Ask the Tech Guys 2032 Transcript

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

00:00 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Well, hey, hey, hey, it's time for Ask the Tech Guys. I'm Leo Laporte Coming up. We'll solve 60% of your computer problems.

00:07 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
And I'm Micah Sargent and we answer the question. Should you run macOS from a random Google Drive link given to you on the internet?

00:15 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Then it's time for Scott Wilkinson's Home Theater of the Week all coming up. Next on Ask the Tech Guys Podcasts you love.

00:24 - Hans (Caller)
From people you trust.

00:27 - Leo Laporte (Host)
This is Tweet. This is Ask the Tech Guys, with Micah Sargent and Leo Laporte, episode 2032, recorded Sunday, july 7th 2024. My baby loves to boom, boom, well, hey, hey, how are you today? There's Micah Sargent, hello, leo Laporte, and we are the tech guys, which means you can call us right now and ask us a question, if you dare. Dare you, I dare you, I dare you. 888-724-2884 Is the phone number.

01:04 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
There are also a couple other ways you can email us atgtwittv. If you email us with your text, then we will get a little printout of your message and we'll try to answer it. Or you can send audio video. Those also work. And the third way, which is to head to calltwittv on a mobile device or laptop or, I don't know, desktop pc. Can you do it on a playstation? Probably you probably can, maybe maybe who knows?

01:32 - Leo Laporte (Host)
try it, brandon. What is his name, brandon? Oh, it's gone already by. Sorry, scrolled off. See you, brandon. Mr culotte says we're looking sharp, oh how? But he's probably because he noticed you have nice runs, my runs of socks. I like the green, though I'm digging the green. It's the little sandwich with the terrible name, the little sandwich that could but the delicious taste and we're out of runs runs as the fresh maker.

02:00 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
That was the. Yeah, I think that was the is that?

02:02 - Leo Laporte (Host)
is that obvious what that is on my sock? Or it's just?

02:05 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
look like something I'm gonna try to pretend. Like a weird meat pillow.

02:08 - Hans (Caller)
I was gonna say it looks like a dirty pillow a pocket.

02:15 - Leo Laporte (Host)
A pocket a pocket well runs are like a hot pocket it also looks like a dirty loofah dirty loofah is the name of this show, oddly enough. I don't know how we knew ahead of time. Oh, there you go. Now you can also stay tuned, because Scott Wilkinsonian is going to be here.

02:36 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
He is our home theater geek, and you can stay tuned even longer because Johnny Jett is going to be here. He's our traveling geek.

02:44 - Leo Laporte (Host)
So there's a lot of goodness ahead today on Ask the Tech Guys. According to Google in a new research paper, ai potentially breaking reality is a feature, not a bug Breaking reality.

03:03 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
Okay, why, how? And doesn't Google do AI?

03:09 - Leo Laporte (Host)
The paper Generative AI Misuse a Taxonomy of Tactics and Insights from Real World Data, co-authored by researchers at Google's Artificial Intelligence Research Lab, deepmind which sounds a lot like Skynet, by the way. Thanks to 404 media for this story. Uh says um AI. Google's research focuses on real harm the generative AI is currently causing. It could get worse in the future, uh, but don't worry, because it's it's supposed. Key and novel patterns in gen ai misuse, including potential motivation strategies and how attackers leverage and abuse systems across modalities in an uncontrolled environment. And we find that most reported cases of misuse involve actors exploiting the capabilities rather than launching direct attacks at the models themselves. Yeah, they prompt something or other Prompt engineering. Prompt engineering the widespread availability, accessibility and hyper-realism of Gen AI outputs across modalities. Can you tell this is an academic paper?

04:23 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
Yeah, I was going to say. This is the problem with this.

04:25 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It needs to be translated into human speech has also enabled new, lower level forms of misuse that blur the lines between authentic presentation and deception.

04:34 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
I don't even know essentially what they're saying is instead of trying to hack a generative ai system itself, people are using generative ai systems to do other things, so the most common uh form of misuse is impersonating someone or something else.

04:52 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Funny that you should say that I was just launching 11 labs new reading app, uh-huh, where they have apparently signed a deal with judy garland's estate. So lawrence olivier's estate, james dean's estate, sir Lawrence Olivier's estate, james Dean's estate and Burt Reynolds' estate to provide iconic voices. Would you like to hear an iconic voice? Oh, I would love to hear James Dean.

05:14 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
Oh, I'm just going to play Burt Reynolds James.

05:16 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Dean's all right. James Dean's all right, but not particularly interesting. Here I'll play a little sample.

05:23 - Hans (Caller)
If a man can bridge the gap between life and death, if he can live after he's died, then maybe he was a great man.

05:32 - Leo Laporte (Host)
That's a nice voice, yeah. Does it sound like James Dean? I don't even hear it. Does it sound like Berger Reynolds?

05:36 - Hans (Caller)
For the good old American life. Yeah, For the money, for the glory and for the fun.

05:42 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, Mostly for the money. I think that's pretty good. Judy Garland's a little weird. They say imagine listening to the Wizard of Oz read by the dead voice of.

05:53 - Hans (Caller)
Judy Garland Once upon a time, in a land far, far away, there was a beautiful young girl who had become lost while traveling.

06:02 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
That's wonderful.

06:03 - Leo Laporte (Host)
What do?

06:03 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
you think I actually okay. I like the idea, yeah, of having a book read by someone that was involved with the process. In some way. If the estate gives you know.

06:20 - Leo Laporte (Host)
They did, they sold it. Yeah, here's. Is it Ossie reading this? I don't know why. Yeah, the Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle. Is it Aussie reading this?

06:26 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
I don't know why Aussie's reading the Adventures of Sherlock Holmes.

06:29 - Leo Laporte (Host)
He is always the woman, but this is Eleven Labs. I've never heard him mention her under any other name in his eyes. That's an AI reading it.

06:36 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
I think that's pretty good, that's actually very good yeah.

06:38 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, I mentioned this because Eleven Labs is who does my voice, you know. Oh, that's right, they're very, very good.

06:45 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
Now, with that, does that mean that I could take, say, an article on a website and oh, I'm.

06:53 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Have.

06:53 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
Laurence Olivier read it Well yeah. Basically, if I'm trying to get to work and I need to get through this article, I could play it and have Laurence Olivier read it.

07:06 - Leo Laporte (Host)
In other exciting news, amateur mathematicians have found the fifth busy beaver um huh, huh, uh. I don't really know if this is really more interest in mathematicians than even computer scientists what's a busy beaver?

07:21 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
Maybe we should start there.

07:22 - Leo Laporte (Host)
So computations limits. Okay, this is from Quanta magazine, by the way. I agree, Quanta, you keep those cookies. I hate that thing, I hate the cookie thing. So once upon a time, once upon a time, over 40 years ago, a horde of computer scientists descended on the West German city of Dortmund. They were competing to catch an elusive quarry. Only four of its kind had ever been captured. Over 100 competitors dragged in the strangest creatures they could find, but they still fell short. The idea is to write a computer program, not like a normal one, but it is computationally very difficult, the Busy Beaver Challenge. Maybe we should go to the website so you can kind of understand what I'm talking about. There is forget it, I can't even. I don't even understand.

08:22 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
It's something very hard to do. Hey, it's a really cool thing.

08:24 - Leo Laporte (Host)
And they had the first four for a long time, like 40 years, and all of a sudden, just the other day, somebody found Busy Beaver number five.

08:33 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
Oh, okay, so it's very difficult to find a Busy Beaver.

08:36 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It's like calculating the digits of pi.

08:38 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
Because they're simple programs but they take a long time to solve.

08:41 - Leo Laporte (Host)
In case you care, the Busy Beaver 5 is $47,176,870.

08:47 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
It's kind of like the fat bear, but nothing like the fat bear, Like Fancy Bear. No, remember the competition that takes place every year where the fattest bear ends up winning. Oh yeah, I remember that. You know what I'm talking about this.

09:03 - Leo Laporte (Host)
One is a Turing machine, which is the simplest kind of computer, and it's given an input and then it has to crank for a long, long time. And you know, I don't know. You know what Did I say at the beginning of the show? There was no news.

09:20 - Johnny Jet (Guest)
You did say that.

09:22 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I think I did say that I am searching folks. The busy beaver cloud flare has launched a tool to combat ai bots and this is different from just saying hey, um ai bots would you, please, please, don't go on my site.

09:37 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
Hey, don't, don't come here there you can use something.

09:40 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Uh, actually this has been around on the web forever robotstxt, which is a text file on your root directory that says hey, google, don't, don't, don't index these pages, or don't index this part of my site, or whatever. It's long been honored by search engine. Uh, spiders crawling around indexing the web. They want to add additional commands to say or this has been proposed, don't search this for AI. But not everybody honors it. As Cloudflare points out, not all AI scrapers, the bots, scrapers and crawlers honor the robotstech. So they're going to do something else, which will an easy button, they say, to block all AI bots. So if you are a Cloudflare customer, even on the free tier, this you could add to your website if you wanted to keep. I think this is smart of them and I think it'll work quite well. By the way, cloudflare's customers preferred to block ai 85 percent, wow only 10 allowed them.

10:50 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
I'm looking forward to hearing this conversation on this week in google. Okay, you know why? Because it's going to be.

10:57 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It's going to be a right to read argument versus yeah, I mean, a technological argument somebody said I was at Sam Altman you don't want an AI that's trained only on public domain materials. And it was the head of Google's AI, suleiman, who said well, no, I'm sorry. Openai Suleiman, who is it? Microsoft, sorry, one of them. Microsoft's AI head Suleiman said anything that's on that I can read is basically open. It's public domain and my ai should be able to read it. Any page you read on the web, that's a. I mean I. There's a point to that, right? I definitely. It's not exactly like the ai is taking an article from the new york times and publishing it, which happens, by the way, all the time. As jeff jarvis is quick to point out, it's chewing it up so it can use it in its predictive engine.

11:50 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
The worst thing, I think, would be AI having to use AI-generated content to train itself on AI. You know, if we get to that point where there's not any information for it to use because everyone's blocking, now suddenly it's all just trained on junk that it itself is generating.

12:11 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Okay, one last story. Saudi Arabia wants to be the home of eSports. They have a bigger prize pot than the Professional Golf Association. Wow, the PGA Tour prize pool for the esports world cup of 60 million dang. And my mom said I'd never make a living playing video games. Some say this is, of course, uh, greenwashing. Where you know you, you become famous. They did this, they've done this with golf, with live. Uh, you spend enough money. Oh, I have to log into my bloomberg account to read this, but you get the idea. Look at this, look at this. Uh, there's, this is one of three main arenas yeah, what are the.

12:57
What's the big game? Look at that. It's got a kit kat as a sponsor, or is that something else? I don't know. It looks like a kit. What are the big games? Is it League of Legends, anthony Nielsen? Do you know? I mean?

13:07 - Johnny Jet (Guest)
probably League of Legends or Benito knew yeah.

13:10 - Leo Laporte (Host)
He knows that kind of thing. Maybe when he gets in later we can ask him Mobbies, mobbies, mobbies. Anyway, that's the news. It was nothing good news everyone a lot of ai, though.

13:26
Yeah, yeah always is actually good news for us. Youtube has released a tool to erase copyright music from videos. It hears the voice, that's okay. Everything else is okay. You know how sometimes a mom will post a video of their baby doing something really cute In the background, beyonce is playing and then Beyonce's people said, hey, take that down, or I want to monetize it. And so now you can post that cute video of your baby and YouTube has a tool that will erase the song. That's nice Features creators silence copyright music in the content. I haven't tried it. I'll have to try it. Yeah, let's, yeah, all right. If you listen, right now, johnny cash's ring of fire is playing. Oh, this is burn, burn, burn. And anthony nielsen has magically removed it by the time we published this show that's how well it works.

14:18 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
We're lying to you. We're lying. There's no ring of fire. But that's interesting because that's actually been a technique in the past used by people who are trying to keep someone from posting something they'll play. They'll blast a song in the background oh yeah, and police were doing that.

14:35 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, well, when you were recording the police, they wouldn't make sure that they had something copyrighted playing, so then it didn't work, by the way, distributed on youtube or whatever. Yeah, all right now, I think, would be an excellent time for us to become the tech guys magically and answer some magical questions. I am transformed. How do you answer that? How do you ask those questions?

14:57 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
let's just give them one more time 888-724-2884 is the phone number you can call. When you do call, please, if you are asked to join us, hit star or asterisk six to unmute yourself. That's really important. You'll be muted by default. You can also reach out calltwittv or by emailing us. Atg at twittv.

15:21 - Leo Laporte (Host)
And the Home Theater Geek coming up in about half an hour. But first and before we get to your calls, a word from CacheFly, because CacheFly literally, quite literally, brings you this show and all the shows we do there are cdn, our content delivery network. For over 20 years, CacheFly has held the track record for high performing, ultraing, ultra-reliable content delivery, serving over 5,000 companies in over 80 countries. And we know this because CacheFly came to our rescue in the earliest days of Twit, when we were desperately trying to make it possible for hundreds of thousands of people to download our shows. Matt Levine at CacheFly said we can help and we've been a customer ever since.

16:01
We love CacheFly their lag-free video loading, their hyper-fast downloads, friction-free site interactions. CacheFly is the only CDN content delivery network built for throughput. Ultra-low latency video streaming Delivers video with less than one second latency to over a million concurrent users. Lightning-fast gaming delivers downloads faster with zero lag, glitches or outages. And, by the way, because CacheFly is a global enterprise, no matter what country your listeners or viewers or users or gamers are in, it works better for them because it's closer to them. Oh, if you've got a site with images, mobile content optimization offers automatic, simple image optimization so your site loads faster on any size screen.

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17:29
I have to say, we never need it, because it just works. It's so great. Learn how you can get your first month free at CacheFly.com/twit. You've heard me say it so many times in the last 20 years of the last 20 years Bandwidth for Ask the Tech Guys is provided by CacheFly at C-A-C-H-E-F-L-Y dot com slash twit. Thank you, CacheFly. Now Anthony Nielsen filling in for John Ashley, who's on vacation. Yep, who should we start the show with?

17:58 - Hans (Caller)
We do have a call from Martin Martin.

18:02 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Hello.

18:02 - Martin (Caller)
Martin. Hello Leo, it's Martin, by the way, oh nice to see you.

18:08 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Welcome. Are you in the hospital? Yes, I am. I'm sorry. I hope you're feeling better.

18:16 - Martin (Caller)
I'll have heart bypass surgery on Thursday. Yikes, oh my word.

18:20 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
Well, you know what?

18:21 - Leo Laporte (Host)
From all the people I know who've had it. You will be feeling better a few days later. It makes a huge difference, so good luck.

18:30 - Martin (Caller)
On June 27th, I was riding my bike up a hill and my heart decided to stop.

18:36 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Oh man, you thought I'm going to stay in shape.

18:40 - Martin (Caller)
I am in shape. I've done 4,200 kilometers this year Wow.

18:45 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Wow, but you know,200 kilometers this year, wow, wow. But you know, this is the problem with heart disease it can also be genetic, not merely lifestyle. Yeah Well, I hope you feel better Thursday. I hope it all goes well for you and hang in there. What?

18:59 - Martin (Caller)
can we do for you today? Well, Leo, I'm calling about what to do with my Drobo Mini.

19:05 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Oh dear, I don't know what to replace it with. I feel so guilty. Did you buy it because of us?

19:11 - Vidak (Caller)
Yes, by the way, if it makes you feel any better.

19:15 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I still have a Drobo Mini myself. Drobo unfortunately went out of business.

19:20 - Martin (Caller)
Yeah, so do I replace it with cloud backups, another NAS or what would you ask you what you used it for?

19:30 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Are you a photographer? What were you using it for?

19:32 - Martin (Caller)
No, I used it to back to time machine. Eight different computers, ok.

19:39 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Wow, nice. So you were using the family, were you using it? On a network, or were you using it as a USB drive?

19:49 - Martin (Caller)
USB. It doesn't work on the network anymore, I know.

19:51 - Leo Laporte (Host)
So you go from machine to machine and back up.

19:55 - Martin (Caller)
Yeah, well, I go to the family, I go from house to house with it.

19:58 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Oh my goodness, so it doesn't really matter.

20:00 - Martin (Caller)
Yeah, wow, aren't you a nice guy? Yeah, well, every family has a tech geek. You know, you're the one. Yeah.

20:08 - Leo Laporte (Host)
So really, all a Drobo Mini was is a giant USB drive, and there are lots of ways to replace that. It might be time to look at a NAS. However, if that's the main purpose of it, Network attached storage you don't. Oh, what's that?

20:24 - Martin (Caller)
This is a USBb drive. It's not a usb key, it's a. It's a ssd drive. How big is it? It's not a, it's big like a like, a like a usb key no, no, I mean uh capacity.

20:37 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Oh, it's one terabyte. I'm sorry it's one. How big is that? It looks giant, yeah it's one terabyte. Yeah, yeah, so is that enough?

20:47 - Martin (Caller)
Well, that's enough for two computers, for two Macs. Okay.

20:52 - Leo Laporte (Host)
The thing about Time Machine ideally is it's always running. So ideally, each of your family members, you'd get them one of those, or better yet. I mean, I keep a USB drive plugged into my Mac, same when you do the first time. You do that. It's an off-site backup. Yeah, that's on-site. Yeah, and you want it.

21:13 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
Yeah, oh, I see you were taking it with you on your bicycle.

21:17 - Leo Laporte (Host)
So now that is off-site. Exactly Going up the hill Boy you are a nice guy to do that for your family. Um, thank you honestly, let's save you some trouble. And uh, you know I I think what I would do. I don't know what you do. I think you do the same thing, which is have time machine as your immediate local backup. So, oh gosh, I didn't mean to change that file, or I didn't mean to delete that file. It's there in time machine, but then you still have off-site right yeah, I use.

21:48 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
I use backblaze personally, um and that was my second question yeah, the great thing about it is it's pretty much a run in the background, no one has to think about it, kind of set up. I very rarely have ever had, you know, troubleshooting, so you wouldn't have to bike over to the family too often to, you know, make corrections to the system once it was set up. And it's pretty cost effective as well. I think it's six bucks a year per device or something I can't remember. It's really cost effective and that, yeah, that works for me as the drive. I have plugged into the device the Mac studio that I have at home as the local backup over time machine and then that offsite backup to backblaze. The first time you run it of course takes a while, but after that then it's good.

22:41 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, all cloud backups. That backups that way it's. Uh, it's very slow initially. Um how many family members? Six?

22:51 - Martin (Caller)
uh, seven, seven, seven, but four in the same house okay, that makes it a little easier.

22:57 - Leo Laporte (Host)
So the four. So in the same house. I use a nas, a synology nas, at home, um, and so I back up time machine on a local USB drive and then I back up to the Synology NAS. And then, for the way I do, cloud is I have a Synology NAS here, and when we close the studio I'm going to have to solve this problem same problem because I won't have the offsite. So my home NAS is backing up to the NAS here, which gives me offsite. I like not having to use a cloud service, but the upfront cost on buying a network-attached storage unit is much higher, in fact, at eight bucks a year. What is it?

23:34 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
Yeah, I think it's more than that it can't be eight bucks a year.

23:36 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, I'm misremembering.

23:37 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
I think it's $9 a month, not $9 a year. That sounds better, but even then, that's $108 a year.

23:44 - Leo Laporte (Host)
A NAS is going to cost you $600 for the box and then you have to put the drives in. Usually it's around $1,000 at least. So you're saving money by using Backplace. The disadvantage is it has to use your network, it has to upload, it's going to be slower to download and all that stuff. With a NAS, you've got it all there.

24:02 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
It's a really interesting question yeah, especially because you had a system leading up to this. The Drobo still works right the Drobo still works.

24:11 - Martin (Caller)
I had a friend of mine whose power brick stopped working and it was awfully complicated to get a new one and solder in the plug yeah, because they have a proprietary.

24:22 - Leo Laporte (Host)
They have a locking plug which is, of course, proprietary.

24:25 - Martin (Caller)
Yeah yeah, but now that we know how to fix the power brick and that would be less of a hassle.

24:33 - Leo Laporte (Host)
But honestly, I gave my drobo mini to goodwill, which kind of is mean because somebody's gonna buy it.

24:40 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
I hope whoever buys oh, I know what to do with this. Yeah, it'll have something to do with it.

24:47 - Leo Laporte (Host)
But they went out of business and so, yeah, I gave mine away and I just use. You know, since you're a Mac guy, I use Otherworld Computing for a lot of this stuff, if you go to Mac.

24:59 - Martin (Caller)
Do you use their NASes?

25:01 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I don't do their NASes's but I do their giant usb drives. I have a couple of raid drives from them that um are giant. Let's see thunderbolt drives. Depends on how modern a mac you want, but I have one. I mean, some of these are very expensive as well. Like, look at that, uh, they have some that are ssd based. So I have, I have this little sucker, the uh express form too. You put 4m.2 cards in there, which means you can have you know features two terabytes. That's eight terabytes. I have, I think I have four, one terabyte. Those are fairly inexpensive now and that's a thunderbolt, um it's.

25:42
It uses soft raid, so you can make it. So it's redundant, so it's like a little. It's not a NAS in the sense that it has an operating system or can run any apps. That's the nice thing about Synology. It's actually a computer running its own operating system and can run extra apps like Home Assistant and stuff like that Plex, but for just a little high. You know kind of to replace the drobo with a fast. And, by the way, this is a lot smaller than a drobo mini and a lot easier to carry in your backpack as you bicycle from house to house. So, um, I mean honestly at this point I hate to say this, but uh, you probably want to not have them be dependent on you, right?

26:29 - Martin (Caller)
Yes and no. It's awfully nice when you're sick to have family members that owe you stuff.

26:37 - Leo Laporte (Host)
That's thinking. Now you're using your noggin. I mean, really, the ideal thing would be to provide each of them with an external hard drive they can use Time Machine on, and then for the people that all live in the same house, that would be fairly easy.

26:55 - Martin (Caller)
They won't plug it in. That's the problem. I have two nieces that use the same password everywhere Zero security knowledge and when you try to speak to them about it, they don't.

27:05 - Leo Laporte (Host)
they don't get it I understand my, you know my dad, who's now 91. Uh, I asked him once how do you back up? He said every once in a while I put a thumb drive in there and I copy some files that's even more than some people do.

27:16 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
He has no plan?

27:17 - Leo Laporte (Host)
no plan at all.

27:18 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
Fortunately never lost any data, but yeah, I often takes losing data that one time to make you go. Oh, and he's very proud.

27:27 - Leo Laporte (Host)
All of his papers are now at the university of oklahoma. He's a geologist, oh cool. So they have a historical geology library and all of his papers, all of his notes and everything are now stored at the university of oklahoma, so he doesn't have to worry anymore about backup. Uh, yeah, he was very proud of that. That was a real honor, um, the real.

27:45
The reason that we're fumbling around is there are a million ways. There's so many ways. There's no limit to how many ways to do this. I'm just trying to think of what would be the easiest for you and the best for your family. Sounds like you really do want to take care of your daughter and and your friends, um, so I don't want you bicycling around with a drive, but if you had to, this is this is faster, bigger, uh, and it does everything. That because the drobo was just really let's face it a fast usb drive that was using drobo's own raid. They had their own custom version of raid, which, at the time, was really cool. This just uses soft, soft RAID or uses Apple's RAID. I actually don't even install RAID, I just use Apple's very simple RAID. So it's four drives. You could make it striped or you could make it mirrored, depending on what you're looking for speed or reliability, the Drobo you could upgrade on the fly.

28:38 - Martin (Caller)
Yeah, that was great. I have two. I have four two terabyte SSDs in it right now and it's great.

28:46 - Vidak (Caller)
Yeah, you wouldn't even have to power it down.

28:47 - Martin (Caller)
I wonder why they went out of business Private equity, Pop it yeah, is that what happened?

28:52 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Once again, they were struggling though, but yeah, there's no reason they had to go out of business. You're right, somebody bought them and scrapped them, sold them off for parts, which is too bad. It's too bad. So the most complicated, expensive solution would be a NAS and, by the way, you could set it up that they're backing up from their houses You're the cloud, I'm the cloud now and they're backing up to your house, even the people who are remote. You could do that with a Synology NAS.

29:25
That's a good idea and give them time machine for local and then they could automatically back up to you and then if something goes wrong, you go. Yeah, I got it right here, I'm secure, I'm taking care of it. So well, thank you, leo. Yeah, I hope everything goes well on Thursday. God bless, don't worry.

29:44 - Martin (Caller)
Here in Quebec we have universal health care, so everything's taken care of. There's no worries about that. The doctors are great, the nurses are great, everybody's great, and I sure wish that you guys would get universal health care. It's the greatest invention there ever was.

29:58 - Leo Laporte (Host)
You know, rene Ritchie, who is in Montreal, told me that one of the reasons he could quit his editorial jobs writing for magazines and do his own thing, become an independent YouTuber, is because he didn't have to worry about health care. It's too bad that here in the United States health care is tied to your employer If you're lucky. If you're not, then you're really out of luck. But it means you have to keep a job and you have to know it's just and your employer gets to choose what kind of health care you have and all that. You know. There are negatives to national health care too, but uh, I'm glad that you're being well taken care of. That's really, that's really great. And and stay safe, god bless, good luck on thursday. Call us back because you're going to be feeling better now because all the blood's pumping, all the blood's doing its thing now.

30:47 - Martin (Caller)
It's the first time I called and I've listened to every tweet and every security. Now Steve Griffin is great.

30:55 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Oh, thank you, thank you. Yes, steve is the best.

30:59 - Martin (Caller)
Yeah, he is. He's very good. I would do two shows with this show One with the news and one with the subject of the week, so it would be easier to manage the listening. You know, that's a great idea. Those two-hour podcasts are really long.

31:13 - Leo Laporte (Host)
We just barely got Steve to do more podcasts after 999, episode 999. Now you want me to talk him into two, but honestly, no, well, you do it.

31:24 - Martin (Caller)
You do it in the studio. Oh, you should say you shut it in the studio.

31:25 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Oh, you should say I should you cut it in two, so which would Steve do?

31:31 - Martin (Caller)
Steve would do the news. Well, he would do the news with you. Yeah, in the first part, yeah, and then you decide when the second part starts and you do the subject of the week.

31:42 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Steve, that's a great idea. So just the same show, but just divide it up, yeah.

31:47 - Hans (Caller)
Or you can just press the pause button.

31:49 - Martin (Caller)
Ding ding.

31:53 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, but that's complicated. Hey, I'm so thrilled that you're listening. I wish you the best. Take care of yourself, and we will see you in a few weeks when you're feeling better. Okay, good.

32:06 - Martin (Caller)
Thank you, Michael. Bye good Thank you, michael, bye-bye, thank you, see you next time.

32:08 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Bye-bye, bye. Aw, that's so great, isn't that? You know here he is in the hospital, yeah, going to undergo major surgery in a few days, and he's worried about backup for his family. That's amazing. That's somebody who cares. That's somebody who cares. Both of us do local and off-site. That's the 3-2-1 thing. We're three different kinds of backup Two of two different, three copies of everything. I should say Two different kinds of backup and one off-site. So we have three copies of everything. You have the original, you have the time machine and you have the back place. There's two different kinds One's on a hard drive and one's in the cloud, and and you solve that off-site one with the cloud. That really, that's what photographers do to say, because you know, if you're a wedding and this was, by the way, peter crowe, who's a good friend and a great photographer, came up with this and, uh, if you're a wedding photographer, you can't afford to lose those pictures. You know you're not gonna, they're not gonna, stage the wedding a second time.

33:04 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
Yeah, just for you literally cannot lose those um. Can we do that again? Take it from the top.

33:10 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I lost all the pictures. No, you can't, so they're very careful about backing up. Honestly, I have another method I use, you might, which actually might work for him. I use the program sync thing. Steve gibson also uses it. It's a free, open source program that uh will synchronize computers and they don't have to be on the same premise sync thingnet. Did you talk about sync thing on uh with steve? Yeah, yeah, he had a a weird problem okay, so it wasn't anything scary.

33:40 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
No, because I know I I caught the part where you were like oh gosh, sync thing, but I didn't get yeah, he scared me.

33:46 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, I haven't had this. It was getting very slow, but that's because he was the relay. It was weird, weird. Okay, but you can do sync thing across different households. So every member of your family, in fact, this works with Synology. This is probably what I would do if I got the Synology. I run sync thing on my Synology and all my machines. This machine, every machine I have, synchronizes the documents folder, all the critical folders, so I have an identical copy everywhere. And then on my NAS I have a read but don't erase version. So even if I erase a file here and it'll get erased everywhere else, it gets preserved on the NAS. That's the, the backup version. So that way you have it's, it's copies of everything everywhere, more than three copies, copies of everything everywhere, plus the off-site. Um, I, I never worry about losing my data, I really don't. Yeah, I like sync thing a lot. All right, what do we do now? Anthony nielsen, we've got a little more time before, scott.

34:46 - Johnny Jet (Guest)
Yeah, like six minutes. Do you want to try to do one more call?

34:49 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
Okay, either that or we go to the emails. While you're reaching, let's do an email my elbow knocked my water.

34:58 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I have a stack here in my hands of all the emails we have received in the last few minutes Moving from Windows to Mac. Question mark what Richard says. Hi, Leo and Mike, I've been a long-time listener, recent Club Twit member. Thank you.

35:13 - Paul the Father (Caller)
Thank you, tokyo, yes.

35:14 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Oh, thank you. Moved to Tokyo from Silicon Valley about six or seven years ago, jealous. Now I know I love Tokyo. Now considering whether to get a new computer now, as we always do, we say, well, what are you going to use it for exactly? I have a large video collection 90 terabytes and we'll be constantly adding to it. Of course, if I move to macOS, the issue becomes do I need to convert all my hard drives to macOS, hfs or APFS from NTFS?

35:51 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
No, the Macs will read that no, NTFS is fine yeah.

35:54 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I'll be reading and writing. Writing's a little tricky, right. Yeah To my existing NTFS disk. Should any new disks be APFS, I prefer APFS, the Apple file system, the new file system, both NTFS and Apple APFS, are modern he says XFAT sounds like it may be a good compromise. It is. Xfat is what.

36:16 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
It's old.

36:17 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, I also use hard links, and that's only supported on NTFS. I also have an Intel NUC which is connected to the TV and hosts Plex and Kodi. Okay, we have a solution for all of this. What platform do you recommend? What I would recommend is to get a NAS and move all of that 90 terabytes onto a NAS. That's where it belongs properly, not on external hard drives. The NAS will be redundant If a drive fails. You don't lose your data. It also will serve it because you can run Plex and Kodi on your NAS. It also will do conversions for different things because you can run Plex on everything on your Apple TV, on your laptops, on Samsung TVs, everywhere on Android.

37:00
So you know, you already know this. You're already using Plex. Plex will run on a Synology NAS. Put everything on there. Plex will use that. It becomes your media server. That's the better way to handle this, and then you don't have to. Then you don't worry about what the what the client is. You can get Windows if you want. You can get Mac if you want, because you're not storing it on a PC, you're not storing it on external hard drives. You're storing it on a network, attached storage which is visible to everywhere in the network. Um that, and then you could choose. I think framework's great. You could run linux or windows on that. Uh, I'm not a windows fan, as you know.

37:36 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
You like windows a little better than I do I think, yeah, it's okay, it's okay, I like it honestly, I'll be, I'll be honest. I like it less the more time goes on.

37:47 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, because they keep putting ads and things on it.

37:50 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
I just want to open the laptop and get going. It's just slow.

37:55 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I think the real solution is don't worry, you're going to get a new computer, that's fine, but before you do that, get a NAS.

38:00 - Hans (Caller)
I agree.

38:00 - Leo Laporte (Host)
And take everything off of those hard drives, put it on a nas, where it's going to be safer. Uh, you can run plex on it. Uh, synology makes a very nice nas's that run plex quite well. All right, one more. Oh, it's back again, and this is very similar from jeremy tech guys yields. I hope you can provide some information. I'm backing up a mac to the cloud. My daughter's heading off to college this fall has a macbook air. This is a good, good time to think about backup, because I guarantee you halfway through the year you're going to get a call, daddy, I lost my paper, Yep.

38:33 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
where's the PowerPoint?

38:35 - Leo Laporte (Host)
We're looking for a simple cloud backup solution that has versioning. Ideally it would be a client install that would monitor file changes, upload those changes to the cloud, easy interface, restore different versions of files. She's not very computer literate. I want her college files backed up without interaction with a simple can. Can Backblaze solve that?

38:53 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
Backblaze does versioning um. Up to a year of versioning Um. Now what about iCloud? So iCloud, yes, if. If you're using iCloud's applications, so if you're using Pages, if you're using Keynote, if you're using the iConnect.

39:11 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Well, even if you use Word, if you have your Documents folder automatically backing up to iCloud, it'll be all right right?

39:18 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
Yes, but I don't know if I don't, that Documents folder is not going to be versioned. Ah, versioning, yeah. So that part is the part would be the problem there. That is where Backblaze would help, but also that's where Time Machine I know it would be local, but a mixture again of Time Machine and Backblaze together is going to give you your best bet.

39:38 - Leo Laporte (Host)
That's ideal, yeah, so you just get a little external hard drive, that's USB, that she keeps plugged in. Whenever she comes back from class she plugs in.

39:47 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
That was the best graduation gift I got in high school. At the end of high school was a drive that I took with me to college.

39:53 - Leo Laporte (Host)
That I did my local backup yeah. You know, really the ideal solution would be a dock with a monitor, maybe. Okay, that's how you want to splurge, so that when she gets back with her MacBook Air she plugs into the dock. The dock has a hard drive and a monitor plugged in keyboard mouse. Now she's got a desktop.

40:10 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
It's funny that you mention that, because that's literally what ended up happening for me At the time. It was the Thunderbolt display that was before the new one, and so, yeah, I'd come home from class, I'd put it on to charge, and then I had that display and the keyboard and the mouse, and then there was usb into the back to that hard drive and so it automatically did the time machine backup right there.

40:31 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Um at the time you have a dock that you like for mac os. Uh, just a variety of them would be cal digit, is that's?

40:37 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
the one I favorite, um it's expensive, it's expensive, very nice anchor also makes a good dock, um and that's more, if you're wanting to use HDMI instead of DisplayPort. So DisplayPort and, I think, higher quality, go CalDigit. Hdmi and a little bit more cost-effective, go Anker.

40:58 - Leo Laporte (Host)
The nice thing about these is you get to the. She is a single cable. She unplugs the MacBook Air Now it's a portable computer, but the minute she plugs it in it's a portable computer, but the minute she plugs it in it's backing everything up, it's all going, the time machine's running, she's got a screen, keyboard and mouse. I think if you can afford the extra cost, because that is going to be some few hundred bucks more, I think that's a good way to do it.

41:21 - Hans (Caller)
If you go with Anchor, though make sure you get the Thunderbolt versus USB.

41:24 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Usb yeah usbc versus thunderbolt, yeah, yeah, and you also have to think about the monitor and whether it's hdmi or display port, etc. Etc, etc. I use the cal digit with display port on my giant 55 inch uh oled monitor and it's quite nice, it's quite pretty, all right. All right, we're gonna take a little break and then guess what? It's our home theater geek, get, get ready. Scott Wilkinson coming up. You're watching Ask the Tech Guys, micah Sargent, on your left, I'm on your right, I'm Leo Laporte. Ask the Tech Guys. Continues with our home theater geek, scott Wilkinsonian.

42:03 - Jim (Caller)
Hello.

42:03 - Scott Wilkinson (Guest)
Santa Cruz. Hello Scott, hey Micah, Hello Scott, hey Micah. Hey Leo, how you guys doing, Do you?

42:09 - Leo Laporte (Host)
remember the Wilkinson sword blade. Oh, I remember them well, I don't know. I guess they're still around. I mean, gillette owns and Schick own the world now, but for years as a kid, wilkinson would do these ads about their amazing Wilkinson sword blades. British brand of razors, now owned by Edgewell, unfortunately.

42:37 - Scott Wilkinson (Guest)
I often tell people old enough to know you know, wilkinson, like the sword blades, not anymore. They would go huh, what They'd go huh. And I'd say, if I was really a member of that family I wouldn't have a beard.

42:53 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Besides guns, the Wilkinson company produced swords, bayonets, typewriters, garden shoes, scissors and motorcycles. They did it all. Oh, wow, Wow is right, you know.

43:05 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
Wilkinson, like the motorcycles.

43:08 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I like that yeah, that's what you should say. Like the Wilkinson motorcycle.

43:13 - Scott Wilkinson (Guest)
Even fewer people would know that.

43:16 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Scott joins us every month, I should say, to talk about TVs and home theater. I just bought I haven't installed it yet, but I'm excited the Samsung Frame TV which we were talking about. Very nice. Yeah, I can't wait to see how that looks, but the idea is.

43:32 - Scott Wilkinson (Guest)
It comes with a variety of frames, doesn't it?

43:34 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, and we're getting this it comes with. There are four different choices on frames. You're just getting a simple black, you know frame, but it makes it look like a painting you can get, I mean mean like ornate third party frames. We're just getting a simple black frame, uh, but the idea is, instead of a black hole in your living room, that is the t the tv when it's on the tv's off.

43:55
It's a beautiful artwork or pictures of your family or whatever you want to put in there yeah, yeah, it's like one of those digital picture frames, but on steroids but jai there it is, yeah yeah and we're getting that one that looks. That's black with the and they have a fake white mat, so it really does look like you're. You got a framed.

44:12 - Scott Wilkinson (Guest)
Like you got a picture of there. Isn't that hysterical? Yeah, that's awesome.

44:16 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, just thought I'd try it out. What the heck.

44:19 - Scott Wilkinson (Guest)
What the heck, what the on in your world? Well, I just I just posted the latest home theater of the month on abs forum and it's a beauty. Um, I sent you the direct link there. It is beautiful wow, like a race car set yeah, it's got kind of a race car theme and on the bottom half with a checkerboard thing. Notice the BB-8 in the corner. Oh my, very cute, which is very good. Now notice also the movie posters are actually acoustic absorption panels, oh smart.

44:58 - Leo Laporte (Host)
So you can get those painted in effect.

45:01 - Scott Wilkinson (Guest)
Yeah, Wow, that's really cool. There's somebody on AVS Forum actually who has a whole thread on how to do it.

45:10 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Maybe in the new studio I could do that.

45:13 - Scott Wilkinson (Guest)
Yeah, yeah, that would be awesome. Yeah, anyway, this thing is 100% DIY.

45:19 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
Wow, look at that. That's what it was looking like before.

45:22 - Scott Wilkinson (Guest)
That's what it looked like ahead of time.

45:24 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
An absolute blank slate.

45:25 - Scott Wilkinson (Guest)
He calls it the blank slate theater because he had this basement. That was a blank slate. He could do anything he wanted, wow. So he put in two layers of uh, of um risers, two levels there and uh, what does? That mean that they're decoupled from the walls, that they can be pushed away, or no, no, no that that there's a quarter inch gap between the risers and the walls, so that you don't want.

45:53 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
They don't rub against the walls and make any noise yeah, that's very persnickety it's very persnickety.

46:00 - Scott Wilkinson (Guest)
Home theater geeks can be very persnickety. You bet, if you're gonna do going to do it, do it right. That's exactly right.

46:07 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
That's exactly right, if you're going to go to town, you might as well go into Lincoln and he used JBL speakers, which is an interesting choice.

46:14 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I like that.

46:15 - Scott Wilkinson (Guest)
Yeah, actually that picture I didn't realize it before I posted is an older version of his system the JTR 888s, okay, his system, that's jtr triple eight, okay, he says, has since replaced them with jbl professional uh speakers and and the two, the four subwoofers that you see there, two pairs um are, are still there, and that's all before he put the screen up the screen in front of it.

46:40
Yes, the screen is acoustically transparent. It's actually a woven material and the sound just passes right through the the little holes between the threads that have been woven into this screen.

46:55 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
It's remarkable isn't that like that one screen we saw in that one place, leo, and we're not supposed to talk about? I remember that they said that the speakers were behind the screen.

47:07 - Scott Wilkinson (Guest)
Oh, yeah, yeah yeah, that is how virtually all commercial cinemas do it.

47:13 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It was the lucas yeah, oh yeah, okay, he knows how to do it, yeah yeah, he knows how they have they have an amazing theater there, uh, which they used to show movies and uh shows, where they worked on the where locals, the walker, uh skywalker ranch, worked on the sound, right, right, and so its sound is amazing, of course, amazing.

47:36 - Scott Wilkinson (Guest)
Yeah, it's mind-blowing, yeah I've been in you and I have you, and I have been there as well. That's right yeah, exactly, exactly so. That's. That's how all commercial cinemas do it. Now, here you can see the equipment rack. I think our rack looks better don't you, john?

47:52 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I think our rack is much tidier, Much tidier than that we also have about five of them.

47:57 - Scott Wilkinson (Guest)
He put this in an equipment room separate from the theater.

48:01 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yes, because you don't want the fan noise. The fan noise, exactly Wow.

48:06 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
There are so many devices.

48:08 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I'm not a fan of the wiring. I'll be honest with you.

48:10 - Scott Wilkinson (Guest)
No, well, that may have been an intermediate stage.

48:14 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, ours looked like that for years in the brick house, and then John and Russell and Burke and Alex oh, alex Gumpel did all that Tidied it up.

48:25 - Scott Wilkinson (Guest)
He said enough, I've had enough.

48:27 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I've had enough. I've had enough, and it's beautiful. Now it's a work of art. It's called cable dressing.

48:31 - Scott Wilkinson (Guest)
You're dressing the cables. Yeah, it's really nice.

48:33 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
Yeah, I like to put ranch dressing on mine.

48:36 - Scott Wilkinson (Guest)
Yeah, when you do it right, it's a thing of beauty. Actually, where do you get the seats? Um, they look nice, let's see. He, he. Actually the front row is our new seats. Yeah, I forget what model, what, what they are exactly. It says in the equipment list. Uh, the second row are ashley recliners that he had already he bought these. He bought these gray seat covers on amazon octane seating octane seating in the front row there, which are real theater seats, really comfy, really nice.

49:12 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
So I guess if you've been bad, then you have to sit in those Ashley seats you have to sit in the back row.

49:22 - Leo Laporte (Host)
So I'm just curious. Oh, one more thing we need to know about what's the projector? Oh, a blanket for everybody. That's nice. Sorry, that's very nice.

49:29 - Scott Wilkinson (Guest)
Yes, the projector, I believe, is you can scroll down to the.

49:35 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It's in the room with them, which is, I think, kind of interesting. It's a JVC, yes, hanging from the ceiling.

49:40 - Scott Wilkinson (Guest)
It's a JVC? I'm pretty sure J JVC DLA-NZ7. Okay, which? If you're going to get a projector in the consumer space anyway, the JVCs are the ones to get, without question.

49:54 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
Okay, Now is that an interchangeable lens? Because I noticed that you noted the lens, the panamorph ECR.

50:00 - Scott Wilkinson (Guest)
No, it's not an interchangeable lens. He put a separate lens in front of the JVc lens. It's called an anamorphic lens and it stretches the image um, so that if you, if you send the projector an image that is squished which is how they are done on dvds, blu-rays and ultra hd blu-rays the lens stretches it out.

50:27 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Nice, and that's again the way movie theaters do it yeah so so how much did this whole kit and caboodle in the blank slate cinema cost him?

50:39 - Scott Wilkinson (Guest)
he estimated um.

50:43 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Let me see, I believe he estimated he says I found it, my wife keeps impeccable records the entire basement, including the theater, my office and other areas ultimately cost just under $40,000.

50:56 - Scott Wilkinson (Guest)
The theater was 60% of that.

50:58 - Leo Laporte (Host)
So $24,000, that's not bad.

51:01 - Scott Wilkinson (Guest)
No, that's not bad. It's really not bad at all. It's one of the least expensive home theater of the months I've done, and the reason is it's because of the sweat equity. He did it all himself yeah. Except for the drywall mudding and texture Right, which that's a hard job I wouldn't want to do that Nobody likes doing that part.

51:24 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
It's funny, do you? No, no, I don't want to do that. Nobody likes doing that part.

51:27 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It's funny, do you? No, no, I don't, I don't like doing it, but I'll do it.

51:29 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
You said it as if you like to do it. Well, it's I just every time I've. You could lose a finger with those professional drywall, mutters man.

51:34 - Leo Laporte (Host)
They move fast the tape in the mud. It's impressive.

51:37 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
I just sat and watched videos.

51:40 - Leo Laporte (Host)
We had to have some work done on our electrical and the electricians put a lot of holes in the drywall and he said, well, just call Patches in a Day, which is the local drywall patcher. Hey, it's Patches in a Day, so I thought that meant they would come that day. No, they still haven't come. It's weeks out. But when they do it. They do it in a day. It'll be done in a day.

52:06 - Scott Wilkinson (Guest)
Right, so I would get professionals to do that as well, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's um, but even so even with that and I think he, I think he said also the carpet, he had that installed professionally. You don't want to do that.

52:17 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Everything else he did himself very nice, all of this is on the avs forum, so you can actually the parts list and the builds and all the images. Uh, yeah, that red.

52:26 - Scott Wilkinson (Guest)
By the way, you showed a picture there of the, of the inner door. Yeah, which that that red is is facing out. It's black on the inside, but when you open it up, he, his wife, picked that red because it's the uh, the red of the british double-decker buses.

52:42 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Oh, how fun now, black is an interesting choice. He said he didn't like the Rolling Stones song Paint it Black, but he painted it black anyway.

52:51 - Scott Wilkinson (Guest)
He did like the Rolling Stones, but don't you think?

52:53 - Leo Laporte (Host)
that 20% or 30% gray is preferred or no.

52:57 - Scott Wilkinson (Guest)
Well, it depends on taste.

52:59 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I guess your lights are out. It doesn't really matter, right?

53:02 - Scott Wilkinson (Guest)
Yeah, if your lights are out, it doesn't really matter. My theater is a a 10 reflectivity uh, that's what you really want. You want it flat, huh yeah, you want it flat and and in the front, particularly with a projector, having true black is preferred.

53:19 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, um but you know, if you want to paint the whole room black, I'm not going to stop stop you, it's fine. Yeah, movie theaters are black, I guess.

53:27 - Scott Wilkinson (Guest)
Yeah.

53:27 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Fun Scott Wilkinson. Now we have a show Scott does a weekly show for us, called Home Theater Geeks. You can hear the audio. It's available to the public at twittv slash htg. Of course club members get the video as well. They can see Scott in his official lair. Thank you, Scott, it's always a pleasure.

53:47 - Scott Wilkinson (Guest)
Always great to be here. Thanks so much, you guys.

53:49 - Leo Laporte (Host)
AVSforumcom if you want to see the home theater of the week. And, of course, twittv slash HTG to listen to home theater geeks each and every week on the Twit Podcast Network. Now I did mention Club Twit members Very important if you are a Club Twit member and it starts at $7. You know, I had an interesting idea, but Lisa vetoed it. I said why don't we just let them pay whatever they want? Like, if you wanted to pay $1, you could pay $1. Because I figure most people are going to pay more than $7, right?

54:22 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
Oh, but the people who are holding out?

54:24 - Leo Laporte (Host)
if there's people say, well, I would do it. If we're five, we would love to have you too. Huh, anyway, help me convince lisa that that's that's the thing to do right now. Seven dollars is awfully low. You can pay more. That's the important message. What do you get? Well, mostly the great feeling that you're supporting these shows. If you like the shows and you want to hear more, uh, please help us out, because it's getting a little tight in here. Podcast advertising has fallen off, which is why maybe many of your favorite podcasts have disappeared. Certainly, many podcast networks have given up the ghost.

54:58
So we started the club two years ago. It's been a great success. We want to invite you to join a great group of people. There's a Discord where they can hang. We want to invite you to join a great group of people you get. There's a discord where they can hang. Uh, you get, uh, audio and video for many of the shows that we only provide audio for in public. You get ad-free versions of everything because we don't need to show you ads. You're the member of the club and you just get that great feeling that you're supporting what we're doing. We'd like to have you join the community. Find out more twittv. Slash club twit. All right, anthony Nielsen, who should we address? We have a Jim on the line. A Jim, oh, I know Jim. No, that's Scott.

55:39 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
Jim, that's a Scott Looking very serious.

55:43 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Jim from Hollywood Hills. Yes, and Jim, you know, unfortunately I don't have the Mac here. I could show you Nysus, I was going to have him give me some tests but I didn't bring the Mac today. But I was able to do some of the things that you wanted to do. The Nysus writer, the program I recommended.

56:00
Jim has a book that's 2,000 pages, very long, lots of illustrations, lots of stuff. He is a longtime movie sound man and we've been talking for probably a year now trying to find you a word processor that won't choke on 2,000 pages. I remembered at the very end of our last call that I had used a program called Nicest Writer that pages out to the disc and supposedly works with an unlimited number of pages. And I did load your book and you sent me a, kindly sent me a copy, uh and uh, it ran, seemed to do everything just fine. I was able to move images around, I was able to go to the very end and page backwards and forwards and stuff. You gave me a long list of things which I did not try. But uh, the problem is jim doesn't have a mac and there's. He asked is there any way I can run max on a pc. No, no. So jim, what's the latest?

56:53 - Jim (Caller)
okay. Well, I sent you an email. Normally you answer them right quickly. You didn't. In this case, I found a fellow in india who has an article which I sent you, step by step illustrated instructions to use vmware to run a mac os on windows, and I was wondering whether you thought this would really work or you were concerned. Perhaps it's a troll in his mother's it will not work in india.

57:22 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I just could tell you it will not work. Okay, I don't know why he thinks it would work. Wow, that would know. The reason they won't work is because Apple uh, relies heavily on a lot of uh library routines that are not available to the public there. Uh, in the old days they were built into the ROM on the max. I don't know if they still are, but you cannot of the ROM on the Macs. I don't know if they still are, but you cannot do it, I don't believe, without violating the law. Plus, you'd need a Mac to start with. You'd need to extract all those library routines from the Mac. There are Hackintoshes. Maybe that's what he's doing. Is he doing a Hackintosh Complete Glide Installing? He says VMware, I don't. Well, you could try it. Huh, uh, let's see where he gets. He needs, uh, oh, he needs a Mac OS image. Okay, where are you going to get that? I guess, um huh.

58:27 - Jim (Caller)
Does he send you this? Uh, it was online. I downloaded it.

58:32 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Okay, I reformatted it a bit, uh, but uh, that's what he uh says yeah, so you could turn a pc into a mac using something called a Hackintosh method, but then it's not a PC anymore, it's running Mac OS. He's suggesting that you could run.

58:56 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
Excuse me download the image from a Google Drive link. Yeah, there's your problem right there. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. This is this is, in other words. This article should be entitled how to install viruses on your pc.

59:10 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, so somebody has made they claim a vmware image of catalina and it's posted on a google drive.

59:19 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
Um, yeah, I guess uh, I, I don't like it yeah um trust it there's a bunch of problems with it.

59:27 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Uh, software, some software is not going to work. Uh, the minute apple updates, anything it's going to break. Hackintosh's themselves are not very reliable. This is even less so I I I don't blame you, uh, for wanting to uh try it, but you adding now such so many. By the way, this may not be faster because you're running it in virtual virtualization?

59:54 - Jim (Caller)
um, okay, yeah unfortunately, all my friends happen to be windows.

59:58 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Nobody has a map that way yeah, there must be a. I mean, I don't, nysys is not extra special there must be a Windows editor that can handle unlimited files. If anybody knows of one, let us know. We'd like to find out, because that's really what you're looking for Something that can handle that. I have to say, nysys seemed to handle it quite nicely, but you're also doing some things that maybe aren't. You know that. I wasn't really some higher end stuff that I wasn't able to try, but it seemed like it worked fine. What is the fastest word processor on Windows? That's the real question. What's the fastest word processor on windows? That's the real question. What's what's the fastest one we could use, jim, what is this image that we're seeing?

01:00:51 - Jim (Caller)
yeah, yeah, that is the chamberlain from the old um jim henson's dark crystal movie. Ah, you were right.

01:01:01 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, you know, micah said it's dark crystal.

01:01:04 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
He was right, yeah, a couple of others thought it was a Skeksis.

01:01:08 - Jim (Caller)
Yeah, I didn't work on that one, but I did work on a series that I would have paid to work on. I didn't tell them that it was the Jim Henson Creature Shop Challenge. Oh wow, a bunch of people who wanted to be creature builders and one of them got a job with henson after the eight episodes and he brought out a lot of the stuff left over from his previous work. Uh, farscape the navigator had three different models because there was no cgi back then, and it's just loaded with mechanics and electronics, hydraulics, pneumatics just incredible stuff that was done in the analog world I love farscape and I love, love, love the navigator.

01:01:54 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
That is so cool to hear. So they had three models of the same navigator in case one of them failed yeah, no, no, no, they did different things.

01:02:05 - Jim (Caller)
Oh okay, no one model could do everything.

01:02:09 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
Oh, I see. So when they needed to do a shot where the navigator was typing, or something like that that was whenever it was.

01:02:15 - Jim (Caller)
yeah, you had to use the right navigator. That's so cool, yeah.

01:02:21 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Jim, have you ever tried LibreOffice to see if that works better than Word? That is available, no.

01:02:27 - Vidak (Caller)
You might want to download that. That's free.

01:02:29 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It's free and it's open source. I don't know. Word is a pig and I'm not surprised that it can't handle a 2,000-page document. It's just a pig and you know I'm not surprised you're having this problem. But we do want you to keep working on the book because we can't wait to see it.

01:02:50 - Jim (Caller)
Oh yeah, no, I will certainly do that.

01:02:52 - Leo Laporte (Host)
And I haven't read the chapter yet on the blow-up, but I will soon. I appreciate it.

01:02:58 - Jim (Caller)
Oh, yeah, yeah, let me see if I can find this quickly here. I do have a picture of the Navator uh, farscape guys get ready.

01:03:13 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Wow. So I have no idea what this is, but I'm glad that it's making you happy, micah oh, because, well, that's um, that's the little guy, isn't it?

01:03:21 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
uh, because that's see, um, what's his name? Cause he's the one that's got the beard that he always pulls on. Uh, that is Domino, rigel, or Rigel, I mean the 16th, wow, and then two other head models for it. That very cool. That is very cool to see. So, for folks who are listening, you can see these kind of puppet contraptions with wires running to them and they're kind of laying on the the table. Uh, all of the animatronics that's involved. Very, very cool. And you said the show was the show that you wanted to be on. Was people competing to get a job with Jim Henson?

01:04:12 - Jim (Caller)
Yeah, the sorry about the phone there. It's the Jim Henson Creature Shop Challenge it. There was some stuff put up on YouTube a while ago I don't know if it's still there or not of the episodes, to try and get around the thing that would get over the copyrights. They blew up the image so it isn't full screen. Oh yeah, yeah, let me see if I've got something else here All right.

01:04:55 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Thank you, jim, I appreciate it.

01:04:57 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
And thank you for sharing those photos.

01:04:59 - Leo Laporte (Host)
That's so cool.

01:05:02 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
All the Farscape fans you're going squeak, hey, thank you for running the show and of I'm a twit member thank you.

01:05:12 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Thank you for being a member of the club. We appreciate it very grateful. Have a good one, jim. I'm sorry we don't have anything better for you, but honestly, office. Don't try to run. Don't try to run a mac in a virtual. Yeah, please don't and definitely don't download an image from Google Drive.

01:05:28 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
I was already kind of going oh, you downloaded this PDF from some site Like who knows Anyway.

01:05:36 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Who else should we talk to here? What else do we have? 888-724-2884 is the number.

01:05:46 - Hans (Caller)
Do you want to do another email?

01:05:48 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Sure, sure, sure. I think I have some more here. I put them back foolishly, returning them to their sepulcher. Matthew writes Thanks for the show and all you two do to help. I've recently switched to iPhone After being an Android user. There's a learning curve and I have a couple of questions. This will be for you, micah. When I switched to the iPhone, I transferred my photos from the old phone to the new phone. No problem, great, worked well. I want to start using the Google Photos app on my iPhone. I'm afraid it's just going to copy the photos on my phone back into Google Photos and then I'll have many duplicates. I am backing up to the iCloud plus. I started using Amazon Photos, so I have more than one place my photos reside. Do you know, if I start using Google Photos app, will I have a problem with duplicates?

01:06:40 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
I don't. I think that it, because the whole point of the system is that it it understands that if the file is the same, that it's not going to make a duplicate copy. But I have to say I have not come from android to ios and then attempted to use google photos, so I don't know if it would copy them at that point, because it wouldn't necessarily have. I'd'd like to think that the you know the image file is going to be the same. Image file name is going to be the same, and that's the first step that Google does to try to determine if the photo is the same. It'll look at the, the image file name, then it's going to look at the metadata and use that to determine what needs to be uploaded. What you might try doing is just launching it and running it for a minute, you know, and then you can force quit the app and that will stop it from continuing to upload photos. Just to see, yeah, just to see, kind of run a little sync test.

01:07:40 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Google doesn't have a remove duplicates feature. One of the reasons people don't do that is the liability that encouraged. They deleted something you really wanted and it wasn't a duplicate, and so they're reluctant to do that. And apple doesn't have that either. I don't believe. Uh, one of our sponsors, my leo photos, does, and there are d duping programs out there, but almost all of them work on their local database. I don't know of anything that will work on Google Photos remotely. So I mean, if it's a duplicate, it's because it thinks it's a different one, right, because the date is different, maybe the name is different, maybe the size is different. If it's the same, if you haven't modified the photo, I think you're going to be okay.

01:08:23 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
I think so too. Yeah, my heart is telling me that everything's going to be fine.

01:08:29 - Leo Laporte (Host)
And then with regard to calendar, matthew wants to know my eye calendar has no problem getting events from the Google calendar but when I create an event and I calendar will not show up, it doesn't sync over to Google calendar. I have a PC so I still need Google calendar because you know, I can't use the Apple Calendar on my PC. They're supposed to do two-way sync. Make sure on your iPhone that you have added your full Google account and then underneath where you're at the accounts, it'll show all the different things that can be synced, including mail, calendar, notes, address book. Make sure all of those are checked to be synced. It's supposed to be a two-way sync.

01:09:07
Now my wife was complaining about this as well. She said I'll add an event and it won't sync over. You know syncing is is tough but in nominally it's supposed to be able to do that. So I wouldn't, I think. Just make sure you've got that set up completely and you've got all the boxes checked, because I you know, actually it's kind of built into google to apple's calendar that you sync with google calendar. They understand that you're going to want some cloud sync yeah absolutely, yeah, one more.

01:09:40
Thank you, matthew, for the email atg at twittv. Don't you hate it when people do this?

01:09:47 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
Lick their finger. Yeah, I don't like fingers. I knew you would hate that. It's so gross to me. Do you wear the little rubber?

01:09:53 - Leo Laporte (Host)
thumb. No, I just Sometimes you'll see accountants with the little rubber thumb.

01:09:58 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
Yeah helps them Whenever you get something on your finger and you lick it off.

01:10:04 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It's disgusting, but sometimes you just there's no way, nope, there's a way.

01:10:08 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
What's the way? The way is water.

01:10:11 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Oh, dip your finger in water Just clean.

01:10:12 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
Oh, you're talking about to swipe through pages. I'm talking about people will eat something and then they're like oh, that's finger licking good, and they'll lick their fingers after.

01:10:19 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Oh, I do that also.

01:10:23 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
I got a little bit it is so gross to me just a little bit so gross to me on shows. You're licking good on shows. We know it's okay kfc tells you to do that. It's so gross, it's fun, you're licking good I. I watched survivor, yeah, and I said, if I ever go on survivor you will not lick your even if I'm starving, I will not lick my fingers afterward. And they all they have dirty fingernails and they're yeah, you shouldn't.

01:10:48 - Leo Laporte (Host)
You know what you're right. It's a bad idea, it's not good. Do not lick your fingers. Get one of those little moist towel yeah I always have one, do you?

01:10:57 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
no, I wish, I wish I was that you seem like you might apple podcast to google speaker.

01:11:04 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Question from Graham in Kingston, ontario. Hey, attgs, hello, that's good. I have a quick question. I use iOS and I have a number of Google Nest speakers around the house. I would like to know if there's any way, shortcut, for example, to play podcasts on my Nest speakers. It seems Apple and Google don't always play nice. I've tried a wide variety of podcast apps. Prefer to use Apple's. He says he has found a solution it's the Podurama app, but it's not great. What did you call me Podurama? Now I use Apple Music, yeah, and I have authorized Apple Music within my Google Home app. So all my Google speakers will play music from Apple Music. Similarly, my Apple speakers will play music from YouTube music.

01:11:57 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
Why not just use Bluetooth to play to them?

01:11:59 - Leo Laporte (Host)
So you can AirPlay also or not AirPlay, bluetooth Play. But I think what he wants to do is talk to it and say, hey, schmoogle, play the Ask the Tech Guys podcast. Yeah, here's the trick that I do. I will say, on YouTube Music, on Apple Podcasts here's one that often works. It's on Spotify. So even if you don't have a paid spotify account, if you have a free spotify account, you can authorize it with your google speakers and then ask for a podcast, and most podcasts are also on spotify. Doesn't mean you have to use it in any other way. You can literally ask for any podcast by name, so, and you can even use the word latest. So I will often say, hey, schmug, play the latest ask the tech guys podcast on spotify and it will then play that podcast. So I think that's the trick is, you don't need to have a podcast app on your iphone at all. Right, you can ask for any podcast by name there you go um the two supported services.

01:13:11 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
Uh, latest supported services do seem to be spotify and google podcasts. They don't support apple podcasts. Yeah, they don't support apple podcast.

01:13:18 - Leo Laporte (Host)
But if you, I think if you, if you, they do support apple music, yes, and I think if I don't know how apple podcasts work, I haven't used it can you can have those podcasts in apple music. The point is you don't need to.

01:13:31 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
You don't need to subscribe all of that. Yeah, I understand that this person's probably wanting to pick up where they left off, for example, and all of that.

01:13:38 - Leo Laporte (Host)
You can do that um, in fact, that's why I learned how to say the latest, because I'll be listening to a podcast, yeah, and I'll stop halfway through and then the next time I ask for that podcast, I don't even have to say a number or anything. It will start in the middle and I'll say and I said, no, no, no, no, play the latest, forget that. I didn't finish that, got it.

01:13:58 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
So I know it will pick up as long as you were listening to it on that device before, but if I was listening to it on my phone in apple podcasts and then I go to that which, yeah, that's just.

01:14:10
It's unfortunately apple podcasts does not have. Uh, google itself says youtube music or spotify are the two places. But yeah, you're right, leo, that if the person's just consistently listening, listening on their google nest devices, then yeah, it'll pick up where you left off I like, uh, I like the slow the, the quote from Chocolate Milk Mini Sip in our Discord chat.

01:14:30 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Hey, you moronic and mostly useless device that usually hears me wrong and or does the wrong thing, even when you do hear me correctly play, ask the Tech Guys on the TV. Do you mean to play funny stories about tech from Vimo on your midnight radio? No, I know it's. You know, I'm hoping, I keep hoping. I am an eternal optimist when it comes to home automation. I have this fantasy that I will be able to say hey Shmoop, hey Shmoopy, hey Shmoopy, good morning Shmoopy. And the curtains will open, open, the lights will come on, uh, the podcast will start playing, the coffee will start perking all of that stuff, yeah that you could talk to your house and have it respond your smart socks will give you a foot massage.

01:15:21 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
But no, but, alas but, alas, I don't talk to these systems because they always let me down. I don't like it.

01:15:29 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I know they let you down, even if you didn't talk to them, by the way, true, so it's just. The whole thing is a bad idea In general, a bad idea All of it.

01:15:39 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
It's all a bad idea.

01:15:39 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It's all a bad idea. I'm sorry we brought it up.

01:15:41 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
Real answer. Do you want to?

01:15:43 - Leo Laporte (Host)
take a call I would love to take a call. I see paul, the father I see a wireless caller yes, wireless call. Let's do a wireless caller come down come on down star six to unmute this is johnny austin speaking for the price is right.

01:16:02 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
We are talking to you, me. What is your name? Me, my?

01:16:07 - Hans (Caller)
name is hans. Me, my name is Hans. Hi Hans, when are you calling from Confirming that you're going to say my name, Hans?

01:16:12 - Leo Laporte (Host)
it's you and where are you calling from Hans?

01:16:15 - Hans (Caller)
Leo, I have been a big fan of yours for too many years. First, I would like to share that I used to work for the Muppets and I used to sit at a desk where the two elephants were dangling above me and when I would look up I would always see them looking down at me and I always felt they were kind of judging me.

01:16:35 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
Wow. So anytime you're making a decision in your life, you think of them looking down on you, going oh not the right? Wow, Should I get chocolate or peanut butter? They never closed their eyes. They never closed their eyes. They would always stare at me. Oh, that's kind of scary. Should.

01:16:44 - Hans (Caller)
I get chocolate or peanut butter, they never closed their eyes. They never closed their eyes. They would always stare at me. Oh, that's kind of scary. So I knew Jim Henson. I thought I would share that with the gentleman who phoned earlier.

01:16:54
Wonderful, that's awesome Because it was a very special moment in my life. I bet that's not why I'm calling, though. I'm calling because I'm a media artist and designer. I've been dipping my toe into AI all the available websites that are online and I can remember so many things in my life that have revolutionized what was before it, from vinyl to cassettes to CDs to now downloading and the same with movies. I can download pretty much anything for free and from what I'm seeing from my just dipping my toe into AI which is a heck of a lot of fun I've been with people who've studied at very expensive colleges where they've learned CGI and spent so much money on their training and their computers they had to buy, and I've gone with them to Seagraph conventions, which has been fascinating, but I see AI pushing that all into like the waste bin and replacing it all. That's my own personal, humble, initial opinion that good.

01:17:46 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Now here's my question is that good or bad?

01:17:50 - Hans (Caller)
I think it's great, except for one thing I think it's going to be really hard to tell reality from unreality, or even with historical events. That's exactly true. I'm very new at this.

01:18:02 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, here's a. Here's a tweet that I think a lot of artists share this opinion. This came from Red and Black Salamander and it's titled Art Tools. There's a pencil for sketching, there's a pen for inking, there's a brush for coloring and then there is a homemade pipe bomb for AI data centers, and I honestly think that a lot of artists really wish AI would go away. They feel like their job is going to. But do you think that it's possible that you could use AI in collaboration to make your work better, to help you in your job?

01:18:40 - Hans (Caller)
Well, I'm already experimenting with that, with YouTube videos and presentations for myself, and I find it stunningly amazing. I feel like the strike that happened last year was moot. I don't think they're going to be able to stop it or hold it back from replacing so many jobs. It's just my personal observation.

01:19:02 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It's really interesting because there is a kind of fork in the road. Some creators welcome it and, like you and some creators are so afraid that it's going to put them out of business. But I'm kind of of the opinion that there's something a human can do that no machine ever can do, and we talk about the uncanny valley can do that no machine ever can do. And we talk about the uncanny valley and, if you've seen the videos generated by Sora and other, very interesting, I mean. It's interesting because they can do it, but it's not as good as a human can do. And even the AI music that we play all the time on our shows isn't. It's mediocre, it's not inspiring, it doesn't have humanity to it. So I do think there's something you think that someday that we won't, that we won't be able to make the distinction.

01:19:51 - Hans (Caller)
I just remember when cameras had two pixels, four pixels and computers only had two megabytes or four megabytes. And the people. I remember an account I work for this major firm in new york and the accountant came in and said we're going to upgrade to a computer that now has six megabytes so we can really do our accounting.

01:20:08 - Leo Laporte (Host)
And you know, you remember the scene in Mad Men when they bought a mainframe computer and they had to take over the whole floor and put in a raised floor.

01:20:17 - Hans (Caller)
Yeah, that was a wonderful moment from the 60s I worked for a firm that had to knock a hole through the ceiling to be able to sit at one desk on one floor and reach the computer above Wow.

01:20:28 - Leo Laporte (Host)
So, yes, we've seen a lot of changes and there's been huge acceleration. I'm still maybe and maybe this is, you know whistling past the graveyard. I still I feel like computers can do so much, and, yes, they're getting better and better and better, but that's not infinite. There is a point that they can get to where they just can't bridge that gulf between a machine, what a machine can do, what a human can do, and maybe that's religious of me or somehow foolish of me, but I really do think there is something magical that we do as humans, that, and we have a very finely tuned ability to recognize, which is not but I'm not anti-AI. In fact, that's to me, that's. That's one of the things that protects us from AI. No matter what tools you use to generate art or photos or movies, you're the human element, will always be. You always need the human element.

01:21:26
Now, I may be wrong. You're right. I mean, we're seeing a hockey stick of progression right now with AI. I just think it gets to a point. It gets 99%, and then there's that 1% that we are unique, that we add. I hope so anyway. What would happen, though, if I respect your opinion? Are you worried about being out of work?

01:21:53 - Hans (Caller)
Well, I've already had that happen to me more than once and I'll share a tiny little story. One of my skills was building scale models. I worked with some of the biggest firms building elaborate scale models. A presentation was given over Lincoln Center and one of the architects asked about computer rendering could that ever replace scale models? And he was laughed out of the building Right. Of course, nobody makes scale models anymore.

01:22:17 - Leo Laporte (Host)
There's a famous scene, there's a wonderful documentary on Disney Plus about the model lab that Lucas built for Star Wars, and there's a wonderful moment where Spielberg is making Jurassic Park and he's got I think it was Ray Harryhausen building a life-size T-Rex mechanical T-Rex because he thought this is the only way we can do it. And the digital artists at Lucas, in a kind of skunk works, made an animated T-Rex and they just kept it playing on a loop in the screen. So when Spielberg walked by and he went, what is that? And the world changed, by the way. And yes, as somebody who could make mechanical models, that was it. It was over for you. It's sad, but that's mechanical models. I think that doesn't mean that your particular artistic skill set is obsolete, is it?

01:23:15 - Hans (Caller)
You can't make mechanics. I still make the occasional model, but there's other things you do, oh yeah, yeah, I'm a member of ASCAP. I write songs, for example, and I've really tried to diversify my artistic expression and I love doing it.

01:23:30 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I think it's interesting that you're not threatened by AI.

01:23:36 - Hans (Caller)
Thank you.

01:23:36 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Are you? Thank you very much. You're not, are you?

01:23:39 - Hans (Caller)
No, no I'm loving it.

01:23:40 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I am loving it, and is that because you feel like there will always be a scope for you to operate? Or do you not fear that at some?

01:23:51 - Hans (Caller)
point, you'll be replaced entirely. I think if you're always got this creative bug or urge inside of you, you're always going to find some way to grow with what's happening around you.

01:24:00 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I guess we're saying the same thing There'll always be a place for humans.

01:24:05 - Hans (Caller)
I hope I don't, Honestly when you were saying all of that earlier, I was thinking I'm happily married and I don't want to replace my wife.

01:24:12 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yes, perfect example, there are people who say, oh no, I'd like an AI robot wife, but not me.

01:24:20 - Hans (Caller)
No not you For the low so far.

01:24:24 - Leo Laporte (Host)
They're pretty soulless, yeah, and I think that a lot of the creations of AI right now are soulless. I think that's a good word to use to describe it. It's an interesting debate. A lot of artists, though your shoes are very threatened, as you pointed out. That's what the last two strikes were about. Partially, I'm glad to hear that you are bullish, so tell me about your art now. What do you do and how do you use AI?

01:24:54 - Hans (Caller)
Well, as I said, I'm a member of ASCAP. I've had a couple of songs recorded in Europe that I wrote, and it's songs you've never heard of, such as my Baby Loves to Boom Boom. I doubt you've ever heard that.

01:25:04 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
What a great song. I love it. It sounds like a great title.

01:25:08 - Leo Laporte (Host)
May I play it?

01:25:12 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
My baby loves to boom boom, you're pretty close, you're really close.

01:25:16 - Hans (Caller)
Another one is called Living in my Truck. That another one is called living in my truck. Oh, that's a, that's a, that's a classic. But um, how?

01:25:21 - Leo Laporte (Host)
about.

01:25:21 - Hans (Caller)
My baby loves to boom, boom in my truck I never thought of that, but I wrote one called sharks in shallow water and I'm right now trying to work on a music video for it and I am having a lot of fun doing it. I'm just pulling as much free stuff as I can off the web from the various sites which, I'm sorry I said because they're probably going to start shutting their sites down?

01:25:44 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Are you using Sora or tools like that to create? By the way, when I searched for my baby loves to boom, boom. I found a YouTube video of the best falls in beauty pageants.

01:25:56 - Hans (Caller)
That's me. That's my song. It's used as a background.

01:26:01 - Paul the Father (Caller)
I put all those videos together what that is you best.

01:26:04 - Hans (Caller)
That's my say. I put that video together. Copyright hans.

01:26:07 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Carl's closet, it's you oh my god, that's hysterical.

01:26:12 - Hans (Caller)
My baby loves to boom, boom uh oh, you will never get that song out of your head.

01:26:17 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Okay, I'm not to play it for anybody, because I Best Pageant Falls. Oh, come on, let's play a little bit. Here we go. Oh, we'll have to edit this part out of the YouTube version of this.

01:26:39 - Scott Wilkinson (Guest)
So you're Mr Model? Huh, I am, that's me, that's my song Is that you singing?

01:26:45 - Hans (Caller)
Yeah, I can do different voices. I love it. I used to do live theater so I used to have a strong voice on stage.

01:26:51 - Leo Laporte (Host)
That sounds so wonderful, hans, I wish we could hang. You sound like a fascinating person. What an eclectic career you've had and I love it that you have always found and I think this, this is the human spirit. You've always found a way to create. You had to create, so you've always found a medium that you could create in now here's the issue.

01:27:10 - Hans (Caller)
Well, I love your original show way back when, but look what you've done with your career as well.

01:27:15 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I'm most impressed well, you're a little too kind, I think, but anyway, thank you, um. My question, though, um is can you make a living? And uh, that I think increasingly is a problem in this country, which is we don't value the really valuable things and artists are not generally valued. I mean, you're creating which is nice in a sphere where it is valuable because it's mass media or pageant boom-booms.

01:27:50 - Hans (Caller)
That was just for fun. That video was just for fun.

01:27:52 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I love it. It's so funny. My baby loves the boom-booms. Hans, a pleasure talking to you. We should continue this conversation because I'd like to know, as time goes by and AI evolves, if you continue to celebrate it. If it makes you nervous, I'm with you. I'm bullish. I think, from the very first, computers have always been best as tools, not to replace humans, but as tools humans use. That's what we're tool makers, we're humans use. That's what we're tool makers. We're tool users. That's what we do.

01:28:24 - Hans (Caller)
Yeah, and let's hope it stays that way, I agree. And they offer wonders beyond imagination.

01:28:31 - Leo Laporte (Host)
So nice to talk to you. They really do. My baby loves to boom. Same here Boom, boom, boom. My baby loves you. Sound like you're a mean one, mr Grinch.

01:28:44 - Hans (Caller)
I can do that voice. I think you can. You should hear me singing Sharks in Shallow Water.

01:28:48 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Oh man, hey, a real pleasure. Thank you, Hans. I wonder if that's like Bridge Over Troubled.

01:28:52 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
Water.

01:28:52 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Like a shark in a shallow water. Now, how many copyright strikes do we have today?

01:29:02 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
That's the question. That's the real question. Run the counter at the bottom of the screen.

01:29:08 - Leo Laporte (Host)
We should you know? We should have a little number that goes up. You're watching. Ask the Tech Guys that there is Micah Sargent. I'm Leo Laporte. We're so glad you're here today and we love to boom, boom. That means whatever you want it to mean. It could mean anything, yeah, in this case, people in high heels falling over yeah, and in some cases it's about answering tech questions.

01:29:30 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
That's what we love to do, that's our boom boom, that's our boom.

01:29:33 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Boom, anthony nielsen, you know what's your boom. Do you think an ai could?

01:29:36 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
ever do what we do um in the short term? No, in the long term. Yeah, I here's what I think. I think an AI could ever do what we do In the short term? No, in the long term yeah, here's what I think.

01:29:43 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I think an AI can imitate. Right, but an imitation is not the same as the original. Humans can be original in ways that AIs can't.

01:29:52 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
Right, because we're loaded with mistakes. Yeah partly it's because of the mistakes?

01:29:57
Yeah, Right, but I found it interesting what you were talking about earlier about our ability to tell the difference? Um modern humans, that is, homo sapiens, have been around for something like 300 000 years, so we've got a lot of time in, a lot of training. That is built into our practically built into our genetic code at this point. That is built into our practically built into our genetic code at this point. That is specifically related to our ability to determine what is dangerous, what is not, and that manifests in different ways. We've talked before about how motion sickness is essentially just our brains thinking that we've eaten something that is poisonous to us and that's why it makes us nauseous, nauseous, nauseated, excuse me, whenever we are in vr? Um, but that uncanny valley aspect is genuinely our ability to determine what is like us and what is not like us, because we've got so much experience of having to do that for the sake of our survival.

01:30:58 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It was survival. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. In the meanwhile, I would like to survive by answering another question, that's what keeps us going?

01:31:09 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
That's what keeps us going Like a shark in shallow water. That is what keeps us going.

01:31:13 - Leo Laporte (Host)
What do you got for us? Paul the Father on the line? All right, paul the Father, welcome. Oh there he is.

01:31:22 - Paul the Father (Caller)
Leo and micah hi, father, greetings, good to talk to you. Where are you calling from? It's um, beautiful downtown oswego, illinois. Ah, nice, outside of chicago, yes, in case you need to say so. Um, but I do have a question and I will say a lot of the questions that I have had in the past you have answered. This is the only one that's hanging me up, so I appreciate your giving me the time to ask it. So it's more of a why versus a how.

01:31:45 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yes.

01:31:48 - Paul the Father (Caller)
I have Apple TV 4K. I have a TV that has Dolby Atmos, I have a soundbar that has Dolby Atmos. But my question is and I've seen all the video settings but it's more of an audio thing it's a why, when I have everything plugged into the television and I'm watching a certain sport that involves a soccer ball, on an app that involves a certain bird, I figured I better not say it, but I figured I'd say it why I cannot hear play-by-play plugged into TV but I can hear play-by-play plugged into soundbar.

01:32:29 - Hans (Caller)
Do you hear any sound at all?

01:32:30 - Paul the Father (Caller)
I can hear crowd noise on either. I can hear crowd noise on either you hear crowd noise.

01:32:35 - Leo Laporte (Host)
You're not hearing the announcers.

01:32:37 - Paul the Father (Caller)
The announcers? Yeah, that's the question Like why does it work on?

01:32:42 - Leo Laporte (Host)
one and not on the other, and I guess which is better to have it plugged into so, first of all, uh, the source of this is the apple tv, correct? Okay? So one thing you might want to do is go into your sound settings and see what apple tv is sending out. It's possible is sending out something that the tv can decode, but the soundbar can't. Okay, it's also possible that your center channel is broken on your soundbar, but everything and every other channel besides the bird channel.

01:33:10 - Paul the Father (Caller)
But it works fine when I plug it in the soundbar?

01:33:13 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, Wait a minute, it works in the soundbar but not the TV, correct. Oh, I thought it was the other way around. No, okay, so, but not the TV Correct.

01:33:20 - Paul the Father (Caller)
Oh, I thought it was the other way around.

01:33:21 - Leo Laporte (Host)
No, so the sound, yeah, okay. So yeah, the TV's not decoding it properly. It's sending it to the TV in a format it doesn't understand Is it an older TV, I got 22.

01:33:33
That's pretty new TCL. Yeah, oh, it should understand everything. It's just then a setting. It might be in the TV, it might be in the Apple TV. So you can send sound in a variety of ways. You can send it as a simple bit stream, but with the modern surround sound you're going to have it be encoded in some way, typically Dolby Atmos. That's what you're talking about. Dolby Atmos is apple surround, minus a few additional features. Uh, your soundbar almost certainly can handle it if the apple tv is sending it out. Does it say atmos on the screen? When you're watching the game?

01:34:10 - Paul the Father (Caller)
it sometimes at the beginning what sometimes it does. Yeah, it'll go through like a little thing on the tv yeah, so it'll, it'll tell you.

01:34:19 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It's just an encoding issue. It's just an encoding issue. Okay, yeah, okay, stick with the soundbar. And the soundbar is connected via optical or HDMI.

01:34:29 - Paul the Father (Caller)
HDMI.

01:34:29 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, that's the right way to do it To your ARC on your TV or onto the. Actually, no, it would be on the.

01:34:36 - Paul the Father (Caller)
Where does the Apple TV go? Everything's in the soundbar.

01:34:40 - Leo Laporte (Host)
So the Apple TV goes to the soundbar.

01:34:43 - Paul the Father (Caller)
The TV's in the soundbar. Where does the Apple TV?

01:34:47 - Leo Laporte (Host)
So the HDMI port on the Apple TV, that cable goes into the TV.

01:34:52 - Paul the Father (Caller)
Actually I have it in the In this situation. Yes, the TV.

01:34:56 - Leo Laporte (Host)
The TV and then your soundbar is connected to the ARC HDMI on your TV. Yes, yes, that's the audio return channel, and the only reason you do that is so when you play on the TCL you play Netflix on the TCL the audio goes into the sound bar. Yes, that's the right setup.

01:35:13 - Paul the Father (Caller)
Okay, I would you could look at encoding. I'll blame the bird.

01:35:22 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Could be the bird. It could be the way it's encoded.

01:35:23 - Paul the Father (Caller)
It could be the way the encoding is being passed along. Okay, yeah, sounds good.

01:35:25 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
I'll try those and you know, it's also worth considering if you're just using HDMI cables that came with those devices. If they're out of date, that could be it too. It's always we recommend Cable Matters and get the latest HDMI, latest version hdmi, whatever is 2.1a matters uh, from you can get them on amazon and they're not very expensive at all. Uh, sometimes that could be the difference. Um, I've had just cables that were old and didn't work properly that's a good point.

01:35:57 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, yeah, I have upgraded cables, uh, for this exact purpose. Yeah, sounds good, yeah, 4k apple tv you want to make sure you're using hdmi 2.1 cables? Yeah, okay, I'll do that.

01:36:09 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
Hey, a pleasure talking to you yeah, great question have a great one. Thank you, take care.

01:36:13 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Bye-bye, nice to meet you all right in beautiful oswego, chicagoland uh.

01:36:23 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
Oswego Chicagoland.

01:36:24 - Leo Laporte (Host)
We're four minutes out from our travel and gear Johnny Jets coming up.

01:36:28 - Johnny Jet (Guest)
We could jump right into it, if you want.

01:36:30 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Is Johnny here? Johnny Jump, all right, let's pause the pause. That refreshes and that's Micah Sargent. I'm Leo Laporte, you're watching. Ask the Tech Guys. It's time to travel to wonderful exotic places all over the world with Johnny Jett from johnnyjettcom. He is our travel guru. Hi, johnny.

01:36:56 - Johnny Jet (Guest)
How are you guys? Where are you? Where are you? I am in Toronto, Canada.

01:37:02 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Visiting the fam.

01:37:05 - Johnny Jet (Guest)
Yeah, so last time I was on, I was getting ready for a big trip. Well, guess what?

01:37:10 - Leo Laporte (Host)
What.

01:37:11 - Johnny Jet (Guest)
I was supposed to go to Europe the day before I got hand, foot and mouth with my daughter.

01:37:16 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
You're kidding, I'm sorry.

01:37:19 - Johnny Jet (Guest)
I mean, I woke up, my hands were killing me. I had all over. I went to the doctor. They were like you cannot go on a cruise with hand, foot and mouth.

01:37:25 - Leo Laporte (Host)
You had to cancel the cruise. I hope you had insurance, Johnny.

01:37:28 - Johnny Jet (Guest)
Listen, I work with Allianz.

01:37:31 - Leo Laporte (Host)
You were fully insured.

01:37:33 - Johnny Jet (Guest)
Even before I worked with Allianz, I always bought travel insurance. But what I did not buy was the cruise insurance. You know, when you buy a cruise they always say do you want to buy their insurance? I was like I don't need it, I have anyway and I figured that, you know, I know so many people I'd be able to get it removed anyway. They're like sorry, there's nothing we can do for you. So if you don't have your own insurance, you lost your money. But luckily I have Allianz and I haven't actually, I haven't even processed yet. I'm not going to do it.

01:38:03 - Leo Laporte (Host)
My wonderful travel agent, Jane at Travel Store, always makes me buy insurance and I have never capitalized on it and I feel like this is such a huge expense. But boy, it sounds like you're glad you had it and I. And I never get it from the cruise line, I always get it from a third party always the third party, and that's because if the cruise line goes under, exactly.

01:38:26 - Johnny Jet (Guest)
You're out of luck, and that's not a part of yeah, no, for sure, yeah, um. But you know one thing if I did have it through the cruise line, I wouldn't have to go through elliott's, although they would have just given me a credit, which would have been fine, but it would have been basically one phone call and that would have been, that's it.

01:38:42 - Leo Laporte (Host)
So you got, you got your money back. Basically Not yet.

01:38:46 - Johnny Jet (Guest)
I haven't submitted it yet, but I will Okay. I should Next my next interview with you. I should know by then.

01:38:54 - Leo Laporte (Host)
They don't say oh well, you're sick, so you will give you your money back, but your wife and kids have to go without you.

01:39:01 - Johnny Jet (Guest)
Well, actually my daughter had it with me and my wife and son actually had it a week before, which we didn't really realize.

01:39:07 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Were they allowed, Were they like, couldn't they reimburse the whole thing?

01:39:13 - Johnny Jet (Guest)
Yeah, they have to. They do okay, but what doesn't really make sense to me is that I go, look, look at my hands First of all. I had it all over my hands and my mouth. In my mouth I couldn't even swallow and I was like, would you rather me go on the cruise so I don't lose my money? Of course they don't want you.

01:39:42 - Leo Laporte (Host)
In fact, when you get on a cruise, the first thing they do is make you fill out a form asking if you're sick in the most graphic of details, and if you said now, what if you said yeah, I am not feeling so well?

01:39:47 - Johnny Jet (Guest)
they wouldn't give you money back, they just would say evaluate you they wouldn't let you know right, yeah, they deny your boarding and then they don't.

01:39:53 - Leo Laporte (Host)
But they don't guarantee you your money back. You'd be out the money oh, you're out.

01:39:57 - Johnny Jet (Guest)
I mean, wow. I don't know if we talked about this last time, but about a month ago a woman did we talk about this, a woman on carnival cruise. She posted it on facebook her confirmation number and they canceled it. Yes, someone, someone canceled it two days before yes, we talked about that yeah, so I mean, she didn't even.

01:40:16
the only reason why she knew is because they canceled one of her excursions, so she logged into her account. Otherwise her whole family was going to be there. They were going to board with all their luggage and then find out, sorry. So, always double check your reservations and get insurance.

01:40:33 - Leo Laporte (Host)
And get a good travel agent right, Because this is kind of a good travel agent will protect you and make sure you do all those things right. Do not be this guy who came and arrived late for his flight and missed it and then decided to take off his shirt and shoes and run after the airplane.

01:40:54 - Johnny Jet (Guest)
Yeah, I wrote that this morning.

01:40:56 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I woke up like oh my God, are you kidding me?

01:40:58 - Johnny Jet (Guest)
This happened yesterday morning Was he hoping to catch it. You know know there weren't a lot of details. Uh, it was actually a baggage handler, I think that posted the video. That's hysterical and I saw it on account of south bay responders and I mean, you know they tasered him.

01:41:18 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Well, so he's obviously, he lost his marbles, I guess.

01:41:21 - Johnny Jet (Guest)
Unfortunately, I think so, but anyway.

01:41:26 - Leo Laporte (Host)
What else is going on in your world, Johnny Jett?

01:41:29 - Johnny Jet (Guest)
Well, there's a few things, so actually last time I didn't have time to mention there's some good news. Southwest Airlines is now on Google Flights. Before, you always had to go to southwestcom, so now you can price it out using Google Flights, which I love using because you can narrow it down to one way or another.

01:41:47 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Are there any airlines?

01:41:48 - Johnny Jet (Guest)
that are not now on Google Flights. I think some of the low fare carriers not in the US, I think all of them are on there, but when I'm on there I avoid the low fare carrier. So when I use Google Flights I just hit either like Star Alliance, one World or Sky.

01:42:12 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Team because I prefer a major, I prefer major airlines and I also avoid basic economy tickets.

01:42:15 - Johnny Jet (Guest)
Yeah, because they're not refundable and, yeah, you know your board lasts some of them. You know you have to wait in line to get your boarding pass. And actually another reason why you should avoid basic economy tickets I had a tip this month Actually one of my writers wrote it which I piggyed off. She piggyed off me a while ago. Whenever I buy a ticket, even before and after, I always set a price alert, a fare alert.

01:42:40 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Ah, where do you do that Because?

01:42:40 - Johnny Jet (Guest)
if that price alert a fare alert.

01:42:41 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Ah, where do you do?

01:42:42 - Johnny Jet (Guest)
that? Because if that price drops, you can do it on Google Flights, you can do it on Kayak. Okay, see, so whatever flight you buy, you track it.

01:42:51 - Hans (Caller)
And.

01:42:51 - Johnny Jet (Guest)
Google Flights makes it really easy. You just go into Google Flights, find the flight that you bought and just hit the track flight for the price alerts and if the price drops below what you paid for, you can call up. As long as you don't buy a basic economy ticket, you can call up and get a travel credit for a future, for within a year. And my writer which I had her write this because I don't fly Delta much anymore she said she did it all through Delta's virtual assistant. She just texted them and they gave her a credit. So I will put that in the chat room right now how to get money back from an airline on flights you've already purchased using price alerts by Melissa Curtin.

01:43:37 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, you already found it.

01:43:37 - Johnny Jet (Guest)
I'm fast, it's at johnnyjetcom.

01:43:40 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Of course you really are fast now, johnny. I did hear a rumor that southwest is going to change their boarding policy and give you assigned seats. Is that true?

01:43:50 - Johnny Jet (Guest)
they need to they don't know for sure, but because you know, I don't fly southwest really anymore, but I've heard that when you fly southwest so many people are trying to get on the plane first. Yeah, because they don't assign. So what? They do is yeah they get. They say they're hurt you get a wheelchair they get a wheelchair. They're taking away the wheelchairs from everyone else that really needs them the last time they call miracle flights.

01:44:17 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, they're miracle flights because they're they walk off the plane just fine. Last time I flew southwest it was from Green Bay, wisconsin there was a line of at least 20 or 30 people who were getting early boarding because they were disabled. Now, I'm sure some of those people were legitimately disabled For sure, but I've never seen such a long line in my life and I guess it's a trick people use to get on early so they can get a better seat.

01:44:44 - Johnny Jet (Guest)
It's a nasty bad karma trick. I do not advise it.

01:44:46 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I don't like it. It is bad karma.

01:44:48 - Johnny Jet (Guest)
Don't do that. By the way, did you get a picture of that? I would love to.

01:44:51 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Next time I did a good picture of that. Oh, I'm sorry I didn't. I was looking at each other saying does this seem like an abnormally large number of people in wheelchairs?

01:45:01 - Johnny Jet (Guest)
It's a problem. So these people, these business travelers or whoever else is paying, you know, pretty good money to get you know the first boarding zone A1. Yeah, they don't even get the board.

01:45:10 - Leo Laporte (Host)
We were, we were in A1 and it didn't. And we're watching. We're standing there watching because, yeah, we paid the extra, because I you know what the whole thing is. It's crazy this struggle to get on so that you have room to put your, your carry-on, and it's just. This is crazy.

01:45:26 - Johnny Jet (Guest)
I think that southwest should just have a sign well, what's ironic is that southwest gives you two free check bags up to 50 pounds the only airline that does it. No, that they give you the free check bag.

01:45:37 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Oh, I see, yeah but nobody wants to not be carrying so much on.

01:45:41 - Johnny Jet (Guest)
No one wants to check, even if it's free. Yeah. No one wants to check, but they especially don't want to check what is not free. So it's even worse. On other airlines, right, but yeah, so there's rumors Southwest is actually going to start doing red eyes. They don't, they're there's, they're. You know, there's a lot of talk right now. Um, you know, the ceo and the chairman are in trouble. This investor came in and bought 10 or 11 percent of the company and he really wants them gone, excuse me.

01:46:12 - Leo Laporte (Host)
And um, yeah, southwest is going through some, some bumps right now so apparently canada will let you in with foot, mouth and hoof disease.

01:46:22 - Johnny Jet (Guest)
Well, you know what? I stayed home for a week, oh okay, until it was gone and they actually said I probably could have gone, like my kid could have gone back to school the next day, they said, as long as she didn't have a fever for 24 hours. I was like are you serious?

01:46:36 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It's amazing what you get from schools these days. I never heard of this disease. This is not this sounds awful.

01:46:44 - Johnny Jet (Guest)
Yeah, yeah, kansaki another word for it is Kansaki, which I had never really heard of. Yeah, hand, foot, mouth is pretty common with kids under five and my daughter's four. But yeah, it's nasty. But what was I going to say? I was just I'm sorry. I distracted you. No, that's all right. I can't remember what we're talking about. Are you going to tell me?

01:47:03 - Leo Laporte (Host)
about the Delta flight, where the passengers ate moldy food.

01:47:06 - Johnny Jet (Guest)
Do you want to tell me about that one? Well, I mean we can, but I was going to say that. You know, I was supposed to go to Europe. When I got better, I was like where should we go? So my he said why don't you come to Nantucket? He has a house there. So I just cashed in some miles, we flew to Boston and then I bought tickets on JetBlue and we flew to Nantucket, which is great. But one of my tips for going to Europe or anywhere that's hot right now it seems like everywhere is hot is to bring one of these. It's a fan, a portable fan. You put it around your neck.

01:47:40 - Leo Laporte (Host)
And people will stay away from you. Yeah.

01:47:43 - Johnny Jet (Guest)
No, listen. I saw people in Europe, in Rome last summer with it Really, and at first I was like are you guys crazy? And then I realized that they're not sweating like everyone else. So either have a portable handheld fan or wear one of those, or a neck fan. Okay, which looks? They look like headphones, but, man, but you'll cool down and they're not expensive. They're like 30 bucks. So that is a good little tip. You are you are.

01:48:08 - Leo Laporte (Host)
You're a wild man. Mr Johnny Jet, our travel guru. He's at johnnyjetcom. Are you going to rebook that cruise? I feel so bad.

01:48:17 - Johnny Jet (Guest)
I did. I rebooked it for next summer.

01:48:19 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Actually, I didn't rebook that cruise, I just bought a new cruise you know I'm really excited in next year we're gonna do, we're gonna go on a mississippi river cruise from new orleans viking to young viking, from new orleans to saint paul I'm really excited about that. I want to see america I want to see it too. You're gonna see the beautiful saint j Joseph Missouri. Did you grow up on the Mississippi or the Missouri? Yeah, Okay.

01:48:45 - Johnny Jet (Guest)
And you don't need a passport for that.

01:48:47 - Leo Laporte (Host)
You don't need a passport, although you might wish you had one in New Orleans. But no, I'm just kidding, I don't know what that means. But no, we really we thought after COVID, we thought we're going to travel in the us for a little bit. Just see what the see, the see, the country.

01:49:01 - Johnny Jet (Guest)
I'm very excited about that speaking of new orleans, was it you that told me a story a long time ago about tipping the, the uh, you know what do you call these guys? That? The guy who polishes your shoes, yes, or? Or singing was it.

01:49:14 - Leo Laporte (Host)
You yeah, and you got in trouble. I got suckered.

01:49:17 - Johnny Jet (Guest)
The guy said, uh, he said no, you got arrested, someone got arrested I did not get arrested?

01:49:23 - Leo Laporte (Host)
no, I've never been arrested, he just had to pay some money that he just out 20 bucks, yeah guy says someone else that guy says will you give me five dollars if I could tell you where you got them shoes? I said, yeah. He said you're on there on your feet, that's where you got them. And I said, just for that I'm going to give you $5. And he started shining my shoes and I had to give him $20. Oh my God, but I was just glad to go out with my wife at that point. Yeah, you got to be careful.

01:49:54 - Martin (Caller)
One more thing, by the way. Yes.

01:49:55 - Johnny Jet (Guest)
You got time for one more.

01:49:56 - Martin (Caller)
One more.

01:50:01 - Johnny Jet (Guest)
So the US got time for one more, one more. So the us state department, they relaunched their pilot program to renew passports online.

01:50:05 - Hans (Caller)
Oh good, about two weeks ago.

01:50:05 - Johnny Jet (Guest)
Oh good, this is only for renewals, so you can't do it for a new passport, but I just saw someone that I follow on threads or or twitter. They got it within a week by using this. I've heard other people don't use it right away because you can get their kinks out, but listen, I would take a chance.

01:50:26 - Leo Laporte (Host)
My passport. You know you're not supposed to travel if it's expiring within six months of your travel. My passport expires next year, I think in January. This is the time to do it, do it. I'm going to put this in the chat room right now. Please do so. They now allow you to do this online. You probably mail in your old one, very nice.

01:50:49 - Johnny Jet (Guest)
Well, they came out with a pilot program, I think last September, but it only lasted for a month. Then they pulled it and now they brought it back and they're only taking, I think, 20,000 people a day or something.

01:51:00 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Oh, so you can get turned down? You could, but they'll tell you. Well, I'm going to try this. This is good.

01:51:12 - Johnny Jet (Guest)
Yeah, I think I would try it. I actually would like to do it with my daughter because hers is going to expire next March, but I don't think you can do it with kids under 16.

01:51:20 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Well, yeah, that's okay. Good, thank you for that tip. I think the whole family is gonna. You can renew early, right? You don't have to wait till the last year, I think maybe even more, but they recommend one year.

01:51:32 - Johnny Jet (Guest)
They actually now send you alerts letting you know when it's. When it's been a year, okay, okay, but yeah, I shall definitely take advantage of that.

01:51:43 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I'm glad we gave you one more tip. Thank you, I appreciate you giving me one more. Thank you. Have a great visit to Toronto and enjoy. Are you going home after Toronto?

01:51:56 - Johnny Jet (Guest)
I am, but I'm going to be up in your neck of the woods in three weeks. Oh, that's right. I was hoping we'd see you, yeah, but I'm going to be up, I'm going to be up in your neck of the woods in three weeks oh that's right we were going to.

01:52:01 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I was hoping we'd see you.

01:52:03 - Johnny Jet (Guest)
Yeah, but it doesn't seem like it. Don't wear your hoofs. I think they're putting me up with a montage.

01:52:09 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Oh, I don't know where that is. It sounds fancy Healdsburg. It's fake French. Oh, the montage is great.

01:52:17 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
I know where the montage is. He knows what he's talking about.

01:52:19 - Johnny Jet (Guest)
I've always wanted to go there I was like man. If Leo doesn't know about this hotel, then it's got to be bad? No, it's brand new.

01:52:24 - Hans (Caller)
It's brand new, it's amazing.

01:52:26 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Everybody's raving about it. Oh, I'm jealous. Yeah, next month, Well, maybe I'll come up, will text you. Okay, montage, how far? Is that 20 minutes, 40 minutes. Yeah, it's not very far Half an hour maybe Okay, yeah, okay, it's the wine country.

01:52:46 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
My baby loves the Montage.

01:52:46 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It's a refined wine country retreat.

01:52:51 - Johnny Jet (Guest)
You know, I don't even drink wine, so it's kind of a waste on me.

01:52:54 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I don't either, isn't that funny.

01:52:55 - Johnny Jet (Guest)
I've never been drunk in my life. I don't drink alcohol. What?

01:52:58 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah Well, good for you, I guess, I guess, I guess.

01:53:04 - Johnny Jet (Guest)
Listen, I remember being 30 years ago. I was in a bar in Spain, ibiza, and we met some girls and they all bought a round for everyone and I was like I don't drink. And the girl looks at me and she's like never trust a man that doesn't drink.

01:53:16 - Leo Laporte (Host)
And I was like Never trust him to fall on his face. That was a common refrain in college. I don't get it.

01:53:22 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
Was it? Yeah, a lot of people said that.

01:53:25 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Thank you, Johnny Jet. Neither Micah nor I drink, so it's the three of us.

01:53:28 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
I have drink, I have drunk Drunk. Yes, I have drunk, but I don't.

01:53:32 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I don't like to.

01:53:33 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
We'll have some tea.

01:53:35 - Leo Laporte (Host)
We'll, I'll come up for it, it's refined Montage for some tea. Thank you, johnny, jet Travel guru Safe travels, take care.

01:53:44 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
Later Pulled the plug.

01:53:45 - Leo Laporte (Host)
That's when you know you're done. Yeah.

01:53:47 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
That's the equivalent to yanking the hook Yum.

01:53:54 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yes, they are noticing, by the way, that we are now streaming on almost every platform. We could find that we are now streaming on almost every platform. We could find this is a new feature that we decided to implement using the Restream program we've been playing with For a long time. We had a $30,000 box from Amazon Huh, we still have it called the Elemental but it was $5,000 a year for maintenance and we decided to stop doing that. That was what led us stream to a variety of places, but now Restream does it all through the web, and what it does that's really cool is allows us to stream onto platforms that we never streamed to before. So we are, of course, in our Club Twit, discord. We're on YouTube, as we have been, but we are also now on Kik. You can see us on x look right at the top there, ask the tech guys on x 370 people watching.

01:54:45
Wow, that's wonderful great to have you 50 of them are bots no I think they're real people. I'm kidding, I'm kidding you can chat there with us, uh, also on twitch tv. So, uh, hello to all those wonderful people uh, chatting with us and watching in a variety of places. Um, this is something we're trying out new.

01:55:06 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
I tried just chatting on twitch. Does that? Does it actually post in my? No, it doesn't.

01:55:11 - Leo Laporte (Host)
That's good oh, like in your on your twitter feed yeah, posted on the twitter feed, yeah well, because, uh, there aren't a huge number of people streaming. I see high watchers. Yeah, I'll say hi, micah, it's just us kids.

01:55:32 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
It's an exclusive little club.

01:55:37 - Leo Laporte (Host)
All right, let's go on with more stuff and thanks and thanks, we got a caller. Hello caller, hello caller.

01:55:46 - Vidak (Caller)
Or not, I mean.

01:55:47 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Oh look, oh, I remember you. Let's go to Montenegro. Hi Vinok, I'm back, welcome back. How are you?

01:55:53 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
I'm good. How are you? I'm fantastic. Are those blue blocking shades your glasses? They look like they block blue light.

01:56:04 - Vidak (Caller)
No, they're just regular for people that can't see.

01:56:09 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
It looks like they had a light yellow tint to them, my favorite kind of glasses. Yeah, for people who can't see.

01:56:16 - Vidak (Caller)
Well, I'm back with another problem I seem to have. I seem to be in a sense of a, something like a uh, weird problems month you know, it does seem to go that way, doesn't it?

01:56:30 - Leo Laporte (Host)
yeah it comes and goes you have, everything will go wrong. Ebbs and flows, yeah so what's the latest?

01:56:37 - Vidak (Caller)
I'm usually good at solving my own tech problems, and now I feel insulted by my own tech that I have in the house because it keeps making problems. I sort of-ish solved the mesh router thing. Oh tell us more.

01:56:56 - Leo Laporte (Host)
We talked about that last week, yeah.

01:56:58 - Vidak (Caller)
Right right, it still does weird things where my computer connects to the further node, but it's now a little faster in terms of Internet speed.

01:57:12
So even if it does jump to it. It doesn't crash my Internet like it did last week. I don't know. It doesn't crash my internet like it did last week. I don't know. The only thing I did is I think it was you, leo, who mentioned channels I changed the channels on the router instead of I don't know channel one now uses channel four to broadcast or something like that, and that fixed the problem.

01:57:39 - Leo Laporte (Host)
That's weird.

01:57:39 - Vidak (Caller)
No, well, it fixed it by about eh a little bit, but 60%. I still can't figure out why my devices are connecting to the node that is Look, all we promise is to solve 50% of your problems.

01:57:52 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
So if you get 60% you're ahead of the game. 50% of your problems 50% of the time.

01:57:57 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, so that's actually 25% yeah.

01:58:01 - Vidak (Caller)
Right of your problems 50% of the time. Yeah, so that's actually 25% Right. But now I got a more serious problem which is actually impeding with my job. See this microphone that is floating around here.

01:58:15 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
Wow, how are you doing that Magic?

01:58:18 - Vidak (Caller)
Alright, yeah, well, it doesn't do anything. It's not plugged in currently. Oh, the reason being is I'm using the Max internal mic to talk to you right now.

01:58:30 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I have a Scarlett, right? So that microphone is a Shure SM58. It's a standard mic with a, with a what they call a canon plug, so you can't. The other end of that doesn't fit into anything on your mac. So you have what's? Uh, it does into this. It takes yeah, that's the scarlet. It's a usb interface, so it takes a standard analog mic input, turns it into bits and then sends it via USB cord into your Mac. You're saying your Scarlett's not working right now.

01:59:02 - Vidak (Caller)
Well, it does work, but it's doing something weird and I can't figure out what it is. I've talked to what does it sound like? It does work, but periodically it, just for a second, cuts out the entire sound. Yeah, the Mac freezes for like a split second and then it's back again and that's why you're losing the sound, because the mac is.

01:59:29 - Leo Laporte (Host)
And what's the? Face did I miss that part? It's a scarlet focus right 2i2 it's actually what we use or used to use for a long time. We still use, use it. Is that familiar to you, John? Because we send this out to many of our hosts. They're using not the Shure but our Heil microphones. Same idea, though it's plugged into the Scarlett, the Focusrite. Here's why, it's Sorry, go ahead, which is then plugged into a Mac, in most cases via USB.

02:00:02 - Vidak (Caller)
We've not seen that happen's interesting here's the weird thing uh, it doesn't do it on any other computer. I tried. I have a 2013 macbook which is now well, not working. Uh, rest in peace, old mac. But it never did that. And I also tried it on a Windows PC. It works just fine. It's only when I plug it in into my M2 MacBook Pro that it does that, and I've tried go ahead.

02:00:34 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
I was going to say. Let me ask you a couple of questions here. Firstly, do you have any audio related software on your Mac, so things like loopback or other products from urogamiba? Thank you audio hijack do you have anything like boom? Do you have? Audio hijack yes right, so audio hijack what?

02:00:59 - Paul the Father (Caller)
but it's not running currently right.

02:00:59 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
So audio hijack um, what I would recommend doing is, if it depends on how often you launch it, if you haven't launched it in a while, launch it and run a software update to make sure that the latest version of that audio engine is installed. There's something running in the background all the time yeah, that, I think, is doing something.

02:01:20
The other thing that I recommend checking, because this has been an issue for me in the past I imagine that you're very well versed with Spotlight. When you launch Spotlight type in Audio M-I-D-I Audio MIDI to find the Audio MIDI Setup app. This is an app that's on every Mac that no one knows about and it can help you solve audio problems and often helps me solve my audio problems. On the bar on the left you'll find that Scarlett interface and select it, and this is just a kind of troubleshooting thing.

02:01:58
Under the format portion, just try different formats. So it may be set to 48kHz, it may be set to 96kHz. Just try it at different levels and see if that does anything, because again, there could be something in the background that is trying to interpret the audio that's coming in. It's causing the Mac to stop for a second because it's having trouble understanding what you're sending to it. And then you can also try removing it from audio MIDI setup, unplugging it, plugging it back in to kind of reboot its connection to that Mac. These are just some troubleshooting steps that you can try taking that I've done in the past to help when I've had an audio issue.

02:02:42 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, something's running in the background. I think that's what's going on.

02:02:46 - Vidak (Caller)
I've tried most of it. Yeah, most of what you just said.

02:02:50 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
Do you use any?

02:02:51 - Vidak (Caller)
And also audio Go ahead. Audio hijack has only been installed recently. I've been having problems with this thing for about well, almost a year now. Um, how I? It went away for a little while because, with focus rights help, I discovered that the I don't know what, what that's called, but when you plug in a new device and your mac asks you are you sure you want to allow this device to connect to your Mac I don't know what that's called. We found that it messes with the, even if I say, yes, it messes with the connection periodically, but now that's been off, so that's not the issue. And for some reason it started really messing with it about 10 days ago. I mean, I've gone as far as unplugging it to be able to talk to you guys.

02:03:46 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
How do you plug it in? Uh, do you plug it directly into your mac? Do you plug it into a dock, do you? How is it plugged in?

02:03:53 - Vidak (Caller)
via a where's the camera? Via a USB-C. Usb-c yeah.

02:04:05 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
Directly into the side of your Mac.

02:04:09 - Vidak (Caller)
Right, right, and I've also tried using adapters and using its original cable and it does not, okay.

02:04:13 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
And it's still doing it. That was going to be my next question.

02:04:17 - Vidak (Caller)
That was going to be my next question, and Apple said and here, apple engineer, if there's any Apple engineer listening currently do not tell people that they should go out and get a new device just because you don't want to. He said get a new computer. No, he said get a new splitting box.

02:04:40 - Leo Laporte (Host)
He box, he called it oh, it's not a splitter, it's uh, you didn't even understand what it does. That's bad advice, yeah. So yeah, I don't think it's could be the scarlet, but I don't think it's a scarlet, especially since your mac's freezing. I think it's some software running on the mac. Yeah, what? Yeah, how do you know what kernel extensions or whatever are loading? Is there?

02:05:04 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
a way to know that yeah, there is, or even temporarily not load it.

02:05:09 - Leo Laporte (Host)
You know like hold down the shift key when you boot or something.

02:05:11 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
So in newer versions of Mac OS it's all via the terminal, and so what you need to do to access that stuff is oh, I forgot, you can also go into System Report. Oh, okay.

02:05:26 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It'll show you what's running.

02:05:27 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
Once again if you go into System Settings or no, sorry, System Information is what they call it now. It used to be called System Report.

02:05:34 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Is that the one that's under the Apple?

02:05:36 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
And it used to be there and it was about this Mac, but now they've moved it. So all you need to do is use Spotlight and type in system info and that'll pop up system information. And then you scroll down to software and you choose extensions and that will load all of the extensions that are part of the system. You can see which ones are loaded currently and which ones are not, and unfortunately there's not a menu that says just show me the Apple ones or just don't show me the Apple ones, so you kind of have to scroll through to find out what's there. But the best way I think to do it is by using terminal, and so if you use terminal, I've got to remember what the terminal command is. Now Let me see it is. Oh yeah, it's K-E-X-T stat, kext stat.

02:06:30 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Those are kernel extensions and that's the stats on that.

02:06:35 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
So if you go into Terminal and you type that in kextstat. That will give you the information that you need to what kernel or what extensions are currently running. Unfortunately, you have to boot into safe mode in order to disable or enable third-party extensions. But you can do that. But you can do it.

02:06:53 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Safe mode would also. If it didn't happen in safe mode then you would know it was a kernel extension that was doing this. And, by the way, Burke, who is responsible for getting everybody on the air, he tests. Everybody says Spinrite's site is excellent. The support there is very good, so you could check there. They have forums. But I think you nailed it. I think there's something on the Mac that's running in the background.

02:07:17 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
I think so too, especially because it's working on other Macs and it's not working on this. That tells me that there's got to be something that this Mac is doing specifically that's causing the issue, right. So we've given you some troubleshooting ideas. I wish we had a just straight up solution for you. I'm sorry that we don't.

02:07:34 - Leo Laporte (Host)
We got you 50 percent of the way. That's our job.

02:07:38 - Vidak (Caller)
I'll do the rest. Here's the interesting thing. Uh, focus right is blaming apple's generic audio driver. I don't think so I.

02:07:49 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
We put people that we know everybody that we know uses it.

02:07:53 - Leo Laporte (Host)
They're fine yeah.

02:07:54 - Vidak (Caller)
So it's not that I can't, even on these newer, even on these newer, max, yeah, we've got who, everybody.

02:08:02 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
Everybody, all of our hosts, paul Theriot. He's using a newer MacBook, yeah.

02:08:08 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, and uses the Scarlett Paris.

02:08:12 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
Yeah, so I'm pretty sure that it's not the Scarlett. I don't think it's a generic audio driver.

02:08:15 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It's something that's trying to capture that USB audio.

02:08:19 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
Yeah, I really do feel that, and that's why Audio.

02:08:21 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Hijack Pro is a good guess.

02:08:24 - Vidak (Caller)
That sounds very likely. I mean, the only other audio-related program that I have is Audition.

02:08:30 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
Yeah, oh, and you did say that this issue had cropped up before you installed Audio Hijack on the machine Right right. That's the only thing that suggests that it's something else it.

02:08:45
It started doing it, uh right, as I set it up, the set up the mac for the first time so here's a question when you did it on the older mac that older mac did not have usbc did it? It had you? You had to do it with the usb a cable, didn't you? Uh, right, right, right, I'm the only thing I could. Is it possible and this is probably kind of a goofy thing could the usbc cable that you're using because what is it on the back of the focus right, is it? It's c, it's also it's usbc. Oh, never mind. Then I was thinking maybe I mean, it's not way too much power being sent to it or something that was causing it to cycle. I think you nailed it with a rogue amoeba, I really do.

02:09:31 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I think there's a. There's something running there, by the way. That's one reason. Whenever I set up a new mac, I always create a second administrator account that I don't use. I I call it ghost oh nice, because it's the ghost in the machine and I never use it. For this reason exactly, when you install these kinds of things, you're installing them per user. Almost always. I mean not necessarily, but a lot of the things that can get you in trouble on a Mac might be local to your user account. So logging out of your user account into this unused administrator account Sometimes, if that fixes the problem, then you know, all right, it's something I did in my profile that I want to fix.

02:10:07 - Vidak (Caller)
So it's one of the first things I do.

02:10:09 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, every time I sit up. So thank you, vidak, it's very great to see you again. I don't have the hat with me, but you know I have it, it's good to talk to you guys.

02:10:21 - Martin (Caller)
I'll talk to you too.

02:10:21 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Take care, my friend. Bye-bye, take care, bye-bye. And we are out of time for this episode of Ask the Tech Guys. I hope you enjoyed it. We're so glad you came along for the ride. We welcome all our new streaming viewers on all those many platforms. I hope you'll come back next Sunday. We do the show in the morning, our time, 11 am to 2 pm Pacific, that's two to five East Coast time, 1800 UTC. The live streams are, as I said, youtubecom slash twit, slash live, but also twitchtv in the Twit channel, kick in the Twit channel. You can find us on X, you can find us on Discord and I'm sure there's other places that I've forgotten. A lot of places, lots of places you can now get in touch, so watch us live.

02:11:11
The reason you might want to watch us live is because we take live calls at 888-724-2884. But if you're watching this after the fact, you can still call that number and leave a message.

02:11:21 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
Indeed, yeah, anytime during the week, leave a message, we'll be able to play it back. You can get in touch with us through our email as well. We'd love to hear from you and answer your questions. Thanks so much.

02:11:35 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, I guess that's all we have to say. Make sure you join the club. We thank our club membersit members for making this show possible. If you're not yet a member, choose your price Anything above $7 at twittv slash club twit. I really want to make it possible for people to join for $1. We would lose money if you joined for $1, but it would still be a member.

02:11:58 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
If the people that have already joined continue, then we wouldn't lose money, right?

02:12:03 - Leo Laporte (Host)
right. I'm just saying I think that the, that patreon takes a cut. Oh, I see. So if you joined at a dollar, I think we'd probably, between the credit card and memberful, which is a patreon company, we probably wouldn't. I say money, but hey, you know, join, but you're there, but you're there. That's the main thing. We want you to be in the club. Thank you, everybody. Have a wonderful week. We'll see you next time. Uh, I'm leo laporte. I'm micah sergeant. Catch him on tech news weekly this thursday. He took fourth of july off. I noticed that's okay. Yeah, did you see fireworks? No, no, we didn't either. Uh, you can also catch him on iOS today, every other Tuesday with Rosemary Orchard Hands on neck, hands on neck.

02:12:48
Yeah, and me, I'm here Just keep watching.

02:12:53 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
Yeah, if you just keep your eyes open, you'll see him. I go streaking by.

02:12:57 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Thanks for joining us and have a great Geek Week. Bye-bye.