Ask the Tech Guys 2034 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 Leo Laporte here coming up how to preserve an old microcassette, 30 years old, with a conversation between dad and grandpa.

00:10 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
Wow, and I am Micah Sargent and we tell a listener don't worry, it's okay. You gave that app Bluetooth permission and then what do you?

00:17 - Leo Laporte (Host)
do when HP disables your printer? It's all coming up. Next on Ask the Tech Guys Podcasts you love.

00:30 - Matthew (Caller)
From people you trust. This is Tweet.

00:37 - Leo Laporte (Host)
This is Ask the Tech Guys with Micah Sargent and Leo Laporte, episode 2034. Recorded Sunday, july 21st 2024. Harpsichord, guff. Well, hey, hey, hey, how are you today? I'm PJ Keene, leo Laporte. I'm Michael Sargent, the host of the Tech Guys. He's one half of the Tech Guys. Hello, I'm one quarter of the Tech Guys and you are 25% of the Tech Guys. You, tech guys, you, yes, you, because this is a show where we all help each other.

01:08 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
We all work together to make this happen. It's like a user group.

01:11 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I like it. You come here, you ask a question, we go I don't know. But then there's somebody in the club twit discord, or who's watching the show. Who does? That's right. I don't know what the news is because I don't. I forgot my laptop. I'm working off the phone today. Or who's watching? The show. Who does that's right? I don't know what the news is because I forgot my laptop. I'm working off the phone today. What's?

01:31 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
in the news. I mean the big news.

01:33 - Leo Laporte (Host)
There is one story that maybe I don't need to refer to the phone, for.

01:37 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
It's like a large group is called. If a large group of people get together, yes, is it a gaggle? No, it starts with a c crowd, it's a crowd. And then if you hit yourself in the head if you hit yourself that, or I was gonna say, if those large group of people start protesting, something.

01:54 - Leo Laporte (Host)
So crowd strike was a long time sponsor of uh twit and uh. I think they're great people but something went very, very wrong, horribly wrong, horribly wrong. And they pushed an update. They call it a sensor, a sensor configuration update. So I remember this from when we talked to the CTO at CrowdStrike who's a little busy right now, but he said what we have is sensors and all these computers, all our customers, that are constantly monitoring for malicious traffic, and that gives them an advantage. So everybody who has Windows and is a CrowdStrike customer is kind of reporting back in as malicious stuff happens on the Internet. Well, they released a sensor configuration on july 19th at 409 utc. At 410 utc, the world came to a standstill. Windows machines in australia began crashing.

02:57
Blue screen of death everywhere. And then it slowly says the dawn, as the day dawned across the globe, spread everywhere. Airlines were down. In fact, I love the pictures. Did you see some of the pictures of blue screens of death on the Las Vegas sphere? Blue screens of death at airports, blue screens of death everywhere. Microsoft says CrowdStrike only is on 15 million Windows PCs. So this only affected 15 million Windows PCs. So it's not that bad. It's not that bad, except it was the PCs that it affected Were the biggest most important ones.

03:36
Actually I take it back, 8.5 million Windows, so that's nothing. Except it was the ones that run the airlines.

03:43 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
Amazon said that there may be package delays because of this. Kaiser Permanente said that they were having issues because of this. Yeah, maybe it's not everybody's everyday PC, but it was the PC of many an important system or group system or group, and it's kind of wild what it came down to which was from my understanding of kind of reading through and perhaps you have even a better way to grok this but essentially the update suggested that the system looks into a place in the code, that is, a place in memory that is reserved and not to be looked into, and any time it is looked into, then what windows does to protect itself from a malicious actor is implode normally. What happens when something like that happens? Uh, because they exist outside of the, the system protected files, is it just crashes the program? Right, but because CrowdStrike has access to the system and it referenced this place in memory, then it had to crash the entire system, not just the program itself. It's really yeah.

05:07 - Leo Laporte (Host)
So this is the problem with security software in general is it often operates at a lower level, what we call ring zero. If you're not at ring zero, you can't crash the system. If you are at ring zero, you can, and so CrowdStrike sensors were. The fix wasn't that complicated it just had to reboot the machine into safe mode so it wouldn't load that sensor and delete some a file from the crowd strike directory. Except that you had to do that at the command line, right, every machine. Well, yeah, I mean, you could do it in the, in the file explorer, if you wanted, but you had to do it to every machine in your enterprise.

05:43
I don't know if you know AD Acosta, who is in our twit social on our Mastodon instance, just ended my second overtime shift thanks to CrowdStrike today. What I have learned these past two days is primitive modern operating systems like Windows remain. No so-called AI could fix. This was a boots on the ground effort. My legs and feet hurt so bad. Poor a da costa had to go from machine to machine to machine doing the same thing over and over and over again. Going back to my point, the recovery tools and windows are trash and can't do anything useful. A lot of this required using command line operations to speed up deleting the corrupt file that was triggering the blue screen, and he goes on with a lot of information. And actually thank you for posting this in our Twit Social. Ada Costa, and you have my deepest sympathies.

06:39
Many, many, many of our listeners have been working overtime. A lot of them work in IT. I almost went live on Thursday. I thought, boy, we really, or was it Friday? We should really cover this. But I just my studio wasn't set up in the attic yet and I just wasn't ready to do that. But next time and there will be a next time Now Tuesday, steve will talk about this in greater detail.

07:04
I'm sure Microsoft says, well, it's not our fault, it's CrowdStrike's fault, and that's actually true. I mean, yeah, genuinely. In fact Microsoft has now released, they say, a USB key that will do the fix automatically. You plug it in, it loads, fixes things and goes away, so that if you are an IT professional you might want to look into that. There's so much time Windows wastes BSODing that blue screen of death thing, says DaCosta, until it finally decides to load recovery. Windows should have common sense to know a foreign third-party file, not a Windows system file is doing something bad Instead of showing my dumb blue screen with a smiley, by the way, insult to injury why not deleting the stupid effing Sagesys file and see what happens and guess?

08:01
Anyway, he's a lot more swearing. I don't blame me at all, blame him at all. Um, a couple of notes I got. I got from one guy saying it's interesting because the shorts on crowdstrike's stock went through the roof two days before this, as if somebody might have known this. Okay, that's weird. That's weird conspiracy theory maybe. Uh, the other thing I will point out is the CEO of CrowdStrike back in the day was the CEO of McAfee, which did the same thing. Cto at McAfee did the same thing pushed out an update that brought Windows machines down all over the world. Yikes. So he's got practice at this. I don't know. Yeah, it shows a number of problems. People with max and uh linux systems had no problem. But don't go oh yeah, see, we're better because that could happen to you exactly there could be some push that goes out.

08:57 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
And it makes me think of when rivian uh pushed out a software update over the air air and then cars were unable to be started. That's the thing, he's mission, whether it's mission critical in terms of a hospital or it's mission critical in terms of I need to get to work in the morning and now I have to have my car towed to the dealership to get this fix done because a push happened. That's wild to me and it makes me never want to turn on automatic updates on stuff because it's like, well, I'll let what is it? Let let the first person go before I do. I can't think of the phrase for that, but yeah.

09:37 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Someone else take the step and then I'll follow. Yes, you go over the hill, gentlemen, I'll be right back here watching. Anyway, terrible thing I guess you know you could take. There's a lot of morals, you know. People took away from this A lot of lessons that I don't know if they're valuable. Like well, we should be using Mac and Linux. No, oh, look how interdependent we are. It is true, I have to say, when you have everybody using the same operating system, you kind of have a problem. You know who didn't have a problem, who? Delta went down, american Airlines went down, southwest Airlines didn't go down. You know why? Because they use Linux. I don't know why Windows 3.1. Oh, oh, Windows. Now I know that, uh, steve gibson's gonna take a victory lap on this one. They use windows 3.1 and windows 95, both of which are not being updated for security, right, but so you don't get any pushed updates. This is okay, you don't get any pushed updates. And what they're saying is well, it's stable, it's operating.

10:42 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
It's stable until you get hacked.

10:44 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Well, I presume they have defenses around it that it's not just connected directly to the Internet.

10:50 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
I guess, yeah, if you're mission critical, I don't know, I thought that was kind of interesting.

10:55 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I'm not sure Again, I don't think that's. The lesson to be learned here is that everybody should use Windows 3.1. But we are kind of in a monoculture and everybody's using Windows 10 and Windows 11. And apparently 8.5 million of you are using CrowdStrike.

11:08 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
I mean, yeah, I drive around a Flintstones car because then I don't have to worry about anything Do you do? It with your feet. Yeah, then I don't have to worry about it, rely on anything else. You know there's nothing that can go wrong.

11:17 - Leo Laporte (Host)
See, we didn't have to. I didn't have to think about what. The news of the week was there. It's pretty obvious. Yeah. We'll be talking a lot about it for the next few days. Steve Gibson will be talking, but I don't think there's a whole lot we can learn from this, really.

11:31 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
Yeah, because this, just this kind of.

11:33 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Thing happens.

11:34 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
This kind of thing happens and you know it. Whoever or whatever was responsible for it. The company is going to be looking into it.

11:49 - Leo Laporte (Host)
They. The company is going to be looking into it. They'll figure it out. They'll do better next time. It is why I have often said and I know Steve has often said we don't use antiviruses For the same reason, and we've seen this happen with antiviruses McAfee is one of them. They operate at such a low level. If something goes wrong with them that can really cause a big problem. And that's what we're seeing here A piece of security software you put on your system to protect you, actually causing the problem. Now I don't think that if you're an enterprise, you should not use security software Exactly. Again, not a great lesson, but maybe home users you know, any viruses generally don't help. They mostly just get in the way.

12:24 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
Yeah, it's more about what you do and how you are safe online. That's right. Speaking of relying on things and having them fail you, a bunch of links online may soon stop functioning or will soon stop functioning, as Google has decided that GOOGL links will completely stop working in August of 2025.

12:48 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Now they said that they were going to stop working.

12:50 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
They stopped doing them. The company did stop in March of 2019. Nobody's created new GOOGL links but there are lots of services out there that have made use of those GOOGL links, and what's wild to me and maybe if Patrick's listening he can chime in is Our engineer, who is listening, I know I do wonder.

13:10 - Leo Laporte (Host)
He just compared Southwest Airlines to Battlestar Galactica.

13:15 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
How much work is it? How much server-side spend goes to keeping the GOOGL links that are out in the world working? It doesn't seem like it's that much, so to say we're not letting those that have been out there for years even work anymore. It's very googly and it feels silly now, I don't.

13:37 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I just uh, this is another news story that just broke. President biden has dropped out of the 2024 presidential race and has endorsed his vice president commonwealth. We don't normally cover that kind of thing, but, uh, I don't want you to be watching the show and then wake up two hours later and say what? So if you want to go watch the news, go ahead, we'll be here. Yeah, we'll be here. We're a podcast, you can download it later, but that's maybe a big deal. Yeah, certainly Maybe a big deal. All right, all right, all right, all right. What do we do now? I think what we do. I don't even have any. I have nothing. Let me just look and see if I have a Slack telling me what to do.

14:24 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
We don't have any ads, if that's what you're asking. Oh, we have no ads? No, so we'll just take a pause that refreshes. You're watching? Ask the Tech Guys with Leo Laporte and Micah Sargent.

14:35 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Now, let's take a call Now. John, do you have that capability or do I have to do that? You can do that, yeah, okay. Do I have to do that? You can do that, yeah, okay, okay. I should mention, by the way, we are now streaming on every dang platform in the Sorry, I didn't mean to say that while you were drinking Every dang platform Almost came right out of his nose. It truly did. I'll work on it Every dang platform out there.

14:58
We were, of course, on YouTube, youtubecom, slash twit, slash live, but we are now on twitchtv again twitchtv, slash twit. We're on kick, which I. The only reason I know kick is because they have they sponsor a lime green car in the f1 races. So I know I'm not kick, uh. Facebook I've heard of we're on facebook. We're on x uh, generally, because very few people stream on x, we are are one of the top streams on X. It should be pretty easy to find us at Xcom. Where else? Everywhere, all the places. Linkedin I didn't even know LinkedIn had video streaming. Linkedin streams, wow. So we are on that. So please, by all means, watch us live. We are live every Sunday from 11 am to 2 pm, pacific two to five eastern 1800, utc. Now we have our first call of the show at 888-724-2884. Hi, what's your name and where you're calling from?

16:00 - Matthew (Caller)
hi, I'm matthew in beautiful valley, glen California. Hi, matthew, I'm a happy Club Twit member.

16:07 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Well, thank you very much. Are you in your Egyptian tomb right now? What is going on behind you?

16:14 - Matthew (Caller)
This is a photograph I took outside a Masonic temple in Pasadena, California. What a great picture. Yeah, I just couldn't resist. I love it. The only reason it works is that my head hides the unimportant part. It's great.

16:31 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It's like you have two sphinxes keeping an eye on you, exactly. So what can we do for?

16:37 - Matthew (Caller)
you. Well, I have an Apple Music issue. Actually, on my iMac I have a rather large library and I wanted to put the entire library onto an external drive. So I bought a 1TB SSD that connects via USB-C, so it's nice and fast. I copied everything in my library first to another disk and then I copied my entire library to this SSD, and then I went into Preferences Advanced and pointed music at the external drive and I thought always well, but for some reason some of the items that show up are in the external drive and some are on my iMac's own drive and I've been updating some of those without knowing it. So what I'd like to do is get the most recent versions of every file, every track, onto one drive and point it at that one and then delete.

18:00 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
Delete the other one. Yeah, you did come unplugged or something you unplugged your mic.

18:04 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Oh, there it is.

18:08 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
Yeah. So it sounds like at some point things got a little confused. And here is my recommendation for you on how to fix that. Because if you do it kind of behind the scenes, meaning that you take those files and you put them someplace and then you open up music and then you go into preferences and do that, you're not guiding the app to do what it needs to do and explaining what it needs to do. So what I recommend that you do is you plug in that external hard drive and you hold down the alt or option key on your Mac and then click on music.

18:51
When you do that, a pop-up comes up on screen that says choose music library and there's an option to choose a library or create a library.

19:02
You'll choose create library and you will choose that external hard drive as the library that gives music the knowledge, first and foremost of okay, I'm being told where I need to create this go library and then you choose organize library and that should help to consolidate those files onto that external hard drive. So I've found that with Apple's systems, especially with macOS, if you kind of just change where the files are using Finder and then sort of go in afterward and, you know, tell it what you wanted it to do. It's not as good as if you kind of, from the get-go, direct the system to create things in that way, because what I think is happening behind the scenes is there's still some part of the app that's kind of holding on thinking that it's supposed to be organizing music in one place, and so some of those references are still taking place there. But by starting from the get-go, that should help you to create the library where you're trying to have it. And, by the way, that same thing works with the photos app as well. That's good to know.

20:26 - Matthew (Caller)
So my remaining question on that is how do I, how do I get the most recent version of every file onto one drive like that external drive? Because that's the problem, because right now it's looking in both places, some updated on one, some on the other.

20:44 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
When you say updated, updated, what do you mean? Are you, are you changing the music somehow? Uh changing the tags I'm very fussy, okay, so you do the tags. I think that's going to require um, that will require some finder foo, um, because you're going to want to make sure, yeah, that that you have the ooh.

21:05 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, this is more complicated. Why do you want it in two places?

21:09 - Matthew (Caller)
I didn't want it in two places.

21:10 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, he wants it to be all in I wanted it on an external drive. Well, move it all to the external drive and delete it from the internal drive, right?

21:17 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
Yeah, because what you could, okay, so here's what you could do. So then, all the changes will be there because you're doing them there yeah, if you take all of the uh ones that are stored on your mac, you highlight those and you move them over, then oh no, because if you do the replace command, it's just going to replace them so here's the command that you want and it's a.

21:34 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It's a deep command line command, but it's very useful. It's called rsync. R-s-'s a good idea and you can have rsync. You're going to have to research the command line for this, but you can have rsync synchronize two folders, keeping the newest file from each Right, because that's what you want. As soon as you modify the tags, that modification date on that file is updated. So you're going to have to just you can Google it and read the manual for rsync.

22:08
I can't remember what it is. I never remember because I don't use it enough, so I always have to do this anyway. But if you rsync and you'll have the source and you'll have both folders and you will say I want this, the external drive folder, to be the most up-to-date and have all the most recent files on it. Rsync is designed as synchronized folders so they're identical. So you can easily use that to make sure that you get just the files you want on the external, and then maybe don't delete it but rename the internal folder just in case, just to keep it. You're missing something, so you have it. But once you've moved it by renaming it, itunes won't see it, music won't see it anymore, and so then, anytime you change tags, it's going to be changing it on the external.

23:00 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
And that's R-S-Y-N-C, just like how you'd think.

23:04 - Leo Laporte (Host)
R-Sync is actually underneath Carbon Copy Cloner. It's underneath Mike Bombich's great program, which is escaping me at the moment. Why do I remember his name?

23:16 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
I know right, because it's the same. Now, no wait, bombich is Carbon Copy Cloner. Oh, he is Carbon Copy Cloner.

23:22 - Leo Laporte (Host)
But the other one. Yeah, there's a couple of them, super duper, that's the one. Yep, so uh, either one of those. They're actually just a gooey front end to r-sync, is my understanding. I was just using really a power tool just using it.

23:33 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
The other day I had some files that needed moving out from several kind of uh directories down into the main directory, right, but then I needed all of the originals to go away while I kept it, but I wanted it to check to make sure that they had been moved first.

23:49 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It does so much it's really that's a secondary tip, by the way is if you really feel uncomfortable with the command line, you could use carbon copy, clone or super duper to do the same thing. They just give you, you know, a gui on top of it. I like the command line because I want to know exactly what it's doing.

24:04 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
I think, too, there's an app. Yeah, there's an app called Kaleidos. If you are uncomfy with the command line, this is the app that I was trying to think of Kaleidoscope, that's well. You can look up kaleidoscopeapp, and kaleidoscopeapp is a merge system, so it will look at files and you can. What's great about it is you kind of do it's a drag and drop interface, so you can say I want all of the most recently edited files from these two places to go here. It's a little pricey and but it you know. If you're having trouble with the command line, this might be what you do.

24:40 - Matthew (Caller)
That might be worth it. And one last thing if Jim, who's somewhere waiting in there, if he's the sound guy, yes, he's a friend of mine. Haven't seen you in a while. Hi, jim, you're kidding. What do you do? Oh, I'm just an IT guy.

24:58 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Okay, but you've worked on movie sets with Jim, or just you know him for other reasons.

25:03 - Matthew (Caller)
No, I know him socially.

25:06 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Nice, cool, well sets with jim, or just. No, you know him for other reasons. No, I know him socially. Nice, cool, well, we love jim. Yeah, yeah, I think he's in, uh, in there with a snail, probably from some movie you worked on. Hey, nice to talk to you. I'm glad we could help. Thanks, very much. Appreciate it. Take care. 888-724-2884. That number works all the time, but when we're live you can get right on the show live, and when we're not on the air, you can leave a message for us. If you want to Zoom us, just as our last caller did, calltwittv, it will put you in the Zoom room and we can see your smiling face. We even take emails, atg at twittv. Now, micah, you're uh not going to be here next week or the week after that uh, just the week after, okay.

25:56
Yeah, so on august 4th I will be out, okay and we should mention that, uh, that is would be the last tech Guys from this studio. Indeed, starting August, our last show from the studio is August 8th. I'm going to leave the fireplace here. I don't really want this, but if you want it, micah, you can take it, okay. Okay, I am going to take the tidbit though this clock.

26:22 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
Yeah, I've already got one, so yeah.

26:26 - Leo Laporte (Host)
We'll be tidbit buddies, Because I saw your tidbit on your set and I said, oh, we have to have that on.

26:31 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
By the way, let's get this out of the way right now, t-i-d-b-y-t dot com, because it's one of the most common questions I get. What is that weather? Thing you have behind you behind you, it's so, and it can do a lot of things. It can show stock, talk, you can. You can program it too. So I've done some different.

26:49 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Uh, little clock programs that, oh yeah, all sorts of dance at certain yeah moments.

26:52 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
Yeah, actually probably will program it to show the current club membership nice things like yeah, I've got the phases of the moon on there, very nice yeah, it was full last night.

27:01 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It was beautiful, beautiful moon. Yeah, I saw it on my tidbit there's the title.

27:07
Just fold the screen. What was I going to say? Oh, so again, I don't want to go back to the politics, but I thought it was very interesting that the president made his announcement on Xcom Really First. That was the first place. As far as I know, that was where he announced it, even in these days. So I find that fascinating that, despite all the stuff that's happened to Twitter and the renaming and so forth, it still seems to be the place people go when they want to reach a broad audience. You know why? It's because the journalists are still there. They can't leave.

27:44
So, august I was starting to say something and I'll finish it August 8th, our last show in this studio, and then we're sending everybody home. They're still going to get paid, they're still going to have a job, thanks to you, club Twit members, but we want to save them money and, frankly, nowadays, at podcasting, you don't need. I mean, if you saw this studio, it's massive, with lights and rigging and all sorts. You don't need that anymore. In fact, I've spent the last few days setting up my attic to be my studio. You've always had a studio at home. That's how you do iOS today and I think almost all of our hosts are working from it? I don't think anybody. All of our other hosts?

28:24 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
Nobody has a studio who?

28:25 - Leo Laporte (Host)
has a studio Nobody. So we're going to save some money and I think appropriately, and I'll be doing it from the attic and actually it's kind of fun. I've been getting different kind of equipment. What really has changed over the years is remarkable. You know, one of the things that happened when I left tech TV and I started twit was I thought, oh, we could do what tech TV did for millions of dollars for mere hundreds of thousands of dollars. We ended up spending millions, but over a period, over a period of 20 years. But now the thing what we do with the TriCaster, we can do with Ecamm and software, what we do with our Axia, an amazing audio system I want to buy a $300 Rodecaster Duo. What's changed is consumer technology has really advanced to the point where all of the things that we spent so much money to do in a studio you can pretty much do at home.

29:21
One of the things that I, one of the ways I saved money when we moved from tech TV, you know, tech TV there were, just as there are still in many TV stations, big giant pedestal cameras that cost hundreds of thousands of dollars and required a camera operator to steer them. Many of the local TV stations now use robotic ped cameras, but they're still very, very expensive. I thought well, what if we didn't have camera operators, because humans are the most expensive thing of all? What if we just had so many cameras that we would just change the shots, as John is doing right now, and that would be like we had camera operators. They never move, but that would be like we have camera operators. So there you go, go see. If there weren't a camera operator, could you see?

30:07
my socks, uh. So what we did is we bought 40. 40 this is back in the brick house 40 canon vixia camcorders consumer camcorders, right john yes, hf uh g10s and hfg 20s and they were about eight800 or $900 each. Leo.

30:26 - JammerB (Other)
I heard you say that and I would like to correct you on that.

30:28 - Leo Laporte (Host)
How much were they? They were $1,500 each when we first bought them, so that's $60,000.

30:33 - JammerB (Other)
And each one required a $500 HDMI to SDI mini converter, so each one was $2,000.

30:39 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I'm glad I didn't know that.

30:40 - JammerB (Other)
So $80,000 on cameras.

30:41 - Leo Laporte (Host)
So $80,000 on cameras.

30:43 - JammerB (Other)
As soon as we bought those 40, the cameras went down to 1,200, and the mini-converters went down to 300.

30:48 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
How come you bought 40, though? Because was it for backups? The brick house was big.

30:53 - JammerB (Other)
It had like four or five sets the brick house had many, many, many sets and different locations.

30:57 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Got it, I put cameras everywhere, basically, yeah, because there was my office, I mean there was just a lot of cameras we still have. How many of the 40 do we still have, do we know?

31:08 - JammerB (Other)
We probably have 20, 25.

31:11 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Because they die after a while.

31:12 - JammerB (Other)
Yeah, Mostly, it's the power supplies that die. Yeah, we probably have a good number of the cameras left.

31:19 - Leo Laporte (Host)
John is our studio manager. He's been with us since before that time. He's been with us since the cottage. He is going to be retiring August 8th. Well, no, actually you can't leave yet, but he's going to after we decommission the studio.

31:36 - JammerB (Other)
I can retire and then still come and hang around, hang out with us. You know before, this will be the third time I've torn down a Twitch studio. I know Wow, but the difference this time is I'm not building a new studio at the same no, I'm doing that.

31:49 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It's a little smaller scale, a little bit easier. I only have three cameras, not 40 cameras. Uh, actually, no, that's not right. I have three cameras plus the ptz, four cameras plus I'm gonna have an insta 360 for a 360 shot, oh, and I think I'm gonna have a.

32:07 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
So maybe five, maybe six cameras I I think I'll have three. I have a camera problem anyway.

32:15 - Leo Laporte (Host)
uh, what's changed is that we really can do a lot of everything that we do here a lot simply, more simply. Um, I did take the take the rusty gear home, the smaller one, I guess. Well, there's one there was. That's a two-sided rusty gear and we only use one side of it. So Anthony Nielsen had the other side of it in his office. I said do you mind if I take that home? So I do have the rusty gear. It's pretty big, that's huge, but it's made of styrofoam. It's not real iron.

32:46 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
It doesn't weigh anything.

32:49 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Anyway, I think this is going to be fun. This is kind of a transformation, like a butterfly going backwards.

32:59 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
What's the maximum resolution?

33:00 - Leo Laporte (Host)
of that PTZ. Well, the funny thing is, these cameras are all 1080i cameras. Thing is, these cameras are all 1080i cameras. Everything else we'll be using is up to 4K, but we won't be doing 4K.

33:11 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
Even the PTZ 1080p.

33:13 - Leo Laporte (Host)
What does the PTZ do? Do you know, John? I think it's 1080p. It's progressive. So we're actually improving the and we will be using Zoom ISO as we do, as we have for a while, and, as I mentioned, ecamm will replace the TriCaster in the switching. So there it's going to be different.

33:34 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
I just used Ecamm for the first time for a Zoom interview the other day that's very cool isn't it?

33:39
And so, for folks who watch Tech News Weekly, my chat with Lexi Savides, that was all recorded via Ecamm early ahead of the show, and so she was able to. From her end it just looked like a Zoom call, but from my end I was able to switch back and forth between us. I did a two-up of the two of us just using my little Elgato and, yeah, we were able to switch back and forth and then afterward I had the full quality video files, and so that was really cool. Ecamm had been they have been a sponsor in the past, of note but I just wanted, like they had been working on the Zoom thing for a while, and so to actually get to use it was really neat. So check out that episode of Tech News Weekly.

34:19 - Leo Laporte (Host)
We should also mention that we are partnering with Restream. If you're watching us on all those different places, you're watching via Restream, which is cool. And when I so the big shows like Twit and MacBreak Weekly, and when we do those big shows, we'll be using Zoom, iso and Ecamm. But when I just toddle up to the attic, like when the CrowdStrike thing happens, and go on the air, I'll be doing that with Restream because I can do that all by myself. I don't need a TD running the e-cam. So we will also be using Restream for much of our stuff. So I'm very excited. I think there's a lot of opportunity.

34:55 - JammerB (Other)
What's the exact model of the Canon Vixia. We started with HFG10s. Then they were discontinued, so most of the cameras we're using in here now are HFG 10s. Uh-huh, then they were discontinued, so most of the cameras we're using in here now are HFG 20s, g20, okay, we did get an HFG 50, which was a 4K, because you can't get the 20s or the 10s anymore. Oh, it didn't really match though our other cameras, yeah, so we only use it when we have to.

35:16 - Leo Laporte (Host)
The 360 will be Sony cinema cams. They have a new. Alex Lindsay recommended this. He uses it the FX30. Sony FX30, which is intended for vloggers and streamers and people like that, so I might go more like to a Twitch streamer. Yeah, I might have colored light. No, I'm not going to yeah behind you.

35:44 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
The colors will change. When someone asks you, when somebody makes a donation to the Twit tip jar, there'll be music.

35:51 - Leo Laporte (Host)
By the way, rusty Bones, who's watching on YouTube and is in our YouTube chat. We are using YouTube chat, twitch chat. All the chats are turned on. Rusty said I'd pay more just to make sure that Twit survives. Look, all you have to do is join the club. You decide what you want to pay. Twittv slash Club Twit. That does make a huge, huge, huge difference. John, I didn't even find out. Do we have anybody joining the show today? We do Rod Pyle at noon. At noon.

36:18
Well, there's a lot of space talk. Spaceman. I have some questions for mr pile. Uh, let me do one email real quickly, since we have only done one question so far. And then rod pile spaceman. Uh, end of life. Big sir francisco. Hello tech guys. I've been using a 2014 macbook pro with big sir. Big sir's done right. End of life, it's got. Sonoma is the current, it will be sequoia. My questions are should I be worried? Oh, is it safe to do online banking and online purchasing? I was going to buy a new macbook pro later this year. Um, and he was, he's smart. He says when the m4s come out, I'm going to buy an m3. So he wants to get a deal. M4s are not going to come out this year? It looks like probably next year. But how big of a discount will apple give on the m3s once the m4s come out and when I get a bigger discount if I purchase just a certified refurbished m3 now? So three questions in there. Wow.

37:16 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
First of all, security wise, he's okay with big sir right with big sir and with your browser updated to the latest version of the browser. So, in the case of oh man, that's the real issue.

37:26 - Leo Laporte (Host)
By the way, it's the same thing on the windows side is when the browsers stop updating. Yeah, because the browser is your window to the world, which includes the bad guys in that case?

37:36 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
this is a weird thing for me to say, but in that case I would recommend installing a third-party browser like firefox yes saf and Chrome because, Safari stops updating, it'll get little updates and you could technically devour no download the Safari technology preview, but that's a lot to mess around with.

37:56
So yeah, I think I would recommend installing a third-party browser like Firefox Chrome and then do your banking there in the meantime. And then do your banking there in the meantime. Now, second question was when it comes to upgrading to the three versus the four, what's the discount going to be like? I don't think that it's ever. It's not perfectly the same.

38:23
It's usually not very much. Yeah, yeah, it's not very much, first and foremost, but also apple changes that every. It doesn't seem like it's incredibly. Um, it's unpredictable. Thank you, it's unpredictable thank you, uh words.

38:34 - Leo Laporte (Host)
If you really want one, I would get m3 now. Yeah, absolutely, and the refurb is fine. Yep, uh, refurb is only going to save you a few hundred bucks. But refurb means out, and don't get it from anybody but apple, apple. But Apple, you know, honors the warranty, the full length warranty, uh, and they made sure to check it. Usually a refurb from Apple means somebody bought it, didn't even open the box, or, if they opened the box, didn't even turn it on, or, if they turn it on, didn't use it for very long and brought it back. So this isn't for me it was too much or I wanted something else. So it usually is very little used. It's not really a used computer.

39:07 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
They just can't sell it as new Exactly, and when it comes to that, basically you're looking at when the M4 comes out, the M3 would get that refurb discount, so you can either get the discounted refurb right now for probably about the same amount off as you would if you waited. That's what I would guess guess.

39:25 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, I don't think there's any reason to wait. And why not have the nice fast computer? Now exactly with sequoia, and then also that certainty that it's much safer than what you have I put the public beta for ios 18 on my phone and then I said, oh, what the hey? I put it on my computers and you know it's great doing the mirror phone projection is amazing. I love it, Love it. So yeah, and the public beta seems fairly stable.

39:49 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
You don't love it. John doesn't like it, john does not like it. There's a thumbs down from John.

39:54 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Okay, john says wait for the final. I haven't found a battery life issue with the public beta for the iPhone. That's the good news. Just before we get to Rod Pyle, somebody in our chat room is asking where's the six-month or one-year purchase? We only, I hate to say it we used to have a one-year deal on Club Twit. We stopped it because I don't want to be responsible for a year from now.

40:21
I have no idea, what's going to happen a year from now. We're months to months, right, I have no idea what's going to happen a year from now, so we're months to months. That way I don't have to refund you if you buy a year and in six months we go belly up. It's that, folks, it's that bad. And so I'm only going months to months. Maybe if things stabilize I have to say, advertisers seem to be coming a little bit, coming back If everything's stabilized although, notice, we have none on this show If everything stabilizes, maybe then we can bring back the year. But at this point the other problem with the year is we got more chargebacks on the year because somebody would buy it Eighty four bucks, forget it and then a year later go what the heck is this? And do a chargeback. Every chargeback dings us, an event costs us money and eventually, enough chargebacks, we won't be able to use credit cards anymore. So that was a secondary reason. There were two really, I thought, very good reasons that we only offer month to month. I'm sorry.

41:21 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
Yeah and to be. I want to point out that we also were well aware of the burden that that has on those folks who live outside of the U? S. We understand that it's that by doing it a year you're only getting one time uh charge on your account because it's, you know, coming from a foreign transaction. We hear you, we've heard that, and it sucks. This is just how we have to do it. So, um, just know that, you know that is not falling on deaf ears, so to say, oh yeah, I understand.

41:45 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Even for people in the U? S, it's a pain in the butt. I much prefer to pay for a year, but I just don't want to be in a situation where we have to refund all that money because we decided we couldn't continue. We can. Only this comes out of my pocket, if, if I'm, if I'm, if I'm spending money out of my retirement, that's a problem, right yeah you need that to retire.

42:10
You know those guys, when you hear the old guy saying I'm on a fixed income, guess what? I'm on a fixed income. So if we don't get enough membership and we don't get enough advertisers to continue, we'll have to shutter it because you're not going to work. Will you work for free, by the way? Uh?

42:28 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
this is a binding statement for for a period of less than a year perhaps? No, I'm just kidding.

42:35 - Leo Laporte (Host)
My dogs have to you can't, you have to pay rent yeah uh, no one can work for free.

42:39
No, I'm working for free and lisa's working for free. We've been working for free for months now. That's fine. Like I said, I'm on a fixed income. I can afford it. I'm just spending my retirement. My kids aren't happy, there goes the inheritance, but I can't ask anybody else to work for free. So we're hoping that you will be very generous, that you will join the club, that you'll put up with that month to month charge, and if you're in europe and you don't want to do that, that's fine, I understand.

43:11
The truth is we don't need everybody to pay right now. Uh, it's fewer than two percent of the total audience. It's less than two percent of the total audience. If we got, if we got, up to five percent of the total audience, we'd audience, we'd be fine, we'd be fine. So 2% covers half our payroll, 5% would cover our payroll and give Lisa and me a little bit of money and we'd be fine, okay, any more than that, we're going to expand. You know all of that. So that's all I'm saying. So I guess Rod bailed. No, go on the Rod. Okay, that's all I'm saying. So I guess Rod bailed.

43:45 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
No, go on the Rod. Okay, that's fine, let's take another call, maybe he'll appear. Yeah, we'll take a call If Rod appears as one does.

43:50 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Let us know. You know what happened. I stopped paying him too. People don't like to work for free.

44:00 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
Okay, we got a hiker with a camera, we can take their call.

44:07 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Oh look, I love it. Yeah, he's pointing the. He's got his hand up. He's pointing at his camera. What is that he's got there?

44:15 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
Looks like a camera with a long zoom lens, long long long zoom lens.

44:18 - Leo Laporte (Host)
He's out there taking pictures. What's your first name and where? What's the name of the trail you're on?

44:25 - Dan (Caller)
Leo, hey, ika, hi, it's a Sony A7IV. Oh, I'm jealous. Sigma 150 to 600. Oh, you're doing birding. Are you birding? Tryon Creek State Natural Area, part of the Oregon State Park System. Oh cool, it's kind of nice. What are you looking for? Well, I would say, if you go fishing, you got to bring your pole, yeah, but you don't always bring home a fish.

44:55 - Leo Laporte (Host)
No.

44:56 - Dan (Caller)
So I do this hike on a regular basis, but I don't always bring home a good shot, yeah yeah. If I don't bring my camera, I won't get it.

45:04 - Leo Laporte (Host)
That's exactly right, it's frustrating, are you looking?

45:06 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
for animals? Are you looking for flowers? What? What do you tend to be looking for?

45:12 - Dan (Caller)
I would say, um, I'm looking for the light. The light hits a bird, or if the light hits a leaf, that's a good photographer looking for the light. If the light hits a raindrop, the right way I capture the light.

45:22 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I love the way you're thinking. What's your first name? Again, I'm Dan, that's right. Hi, dan. Well, are you having a lovely hike and you still want to talk to us? I'm impressed.

45:36 - Dan (Caller)
The great hike, leo. Your whole studio move reminds me of another change. Remember when you had to strap on a whole backpack of live streaming gear? Yes, just to do a live crowd search? Yes, now you can do that with an iPhone.

45:50 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It's amazing how this has all changed. That backpack was from a company called Ustream or U Live U I'm sorry, live U. I'm sure Live U still makes stuff. Their whole premise of this was that you have multiple sims and you're bonding together. But remember, this is in the day of 3g. So in order to get a, a decent quality live stream, you had to bond together multiple. Now one is plenty for five with 5g, as long as you have a signal. Wow, and yeah, I had a, I had a camera on a monopod, it was. We were covering south by southwest and uh, and I remember somebody told me oh, south by southwest, it's all about the parties. Forget the conference, go to the party. So we created this whole rig, the party rig, the party rig, kind of what you got there with your phone.

46:39 - Dan (Caller)
Same thing, exactly I'm doing the same thing without a backpack Amazing. Well, I have a backpack. It's got 30 pounds worth of gear, but it has nothing to do with live streaming. It's all that glass that's so heavy these days.

46:52 - Leo Laporte (Host)
You're carrying a lot, just more than that lens. Huh, You've got a number of lenses in there.

46:56 - Dan (Caller)
Well, you know, I've got the wide angle back there and I have the primes for just in case you know how photography be.

47:05 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
So did you have a question for us? Anything we can help you with?

47:07 - Dan (Caller)
I do. I do so my dad. I lost him 12 years ago now and lost my grandfather a decade before that. But they sat down drinking whiskey one night at the kitchen table at the farm and my dad asked him questions for a couple hours and got it all on tape, on micro cassette. And I've got these micro cassettes. They've been, you know, stored, they haven't been handled, they haven't been necessarily treated with any special care, but they haven't really been moved or jostled. I'm wondering, you know, coming from the days of Radio Leo and baking tapes and Baking tapes.

47:54 - Leo Laporte (Host)
You know about that, Dan.

47:55 - Dan (Caller)
You know taking great care of that magnetic media.

48:00 - JammerB (Other)
Yeah.

48:00 - Dan (Caller)
Do you know of a good service? Could you recommend a good service?

48:03 - Leo Laporte (Host)
For microcassettes? I don't know, I don't know.

48:06
And just treat it with sort of so what Dan's talking about here's what happens, you know, in all of this tape media is they've got a mylar, a plastic backing, and then they have iron oxide particles on top of it and it's the magnetism of the head that magnetizes the particles in direction and then playback is just reading those magnetized particles. The problem is that it, as as it ages and those, those tapes are 20 years old at least as it ages, the, the iron oxide starts to, starts to flake off. And if you have old cassette tapes or reel-to-reel tapes, even in the best conditions, eventually that's going to flake off. Now, if they haven't, if they've been kept dry and out of the sun and, you know, without extremes of heat, you might be able to play them back. You hope you are.

48:56
Dan's talking about an old thing we used to do. If you, if you, you could only do this once, if you had a tape. You know, my friend, john Donabee, up at CFRB in Canada interviewed Jimi Hendrix and he had all those tapes in his garage and I told him. I said, john, we've got to digitize them, because once you digitize them they can be given to everybody, they can be preserved forever, you can put them on the Internet Archive. You want that to survive.

49:21
It's that fragile medium that it's on right now. If you cannot play it back because it flakes every time you you play it back, you can bake it, but it only works once, because as it goes over the head it then really falls apart. Wow, but you can play it back once and uh, but that's all you need right. Play if you're, if you're doing it right and you're recording it into a digital medium. You could play it back once. I never convinced John to. He had a garage full of these classic interviews and I never convinced John to do that. But maybe we could do that with your micro cassette.

50:03 - Dan (Caller)
You know, I feel like I could try it and, and you know, maybe even get one play out of them, but what happens?

50:08 - Leo Laporte (Host)
do you have a?

50:08 - Dan (Caller)
micro. Do you have a micro cassette player? I have the same player that everything was recorded on. That's probably one one. Uh, you know, unsealed um bag right. So you know there's no moisture no that's where you should start.

50:25
Instead of me trying to play them once and maybe ruining them, I thought if I could pay some you know sort of best practices professional studio that does this stuff for a living, they would know how to handle that stuff and would put it into their workflow and capture that and have the best shot at getting it. You know, it may not be recoverable, Look at this, or I could do it myself. I just don't know.

50:51 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Tape. Guy 89125 in our Discord says I was an engineer for BASF mag tape division. Tape can last for many years. I have tapes that are 60 years old and could still play. He recommends legacyboxcom. Okay, but then this is a guy who knows he worked at basf. That's awesome, and I've heard of those guys too sure I had basf cassettes and reel-to-reel tape. Uh, wow, that's wonderful legacy box.

51:19 - Dan (Caller)
That's one of those where you just send a box or whatever you got and they'll, uh, yep just it, convert it and put it in, and do they do microcassettes?

51:28 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I mean it's really risky. Who?

51:30 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
knows? Yeah, they do, they do microcassettes.

51:33 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I would call them and tell them the story and see they're not going to make a guarantee. Boy, you really want that tape. Have you ever listened to it? You?

51:45 - Dan (Caller)
know I did Boy. We lost my grandfather in probably 94.

51:53 - Leo Laporte (Host)
So it's 30 years old, I think.

51:54 - Dan (Caller)
I probably listened to him in like 96. Yeah, and then when my dad died, it was just, you know, part of his collection of Dong Shi, or goods from from, his, uh, lifetime. Wow, you know dongshi, I don't know chinese actually.

52:10 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, what is what is dongshi? I can tell it's chinese. What does it mean? I think it means things or stuff.

52:17 - Dan (Caller)
I've adapted it to mean stuff like ephemera yeah, yeah and throughout china. When I uh was backpacking in china in the early 90s, I had a little sack and somebody called it my dongshi bag and I said I love it. What is that? And it's my little bag of things. You know, I had my, my wallet and my passport and my, just my little things that if I lost everything and I had my dong shui bag, I'd be good.

52:47 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Wow, wow. That's a great story and I love the story of the tape you know we had for years in the family. Grand Mary would tell a story, would tell a little poem about a turkey, every year at Thanksgiving, and one year many moons ago somebody recorded Grand Mary's turkey tail and I was fortunate enough to digitize that before the cassette fell apart. It is so worth getting this stuff whether it's slides, photos, audio into digital form because then it can live forever, you know.

53:24 - Dan (Caller)
Well, if TapeDude69 says go to Legacy Box Sounds like.

53:28 - Leo Laporte (Host)
TapeDude69 knows what he's talking about. Legacy Box yeah, rusty Bones says they're really good to preserve any recorded material photos, slides et cetera. So there's two recommendations.

53:43 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
It's kind of a cool idea too, because it can be mixed media. They do it by item, so you get a box and the smallest box is two items, so you put two items in there, you send them away. They digitize those things. How cool, how cool.

53:57 - Dan (Caller)
Yeah, I think I have like boy. I think there's a dozen cassettes in there and I think three or four are their conversations. Wow, I have no idea what's on the other ones, but they're all?

54:08 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Do you remember from listening in 96? I mean, do you have some sense of what it was like, what the conversation is?

54:17 - Dan (Caller)
Imagine a son and father sitting around the farm dinner table where they grew up. My dad grew up there. It was a century farm in southeast Minnesota and my dad asked him questions for two hours about family, about the farm, so your dad had some sense of history as well.

54:38 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I mean, he knew this was the last chance to get granddad's recollections. Wow, that's wonderful.

54:47 - Dan (Caller)
You know what? My dad and I would sit down and watch on cable TV together, leo, what.

54:56 - Leo Laporte (Host)
What was your first? The screensavers. What was that?

54:58 - Dan (Caller)
Oh, the site, the screensaver, the screensaver, the site. Well, yeah, the screensavers was on. Was that on? What was that cable TV station?

55:08 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Tech TV I can't remember the name of the network ZDTV, zdtv, yeah, yeah, yeah.

55:12 - Dan (Caller)
Before Paul Allen bought it. Yep, wow, and he was a tech guy. I'm in computers because he bought me my very first computer, the Atari 400. My first as well. Yep, I typed out in BASIC I would program games from BASIC magazine, while he would stand over my shoulder and make sure I recorded what I did on that cassette tape properly. So he got me into this tech thing and he had a sense of history and you know, as I'm in my um, aging, uh years now, and I can relate more and more to what he was doing at time. He was probably close to my age when he did this and uh, um, you know that sense of history and my son is now I think that's what happens as you get older, about to turn 20.

55:57 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, when you're 20 you don't care. But it's always the elders in the family that try to preserve these memories, I think because we realize we're going to be gone soon too and we want people to remember us. But it's a natural inclination and I'm really glad you have that on cassette. And now, folks, you can start digital and stay digital, but do it, go, sit down with your elders and ask them stories. I've done this with my mom. It's really a wonderful thing to do.

56:29 - Dan (Caller)
You know we did it with our family photo albums when we had to sell the big house and my mom moved to a smaller apartment. We had an entire closet full. The top shelf had I don't know. There were numbered albums, probably going up into the 50s or 60s in total number of albums. You remember those with like a cellophane type?

56:48 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Oh yeah, yeah, my mom has a whole stack at the home that I've been meaning to bring in. I'm going to send in a legacy box, I guess, and digitize.

56:56 - Dan (Caller)
Yeah, you know, I had a little local company, digitize all of that for us.

57:00 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Oh nice.

57:01 - Dan (Caller)
And they preserved the album order and you know, said all right, in this subfolder we've put everything in album 32. And so they're still kind of in the same order as those albums. But you know they were yellowing and deteriorating and so we did capture all those, which I feel lucky to have done.

57:20 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Dan, I'll let you get back onto your hike. It's a beautiful day in Oregon. I'm so glad you could share it with us and save that cassette. That's wonderful. Oh, look at that.

57:30 - Dan (Caller)
So Legacy Box, what was the other one?

57:32 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
That's the only one. Yeah, that's the one we recommend LegacyBoxcom.

57:38 - Dan (Caller)
All right, I'm going to contact them.

57:39 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Thanks guys, take care. Remember our regular caller, susan, does this also. In fact, lisa just sent a bunch of family photos to Susan, oh nice, and she does the same thing. She not only scans them, but she looks at the order in the album and looks at the back notes around it and so forth. To preserve the kind of the contextual that's a librarian for you. Preserve the context, very nice. 888-724-2884. You don't have to be on a hike, you can just be calling us. We'll have more of your calls in just a moment. You're watching. Ask the Tech Guys, micah Sargent and Leo Laporte. John, what should we do next? Who's going to edit this show, kevin?

58:24 - JammerB (Other)
Okay, we have voicemails, we have emails.

58:29 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Let's do a voicemail I like voicemails, all right. Here's a voicemail.

58:35 - JammerB (Other)
This is from Jim in Louisville, it looks like.

58:38 - Jim (Caller)
Hi Leo and Micah Jim Heights from Louisville, Kentucky. Oh, I know, Jim. A question about my Apple Watch. I can't seem to hear the text tone. I have tinnitus and when I try to hear a message coming in, I never hear it unless I have my hearing aids in. Is there any way around that? Yes, I can't seem to change the text tone for the watch. Thank you much. Enjoy the show.

59:02 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Thank you, jim, we appreciate it. There's haptics. It'll buzz you as well as here. I also have tinnitus, that's that ringing in the ears. It must be hitting at the exact frequency of the tinnitus because I can hear the bings pretty well, but it's nice you can turn on the haptics. How does he do that? Is that a setting on the app or is that a setting on the watch?

59:27 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
It's a setting on your phone in the watch app. Okay, I believe it's either under notifications or if there's sounds on there. I can't remember off the top of my head.

59:39 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Let's go to notifications. There is an indicator, red dot, which is nice, so you can always see that, and I have that turned on.

59:47 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
But if you go to messages, does it?

59:50 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, maybe I have to go to messages, mirror my phone, repeat alerts once. There must be another section for haptics.

59:58 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
Yeah, check that.

59:59 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I don't have my phone, yeah gestures here it is sounds and haptics. There we go. Okay, so if you turn on haptic alerts in fact I would suggest making the prominent, do you? Can you see over the shoulder, is it? I was wondering about airplay because you had that turned on. Oh, you want me to airplay it? Oh, you're getting fancy.

01:00:18 - JammerB (Other)
I have over the shoulder too.

01:00:20 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I can airplay it. Let me just. This is fancy, fancy schmancy, so let me go back. I'm in the Apple Watch app. Can you see that now, john? No, you can't.

01:00:35 - JammerB (Other)
I routed back to the overhead. I can route back to airplay.

01:00:38 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Oh, I see, it's one of the other limited number of, I get it okay, uh, sounds and haptics.

01:00:45 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
There we go and first of all, at the top, you can turn up the volume. That's the first thing you do.

01:00:51 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Well, that's good all right, silent mode will not mute alarms and timers. Okay, we don't care about that. Headphone safety, that's so you don't get tinnitus. Kids, protect your ears. Uh, haptic alerts turn those on.

01:01:05 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
I made them prominent, as you can see yeah, so default, it'll just do a little bit of a buzz.

01:01:10 - Leo Laporte (Host)
But prominent, yeah, it will really let you know, and I have them turned on for system as well. So I I like to feel it in my wrist and I do at all times. What do you use, uh? I'm just curious what you use as your, uh, as your watch face.

01:01:26 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
See what I used to use that one, but I recently made the switch um to modular ultra, modular, ultra and oh, that's pretty. I really like it because I get a big old calendar view right in the middle and I, I live and die by my calendar. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:01:43 - Leo Laporte (Host)
That's smart.

01:01:43 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
And I have it set to this nice green color, so my watch is always green which is how I like it.

01:01:49 - Leo Laporte (Host)
For a long time, you would ask people what was on the homepage of their phone.

01:01:53 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
Now it's like what watch faces?

01:01:55 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I might switch over to Modular.

01:01:57 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
Ultra. That used to be my watch face of choice. I might switch over to Modular Ultra that used to be my watch face of choice but yeah, I just recently started doing Modular Ultra and I really like the seconds around the outside.

01:02:05 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It looks like I have customized it so I must have used it at some point. There's my wife, so if I want to text her I just tap that Voice memos. If I want to record a quick voice memo Looks like draft Activity Drafts is another way I have of kind of keeping track of things. I don't know what that is Weather in the top left, what is that? Let's go to complications here.

01:02:26 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
Bottom left looks like start an exercise. Yes, that is.

01:02:31 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I don't know what that middle one is from here, yeah, but I also, as you can see, I have my calendar Where's complications.

01:02:38 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
Yeah, calendar right in the middle Temperature.

01:02:40 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Oh, the top one's flighty. Now I change that if I'm not flying around Makes sense. Yeah, so I might make that. Oh, I don't know, I'll make that my car so I can unlock my car, nice. And then top right is capture for drafts. Drafts is a third-party tool. That's really nice. The idea was capture everything in drafts and then afterwards, when you go home, you can assign it to different applications.

01:03:05 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
So you can send it as a tweet, you can email it, you can put it in reminders. Middle is today's date, don't I want that to be the calendar? Yeah, or something, anything else? Because it's so powerful that you well, even launch Fantastical is not great. No, because that just launches, it.

01:03:21 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, you want like up next, I want it to be Fantastical. So if you go to Fantastical, go to up next or up next timeline.

01:03:28 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
What's the up next timeline? Up next timeline not only shows you what you have up next, but it also gives you kind of a timeline of how your day's looking. So I want more data, right? Yeah, exactly, always, more, always more data Set as current watch face.

01:03:41 - Leo Laporte (Host)
AMD. Look at that. Always more data Come on.

01:03:45 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
Now I have mine, you have yours. That's a multicolor. Right now, I feel like it's a little overwhelming. You don't like all that color? Yeah, I keep mine. All one color Monochrome yeah. Oh, it's boring green.

01:04:01 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I thought you were more excited, so I guess I can't. I'm not. It's not working to set it there, so let's just set it here. There you go. Nice, isn't that party, so party. So it is very colorful, I like it colorful, that's fine, that's fine. You, you make it all the same color.

01:04:11 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
I feel like it's easier to read when it's all one color.

01:04:14 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Huh okay if you say so, but that's me, you know, embrace it, I'll try it. I'll try it. You know what? You're smart, I'll try it, as my the monochrome is your recommendation. Do we have let me do an email? How about that? Let's do an email Trying to mix it up, you know, like a salad here from David from Chester in the UK. Hello David, I'm sounding like the.

01:04:46
The Queen's brother, sorry. An Apple website? An app or website? Oh, app or website. An app or a website I can use to track library books, In my case cookbooks. More importantly, I'm hoping to be able to search the index pages for a recipe. I collect cookbooks, you know Old and new. There's something great about finding an exciting new recipe in a book on my travels. The issue is I have many books now and I struggle to find a recipe when I want it Chewy's. I have many books now and I struggle to find a recipe when I want it. The perfect app would let you scan the cover and index pages of all your books and then let you search, perhaps by ingredients or dish name. Surely such an app must exist. Thank you for any guidance you can offer. Take care, david, from Chester in the UK.

01:05:38 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
You're asking for a lot, david.

01:05:40 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I'm sorry, I'd like to have all my books on the wall indexed by date.

01:05:47 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
Yeah, I don't think nothing that I know of. No, because it's such a specific thing. What you want is the e-book version of all of those Exactly. You want the e-book version of all of your cookbooksbooks, because then you could just do a search and you'd be able to find it. That way, you could use Calibre or Calibre C-A-L-I-B-R-E.

01:06:08 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I want to say, by the way, free, open source program that you can use.

01:06:11 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
You made me feel so much better about myself, because that's my job I for I can remember this goes all the way back to middle school. In middle school I was I worked in the library at school, Like that was one of my little things that I got to do and thought it was the coolest thing. I started a little library at home with our books and got it all set up in caliber, but since middle school I have always pronounced it in my head as Calibre and then I don't remember who it was, but some, you know there are some people online who are pep. I'm sorry.

01:06:49
It's pronounced Calibre yeah, just just railed and went in on me and made me feel so stupid about it it's a play on words. And when you said, yes, that it's a play on words. And when you said, yes, that it's a play on words and libre, yes, then I thought you know what I feel so much better about myself and there was a little bit of of, uh like late high school trauma that was removed from me at that moment.

01:07:12 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I'll tell you two things. One, the reason I say sometimes calibre is because if you said caliber, that's's in the US anyway, sped spelled C-A-L-I-B-E-R and calibre is L-I-B-R-E. So always I try to pronounce something so you can kind of intuit how to spell it.

01:07:32 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
Yeah, because this is an audio medium and you need to know.

01:07:35 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, so that's an old habit. The other thing I would say is that people who are very well read often know many, many words they've never heard pronounced out loud. In fact, when somebody mispronounces a big word, I usually think that's a very intelligent person who is very well read. And how would you know how to pronounce that if you see that word in print and you would make up your own pronunciation. So I don't think there's anything wrong with that. In fact, I think it's a sign of, uh, deep reading and great intelligence. Yeah, I agree, so there, so ha.

01:08:11
But I also will say that after 50 years in radio, I've kind I've kind of gotten pretty good at pronouncing cold reading, yeah, pronouncing words, because that's part of the job you know last names and things like that. So I kind of take some pride in pronouncing words correctly. And when I do catch myself or get caught mispronouncing a word, I feel very bad about myself. You know, I, for a long time and I still believe this is correct I would say we have some ad copy that says processes and I would say processes, which I. This is correct. I would say we have, uh, some ad copy that says processes and I would say processes, which I believe is correct but that's just me Um did you know that the plural of octopus is octopi is octopodes, octopodes because it is a Greek, it's a greek root.

01:09:04
Yeah right, octopodes would be correct, that's right. And throw paw and throw poo and throw pos and throw poo. Yes, I, uh, we had this conversation on twig with the plural for corpus. Oh, which is what, christy, you know, you know from your latin it is corporei. Uh, yeah yeah um all right.

01:09:27 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
So what to answer your question?

01:09:28 - Leo Laporte (Host)
no, epitome is a good one.

01:09:30 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
A lot of people say epitome oh, they do, yeah, yeah, yeah, because you've who says epitome in the real world.

01:09:37 - Leo Laporte (Host)
So you don't know how to pronounce it. That's All that means is you're smarter than the average bear. You've read a lot of books. You know a word. You're smarter than the average bear. You just never learn how to pronounce it. You are the epitome of bears. Kubernetes means helmsman. That's a good name. We learn things all the time. All the time. There is an option for octopi and octopuses also. Option for octopi and octopuses also correct because of standardized pluralization. Correct.

01:10:00 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
Modern English would allow for those. Thank you, Discord.

01:10:05 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Oh no, that's Twitch. Thank you, twitch.

01:10:06 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
Thank you Twitch, the plural of which is FPG-2, FPG-2-2. Twitchers Twitch eyes.

01:10:14 - Leo Laporte (Host)
That's actually I kind of like octopus.

01:10:17 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
I just really like how octopodes sound. Octopodes. I just really like how octopodes sound. Octopodes. I just think it's so. Octopus is probably one of my favorite creatures in existence, and octopodes just sounds so cool. I have.

01:10:27 - Leo Laporte (Host)
after seeing my octopus, tutor stopped eating octopus Good.

01:10:32 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
They're too smart to eat. They are very intelligent creatures. They are delicious. I've never had and never will. But.

01:10:40 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I won't anymore. No, I feel guilty eating them.

01:10:42 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
That's I'm glad. Yeah, um, but yes, going back. No, there's not an app that does that by default.

01:10:49 - Leo Laporte (Host)
We had a question I forgot I. We got sidetracked a little bit, Right.

01:10:54 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
I think that if you wanted to put in the work, you could just in even Apple Notes, if you're an iOS user. There's this great feature in Apple Notes where you tap and hold while you're in Notes and you can choose scan documents and you could easily take a photo of the front page. It makes a scan of it and then take a photo of the index. It makes a scan of it, of it. Apple's iOS does automatic OCR and then from there you could do those searches. But you said you wanted to even be able to type in ingredients and find the recipes that have that. That's not something that there's an app for.

01:11:30 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Ai will be able to do that. Yeah, that's true Eventually. Just hang in there. Hang in there and you'll be able to ask your AI pal Scarlett. Ask your AI pal Scarlett, how do you make potato niçoise? And then Scarlett will say well, david, I can tell you that the problem is really what I like to call an impedance mismatch. You've got a printed book and you've got Sorry, he's a Yale man.

01:11:59 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
I like to call it an impedance mismatch, which?

01:12:00 - Bill (Caller)
like what I like to call it, which is what everyone that's what everyone calls it.

01:12:04 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Uh, no, because you have this, this old school printed book with this modern and you have this modern concept that I should be able to search. But that is really that belongs to a later era. Yeah, absolutely. Uh, do we? 888-724-2884? John, it looks like we have some calls in here. Hey, what's your first name and where are you calling from?

01:12:25 - Jeff (Caller)
uh, my name is jeff. I'm calling from metro detroit, st clair shores, michigan. Hi, jeff. Uh, first off, if I forget to do this, I'll be in big trouble. My wife is a huge fan and we've been listening and watching um. She watches and listens much more than I do oh nice what's her name?

01:12:45 - Leo Laporte (Host)
uh, kim hi, kim hi. Jeff, welcome, she's laughing. Get on over there, get in the camera shot. Come on, she's in the living room okay, excuse me, it's so.

01:13:01 - Jeff (Caller)
I, um, I was a teacher and just retired. I acquired a business where we record, uh, high school marching band events, festivals, and then, um, there are judges that speak into a hand. Uh, right now we use like an olympusus handheld recorder. We put everything on a thumb drive. I actually, when you're having your Canon HD or, sorry, vixia G20 conversation, that's what I have about six of them.

01:13:31 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Oh, wow and they're good camcorders, but nobody has. Nobody even makes camcorders.

01:13:37 - Jeff (Caller)
I think it's kind of Well and that's what I'm running into because I'm obviously I'm on a budget. I can't necessarily go out and we're not looking for a 4k video. You know, directors want to see how the bands looked, say, 30 yard line, 20, even goal line. Sometimes we can't get that wide right and um. So what I, what our current setup is, is to use those cannons and usually some condenser mics running into either a cheap mixing board or audio interface through a Mac is what I use from time to time. That might be. At least give me a decent product, because I don't want to put a cruddy product, you know, out there for the directors. But at the same time we have to be cognizant of the file size because we upload it onto a thumb drive the day of the event so the guys can take it home.

01:14:33 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I mean, is there some reason you don't use a smartphone? I'm just showing you right now the super wide 0, 0.5 x on the uh iphone. Let me turn it this way uh, and, and it's wide enough that you would catch the whole field if you were at the. You know, even if you were right at the sideline, you'd probably catch 75 yards of the field. It's pretty darn wide, um, is there some reason you don't use a smartphone to do this?

01:15:01 - Jeff (Caller)
well, again, I just acquired the business as kind of a learning curve for me, but so that's what I would say I mean honestly that's.

01:15:08 - Leo Laporte (Host)
That's why nobody makes camcorders anymore. Everybody has a very competent video recorder which, incidentally, does a pretty darn good job with sound as well in their pocket.

01:15:21 - Jeff (Caller)
Probably. Another detail that would help this conversation is I have about 15 guys that do it throughout the state, and so we need a consistency of product, so I think that was partially the reason that we have the cannons. Sure, sure, you know, I use my uh fold and that was marvelous. Why I used it? As a backup? Because when, luckily, I had that because the we couldn't get the camera, uh well, see that's a perfect, but it worked.

01:15:50 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I bet very nicely did. Yeah, yeah, it was great. Yeah, so any samsung, uh or a modern iphone would give you very nice wide angle. You can buy external microphones if you want, but you probably don't need it. Ambient sound is probably sufficient. They just want to hear the band, right.

01:16:07 - Jeff (Caller)
Yes, yeah, I mean I've used. I have AT2020 microphones that I use for inside for the concert band festival, so you don't need that.

01:16:15 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It's just for the outside. Yeah, I mean honestly, the iPhone is designed. It does a very good job with concert audio because it has good limiting, because you know, normally a marching band is going to be so loud that it's going to over-modulate it. But I know the iPhone does a very good job because I've recorded at live concerts, like the Madonna concert, and it worked beautifully. I was like blown away. I'm sitting right next to the speakers and the limiting built into the iPhone and they tout that. So I mean honestly, you know, $800 or $900 for one of these phones is about what you'd pay for a camera. It's got built-in recording and because it's, you know, you don't have to get it on the network, on the cell network, but if you do, then it's very fast turnaround because you can upload it instantly or you can even be streaming it. Are there standalone camcorders you could use? Well, yeah, I mean plenty of them. And the higher end.

01:17:14
You might want to look at the Sony vlogging camera. What is the? Is it the VX1? Sony makes a $600, well, it was $600 on Prime Day anyway $600 vlogging camera. That is a still camera but it's designed for video. Is it the ZV1? That's it, the ZV1. $400 is a Best Buy right now. Very nice camera, has wide angle, has good microphone. It's designed for vloggers, for video bloggers, so it's designed to do exactly kind of what you're talking about and it's more kind of a camera. So it's maybe a more comfortable thing than trying to hold your phone. It also looks a little more professional than holding a phone.

01:17:58 - Jeff (Caller)
And I think that was part of the reason that.

01:18:03 - Bill (Caller)
Yeah, that's dopey. That's what every, because anybody could use every parent, every parent is doing that you for?

01:18:07 - Leo Laporte (Host)
yeah, um, well, that was for years, by the way, why camera operators were carrying these big beta cam sp decks they're 50 pounds uh, because they didn't want to look. But even though the quality would be better with one of these little rigs like this you see, it's got a muff on the microphone. You could you know you want to make it a little more professional. You could get a small rig, camera rig to put around it and you could add a monitor, a little video monitor, on top so it'd be easier to see what you're getting. You could make it more professional looking than the band parents camera. Of course there's always going to be a band parent who's going to have better gear than you do.

01:18:46 - Jeff (Caller)
I'm sure it seems that way Can I sit up right next to you. So the other challenge is I'm trying to make a transition from thumb drive, so I have. You know, the cannons have dual SD card slots, so one SD card slot works as the backup and I just record everything. That's really nice, yeah. And then the other one, I interchange with the other tech that is there and he's taking the judge's comments and my video and he puts it all on a drive.

01:19:17 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Wonderful.

01:19:18 - Jeff (Caller)
But you know, obviously we'd like to make the transition to putting that all on a drive, uh, google drive, or on um the cloud.

01:19:28 - Leo Laporte (Host)
So yeah, so they can just download it. That's the future, isn't it? Why give them a thumb drive?

01:19:33 - Jeff (Caller)
yeah, because most of the stadium, uh, the press boxes we go to, they all have wi-. Oh yeah, and I have to check and see the speed. I think.

01:19:42 - Leo Laporte (Host)
You know you go to a sporting event I've seen this at NFL games the photographer's standing there on the sidelines. He's got somebody behind him holding him because the photographer's not paying attention. If a big old linebacker comes his way, you can yank him back, but the other thing that guy's doing he's a runner. So comes his way, you can yank him back, but the other thing that guy's doing he's a runner. So every quarter the photographer will pull out a card, put in a new card and give it to the guy behind him and he runs it up to the sports, to the box where they can upload it to the newspaper. So your idea is perfectly reasonable. The Sony does not have dual card slots, to my memory, unfortunately. That's a nice feature of the Canon, but you don't want everybody to have a Canon. That's a little too expensive, I would imagine.

01:20:28 - Jeff (Caller)
Yeah, well, and I didn't know if there's a way to record to an external hard drive. Yes, it's backup is the issue.

01:20:35 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, so you want to get fancy. You want to get fancy. You get a small rig. It's called Small Rig. It's the company they make rigs for these cameras, the Sony ZV-1. You put in a rig and the rig has attachments for external hard drive, microphone, a monitor. You can make it look like you guys are really pros, but it could also have a recorder on there that could have SD cards in it that you could pop. I don't think the Sony has wireless. I bet you there are cameras, though that you could. That's something somebody should do, if they don't do it already. Stream to Google Drive.

01:21:13 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
I think you might be able to do it via. So if you have the Sony and you have the app on your phone, oh yeah. If you go to the app on your phone. That then syncs to Google drive or some third party service.

01:21:26 - Jeff (Caller)
Yeah, I purchased some zoom Q2M 4k cameras. I haven't really tried them out. They're real small. Only because you know, I don't know that much about the cameras and they were I don't know that much about the cameras and they were, I don't know $200.

01:21:44 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Do they still make those? That's interesting. That was remember the flip cam. This was a very popular. Yeah, there you go.

01:21:52
Yeah, let's talk about it Very popular camera option a few years ago. Again, all of this has been killed by the smartphone. Nobody needs anything more than a smartphone, really, these days for video. They even make movies. In fact, the entire apple presentation last time on ai was shot on an iphone. I mean, they don't.

01:22:13
The quality is amazing on these things. What they almost universally have, though, is a is a small rig things. Yeah. What they almost universally have, though, is this is a small rig cage that has additional stuff hanging off of it, so I would I would look at I think that that that zv1 is actually exactly what you want. Uh, I'm pretty sure it gets wide enough. Get a, get a, uh, get a cage for it.

01:22:35
A company called small rig makes them, and I'm pretty I. The one reason I know this is I just bought for my Sony FX30, which is the ones. Those are also cinema cams. They're about three times more expensive. Those are the ones I'm going to use to shoot in the home studio, and with every one of them I got a Small Rig, because it goes around it, it fits it perfectly, and then it has lots of quarter 20, you know places that you could screw things in, and a lot of people.

01:23:02
What a lot of people do is they'll have a larger monitor screwed around. This is the kind of thing Alex Lindsay would be really good at. That's another suggestion. If you know about office hours, go to officehoursglobal. They do Zoom every morning morning, pacific time and you can go into the Zoom call. You can get an invitation by going to officehoursglobal. I think there's a link that says join us. You get a link to the Zoom call. You can go in and you can say this exact question to them and you will get 30 people, including people who are technical directors for the NFL, people who do sound for movies. Every possible person in the video trades is there and they will have many, many suggestions for you and they're happy to help. Yep, yeah, in fact, way too many. Do you have a budget per person for this?

01:23:57 - Jeff (Caller)
Well, here's the thing as I get new people, I am trying to give them the equipment. The guys that have been doing this for a while, some have their own right and they have their own system. Yeah, let them do that, you know you don't want to know they do their thing. So I you know. No, actually I'm trying to figure out what it is I would need. What is the budget? Yeah, and then set my budget by that. I like these EV1s for $400.

01:24:25 - Leo Laporte (Host)
That's an amazing price, I think. The cameras that I bought, and they don't include a lens, so you've got to consider that the Sony FX30 is APS-C, so it's got a bigger sensor instead of the 1-inch sensor in the ZV-1. But they're $1,600. Then you have to buy a lens. You're going to talk about at least $2,000 per camera. They even make the FX3, which is a full-frame sensor. These are all cinema cameras, though, and the reason you want to get a cinema camera. Canon makes them, and Nikon makes them as well the but the cinema focus cameras will let you record more than half an hour. That's really, obviously, really important to you. Uh, so, um, I, yeah, I think I would focus on those cinema models as opposed to a, uh, a, still, which canon are you using right now? Uh, the g20, okay, that's really nice, yeah, and that's, and that will record more than half an hour at a time, right?

01:25:24
yeah yeah, that's a point and shoot. I mean, that's a very, very good one. Basically, the zv is just the next is kind of the same thing, but a later generation, that's all okay. Okay, the zoom 4k, uh is interesting. Zoom I'm seeing this in our Twitch focuses on sound. It's also discontinued by Zoom. Yeah, I have a Zoom audio recorder that I love. I have several actually. I love what they do and their 32-bit recording, audio recording is a very good idea for you because of the sound pressure levels from those bands.

01:26:07
You don't have to worry about that. It has so much headroom that you don't even set the volume, you just record and everything is recorded without clipping. So a 32-bit float is a very nice feature. I don't think it's on the zoom 4k, but all of the new zoom gear, all of their new zoom field recording gear, has a 32-bit float. You can get uh, and I have one of those uh, like the zoom field recorders, I think I have an f3 that will use good mics, can can have uh shotgun mics, has 32-bit float and is designed. It has a quarter 20 hole. It's designed to attach to a small rig underneath the camera. It's designed for that. It's a field recorder for that. So zoom has some very good stuff. Especially if you say I need the best possible audio, then I would get a zoom audio recorder a feel you can have a couple of those. Yeah, yeah, I love my f3. That thing is amazing. You can't you can't clip it and for a marching band that's probably a good thing.

01:27:08 - Jeff (Caller)
Yeah yeah, I used to. What did you?

01:27:11 - Leo Laporte (Host)
what did you teach when you taught?

01:27:13 - Jeff (Caller)
um, I was a high school band director for 20 some years and then the last three or four, actually 26 years. The last three or four years, I taught STEAM, or STEM. Oh nice For K-5 students. Oh, how fun. That must have been fun. Yes, it was. There's a learning curve, as with everything, but, you know, I taught high school and people, would you know, they always say roll their eyes oh freshmen, or oh whatever. But I say that you know kindergarten teachers. There's a special place in heaven for them, yeah. I agree.

01:27:47
Because kindergarten, oh my goodness, it was herding cats yeah. But cute cats, really cute, yes, very cute cats that have absolutely no filter, oh wow.

01:28:06 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yes, there is a special place in heaven for all teachers. Thank you for the service and those many generations of kids who learned at your feet and have a better life because of it. I think you've made a big difference in their lives and I think this sounds like a great retirement plan. You know a fun business.

01:28:22 - Jeff (Caller)
What's Kim?

01:28:23 - Leo Laporte (Host)
going to do.

01:28:24 - Jeff (Caller)
Well, Kim is still teaching music. She's got a few elementary music. She's done that for quite some time. She has a few more years and then both our you know, both our kids are married or close to married. So we're at that, that stage of possible. She's sneaking in here, she can't.

01:28:43 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I want to see Kim. Come on, kim. I heard that Just the top of her head, that's all. That's all. Hi, kim, hi. So nice to see you, nice to see you, and I was thanking you and Jeff for the good work that you guys have done over the years. Oh, she can't. As teachers, yes, teachers, teachers are the probably the most important uh profession in the world. Thank you for your contribution. I really thank you that's very kind of you to say.

01:29:16
Thank you, kim. Nice to talk to you both. Yeah, great question. Thank you so much. Take care, bye-bye everybody. Yeah, I think that's fun. Yeah, I think that's fun. Were you in marching band?

01:29:26 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
you look like you were I do, I not, I do, but I was not, sadly you didn't play the clarinet in marching band. It's funny that you say clarinet, because a friend of mine who's in band was like if you played an instrument, it would be a clarinet clarinet rightarinet, right.

01:29:39 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Doesn't he look like a clarinetist?

01:29:40 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
Look like a clarinet player.

01:29:42 - Leo Laporte (Host)
You're watching. What do I look like? A tuba player, right?

01:29:46 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
Yeah, maybe I don't know, Trying to think of what. Yeah, maybe a flautist Flautist You're watching the flautist and have no idea.

01:30:00 - Leo Laporte (Host)
The clarinet trumpet player ask that yeah, yeah, trumpet now we're talking.

01:30:05 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
There's an instrument.

01:30:09 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Ask the trombone, okay, okay. Addison says I should be accordion. You know I? Oh, I've. Okay, talk me out of this. I was thinking of getting an accordion.

01:30:22 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
Why would I talk you out of it? That sounds so fun. I'd have to take lessons, obviously, but you'd need to learn, yeah. It's probably a pretty hard instrument because not only are you playing the piano, you're also playing the holes. There's a lot going on, and you've got to do this at the right time too. I at the right time too, I think I could do that.

01:30:43 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Maybe start with a theremin? This is Ask the Tech Guys.

01:30:50 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
I just thought for my retirement like pick up an instrument, maybe start with piano and then do accordion. I don't know, though. Maybe accordion's easier. Who plays?

01:30:59 - Leo Laporte (Host)
the accordion out here Anybody? If you play the accordion, yeah, let let us know. Is it better to start with piano and then move to accordion?

01:31:05 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
but that's like playing it is it better to start with bagpipes and then move to accordion? My college roommate played bagpipes at night and in the morning. Only that was that was. I think it's hard to make it sound good, but when it does I'm impressed oh, yeah, yeah, and he would practice bring me tears.

01:31:26 - Leo Laporte (Host)
You can practice without the horns, so it just sounds like a really annoying nasally reed instrument, the instrument that I think gets too much guff, that I love.

01:31:37 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
I love the harpsichord. I love the harpsichord who gives the? Harpsichord gu. I love the harpsichord. Who gives the harpsichord guff Almost everyone I say that to is like you like the harpsichord, that sounds terrible. Oh, I love the harpsichord.

01:31:47 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Goodness, I love harpsichord. Yeah, you have good taste. Thank you, Wow. One Brian in our Twitch said his dad used to play drums for Myron Florin. The polka king on our Twitch said his dad used to play drums for Myron Floor and the Polka King.

01:32:01 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
No one apparently plays accordion.

01:32:03 - Leo Laporte (Host)
No, there are no accordionists. I used to have a guy come on the radio show because you know, we have the Cotati Accordion Festival coming up. Actually, I just learned about that. I just learned about that and he was Tom was famous for playing with a band called those Damn Accordions. I said it was those Darn Accordions, but they were an accordion band, which is that's cool.

01:32:26 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
Honestly Sounds annoying to me. Maybe harmonica? I play the harmonica. Oh you do. Yeah, Nice John, help us. Do you just blow into it or do you play?

01:32:37 - Leo Laporte (Host)
it. No, I can play a tune there. It is. The Katahdi Accordion Festival is coming up August 16th through 18th at the Plaza Park. Hundreds of accordionists will show up Dang it.

01:32:47 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
I wish I was going to be in town. Are you not going to be in town for that I'm?

01:32:50 - Leo Laporte (Host)
going to be in town. You missed the last few. I've got to live stream it for me. I will. I'll go on over there maybe you got some video.

01:33:00 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
I would love to see some video of it, john.

01:33:02 - Leo Laporte (Host)
What should we do next?

01:33:04 - JammerB (Other)
well, we got callers, we got. What do we have? Do we have anybody at?

01:33:07 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
one, no, no, just one. We had. We had one guest today. It didn't show up any more voicemails. Yep, I'd love to hear another voicemail guys, this is ann and annie.

01:33:17 - Ann (Caller)
I have a question about my new state-of-the-art garage door opener. That was installed by this wonderful guy yesterday in over 110 degree temperatures, wow. Anyway, after it was installed, he told me I should download the MyQ app, which I did, yeah, and it was asking me a couple of questions my name and stuff and it got to a point where it asked me if I wanted to allow or don't allow Bluetooth. And in his instructions, the only the installer only mentioned Wi-Fi, nothing about Bluetooth. So I didn't know what to do, so I clicked on allow. Did I need to allow or should I not have? Allowed.

01:33:56 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Bluetooth.

01:33:57 - Ann (Caller)
That's a great question. That's my question. If I needed to, did I do anything bad have allowed Bluetooth? Yeah, that's a really good question. That's my question. If I needed to, did I do anything bad by allowing Bluetooth? Thanks, ann, what a great question. I really enjoy your show. I've been listening to you since you were on KGO back in the day.

01:34:12 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Oh yeah, Way back in the day. It's a great question yeah.

01:34:18 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
So, no, you didn't do anything bad. You did the right thing. Yeah, you did the right thing. First and foremost, even if the app didn't actually need Bluetooth which we'll talk about in a second, where that comes into the process the most that an app would gain about you by having access to Bluetooth is just the Bluetooth devices that are around you. Some companies will use that information to try and figure out a little bit about you so that they can maybe figure out oh, this is the same person who used this app yesterday that we showed an ad to. And so, even in the case where an app doesn't need Bluetooth, by giving Bluetooth, you're not giving access to anything truly nefarious. You're not doing anything. You're not giving access to anything truly nefarious. It's not going to, you know, result in them being able to scrape a bunch of data, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. But many, many a smart home device, many a connected device, is going to use Bluetooth as part of the pairing process.

01:35:17
Part of the handshake, and it is because they need to be able to communicate with one another before you actually get it set up with Wi-Fi. So, if you think about it, your garage door opener doesn't yet have access to your Wi-Fi network. It doesn't know what your Wi-Fi network is called, it doesn't know what the password is, it doesn't know anything yet, and your phone and it need to be able to talk to each other some way before that Wi-Fi connection can be made. So they will typically use Bluetooth. The device on the other end says, hey, I'm here, and your phone says hey, I'm looking for you, and they find each other, they talk, and then you can send that information to the Wi-Fi or to the device and it can then connect to Wi-Fi.

01:36:01 - Leo Laporte (Host)
So MyQ is from LiftMaster. I think there are only really a handful.

01:36:08 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
Yeah, they're both owned by the same.

01:36:10 - Leo Laporte (Host)
They're all owned by everybody and MyQ works with most garage doors. I have a MyQ garage door. It's the same thing.

01:36:19 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
I use one with my third party garage door opener as well. Yeah, it doesn't have to be a lift buster, yeah uh, and yeah, that's.

01:36:28 - Leo Laporte (Host)
You answered the exactly right. It's just part of the it's, in case you know. Uh, they, you know they had to get the wi-fi. Get to the wi-fi. They have to, you know yeah and that's the other thing too.

01:36:41 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
If your Wi-Fi is not working, it's possible that when you're close enough to the garage door, it could still make a Bluetooth connection and let you open up the garage door.

01:36:51 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I'm logging into MyQ and I'm going to open my garage door and close it, just to give Lisa the willies.

01:36:59 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
That's mean it's good you don't have dogs, because then you go. Good question.

01:37:09 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Thank you, ann and Antioch, and I'm sorry about the weather, yeah.

01:37:14 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
But good to have that skepticism. Let's be clear about that. You know you are trying to protect. It is, that's smart. Yeah.

01:37:20 - Leo Laporte (Host)
The fact that you said do I?

01:37:21 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
need to turn this on. That's good. Keep that yeah.

01:37:24 - Leo Laporte (Host)
And I think usually I would be. My guess you could turn it off afterwards.

01:37:29 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
Yeah, yeah, I in fact. Why not, you know afterward, go into the settings, find my cue in the list, tap on it and then look for Bluetooth permission, turn it off and see what happens. If you're no longer able to open or close the garage door, then you know that it's part of the process going forward. But it should be able to do it over Wi-Fi.

01:37:46 - Leo Laporte (Host)
But yeah, if you're ever worried about it, you can always turn it off afterward 888-724-2884 is the phone number you can do as Ann did call during the week and leave a message. But if you're calling right now, during our broadcast hours, which are 11 am to 2 pm Pacific time on Sundays, you could talk to us directly. In fact, that's exactly what John's looking at me like what, what? Poor John, you're doing this all by yourself today. Normally we have a team of 23 people working on the show and John's like an octopus.

01:38:22 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
Yeah, fortunately they're very smart, they have so many arms. And don't worry, I won't eat you. And no, legs?

01:38:29 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Really, those aren't legs, those are arms, is that?

01:38:32 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
technically the yeah. What is it? Anatomically speaking, they're arms. What makes them legs If they walk on them? It's not that they're not legs. There's a reason. They are arms, but I can't remember what it is.

01:38:45 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I'll tell you off the top of my head I do not, they can throw a baseball with each of them it has to do with grasping as opposed to just ambulation.

01:38:51 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
I'm pretty sure this week in october, yeah exactly, richard has joined us.

01:38:56 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Hello, richard.

01:38:59 - Richard (Caller)
Hi guys, how's it going Wonderful? Where are you calling? From Jackson Tennessee.

01:39:05 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Did you have to check the street sign to know? No, sorry.

01:39:14 - Richard (Caller)
It's okay. Okay, here's my situation. I just bought a S24 Ultra on Prime Day. Yay situation I just bought a s24 ultra on prime day, yay. And every time I go to open youtube, the entire phone just shuts down and resets itself. That's the only flaw I'm having with that. That's really bad.

01:39:32 - Leo Laporte (Host)
he's talking about the galaxy s24, and the ultra is the top of the line. It's a very nice, very nice device, but that's not how it's supposed to act. So I presume you've tried uninstalling YouTube and reinstalling it.

01:39:50 - Richard (Caller)
Well, since it's a system app, you can't really install it. Yeah, so it comes with a system, so there's no way to uninstall it. Wait the.

01:39:55 - Leo Laporte (Host)
YouTube app. It might be Samsung, so there's no way to uninstall it. Wait, the YouTube app, it might be Samsung. It's interesting. Lately Samsung has kind of changed their tune about Google. For a long time, when you got a Samsung phone, you got both Samsung messages and Google messages, and they've announced they're going to stop shipping their phones with Samsung messages. It's going to be Google messages going forward. So I guess they've kissed and made up for a while. Samsung didn't even say it was an android phone. They really didn't want any connection to google. Can you disable it and mainly, it's? You want to delete the data cache, because I suspect it's something?

01:40:31 - Richard (Caller)
I've tried that. I've installed. Uh, I've installed updates still happening after the updates still happening. Reverted from the updates still happening. I have a YouTube premium account. I thought it had something to do with that.

01:40:50 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Well, it shouldn't reboot the nothing should reboot the phone. Is it really shutting off and starting up again? Do you see the Samsung logo? Yes, oh my gosh every time not I would well see, I would send it back, I would. Yeah, I think there's something seriously wrong with it so you're saying you did, say you.

01:41:10 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
You went to the app store, you typed in youtube and tried to just get it from the app store, just to see, yep got it tried getting it right off the place here.

01:41:20 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Before you send it back, do a factory reset on it. I know it's a pain, did it Twice, twice. Oh no, it's broken.

01:41:27 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
There's something wrong with it. It broke. That's a lemon.

01:41:31 - Richard (Caller)
Okay, wow, wow, before I sent it off.

01:41:36 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, what a pain, I know, and get my money back and everything. Why would this? Why would one app break the phone? Well, youtube, probably, is accessing an area of memory. It's loading enough stuff. That's accessing an area of memory. That's that's failed, uh, and when it hits that, the whole thing blows up. You could probably find it's crowd strike. It's crowd strike. You can probably find other apps, big fat apps that would do that, or maybe it's possible google, in order to play video, has to load a driver. That's flawed. But there's something really broken. The reset should fix anything. That's software only right, because you're refreshing all the software. So the fact that it doesn't and you've done it twice, which is admirable that means there's some hardware issue with the phone and that's why you have to send it back. There's nothing you can do about that.

01:42:34 - Richard (Caller)
Okay, I just figured I'd give y'all's opinion beforehand Worth a try.

01:42:39 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Really nice to talk to you.

01:42:40 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
Sorry that it's not I appreciate it.

01:42:42 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, it's fine it's a nice phone. I think you're gonna really like a great camera and samsung's screens. I'm gonna fall back in screens in the business. There are no better screens. Even on the iphone they have the best oleds. They keep them to themselves, so enjoy it.

01:43:02 - Richard (Caller)
It's a very awesome phone, other than this one problem.

01:43:05 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Have you ever considered a folding phone?

01:43:08 - Richard (Caller)
I've tried it. I've tried the Z Fold 5. But also returned it, mainly because the cost to performance benefit wasn't really there for me. I also have a vision impairment where that large internal screen would be a benefit. But even that wasn't really. It wasn't what it cracked up to be, and the new one isn't really much different. So it's not. The desire is not there right and plus it doesn't have an s-pin until until they stick an s-pin in that chassis I love the s-pin.

01:43:46 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I agree with you, I'm 100, I was. I had the first. I had every, every note, even the one that blew up. I love that one yeah, had that one. Yeah, I had to send it back. I loved the Note and so I was really glad that they started putting the pen into their S series, because that's actually a Note. Right, it's as big as a Note. There really is no difference. I'm a little jealous. I think that's a really really nice phone. Did you try the Galaxy AI stuff yet?

01:44:16 - Richard (Caller)
I didn't't. I've just mainly been sticking to gbt and gemini yeah, or for more uh, yeah, I'm curious, very tempted very.

01:44:25 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I have the s23 and love it, but uh, the 24 is very tempting.

01:44:31 - Richard (Caller)
Yeah, that one I think I'm gonna I'm gonna return this one and just wait for the s25 and try my lucky cat.

01:44:37 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, right, that'll be out soon, right? When are they usually announced?

01:44:40 - Richard (Caller)
Six months.

01:44:41 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, something like that, Typically January yeah yeah, all right, nice to talk to you. I'm sorry about your bad phone. Yeah, that sucks.

01:44:49 - Richard (Caller)
Yeah, it's all right.

01:44:51 - Leo Laporte (Host)
We get so used to the reliability of these devices that we forget it happens. You know there's a defect and companies should understand that and should be able to return it and replace it easily. Thanks for the call, richard. All right, take care. Bye-bye, yep, all right. Email, oh, oh, email, oh, imagine that.

01:45:17 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
ATG at twittv.

01:45:20 - Leo Laporte (Host)
What's that email doing in the mailbox? Remote desktop from Richard. It's that from his iPhone. Oh, you know I'm thinking AKA his remote desktop. I'm thinking he never changed his signature, but maybe the kids today that's a status symbol Could be they don't change their signature. Richard says two questions. Two I have a PC at home I'd like to access and use when I'm not at home.

01:45:47
I'm a bit confused by RDP and VPN. Do I need both to securely use my computer? To securely use your computer? Rdp is Remote Desktop Protocol, vpn is Virtual Private Network. Now, rdp has had a checkered past but assuming that Windows has properly implemented RDP currently, it should be just as secure as if you used a VPN right. It should be just as secure as if you used a VPN right. But it is the case that RDP has in the past had flaws. So, yeah, I think it's fine just to use RDP. You don't. Vpn is if you are accessing the company's network and you wanted to not just access a remote machine but access other resources on that network. You probably don't do that. And uh and yes, randomly delivered pizza is fine. That was the chap did that to me. I also looked at parallels just to put everything on my new macbook pro, but that is expensive having to buy a copy of windows and pay for parallels. I know that's what I did, but what's that penguin site that you recommend?

01:47:01 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
penguin p-i-n-g-u-i-n.

01:47:04 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I paid 27 for my windows license and apparently it's legit. Yeah, I know, I know it doesn't seem legit, uh, but Tom's Hardware the website, which is a reliable website, recommended it, so I tried it and it's fine.

01:47:20 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
And to this day, your Windows loads. There's no weird pop-up.

01:47:23 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It loads, there's no problem If I had brought my computer.

01:47:25 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
it would be, Because oftentimes what they're doing is they're buying the extras of the deals that are getting sent to OEMs, they're legit.

01:47:33 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Even Microsoft says they're legit. So, penguin, but you still have to buy Parallels. While looking at this, I noticed they were making such a big deal about being able to use the M chip. Now what makes them so different from the other chips? Oh, richard, that's a big question. That's a big question. I should have saved that for last.

01:47:47 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
Oh I did Zing zing.

01:47:52 - Leo Laporte (Host)
We have all of this planned.

01:47:53 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
It may seem sporadic, but it's not.

01:47:55 - Leo Laporte (Host)
If you want to run Windows on a Mac, an M1, apple Silicon Mac you've got to get Parallels, and it's great. I think VMware Fusion now does it too, but Parallels really works beautifully, so well that it's like the best Windows. Now that ties into your last question, which is it's not the standard Windows you'll be installing. You'll be installing Microsoft's Windows on ARM, so that's one of the big differences. Apple went from Intel chips to ARM-based chips of its own design. Of its own design is really important. Qualcomm also has ARM-based chips. Your phone has an ARM-based chip. Arm was initially founded by Acorn and Apple for the Newton to make a low-power, very efficient chip for a portable device, and in fact that's why ARM chips are very widely used in portable devices, initially phones and eventually now they're starting to be used in laptops. They're fast, given their consumption of energy. Low energy consumption also means they run quieter and cooler. You don't need fans, and the Apple chips have an additional advantage they are designed for a very specific hardware and software stack. Apple makes them all all three right, so they know what software is going to be run, they know what the hardware is and they can make sure that their chips are optimized for the kinds of tasks that you would run on an Apple device. So and they also have a long history, because the iPhone is the original Apple Silicon they started putting those in I don't know when A4, a5. They've been doing that for more than a decade and then they have expanded them to make them desktop chips and they're very, very good. Now the good news is you're starting to see these on Microsoft's side. That's why there is a version of Windows for ARM processors, and Qualcomm just this year came out with its new Snapdragon X Elite, which is comparable in many ways to the Apple chip. They don't have the advantage Apple does of we know exactly what hardware and software is going to be running on this. We make the operating system, we make the machine and we make the chip. That's the advantage Apple has. Qualcomm has to make it for a much broader variety, and yet they've done very well in early reports. These just came out, june 18th. Early reports for these Qualcomm-based computers, laptops, computers, laptops from Microsoft, lenovo, asus, hp are that they're great. Read Paul Theriot's reviews on his website, theriotcom. They are very, very impressive. Great battery life that's what you'd expect from an ARM chip. Low power they run cool. They run quiet, low power, they run cool, they run quiet and they're very, very fast. The other thing Apple has done since practically the beginning is built in what they used to call a machine language coprocessor into these. Now Microsoft calls it an NPU or neural processing unit. These are parts of the chip designed specifically for running AI tasks. So that's one of the reasons you're seeing more and more PCs and more and more phones offer artificial intelligence locally because they have these processors. So there's a huge advantage, frankly, to Apple designing its own chips, and they've seen that advantage for the last couple of years. But Microsoft's catching up Now.

01:51:37
It's bad news for Intel. Frankly, intel is trying to do the same thing. In fact, intel is essentially making the same kinds of chips that ARM makes. They call them reduced instruction set computing chips, risc, and all the new Intel stuff has efficiency cores and performance cores, just like the Apple silicon. It's really interesting to watch how apple has influenced the entire industry. Uh, but this is good for everybody, whether you're running windows or macintosh. Uh, I think there's some real benefits, uh to this. It's pretty good. It's pretty good, pretty, pretty good, uh. Uh. You're watching Ask the Tech Guys. That's what you're watching. I'm Lionel Richie and I don't know who you are. Who are?

01:52:25 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
you, you can be anybody you want.

01:52:32 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Today I'm, oh boy, I'm Mickey Mouse. I was going to say Mr T, but that's okay, mickey.

01:52:35 - Mark (Caller)
Mouse, if you want to be, I can do Mickey's voice a little bit. I'm a pitiful.

01:52:39 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
I'll answer a quick question that just came up in the chat.

01:52:43
So if you're listening Rail Europe Groups. It is a printer question, but that's why I'm taking care of it. I have an HP printer that is an instant ink printer. I was paying monthly their fee, but after six months of not getting any ink sent by them, I stopped payment. So first I want to say this you pay monthly for the fee and they only send you ink when you run out of ink. So if you don't use the amount of printing required to run out of ink, they're not going to send you new ink. Yes, it's bad, it's this, it's that and the other, but you just have to understand how the program works.

01:53:18
Not to ink, but to how many pages you're printing. But to HP, yeah, exactly. It says. I then saw an amber light flashing on my printer and it said printer disabled. I found I can no longer send anything to. Is there a way around this, or am I now forced to buy a new printer? No, so here's what happened. When you agreed to be part of the Instant Ink program, you have to stay in it.

01:53:41
Hp sent you ink that is blessed as part of the Instant Ink program. Yes, when you installed it you agreed that you would only use this ink for as long as you're part of the Instant Ink program. When you left the program, the ink that is in your printer that is part of the Instant Ink program is no longer usable. They sucked it right out of your printer. All you have to do to continue to use your printer is buy HP ink from wherever that is not part of the Instant Ink program. So the kind you can buy at the store if you go to Best Buy and you get the ink for your printer and you put it in your printer is going to work again. The thing that you agreed is that that those ink cartridges that were part of the hp instant ink program only work as long as you have an hp instant ink subscription. So to leave the hp instant ink subscription, go to the store, buy some hp ink cartridges for that printer. You'll be fine, all I can say, is cory doctorow was right.

01:54:36
This all happened, because I don't know why it happened, it's because they weren't making enough money off of their printers, because they were subsidizing the cost of the printers.

01:54:44 - Leo Laporte (Host)
They wanted to sell you printers at $80. But they didn't pay for the printers if they sell it to you for $80. So they said, well, we'll make it up in the ink. And that worked for a while. But then people started using other companies ink. Now what do we do? You know we're really now we're not making much money either. So they figured out a way to make sure you use their ink. They actually put chips in the cartridges.

01:55:07 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
Prm, physical rights management yeah, and uh, yeah, prm yeah and so.

01:55:13 - Leo Laporte (Host)
so you still have to use an HP cartridge, but you don't have to do the ink subscription Correct.

01:55:21 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
It's a good question, by the way, and if I sounded frustrated at you, I am not, I just want because this is a common thing that comes up and I want everyone to know you don't have to get rid of the printer, you don't have to e-waste your printer.

01:55:41 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It's a little annoying, though, that hp does this, but what you can do instead is buy that brother printer everybody has, yeah, and never worry about this ever again. It's not. The print quality is better on the hp, to be honest, than it is on the brother laser. But the brother laser I don't have a subscription. Yep, I buy toner when I need it. I can buy it from third parties, etc.

01:55:51
Etc etc although I have to say, you know, I have the Brother Laser and we just brought home a HP multifunction for Lisa because she wants color and she wants better quality print. I think you know, the first laser printer I ever saw was the Apple LaserWriter and as I remember, it was $4,000. It was really really really expensive and we thought, well, only you know very fancy people will ever have laser writers. I certainly couldn't afford one. So the printer companies got to work and they figure out a way to get you the printer cheaper, but in the long run you probably still paid four thousand dollars over the life of the printer. Right, yeah, okay, let's do something else. All right, by the way, there are plenty of companies not HP that will let you use third-party cartridges, and also now, with the EcoTank printers like Epson makes, canon is starting to make these too. You don't even buy cartridges, you just buy a bunch of ink to put in a tank.

01:56:59 - JammerB (Other)
We have a couple more voicemails.

01:57:01 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Let's do one.

01:57:02 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
Let's hear one.

01:57:05 - Bill (Caller)
Hey guys, my name is Bill, I'm in Tarzana, California, and I have two older iPads and a Surface Pro that's a couple years old and I keep them in my music room plugged in all the time. Sure, I'm curious if that's a problem. Or is it better for me to charge the devices and then drain them down and recharge?

01:57:33 - Leo Laporte (Host)
them. Common question. Thank you, yeah, by the way, you know it's named tarzana because edgar rice burroughs lived there. Oh okay, just thought I'd throw that in. Uh, no, that's uh. All modern devices, certainly all apple devices, have circuitry that keep the thing in good shape. It doesn't hurt it to leave it plugged in.

01:57:54 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
It did in the old days maybe, but not anymore and that's why everybody still thinks that it's a problem, because it once was a problem. And unfortunately there's still um quote unquote technical reps who say that it's a problem, but that's because they don't know otherwise, right uh, that's it, yes, from the old nickel, cadmium, nicad batteries that had a memory effect and all that stuff.

01:58:18 - Leo Laporte (Host)
You're, what the apple's doing actually I think many modern devices do is, yeah, they let it go up and then let it go down in little tiny bits. Uh, so it's not always it's it's it's doing its own little. Just let go and let apple, exactly they will.

01:58:36 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
All the many of these modern devices are going to properly manage it. It's not an issue. I leave almost all my laptops and ipads plugged in most of the time yeah, the only thing that I would recommend when doing that is just don't store it in direct sunlight while it's doing that. No, that's a bad idea. Yeah, that's bad for it. Even if it wasn't charging? Yeah, but while it's charging, there's typically going to be a little more heat involved, and so to add even more heat is not great.

01:59:00 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Now somebody in the Twitch chat said that the subscription cartridges have more ink than the store-bought cartridges. That is true they do. That's interesting. Yeah, so is it a better deal on ink? It is.

01:59:11 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
It just lasts longer. So then HP doesn't have to send it to you that often. Oh yeah, because the mailing cost.

01:59:17 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, they're always working on the angle. Those guys at HP, they're smut.

01:59:21 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
Yeah, whenever you sign up, they're like you'll get the higher capacity premium cartridge from us instead of the one you buy at the store Unless you never print, unless you never print, and then you're paying monthly for something you're not using really Exactly.

01:59:33 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, absolutely. Should only do that if you do a lot of printing.

01:59:36 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
Yeah, I think the smallest one is 20 pages a month or something like that. Oh, you actually subscribe by the pages. Yeah, that's hysterical, yeah. And then after that it's per page. You know, five cents per page, but one, brian in the is it the Discord?

01:59:54 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, that's Discord. Yeah, the uh. In the is it the discord? Yeah, uh, that's discord. Yeah, yeah, it says if you print a lot, it's worth it. Okay, I'm not again it, I just uh, you gotta understand what you're getting into exactly hp holding prisoners.

02:00:06 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
That's one new me on youtube thank you, one new me.

02:00:11 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I like it. Uh, let us see here a A Bitwarden question, our sponsor Bitwarden, from Wayne. Hello, leo and Mike. I enjoy listening to shows. Thank you, wayne, I make sure to listen weekly. Thank you again. I always look forward to the witty conversations. Okay, now you're just buttering us up. Keep up the great work.

02:00:32
Wow, I have a question about Bitwarden. I don't usually use the app in the computer, but I know something new to me. It might have always been there, but it's new to me. Under type on the left-hand pane I see secure note. I would love to use this feature if it's secure. It is. I've trusted Bitwarden. I've been using it now for the past couple of years. Leo, you're the reason I switched over from LastPass. Thank you, maybe you're not the only reason. They did have a breach they did, which scared me into switching. Me too. Can't wait to hear the answers from the two of you. Keep up the work. Great work guys. Yeah, in fact, I've used SecureNote as long as it's been around, which I think has been years, so maybe you just never noticed it. I actually did it on LastPass too.

02:01:19
The whole idea is really all a password manager is is a thing that encrypts a ball of data. The data can include passwords, of course, and logins, but anything else. So I store my social security card, like images, my driver's license, my passport, all of that stuff in there, because it is secure. And if you wanted to, you know I have notes that include all the family's social security numbers and stuff. I wouldn't put all their social security numbers into something that wasn't secure.

02:01:47
Now one thing does happen, and this is true, I think, of all password managers If you store an image as a secure note and then you double click that image and you want to see it, it has to decrypt it to to so you can see it right, and at that point, oftentimes it's saved somewhere. Yeah, so if you something you really want to keep truly secret, if you detach it or you open it up, make sure you then delete any copies of it that were saved as a result. In the secure bundle it's. It's secure and encrypted, but in order to see it you have to decrypt it. Um, okay, good question.

02:02:24 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
Okay, just a place to store information that's more secure than putting it in the notes app or something.

02:02:31 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Oh, I love it yeah I mean it's a little harder. There's extra effort involved, so I don't do it for all my notes.

02:02:40 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
But for anything like a list of all the family social security numbers. His next genius ideas all in there.

02:02:43 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, all my world-conquering thoughts, they're all in there. One more voicemail and then we'll wrap it up.

02:02:55 - Mark (Caller)
Hi, this is Mark from Racine, wisconsin. Hi, mark, micah and Leo love the show. A proud Club Twit member.

02:03:03 - Jeff (Caller)
Thank, you and.

02:03:05 - Mark (Caller)
Leo, my son and I had come up from Racine to Green Bay when he did a meetup recently. That was so much fun. I remember you, Mike. It was a fun time.

02:03:13
Oh, wasn't that great, remember you, mike? It was a fun time. Oh, anyway, my question is, uh, leo has mentioned recently, uh, that he has moved from offy to some other second factor yes, uh, app and I was wondering if you could uh elaborate as to the reason why uh, you migrated from offy to this other app and how important it is to move to something else, because currently, right now, I have a lot of second factors set up under Authy and I'm trying to figure out if I need to take the time to make that change Stay with Authy, mike.

02:03:45 - Leo Laporte (Host)
By the way, did you know Racine was named Racine because Edgar Rice Burroughs lived there? Many people didn't know that. No, that's not true, okay, Okay.

02:03:53 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
Okay.

02:04:00 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Can you see my screen racine? There it is. There is two f a s. This is the authenticator, uh, that I use right now. Let me enter my free and open source. It's free, it's open source and it has the same thing that I liked offy for, which is it saves the secrets that generate these six-digit codes and it saves them encrypted onto iCloud if I'm on an iPhone, or Google Drive if I'm on an Android device. By doing that, it makes it very easy for me to use multiple phones or move from phone to phone, and one of the kind of the hazards of this job is I'm always installing new phones. So I need an authenticator that will be portable, that will go everywhere. Authy does that.

02:04:41
Now I don't have a strong reason to move off of Authy. It's made by Twilio. That's why it's free. It specifically has extra support for Twilio customers, so you may notice a few of your authentication keys are kind of a little different. It also hosts the file for your secrets on its servers.

02:05:06
That was the main reason I moved is because now you have all of your two-factor secrets stored on commercial companies' servers and, in fact, twilio recently did have a little bit of a breach and all the people who had Authy. Their phone numbers were revealed to bad guys. So maybe my instincts were good. That has not happened to 2FAS yet, probably not because 2FAS is so wonderful, but because it's a much smaller market. Authy was becoming very well known, so it becomes the target for more attacks. 2fas is free. It does all the same things Authy did. The other reason which is really silly that I switched is because the numbers are really big and easy for this old guy to read, and so that was for me. The other thing I did not like about Authy was they didn't seem to have much order in the numbers. You had to find the secret sort thing.

02:06:10
It was just kind of the UI felt a little haphazard, so I'm very much more a fan of this. You may say Leo, you're giving away all your six-digit keys. Well, you better use them fast. Yeah, exactly. In 30 seconds they're going to change. Oh there, they did. Okay, so you now have 30 seconds to use my six-figure two-factors.

02:06:33 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
While also guessing your super random password.

02:06:38 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Now if somebody's watching who already knows my password, I've just given them my keys to my kingdom. But anyway, you see the nice little countdown timer on the right there and it has the logo. I just like how it looks better than offy, to be honest. Uh, there were a couple of things I couldn't get off of Authy. So I actually still have Authy on my phone, you know, look at the difference in the interface, though I just you know that's, it's just you have to hit the thing and it's not as good. And I don't know, I don't know, I just it's not to me. I just like 2FAS better, and that's the answer to that question.

02:07:15
Thank you for your very kind words, mike. It was really fun to see you in Green Bay. I have to get together this plan to do a meetup in New York City. Lisa and I are going to be there the week after Labor Day and maybe we're thinking like on the 7th or the 8th of September doing a meetup, but I haven't yet figured that out. Joe, who is one of our Club Twit members he's in our Discord and is a street photographer in New York City has put together a really lovely photo walk itinerary that I'd like to do too.

02:07:48 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
Oh, that's awesome.

02:07:49 - Leo Laporte (Host)
So maybe we can do a meetup and then a photo walk or figure that out. That's so cool. I've been, I've been consumed by the studio move. That's been every ounce of my attention, uh, so I really haven't done any thinking about that. But yeah, we're only six weeks off. Uh, I, I better find my passport and I better make some plans. Uh, for a meetup in New York city. Micah Sargent will be back Tuesdays for iOS Today with Rosemary Orchard, thursdays for Tech News Weekly and, of course, right here every Sunday. Thank you, micah, for being here. Thanks to all of you for joining us, thanks especially to our Club Twit members. We love you. We need a special handshake. Yeah, secret handshake.

02:08:39
That's probably not the best secret handshake. We are so grateful to all of you for the support that you give us, not just financial but the moral support. If you are a regular, you like our shows and you want us to keep doing them. We want to keep doing them too. Ad support has really dwindled.

02:08:57
This show had zero advertisers. There may be some advertisements inserted in later, but those pay a fraction of what advertisers used to pay. So, in order to keep this going, even after leaving the studio, but in order to keep Micah and Benito and John and Burke and everybody Well, john, we don't have to worry about you, we can cut Boy. That's going to be like $15,000 a year off Because we're losing John now he's retiring, which I'm thrilled, but everybody else we want to keep, and so that means you have to help us or you don't have to, but we would like you to help us. $7 to help us, or you don't have to, but we would like you to help us. Seven dollars a month is a minimum. You can pay more, whatever you feel is appropriate. Twittv slash club twit. You get ad-free versions of the show. Should you choose access to the discord special events. How did the crafting corner.

02:09:48 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
Go by the way I meant to go in there. Yeah, this last one went really well. Um, I started in before I was doing crochet. This time I started working on a uh, little model, like it's a little room, and you have to put together all the pieces and glue and all I've seen those.

02:10:03
Yeah, punch them out and yeah, yeah and it's got little wires and that looks really cool so we're kind of doing one module at a time yeah, and I started to feel like um little trees, um happy trees yeah, you were Bob. Ross of miniatures, of miniature houses. It was quite fun. People were kind of sharing stuff that they've worked on. Uh, patrick Delahanty and one of our listeners oh, it was actually Galia. We're talking about the resin casts that they've done fun. So, yeah, it's been a lot of fun.

02:10:32 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I love, love that. Well, we'll keep doing that. Honestly, once I get my little attic studio set up, I will go on and you and I'll do stuff. I talked to Father Robert Ballas there. He's going to join us from his Vatican studio. We can do some. You know that's what I would have done in the CrowdStrike thing is get Robert and Steve Gibson on and we could have talked about that. It just gibson on and we could have talked about that. It just it's not set up yet. It will be.

02:11:06
Burke's going to come over to the house tomorrow. Huh, he's there now. Is that why he went over there? Who's going to help him lift? Oh well, he's. Burke hates it that I've been climbing up on a ladder on this bookshelf. That's not secure, made out of old metal. He's afraid I'm gonna impale myself. So god bless you, burke. Thank you, he went over to the house and he's gonna start putting that desk together. I hope he. I have all the pieces all laid out. You know he's a brave man anyway. Thank you, burke. I really appreciate that. See what the club does. Thank you everybody. Twittv slash club twit.

02:11:37
I will take care of myself and we will be streaming from the attic starting August 12th August 12th will be our first August 11th, sorry will be our first show from the attic the brand new attic studio and all the shows subsequently we'll be decommissioning this studio will be our first show from the attic the brand new attic studio and all the shows subsequently, and then we'll be decommissioning this studio. And if you're in the neighborhood, come by and pick up some stuff, please. We've got to get rid of this. Anybody want this fine fireplace? How many of these monitors do we have? That's it for. Ask the Tech Guy Lots. Just a random question. There's lots. Anybody want the clock? It doesn't keep the time. Oh, it is, you fixed it, thank, you that seems like a cumbersome nightmare.

02:12:26
You fixed it. Wow, that's very nice of you, john. This porthole is available, you know, anyway, there's a lot of stuff that we don't know what to do with, to be honest.

02:12:42 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
So thanks for joining us and we'll see you next week. Bye-bye.

02:12:46 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Have a great geek week, will you?