Ask The Tech Guys Episode 1964 Transcript

Leo Laporte (00:00:00):
It's time for Ask The Tech Guys. Hi, I'm Leo Laporte. Coming up a conversation with the father of Modern Genomics. George Church is gonna tell us what he thinks of The Last of Us.

Mikah Sargent (00:00:08):
And I'm Mikah Sargent and I'm so excited to help and muddle his way through makos

Leo Laporte (00:00:15):
Plus brand new socks. Make sure you wash 'em first. It's time for Ask The Tech Guys

... (00:00:25):
Podcasts you love. From people you trust. This is TWiT.

(00:00:31):
This is Ask the Tech guys with Mikah Sargent and Leo Laporte. Episode 1964, recorded Sunday, March 5th, 2023. Podcast Dreamin'. This episode of Ask The Tech Guys is brought to you by Lectric E-Bikes. Discover the local area or experience the freedom of the great outdoors with fun, fast, and foldable electric E-bikes. Learn more about the expedition, cargo, e-bike, and all the other sweet models Lectric has to offer By visiting electric e-bikes dot com and bFortraT the cybersecurity landscape is full of single solution providers, making it easy for unexpected cyber threats to sneak through the cracks. That's why Forr created a stronger, simpler strategy or protection. They are your cybersecurity ally, working to provide peace of mind for every step of your journey. Learn more at fortra.com. Thanks for listening to this show. As an ad supported network, we are always looking for new partners with products and services that will benefit our qualified audience. Are you ready to grow your business? Reach out to advertise at TWI tv and launch your campaign now. Well, hey, hey, hey. How are you Today? It's time for Ask the tech guys. I'm tech guy on the left, actually, you're right. Leo LaPorte. On your left,

Mikah Sargent (00:01:57):
It's Mikah Sargent and

Leo Laporte (00:01:58):
We are here today to help you with your computerized woes, Uhhuh <affirmative>, the zoom line. And I guess the zoom line

Mikah Sargent (00:02:07):
Is open.

Leo Laporte (00:02:08):
You suggested that we get a number, which I think is a good idea.

Mikah Sargent (00:02:11):
Yeah. We're talking about getting a number. We heard from some folks both in email and then on the call last week who said, Hey, we've got some people who would love to call into the show but aren't really savvy with the Zoom. So we're thinking about that. We'll let you know when, and if

Leo Laporte (00:02:27):
We do until then, what you do is you point your browser on and do it on your phone. Cause you already got a microphone on camera. Right. And point your browser to call tweet tv. That website, if you have Zoom on your phone, it'll launch it. If you don't, it'll give you a chance to do it in the web or launch the app. If you want to install the app that's probably the easiest way to call us. You can also email, ask the tech guys at twit.tv. And if you do that send us a video. We didn't get any videos this

Mikah Sargent (00:02:53):
Week. Yes, we do love to get those videos.

Leo Laporte (00:02:54):
Oh, video. We had a fun one last week. It was all edited

Mikah Sargent (00:02:57):
For <laugh>. That was nice.

Leo Laporte (00:02:58):
You don't have to do that, just you, your sweet face on camera. But again, call twit tv. We, we have lots of calls. We go to the calls in a bit. We also have a sad and lonely Ant Pruitt who has moved from Windows to Mac and it's been a tough time. So you're gonna, you're gonna counsel him a little bit. Yeah,

Mikah Sargent (00:03:19):
Yeah. There's gonna be a, a conversation and a resolve

Leo Laporte (00:03:22):
Hopefully. And that I will be in the peanut gallery over here. So I'll shout <laugh>, try that. If I see it, do this, do this. Push that button. We also have a very exciting interview I did on Friday with the father of Modern Genomics. Oh my Dr. George Church is a professor at Harvard Medical School in m i t, but probably better known as one of the people. Hell helped sequence the Human Genome, started the Personal Genome Project. He's working on some amazing things, including bringing ma introducing Macedon jeans to elephants to make them cold resistant so they can live in Siberia and help with global warming. He tells that story a lot of interesting stuff. But I did have to ask him cuz he's an expert in all this about the last of us, the TV show. So I look at <laugh>, get his take.

(00:04:15):
We'll get to that on the Cord ceps Fungus and how much of a threat it might be to humanity. Humanity in a little bit. We're also gonna take your calls. So let's see. Let me see. Just, I like to do this, and you could do this too with me, Michael. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> Mikah, follow along in the, in the prayer book. But it's time for our Sunday sermon. Oh, web excited Leo. Sunday's Sunday sermon. Amen. and I'm just looking through. I forgot to, I forgot I had something I really wanted to talk about. Well, one thing, huh? Got a text from my mama. Oh a couple of days ago she said, I got this invoice from the Geek Squad at Best Buy for $400. I didn't give them, I didn't pay them. I should call them, right? Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. And I said, mama, don't let your babies grow up to be DJs. No, no, I didn't say that. I said, mama, look at the email address that's coming from look at the link that it's bringing you to. Is anything, any of that have anything to do with the, you know, geek

Mikah Sargent (00:05:22):
Squad? Geek

Leo Laporte (00:05:23):
Geek Squad, or Best Buy? And it was some like long, you know, zaka 74 gmail.com mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, I said, do you think Best Buy would use that email address? Send you an a bill? Mm-Hmm. So I did a little instructional, but I think more and more we're seeing these yeah. I got a text the other day, said, Hey, that was a great round of golf last week. You wanna do it again? I don't play golf <laugh>. I don't play golf. That wasn't me. So why does that a scam? You might ask. Yeah. because then I'm supposed to call the guy, say, oh, you, or text a bag all us, I don't play golf. Must you got the wrong number? And the guy says, oh, shoot. Well, I'm sorry. What's your name? And I said, well, it's Leo. What's your name? He says, it's Joe. And we talk, we get to know each other. We're good friends. And he says, you know, I've been making a lot of money in cryptocurrency lately. <Laugh> you think you'd be interested in investing? And at that point you should stop the conversation.

Mikah Sargent (00:06:20):
Absolutely. Don't, don't even text back in the first place if you can help it, because Yeah, I did the same thing. And it was some gal who started sending photos and it, you know, trying to make this connection. It didn't happen. And I've been getting lately a whole lot of scams, especially via a text message related to Amazon. Those have been the most recent ones.

Leo Laporte (00:06:41):
Yeah, that's a big one,

Mikah Sargent (00:06:41):
Isn't it? Yeah. I, I got two just the other day. Oh, your Amazon account has been frozen. We're waiting for this bill to be paid. That's

Leo Laporte (00:06:49):
The key on that, by the way. They will say things that get you scared

Mikah Sargent (00:06:54):
Mm-Hmm. <Affirmative> to immediately

Leo Laporte (00:06:55):
React so that you react. And they'll say things like, you know, fact who was it? Just got a, I was watching and massed on. He said, Pete, I got a, a call from Pacific Gas and Electric Car Electric Company saying they were gonna turn off the power in an hour if I didn't pay the bill. Wow. To give us a credit card number and pay right now. We'll be okay. That's designed to scare the heck outta Yeah. And that would scare you. And as somebody who's had both the water and power turned off in my youth <laugh>, it's legit. Yeah. Right. You don't want that to happen and get turned on is a pain and all that stuff. So that's, that's a smart scam. Don't fall for it.

Mikah Sargent (00:07:34):
I, I, it's, it's always this, this desire to drag you. I mean, the one we talked about, the text messaging back and forth, that's a different kind of attack. But a lot that you see pretty regularly are all about that fear that just leads you to react as quickly as possible.

Leo Laporte (00:07:48):
Oh, I know who it was when you catch up was Rich tomorrow. Oh, my, our counterpart on on the radio on Saturdays he hosts the show I used to host mm-hmm. <Affirmative> and yeah. Rich Un Tech, and he tweeted, yeah, I guess, I guess I should call 'em. Right? Get the power turn back on. We don't wanna miss the show <laugh>. It was right before the show too. It was as if they knew it was as they knew. One other thing I wanted to mention you may remember a few weeks ago, Elon Musk, somewhat brusk, somewhat rudely, turned off the, what they call the API on Twitter. The ability for third party non Twitter apps to access Twitter. His completely, his right and probably the right thing to do because, you know, when you use third party apps, you don't see all the ads.

(00:08:26):
It's, it really takes money outta the pockets of Twitter. So he turned it off, but he didn't tell 'em ahead of time. He didn't admit to it for the longest time. And when then they finally said, oh yeah, we did that because you broke the rules. That was a lie. Then they retroactively changed the rules. <Laugh> to make, you know, here's, here's how you should do something like that. You announce it a month ahead of time. You say, you know, look, we gotta monetize. We're gonna turn off third party api and companies like Tap Bots, which makes the fabulous tweet bot the Icon Factory, which makes Twitter terrific. But they got stuck with their pants down. And now, and this is why it comes up, you know, we're about a month in a number of people are starting to get a notice saying, do you want a refund?

(00:09:15):
What if you had either of those apps installed Apple's policy is once the product stops working that you get a refund for, because you, a lot of people would pay not just the month for the year. Yeah. I paid for the year. So you get a notice saying, when you want your money back, please <laugh> if you can afford it don't do that. These are small companies. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> the Icon Factory number one products Twitter. There are thousands and thousands of customers for both Tap Botts, tweet bot, and the Icon Factory. Terrific. Who could ask for their money back and effectively bankrupt these companies. So when you see that message, say no <laugh>, that no Goosebumps territory, if you, if you want, you can transfer your tap bot's subscription over to Ivory cuz they're making one for Mastadon. And if you're watching this show, you're invited to join our master on, which is twit.social free to join.

(00:10:21):
 And then, you know, you could point your ivory application over there and it's a very nice application. But this is, this is a big story. And both companies put up little posters. I think I have one here saying, please don't do it. So you've probably seen those, but now you know why you don't want to, if you can get that refund now. I understand you need the money back. Okay, fine. But here's the, here's the, do you have, can you see my screen? There it is. Here's the Twitter. If this is from John Gruber's daring Fireball dot net. Here's a Twitter terrific notice. And you see they have to give you the button. Apple requires it. It says, I want my money back. Here's the tweet bot notice. And you, you know, you can say, transfer my reigning remaining subscription time for Tweet bot to ivory.

(00:11:12):
That would be the preference. I'm happy with what I got outta Tweet bot and I do not need a refund or sad to say the third option. Give my money. I want a pro <laugh> by know it's grayed out <laugh>. I want a prorated refund. And they have to do that in order to stay in apple's good graces, which they obviously want to do. So just a little tip to all of you. Be nice. Be a nice person. And don't cancel your subscription. I actually gave 'em more money cuz I, you know, those are good guys. I, I, we know 'em. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, you've talked to 'em. Yes. Absolutely. His

Mikah Sargent (00:11:49):
Weekly, we talked on Tech News Weekly, and I've talked to them working at IOR in the past. Both of those teams are honestly just small teams who are making these apps that were the forefront of the income that they were making

Leo Laporte (00:12:03):
And the, and the richest man in the world. He's, by the way, he's richest man in the world again.

Mikah Sargent (00:12:07):
Oh, congrats. Richest

Leo Laporte (00:12:08):
Man in the world decided he needed the money and just cut 'em off like that. Apple News, mark Germond, who is the smartest man in the world, at least the best connected <laugh> says Apple is now working on not only a f a 15 inch MacBook Air for before June, but they're working. Everybody wanted to know when is the new iMac coming out? They're working on a new iMac for later this year. An iMac and an iPad. And it's possible all three and a 13 inch MacBook Air will come with the M three chip.

Mikah Sargent (00:12:41):
Ooh.

Leo Laporte (00:12:42):
M three, in which case I will buy it. <Laugh>. Yeah. <Laugh>. I have the M two. You have the M two use in the M two right now. Macbook Air. Yep. But I would you like

Mikah Sargent (00:12:49):
A 15 inch? No, I love this thing. <Laugh>. Exactly how it is.

Leo Laporte (00:12:54):
No bigger. Yeah. This big and no bigger. All right. Well watch with interest. Those are rumors. But you know, I like to keep you up to date if you're about to go into the marketing pie. Shall we do our first calls? Let's do

Mikah Sargent (00:13:05):
Our first

Leo Laporte (00:13:05):
Calls. All right. I see David has his hand raised. And we're gonna, we're gonna, we're gonna pick on David right now. I'm gonna send him to the magic room and he shall appear in the tech guy. Ask the tech guy's Stargate in Moments.

Mikah Sargent (00:13:22):
Moments.

Leo Laporte (00:13:23):
What's that?

Mikah Sargent (00:13:24):
<Laugh>. It's a package we got.

Leo Laporte (00:13:26):
I got another package I should get outta my office. Go ahead. Look,

Mikah Sargent (00:13:28):
This is from Pelham Warehouse. And it's Pelham Warehouse is may contain traces of Awesome. It's two Leo and Mikah Twit. Okay. What's

Leo Laporte (00:13:35):
Your, before you open it, what's your guess?

Mikah Sargent (00:13:36):
My, okay. Let's say it's

Leo Laporte (00:13:37):
Squishy, right? Is it a bean

Mikah Sargent (00:13:38):
Bag? It's, it's feeling like some sort of stickers.

Leo Laporte (00:13:41):
Do you feel

Mikah Sargent (00:13:42):
Beans? I don't feel beans. It feels

Leo Laporte (00:13:43):
Papery. Oh, it doesn't feel like beans. No. I thought it might be coffee. I was getting excited. Oh, all right. Well let's give somebody a free ad then. Yes.

Mikah Sargent (00:13:51):
<Laugh>. I guess we'll

Leo Laporte (00:13:51):
See. Yeah. Now we got David C in the OnAir room. Hi David. Sorry about that. Dig Nation. Oh, what's that?

Mikah Sargent (00:14:01):
Dear Leo and Mikah, what's up? My favorite tech gurus, it's your number three fan here. And before you start feeling sorry for me, just remember that Wendy's is number three in the fast food game in, they're doing just fine. <Laugh>, I'm loving the new format of your show, but I I

Leo Laporte (00:14:14):
It get number

Mikah Sargent (00:14:15):
Three. I know right? The new format of your show. But I have to say, Leo, those socks you've been wearing are about as exciting as a dialup connection. Yours

Leo Laporte (00:14:22):
Are much better. This, this week.

Mikah Sargent (00:14:23):
Lucky for you. I've got a solution. Oh, my socks. <Laugh> Mikah Braze yourself because I made you some custom Leo socks that are going to knock your socks, socks out. No. And Leo, don't feel left out because I made some socks with the face of your best friend Steve Martin on them. What?

Leo Laporte (00:14:39):
So this person's a

Mikah Sargent (00:14:40):
Sock maker. Sock maker, sock maker. Make me some socks. All right. I'm not gonna read the rest of that cuz it's really long. But

Leo Laporte (00:14:48):
We would not have guessed

Mikah Sargent (00:14:49):
Socks. No we would not.

Leo Laporte (00:14:50):
Oh, pink Panther. So here are Leo's. Steve Martin. These are socks. These are mine because he's got Steve, Steve on. I'm definitely gonna wear these and here are mine. Wow. These are crazy. Leo LePort socks. Oh my God. How do you get, how do you make this? These are really well designed, frankly. These, these I think they're gonna go all the way up to my thigh though. <Laugh>. They're somewhat long. Oh my word. Thank you. Thank you very much. You number three. That's all it says. Just number Fan. Fan. Well, I don't think we should change socks right now. No. I wanna wash them first. Save us for Oh, you wash always brand new everything. I No, you wash socks before you wear 'em. Yeah. My mom used to work in clothing and I learned some things. Always washed before you wear 'em.

(00:15:36):
Really? She once saw someone get a horrible, horrible spider bite from the clothing cuz it had just shipped in the crater in the craters and the crates. Yikes. Freaked me out. Anyway, socks wash them three. There might be spiders in it. There could be spiders. Thank you. Number three. Hey, must be, Hey David, show us your shirt. Stand up a little bit just so we can see. Dig Nation baby. Greatest of podcast of all time with Kevin Rose and Alex Albrecht. They would sit just like we're sitting, but they'd be drinking beer. Oh. And talking about the top stories from the website. Some remember called Dig. That was a huge show. In fact, I think it almo pretty almost killed revision three when they decided to retire <laugh>. It was like all over. Well that's great. It's good to have a, have a long time. Kevin Rose fan on the show.

Caller 1 (00:16:32):
What's Well, a long time Leo fan.

Leo Laporte (00:16:34):
Well, Kevin and I are

Caller 1 (00:16:35):
Buddies. Foremost. Yeah. And in fact, I went to Petaluma back in 2013 and you recommended a beautiful place to visit in Napa Sola.

Leo Laporte (00:16:47):
Oh, did you go?

Caller 1 (00:16:48):
And we went and we had a great time and we Nice. Really nice. Really appreciate that. Oh, nice. And Mikah, you're doing a great job. You guys are fantastic. Really appreciate what you do. My question is basically has to do with Google takeout.

Leo Laporte (00:17:04):
Okay.

Caller 1 (00:17:05):
And, you know, it's a very large file and trying to back up my photos, which are all basically there. And downloading them has been a problem. I mean, a lot of stall downloads. How big to break up the individual zip files. I tried our clone for a while. I was wondering if you guys had any techniques or suggestions about how to successfully download from Google takeout. So

Leo Laporte (00:17:35):
It's a, you know, praise to Google for doing that. That was Brian Fitzpatrick who worked at Google, said, you know, you don't wanna make your business a roach motel. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> where you can get in, but you can't get out. And so he, and they created Google a result. But I wonder how much of Google's heart was in it because instead of just getting <laugh> files in a way you can use, and I guess it's cuz it would be a giant file, they zip it up into two gigabyte files. What were you taking out? That's the first question.

Caller 1 (00:18:05):
I mean, primarily photos. Okay. But I was trying to get, you know, you start getting the option to check boxes, you

Leo Laporte (00:18:12):
Can do everything.

Caller 1 (00:18:13):
You start checking a lot of boxes. And then I started minimizing it. But still the photos, I mean it was, I don't know, a hundred gigabytes or, or something like that.

Leo Laporte (00:18:23):
I've done more than that at a photos. I've done almost a terabyte at a, at a takeout. Sure. My, so I have a good, I have a good story to tell about how you do this. You're gonna unzip 'em and then you're gonna get folders from it now. So there's a couple things to know. The photos will be in the original photo format. So you're not gonna lose, you're not gonna have some weird format you have to decode. They'll be JPEGs. But there will be additional material index material metadata material. And that will be, usually it's in an XML format. Possibly a J S O format. But I think as I remember, it was all xml. I just threw that out. I said fine. I just really just get, get me the photos. That's the thing. But then the photos have weird names. They don't have the names you gave them. And they certainly don't have informative names. So now you've gotta do something with the names. And what I ended up doing is downloading a couple of useful tools. And I did this on a Mac. Are you on a Mac or Windows?

Caller 1 (00:19:20):
Windows.

Leo Laporte (00:19:21):
Okay. Some

Caller 1 (00:19:22):
Of them, but actually my problem, sorry. My problem is actually getting the files successfully downloaded. Oh. Like, it'll run, it'll run for three days, but I'll get errors. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> and my I S P is fine. I can download lots of Oh, that's

Leo Laporte (00:19:37):
Weird.

Caller 1 (00:19:38):
I will. And so that's why I ended up using our clone. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> seemed to be successful and not timing out. And

Leo Laporte (00:19:44):
You were able to, to get the full file with that or the, all the files with

Caller 1 (00:19:48):
That? I did. I did, but I, so I have like an old laptop, which I have Linux running on, and I, it's like my Arone machine and I just have it running for days. But

Leo Laporte (00:19:59):
So Arone, which I use and I love, allows you to basically turn everything into Dropbox. Kind of like Google Drive, whatever cloud stuff you've got. And you can actually merge it all together. So that's nice. It's the Swiss, they call it the Swiss Army knife of of cloud storage. So good. That was a good, that was good thinking. It's lucky you had a window, a Linux machine to do that on. That's why, by the way, that's the ant Google's answer to why, well, here's why we divide it up. Yeah. You can't download a hundred gigabyte file, but you were trying to download two gigabyte files at a time. Or were you trying to down hundred hundred gigabyte file?

Caller 1 (00:20:34):
I was trying different sizes. Yeah. And some of the, if you have like a video, which is bigger than two gigabytes, right. You're just trying download the video itself, right?

Leo Laporte (00:20:44):
Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. Right.

Caller 1 (00:20:46):
I,

Leo Laporte (00:20:46):
I blame I s p to be honest

Mikah Sargent (00:20:48):
With you. Yes. That's, that's what it does. I mean, even though you said you have no issues, these files should be downloading. You

Leo Laporte (00:20:55):
Download files that size all the time. Yeah,

Mikah Sargent (00:20:56):
I do. And frankly, we're doing it all the time whenever we're streaming media and, and you know, looking at different stuff. I will tell you that the one way that I've always done Google takeout so I at least know that this has worked for me, is I actually do use Dropbox with it. And then it happens on their side of things. And so they can talk to each other without even involving my i p So you

Leo Laporte (00:21:18):
Could tell Google takeout don't, don't, I don't wanna download it, just

Mikah Sargent (00:21:20):
Transfer it to send it drop to my Dropbox and then

Caller 1 (00:21:22):
I end up, because I was getting, you know, nervous about not successfully having a backup. I ended up using Dropbox. But that you have to pay for,

Mikah Sargent (00:21:32):
Right? Yes. This is true. Yeah. And I use Dropbox

Caller 1 (00:21:34):
For like hundred. That's like a hundred dollars a year to increase the storage.

Leo Laporte (00:21:39):
Well you could use it temporarily. <Laugh>, right?

Mikah Sargent (00:21:42):
And then download it from Dropbox.

Leo Laporte (00:21:43):
Yeah. Dropbox. I if if it's Google's Yeah. I have to think it's your Issp cuz I don't.

Caller 1 (00:21:49):
Okay. I mean, it is the big, it's the big one. You know, it's

Leo Laporte (00:21:52):
Comcast

Caller 1 (00:21:52):
Sucks. Comcast, yes. But

Leo Laporte (00:21:54):
I've used, I've used Comcast to do this exact thing at home. So Yeah. Okay. I don't,

Caller 1 (00:21:59):
Maybe we'll contact them. Do you

Leo Laporte (00:22:00):
Think the other po here's a weird possibility, but I'll give you this as well. Routers can overheat with continuous transfers. And if you have an older router, a router that's not well cooled, or just a router that's susceptible to overheating, it could be failing. And then the packets slow way down and the computer gets upset and blah, blah blah. So I would also make sure you've, do you, what are you using for router? Not the one that they gave you. I hope.

Caller 1 (00:22:25):
I think I have an or B router. Orbis.

Leo Laporte (00:22:27):
Good.

Mikah Sargent (00:22:28):
I just had another thought too. Are you doing this on a PC or a laptop? Like a, you know, connected computer or a laptop?

Caller 1 (00:22:37):
It was a wifi connected laptop.

Leo Laporte (00:22:40):
Okay. That's another issue.

Mikah Sargent (00:22:41):
Battery saver. Stuff. If the screen is going dark sometimes, depending on what your settings are, it can throttle the connection. It can completely shut off the connection. So you would want to have essentially a mouse jiggler kind of thing keeping it

Leo Laporte (00:22:54):
Alive.

Mikah Sargent (00:22:54):
Caffeine or Yeah. Caffeine for the Mac. But I dunno if they have it for windows.

Leo Laporte (00:22:57):
Yeah, they do. Yeah. And you'd probably want to use ethernet for at least for this one time.

Mikah Sargent (00:23:02):
Yep. Absolutely.

Leo Laporte (00:23:03):
Okay. Yeah.

Caller 1 (00:23:04):
Gimme something to work on.

Leo Laporte (00:23:05):
Yeah. Wifi. So remember in the old days you wouldn't remember this. You're way too young. But you, you <laugh> you might David, in the old days we would have things like Z modem were protocols designed for bad connections that could resume. Oh, nice. That would keep track of where you were. And all of that was because back in the dial-up day, you could be pretty sure your mom was gonna pick up the phone in the middle of this download <laugh>. So, so Z modem and other technologies were there to solve that problem. And I think one of the reasons our clone might be working better is cuz it has that kind of stuff built into it. Right?

Caller 1 (00:23:43):
Right.

Leo Laporte (00:23:44):
Yeah. It may just be, and wifi is gonna make that worse because wifi is is a collision based network. It will, it'll pause when another wifi signal is seen and stuff like that. So I, yeah, I would, I would definitely look at that. And then a good cha a suggestion from Joe who's consistently good on this stuff. Check for packet loss. You might do this@cloudflarespeed.cloudflare.com. There are lots of places you can check for packet loss. Okay. The CloudFlare one's very good. Speed.Cloudflare.Com dot CloudFlare. Okay. Something's going on that your computer is saying. I don't think I got it. Where was I again? I don't think I got it, man. I don't Got it. Okay. And so you, you wanna, you know that's why these zoomable protocols are useful still. Even in this day and age, especially with wifi, you wanna make sure you're not losing packets.

(00:24:30):
There are a bunch of things you wanna look into. Now once you get all those files, then call back and we'll talk about I have, I have some programs because what happened was I ended up running a bunch of programs to fix the dates cuz the dates all become the date that you downloaded it. So I fixed the date so that the same date is on the exif. If you're using cameras that store that kind of information in the file itself, which I was, and I bet you are phones all do it. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. Yeah. Then you know the capture date and you could change the file, the capture date. And I was, and I was u I used a mass batchy naming program that would take the junkie file name Google had given it, which is basically a numeric name and turn it into, you know, something reasonable like the date of the capture. And if you have information in your exif about where it was captured, you could maybe even do that. So there's, there's some really good tools for doing that. Windows and Mac. And so when you, when you get it <laugh>

(00:25:24):
Call back. I'll tell you how to process it. Okay. Thank you guys. Thank you so much. Yeah. Appreciate it. You guys great. You guys are great. Knife. Throw a knife. Aunt, throw me that knife that you got here. Oh God.

Mikah Sargent (00:25:37):
Throw,

Leo Laporte (00:25:38):
Just throw it at me. Nope. I'll catch it. Mm-Hmm. No, because I gotta get this box. We have anything? I can open this box. I,

Mikah Sargent (00:25:43):
God, I've

Leo Laporte (00:25:43):
Got you got a knife? Yes. Great to talk to you David. Thank you. Call dot twi tv. We'll take some more calls in a bit. I'm gonna open this box and then we're gonna, here you go. Talk about our spots. We got a great spot.

Mikah Sargent (00:25:54):
Look, it's the cutest night. It's the cuter night. You couldn't hurt anybody with knife. It's little. You wanna bet <laugh>.

Leo Laporte (00:26:01):
Did you did you watch Chris Rock last night on Netflix? No. Okay.

Mikah Sargent (00:26:06):
No. Burke. My knife is cooler.

Leo Laporte (00:26:09):
His knife is way cooler. <Laugh>, do you, does does the TSA let you through with

Mikah Sargent (00:26:14):
This? I don't know. I don't fly really? <Laugh>. Oh. So

Leo Laporte (00:26:18):
I don't know. I don't go anywhere. So I used to carry a Multitool in my bag, but then I thought, well, I'm gonna what? We, because what happens if the TSA finds it, they just take it. Yeah. Say, oh, that's nice. I'll keep that.

Mikah Sargent (00:26:28):
Oh, I like that.

Leo Laporte (00:26:29):
I'll keep that. So I didn't wanna lose this beautiful multi-tool. I wouldn't, if I were you, I wouldn't wanna lose this. This comes to us from Jeff Kirk who was on the show. Oh, that's right. A little while ago. Okay. You can have your little mic

Mikah Sargent (00:26:40):
On the show a little while ago. Oh, it's

Leo Laporte (00:26:42):
Locking. It is locking. Oh, so cute. Look at that goes right on your key chain. If you ever have to go to court, take it off the Absolutely. Take it off. They don't let knives in court either. Oh. I didn't. Maybe I didn't. Don't have any plans to go to court. You're not. Go. Yeah. Nobody does. That's true. Nobody plans on it. Court happens. All right. This, oh, this is well wrapped. That's good. This is well, well wrapped. And take them. Oh, look at this. This here's a book. This is, so we were talking, remember we were talking about Zeppelins? Yep. And we were talking and he said, Jeff says, well, I have a whole series of science fiction books based on, I think this is the Zeppelin one. Well wait a minute, maybe I'm wrong on this first science fiction novel, the Prometheus option.

(00:27:30):
Oh, they're all autographed. These books get pretty apocalyptic and the body count is not small. If it were a movie or better yet a big budget, H b o miniseries, the Prometheus option would be plastered with parental advisory stickers. Oh, that's nice. That's really nice. He says thank you and through you Daniel Swartz for inspire me to get off my duff and crank this out. So this is not the Zeppelin books. I thought it was gonna be, this is another one. And for Andy Naco for suggesting s Scribner I Mac Break Weekly. Yeah. Andy uses that for his writing it. He says, I wrote the Prometheus option of Microsoft Word. Jeff says, you've never heard more swearing than when it decided to make a single paragraph Vitalik. I must therefore want every Oh, he did. Oh, I get it. Jeff made a paragraph Vitalik and Word said, well you must want 'em all that way.

(00:28:20):
With 220,000 plus words in the manuscript, the undue function didn't work. Pretty sure my dome is Chrome now because of that experience. In case you're interested now working on a new five book series, tentatively entitled The Stair, the StarWay Cycle First book is done. And I'm just starting my search for an agent. Hey, that's great. Congratulations to geezer Nerd. Yeah. Jeff Kirk, here's your autograph copy. Beautiful. And I have one for you. Autograph. Copy. John Ashley, I got one for you. Autograph copy. Oh yeah, you can go that way. <Laugh>. And for you and every look under your seats. Everybody at home <laugh>. You get a book. You get a book, you, you get a book. That's great. I can't wait. I hope the body cut. I like that. I want to thank you. I want apocalyptic. Yeah. Oh, here John Ashley, get stick your hand in the, in the screen.

(00:29:10):
There. There you go. There you go. Very nice. Thank you Jeff. Thank you. Hey, our show today. We had some fun the other day, didn't we? You and me riding around. Oh, that's on our electric e-bike. Now you think when I say electric, I mispronouncing it. Oh no buddy. It's not electric. Well it is electric. It's electric, but it's called Lectric E-Bikes. Our show today brought to you by electric E-Bikes. You might think an E-bike isn't the smartest way to transport something. Well, think again. I'll tell you what I love my electric E-bikes look had an important mission. I had many boxes I had to deliver to a place. Unknown <laugh>, what did I do? I strapped it onto the Expedition Cargo e-bike. Now one of the things they do with this e-bike, besides the long bed and the back suitable for, there are many attachments, but you could just also do what I did, which is probably not what you should do, which is just strap the boxes in.

(00:30:04):
But it has extra torque in the engine I was able to get, even with a heavy load, you're able to get up as, as much as 450 pounds on that back. It's be great for a that real expedition. Whoop, watch out Leo. You're gonna don't No, don't that that box looks a little low. Nevermind. I didn't need that one. So <laugh>, this is so much fun. It's a bike design to make taking cargo easier. If I were gonna, for instance, and I might even do this cuz this bike is so much fun. Bicycle across the United States. Gotta bring your stuff with you, right? Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, you know, I would bring this bike. It's designed for all that cargo no matter what you're packing. Even an extra passenger. Whoops. Burke <laugh>. Oh Burke. He dropped it all. 450 pound carrying capacity. You can reach up to 150 miles on a single charge cuz it has not one but two batteries.

(00:31:00):
Perfect for getting passengers, including the kids. This is another electric bike I'm showing you here. This is one I really like too, cuz it folds up. So now I can go to the park, I can go to the mountains. I can go somewhere where I really want to go biking. And I can throw the bike in the back of my car, unfold it and it's ready to go. Adjust the seat. It's got electric lights front and back, powered by the removable battery. A really nice bright L C D display, seven speed gearing. Five. Let levels of pedal assist to allow you to ride. Plus you can lower your gas costs, reduce your carbon footprint. And I can tell you, as a longtime lover of electric bikes, the throttle on these is great because when you come to a stoplight and you got 450 pounds of cargo, you don't want to have to oh step and slowly pedal your way forward.

(00:31:46):
So you use the throttle and you, you just leap forward. It's really fantastic. There's a full line of accessible bikes from electric e-bikes, from quick store trips to outdoor adventures. Electric L E C T R I C e-bikes will transform how you get around. They cost a lot less by the way. Yeah. You can spend a lot of money on an e-bike. But these are very affordable with quality feature packed models. And you get financing as low as $133 a month. That's a lot less than buying a car. And with this, I'll tell you what, with this expedition, you can go to the store, you can bring home a sofa, <laugh>, you're set. This thing is amazing, amazing. Make it your own. Lectric E-bikes are customizable, adjustable to fit your lifestyle. They f they have foldable bikes, they're ship free and they come fully assembled. You just unfold them, set 'em up and you're there. Join more than 250,000 dedicated riders on the road so far. We love our electric e-bikes. And check out that new expedition cargo e-bike from electric visit electric e-bikes dot com. You'll learn more about the expedition cargo e-bike and all the other suite models like that folding model, the expedition. See, you can see you put a kit on it. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, right? And they have a, they have all the sorts of little Oh, so attach

Mikah Sargent (00:33:00):
Accessory thing

Leo Laporte (00:33:01):
That you could put on that back bed there. It's kinda like a pickup truck bike. Really? It is. Yeah. I love it. And man, it has such good tour. Yeah. It goes, you actually, when if you, if you're unloaded, you gotta remember that when you start it cuz it just, it go, you could <laugh>, you can peel out in that thing. I love electric bikes from electric. That's L e c t r i C e-bikes dot com. Electric e-bikes dot com. If you've never ridden an e-bike, had you ever ridden one

Mikah Sargent (00:33:31):
Before? No, that was my first time. Isn't that great? It was so much fun. You

Leo Laporte (00:33:35):
Get to what would normally when you're riding a bike, you get to a big hill. Like there's a hill I love, there's a park here. I love to ride. But the first thing you do is go straight up. And so I'm always exhausted by the time I get to the rest of the park, I'm going, you go on electric bike, you're still pedal. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> cause pedal assist. But you're going, you put it in first gear cause you've got seven gears and you go up the hill, you feel it's so much fun. And by the way, research studies show people sometimes mock me for my electric bike. They say, come on Leo, you're not really biking. Studies show you get like 99%, maybe 90% of the exercise you would get if you didn't have the engine. Oh wow. It just helps you on those tough hills. I love it. Anybody who's got bad knees or just, you know, doesn't want to pedal around, this is a brand new way of riding. And I've always loved my bicycles. Get your Lectric E-bike at lectricebikes.com. All right. Now do the, do you think the buttons will work now? Should I try?

Mikah Sargent (00:34:36):
Fingers crossed.

Leo Laporte (00:34:37):
Shall we go to John? Send to the breakout room. John. Hello John.

Caller 2 (00:34:43):
I have, I have an iOS question and a couple of bit warden questions. So let me do the iOS one first. All right. I would like to get a shortcut. So with one click I could set my screen, my screen lock to never, and then another click to set it back to what it was.

Mikah Sargent (00:35:02):
Yes. Okay. This is something that I too would like but is not yet possible with shortcuts. The closest, ah, that I've been able to come, I actually, it's a shortcut that I use quite literally every week. Is a shortcut that will take you directly to the screen where you choose the never or one minute, two minute, three minute, et cetera. And then you have to choose manually. And then after I'm doing whatever I'm doing, I can pop back in there. So it's basically a shortcut to that settings page. But that's the most that shortcuts does. Right now, unfortunately, apple has not made that accessible via shortcuts. And I have a kering that has to do with the security of the potential

Caller 2 (00:35:47):
Loss of security there. How, how could I get that? Well, or, or to what

Mikah Sargent (00:35:51):
I'm gonna do is I am going to share the link to that shortcut with our producer and then our producer's going to put that link on our website and you'll be able to get that link and then get that shortcut added directly to your

Caller 2 (00:36:05):
Phone. Oh, okay. In other words I ask the tech guys dot

Mikah Sargent (00:36:10):
It's 

Caller 2 (00:36:10):
Tom? No,

Mikah Sargent (00:36:11):
You can just go twit.tv/ask the tech guys.

Caller 2 (00:36:15):
Tech guys

Leo Laporte (00:36:16):
Or a atg

Mikah Sargent (00:36:16):
If you're ATG off

Leo Laporte (00:36:18):
The short, short version. Yeah.

Caller 2 (00:36:20):
Oh really? Yeah. Just, okay. Correct.

Leo Laporte (00:36:22):
Ag I didn't put the thug in

Caller 2 (00:36:25):
<Laugh>. Oh, okay. Just atg. So now my other question is about Big Warden. I called a while ago about Big Warden C.

Leo Laporte (00:36:33):
Yeah. Did you ever I never did. I'm sorry John. I meant to do that. I told you I was gonna do that. I know. I even got home and I thought, oh, I should do the cli and then something, I don't know, something distracted me. The com we're talking about the command line version of

Mikah Sargent (00:36:49):
Oh, that's right. I remember talking

Leo Laporte (00:36:50):
John Wast it wasn't working with your screen reader. Is that what it was? Or wasn't

Caller 2 (00:36:54):
Working? But not, not, not, not necessarily. It was screen reader, but it's just crazily complicated and ridiculous to use. Yeah. you have to, that's

Leo Laporte (00:37:05):
A command line for you

Caller 2 (00:37:06):
<Laugh>. It, it's, you have to use JQ

Leo Laporte (00:37:10):
And, and that's right. Yeah.

Caller 2 (00:37:12):
The whole, it was a whole crazy Yeah. Whole crazy thing.

Leo Laporte (00:37:17):
You know, honestly, if you want a command line passenger password manager, there're probably better choices out there. Like Key Pass xc

Caller 2 (00:37:25):
No, but I can't use that cause it's, I, I need something that goes to iOS.

Leo Laporte (00:37:28):
Oh, right, right.

Caller 2 (00:37:31):
So that's, yeah. You know, but, but I, but I use Linux a lot, so, so I've learned how to kind of deal with it. But it's a mess. I mean, you know, all. So

Leo Laporte (00:37:41):
How is accessibility on Bit Warden the graphical version on the iPhone and thinking? Well,

Caller 2 (00:37:46):
It's, it's fair. You have to kind of, it's, it's kind of a mess. It has a unlabeled buttons and you have to pop out the window. And in, in fact, one of the things I was trying to find is, is the place I haven't decided this to change it to argon, but I can't find where to do it. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:38:07):
That's in the, so I've, I've done it now and we talked about it last week.

Caller 2 (00:38:11):
I went to the security. But it just has the, I think

Leo Laporte (00:38:13):
You need the desktop application, not the Yeah, not the, you can't do it in the you can't do it

Caller 2 (00:38:19):
In the

Leo Laporte (00:38:19):
Extension. And the extension. And furthermore, you probably shouldn't do it yet. Because one of the things that bit me was Lin the Linux extension for Firefox at least is not yet at 2020 3.2

Caller 2 (00:38:31):
0.3

Leo Laporte (00:38:32):
Needs to be 0.2. Yeah. 2020 3.1. The current version for Linux.

Caller 2 (00:38:36):
I can't get the Linux one to work anyway.

Leo Laporte (00:38:39):
So there <laugh>. So there, yeah. I am u I did, I did make the change. If it logs you outta everything, you have to log in back again for everything. But once you've got it, so

Caller 2 (00:38:49):
Where is, where is it in the, in the app?

Leo Laporte (00:38:53):
I will can I, I guess I can show you. Yes. Can I show you?

Caller 2 (00:38:58):
Let me see. Well, I, you, you, you, you'll have to tell me, I'll

Leo Laporte (00:39:01):
Have to tell you cuz I can't show you. So you're gonna open the app? Yeah. And then you're gonna go to the settings for the app, which is up in the, where you're, you're it's

Caller 2 (00:39:09):
In the file menu, right?

Leo Laporte (00:39:10):
Yeah, yeah. It's hidden away. You're

Caller 2 (00:39:12):
Gonna No, it's in the file. Yeah, it's in the

Leo Laporte (00:39:14):
File. In the file maybe. Yeah. Yep. You're gonna go. Yeah. You know I'm better than I do cuz you have to navigate this darn thing. And then That's right. And then once you go to security, it's, there's tabs. And I don't know how well this is gonna work with a screen reader, but there's three tabs and the last tab is the keys tab. Once you get to the keys tab, which is the third tab,

(00:39:36):
Security within security, there's three tabs. The third tab is the keys tab. And that's the one where you can choose the key derivative function. And the reason we're talking about this is most password managers use pbk DF two. That's kind of the default. But recently Last pass was updated because it's open source to support Argon two, which is a better key derivative function. It's less Bruce Forceable. I gotta tell you this though, and I, I should have said it to everybody, I probably should have said it last week. All of this is dependent on you not having a good password. If you have a good, long, strong master password, you don't have to worry so much about the what key derivative function. Yeah. As long as, I'm

Caller 2 (00:40:13):
Just kidding. I'm just paranoid. You know me.

Leo Laporte (00:40:16):
Yeah, it's fun and it's worth doing. I agree with you and I did it and I did it for you because now you can't, now I can't use Bit Word and Linux until they update the Mozilla.

Caller 2 (00:40:27):
Now. Now but do you have to do it? There's no place to do it in the extension? No,

Leo Laporte (00:40:33):
In the app. Can't do it in the extension. And I think that's a security, that's a security feature. You do those really hardcore security settings. You all do do all of them in the app? Yeah.

Caller 2 (00:40:41):
Okay. So the extension doesn't have that security feature.

Leo Laporte (00:40:44):
You have to open the app, go to settings, go to security. Third tab in is Keys.

Caller 2 (00:40:49):
And what about in iOS? I have the correct version. Do I have to do anything in in it?

Leo Laporte (00:40:54):
No, it'll happen automatically. You only do it in your, actually I'm wondering if you even do it in the app. You might have to, you know, it might be better to log in to bit Warden on the web and do it there. Come to think of it. I think that's what I did. Sorry, I gave you the wrong answer. Log in to bit word on the web and go to the settings there. Security third tab. And that changes it and that's gonna change it for every client, right? That's the, that's the main, oh, is that right? That's headquarters. Oh, HQ headquarters. Yeah, you go to HQ and fix it there. Okay,

Caller 2 (00:41:24):
John. I didn't, I didn't, I didn't know there was a difference. Okay.

Leo Laporte (00:41:27):
Yeah, I think so. I think they reserve those, they last pass used to do that too. You reserve those settings for a, the most secure environment you can have now. And the truth is, we should, you know, we should probably mention this. The truth is when you're talking about browser extensions, those are done in JavaScript and they're not quite as good as they're not quite as secure. There's a potential for code injection and so forth. Hey, appreciate it. Thank you so much, John. Thank you for, for joining us. We're gonna move you if I can. Stephen's working. I can't move. You can't do anything. I'm just gonna have to say goodbye. Bye-Bye. <laugh>. Oh, the studio's telling me we can talk to Carl. And Carl has let's go to Rice Control holding Kyle on air. Hello, Carl.

Caller 3 (00:42:15):
Leo, can you actually hear me?

Leo Laporte (00:42:17):
I can hear you. Are you in the office? Carl?

Caller 3 (00:42:22):
Oh my gosh. That's one of my classrooms. So Leo, this is such a blessing to be able to speak with you. I was able to get through to you once on the radio and I explained to you that you have allowed an Arian FORTRAN program from the Apollo project.

Leo Laporte (00:42:45):
I remember now. Yes.

Caller 3 (00:42:48):
You allowed me. The twit network has allowed me to reinvent myself. So great as an octogenarian community college instructor.

Leo Laporte (00:43:00):
Carl, you, you fooled me because you don't look like an octogenarian. Look, you look great, dude. You're obviously leading a clean

Caller 3 (00:43:07):
And

Leo Laporte (00:43:07):
It's healthy life

Caller 3 (00:43:09):
Now. Now it's lower Blepharoplasty <laugh>. Oh, we did that

Leo Laporte (00:43:15):
<Laugh>. Okay. Well the face work is fantastic. Congratulate your your plastic circuit.

Caller 3 (00:43:22):
Oh. And it helped, it helps a lot in class to be wearing a mask.

Leo Laporte (00:43:26):
Yes.

Caller 3 (00:43:27):
So anyway, Leo I have a few comments for you that I think might in some way be helpful for twit. And I have a couple of other comments. But first, I am blatantly asking you to, I've just tried sending this to you in chat. You cannot chat with everyone during this meeting. Okay. So maybe when I get out Leo, I don't know if this is appropriate. I was hoping to get the twit ne the twit army on this.

Leo Laporte (00:44:02):
Okay.

Caller 3 (00:44:04):
I have a GoFundMe campaign. My 22 year old granddaughter. Oh. died of camp

Leo Laporte (00:44:14):
Two weeks. Oh, I'm so sorry. Oh, that's,

Caller 3 (00:44:18):
And I've set up a GoFundMe camp. I've set up a GoFundMe campaign for my son's family. It's kind of devastating to lose a 20 year old

Leo Laporte (00:44:28):
20. No kidding. So anyway, the medical bills that they have to cover or

Caller 3 (00:44:34):
Funeral expenses and so on. Oh yeah, I was trying to paste the GoFundMe link in chat, but it isn't taken. Just

Leo Laporte (00:44:40):
Tell me what to search for cuz. Usually that's how we do it.

Caller 3 (00:44:44):
Okay. Well, let me see. Gofundme has let me open up the GoFundMe page over here. You know, they give you this really weird

Leo Laporte (00:44:57):
Url. Yeah. So I don't need the url. If you give me the,

Caller 3 (00:45:00):
The title, the title

Leo Laporte (00:45:01):
Of GoFund. Yeah. That's all I need.

Caller 3 (00:45:04):
Yeah. I'm gonna give you the title as soon as, do you remember you used to sponsor DSL Extreme? Oh

Leo Laporte (00:45:11):
Lord

Caller 3 (00:45:12):
<Laugh>. As soon as DX said DSL Extreme. Yeah. As soon as DSL Extreme gives me the, yeah. The title of my GoFundMe campaign is my granddaughter died of Cancer.

Leo Laporte (00:45:25):
Oh God. That's the saddest thing I ever heard. So

Caller 3 (00:45:28):
I,

Leo Laporte (00:45:29):
Oh, there it is. Yep, I see it. First thing I find when I type my granddaughter in. And and a beautiful picture of you and your beautiful granddaughter. And that's so Yeah,

Caller 3 (00:45:40):
But Leo, don't talk Leo. Yeah, Leo. Don't talk about it anymore. Please. Cause it bet it's

Leo Laporte (00:45:45):
Really hard. I bet it's very hard. So, but the good here, I'll tell you something. Happy. You're getting really close to your goal and if we get a few people just kick in a couple of bucks. We are, you will, you will get it all. So, and that's, so let me, that's great.

Caller 3 (00:45:57):
Let me just let me just tell you a few things Leo, that's been a burden on my heart. Twit has been so valuable for me. But you know, I'm just not into all of the groupies who hang out on twit. So I wanna tell you <laugh> how I use You mean,

Leo Laporte (00:46:17):
You mean club twit? Is that what you're talking about? The groupies on club Twit. <Laugh>.

Caller 3 (00:46:21):
I, I wanna, I wanna tell you, Leo, I wanna tell you Leo, how I use twit because that might be insightful.

Leo Laporte (00:46:28):
Okay. So

Caller 3 (00:46:29):
Again, when I get back to my office, or maybe I'm school or whatever, my go-to place is live tv, Twitter, love

Leo Laporte (00:46:36):
It.

Caller 3 (00:46:36):
Because I know that no matter what thumbs up, it's gonna be interesting and I'm gonna learn something. So for example, a few weeks ago I just turned on Twitter it and there was Steve Gibson and he was talking about how on a new Intel processor, I believe there was a new strategy for increasing performance that involved variable execution, time of ins instructions. Yeah. Based on the opera end or the data that the instruction was using.

Leo Laporte (00:47:10):
Yeah.

Caller 3 (00:47:11):
Now I have been programming back in the day Intel processors since the 1975 when I started programming 8 0 0 8. And it never occurred to me that anyone ever think of giving variable execution time to instructions based on the data they were using. So I learned in that 15 minutes that I was listening to twit, I learned something that I never knew that occupied my brain for like, most of the rest of the day.

Leo Laporte (00:47:48):
Isn't that cool?

Caller 3 (00:47:49):
You kinda ruminated on it.

Leo Laporte (00:47:50):
I think a lot of people listen to security now for that very reason because they just get, they hear stuff and they go, whoa, <laugh>. Yep.

Caller 3 (00:47:58):
I never, I never thought of that. I never

Leo Laporte (00:48:00):
Thought of that. Just yesterday

Caller 3 (00:48:02):
And just yesterday Paul Throt again, it was another like another 15 minute encounter, but yesterday Paul Throt mentioned, what was it? LL VMs, low level virtual machines. Yeah. When you guys were talking about some of the some of the various languages that were being hosted on different environments. Yeah. 15 minutes I learned something, I ruminated on it and what it, like, you guys are awesome. Good. So I, I want, I wanna share that with you.

Leo Laporte (00:48:33):
Thank you.

Caller 3 (00:48:34):
You're no longer on the radio, so I'm not sure how much of an Overton window that you have.

Leo Laporte (00:48:39):
I have zero over. I don't know if I had much when I was on the radio. He's talking about shifting the conversation. Oh, okay. You know, I,

Caller 3 (00:48:47):
There are two things that I wanted to, to shove into your Overton window. Okay. <laugh> number one is we're we're coming close to changing that clock again. Yes.

Leo Laporte (00:48:58):
For sprint. I hate that. Don't you hate that?

Caller 3 (00:49:01):
Why in the United States are we not talking about permanently shifting the time a half hour ahead or a half hour back? As in India,

Leo Laporte (00:49:15):
I think we still, and then the bill is still just waiting. That, that we had to make that choice. Well,

Caller 3 (00:49:20):
The bill is not talking about a half hour time shift.

Leo Laporte (00:49:25):
Oh, a half hour. Why half an hour? That's interesting

Caller 3 (00:49:29):
Because it addresses both of the dis disadvantages of being too early and being too late and it gives you a happy medium that seems to satisfy 1.3 billion Indians.

Leo Laporte (00:49:45):
Hmm.

Caller 3 (00:49:46):
So something for you to ruminate on Leo.

Leo Laporte (00:49:49):
Interesting. 30 minutes. Interesting. Yeah. I don't know if I really like that idea. Honestly. <laugh>, I kinda like this. Nobody gets what they want. Nobody seems

Caller 3 (00:49:57):
To like, nobody seems to like any of the ideas. <Laugh> the next comment I I had for your Overton window was from time to time you're bringing up the dangers of artificial intelligence. And you, do you recall a number of years ago, who was it? A number of luminaries had written an open letter warning about the dangers of artificial intelligence. Do you have any? It was Stephen Hawkings and a number of other people. Yeah,

Leo Laporte (00:50:25):
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Caller 3 (00:50:27):
So I teach this in my computer information management class for the past 10 years. And I've been saying the same thing for the past 10 years, that we homo sapiens should be embracing these creations of ours because they are our next leap in evolution. We are in on the cusp of evolving from carbon-based life forms to silicon-based forms.

Leo Laporte (00:50:54):
Do you really think that, do you think that's what's happening? Is I this is the next stage of evolution. Oh,

Caller 3 (00:51:00):
Unquestionably. Wow.

Leo Laporte (00:51:01):
Wow.

Caller 3 (00:51:02):
And you know, back in the day, I don't think a couple of MEbA ever got together <laugh> and hanging out and said, Hey guys, do you realize we're gonna be moving on? We're gonna be evolving to multicellular organisms that probably didn't happen. We should be embracing we're, Hey Leo, look at the news sometime. Are homo sapiens the end all?

Leo Laporte (00:51:27):
We might, we might need some help, is what you're saying. Well,

Caller 3 (00:51:30):
I'm saying we're not the end of the line.

Leo Laporte (00:51:32):
I know we're not the end of the lie. We might be the end of the line for homo sapiens Howard. <Laugh>. Carl, I can see why you're such a great teacher and I thank you. I really appreciate your insight. And did you ever think you would live long enough to see this amazing transformation of, of society?

Caller 3 (00:51:49):
The first job that I had as a for programmer on the Apollo project, I had a milestone salary, which was $10,000 a year.

Leo Laporte (00:51:59):
Wow.

Caller 3 (00:52:00):
That salary was one, that salary was 1% the cost of the computer. I was today the cost of the computer is 1% the cost of the

Leo Laporte (00:52:15):
Program. Isn't that a shift? Isn't that an interesting shift?

Caller 3 (00:52:19):
That dynamic has driven all of software development. Yeah. Bringing us up to object oriented programming. That's it, Leo. God

Leo Laporte (00:52:30):
Bless you. Now the machines are gonna be be doing it and they'll be 1% of their own costs. <Laugh>. Yeah, exactly. What a pleasure to talk to you, Carl. Listen, look. Great. Go fund me, search for my granddaughter and you'll find him. And just kicked in a little bit. And I have a feeling that our family, our groupies will. So thank you. No groupies will a real pleasure talking to you.

Caller 3 (00:52:51):
God bless the groupies.

Leo Laporte (00:52:53):
Thank you. Take care. They're groupies in a good way. Yeah. I want a shirt that says that now. God bless the groupies. God bless the groupies as if we don't call 'em groupies. We call 'em club members. And we are so grateful to our club makers who make this show and all the shows we do possible. They keep the lights on. It's expensive to do what we do, but you help us immensely with a small contribution to $7 a month. And and you're, you're helping keep twit on the air, helping us launch new shows like Mikah's Hands on Macintosh, which is excellent. Hands on Windows with Paul Throt, our Untitled Linux show. These are all shows that are only in the club right now. We've got some great club events coming up, thanks to our our game master, our club master aunt Pruit.

(00:53:38):
 Some really fun events coming up. So if you could find your way to kicking up just seven bucks a month, $84 a year to help us do what we do, we would sure appreciate it. And we thank all the club members who've done that. All you have to do is go to twit tv slash club twit. And I I thank you in advance. We were talking about the world changing. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, have you ever watched the last, have you watched the last of Us? Oh, I got you to watch it, didn't I? No, no. You, you did. Yeah. big, I mean, the show's amazing. It's incredible. Big H B O Show. On Friday, I interviewed a guy who is probably the smartest guy I've ever talked to. Dr. George Church. He's a professor at Harvard Medical School at m i t. He is widely considered the father of genomics, modern genomics helped sequence the human genome, helped develop CRISPR as a way to edit the human genome. Genome. We had a wide ranging conversation, including talking about his plan to introduce Mastodon DNA into elephants to make them cold resistant, which I thought was fascinating. That's really incredible. But I am ashamed to say, I did have to ask him, cuz the whole premise of the last of us is that the fungus quadriceps infects us. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, we lose our ability to fight it. And it, and well, it's like zombies among us. I, so I asked Dr. Church, this is actually after the show. Have you seen the Last of Us?

Dr. George Church (00:55:09):
I haven't seen that. That movie. I've, I'm sorry. TV show, but I've, I've heard it that my daughter loves it. Yeah. it's on my wish list. But, but yeah, cor deceptions will, will force insects like ants to, to, to go up on a, on a plant. The and then, and then once they get up there, they, they, they kind of freeze there. And then the, and then the, then the fungus produces a fruiting body on the top of the, out, out of the head of the ant. And then the spores go everywhere. So it is kind of programmed. This ant is, did they mention this in the show?

Leo Laporte (00:55:45):
They so the, the premise, it's based on a video game. And the premise is that fungus is, are less of a problem because they can't survive human body heat. But that in the process of global warming, the fungus has evolved to survive above 94 degrees, and all of a sudden they become a problem for humans and be, and we just don't really have any treatments, effective treatments for them.

Dr. George Church (00:56:09):
Yeah. And well, that, that's, that's not, not, it's not quite true. There are a lot of fun fungi that, that grow at a body temperature. Oh, good. In fact, there's a, there's a version, Sacra Myy Cevi, which is the bakers and brewers yeast has a pretty close relative that will grow at body temperature, which is a opportunistic pathogen. And of course, they're, they're fungi that, that infect immune compromised patients like h i v patients. But the thing that's cool about corti ceps, I can't believe they passed this opportunity, is what it does to ants. I'll, I'll, I'll send you. 

Leo Laporte (00:56:46):
No, that's fascinating. But it, but it, it's almost like, I mean, parasites do that as well, right? They they have life cycles that

Dr. George Church (00:56:53):
Yeah. Toxic plasma, toxic plasmas, right? Yeah. It, it influences behavior. Right. In fact, you could argue that a lot of pathogens influence behavior. Usually it's something trivial, like it causes you to cough. Right. Coughing spread is a really terrific way of, of spreading Yeah. Vomiting. Yeah. Diarrhea. These are all terrific ways of spreading little baby pathogens. Right. but, but, but there's just the cortis, it does it in such a graphic. I mean, when you see one of these things crawling up the plant and then sitting there, and then, then this spore forming thing comes out of the top it's just, it really is like body snatcher. It's just a time, you know,

Leo Laporte (00:57:34):
I think really in a way, the TV show shows that because humans become infected and then fruit <laugh> and it's

Dr. George Church (00:57:43):
Not. Yeah. So I'll, I'll have to look it up. But, but I mean, they could have shown some actual footage of, of real Yeah. Of real ants infected with cor decept. No, no. That's

Leo Laporte (00:57:54):
A fascinating thing cuz we don't think of fungus is as well, I guess they're alive sort of in a quasi

Dr. George Church (00:58:01):
Oh, they're definitely, they're definitely alive. Yeah. Even viruses could be argued or are alive. Right. but they, they just req viruses. Like wolves require very complicated living systems to survive.

Leo Laporte (00:58:16):
Fungus do not

Dr. George Church (00:58:18):
Fungus. No, they do. They do. Most of them do. Oh, okay. You know, they, fungus, unlike plant sub plants are the only things, photosynthetic organisms, the only things that really can grow on in inorganic material period. But almost everything else depends on some other organisms. Provide them with food. Fungus included.

Leo Laporte (00:58:39):
Interesting. This, this circle of life. Quite an amazing thing. <Laugh>. Yeah. Really. wow. Thank you. Thank you so much, Dr. Church. I really appreciate you. Yeah, sure. For the full interview with George Church, you can tune in triangulation. It's weird. I have a old radio and TV habits You don't have to tune in, in, you can, you can download triangulation. Just go to twit tv slash t i. It'll be the most recent episode. It's also on our Twitter events feeds, twi do tv slash events. And you can watch it there. Now we think, while we were talking to Dr. Church, I think we got this call thing working again. So let's, let's try one more time. I see Dan has his hand raised. I'm gonna push the button if I can find him on the <laugh>. Now I don't see him. Oh, there he is. Okay. Dan has got his hand raised, sending him into the breakout room. Dan, welcome to ask the tech guys. Oh, that's a cool welcome shirt. You're driving. Wait a minute. Whoa, look at that. Holy, come

Caller 4 (00:59:43):
On down. Formula one driver. My formula portion

Leo Laporte (00:59:46):
Driver <laugh>. I love it. I

Caller 4 (00:59:48):
Love it. It's a picture from the track. Where are

Leo Laporte (00:59:50):
You calling? Where are you calling from?

Caller 4 (00:59:52):
Brookings, South Dakota. All right. Sorry. As you pronounced it as Kim Schaffer pronounced it, bur Kings South

Leo Laporte (00:59:59):
Kings Bur Kings are you, so you are, you're either a rock and roll guitarist or a Formula one driver, which is it?

Caller 4 (01:00:06):
I can't be both.

Leo Laporte (01:00:07):
Oh yeah, you could be both <laugh>. Be both.

Caller 4 (01:00:10):
It's nice. Very amateur welcome. Very amateur.

Leo Laporte (01:00:12):
Welcome back. Good to talk to you. What's up?

Caller 4 (01:00:15):
Well, as a non podcaster, I have a question for you. I know Mikah has said before that he uses audible to go to sleep. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, I use podcasts to go back to sleep in the morning. So I don't bother my lovely wife. Aw. I wake up at, you know, five in the morning or some, sometimes, and a lot of times, and I'll just slip my AirPods Pro in mm-hmm. <Affirmative> and let go and go to town on a podcast. And I have since had, when I do go back to sleep, which is the, usually the goal, I have since had some semi lucid dreams where Oh, I'm on a podcast. So I was wondering if you guys, is

Leo Laporte (01:00:57):
That why you have that? Is that a dream microphone in front of you? Because for somebody who doesn't have a podcast, you got a pretty good microphone,

Caller 4 (01:01:03):
<Laugh>. Oh, I have a business that allows me to invest in whatever technology I want to. I spent the week. That's a good business. Containerizing my backend database, but No kidding. But anyway, I've Did you use Docker?

Leo Laporte (01:01:15):
Docker? What did you use for that?

Caller 4 (01:01:16):
Yeah, Docker, I spent the week learning Docker and fun. But back to my original, I've since been a dream participant in Mac Break Weekly <laugh> slash film.

Leo Laporte (01:01:27):
Did you, did Annie and ACO come sit on your bed and <laugh>

Caller 4 (01:01:32):
As it would happen that, oh, I was just so frustrated. I was like, I'm trying to think of something to, oh, I have something to say now. Now, if he would just stop talking, I can, let's going on here. Oh,

Leo Laporte (01:01:45):
It's

Caller 4 (01:01:45):
Not a, and then the last,

Leo Laporte (01:01:46):
It's real <laugh>

Caller 4 (01:01:48):
<Laugh>, the last incarnation. I was at church and you guys had rented a corner of the church for your podcast. And I was looking back there, I was like, Leo God, quiet down Rav Church.

Leo Laporte (01:02:03):
Leo, you in quiet down. No, no. Oh,

Caller 4 (01:02:06):
That's super funny. I was, I was wondering if, did

Leo Laporte (01:02:09):
Devendra, did Devendra Hardwar join you when you were falling asleep? The slash film?

Caller 4 (01:02:13):
No, I was, I was, that was one more time where I was just frustrated. I was like, trying to think of something to say and I was having this,

Leo Laporte (01:02:19):
You're in the show. I love that.

Mikah Sargent (01:02:21):
I love this. So I know, I know what your question is. Have, has this ever happened? And this is the fascinating thing about what you're talking about. So sleep scientists who have for a long time tried to determine which stages of sleep are most important to us. And we have determined that rem rapid eye movement stage, which is the closest stage to actually being awake, is an incredibly important stage of sleep. Ah, but no one can say why. Ah, but one of the reasons why we think that it's the most important, or one of the most important is because of the fact that our brain does what you're describing. Have you've ever had a dream where you, you're like walking around and there's a cat that's making meow sounds. And then it turns out that it was actually your alarm that was going off in real life.

(01:03:04):
That is because your brain is essentially protecting you from waking up. It is trying to keep you in rapid eye movement sleep instead, instead of letting you actually wake up. And so for you to be listening to this podcast and suddenly be in the podcast, that is so that your, your brain goes, okay, this is something that's happening in real life, but I need you to stay asleep because for some reason REM sleep is so important. So I'm going to make it seem like this is part of what's happening. It's frustrating your dream. Yeah. And it does this just to keep you going in rapid eye movement sleep. So yes, to answer your question, this has happened to me with lots of audio audiobooks. I'll wake up later in the day and I was just hanging out with Harry Dresden from the Dresden Files <laugh> because I was listening to that book before I fell asleep. And it's a really close, great

Leo Laporte (01:03:48):
New new meaning of Parasocial relationship <laugh>

Mikah Sargent (01:03:51):
As it does.

Leo Laporte (01:03:52):
We were, oh yeah, we were sleeping together the other day and <laugh>. So I would like to do that. I don't listen to podcasts. You know, it's funny because thanks to our eight sleep or sponsor eight sleep when it's really cozy in the morning, and thanks also to my excellent schedule, thanks to my wife, I can just go back to sleep. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. So I do a lot more dreaming than I used to. Cuz that is when you dream, isn't it? Yes. So yeah, that's when that rem happens is cuz you're not gonna get at a deep sleep right away.

Mikah Sargent (01:04:19):
Yeah. So the, that's, you go down stage one, stage two, stage three, you come up stage two, stage one, and then your body makes the choice. Do I wake up right or do I go into rem? Rem A lot of people think REM is a deep sleep. It's not. It is a above, it's a light sleep. It is the exact same thing as being awake without being

Leo Laporte (01:04:35):
I love dreaming. Yeah.

Mikah Sargent (01:04:36):
Yeah, I do. And you need to, that's the thing is you've got to get down and back up again before if you wake up too soon, then you're not going to hit rem.

Leo Laporte (01:04:44):
Is that what, is that what you were asking about Dan? Is that a what's going on? Yeah,

Caller 4 (01:04:48):
I was just wondering if, if anybody else had had experienced elective. I'm not, I'm sure I'm not the only one that uses headphones to fall back asleep. Although it, it, it doesn't work like it used to. It used to just fall back asleep within five minutes. And now I just kind of, I listened for an hour sometimes.

Mikah Sargent (01:05:03):
Oh man.

Leo Laporte (01:05:03):
Yeah. So now you've got me really curious. Dan, what do you do for a living?

Caller 4 (01:05:08):
I train power lineman. But

Leo Laporte (01:05:12):
You mean like also like I am a lineman for the county, that kinda line. Exactly.

Caller 4 (01:05:17):
Oh, Glen Campbell was our spokesman. Yes. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:05:20):
You climbed the poles and you fix the wires up there.

Caller 4 (01:05:23):
That's cool. My dad who wrote the program back in 1983 he was a lineman from the time he was 15. And and I wrote a database that ran our program in 1987 and Oh wow. Mentioned that ran, that ran until 2012 when I rewrote

Leo Laporte (01:05:45):
It. Wow. Who knew 4D D would last that long?

Caller 4 (01:05:47):
Wow. I know. I was not, not many of them did <laugh>, but when I looked at the code 20 years later, I didn't even recognize it. I mean, it was,

Leo Laporte (01:05:57):
I'm impressed that you can sleep with AirPods on because they protrude out and I put my head on my pillow and it's, it's, I

Mikah Sargent (01:06:04):
Just do one uncomfortable. I do whatever you Yeah,

Leo Laporte (01:06:06):
I do. You just do one.

Caller 4 (01:06:07):
I do one.

Leo Laporte (01:06:08):
There are headphones. Father Robert showed us a pair that are designed for Sleeping Effect. I have the bows, sleep headphones that have a kind of flat surface. Yeah. Their theory is that you could, but then I was very disappointed. I said, I bought, I should bring those in cause I bought 'em. And then I found out you can't listen to podcast or audiobooks on them. Really. They're

Mikah Sargent (01:06:27):
Designed especially Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:06:28):
They're special, which means you can't listen to music or anything. You can listen to the sounds that Boze provides. That's, that's it. And maybe that's because they're so thin and they don't have oh, like a more process singer. I

Caller 4 (01:06:41):
Don't know what my original headphones were. The bows and whenever I would click, cuz when they, when you finish a podcast and overcast, if you just click it one more time, it'll start the next one. So, but the Bowes ones, when I clicked them, my wife would hear it and wake up. So I was always kinda trying to <laugh>. But the, the AirPods Pro are perfect.

Leo Laporte (01:07:00):
Well, Dan, until our next session in bed together, <laugh> I, I thank you. I look forward to it. I look forward to seeing you there, <laugh>. Thanks. Thanks Dan. I really appreciate it. Nice to give it a call. Nice to talk to you. Be careful. You go up on the polls or you just show you Say that one up there.

Caller 4 (01:07:17):
No, I'm a I'm a tech guy. Yeah,

Leo Laporte (01:07:19):
Good. You don't have to you don't have to climb those things. We had a family friend her son was a friend of my son's. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. She was a lineman or a line woman I guess you'd call it. And she was, she had the strongest upper body cuz she would be climbing those poles. She was very impressive. Wow. Do you have sleep headphones that you wear?

Mikah Sargent (01:07:38):
I, I just wear an AirPod. The reason why the, I do actually have some, they're called sheep headphones, I think, I honestly can't remember, but I would get too warm because they wrap around your head like a headband and then they've got these sort of loose piso transducers in them. But it just was not good. And what I ended up going back to the AirPods Pro is because for some reason, since it's apple to apple, you can turn the volume down very, very, very low. And any third party headphone, just using the standard Bluetooth profile, it doesn't let you turn it down that low. And I can't have it very loud in my ear. I just have

Leo Laporte (01:08:14):
A, a very quiet voice that's reading my book to me. Oh. And only AirPods, AirPods or AirPods Pro have been able to get that quiet enough to do that. Oh yeah. I got that head acoustic sheep. That's it. Thank you. Joe. Acoustic sheep. Yeah, acoustic sheep. I had the headband and then you see you wear it low so that it, it goes over your ears. Yeah. Yeah. I just got too, too warm cuz my ears do that. Yeah. Get warm from it. All right. I am gonna see if we can get Arizona, Neil on the horn here using the magic of technology that barely works. Hi, Neil <laugh>.

Caller 5 (01:08:50):
Hey Leo. How you doing? I'm

Leo Laporte (01:08:51):
Great. I guessing you're in Arizona.

Caller 5 (01:08:54):
I am. I have been. I have talked many times with you on the, in, on the radio show. It might've been a listener since at least 2011, if not sooner than that. That's

Leo Laporte (01:09:03):
Very gratifying cuz I was worried that when I stopped doing the radio show, we gave it to Rich Tomorrow that people wouldn't follow us to the podcast. And so well as

Caller 5 (01:09:12):
It happened.

Leo Laporte (01:09:14):
Go ahead.

Caller 5 (01:09:14):
No, I'm catch you up. I just No, I'm just, I'm just gonna say that.

Leo Laporte (01:09:18):
I'm just glad you made it. No, I just, that's all I was gonna say, <laugh>,

Caller 5 (01:09:21):
That's No, I was just saying, I, I found the last radio show, I guess it was after Christmas or whatever, and, and I said, and then I, it said check back on Mar January the eighth. There we go. And, and here we

Leo Laporte (01:09:34):
Are.

Caller 5 (01:09:35):
And, and I and I found you

Leo Laporte (01:09:36):
Still some

Caller 5 (01:09:37):
Technical, he follow you from day one. Still

Leo Laporte (01:09:38):
Some technical struggles. On the other hand, there's certain benefits to this. We can, you know, you get to see video if you wish. You don't have to we could see you, which is really great as far as I'm concerned. Where in Arizona are you?

Caller 5 (01:09:51):
Chandler? Chandler. So this just southeast of Phoenix.

Leo Laporte (01:09:55):
So you haven't ridden those Waymo's yet, have you?

Caller 5 (01:09:59):
Waymo's

Leo Laporte (01:10:00):
Oh, oh, no. Driverless

Caller 5 (01:10:01):
Vehicle. I know, I, I, I, you know, I had to think about Yes, I, no, I have not. I'm in the area and I'm willing to give it a try, but I have not actually had one. I actually, I actually don't drive. I may think about get, look at the, look at the electric bike.

Leo Laporte (01:10:14):
Oh good. You're,

(01:10:16):
Oh, you know, for people of a certain age, you and me you know, bike. I always, as a kid I biked like crazy. I love bicycling, but you know, it's harder and harder on your knees and stuff. The electric bike brought it back into my life and I just love, it's more fun than pedaling. It's so much fun. And then, then the problem is, oh, I don't wanna ride on the roads around here cuz too many people get creamed. So the fact that I could fold that one up, put it in my trunk and go to some nice pike park with bike path is just a transformational. It's gotten me out and about much more than before. So I highly, highly encourage you to do that. What's your question, Neil?

Caller 5 (01:10:59):
A couple of questions, really. Okay. I have been, well, I, I've been a longtime longtime listener as I say. And I have, I've got, I've taken many of your sponsors and recommendations to heart, so thank you. Worked better than others. Thank, thank you. In other words, some work The helm not the best idea, let's be honest about

Leo Laporte (01:11:14):
Oh, it's too bad. I feel bad. It was a good idea. But yeah, it's gone now.

Caller 5 (01:11:18):
Yeah. It just didn't work. It was a mail what I have. Yeah. Yeah. But I did get fast mail. I finally took the plunge and I just paid for my plan. Good. And that's working very well. I didn't like fast mail. Yeah, right. So

Leo Laporte (01:11:32):
That's, yeah, that's what I ended up doing is I, I tried the helm and I, and then I went back to Fast Mail because I thought I'm gonna let them do the hard part. And it was a great idea to kind of keep your privacy but running your own mail server. But it's just not an easy thing to do, unfortunately. And I think people kind of gave up on it. Good. I'm glad you went to Fast Mail and I think you'll be happy.

Caller 5 (01:11:52):
So I have, so I have Fast Mail and the only question, the only issue I had with the, with Fast Mail itself, with getting over there, was getting all of the contacts moved. All of the either email addresses, I've been a longtime listener, as I mentioned some, I've been on the internet since 1995. You and I are of the same age. Just so you know, November as matter of fact,

Leo Laporte (01:12:12):
56, I had a feeling. Yeah.

Caller 5 (01:12:15):
<Laugh>. So we're just, yeah. With a couple weeks apart. But anyway, nice. We've been on, you know, long enough. But it's a real pain to move all of the contacts over. I was hoping there was either an app or some easy way to do it. Yeah, there was

Leo Laporte (01:12:28):
A having to go. So I'll tell you how I did it, cuz I did do that. I now use Fast Mail again, a sponsor. But we still like it. In fact, I've been plugging Fast Mail since you've been listening. In 2011. I, I moved both contacts and Address book. I mean and a calendar over to Fast Mail. They hosted just like Google would. So the trick was for me it was very easy. I just added fast mail to my iPhone. Now, if you have an iPhone or an Android phone, you know that you can be syncing your calendars on the phone with Google or some other service. Well, fast Mail is one of the services that you can do that with. And then you don't have to do anything. You just let it sync. And once it's all synced up and you can check by going to Fast Mail and going into the contacts now, you know, you've got all your contacts on Fast mail.

(01:13:13):
And then, but only do it after you've made sure everything's transferred over. You can disconnect any other, like, if you don't want to use Gmail anymore, which is what I did, I disconnected Gmail so that it does Google no longer has access to my phone numbers, my calendar, any of that stuff. So that was a very easy thing to do. It didn't require an export or an import. I still would recommend an export. It's always a good idea if you've got your contact list working and us old timers, we probably have, you probably have as many as I do. I have I think 1900 contacts in my contact list as soon as you, you know, I don't wanna lose them. So as soon as you got that looking like how you like it bef even before maybe you go to Fast mail, make a backup copy, almost any contact program, including the ones on Apple, Android, windows, and Mac, will allow you to export into either a comma separated values file, CSV file, or there's something called Card D which is a standard.

(01:14:09):
And if it, if it supports, that works too. That's the one that you know, fast mail's using. Same thing with your, your your calendar. That's Cal d you can export those out and then you can, you have a backup. So if, and this happens sometimes with synchronization, you might get like a mess happen where you get duplicates things five times or you might get zero. Suddenly you open up your cal your contact sensor. I don't know anybody. So if you have a backup, that's a good idea. Save all those names and addresses you've accumulated as I have over the years. So just turn, do do you use iPhone or Android or, or no. Phone. 

Caller 5 (01:14:43):
Iphone. I, I'm all in on the Apple. I guess I have the iPhone, the iPad, the watch and AirPods and so forth. Me

Leo Laporte (01:14:50):
Too. Yeah. So Mike, it's just in the settings, right? Yeah,

Mikah Sargent (01:14:53):
Yeah, exactly. Instead of, they, they'll have the links at the top that have the icons for the different services that are the main services, Gmail, et cetera. But then below that you'll have those options for using a classic login for both card D and, and for the mail.

Leo Laporte (01:15:11):
Yeah, definitely, definitely the easiest way to do it. You can export an import if you wish, but you don't have to. And, and the nice thing about synchronization isn't, it's okay to have it on as many places as possible. Right? We don't wanna lose it. Do you know how many contacts? I'm just curious, do you know how many contacts you have Neil,

Caller 5 (01:15:27):
Maybe 250 or something like that. Have quite as many as yourself?

Leo Laporte (01:15:32):
<Laugh>, you know,

Caller 5 (01:15:32):
I guess maybe it's around a long

Leo Laporte (01:15:33):
Time. It's maybe my business, you know, because I, you know, I, I meet so many people and as a journalist I collect cards at, at conferences and things. So maybe that's why I have 1900 ridiculous numbers. That's

Caller 5 (01:15:45):
A lot. That's ridiculous. Well, the other thing I was gonna ask if I could jump in here, is the, I was thinking about moving. I have one password. I've been using that for years because I have all Apple stuff and it's, it works fine, but it is, it is a little pricey I would think of moving to Bit Warden which I noticed is a little more reasonable. But that scares me. And the idea of having to move all the, how to move the one password information into a new password manager. Is there a good way to do that? Same thing.

Leo Laporte (01:16:11):
Very easy. Go

Mikah Sargent (01:16:12):
Ahead, Michael. Yeah, I was gonna say

Leo Laporte (01:16:13):
In fact we demonstrated, I think on our very first show, go back to that January 8th show, <laugh> you, I think I did a demo or maybe it was the next one.

Mikah Sargent (01:16:19):
It was one of the first, it

Leo Laporte (01:16:20):
Was the 15th. It was one of the first couple. Yeah,

Mikah Sargent (01:16:21):
It, it's a simple thing. I mean, any password manager that <laugh> is you know, modern and is doing the right thing, is going to give you the ability to leave it if you want to. And one password is one of those. You could do an easy search for export from one password and I, in fact, I wouldn't be surprised if Bit Warden has a guide moving from one password to Bit Warden. It is a simple process of exporting the files and then moving them over. And if you're worried about, if you use like one time authorization codes, OTA codes all of that can come over too because essentially it's not, you know, you, you typically scan a QR code, but what that QR code has is a specialized link or a specialized URL essentially that then gets translated into this, the proper code.

(01:17:05):
So all of that can be moved over as well. The only thing that you may have a bit of an issue with is if you've got documents and, and images and those kinds of things stored in your one password account, you'll just need to look at how one password handles exporting those. And of course, my biggest tip, my biggest advice is after you've done that export process, make sure you get rid of that unencrypted bit of information as quickly as possible, you know, to once you've moved it over. And honestly, if it were me, I'd hang on to that one password account for a little bit longer just to be safe. Cuz you never know if you know something gets lost in the shuffle and it's always worth kind of having that as a backup. But yeah, the, the process for any password manager that's worth it, salt is going to be an easy transfer from one to the other.

Caller 5 (01:17:58):
Well, thank you so much. It's great to talk here. I'd love the new format, by the way, this is a great show. It's a little more of the radio show was Yeah. Relax. You could take your time of it. You

Leo Laporte (01:18:06):
Have 22 minutes worth of ads, either <laugh> during the show. Hey, one last question for you or request for you Neil.

Caller 5 (01:18:13):
Sure.

Leo Laporte (01:18:13):
Haah, Waymo, <laugh>, one without a driver in it. Get your phone out and show us what it looks like to be riding in a taxi with no driver.

Mikah Sargent (01:18:24):
We would love that.

Caller 5 (01:18:24):
I'll see what I can do. I'll see what I could do. All

Leo Laporte (01:18:26):
Right, Neil, pleasure to talking

Caller 5 (01:18:28):
To you. Nice time with you. Take care. Likewise. Take care. Bye-Bye. Thank you so much. Bye now.

Leo Laporte (01:18:32):
They thought I was crazy <laugh>, they thought it was right outta my hand.

Mikah Sargent (01:18:36):
I was

Leo Laporte (01:18:36):
Wondering the driver on the top. Oh, I'm sorry. No, you're fine. <Laugh>, if, what were you wondering?

Mikah Sargent (01:18:41):
I was wondering if we could take a break and then go to and after this. Does that work or

Leo Laporte (01:18:46):
No? We could totally do that. Okay. How about that? How

Mikah Sargent (01:18:49):
About

Leo Laporte (01:18:49):
That? He's producing me kids, just so you know. That's what it looks like when a talented producer wants you to do something. They ask nicely. I show <laugh>. We're gonna have aunt make the transition from Windows to Mac with a little help from our friends.

Mikah Sargent (01:19:07):
I got Bye with a little help from my aunt. You

Leo Laporte (01:19:09):
Don't wanna make Anne angry

Mikah Sargent (01:19:11):
<Laugh>. No, you won't like him when he's

Leo Laporte (01:19:13):
Angry. Okay. Okay. He's such a gentle giant. Yeah, I've never seen him. Well, I've seen him maybe once angry. But we're gonna try to make it an easy transition for him. Our show today brought to you by Fortra you, you may say Wolf I don't Fortra, but I know you know the name. Help Systems. For 40 years, help Systems has been known for helping organizations become more secure, more autonomous. Over the years, customers have have told 'em it's gotten harder and harder to protect their data. But Help Systems is there or has been there to help you. Cyber threats of course are evolving. They're more powerful than ever before. In an industry where the only constant has changed, adaptability is the best way to grow in the right direction. So help Systems listened to their customer's concern, they problem solved and boy do they deliver.

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They are a different company today. That's why Help Systems is now Fortra. Your cybersecurity ally designed specifically to answer those issues that their customers are coming to them with. For of course, CONT continues that same people first support and best in class portfolio that you know and love from Help systems. But, but, but they are there in the modern times too. And I think this is a more modern name to really re kind reflect what they are doing to protect you for, to transform the industry by creating a stronger line of defense. And it all comes from a single provider, which makes it a lot easier to deal with. They work with the top 10 Fortune 500 banks in the world. Let me say that again cuz that's pretty impressive. The top 10 Fortune 500 banks in the world to help keep 'em secure. Boy, if those banks trust for that says something, doesn't it?

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If you don't know that, you ought to. This valuable resource provides an analysis of the latest findings and insights into key trends shaping the threat landscape. It's always changing. You need a map. You need Fortress Quarterly Threat trends and Intelligence report Fortress approach. And this is really the most important thing is different in pursuit of a better future for cybersecurity. They're, they're driven by the belief that nothing cannot be solved. There's nothing unsolvable for F O R T R A positive change makers and your relentless ally providing peace of mind through every step of your security journey. Don't you think you'd like some help? Now's the time. Set yourself up for success. Just go to for.com to check out one of their free trials or demos today. Here's to a stronger, simpler future for cybersecurity. Visit F O R T A for.com to learn more for.com. We thank 'em so much for their support of Ask the Tech Guys now time for you to be an ally. Mikah, Sargent. Poor Ant Pruitt <laugh>. How many years has aunt used Windows his whole life, right? You've been a Windows guy. Aunt is gonna show us some of the issues he had transitioning to Mac Watch.

Ant Pruitt (01:24:21):
Hello Tech guys. I am Ant Pruitt. I think you know who I am. I'm that guy that is the only person using Windows there at twit. Yeah, that's me. Also host of hands on photography. It's been a couple weeks since I finally made the move from Windows to Mac os. You know, again, being the only person running windows there at twit I, I, I've gotta say I've always found Apple Hardware to be pretty badass. It just, just looks so good and it seems to have all of the nice performance numbers, you know. I've always thought Mac OS or O S X was pretty, you know, I always thought it was smooth, you know, but I could never really dive into the world of OS X or now Mac Os until recently. Why couldn't I dive into it? Well, there's a couple things.

(01:25:11):
 Two things actually. First, apple computers. They, they never had enough ports on them. And coming from a Windows environment, I needed multiple USB ports for my peripherals. You have your keyboard, you have your mouse, you have your webcam, you have your direct access storage, you have thumb drives, you have audio interfaces like this here. And so on. Now you need more than two or three USB ports on a laptop. Clearly, at least I did. So that was one big thing. The second thing was the cost of Apple computers. They were always outta my budget. Yeah, they just were. And then when it got to the point where they were in my budget, I still found the lack of ports. And I found the lack of Upgradeability being a non-starter. Now, if I wanted to install a new graphics card or something, I couldn't do it.

(01:26:02):
Now I know that wasn't a big thing on the Mac side. So let's take a look at an <inaudible> sample. I wanted to install some RAM on my computer. Couldn't do it. You, you just couldn't do it. I wanted to put, you know, an extra 32 gigs on myself. I couldn't do it. That was a problem. And it was, I was always curious about the Mac Mini, you know, that small form factor, it looks great. It looked like it had plenty of horsepower, if you will. But again, it never had any ports on it. I need more ports. Now. Fast forward to today, actually, just a couple of weeks ago you know, I got my hands on the New Mac mini, you know, when Apple announced the New Mac mini, it was, it, it not only brought up the next generation Apple silicone but it also put some more ports on this device.

(01:26:53):
And honestly, it still wasn't quite enough for me. But I thought I could get closer to it being something that that would work for me. And then my price range, if I went and found some type of doc to gimme some extra IO and I did find a doc, which was discussed on this week in Google, and for the most part it's working. Okay. Now, with all of that said, hmm. If I were to, to, to go back in time and re redo all of this again, I would look for, or maybe even create some type of primer that's based on going from Windows to Mac. Cuz right now, when I look out there for something that, that walks through the process of going from Windows to Mac, I get a whole lot of fanboy stuff. I don't want that. And it's just a whole lot of, oh, how great it is to be on Mac from Windows, you know?

(01:27:43):
And I get that people are gonna be happy. But there's a couple things that I've come across that just sort of bugged me and I'm hoping that you, the tech guys can help me out. So first, and there's four points. First is the notifications inside of Mac Os. Now look here, I can't stand the notifications on iOS. Absolutely hate 'em. I think they're just not functional at all. So then when I get into Mac os, it's pretty much the same thing. I hate 'em. And so I spent a lot of time just trying to turn notifications off for different apps and things like that. This stuff still pop up and it just annoys me with all get out. So just, I need to find a way to get rid of notification cuz I, I, I just don't care. Secondly, app installation on Mac os.

(01:28:28):
Now when those things are pretty straightforward, you get an m MSI or xc, you just click on it, boom, it runs and it does its thing to install whatever app you're trying to install. On the Mac side, you get some type of zip file or you get a DMG or you get a zip that's in the DMG and then you get the dm. No, you get a DMG that's in the zip, see, I'm already confused. And then you get the option to drag set file into the applications folder or you have to double click the DMG to make it do the installation. So it was a, it was a little bit confusing at first, but it was no big deal. That's just some extra muscle memory that I need to try to figure out. And then there's the doc in macros. The doc is quite useful.

(01:29:11):
You know, I guess it's useful enough for Microsoft to decide, hey, we wanna put our stuff at the bottom just like a Mac does too. So I like the doc, but I don't care for the fact that I can have this bit of an O C D moment and see that some applications or services are running when I know they're closed. Well, the windows are closed at least. I don't like the fact that if I click on a Windows, like I don't know. So let's say I open up Spotify and I'm listening to some music and I'm done listening to Spotify. Stop the music, close the window there for Spotify. Look down at my dock. It's still down there running. Okay cuz that little white DOT's there. Then I realized, oh yeah, you have to go to that top menu, hit foul quit or whatever it is to stop whatever it is you're, you're running.

(01:29:58):
Yeah, that's an extra step, extra bit of muscle memory. But what's the point of having that little red dock there in the window to close the window if it's not gonna close the application or that's just my Windows brain coming through and battling here. Because in Windows, if I close the window, it closes the app, it closes the service 95% of the time. Okay. But anyway, I'm, I look here, I, I know this, this sounds like I'm doing a bit of nitpicking, but yeah, I am actually <laugh>. Lastly, point number four, the file system of MCs. And this is probably the most important thing, the file system. So coming from Windows, I have a lot of external drives that were formatted in T F S. Oh boy, that's a problem when I plug it into this Mac. Why? Because I can read that data but I can't write to those drives.

(01:30:51):
That was, that was a bit of a problem for me. So now I'm stuck figuring out, okay, fortunately I have backups of these drives, so I'm just going to wipe these drives and format to work in a read, write aspect for Mac Os. But then there's the, the, the idea of what format do I choose? Do I choose the Mac Os extended journal Macro Os extended. Then there's the APF F s, I believe it's what it's called. Just come out not too long ago from Apple. Or do I just use X fatt? I'm thinking I'll use X fatt because I still have a couple laptops that I use here from time to time and I want to be able to still access those drives if I need to on the Windows device. So what are your thoughts on that? And then, oh yeah, that holy jet button, whatever inside of finder.

(01:31:41):
That's why is that even there now I thought that, you know, safely removing <laugh> drives was, was a thing of the past. But anyway, I'm done. Again, lastly, let me just say I am quite happy with Mac os. I am having a good time with this. It reminds me of my time with the Buntu and Nome probably about 10 years ago when I played around with it in the house. I do enjoy having the additional desktops where I could switch through and work on things in another desktop virtually and just, you know, keep up with my productivity. But yeah, they're just a couple things that just sort of nitpick and I'd like to address, you know, such as snapping windows inside of a display. So if I wanna work on one project on one side of the screen and compare it to the other side, I can, you know, there's little nitpick stuff like that.

(01:32:32):
But for the most part, this os is so much better. I just grew tired of windows being a crashing miss and having all of that hardware to, to still be a really, really bad experience from a performance standpoint. And you know, even if I just wanted to shut down the laptop, it took a whole lot of cooling just to shut it down. Really. Fans are gonna ramp up just to shut down. That's stupid. Microsoft do better. Sounds like a dagum B 57 taken off. 7 57 taken off. Anyway, so yeah, that's it. I just wanted to share that with you all and hopefully you can address those couple bullet points that I have. Thank you for all you do for our community here and appreciate all the help take care of gents.

Leo Laporte (01:33:16):
I appreciate you aunt. That's great. Yeah, this

Mikah Sargent (01:33:18):
Is great.

Leo Laporte (01:33:19):
He has a really good point and I think this is unfortunate that when you go to look at Mac information, it tends to be a lot of fanboy mm-hmm. <Affirmative>. Right? And I think that that is a, a problem. It's a problem everywhere where you get people going, you know, it's not a religious war, right? Saying ah, windows. And and I don't blame it for being a little put off by that.

Mikah Sargent (01:33:39):
Yeah. Especially because most of those stories are this clickable. I've used Windows for years and I'm making the change. And you'll never, no people just, I, this is a question I do get a lot is I'm making the change. What are some of the things that I need to know? And what I appreciate about what you've done aunt, is you've actually given us some sort of common questions that person might have.

Leo Laporte (01:33:59):
And I think all I use Mac, windows and Linux equally. So I think it's possible not to abandon any, anyone, right? Or use say I'm gonna tip be on Team Mac. You could just be on, you know, team PC or Team Smartphone. Maybe that's a better team to be on than, than any particular operating system. Especially as time goes by, right? Because they're getting closer and closer to to each other. I, there is, that is the biggest issue in of incompatibility file systems. And just real quickly to answer that question you don't have to erase those NTFS drives, please don't you, you can add a driver to Macintosh to read and write ntfs. It can read them already. You probably noticed that you can open them but it won't write them. The most common choice is from Paragon software.

(01:34:50):
 They've been making this for years. It is now. And one of the reasons I like it is M one and M two compatible. There's been a long time, there's been a program called Fuse that was open source and free. But I don't know if Fuse has been updated to M one or M two compatibility paragon's not expensive. You buy it once and then you'll have it you know, forever. So if you have a lot of formatted drives, this is a problem for me too. Cuz I work in all three environments, so I have multiple file formats. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> I would also suggest for stuff, you know, you'll only use with a Mac, cuz only Maps Max can read it. A PS is the right choice. Yes. That's the default choice. For instance, time machine works best with a P F S. So if you're gonna use time machine as your backup, have an apf s configured drive.

(01:35:34):
But often because I'm using thumb drives that I'm moving around, I'll use X fat. Same. Yeah. That's kind of a standard format that everything can read. Linux, Mac, and Windows. It's not the, not the greatest file format ever, right? But it file system, but at least you know it's compatible with everything. So format your, your USB thumb drives that you're gonna move around X fatt format that drives you're gonna use with the Mac only apf fs. And when you need to read those NTFS drives, no need to erase 'em, just use Paragons ntfs driver. It's an easy thing to install on Mac and then you'll be able to read and write

Mikah Sargent (01:36:06):
'Em. Beautiful. starting at the top with notifications, I think one thing that will help make it easier for you is when a notification pops up for the first time, go ahead and make your choices. Then at any time when a notification pops up, you can right click on that notification and you'll see the options for mute for one hour mute for today. But there's also the turnoff option and so it will feel a little bit less unwieldy if you do it piece by piece as opposed to hopping in that notification. So I gotta put into work now. Yes, put in the work now. So if, if you, if you stay or you don't gotta get ready, right?

Leo Laporte (01:36:40):
Can't you just run and do not

Mikah Sargent (01:36:41):
Disturb? You can run and do not disturb. That's what I do. But then all, I mean, yes, that's a, that's absolutely a possibility, but if you do that, there are times when a notification, because that's the thing makos uses that notification method as the way of communicating about everything. So sometimes it is just an app being annoying and you can right click and choose turn off. But what if it's about a a specific application trying to let you know that something, you know, there was an error and if you have it on do not disturbed, then suddenly you might not see that error because it didn't pop up as a prompt. So there are things you

Leo Laporte (01:37:14):
Kinda want those, right?

Mikah Sargent (01:37:15):
Yes, exactly. You don't run a backup and a backup fails or something. Exactly. And and the idea of always having do not disturb turns on it kind of runs contrary do not disturb as opposed to be kind of a, I use this sometimes kind of thing. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. So, but again, totally up to you. But yes, if you do it piece by piece, that will feel a little bit less of a struggle and then you're also getting the opportunity at that point to make those choices. The fourth setting in there is notification preferences and it will go directly to that app's notification preferences. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. So you can make those individual choices for that app. So you get the option to say, I don't ever want this to notify me at all, or I want it to do a specific kind of notification. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> I love conversation about the, the the second bullet, which was app installation <laugh>, because yes, it is so different between Windows and Mac. And there, it's interesting because there are things that I like about Windows with this and there are things that I like about Mac with this. I like Mac's method of I just have this application. I don't need to do anything behind the scenes. I just put it in the applications folder and that means it's ready. I like

Ant Pruitt (01:38:17):
That part too. And I also like the fact that it says, okay, now that we've done installing this, can you just drag this to the

Mikah Sargent (01:38:22):
Trash? Yes. See how it does that automatically. It's

Ant Pruitt (01:38:25):
Beautiful. Yes. But everything doesn't do

Mikah Sargent (01:38:27):
That right. And that, so yes, there, there are a couple of basically it's on the developer to make that work as it does what? On the Windows side, what I've always loved is uninstalling on Windows. You go through this process and it removes a bunch of the stuff. Yeah. On the Mac there are times where I go, the way that you typically uninstall a program is you go into the applications folder, you right click on it, you delete it or you just drag it to the trash. But there are still some files around in different places that may be part of that that you lose. Oh,

Ant Pruitt (01:38:58):
I didn't

Mikah Sargent (01:38:58):
Know that. Yeah. And so I like to use a third party application to do the uninstall management. Okay. it's a program called Clean My Mac. And you as a member of the club can check out hands on Mac where I talk all about Clean my Mac. Because it used to be that that program kind of got side-eye from people, but it's actually an excellent program that has some great tools in it. So speaking of, of that still, yes. Most of the time it will have that go ahead and throw it in the trash option. The reason why some of them don't do that is because there may be that when you do a restart, there's more that the program needs to do that has to install behind the scenes or other things where it's kind of gotta play catch up a little bit later. Right. but then after that, going ahead and removing it is good. Now moving to the dock, this is so funny to me because my partner actually came to me and of course it's my fault if Apple stuff doesn't work. You know, cuz I'm, you know, I'm the the person Of course. Was your

Leo Laporte (01:39:55):
Partner a Windows user

Mikah Sargent (01:39:56):
Before? No, not really. So

Leo Laporte (01:39:58):
Why, why should they blame you

Mikah Sargent (01:40:00):
For it? <Laugh>? Right? It's just because I know about Apple, so it's my fault. Oh,

Ant Pruitt (01:40:04):
Oh, oh. You're doing a show on this for me going forward, just so you know. Yeah. As soon as I Lisa blames me, crap.

Mikah Sargent (01:40:10):
I'm blaming you if you're the tech person

Leo Laporte (01:40:11):
To blames me. Yeah. Yeah. So I made Lisa move from Windows actually. That's good. I deserve the blame.

Mikah Sargent (01:40:16):
He hates that the finder window or the finder icon in the doc. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> always shows that it's launched. Right. It doesn't matter. But anyway, so I get where you're coming from, right. It's, it's just,

Leo Laporte (01:40:27):
But that's a really, I never noticed it. Now it's gonna bug

Mikah Sargent (01:40:30):
Me. Oh no. Thanks a lot. No, not you too. Yeah. Now everybody's gonna blame me for this, but outside of that, the other dots, so the reason why, and this is you have to blame Spotify actually. Okay. So you have to blame the individual app mm-hmm <affirmative> because depending on the type of app it is and what it expects from its user, that red button to close is either going to be a quit the app. Which is why you've noticed that in some cases where it does go away or not acquit the app. Mm-Hmm <affirmative>. So here is my recommendation from you don't use your mouse for this. Yeah. If you want to quit an app,

Leo Laporte (01:41:04):
Alt F four. F

Mikah Sargent (01:41:05):
Four. Not, not,

Leo Laporte (01:41:06):
No. Wait a minute. Sorry. No

Mikah Sargent (01:41:08):
Command Q command's. So

Leo Laporte (01:41:09):
Little easier to remember. Q, command Q, isn't it F

Mikah Sargent (01:41:12):
Four? Yeah. Command quit is what? And I know you see me doing this. That's because it's, that's my thumb and my middle. I'll

Leo Laporte (01:41:17):
Show you a quick one cuz I do the same thing is when you're alt tapping between apps, alt tab, command Q, alt tab, command Q, alt tab, command Q, you can close those all with just a couple

Mikah Sargent (01:41:26):
Of keys strokes. So I do think that's a muscle memory thing where you switch from using the menu at the top or the X button because, and so for example, I have text edit open right now. If I hit the X button text edit, it's still gonna stay alive because it's an A text editing application. And Spotify's thinking you probably wanna keep playing music in the background. You just wanna make this window go away.

Ant Pruitt (01:41:46):
No, I know what I'm doing,

Mikah Sargent (01:41:47):
But you know what? You close it close. Right. And that is how it should be, honestly. And again, that's up to the developer to make that choice. And some apps they do whenever you close them. And that's the thing is, I I, that is a complaint of mine because there are some times where, no, I actually don't want you to close. I just want you to, you know, to, for

Leo Laporte (01:42:05):
Spotify, you wanna keep playing music in the background. Right. That's why

Ant Pruitt (01:42:08):
If I want to keep playing music in the background, I just minimize it.

Mikah Sargent (01:42:11):
Right? You use the yellow button to minimize that button,

Leo Laporte (01:42:13):
But you could also close the window.

Mikah Sargent (01:42:14):
Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> I like to use, so it's Command Q to quit. Right. And to make the window go away. Command h I switch between those all throughout the day to Q and

Ant Pruitt (01:42:23):
H H for hide four in my head from Right Command H Windows hide.

Leo Laporte (01:42:27):
Yeah.

Mikah Sargent (01:42:28):
Yeah, yeah. I'm, I'm always doing command Q and command H. Which the

Leo Laporte (01:42:31):
Funny thing is, almost all of these commands have analogs on the Windows site. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> pretty much now there, there's so little difference between operating systems. The single bi biggest difference between Mac and Windows is where the menu bar is. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> on the, on windows, every window has the menu bar. So you know Right. Where to look on the Mac, you have to go look at the top of the window's a little bit taller. That's the biggest, frankly, that's the biggest mm-hmm. <Affirmative> difference between the two operating systems these

Ant Pruitt (01:42:57):
Days. And that's how Ubuntu was too. It was the same thing. And I remember thinking, gotta get used to that. Like,

Leo Laporte (01:43:02):
Let stop. Yeah. You just gotta get used to that. I actually, the popups is a bigger issue because there is, I think, a bug in Mac os, I don't know if you've noticed this, Mikah. But when, and I, a lot of people complained about it. It was a big problem in Ventura. It's a problem in Monterey when you add, like the Google updater has always giving me a popup background item. Oh yes, yes, yes, yes. I've got it on my screen. Background item, added background. I, that annoys me. You can't turn that off.

Mikah Sargent (01:43:29):
No, this is, yeah, this, I think it's a, it's absolutely a bug. They didn't intend for it to continue to pop up. You should be seeing it one time. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>,

Leo Laporte (01:43:37):
That's for security reasons. Exactly. You wanna know if somebody's installing something that's running in the background mm-hmm. <Affirmative>. But you don't wanna be notified that every five seconds <laugh>.

Mikah Sargent (01:43:45):
Right,

Leo Laporte (01:43:45):
Right, right. And many people put screenshots on Reddit, <laugh>, Google Update or Google Update or Google update or go, you know, five or six going all the way down the screen. There's no reason for that. That is, that's a bug though, right? Isn't

Mikah Sargent (01:43:56):
It? Yes, it is. And in fact, I've seen multiple confirmations of that being, there's

Leo Laporte (01:44:01):
Not, there's no

Mikah Sargent (01:44:02):
Fix. Yeah. That will be fixed.

Ant Pruitt (01:44:04):
How is Apple when it comes to bug reports like that? Because on the Windows side of things, you have Patch Tuesdays, so

Leo Laporte (01:44:10):
Apple does it whenever they darn well

Mikah Sargent (01:44:12):
Feel like that. Yeah. It's not as often. Yeah. You will not get it as often, which is unfortunate in comparison to what you'd be used to. Okay. but I also don't run in that many crashes. Right. Right. So there's that when it comes to this yet that unfortunately is one where I wish there was a way to turn that off or, you know, be able to say, okay, I've seen this one already. Leave me alone. I have noticed it get a little better though. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, there's only one app at this point, which is Steam that gives me that problem still where it's popping up multiple times.

Leo Laporte (01:44:41):
Steam is its own world, frankly. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> Steam drives me nuts.

Mikah Sargent (01:44:44):
Yes. And that's cuz it's not really running natively. It's not running, it's all, it's messy. Yeah. I want to tell you that the option slash alt key Yep. Is going to be your best friend. You talked about snapping and with Windows. Uhhuh <affirmative>. So the green button at the top, there are two modes. When you just hover over it you'll see three options enter full screen. There's also tile window to the left of the screen or tile window to the right of the screen. Oh. Now when you click that, this is a special mode where it takes up the left side of the screen and then it asks you what do you want to show on the right side where you can

Ant Pruitt (01:45:20):
Choose that. Right. That's

Leo Laporte (01:45:21):
What I want. Let me just I speak Windows. Oh, it's Snap,

Ant Pruitt (01:45:25):
Snap <laugh>. Yeah. Yeah. That's, that's, that's what

Mikah Sargent (01:45:27):
I want. But there's another mode if, if you want that where it's like a, it's its own workspace. That is what you do. But okay. If you just want to have two Windows side by side and you don't want them to be in like their own little workspace. Right. Hold down the alt key first and then there's an option that says Move window to the left side of the screen.

Ant Pruitt (01:45:45):
Wait a minute. Hold down the option key.

Mikah Sargent (01:45:47):
Hold down the option key. Okay. Move over the green button and then there's Move window. Okay. And that's as opposed to Tile Window. Okay.

Leo Laporte (01:45:54):
Here's what I would do. There's good third party for this. Rec rectangles. Great. everybody seems to be using Magnet, which is $8 rectangles free. Magnet is Windows Snap on steroids. Okay. And it makes it very easy. You just drag the, the title bar to where you want it to be. Right, left, right, up, down. And it will just snap into that position. Just like

Ant Pruitt (01:46:13):
Snapped it. Yeah. That's what I want.

Leo Laporte (01:46:15):
That's what you want. In fact, I'll tell you maybe this started with me for the iPad where I used to full screen mode, but I run most programs full screen and I use the Macintosh workspaces, which is a three finger slot. Swipe on the track pad or Yeah. To, to swipe between workspaces. And I, frankly, most of the time I'm working in full screen mode. But that may, everybody's got their, I

Ant Pruitt (01:46:36):
Like doing the, I like doing the workspaces too. Yeah. I think it's like command and arrow left or right.

Leo Laporte (01:46:41):
Switch. That's right. Control arrow left, right. Yeah. Mm-hmm. <Affirmative>. Actually I have a question for you Mikah. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, when you're using EMAX on the Mac, have you found that sometimes it sees the option key mm-hmm. <Affirmative> as the medic key and sometimes it sees the command key as a medic key. And what do you do

Mikah Sargent (01:46:56):
<Laugh>? Honestly yeah, when it's giving me that issue, I just pull out my Linux machine <laugh>

Ant Pruitt (01:47:01):
Oh boy.

Mikah Sargent (01:47:02):
And use that instead. I'm

Leo Laporte (01:47:03):
Just teasing.

Ant Pruitt (01:47:04):
Well I got now, well speaking of Texted text editor, editor, text edit, text edit. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. I don't like the fact that when I go to fire up it's making me name the file right out the gate. Just let me start typing cuz I would like to, I like to take Interesting. Take quick notes. Yeah. And I'm used to just hitting windows. Get B notepad because every now and then in the middle of the show I have to remember something and I just pull it up and stick it over there. I don't necessarily need to save it at the

Mikah Sargent (01:47:28):
Moment. Yeah. This again is where, cuz I use text edit for this in this way too. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> again where keyboard shortcuts are gonna be your friend. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> command N for new and then it'll just pop open a text at a document. You don't need to name it. I've got one right now that's not saved, it's not named or anything like that.

Ant Pruitt (01:47:43):
Command n Really? That's it.

Mikah Sargent (01:47:45):
Yeah. Command N for new.

Leo Laporte (01:47:46):
For

Mikah Sargent (01:47:47):
New for new. Nice. And, but that, that'll let you do that. I

Leo Laporte (01:47:50):
Do have to put in a plug cuz everybody uses the Mac eventually will download and install BB edit. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, there's a free version. You don't need to pay for it. Uhhuh <affirmative>. And it will do exactly what you want. It's basically a place you can just dump text. Okay. So I think it's a little better than text edit. Text edit can also unfortunately save plain text as rich text. And that's a problem. Yeah. Heb edit his plain

Ant Pruitt (01:48:11):
Text. I just want plane text. I

Mikah Sargent (01:48:12):
Saw I always, anytime I start up a new Mac OS system, I always go in and change text, edit its formatting so that it's plain texts from the start. I have a little few settings. So if you, if you wanna,

Leo Laporte (01:48:24):
I use text edit in years.

Mikah Sargent (01:48:25):
Really? I use literally I have a file every day for notes that I have. Oh, that's interesting. So I've got a whole system of notes that are just what I needed for that day. Yeah. just like

Ant Pruitt (01:48:36):
The sergeants organized. That's a shocker.

Mikah Sargent (01:48:38):
<Laugh>. but yeah again there, that's the great thing too. I think about Mac os that maybe I don't see as much as as I do on Windows, which is there seems to be more of an agreement on the best apps for different categories where a lot of people who are, you know, Mac Power users, they're all like, oh yeah, we all use bbb. Yeah. We all, oh yeah, we all, you know what I mean? And so it can be a little bit easier. There's not so much of an abundance of choice, which leads to paralysis of choice. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> where you can zone in Zoom. Yes. Let me try that again. Zone in on what you specifically want. 

Leo Laporte (01:49:16):
Although I have to say that the rectangle magnet is a really interesting discussion cuz some people swear by rectangle, which is free. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, some people swear by magnet, which is simpler, but, but eight and also

Mikah Sargent (01:49:26):
Better Touch Tool can do a lot of

Leo Laporte (01:49:28):
Stuff. And if you have a lap but you don't have a laptop, you're a Mac Mini user.

Ant Pruitt (01:49:31):
Yeah. I'm on a mini. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:49:32):
If you're stuck with a laptop with that horrible touch task bar, <laugh>, that's better Touch Tools and must and everybody agrees that's another one everybody agrees on. That's just like, that's just get that, that's what everybody uses. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. 

Mikah Sargent (01:49:44):
I'm gonna do one last shout out for something and a recommendation for you because I found it to be an inexpensive way to be able to try a bunch of different applications that have been beneficial to me. There's a company that makes an app subscription service for the Mac, it's called Set App. S e t a p P and not a sponsor or anything like that. The reason why I'm talking about them is because genuinely it's been a way for me to try a bunch of great Mac os apps that I now use regularly. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> and you, I, I can't remember exactly what the subscription cost is, but it's like less than 10 bucks a month. Okay. And in doing so many of the apps that I was using before I started using Set App and then many apps that I have now started using afterward have all been part of this library. Okay. and catalog. So yeah. If you want a quick way to like nail it exactly how you want it, cuz they've got those Windows Manage window management apps, they've got all sorts of stuff. Set app. Set app. Yeah. As a

Ant Pruitt (01:50:45):
Okay. I'll look at that because I've also been curious about irc clients and our loyal chat room has given me textual. Textual was the main one that popped up. Right? That's one out using My Lime chat.

Leo Laporte (01:50:58):
No textual. Just use textual.

Mikah Sargent (01:51:00):
See, this is another one of those. Everybody

Ant Pruitt (01:51:02):
Goes textual.

Leo Laporte (01:51:03):
That is one advantage of having a fan base, you know, as there's a certain agreement, you know, read people like John Gruber mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, and you'll start to get the feeling for this, this culture that is surrounds the cult of Mac. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> number of people in the discord are saying consider Obsidian for Notetaking. That's a third party app, which is quite good. And cross-Platform, which

Ant Pruitt (01:51:24):
Oh, obsidian was on Floss

Leo Laporte (01:51:26):
Weekly. They're really, which is amazing. Yeah. Mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, but I have to say Apple's notes app is probably the single best free app on any operating system. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> is really good. And it does some very surprising things. You

Ant Pruitt (01:51:41):
Put, is this the thing that sort of looks like Google Keep?

Leo Laporte (01:51:43):
Yeah.

Ant Pruitt (01:51:43):
Okay. Yeah,

Leo Laporte (01:51:44):
It does. Everything Google Keep does pretty much. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> stores it in iCloud. This is the real problem in my opinion. Apple is really designed around getting you locked into an ecosystem

Ant Pruitt (01:51:55):
Right. As they should. That makes sense.

Leo Laporte (01:51:57):
Good for their business isn't not good for users. Yeah. It's good for you. So everything works better if you're all Apple. And if you are than iCloud, you're gonna want to pay for some iCloud storage because things like notes are stored in iCloud automatically. Your desktop and documents file by default is stored in iCloud. Icloud ends up being a very useful tool if you are Apple only. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> actually now you can use iCloud for Windows. So it's not completely restrictive, but it's not as

Ant Pruitt (01:52:27):
Good. You know, I, fortunately, I don't think I'm ever going to an iPhone. I just don't like iOS. Yeah. The hardware is great on iPhones, but I just don't like iOS so I'm probably never gonna be full bore apple ecosystem. Yeah. But I do like the computers, so.

Leo Laporte (01:52:44):
Yeah. and I think a lot of it is just kind of getting the fingers and brain Yep. Used to different kind of things. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> frankly, once you start using the Apple Finder, going back to Windows File Explorer will be a nightmare for you. I

Ant Pruitt (01:52:56):
Know you, I've never really liked File Explorer. It was just there.

Leo Laporte (01:52:58):
You learned it though. Yeah. And you learn and there's things, people who go to Windows go, what do you mean? There's, it's not really a folder, it's, it's, my documents is just a, a search, a pointer, <laugh>, it's a point. What, what are you talking about? And it's, it is, and it's not clear and it's very confusing. I'm not a fan of, of Microsoft's model for how they explore files. So Yeah. I think you'll get used to Finder and probably not want to go back,

Ant Pruitt (01:53:21):
But x far as file systems. Again, let's make sure we're clear. X fat is probably my safest

Leo Laporte (01:53:28):
Way to be cross-platform. But you wouldn't on your Macintosh or external drives that are used exclusively with the Mac. Okay. Use the APF fs. Okay. Absolutely. That's actually a much better file. It's what we call a cow a copy on Right. File system. And while Apple hasn't enabled all the features, it's all the things it's capable of, like snapshots down the road. That is a very modern, even more modern than NTFS file system. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> and by far with an Apple preferable.

Ant Pruitt (01:53:52):
Okay. Yeah. Cool.

Mikah Sargent (01:53:54):
Yeah, these were great questions too. Again, I I'm sure they're gonna be blow out there.

Leo Laporte (01:53:57):
They're universal. Yes. Yes. Everybody who starts using a Mac comes up with these basic kinds of questions. But what's really interesting, and I I noticed this as, as we help people like, like aunt and, and our, our partners and so forth, everybody has a little bit of a different way. There may be some commonality mm-hmm. <Affirmative> of what programs use, but you know, a lot of people keep a lot of icons on the desktop. Yep. For instance, that's where their kind of default recent file are.

Mikah Sargent (01:54:23):
A huge menu bar.

Leo Laporte (01:54:25):
Yeah. Every and every or a dock. That's massive. Yeah. I take everything out of the dock <laugh>. Yeah. I just take it all out except for the four things that I

Ant Pruitt (01:54:32):
Use only. Yeah. The doc is only for the things that I'm going to use all the time, which is pretty much Creative Cloud Da Vinci resolve, stuff like that. Yeah. what I did have one more question mm-hmm. <Affirmative> about the menu bar at the top. I think there was a service that helps you clean that up. Yep. what was that service

Mikah Sargent (01:54:46):
Called? It's, it's called Bartender and it's also a part of setup. So if you did want to try it through that, you

Leo Laporte (01:54:51):
Can, you mostly that's for people with laptops. So they have a notch so that your menu bar doesn't go into the notch. No. Most

Mikah Sargent (01:54:58):
Also's for people who just like a nice clean,

Ant Pruitt (01:55:00):
See

Leo Laporte (01:55:00):
I don't use it on my desktop. I definitely use it. I

Mikah Sargent (01:55:02):
Got it everywhere. Just cuz I like to have it all clean.

Leo Laporte (01:55:04):
It does a great job. It

Ant Pruitt (01:55:05):
Is, is a bunch, a bunch of clutter on mine right now. See

Leo Laporte (01:55:08):
Between like the clutter that's

Ant Pruitt (01:55:09):
Information out running there. I don't necessarily see it running. I don't need to see back blazes running, you know, just

Leo Laporte (01:55:15):
Right. So bar, this is the equivalent of the sy of the sy on Windows of the task bar,

Ant Pruitt (01:55:19):
The tray,

Leo Laporte (01:55:19):
The system tray rather. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> and, and the, and you know, on the system tray there's a place you can drag Yep. Stuff so you don't see it. Bartender adds that feature. Okay. Essentially. So you can see what you wanna see, but you don't have to see anything you you don't want to see. I think

Ant Pruitt (01:55:32):
It's a pretty, I think I can remember that name pretty easily.

Mikah Sargent (01:55:34):
<Laugh> one

Leo Laporte (01:55:35):
Other thing, I don't know. So in Windows it depends on if you, if you got used to doing this, I think most power users and Windows get used to hitting the Windows key and typing the first few letters of what they want to run.

Ant Pruitt (01:55:47):
Yes, I did. And I have now learned to do Command Space bar. Whoa,

Leo Laporte (01:55:50):
Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. So you got Spotlight mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, which does the same basic

Ant Pruitt (01:55:54):
Thing. Same thing works. Just

Leo Laporte (01:55:55):
There are spotlight replacements that go even farther and down the road I would suggest looking at either Alfred or the free open source Raycast, which will still command Space Bar or you can make it have Spotlight Command Space Bar and Control Space Bar for the third party apps. But they add lots of features. For instance, I'm constantly searching for people's phone number. <Laugh>. Let me do that. It'll let you add Dave,

Ant Pruitt (01:56:18):
What are phone numbers?

Leo Laporte (01:56:19):
Leo? What

Ant Pruitt (01:56:20):
Is what what are those?

Leo Laporte (01:56:21):
Yeah, you're right. I haven't searched for a phone number in a long time. Mostly addresses I guess. And I dunno why I pasted in places and things like that. So there are definitely you know, the next level. But I'm glad you learned how to use Spotlight this. Yep. That's on every Mac. Yep. In fact, Andy and ACO doesn't install these third party apps like Ray Castor Alfred, he says, because when I use another Mac, they won't be there.

Ant Pruitt (01:56:42):
Good point.

Leo Laporte (01:56:43):
And just, so being good at Command Space and, and just typing with Spotlight. I'm glad you found that cuz that's the single most useful.

Ant Pruitt (01:56:49):
I use it all the time. All the time to find excellent things.

Leo Laporte (01:56:53):
Did we help you?

Ant Pruitt (01:56:54):
Yes. Yes sir. Gentlemen, thank y'all so much. Thank you. Thank you. I'm glad that this is now gonna be out here in the airways and people too can find it instead of Thank you. Looking at a bunch of fanboy stuff. Wait

Leo Laporte (01:57:04):
A minute, <laugh>, that's a Windows laptop you've

Ant Pruitt (01:57:06):
Got. Yeah, this is my Windows laptop that I will still use from time to time. Oh,

Leo Laporte (01:57:10):
That's your MSI baby.

Ant Pruitt (01:57:11):
Yes. It sounds like a jet taking off. But yeah, this is just for mobile stuff, but on my rig at home, I'm going to be using my Mac cuz I need that to be up to snuff and not crashing every two days.

Leo Laporte (01:57:24):
It, you know, my biggest complaint about Windows is just that Microsoft seems like they need more revenue, so they keep advertising stuff <laugh>. They've just added to their, you know, you have a, this was part of the new moment too, which is a feature update in Windows 11. So they turned the, what used to be just a little magnifying glass search into a search pill. Yeah. And we now know why, because they've extended the search pill now it has a Bing logo in it, and Microsoft said in a press release, now Bing chats out of the windows. Except it isn't. Because when you add that, when you click that Bing button, it just opens edge. It just opens it up. It's an ad for Edge that is, it's an ad for Edge. And try going to chrome.com, download Chrome. Microsoft's in actually injects into the webpage. No, you don't want to use Chrome.

Ant Pruitt (01:58:12):
That is,

Leo Laporte (01:58:13):
You don't, you don't want to use Chrome. And that bugs me. Honestly. You don't need to do that. Microsoft, you make plenty of money. I'm

Ant Pruitt (01:58:21):
Also not going to miss Reg edit, you know, how many times I had to go in the registry to, to try to fix something that should have been working. I, I'm not gonna miss that at

Leo Laporte (01:58:30):
All. Instead of reg edited, apple does the much more sensible thing, which is, it uses something called P list files. And as you start doing this, you'll get used to this. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, these P list files are plain text XML files. Okay. And they store all those settings, but there's not one massive hairball of a file. They're all over the system folder. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. It's probably a good idea. You're, you're very technical to start browsing around. Don't change things yet, but looking around at what's in the system folder, the launch agents, the demons, there's a lot of interesting stuff in there. And you can use BB Edit to open those files and take a look at them. There's some very interesting things. Oh dear. We've now invoked Lou m m oh boy, <laugh>, Mr. Twt himself, Mr. Windows himself. He's joined us in the chat room, so we'll be, we'll be nice.

(01:59:16):
Hey dearly, he won't say anything bad about his company. Hey everybody. Leo LaPorte here. I am the founder and one of the hosts at the TWIT Podcast Network. I wanna talk to you a little bit about what we do here at twit because I think it's unique and I think for anybody who is bringing a product or a service to a tech audience, you need to know about what we do Here at twit, we've built an amazing audience of engaged, intelligent, affluent listeners who listen to us and trust us when we recommend a product. Our mission statement is twit, is to build a highly engaged community of tech enthusiasts. Well already you should be, your ears should be perking up at that because highly engaged is good for you. Tech enthusiasts, if that's who you're looking for, this is the place we do it by offering 'em the knowledge they need to understand and use technology in today's world.

(02:00:10):
And I hear from our audience all the time, part of that knowledge comes from our advertisers. We are very careful. We pick advertisers with great products, great services with integrity, and introduce them to our audience with authenticity and genuine enthusiasm. And that makes our host Red Ads different from anything else you can buy. We are literally bringing you to the attention of our audience and giving you a big fat endorsement. We like to create partnerships with trusted brands, brands who are in it for the long run, long-term partners that want to grow with us. And we have so many great success stories. Tim Broom, who founded it Pro TV in 2013, started advertising with us on day one, has been with us ever since. He said quote, we would not be where we are today without the Twit network. I think the proof is in the pudding.

(02:01:08):
Advertisers like it Pro TV and Audible that have been with us for more than 10 years, they stick around because their ads work. And honestly, isn't that why you're buying advertising? You get a lot with twit. We have a very full service attitude. We almost think of it as kind of artisanal advertising, boutique advertising. You'll get a full service continuity team, people who are on the phone with you, who are in touch with you, who support you from, with everything from copywriting to graphic design. So you are not alone in this. We embed our ads into the shows. They're not, they're not added later. They're part of the shows. In fact, often they're such a part of our shows that our other hosts will chime in on the ads saying, yeah, I love that. Or just the other day one of our hosts said, man, I really gotta buy that <laugh>.

(02:02:00):
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I have absolute approval on everybody. If you've got a great product, I want to hear from you. Elevate your brand by reaching out today@advertiseattwit.tv. Break out of the advertising norm. Grow your brand with host Red ads on twit.tv. Visit twi do TV slash advertise for more details or you can email us, advertise@twit.tv if you're ready to launch your campaign. Now. I can't wait to see your product, so give us a ring. Let's take us. Thank you aunt. Thank you so much. Thank you aunt. Thank you. Let take another call from we got a lot of hands raised. Should we do Louisville? Louisville, Paul, Louisville on the line. I'm gonna let you John Ashley bring up Lou Louisville. Paul, well, hello. What's Louis into the room? Paul, I should give you lessons on how you say Louisville. Louisville Paul, l o u i s is not Louie. Don't say Louie. I actually love Louisville best time of the year. Course goat is May, May 1st for the the Derby Derby, but you don't go to the Derby. You go before the Derby and you have some Derby pie, which is the best pie known to man Louisville Paul, unmute your microphone and welcome to Ask the Tech guys.

Caller 6 (02:05:07):
I've unmuted.

Leo Laporte (02:05:08):
Yay. And I We can you hear me? We hear you loud and clear. Hi, Paul. Yeah.

Caller 6 (02:05:14):
I was unfortunately not. Before I get to the tech questions, I wanted to talk to you about your last radio show because I thought that would be a good time to ask you about your disc jockey days.

Leo Laporte (02:05:29):
Ah, the good old days.

Caller 6 (02:05:31):
Yeah.

Leo Laporte (02:05:31):
56 degrees in the city. It's a Wednesday afternoon and now here's a little Neil Diamonds song. Great Sun Blue.

Caller 6 (02:05:42):
This band has been around since the late sixties and they're still going strong. They never had any hits, but they were the only claim to fame was that they were the a featured band on the cartoon, the Simpsons <laugh>. And is this a

Leo Laporte (02:06:00):
Trivia question?

Caller 6 (02:06:01):
<Laugh>? Yeah. Well, no, it's, it's, it's a question about your days in the radio. Okay. did you ever, back in the time when you were listening to or playing music were you aware of a br group called N R B Q?

Leo Laporte (02:06:16):
Oh yes. New yes. Nrbq. Wait a minute, don't tell me Stands for No, I'm thinking New Writers of the Purples. It's n r p s n Rrb Q stands for, I don't remember, but of course I know n New

Caller 6 (02:06:27):
Rhythm and Blues quart.

Leo Laporte (02:06:28):
That's it. New Rhythm and Blues Quartet. Yeah. Yes, of

Caller 6 (02:06:30):
Course. I, the reason I'm so interested the reason I'm so interested in them in stage, they're still together. Originated. Yeah. Wow. They originated here in Louisville. Yeah. great band band, great music. The one remaining member Terry Adams is from Louisville.

Leo Laporte (02:06:48):
I'll be darned. Yo. No, I'm very well aware of them. I don't know if, did they have any hits? I don't know if I would've no hit. Yeah. Wouldn't have played any of their

Caller 6 (02:06:55):
Music. They're known for being a bar band. You that is. They, they in their, if you ever watched any videos of them, it's entertaining to watch the keyboard player Terry Adams. He plays the piano like the drums. Yeah. It's really entertaining. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (02:07:13):
I I think I know them mostly from college radio where we did play in our bq cuz we didn't care if he had a hit or not. And I love, that's my style of music. I love that kind of music, so great. Yeah. Great. Yeah. Thanks for

Caller 6 (02:07:25):
Asking. So onto the tech questions for both you and Mikah, I'll start with you. Leo, I'm having at and t Fiber installed this week.

Leo Laporte (02:07:36):
Nice.

Caller 6 (02:07:37):
But I wanna ask you about the router situation. I've got an Orbi router.

Leo Laporte (02:07:41):
Okay.

Caller 6 (02:07:42):
And I've heard you and Lee and you and Steve talk a lot about the IOT devices. Right. Is there any way that when he sets this up for me, that he can put me on a separate you know, connection to my cameras?

Leo Laporte (02:07:59):
So yeah, you want, and this is this is Steve's, Steve's solution for, this was called three Dumb Routers. I'm actually not a huge fan of Steve's solution and nowadays they're better ways to do this. But the theory is these iot devices like cameras doorbells plant watering sensors on off light switches are not super secure. They're often unup updateable, the firmware may become insecure. We've heard so many stories. So his thesis is, and I think he's absolutely right, in fact I'm gonna in a second show you somebody who agrees with Steve, but his thesis for this is if you, if you want to use these, and he, he uses an example. He bought some no name Chinese on off switch. He said, well I'm gonna put this on my network. I have to, cuz it's a, it's a IOT device, but I'm sure as heck got not gonna give it access to anything else on the network.

(02:08:52):
So what he does is he creates something called a virtual land, a virtual local area network that is separate from the network where your stuff is. So I do this, we, I have a ubiquity system at home. I have a vlan, I have an IOT land and I have something I call secure land. And secure land is only phones, computers, things that I know are being kept up to date. I wouldn't even put a Windows XP on it. Stuff that I know is being kept up to date and secure because you don't want somebody to get into your network via a smart light bulb and then get access to your smart devices. There's a downside to doing this. First of all, many routers won't do it. I asked Steve about this, it's a Tuesday actually. They won't do it. And for instance, a guest network isn't necessarily isolated.

(02:09:41):
Plus there's a disadvantage to doing this, which is you can now no longer control <laugh> the light switch because it's on a different network. Right? So in order to do this properly, you have to also write special firewall rules that say you can only have traffic outbound from the secure network into the insecure network and no inbound traffic from the insec. And it gets very complicated. So as much as I love Steve, I think a lot of what he's proposing is not for the faint of heart and probably not doable with a company provided like the at and t router company provided router, your Orbis may be able to do it. There are now more and more consumer routers that can do it, that have separate networks. I asked Steve about that. And sometimes a guest network is, is a better solution. But it's funny because this did come up this week because Steve was talking about, believe it or not, cybersecurity recommendations from the nsa.

(02:10:38):
Whoa <laugh>, the National Security Agency, our spy agency, which we know has all sorts of tools for breaking in our computers. Well I guess that would make them experts <laugh> in in, in protecting your computers against others. They have kind of this weird dual purpose in life, both to protect us and to invade us. But one of the things they say in here is to is here it is secure routing devices. Keep them up to date. They say do not use your internet service provider may provide a motor or router as part of your service contract to maximize administrative control over a routing and wireless features of your home. Consider using a personally owned routing device. So like your Orbis that you control, it's more up to date. It's not a secondhand device. It is the case that some, in some cases you can't. The is p won't let you.

(02:11:34):
And some of this is because the I S P is doing bandwidth shaping using the router they provide you so they actually can control how much bandwidth you have. They can do all sorts of stuff. And if you don't use their router, they don't have as much control over what you're doing. That may be something you want. So they do talk at the NSA talks about not using the provided router. They say this is also from the NSA implement wireless network segmentation. This is what we were talking about. At a minimum, your wireless network should be segmented between your primary wifi guest wifi and i t network. They don't really tell you how to do that. <Laugh> <laugh> and it's

Caller 6 (02:12:15):
Not easy think it's po. Do you think it's possible that they would say I won't be able to use my orbi router?

Leo Laporte (02:12:23):
It is possible. It's unlikely. I think what at and t will do, you, there's two devices that you need with fiber. You need a device that converts. It depends on also what they, what they're providing you with. So if it's fiber to the curb, you're gonna get fiber into the house. You're gonna need devices converting the fiber into ethernet. But it may not be fiber to the curb. It may be fiber to the head end going into your house via ethernet. So it really is gonna depend what they give you. But usually they need some sort of device that's there. The company device, it's the equivalent of a cable modem for the fiber. Then they're gonna give you one device that does that. And routing. What you wanna do is do your own routing. So what you'll need to be able to do, first thing is ask them what can I use? And most cable providers have a list of approved personal routers. So make sure that you're gonna use a router that's compatible. And secondly, you're gonna wanna know how you can take the device they provided you and put that into bridge mode. Put that stop, stop it from doing any routing. Cause what you don't want is them to route and then you to route. That's called double nat. And I'm, I've heard

Caller 6 (02:13:27):
That's the way I have my current set

Leo Laporte (02:13:29):
Up. Yeah. There's it. That's that. It's doable. It's not ideal. So what you'd like to do is turn off routing on and ideally on their device. If you can't turn it off on their device, then turn it off on your advice.

Caller 6 (02:13:39):
When I try to log into my orbi router, I get this that says that this is insecure. Is that, is there any way to get a secure connection to my router?

Leo Laporte (02:13:50):
It says it's insecure cuz it's double naed

Caller 6 (02:13:53):
Or I don't know. It just, whenever I, whenever I try to get into my router, the, the address that they give me. Oh. it's not doing h whenever I go ahead. It's,

Leo Laporte (02:14:04):
That's your browser warning. You don't worry about that. Ignore that. Usually what you I have

Caller 6 (02:14:09):
One

Leo Laporte (02:14:09):
You could say, I accept this certificate. It's fine. I'll take it. And then

Caller 6 (02:14:13):
You, I have one last question. Leo before I, if, if you can I have time to check with Mikah. When you have on this new system that's set up that you have, is there any way on your end to put a queue so that you would know where you are as far as someone that's going to be called on? So like for example, oh, I knew I knew this. I was halfway back.

Leo Laporte (02:14:38):
We're barely able to pick you up. I know. I'm so sorry. <Laugh>. Yeah, you, but I mean, like in the old days, Kim would pick you up and say, Hey, you're gonna be next. Yeah.

Caller 6 (02:14:46):
Yeah. Well, this way I could know, I know for example, you had sit hours.

Leo Laporte (02:14:52):
I know, right?

Caller 6 (02:14:53):
Yeah. I could, I could go somewhere else. But John Ashley just

Leo Laporte (02:14:56):
Make it so <laugh> Okay.

Caller 6 (02:15:00):
Where, and

Leo Laporte (02:15:01):
We're in the very earliest stages of this and it's not Yeah.

Caller 6 (02:15:03):
I I hope that as

Leo Laporte (02:15:05):
You could see, it's not working very well. Right. With a phone number. That's maybe more

Caller 6 (02:15:08):
Of a possibility. Yeah. Well fortunately it's working for me. <Laugh>.

Leo Laporte (02:15:11):
Yeah. I'm glad you got in. I'm sorry. And for everybody who's sitting on hold, you know, there are people gonna be sitting on hold who never get in.

Caller 6 (02:15:17):
Well, I'm recovering from surgery, so, oh, it's no problem. Okay.

Leo Laporte (02:15:21):
Yeah, I apologize. I, we, we roll, we, we gotta find a better way. What we didn't wanna do and really can't do is what the radio station does. They pay for a special kind of a line and rollover line in special hardware and phones and stuff. We have the hardware, I guess we could pay for the line. It's expensive. That would give us a rollover and then we'd get phone calls. We thought it'd be better to have higher quality, which we do have video on occasion, but we lose a lot of the features. And Oh, one more thing. We didn't wanna have a full-time call screener cuz maybe, maybe somebody like Ann could do that. I don't know what <laugh> Yeah, <laugh>. We didn't wanna spend the money on a, on a call screener. By the way, the good news is Kim is working with Rich tomorrow and still doing it. So but yeah, we were trying to save money. I'm a cheap skate. Mm. That Now ask your questions of of Mr.

Caller 6 (02:16:11):
Yeah, Mikah. I have an Android an Android phone mm-hmm. <Affirmative> and an iPhone. But my iPhone is an iPhone SC that I bought in December of 2016. Okay. I'm still getting, I'm still able to get the 15 updates, but I'm wondering, am I ever, am I going to get a notification from Apple that they, they're no longer gonna be able to support that?

Mikah Sargent (02:16:40):
You're wondering about the end of life. So basically what will happen is you'll go to try to do the update and then it will let you know at that point. So it, I assume I mean one of two things. Either you are going into the settings and you're choosing software update and you're getting those installations, or you're letting it happen automatically and it kind of happens in the background if it is happening. What

Caller 6 (02:17:01):
I do, go ahead. What I do is I go to the general and then I put software updates. Then it says this is available. I have so little space that I have to do it on windows the iTunes.

Mikah Sargent (02:17:16):
Yes. Yes.

Caller 6 (02:17:17):
I have to do it because I don't have enough space mm-hmm. <Affirmative> and I'm able to update it that way. But I was just wondering, you're saying that when I do that, when I check for updates, it'll say you can no longer get updates. Yes.

Mikah Sargent (02:17:30):
That is correct. Yeah. So it's not as if it'll, you know, tell you, hey, in the next update is not going to be something that you're going to be able to use. Right. and a part of that is because genuinely the developers who are working on the next version are trying to determine what phones can or can't support it as they're working through the process. And so it tends to happen that whenever Apple's worldwide developer conference comes around and they announce the next version of the operating system, round about that time is when we get that information of, Hey, here's what it is and here's what films it'll be compatible on. So yeah. Is there,

Caller 6 (02:18:07):
Is there a a recommendation on, you know, I don't really use the iPhone, I use the Android more mm-hmm. <Affirmative> and I was wondering to save a little money, could I get, get the, the new phone, the new I, well get a refurbished mm-hmm. <Affirmative> iPhone se. Is that a good choice?

Mikah Sargent (02:18:28):
So

Caller 6 (02:18:29):
Since I don't really use the, the phone that much.

Mikah Sargent (02:18:32):
Right. But you, you're telling me you don't use it that much, but you're tell saying you do need to have both.

Caller 6 (02:18:37):
Yeah. It's, it always comes in handy for something. Okay. And that, you know, that I can't do on Android or seems like they're always saying, we need, we sent you a text to your iPhone and we need that <laugh>. Gotcha. Something like that. Well,

Mikah Sargent (02:18:52):
Here's what I'll say. Yeah. I would continue to use the iPhone essay you have now. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, if you do need to make the upgrade at some point, then yes, the refurbished store is specifically from Apple is a great place to shop because you do get those warranties that come with it. And you do get some, do

Caller 6 (02:19:09):
You, do you just go to the Apple website? What is that? Yes,

Mikah Sargent (02:19:12):
You go to, you go to apple.com and then typically at the bottom of the page, you'll find the refurbished store. In fact, what we'll do is we'll include a link in the show notes directly. Great. To the refurbished store for you.

Caller 6 (02:19:24):
Okay. Well thanks a lot. You're doing both

Leo Laporte (02:19:26):
Great. Thank you. I appreciate it. And give my regards to Nrbq <laugh> <laugh>. Hey, if you, they started here. Yeah. Louisville, they started here. A lot of good things started in Louisville. I love Louisville. Hey if you want to know or wanna see that the NSA cybersecurity recommendations, Steve Gibson did make a shortcut for you. It's his security Now shortcut of the week, which is a grc dot com, I'm sorry, grc.sc/nine 12. But all of the NSA cybersecurity publications are also on GitHub and the it's NSA cyber NSA, CYB e r.github.io. And including their best practices for keeping your home network secure, which actually I didn't realize is, is five years old now, but I don't, after Steve and I went through it, I think it was all pretty accurate. So we would, we would support it. The only issue I would have is some of this stuff is hard to do.

(02:20:21):
 And I, I worry because if you tell people all you, what you gotta do is you gotta get three routers. See and <laugh>, it's just gonna be too hard and people aren't gonna do it. So I like to, generally, I like to make recommendations that are less difficult to achieve. Even I think even putting an IOT device on on a guest network is good. Really the true, the best recommendation for iot devices is buy them from big name manufacturers. Although that won't protect you fully as we learn from Wise Yeah. Buy them from big name manufacturers. And then specifically what you wanna look for is over the air updates. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, they need to be over the air updateable because a manufacturer, if, if a security vulnerability is found, needs to be able to update it. And that's a really important feature.

(02:21:08):
So always look for that. Eventually you'll be able to say, I want Home Kit or I want Matter. They'll, there are standards for IOT security. Apple's Home Kit is probably the, the best example of this. If something has a Home Kit certification, you know that they're doing all the things Apple requires for them to be secure, you're much less likely to run into problems with it. Unfortunately that stuff's much more expensive and, you know, it's a lot cheaper just to go to Amazon and buy some noname Chinese light switch. Yeah. But don't do it <laugh>. You can if you know how to do Yeah. A VLAN and segment your your network. Yeah, there's the, there's the link. Thank you. Doug m also put that in our rrc chat room. Is that a more recent one? That's from 2023. Okay. So, so the one that I see on GitHub is, is the older one.

(02:21:57):
And though there is an updated one from the nsa, I guess go to Steve's I don't know if this is different than the, than the the 20 18 1. Yes. It's dated February, 2023, so I guess it is more up to date. So go to Steve's shortcut, then GRC sc slash nine 12. If you, if you want to read this. Hey, that wraps up another thrilling gripping edition of Asked the Tech Guys if you wanna see the full George Church interview twit TV slash twig. If you wanna watch Mikah and Rosemary Orchard, the best darn show about iOS that exists. You should watch iOS today, every Tuesday morning, and we do it live 9:00 AM Pacific noon Eastern Time, or just download it at Twitter tv slash iOS. Michael also hosts Tech News Weekly. You had a great guest on on th two great guests on Thursday with Jason Howell. Mike McCue from Flipboard was on talking about Mask to them. Yeah, that was great. That was great. What else? Anything else you wanna plug? Mikah? No, <laugh>, I got nothing. I'm okay.

(02:23:05):
Thank you all for joining us. We really appreciate it. Join us as we do this show live every Sunday at 11:00 AM Pacific. 2:00 PM Eastern Time, 1900 utc. The live streams for all of our shows are@live.twit.tv. If you're watching live, you could chat with us live@irc.twit.tv or if you're a club Twi Member Bravo. Thank you. Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you our much. Just to go to our discord and chat there. It's always a lot of fun in the in the Discord there. After the Fact on-demand shows available on our website, twi.tv for this show, it's TWI tv slash atg. There is an Ask the Tech Guy's YouTube channel. You can, that's actually a great place to take a clip and share it. Youtube makes that pretty easy to you. Of course you can always subscribe. In fact, that's our favorite way. If you find a podcast player you like, subscribe and that way you'll get it. The minute's available every week after our Sunday production. Thank you everybody. Thank you Ant Pruitt. That was fantastic. Fantastic. we will see you all next time on Ask the Tech Guys. Bye-Bye. Bye bye.

Jason Howell (02:24:13):
You wanna hear about the latest news happening in the tech world from the people who write the article sometimes from the people who are actually making the news? Well, we've got a show for you here at twit tv. It's called Tech News Weekly. Me, Jason Howell, and my co-host Mikah Sargent. We talk with some amazing people each and every Thursday on Tech News Weekly, and we share a little bit of our own insights in each of us bringing a story of the week. That's at twit.tv/tnw. Subscribe right now.