Ask the Tech Guys Episode 1971 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):
Well, hey, it's time for as the tech guys. Yes. Leo LaPorte here. I'm back and I'm gonna tell you which technology worked on vacation and which technology didn't.
Mikah Sargent and/or Dick Debartolo (00:00:09):
And I'm Micah Sergeant. Still here? Yes. And I am going to explain why Bluetooth is really not a good option for the smart
Leo Laporte (00:00:15):
Home. And then it's a fond farewell to one of Mad Magazine's greatest artists. Al Jaffy. Dick de Bartolo joins us with some memories. It's all coming up. Next on Ask the Tech guys
Mikah Sargent and/or Dick Debartolo (00:00:28):
Podcasts
Leo Laporte (00:00:29):
You love
Mikah Sargent and/or Dick Debartolo (00:00:30):
From people you trust.
Leo Laporte (00:00:32):
This tweet tweet.
(00:00:37):
This is Ask the Tech guys with Micah Sergeant and Leo LaPorte. Episode 1971, recorded Sunday, April 23rd, 2023. Sweet Tea and Pecan Pie as the tech eyes is brought to you by Miro. Miro is your team's visual platform to connect, collaborate, and create together. Tap into a way to map processes, systems, and plans with the whole team. Get your first three boards for free to start creating your best work yet at miro.com/podcast. And by Cisco Meraki. With employees working in different locations, providing a unified work experience seems as easy as herding cats. How do you reign in so many different moving parts? The Meraki Cloud Managed Network. Learn how your organization can make hybrid work work. Visit meraki.cisco.com/twit. And by ACI learning, our military uses some of the most advanced technology in the world, which makes you veterans uniquely qualified for it and cybersecurity positions. To learn more about ACI learning's premium training and across audit it and cybersecurity readiness visit go dot aci learning.com/twit. Well hey, hey, hey. How are you? It's Leo and Micah. The tech guy show is on the air and I've been gone. Did anything happen while I was gone?
Mikah Sargent and/or Dick Debartolo (00:02:05):
Nothing big. I mean, other than Rosemary Orchard flying across sea, she sitting to join us sitting in seat. She sat in that very seat. Oh man. Scott Wilkinson as well. Join us and Aunt Pruitt was here.
Leo Laporte (00:02:17):
Thank you guys. Yeah. Thank all three of you for filling in. Really appreciate it. I'm a little mad at Scott
Mikah Sargent and/or Dick Debartolo (00:02:24):
<Laugh>. Oh yeah.
Leo Laporte (00:02:25):
Well he came over to my house while we were gone. He came over to look at our tv. Cuz I have that new QD O led from Samsung. Yes. Beautiful tv. Beautiful. I really missed it while we were gone.
Mikah Sargent and/or Dick Debartolo (00:02:35):
<Laugh>. I can only imagine. I missed
Leo Laporte (00:02:37):
Some. There's three technologies I missed while we were gone. The qd o led tv, Uhhuh <affirmative>. The Toto Washlet toilets.
Mikah Sargent and/or Dick Debartolo (00:02:45):
Yes.
Leo Laporte (00:02:46):
And the eight Sleep Mattress. Yep. Those are the three things. <Laugh>, everything else, the coffee was better. Everything else was great. But I did miss those three things. Anyway, he came over and there's something was he couldn't figure it out. Disconnected, stuffed, unplugged to the Apple tv. I guess the Apple TV was taking over. You didn't like that. Anyway, I came home. We're trying to watch succession cuz apparently something happened and nothing. You had
Mikah Sargent and/or Dick Debartolo (00:03:10):
To reconnect everything.
Leo Laporte (00:03:11):
What the I'm going, what the hell? Sorry. It's fine. I figured out pretty quick. And and I understand what his question was because it's a little weird the way the Xbox works on that. So he had to kind of disconnect the Xbox so he could play some, you know, his calibration DVDs. Thank you for doing that. Anyway, Scott, appreciate it. I came back. All the settings had changed. <Laugh> for
Mikah Sargent and/or Dick Debartolo (00:03:32):
The, he did say for
Leo Laporte (00:03:33):
The better.
Mikah Sargent and/or Dick Debartolo (00:03:33):
He was actually very impressed. You had a lot of the settings how he would have them already. He
Leo Laporte (00:03:39):
Found something that I didn't know existed called Filmmaker Mode. That must be a hidden menu he
Mikah Sargent and/or Dick Debartolo (00:03:45):
Found. Yeah. You have to hit up, down, up. I've
Leo Laporte (00:03:47):
Never seen it. Yeah. And it, and it's, you know, it's, it New TVs are starting to do this after many years of filmmakers and actors saying, you're screwing up our video with this high frame rate stuff. So they put in this filmmaker mode, which is as the filmmaker intended it mm-hmm. <Affirmative>. And it does look much better. So thank you for doing. Nice. that's Scott. So that was, that was anyway, I'm back and I appreciate Scott and aunt and Rosemary. I'm sorry I didn't get to meet Rosemary after all these She's years. I am wearing
Mikah Sargent and/or Dick Debartolo (00:04:16):
You're wearing very, it seems fascinating.
Leo Laporte (00:04:18):
Socks. These are, these are these are the socks that they hand out on the Portuguese Airline tap.
Mikah Sargent and/or Dick Debartolo (00:04:26):
Really?
Leo Laporte (00:04:27):
Yeah. They hand out socks cuz the floor is dirty. So you put on their special socks and, and I thought those are pretty good, but they're really thin and they're gonna fall apart. So this is the one shot I get to word
Mikah Sargent and/or Dick Debartolo (00:04:35):
About <laugh>. Those are lovely.
Leo Laporte (00:04:37):
These are your tap socks for the week. Did Elon do anything in the last few days? I'm thinking now more and more. There was a great article in Politico opinion piece saying don't fall for it. Journalists. Mm-hmm. <Affirmative>. He's just, it's his way. He's, he's even said, I don't wanna pay for advertising. I'm gonna get attention mm-hmm. <Affirmative> any way I can. And he, the blue checks are gone. I lost mine.
Mikah Sargent and/or Dick Debartolo (00:05:02):
Yep. Same.
Leo Laporte (00:05:03):
But then, because we're not paying Twitter blue, so we don't, we don't have the $8 a month blue checks. But then he realized, well, that probably is the wrong thing to do. So if you've got more than a million followers, apparently you're getting your blue checks back. And then Elon, this is nervy, but again, this is, and I don't want to give him any time, so I'm gonna say this and be done. He said, we'll, I'll pay for it for Stephen King and LeBron James. Like he's paying for, he owns the company. He can say, turn on a blue check, <laugh>. Oh, I'm paying for it for them. Aren't I generous? $8 a month?
Mikah Sargent and/or Dick Debartolo (00:05:35):
Well, especially as a means of trolling. He's
Leo Laporte (00:05:36):
Just an a
Mikah Sargent and/or Dick Debartolo (00:05:38):
Yeah.
Leo Laporte (00:05:39):
You finish the sentence.
Mikah Sargent and/or Dick Debartolo (00:05:40):
Yep. You finish it. We're
Leo Laporte (00:05:41):
Done. I don't like him <laugh> and I don't want to give him any more energy. So we're done. All right.
Mikah Sargent and/or Dick Debartolo (00:05:48):
I actually do have a question for you. Before we left, we had a great episode where we covered what's in your bag. And we, we, it's kind of was a larger conversation about bags themselves, but you also showed us a lot of what you planned to take with you. And I, as someone who tends to way over pack and bring along a lot more than I actually need, always do my best to try to have a moment when I get back and say, what did I actually use while I was gone? You're
Leo Laporte (00:06:15):
Good. At least it wants to do that too. She calls it a post-mortem. Like, there you go. She
Mikah Sargent and/or Dick Debartolo (00:06:19):
Died. Yeah, I know. I don't like that term. So I was, it's literally this morning as I was showering, I thought, I'm not gonna say postmortem <laugh>, cuz I think that's such a grim term.
Leo Laporte (00:06:28):
<Laugh>, let's do a post-mortem. We're not dead yet. <Laugh>. yeah, no, there were some definite lessons learned. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. So one of the experiments was, am I gonna bring a good camera? And Lisa said she was gonna, she brought her o om systems, om one, which is a really nice micro four thirds camera. She brought a very good lens's of, got a huge Zoom range so she could get one from wine angle to really tight on the, you know, on the Michelangelo pita. She could zoom right into the nose hairs. And and so she was able to get a very good picture of anything that we really needed. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. So I thought, well that's gonna let me off the hook. But the truth is I did, and then at the, so you remember I was gonna bring two things. I was gonna bring my iPhone and use that as my primary camera and the Insta 360 x 3, 360 degree camera four. I thought, well maybe cuz I, I'm so impressed with what our Anthony Nielsen are Yes. Our chief lead editor does with, with that and the long stick, you know, that he has. And it looks like a, like
Mikah Sargent and/or Dick Debartolo (00:07:28):
Yeah. It's a giant, like very long mono pop. It's
Leo Laporte (00:07:31):
His own, like, it's weird. Anyway he'd done such a good job and he gave me some tips on how you do it. One of the things that's cool is you put the, the use use the Insta 360, you tie it into your phone mm-hmm. <Affirmative> with their software. And then you can in, in post you can edit it by say, pressing a button. Holding a button, and then looking around with the phone within the video. Oh. And it remembers it.
Mikah Sargent and/or Dick Debartolo (00:07:52):
Oh, that's cool.
Leo Laporte (00:07:53):
And then you've got your video. So that's really neat. Yeah. So I did a few things. There were a few moments where having that 360 was incredible. Now you can't, you can't be doing that in St. Peter's Basilica waving around the thing. Oh, they'll stop you right away. So there were a lot of places that would've been great, but where was most useful, where walking around the Peloton Hill in in Rome where, you know, the Roman Forum was, and the Jupiter Church of Jupiter and the, and all some amazing stuff. And I did get some very wonderful video. But the problem with the Insta, and everybody will say this is, it's no goodo. You gotta post a lot of post editing. It's no good by itself. You can't just the
Mikah Sargent and/or Dick Debartolo (00:08:36):
Wrong
Leo Laporte (00:08:36):
You could. And I will put these on my YouTube channel. I have a personal YouTube channel where I've put 360 stuff before. So if you wanna walk through Romans, look around,
Mikah Sargent and/or Dick Debartolo (00:08:45):
I could put on my yeah. Or even just with your quest, put your mouse point. Yes. So you have the option. Got it, got
Leo Laporte (00:08:51):
It. Got it. So yeah. But, but if you had the three, the VD VR glasses, it would be really cool. You could look around and it'd be like, you're with us. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. In fact, you can even hear our guide explaining stuff. Oh,
Mikah Sargent and/or Dick Debartolo (00:09:00):
The audio's there as well.
Leo Laporte (00:09:01):
Yeah. The audio's pretty good on the Insta.
Mikah Sargent and/or Dick Debartolo (00:09:03):
I'll have to check that
Leo Laporte (00:09:04):
Out. Well, I, what I found, so the, the, the deal with the Insta, if you really wanna understand the difference between a, an iPhone and a and a 360 camera is you don't have to make the decision in the, you're deferring the decision on what to look at with a 360. With the iPhone, you aim it with any camera, you aim it and say, this is what I wanna look at. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, this is what I wanna see right now with a 360. It takes everything. And then later you decide, God, the problem is you have to then decide later. You know, you have to do that work. It's
Mikah Sargent and/or Dick Debartolo (00:09:30):
Like that camera that it's, it's a very old camera. It had 30 different lenses on it. Yeah. And it was supposed to be, you could take one photo and Yeah. Have all, but a lot of times you don't want to go back later. Right. And try to figure it out. Yeah. You're capturing the moment for the moment. Right then. Yeah.
Leo Laporte (00:09:46):
And it turns out the camera now in, and I have an iPhone 14 Promax as you do the latest iPhone. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> is so good. I also, by the way, I brought the Samsung S 23 Ultra, didn't even end up using it that much cuz a camera on the iPhone is exactly what you want. Yeah. And so I took, I think I took all the pictures I would've taken with a fancy camera. Maybe there's a few, like, you really wanna make an artwork.
Mikah Sargent and/or Dick Debartolo (00:10:11):
Yeah.
Leo Laporte (00:10:11):
But I, I would, but doing that takes you outta the scene, outta the moment too. Somewhat. So I was using a, like an Instamatic just recording what happened and I'm, I'm ex the image quality's great. I do have a few images that I'll, I'll probably post and, and I, you know, make, do some post editing on and really make look. That's cause I think they're artistic, but I got 'em with the iPhone. They're fine. So there are, there's some stuff with Theta 360, probably, you know, not unhappy. I brought it for a few special occasions, but F 99, I don't think I'll ever bring my, I've spent so much
Mikah Sargent and/or Dick Debartolo (00:10:45):
Money on Yeah. Fancy
Leo Laporte (00:10:46):
Cameras, <laugh>. And I don't think I'll ever need to do that again. I, I, I feel like this worked really, really well. So Lisa took so of some beautiful shots, which she, she loves to do post mm-hmm. <Affirmative> post-processing. I'm keep saying post and you're thinking, what are you talking about? She loves to do post-processing. So life of lisa.com is her blog. There's stuff there. We used Polar Steps, which I do recommend. I was very happy. This is an app that on your iPhone, you can use it on Android too, that uses the GPS and the iPhone if you give it permission and tracks your whole journey. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, in fact, I'll show you it, it actually puts a track of the journey on your, on a map. And then it will add the pictures. Or you can manually add the pictures and text if you want, of that trip. And so now you have this wonderful, and I shared this publicly, this is available.
Mikah Sargent and/or Dick Debartolo (00:11:35):
Yeah. Where do people go to follow along?
Leo Laporte (00:11:36):
Well, it's a, it's a, oh think polar steps.com/laporte I think is what you would do. Oh, that's easy. But and I think you can then see it without signing up. You may have to sign up. You can, okay. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. So you can see the trip. This was Lisbon de Rome, the most recent trip. And you can see the pictures. And almost all of these, some of these are, have, have leases, but almost all of 'em are with the iPhone and they're snapshots. I agree. They're not I'm not doing art. I wanted some snapshots. So I feel very happy about you know, and yeah, there's food pictures.
Mikah Sargent and/or Dick Debartolo (00:12:06):
Oh, this is so fun. You're, you're quite literally seeing your journey. Take the place. And, and you mentioned too, that one of the benefits of Polar Steps is how easily you could e then make this into a photo book,
Leo Laporte (00:12:18):
Right? Yeah. And that's their, this is free mm-hmm. <Affirmative>. And that's their that's their monetization strategy is that you will wanna make a book outta this. So I'm going to, and we'll show that when it comes, I'm gonna use this, but I also duplicated this into a very nice apple journaling program called Day One. Highly recommend. By the way, the rumor came out after I'm half. Yeah. Halfway through a trip. Germin says, oh yeah. An Apple's gonna do its own journaling program in Sherlock Day one. I hope they don't. Cuz day one is Day one's. Great. Amazing. So I use day one for like, my personal journal with the similar pictures. And then you also make books. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. So the problem with Polar Steps is you can't really caption each photo. You have a text block and then all the photos.
(00:13:02):
I don't think maybe you can when you start making the book, but I'm gonna play with it, both of them and make books from both of 'em. And you can be the judge of Great. Yeah. Love that came out the best. So I, bottom line, I like having polar steps. I think that's a great way to share your trip. You don't have to go to somebody's house and bo them with a five hour slideshow. You can just do it online. And <laugh> this, by the way, was the mo the most richest church in in Lisbon in Portugal. It, it's, we were talking about how much wealth the church had. It's amazing. Anyway, polar steps was great. Iphone was great. I didn't really need the Insta. I'm glad I brought it. I don't think I'll ever have to bring a fancy camera around again unless I wanna do like street. Like say, okay, this is a journey. I'm gonna do street photography or something like that. So Aunt Pruitt's looking me right now and he's not happy. <Laugh>. Sorry, <laugh>.
Mikah Sargent and/or Dick Debartolo (00:13:57):
That does make me wonder though. He, you also brought, or you said you were going to bring, and that was a pretty hefty box that had your recording equipment in it. Did
Leo Laporte (00:14:08):
You get that? Yeah. Cuz there was some thought that I might have to, as an emergency record some ads for.
Mikah Sargent and/or Dick Debartolo (00:14:12):
And you also talked about maybe doing a little bit of audio recording. Like, and
Leo Laporte (00:14:15):
Then Lisa, I thought maybe we might want to kind of practice doing kinda a travel log. Like we might wanna do that in our do. I didn't use any of that. In fact, when I did have to make a commercial last minute, I just used the ista. Oh. Cuz the microphone's really good on it. Oh, wow. And that commercial aired on the twit that Devendra hosted a couple of weeks ago. And it was just a quick little thing. But I think the audio was decent. I did bring a lot of stuff I did, I did not need to bring as always. And so I will probably not do that again. But that was more, that was more a business thing than I thought. I might have to do some ads. Lisa and I both, when we recorded video narrated it, she's been doing that. And so Oh, that's on her Instagram. Lisa de Laport I think is the Instagram you'll see. She'll go And now we're standing in front of the PTA and she'll do a whole thing. So she did it. And I, and I did a little bit of that too. And I think those came out quite well too. Yeah. I don't know if there's a market <laugh> for it. I don't think so.
Mikah Sargent and/or Dick Debartolo (00:15:14):
Not necessarily market, but there doesn't have to be. This can be just for enjoying the experience. It's
Leo Laporte (00:15:18):
For, I, I realize it's all, it's really more for us.
Mikah Sargent and/or Dick Debartolo (00:15:20):
Yeah.
Leo Laporte (00:15:21):
I, I and family. I, you know, my mom who was too old now to go to Italy, but loves Italy. She, she, she loved it. And Oh, sorry about that. Think
Mikah Sargent and/or Dick Debartolo (00:15:28):
About the opportunity later on down the line for Michael to be able to look back on that. Hear Yeah. Mom's voice. Yeah. See the, the journeys that, I
Leo Laporte (00:15:38):
Guess you have to think of posterity. Yeah. I, I don't think my kids have any, you know, I have 57,000 photos in my Apple photos. I don't think they're gonna be going through the old family photos that maybe they will. I don't know.
Mikah Sargent and/or Dick Debartolo (00:15:50):
I I certainly wish that there were more of,
Leo Laporte (00:15:53):
Of your grandparents. Yeah. Imagine if you could see your great-grandparents or your
Mikah Sargent and/or Dick Debartolo (00:15:57):
Great-Grandparents. I'm, I, my, so my no, I'm not gonna talk about it cause I'm gonna get weepy. So nevermind. I do wish that there were some things Yeah. Cuz there were opportunities for me to capture things and I hadn't thought about it at the time. Yeah, yeah.
Leo Laporte (00:16:07):
When you young, you don't,
Mikah Sargent and/or Dick Debartolo (00:16:08):
When aunt was on he mentioned a really great thing is if you have the opportunity, sit down with a loved one and just record audio. I agree. Of a conversation. I agree. To be able to play back. The problem
Leo Laporte (00:16:19):
Is, and this becomes the, the big issue is well, okay, now I've got it and I'm gonna put it somewhere. How do I know it'll be around Right. In three generations. Yeah. And that's a, you know, I think the cloud is a good solution better than say putting stuff on zip disks, <laugh>. Right. that the cloud, at least they're gonna keep their, as long as they don't go outta business, they're gonna keep renewing it. So you'll always be able to play it back over the internet. But will Google photos or Apple photos be around in 200 years? Probably not. Right. This is the other thing. You get going to ancient places like Rome and Lisbon, you really get a sense of a lot of stuff doesn't survive. Yeah. A lot of stuff doesn't survive. Mostly if you wanted your photo album to be around for your great-great-great grandchildren, you should make a giant palace and put the photos up, paint 'em, get a nice gold frame, and then <laugh>, then
Mikah Sargent and/or Dick Debartolo (00:17:11):
Maybe invent a religion, inventor
Leo Laporte (00:17:13):
Religion, and then they'll survive. Yeah. in Incre. Anyway, I had a wonderful time. I missed y'all. It's great to be back. It's good to have you back. And let's do a tech guy show. What did he say? Ho. Hi Yo. I guess I should ask you, okay, we've got, what's, what are we doing today? John Aston. So he told me Dick de Bartos coming up. Yes. The Mad Magazine's maddest writer in our GWiz. He'll have his gadget of the week. We will talk next week with Rod Pile. I hope you watched this week in space this week, cuz they talked about, what is it called? The Rapid, what do you call that? Rapid, rapid, uncontrolled, unplanned unplanned disassembly. Disassembly.
Mikah Sargent and/or Dick Debartolo (00:17:57):
Disassembly, yes. The
Leo Laporte (00:17:57):
Rapid unplanned disassembly of Starship. And, and I think very interesting because of course the immediate spin from SpaceX is, well, this is all good. We learned a lot. It's good news. It's not, and of course they're gonna launch this rocket hundreds of times before humans get into it. And no one was hurt. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, although a few cameras were destroyed. I understand. Right. John <laugh>. And and I, I think some debris hit somebody not no, no major injuries, but so, you know, but it was over the ocean. And so it was kind of, if it's gonna go wrong, this is how it should go wrong. But I gotta say that's a little bit of spin. I know John and everybody saying, oh, this is still good. You don't build, how much did it cost to build that rocket? That's specific one, you don't spend millions to blow it up. Ideally you could. He doesn't
Mikah Sargent and/or Dick Debartolo (00:18:48):
Blow up. That's Yeah. In an ideal world, you don't get to the point where you have to do the rapid unplanned display. But
Leo Laporte (00:18:54):
It's normal. It's normal that these things have to understand.
Mikah Sargent and/or Dick Debartolo (00:18:57):
So, yeah, that I was gonna say, did they go into it planning on destroying it? No. Yeah. But they have new technology that they're working on. So this had a hydraulic system. Yeah. And they're switching to a different one. So that's fantastic.
Leo Laporte (00:19:11):
Ideally you'd test stuff without blowing it up,
Mikah Sargent and/or Dick Debartolo (00:19:13):
<Laugh>.
Leo Laporte (00:19:14):
But some things you just have to do. Yeah. And you don't know. And you know, we forget in the early days of NASA and the early days of rocketry, rockets blew up more often. Yeah, exactly. In fact, John's just shown me, he said, well, how many rockets did NASA blow up? How many rockets did NASA blow?
Mikah Sargent and/or Dick Debartolo (00:19:30):
And sometimes with people, you know, in them, unfortunately
Leo Laporte (00:19:33):
Many before they got off the lodge. Before the, before Mercury. Before the very first. Yeah. All right. We are gonna go to your questions just a bit. That's all I have to say. It was a, it was a success. A qualified success. <Laugh>.
(00:19:53):
It's, you know, you have to do it right. You have to do it. I just think it's a little bit of a spin to say, well, no, this is what we wanted to have happen. No, you didn't. Our show today is brought to you by Miro. You know, it was fun because we were in Spain where Johan Miro, the great artist that Miro inspired is ins names itself after did his beautiful paintings. In fact, I wanted to do a Miro ad in front of, oh, that would be fun. Oh, John Miro painting Miro is amazing, but Miro like the artist is a, in a way, a blank canvas for you to put your ideas and thoughts on. You've been doing a great job. We have a, a Miro whiteboard for Ask the Tech Guys. And the problem I have with talking about Miro is I don't want to tell you what Miro is. You decide what Miro is
Mikah Sargent and/or Dick Debartolo (00:20:37):
Really. Exactly. And you have to go try it to really get it. And it's fun. Amazing. Amazing. It's fun to even play with, even if you're just one person just to play with. Here's
Leo Laporte (00:20:44):
The problem, here's the problem. It solves. It does solve a problem. Yes. We all, big teams, we have work together, we collaborate. Very few people work by themselves anymore. Right? Sometimes that team is all in one place, but oftentimes it's not. People are remote, people are in Spain, they're all over the place. How do you keep a team together, coherent, working towards the same, in the same direction, communicating when they're different time zones. That's what Miro solves. It lets your team bring together in one place. You don't have to go from tab to tab or two to tool brilliant ideas and important information along the way.
(00:21:20):
Miro is a collaborative visual whiteboard that brings all of your great work together, no matter where you and your team are, whether you're working from home in a hybrid workspace, everything comes together in one place. And it doesn't e it's asynchronous. So you could, you could put your brilliant idea there and your and your team 12 hours later could wake up and say, Hey, that's a great idea. And to add to it and collaborate, saying it's a whiteboard really is too simple. Miros capabilities are so much more best thing to do. Go to miro.com, M i r o.com/podcast. You get your first three boards for free forever. So you can start working and then go to the Miro verse, which is a, a, a collection of templates of the other Miro users have created. Just to get some inspiration. You could do so much with it.
(00:22:05):
For instance, if your Zoom meetings are going long or getting a little d disjointed, they have a timer built in. They have brainstorming, they have icebreakers, they have all sorts of ways for you to use that Zoom meeting more effectively. It's a visual collaboration tool pack with features the whole team can use to stay in touch, to build on each other's ideas, to create something innovative from everywhere. You'll shorten your time to launch your customers, get what they need faster. The one tool. That's all one tool. Miro can bring your vision to life planning, researching, brainstorming, designing feedback cycles. It can all live on a Miro board across teams. Even your customers, you can invite them, say, what do you think? And faster input means faster outcomes. Miro users report the tool has increased their project delivery time by 29%. That's not all Miro users report saving 80 hours per user per year.
(00:23:02):
That's two full weeks. That's a full vacation per year. Just by streamlining their conversations. You know, everybody hates meetings. Miro makes meetings work, view and share the big picture overview and a cinch. You can zoom in and zoom out so you can see the 30,000 foot level or see every detail you need. Everyone gets a voice. Everyone can tap into that single source of truth. Your team remains engaged, invested, and happy. Miro, it's amazing. You like can band boards, they've got that. You like swim lane templates. They got a swim lane diagram. They, if you like. It's, it's basically whatever you need to do your strategic planning to your brain storming to do your product development, to invite comment. It's a, it's a way to map processes, systems, and plans with the whole team. Just can just try it, try it three boards for free. Start working better today. Miro m i r o.com/podcast. I think you'll get the idea, but it for me to tell you what it is that would, that would defeat the purpose. You have to figure it out. You get to see, you get to make it yours, miro.com/podcast. We thank him so much for supporting Ask the tech guys. You ready to take a question?
Mikah Sargent and/or Dick Debartolo (00:24:16):
Actually we need to take Dickie d Bartolo.
Leo Laporte (00:24:19):
Is it time
Mikah Sargent and/or Dick Debartolo (00:24:20):
Already? 1130. It's time. Holy
Leo Laporte (00:24:21):
Cow. Hey, Dickie
Mikah Sargent and/or Dick Debartolo (00:24:23):
D Leo, how you doing?
Leo Laporte (00:24:26):
I'm very well. I went to the land of your forefathers.
Mikah Sargent and/or Dick Debartolo (00:24:29):
You went to Brooklyn. Yeah.
Leo Laporte (00:24:32):
<Laugh>.
Mikah Sargent and/or Dick Debartolo (00:24:34):
Yeah. It's hot. And you spent all three weeks there. Have you
Leo Laporte (00:24:37):
Ever been, have you ever been to Italy? Dickey?
Mikah Sargent and/or Dick Debartolo (00:24:40):
Of course. Yeah. Yes.
Leo Laporte (00:24:41):
It's amazing, isn't it?
Mikah Sargent and/or Dick Debartolo (00:24:43):
Yeah. This whole time. Stick us there. We,
Leo Laporte (00:24:45):
We. Oh, that's right. Oh, he was Bill, bill Gaines treated his employees. Right. Don't get any ideas.
Mikah Sargent and/or Dick Debartolo (00:24:51):
<Laugh>. That's exactly <laugh>. Well you're taking me li He
Leo Laporte (00:24:54):
Used to, he used to do some amazing things. So we would take the whole mad office to Italy.
Mikah Sargent and/or Dick Debartolo (00:25:00):
To Italy. Yeah. Africa. Wow. Japan. Yeah. He was an amazing person.
Leo Laporte (00:25:05):
So I, I found out something cuz I wrote a little blog post saying I'm in Genoa of the land of my father's and my sister who's been doing all this research cuz she's gonna move to Italy. She said, no, that's the land of your stepfather. <Laugh>, your grandmother. My grandmother. We call her Nae Nona. Right. Nona was born in, in the Veneto. I'm Venetian. Really? I always thought I was Genovese. But being a Venetian, you don't know what you are because is it a melt melting? Melting pot? Melting pot, yeah. From all over. So Dick, where do your people come from?
Mikah Sargent and/or Dick Debartolo (00:25:38):
My father is from pmo.
Leo Laporte (00:25:41):
Ah, nice. He's Cecil.
Mikah Sargent and/or Dick Debartolo (00:25:43):
Yeah. And and my mother is second generation. I think she, I think her father was Sicily. Yeah.
Leo Laporte (00:25:52):
So you got that Southern Italy. There's there's mafia roots there. Our
Mikah Sargent and/or Dick Debartolo (00:25:56):
Hotel always have pecan pie and stuff like that.
Leo Laporte (00:25:58):
Pecan pie. They're very famous Italian pecan pie. <Laugh>
Mikah Sargent and/or Dick Debartolo (00:26:02):
Southern. That's southern Italy.
Leo Laporte (00:26:03):
Southern Italy. That's what they Southern
Mikah Sargent and/or Dick Debartolo (00:26:05):
Sweet tea. Well,
Leo Laporte (00:26:07):
Sweet tea and play Camp Pie.
Mikah Sargent and/or Dick Debartolo (00:26:09):
<Laugh>. What's
Leo Laporte (00:26:10):
Now Dick joins us every week. Of course he's mad magazine's. Maddest writer has been for decades. But he also, oh, and I haven't had the chance since since I saw you last to commemorate Commiserate. The great Al Jaffey has passed away at 102. The guy did the famous Mad Foldings for so many years.
Mikah Sargent and/or Dick Debartolo (00:26:29):
Exactly. Exactly. And who at a hundred when I called him on his birthday, said, so Dick, if you hear of any work <laugh>, I said, I don't wanna do any, any mad stuff, but if you hear of anything that you think might be fun, let me know. And I said, Jeffrey, you are my hero. A man at a hundred who said, if you hear of any work, let me know.
Leo Laporte (00:26:54):
Here is from the latest mad the 20, actually this is the 2023 Barnes and Noble edition. So it's a little thicker is a folding one of Al's foldings from years gone by a robust economy. Can you get this over the head, over the shoulder? There we go. A robust economy usually gives our laborers a lot to cheer about. But when we take a closer look at how the US industry works, we see that this jolly situation, cuz also make life a bit drab. And then, and I remember as a kid, <laugh>, I was not very good at this. You'd fold it and you'd find out it would say something. And and there you go. I dunno. You can't re you have to do it yourself. You know what, go to Barnes and Noble. Yeah.
Mikah Sargent and/or Dick Debartolo (00:27:38):
Get the book <laugh>.
Leo Laporte (00:27:40):
So so you talked to Al a couple years ago when he was a hundred amazing fella. Any memories you wanna share about Al Jaffy? Oh,
Mikah Sargent and/or Dick Debartolo (00:27:49):
You know I, I posted this on Facebook because I think the funniest thing Jaffy ever said, when Bill was taking us on trips, he took us to Africa. Okay. And there were about 25 of us. And behind the hotel, they built this huge campfire so people could go out there and sit around and chat and the campfire would keep animals wild animals away. Because we were out in the middle of nowhere and two people from another group came out and we were all talking. And then one of the people said, what is the staff of Mad Magazine <laugh>? Good question. In the middle of Africa. Great
Leo Laporte (00:28:32):
Question.
Mikah Sargent and/or Dick Debartolo (00:28:33):
And Al said, we are on a tour of Puerto Rico booked by a really stupid travel age <laugh>.
Leo Laporte (00:28:44):
Oh, I love it. Here it is. I folded it in while, oh, this is very appropriate. A robot took his job when you fold <laugh>, when you fold it in. That's he was really, you told me that when, when mad first started, when Bill Gaines first started Mad Playboy was very hot at the time, and they had the fold out and they didn't wanna do a fold out.
Mikah Sargent and/or Dick Debartolo (00:29:06):
Yeah, yeah. Jaff went to Bill and said, listen, we, let's just say we're a poor magazine. We can't afford a fold out. All we can do is afford a fold in <laugh>. And, and
Leo Laporte (00:29:17):
Little did he know he was screening a job for himself for the next 60 years.
Mikah Sargent and/or Dick Debartolo (00:29:21):
Yes, exactly. He, he thought it was a one time thing.
Leo Laporte (00:29:25):
Oh my gosh. But, but I, you know, did, is there Al Jaffe non Mad Al Jaffe painting somewhere? There should be a gallery because he's heed.
Mikah Sargent and/or Dick Debartolo (00:29:36):
He did a lot of edge. He did a, he had his own set of books, I think called The Tall Books. But the Snappy Answers book sold millions snappy answers. Yeah. Think snappy answers were stupid questions. Did
Leo Laporte (00:29:47):
He write that too? Or did he just illustrate it? N
Mikah Sargent and/or Dick Debartolo (00:29:50):
No, he wrote that. Wow. He wrote that. I, I'll can I tell you one more quick question from Jaffy? Yeah. I, I, I, I, I, I said to Jaffy, we were having lunch at the Society of Illustrators. I said, how did you ever come up with snappy answers to stupid questions? And he said, one night, the tv, the picture was going in and out and in and out. And I said to my son, you know, that's the roof antenna in the old days. And he said, the next day in the afternoon, I'm up there with, you know, bailing wire and trying to get the antenna to stand up straight. And my son climbs up the ladder and looks at me and says, are you fixing the TV antenna? <Laugh>? Yeah, <laugh>. And I said, no, I murdered your mother and I'm stuffing her down the chimney. <Laugh>.
Leo Laporte (00:30:36):
That's a snappy answer.
Mikah Sargent and/or Dick Debartolo (00:30:38):
Yes. It was stupid. My son slowly backed down <laugh>. And then I, and then I thought, wait a minute. That's great. Maybe there's something here. Anyway,
Leo Laporte (00:30:47):
That's great. The great Al Jaffe. What a talented artist. Well, I remember when you when I went to visit you on Madison Avenue to visit the old Matt offices, they have all the originals of these, and they're huge, right? They're,
Mikah Sargent and/or Dick Debartolo (00:31:01):
Yeah. Yes. They're twice, they're big. So he can do that, that kind of minute detail illustration. Yeah.
Leo Laporte (00:31:08):
Yeah. And and were they acrylics? They were, they looked like they were paintings, right?
Mikah Sargent and/or Dick Debartolo (00:31:12):
They were paintings, yeah.
Leo Laporte (00:31:13):
Yes. They were beautiful. I would buy one. I they've had sales. I know. I'm sure DC will sell the whole lot.
Mikah Sargent and/or Dick Debartolo (00:31:21):
<Laugh>, they'll see anything that's not nailed there. Yes. <laugh>. And if it is, they'll un unnail it and sell the nails too. <Laugh>. Yes.
Leo Laporte (00:31:29):
Did you did you bring us a gadget?
Mikah Sargent and/or Dick Debartolo (00:31:31):
This weightman Steve? I did. I, I, I brought what I think is a really neat gadget from anchor work, you know one of the divisions of Anchor and it is their new wireless mic system. And this is a spiffy little travel kit. Ooh,
Leo Laporte (00:31:50):
Look at that.
Mikah Sargent and/or Dick Debartolo (00:31:51):
Yeah. It is really neat. And what I, several things about it are great. First of all, if you decide you wanna clip it on, you can clip it on, or if you want, you can pull the clip off and then put the mic in front and put the clip behind your shirt because can you, <laugh> this is one
Leo Laporte (00:32:13):
Oh, that's a magnet. Yeah. Yes. Magnet's a magnet. Yeah.
Mikah Sargent and/or Dick Debartolo (00:32:16):
Yeah. So the one little clip can either be clip on or clip through clothing. Then the mi at the top of the mic, there is a mic input where you can monitor sound. So that, or you can plug
Leo Laporte (00:32:31):
In look in piece coming out of it.
Mikah Sargent and/or Dick Debartolo (00:32:32):
Yeah, yeah, exactly. Or you can plug in your own lavalier mic and use this just as the Oh, transmitter.
Leo Laporte (00:32:38):
Oh, that's good idea. That's
Mikah Sargent and/or Dick Debartolo (00:32:40):
Cool. This would be great when I'm getting very bored in editorial meetings and I want to get up and walk away from the screen <laugh>. Yeah.
Leo Laporte (00:32:46):
But this is, it seems like this is more for influencers to record. Yeah. Like, like this Right. Video. This is
Mikah Sargent and/or Dick Debartolo (00:32:53):
Gonna be great at trick. But you know, what, if, if you were saying that you were Ill talking over your videos Yeah. That you were recording, this is a way to do that and
Leo Laporte (00:33:03):
Be on camera.
Mikah Sargent and/or Dick Debartolo (00:33:04):
Yeah. And be on camera. Yeah. And then whether you are u s bbc. Oh, look at that. Or an Apple device.
Leo Laporte (00:33:13):
Yeah. Oh, it
Mikah Sargent and/or Dick Debartolo (00:33:13):
Has a lightning cord.
Leo Laporte (00:33:14):
Nice.
Mikah Sargent and/or Dick Debartolo (00:33:15):
That clips to the back of the transmit. So
Leo Laporte (00:33:18):
There's a receiver that goes
Mikah Sargent and/or Dick Debartolo (00:33:19):
There. This is the receiver,
Leo Laporte (00:33:20):
Yeah. Yeah. On your phone. And then and then you have the two microphones and all of that for 250 bucks.
Mikah Sargent and/or Dick Debartolo (00:33:27):
Yeah. I think it's really neat. It comes in black and white 50.
Leo Laporte (00:33:32):
Yeah. See, I would've taken that. If I'd had that, I would've taken
Mikah Sargent and/or Dick Debartolo (00:33:35):
That. It's a nice look. You know what it, Leo, it's been out only about three or four weeks now. I think it came out
Leo Laporte (00:33:41):
Midor. Yeah, no, I know. I saw, I saw
Mikah Sargent and/or Dick Debartolo (00:33:43):
<Laugh>. I saw it and I went, oh,
Leo Laporte (00:33:45):
I'm not gonna have time to get it. I did, I brought something that we, we had met the creators of it, the former AKG engineers called Mike me that works sort of similar. Had a little lavalier and a bass unit, and then you could run their app on your phone and it would record locally and, and all of that. I brought it, but I never ended up using it. This is actually, this seems much simple as,
Mikah Sargent and/or Dick Debartolo (00:34:06):
And one other thing ahead that you might like is that it also can record seven hours of audio right on the mic. Yes. So that if you don't like your phone audio, you have backup audio in within the mic and it can record up to seven hours.
Leo Laporte (00:34:25):
The only thing I don't like about it is it's somewhat large and it has a big anchor work Yeah. On the front of it. So it's a big ad for anchor work everywhere you use it, which I think is
Mikah Sargent and/or Dick Debartolo (00:34:35):
Quite annoying. Well, there's always a magic marker <laugh>,
Leo Laporte (00:34:38):
Or you could put it inside your lapel maybe or something. There's probably ways. And then as you said, you could use a lavalier mic that you wouldn't see that, but that's a Yeah. You know, that's, that's kind of what I'd expect. It's not a professional tool. It's a, it's a tool for you know, for blog, for
Mikah Sargent and/or Dick Debartolo (00:34:53):
People like me, I don't like that. It doesn't tell me what it is capable of in terms of recording what's the float, that kind of thing. I'm not seeing that anyway.
Leo Laporte (00:35:03):
Yeah. It's not a super pro device. It's for a regular people. Yeah. But I think it's a great idea. I like anchor stuff. So I, I'm, I'm
Mikah Sargent and/or Dick Debartolo (00:35:10):
A fan. Yeah. And also I paid $180 for Oh, a Mickey Mouse system. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. And this one is two 50. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Very nice. And has a a lot more featured and
Leo Laporte (00:35:20):
Black or white.
Mikah Sargent and/or Dick Debartolo (00:35:22):
Black or white.
Leo Laporte (00:35:23):
Yeah. So I guess if you want, they showed you showed that little video of a woman using it with a white one and it kind of blended into her clothing. So that's not so bad. Anchor work. That's a new Yeah, there's the white one. Anchor works a new division of anchor to it is do stuff for work, I guess.
Mikah Sargent and/or Dick Debartolo (00:35:42):
Yeah. They make conference call machines and Yeah. Interesting. Webcams and all sorts of stuff.
Leo Laporte (00:35:48):
Yeah. Dick d Bartolo, mad, mad writer is giving you a chance to get an autographed
Mikah Sargent and/or Dick Debartolo (00:35:53):
Copy
Leo Laporte (00:35:54):
Of the Barnes and Noble. This is not some little scheme. Well,
Mikah Sargent and/or Dick Debartolo (00:35:57):
Actually, they'll, they'll be getting a copy of Oh, they won't. June. Mad issue <laugh>
Leo Laporte (00:36:02):
You just sent it to us.
Mikah Sargent and/or Dick Debartolo (00:36:03):
I just sent you, this
Leo Laporte (00:36:04):
Is 10 bucks at Barnes and Noble, but I bet you're in this as well, right? You have to
Mikah Sargent and/or Dick Debartolo (00:36:09):
Actually, it, it just turned out to be that there's a, an article there that Chaffey and I did. Oh, nice. And it was printed long before passed on, so.
Leo Laporte (00:36:17):
Oh, wow. Yeah. I'd like to see that. So what is the, we're paying for the June Mad Magazine and what are we playing? We're playing the,
Mikah Sargent and/or Dick Debartolo (00:36:25):
What the heck is it? The heck is it Exactly. You
Leo Laporte (00:36:28):
Go to gwiz.biz and click the, what the heck is it button? And you'll get a closeup of a gizmo or a gadget. Oh, look at this. There's two fold ins. Oh, nice. And the Barnes and Noble edition. Well, that's a very nice thing. Extra fold in. It's one of the advantages of a fold in unlike a gate fold, you can put as many in them as you want. <Laugh>. Yes.
Mikah Sargent and/or Dick Debartolo (00:36:48):
Right.
Leo Laporte (00:36:49):
Really fun. Al did this as well, a mad peak behind the scenes at a hospital with Larry Siegel. You know, all these guys, don't you? It's kind of
Mikah Sargent and/or Dick Debartolo (00:36:58):
A Yeah.
Leo Laporte (00:36:59):
What a bunch. What a talented bunch. What the heck is it? Go look. You have until, when is the contest run?
Mikah Sargent and/or Dick Debartolo (00:37:05):
The end of this month. So you only have quick like eight days, seven days, something. Yeah. Seven days. There
Leo Laporte (00:37:11):
Are six mad magazines for the right answer. If there's more than six right answers, I'll have a drawing. And there's, what is it? 12 for the best wrong answer.
Mikah Sargent and/or Dick Debartolo (00:37:19):
That is correct. Yes. Judges'
Leo Laporte (00:37:21):
Decisions are final
Mikah Sargent and/or Dick Debartolo (00:37:22):
<Laugh>. That's right.
Leo Laporte (00:37:23):
And Dick will sign it his very own self. He uses is that a Sharpie you use there to sign
Mikah Sargent and/or Dick Debartolo (00:37:29):
That? A little Sharpie. Yeah.
Leo Laporte (00:37:31):
Little Sharpie. Not a big Sharpie
Mikah Sargent and/or Dick Debartolo (00:37:33):
<Laugh>. Exactly. You know, it turned out that my blue check mark on Twitter never went away either. You still have a
Leo Laporte (00:37:39):
Blue
Mikah Sargent and/or Dick Debartolo (00:37:39):
Check? Yeah. Well, I turned out that it was on my monitor. <Laugh>,
Leo Laporte (00:37:45):
You just threw it yourself.
Mikah Sargent and/or Dick Debartolo (00:37:46):
I just threw it myself a bit ago and I thought, oh, it's still there, <laugh>.
Leo Laporte (00:37:50):
It never, it never went
Mikah Sargent and/or Dick Debartolo (00:37:52):
Away. No. And then my monitor went off and I said, oh, it's still there. <Laugh>.
Leo Laporte (00:37:58):
That's one way to get the blue check.
Mikah Sargent and/or Dick Debartolo (00:38:01):
Yeah, exactly.
Leo Laporte (00:38:02):
Dickie d we love you. Thank you so much for being here.
Mikah Sargent and/or Dick Debartolo (00:38:04):
Thank you for your, you safely home.
Leo Laporte (00:38:05):
Yeah, of course. Yeah. I didn't get covid either, even though I was, many, many crowds. None of whom were wearing masks or doing anything sensible. But I, I at Lisa and I both masked up whenever we could and were careful and, and all, all of that stuff. But I guess Covid is over, you know, <laugh>, so there's the
Mikah Sargent and/or Dick Debartolo (00:38:24):
Good news. Yes, that's right. That's
Leo Laporte (00:38:25):
Right. Yeah. Well, here's another Al Jaffe low tech inventions for everyday needs, like the nose hose,
Mikah Sargent and/or Dick Debartolo (00:38:33):
<Laugh>.
Leo Laporte (00:38:34):
Okay. Oh, the no panic paper purveyor. I think actually this was a joke, but actually they make these Yes, exactly. <Laugh>. That's not somebody's, somebody said, oh, that's a good idea. Oh, gotta get that. Gotta gotta make that. What's the, what's the one that's, oh, there where you are. That, that's me and Jaffy. This is it. MAD's catalog of practical joke items for the computer. You were always 50 bartolo al sophisticated. Yes. You're always up and with it on all the, a dis hidden message from the cia <laugh>, they call it an embarrassment of Richard's department. Is, are you the Richard in the embarrassment of Richard's exact <laugh>. Some of us, some of the long-term writers have their own lead into stories and, and embarrassment of Richard's is mine. Oh, that's so great. Dick d Bartolo a legend. So great to have you.
(00:39:29):
Thank you. And thank you for those memories of the great al Jaffey. Thank you guys for honoring him. I thank you both very much. Yeah, thank you. Pass away at 102. You know, that's a good long time. I would be, I'd be, I'd be happy with 101, be honest. <Laugh>, right? Yeah. So you got an extra year. Thank you, Dicky. Okay, buddy. Take care. Bye-Bye. Take care. Bye-Bye for you next month. See you next month. Every month we have Dick DeBartolo on. In fact this is the good news. John Ashley, our producers worked hard and he's managed to horn squeeze everybody in. Shoehorn everybody in, not horn, everybody in. Shoe shoehorn would be the phrase. Yeah. Let's get that right. Everybody in. And so next week it's gonna be Who's it gonna be? It's gonna be, I will be
Caller 1 (00:40:13):
Joining us next
Leo Laporte (00:40:14):
Week. Who? Rod. Rod? I have I have earphones in. I can't hear Rod pile. Rod piles. Next rod pile from this week of space will be next. Will be next week. You'd think those earphones would help. You'd think. You'd think, but I can't hear a bloody thing. <Laugh>, let's take our first call. Sorry to keep you on hold for so long. Kenny, send to breakout room. Right. I forgot how to do this. <Laugh>. And then what? And then he just shows up. Log in with your
Caller 1 (00:40:41):
Password. Hello.
Leo Laporte (00:40:42):
Hey Kenny. Hi Kenny.
Caller 1 (00:40:44):
Hey Leo. How you doing?
Leo Laporte (00:40:45):
We're great. Oh, I could tell where you are. You're in San Francisco.
Caller 1 (00:40:49):
Well, I did it because the Warriors are playing later on, so I gotta show some love.
Leo Laporte (00:40:54):
Are you a Bay Area guy?
Caller 1 (00:40:57):
Oh no. Oh no. You know me.
Leo Laporte (00:41:00):
Where are you from? Ken? about
Caller 1 (00:41:01):
Those Lakers, man.
Leo Laporte (00:41:03):
Oh, he's an LA guy. But, but you're gonna support, that's right. You're gonna support the Golden State Warriors, which is a ridiculous Yeah,
Caller 1 (00:41:09):
I, I kinda like them. I kind of always been a big fan of Steph Curry. I've always,
Leo Laporte (00:41:13):
He's amazing. Like him,
Caller 1 (00:41:15):
He's an amazing guy and he doesn't get the credit that he deserves because of LeBron James. But yeah, I always liked him.
Leo Laporte (00:41:21):
Steph is super talented, but he's a low-key individual, low-key personality, unlike LeBron. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. Yeah. I don't wonder if Steph got his blue check mark back LeBron's, who knows. Paid for. What can we do for you, Kenny?
Caller 1 (00:41:34):
Well, I have a printer story. Hmm. And a question about a product that I believe that you have a sponsor. Are you still sponsoring Express VPN N on twi? I
Leo Laporte (00:41:45):
Think we are. Yeah. Yeah. They are sponsoring us. Yes. You can tell if you go to twit that TV slash sponsors, all the current sponsor that's good. Are listed there. Yeah.
Caller 1 (00:41:54):
So the product that I bought was a Airco six router. Okay. And I talked the last time to you guys about it, some network issues with YouTube tv. And I just figured, well, okay, I'm just gonna get me one of those nice little routers, routers to see if that was solve the problem. And it did. Hmm. It made a big impact. And the nice thing that I like about it is that it obviously comes with Express PPN built if you have an account, which I do thank goodness. And it works really, really fast. And see
Leo Laporte (00:42:26):
That's interesting. And I haven't had a chance to try it. I, we played with the Express p n installed on top of an older Linksys route, I think it was. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, but I haven't tried to these new express VPN n arco routers. And so that's the real question, right. When you use an A vpn, you're going through additional servers potentially can slow you down a lot. Mm-Hmm. But your experience was is pretty, it was, it was usable.
Caller 1 (00:42:47):
Yes, it was. I just made some modifications on what type of VPN n I wanted to use. I use lightweight as the basis basis of it's Yeah. To make it run fast. So yeah, it's running pretty well. But I guess I'll just asked this, why is it that most cable modes, like let's say you have an internet provider like Comcast or Spectrum, why is it that they just give you what I think are standard or subpar modems to where you feel like you're not really getting the full advantage? Why you feel like you have to go and like I did and have to go buy a router or to take advantage of your fast service? Huh? I mean, I, I just can Why
Leo Laporte (00:43:27):
<Laugh>? I'm in a hazard. Guess they've, you know, nobody from Comcast talks to me. Yeah. <laugh> not even their reps, but I'm in a hazard. Guess it's cheap, right? They get one device, that's why. Yeah. It's all built in together. And they make money on it. Don't forget, they're gonna charge you somewhere between five and $10 a month mm-hmm. <Affirmative> to rent this crappy router cable modem com. Yeah. And that's a profit. So what they look, what they're looking for is what's the cheapest box we can get that we can charge the most for? And that's kind of what you get. And the reason I always recommend against it, besides the fact that it's usually a hand me down. Right? You rarely get a new, occasionally you get a new one. I've got a new one sometimes, but usually that was a previous customer who brought it in.
(00:44:15):
So it's a hand me down. It's not necessarily gonna be state of the art and it's gonna be hard for you to configure. And to me, that's the biggest thing. I don't want any hardware in my house that I can't go into and set up and do what I need to do. Right. Yeah. So what we always tell people, and Comcast will let you do this almost all cable mode cable companies will let you do this, is they'll have a list of approved cable modems you can buy. Yeah. This is gonna be a upfront expense, but you won't have the monthly rental fees. And by the way, there's a law <laugh> because these guys are such scumbags that they were letting people buy their own cable modem and router and still charging them rent. So they're actually the Fed. They had to pass a federal law that said you cannot charge rent for something somebody's not using. Well duh. So if they charge you, make sure you, you call 'em and say, no, that's against the law. You gotta take that, that off my bill. So you're gonna pay a hundred bucks or more for a cable modem. I recommend we, I use the CM 1000 from, is it Aris? Yeah. No, it's not Ariss. Let's, oh shoot. Now I've forgotten the name anyway. Oh yeah, that is the net gear. Yeah. Net gear. That's right. Yeah. Night haw. Oh, net
Caller 1 (00:45:23):
Gear,
Leo Laporte (00:45:24):
Gear, neck gear. CM 1000. And then I use ubiquity routers. But this way, you, you, the, you separate the two came mo's gonna do what it's gonna do, which is take that signal coming in the wall over the coax and turn it into ethernet. Then you have your own router. What's gonna do what it's gonna do. And it gives you the choice. Right. So check and see which cable modem they allow. And then you can use any router. But the Air Cove you know, that's a good in fact there's Doug Gammon, our chat room is saying he, he was using it in Vietnam, used to live in Vietnam. Oh wow. So it's a great, it's a great little router. So they chose a good router. And you get the express VPN built into it. I think it's a good deal. What, what are you, what you looking over your shoulder for? Did somebody just bring you something?
Caller 1 (00:46:03):
Oh no, no. I just was you know, I've, again, like I've been using that router cuz I've trying to link everything together into my one device and I'm having to share the cable modem with other members of my family. And so I was getting ready. I have an internet radio and I'm about to switch from, believe it or not, this is gonna sound silly. The Rick DS weekly top 40 to American top 40 with Brian's secrets. You know, I got the two top 40 countdowns <laugh> back to back after I get off the air.
Leo Laporte (00:46:31):
Nice.
Caller 1 (00:46:32):
Yeah. But I mentioned a printers story. So I got a new job about a month ago and you know, I'm going to go back to college in the fall to try to go into it. And right away I was flexing my muscles because I had to connect printers, especially wifi printers. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. And so my first day with this particular job I was toying around with a printer because I don't know if you're familiar with Sibr Technologies, but they're kind of like poor logistics, like printing, shipping labels and so forth. And I was struggling getting labels printed and they told me that it was a wifi riter. That's why I figured, okay, I know what it is, connection issue. So I turned it off for about a minute or two to reset itself like everything else. And then within about two minutes later it started to work.
(00:47:27):
And I also got another wifi printer one where prints like paper documents and like a good IT person I have to take a look and see like the IP address and everything else. And found it and got it to go cuz we were struggling trying to get it to connect. And finally I was able to do workarounds cuz we were still using Windows 10 as opposed to Windows 11. Cause companies are cheap like that. So I manage to make it will work. So I'm flexing my IT muscles in preparation for going back into college to try to get my IT certificate in the fall.
Mikah Sargent and/or Dick Debartolo (00:48:01):
Nice. You're also flexing your ask and answer questions on the radio muscle <laugh> if you're
Leo Laporte (00:48:08):
Printers. I like that because, well of course I've retired from printer questions. Yes. And mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, my colleague Micah, who answers all the printer questions now is, does not have to sweat this one. So that's a that's good.
Mikah Sargent and/or Dick Debartolo (00:48:20):
Yeah. You solved it. Thank God. In
Leo Laporte (00:48:22):
Fact, let's nominate Kenny for all the future PRI printer. We're gonna call you Kenny anytime there's a printer. Okay. Okay. Hey Kenny, great to, to talk to you. Keep up the
Caller 1 (00:48:31):
Good work. All right guys, have a good show.
Leo Laporte (00:48:33):
Thank you. You too. It's great to talk to Kenny was not from the Bay Area. No. Despite just
Mikah Sargent and/or Dick Debartolo (00:48:40):
Honoring us, I guess, which was very kind.
Leo Laporte (00:48:43):
It's very sweet of him. But you know, you could put anything behind you. Well, no, not anything.
Mikah Sargent and/or Dick Debartolo (00:48:47):
Well please yeah.
Leo Laporte (00:48:48):
<Laugh>, take
Mikah Sargent and/or Dick Debartolo (00:48:49):
That back. That almost had a little bro to it. You could put anything behind
Leo Laporte (00:48:51):
You, put anything behind you. I think Kenny comes from Cottontown, Tennessee, right? I think he's actually from from the southeast. We should have asked him about sweet tea and pecan.
Mikah Sargent and/or Dick Debartolo (00:49:02):
There we go. <Laugh>.
Leo Laporte (00:49:04):
Let's get another question in I
Mikah Sargent and/or Dick Debartolo (00:49:06):
America, Sicily,
Leo Laporte (00:49:07):
<Laugh> America, Sicily, the South. I have guy on the line. Let's say hello to Guy who's, who's a baseball Oh no football fan. What is that? What is that behind you guy?
Caller 2 (00:49:19):
That's this is Kyler Murray. Yesterday was Kyle Kyler. Murray day over at the land of the Boomer Sooner. I,
Leo Laporte (00:49:26):
And I think Kylo was a super talent. I really like, I like Kyler a lot.
Caller 2 (00:49:31):
Yeah. So yesterday we unveiled his Heisman statue and I was at spring day yesterday and you know, it was a great day at, at, at Norman, Oklahoma to celebrate a, a talented person who was number one grafted in the Oakland A, which may be the Las Vegas as soon <laugh> or, you know, it was a good, it was good.
Leo Laporte (00:49:52):
Don't rub it in. Okay. <laugh>, you're stealing all our teams.
Caller 2 (00:49:58):
Well No, this is Las Vegas doing that. I don't know what's going on with Oakland and everything.
Leo Laporte (00:50:02):
Yeah. Actually blame Oakland. Exactly. Blame Oakland.
Caller 2 (00:50:05):
Yeah. so, hey, I, I was wanna ask a question and I was kind of, you know, I own my own home and everything, but, you know, I've got friends that that live in apartment situations and also assisted living situations. And so my question is, as far as smart home tech, you know, that can't install into walls, like lighting and and lights you know, you could, you could probably get away with light bulbs and stuff, but is there like any kinda like Bluetooth connections if you don't have wifi availability or, you know, stuff that you can apply to old-fashioned light switches that would give you the opportunity to I would say, you know have a smart light to control from your phone. You know what? Yeah. I'm ki I'm kinda curious about that. Mike
Mikah Sargent and/or Dick Debartolo (00:51:01):
And I, I think we know you. We can do this with me. You ready? Yeah. Clap on. Clap off. No, that's the clapper. <Laugh> <laugh>. That doesn't even eat Bluetooth. Clap on <laugh>. Clap
Caller 2 (00:51:14):
On. Yeah. Yeah, yeah,
Mikah Sargent and/or Dick Debartolo (00:51:15):
Yeah. So there are several companies that make products that you're, you're talking about. And depending on what you're looking for exactly, you could get away with this. A lot of the, in fact, Phillips hu many of their bulbs will work without a hub connected to your router. But he still doesn't need his wifi. No, but no, no, not with this. If you don't use it in the bridge mode, it is just Bluetooth, it Bluetooth communicate the, oh, I did not know that It's new. The newer bulbs from Phillips hu because I think because of this exact reason what you're talking about, there were some folks who wanted to be able to control their Phillips Hu bulbs without needing to get the bridge. And so what they did was they made it possible for you to just Bluetooth communicate with them.
(00:52:01):
Here is my warning though. You, if, if this is, if this is a situation where someone is new to the smart home, I promise you, you are never going to convince them that the smart home is the way to go. If you make them use Bluetooth connectivity to talk to the devices. When I walk over to a wall and I flip a switch, it instantly comes on. And when I flip it again, it instantly comes off. So agree with you. When I clap it, the light comes on. Even the clapper is more responsive. It's so much more responsive. Bluetooth, you can sit there and watch it spin and then the light shuts off. No one's gonna, someone who's new to that, it's gonna go, why would I do that? Instead of getting up and being able to turn it off? They're right away. They're wrong.
(00:52:42):
They're not wrong. Bluetooth is just, it's not the way. But if you're older and yet mobility issues, yes, yes, yes. This is fair. Yeah. If, if, if it is a situation where otherwise it would take you so long to go and get the, the light turned off or if you had some sort of mobility issues even outside of age, then Bluetooth could be the way. But here's the other thing. I have often found that Bluetooth also ends up being something where sometimes it just doesn't send the message that I want it to send to the device, and then 30 minutes later, suddenly my light is turning off because I had asked it to turn off 30 minutes ago. So, oh, that's terrible. You're gonna find yourself that long. Yes. Because essentially it just, it got lost in, in translation and then Transla, but
Leo Laporte (00:53:26):
Eventually it got around
Mikah Sargent and/or Dick Debartolo (00:53:27):
To you eventually got around to it. And so I think that you are opening yourself up as someone who seems to know a little bit about it, a lot of support requests from the folks who you're recommending these products to. And the thing you'll see,
Leo Laporte (00:53:40):
<Laugh>,
Mikah Sargent and/or Dick Debartolo (00:53:41):
You'll see the, the main company now, or the main sort of group now that is working on both matter and thread as these protocols. They are talking about how Bluetooth is good at one thing and that they should have limited it to this one thing, which is the original onboarding of a device. Whenever you're first adding a device to a network, that that is where Bluetooth is great to come into play. But once the device has been added to the network over wifi, they want to get away from Bluetooth altogether. Because the, I'm sure the number of support requests that Belkin in particular has gotten for its Waymo line of products, that's because of the Bluetooth connectivity that just is garbage is
Leo Laporte (00:54:28):
It's way more frustrating. It's
Mikah Sargent and/or Dick Debartolo (00:54:29):
Way more frustrating than you're using anything else. There are some devices out there. Have
Leo Laporte (00:54:38):
You ever heard of third reality?
Mikah Sargent and/or Dick Debartolo (00:54:40):
Third reality?
Leo Laporte (00:54:40):
Somebody in our Discord
Mikah Sargent and/or Dick Debartolo (00:54:42):
Boy band.
Leo Laporte (00:54:43):
Yeah, it does. Somebody our Discord says it's heat. The furnace says I use third reality light switches for that exact reason. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> made for Amazon ZigBee Smart Switch. So it's a ZigBee, but, but ZigBee needs wifi. Oh no. I guess it doesn't. Zigbee has its own kind of radio capability.
Mikah Sargent and/or Dick Debartolo (00:55:04):
But how will, this is the thing. I don't know how the phone, well,
Leo Laporte (00:55:07):
No, you do it with your
Mikah Sargent and/or Dick Debartolo (00:55:08):
Echo. Okay. So yeah, if you're just using voice control, then it would work. Yeah. But
Leo Laporte (00:55:12):
I do that all the time, by the way. Wait, I love that feature. In fact, when I came home, I don't know why the kid had set the hue lights to purple.
Mikah Sargent and/or Dick Debartolo (00:55:20):
That would suggest though that the Echo would be able to process that line
Leo Laporte (00:55:25):
By wifi. You need still wifi. Yeah,
Mikah Sargent and/or Dick Debartolo (00:55:27):
You'd still need to have wifi.
Leo Laporte (00:55:28):
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. so
Caller 2 (00:55:29):
In, so in places like assisted living and everything where they don't have a shared, you can't hook up anything for security reasons for
Leo Laporte (00:55:36):
The wifi. Well, they could use Bluetooth, but gosh, you know, that kinda latency would be really frustrating. Frustrating I think for an older person, especially cuz you do it, you go, I, I turn it off and didn't react to you. You press it again, now you've sent it a turnoff turn on so it doesn't turn off. So you press it again. And, and I think that would be horrible. Worse. A fate worse than Waymo.
Mikah Sargent and/or Dick Debartolo (00:55:57):
Absolutely. I'm seeing third Reality does have a smart button and so, whoa.
Leo Laporte (00:56:04):
It's, and then it uses ZigBee. So you press the button button, so you're in bed, you can't get up, you got a button near the bed, you press the button, it turns the light off. Yeah. Communicating, just using the ZigBee radio, that seems like that might be a good way to do
Mikah Sargent and/or Dick Debartolo (00:56:16):
That might
Leo Laporte (00:56:16):
Work. Thank you. Mr. Furnace heat the furnace.
Mikah Sargent and/or Dick Debartolo (00:56:23):
See, that's the one problem that all of these opportunities have is you still have to have some interface for setting up these devices in the first place. And oftentimes that's a smartphone or a tablet. And the way that the smartphone or tablet communicates with the hub is over a wifi connection. I'm wondering, is there some way, Leo, that think, think about that. Don't
Leo Laporte (00:56:46):
Put this
Mikah Sargent and/or Dick Debartolo (00:56:46):
On me, <laugh>. Well, no, you talk to Steve Gibson regularly. Yes. And Steve has talked in the past about ways to have, you know, kind of your own, we're secure, your own secure network. Yeah. I'm, Hmm. This is tough.
Leo Laporte (00:56:59):
<Laugh>. Stacey Higginbotham really loves the Trons and the Seds. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. I don't know if they do what he wants them to do, but they are smartphone control. Do you, so guy, are your, your folks don't have smartphones?
Caller 2 (00:57:15):
No, they have smartphones. You know well actually, you know, they have, they have an iPad.
Leo Laporte (00:57:19):
Ipad and everything. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So if you could put something, if you can get a switch that you could basically have a home control on the iPad, regardless of whether you have wifi, you don't need wifi. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. Can you do that though? How is it gonna
Mikah Sargent and/or Dick Debartolo (00:57:34):
Connect exactly? I it's
Leo Laporte (00:57:36):
Not gonna
Mikah Sargent and/or Dick Debartolo (00:57:36):
Connect that It will.
Leo Laporte (00:57:39):
Oh, I don't, oh, oh, you found something
Mikah Sargent and/or Dick Debartolo (00:57:42):
Lutron Yes. Makes it's rather expensive, but it has what's called the radio r a three line. Wow. And it uses rf as its means of communicating with different, the
Leo Laporte (00:57:57):
Reason this is expensive, it's a whole home system. Yeah. So you put this in your house, you know, you, when you're building the house, or you go in and you, yeah, this is very fancy. Yeah. I don't know. But they might have something less expensive than the radio or,
Mikah Sargent and/or Dick Debartolo (00:58:13):
You know, what listeners out there love to hear. If you've ever had this exact situation, a person in assisted living, something like that, let us know. Or
Caller 2 (00:58:21):
Maybe in apartments too.
Leo Laporte (00:58:22):
Yeah.
Mikah Sargent and/or Dick Debartolo (00:58:23):
Well see. But e in apartments, you can often have a conversation with your with the person from whom you're leasing or the, the group from whom you're leasing. And a lot of times those leases just stipulate that things have to be the way they were when you leave, as they were when you arrived. And so, as long as when you leave, you put the right switches back in, then it's not as much of an issue. And a lot of times in a, in an apartment, you'll have your own wifi, so it's not as difficult to pull off there. The, yeah, the big issue here is the fact that, as you're saying, it's hard to get that connectivity. Someone is also suggesting maybe like what you did with Abby t-Mobile home internet connection. Oh yeah. And then you just have your own router Yeah. Essentially in your room. Yeah.
Leo Laporte (00:59:09):
She has the Verizon basical. Oh, it's Verizon. That worked really well. That's become very, these residential gateways from T-Mobile and Verizon become very popular and really are somewhat threatening to the big ISPs. Yeah. They're losing some business. So you understand the issue is you somehow have to wirelessly talk to this light bulb. So you, there's wifi, there's Bluetooth they don't have wifi. Bluetooth, we've already decided as a horror. So there, now there are ZigBee Z-Wave and these other kind of proprietary wireless systems. Doesn't, doesn't Hugh have a proprietary wireless
Mikah Sargent and/or Dick Debartolo (00:59:41):
System? They do. And it would be so great if you didn't have to have the router serving to set it up. Means of telling the cause. Cause whenever you tap on your phone, the phone is talking to the router that then talks to the bridge, talks to the, and the bridge talks to the life Hugh
Leo Laporte (00:59:56):
Does make though
Mikah Sargent and/or Dick Debartolo (00:59:58):
Switches. Yes. But the setup of them, it's,
Leo Laporte (01:00:01):
You have to set it up. Yeah. Somebody will know this. You
Mikah Sargent and/or Dick Debartolo (01:00:04):
Know what, I'm gonna do a test though. I will do a test. So I hope you tune in every week because I was just thinking I, their most recent line of remotes that Hugh has, it is possible that a Bluetooth connection to set up the remote and then a Bluetooth connection to set up one of these new bulbs that uses Bluetooth would be a, a possibility. Cuz Amazon actually will sell them in a pack where you get two bulbs or something like that, and then the the, the remote. And you don't have to have a bridge in between them. So I'll see if that is a possibility, in which case that that would take care of it. The only thing would be making sure that the family member or whomever did not turn off the switch on the wall because it needs to be able to be powered. The lamp does. So Yes. Micah, stay tuned for that. Did
Caller 2 (01:00:50):
You, Micah, did you say that matter is gonna provide a solution for this kind of situation?
Mikah Sargent and/or Dick Debartolo (01:00:55):
Not a solution. Because again, the, the, the way that all of this is working is there needs to be some way for the app to communicate with those devices through some means. And so there needs to be an inter internet connection there. And even if you had something like the Echo setup in the, in as the, the means of communicating with them, that Echo does not do all of the voice processing locally on device. It does need to sometimes talk to the cloud. So when you said turn off the lights, if that's not something that it's processing locally, it's not gonna be able to communicate and make that happen. So yeah, this is, this is kind of a conundrum with how much wifi plays a role in the control aspect of it, even if it's not part of the connectivity aspect of it. But again, I'm gonna test this out. I, I have an idea and I'll report back next week with my findings
Leo Laporte (01:01:48):
And just this might be a value to you going forward, guy from the wire cutter and thank you to Reman J thought and our I c who recommended this wire cutter article, this best smart home devices to help aging in place. That's great. And this came out just a couple of weeks ago. So this might, this might be, and they keep it up to date. This might be a, certainly something to look at to give you some ideas, testing, testing this stuff with older people who want to maintain their independence, which sounds like exactly what you're doing. And bless you guy for doing that. I, that's really great.
Caller 2 (01:02:22):
Yeah. I'll look forward to all these comments in the show
Leo Laporte (01:02:25):
Notes. Yeah. Yeah. We'll put in the show notes. He, the, the wire cutter articles HARs with talks about X 10, which started this all back in the day, right? This was before anybody had wifi, Bluetooth mm-hmm. <Affirmative> X 10 had an RF based system that would work actually quite well today. <Laugh>. Yeah. To exactly be great. Yeah. I don't know if it's still around or how well it works. They probably moved to wifi like everybody else. Thank you guy. I appreciate the call. Thank you guys. Have a great day. Have a great day. Well, our show today brought to you by Meraki, talking about networking. Cisco Meraki are the experts in cloud-based networking for hybrid work. Whether your employees are working at home at a cabin in the mountains, that sounds good, doesn't it? Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, or maybe on a lounge chair at the beach.
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Save money Reserve workspace is based on vacancy and employee profiles. They call it hot desking, right? Allows employees to scout out a spot, settle, settle in. It's easy for them to find a place. And it's easy for you to make sure you're maximizing your efficiency. Locations in restricted environments have security too. They can be booked in advance. They can include time-based door access. You can't get in unless it's your turn. Mobile device management, of course, it's Cisco Meraki. Integrating devices and systems will allow your IT department to manage, update, and troubleshoot company owned devices. Even when the device and employee are not there. They're in a remote location, they're on that beach, right? Turn any space into a place of productivity and empower your organization with the same exceptional experience no matter where they work. With Meraki and the Cisco suite of technology, learn how your organization can make hybrid work, work.
(01:06:00):
Visit Meraki, M e r a k i, meraki.cisco.com/twi. Thanks Cisco. Meraki for their support. I've asked the tech guys remember that address, meraki.cisco.com/twit. Just before I left, I get something in the mail. We talked about this and I'm very excited. This is from pie Moroni Pie Moroni. Oh, this is a seven color Yes. E Ink display. That's, that's the dis that's the image they left on there. So that's an actual image from the ink display. And on the back here, the connectors, this is the inky impression. 7.3. It's a 7.3 inch, eight color E ink display. Eight 800 by four 80 pixels. That's pretty exciting. I've got a raspberry pie here. It's gonna, there is an api. There's a, there is. I'm gonna have to do a little Python coating to get this working. That's so exciting. But what I was thinking, you know, we've got this clock here, but the resolution on the, it's kind of cool.
(01:07:06):
That's the tidbit that you use at home. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> and recommended. And I think that's great. We, we know you want us to have a clock on set. This has got the date and the time, but I was thinking this is about the same size. We could do something with this and maybe we could have more than just the date and time in there. Maybe we could have, you know, club members, you know. Oh, that'd be fun. In, in real time. There's an API to that. A P H P A P. So I'm gonna have to do this little Python. P h p I'll probably gonna get myself in trouble, but I'll give you an update and we'll do this and we'll show you as, as I progress, we're gonna try to get this seven color E Ink display, which would be a nice, stable display on set.
(01:07:42):
That's so cool. Yeah. What's the refresh rate on that? As fast as you want, want it to be <laugh>? I don't know. You're not gonna, you know, once a second's plenty, right? Yeah, exactly. It's a clock. Yeah. so but I'd like the idea of getting the Club TWI members in there. What? We need a light. Yeah. You'd have to point a light at it because it's reflective. Well, we'll figure it out. You can see it now, right? There's enough light in here. Well, I'll do black letters on a white background. I'm not gonna make it too hard to read, but we'll see. Yeah.
Mikah Sargent and/or Dick Debartolo (01:08:17):
We'll, yeah, we gotta try it. The
Leo Laporte (01:08:19):
Fact that you can get these now, color E ink displays is pretty
Mikah Sargent and/or Dick Debartolo (01:08:22):
Exciting. That's so cool. Yeah. It's
Leo Laporte (01:08:23):
Not the greatest color, but it's color. Anyway, we'll play. I'll be playing with that. That'll be a project. We'll be working on it. That's fun. Few weeks on it. Ask the tech guys. So stay tuned. P i m o r o N I is the company. Pa Maroni. Hi, Maro Pi Maroni. I was gonna say, I picked this up in the Flo and says I was at traveling, but no, I mail ordered it, but it came and unfortunately just before I left, so I didn't get a chance to work on it, but I'm looking forward to that.
Mikah Sargent and/or Dick Debartolo (01:08:50):
Leo, there is a great question. Yes. It came to us via email. That's, let's do it specific to you, uhoh. No, it's okay. It's about Linux. So Robert sent in via email and said, welcome back Leo. Thank you. I have a Lenovo E 15 think pad on Wish. I have installed Linux and I'm having a problem with battery life. I charge the battery to 90% and I turn it off a week later. When I turn it on, the battery is down to around 30% or less. This battery drain was not as fast when I had it Windows installed. I have also installed other Distros of Linux and still seem to have the same issue. And then as a comparison, Robert mentions I have a 2010 MacBook Air that I've also installed Linux on Pop Os. And the battery drain is slow when turned off compared to the Think pad. Any idea on how to solve this
Leo Laporte (01:09:38):
Issue? Yes. So this is very common complaint. Most laptops, including that Lenovo you have, are designed for Windows. And Windows has a lot of stuff running in the background to increase battery life. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> puts just like your smartphone and puts stuff to sleep, put stuff in the background, stop stuff. Linux is not tuned specifically for that laptop, but you can tune it better. So there are a number of tools that I use, probably if you're using Pop Os might be why you're getting a better result in Pop Os. It's getting installed auto automatically. I use T L P, which is battery management and Optimization utility. Most Linux Distros, I believe now install T L p automatically. But if you don't, you should install it and you should read up on it because T l P is basically a manual way to do what Windows does automatic.
(01:10:35):
Ah, so when Lenovo makes a laptop, they make their own driver's software. They integrate with Windows, they do a lot of things to improve battery life. And it's a very common complaint when people are running Linux. They're not getting the same battery life they got on Windows. It's, I mean, it's also the case that some, some of these laptops have terrible battery life no matter what they're running. <Laugh>. Yeah. And it's an older laptop, so maybe the battery is less, you know effective as it than it used to be. Nevertheless, try tlp. But I will also put this link in to this article, which is a really good article, make tech easier. It mentions a number of other which I haven't used like C P U free slim Book, battery and so forth. In my opinion, TLP is all you need and you probably have installed, but you're gonna want to use, you're gonna want to configure it because it doesn't necessarily give you the best performance out of the box.
(01:11:33):
Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, there's a lot of things you could do, like put the PCI bus to sleep when it's not being used, things like that. So if you don't have it installed, you installed tlp, read the instructions use TLP to figure out what's going on, what's using up your juice. This particular problem is while it's asleep, right? So you really want to make sure that all the processes are going to sleep when your laptop is asleep. That the email is in every five seconds going, Hey, is there more email? Check in the email. Yeah. So there's also things you can do in those programs that will help. Email is a big problem with all things. The other tool that I have used that's very good, which lets you at least look at what's going on, is called Power Top. And it lets you see what's using power that would be useful for figuring out, well, what is, what is going on when I'm sleeping that I am I am, you know, losing juice.
(01:12:28):
So oh, it should be called Tattletale. Yeah. Kind of is a tattletale program. So I use Power PowerTop in conjunction with T L p. Powertop will tell you what's what's going on. And then T l P will let you let you configure that to, to some degree. Both of those are very useful tools and I highly recommend them. I knew you'd have an answer for that one. Well, it's a co you know, I, every single person has ever installed Linux on a Windows PC has had this problem. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. So I've spent a lot of times as the subres are fantastic for this. They're great Linux subreddits. You can go in there and ask the same question and you'll get a bunch of experts saying, well, what I think you should do is this. But my, my, my distillation after years reading those subreddits is t l p. That's the tool you really wanna install. Do you wanna do another email? Do we have video or should I take a I think we should go back to the call cast. Kevin's got his hand raised. Let me push this button in that button and see if I can put Kevin in the in the star gate. Hi there. Hey, Kevin. Hi, Kevin.
Caller 3 (01:13:30):
I'm good. Yes. How are you? Welcome back, Leo. And
Leo Laporte (01:13:33):
I am great. You know what? It's funny. I usually, I'd have terrible jet lag. There's an eight or nine hour difference between where we were and where I am now. And we didn't have jet lag going or coming. Nice. So maybe because I sleep all the time now as an old person, I just don't have to worry about jet lag anymore. <Laugh>. It's always, it's always nighttime. What can, what can I do? What can we do for you?
Caller 3 (01:13:55):
Well, I think I was sleeping all the time running this. And when iMac when I set it up for my wife we didn't notice that all the documents and photos were stored in iCloud.
Leo Laporte (01:14:12):
Oh, I hate that.
Caller 3 (01:14:14):
Yes. And so we were, we were pulling our documents down in a manner. And I, I was then I, after a few months, I let this go on for probably about six months. I decided, well, I wanted to turn that off, but now I'm kind of halfway between there. So if I turn off iCloud and just sync my documents or not documents, just the photos, and I want to keep documents down on the desktop, the whole desktop disappears. So is there some way where I can kind of suck this desktop down to where it is and then turn off the iCloud syncing or Yeah. What steps do I do?
Leo Laporte (01:15:01):
This is, this is a, something that both Microsoft and Apple now do. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> that I think is confusing to people are very frustrating, but the reason they do it is because people don't back up. Yep. So they're gonna back up for you in effect. And if, you know, they tell you, when you first set up your iMac, they said there was a little checkbox. Do you want to save, use iCloud for your, your desktop and your documents? And you didn't notice it? Most people don't. And you're getting behavior, and this happens on Windows too, that you don't expect. Fix this, Micah, fix
Mikah Sargent and/or Dick Debartolo (01:15:34):
It. Help me. Obiwan, help
Leo Laporte (01:15:35):
Me.
Mikah Sargent and/or Dick Debartolo (01:15:37):
So basically what you want, what you're wanting to do here, and I will, I wanna make, make it clear, apple does have a process in place built in when you turn this off where it will actually move those files that you are worried or going away to a different place. So I want to actually just go from this document, this Apple Support document. What happens when you turn off desktop and documents when you turn it off, your files stay in iCloud Drive and a new desktop and documents folder is created on your Mac and the home folder. You can move files from your iCloud drive to your Mac as you need them, or just select all of them and move them to the desktop. So while that is what I, what what Apple suggests, I understand the anxiety that comes from turning that off and seeing things change and going, okay, did everything get copied over?
(01:16:30):
So here's what I recommend, and I'm, I'm, let me be clear, you don't need to do this. You could do what Apple was just suggesting there, but I'm with you. I would wanna make sure everything got moved over. So I would take everything that's on my desktop and move it to either an external drive network attached storage for a moment you can move it into the Downloads folder because the downloads folder is not synced. And oftentimes when there is a file that I don't want to sync to iCloud Drive, that's where I'll move it. Move those files temporarily. Now you've got them in that spot. Go ahead to and turn that feature off. Turn off desktop and documents is syncing. And then what Apple's going to do is essentially create a copy of those files that are already synced. Those will be in that iCloud drive you have online.
(01:17:16):
And then wherever you put those files, whether it's in the downloads folder or in a flash drive, external storage, move those to the desktop if that's where you want them, move those to the documents folder if that's where you want them. And from that point on, then they won't sync. I think why it looks so jarring and shocking whenever you turn it off and you said it's like I have a new desktop, is that Apple wants to make it incredibly clear to you that you have turned this off. So it's like a refresh. And this desktop is all brand new, but it is not as if those files are actually going away because they knew that people would want to switch between having them turned on or turned off. So they are safe even if you just turn it off. But if you're like me and have a little bit of mistrust and wanna make sure your files are there, just make a quick copy of them to somewhere else, and then you can move 'em over yourself afterwards. And
Leo Laporte (01:18:04):
Remember, if you're turning this off, you're no longer backing up. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. So now it's on you, man. You gotta, you gotta have a backup strategy so you don't lose stuff.
Caller 3 (01:18:11):
Yes. Yeah, we, well, we had turned it off and then so the, the desktop went to a default desktop. Right. And then I turned it back on and then they were all there. And so I didn't know how to get out of the <laugh>.
Leo Laporte (01:18:26):
I just, you know what stage I, I would just like you and it drove me crazy for a long time. Finally, I just let go and let Apple. Yep. And I said, all right, fine, I'm gonna leave it on. And it is useful if you have multiple Macs, because then you're gonna have the same documents and the same desktop everywhere.
Mikah Sargent and/or Dick Debartolo (01:18:42):
And there are times where I'm on my iPhone and I know I can hit that Files app there, go to my documents folder, and it's the same one that I access on my Mac.
Leo Laporte (01:18:50):
But you have to pay for iCloud. Yes, exactly. It's gonna use more than the free five gigs usually. And so, you know, that's the, that's the
Mikah Sargent and/or Dick Debartolo (01:18:56):
Choice. It's a give and a take. Yeah. I
Leo Laporte (01:18:58):
Would if you, so there's, I like the idea of my desktops and my documents duplicating. I don't want to necessarily trust Apple to do it. Plus I'd use Linux and Windows, right? Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. So I, you know, so what I end up doing is using a free open source program. This is much more complicated, but it kind of has the same thing called Sync Thing. And I really recommend this because what, what if you don't want to use iCloud and you don't want Apple to do it? Sync thing will do in effect the same thing minus one piece the cloud storage. But in a way it is like backup if you have multiple machines because then you, so for instance, I use Think thing to B back up a default sync volume. And by the way, I could put stuff like tax returns there because it's not sta nobody has access to it.
(01:19:46):
It's not in the cloud. It's only on my systems. Right. So I use that for financial documents, things like that. I have a documents folder. I have a down, not the downloads documents. I think my, in my pictures folder, I have a, a handful of folders. I doc, I duplicate. This is at no cost. It uses the internet to copy in the background. It's very efficient. Very. This is kind of a black diamond tip. This is a higher level <laugh>. You know, if, if you, if you really, and I know there are people say, well, I'm not gonna use iCloud, but you gotta back up. And this is an, an interesting way of keeping everything in sync without storing it in the third party cloud. So if you don't wanna pay for the cloud or you don't wanna do that, but frankly, I think for most people what Microsoft and Microsoft does it with OneDrive. Yep. Apple does it with iCloud. What they're doing is after many years of experience, people are gonna lose their data. We're just gonna make sure their documents are in the cloud and that way they'll be okay. So I would just leave it on unless you're willing to take the extra time to learn some other system and, and use it.
Caller 3 (01:20:53):
Well, thank you so much.
Leo Laporte (01:20:54):
Yeah, absolutely. Thank you for calling. So it's okay. Yeah, it's okay that it's happen. It's okay. Turn it off. But now you've got a couple of options, but it's on you man it off. Get it back up. You
Caller 3 (01:21:03):
Got, thank you Micah. You got, you got my, I know exactly what I need to do because we just want our documents and Yeah. Down here we can back those up.
Leo Laporte (01:21:11):
Yeah, exactly. Good, good, good. Okay. Hey, a pleasure talking to you. Thanks for the call. Do I now in this new system, John, do I have to press any additional buttons or they just get hung up on? I have a hangup. Oh, <laugh>. I didn't see. There's a big red button that says hang up. Hang up. Well, there you go. That's what we got John for. Ooh, let's see. What time is it here? Oh, we got an hour left. Yeah. You wanna do an email? Yeah. All right. I think this is a good all around question. From Hugh. Hugh writes in, I've been using the Apple Airport Extreme and Express for quite a while. I just switched from Xfinity to Fiber. I now have at and t Fiber to my house. I chose to continue using the airports with the at and t box configured to be just a modem.
(01:21:56):
I am currently happy with the airports. Are there any reasons I should not be using these Apple routers? I know there is definitely more currents technology out there, but these are working fine for me. Thanks. So Apple discontinued those when, oh my gosh, like a decade ago. A long time ago. It feels like a really long time. And I believe they just stopped issuing bug fixes. That's a bigger issue. That's the bigger problem. Yeah. So although they're probably by now pretty reliable mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, nobody's going around saying, Hey, where can I attack those airport routers? Cuz they're probably not very many of 'em. So I wouldn't worry. I mean, that's always the issues. There's two, two issues. Technology, as you mentioned, has passed you by and security. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> a newer router would give you a later technology that might be more robust, that might be faster.
(01:22:50):
That would certainly work better with the newer wifi devices. Like wifi six. I don't think they su they support WPA three. Right? Oh, that's another issue. That's a, that's actually a, a significant security issue. I don't think Apple used Web. I think Apple was always W P A, but make sure you're using WPA A too Uhhuh <affirmative> wpa three fixes. I consider a minor security problem in WPA A two. This is the encryption that you use on your wifi so that somebody sitting on the curb outside your house can't see everything that's going on. And you certainly want to use that. When did they what is, does any, has anybody looked up the dates of the, the last airport <laugh>? It's been a while and I'm kind of mad at Apple, honestly. I don't know why they got outta that business, but you know what the issues are.
(01:23:41):
Technology has gotten better and faster and security is now kind of questionable. Yep. there are, I think some very good devices. One of the reasons I went with ubiquity, it was design. It's the founders of Ubiquity are former Apple engineers and they really wanted to make something that was like the airport but modern. And we've been, we've been very happy for this morning. Lisa said the internet's really good. I said, yeah, it's a lot better than that hotel, internet and the wifi on the boat. It is good <laugh>. That's cuz I put a lot of effort and time into making it good.
Mikah Sargent and/or Dick Debartolo (01:24:13):
The last airport extreme was introduced in June of 2013.
Leo Laporte (01:24:18):
That's what is
Mikah Sargent and/or Dick Debartolo (01:24:19):
10 years. And then it was officially discontinued in April of 2018, but there wasn't a new one introduced in the meantime. So yeah, it's been 10 years. 10
Leo Laporte (01:24:26):
Years old. Yeah. I, it's hard for me to recommend a 10 year old router. It is a testament to Apple's quality control. It's still running, to be honest. Most if you had a 10 year old lysis Yeah. I'd say you're probably not getting very good throughput on that <laugh>. Cuz they we're out. I know they're, they're might be in the chair hates me when I see they get hot. But the heat that routers don't usually have fans in them. The, as you put bits through them, they heat up and that actually degrades the, the, the quality, the performance, the can, it can cause failure, but it also just can kinda screw it up. So I I honestly for were me, I'd get a new one.
Mikah Sargent and/or Dick Debartolo (01:25:04):
I would get a new one. I know that feeling of, oh boy, now I've gotta set this. But in almost every case, I, I actually did this with mine when I switched from airport Extreme to e as long as the password and the wifi name were the same many of the devices just moved right over to the, the different router. I didn't have any issues with just having it. So there wasn't a whole lot of setup that I had to do. There were a few that had some special authentication that I needed to do. But if you're worried that switching to a new router is going to mean having to completely reset everything, set everything up again by having the same name then and the same password it made it quite simple to move over from an airport extreme to the Euro system. That's what I used.
Leo Laporte (01:25:50):
Euros very Arrow also, I believe was inspired by Apple.
Mikah Sargent and/or Dick Debartolo (01:25:54):
Oh, I, yeah. I in fact, I think that was part of the former, I remember whenever they had sponsored some of my shows and I think that was part of the Yeah. Sort of
Leo Laporte (01:26:01):
Pitch. It is very much like that, in fact. Yeah. That would be the choice. I would say Get get an arrow. Yeah. Yeah. Especially with the configuration. If you have a new iPhone or a new MacBook or even a new Windows machine, chances are it's using wifi six. Yep. Or later, there's wifi six E and I just saw that wifi seven is coming. You're, you're not getting all the throughput, all the quality. For instance, one of the things wifi six does is it, it kind of knows where you are in the house and it, and it, and it tries to improve your, your it, there's just a lot of benefits to it. Mm-Hmm. I didn't really explain that very well, did I? No, no. But at the base level, it's smarter than it used to be. Yes. <laugh>, there you go. That's a good way to put it.
(01:26:43):
Unlike Leo <laugh> nobody in the in the Zoom has their hand raised. If you wanna call us, call, but if you wanna talk, raise your hand. So, oh, someone's raising their hand physically, but they're hidden behind you. Don't physic. Okay. Physically raising your hand works also. That's good. There's a button I believe we'll put Ray on. And then everybody else press the button. <Laugh> to raise your hand. Call TWI TV is the Zoom call TWI tv. You can do that on your phone. It works great. Or your any device, your iPad, it works great, but you don't have to have a fancy setup. Don't forget, you can also email. It wouldn't Now. It's atg twit tv. Yep. Okay. It's lot of things. Atg Twitter tv. It's a lot of things. Ags a tg. Ask the tech guy. Ask the tech guys email's a miracle. All right. Ray <laugh>. All right, Ray, welcome to the show.
Caller 4 (01:27:34):
Thank you. Can you hear me? I
Leo Laporte (01:27:35):
Hear you. Great. Where are you calling from?
Caller 4 (01:27:38):
Oh, Northern Virginia. This is my second time calling Your new format show
Leo Laporte (01:27:42):
Nova. Well, yep. Yep. Well, what's your what's your problem today?
Caller 4 (01:27:48):
Well, I'm not sure if it's my job, <laugh>, but normally I listen to the TWIT network on my iPhone through the Apple Music tune in thing. Yeah. But lately, and it's been about the same time as you left on vacation and I get the certificate error. Yeah. You
Leo Laporte (01:28:07):
Know, come up when I go on vacation, everything just falls apart. I, I forgot to s No,
Caller 4 (01:28:13):
I wasn't gonna say anything.
Leo Laporte (01:28:14):
Everything falls. No, I certificate error. Huh. So tell me again. Yeah, I don't really understand what you mean. When you said that Apple thing tune in, how are <laugh>? You're using your phone?
Caller 4 (01:28:24):
Yeah. You know how it's an app, but it's a built-in Apple app. It's the music. I guess you're using
Leo Laporte (01:28:29):
The music app to listen, or is it the podcast? You No, you wanna listen live. So using the music app Yeah. And Right. And you're pointing it where what are you, what are you pointing it at?
Caller 4 (01:28:40):
Well, you know how you can choose a radio station. Yeah. And you, so you just, you put in twit.tv and I think it just automatically starts playing. But recently this has been happening with Exactly, with this, with this network. And over the last a year or so, I'd like also like to listen to xpn.org, which is a NPR station, rock station out of, and, and that, and that's had the same issue. So I can't figure out if it's and it's o only on the cellular network. If I make, if I come home and I put my phone on my wifi,
Leo Laporte (01:29:11):
That's a clue
Caller 4 (01:29:12):
Then. But when I go out and I'm traveling and it's, and I have T-Mobile as a carrier I've been experiencing this certificate error with the TWIT Network now
Leo Laporte (01:29:23):
Twit and an US network,
Caller 4 (01:29:25):
So, well, the other network, yeah. I'm not, you know, it's hard for me to get on and, and talk with them about this. It's, yeah,
Leo Laporte (01:29:31):
Yeah. No, I, I know, but I think it's not our fault, is what I'm saying. We're just trying to look at all the points. Yeah, because it works fine on wifi and it just, it's just on your T-mobile. It doesn't work. We are using, we do use TLS for our streaming as well as I think as well as for the website. So that's why, so the way that works SSL or Secure Websites work is you have a certificate. We pay you Good. Pretty penny actually for every year for that certificate that mm-hmm. <Affirmative> says, yes, this really is TWIT tv. And that's mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, that's the URL that you're streaming it from. But there are a number of reasons that you would get a report that the certificate is broken. It's not broken, I don't think, Patrick, is it broken? No, it's not broken. Well,
Caller 4 (01:30:19):
Well, plus I just, before I came on with you guys, I wanted to test to see, just, just to know that I was not talking, you know, out of where I, I, I used Safari to go to the network and I thought that there was some kind of a, like a, it's almost, it's almost like it's, it's an unsecure site or something like it. Yeah. That
Leo Laporte (01:30:38):
Would, that's what it is. That's exactly what you'd be getting. So I just went to, I just went to New Twit which is the site we get it from mm-hmm. <Affirmative>. And I did not get an error. So those, so the way this work is very complicated. The way this works is when you get a browser or an app like Apple Music or whatever they have in, as part of the app, they have a certificate store where they say mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, well, these, these are the CER certificate authorities, the cas that we accept. This is important because they are trusting those certificate authorities. And so if that gets out of date, if for instance, you had an old browser, you, you might get that error because they're not trusting the certificate authority that we're using or whatever. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, I'm trying to remember what we use for, I believe it's GoDaddy because we shopped it around and that was the cheapest one.
(01:31:38):
But so, so out of date stuff can do that. It's also the case that if a computer's clock is wrong, or I guess it's not gonna happen with the phone, but if your clock was wrong it could be, you know, it's could, the computer could think it's in the 1970s as this show. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> and and then it would say, well that certificate isn't good until <laugh> the year 2020. So. Right. I'm not, that's a bad certificate, so go both. It's too old or it's too new. It's just not the time, the date and time aren't appropriate, but none of these things should affect a phone. Phones, phone's gonna,
Mikah Sargent and/or Dick Debartolo (01:32:14):
I'm thinking it's, it's not gonna be too, it's using Let Encrypt, by the way I am thinking that T-Mobile has some sort of security package in place that is blocking a, an unsecure website because it's,
Leo Laporte (01:32:28):
But he said no. You said Safari gave you that result as well on a,
Caller 4 (01:32:31):
It seemed like Safari. Yeah. Safari did something today, but right before I came on with you guys, something I wish I could have a, like a, a snapshot and then send it to you. But and then even, even like a couple weeks ago, I'm, I'm still perplexed by this problem. I downloaded Firefox cuz I thought it was maybe a Safari problem or something. And I was some kind of a, some kind of a sticky issue as well. So
Leo Laporte (01:32:55):
You're still seeing that, you know, something like this site is insecure. That that's commonly what you'll
Caller 4 (01:32:59):
See. And, and yeah. And some, you know, sometimes at work I'll be able to like say, I'll make the exception and let me go through on a certain site. But for these things on the phone, oh
Leo Laporte (01:33:08):
No, you don't wanna, yeah,
Mikah Sargent and/or Dick Debartolo (01:33:09):
I just did this. It's, it's interesting. There are two of the URLs that you can go to. You can actually go to http new dot twit, da da da da da. And that's where that won't work. And there No, it worked. I was able to go there. Oh. But then if you put https you can also go there and then it is secure. It has the padlock, everything is fine. So I'm wondering if TuneIn was for some reason streaming from the unencrypted stream and that was causing the error because Yes, on this machine I'm using Firefox and if I delete the s at the end of Htt p s and I hit enter, I'm able to go to an unsecure version of it and it is streaming the, the show.
Leo Laporte (01:33:49):
And it didn't re it didn't read Direct it to https
Mikah Sargent and/or Dick Debartolo (01:33:53):
S It did not. No.
Leo Laporte (01:33:54):
It's supposed to do. That's
Caller 4 (01:33:55):
<Laugh>. You know what's really weird too? This is just all evidence that I collect as I'm going along. Last week I tried it again because I keep thinking that it's something going on. And I, for the very first time that I've used this iPhone or even an iPad, I got a, a commercial, like an ad through TuneIn through that service or, and when I tried to go to twit.tv, you know, and through that service, I may have forgotten the air, but I don't recall. But suddenly I was starting to hear a tune in at, I'm like, yeah, they, what the hell am I hearing a
Leo Laporte (01:34:25):
Tune in? We don't, I've never heard that before. My mother. Yeah. We don't control that. They they can't. Yeah. Yeah, they can't do that obviously. Yeah.
Caller 4 (01:34:31):
It's just really weird. Yeah.
Leo Laporte (01:34:33):
I don't, you know, I hope Patrick's listening, Patrick Delehanty, who is our very talented engineer he would know, why don't you say it's less encrypt? Is it really less encrypted?
Mikah Sargent and/or Dick Debartolo (01:34:42):
That's what I said. Huh? Firefox was saying that. Oh yeah. You
Leo Laporte (01:34:44):
Looked at the cert. Yeah. Okay. Oh, that's cuz it's twit. That's right. Yeah. Twit TV is what uses GoDaddy. Got it. Twit do. Wow. I don't, I don't know what we're, we don't, we use this third party service now John, for our shoutcast streams. For our twit streams. We used to do that ourselves. We had a little box that would do a an ICECAST server. And I think now we use, and I don't remember the name of it. It could be that the people who are doing that or doing something, something, this is a puzzle though. Yeah, it is. The reason we're kind of for
Caller 4 (01:35:20):
Sure
Leo Laporte (01:35:21):
Ing around is, is we're not sure why that's happening. And it's not, by the way, it's not happening to me or you. Right. Yeah.
Mikah Sargent and/or Dick Debartolo (01:35:27):
And can you, the one question I do have is you said that this error popped up. Did it pop mm-hmm. <Affirmative> up as a little prompt in iOS over the music app. How did you see that? It was saying, you know, I having a connection issue because the site's not secure or whatever.
Caller 4 (01:35:42):
It, it's, you know, it's like if, if I go back to when I was trying to get on xpn.org and, and then it would be in like the list of things that you can see in Apple Music or for the radio section at least. I didn't
Leo Laporte (01:35:55):
Even know you could look into us in Apple Music. I
Mikah Sargent and/or Dick Debartolo (01:35:57):
Just learned that this is
Leo Laporte (01:35:58):
New. This is new.
Mikah Sargent and/or Dick Debartolo (01:35:58):
I learned that last week. <Laugh>,
Caller 4 (01:36:00):
Well it's through TuneIn I think. Yeah. It's, maybe it's just a, a reer through TuneIn. And that might be the case with xpn.org. I get this error, it just says certificate error and there's nothing I can do it. Just say, okay and that's it. And that's it. This doesn't play anymore. This is
Mikah Sargent and/or Dick Debartolo (01:36:16):
On an iPhone? Or
Caller 4 (01:36:17):
On a iPhone? Yeah. I'm always, it's always when I'm in on the road, I'm trying to get these stations. I mean, I was just listening to you guys just early in March, so it's like, yeah, I don't know what happened. There's been a couple of Apple OS updates since then, you know, 16 four, whatever. So yeah,
Mikah Sargent and/or Dick Debartolo (01:36:33):
So I tried it both on wifi connected here and then I did switch off my, I'm on at and t and I was still able to access the tune-in station of twit live via Apple Music. So
Leo Laporte (01:36:45):
One possibility is not to use Apple Music. Yeah, you could try, try, try downloading the TuneIn app. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> seeing there. What's the, we don't have a TWIT app. I, you know, this is always something I always we can our opportunity cut you.
Caller 4 (01:36:59):
You guys used to I've been tracking you guys for years. Well,
Leo Laporte (01:37:01):
We didn't make it
Caller 4 (01:37:02):
On
Leo Laporte (01:37:02):
The iPad. Very nice guy. Made it for us. Yeah. Yeah. Craig Elaney. I, I I think I don't know. There, there are many ways you could listen. So if you enter in, if you Yeah, I know. I understand. Try TuneIn. You can. There's VLC for the iPhone isn't there? Cuz you can't enter manually enter the address. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, which is a somewhat long address. Hmm. We use broadcasts.
Mikah Sargent and/or Dick Debartolo (01:37:34):
I c s app.
Leo Laporte (01:37:37):
I
Caller 4 (01:37:37):
C Oh V L C I C. That's an interesting context. Yeah.
Leo Laporte (01:37:40):
Vlc you'd need the address, which is Yeah. Ready?
Mikah Sargent and/or Dick Debartolo (01:37:43):
<Laugh> <laugh>
Leo Laporte (01:37:44):
New twi slash radio slash 8,000 slash radio slash 8,000 slash Listen. That seems like too much. Yeah, that
Caller 4 (01:37:53):
Was, oh yeah, I got all that. <Laugh> <laugh>
Leo Laporte (01:37:57):
I'm not sure why it doubles that radio 8,000 and all of that. No. Maybe he, maybe he missed, maybe that was a mistype. Try this new twi dot slash radio slash 8,000 slash listen.
Caller 4 (01:38:15):
Okay.
Leo Laporte (01:38:15):
I think that'll work. Yeah, that works. That's what I was going, he doubled it up. That was my, I would look at somebody in irc. Okay. Quick, quick on am slash radio slash 8,000. Okay. Slash listen.
Caller 4 (01:38:27):
Okay. What are you,
Leo Laporte (01:38:29):
If I turn this on, get ready for some weird
Caller 4 (01:38:33):
Yeah, it's a to looping thing. Yeah. Feedback. Yeah. What you
Leo Laporte (01:38:40):
But it's, but it's not giving me a certificate error, so that's good news. But he is jumping back and forth now. I don't know what's going on. I think that's just a poor UI for a live stream. I think that's just a weird Okay. It's a bad player. Yeah. Bad player. You know, you can always I'll try. You can always go to the website, Twitter tv.
Caller 4 (01:38:58):
I'll try that. I mean, I'll try Twitter
Leo Laporte (01:39:00):
Tv slash live. Yep. Twitter tv slash live. That'll give you, and what it does, by the way, is it redirects to whatever that crazy u r URL I was saying is.
Caller 4 (01:39:07):
I'll, I'll try, I'll try everything. Do
Leo Laporte (01:39:09):
That in the browser on your iPhone. That Oh, yeah. Streaming directly from Icecast. From TuneIn or from Sprinkler? Sprinkler. That's breaker Sprinkler. I forgot about it. Damn. So let me just see. I'll just do this. Let's launch Safari on my iPhone. I am also on T-Mobile. Oh good. By the way. So this'll be a good test. I'm gonna go to twit.tv/live. That's gonna give us a website where you can then choose the, which live stream you wanna listen to. So I'm now, I'm now on the website and I can listen. Can we show you over? Thank you. Yeah. Can you show this? Oh, there it is. Okay.
Caller 4 (01:39:47):
Oh yeah. Cool.
Leo Laporte (01:39:48):
So I'm gonna choose either TuneIn, streaker or Icecast. Oh, like Icecast. Let's go with Icecast. See if I can hear anything. Didn't do nothing. I don't know what's, you might have scrolled down the page too far. Did I go too far? Well, yeah. Maybe scroll. Screw it up. It's there. Yeah. There. It's okay. Now go there. No. Oh no. You were, you were in the right spot. Oh, my driver's license. Let's hide that.
Caller 4 (01:40:10):
Let's, that's
Leo Laporte (01:40:10):
Okay. I used to have something else in front of that. That's, let's put a business card. Looks like you've been traveling and needed you license. I needed my license. Okay. Let's see if any Oh yeah, I hear it. I, I think I hear it. I feel it. It's vibrating. <Laugh>. Well, I'm not getting an error. That's one thing. Anyway, you could try that. That'll, that'll use the website. Okay. And then at least we know that's gonna be the most up to date place. For it. Right.
Caller 4 (01:40:37):
Okay. I will check it out.
Leo Laporte (01:40:39):
Yeah. Huh. All right. And,
Caller 4 (01:40:42):
Cause I miss you guys. I listened to, you know, first thing in the morning. I know you guys are looping the different playbacks with shows and things, and I, you know so it's, it's, it's kind of a crude way. I'm not too interactive by doing a thing like a, the pod podcast thing, apps that you guys suggest all the time. But I just, it's almost like I'm just used to that radio mode. I play it, I hit play, and it's like, it just plays, you know? So.
Leo Laporte (01:41:05):
Yeah. And we want, you know, when we first started podcasting lo these 19 years ago we thought, actually it was 18 years ago. We had just had our 18th anniversary. Did you know that? Yeah. John, did you do anything, did you have a cake here or anything, <laugh> on a, on April 17th? No, nothing. Nothing. Didn't do nothing. Lisa and I drank a toast of champagne. Nice. that was our 18th, I think. 18Th, yeah. 18Th anniversary of the launch of twi. Which is kind of mind boggling. That's a long time. <Laugh>. Geez. The, you know, my concern was, well, this is too hard because at the time you had to, you may remember this, you had to download it in iTunes, then you had to hook it up to your iPod, <laugh>, then you had to sink it up to your iPod.
(01:41:54):
Then you'd play it off of your iPod. It was just too hard. And I always said, as soon as it's as easy as radio podcast is gonna be something. Well, it is. It should be. It is now, I think as easy as radio. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> but maybe not for everybody. <Laugh>, maybe not as easy as it ought to be. Really truthfully, what we should have done is made an app. Now my suggestion to you, once you've got what you want, is you can use Safari and make that icon on your home screen. So all you have to do is Oh,
Caller 4 (01:42:21):
Yeah, for sure.
Leo Laporte (01:42:21):
Yeah. And it'll just launch up. And I think that that's probably the best I can offer. We at one point commissioned a company spent, how much did we spend? I think $70,000 for an app, and it was unusable. Oh, really? Yeah. They, they were doing an Android and iOS version, and it was unusable. And I thought at the time, this is about 10 years ago, that the f that really the future podcasting of any kind of media was that you'd have an icon on the, on the smartphone screen. It wasn't the website. It was an icon. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, that's what people want. I wanna put some button mm-hmm. <Affirmative> and, and just like radio. And it just plays. We never were really able to do that thanks to Craig and other people who, who, Houdini seven was his chat room who who volunteered their time and made these apps. We had some apps for a while but we, but most of them have gone out of date. And and maybe it's time for us to figure out some better way to do this, but for now, what I would do is go to the website, get the stream going, then, then press the sh was the share share button. Yeah, I was gonna say, can we show my screen? I'm on airplane one. So we are going to do this together. We'll show you how to do it. Okay.
Caller 4 (01:43:29):
Okay. Thank you.
Leo Laporte (01:43:30):
Yeah. Thank you. You wanna, you wanna go? You can go. I, yeah, you don't have to get, I get the feeling you want to get outta here.
Caller 4 (01:43:35):
Yeah. You can drop me off and I'll just, I'll just watch it on
Leo Laporte (01:43:38):
Here. Yeah, we'll figure it out here. Okay.
Caller 4 (01:43:40):
Thanks guys.
Leo Laporte (01:43:40):
Thank you. Thank you. Great to talk to you. And thank you for bringing this to our attention. Cause we do wanna make this as easy as, as you know, listen to the radio. It should be, there's no reason not, especially the live stream, right? We do live video. We're one of the few podcast networks that does live video and audio at all times. So you're on the website now. So you went to twit.tv and Safari?
Mikah Sargent and/or Dick Debartolo (01:44:00):
Yes. And I'm gonna go to now, just so that people knew that we're gonna go to twit.tv/live. Okay. And then we're going to hit the share sheet button at the bottom of the screen. And then we're going to scroll down until we see something that says add to home screen. You've
Leo Laporte (01:44:16):
Got a lot of stuff on your share sheet.
Mikah Sargent and/or Dick Debartolo (01:44:17):
I do. I'll tap add to home screen. And we're gonna change that name from that very long text to just be twit on its own. I'll tap done there. And now you can see it's like an app. There's Twitch.
Leo Laporte (01:44:29):
Now what that is, is brings up this interface. Could you do the same thing if you then chose, like, now,
Mikah Sargent and/or Dick Debartolo (01:44:38):
If I were to go here and choose,
Leo Laporte (01:44:39):
Choose A, choose an audio stream, and then share it. Could you get it so that, let's see. You just tap the icon and it starts playing. That's what we want. Let's see. Okay, now sh Now, ah, there's the player.
Mikah Sargent and/or Dick Debartolo (01:44:49):
Let's do that. Let's share that on the screen, and we'll just call that the twit live stream. That's fine. Now if I tap on this, yeah, it will. And then I do need to hit the play button, but
Leo Laporte (01:44:59):
Well, there's even a way, if you change the url Oh
Mikah Sargent and/or Dick Debartolo (01:45:02):
Yeah. Where it could automatically click. You
Leo Laporte (01:45:03):
Can have it Autoplay. Autoplay. But that's a, that's another black diamond tip. But what, what is it saying now?
Mikah Sargent and/or Dick Debartolo (01:45:08):
It says here what you want, where and when you want. Download the two. So TuneIn is constantly trying to get you to download the, so
Leo Laporte (01:45:14):
Don't use TuneIn. Yeah,
Mikah Sargent and/or Dick Debartolo (01:45:15):
That's Tune in <laugh>. Let's try Ice Cast. Ice
Leo Laporte (01:45:19):
Cast should have no no, no commercialization. Also as a crappy player though, that was that weird player. Yeah, it
Mikah Sargent and/or Dick Debartolo (01:45:25):
Was a strange, yeah. It may not even be working. And it takes a while to load too.
Leo Laporte (01:45:29):
So if you make that on your home screen, it'll have the nice twit like icon. Yeah. Which is great. And then you should be able to tap that and have it start playing. Or maybe you have to press the play button that's tune in, but that's fine.
Mikah Sargent and/or Dick Debartolo (01:45:39):
Yeah. I didn't make it with Icecast, cuz it hadn't fully loaded. But there you go. You get an idea of how easy it can be. And then, because
Leo Laporte (01:45:46):
You shouldn't have to do that. I agree. But because
Mikah Sargent and/or Dick Debartolo (01:45:48):
Of the way that iOS works, or Macros or iPad os it will actually just play that stream in the background while you go and do other things, which is nice.
Leo Laporte (01:45:56):
Not quite as easy as this to the radio. Not yet. But hey, we're only 18 years off the wall.
Mikah Sargent and/or Dick Debartolo (01:46:02):
<Laugh>. Yeah. How old is
Leo Laporte (01:46:03):
Radio? How old's radio? Exactly. The first 18 years of radio you had a pump pedal, a bicycle. And, and we're a special helmet to Uhhuh <affirmative> to listen. So, you know, it just takes
Mikah Sargent and/or Dick Debartolo (01:46:14):
A while. Takes time.
Leo Laporte (01:46:15):
Our show today, you see the sign here, ACI Learning. They sponsor our studio. You may say, well, who are these ACI learning people when they're at home? Who are they? Well, you know, it pro It Pro has been a part of TWIT since they started 10 years ago. Now it Pro is part of ACI learning, which means they have even more resources to help you. L there's your beautiful Gainesville studio. We've been there, we love it. You, you have even more resources for learning, not only on demand live over the internet, you also now have in-person learning hubs. And of course, they've got more skills to teach you. Audit Pro, they've got Practice labs. This is really a great partnership. And now here's something I really want to tell you about. If you're a military or ex-military, if you're a vet, this is for you.
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Military members are some of the most tech savvy people on the planet. You often get to use some of the latest, newest technology that we haven't even seen yet. But transitioning to civilian life can always be maybe a little bit of a challenge. I want to give you a little invite from ACI Learning. ACI Learning is so proud of their track records, supporting veterans who want to choose a tech career as they muster out and start their civilian life. And veterans, we know you are, you are the best possible employees, right? Uniquely qualified for tech positions. You use some of the most advanced technology in the world, and of course talk about security. There's nobody better at it than the military. Many service members know how already to protect systems from attacks makes working at Tech perfect for their experience. But how do you get that job?
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ACI Learning Go dot aci learning.com/twi. They've got special benefits for vets. And, and you can decide what area you want to do. Of course, cybersecurity. The average salary for cybersecurity specialists now is $116,000. ACI learning's, information security analyst and cybersecurity specialist programs are a great way for veterans to start their careers. Or maybe you more inclined towards network administration. The average salary for an entry level, entry level network administrator, 75 K, and it's only up from there. ACI Learnings Network Support Specialist program gives you the training you need to pursue or advance a career in networking, preparing you to take that CCNA cert, which is so important for that first job. Or maybe you want to get the compt certs, like their Security Plus and network certification exams. There's also IT project management. The average salary of an IT project manager, $105,000 annually, annually.
(01:49:03):
The ACI learning Senior Technology Project Manager program certifies students in the skills they need to become project managers. And that's just a couple of the many ways you can get into it. Whatever your desire, ACI learning offers fully customizable training for all kinds of learners. Whether you prefer it in person on demand or remote. There are several programs available for vets wanna fund their education. If you wanna learn more about IT training and the funding available for you, go to ACI learning.com/veteran-it-training. Did you get that? ACI learning.com/veteran-it-training. This is such a great program and we're really proud of what a c I and IT Pro have done to really help veterans as they begin their, their civilian careers. Of course, there's more than that. There's, there's great team training at a c i learning for teams of two to 1000. There's volume discounts starting at just five seats.
(01:50:03):
You get a free two week trial for training your team. This month is a great month. In fact, this week is a great week. April 24th, that's tomorrow through the 27th. IT Pro wants to connect with you there at rsa. Up here in San Francisco, right? Is it in San Francisco again this year? IT Pro Audit, pro and Practice Labs. Now training the modern workforce together is a ACI learning Go visit the ACI learning booth. It's number 2 4 29. 24 29 at rsa. They've, they've been going to RSA for years. We've always used to get together with M and rsa. It was so much fun, Don and Tim and the whole IT Pro Gang. Choose a career to support your goals. Let ACI learning get you started. ACI learning and TWI TV would like to thank our veterans and active duty service members for your service to our country.
(01:50:54):
We are so grateful and and we thank you, but also we offer you this great opportunity. Remember vets, it's ACI learning.com/veteran-it training. Our military uses some of the most advanced technology in the world, which makes you veterans uniquely qualified for IT and cybersecurity positions. And for everybody, you can go to ACI learnings website and learn about their options across audit it cybersecurity readiness@go.acilearning.com slash twit. And we do have an offer code TWIT three zero TWIT three zero for 30% off. That's for a standard or premium individual IT pro membership aci I learning. Thank you so much for supporting us and our work here. We're trying to teach people too. You do such a great job. I invite you to go to the website, go dot aci learning.com/twit to learn more. And don't forget Twit 30, the offer code. Thank you ACI Learning. We appreciate it.
(01:51:55):
I see no hands raised, but Arizona Lou's been hanging out in there. I'm gonna guess that Arizona Lou wants to say hi. He's just shy. You know how shy? Yeah, he's a very retiring, quiet, shy kind of guy. Can't imagine him ever on a stage on, no. Lou, are you there? Maybe he really is. Shai <laugh>. Maybe. Maybe he really is quiet. Oh, we got audio. Do we? Oh, I thought we did. Maybe this is just just me. Nerfing. Well, if you, if you decide to be less shy, you can come on in. There is a good email question. Do you say veteran or veteran? Oh, I say both. Eric Tuckman says, when did veteran become two syllables?
Mikah Sargent and/or Dick Debartolo (01:52:44):
I think I've said it depends on how quickly I'm a attempted veteran to
Leo Laporte (01:52:48):
Speak. I say veteran.
Mikah Sargent and/or Dick Debartolo (01:52:49):
I think I say veteran. Yeah, mostly. Is it
Leo Laporte (01:52:51):
The Veterans Day Parade or Veteran
Mikah Sargent and/or Dick Debartolo (01:52:53):
Veterans? Veterans Day Parade. <Laugh>. It's elementary. My idea. What's,
Leo Laporte (01:52:57):
I don't know. I don't know. By the way, new study in, from the American Association for the Advancement of Retired People. A A R P over 50 gamers feel overlooked.
Mikah Sargent and/or Dick Debartolo (01:53:08):
Aw. Aw. Actually I could see that. What games are they playing though?
Leo Laporte (01:53:12):
<Laugh> Candy Crush Saga. I'd overlook you too. Aw, no. A A R P counts 30 counts. 52.4 million Americans who are over 50 and play games at least once a month.
Mikah Sargent and/or Dick Debartolo (01:53:26):
What games? I just, that's Are they playing Call of
Leo Laporte (01:53:29):
Duty? No, I don't. Well, I don't know. You know what, isn't Paul Throt over 50? I believe he had a birthday, didn't he?
Mikah Sargent and/or Dick Debartolo (01:53:37):
Oh
Leo Laporte (01:53:37):
Wait, I think he's over 50. So welcome to the A A R P, Paul <laugh>. And, and I hope you don't feel overlooked. I see somebody in our br in our Zoom call that we wanna always want to talk to. It's the
Mikah Sargent and/or Dick Debartolo (01:53:53):
Main
Leo Laporte (01:53:53):
Man. It's the guy from Maine. Mr. Micah, the other Micah. Hi Micah. Uhoh. oh. I don't hear you.
Mikah Sargent and/or Dick Debartolo (01:54:02):
We don't hear ya.
Micah (01:54:04):
That's because I didn't unmute. It was operator error.
Leo Laporte (01:54:07):
<Laugh>. You know, Micah, it is funny. For years I did radio and people would meet me and they'd go, oh, you don't look at all like you sound. And I say, no, I don't. You sound so good looking. And I say, no, I, I know I'm just me. But it's the same for you Micah. I, for years have talked to you on the phone. I never saw you until we started doing this with Zoom. And I love you. I love your voice. And it's just, it's, it doesn't match the picture The same as I guess Mark
Mikah Sargent and/or Dick Debartolo (01:54:33):
In your head you had invented. You, you
Leo Laporte (01:54:35):
Have to invent somebody if you only hear their voice. Right? Yeah. You invent a face
Micah (01:54:38):
That, that's the way it goes. You know, when I first met Gene Shepherd, I felt the same way. When Oh yeah, I met him and had, you know, I was able to have lunch with him one time and I was so jealous. Oh, it was just fabulous. But, you know, he didn't look anything like what I expected. And but what an amazing radio guy. I mean, nobody, nobody better under any circumstances. He
Leo Laporte (01:54:57):
Was very much, and we've talked about this before, so I don't wanna repeat, but very much an influence on me. I remember being under the covers in Providence, Rhode Island, listening cuz it was past my bedtime to the great late great Jean Shepherd on w o r radio. And and you know, the horses would go, clap, clap. And he'd play that silly song. And then he'd come on and tell stories. He became very famous, thanks to a Christmas story, which is the Oh, okay. Yearly Christmas movie that he narrates. And it's from his stories he used to tell on the radio.
Micah (01:55:30):
But from his book, and God, we trust all others pay cash.
Leo Laporte (01:55:33):
<Laugh>. I'm so jealous that you actually met the guy. I mean, he was, he's a hero. Absolutely.
Micah (01:55:38):
It was mine too. A fabulous, fabulous experience. And I am so lucky. And, and by way, and you know, I used to do radio as as as you know, and I did for radio for local ra, public radio station. And I used to, you know, I did music and so I would introduce a lot of concerts on stage and some of the big theaters here in Portland. And I would always say, yeah, I know. I don't look like what I sound like. In fact, you know, when you get on stage, it adds 50 pounds to you. At least
Leo Laporte (01:56:03):
<Laugh>, I'll have to steal that line. <Laugh>, you, there is this thing that happens. Everybody in radio knows it where you meet somebody and they go, oh, and they're face false because it's not, it's not so much that, you know, you're not at attractive or whatever. It's just that they had a picture in their head of, of what you look like.
Micah (01:56:23):
It's like when you read it, you listen to an audio book and you know, a lot of times I'll be listening to an audio book and I'll have the book with me cuz you know, there's times I can't listen and I wanna read. But as soon as I start reading the book, that same voice that I was listening to comes into my head. And that's who's reading to me.
Leo Laporte (01:56:38):
Yes. And in fact, if you're a really good writer, that even happens. You know, I worked for years at John c Deak, who's was this legendary computer columnist. And somehow his voice, every time I'd read his columns, I'd hear his voice because he wrote in his voice. So you can even write in your own voice. It's kind of an interesting thing. Anyway, Michael, what can we do for you? By the way, I flew on the trip 7 87 and you told me that would be a much better flight than the 7 87 because I don't know, recent carbon fiber and, and better pressurization or something. And it was a very nice
Micah (01:57:14):
More moisture in the air and wasn't more moisture. That's one of the reasons why I called. I wanted to know how you liked it. I
Leo Laporte (01:57:19):
Really liked it. This is the, is that they call that the Dreamliner.
Micah (01:57:22):
It is the Dreamliner. Yes it is. And it's car carbon fiber fuselage. And because of that, they can pressurize it to a lower altitude. You can have more pressure inside the plane. They can keep more moisture inside the plane and you're less likely to have jet lag or the jet lag won't affect you quite as much. It's also very quiet, at least from my perspective. Well, I
Leo Laporte (01:57:42):
Was thinking maybe that's why I didn't have any jet lag. But, but then I realized, well only one of the three legs that we flew <laugh> was in a 7 87. The other two were in the A three 30, the Airbus. And I don't think that is quite as good for your jet lag.
Micah (01:57:56):
No, no. It's, I mean the Airbus is a fine aircraft, very comfortable. And you can't say anything bad about it necessarily, but it's not quite the same as a, as a 7 87, which would be my, my choice to fly any place that I could. Yeah. We liked it. In terms of quality,
Leo Laporte (01:58:11):
I always know I'm on a 7 87 because they don't have, you know how you get on an airplane, Micah, you've never flown anywhere but <laugh>, you know how you get on an airplane and they have, when you close the windows, they have a plastic little cheesy little plastic thing. You slide down. Do they? Yes. You'll learn someday. Yeah, they slide down. But on the 7 87 they got some magical wacky glass in the windows. You press a button and it darkens and then, or lightens. And you can choose how much of that you want. That's cool. And so you always know you're in seven. Cause the winters are also bigger and then they're tilted tinted.
Micah (01:58:44):
And, and the flight attendants can control all of them, which they do because that way they can darken the cabin at night so that everybody can sleep and it kind of quiets things down. But the last time I was flying on a 7 87, I was flying to the UK and it was night and I'm had my window seat. I was very comfortable in business class. And I said, you know, I know that we're over the ocean and I know that it's night, but I really like looking at the stars. And the flight attendant was kind enough to give me control of my Oh,
Leo Laporte (01:59:10):
That's nice.
Micah (01:59:10):
Window. Which was
Leo Laporte (01:59:11):
Great. Yeah. Yeah. I, I like to control my window. I really I do, but I also hate it when it is bright daylight out and you're trying to sleep. If somebody says, no, I wanna see where I am. It's clouds buddy. It's just clouds. I did bring along with me on the trip, my ANet carbon dioxide sensor. I don't know if I've talked about that with you before.
Micah (01:59:35):
I do recall you speaking about it. Did you notice any differences? You know,
Leo Laporte (01:59:38):
I, kicking myself, cuz I forgot to look at it on the 7 87, but I did on this, on the A three 30 and it was 1,545 part. I guess it's parts per million of carbon dioxide parts per thousand can't be parts per thousand. Cause it'd be <laugh>, there'd be no hearing it at all, <laugh>. So it must be parts per million. But that's very high. That's that's almost to the osha level of, you know, that's dangerous. But what it does do is makes you sleepy and kind of, kind of groggy. And I've noticed that on every other airplane I've flown. Darn it. I wish I'd done it on the 7 87. But it, it's not that the air as bad, it's just that it's not as much oxygen as the air in the air as you would like when you were outside, when it would be more like 3, 4, 500.
Micah (02:00:22):
It's stuffy and it, but it stuffy. You're at a, you're at a lower altitude or rather a higher altitude when you're in there. Yeah. You're, you're, you know, you're at I can't remember what they pressurized to, but it's a much higher altitude than what you would get where you are pretty much at sea level or close, close, much closer to it, that's for sure. Yeah. I, that's not why I called.
Leo Laporte (02:00:40):
Yes, please go right ahead.
Micah (02:00:42):
No, I called to help the last caller. Oh, you know, I'm, I'm a radio guy, as you know, and I love to listen to the radio. And here I am in, in Portland, Maine, but I don't like Portland Radio. You know, the local radio to me just isn't what I would like to listen to. So I listen to W N Y C out of New York. I listen to a lot of npr. Listen to K Q E D all the time. Up
Leo Laporte (02:01:02):
Station. Yes.
Micah (02:01:03):
K u o w, another great NPR station outta Seattle. Now I do a couple of things. My favorite thing and the best toy that I've ever purchased is the sea crane wifi radio. Yes. Which
Leo Laporte (02:01:16):
Bob Crane is a good friend. And they really make a great little radio. And what I love about Bob is that he's, remember when the the internet directory of radio stations went out of business? I can't remember the name of it. I
Micah (02:01:30):
Can't remember the name of that directory, but the original Sea Crane wifi radio used that and it, and it went out of business. And anybody who had bought that radio from him within the first year just got a brand new one. The wifi radio three. Isn't that great? And if you had the old one, he'd give you a, I think he gave you a $50 discount on the new one. Yeah. Which was just
Leo Laporte (02:01:48):
One. I really appreciated that that was a kind of a crisis for a lot of people who used wifi radios. Is that the, the directory stopped working and, and the radio had no way of going to the newer directory. Bob also worked with others to create this new directory that they use now that this isn't gonna happen again. So I was, I was very proud of what Sea Crane did to stand behind their customers.
Micah (02:02:09):
And the new directory is called Sky Tunes and it has Sky that's it has, I'm listening to you on it right now. You're listed in there Air as our most, all the other radio stations that that I like. I haven't had any problem finding them. I I can even listen to Rich if I want to. Who does the the Saturday show? Who,
Leo Laporte (02:02:24):
Who's that? I don't the name doesn't right now. I'm just kidding. Rich is doing great with that show and
Micah (02:02:30):
I he's doing a good job. Yeah. Different show than what you do and you know, be people like different things. To be
Leo Laporte (02:02:35):
Fair, it's probably a better show for radio stations. It's a more broad show. And as you know, we, we get pretty geeky. We get geeky. Yeah. Yeah.
Micah (02:02:45):
But anyway, they'd uses Sky Tunes, which is great. But what Bob also did is he set it up so you can plug in your own url. And so if you have
Leo Laporte (02:02:52):
Url, that's
Micah (02:02:53):
A good, and as Sky Tunes goes out of business, you can plug in the URL directly and you'll still be able to listen. So it's a, it's a wonderful way to listen to radio from all over the world. A friend of mine does a radio show in the uk. I can listen to him over here and and, and, which is just great. But that's what I use. And then the other thing that I use is I, I'll always use my phone and the radio stations, all of them that I listen to have apps. And so it's easy to do it on an app. It's not always easy to do it on Safari or, or on iTunes, but it's easy to load, download the app if you have the room on the phone and it works. And now I don't know where it's coming from, but I have a tweet livestream app that maybe I created by just downloading a link from Safari. But it says Tweet livestream on my phone and every time I open it up, there you
Leo Laporte (02:03:39):
Are. You don't even remember how you did it <laugh>. But it still,
Micah (02:03:42):
It still works. It's there. Don't question it
Leo Laporte (02:03:44):
Michael. Way. We, we did cause a problem a few years ago. We switched the R URL cuz we were switching providers and it was kind of a mess. But I think it's settled down now. That's why it says new dot twit dot for the stream. There is a gr somebody in the chat room is reminding me and I appreciate it. Thank you Doug. M about Sinai, I'd mentioned before radio.garden. I don't know if you've ever seen this. If you like internet radio, this is a website where you can go anywhere in the world. It's a world map with green dots for radio stations all over the world. Wow. And you just click any of those green dots and suddenly you're listening to radio in that part of the world, which is really amazing. Oh, station is unreachable. Well, maybe not every green dot.
(02:04:33):
Let's pick a different green dot. Here's, we're listening to Orange 94, 5 fm, which is also unreachable. All right, I'm gonna leave Africa now. I don't know, maybe there's something going on <laugh>, but this is a really cool site radio.garden. And I if you're just new to the idea of listening to, I used to, and I sure Micah, you remember this listen to shortwave radio all the time and I always, all the time thought it was so cool that I could tune in a radio station outta Moscow and be listening to Russian and stuff like that. This is kind of like that for the internet era. You can just basically without any special hardware, use your browser and go to any radio station in the world. Not all of them stream, I have to say, having listened now to radio in Italy, that's crazy stuff. Those Italians, they're, they have, they have crazy stuff. That's a good way to learn a language. I was gonna, that's exactly what I was thinking about
Micah (02:05:34):
It is when I lived in Mexico, I used to listen to the radio down there and very, very different. But radio's a, it's a beautiful thing because radio different than any other medium. Well, podcasting is along the same lines, but it's intimate. You know, when you're listening to radio when I'm listening to you, you're talking to me now I know you're talking to millions of other people. But when I, and when I do radio, I know that whoever I'm talking to, it's, they think or they feel that it's me. Yeah. That, that, that, that, that's
Leo Laporte (02:06:03):
Talking to you. That's why it's a wonderful
Micah (02:06:04):
Only talking to them. Yeah. And that's what makes it so beautiful. I agree. And and, and that's why when I, when I write and I do pieces for radio for, for the airplane geeks or the airline pilot guy or for plane talking UK or for the journey is the reward. I, when I do pieces about it, I'm writing, like I'm talking directly to one person. And that's how you have to think about it. Yeah. You're talking to one person and let everybody else listen. And it, it's just a, a wonderful, intimate, beautiful experience. Yeah. And you can do it and listen to it while you're doing a lot of other things, which just doesn't happen with tv. Look, I, you become,
Leo Laporte (02:06:35):
I got Radio Vatican. Oh, the Vatican City. I wonder if Robert's on it. He should be doing a show. <Laugh>. That would be cool on the Vatican. Oh
Micah (02:06:43):
Yes.
Leo Laporte (02:06:43):
<Laugh>. Absolutely. Wouldn't that be great? Oh. It's a little peaceful music. People ask me if I ran into Robert while we were in Rome. It's very sad. Robert returned from the U, he was in the US for N A B and visiting his family and he returned the night before we left and we had to leave at like 6:00 AM Dang it. He got back at 8:30 PM So we, we just like ships have pass in the night. Exactly. We missed each other. Which is too bad cuz he was gonna give us a great tour's. Too bad. The back museum. Micah, always a pleasure.
Micah (02:07:20):
Thank you. Great speaking with you. Thank you for having me on. And I hope that that information helps the last caller who was looking for find ways to
Leo Laporte (02:07:27):
It's a good, it's a good tip. Listen. Yeah. And those, I all agree. Those CC radios are fantastic from seat crane.com. We tried to get Bob to buy ads on the tech guy for ni for 19 years. And he said, why should I, you just plug me for free <laugh>. I don't, I don't need an ad. Thank you very much. Oh, that's funny. Okay, fine. He's not only a nice guy. He's a smart guy. He's a good business producer. This is a guy. Yeah, no, I like Bob. In fact, when I announced the retirement, immediately got a phone call after. Oh, that's nice. Just say goodbye. Thank you Micah. Have a great evening and we'll talk to you again soon, I hope. Take care. Beautiful. Downtown Maine. Oh my. You know, I think we've gone through all the calls. Do you have another email for us? Micah? Do. And
Mikah Sargent and/or Dick Debartolo (02:08:10):
I love this one for I think it, it applies to a lot of people. Jerry has written in and said, I have an embarrassingly large number of Sonos V1 hardware that I have not used in a long time. Is it still any good or should it go to the crusher?
Leo Laporte (02:08:27):
Oh, don't get me started on this.
Mikah Sargent and/or Dick Debartolo (02:08:29):
Don't get him static. Don't
Leo Laporte (02:08:30):
Get me started. I too have a lot of V one Sonos Gary. Yeah, it's still good. It still works. However, you have to use the old Sonos app and it won't work with the new V2 Sonos stuff and there's stuff the V2 does that's different from the stuff the V1 does. So the way Sonos handled this, I guess they did the best they could. They needed to upgrade the technology and here's the problem and it's just a general problem and something, maybe a lesson learned here. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, a speaker doesn't ever go bad. Right. You can break it, but it's not gonna go bad and music's gonna sound good through it for as long as you have it. The problem is when you tie a speaker to internet to a computer, in effect with internet access and software and so forth that's gonna get obsoleted and just like this is the same problem with these wifi radios.
(02:09:24):
Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, they were dependent on a directory that went outta business. They got obsoleted, the radio's still good. All the, everything in there is still good. The speakers still good on all the Sonos is they make nice speakers, but they had to upgrade. So they offered people I think kind of a pathetic discount on getting the new speakers. It bothered me if you decided you wanted to take that they would brick those speakers, which I think is, I mean you could still use it as a speaker I guess, but they would brick the hardware in it. I don't think it was handled well. It really made me angry. I have given away all my old sono stuff. You've got some of it mm-hmm. <Affirmative> and you could still use it, right? Yeah.
Mikah Sargent and/or Dick Debartolo (02:10:05):
Yeah. It still works. I was able to connect with it and it all played. So yeah, I think that you are spot on. It. It's almost a disappointment that in the back of those Sonos speakers there aren't just standard hookups.
Leo Laporte (02:10:21):
That's right. That's the real problem. If it just had a, a little So I could hook speaker one right to it. Yeah. And be
Mikah Sargent and/or Dick Debartolo (02:10:27):
A speaker quis on there. But
Leo Laporte (02:10:28):
There's no easy way to get into those. No.
Mikah Sargent and/or Dick Debartolo (02:10:30):
You'd have to disassemble it.
Leo Laporte (02:10:31):
This. Yeah. John, we we're all V1 here, right? Yeah. And we use it. It's fine. John. You know, we got when we built the brick house years ago, Sonos gave us some and then we bought a Sonos gave us six speakers. Wow. That's nice. So six five play five, six play fives and one play. One and one play one. And we have since added more, but there's a sono speaker and no we haven't. Oh, okay. I thought we had, there's a sono speaker in it pretty much everywhere. When John's alone here in the studio, Johns Salina, he'll put a little Humphries McGee on and the whole, the whole studio rocks, <laugh>, the, all the offices rock. We should get some more. I didn't know what, so you don't have one in every room, huh? No. <laugh> at home. Do you have Sonos John as well? No. It, it's hard for me and I like something Sonos has just put out some new speakers that are really good. They're a little pricey.
Mikah Sargent and/or Dick Debartolo (02:11:23):
Yeah.
Leo Laporte (02:11:26):
I just, it, it kind of hurts my heart. I don't know if I really wanna invest in Sonos anymore. You, you,
Mikah Sargent and/or Dick Debartolo (02:11:31):
You have a lack of trust there. Yeah, because they did break the trust, I think. And I will say, so the most recent announcement has to do with the commercial aspect. So they are really focusing on businesses right now. And I, I remember going into San Francisco, I don't know, about a month ago, and we went to a few different places and every single place where, how are they playing music in their Sonos place, Sonos speakers. Interesting. Because it's very easy in a small shop to just have one Sonos, like play one or whatever it is plugged in. Yeah. And then because they have good sound and good enough amplification, then you were able to hear it throughout the whole space. And so now they have a, I think it's a subscription service that businesses can use to have kind of the latest Sonos technology added to their, their spaces.
Leo Laporte (02:12:20):
Yeah. It's about, so it's like music.
Mikah Sargent and/or Dick Debartolo (02:12:22):
Yeah.
Leo Laporte (02:12:25):
People don't really often know this, but you're not supposed to just turn on the radio in your place of business and let the music play.
Mikah Sargent and/or Dick Debartolo (02:12:32):
Oh yeah. Isn't it not?
Leo Laporte (02:12:33):
Well what the, the guys from ascap, B m I, the licensing guys, they actually have people that go around to stores and say, you know, you, you, you can't do that. You're gonna have to give us some money now. Wow. So music, that's where music came. It was licensed music originally Terrible <laugh> licensed music. Now they have better music that you would pay a fee. So Sonos is basically getting in that business. You have to buy the sodas, armor, but then it's 35 bucks a month and you can use it in different stores and stuff. And I think that's actually a great solution. You don't have to worry about licensing. The artists are gonna get paid for the music you're playing, which is Right. Or at least their labels will which is the right thing to do. So I, you know, good on them. I, I don't hate, I'm not mad at Sonos, right? Yeah. It's just, I can't, I wanna buy it, but I can't. So now I buy speakers that are speakers with hookups in the back and, and when the hardware gets obsoleted, I'll get new hardware. But those speakers are gonna
Mikah Sargent and/or Dick Debartolo (02:13:23):
Work. Speakers still work. Yeah, they still work. They sound great.
Leo Laporte (02:13:25):
Is, do you have another one? We have a few minutes left if you have another one we could do.
Mikah Sargent and/or Dick Debartolo (02:13:29):
I don't have one, so I guess this is a great time to say, if you would like to have your question answered on Ask the Tech guys, please send n in your question to a, or excuse me not to ask at TWI tv. No, send it into atg@twit.tv please.
Leo Laporte (02:13:47):
We shortened it.
Mikah Sargent and/or Dick Debartolo (02:13:48):
So Yes. Made it easy for you. I think it's, and if you do a little mistyping maybe that you add, you have two T's in there or maybe you write out, we tried to make it really
Leo Laporte (02:13:56):
Like every possible, all
Mikah Sargent and/or Dick Debartolo (02:13:58):
All of the
Leo Laporte (02:13:58):
Ask the Tech
Mikah Sargent and/or Dick Debartolo (02:13:59):
Girls. Well, I
Leo Laporte (02:14:00):
Dunno about that one. The tech morones.
Mikah Sargent and/or Dick Debartolo (02:14:02):
Although if Patrick's listening, then he's quickly happening. All of those that we get them
Leo Laporte (02:14:07):
You know, it's easy ass atg.
Mikah Sargent and/or Dick Debartolo (02:14:08):
Yeah. At tg At Twitter. Twitter tv And send us video please. Exactly. so send, consider sending video. We do. We'll have a video question for next time. I saw kind of flying at the last minute. This takes us a minute to check it. Make sure everything's good to go there. And you can do that from your phone. You don't have to do the whole production. We've seen while you were gone, there was someone who had sort of edited together this, this, there were multiple moving clips. And you can do that if you do, if you want. It's fun. I have to, it's great to display your art, but yeah, don't feel like you need to become a cinematographer in order to ask your question. We're okay with just getting standard questions as well.
Leo Laporte (02:14:45):
Love that. We appreciate it. We also wanna thank our club Twit members for making this show possible. We now have three ads on this particular episode. Yeah. As you remember when we started, we didn't have any the reason we can launch new shows like this, like this week in space there's some shows by this guy Micah over here. There's the hands-on Macintosh that don't have any ad support. Is, is, is thanks to our club members who put their money in and you know, it's one buck less than a blue check on Twitter and you get so much more. If you'd like to join Club Twit, go to twit tv slash club. We now have family plans. Yeah, we have business plans, individual plans. The individual plan starts at seven bucks a month. You can put in more, what do you get? Ad-Free versions of all of our shows.
(02:15:30):
You get access to the Club Twit Discord, which I have to admit, as I was traveling I was Jones in a little bit. I got into that discord whenever I could cuz I missed the social element there. It's not just chat about the shows. It's topics that geeks like everything from beer to coding to comics to hardware, i o t pets. You know, you ask questions to the tech guys, but you can get some pretty good answers in our club. Twit Discord, that's part of your membership. You also get the Club Twit feed, which has hands on Macintosh, hands on windows with Paul Throt, the Untitled Lennox Show. Scott Wilkinson's.
Mikah Sargent and/or Dick Debartolo (02:16:07):
Yeah. If you're curious about Leo's tv Yeah.
Leo Laporte (02:16:11):
Scott's brought back. Thank you Scott. Home Theater Geeks right now. Club only twit TV slash club twit. There's a lot of content, there's a lot of fun in there and it really helps us keep this show on the air. We love the Club and we're thank you all for supporting us. I think we're out of time. We gotta turn the set around, turn the set over around because this week in Tech is coming up. Next. but I want to thank you Micah Sergeant for spending some time your, your Sunday afternoon. Thanks to all of our listeners as well. Yes, you can watch us do ask the tech guys every Sunday from 11:00 AM to 2:00 PM Pacific. That's two to five Eastern time. That is 1800 utc. The stream, as we've mentioned, is live.twit.tv or twit.tv/live audio or video.
(02:17:06):
Of course, we make it a podcast so you can listen at any time at your leisure after the fact by just going to twit.tv/atg. You can even go to the old tech guy labs.com. You can, that goes right there directly as well. Tech guy labs.com. The show notes will be there. We put links there, information, there's a transcript there. Audio and video from all the shows. That's all on the website. Twit.Tv/Atg. There's also a YouTube channel dedicated to ask the tech guys. You can watch the video there after the fact. And you could subscribe in your favorite podcast client. That's another good way you'll get it automatically the minute it's available. So, great to be back. I missed y'all. I'm so glad you're here. Yeah. I really love doing this and all of the shows. We do. I don't have a hard schedule.
(02:17:49):
You know, I, I I think I could do this for a while. Good. I think I could keep doing this for a while. I have to say no more long trips in the plan. We canceled all the long trips. I just, I don't wanna spend the money and I don't wanna hurt the environment. I have to really think about, you know, what's the best way to, to travel the future. So we really, the one of the reasons I paid a lot of attention on this trip is I thought this could be Yeah. The last time, you know, I do this for some time. Hmm. So yeah, I'll be here for a while. Sorry. Sorry, <laugh>. Mike is just waiting for me to No, no, the keys and he'll go off in the sunset. Thanks for joining us. We'll see you next time. I'd ask the tech guys, bye on.
