Ask The Tech Guys Episode 1965 Transcript
Please be advised this transcript is AI-generated and may not be word for word. Time codes refer to the approximate times in the ad-supported version of the show.
Leo Laporte (00:00:00):
It's time for ask the tech guys. I'm Leo Laporte coming up, I'll explain what this 32 bit float thing is and whether you need it.
Mikah Sargent (00:00:07):
And I'm Mikah Sargent and Leo Laporte and I help Mace wind Dee Google his life.
Leo Laporte (00:00:13):
Plus a visit from Bill Nye, the Science guy. It's all coming up next, on Ask The Tech Guys.
Mikah Sargent (00:00:22):
P odcasts you love. From people you trust. This, is TWiT.
Leo Laporte (00:00:25):
This is as the Tech guys with Mikah, Sargent and Leo Laport. Episode 1965, recorded Sunday, March 12th, 2023. Wet and funky. Ask the tech guys is brought to you by Melissa. More than 10,000 clients worldwide in retail education, healthcare, insurance, finance and government. Rely on Melissa for full spectrum data quality and ID verification software. Make sure your customer contact data is up to date. Get started today with 1000 records clean for free. At melissa.com/twit. 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@quit.tv and launch your campaign now. Well, hey, hey, hey. How are you today? It's time. Yes, indeed. Poor. Ask the tech. I said hello, Mikah. Sargent. Hello.
Mikah Sargent (00:01:30):
Leo Laport.
Leo Laporte (00:01:31):
You look fabulous. Maybe it's that new giant screen TV that you've got.
Mikah Sargent (00:01:36):
<Laugh>. Yeah, I've actually been tanning from it. Yeah. Yeah. It's been nice.
Leo Laporte (00:01:39):
We did a TV trade cuz I went out and got a new tv. The Q DK that Scott Wilkinson was talking about. The latest squareish technology is really bright.
Mikah Sargent (00:01:48):
Which brand
Leo Laporte (00:01:50):
Samsung.
Mikah Sargent (00:01:51):
Samsung 70
Leo Laporte (00:01:51):
Sevener. And then that meant I had this giant a hundred inch projector just hanging around. So you came over in a Sprinter van and loaded up and and you set it up and it's all good.
Mikah Sargent (00:02:03):
Yeah. Nice. It was, it was a process and but it's all up on the wall now and it looks great.
Leo Laporte (00:02:09):
You know who's not here today? Who's
Mikah Sargent (00:02:11):
That?
Leo Laporte (00:02:11):
Oh yeah. Pruitt got an extra hour of sleep today. <Laugh>. Actually we got an extra hour. We got a hour less of sleep. Yes, because we set our clocks forward. When will this madness end Mexico? This year is for the first time not gonna switch. I have a feeling that this is gonna be sweeping the, the globe eventually cuz it's a night nutty idea to change the
Mikah Sargent (00:02:32):
Clock. Absolutely. And we've got a bill waiting.
Leo Laporte (00:02:34):
Marco Rubio put a bill in. Now there's some debate. Should we, like my wife says, let's stay on daylight saving time.
Mikah Sargent (00:02:42):
Oh, which one to do?
Leo Laporte (00:02:44):
So California already had an initiative, a ballot initiative in which we'd say, we said we wanna, we want to change. But the, but it, the way it works, the federal government has to say yes cuz you're effectively changing your time zone.
Mikah Sargent (00:02:57):
Right.
Leo Laporte (00:02:59):
Your time zone is standard time. And you can't change your time zone unilaterally as a state or an individual. Although I'm very tempted just to say I'm gonna stay <laugh> on saving time
Mikah Sargent (00:03:11):
Zone. Right. I don't care what all the rest of y'all do. You all
Leo Laporte (00:03:13):
Can change any <laugh>, Arizona, Hawaii, they don't do it except for the Navajo Nation. They do it. It's a very confusing thing. Anyway, for those of you who are watching right now, congratulations. Your computer figured out how to change the clock or your phone. I have, there's three clocks in my house. I have to go around and manually change. Yeah, the micro wave, the oven. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>
Mikah Sargent (00:03:33):
Same.
Leo Laporte (00:03:34):
And the clock in the gym.
Mikah Sargent (00:03:35):
Okay. Which is not too many.
Leo Laporte (00:03:36):
The clock clock, because I mostly buy clocks that Well, you're sync up, you're
Mikah Sargent (00:03:40):
Cuckoo clock too.
Leo Laporte (00:03:41):
Oh, I had to change that too. Yeah, you're right. Four clocks. Why
Mikah Sargent (00:03:44):
Does he know that? I was there to get a projector. Remember
Leo Laporte (00:03:47):
<Laugh>? He noted my cuckoo clock. Ba Actually we are being, there's a lot of levity. Yeah. But there shouldn't be because a very serious thing happened in the United States this week. Very abruptly. The Silicon Valley Bank collapsed. Should I play the, there's two different clips we could play, both of which will get us taken down from YouTube immediately. One is Bart Simpson creating a run on the bank. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. And the other is of course from Jim with Jimmy Stewart. And it's a wonderful life. Well, you're money's not here, Mr. Potter. It's, it's over in Harry's house. You built Harry's house and, and, and his, so
Mikah Sargent (00:04:25):
You remember, just imagine them in your room. Imagine
Leo Laporte (00:04:27):
If you will. Yeah. Bart created a run in the bank by just going into the bank saying, boy, that's fake shot of money. They don't have any more money. Oh no. And everybody runs. And this is what a run in the bank is. It's a
Mikah Sargent (00:04:36):
Panic. Yeah. And, and that's what this story is, right? It was mis or improper communication. Right. For the most part. It's,
Leo Laporte (00:04:43):
It's complicated. Yeah. We're gonna, we're gonna get some financial experts, some financial wizards. I know you later in the week will have some on tech news weekly. Here's and, and man, Twitter was full of hot takes all weekend. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, many of which were probably misguided. But here's my understanding from talking to experts of what actually happened. So Silicon Valley Bank, which is a regular everyday bank, number 18 bank in the nation, billions on deposit. But it also catered to startups and Silicon Valley, you know, because the name and the cachet, you know what kind of hip but they had a problem other banks don't have, which is the, the way startups work. They get a pile of money in the beginning from venture capital. They have to put that in the bank cuz they're gonna spend it over time.
Mikah Sargent (00:05:30):
Okay.
Leo Laporte (00:05:31):
The way a normal bank would work, you might, a sergeant would open a checking account and dribble your pathetic little paycheck into it every month or every week. And then you might come to the bank and borrow as a, you know, to buy a house, a mortgage. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. So banks, you know, typically expect small amounts of cash and loans that they can give out. But Silicon Valley Bank had a problem. Its customers didn't need, they had a lot of cash. So they didn't take out loans. They just put a ton of cash in the bank. So that's problem number one. It was kind of a different customer base problem number. And now, and I should mention that the F D I C ensures deposits in a bank up to a quarter of a million dollars. 20, $50,000. So if you, if your bank defaults as SVB did, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation will make sure you get your money.
(00:06:25):
So all the people who are under a quarter of a million depositors like you, with your pathetic little paycheck. Right. You'll get your money back. Problem is <laugh>. Remember the investors with the big cash, huge amounts of money. Billions of dollars. Yeah. Roku, what did Roku say? 56% of their money was in svb. Billions. Billions. That's more than $250,000. <Laugh>. Etsy just sent out a notice to Etsy Sellers, Hey, we are not gonna be able to get you your checks for a while because the money was in the Silicon Valley Bank. There will be trickle down effects where thousands of startups who maybe won't be able to make payroll cuz they had more than a quarter of a million dollars in there, they won't get their money back right away. The other problem that happened was, here you have a bank with lots of cash and that nobody wants to borrow.
(00:07:14):
You have to put that money as the bank. You have to put that money somewhere. They did what they thought was the smart, safe thing. They put it in treasury bills, T bills, government backed securities, very safe. But the interest rate was less than 1% when they did it. Because the Federal Reserve has been raising the interest rates. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, those, those federal bonds are worth nothing. Right. You can't sell 'em to anybody except for, you know, 60 cents on the dollar. 70 cents on the dollar. Because right now I can get a T bill for a lot more. So they got upside down. They had a lot of money. They had to put it somewhere. If you're a bank, you can't put it in another bank. You, you know, so they invested it and they normally you'd invest in loans, but nobody wanted to borrow money from them.
(00:07:58):
Not many. Anyway. So then as the interest rates went up, they got in a more precarious position. And then the final straw was Peter Teal's Founder's Fund, which is a venture capital firm. He wrote a note on, I think Wednesday night or Thursday to his startups, all the startups he'd invested and say, take your money outta Silicon Valley Bank. It's not safe. Wow. And that triggered the run. So that's what happened is, you know, that's the Bart Simpson going in the bank doesn't have any money. And that triggered the run. And of course a lot of startups thinking this is gonna be bad on Thursday mornings, tried to wire as much money as they could out of there. Some succeeded, most failed. And it turns out about 95% of the deposits at the Silicon Valley Bank are above a quarter of a million dollars and are not insured.
(00:08:46):
F D I C came in, the bank has, has been taken over by the government. The federal government came in took it over on Friday and has guaranteed those depositors of a quarter of a million or less. We'll get your money tomorrow, but it's gonna take a while. I don't know if people will lose money. That's unclear. Janet Yellen was on the Sunday morning news programs this morning and was kind of reluctant to say much. She essentially said what you'd expect, which is well depositors under a quarter of a million dollars, you're gonna get your money back. The rest of you we're gonna get your money back. And it's gonna take some time. It's gonna take some time. So the real concern is tomorrow morning, and this is, this is something everybody might be impacted and we by, we don't know what's gonna happen.
(00:09:33):
Right. We don't. But there is a risk, as is always with a run of the bank when a bank collapses, especially a big bank like Silicon Valley Bank, that others go to their bank and say, you know what, I want my money. But as Jimmy Stewart said, we don't have your money. It's been lent out to Mikah for his mortgage. Right? Mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, it's been lent out. Even with those T bills, you can't get it right away. Cuz there's a term, the 10 year, I think a lot of their investments are 10 year terms. So if you go to your bank and say, I want all my cash, they can do that for some people. But they have to keep some reserves. I can't remember what the percentage is. It's higher than it used to be after after 2008. But I think it's, I don't know, five, 10, 20%, whatever it is.
(00:10:15):
We'll find out tonight. But so they can pay out that much, but they don't keep the, they don't have money in the vault. Right. So that's a run in the bank. If you, if everybody, all the deposits taking me my money, the bank has to go close it. Store, remember? And it's a wonderful life. Jimmy Stewart started taking money. I wish we had that clip. See if you find that clip, I think we could play that. You started taking money out of his own pocket and said, look, look, I can't give you all your money back, but how much do you need to get Baja? Wow. <laugh>. I'll take $17 and 50 cents. Oh, bless your heart. And so he, and they're watching the clock till it's 5:00 PM and they can legally shut the doors. Cause if you shut the door before the closing time, I don't know, something bad happens. <Laugh>.
(00:10:59):
So they made it fly. 4 3, 2. Oh, whoa. We made it right. Wow. So anyway, that's all I know about runs up Banks is from It's a Wonderful Life. And Homer Simpson and Bart Simpson. So that's not a really good education, but this is, it's potentially catastrophic. What it will impact. And if you're on Twitter at all, you, this is unfortunate, but you have to kind of go to Twitter to see what's going on. Everybody. a lot of lot of startups are saying, oh, you know, we're not gonna make payroll. This trickles down to normal people. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, we're not gonna, we're not gonna be able to pay people, you know, Etsy's not gonna be able to pay sellers. So we don't know how bad this will be until maybe tomorrow when the bank opens for business and we see. But it could be catastrophic. We are gonna get Jason Kakais, who has been, his hair has been on fire all weekend. He's been tweeting in caps all weekend. <Laugh> we're gonna get him on twit this afternoon about four o'clock Pacific. Here it is.
Old Film (00:12:13):
I have some news for you folks. I just talked Old Man Potter and he's guaranteed cash payments to the bank. Bank's going to reopen next week. But George, I've got my money here. Did he guarantee this place? Well, no. Charlie, I didn't even ask him. We don't need Potter over here. I'll take mine now. No, but your,
Leo Laporte (00:12:31):
Your money's not here.
Old Film (00:12:32):
You're, you're thinking of this place all wrong. As if I had the money back in a safe. The money's not here. <Laugh>. Well, your money's in Joe's house. That's right next to yours. And in the Kennedy house on Mrs. Mayland's house and, and a hundred others, you are lending them the money to build and then they're gonna pay it back to you as best they can. Now what are you gonna do foreclose on them? I got $242 in here and $242 isn't going to break anybody. Okay, Tom. So
Leo Laporte (00:12:58):
You can pay out a certain amount because you've got
Old Film (00:13:00):
Certs. You already sign this. You've got your money in 60 days. For 60 days. Well, that's what you agreed to when you bought your shares, huh? Huh? Did you get your money? No. Well, I did. All man put will pay 50 cents on the dollar package.
Leo Laporte (00:13:11):
Ah, that's what's going on right now. People are offer offering to buy those TBIs.
Old Film (00:13:16):
Tom, you have to stick to your original agreement. Now, give us 60 days on this.
Leo Laporte (00:13:20):
Anyway, that's enough of that. We're gonna get taken now. But actually we could put that in the podcast for a long time. It's a wonderful Life was public domain, remember? Mm, not anymore. Oh, wow. Yeah. That's odd. Not anymore. So, hello everybody. Welcome to Ask the Tech guys on a very interesting day. That's all we'll say about svb. I invited quite a few people including O' Malik, who's been writing about this. A good piece on Gigaom if you're, I guess his blog is now om.co. If you're interested, he has some very powerful links to say. Jason tweeted all in caps. Scooter X has put this in our discord. This is not one you need for people like Jason all in caps on Monday, a hundred thousand Americans will be lined up at their regional bank demanding their money.
(00:14:10):
Most will not get it. This went from Silicon Valley Insiders on Thursday to middle class on Saturday. Main Street finds out Monday. This is how you have a run in the bank. That is not the way to calm things down. Right. Your money is safe. Mr. Potter will give you 50 cents at the dollar. But I trust Jimmy Stewart. Right? Your money's safe. Anyway, we hope <laugh> Yeah. I'm not taking my money, I'm leaving my money alone. Leave your money in your bank. But it probably is a good thing for normal people to note that you're insured, but only up to $250,000. Yeah. you can't expect somebody who just got, you know, a hundred million dollars in a venture fund to spread it out. 20 different, you know, or 40 different banks, right? Yeah. So I mean, you could, I remember in the early days of Microsoft, they were making so much money and they didn't really have a cfo, f or any anybody to invest it.
(00:15:05):
They didn't know what to do with it. They just bought CDs, certificates of deposit banks, CDs, and they just had hundreds and hundreds of bank CDs. Wow. Eventually though a company gets big like Microsoft, you have somebody who's investing it and, and doing something with the money. Alright? This is a show where we take your calls, calls come into call.twi.tv. That'll what that'll do. And do that on your phone. Just go in your browser and enter call twit.tv and they'll either open Zoom, if you already have Zoom on the phone. Otherwise you can't can do it in the browser. We say that just cuz you got a microphone and you got a camera on your phone. That probably works. Works. Yeah. Buddy, you could do it at your desktop. If you know what you're doing, call twit.tv. You can also send us emails. We have, I, I am told three, maybe four video emails. We'll get to as many as we can at ask the tech guys at Twitch tv. Let's start. Ray's been sitting very patiently. We're gonna move Ray into the into the lobby or out of the lobby into my heart <laugh> and get our first question of the day. Mikah, Sargent and Leo LePort. Ask the tech guys ask something. Ray. Hello Ray.
Caller 1 (00:16:17):
I'm not hearing him.
Leo Laporte (00:16:19):
Oh, we can see ya.
Caller 1 (00:16:22):
Hello. Hello.
Leo Laporte (00:16:23):
Hello. Hello, Ray.
Caller 1 (00:16:26):
Thanks Leo. Welcome. Thanks
Leo Laporte (00:16:27):
Mikah. Thanks for hanging on. Have a,
Caller 1 (00:16:29):
I'm not sure if he saw my chat, but I took advantage of the T-Mobile Tuesday deal for the mls pass. Yeah.
Caller 1 (00:16:40):
Nearly pass or whatever they call it. And so I set that up on my iPad from which I'm calling you now. And but when I went to, and I have the AV adapter that Apple sells, the digital AV adapter. And so I launched the, one of the games yesterday. Tried to hook it up to, well, I hooked up to my oled 55 inch c I think it's what it is in lg, NICE tv. Got it. For the, for the Super Bowl. Basically.
Leo Laporte (00:17:07):
Good choice.
Caller 1 (00:17:09):
And so the, the, the live games play on the iPad obviously, but when I hooked it up to through the adapter to the tv periodically it would shut down saying content couldn't load. Sometimes the message was your, the display that you got it hooked up to won't Is, is it's copy is illegal. It's hcp.
Leo Laporte (00:17:33):
Yeah. So what you want to, unfortunately there's really only one way to do this, which is to get an Apple tv. If you had an Apple TV built into the display, which you might modern, a lot of modern TVs do, LG might so look. Yeah. Yeah. But if not,
Caller 1 (00:17:47):
I have the old Apple tv but not a new Apple. Yeah.
Leo Laporte (00:17:49):
Cuz you want 4k. Right? So the, there are a couple of ways to do this, but of course you could put MLS on your Apple tv. It's part of the Apple TV plus subscription. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. So you could do that or you could airplay from your iPad.
Mikah Sargent (00:18:03):
Exactly. Lots of Apple tv. A modern air LG TVs have airplay too.
Caller 1 (00:18:08):
Yeah, I tried that, but it looked like crap.
Leo Laporte (00:18:11):
Ah, so they, so, so of course they're, you know, this paranoia is everywhere and so the, the copy protection won't let you hook up an H D M I cable to a TV cuz they think you're somehow stealing
Mikah Sargent (00:18:24):
<Laugh>. Right.
Leo Laporte (00:18:25):
I should explain what this is cuz we mentioned it on a Mac Break weekly on Tuesday. You have till March 14th if you're a T-Mobile customer with like, like a full, I don't remember what it's the T-Mobile one account. You get a free one
Caller 1 (00:18:38):
Magenta
Leo Laporte (00:18:38):
Or something magenta, something like that. You get a free one year subscription to Apple tv, plus's, mls. Oh, nice. Mal ma Major League Soccer. Yeah, I did it. I'm not, and you know what's good because I probably wouldn't have paid for it, but it's, and I watched it the other night, it looks good and everything, but I watched it on Apple tv. So is there any way around
Mikah Sargent (00:18:55):
That? So, huh. So the, the problem too is basically when you are airplane, you are using part of your internet bandwidth, your local wifi router bandwidth mm-hmm. <Affirmative>. And so you were trying to have something stream streaming to the iPhone and then the iPhone's trying to also stream that to the device. So that's causing it to be at the quality that you're seeing. If you, if you had a, if you had an iPad or something like that where you could get you know, actual ethernet into it and then stream it that way, that would work. But yeah, unfortunately doing that airplay, in fact there are some times where Airplay two will just kind of stop actually loading the content if it's too big. If it's too much of a
Leo Laporte (00:19:40):
But look on your tv cuz I think since you just got it, it should have the Apple TV app on it. You know how Oh,
Mikah Sargent (00:19:46):
That's true too.
Leo Laporte (00:19:47):
Yeah. Yeah. You know how your TV is, those apps look and see if you've got the Apple TV app. If that does, then you install MLS on that. It's not as good as an Apple tv, but at least it'll give you that capability. You should be able to watch it.
Caller 1 (00:20:01):
Yeah. This was through the Apple TV app on the iPad and No,
Leo Laporte (00:20:04):
But there's one on your TV is what I'm saying.
Caller 1 (00:20:06):
Oh, I understand. No, I understand that. Yeah. What I had to do yesterday is, and, and it was really frustrating, is I would play it on the iPad and then I would see it play on the iPad and that would punch in the the, the adapter and then it would show up on the TV for about five minutes. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. Yeah. And then somehow some error came up and it said the content can't pass the content or your display is illegal. There's
Leo Laporte (00:20:27):
One other. Yeah. It's HT c p, it's the copy.
Mikah Sargent (00:20:29):
It's frustrating that it shows up for a second there. Cuz then you're going, well what's, why, why can't I see it? They
Leo Laporte (00:20:34):
Go, wait a minute, he's parting this, turn
(00:20:37):
It off. There is one thing you probably could do. We, when whenever we buy H D M I converters from Amazon, they don't say strips out H D C P splitters, but almost all of them do. Yeah. So, so it's an H D M I splitter. Is that what it is? Benny? You know. Okay. so we have a bunch of them and we've discovered that I believe all of them <laugh>.
Caller 1 (00:21:06):
That's
Leo Laporte (00:21:06):
True. Because they're made in China. Right. And and they're not gonna support it. Darn it. So that's another thing you can do. It won't be, it won't say it cuz it's illegal. It's a violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act to remove copy protection. But in fact, these htmi, so it's a spinto, there it is. It's a splitter. And so it's H D M I and then it has a couple of HDMIs out h dmmi. And that, believe it or not, may solve your problem. They're, they're 12 bucks. They're not expensive. Because in our experience, although unbilled, this is an unbuild capability of almost all H Dmmi splitters is we don't need to pass along that copy prediction stuff that's in America. So that's what what's
Caller 1 (00:21:53):
Interesting is because I saw the Super Bowl a month ago that that's the reason why you bought the tv. And I had the Fox app and I was watching it through the, through the Fox app and it didn't have an issue with this. So I don't know, maybe it's, maybe it's some kind of licensing agreement with M mls or
Leo Laporte (00:22:07):
Probably is.
Mikah Sargent (00:22:07):
Yeah, almost certainly. And plus we know that mls well, was it mls? I was gonna say mlb. I know that Apple, when it made all of this technology, they relied on what the baseball, what Major League Baseball had done before this. And so there was, you know what I mean? So they're like the best, you know, that sort of the, the Cadillac of streaming. So they're gonna have all that extra stuff that keeps that the content safe versus the Fox app, which a part of that was Fox wanted as many people as possible to see it because they were
Leo Laporte (00:22:40):
Selling
Mikah Sargent (00:22:41):
Advertising. Exactly. So they weren't as concerned with making sure that that HTCP was there.
Leo Laporte (00:22:46):
So here's, here's one of the HD mi splitters we have. So it's got, it's got a little power dongle. It's got H D M I in you take that off the iPad on the other side. It's got a couple out and oh, look, conveniently it's labeled <laugh> H D C P, stripper <laugh>. So that's something we put on because what I think we did ended up testing a lot of these and we found it doesn't, so that's something that's not widely known. In fact, I would prefer it not. So if president she calls, just don't tell 'em. But yeah, I think a lot of these, they just, and I think that's intentional. I don't think that's accidental. So that's one more thing you can try.
Caller 1 (00:23:26):
Okay. I, I have some tools to try so
Leo Laporte (00:23:28):
Far. Hey, great, great to talk to you, Ray. Thank you so much for joining us and
Mikah Sargent (00:23:32):
Best of luck.
Caller 1 (00:23:33):
Thank you very much. All
Leo Laporte (00:23:33):
Right, take care. I, I should point out that we are, I am wearing, you are the socks from our third biggest fan <laugh>, who shall remain nameless because he or she did not tell us. But she, he or she made you Chihuahua socks? No, no Leo socks. Oh, them I thought it was a chihuahua. It was me. Yeah. For some reason it's Leo, some other yappy thing. <Laugh>. And then and then I have, oh, can you see him? I have Steve Martin socks. Isn't that cute? Thank you. Pink Panther third biggest fan. Yeah. You're supposed to wear funny socks. You forgot, didn't you? I forgot to wear them today. Yeah. So I need to wash them still. This is the funny socks. So, well, I didn't wash 'em and there were no spiders in it, so I think you're probably okay. I wouldn't all right. Skin rash. Kevin is next from, despite Joe Esposito's lobbying. Kevin is next from Las Vegas <laugh>. But don't worry, Joe, you are, you're coming up. Don't worry. <Laugh>. Kevin, are you there?
Caller 2 (00:24:38):
I'm here.
Leo Laporte (00:24:39):
Hey, welcome. Welcome. Talk to you. Thanks for joining us. The tickets.
Caller 2 (00:24:41):
Oh, good. Well, I, I'm, I'm hoping everything works out. I've got my iPhone as a continuity camera on my Mac. So it's doing the audio and the video and
Leo Laporte (00:24:51):
It looks great. And it sounds great. Yep.
Caller 2 (00:24:53):
So yeah, it's great. And I'm still using my, my Mac to do everything. You
Leo Laporte (00:24:59):
Are a Mac geek? I I believe it. He's wearing a Mac Geek T-shirt that's
Caller 2 (00:25:04):
I got. I'm, I'm all Mac all day everywhere. Nice. But I got a couple quick hits. The, the main thing well, a couple main things I wanted to do is of question. Thank God Apple finally introduced the classical service through this app.
Leo Laporte (00:25:20):
Hallelujah. I've been saying that everywhere. Hallelujah. Hallelujah. Hallelujah. Hallelujah. So they bought a year and a half ago. Absolutely Prime Phonic, which I was a subscriber to. Loved it. Annie and Ako was too I take it. You were as well. And they said, oh, don't worry, don't worry, we bought it, but we're gonna bring it back as part of Apple Music. And then nothing for a year and a half. Crickets. Crickets. And they finally announced the, the day after I complained about this on that pretty quickly, they finally announced that they're gonna do it March 28th. You can go to the app store right now and pre-order it and it will download. I bet you they do it sooner than March 28th. But people have asked, well, Leah, what do you care? I mean, there's all that music's already on Apple Music. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, the problem is classical music's very different from pop music.
(00:26:07):
Not only does it have a performer, you know, an orchestra, it has the composer, it has the year, it has the opus number. There's a lot more metadata mm-hmm. <Affirmative> and Apple Music doesn't really let, for instance, one of the things we used to do with Prime Phonic, which is great, you could say, I want Mozart's the Magic Flute. And then it would show you all the different performances of it and you could choose the performance that you want. You know. And so that's something really that wasn't well served by Apple Music. I am so thrilled. Plus, I just, I mean, I like to go to a classical music app cuz I know when I ask for something, I'm gonna get classical music. So often on Siri, I'll say what happened the other day, I say I wanted Vivaldi, the Four Seasons, it gave me Frankie Valley in the Four Seasons.
Mikah Sargent (00:26:49):
Oh no.
Leo Laporte (00:26:50):
And it's just not the same <laugh>. So it's, it'll be nice to have a classical app. I think that'll be good. Yeah.
Caller 2 (00:26:56):
Well, especially for musicians, because generally as a pianist you wanna have a specific performance of a piano concerto or a Mozart sonata or whatever it be. You want a specific performer. You want to hear that?
Leo Laporte (00:27:10):
I want Glen Gould. I don't want no Baron Baum. So Yeah. So that's, yeah. So that's exactly right. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. and so thank you Apple. I you took, I'm
Caller 2 (00:27:22):
Debating whether I'm gonna do this standalone app.
Leo Laporte (00:27:26):
Well, apparently it, I don't, they haven't said if
Caller 2 (00:27:28):
I'm gonna do the Apple one. I
Leo Laporte (00:27:29):
Don't think it counts. It costs more.
Mikah Sargent (00:27:31):
No. If you have an Apple Music subscription,
Leo Laporte (00:27:33):
You'll,
Mikah Sargent (00:27:34):
You'll get it. Period. You will get this Yeah. As part of your Apple Music subscription. That's nice. You don't necess phonic get Apple one. Yeah. Yeah. I, I think two.
Caller 2 (00:27:43):
I don't, yeah. And I was thinking of doing the Apple one bundle. Cause I have the, the iCloud 50 gigs and I have Apple TV plus. So well just to
Leo Laporte (00:27:52):
Add worth it.
Caller 2 (00:27:53):
Use it and have everything. You could
Leo Laporte (00:27:55):
Do the math, you get additional stuff. The Fitness plus stuff on Apple TV is really great as well. You get Apple, that app. Yeah. A news app with a, well, you get a lot of magazines for free. Yeah. So I, I did subscribe to one that's worth it, I think. Yeah.
Caller 2 (00:28:09):
Yeah. The other thing I wanna mention is I, I did the court cutting finally. I got rid of Cox <laugh>. I've got the Verizon 5g mm-hmm. <Affirmative> for the router. And I've hooked it up to, and I've got Apple TV Plus, and I have a D V D player and I've hooked it all up and it's working. Great. The only question I have is about hooking up an ethernet to the hello? Are we there? Yes. Yes. Oh, I, I, I, I lost you there for a second. I didn't, I didn't hear anything. I thought maybe I lost you. But I was wondering if cause I have ethernet from the router to either, right now I have it hooked up to the tv, but I can hook it directly to the Apple tv. Is there an advantage one way or another? And if I do that, should I take off the network and not have the wifi? Is that gonna be a problem?
Mikah Sargent (00:29:08):
So this, these are kind of separate questions as far as the Apple TV goes. Thinking about ethernet, it depends on how new your Apple TV is. If you don't have the most recent Apple TV 4k, then you may not want to use the ethernet port. And that's really, yeah, because up until the most recent Apple tv they have not had a gigabit as an option for the porch. Oh, I didn't know that. So in many cases, the 8 0 2 point 11 AC ended up being faster than the, what is it, 10, 100, 1000 base connection that was there. And so people would just do that if they needed to have no latency or if it was part of, you know, a larger network, especially in conference rooms and stuff like that. But at home, just connecting into the wifi was faster. But if you've got the most recent Apple tv, then yes, plugging in the Ethernet's going to be faster. But the rest of your question, I'm getting a little confused cuz it sounds like you're saying plugging the ethernet directly in and No,
Leo Laporte (00:30:14):
Just go through the router. That's fine. You actually have to go through the router cuz it's gonna
Caller 2 (00:30:17):
Be Right. Cause right now I have it. I have the router hooked to the TV through ethernet.
Leo Laporte (00:30:22):
Does your router have more than one ethernet? Extra ethernet port or just one? Yes it does. Yeah. So
Caller 2 (00:30:28):
No, it has two.
Leo Laporte (00:30:29):
Yeah. So yeah, either that or get a switch that goes into the router. But you definitely don't, you want, you have to go through the router. You can't bypass the router.
Caller 2 (00:30:38):
Oh no, I'm not trying to do that. I was wondering whether I should do the router directly to the Apple TV or the router to the tv.
Leo Laporte (00:30:45):
Through the directly tv.
Caller 2 (00:30:47):
Yeah, I have it right now. Connected to I
Leo Laporte (00:30:50):
Both. If
Mikah Sargent (00:30:51):
You use,
Leo Laporte (00:30:51):
Do you use the TV for streaming? Like does it have Netflix on it or something? Or do you just use the TV as a monitor for the Apple tv?
Caller 2 (00:30:59):
No, it's just a monitor for the tv.
Leo Laporte (00:31:01):
Well, here's my advice with a smart tv, if you're not using the smart features, do not connect it to the internet. Cuz what it's really doing is spying on you. You need to periodically to update the tv. Maybe. But what that, that whole internet connection for the tv, if you're not using built-in apps inside the tv, like Netflix or whatever, if you're using your applet as you should be using your Apple TV for all of that. Disconnect your take the thing off your TV and put it into the Apple tv. Your TV does not need to be connected to the internet except for updates and to send back information about what you're watching to the home office.
Mikah Sargent (00:31:35):
Are you ready for this last week? Because I have my TCL TV connected to get internet or to get firmware updates. But I have it blocked from phoning home last week the TCL t v tried to contact home. I kid you not in one week, 22,800 times <laugh> it, my router blocked it from phoning home 22,800 times.
Caller 2 (00:32:01):
Holy amen.
Leo Laporte (00:32:02):
So you have set up that it can't call out. It can
Mikah Sargent (00:32:06):
Only receive, it can only receive an update. That's
Leo Laporte (00:32:08):
Interesting. Yeah. I would just say, I would just say don't even bother connecting. You can see why skip it. That's a lot of traffic you don't want in your network. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> don't connect it un you know, once a month or once every quarter, connect it just to see if there's updates because the rest of the time it's just spying on you. Again, that's not the case. If you have you know, you're using the smart TV apps on your smart tv, you need to connect that to the internet. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. So just take it
Caller 2 (00:32:30):
Off the tv. I've
Leo Laporte (00:32:30):
Got an old plug it into the Apple tv.
Caller 2 (00:32:33):
Okay. I'll do that. And I've got, oh, I've got an old TV and, and that's the other, eventually I wanna upgrade a 4k. Cause I have an old Panasonic that's still chugging along and it's a nice picture, but it's not 4k. And I have an old Denon receiver, which I'd like AV receiver, I'd like to upgrade eventually as well. But they don't die. So I just can't
Leo Laporte (00:32:53):
See. This is when I call the upgrade cascade. People forget you get a 4K tv, suddenly you have to upgrade your AV receiver. You have to upgrade your Apple tv. Oh, you're, you're spending a lot of money on a lot of stuff. Get new H D M I cables, <laugh>. Yeah. It's not just the tv. You wanna upgrade everything to get to to get to the nice 4k, but then you're gonna Well
Caller 2 (00:33:12):
Eventually I will. Yeah. Yeah. Eventually I will. But right now
Leo Laporte (00:33:16):
And by then they'll have eight K. So <laugh>, what did they call up again?
Caller 2 (00:33:20):
<Laugh>. Oh, one last thing. Yeah. Just cause a few months ago I was wondering about a replacement for the Logitech remote and I was asking about the sofa baton and I got it. I got it on spec 50 bucks, but I got it for 40 on Amazon. I highly recommend it. I give it about an eight minus. Nice. only cause only because it has a scroll wheel, which is a little cludgy. And it has batteries that you have to either recharge or replace as opposed to plug in to recharge your battery and onboard battery. But other than that,
Leo Laporte (00:33:52):
It does look like a bat baton. How many buttons does that thing have? One <laugh>?
Caller 2 (00:33:56):
Not bad. It's, but it has those colored ones that you can use for macros, which is great. And like I said, it connected with an app. You connect to all your devices and then it pairs with this and it sends the info there and it's, it's, I like it better than the Logitech. And it was a lot cheaper. And you know, I say I think it's a good choice for people to do. They have the more expensive one with the hub, but that's like three or four times the price and it's ridiculous. But the
Leo Laporte (00:34:27):
So don't So your advice is don't get the hub, just get the regular sofa baton.
Caller 2 (00:34:32):
Yeah. I think for most people cause it, it's 15 devices. I don't think you Right. You're gonna need more than that.
Leo Laporte (00:34:37):
Yeah, you'd have to. Yeah. So get the U one, not the X one. Right. And, and does it, so one of the things, the harmony was great. The log harmony was great, is they had a database on online. Of course, you know, they're, they're, they're gonna discontinue it, but they had database online that had all the devices. You didn't have to teach it. Does the sofa baton do that as well?
Caller 2 (00:34:58):
Yeah, they, well, through the app you enter your name and just, just the company in the name. You don't even have to add any codes or anything
Leo Laporte (00:35:06):
And then it will figure it out. Okay, good.
Caller 2 (00:35:08):
It figures it out. Sends it to it. And then even when there was a device I had, I was using an H D M I switcher, but I'm not anymore. But it didn't have that in its database and it sends information to the developers and they sent back a note saying, well, can't find it. They'll
Leo Laporte (00:35:23):
Add it.
Caller 2 (00:35:24):
But yeah. But just go ahead and par it to that remote. If you have a remote for it. And it did and it worked fine.
Leo Laporte (00:35:31):
And now you're doing a favor, everybody else cuz they'll be able to access that in the future in the database. That was
Caller 2 (00:35:36):
So they're,
Leo Laporte (00:35:37):
This is, they're really good data. Yeah. Yeah. They say they have 600, like I say, 600,000 devices from 6,000 plus brands in the cloud. So this is impressive. Yeah, this is very impressive. And
Caller 2 (00:35:49):
They're, and they're adding, like I say, through users, they're adding more every, every day. So they're very, and they, like I said, they were very responsive when this particular device didn't show up. So I know that they're really trying to build the database of devices they have to be able to use with their remote. Look
Leo Laporte (00:36:07):
At all those. But
Caller 2 (00:36:08):
I, I think it's wonderful. I don't any pro, the only other issue is I think distance. You have to be like within five to seven feet. You can't be very far away from it. But other than that, like I said, those two, two or three little,
Leo Laporte (00:36:23):
It's, it's in, it's it's infrared too. So it's line of sight. Some, some of the logitechs were rf. So you go around a corner and still control your stuff. Right. I bet the hub though. I wonder, I bet that's how the hub works is with rf. Anyway, I'm gonna buy one of these. Yeah, I'm gonna buy one of these because
Caller 2 (00:36:41):
Yeah, you, you can get it on sale at 40. That's great. I know it says 50 in the but I, I, Friday what? Oh, Thursday or
Leo Laporte (00:36:51):
Friday, the X one with the hub goes a hundred goes 10 meters infrared, wifi or Bluetooth. Yeah. Yeah. That's really cool. So you can, Hey, great tip. I really thank you so much. That's great. Kevin
Caller 2 (00:37:04):
Works great.
Leo Laporte (00:37:05):
Thank you. I'm gonna buy one. This is a constant battle. You know, we have five remotes right now in our coffee table. Woo. And Lisa says, you can't die because I won't be able to watch tv. That's the only reason. Yeah, no, it is literally the only reason. <Laugh>. So I didn't do a manual. I printed up a manual with pictures and everything. But this would be much better to have a, have a remote, one remote that, that rules them all. Hey Kevin, thank you for calling. I appreciate it.
Caller 2 (00:37:32):
Great. Thank you guys.
Leo Laporte (00:37:33):
Thanks Maggie. Take care. Bye-Bye. It's nice to talk to a Matt Geek. You wanna talk to a science geek? Yeah. Earlier this week I was so jealous. So cool, so jealous. On this week in space, Rod Pile and Tariq Malik, the host of this week in space, had a very special guest, bill Nye the science guy. And they asked him kind of the most important question, why do we need manned space exploration? Watch,
Bill Nye (00:38:02):
We wanna explore just to see what's out there. Cuz you don't know what you're gonna discover. You wouldn't, nobody would be talking about the big bang or dark energy and dark matter without space exploration. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, we wouldn't be having this conversation electronically across a continent without space exploration. But the other thing for me, you guys, I want to find evidence of life. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> on another world while I'm still alive. I just, that just would mean the world's <laugh> to me. <Laugh>. So I claim if we could find life on or evidence of life on another world, it would change this one. It would change our world. Everybody would feel differently about being alive in the cosmos. I mean, and you know, the, we all accept that the earth is, well, almost all of us accept that the earth is a ball <laugh> that has changed the way we do everything. Commerce, navigation, reckoning of the seasons and time on clocks and computer clocks and everything. And so I would like to find evidence of life some sort of like fossilized paws scum on Mars. But what would be really cool would be right, would be to find something still alive. Does it have DNA N right? Martian microbes, little Mars CBEs. Do they have dna n a Are they a whole nother thing? Do, do, do.
Leo Laporte (00:39:33):
Wow. Bill Nye the science guy.
Mikah Sargent (00:39:35):
I'm shook.
Leo Laporte (00:39:37):
He's kind of a hero for all of us geeks. Anyway, if you wanna see the whole interview, it's on this week's, this week in space TWIT tv slash ts and you note something different. What's that video? That's right. We, we were, we've been planning a rollout video for this week in space for some time. But when we heard Bill Nier is gonna be always a no no, no, no, no. Now is the time. So you can watch that video or audio if you prefer TWI tv slash twist or search for this weekend space wherever you get your podcast. <Laugh>. Hey, let's take a little break. We come back with more questions. Joe who is a betting man said I'm gonna be next. And I said that's kind of like the WWE e wanting legislatures to approve betting on scripted wrestling matches. I don't know. That
Mikah Sargent (00:40:22):
Seems, I
Leo Laporte (00:40:23):
Don't know if it's <laugh>, it's gonna the lobby, the guy with the button is what I'm saying. <Laugh>, do you think that'll pass? That's such a weird,
Mikah Sargent (00:40:31):
I didn't realize that was happening.
Leo Laporte (00:40:32):
Yeah, they want, they want people to be able to bet
Mikah Sargent (00:40:34):
No
Leo Laporte (00:40:35):
On matches. They said, well, we'll keep the script secret,
Mikah Sargent (00:40:38):
But what if I decide to change it? Right. I
Leo Laporte (00:40:40):
Don't like it. No, I don't. I don't like it. Plus I think there'll be a lot of people who say, wait a minute, wrestling is scripted.
Mikah Sargent (00:40:47):
Oh, isn't that Yeah. There really? Yeah. Sorry. It's like, you know, learning that Santa Claus truly is real
Leo Laporte (00:40:54):
<Laugh>. I know. Wait, when I found that out, yeah. I fake. Oh man. I've been blowing it every Christmas. Holy cow. Our show speaking at Christmas. Our show is brought to you by a wonderful sponsor who has gifts for you. Melissa, you've heard us talk about Melissa before. Organizations who are looking to adapt and survive today's digital world have got one thing is really important. We talk about it all the time. Authentication, the ability to establish and verify identities online. And frankly, traditional identity verification methods are just not cutting it anymore. Digital ID verification is now a core fundamental to maintaining customer and employee trust. Transactions must be secure in order to safeguard against the continuous rise in fraud fraudulent activity. It's one of the biggest issues we face today in, in a whole bunch of sectors. But the use of digital identity and digital identity practices has transformed it.
(00:41:54):
It's put, businesses are using it now at the forefront of new technologies, new user behaviors, and it lets them onboard customers in a matter of seconds. It lets you have the confidence that you're dealing with you, who you think you're dealing with here. There is a quite a few benefits you can expect with digital identity verification using Melissa. Users can verify themselves remotely 24 7 and by the way, at a much faster rate. And for you at a cost rate that's far lower than manual checks, digital ID verification can verify more than 6,000 global ID types. Wow. And uses trusted worldwide data sources to ensure that person's who they say they are, increased automation, faster turnaround times, fewer touchpoints, make it for a seamless customer experience. Plus you are in a position to be able to scale up or down with a business based on the number of checks performed.
(00:42:52):
You can, you know, grow or if, if you can reduce it, if you don't need it, you never pay for more than you need. You could be up and running in minutes with easy integration into existing systems and workflows that could be performed in seconds. In an easy three-step process. You'll enjoy higher levels of accuracy. That's one of the things Melissa, the address experts has always been great at getting that accurate customer data in there. You'll also get better compliance. You know, manual keying is just a, a recipe for error. Right? But you're not doing that anymore. Rarely will you experience any downtime when it comes to cloud servers because they're always updated with the latest technology. So they're gonna stay one step ahead. And if you have to maintain, know your customer KML or any money laundering AML compliance, you'll be very happy to learn that Melissa is fully compliant.
(00:43:44):
So you're gonna ensure a standout customer experience, but you're also gonna get that fraud protection. Since 1985, Melissa's specialized in global intelligence solutions to help organizations unlock accurate data for a more compelling customer view. And don't worry, I know you know you're giving them that precious data, but Melissa treats it like the goal that it is. They undergo continuous independent security audits cuz they're absolutely committed to data security and privacy and compliance. In fact, they're SOC two, HIPAA and GDPR compliant. Your data's in the absolute best hands. Make sure your customer contact data is up to date. Make sure you're dealing with the customer you think you're dealing with. Get started today. 1000 records clean for free. That's always been the offer. I love it. Melissa.Com/Twit. Melissa, m e l i s s a.com/twit. We thank 'em so much for supporting as the tech guys you support us too.
(00:44:39):
When you use that address, melissa.com/twit. Another way to support us join the club. If you enjoyed that Bill Nye interview. If you enjoy this weekend space that's thanks to our club members, we launched this weekend space in the club and we're able to bring it to a larger audience as it grew its audience. We're doing the same thing with Mikah's show. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, hands on Mac. I think hands on Mac may be getting close to a a public reveal. We don't wanna keep things in the club only, but when a show is launching and it doesn't have any support, ad support or audience support, the club is the best way to get it launched. We got hands on Windows with Paul Throt. We've got the Untitled Lennox Show with Jonathan Bennett. Jonathan asked me every week, when can we go publicly <laugh> keep saying someday maybe enough.
(00:45:28):
There's there's enough support with Cliff Lennox <laugh>. It means a name. Is that the problem? <Laugh>. we also have the GIZ Fizz with Dick d Bartolo, Stacy's book club special events we put on. You get access to the Discord for a lot of people. Add free versions of all the shows is the selling point. That's nice. You wouldn't even hear this. And you also get the TWI plus feed, which has, besides new shows, it has material that we just don't put out anywhere else. The, a lot of the chatter before and after shows is the most interesting part of shows. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, it helps us out a lot. You would think with all that it would cost a ton. Seven bucks a month. Nothing. We wanted to make it affordable. $7 a month. You can give us more if you wish, but you don't have to. $84 a year. There's also corporate memberships. Find out more at twit tv slash club. Twit tv slash club. And honestly, I think the discord is is perhaps the <laugh>. It's so fun. The best part of the whole thing. It's such a great community. We would be honored if you would join us.
(00:46:33):
Is that Bobba? Yeah. I don't know. What movie is that from? Empire. Empire. Okay. He knew I neither knows all twit TV slash clum twit. Thank you. Thank you for your support. Hey, should we take another call? Let's take another call. What else do we have? We got by Sam Bull Salmon is on his way up in a Kia. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> the new the new Ionic. Right? The new EV from Kia. Something <laugh> that's coming up in just a bit. We got a lot still to do. We're gonna do talk about these microphones. I promised we would ex explain what 32 bit flow recording is and why you might want it. But Joe has his thumb on the scale. Joe says, I bet you're gonna take me next. <Laugh>. All right, Joe, you win. Hello, Joe, our photographer, our street photographer from New York, New York. I, I was just guessing based on the order in Zoom on the top, so you think pays attention to that. Is this order chronological even? I don't even know how it works. Is it chronological? We don't know even we don't know magnets. How do they work? No one knows. So what can we do for you, Joe?
Caller 3 (00:47:43):
Yeah. real quick before I get into my question I just going back to the TV thing that Michael was talking about. I have a TCL eight series and I don't connect it to the internet. I use an Apple TV and there's a flashing white l e d in the front that cannot be disabled unless you connect it. So I to cover it with some electrical
Leo Laporte (00:48:01):
Tape. Oh, I hate that.
Caller 3 (00:48:02):
It's, it's, it's really
Leo Laporte (00:48:04):
Obnoxious. I have the same pro. I have a, Lisa doesn't like anything, any lights in the room. I have so many blinky lights and, and what I've done is gone around and they're, they even sell these Yep. Little sheets of dots of different not only different sizes, but different opacities. Yep. Different. So dots. So if you kind of need to see it, but you don't wanna see it bright and stuff. And you can go around and, and I now take it on trips with me because we stay in hotels. They're also blinky lights. And I, so if you ever stay in a hotel room that somebody's put dots on all the LEDs,
Caller 3 (00:48:34):
<Laugh>, you know, Leo's
Leo Laporte (00:48:34):
Been there. I've been there. I've been there. Hey, that reminds me, I forgot to mention when I was talking about Club Twit seeking a home theater. Home theater Geeks is back. Yes, that's right. In our club. Scott Wilkinson. And he is first interview was with Tomlinson Home Olson. The t the H, the th is he the T and the H of th h x. He's the, he's definitely one of them. <Laugh>. <laugh>. Anyway, what can we do for you? That's a good tip. Thank you Joe, what can we do for you?
Caller 3 (00:49:00):
Yeah. so I just installed Ubuntu on my laptop and everything is working well except for one thing. The track pad scrolling, you know, when you use two fingers to scroll it's all over the place. And I looked on Google, looked on the Ubuntu forums and cannot get a straight answer as to how to slow that down a little bit. Apparently different apps might use different methods. I think you
Leo Laporte (00:49:25):
Have a bad driver. I think you have a bad driver. So I use a buntu and a buntu derivatives. I like Pop os I also use Manjaro and arch derivatives and all of them handle the track pad on every laptop. I try. Well, but you gotta get the right track pad driver. And so cuz I think that's the problem. And then once you have the right driver, there will be settings to slow down the ballistics of the track, padd, things like that. But I think if it's jumping around a lot, it's really hard to control. That's just a bad
Caller 3 (00:49:54):
Driver. It's not that it's jumping around, it's just too fast. I just wanna slow it down like it works
Leo Laporte (00:49:59):
Well. Well have you gone into settings just to see nothing, nothing in there. Okay. There's,
Caller 3 (00:50:03):
You can control the track pad speed, but not the scrolling speed.
Leo Laporte (00:50:07):
Oh, I get what you're saying. So the track pad's fine.
Caller 3 (00:50:10):
That's fine. It's,
Leo Laporte (00:50:11):
It's up and down.
Caller 3 (00:50:12):
Yeah, yeah, yeah. The two fingers scrolling and I, I cannot get a real straight answer as to how to change that there. There's nothing in settings. There're some people say, oh, if you have a Logitech whatever, use this. If you've got a synaptic whatever, use that. And it's, it's all over the
Leo Laporte (00:50:30):
Place. Scooter X is pointing us to ask ubuntu.com/questions, but you could just search for touchpad. Two fingers scroll too fast. <Laugh> <laugh>. And there actually is an article about that. So
Caller 3 (00:50:44):
I have seen those, but apparently Firefox uses a different method of scrolling than some others do.
Leo Laporte (00:50:51):
So one thing you might do is turn off or on, but I think off smooth scrolling on Firefox. Okay. That might be one of the, one of the problems. Or maybe turn it on, actually, you know, I don't, whatever it is. Turn to the other one. <Laugh> just saved. Toggle it. Because there is a setting for smooth scrolling and that may be actually what's, what's causing the issue. I wouldn't be surprised. Okay.
Caller 3 (00:51:13):
Yeah. I'll give that a shot.
Leo Laporte (00:51:15):
Yeah. And then, and then do. Look, this is where Arch is. Great, cuz the Arch Wiki has lots of information and BTU is less, a little less so, but do look for alternate drivers. What you wanna find out is who makes that track pad, is it a Synaptics or, or who, and it may be the, the generic driver that Abuja installed isn't the best driver for that. So that's the other thing I would try to do. Okay, Joe,
Caller 3 (00:51:41):
That makes sense. Real quick before I go one quick tip, if I may. Yes. so I have been doing some spring cleaning lately and getting rid of some old gadgets that don't really work too well, like old printers and things like that. Dell will take almost anything back if you just want to get rid of it, really. Yeah. Well to recycle, I mean, they
Leo Laporte (00:51:59):
Don't give you money for it, but they, but they'll, they'll take it. Well,
Caller 3 (00:52:01):
I mean, it's stuff that I would just throw out anyway. Right. It's not anything that's worth
Leo Laporte (00:52:05):
Selling. I don't know if you've noticed, but every time you buy a computer these days, there's a five buck recycling fee. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, they have to take it back. That's what that money goes to. So good. Yeah. Just, just say And do you have to box it up in any particular way or Yeah.
Caller 3 (00:52:18):
How does that work? No, no, no. They don't care. They'll just, you tell them what you're returning and you give them some basic information like your address and phone number and you just print out a FedEx label and you can just nice have FedEx pick it up. And I've done broken old computers and printers and things like that that again I wouldn't get any money for, but I kind of felt bad just having it sit in a landfill somewhere. Something.
Leo Laporte (00:52:37):
Yeah. No, that's good. Yeah.
Caller 3 (00:52:38):
Allegedly, you know, dispose of it properly. That's
Leo Laporte (00:52:41):
Good. It's, it's tricky to dispose of these. And so you always want to go to an electronics recycler and I bet you Dell does the right thing. They don't just send it to China. I bet you they take it apart and get the pieces out and so forth. The biggest problem is the battery. There are constant fires at recycling centers from lithium ion batteries getting punished and exploding
Caller 3 (00:53:02):
And, and they pay for the shipping to be clear. Nice. It doesn't act cost you any money. Nice. That's great. And I don't know whether they still do this, but they used to actually feed, didn't have a box. They would ship you a box
Leo Laporte (00:53:11):
Oh
Caller 3 (00:53:11):
Wow. To send it back and for free. I don't know whether that's still the case, but. Right. I have done that before and it's again, completely free. So Nice. Definitely worth looking into.
Leo Laporte (00:53:19):
Very good tip. Very good tip. And they pay for shipping, so there's no reason not to. Thank you, Joe. Always a pleasure. Pleasure. I appreciate it. Likewise. I see Dr. Mom in the chat room, but she's not raised her hand, so I won't call on you. Oh. Unless maybe
Mikah Sargent (00:53:35):
Looking to raise
Leo Laporte (00:53:36):
That. Do you wanna raise your hand, Dr. Mom? You should. You can raise your hand in person cause I can see you <laugh>. Yeah. All right. Dr. Mom's gonna raise me. Ah. Hello. Dr. Mom <laugh>. So she goes, she's looking, she's looking, she's looking. She goes, oh, well there, I could do that. I could do that much. All the way from beautiful San Diego, California, where the sun is not shining because California is under six feet of water today. Dr. Mom. Hi lil.
Caller 4 (Dr. Mom!) (00:54:05):
Hi. Yeah. Not just six feet of water. The swimming pool is overflowed. The fountains in the courtyard have got water. And my poor dog is looking outside going, I'm not going <laugh>, I
Leo Laporte (00:54:14):
Ain't going out there Uhuh. No way.
Caller 4 (Dr. Mom!) (00:54:18):
The only comment I was gonna make on recycling check with your local high schools and fundraising events. They're always having recycling events.
Leo Laporte (00:54:25):
Yeah. And you know we used to on the radio show years ago, we used to have ads for electronic or e-waste recycling. Cuz you can't just give it to the regular recycler. You gotta Right. You gotta find an e-waste. Every town we'll have an e-waste center. And that's even batteries. Even old batteries you gotta bring there. Well,
Caller 4 (Dr. Mom!) (00:54:43):
In San Diego, the, the libraries will take back your batteries. Nice, nice. Recycle these batteries. You just take 'em in and hand 'em to 'em. Things like televisions and stuff they usually try and charge you for, but like, we're having another one next weekend. Nice. And the high schools do it to raise money. Sure. You're not gonna get any money for it, but just drive it over. Give it to 'em. But one thing, make sure you wipe the hard drive. Give it over
Leo Laporte (00:55:06):
To 'em. Yes.
Caller 4 (Dr. Mom!) (00:55:08):
You know?
Leo Laporte (00:55:09):
Yep. I got
Mikah Sargent (00:55:09):
Rid of an old printer and I I, I put on my safety goggles. I got out my drill and I drilled through all the printers, chips in it.
Leo Laporte (00:55:17):
Printers have hard drives. Printers have storage on them. People
Caller 4 (Dr. Mom!) (00:55:21):
Remember that old fiasco with the printers and they were recycling 'em when they said and found all the patient records and everyth
Leo Laporte (00:55:25):
On them. Yeah. Terrible. Dr. Mom is a physician and fully HIPAA compliant. So there <laugh>. Yeah.
Caller 4 (Dr. Mom!) (00:55:33):
No kidding. Believe me. The stuff that you have to deal with, did you know that your side of your face is not HIPAA compliant, but your full face is.
Leo Laporte (00:55:40):
Oh, really? Yeah. N b NBC used to tell us if your mother, so they said when you're shooting on the street or whatever, even if it's somebody's back, if their mother could look at it and say, oh, that's, that's my son Mikah mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, then you gotta get a release. Interesting. If you're But now the computers, it's only half the face. Cuz my mom would know it's this half
Caller 4 (Dr. Mom!) (00:55:59):
HIPPA is a profile is not considered a problem. A full face or three quarter
Leo Laporte (00:56:03):
Six. Isn't they funny?
Caller 4 (Dr. Mom!) (00:56:04):
Huh? Tattoos are a problem.
Leo Laporte (00:56:06):
Oh yeah. Cuz they're often unique. Yeah, yeah.
Caller 4 (Dr. Mom!) (00:56:08):
Yeah. If you have like a radiation therapy tattoo like I did when I had radiation 10 years ago, I got a blue dot on my chest. That's not exactly considered identifiable.
Leo Laporte (00:56:16):
There are a lot of people with blue dots there. Hey, but you're, you're good. You're in good health now. Everything's fine.
Caller 4 (Dr. Mom!) (00:56:22):
I celebrated 10 years in June. I take my last maintenance pill Nice. And I get to throw and the better, I finally had both cataracts fixed. Fixed I celebrated by throwing out all my contact lenses. Woo.
Leo Laporte (00:56:34):
Nice. Yeah. You told me when you get your cataracts fixed, you can get corrective lenses put in your eyes. Yeah. You don't have to wear glasses anymore. Oh, that's fantastic.
Caller 4 (Dr. Mom!) (00:56:43):
I can, I can see 20. I didn't realize how bright colors were.
Leo Laporte (00:56:46):
Oh, that's so great. I can't wait to get cataracts <laugh>.
Caller 4 (Dr. Mom!) (00:56:50):
Yes
Leo Laporte (00:56:50):
You can. No, I, I'm just kidding. Obviously I'm, I'm just kidding. Hey, I had some questions actually cuz Dr. Mom is kind of our physician resident, physician expert. We've been talking lately about apple and they seem to be making some progress towards a non-invasive mm-hmm. <Affirmative> glucose monitor for your Apple Watch. And I was, I w i you, I know you're kinda up on this. I was just curious what kind of f d a approval do they have to get for that?
Caller 4 (Dr. Mom!) (00:57:18):
Okay. They're gonna have to get an f FDA A to use it and get insurance companies to pay for it. People have to understand there's a difference between f FDA compliant approved or compliant. And FDA approved compliant means that FDA's decided it's not gonna kill you or harm you. Right. Approved means it can be used for medical things. So you see a lot of stuff like that. I don't
Leo Laporte (00:57:38):
Know if there's almost all the Apple Watch stuff is is merely compliant. Right. Right. The
Caller 4 (Dr. Mom!) (00:57:43):
E ecg it's not a proof. Yeah. It just means it's like remember that thing card's still around where you put
Leo Laporte (00:57:48):
Yeah.
Caller 4 (Dr. Mom!) (00:57:49):
Or I would use a Google watch. I can put a finger here and get an ekg.
Leo Laporte (00:57:52):
Yeah. That's a, that's compliant, not approved. That's
Caller 4 (Dr. Mom!) (00:57:55):
Compliant. It means it's not gonna electrocute me or something. But a physician.
Leo Laporte (00:57:59):
But don't dia but don't diagnose anything from it cuz it's not approved.
Caller 4 (Dr. Mom!) (00:58:05):
Well you could, like they say cardio will send it to a cardiologist and they'll look at it and everything. Right. no reliable physician would risk their license and their insurance
Leo Laporte (00:58:16):
On it's a No, but they'll get you, they'll give you a full e kg with all 20 sensors or
Caller 4 (Dr. Mom!) (00:58:22):
Whatever. Well what they may do is they may look and say, that doesn't look right. Get yourself in here. Yeah. And let's do it properly.
Leo Laporte (00:58:27):
Yeah. Yeah. And that's really, I think the value of it. Oh, that makes me nervous. Let's come on, let's, let's do a real test. Exactly. Yeah.
Caller 4 (Dr. Mom!) (00:58:34):
The the thing with the glucose, what they're trying to do is, I mean, I wear a continuous glucose monitor little button on my arm over
Leo Laporte (00:58:41):
Here.
Caller 4 (Dr. Mom!) (00:58:41):
Yep. Yep. And I can scan, but the, the sensor is under my skin and when it does, it measures the sugar level in the fluid around the cells in my arm.
Leo Laporte (00:58:49):
The interstitial which glucose level.
Caller 4 (Dr. Mom!) (00:58:51):
Exactly. Yeah. That lags about 15 minutes behind what's in my bloodstream. Mm. Both going up and going down. But for day-to-day stuff like what can I have for breakfast? Don't scan my arm, my blood sugar's 80. I can sit there and have toast for breakfast. My blood sugar's 130, I'm gonna pass on the bread and such. Right. They're trying to see if they can do it with a sweat on the arm.
Leo Laporte (00:59:12):
Interesting.
Caller 4 (Dr. Mom!) (00:59:13):
Okay. Which the problem is what if you're not sweating? Right. It's not hot enough or anything. There's some technical points. They've been working on it for a while. There's also, again, the latency issue, as I said, the interstitial one cause
Leo Laporte (00:59:25):
It's not your blood glucose, it's just the glucose and other stuff. And remember at Google had this contact lens fairly mm-hmm. <Affirmative> that they decided to abandon it was gonna do the glucose in your tears. Right. And it had the same latency problem, but also it was hard to make a contact lens with batteries and <laugh> all the equipment that you had to have in there. Not something anybody wanted to wear.
Caller 4 (Dr. Mom!) (00:59:46):
I think as they said, like I use second generation CGM from one company. The third generation just came up. It's about the size of two dimes. I want
Leo Laporte (00:59:54):
The new one I was using the Abbott and the two. Yeah. But but the new ones do it by Bluetooth. You don't have to put your phone on your on your arm.
Caller 4 (Dr. Mom!) (01:00:04):
The new ones are, the new ones are Okay. Now that you, the dex the product Dexcom came, I used, I used the Abbo. The Dexcom is continuous reading. The average stores the information, but you have to scan it with nfc Right. To get the information off it. And you have to do,
Leo Laporte (01:00:17):
Supposedly within eight hours, it only stores eight hours of
Caller 4 (Dr. Mom!) (01:00:19):
Readings. Supposedly the new abbots are supposed to be like the Dexcoms and they're gonna be doing it continuously. Good. Good. Here's the problem. I will tell you with all of 'em, if you take a hot shower, they're inaccurate for about an hour and a half now.
Leo Laporte (01:00:31):
It's all sorts of problems. Yeah.
Caller 4 (Dr. Mom!) (01:00:33):
Yeah. You, you can't take vitamins. Yeah. Can't take vitamins C with them. There's a whole bunch of issues that mess it up.
Leo Laporte (01:00:37):
Yeah. Plus your arm gets tired of that every two weeks, man. Every two weeks.
Caller 4 (Dr. Mom!) (01:00:43):
Ah, no that doesn't, that doesn't bother me.
Leo Laporte (01:00:45):
I wanna put on my butt instead. But anyway, that's another story, another conversation for another time. You
Caller 4 (Dr. Mom!) (01:00:50):
Can, the reason they say your arm is, that's the only place that they tested it to get approval. Right. God, people put it on their stomachs. They put
Leo Laporte (01:00:57):
It on their back. I know some type one diabetics put 'em all over the place cuz Yeah.
Caller 4 (Dr. Mom!) (01:01:00):
You should run out. They wanna rotate even changing it every two weeks. You run outta spaces eventually, but, oh yeah. I mean, to me it's, I slap it on my arm. I've gone around in tank tops and stuff with the button on my, on my grandkids. People are used to
Leo Laporte (01:01:11):
Grandma's. Yeah. I, the other day
Caller 4 (Dr. Mom!) (01:01:13):
Grandkid, it's Grandma's reset button.
Leo Laporte (01:01:15):
<Laugh>,
Caller 4 (Dr. Mom!) (01:01:16):
You know, I go
Mikah Sargent (01:01:18):
Store.
Leo Laporte (01:01:19):
We saw, we went to a big rock concert with you know Motley Crew and so forth that Poison was playing. And Brett Michaels, who's the lead singer of Poison, is wearing proudly wearing his CGM right in his arm there. Yeah. cuz he's a type one diabetic or Yeah, I think he's type one. And he has been his whole life. And it's no, it's no big. Right. It's no big. It's a, it's a good thing. Yeah.
Caller 4 (Dr. Mom!) (01:01:43):
It's, so Now listen, I have one bone to pick with you. Uhoh. Why didn't you give mic? Why didn't you not give Mikah the weekend off last weekend to go to the knitting show in Sacramento?
Leo Laporte (01:01:52):
I, he didn't ask
Mikah Sargent (01:01:54):
<Laugh>. I didn't know. But thank you Dr. Mom because Dr. Mom shared in the chat place where I can see all of those events that are coming up. So next year, oh God. Hopefully I'll get to see your mom. Thanks. In Sacramento.
Leo Laporte (01:02:05):
Now I gotta give him time off <laugh>. Did you go up to
Caller 4 (Dr. Mom!) (01:02:08):
Sacramento? Well, there's also one in Pasadena in November.
Leo Laporte (01:02:11):
Did you go to the Sacramento one?
Caller 4 (Dr. Mom!) (01:02:13):
Of course I did.
Leo Laporte (01:02:14):
Oh, you're a big knitter. That's a big deal. That's a commitment.
Caller 4 (Dr. Mom!) (01:02:17):
Well, okay, here we go. Pictures
Mikah Sargent (01:02:20):
<Laugh>
Caller 4 (Dr. Mom!) (01:02:20):
There. Okay, there's my crochet.
Leo Laporte (01:02:24):
Wait a minute. Don't tell me what that is. Is it like
Mikah Sargent (01:02:26):
A, is it like a latte?
Caller 4 (Dr. Mom!) (01:02:28):
That's a hot chocolate.
Leo Laporte (01:02:29):
Hot chocolate cuz it's got whipped cream in
Mikah Sargent (01:02:31):
Oh, the little
Caller 4 (Dr. Mom!) (01:02:32):
Teapot. There's my crochet
Leo Laporte (01:02:33):
Tea pot, Susan. Annoyed. Okay. Oh, it's a teapot. Okay. <laugh>.
Caller 4 (Dr. Mom!) (01:02:36):
That's a teapot. Yes. It's annoyed. Oh yeah. I have a crochet latte. I have problems. San Diego.
Leo Laporte (01:02:41):
I love the show us us the latte again. Yeah. Can we see that again with the hot chocolate? Okay,
Caller 4 (Dr. Mom!) (01:02:45):
That's, this is hot chocolate.
Leo Laporte (01:02:46):
I love the hot chocolate with the
Mikah Sargent (01:02:48):
Cream. So
Leo Laporte (01:02:48):
Cute. Whip flies.
Caller 4 (Dr. Mom!) (01:02:49):
Chocolate bar on the
Leo Laporte (01:02:50):
Top. Oh, that's so cute. Do you give those to your grandkid?
Caller 4 (Dr. Mom!) (01:02:54):
Some of them I do. Some of them I don't. If I put what's called modeling wire to it so the arms will stand up and like wave at you or something. I won't give that to a child.
Leo Laporte (01:03:01):
Yeah, no, no, no. Yeah.
Caller 4 (Dr. Mom!) (01:03:02):
Yeah. Because there's a wiring risk. But my problem is I moved in New York, I used to knit myself new hats and scarves every year.
Leo Laporte (01:03:09):
Right.
Caller 4 (Dr. Mom!) (01:03:10):
You move them in San Diego.
Mikah Sargent (01:03:11):
Yes. I had the the same issue. I've made so many hats and scarves with knittings specifically. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. And I'm like, I don't,
Leo Laporte (01:03:19):
You know what they do in San Diego? They knit golf club sucks.
Mikah Sargent (01:03:22):
Oh. Cuz they all golf.
Leo Laporte (01:03:23):
Yeah. That's what you're gonna knit. There's your golf
Caller 4 (Dr. Mom!) (01:03:26):
Clubs. Except, except you can't use wool because they get wet and get funky. So you have to use acrylic, which I hate using acrylic club. How do, like
Leo Laporte (01:03:31):
Acrylic guys, it's my hobby is getting wet and getting funky. So, you know, it, it just depends. PMI different
Mikah Sargent (01:03:36):
Strip. Yeah. Thank you. Tim
Leo Laporte (01:03:38):
<Laugh>, did you have a question Dr. Mom, you just wanna call me to yell at me for not letting Mike have the weekend off.
Caller 4 (Dr. Mom!) (01:03:44):
I just wanna give a you a comment on another place on how to recycle.
Leo Laporte (01:03:47):
Okay.
Caller 4 (Dr. Mom!) (01:03:48):
Which was as like I said was check your local high schools, check your local churches and Oh,
Leo Laporte (01:03:53):
That's right. Such Yeah, you already
Caller 4 (Dr. Mom!) (01:03:54):
Said it. They almost all have events every month or so. Okay. Some of them even have paper shredding events and you can bring bins of paper.
Mikah Sargent (01:04:00):
Oh that's nice.
Caller 4 (Dr. Mom!) (01:04:01):
Big old. Because what they do is they, they sell the byproducts to raise money. So they just give 'em to you Nice ham farmers. They don't charge it all away. The TVs or anything.
Leo Laporte (01:04:09):
Dr. Mom, longtime friend of the show, it's so nice to talk to you. Good to see you. Appreciate getting you on. Ask the tech guys your first visit, but not your last, I'm sure.
Caller 4 (Dr. Mom!) (01:04:19):
Yeah. And Mikah, one of these days we have to do a little segment on Knit companion, I dunno
Leo Laporte (01:04:24):
Use yet. He's totally like the, the textile guy. He does it all. It's amazing.
Caller 4 (Dr. Mom!) (01:04:29):
It's the best program for knitters around. But it has a very steep learning
Mikah Sargent (01:04:32):
Curve. Yes it does. Yes it
Leo Laporte (01:04:34):
Does. Oh, you have it knit
Mikah Sargent (01:04:35):
Companion. Companion. Yeah. It
Leo Laporte (01:04:36):
Is it iPad as well as iOS. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, I mean iPhone. Yeah. Cuz you want a bigger screen, right? Yeah.
Mikah Sargent (01:04:41):
Right. It it's got lots of great tools for kind of moving along in the process and everything. That's
Leo Laporte (01:04:45):
My mom about
Caller 4 (Dr. Mom!) (01:04:46):
This. My like stitches. You know, you wanna do a special lay stitch here? You can turn it purple everywhere in the pattern. So, you know, it's coming up nice. But it's got an incredibly steep learning curve.
Leo Laporte (01:04:54):
I agree. Nice. Thank you doctor. Mom. A wonderful day. Stay dry or like me get wet and funky. It's up to you <laugh>. Okay, I should we take, I think we should take the nerdiest caller in the in the who
Mikah Sargent (01:05:17):
Is the
Leo Laporte (01:05:17):
Nerd? Who is the nerdiest caller? Caller? I think it's Tom. Tom. You don't have your hand raised. Can I, can I pick up on any on you anyway? Oh, wait a minute, Joe. Joe has the mug too. Yeah. Tom, can I, can I pick you up? Let's do it. Tom, come on. You win the prize nerd of the week. Ladies and gentlemen. Tom is on the line. Where are you calling from? Tom
Caller 5 (01:05:45):
Warren, Ohio. Can you hear me?
Leo Laporte (01:05:46):
Yeah. Warren, Ohio. Yeah, you bet. See I, I gave Tom the prize cuz he, he's wearing <laugh> with a twi sticker on it. <Laugh>. Okay.
Caller 5 (01:05:54):
Yeah, I, my, I have, I ordered some twit mugs but the logo's worn off of 'em. And
Leo Laporte (01:06:00):
Joe s Baito has a very nice twit mug. He sent us a twit mug, in fact. Thank you Joe. I gotta thank you for that with the new logo on it. I really Oh, nice. One of the new, we have many, many logos cuz Anthony Nielsen can't stop <laugh>. So what's up in your world Tom from Warren?
Caller 5 (01:06:17):
Oh, it snowed a little bit today. It's temperatures all the way up to 35 degrees and we're waiting for spring over here.
Leo Laporte (01:06:25):
Yeah, I bet. Patiently we're getting it. It's beautiful. Do you see all the blossoms?
Mikah Sargent (01:06:28):
Yes. Oh my goodness. You
Leo Laporte (01:06:29):
Don't get that in St. Joe? Oh
Caller 5 (01:06:30):
Yeah. We have a little bit of the Capitol Hills, but they're not blooming yet. They're, they're, they shoved up through the leaves and through some of the snow. We don't even have any snow on the ground now. That snow came today, about a quarter of an inch of still in. It was gone after a couple hours.
Leo Laporte (01:06:46):
This is what radio is great for. It's the farm report. We got Tom on from Warren Howard. Things you Ohio or is the corn coming in?
Caller 5 (01:06:56):
Not yet.
Mikah Sargent (01:06:57):
Not yet.
Caller 5 (01:06:58):
<Laugh> around this area. If I go about 10 miles, five, 10 miles out of town, there's soybean and Corn Farm. Oh,
Leo Laporte (01:07:05):
I bet. Oh, I bet. Yep. So what can we do for you Tom?
Caller 5 (01:07:10):
What's the latest and greatest for mesh system for your wifi?
Leo Laporte (01:07:16):
Oh, that's a good question.
Caller 5 (01:07:17):
I'm looking for a wifi six setup. Yeah. Because I think my old Google mesh that I have now doesn't have, it doesn't do wifi.
Leo Laporte (01:07:26):
Google I believe has updated the mesh and it probably is wifi six, but I'm still an Arrow fan. I know you you
Caller 5 (01:07:32):
Mean just through a software update?
Leo Laporte (01:07:34):
No, no new hardware because that's Yeah. New frequencies. So they have to have new radios to do six or six E. Okay. In fact, I'd probably look for six E because if you're gonna upgrade it might as well get six E. You don't have six E.
Caller 5 (01:07:46):
That's the hero you're talking about. That's what
Mikah Sargent (01:07:47):
I was thinking. So Nest, Google has the Nest wifi Pro with wifi six E, that is the full name. There's the Google wifi, there's Nest Wifi and then there's Nest Wifi Pro with wifi six E. So if you wanted to stick in the Google ecosystem, if you liked the way that that worked and you're comfortable with the system, then yes you could go with the Nest wifi Pro with wifi six E. I, because I use it so much and because I have been able to troubleshoot it with family and know exactly how it works, I do continue to recommend Euro. I have not yet had a reason to not recommend Euro as the mesh wifi system. They have absolutely wifi six E there's the Euro Pro six E version and so you could use that if you'd like. But again, if you wanna stay with Google, there is an option for you with wifi six e
Leo Laporte (01:08:38):
I personally, I like the arrow. That's what you have. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. And if the speed leader was always Netgears Orbi, which is also mesh system, they also have a six E system. But I'm not Netgear Yeah. I am not up to date on what the, what the best mesh is these days. Cuz as you can see, they, they release new stuff all the
Mikah Sargent (01:08:57):
Time. All the time.
Leo Laporte (01:08:59):
Oh. Yeah. And I just don't know what the best mesh is. We should do a little poll.
Caller 5 (01:09:04):
My Google system I think is an antique. I think it's five years old or
Leo Laporte (01:09:08):
Older. Yeah. I wasn't really fond of the old Google systems, but I've heard from a number of people that the new pro is actually quite good. So I didn't,
Caller 5 (01:09:16):
It worked fairly well. I know they've increased the speeds over here with our whatcha you call it? The
Leo Laporte (01:09:24):
Your I S P charter?
Caller 5 (01:09:26):
Yeah, the, the charter. Yeah. Charter Spectrum. I was trying to think of the spectrum. And it's up the 300 now, but it's still not, you know, the uploads not symmetrical.
Leo Laporte (01:09:37):
Right. The
Mikah Sargent (01:09:38):
Wire, the wire cutter, which does a lot of different guides for the best of this, the best of that. They did recently update in February their best wifi mesh networking guide and continue to recommend the euro as well. Yeah. So that's, that's good to hear. Cuz it sometimes takes a while from them to get the latest.
Leo Laporte (01:09:55):
The negative though, and the only negative I think on Euro is there's a subscription fee of 90 bucks if you want the euro, all the extra features. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, there's a second negative, which some people bother. Some people wouldn't bother you cuz you have a Google mesh router. But Euro does send a lot of information back to the home office. That's how they do their bandwidth shaping is it's not done locally. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> on the Euro, it's done on their servers. And some people, you know, in effect Euro is getting information about all the devices you have so they know everything you have on your network, things like that. And that bothers some people. I think Google probably does the same thing. It's the easiest way to do bandwidth shaping. I don't know if Netgear does. My sense is they do not. So wire cutter obviously wasn't paying any attention to those issues, but I think those are for some people, you know, showstoppers. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, so you should be aware of it. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>
Caller 5 (01:10:45):
You have to have the subscription with the
Leo Laporte (01:10:47):
No, no, no. What do you get? You
Mikah Sargent (01:10:49):
Describe though, right? Let me see. Yes, I do because it's how I get my it's the password subscription and stuff like that. So if you want to have a dynamic what is that called? I can't think of it now.
Leo Laporte (01:11:02):
Dn
Mikah Sargent (01:11:02):
S
Leo Laporte (01:11:02):
Yes.
Mikah Sargent (01:11:03):
Thank you. If you wanna have a dynamic DNS so that you can phone home with a specific dn s a
Leo Laporte (01:11:09):
Dynamic ip.
Mikah Sargent (01:11:10):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Also ad blocking at the network and
Leo Laporte (01:11:14):
It's kinda like a like a pie hole a little
Mikah Sargent (01:11:16):
Bit. Exactly. Yeah. You, you're basically paying for pie hole. That's what a-plus gets you is is pie hole. But you also, if you want them, and again, this is how I do it a one password family account encrypt me vpn, which I don't use. And then malware bys, antivirus, particularly if you've got a Windows machine somewhere, <laugh>, it's great to have malware bites for that.
Caller 5 (01:11:35):
Yeah. Sounds like you're describing a v like you're subscribing to a vpn.
Mikah Sargent (01:11:40):
That is an, you
Leo Laporte (01:11:41):
Think I think they offer a
Mikah Sargent (01:11:42):
Vpn. Yeah. It's, it's part of it. Yeah. So you get that as part of it. But again, those are all extras that you don't need.
Leo Laporte (01:11:48):
You should look at the list to see if it's worth 90 bucks or 99 bucks a year. But
Caller 5 (01:11:54):
Oh, okay. They just do
Leo Laporte (01:11:55):
It. I, when I had euro, I paid for it. But it just, some people goes, well you mean I have to pay, I pay 600 bucks for this euro and the two beacons. Right. And I have to give you another a hundred bucks a year. Yeah. And that some people that really bugs them. Yeah. But, but I think performance wise, I'd agree with wire cutter at Euro's. Always been the king of the hell on that one.
Caller 5 (01:12:16):
I'll have to take a look. Yeah. The six E you said?
Leo Laporte (01:12:18):
Yeah, you might as well. If you're going to six, go to six E Cuz it's sexy. Golly. Yes. Says every time he says six E I got, I like the
Caller 5 (01:12:26):
Fireplace there. I got, I got my real wood fireplace burning.
Leo Laporte (01:12:29):
Nice room. This you we're in California, you're not allowed to have wood. So we got this and there's no heat at that. All that
Caller 5 (01:12:36):
Wood composes in the forest.
Leo Laporte (01:12:39):
<Laugh>. Yeah. And then we, it burns anyway, so what the hell, right. Yeah. We're worried more. I think they're more worried about the smoke in the air. And I'll tell you what, you drive from here down into San Francisco, you go through Marin where every single house has a wood burning stove. It is really smokey. I don't know what it's like in Warren, but it's really smokey in the winter. It's
Caller 5 (01:12:56):
Oh prob. I think I'm the only one in my block.
Leo Laporte (01:12:59):
Well, there you go. It's a nice, there's nothing like a fire. I mean, I, I, I agree. I love it. But yeah,
Mikah Sargent (01:13:04):
I think it's, we got genetically it's, it's
Leo Laporte (01:13:07):
It's built in. Yeah. Yeah. Hey, thank you so much Tom. Have a great, it's always good to talk to you. Have a great one. Take care.
Caller 5 (01:13:14):
I got my sticker from the last,
Leo Laporte (01:13:16):
Yeah, that's his hat sticker.
Mikah Sargent (01:13:18):
Now I saw an individual with a lightsaber. I was wondering if we could talk to the lightsaber.
Leo Laporte (01:13:22):
Is that Aaron? All right, we're gonna go to Aaron. Let's pick up Aaron with his Li <laugh>. So I think he's a Jedi. I believe that makes him a Jedi. Is that right?
Mikah Sargent (01:13:33):
I think so. Yeah.
Leo Laporte (01:13:34):
Yes. Hello Aaron. Welcome.
Mikah Sargent (01:13:35):
Or a sip.
Leo Laporte (01:13:36):
Hello. Welcome to ask the tech guys <laugh>. Are you a sy Lord or are you a Jedi?
Caller 6 (01:13:42):
No, I'm a Jedi. I'm I'm actually along with my mother-in-law, we're actually creating or sewing the costume for me, Wendy, so. Oh,
Leo Laporte (01:13:53):
That's, so you're gonna do some cosplay with now? Yep. I don't usually ask guys this, but will you show me your light saber
Caller 6 (01:14:00):
<Laugh> <laugh>. Here it is.
Leo Laporte (01:14:02):
Oh, look at that. Gorgeous. Where'd you get that? Is that the one where you make your own?
Caller 6 (01:14:08):
No, there, you know what, it's it's a large community in terms of saber makers. There's probably at least a dozen different oh okay. Companies that make sabers. And this was, this one was my first one. And that's beautiful as usual. I, I, you know, I checked on Google and I, I bought the first one that looked like what I needed. Uhhuh <affirmative>. And then I went to Reddit and I was like, oh, maybe, maybe I could have chosen better books.
Leo Laporte (01:14:35):
Never, never. Second guess the purchase. <Laugh>. That's a beautiful, now what happens when you turn it on though? Did you, what do you get? Well
Caller 6 (01:14:43):
You do get the sound. I turn, I took the battery out cuz it's charging because it's, it's pretty loud. But it does do the, the Yeah. The official
Leo Laporte (01:14:50):
And then what comes out of the thing. Is there a light or is there
Caller 6 (01:14:53):
There is an attachment. It's a long plastic.
Leo Laporte (01:14:57):
Ah, okay.
Caller 6 (01:14:58):
That looks like the, the exact saber. So cool.
Leo Laporte (01:15:01):
Cool. Because I remember I, Justine went to a place where you would make your own sabers. Mm-Hmm. And you customize it and all that stuff. And I was just, that looked so good. I thought, well that must be a pro. You're a pro A pro Seth Wi Window. What is his name? Wedu Mace. Wind. Mace. Mace Wind. Mace
Caller 6 (01:15:18):
Wind. Yeah.
Leo Laporte (01:15:18):
Seth is his brother. He was kind of a nerd. Well, I, I saw him once in the background. Yeah. Not so good. Yeah. <laugh> good. What can we do for you Mace, wind?
Caller 6 (01:15:28):
Well first thing I just wanted to think both of you guys for being for the TWIT network because I've been listening, I don't know, for like, over probably a decade. Yeah. And I think I started with Security Now and yay, you know, port forwarding and ever since then I've now I'm a an IT analyst in the my town. And yeah, I I really appreciate Mikah and aunt and seeing the network grow, so thanks.
Leo Laporte (01:15:55):
Yeah. We thank you. We we we love our hosts Mikah, aunt Jason too. We love 'em all. Yeah. I'm very lucky we've, we've built a really nice team here, so I thank you very much. I appreciate this.
Caller 6 (01:16:06):
That's very, you're
Leo Laporte (01:16:06):
Welcome. I forgot to ask, where are you calling from?
Caller 6 (01:16:09):
I'm calling from French George, which is in the middle of British Columbia, Canada,
Leo Laporte (01:16:15):
BC is so beautiful. Do you have snow in Prince George?
Caller 6 (01:16:19):
Oh yeah. We have snow. Yeah. I think last week we got it actually snowed so much. It's, I've probably got about a 12 foot hell of snow on my what lawn? Yep. So I could literally jump off of one What <laugh> my roof into the snow.
Leo Laporte (01:16:34):
12 feet. And will it stay till spring?
Caller 6 (01:16:39):
It's pro. It probably will. Like the weather has been really crazy. That was something else up here, you know, so it'll it's it's snowed a lot and then it's gotten warm and then it's snowed and then gotten warm. No
Leo Laporte (01:16:52):
One goes anywhere then, huh? Like how does anyone,
Caller 6 (01:16:55):
There are days where I, there's just so much snow. I don't even bother leaving my house. I'm just like, oh, I'm just staying here 12
Leo Laporte (01:17:03):
Feet.
Caller 6 (01:17:04):
Yep.
Leo Laporte (01:17:04):
I'd be so tempted to like, you know, tunnel through it. Yes. Out. Yes. B glue and a snow fort and gosh. Although you'd be worried to collapse on you and you're be stuck. I know. That's kind of scary. I know. Yeah. What can we do for you, sir, Mr. Bass window?
Caller 6 (01:17:20):
Well so I've been trying to de Google a little bit of my life and I'm with Fast Mail, so I switched over probably over a year ago. And
Leo Laporte (01:17:33):
You can use their calendar and their address book, as I've mentioned before. Yep. And that, that gets you off of Google for that. Mm-Hmm.
Caller 6 (01:17:38):
<Affirmative>. So now the challenge is that I've got a lot of content with Google Photos, particularly video mm-hmm. <Affirmative> and I mean, I've got a Sno Nas, I've got a two bay. So I've got the, the storage here and I've played around with things like Photo Prism, but it's, you know, it's a little bit janky in, in my personal opinion. So I'm looking for some suggestions on what I can use to, in particular replace Google Photos for storing my, my videos. Cause they're really large.
Leo Laporte (01:18:12):
Yeah. The Sonology has its own photos app. Is it moments still or do they rename it again? I think they keep renaming it to something
Caller 6 (01:18:19):
Else. Yeah. I think it's photos or something
Leo Laporte (01:18:21):
Else. Photos now. Yeah. and I played with it. There are, there are people out there. There's an open source. I think very promising new open source. If you, you said you're on Reddit. I've, I've been reading about it on Reddit open source photos program. I can't remember off the top of my head the name of it, but I'll, it'll, it'll come to me. But at this point I think there's nothing as good as Google photos. Apple's photos is very good. You know, if you are a Mac user you know, even though iCloud is kind of pricey it's certainly, I, I actually, that's what I do now. I used to use Lightroom and a bunch of other solutions to store my photos. Cause you always need something a digital asset management solution. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> somewhere to kind of put everything.
(01:19:04):
And actually I've been using Apple's photos and iCloud and that actually works really well. But I think Google Photos works well. The downside to Google compared to Apple's photos is it's not the original photos. Google squishes 'em down a little bit there, so they're JPEGs. So, which isn't the end of the world, but it's not the original. And I take a lot of raw, there's Amazon photos, which if you're a Prime member is free for unlimited original quality photos, they do charge you after 10 gigabytes of video. You said you have a lot of video, so you might end up paying for that. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. But I, I actually still use both Amazon and Google in addition to iCloud. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> just cuz Belt and suspenders. You know, I don't, I don't want to ever lose anything. But I think cuz you have a sy analogy, you've got tons of storage either look at Sonology solution and I will find you, I'll have to do a little searching around, but I will find you the name of the of the third, third party open source. It looks very promising. Guy's been working on it for a few years now though, so that's the only drawback. And what if he gets tired of it and so forth and so on. What do you, what do you use?
Mikah Sargent (01:20:10):
I just use Apple Photos. Yeah. I do also upload many of my photos to the Google Photos library because I have a subscription where they send you the printed out photos every month. I really like that. So I use it specifically for that. And in the past I've used Amazon's as well, just to have multiple places to store it. And then I've also used drop boxes own built-in photo and video storage solution. And that isn't as great when it comes to searching for photos. That's where Google photos and Apple photos I think really shine. But in terms of just having a storage location, the Dropbox storage is quite good. But if you're trying to move away from Google, then, you know, in that same vein you would want to be trying to move away from Amazon. And a lot of these solutions are using Amazon web services in the background. So it's hard to truly get away from any of it in, in the long run.
Caller 6 (01:21:07):
Yeah. Yeah. That's right. Okay.
Leo Laporte (01:21:09):
Are you using Google for search or what are you doing for search?
Caller 6 (01:21:13):
I was, I am using Google for search. I was thinking about paying for is it Neva? Neva? Are
Leo Laporte (01:21:18):
You using Neva? Yeah. I cannot say enough good things about Neva. It is com. You know, I've tried Bing and I've tried Duck Duck Go. And I've tried Brave Search and, and I always feel like, oh, I'm missing something. It's not gonna do as good a job. And Neva is the first one I've found that actually is as good as, in fact, I think better than Google with no ads. It is five bucks a month. There's a free trial version, but I wanna support 'em. I still pay five bucks a month, <laugh> not to have that. And I have not. This is the first time ever I've not been tempted to go back to Google partly. Cause I'll be honest with you, I think Google search has gone downhill. I think it's kind of junked
Mikah Sargent (01:21:55):
Up. Yeah. There's so much gun in the way before your actual results
Leo Laporte (01:21:58):
Were ready for replacement. It's hard to get completely de Google Yeah. De Google aide. But it's nice if you could take a little bit away from away from them or at least diversify, right?
Mikah Sargent (01:22:11):
I think diversify.
Leo Laporte (01:22:12):
And you saw a caller cut three weeks ago who Google oof took down his account.
Caller 6 (01:22:19):
Yeah. That's what I'd like to avoid. Occasion. Yeah. I mean, and I don't think I'll ever be in that particular situation, but I'm thinking, what if, what if that one time I, that's
Leo Laporte (01:22:28):
Why you wanna diversify. Yep. Mm-hmm. <Affirmative>. Yep. What? That's
Mikah Sargent (01:22:31):
Scary. Yeah.
Leo Laporte (01:22:32):
I have a picture by the way of Aaron as Seth Wind, <laugh> Mac's Mac's brother. That's very good. You wanna arrest my Lord. Good. So are you gonna have that kind of Jedi outfit? What is
Caller 6 (01:22:46):
It gonna look like? Yeah, I'm gonna do as as I'm gonna replicate it as best as I can. Oh, awesome. And yeah, and in Calgary there's a fan expo at the end of April, so I'll be attending that. Oh, neat. In full costume. And yeah, it'd be cool. It's there. I see Hayden Christensen's gonna be there. Cool. And and then I'm also Trekk, so I like so Jonathan Franks is gonna be there, so definitely gonna get some
Mikah Sargent (01:23:12):
Photos. Love.
Leo Laporte (01:23:13):
Awesome. Number two. All right,
Mikah Sargent (01:23:16):
Well, may the force be with you Aaron
Caller 6 (01:23:18):
<Laugh>. Thank you.
Leo Laporte (01:23:19):
And live long and prosper, right? Oh yeah, that's, you know, you get 'em both. You do? Yeah. Oh yeah. Yes. Security. He started with security Now Steve always does that. I can't do it with my left hand for some reason. Number one, right? He's number one. Yes. He's not number two. I think
Mikah Sargent (01:23:34):
Picard names his dog. Number two, <laugh>. No, that's not a joke. I'm serious. I think he names his dog number two. At some point I
Leo Laporte (01:23:41):
Just figure Picard should be number one. Yeah. And then he would be number two. But you're right, he's
Mikah Sargent (01:23:45):
Number one. But who is your number one? Yeah, who is my number one? Right? Yeah, that makes sense. Anyway,
Leo Laporte (01:23:50):
Anyway, Aaron, thank you <laugh>. Sorry you, sorry you had to be here for
Mikah Sargent (01:23:53):
John Lenina came panicking into the room. He's
Leo Laporte (01:23:56):
A true trick. Tricker number one, he's a tricker. Pardon me. Thank you, Aaron. Have a great day. Stay safe. Don't fall in the snow. Bang.
Mikah Sargent (01:24:04):
Oh man. 12 slice through it with the saber
Leo Laporte (01:24:08):
There. Wow.
Mikah Sargent (01:24:09):
12 feet of snow. Oof. Woo. A
Leo Laporte (01:24:11):
Dfa. I so we've been talking about this 32 bit float recording. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. And there's a lot of confusion about it. And what it really got me is when Road who makes some very inexpensive and fairly good podcasting mics came out with a microphone that does 32 bit float. And I thought,
Mikah Sargent (01:24:33):
Wait, what? Wait, that's not
Leo Laporte (01:24:35):
Possible.
Mikah Sargent (01:24:35):
I thought it was the recorder that did
Leo Laporte (01:24:36):
That. Yeah. So let's go, let me walk over to the other side of the room and we'll talk about 32 Bit float. In fact, I have the new sixth Generation Road NT one microphone. I'll give you a little, a little demo comparing it to our, these are a hundred bucks more and they require a mixer and stuff, but boy, they sure are good. Our Hele PR forties, which I think are the kind of the benchmark for what, what we're looking for. Anyway, so let me take a walk. So this is our Hele and this is the brand new road. The original road nt you know what's funny, I didn't realize this road, the po the microphone and podcast equipment company, their first microphone was called the Rodent Uhhuh <affirmative> the Rodent. And so they cut off the NT and they made it the road space nt.
(01:25:25):
But <laugh>, this was the rodent. This is the fifth generation rodent. And like the predecessors, it has an XLR connection. This is what we, you know, sometimes call a pro connection. This particular XLR is the kind of thing you see on Mike cables, but it's not great for podcasters or anybody who doesn't have a mixer because you need to have something not ussb that will take this. We, when we set up people for our shows, we send 'em a good quality. He PR 40 microphone, which also has one of these XLR connections and then a XLR to USB adapter. We send 'em this focus rate Scarlet. There are variety of ones that do that. That's what we call an A to D converter cuz a microphone is analog and the computer wants digital. Even here we convert to digital. We have a fairly fancy system, the Telus Axia system.
(01:26:19):
And so we have what we call mic nodes and the analog microphone cable goes into the mic node and the mic node turns it into bits, ones and zeros and then sends it over the network into our mixer, our TriCaster over here. So that's, you know, one of the first things a microphone has to do is con is get your, capture your voice in an analog wave formm. And then somehow you have to turn that into bits. This is the new one. This is the road n T one sixth generation. You can immediately see cosmetically it's a little different and it has a silver cover. And, and, and the whole kit comes, which is kind of nice with this spider. Oh wow. That came with it. This, yeah, it's two hundred fifty, two hundred fifty bucks. You get the microphone plus the spider, which is nice cause it isolates the microphone.
(01:27:08):
You see it's got little rubber bands isolates it from, you know, table noise and things like that. It also comes with this pop filter, which is actually very useful for people new to mm-hmm. <Affirmative> broadcasting cuz it keeps their mouth at an appropriate distance from the microphone in addition to stopping the pops. But this one's different. This is kind of interesting. This particular new road, N T one, has a U S B connection in addition to the traditional xlr. In fact, it's both in the same opening there on the bottom of the microphone. You have to search for the usb. It's a type C connection. And that explains how they can claim that this microphone is 32 bit float. Because the 32 bit float is really a reference to how you are storing the digitized recording. And a microphone, as I mentioned, is analog.
(01:28:04):
So this microphone for the first time from Road has circuitry inside that does that standard analog to digital conversion over a USB cable. It also comes with a bunch of software. I'm running it on a Mac right now. This is the Road Connect software. And they have built in some processing from the, from Afex, the Afex Oral equalizer or Excite, I'm sorry, AFEX Oral Excite and the big bottom <laugh>. This also, as you can see, has some additional I don't know why Air horn and other sound effects. So I guess the idea road is really focused on podcasters is this could be your little software mixer, you know, for, for down the road. When, when you wanna make a podcast. Let me, can I switch over? Can we switch from the, the high PR 40 to the road? Do you have that ability with Anita? So now I'm talking on the road and I don't know if you'll be able to hear the difference, but there is. Can you hear it Mike? Yeah.
Mikah Sargent (01:29:03):
Oh definitely.
Leo Laporte (01:29:04):
It's not as open as airy. Exactly. I think it's missing a little high end. The base is pretty good. The biggest difference in technology is the high L PR 40. Much like the sure SM 58 and the SMB seven is a dynamic microphone. It doesn't need power. It has a large coil that picks up the vibrations from your voice and converts them into an electrical signal that then goes into the mixer. This thing is a condenser microphone. The best microphones in the world, the Nomans for instance, thousands and thousands of dollars. Those are all condensers. And when you see Lady Gaga singing in the studio in that anno Coic booth with the egg cartons all around her, they're almost always using a very high quality Noman microphone. But notice they have to do a lot of soundproofing because condenser mics are very sensitive. They pick up a lot of sound including not only sound from outside but lips smacking and things like that.
(01:30:06):
This microphone is okay, $250, you get all this equipment and you get this USB interface. So maybe, you know, when I pay 350 bucks for Ohio plus I have to buy the focus. Right? That's gonna convert it into U USB or a sure icicle or one of many devices. It's gonna add up. It's a little bit more expensive. I think for most people. This is a decent podcast, Mike, but when you hear it compared, go ahead and can switch back to the, when you hear it compared to the aisle now it's just a different, it
Mikah Sargent (01:30:38):
It sounds so muffled in comparison.
Leo Laporte (01:30:39):
Yeah. It's just not capturing the full frequency. The other thing about condenser mics, and one of the reasons you pay a lot for Neiman mics and the really high-end mics is every capsule on a condenser is different and they have to test it than what Neiman does is they go through a dozen capsules to find one that has the exact frequency response they want. And that's the one they sell you. I doubt road is doing that. So what also will happen is you get an inconsistent sound. One road may sound very different than another road because I'm sure they just use every capsule that comes off the line. And that's why, you know, maybe I could get a road that would sound as good as the hile, the hows are very, very consistent possibly cuz they're dynamic. Anyway, let's talk about 32 bit cuz that was the other thing. This, this is advertised as 32 bit float. That's only true if you use the internal circuitry that converts the analog signal from the microphone into bits that are going into the computer. Actually, maybe it'd be an interesting experiment to see. Let's, let's compare apples to apples instead of the using the USB interface, let's use the full interface. Can we, do you know how to do that <laugh> road test? It's called road test. So I'm gonna use this and connect it directly to our board. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. So let it do the analog too.
(01:32:01):
<Inaudible>, it's not
(01:32:02):
Working. It's not working okay. Doesn't really matter, but I think it's gonna sound pretty much the same cuz it's really the characteristics of the microphone are, are this capsule here. So let's talk about 32 bits versus 16 bit mm-hmm. <Affirmative>. So when you get a cd, CDs are recorded at 44,100 samples per second. That's the hertz and each sample, each, you know, they're looking at a waveform and 44,100 times a second, they sample that waveform. And that wave form can be anywhere in a 16 bit space. That's CD quality sound. That's 65. What is it? 65,536 possible variations on the amplitude. That's how many levels you get with 16 bits. Now you can increase that. In fact, in recording studios, modern recording studios, by the way, this, this graphic thank you to sound devices. They did a really good piece on 32 bit recording.
(01:33:04):
Most studios record 24 bit. I remember asking one of the members of the Eagles who was a regular on ham Nation, Joe Walsh, how he recorded in his home studio. Now this guy can record any way he wants. And he said, yeah, 16, 16 bit. I I I like 24 bit. I said, do you have, do you hand sample it at 96,000 cycles per second? Instead of he said, nah, fourteen's, fourteen's fine. 14, not 14, whatever. 44 is fine. Oh, but 24 bits. So most studios will at least do 24 bit sampling. That gives them, instead of 65,000 levels, that gives 'em 16 million different levels of amplitude. Wow. That they can measure. That's a lot more. 32 bit, you probably figured this out, is using a 32 bit, but it's not just 32 bit inte integers. It's using floating point. So it can get many, many more.
(01:34:02):
Now what does this mean? So this is the really the, the, the thing that makes a huge difference. It's not how many samples per second, but what's the dynamic range you can reflect? So with 65,000 samples per second with a CD quality, your dynamic range from the lowest sound to the highest sound is about a hundred decibels. Okay. That's the, that's so the quietest sound, the symphony where the guy has just got a little triangle and he goes, ding the quietest sound that's, that's a hundred db below the loudest sound where the whole symphony is playing as loud as they can and the tempes are pounding on the drums. 24 bit gives you more dynamic range. So remember we had a hundred decibels, 24 bit gives you 145 decibels.
Mikah Sargent (01:34:51):
Now Leo, on that one, the space that's between the top and the bottom
Leo Laporte (01:34:56):
Looks, well it's such 16, it's not, it's 16 million levels. That's why they, they, they're not gonna show you.
Mikah Sargent (01:35:01):
Okay. They're just shortening it. Okay, good. It's, I I didn't know if they're, yeah, there was more. I
Leo Laporte (01:35:05):
Think that's the illustration. Got it. Okay. Or something. I don't know what that is. What is that? Maybe that's the zero level. Yeah actually maybe that's it. You know what, you're probably right. There's more down than there is up, but I don't want to get into that. Okay. Cause
Mikah Sargent (01:35:18):
Yeah, that gets
Leo Laporte (01:35:18):
Complicated. What you really need to know is what's the dynamic range, what's the biggest difference between the quietest set and the last set? 145 decibels with 16 bit. Would you like to know what the dynamic range this represented by 32 bit float? Yes it is. It is 770 decibels.
Mikah Sargent (01:35:37):
Wow.
Leo Laporte (01:35:39):
So I'm sorry, that's half of it. It's 1,526 decibels. Wow. So the loudest noise on earth is 200 decibels, 210 decibels above the quietest noise. 200. That's the most Jude ever have to represent the bellow of a blue whale versus the sound of a leaf falling in a forest. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>,
Mikah Sargent (01:36:06):
I like it. Space
Leo Laporte (01:36:07):
Shuttle taking off, space shuttle taking off. Okay. You can use that if you want. <Laugh>. Actually the bell of blue whales last loud as natural sound. But you're right with man-made sounds can be quite a bit louder. But that, that, that whole difference. 210 db, you're getting 1500 DB when you're doing 32 bit float. So what does that mean?
Mikah Sargent (01:36:25):
<Laugh>? Look at that graph.
Leo Laporte (01:36:27):
<Laugh>. Yeah. Actually this is the graph comparing the 3 16, 24, 32 bit float. That means, and this is the most exciting thing about this, you don't have to pay attention to levels, just turn on the recorder because you're recording with so much dynamic range that you'll never get too loud. You'll never, the reason we have to pay attention to dynamic range. You've seen this. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, if it gets too loud, it clips, it chops off the top cause it just can't record that. So you have to keep the levels right in the middle. And if something gets, if I shout really loud, I can clip it because we've, we've got it set for not anymore, not with 32 bit. Now there are devices that are legitimately 32 bit. One of the reasons sound devices are talking about this cuz they're usb mix pre two, what is it? Mix Mix Pre three two. Mix two three. <Laugh> anyway is 32 bit. But also I recently bought this, this is from Zoom. This is the zoom F three field recorder. Oh, it's
Mikah Sargent (01:37:29):
A
Leo Laporte (01:37:29):
Little, this is actually my field kit. I have a couple of dynamic SM 58 microphones with regular mic cables because this takes analog in regular mic cables. But this also does the recording and this does 32 bit float recording.
Mikah Sargent (01:37:46):
Wow. That little thing. Little thing. This 32
Leo Laporte (01:37:48):
Bit. Wow. So what that means, well, you know, the main reason we didn't do a 32 bit before it takes up a lot of space, but hard drive space is, you know, I have in here a little compact flashcard that can record a hundred hours because drive space has gotten cheap. Mm-Hmm <affirmative>. So we don't mind storing a lot of extra data, which you are with 32 bit float because I don't have to pay attention to levels on here. I can just record, I can go out in the field and go, tell me what's your reaction set in a fog going, I'll tell you what more he can shut and it will not clip because we're recording a 32 bit float. So this is my field kit that I take around. If I ever, in fact, we're gonna take this on the next trip we take.
(01:38:26):
So if we wanted to do a podcast on the trip, we could do that. And this little thing can record more than a hundred hours. You can put it bigger card in it of 32 bit float with two microphones at once. That means you never clip, you're never too loud. Your dynamic range is 1500 decibels. So you could even, I could even go out here and say, I am standing in front of the, the launch of the new Falcon Heavy any minute now it's gonna go off. It could go off, it could, I could be standing right next to it and it wouldn't clip, it wouldn't, it would be able to record the whole sound. And even better when you get into your digital audio workshop software, if it understands 32 bit float and I recorded it too quietly mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, I can increase it without increasing the noise level.
(01:39:12):
Cause I have so much dynamic range. So you have absolute control over how loud and quiet something is. So Road is selling this as a 32 bit float microphone, no such thing. It's the circuitry in here. And honestly, if the microphone doesn't sound great, it doesn't matter how good the circuitry is. Right? Right. Now I'm not gonna carry around Hele PR forties. I probably should. That would be the best way to use this the Zoom field recorder. But these sure sm 58 s, they're pretty good too. They do a decent job dynamic. And so I can go out in the field and do that recording you. What do you have, John? Is this, this is, he's version of this. I should probably carry these around. These are nice. This is really nice. It's, it's, Bob does the best stuff. That's, that's his version of the SM 58. You recognize this, this is in punk, punk clubs everywhere because you, you just can't break it. You can't destroy it. Anyway, there's what 32 bit float means. Does that make sense? Mikah does.
Mikah Sargent (01:40:11):
Yes. No, it absolutely
Leo Laporte (01:40:12):
Does. It's about increasing the dynamic range beyond the point where you would ever be too loud or too soft. You're recording every bit of the information and you can zoom in. In effect, you can increase the levels. That's without adding those.
Mikah Sargent (01:40:26):
So if I were to go out and I'm recording the sound, I'm, I started a new as m r show and I'm recording the sound of Mouse, somebody eating some grubs on the ground. Yeah. And that's gonna be quiet. I can then go into my software and bump up the lever and it'll all still be there.
Leo Laporte (01:40:43):
Or, you know, you could be standing there recording the G grubs and a firetruck goes by and you don't have to freak out and say, oh, turn it down quick because you're recording it all right. And you're getting all that information and can adjust it later in post. That's the story. Let's take another call. You want to? Sure. All right. I'm gonna unplug here. Well wait a minute. Now. They say, they tell me they have it working now.
Mikah Sargent (01:41:04):
Well, yeah. So we should see because, yeah.
Leo Laporte (01:41:07):
So I'm on the hile right now. Yeah. And you think that you got the road working. Should we make the switch? Yeah. And now I'm talking on the road. Actually, you know what?
Mikah Sargent (01:41:16):
This does sound better. It
Leo Laporte (01:41:17):
Sounds a lot better. Don't use the road's. USB interface, <laugh>. That's the rule.
Mikah Sargent (01:41:22):
It's
Leo Laporte (01:41:23):
Back and forth. Do an AB comparison. Now I'm talking on the pile. PR 40. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. Which it's better treble or something. It's more spacial. It doesn't sound as muddy. And now I'm gonna talk on the road. NT one, sixth generation. You know what? It's better though, than the usb. I think it is.
Mikah Sargent (01:41:40):
It is.
Leo Laporte (01:41:41):
That's not so bad.
Mikah Sargent (01:41:42):
Could have been tolerable. This is enough filters. You had added the round bottom or whatever it was. <Laugh>.
Leo Laporte (01:41:48):
The big bottom. The
Mikah Sargent (01:41:49):
Big bottom.
Leo Laporte (01:41:50):
I don't think I'd turned on the big bottom or the afex all excited. But that's a, we'll do that for another day cuz that's really cool stuff. It used to be a big hardware box you'd get. I'll tell you about it when I come over. Hold on. No, when in I think it was the seventies or eighties, I remember Linda Ronstadt was recording with the Afex Oral Exciter. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. I was a DJ in those days. And everybody said, well, what does it do? And they said, we can't tell you what it does. We don't know. It just makes it sound better. <Laugh>. But what, but how does it make, we don't know. It's just Magic and Apex, which made this box, this hardware box that every recording studio in the country started using all of a sudden Uhhuh <affirmative>. And then they added this other button, which I remember Adam Curry using the Big bottom, which just adds a kind of a basey kind of big bottom to it. But yeah, you don't really need that. Yeah, no, just talk normal. Somebody in the I in the Discord says the, the road is like listening with a head cold. Yes. That's probably the
Mikah Sargent (01:42:51):
Best way. That's a good way of putting it. Yeah.
Leo Laporte (01:42:53):
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. Boy, 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.
(01:43:45):
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.
(01:44:43):
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 are other hosts will chime in on the ads saying, yeah, I love that. Or just the other day, <laugh>, one of our hosts said, man, I really gotta buy that <laugh>.
(01:45:35):
That's an additional benefit to you because you're hearing people, our audience trusts saying, yeah, that sounds great. We deliver always overdeliver on impressions. So you know, you're gonna get the impressions you expect. The ads are unique every time. We don't pre-record them and roll them in. We are genuinely doing those ads in the middle of the show. We'll give you great onboarding services, ad tech with pod sites that's free for direct clients. Gives you a lot of reporting, gives you a great idea of how well your ads are working. You'll get courtesy commercials. You actually can take our ads and share them across social media and landing pages. That really extends the reach. There are other free goodies too, including mentions in our weekly newsletter that sent to thousands of fans, engaged fans who really want to see this stuff. We give you bonus ads and social media promotion too.
(01:46:27):
So if you want to be a long-term partner, introduce your product to a savvy engaged tech audience, visit twit tv slash advertise. Check out those testimonials. Mark McCreary is the c e o of authentic. You probably know him one of the biggest original podcast advertising companies. We've been with him for 16 years. Mark said the feedback from many advertisers over 16 years across a range of product categories, everything from razors to computers, is that if ads and podcasts are gonna work for a brand, they're gonna work on Twitch shows. I'm very proud of what we do because it's honest. It's got integrity, it's authentic, and it really is a great introduction to our audience of your brand. Our listeners are smart, they're engaged, they're tech savvy. They're dedicated to our network. And that's one of the reasons we only work with high integrity partners that we've personally and thoroughly vetted.
(01:47:26):
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@advertisetwit.tv. Break out of the advertising norm. Grow your brand with host Red Ads on twit.tv. Visit twit.tv/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. Samal salmon coming up. He's driving up right now. Even as we speak in a brand new ev, he will join us in just a little bit. But let's see who, who's got the, oh, Joe. Joe. The Joe Es. See I called Joe Esto, call the other Joe Joe Esposito. He's not, this is Joe Esposito. He's the guy who sent me the mug. Hi Joe.
Caller 7 (01:48:17):
Hello. Can you hear me? Is my audio
Leo Laporte (01:48:19):
Okay? You sound great Joe. You sound as if you're using an Apex orally. Excited
Caller 7 (01:48:24):
<Laugh>. Well, okay, so I'm not but the, it's interesting cuz you just did all this because my question is related to podcasting specifically. Cuz I've been doing a podcast for a long time.
Leo Laporte (01:48:34):
What's your podcast? And
Caller 7 (01:48:35):
I've kind of it's called the Ozone Nightmare <laugh>. It's not a great name, but it's
Leo Laporte (01:48:39):
No, it's a great name. I'm, I'm intrigued. Yeah. What what is it about
Caller 7 (01:48:42):
By the way? Just, just for my wife. Go San Francisco.
Leo Laporte (01:48:46):
Oh, oh, giants. I was watching The Giants just the other day. Play the Team USA as we're getting ready for the season opens March 30th. Yep. Yeah. Wait. Yep.
Caller 7 (01:48:57):
So over the years I've been upgrading Mike's and I have one called, I'm not on it now. I'm actually on a road. It's funny, I'm on a little road. You
Leo Laporte (01:49:04):
Actually sound fine. Yeah, you sound good. Yeah. Yeah. Using one these, one of those little things. Yeah.
Caller 7 (01:49:08):
Yeah. For this. But for my show, I use what's called an Apigee Hype Mic, which has this built-in compressor. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. And it does 32 bits. Supposed to be very good. But what I was wondering is, I use Audio Hijack for the recording and I know it has a built in, it has some built-in mixer functions. But what I'm wondering is, do you know of a, a software mixer? Cause I, I like to keep things segmented that way. If Audio hijack suddenly has an update that crashes it, I don't lose all that. So I'd rather have it something independent that I could switch the mic to say Audacity or Zoom recording or whatever and still be able to have those EQ levels and mixing levels. And I barely know, I'll just admit I, this is, you know, I'm amateur at this stuff, but I'd like to be able to, to have that in between the mic and whatever I'm using to record and still be able to have those settings so that if I wanna, you know, I don't think I have the best voice in the world. So if I sweeten a little bit or do something
Leo Laporte (01:50:02):
To it
Caller 7 (01:50:03):
<Laugh>, I want that to be preserved cuz I have the face for radio.
Leo Laporte (01:50:06):
I think you sound great and I think one of the things people do, and what I did when I got into radio is you're start talking like it at Announcer. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. And I still have that unfortunately cuz it's just got built into my brain. But honestly, I kind of prefer people just sound like they sound and you got a great, are you a New Yorker Joe? I'm guessing.
Caller 7 (01:50:22):
I am. I'm in California, but I am a native New Yorker. Yes. People pick that up. I don't know why
Leo Laporte (01:50:27):
You don't wanna get rid of that. I think that's what makes it authentic. And I think podcasts are great because people don't sound like announcers. Exactly. They sound like themselves. But okay. You do want a microphone that's gonna be honest and true to your voice. And and part of the thing I always think about with a podcast is listener fatigue. So one of the reasons we pay a lot of attention to audio, and you probably notice this when you listen to other people's podcasts, if the audio is bad, there's Scratch ORs something in there, it just fatigues you. You, you don't wanna listen to it. I wanna make shows that people are comfort, want,
Mikah Sargent (01:51:03):
Don't, comfortable, they comfortable the whole time. Yeah. Yeah.
Leo Laporte (01:51:04):
It's like wearing uncomfortable headphones. You wanna wear comfortable headphones. I want them to be comfortable. So that's the thing I would worry about more than the quality of your voice. I think people can actually hurt themselves by paying attention to their vocal quality too much instead of their actual audio quality, which is what really matters. I have not tried the Hype Mic, Apogee Mix great stuff. So I want to try that. Audio Hijack is not really intended to be a mixer. It's just intended to be a router. So you route stuff from here to there.
Caller 7 (01:51:33):
And it works great that it does that very well. Yeah. That's what I, I mean about it. I don't wanna start trying to bend it into something. It's not meant for
Leo Laporte (01:51:40):
I think the same people Yeah. Make a very good mixer as I remember.
Mikah Sargent (01:51:46):
So they make a program call. Now I'm forgetting what it's called
Leo Laporte (01:51:51):
<Laugh>.
Caller 7 (01:51:51):
That's fine. I know where their website is. Yeah,
Mikah Sargent (01:51:53):
You can, you can head there. To ro
Leo Laporte (01:51:54):
It's ro gaba. Yeah.
Mikah Sargent (01:51:55):
And they make several different programs and one of them lets you not only kind of route audio exactly how you want to, but then you can filter the audio as you need to, to make it sound how you're hoping to. And it's got all of the built in tools that your operating system has and then also extra tools that they've added for EQ and normalization and all that kind of stuff.
Leo Laporte (01:52:20):
Let me see if I can find, is it Air Foil? Is there Mixer?
Mikah Sargent (01:52:23):
No, it's
Leo Laporte (01:52:24):
That's Eddie Audio. Audio Hijack Fargo.
Mikah Sargent (01:52:27):
It's the one after that one, the one that fell
Leo Laporte (01:52:29):
Visions and Editor.
Mikah Sargent (01:52:31):
So Loopback has the tools in it. So on top of letting you route your audio, you can also make adjustments to it with that. Okay.
Leo Laporte (01:52:38):
So Loopback Okay. Yeah. I don't, I've never used them, but I know, I think it was Andy, somebody on Mac Break Weekly is very high praise for all all of their stuff. Let me ask our chat room in our cause we have a lot of podcasters listening.
Mikah Sargent (01:52:55):
No, that's funny. All of were saying Loop back there.
Leo Laporte (01:52:57):
Oh really?
Mikah Sargent (01:52:58):
Yeah. You Discord.
Leo Laporte (01:52:59):
Okay. well I love
Caller 7 (01:53:01):
Audio Hijack, so I, I mean I would
Leo Laporte (01:53:02):
Trust Ro
Caller 7 (01:53:03):
Try because that's great on
Leo Laporte (01:53:04):
The Mac. And these are, this is, these are Mac apps. And on the Mac, I think ro gaba is widely considered to be the best still standing audio guy. I mean there used to be quite a few. There used to be Biased sound and so forth. And all of 'em seem to have it's disappeared.
Mikah Sargent (01:53:17):
It's, it's funny because here at twit we have an incredible team that does so much of the stuff that we need behind the scenes. We don't have to think about, we don't have to, but on, I'm on other podcasts outside of the network and we are all using Audio Hijack. We're all using ro GABA's tools. Yeah. For everything that we do. We're all recording with it and using loop Back to do what we need to do. So yes, I, I can yeah. Essentially vouch for that. Essentially
Caller 7 (01:53:43):
I'm the team cuz it's me and my co-host who used to eat popcorn on the show. And I'm like,
Leo Laporte (01:53:47):
We're using, I didn't know this, but we're using Loopback right now to route our audio <laugh>, the Zoom audio is routed Okay. Through Loopback. The other thing I would look at, it's probably overkill, but Apple makes an excellent dog digital audio workstation called logic. Logic. And it, and it's not expensive. It's 200 bucks for what you get. It's amazing. And I think Jason Snell uses Logic. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> a lot of very serious pro podcasters use Logic. It does a whole lot more. I mean, it's really designed for music album, you know, song creation. But but at, for that price, it's pretty good. For years when I was doing the editing, so you know how long ago that was I started using Cool Edit Pro. Everybody in radio used Cool Edit Pro. Adobe bought it and turned it into a program called Adobe Audition. That's really more for editing. It's not so much of a mixer, but it's, it's really a superb product. We still use that as well because we use the whole Adobe Creative Cloud for our editing premier and, and all of that. But for
Caller 7 (01:54:52):
Mixing, I don't mind. Yeah. We're spending a little bit of money. That's okay. I, I, I don't mind patching pieces because I still use Audacity for editing and honestly for adac it's just a two-person thing. Yeah. And we're not doing music or anything too complicated. We have an intro and an outro, but it's mostly just me and my co-host Abilene for a couple hours. So it's perfectly fine for that. Okay. but like I said, I like my audio to be as clean as possible cuz that's the only thing I can really contribute. Right.
Leo Laporte (01:55:15):
I don't
Caller 7 (01:55:16):
That much else that I can do. So that was my question on that.
Mikah Sargent (01:55:19):
Yeah. I think between a good microphone and the audio tools that don't get in the way, those two things can come together to make what you need there. Loop
Caller 7 (01:55:31):
Back sounds like a good option. That sounds like
Mikah Sargent (01:55:33):
We're all Yeah. Check out loop back. Yeah. And I would also say you know, paying attention to whoever's doing the editing afterward, paying attention to background noise and things like that that might be there. Trying to limit that as much as possible is great. Because as Leo was talking about that moment where someone's listening and then they realize, wow, it's actually kind of g grading on my ears after a while. Comfort cause of Yeah. You just want them to be comfortable
Leo Laporte (01:55:57):
Listening. Raymond thought in our IRC is seeing a program called Voice Meter from VB Dash Audio Software. I'm gonna guess this is more Windows. Oh, maybe it's Mac.
Caller 7 (01:56:15):
That's fine too. Cause I'm on both platforms. Okay. So it's, I I like having backups so that way if the Mac goes out for some reason.
Leo Laporte (01:56:20):
So this is, this is unlikely, but this is exactly a mixer. It does, it does some of the same things Audio Hijack does because it's got a virtual audio device that you can mix with voice meter it looks like. Okay. It's free to try. So Thank you Ray. That's a, that's a good choice as well from vb-audio.com Voice meter. I think. I bet you did. The Windows Good options. The Windows guys that do the rova stuff, the windows, windows focused it can route and mix. Yeah. Thanks Raymond. And thank you Joe. It's great to meet you. Thank you for the mug by the way.
Caller 7 (01:56:58):
You're welcome.
Leo Laporte (01:57:00):
One, show us, show us yours. Yeah, I think that's Anthony's we think that's Anthony's Nielsen's design. Yeah. That's a good looking mug. I
Caller 7 (01:57:07):
Just took that and kind of blew it up and wrapped it around, so, yeah.
Leo Laporte (01:57:12):
Okey dokey. Thank you very much everybody. Thank you. Have a wonderful life.
Mikah Sargent (01:57:19):
Have a, it's a wonderful
Leo Laporte (01:57:20):
Life. It's a wonderful life. So I don't know we were thinking that by now we would have a visit from our car guy, Sam Bull Salmon. He is driving up and I think he probably got caught in the flood. Yeah. On the way up here. So he's not here. But that's good. That gives us a chance to take some more of your calls. What do you say? Should we Yeah, yeah. There's a lot of excitement in these zoom. Should we do Mike and Bonnie Lake, Washington. Oh,
Mikah Sargent (01:57:45):
Bonnie Lake.
Leo Laporte (01:57:45):
Oh, Bonnie Lake. The hills. The hills are calling. Thank you. I shouldn't sing. Hello? He's in a car. The only reason I like seeing people in the car. Hi Mike. Can you hear us? Can you see us?
Caller 8 (01:58:00):
I, oh gosh, almighty, I I can hear you and I can see you. See it works. Excellent. And I'm on and I'm on Zoom and I'm calling in for the very first time to my hero, the tech guy, Leo LePort. Oh, nice. They call me Mike. Yeah. They call me Mike, the tech guy around here. Nice. and I've tried to call before and this is a first, so yay. This question is Yeah, yeah. So the question is, when I need to find a file on my Windows computer, yes. I go to like so if it's Windows 10 or 11, I go to this PC and I go to the hard drive that I know the file's on and there's a, there's a search box in the upper right hand corner and I type in a portion of the file name or the xls if it's a, you know, and it starts searching and it sometimes takes forever. Yeah. My question is is there a better way to do it quicker? Or is it just a limitation on how it's searching the hard drive and or the virtual kind of server share? So if I got it on Google Drive or oh,
Leo Laporte (01:59:16):
So you're saying not just, not just stuff that's on the physical hard drive, but you want cloud search as well?
Caller 8 (01:59:24):
Well, I, I always used to only have it on, on, on the computer hard drive. But now as I've progressed in my technology brain, yeah. I, I have OneDrive, I have, I have Microsoft Drive, i, I
Leo Laporte (01:59:41):
Drive. So that does slow it down, obviously. Yeah. Well
Caller 8 (01:59:44):
It, well, and, and, and those, those kind of virtual drives, including iDrive and other backups kind of magically got hooked up on their own. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. So if I, if, if I make a new file, you know, it
Leo Laporte (01:59:57):
Saves it up. Yes. It saves it up to OneDrive. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Caller 8 (02:00:01):
Well it, it kind of seems like it goes a bunch of different places.
Leo Laporte (02:00:04):
<Laugh>. Oh no. So
Caller 8 (02:00:07):
Because cause so, so it's a little bit kind of sadistic in background. So,
Leo Laporte (02:00:14):
Well lemme show you. I've got File Explorer open right now. I think there's something wrong with your system now pay attention to the road. But when I start Yeah, yeah. When I start typing, so I just typed the six, you saw how fast that came up. It does the first few characters. It doesn't take much time. Remember that when you first set up windows, it's slow because it's indexing. Indexing and indexing. Yeah. So that's one thing I'd make sure that you're indexing services index running. Yeah. So that's in a, that's in the services. You know you do window windows, key X and you'll see you can look at all the services that are running and I would make sure that you didn't accidentally stop that because that's supposed to make it much faster. Now the cloud might be different. I'm not sure exactly.
(02:00:59):
That's gonna slow it down, but it should still show up something almost right away. The first letter I type Yeah. It shows up something. Yeah. So I'll type an H and it's almost immediately showing something on here. So and by the way, it's searching into files as well. Cause you see the, I'm getting files that don't have an H in the file name, but there's an H in the contents and that's almost instant. So first thing I do is look at your services, make sure the indexing service is turned on. Sometimes people get impatient. It slows your machine down when you first set it up. Right. Right. And they might disable it, but if you do that
Caller 8 (02:01:33):
<Laugh> okay,
Leo Laporte (02:01:34):
Then you're gonna be impatient.
Caller 8 (02:01:35):
So you should turn that in. So I should turn that indexing on in background and get it done Now in the next couple
Leo Laporte (02:01:41):
Of days, it should always be on. It should never, it should never turn off. Yeah. You
Mikah Sargent (02:01:44):
Want that to be on always running and it'll occasionally check again and update what the files are. The other thing that could be slowing things down is if you are connecting to, you know, a cloud server somewhere, then of course the internet connection is going to be part of what could be slowing it down. But you, it should be showing those local results a lot faster than it sounds like it is.
Leo Laporte (02:02:05):
Okay. Yeah. I'm not sure what the lag is and Yeah. Would if it's not sort of index, that would do it. Yeah.
Caller 8 (02:02:11):
Yeah. On another subject, you know, you talked about Arrow as the mesh router system, you know, that you prefer mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, I bought a new house up here in Bonney Lake. Correct. And the builder, thank you. And the builder put in arrow.
Leo Laporte (02:02:27):
Oh
Caller 8 (02:02:28):
At, up in the ceilings. Oh. It's got pow power over ip, which is a term I never heard about before. Yep. so it's got a ring doorbell power over ip. It's got a couple arrows in the ceiling. I went to change out the switch cuz I needed to add, add some more ports. It took a, it, it took something called an injector. Have you heard of an
Leo Laporte (02:02:51):
Injector? So it's called power over ethernet. P o e. Okay. And the idea is you've got an ethernet connector, which you need for a data, but it also carries power. And so you don't have to plug it in. Absolutely. But if your devices, the device you're connecting to doesn't provide power over ethernet, you need something called a P O E injector, which plugs into the wall injector. Yeah. The injector is putting power in over the ethernet. So don't disconnect the injector or all of the other stuff's gonna die cause it's not getting power anymore.
Caller 8 (02:03:23):
Well, so back to the tech guy, Leo, I've, I've been listening to you forever. <Laugh> on chiro Nice. Up here. And then K F I via the internet. Love
Leo Laporte (02:03:33):
Chiro. Yep. Yep.
Caller 8 (02:03:34):
But, but I never heard you talk about a switch that was also an injector they make. So that was a brand new they do
Leo Laporte (02:03:43):
Make
Caller 8 (02:03:43):
Yeah, yeah. No, yeah. Yeah. And, and it, and it came in the panel that came with the house, but as I said, I needed some more wired ports. I bought a eight port switch that was after the fact. It was not an injector.
Leo Laporte (02:03:58):
It needs to be p o e
Caller 8 (02:03:59):
Quit working. That's right. Absolutely. So I don't know that you've ever talked about P oe, have you?
Leo Laporte (02:04:05):
Probably not. You know, there's about 1,000,001 subjects I could talk about. This one never came up, I guess. Oh yeah. This is a POE injector I've got right here. You see it, it plugs into the wall and then the other side's ethernet and Yeah. And so it says data and power out on this one. So this has, yeah. Electricity over the ethernet. That's P oe or Power of Ethernet. So just get a switch that says P oe built in. I did. And supports p e
Caller 8 (02:04:31):
I did. And I got on. Yeah. And, and but but back to the, it came with the house. I'm sure Amazon gave them Yeah. Those devices that's at That's right. A low fee. Cause now they've got me, I'll say pregnant, you know, with that device, <laugh>. And I pay the annual fee just like alimony. And you
Leo Laporte (02:04:52):
Don't have, you don't have to as we talked about earlier,
Caller 8 (02:04:56):
But it gives you some things. You might want it, it gives you some, yeah. Yeah. But it's but it's a great way for these builders to put that in. Absolutely. And now I'm gonna buy a house in Phoenix and I'm gonna put in an arrow down there. So there
Leo Laporte (02:05:08):
Were a number of builders that made that, it made announcements with Amazon that they would have echo enabled houses. And I'm guessing I kind one came along with this, I think ring kind the, the Ring doorbell and the ring thing. The, the big developers do deals with Amazon. And you're right, Amazon Public gives them a discount and so forth. The only reason I don't like that is it's hard to upgrade now. Right. So when IRO comes up with a new system, you, you, you're kind of gotta open up the ceiling and put the new system in there. And that's kind of a
Caller 8 (02:05:37):
Pain. Well, I can drop it down, but, well, I can drop it down. You know, it's in a box in the ceiling. Oh, okay. So I get up on my ladder so
Leo Laporte (02:05:44):
You can get They made it accessible. That's good. Yeah.
Caller 8 (02:05:46):
Yeah. Absolutely. So anyway, hey, this, this is a real thrill to talk to you. It's Mike on the video driving, driving and where
Leo Laporte (02:05:53):
Are you right now?
Caller 8 (02:05:55):
I'm up in a trilogy property at Bonney Lake Washington. Nice. 55 and over all one 14. No yard work. Nice. All brand new hose. Brand new sewers. Wa you know, everything's brand new sewer.
Leo Laporte (02:06:07):
I'm moving in, I'm moving in <laugh>. Come on,
Caller 8 (02:06:10):
Come on up. We're at we're at about 900 feet and it snows. Oh. And so anyway through, so I hope this new model for the business works for you because I'm and I'm gonna, I'm gonna sign up as a P one right now. So
Leo Laporte (02:06:25):
There you go. Thank you for everything. Thank you such, it's so great to talk to you. I'm glad you finally got through. See, this is the beauty of it. We don't need to have a radio station. We can talk to the whole world over the internet. It's miracle. No, the internet is amazing. It's a miracle. As long as we're talking to Mike, why don't we talk to Michael? We'll just keep it through this show, this show Be Mikah Mic and Michael is the whole thing. It's all very confusing. Yeah. Michael, I welcome you to ask the tech guys.
Caller 9 (02:06:51):
Thank you very much. Can you guys hear me okay?
Leo Laporte (02:06:53):
Yeah, you sound really good actually. Oh, you look at the size of that microphone. There you go. That's a good mic.
Caller 9 (02:07:00):
So loving the new format of the show. Yeah,
Leo Laporte (02:07:03):
We like it too. Good. I'm glad to hear it. It's not quite as smooth maybe as the radio show, but then
Caller 9 (02:07:08):
It's it's like eighties morning radio. It's awesome. <Laugh>,
Leo Laporte (02:07:12):
<Laugh>. I just need Robin Quivers and we'll be set. Right?
Caller 9 (02:07:15):
Yeah. It's like Larry Lou, Jack and Snot knows Tommy Great.
Leo Laporte (02:07:19):
In the day. Is that Chicago? That's Chicago. Chicago, yeah. Yeah. <laugh> seven
Caller 9 (02:07:22):
Eighties. So, so two questions for you. One is it's a, a raspberry pie plex question. Okay. I have my plex server running on a raspberry pie. I think it's a three hardwired with a, a spinning USB terabyte drive. Okay. wondering, I recently bought a little Samsung solid state terabyte drive and I'm trying to figure out a use for it and I'm wondering if there would be any kind of, the performance is not bad. It's like four seconds for something to load up. Yeah. Wondering if I would see any speed improvement with a solid state drive as opposed to
Leo Laporte (02:07:56):
A yeah. The problem with solid state is depends what you're using. It can, they can get thrashed in an environment like that. Depends on what you're using it for. But solid state's always faster than spinning. What are you using it? What's the, what's the use case? How are you doing it? Is it back?
Caller 9 (02:08:13):
No, it would be for the my Plex server. The media would be
Leo Laporte (02:08:17):
To
Caller 9 (02:08:17):
The solid stay drive.
Leo Laporte (02:08:18):
Okay. The nice thing about Plex, Plex is actually pretty good because it, it'll load in big chunks so it's not gonna thrash the drive. It loads a big chunk of the vid of the video and then plays it and then loads another big chunk. So I think for Plex spinning is fine. Okay. You're not gonna benefit from the speed.
Caller 9 (02:08:37):
Okay.
Leo Laporte (02:08:38):
Where, where Plex benefits from is a processor because Correct. It's re encoding the video often before it's serving it. So a faster processor can make a bigger difference in plex speed is not good. The drive speed's not gonna be an issue.
Caller 9 (02:08:52):
Okay. That's what I figured. Yeah. You know, also, just in terms of the caller earlier I use Loopback. I've been podcasting Oh nice and off since like 2008. Oh nice. And I used to have a mixer, but I moved everything into software. What Loopback is really great for is routing audio. So if I have my sound cart, if I have something on Spotify I wanna play, I put that all together with this microphone that becomes the input that goes into Zoom. So everybody in the Zoom call, it's like mixed minus without having to worry about the wires and the yeah. Mixer
Leo Laporte (02:09:21):
Itself. The reason we have such a fancy
Caller 9 (02:09:23):
Things like that
Leo Laporte (02:09:24):
Set up here is because I was so suffering back in 2007 with mixed minus on an analog board that Kirk Hark of the Telus company saw me. He was watching. He said, I can't let I this, I can't, I can't take it. Then you
Caller 9 (02:09:40):
Have like, you had a headset around your neck. Oh you had a headset
Leo Laporte (02:09:42):
Around your It's the worst. It was. You remember this? Yeah. It was
Caller 9 (02:09:45):
Terrible. Wait. That's how I got into podcasting. Oh, nice. I thought I'd like to do this myself. Yeah.
Leo Laporte (02:09:49):
I'd like to be crazy like Leah. So Kirk contacted us and Teos arranged for a complete Axia digital audio system that does mix minus automatically. And it saved my life. And we're still using it, although they're, they're getting their money's worth cuz we just had to buy a $24,000 replacement mixer. <Laugh>. N B D I am <laugh>. Stick with Loopback. You're much better off <laugh>. Yeah. What's your podcast?
Caller 9 (02:10:16):
Tell us about your it's op opera now. I called you many years ago. Opera Now. Opera Now Opera Now podcast is the website and again, we started I think in October, 2008. And it's fallen on and off. Yeah. It's fallen on and off over the years, but started, we started up again during the pandemic because, you know, everybody and his brother I saw was doing a podcast <laugh>. So I thought it's time for us to come back. Yeah. The
Leo Laporte (02:10:42):
Audience needs us. You've done 295 shows. That's pretty dang good.
Caller 9 (02:10:46):
Yeah. Only it's been since 2008. That's the problem.
Leo Laporte (02:10:49):
<Laugh>. That's all right. That's all right. There's no, you know what keep going, keep going. And now a whole bunch. Oh yeah. Now you got it. Cuz a whole bunch of people now are gonna go to opera now podcast.com and that pump and they're gonna sign up.
Caller 9 (02:11:03):
One other quick thing too, if you don't mind, it's not a plug, but it's kind of a call to arms to the, the army out there. Yes. None of you guys have a lot of sophisticated listeners. <Laugh>. So I have been, before I was an opera singer before and then I got into executive search. I've been doing it for about 12 years. The last five I've been focusing on product and tech roles and to, and I work in-house for a very large, I I plug it, you can find looking for, I work for internet brands, so like a Web MD and Med Scape Martindale. And I am looking and banging my head looking for a senior cybersecurity Linux administrator. <Laugh>
Leo Laporte (02:11:40):
A senior. You know, we, oh, I see. This is, we talk about this in the in the ads for ACI learning all the time. Yeah. Yep. There are one, last time I checked 1.4 million open jobs for cybersecurity people. It's a, it's, there's so much need and there's so, so few people. So if anybody watching is and, and where would they have to work?
Caller 9 (02:12:03):
So it would have to be in the LA area because we want like a three day week hybrid, but it's working for our VP of IT who was a known real Linux head. He des spotted an Android to vulnerability years ago. Nice. So we want the person to be in there three days a week cuz this person's gonna really, really learn a lot.
Leo Laporte (02:12:20):
And how should they contact you if they are a senior? I
Caller 9 (02:12:22):
Don't mind giving an email address. That's fine. If that's okay with you. Sure, yeah. And we're, it's Michael dot rice internet brands.com.
Leo Laporte (02:12:30):
Michael dot rice internet brands.com.
Caller 9 (02:12:33):
See I make it few Baba Bowie emails, but <laugh>, I don't care if you be actually, I think or a snugs if you're a Kevin Smith fan, but that's fine. I wouldn't mind getting it.
Leo Laporte (02:12:42):
Snugs <laugh> and yeah, particularly looking for a cybersecurity professional with Lin Linux, senior Linnux. Yeah. Cybersecurity professional.
Caller 9 (02:12:52):
And OnPrem is our big thing too. It's cuz the big problem is a lot of these people are remote know, maybe they're doing it up until 2017, but on-prem in terms of servers, it's not cloud. Yeah. A lot of these people have moved on to AWS or Azure or
Leo Laporte (02:13:05):
Whatever, so Yeah. Oh, so the servers are on-prem, so the Oh, actually that's more
Caller 9 (02:13:09):
Fun. Containerization. Yeah. If we want somebody who wants it, keep doing that. Yeah, that's the thing. And again, it's a good opportunity. Pay is good. I won't say more than that, but, you know, I thought this would be a great place to kind of get the word out there.
Leo Laporte (02:13:21):
Awesome. Can I ask you one question though? I'm looking at the your website. Do you actually talk about opera on this show? Oh yeah.
Caller 9 (02:13:29):
Okay. We do. We we are all very experienced, but it definitely is a kind of a sideways glance at it.
Leo Laporte (02:13:35):
<Laugh> Okay. <Laugh>. It's not, it says it's the latest opera news, but it sounds but it looks basically on your illustrations. Like you talk about a lot of different things.
Caller 9 (02:13:44):
We, we do. Yeah. It's, it's a humorous bent for
Leo Laporte (02:13:46):
Sure. I like it. So I like it. Hey, that's great. It's nice to meet you Michael. Thank you so much for calling. I hope we could find somebody for your opening. Yeah, that would be great.
Caller 9 (02:13:55):
I'll look and put in the promo code. Twit in the subject
Leo Laporte (02:13:58):
Came. I don't want a commission <laugh> just the, the warm feeling of knowing I have helped you. Exactly.
Caller 9 (02:14:04):
I'll be sure to update you if
Leo Laporte (02:14:06):
Anything comes. Hey too, let me know. Yeah. Thank you Michael. Absolutely. Have a great one.
Mikah Sargent (02:14:10):
The twig of opera. I like
Leo Laporte (02:14:11):
That. The twig of opera. Yeah. Twig is no longer about Google, is it? I shouldn't be the, I shouldn't be the guy who says
Mikah Sargent (02:14:18):
<Laugh>. Your show doesn't look like
Leo Laporte (02:14:19):
About this show. Yeah. Why do you call it opera now? There's no opera. Why don't you call it this week in Google? Everybody says we should rename this week in Google. Really? Yeah, this week. It was this week in in pop screens. But that's, you should listen. You will know what I'm talking about. So bad news. Samal Sam had missed his plane.
Mikah Sargent (02:14:38):
Yes. Delayed.
Leo Laporte (02:14:39):
So he is
Mikah Sargent (02:14:40):
Delayed. He's delayed probably
Leo Laporte (02:14:41):
Night. Yeah. So we won't get him on the show this week. But I do, I really wanna see this. Yeah. New ionic. We'll get his review maybe next week, maybe at another date. But I am so glad you could be here for the show. Yes. Now let me tell you a few, we'll take care of some business and then we'll start breaking down and getting ready for this week in tech, which is coming up on most of these say Ette stations at Moments. Oh. We didn't even get to our videos. I forgot we had three videos. Oh man. We'll have to do 'em next week. Email us, ask the tech guys at twit tv and send us some video questions. I completely forgot. I feel that's my
Mikah Sargent (02:15:24):
Fault. Oh yeah. I mean look, this is the thing. This show is a variety show. It's got a lot going on and we can only get to so much every week. Yeah. But the good thing about those video calls has there
Leo Laporte (02:15:32):
Forever. They're here. We'll do 'em next week. So thank you for those. If you wanna send more, ask the tech guys at TWI tv. Of course. We take our calls via Zoom. We're still working on the idea of a phone number.
Mikah Sargent (02:15:43):
Yes, yes. I, yes, by next week we will have some more information about that. So we may have a phone number soon, but
Leo Laporte (02:15:49):
I'd like the zoom cuz we get to see you.
Mikah Sargent (02:15:51):
Yeah, that's fun.
Leo Laporte (02:15:52):
See your light Saber <laugh> call dot twit tv. That'll continue to be the Zoom call number if you wanna watch the show live. In fact, really, if you're gonna call in, you probably have to watch the show live. We do it every Sunday morning. It's 11:00 AM to 2:00 PM r time, which is two to 5:00 PM East Coast time. Our time is specific, so two to five East Coast time and that is 1800 utc. So you can figure that out if you're watching live. And the livestream is at live dot twit tv. It's live audio or video. So you can, you could choose chat live@irc.twit.tv of course Club twit members get special chat experience in our Discord after the fact the show's available at the website. Just easy to remember. Tech guy labs.com still works, but I think eventually that's gonna go away. So twit.tv/atg, keep that in mind. Twit.Tv/Atg for Ask Tech Guys, Aztec guy,
Mikah Sargent (02:16:52):
Aztec guys a Asta, guys,
Leo Laporte (02:16:54):
<Laugh>, aec atg. We let could be two D's but you know what one t's enough atg after the fact. That's the website. But you can also watch on YouTube cuz we have a special YouTube channel with all the shows since we do video. And you can subscribe audio or video in your favorite podcast client. You'll get it automatically the minute it's available. Mikah Sargent does other shows every Tuesday. He does a fabulous show. Ios today with Rosemary Orchard. She's wonderful. She uses her exercise equipment. I understand <laugh>. I I've been told that's Tuesday morning, 9:00 AM Pacific right before Mac Break Weekly. Also Tech News Weekly at noon on Thursdays with Jason Howell this week. I'm sure there'll be lots to talk about. This was a, it's gonna be an exciting week in tech.
Mikah Sargent (02:17:41):
Yes indeed.
Leo Laporte (02:17:42):
And of course you can catch all of us in our twit forums@twit.community on our mastadon at Twit Social in the Discord for TWIT members and of course our irc. Anything you wanted to mention? Just
Mikah Sargent (02:17:56):
Please subscribe to the club so you can see Hands on Mac, cuz I'm doing that every week. That's great show. And it'd be great to have you there in the club hanging out with us. Great show.
Leo Laporte (02:18:04):
I guess that's it for as the tech guys for this week. Watch the Oscars tonight. We'll talk about it next week. <Laugh>, <laugh>, sorry if you called and I didn't get to your calls. We apologize if we didn't get to your videos. I'm sorry. We'll be back next week in time. More ask the tech guys. We'll see you then. Bye-Bye. Byebye.
Ant Pruitt (02:18:24):
Hey, what's going on everybody? I am at Ant Pruitt and I'm the host of Hands On Photography here on tv. I know you got yourself a fancy smartphone. You got yourself a fancy camera, but your pictures are still lacking. Can't quite figure out what the heck shutter speed means. Watch my show. I got you covered. I wanna know more about just the ISO and Exposure Triangle in general. Yeah, I got you covered. Or if you got all of that down, you want to get into lighting, you know, making things look better by changing the lights around you. I got you covered on that too. So check us out each and every Thursday here in the network. Go to twit.tv/hop and subscribe today.
