orange and it it has. See behind me, there's the river behind me, colorado River. Oh, beautiful, yeah. And so it was orange, because I wear this orange hoodie with long sleeves so you know people don't run me over on my jet ski. And so it has pictures. Oh, you're jet skiing down the river.

0:20:25 - Leo Laporte
That's cool. Do you have a stand up or over on my jet ski? And so it has pictures. Oh, you're jet skiing down the river, that's cool, do you?

have a stand-up or a sit-down jet ski? No, just a sit-down. Yeah, my wife is a big stand-up jet ski rider. And you know who else is johnny jet. They used to call him johnny jet ski, I'm not kidding. Wow, he's famous, a famous jet skier, anyway. That's that my wife says. It's when she does it, she comes off, she's glowing, she's the most fun you ever had in your life.

0:20:49 - Caller
So I guess you enjoy. I'd love to have a house in the river where, for breaks, I would just go down, jump on the jet ski, go around and come back. Wouldn't that be nice?

0:20:56 - Leo Laporte
yeah what can we do for you my?

0:20:58 - Caller
friend, I am missing, uh, sometimes texts and voicemails, usually not calls, and then I don't think about checking them all the time. And also, I've been hiking up in the hills trying to improve, you know, physically improve and so, but of course I need to know max heart rate. So I'm wondering does a watch would watch apps I'm sorry, apps. Would a watch help? Or like beep every time I don't pay attention to texts or voicemails? And can one also be good for checking my heart rate and beep when I start going too high?

0:21:35 - Mikah Sargent
Yes, I don't see. Do you have an iPhone? Yeah, why are you missing the messages?

0:21:42 - Caller
Well, because either I'm on the phone a lot or I'm listening to Twit and so the headset the old.

0:21:47 - Leo Laporte
Actually the phone has this headset. I'm too busy listening to twit gambit.

0:21:52 - Caller
I like it yeah, and and so then I just miss them, and I'm not one of those phone people who's always looking at their phone, right, yeah, you know, it's just on my belt that's what I do.

0:22:03 - Leo Laporte
Now you have to. You have to make sure that the watch will send you notifications. We talked about this last week. Yes, but that's what I do. I always know if I in fact I can answer the phone on my watch and it's, believe it or not, decent quality, so I can actually talk on my watch to people and stuff. When the phone rings, I'll see their face, I press answer and I'll see their face and press answer. And when I get text messages, I could just slide it down and show the text messages like this. They even have a nice feature where if you tap the text message, you get some canned replies. So if you're too busy jet skiing, you could say, hey, I'll get back to you later. They don't have, I'm too busy jet skiing. I wish that would be a good one.

0:22:42 - Mikah Sargent
Can you add custom ones? Yeah, you can. You can change what the text says. Yep.

0:22:47 - Caller
If I have Android, which I do, do you have recommendations for whether it's Samsung or a Fitbit or my next phone? I'm just thinking of getting.

0:22:56 - Leo Laporte
Apple, google has the Pixel Watch, which will do that. Actually, my favorite Android watch is the Samsung um, and what kind of phone do you have? Is it a good pixel?

yeah, google pixel 6a okay so you might want to go with uh with a google watch, although I think the samsung watches are are better. They just announced a new generation of the they call them the gear uh, and they just released the watch ultra. They're trying to they're always playing keep up with uh, with apple, you know, on this, but I really like the galaxy watches and all the things that you talked about. They will absolutely do um, heart rate, all that stuff, uh, and and including notifications. See, there, there's a phone call going through. That's really cool. Heart rate monitoring, you see. So, yeah, I like that. You get the messages, you can send messages, you can answer calls, so everything that you want to do. I believe that Pixel Watch does that as well. Remember, google bought Fitbit, so they've incorporated a lot of the Fitbit features into the Pixel Watch.

0:24:06 - Caller
Okay, and will it beep at me later? In other words, if I'm just like that's part of my problem is is I may walk away from my phone and it doesn't occur to me to go to my phone and and look, because I don't always get calls, don't always. Will not beep at you later. No, yeah, I missed that from the old record. You know voice recorder days. Yeah, you're answering machine. That would beep at you later. No, yeah, I missed that from the old record. You know voice recorder days.

0:24:26 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, you're answering machine that would beep at you apple does have a feature for that, really, yeah, but it's not a lot later, so it's. You can tell it. To re-remind you, let me see what the actual feature is called um, so settings, notifications and then messages, and there's one that's like let's see what it's called here. It is called um. Well, now, I'm trying, I'm trying to remember where it shows up, but there is, yeah.

So what does it do it every once in a while yeah, if you don't, if you don't respond to it, there it is repeat alerts, um, and so you can say once, twice, three times, five times, ten times, and they're two minutes apart so most would be 20 minutes exactly yeah, so not not great, but that that is a feature there, and I I mean, I don't know if android, yeah, has a. I I have no idea.

0:25:20 - Leo Laporte
I didn't know. I didn't know the apple watch did, and that's the one I wear. The only reason I'm not crazy about the Pixel Watch is the design the crystals is kind of like. It's pretty, but it sits up above the watch and I think it's very vulnerable so they get cracked. I've heard about delamination as well, but I would say probably it does everything that the Samsung does. You notice, it's more expensive. It's $350. It's 350 bucks. So I would just get a Samsung watch, smartwatch. It will do all of that. I don't know about the continual notifications. Well, you know, what you could do is can you set a repeating notification that says look at your watch?

0:26:02 - Mikah Sargent
or something like that.

0:26:03 - Leo Laporte
Just tell your phone every half hour until I say stop, remind me to look at your watch, or something like that. Just tell your phone every half hour until I say stop, remind me to look at my notifications. I didn't even think of this. Somebody in the Discord is reminding me that OnePlus also makes a watch. Do you chocolate, milk, mini sip? Do you own one of these? Because I don't have any experience with them, but I think OnePlus does some very nice stuff and look at that.

That's a pretty, that's a good looking watch and because it's using Wear OS, this would be comparable to the Pixel watch in terms of performance, but probably a better watch. You know, more robust. Google's had all sorts of trouble with the Pixel. I don't trust Google for hardware anymore. Unfortunately. They've had a lot of trouble with the watch. I don't trust Google for hardware anymore. Unfortunately, they've had a lot of trouble with the watch. So this is probably another good one to look at If you want Wear OS, which is designed for Android, and these have much better battery life, which is incredible. So this one, it's called the OnePlus Watch 2. And let me just make sure, because it's a Wear watch, it's going to do the notifications. It's going to do all look how, look how, exactly like apple. Yeah right, they're just copying. It is it's just. You know everything. Yeah, it's got the heart rate monitor. They call it oh health, oh health, oh, oh health. That's what I think, yeah wellness

or maybe it's health, oh health, oh health, uh, you could get a hat with that oh health, um. So I'll have my daughter make one up. Those are three different, uh, three different ways. I'd, last least, recommend the the uh, google pixel. I would. I have experience with all of the Samsung watches. I've been very, very happy with them and, yeah, this nothing looks pretty good. I have to say it's a little more expensive, it's 400 bucks, but that's because it comes. It's big too, 46 millimeters. That's. The other thing you should remember is these smartwatches tend to be kind of hefty. But Mike is a slender.

0:28:05 - Caller
That's Canadian thing, you should remember is these smartwatches tend to be kind of hefty, but Mike is a slender that's Canadian. By the way, I do have a slender oh, that's Canadian. Why am I in the? It's $300.

0:28:10 - Leo Laporte
Oh, that's much better, I was going to say mine says $269. Oh, that's much better. That's even less than the Pixel. You know what I forgot? Gave me a Canadian website. There you go, if you're in Canada, it's $3.99.

0:28:28 - Caller
So there's some good choices.

0:28:29 - Leo Laporte
Mark, I think the watch is what you want. Oh, are you going to wear it? Jet skiing?

0:28:34 - Caller
Yeah, probably. I mean if it's waterproof, yeah. Generally, except for the last thing where I jumped off one wave and landed in two waves converging and basically slammed into the uh handlebars. I generally don't fall off but there's a like spray oh no, there was no spray. I just hit the bottom.

0:28:57 - Leo Laporte
The thing submerged and then popped back out yikes so you had a quick dunk, a little dip, no yeah yeah, the.

0:29:05 - Mikah Sargent
The concern is, uh, jet. Any kind of jet spray could bypass any water resistance misting, but yeah, missing even submersion, quick submersion.

0:29:16 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, you're all fine on all of us. Yeah, I think you'd be fine. I actually have to get one of these one, uh, one plus watches. These look pretty nice. I don't know about the waterproof status on this.

0:29:31 - Caller
I'll read up on it, but I never would have thought to look at this. I only thought Samsung Google.

0:29:36 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, me neither. That's why we thank our Canadian viewers.

0:29:42 - Caller
Okay, well, hey, if you ever come down to Southern California and need your picture taken for the group, I'm available oh, it's that mark.

0:29:51 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, it's so funny. I'm sorry I never remember mark mark is in boston. He came out to see the last best event that I did with steve gibson and there was a line out the door to get steve gibson's autograph not autograph these days selfie with him. Right right, there's a line out the door to get a selfie's autograph not autograph these days selfie with him, right Right.

It was a line out the door to get a selfie with Steve Gibson and Mark. Very kindly, he saw us, saw me fumbling and stuff said, let me, let me be the photographer. So so you, you managed that line beautifully. So you came up. You say, okay, you got one minute, take the picture. There you go. You posed him and everything. You were good, mark. I appreciate it, thank you everything you were good, mark, I appreciate it, thank you. Thanks next time, that's funny. Next time we do an event I'll let you know.

0:30:26 - Caller
Yeah, I stop every time at disneylander places and will help take pictures. Oh, that's which is funny, because I hardly take pictures of my own family, but you're good so uh, thanks, thanks, mark.

0:30:37 - Leo Laporte
Take care, mark, mark has. Brownlee gave the one plus watch to uh a review. You can read, watch his review. He says I think the headline says it all Total redemption, total redemption, nice, good to know. So there you go Hybrid powertrain in a smartwatch. Now that's an idea. All right, there you have it. We have time for another call before Dick T Bartolo graces us with his Gizwizzy presence. Who should we?

0:31:07 - Mikah Sargent
I'm going to pick up on another caller once I can push this button.

0:31:16 - Leo Laporte
Now, if you're a caller, you should press star six. You should do that. And, john, you see what it says on that screen there. While I like looking at that, I don't know if we really want that it says please stand by. I feel like the show hasn't even begun. Caller, what's your first name and what city are you from?

0:31:36 - Caller
I am jesse and I am calling from lexington hi jesse, welcome lexington ky uh south carolina.

0:31:45 - Leo Laporte
South Coast. I didn't know that. Okay, SC. Well, hello Jesse. What can we do for you?

0:31:51 - Caller
So I am having trouble with two different issues and I'm trying to figure out if they might be related. The first one is I'm having an issue with Windows Update and I have this newish HP desktop. It's running Windows 11 Pro and when I'm trying to download software updates for it I'm getting an error that says 0xADD02002. And then I'm having another issue with my Google Wi-Fi and trying to connect it to well, trying to get a Roku TV to talk to Apple Airplay, and I'm thinking it might be connected to Google Wi-Fi. And trying to connect it to well, trying to get a Roku TV to talk to Apple AirPlay, and I'm thinking it might be connected to Google Wi-Fi All right?

0:32:32 - Leo Laporte
Well, let's handle the first one Does it give you any. English error message at all, or just gives you that zero.

0:32:39 - Caller
X, it just says download error and then it gives me that error. It gives me the option to retry it, but the download stays stuck at 0%. Once in a while I can click retry and it'll try to download and install successfully. And I've also tried downloading the Windows ISO file and doing a clean install from that, Still having the same issue.

0:33:04 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, no, it sounds like it's an internet issue, not a windows issue, and maybe it is related to the second question. You can browse the web, fine, and all of that yeah, perfectly fine, and you tell me about your internet service provider. What, what do you, what do you have?

0:33:19 - Caller
uh, gigabit fiber, it's local. Uh, nice oporium.

0:33:24 - Leo Laporte
So you have plenty of bandwidth and you're getting that full gigabit speed. Are you on wireless or wired?

0:33:30 - Caller
Wired Ethernet.

0:33:31 - Leo Laporte
Okay, wow, you got wired Ethernet to a gigabit fiber connection and Microsoft tries to download it and fails. Check to make sure that your time and date are correct. I presume that's accurate.

0:33:48 - Caller
yes yep, I've checked the time zone and the date and time and I've checked my firewall settings.

0:33:55 - Leo Laporte
I've tried using google dns um, I'm looking at this error message, error 0xADD02002. Somebody else has this. This is on Microsoft's community support page. The thread is locked, which means they must have come up with an answer. This is from two years ago, I don't know. That's all this stuff.

0:34:23 - Mikah Sargent
Did you see the fix about um changing the client setting allow clients. Yes, I've tried that already. Good good that you tried that progress.

0:34:34 - Caller
Zero percent is never a good thing, and that is that is yeah, especially when it comes to like antivirus and malicious software, I mean so you did those three, those three suggested methods, I assume what's resetting the Windows update?

0:34:52 - Leo Laporte
component. What security software are you using, if any?

0:34:57 - Caller
I have not installed anything special. It's built right into the Windows OS. I have not changed anything.

0:35:02 - Leo Laporte
Right. So that's the other thing that sometimes causes. You know, you have some antivirus Norton antivirus famously on there and would say well, no, I'm not going to let you download anything ever again. I see on this that one of the things that network adapter reset. That's interesting. Yeah, I've tried that too. Yeah, it looks like you've looked at this page because you've done all the things that this page recommends. So you've seen this support message before.

0:35:35 - Caller
Yeah, so I know I'm not the only person with this issue. Someone else out there has to have it.

0:35:40 - Leo Laporte
Right and he never got it fixed and they closed the thread without a solution. That's frustrating, yeah, so so you're trying to do the download? I mean I guess you could down.

0:35:55 - Caller
You know you can download these updates separately and then imply Right, I've, I I'm able to pull up like the Microsoft windows update catalog.

0:36:04 - Leo Laporte
That's what you do. I know that works and that does work. So you're able to download those updates via the catalog. They do that for IT departments, right? You got 100 machines you want to update. You don't want to go to each machine and say, update, update, update. You go to the catalog, you download the update once and then you bring it around on a USBb drive or something and you update each machine. So that works fine.

0:36:29 - Caller
You're able to download from the catalog, fine yeah, it's just a bit of a hassle having to look at.

0:36:34 - Leo Laporte
Of course it is update, yeah um yeah, this is um a thorny issue. Out of sync in our discord. Our club Twitch chat says there used to be a windows update repair tool. But before you get your hopes up, it never worked.

0:36:53 - Caller
Right, yeah, I tried to go in the settings and look at that. That is grayed out for me.

0:36:58 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, uh, the windows clubcom. Joe's given us a link to uh fix windows update errors. Joe's given us a link to fix Windows update errors. That's interesting. So you wiped the drive and reinstalled Windows and it still happens.

0:37:13 - Caller
Yeah, I did what Microsoft recommended with the ISO install. I followed their recommended steps and it looked like it was going okay. But then when I would go under settings Windows update and I would let it download, I would let it sometimes sit there all day and it would stay stuck on downloading 0%.

0:37:33 - Leo Laporte
Wow, and you don't have a metered. You don't have it. You're not telling it. It's a metered connection, is it, are you?

0:37:38 - Caller
No, I made sure that was off.

0:37:40 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, that's a common hack people do to keep it from doing updates in the background, things like that. Delivery optimization not enabled. Yeah, it sounds like you have done everything. Uncheck boundary group option. I'm looking at a Reddit post in r slash sccm Same problem exactly right Updates and feature updates stuck at zero percent download. Oh, by the way, all that error code means is I waited and nothing happened and I'm giving up now. So it's merely saying exactly what you already know, which is the download's not starting, and you know reasonably, after a period of time it goes, I give up. So there are some this. I don't know if you've looked at this. This is a pretty obscure place to find it.

R slash SCCM the all things system center configuration manager yeah, we'll put this in the show notes center. Configuration manager yeah, we'll put this in the show notes. Um, thank you to, uh, our club members who are very useful in this stuff. Uh, this had a lot of features, but this unchecked boundary group option is interesting. Um, and then there there are other things like delta updates in the system, update client setting. These are network, I think network professionals for the most part.

0:39:12 - Caller
I've been able to download updates to it before previously, and one day it just stopped and gave me that error.

0:39:19 - Leo Laporte
So this is a four-month-old message. We'll put it in the show notes on the r slash SCCM.

0:39:26 - Caller
As far as the second issue with the Apple Airplay and the Roku TV, I feel like with the Google Wi-Fi, if they could just get like a reboot schedule option in there, because it seems like almost every Sunday before your show I'm having to do it first thing when I wake up.

0:39:43 - Leo Laporte
So you have to reboot it and then it.

0:39:45 - Caller
It works yeah, it works just fine, and I've tried replacing the wi-fi router the google wi-fi because I was having some range issues with my previous router. Yeah, and when I put on that reboot schedule, it picks the problem. No issue with the previous router, but this google wi-fi. You would think that they would add that in there for simplicity, but they didn't yeah, I have seen other routers that option to reboot daily and things like that.

0:40:13 - Leo Laporte
That's kind of an admission that there's something, yeah in the firmware that's wrong and we couldn't figure it out. They have a memory leak. So if you just reboot every day, um, but you shouldn't have to do that manually.

0:40:25 - Mikah Sargent
When I was connecting the two I with the Roku, I assigned it a static IP. I don't know if that's something that you tried. Yes, I can do that. That helped me maintain the connection with it. I don't use that now because I started to see how much Roku phones home so I didn't want it on the network at all, but that when I was doing that, that was what fixed. The issue for me was just giving it a static IP and letting it do its thing.

0:40:59 - Caller
Awesome. I will take note of that. Thank you so much.

0:41:03 - Leo Laporte
And, yeah, this subreddit has lots of good information. The delta content seems to be a common source of this error allowing a delta deploy. These are all you know it professions yeah, I've never had to touch like any advanced settings with it before you know what happens sometimes with windows is it gets flipped for some just accidentally or for some reason, just like a bug, yeah, or a cosmic ray particle.

It's the hard drive in exactly the wrong that seems pretty unlikely, but but something like that. This is a. This is really interesting, and here's an also an article that I got from that. This is from endpointerscom Troubleshooting Windows 11 upgrade delivery optimization error. This is what you've got, and this is actually a great page that has a lot of information on why this happens and what you can do about it. So this is good this is really good. I'll give you this link too.

0:42:10 - Mikah Sargent
And it's odd to me that an individual computer would even have delivery optimization as a feature, given that what delivery optimization is meant to do is let you download and update on one of your client machines and then use that locally to help update other client machines, so that you don't have to keep downloading from the server. And what's happening is the computer is having trouble gaining the access to the local and then it's just ceasing the download. But if you don't have a bunch of machines that have that, then you don't need to really use delivery optimization. And so to have that for a personal machine as opposed to in, you know, a giant work group is a little odd. But again, stuff gets flipped for some reason.

0:42:54 - Caller
Yeah, it's the HP desktop. I bought it off of Amazon like less than a year ago. It was certified from them and it's worked great. Yeah, I don't think that's the issue.

0:43:04 - Leo Laporte
I think some little weird setting got flipped, but I've put two links in the show notes. That should at least give you a lot of things to try and let us know if it works. Yeah, we'd love to know.

0:43:16 - Caller
Yeah, definitely.

0:43:18 - Leo Laporte
Is this your first time calling?

0:43:20 - Caller
No, I have called you before.

0:43:22 - Leo Laporte
And we remarked at that time on how good the quality is. That's the best phone call I ever heard. Yeah, it sounds great. What?

0:43:30 - Caller
are you using? Yeah, I'm actually on a Blue Yeti microphone.

0:43:34 - Leo Laporte
Ah, and you're on the phone or on Zoom? I am on Zoom. Ah, no wonder. Yeah, zoom, you sound like one of our hosts. That's why we use Zoom for the host. Hey, it's great to hear from you. We'll hear from you again, I hope, with a successful fix. Fingers crossed.

0:43:51 - Caller
I will keep you updated. Thank you so much.

0:43:54 - Leo Laporte
You're watching. Ask the Tech Guys Mikah Sargent, leo Laporte. We do this show every Sunday around 11 am Pacific, 2 pm Eastern, 1800, 1800 utc. So you can tune in and get your questions answered. You can always email us if we're not around atg@twit.tv and that phone number at the bottom of the screen that works all week long. If we're not here, you'll be able to leave us a voicemail 888-724-2884. Let's continue. It's time to say hello to Mad Magazine's modest writer, Dick DeBartolo. I have in my hands the latest August issue of Mad Magazine and I'm going to interpret. Look at this, autographed from Dick himself, and you can see that the rain cloud over Coney Island is Alfred E Newman. Everybody's getting wet, except for the people on the other side. That's a great. That's actually a really fun. It's the summer bummer issue and you have some good tips in here, Dick, right?

0:45:02 - Dick DeBartolo
I do. I have Mad's guide to stay safe on your summer vacation why is national lampoon crust? You know what? Because national lampoon made five vacation movies.

0:45:14 - Leo Laporte
So we thought oh, I get it yeah, you get it, I get it yeah but my, my favorite is uh.

0:45:20 - Dick DeBartolo
The last one is you know, they say put bows on your luggage and stuff yeah, yeah. No labels are better like nuclear waste body parts refrigerate immediately. Flesh eating bacteria samples in clothes.

0:45:36 - Leo Laporte
Oh, that's brilliant yeah.

0:45:38 - Dick DeBartolo
People are not going to take your luggage.

0:45:41 - Leo Laporte
In fact, I've heard baggage handlers say do not put bows and ribbons in your luggage. That's going to cause problems with our automated luggage systems.

0:45:48 - Dick DeBartolo
Yes, exactly, you get caught in the machinery. Yeah, yeah.

0:45:52 - Leo Laporte
Dick DiBartolo in Disneyland. You survived the heat dome.

0:45:57 - Dick DeBartolo
Oh my gosh. Yes, you know what, leo, I'm going to have you just show the back cover. Only because I'm kind of proud of this is of all things. The Norman Rockwell Museum has a huge mad exhibit that's going to run the entire summer.

0:46:14 - Leo Laporte
You told us about this last week and you helped them out, didn't you?

0:46:18 - Dick DeBartolo
One of the three consultants for the exhibit.

0:46:23 - Leo Laporte
I am so thrilled that DC, in their their infinite wisdom, decided to give this a plug on the back, cause I'm sure that was hard to convince them to. That is awesome. Museum gone mad, the art and humor of mad magazine. The Norman Rockwell museum is in beautiful Stockbridge, massachusetts, one of the most beautiful.

0:46:43 - Dick DeBartolo
That's right.

0:46:43 - Leo Laporte
I'm sorry you said you've been there. I love Stockbridge. It One of the most beautiful. Oh, that's right. I'm sorry you said you've been there. I love Stockbridge. It's gorgeous. Yeah, great, june 8th through October 27th. You know what, if you want to see a beautiful area of Massachusetts, they've got the trees and everything. It's beautiful. And go see the Norman Rockwell Museum. I guess Norman Rockwell lived in Stockbridge. That's probably why the museum's there.

0:47:05 - Dick DeBartolo
I believe he did, and we satirized so many of his pictures that it made sense.

0:47:13 - Leo Laporte
It is a little bit of a departure for them, but that's good. It is.

0:47:20 - Dick DeBartolo
So I do have two gadgets for you, One you, Leo, especially will love because it's from Aeropress. Yeah, Lisa's going to love this.

0:47:28 - Leo Laporte
Oh, wait a minute. Now we have. You know, we were doing Swedish death cleaning, so one of the things we had to do oh my God, did they go?

No, one of the things we had to do is go underneath the coffee bar. We have a. We love coffee so much. We have a dedicated coffee bar. That's just coffee, and underneath it are all the different ways I've purchased over the years to make coffee and I went under. There there were four more aero presses, including one travel aero press. I we were, I have, we had so many aero presses. Of course I didn't throw a single one out. One needs one's aero presses. One does. These are widely considered the best way to make coffee, weirdly from the same people who invented the aerobie frisbee clone yeah, that's.

0:48:15 - Dick DeBartolo
If you want to deliver coffee fast, you put it on the frisbee, can you?

0:48:19 - Leo Laporte
but I think they've found their uh. They found their new niche uh.

0:48:23 - Dick DeBartolo
Oh, absolutely so. June 1st they introduced the Aeropress Go Plus, so this is the entire Aeropress kit that is in a thermal mug Ooh.

0:48:40 - Leo Laporte
So we have the older one, we have the older travel one, everything fits down into it.

0:48:45 - Dick DeBartolo
Oh, nice, and a couple of neat things. Is the little sip thing that you sip from is magnetic. Ooh, so if you want to clean that separately, just pop it off the top.

0:48:57 - Leo Laporte
Oh, I thought you were going to say if you have metal lips, be careful. No lip rings.

0:49:05 - Dick DeBartolo
And the filters screw into a little compartment on the bottom of the thermal mug.

0:49:10 - Leo Laporte
I see that, that's clever yeah, it's very it's very compact yeah oh, you don't need the thermal mug, it can keep your coffee does it use the paper it does they go on the bottom?

0:49:20 - Dick DeBartolo
you, you have some parts you screw onto the bottom and look, look at that.

0:49:23 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, that one photo there, that one right there for folks who are listening. It shows how compact it is. It's just this little. What is that? A hexagon, yeah, a hexagonal prism.

0:49:35 - Leo Laporte
It's a hexagonal prism. Hexagonal prism?

0:49:37 - Dick DeBartolo
Well, I'll be damned no it doesn't print, but it is clever how everything fits into the.

0:49:46 - Leo Laporte
I'm getting this into the thermal Lisa, literally brings an AeroPress with her every time we travel. She doesn't trust other people's coffee. She also grinds about 10 pounds of coffee and puts it in her luggage, which always causes problems because it turns out drug dealers also do the same thing. They hide their drugs in the coffee, makes sense. So they invariably, and you know. Once she said can you carry my coffee? I said no problem. Oh no, they're going through the coffee looking for the bags of marijuana. Maybe they don't do that anymore because it's legal. But for a long time.

0:50:16 - Dick DeBartolo
Yeah, when the bag says dark roast, I don't think drugs, I know well, it is a drug, but it's a drug of choice and it's legal it.

0:50:24 - Mikah Sargent
It is a drug.

0:50:25 - Leo Laporte
Oh, this is awesome. Yeah, we have the predecessor, the Go, which isn't quite as useful because, for one thing, it's too small, so I'm going to get her the Plus.

0:50:37 - Dick DeBartolo
So that's great, yeah, the Go Plus. It's out this month. It's out this month Exciting.

0:50:43 - Leo Laporte
It's twice this month, exciting, it's twice as much.

0:50:44 - Dick DeBartolo
The other thing. I did not get to play with this, but Lenovo had an event Tuesday to celebrate the shipping of their first creative, their first co-pilot laptop.

0:50:58 - Mikah Sargent
Oh, the co-pilot plus, yeah, did you get?

0:51:01 - Dick DeBartolo
one. No, no, I think you can fill out a form and request one at some point. But it's called the Yoga Slim 7X. So it was a combination of Snapdragon, microsoft and Lenovo. And boy it's a great. It's a 3K screen. And boy it's a great. It's a 3K screen, backlit keyboard touchscreen, 14 inches and, uh, half of a terabyte of solid state memory. It seems reasonable to me 11.99, yeah, and I think it's 90 more. You can get a terabyte of solid state memory, and that started shipping tuesday, so that should be around.

0:51:53 - Leo Laporte
Best buy is going to carry it and lenovo has it on their website and this is the new processor which uh they're reporting is very, not only very speedy, but uh has great battery life, so I'm definitely yeah, and also it has one of this quick charge.

0:52:13 - Dick DeBartolo
If you start running out of battery power, it's 15 minutes charging for three hours of use.

0:52:20 - Leo Laporte
Maxed out it's $1,300. That's not bad. With 32 gigs of RAM and the terabyte solid state, that is really. That's a good price. Yeah, Incredibly good price. Oh, and I wish you hadn't mentioned that.

0:52:33 - Caller
So now I'm torn. Should I get the AeroPress Go Plus?

0:52:37 - Leo Laporte
or the Lenovo Yoga Slim 7X.

0:52:41 - Dick DeBartolo
I say Go Plus. You know what You're buying her the coffee I should buy myself something.

0:52:48 - Leo Laporte
You need something for yourself.

0:52:50 - Dick DeBartolo
It's like, even Steven, I bought you a coffee maker, so I thought I'd get a laptop as well.

0:52:52 - Leo Laporte
Yeah Well, give her a pound of coffee too. So I thought I'd get a laptop as well.

0:52:55 - Dick DeBartolo
Yeah Well, give her a pound of coffee too, so it balances more evenly Very nice, maybe a gift basket, yeah.

0:53:01 - Mikah Sargent
A gift basket $1,300 of coffee.

0:53:04 - Leo Laporte
We have so many ways. Dick, do you remember we were making cold brew and it looked like-.

0:53:09 - Dick DeBartolo
Weren't you making something where there was something in the air and you had to wait 24?

0:53:14 - Leo Laporte
hours. That was the cold brew and it would drip very slowly. People thought I had a meth lab in my house. It was like all this glassware and there was ice involved. It had this wooden frame and it was beautiful. But yeah, it took you a day to get a cup of coffee.

0:53:35 - Dick DeBartolo
I remember you said, dick, this coffee is going to be so great. And I said well, leo, my flight was three hours ago oh yeah, yeah, that was a bad.

0:53:45 - Leo Laporte
That was a bad period. Now you know what. Now I just want to go back to the percolator, can I?

0:53:51 - Dick DeBartolo
just have a mr coffee, please, just something I just, you know we don.

0:53:54 - Leo Laporte
We got so fancy with coffee now. It's so elaborate. One of the things I like about the AeroPress is it isn't elaborate, right, it's very simple. It's very simple, makes exactly one cup, so it's perfect. You know, you get up in the morning, you make your AeroPress. Lisa loves it every day and Michael, our 21-year-old. He has the Aeropress habit too. He'll set it up the night before because he has to work early.

0:54:15 - Dick DeBartolo
Oh, that's great. It's all ready to go.

0:54:17 - Leo Laporte
That's probably why we have four Aeropresses One for everybody in the family and any visitors. Dick DiBartolo, how do we get? I would love to get a copy, maybe I'd like to win an autographed copy. What the heck is it game?

0:54:33 - Dick DeBartolo
You can get one and it'll be that issue. You just have to guess what this thing is. Hmm, and because it's summer, there are less entries than usual. So you have a good chance this year to win the August Mad by guessing what that what?

0:54:55 - Leo Laporte
the heck that thing, is Let me just so here you go to go to, you have to go to wwwGizwizbiz. That was what's slowing me down If you just go to Gizwizbiz. It didn't work. For some reason it didn't work. Yeah, there's. You know, this has happened before. Call Myra. Myra is she still doing the website? No, Myra, is she still doing the website? No, oh, there's your problem. She retired. She retired. Who's doing your website? Me. Aha, now I understand all. Yeah now yeah, Get the dub, dub dub.

0:55:28 - Dick DeBartolo
Yeah, no soon. I'm going to have it on the web. I'm working on that. Put it on the web and then everybody can see it. Yeah, I have it on my desk.

0:55:42 - Leo Laporte
It looks great. Go to wwwGizwizbiz. Click the button that says what the heck is it right under there? The Gizwiz is the tech guy. This is the uh, I don't know what it is, but anyway, if you can figure out what?

it is. I'll tell you what. You don't really need to figure it out. There are six autographed copies of Mad Magazine for the right answer. There are 12 for the best wrong answers. Okay, but all the rules are there. That is right. If there are too many right answers or wrong answers, they'll do a drawing. You're playing for the Mad Magazine for August the summer bummer issue and you have until the end of june not very much longer. We're now not a week get to the end of june wow, I have no idea, wow I don't have to play.

0:56:27 - Dick DeBartolo
I'm not allowed to play but I know you could play well, you get an issue every month anyway, so why?

0:56:32 - Leo Laporte
wow, look at that, that's great. The centerfold, oh tom bunk. Tom bunk visits coney island. This is better than where's waldo I.

0:56:43 - Mikah Sargent
That's so funny because I was talking about where's waldo this morning is there any?

0:56:46 - Leo Laporte
is there anything like where's wall? Is there waldo in here?

0:56:49 - Dick DeBartolo
no, but occasionally there's the mad staff, so I haven't looked at that oh, you have to look for yourself sometimes I'm in them and sometimes I'm. This is so fun.

0:57:00 - Leo Laporte
They call it the shore losers department. This is coney island. All right, there's the original nathan's the wonder wheel. How fun little odessa. Thank you, dick de bartolo you are my hero.

0:57:17 - Dick DeBartolo
This is great fun mad maddest writer.

0:57:20 - Leo Laporte
Oh, Gizwiztv, you can watch the show every week and the Gizwiz podcast every week. Gizwiztv, you can even watch it live with chad and dick. Fire up the cameras and make and make magic. Thank you, dickie D. Bye-bye.

0:57:36 - Dick DeBartolo
Thank you guys. Bye.

0:57:40 - Leo Laporte
Gizwizbiz. We don't pay him, so I got to give him a plug. Dub, dub, dub, dub Gizwizbiz. All right, that was fun.

0:57:49 - Mikah Sargent
I don't know if you've ever noticed, but uh, when you go to that site, it redirects to Gizwizme, and so I've always just been going to Gizwizme forever, even though it says Gizwizbiz at the top. When you go to Gizwizbiz it redirects to Gizwizme.

0:58:05 - Leo Laporte
So Gizwizme, yeah, so that's so confusing. You know the internet as a whole is confusing and it is a hole it's a giant hole filled with weird stuff.

0:58:18 - Mikah Sargent
Can you?

0:58:18 - Leo Laporte
believe it, the 19th GizWiz show, 19th year of the night, 19 years of GizWiz, episode 1993, was this week. That's amazing Long time that show's been on All right, john Ashley.

0:58:34 - Mikah Sargent
What would you like us to do? Now? I'm going to pick up on a phone caller that I want to assume was is from the uk all right.

0:58:41 - Leo Laporte
The united kingdom remember star six to unmute yourself oh no, and I just knocked all the email on the floor. Wait a minute. Oh, I got a couple, that's all right you.

0:58:52 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, you're able to grab a few.

0:58:54 - Leo Laporte
Before the tower of email. It's getting higher, the leaning tower. Yeah, sundays are special, says Steve from Mesa Arizona, a $7 guy. You know what that means Club Twit. Yep, he says I enjoy Twit, especially everything Mac, mac Break, weekly, ios. Today, sundays are special with the tech guys this week in tech.

0:59:13 - Mikah Sargent
Today, sundays are special with the tech guys this week in tech. Thank you, Steve.

0:59:15 - Leo Laporte
Thanks, that's very sweet, steve. My problem is I can't leave my computer room without degrading the signal. Half a Laporte just doesn't make it. Is there a booster that will let me roam farther using my AirPods? Ah, bluetooth. So what he's doing, he's got his AirPods and he's got the show on his M1 Mac, his Mac studio. And as he and this happens to me too I often forget that I'm on the phone and I just I'm talking and I start walking and it starts going because the phone is back. There's no way to fix that, is there?

0:59:51 - Mikah Sargent
No, here's my recommendation. My immediate recommendation is to not use your. This is one option. Don't use your Mac as the way to watch it. Use your phone. If you use your phone or something portable anyway. Yes, because you'll be able to take that with you. But here's what's great your Mac can serve as an AirPlay destination. So if you want to have it pulled up as a display, you can watch it on your Mac as a display. Oh, so you start, but you start on your phone.

1:00:20 - Leo Laporte
Start on your phone and then you AirPlay your phone to your Mac studio. Yep, but you have. If you're doing that, can you still hear the audio in the AirPods From?

1:00:30 - Mikah Sargent
the AirPods From your phone. So then, when you walk away with your phone, it's going to play the audio.

1:00:35 - Leo Laporte
So you're watching on the Mac Studio. You get up, but you wisely put your phone in your pocket as you get up and then you wander away. The thing still plays in the Mac Studio, yes, but your audio never fails. But your audio is coming with you. Oh, that's so smart.

1:00:49 - Mikah Sargent
Because it's over Wi-Fi that it's going into your Mac, so into your Mac. So then you don't have that issue. I've also found that the Bluetooth radio, in my experience, is better from the iPhone than it is from the Mac I have. I've mentioned before it's. I live in a what is that called A split level home, so it's three levels and I can have my phone all the way on the top level, go down two flights of stairs into the garage and unless I'm at the far corner from where the phone is, I still have good signal. If I'm on my Mac, I just go down one flight of stairs and it starts to break up. So it's been my experience that it does do better on that. Yeah, you can also, as someone is pointing out in the chat, use HomePod minis to kind of spread the sound threat.

1:01:35 - Leo Laporte
Oh, that's a good idea, but if you live with other people that's rude. He says no, I don't want to complicate things beyond using AirPods for listening. So there you go. Yeah, so I hope you have an iPhone. That wouldn't really complicate anything.

1:01:45 - Mikah Sargent
Right, yeah, I think, do it from your device that you can move around with. Yeah, because the problem is they. So Bluetooth has the issue of being in the same frequency as so much other stuff that you have in your home, and so that's why turning on a microwave can interfere with your Bluetooth signal. Your wifi router can interfere with your Bluetooth signal.

1:02:12 - Leo Laporte
That's why they talk about bluetooth mice being an issue in your home. There are, though, bluetooth boosters.

1:02:19 - Mikah Sargent
Really world, I've never, I didn't know two of these connects just to the usb port are they real or are they elevator?

1:02:26 - Leo Laporte
door. That's a good question. Long-range bluetooth audio transmitter receiver for TVs? Huh Well, it's only $9. Now, this may really just be a Bluetooth adapter.

1:02:42 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, that might just add.

1:02:43 - Leo Laporte
Oh, but guess what? It's long range. It does say it goes 328 feet, wow, so this is for a desktop or laptop PC with Windows, so it's not going to be good if you're USB-A, yes. Yeah, I feel like these might be old devices. Let's see if we can find one that works with the Mac 328 feet. I was looking at the $9 one. This is the $19 one Still Windows required. Why would it require?

1:03:15 - Mikah Sargent
Windows.

1:03:18 - Leo Laporte
That's a good question, yeah, because wouldn't it just be plug and play?

1:03:20 - Mikah Sargent
shouldn't matter, it becomes your bluetooth transmitter, right you would basically be outputting your audio to it and then it does the output to other devices over bluetooth.

1:03:28 - Leo Laporte
These all do say windows, there are bigger boxes. Um, that's really interesting I don't.

1:03:35 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, no, car key fobs aren't using bluetooth. No, in most cases. Somebody asked in the chat if car key fobs use bluetooth bloom hd long range bluetooth 5.0 music receiver hi-fi see that's different because, yeah, that's, that's like a true this is 190.

1:03:52 - Leo Laporte
This is 110 more than the other one, but this seems like this. You know you put this somewhere in the house.

1:03:58 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, it does say amplifier, but again I don't know, because how does it know which Bluetooth signal to pick out of all of the Bluetooth signals that are flying around in the home? Is it going to grab all of them and boost all of them, or can you? How do you specify? And then, if you specify, is it going to take the bluetooth that you're trying to send? Yeah, I, I would have to see this in action to understand how a bluetooth amplifier could just amplify bluetooth.

1:04:24 - Leo Laporte
If I were to design such a thing, I would have it take the audio digital audio out of the mac studio yes, and become, and I think that's what it does, because if you look at it, it's it's designed to be connected to an amplifier, so stream 24-bit audio directly from your phone or tablet. I'd like it that supports these newer aptx codecs. Change pairing name iphone. So this isn't it looks like.

1:04:51 - Mikah Sargent
So is it only a receiver, or does it also transmit? Oh, I see what you're saying yeah, it seems like what it does is it takes music. Yeah, this isn't what you want, unless you look to.

1:05:09 - Leo Laporte
I don't know. It's also very expensive, so I don't know. I don't know what the answer is, but there are things that claim they will extend the range, might get it throughout your house. Maybe just get the nine dollar one.

1:05:22 - Caller
yes, give it a, give it a go give it a try, see what happens.

1:05:24 - Leo Laporte
See, I don't think it would really shouldn't really require any particular operating system, as long as the operating system could send audio at the usb port, which all can, including max, yeah. And then this thing is a bluetooth adapter with an antenna, which I think is the idea of how they get the longer range. Should I? I gotta stop doing this. I keep buying things that somebody asks about and you forget, and then well then, I don't need it, like, like, I have this little tiny keyboard, yeah it always ends up in leo's garage.

1:05:56 - Mikah Sargent
Did we end up showing that on?

1:05:57 - Leo Laporte
the yeah, we showed it and then that was it. Um, maybe I think I was sick that week.

1:06:02 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah nine dollars. I guess I could try it. I'm just really nervous about you plugging your computer. To be honest with you well, what could go wrong?

1:06:09 - Leo Laporte
it's from the edupe love store.

1:06:11 - Mikah Sargent
Okay, let me call up steve gibson right now. What could possibly?

1:06:14 - Leo Laporte
go wrong, possibly go wrong. Oh look, edupe has a lot of these things. Oh, I love edupe, love, edupe, love. Everybody knows edupe love, right, yeah, oh sorry, edupe, uh, bow and arrow love.

1:06:26 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, I like that because it's a cupid see uh, oh, what's that fancy thing that looks like it's got cooling fins on?

1:06:33 - Leo Laporte
it. This is a wi-fi 6 pce ie. Oh, you put it in your computer. It's got bluetooth 5 2 as well as, so if you had an older pc you could upgrade it to the latest and greatest for only 30 dollars for 30 dollars. I do love edu. And what do they call it? Edu love.

1:06:57 - Mikah Sargent
There's a thought yeah, good luck, but I think, if you have an, iPhone, pair it to the iPhone and carry it around with you.

1:07:05 - Leo Laporte
Leo, do you want to try that collar again? Oh yeah, you think you got them. Let's go to the jolly old and see press star 6. To unmute first name and the city, please. Oh, I'm calling from London. My name is Bala see.

1:07:16 - Caller
Press star six. To unmute First name and the city, please. Oh, I'm calling from London. My name is Bala, Hello Bala from London, england, welcome.

1:07:24 - Leo Laporte
It's nice to know we have a listener. Thank you, yes, in England.

1:07:29 - Caller
Well, yeah, I do follow you guys. Thank you, Bala. What can we do for you? Well, my question is it's a long story, but I'm going to keep it short my phone was snatched in central London recently. It's an iPhone, so then I want to remove the find my option. Would that be a problem?

1:08:00 - Leo Laporte
The only way you can remove it is if the original owner does it.

1:08:08 - Caller
Yeah, yeah. So if I remove it, I don't want to have my data on my iPhone. So what I did was yeah, so what I did was, when somebody snatched my phone in central London, I came home and then I put the phone on, find my device, that option on my iPad and then I did also use the erase option and then I did also use the erase option. Now I want to remove that iPhone from my iPad. But my question is if I remove the iPhone from my device, would that be a problem? I see what you're saying.

1:08:53 - Mikah Sargent
So there are a couple of things here, basically. So the phone was snatched and you did the thing where you went into find my and you popped it up and you said erase this device and all of its settings. So that has happened and now it's still showing up on. You're saying it's on your ipad. Basically, your ipad is just showing you what's still linked to your icloud account. If you do do remove that device from your iCloud account, that will free up that device to be able to be used in whatever way. What I would suggest that you do, before you ever remove the device from your account, is reach out to Apple support and let them know that this device was stolen. They will probably ask you for the serial number and that way yeah, they did.

1:09:46 - Caller
Okay, so you've done that. Sorry, I did call them yeah.

1:09:50 - Mikah Sargent
Good, good, good. So that's great. Because what that means is if that device ever shows up in an Apple store, that serial number is logged in the database and they will know that the device was stolen. So, um, once you've done that erase on the device, that is logged kind of in the system, and the second that that device reconnects to the network, then it will go through that process of erasing it. You can, if this is what I would suggest that you do, and maybe you've already done- this Before we do anything.

1:10:21 - Leo Laporte
your initial concern was your data on there. Your data's gone.

1:10:24 - Caller
That's correct and you don't have to worry. I don't care about the device.

1:10:27 - Leo Laporte
You know I've got the new iPhone now you don't have to worry about it because it's encrypted and unless they could unlock the device with your passcode, even if you hadn't erased it, they wouldn't be able to get your data. So you don't have to worry about your data, and now you've erased it, so it's even more safe, are you sure? Yes, it's encrypted.

1:10:48 - Caller
Wow, okay. So, because what happened was I was clubbing and in the morning I was off.

1:10:55 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, this is when you people lose their iPhones Absolutely Very common yeah.

1:11:01 - Caller
Yeah, and I was trying to book the Uber taxi to come home and suddenly two guys started talking to me because it's in central London, it was so busy. You know, it was Saturday morning, yeah, friday or Saturday, I can't remember and then they went away and then I started booking. I took my phone out of my pocket and suddenly one guy just boom and my phone was unlocked. Actually.

1:11:26 - Leo Laporte
So that was the worry. That's a reasonable worry if they can keep it.

1:11:31 - Caller
But nothing happened, actually Nothing, yeah, sorry. They have to keep it unlocked.

1:11:35 - Leo Laporte
But, nothing happened. Actually Nothing, yeah sorry. They have to keep it unlocked. Nothing happened since my phone is. So there's two ways that people and this is very common with snatching they either shoulder surf you when you unlocked the phone. If you entered a code, they shoulder surfed you to steal the code.

1:11:50 - Caller
No, it was a face ID. But if you use face ID, then they can't steal your code.

1:11:55 - Leo Laporte
That is better. However, if they get your phone while it's unlocked, now, in order to use it, they have to keep it unlocked, Because the minute it locks, all bets are off, right, yeah, so I guess they could keep going like this all day. They haven't done that, I'm sure. And then you sent the erase command.

1:12:15 - Caller
Yeah, nothing happened.

1:12:17 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, and you sent the erase command, which then erases the data.

1:12:21 - Mikah Sargent
It does, as long as it connects and gets that command. That's, that's my. Were you able to use find my to spot the device again? Like you, you saw it on a map somewhere.

1:12:31 - Caller
Because, yeah, yes. So what happened was when I came home, because my SIM card, well, it's a phone and that phone was connected to my iPad. So when I came home I tried to use my ID and it didn't let me in because it was asking me the question, you know that is this the right owner to accept it? So, of course, because the phone was stolen. And then, of course, I did go on my PC and then I logged into it and then I used the you know, find mine. But then I had to wait for my new phone and the same number with the different SIM card, and that's how I did it. Then I went back to my account, then, blah, blah, blah, I re-signed it up. Yeah, so as soon as you get the new SIM card, the old, ones deactivated If they were not able to keep your phone

1:13:27 - Leo Laporte
from locking, which I suspect after. I mean, how long are you going to sit there going with your finger to keep it unlocked? As soon as it locked, they don't have access to it. In fact, what typically happens we talked about this a couple of weeks ago is they'll start sending you annoying text messages saying remove your phone from Find my because they can't do anything with it. They can't sell it, they can't reuse it, they can't take, they can't even use the parts, they can't even take it apart for parts.

1:13:56 - Caller
So uh, yeah, so it depends why. Why did they? Why?

1:13:58 - Mikah Sargent
why they're stealing it well, because they snatched it after you had unlocked it. They probably were trying to do that shoulder surfing thing. Um, unfortunately well, fortunately, rather, uh, some of the the system has changed in later updates that make it more difficult to do that, and it's just possible that these crooks didn't know that that has happened and so you can. Technically, there are some of the pieces that, again, for quite a while, were able to be used for parts, but Apple just updated its terms that make it harder for you to use stolen parts.

1:14:35 - Leo Laporte
They're paired to your account, just like everything else. This all started last year when Joanna Stern in the Wall Street Journal talked about this. Yeah, I saw that. I saw that news.

1:14:46 - Caller
Yeah.

1:14:47 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, and it happened to her outside a bar, right, so or didn't happen to her, but yeah that's correct. Yeah, same thing. So after this story, apple responded by making this even more difficult, so I don't think you have anything to worry about if you don't care. If somebody gets to use your phone, you could remove it from find my yeah, because the data is gone.

1:15:10 - Mikah Sargent
You've erased it now, as soon as they as long as it was able to connect with the server to see that you said erase.

1:15:17 - Caller
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Sorry, sorry guys, I have used the option erase, but the phone is still there. You know it's not gone, it's still there on my. Those are two different things.

1:15:28 - Mikah Sargent
My, option as it will be forever to stay there yep, unless you remove it, because those are two different things. One is telling it to erase all of the data on the phone, but that doesn't remove the find, my activation lock protection. The reason it's still showing up on your account is because it's still locked, it's still pending.

1:15:47 - Caller
Oh, it says pending.

1:15:48 - Leo Laporte
So, that's good news In some ways it means they were not able to connect it to any network. So what they did after they stole it by the way, somebody steals your phone from a nightclub in the middle at 3 am is not the smartest people in the world, so they don't know that that phone is worthless. But they've got it. They turned it off. It sounds like they turned it off immediately, which means they now no longer can get into it. The minute it's turned on, it'll register with any. As soon as it registers with the network. It will then immediately get erased.

But the fact that it is yeah, the fact that it hasn't been erased means. Here's what happened. They got it, it's locked. They go oh screw it. And they threw it in the thames and so it it. You know it's off and it's gone. Now, if you wanted to really harm them, you would not remove it from find my for a while?

1:16:39 - Mikah Sargent
yeah, but who cares? It could be a waiting game honestly.

1:16:41 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, I mean, it just depends on how much you want to harm them. So if you, if you wait, well, I mean I?

1:16:47 - Caller
I, yes, I saw the news about um iphone stolen in london. Yeah, I've sent to China, apparently Exactly, and they're using the parts Exactly, which they won't be able to do either.

1:17:04 - Leo Laporte
So as long as you don't unlock it Now, the next step is you might start getting text messages to your new phone because it's the same phone number saying hey, I'm an innocent person that just happened to buy this phone and I can't use it. Would you mind removing it? And then they get more and more irate we talked about this the other day and they'll start threatening you and your family. Just ignore it.

1:17:28 - Caller
Oh, yeah, they get mean they're trying to scare you, but they can't.

1:17:32 - Leo Laporte
They're not going to do anything. That's the famous. I'm going to send Miami to ruin your life.

1:17:37 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, yeah, leo and I, I don't know if we'd have different um methods of dealing with it inter. I know if it were me I would keep it on my account until I saw that a race go through. I would want that race pending.

1:17:49 - Caller
I haven't I haven't removed it. I thought I better ask you guys, because you guys are the experts, isn't it? So yeah, that yeah. That's the reason I'm calling you.

1:17:57 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, I, yeah, you might feel differently. I'm curious.

1:18:00 - Leo Laporte
So yeah, it might be.

1:18:03 - Mikah Sargent
it's on a boat to China, turned off Because I mean they're not going to as soon as am I wrong that as soon as they turn it on, it connects to a cellular network or a Wi-Fi network to a cellular network or a Wi-Fi network. The second that it makes that connection that will go through.

1:18:16 - Leo Laporte
Apple sends a signal and it goes poof. So the fact that it hasn't happened yet means that it may be on a slow boat to China, and you may, but as soon as they turn it on it's going to erase itself. If they don't turn it on, they can't get your data anyway. And even if they can turn it on and it didn't erase itself let's say they turn it on in a Faraday bag, which they may do, and it didn't erase itself they have to unlock it to get to your data and it's encrypted.

Now I mean, if you're really paranoid, it is the case that law enforcement apparently has machines made by a company called Celebrite that can plug into your iPhone and take all the data off, but I think even then it has to be unlocked first for them to be able to read that data. It's encrypted. So right?

1:19:04 - Mikah Sargent
Am I wrong? I think so. I'm not sure. We've heard stories that law enforcement can get into it.

1:19:11 - Leo Laporte
In the past maybe it was with a bug. You may remember the San Bernardino terrorist the FBI demanded that Apple decrypt the phone. Apple refused and then the FBI mysteriously gave up. They had apparently found a way, using a bug, to get into it. There are companies that sell these. So if you're worried about law enforcement, then maybe there's something to be worried about. But almost 99% law enforcement doesn't snatch phones from nightclubs in the wee hours of the morning.

1:19:40 - Caller
Oh, no, no. No, the phone was snatched outside the club at Leicester Square. I don't know if you've been to London.

1:19:47 - Leo Laporte
Have you guys been to London. I love London, yes, and I know.

1:19:50 - Caller
Leicester Square. Yeah, so, yes. So I was booking an Uber taxi around that area, you know, chinatown and then Postal Road and Chinatown and then Leicester Square. I was in a club nearby and then I was on the street in the morning at 3 o'clock. This is what happens.

1:20:07 - Leo Laporte
The gangs rove around at 3 in the morning they rove around, they think people are a little bit happy and they grab them, and then they get a hundred of them and they ship them off to China, where they're going to get a few bucks per by the way. And maybe they can take it apart. I wouldn't worry about it. I would leave it on. Find my as long as you can tolerate it. Eventually they're going to give up.

Yeah, eventually they're going to give up. You're safe. Your data is not, unless again you've got you know. Mi6, trying to get your information.

1:20:46 - Caller
I think, you're safe. They're worried about my data.

1:20:49 - Leo Laporte
I don't think they are. I think you're safe. No, I don't think so.

1:20:51 - Caller
Yeah, criminals don't criminal gangs don't have access to this stuff. Yeah, yeah, how about the scans I put on my notes? Are they? Can they be accessed when the phone is locked?

1:21:06 - Mikah Sargent
Not when it's locked.

1:21:07 - Leo Laporte
no, Because I've got my properties, my passport scans and my bank, my, my investment was scanned and you know what? You're not alone, Vanta. Everybody puts everything on their phone. You know my passport's on there.

1:21:24 - Caller
It's a walking wallet. That's a really good way to describe it.

1:21:30 - Leo Laporte
So they stole your wallet, but the good news is it's locked, they can't get into it and they can't even use the parts at this point, right, so it really depends on how badly you want to push this. I mean, yeah, leave it on, uh, find my for another year and by then you can, if it's bothering you that you keep seeing it. I have so many devices. When I look at find my, I have phones that I haven't used in 20 well, not 20, but a long time watches.

I got, I got all this stuff well, and also because I do hand me downs. Yeah, this is the I have. Look how many henry's iphones I have. Look at this. Look at this henry's iphone, henry's iphone oh my god hen erase pending. Henry's iPhone Chicago, Dave's AirPods Chicago.

1:22:18 - Dick DeBartolo
Dave's, I asked.

1:22:18 - Leo Laporte
Henry. I said I gave you those AirPods. What the hell did you give them to some guy named Chicago Dave? He said, no, that's the name I use when I register them. I said, okay, fine, so I have two Chicago Dave's AirPods, a bunch of Henry's stuff. So this stuff is all on Find my. It's never been erased, right.

1:22:36 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah.

1:22:38 - Leo Laporte
This is my mom's stuff. So you know, I guess if you don't mind having a lot of stuff on your Find my, leave it Because they can't. Now you're really screwing with them Still linked to you, and it'd be funny if you start getting messages threatening you. Don't take it seriously. This is from the guy in china who's really trying to steal your stuff. Just laugh, even if he threatens your family. You're okay, you're safe. Hey, I'm really glad you listen. Stay away from leicester square, notoriously a trouble spot in greater london. It's really great to talk to you. Keep listening. You're watching. Ask the tech guys. That's Mikah Sargent and I'm leo laporte, continuing on with some fantastic call. I love that call right here. That was a fun call. That was yeah, stay away from lester square, you know? Uh, a lark sang in Leicester Square a nightingale, I believe.

1:23:36 - Mikah Sargent
Sing sweet nightingale.

1:23:39 - Leo Laporte
Hello and welcome to the show. Press star six, so we can hear you. Hi guys, can you hear me? Yeah, welcome to the show. What's your first name, hi, and what city are you calling from?

1:23:52 - Caller
Well, I was listening to the beginning of the show and I I know you. You have your nuts. What is it?

1:24:00 - Leo Laporte
you don't recognize faces, or what was it a fantasia yes okay, it's vidak from montenegro vidak is uh, gave me a montenegrin hat. It's a beautiful hat which I still have in my other office he came out to visit Are you still in Montenegro?

1:24:18 - Caller
Right, yes, I am. I'm in the Bay of Kotor Bay of Kotor.

1:24:22 - Leo Laporte
It is so beautiful that we took a cruise to that area and they spent a whole day scenic cruising the Bay of Kotor. So that's how beautiful it is.

1:24:33 - Caller
I mean, if you like history, you're set when it comes to the Bay of Kotor.

1:24:38 - Leo Laporte
It's really incredible. Nice to see you again, Vidak. I thought you looked familiar, but I didn't remember. Well, at least I looked familiar. I can't, if I close my eyes, I can't see my kids' faces. That is wild to me. I can't. I can't see my wife.

1:24:53 - Caller
All I say to that is uh, be careful diagnosing yourself with the help of the internet well, that's a good point, that's a really good point.

1:25:02 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, yeah, I tell my daughter that, but am I, do I listen?

1:25:06 - Mikah Sargent
no, you're saying it's not a brain tumor.

1:25:08 - Leo Laporte
I thought I had right, I was just surprised that other people can see all those things. So what can we do for you, videk?

1:25:17 - Caller
So I have a problem with a mesh router which is made by Xiaomi, which is quite popular here in the Balkans, which is it's not doing the mesh thing. Which is it's not doing the mesh thing, meaning I have two routers, or two nodes, basically, which are linked to one another, which is how mesh is supposed to work. One is a gateway and the other is a node which is on the other side of the house, because that's where I need the internet to continue doing internet things. Uh, and my devices from the other end of the house, which is my laptop, which is what I'm using to talk to you guys, instead of connecting to the closest node, which is literally, like I don't know, five feet away from me, it connects to the other node on the other side of the house, and I cannot get it to do what it's supposed to do, which is connect to the closest one.

My internet speed suffers from it, I mean, which is understandable, but basically, to be able to talk to you guys, I had to unplug the other node of the other house. Oh, that's frustrating. Literally unplugged it. That's so weird. I can't figure out in the app as a Mi Home app or something like that on iPhone and on iOS and Android. There is no such thing as I was looking for, something like, I don't know, wi-fi steering or something like that.

Right, yeah, Band steering yeah, at least I can't find it. So do you guys have an idea how to solve this? Why is it joining the?

1:27:13 - Mikah Sargent
farthest node Remind me oh there's the hat. You said it's for your computer. Is this a laptop or is it a? Yeah, it's a.

1:27:23 - Caller
MacBook.

1:27:24 - Mikah Sargent
It's a M2 MacBook, so you occasionally walk into the range of the other one in theory. Yes or no?

1:27:33 - Caller
Not really. I mean, it doesn't move from my room.

1:27:37 - Leo Laporte
They all have the same name, right? They're all the same SSID, right?

1:27:41 - Mikah Sargent
Right yeah, because that's supposed to make it easier for them to switch between the two. So I've actually had this issue before too, and I didn't, I'm sorry to say I didn't have a way to solve it. I just had to kind of deal with it, and this was with devices that did have like band steering and with with more going on.

1:28:05 - Leo Laporte
All the devices are Xiaomi devices. They're all the same family.

1:28:10 - Caller
Mine. No, I only have a mesh router, but here's the kick. So you have one router, I router, but here's the kick, so you have one router.

1:28:17 - Leo Laporte
I'm confused.

1:28:22 - Caller
What's the other device? It's just a node.

1:28:23 - Leo Laporte
It's also a Xiaomi, though, right? Yes, yes, yeah. So it's part of the mesh Right In fact, when you buy the base station. Do you get these nodes as well? You get another node? Yes, so this is sorry, I didn't. I didn't get no. No, I think I understood it. It's all in the family.

1:28:41 - Caller
In other words, yes here's the here's the kick, though I, before buying mine my mesh system I tried the same exact system I borrowed from. Borrowed it from a friend at my neighbor. He was like well, before you buy it, try it and see if it works. It worked flawlessly. Oh, dang it, Like no issues whatsoever. And then I buy mine and it does well that.

1:29:08 - Mikah Sargent
Okay, that could tell you something. That could mean that there's something going on with the router firmware. Have you tried reaching out to xiaomi about it to say, hey, I think mine isn't working and they could maybe replace it? Uh, as someone is suggesting, you could factory reset, which I know is no fun. I know it's no fun at all I tried it two times.

1:29:31 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, you've done that okay and you're not doing anything like saying you use this channel, you use this channel. You're not doing, you're not fussing with done that okay. And you're not doing anything like saying you use this channel, you use this channel. You're not doing, you're not fussing with it in any way. You're letting no, no, no, out of the box, okay it's supposed to be plug and play.

It is, and then it is yeah so, uh, let me, let me re -understand what you said. So you have the base station, you have the node. Do you have the base station? You have the node? Do you have more than one node?

1:29:58 - Caller
No, just the one. What is happening is I have it plugged in. I have the base station plugged in to my other router, which is supplied by Montenegro Telecom.

1:30:14 - Leo Laporte
Wait a minute, now I have an idea what's going on. Okay, so you can you tune. Turn the telecoms router into bridge mode.

1:30:23 - Caller
Yes, it, does it automatically it doesn't matter, it kills its it kills its dhcp.

1:30:29 - Leo Laporte
Okay, so it's. Its wi-fi is off and it's not doing any DHCP, because you don't want dual NAT, you don't want two devices doing the NAT, which would actually cause what you're talking about. So good, so it's not. You're sure it's not doing anything, it's just passing it, it's just a cable modem, in effect.

1:30:50 - Caller
It's supposed to be. I mean, I haven't specifically checked when you use your neighbors, you use that right setup and it worked fine.

1:30:58 - Mikah Sargent
Yes, so you've already confirmed that it works with your neighbors right.

1:31:01 - Caller
As soon as you plug in the cable, the wi-fi antenna goes off on the I'm sorry, on the telecom supplied router and the xiaomi thing takes over. So, as far as I can tell, the only thing the telecoms router does is the internet.

1:31:20 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, serve as a motor that's what you want.

1:31:22 - Leo Laporte
You want to be a cable modem and not doing that? Uh, and not using wi-fi either. Uh, tell me about the lights on the front. Um, does the mesh light a solid white? Yes, okay, yes, so I'm looking at the manual for the AX3000. I don't know if that's the one you have it is, that's the exact one, okay.

Yeah, so the lights are important to make sure that you are actually meshing with that remote node Right, actually meshing with that remote node, right. So when you first turn it on, you see blinking slowly as it discovers the satellite, and then blinking quickly when it's pairing, and then it should be solid white. It is connected. So that tells us that the the node is connected and is is, in theory, providing internet. Uh, I'm wondering if there's something wrong with the node like it's it. It's thinking it's doing its thing, but it's not. You know, um, because you have to turn, you have to unplug the node to to be on the line with us, right?

1:32:33 - Caller
right, yeah, currently my. As soon as you plug in the node, yes, what happens? It just dies on the line with us. Right, right, yeah. Currently my MacBook is connected.

1:32:37 - Leo Laporte
Yes, what happens? It just dies.

1:32:41 - Caller
No, my internet speed is 64 megabits down. Yeah. And something or other app. I can't remember it, but as soon as I plug in the other node, my internet speed goes from 64 megabits a second to like three.

1:33:01 - Leo Laporte
I think there's something wrong with the node. Can you borrow your friend's node? Not the whole thing, just the node.

1:33:08 - Caller
I could try that actually yeah, I wonder if there's something wrong with that node?

1:33:12 - Leo Laporte
that it's not. So the way a mesh system works. It's a little bit like the old wi-fi extenders, except better. The old wi-fi extenders cut the bandwidth in half, because half the time they were talking to your computer, half the time they're talking back to the base station, so it's like a handoff device, right? The? The only difference in a mesh router like your Eros or this Xiaomi is it has a separate back channel, so it's always communicating with the main system and then independently communicating with your laptop. Instead of this, it's going full time. That means it should be full speed. However, sounds like something's wrong. It may be also the placement of the node, uh it. So it's not getting a solid back channel to the mat, the main master.

1:34:04 - Caller
So another thing you might try before you borrow your friends is putting that node somewhere else I did and also the current placement is where the my friends uh yeah, I understand system used to be, you know, and I also tried moving it around the house.

1:34:21 - Leo Laporte
It didn't same thing I think the note is bad. Try it with your friend's note. If you get the same problem, then that's worse. The base station's bad, but something so you understand the problem. It's there two potential places. It could be the node communicating with the base station isn't getting full speed connection. It could be the node connecting with your laptop isn't getting a good connection. So there's two places where it could be slowing down, and both of those would be maybe a broken antenna or something wrong with the node.

1:34:57 - Caller
I mean, unless something happened in shipping. Well, it can happen.

1:35:01 - Leo Laporte
God knows, yeah Right, god knows right, it can happen what was that you were saying.

1:35:06 - Mikah Sargent
I mean a stray solar particle, Cosmic particle?

1:35:10 - Leo Laporte
People mock me when I say that, and you shouldn't mock a guy with a Montenegro hat on Amen. Is this the standard headgear in montenegro? I'm just curious, or are you? It's a true?

1:35:21 - Caller
it's traditional headwear. It's not worn every day, it's just traditional for special occasions, like talking to that.

1:35:30 - Leo Laporte
So, um, but people mock me. But it is true that we are. We know, because of the coronal mass ejection that just happened a couple of weeks ago we're constantly bombarded with cosmic rays, solar particles. They hit your computer and they cause errors. Has said all computers should have error correcting RAM, because that's the source of a lot of computer crashes. Is cosmic particles causing errors in the RAM flipping a bit and the RAM not detecting it. So I rest my case. I look like a judge. Do the judges wear this?

1:36:10 - Mikah Sargent
in modern day Could? I use that if I don't get an A on a test. Yes, it was a cosmic ray.

1:36:16 - Leo Laporte
So, vidak, I think there's literally some hardware issue. I don't think it's anything else.

1:36:21 - Caller
Well, if it's a cosmic ray, I can't really do anything about it.

1:36:25 - Mikah Sargent
But Xiaomi can maybe replace the node for you.

1:36:28 - Caller
I mean, I'll try that. Yes.

1:36:31 - Leo Laporte
You don't have much faith in customers, At least go get your friend's node and just say can I just Right, that's a good idea.

1:36:37 - Caller
I didn't think of that.

1:36:44 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, and that way you can at least narrow it down. I bet you you're going to have the same problem. If it's the same problem, then it's the router, the base.

1:36:52 - Caller
If it goes away, it's the node. Hope it's the node because you can get another node easy Right, right Before, before I hang out, can I ask another question which is hopefully you can ask any question you want, because as long as I have the montenegro hat on, you're in charge okay, good, um, okay, I have a friend. I hope she's not watching the show, because that this will ruin the surprise.

1:37:13 - Leo Laporte
Oh, um, I guarantee you she's not watching the show.

1:37:19 - Caller
Go ahead well, I don't know, but um, she does. Um, she records instagram videos for clients, meaning she records other people being in front of the camera, or for her client. And she asked me, uh, what she wants to get a like a lavalier style microphone to clip on to the host shirt and record it that way.

1:37:48 - Leo Laporte
I advised against the the 25 dollar chinese knockoff microphone smart yes yeah, uh, I am thinking of getting her as a surprise for her birthday a uh road mic I was just gonna suggest that, yes strongly the wireless pro or the wireless emmy, yeah, yeah, these are uh as good as you can get for a lot. They're a little ugly because they're they're not little lobs like you see on TV, they're squares, but they do a nice job.

1:38:21 - Caller
Would that work with our iPhone?

1:38:23 - Leo Laporte
Yeah.

1:38:25 - Caller
I mean, I'd probably get a. What is it? Something TRRS to lightning or something like cable? Is that what I need?

1:38:34 - Leo Laporte
No, I don't think you need that. I think it um I think bluetooth.

1:38:38 - Caller
I think it pairs. I think it pairs to the uh phone.

1:38:42 - Leo Laporte
I don't know. You'll have to look. Uh see, there she is. She's shooting with an iphone right there. By the way, 54 32-bit float, which is great, which means you cannot clip on this thing. You can clip the hardware but not the software, and I think they have it. What I think is they have an app for the iPhone that you run on the iPhone.

1:39:06 - Caller
Yeah, that's good.

1:39:06 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, yeah, I mean in every case. Here they're showing people using it with an iPhone. So it does have an analog and digital output. So if she has a modern iPhone you said lightning- she's got an iPhone 15, I think so it connects directly. It has a USB-C connection so my idea is good your idea is excellent.

Well, finnect is an example of one of the blessings that I have, and you have, from doing TWIT over all these years we have. We have friends all over the world and I always love hearing from you, fidac, and it was great visiting you. You really are a blessing to us to know that you're there listening in Montenegro. It's great. Thank you, fidac.

1:39:54 - Caller
Well, thank you guys. I like calling the show, so always welcome.

1:39:57 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, can I take the hat off now, you can.

1:40:01 - Caller
The lifting of the hat. I love this hat, though.

1:40:04 - Leo Laporte
It's so cool, yeah, isn't it? I'm glad you like it, it's got your name in it.

1:40:08 - Caller
Yeah, that's right.

1:40:11 - Leo Laporte
Is that so I wouldn't forget who gave it to me? Yes, it was the signature. Jammer B did the same thing. He gave me an antique telephone. He wrote his name on it, so I wouldn't forget him. No, I wrote your name on it, oh, okay, well, same idea, same idea that's good I wish I did that with everything people donated. Thank you, vedak, it's great to talk to you. Take care.

1:40:33 - Caller
Bye, guys, take care. Oh, you have to one other suggestion, darn it Uh.

1:40:37 - Leo Laporte
the both John and the discord suggested he could take his node over to his friends. That'd be the first thing, vidak. Take your node to the friends. See if it does the same thing at your friends.

1:40:47 - Mikah Sargent
Right, yeah, if it. If it, that would be a great diagnostic, you know, problem.

1:40:52 - Leo Laporte
The reason I'm hesitant is because rf is just voodoo and there could be something weird and exactly. You never know what's going on, what's going on? But you were smart to borrow your friend's system first. That wasn't a bad idea, but, uh, all right. Uh, we are at the top of the hour. Is there anything we need to do? Uh, besides, say you're watching, Ask The Tech Guys. With this cat here, mike a sergeant, I'm leo lap. Oh, I should thank our club members.

1:41:18 - Mikah Sargent
That's always an important thing to do, they're pretty great.

1:41:20 - Leo Laporte
We love our Club TWiT members and we'd love to have you in the club. $7 a month gets you all ad-free shows. You get video on the shows that we don't put publicly as video. They're audio only. Like iOS Today, Scott Wilkinson's Home Theater Geeks, Untitled Linux Show you know all those audio only shows hands on mac Mikah does that. Hands on Windows with Ppaul Thurrot. So you get video with those. Uh, you get access to special events. Thursday Stacey and I are going to do uh, I'm I'm actually really nervous about this our book club, Stacey's Book Club, is Thursday, june 27th, 2 pm. Pacific. I hate the book. Oh, what do I do if I hate the book? Have you read it yet? John high voltage I don't know what to say to her. I have hated the book before. It won't be the first time.

1:42:13 - Mikah Sargent
And then on Wednesday, July 17th, but so tune in on the 27th to see how I handle this, and then Wednesday, july 17th, Mikah's crafting corner. Yeah, we had our first one. Uh, thanks to John Ashley for joining me what did you craft lego?

1:42:29 - Leo Laporte
yeah, he did lego.

1:42:30 - Mikah Sargent
I was doing some crochet. Uh, Dr. Mom stopped by oh she's a real crafter knitting she's a premier knitter and it was a great time and we're going to continue to kind of play around with things and see what we do.

1:42:44 - Leo Laporte
So I just, I think the club is such fun and it really helps us meet our bottom line requirements and we just love having you in the club. So, please, if you're not yet a member twit.tv/clubtwit. And you know what? If you can't afford seven bucks, I understand that's fine. That's how you make almost all of our content available. Uh, for free, ad supported. Just, the ads aren't supporting it as well as they used to. It's kind of a, it's tilting, it's leaning like this. So, if you imagine the twit network has two posts, okay, supporting it, one of them, well, actually three. So there's the advertisers, there's our wonderful community right here in the middle, and there's our Club. There's a Club and they hold it all up, but the advertisers have slowly been letting down their, their portion of it and you can't you can't stand up on two. We have a great audience and we have a great club, but yeah, so so the Club is, I guess, really gonna have to beef up the uh.

1:43:45 - Mikah Sargent
That that analogy doesn't work no third leg anyway okay some sort of tripod situation?

1:43:54 - Leo Laporte
I tried, you did, I know you were halfway there. It was so close. Johnny Jet is not here right. He will be back next week. He has two weeks no, so yeah, he'll.

1:44:07 - John Ashley
He'll be in two weeks and he'll be in in two weeks.

1:44:10 - Mikah Sargent
He'll be on the show in two weeks.

1:44:12 - Leo Laporte
Sitting in this chair? No, sitting on the floor. No, he'll be calling in.

1:44:16 - Mikah Sargent
Oh, okay, yeah but he might be swinging by later in July though.

1:44:20 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, we were hoping to see him. I thought that was then. What else, what else? Let's take a call. Yeah, I want to pick up on this caller right here and I shall get a stack of email Hello this caller right here.

1:44:34 - Mikah Sargent
Remember star six to unmute yourself. Tell us your name and from where you, hence when you hence Greetings.

1:44:45 - Leo Laporte
Greetings and salutations. What's your first name?

1:44:50 - Caller
I'm Tim, and I hence from Minnesota.

1:44:52 - Mikah Sargent
Hence from Minnesota, tim from Minnesota.

1:44:54 - Leo Laporte
Hello Tim. What can we do for you?

1:44:58 - Caller
Well, a couple questions. I hope they're brief and easy to answer. I'll start with the first one and hopefully it's a segue. I'm really I don't know. I'm baffled by the fact that Apple puts out its mass privacy efforts, and especially in every way on its mobile devices, and yet the various items that you load on your phone, that they provide you through the App Store it's like all the apps are basically Trojan horses to collect your data. Yeah, that's right. Looking at any app that you download from the app store, if you go into the privacy settings and see what is collected, you can go page after page after page say a face, say on the facebook thing, what is collected and just wondered why do they allow that? And isn't there like an electronic mode they can create around these apps to keep them off the rest of your information on your phone?

1:46:07 - Leo Laporte
so why they allow it is because, uh, it's kind of it's kind of precedent um apple would say if you didn't put any apps on your phone, it'd be nice and private, right, and they provide with most of the apps you need. All you need is it's right there, stop using. I do know people who never install an app on their iPhone.

1:46:25 - Mikah Sargent
Uh, but yeah, the precedent was kind of set because, especially in the beginning, those apps were not phoning home because they wanted to profile and get information about you to market to you. But in many ways, the first reason that all of that stuff was installed was to see when an app started misbehaving, when there were crashes, so that the developer was able to fix it, and then over time, that kind of knowledge has morphed into becoming so much more. I want to recommend a third-party app. Of all things. It is an app called OneBlocker, and OneBlocker started out as a simple content blocking app that basically allows, whenever you're in Safari, to stop ads from loading, to stop trackers.

But what OneBlocker has added is an actual firewall setting that is installed at your phone's level and if you enable this firewall, it will stop apps across your entire phone from being able to phone home.

And so, while Apple's internal system that thing that you went to to see how all of those apps are phoning home only tracks when they're doing that, one blocker will actually let you completely block those apps from being able to phone home. Because, again, what it does is it installs what's called a provisioning profile, essentially, and all that does is at the system level. It says here's what's allowed out, here's what's not allowed out. It's a firewall. It's a firewall for your phone, and so apps aren't able to do that. Now it has been my experience that some apps run into issues loading certain content. So you do run the risk of those third-party apps not working exactly how you expected them to, and you may have to turn it off in some instances. But if you are truly concerned about those apps, phoning home one blockers firewall is a way that I have been able to block app trackers.

1:48:27 - Leo Laporte
You ask a really good question, which is Apple claims to care about our privacy. Why don't they stop this? And remember, they did add this thing called application tracking transparency more than a year ago. It was a switch. In fact, every time you install an app, you'll see a pop-up from apple saying do you want this app? Do you want to allow this app to track you across other apps? And you can say yes or no to it. Most people the last time I saw it was something like 80 of of Apple users say no, you can't. Apple.

We've got such heat for this including, by the way, from the United States Congress. Facebook said that cost us billions of dollars a year. People were very upset about this and that was, by the way, the smallest little thing that Apple could do. It didn't prevent apps from tracking you themselves while you're using the app. So, yeah, I think Apple would probably love to do this. But remember, some of this stuff is for functionality. For instance, you could say, well, google Maps tracks me everywhere I go. Well, yeah, because Google Apps needs to know where you are in order for it to give you a map and navigation. So the fact that Google collects that information, apple can't really stop them. They have to have location permissions turned on to use Google Maps. So a lot of this is that these apps require this for functionality.

Nevertheless, as you point out, I mean Facebook gets in a lot of trouble for something they call behavioral advertising. That is, advertising based on what you do online, and a lot of people don't like that. I'm not as against it as some people, because if I'm searching online for fencing supplies and Facebook sees that and starts offering me fencing supplies and ads, that's somewhat useful. It makes their ads more valuable and in fact, the EU has said to them you got to stop that, to which Facebook's response was okay, so that's how we make money. So what we're going to do to European users is we're going to give them a switch. They can either pay for Facebook a few dollars a month actually it was more than a few dollars, I think $11 a month or they can turn that on.

We hear that the EU is not happy with that solution, that they're going to go after Facebook for that. But you see, that's the trade-off is that Facebook uses that for advertising. I think you're right. I think Apple could say you see, that's the trade-off is that Facebook uses it for advertising. I think you're right. I think it would. Apple could say you know, we're not going to allow that. It would make your phone less useful and, frankly, you would lose some apps. Facebook would just say okay, well, you can't use this on the iPhone. Instagram would say no.

1:51:11 - Mikah Sargent
And then Facebook would reach out to the government and say, um, Apple's not letting us be a business on their platform.

1:51:18 - Leo Laporte
That's restraint of trade, yeah.

1:51:19 - Caller
Go ahead.

Yeah, I'm sorry, I was just going to say. You know, outside of functionality, things like you know, maps need location, et cetera, and for geo content, that's only available in certain spots, that's going to be required. That's only available in certain spots, that's going to be required. But you know, you look at data linked to you, things like your contacts, your photos, your browsing history and all that stuff is things that Apple says they're protecting your phone from outside forces. But there it is inside your phone, loaded from their app store. So it just seems to be quite a contradiction.

1:51:59 - Leo Laporte
It's the way the world is now, unfortunately, and I think Apple would get in a lot of trouble. If, as a platform, well, maybe they wouldn't. If, as a platform, they said, yeah, we're going to block all of that, I don't think the iPhone would be as popular.

1:52:20 - Caller
Yeah, our next question is kind of related, I think. Recently I started getting a message saying that private relay I couldn't use my my phone wasn't working correctly. I don't know if it was just trying to. You know, after booting or after turning it on loading Safari again, it said privately privately with private relay can't connect to the internet because it's not compatible with your. And then it would say my wifi network name. And that's something new. I haven't changed anything on my wifi, which is a fairly new uh device, so what advice would you have for me with that? Is that just a glitch?

1:52:59 - Mikah Sargent
Is it? What's your? Do you use an ISP that is like a traditional one, or do you use one that's cellular?

1:53:07 - Caller
No, I well. I have, you know, cellular internet, unlimited data, but when I'm home I connect to my Wi-Fi network, which is fiber to my house, and then just a straight Wi-Fi connecting thing with all the data protections turned on.

1:53:26 - Mikah Sargent
The reason I ask that is because in the past there were some cellular carriers who did not work with Apple's private relay, and so that was a common pop-up. The fact that it's saying that now it could be that some firmware update has been pushed that's causing some issues. I think I would recommend just continuing to try it, so keep toggling it on from time to time, see if it's no longer popping up with that error, because it's been my experience that when I've seen that, then something somewhere gets updated in the system and then things are working. Apple's private relay requires a couple of things. First and foremost, your connections make their way through Apple servers that then work with third-party systems that they're locked into, like content management systems, and then, once they're relayed from there, then they go to whatever you're trying to connect to. So it's a very complex web of networking that's taking place, and I know that that system is constantly needing to be updated with the latest kind of information exchange that needs to take place.

1:54:41 - Leo Laporte
So private relay is a privacy feature Apple offers. That is not exactly, but somewhat like a VPN. It routes your traffic, your DNS traffic, through Cloudflare in most cases. Not everybody likes that. As you pointed out, mobile carriers for a while were blocking it. It's possible for an ISP to block it. It may be that your internet service provider who's your ISP?

1:55:06 - Caller
It's an independent fiber company here.

1:55:08 - Leo Laporte
They may well say, yeah, we're not going to allow that, because when you use it, one of the reasons you use it is they can't see what you're doing. Do you use NextDNS? Have you heard of that? So I use that instead of Private Relay and Private Relay turns it off. Private Relay says no, no, no, no, we're in charge. So there could be conflicts with Private Relay and Internet Service Providers or other software you're running on your system.

I have disabled private relay. I think it's a poor solution from Apple. It's not a VPN. If you want a VPN, use a VPN. I, instead of using private relay, I use a provider called NextDNS and I think that they do a superior job of doing what Private Relay wants to do, which is kind of hide your internet traffic and hide who you are from sites. Nextdns has more features. It's not free, but it's NextDNSio, if you want to read about it.

Do you leave Private Relay on? No, it's caused too many problems for me and it's and the problems are unpredictable. Uh, so you just don't know. You know your site won't load or very this or that. Um, this is related. It is related to your previous question, because it's this fundamental issue of the internet is built basically on spying, basically on monitoring what you do. That's how it monetizes itself and, as a result, things that break that often break the internet. So they're very much related. We live in a. It's too bad, but this is what happened.

You may remember, early in the days of the internet and I was always puzzled by this Everybody said, hey, no, no, no, it's free, free, free, gmail free, yahoo free, facebook free, free, free, free. But it's not free to them. They're spending millions, sometimes billions of dollars to provide these services. It was never tenable. It only worked because, without our knowledge, in many cases, they were giving you Gmail a free service so that you use more Google, so that Google could monitor your behavior, so they could sell you to advertisers. That was the whole thing.

People think Google's a search engine. Google's not a search engine. Google's an advertising company with a variety of features like Gmail and search, all of which fuel the advertising model. So I think maybe I was naive, maybe we were naive in the beginning. We thought look at all this great free stuff we get from the internet. Isn't this wonderful? But the companies weren't naive. Their whole premise was the more people we get using us, the more money we can make. Do you know how much money Google makes every year on its advertising? It's almost $100 billion a year. I think it's like $88 billion a year on advertising.

Google's very profitable. Facebook's very profitable. Their profit is unlike Apple. Apple is profitable by selling you hardware. So they can say well, look, we're making money on the hardware. We don't need to spy on you, we don't want to. But that's not how Google, facebook and all these other companies work. Their only revenue model is advertising. So it's a deal with the devil. But we made it and I mean, you do have a choice. You can get off the internet, that's not my personal opinion.

1:58:44 - Caller
My personal opinion is that advertising is now the scourge of modern life. We're just so bombarded with it at every turn we can't look away. And in that case I'll let you guys go with saying that I am a member of club twit and proud to be so, and the ad free part is my favorite, and I would just like to say that, um, I'd encourage anybody to join. The extra content's fantastic and um.

1:59:13 - Leo Laporte
Look, I'm in sympathy with you. Thank you for all you guys do. Thank you, I appreciate it. Thank you, I'm in sympathy with you. And as true podcasts not the ones that you listen to on Spotify or Audible or other places if you have to use an app to listen to it, they are spying on you but real podcasts, which is what we are RSS feeds. We don't know anything about you. We only know the IP address you download the content from. That often is useless, because you know if you're working at a company and using the company's IP address or if you're on a cell phone. That's actually a big problem for us. One of the reasons our numbers go down is because most people these days how do you get your podcast? Think about it. You get it on your phone, right, you download it with your phone. You use a podcast player on your phone. Well, those phones, when they connect to towers, don't identify you. We don't know who you are. We know that you're a T-Mobile customer. That's all we know, which is fine with me.

Our advertising model was we got great, smart, interesting people who will buy your product. Would you like to say hello to them? I can't tell you their names, I don't even know their demographics, I don't even know where they are, but I can introduce you to them. That worked for a long time. It's not working anymore. This is the whole reason for the club. Look in a perfect world and I hope we may reach this world. We would have no ads and it's going that way because advertisers are saying, well, we're not going to buy an ad from you. We don't know who's listening. So fine, if our users support us and, honestly, we don't need all of you. That's the other beautiful thing. If only one in 20 people who listen to this show 5%, one in 20 people listen to the show spent $7, we'd be fat and happy. We would no longer need advertisers. We could expand, not contract 5%, one in 20. And the other 19 people listen for free. That's great. That's a much more.

I wish the internet had been designed that way in the beginning. It's if you'd paid for Gmail in the beginning. It would be better, but that's not how it got set up in the beginning. The weird thing about podcasting is it was never designed to spy on you. It can't. So that's why Spotify's eating the world and audibles eating the world in these companies because you have to use on you. It can't. So that's why Spotify is eating the world and Audible is eating the world, and these companies because you have to use their app.

Spotify knows exactly who you are. They got your credit card dude, they got everything. They know exactly who you are and how long you listen, and whether you listen to that ad, whether you're rewound, whether you skipped it. They know everything. Advertisers want that information, and so YouTube same thing want that information, and so YouTube same thing. So they want that information. So you know, with YouTube, you have to sign into YouTube, right, guess why? So they know who you are, so they know what you're doing and they take all that information. They mix it all together with all the other information they have. They got a dossier on you.

I don't think that's a bad thing. I'm not against advertising. Honestly, that's what pays for most sites. If you read the Verge, you don't pay for the Verge. You read it, or Engadget or whatever your favorite website is. The ads on that site pay for it, but increasingly, almost half of the audience no longer sees those ads because they use ad blockers.

The whole structure is falling apart. We have to decide. Do we want free, ad-supported media. That's what TV and radio were for years. Or do we want to subscribe? We don't want either, right, but somebody's got to pay for this stuff. This is why the whole world of journalism is collapsing. This is why there are no more magazines. I don't know what's going to happen. I know we have a great community and I think that community will support us, so I feel very good.

I should explain what we're doing with Twit. We're reinventing it for the 21st century. Twit was built in 2005 like a tv station, a radio station ad supported. That's what I knew and I, a year or two ago, I challenged the team. I said, if we were going to start twit today, what would be different? And it will be very different in the next few months. It's going to look very different, but it's going to be much more modern and, I hope, with the help of the club, sustainable so that we can continue to grow. We can keep Mikah, keep the staff, we can continue to grow in a more modern way. So that's what we're modernizing, um, and I hope that this works, because I want to.

I like doing this. I don't want to stop. All right, this is, this is alright. This is a big issue you brought up. It's a larger issue, right, absolutely, and it's because of the way the internet was designed 20 years ago and we just have to grapple with this. To figure this out, there's only a handful of newspapers left in the world. Alright, do I have another break? No, let's take another.

2:04:22 - John Ashley
Uh, or wait a minute, I got the emails I get this I was ready for you to do the emails.

2:04:25 - Leo Laporte
I took him. Yeah, flapping them around, let's answer some. This is from dave, who cheers hi dave. He says hey, leo and mike.

I've been trying to figure out the best way to hook up my apple tv to a projector and get some good sound going with a soundbar speakers. Right now I'm using an hdmi audio splitter, but I'm hoping to find something more solid and flexible. Got any tips? So the problem really is, the apple tv has just one out. That hdmi out. Now that contains it is the best way to get audio as well as video. That's the best way.

So you need something that will pass through the video to the TV and the audio to your sound system. Many soundbars will do that. They'll have an HDMI in and HDMI out. The in goes the soundbar, the out goes the TV. Many TVs will do it the other way around, with ARC, the audio return channel. So you plug your Apple TV into your projector and then, no, that sound bar goes into the other side. I don't know, maybe the best way to do it is how I do it at home, which is have an AV receiver, so your Apple TV goes in the AV receiver, all your other devices too your Roku, your game, xbox. I don't think a splitter is the right way to do it. Are you saying splitter? Use a splitter? He's using a splitter. I think it's. The best way is to go an AV receiver, because the AV receiver then has hdmi out to the tv it also splitter.

Essentially, though, yeah, well, it is a splitter, but it's yeah, it's so okay, and your?

2:06:04 - Mikah Sargent
soundbar, though, should do that right. Yes, yes, that's so, that's what I think, uh, so I get a soundbar that does that that has e-arc built into it, yeah, and then you just connect the projector and the apple tv to that and you just use the e-arc port for the apple tv, um, and then it goes to that and yeah, I guess I've got one set up in here as well.

Um, the, I guess it is a splitter, but it's better than just like a box that splits hdmi that's apparently we're doing it everywhere so I guess it's okay, that's how we do it, so go ahead the other thing that you can do but it's just something that I never recommend because I know it's costly uh is, yes, apple tvs can serve apple tvs. Uh, home pods can serve as an output. Yeah, I don't know if that's the best sound. No, I didn't say it's the best, it's just an option so let me look just here.

2:06:57 - Leo Laporte
I'm going to look at, uh, the vizio 5.1 sound bar. Uh, let's see if we can get a picture of the back, because I want to see what the ports are on this thing, while they're not showing you. Uh, is that the back? I can't, I can't even see. So while Leo's, looking at it, it'll have two HDMI ports, right? Yes, in theory, but they're not on the back. I don't know where they are. Oh, maybe they're in the sub. No, it should have two HDMI ports. Okay, thank you for the stickers.

2:07:37 - Mikah Sargent
Oh, I think that was the one, wasn't, was that the one? I saw a usb and then, okay, it's just so to tv.

2:07:47 - Leo Laporte
So there must be an hdmi somewhere else. Right, do you plug in? No, okay, so this is designed that the tv does all the sound yeah, so you this, that's what er gives you the sound back from the tv to the sound bar, so we don't want that. No, it needs to have more, unless that will the tv no yeah, because how would the so?

2:08:10 - Mikah Sargent
because the apple tv only has one port out.

2:08:12 - Leo Laporte
I think you're right, we need a splitteritter, but he's already doing that.

2:08:17 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, this is a tough one. Right now I'm using an HDMI audio splitter, but I'm hoping to find something a bit more solid and flexible An HDMI splitter, just a straight up splitter, as opposed to just audio.

2:08:31 - Leo Laporte
Oh, so you said HDMI to both.

2:08:32 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah Now. So I want to explain something that I think is kind of cool. So I mentioned that my significant other has gotten into a DVD kick as of late and Apple introduced eARC support on the Apple TV, produced e-arc support on the Apple TV. So what's kind of cool is that the Apple TV is connected to the projector that we have and wirelessly connects to the two HomePods that we have, and when you're watching something on Apple TV then of course the sound is output through the HomePods. But here's what's cool there is a DVD player that is a solo DVD player that, via HDMI, is also connected to the projector. When we watch something on the DVD player, the DVD player is able to send the audio through the eARC on the projector into the Apple TV, which then sends the sound to the HomePods wirelessly and is able to play the sound out of the HomePods.

2:09:42 - Caller
It does a pretty good job and it does a great job.

2:09:45 - Mikah Sargent
Yes, it's not going to be as great as a 5.1 surround system, but I just wanted to mention that because I think it's super cool.

2:09:51 - Leo Laporte
Here's the example that I wanted to give. This is a Denon home theater soundbar and it has HDMI in and then HDMI out, and to me that's kind of what you're looking for. So the HDMI? So you connect the Apple TV to the HDMI on the left no, what's wrong and then you connect the HDMI out to the TV.

2:10:14 - Mikah Sargent
Oh, you're asking where they are in relation to each other. Yes, a splitter at the source will make it easier. Oh, you're asking where they are in relation to each other. Yes, rather than running one this way and one that way, okay yeah, so you can decide.

2:10:28 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, but they do make sound bars with hdmi in and e-arc out. Yeah, and you want to. You want arc out because the tv also is sometimes a source of audio or the projector might be a source of audio going in.

2:10:39 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, if your projector is like a smart projector Sometimes they have Netflix on the projector right.

2:10:42 - Leo Laporte
So then you're watching Netflix on the screen and it has to output to the soundbar.

I mean honestly I wouldn't use a soundbar with a projector at all. I would use a discrete system Receiver. Yeah, yeah, but if that's what you really want to do, yeah, and they make them. So there's a Denon as an example. There are many soundbars, it turns out with multiple HDMI ports. Okay, now you got us in a fight. John says just use a splitter for crying out loud. What's wrong with that? Not a splitter, though, of the sound out. Don't, just don't take, why not? Is that bad to take the sound out of the signal? It's the best way to do. It is.

2:11:22 - Mikah Sargent
HDMI If it's splitting just the sound HDMI carries as much information as possible.

2:11:26 - Leo Laporte
That makes sense. Airpods pro two pausing audio. Emil is really upset. Okay, my AirPods pro two second jam with lightning port. I'm upset about that. It's my last thing with a lightning port. Keep pausing my podcast, including yours, from my iPhone. All the time, especially when I do sudden movements, I have to pull out my phone from my pocket to resume playback. These are all designed, these AirPods, so that when you take it out, it stops. And it thinks you're taking it out.

2:11:55 - Mikah Sargent
So there are a couple of things you can do. I it stops and it thinks you're taking it out. So there are a couple of things you can do. I don't know why I got so casual here. I got my arm up. He's relaxed.

2:11:59 - Leo Laporte
It's almost the end of the show. So it's time for runs. Did you get them in time? Should I remind you?

2:12:06 - Mikah Sargent
So there are a couple of things you can do. I don't have my AirPods connected right ears and they show up on your phone. You can go into the Bluetooth settings for the AirPods and you can turn off if you would like automatic ear detection. That will keep them from turning on or off when they're in your ears or they're not. But here's what I recommend. Instead, I recommend getting some 99% isopropyl rubbing alcohol, Clean them and looking for all of the black plastic anywhere there's black plastic on your AirPods Pro and wiping that with a soft cloth and the isopropyl rubbing alcohol. It is my thought that there might be something that is causing the, because basically, there are little sensors underneath the black parts that look for light shining through and they use that as a way to determine it's in your ear or it's not in your ear, and it sounds to me like it's not getting the full understanding of what's going on. So cleaning it can help.

2:13:12 - Leo Laporte
I don't remember it's been so long. But when you get your AirPods, don't they do a test to see how good the seal is, how they fit? Yep, and that's why Yep. And so maybe you don't have the right tips.

2:13:20 - Mikah Sargent
You get a variety of tips that can also make a difference.

2:13:22 - Leo Laporte
You want to go through that test, make sure it got a good seal, because that'll give you the best base, but it will also make sure that they aren't slipping out?

2:13:31 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, especially if room for the stems themselves to move around and that might be causing it to touching you. Yeah, yes, yeah, that could do it and again. Yes, thank you, evanescence photo I. I don't say 99 just because that's the number I chose. Do not use 70 99 isopropyl alcohol only, because that means it's only one percent water, and so you're not going to run the risk of causing damage to it with that.

2:13:56 - Leo Laporte
On the other hand, if you're trying to disinfect, yes if you're not going to run the risk of causing damage to it with that. On the other hand, if you're trying to disinfect, yes if you're disinfecting 70 because 99 is too strong, and the alcohol evaporates before it can serve its purpose. So and often they, uh, they, uh, it's not just water. They put glycerin right there yeah, yeah, that's more for skin protection.

Yeah, yeah, protect your skin. So that's an interesting fact, fun fact, fun fact. Clean with 99%, disinfect with 70%. There you go. Can you keep track of that for us, because I've already forgotten? I hope you don't forget us. We are here every Sunday right around 11 am Pacific, 2 pm Eastern time, 1800 UTC. You can watch the live stream at YouTube, youtube.com/twit/live. By the way, part of this modernizing of Twit will bring us to more streams, so you'll be able to watch in more places. Details to come on that. I'm very excited about that.

After the fact, on-demand versions of the show are available on the website twit.tv/atg. Or just go to techguylabs.com. We kept that. Uh, you'll also see the show notes there. So when we say we're going to put something in the show notes, that's where that will be. Uh, you can also watch. There's a Youtube channel with a video dedicated. Great for clipping and sharing. Uh, and you can also, of course, subscribe. The best thing to do get a podcast player. Uh, not spotify something that doesn't spy on you. Apple podcasts would be a good one. Uh, google has some. No, they don't. They used to. They don't anymore. Oh, and anyway, I wouldn't trust them. So but get a podcast player our favorite spotcast doesn't spy on you and then that way you can get it automatically and have it whenever you're in the mood. I want a little ask the tech guy fix and you and you'll have it. It'd be right there on your device. How could they, uh, reach us during the?

2:15:43 - Mikah Sargent
week. If you'd like to reach us during the week, atg@twit.tv is the email where you can send text, audio or video. You can also call us at 888-724-2884 during the week. Doing so, we'll actually let you leave a voicemail.

2:15:57 - Leo Laporte
And we'd love to get your voicemail so fancy, so fancy. Mikah Sargent is going to be back on Tuesday with iOS Today. Indubitably, indubitably. You'll also be back on Thursday with Tech News Weekly.

2:16:10 - Mikah Sargent
And that's also when the club shows publish Hands on Mac and the episodes of iOS.

2:16:16 - Leo Laporte
I'll be back Tuesday and Wednesday, but also Thursday for Stacy's book club.

2:16:22 - Mikah Sargent
Oh, and I guess I will be on Wednesday.

2:16:26 - Leo Laporte
I'm taking a morning off. Yeah, so I'll be back for TWiG on Wednesday afternoon, but Mikah is going to do. Thank you, I appreciate you doing that. I look forward to windows weekly for me. Is there any other business we need to take care of? Join the Club twit.tv/clubtwit. There's one more point in business.

yes, it's run the time thanks to John Ashley, our producer and technical director, John Slanina, our studio director, and Burke McQuinn, the runza baker, for making making this show possible. And never forget Lily, the runza eater even making this show possible. And never forget Lily the Runza eater.

2:17:00 - Mikah Sargent
He even rewrapped them Because you know it had to go in the oven unwrapped. So that's so nice.

2:17:06 - Leo Laporte
Very tasty. Thank you, we'll see you next time on Ask the Tech Guys. In the meanwhile, we always like to say this at the end of the show have a great Geek Week.

2:17:16 - Mikah Sargent
Yay, bye-bye.