The Tech Guy Episode 1849 Transcript

(00:00:02):
Podcasts you love, from people you trust. This is TWiT.

Leo Laporte (00:00:06):
Hi, this is Leo Laporte and this is my tech guy podcast. This show originally aired on the premier networks coast to coast on Saturday, December 4th, 2221. This is episode 1849. Enjoy the tech guy podcast is brought to you by ITProTV. Start or advance your IT career with the wonderful instructors of ITProTV, visit itpro.tv/twit for an additional 30% off. All good consumer subscriptions for the lifetime of your active subscription. Just use the code TWiT30 at checkout, and by userway.org Userway ensures your website is accessible, ADA compliant and helps your business avoid accessibility-related lawsuits. The perfect way to showcase your brand's commitment to millions of people, but with disabilities, it's not only the right thing to do. It's also the law. Go to userway.org/twit for 30% off Userway's AI-powered accessibility solution.

Leo Laporte (00:01:13):
And by AT&T. It's 2021, there are self-driving cars, plant burgers, tourists, and space. The least your phone could do is stream without lag. You should get AT&T 5g. AT&T 5g is fast, reliable, and secure. It makes downloading entertainment, staying connected, and protecting your device easy. Make sure your phone service keeps up with what you need from it. Get AT&T 5g. It's not complicated. 5G requires a compatible plan that may not be in your area. See att.com/5gforyou for details. Whoa! Hey, Hey. Hey, how are you today? It's me Leo Laporte, The Tech Guy. Time to talk computers, the internet home theater, digital photography, smartphones, smartwatch is augmented reality. Virtual reality, real reality introduced to you the man in charge of real reality here, Mikah Sargent. Boy Genius. Hello, Tech Guy Jr., Joining us as he does these days on Saturdays.

Leo Laporte (00:02:18):
I don't know. I guess you just don't have anything else to do. <Laugh> I'm glad you're here to help us out. So the NSO group, bunch of spooks mm-hmm <affirmative> and I mean that in the nicest way, they're spies they're agents, it's a comp it's a company that Israeli company that collects bugs, the kinds of bugs that let bad guys get into your, you know, phone or your computer without your knowledge, we call 'em exploits, cuz they exploit you. And these they collect these exploits, but they, but they have a very keen eye for exploits. What they really want is exploits. They can sell on to governments, to hack people's devices, to spy on 'em mm-hmm <affirmative> theso group. Now theso group says oil. We don't sell it to repressive regimes. We only sell it to the good guys except they sell it to Turkey, which is somewhat repressive, Bahrain, res some.

Leo Laporte (00:03:28):
And then these gov, these governments use it to spy, not on terrorists. You know, that's what they say. Well, we're gonna prevent terrorism. I'm all for that prevent terror. But they also spy on journalists who say things about the government. And they also spy on activists who are agitating in the government. You know, you, you know, it depends on your point of view. You could call 'em terrorists. I guess they're activists, the government doesn't like 'em. So the NSO group collects these from hackers. Hackers have a choice. You know, when you find a bug in software, you, you there's a lot of things you can do with it. The, the worst thing you could do with it is just publish a blog post and say, I found this bug, cuz then that's telling the world that's not a good thing. Mostly what you wanna do ideally is tell the company that made the software.

Leo Laporte (00:04:14):
Let's say you find a bug on the iPhone that allows a bad guy to send you a text message with that. You know, you open it and you go, I don't know what that is and that's it. And then by virtue, pure virtue of opening that text message, the bad guy now can get into your phone and read your messages and see what you're doing. That would be bad, right? That's an exploit. You, if you discovered an exploit like this, you'd have some choices you could set, go to apple and say, Hey, I found a problem. It's called responsible disclosure. Generally, when companies that do this, you know, security researchers do this, they say you have 90 days to fix this problem. Eventually, I'm gonna have to go public cuz I don't want the, I don't want people to get, you know, exploited. So if you don't fix it, I'm gonna tell 'em.

Leo Laporte (00:04:57):
But the companies usually say, oh good, good, thank you. Not only will we fix it, but he here's some money for your efforts. You know, 10,000, 20,000, they call it a bug bounty. And there are a lot of people out there who make their living searching for these flaws, these exploits, and then selling them to apple problem is apple don't pay quite as much money as some other people. There all are. Some other legitimate groups, usually funded by companies like apple and Google and Microsoft that will buy them. Erodium is one of them and they'll then pass it onto the company and then they'll reward the hacker. And this is a way to make a living. But then there's this NSO group. And if you've got something, this is what I just described with is what they call a 0-click exploit on the iPhone.

Leo Laporte (00:05:46):
If you've got something that will let me send you a message and then put stuff on your iPhone that can spy on you. Ooh, that's valuable. And they will pay millions to this hacker. Hmm. I can get 50,000 from apple. I can get a million and a half from the NSO group. Now Apple's gonna not do anything bad with it. They're gonna fix it. NSO group. The reason they could pay you so much is cuz they're getting paid that much by governments for these X exploits. Now I understand, you know, a lot of hackers say, well, I'm gonna take the million and a half. The problem is now the NSO group sells this on to governments, apple doesn't like this apple in fact last week sued the NSO group cuz the way they, this, this particular exploit works is the NSO group sends the message to let's say Mikah, let's say you're an activist trying to take down the tech guy regime <laugh>.

Leo Laporte (00:06:46):
So I say, well I'm not gonna, we will not have that. I'd like to get into his phone and find out what he is up to. So I send a million dollars to the NSO group. They say, okay, we're gonna open the door to Micah's phone. What you do with it is up to you. They send a message to Micah's phone as NSO group, does it hacks your phone? And then they give me <laugh> more <laugh> access to your phone. Apple says that's a violation of our terms of service. They're creating message. Imessage accounts fall under false pretenses to hack phones. And they sued them. Facebook has sued them. They appealed and Facebook won again in, in superior, in superior court. So this is interesting. Now the, the reason I bring this up, so you understand what the NSO group does.

Leo Laporte (00:07:37):
They come elect these malicious exploits and sell 'em off to the, to governments. And then they say, well, we only sell it to good governments except they'll send it to any government. Well, and I'll give you an example. Apple has just revealed that the NSO group and AI company has hacked the smartphones of a number of state department employees using the NSO groups software. They call it Pegasus, by the way, just case you just for your, you know, when you're at a cocktail party, somebody says, Pegas says, now you'll know what that is. The U.S. state department.

Leo Laporte (00:08:26):
Okay, this is bad. Now. Now we're talking. Now we're so I had always assumed somewhat that that the us government probably used NSO to spy on terrorists, right? Might maybe that maybe not according to people familiar with the matter, this is a story from Reuters, apple iPhones of at least nine us state department employees were hacked by an unknown assailant. I like that use of the word assailant UN unknown assailant using sophisticated spyware developed by the NSO group. According to four people familiar with the matter the hex, which took place in the last several months hit us officials either based in Uganda, ah, or focused on matter is concerning Uganda. Oh, maybe now we know who paid the NSO group to get into those guys, phones Uganda, the intrusions represent the widest known hacks of us officials through NSO technology. Reuters could not determine who launched the latest, but the tech guy says it was mic or no, it was Uganda. <Laugh> Uganda. NSO group said in a statement on Thursday, they did not have any indication. Their tools were used, but canceled access for the relevant customers. <Laugh>

Mikah Sargent (00:09:53):
How much longer is NSO gonna be around you? Because they're starting to be at the center of all of these different lawsuits and all of this attention that's being paid to them a

Leo Laporte (00:10:01):
Couple of months ago, the United States issued sanctions against the NSO group, which really irritated these Israelis mm-hmm <affirmative> who said, well, wait a minute, this is an important company for our economy. How dare you? Well, I think we know how dare we. The NSO group says if our investigation shall show these actions, indeed happened with NSOs tools. Such customer will be terminated permanently and legal actions will take place. Oh please. Officials at the Uganda embassy in Washington, DC had no apple had no comment. A state department spokesperson had no comment, but the NSO group is on the Israeli entity list sanctions, making it harder for us companies to do business with them. This is the world we're in right now. And we, you know, we often talk about securing your phone and so forth. And I wanna make this really clear nobody's pen spending a million and a half bucks to hack into your phone.

Leo Laporte (00:11:04):
Yeah. Or my phone. Well maybe mine. No, no one is or MiKah's phone. Well, these exploits, but the problem is they're worth a lot of money. And if you use them too much, they'll be discussed, covered, and fixed apple will fix them. So you really want to use them surgically carefully and you have to have some money. That's often a government that will pay to do this. So now, now, you know, if you hear you're at a cocktail party and you hear about NSO group, that's what they do. That's what Pegasus is. Apple suing them, Facebook suing them. US government is sanctioning them. However, they're still at it. They're

Mikah Sargent (00:11:45):
Still at it unless you're at a fantasy cocktail party about unicorns and magical horses. Yeah. In which case Pegasus would be,

Leo Laporte (00:11:52):
That's a different Pegas. Yeah.

Mikah Sargent (00:11:53):
So, you know, that's the one, some people to be embarrassed, you know, if they're at that kind of, oh, I know all about

Leo Laporte (00:11:57):
That. No, we're talking about the one with wings. <Laugh> that's a good point. I should really qualify horse

Mikah Sargent (00:12:02):
Cocktail parties are outta the question.

Leo Laporte (00:12:04):
Yeah. No, but if you're talking amongst sophisticated technical sophisticated. Yeah. Yeah. It's a, it's a really interesting world we live in. And again, I'm wanna emphasize you're normal people. You and I are not targets, but dissidents journalists, maybe if you were writing a story that Uganda didn't like, guess what? Or if you were a state department person who was doing something Uganda didn't like, guess what? So, and by the way it is possible to discover these hacks. If you send the phone to apple, they can figure it out. But otherwise, you wouldn't know your phone would just be operating completely. Normally our show today brought, we're gonna talk and take some phone calls in just a little bit. 8888-Ask-Leo, website is techguylabs.com. We have extra time this hour, cuz Scott Wilkinson is taking the week off. So our home field, your geek won't be here. That means more calls for you. 88-88-Ask-Leo. When you hear something on the show, techguylabs.com is the place to go. It'll all be there. How are you Mikah?

Mikah Sargent (00:13:05):
I am doing peachy keen. I saw you got to go to SF for your birthday.

Leo Laporte (00:13:09):
Oh, did you see that? Oh, you should go. I think you would enjoy this. Okay. Have you ever been to the Deyoung Museum in Golden Gate Park. Okay. You guys should go down there. There's a science museum, which is great. I'm already on board. Yeah. And then next to it's the art museum and right now, cuz I know you love fashion. I just look at your straighty outfit and I can sell <laugh> right now at the de young there's and let me see how long it's gonna go on. There's a special, a bit of the fashion designer. What's his name? Patrick. Kelly. Do you know who he is? Patrick Kelly. Oh, he was so great. Anyway, all of his clothes he's passed away. But he was just this brilliant guy. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> and there's all the clothes are there. And then they show and they have the videos of the runway. Oh neat. It's really, I think you would enjoy it. Plus the art is great. Lots of good art of all kinds. And then next door. The science museum, I think you would. And it's beautiful. It's in a beautiful building. It's Golden Gate Park.

Mikah Sargent (00:14:08):
See fashion museum would be more for Sebastian. I would be at the, I like he would get something out of it. I could go, but

Leo Laporte (00:14:13):
He likes he's more into fashion than you are. Absolutely. You're just so fashionable. I thought you must be interested. Oh, that's kind Patrick. Kelly is really amazing. He died in 1990 at a very young age. It was very sad. Oh

Mikah Sargent (00:14:24):
Yeah. I'm looking at some of the fashion now. It's really fun.

Leo Laporte (00:14:27):
It's fun. It's fun. He was black. He moved to Paris because of prejudice. He grew up in Vicksburg, Mississippi. Oh wow. And was beloved in Paris, had his fashion house in Paris and he, one of the things he did that was kind of controversial. He collected like icons of racism. I see that. Yeah. And then would incorporate it into his fashion, which makes it so much fun. Yeah. I love the idea. Wonder how long that's gonna be there. Cause it's draining the power from those things. Yeah. That's what's his point. Exactly. And then Judy Chicago is there too. There's a Judy Chicago retrospective, which I, I love her stuff, but so fun. Yeah. That's doesn't say when this leaves, but the de Young's worth a trip. And then yeah, we went to the best restaurant. Oh my God. What

Mikah Sargent (00:15:17):
What type of cuisine? 

Leo Laporte (00:15:18):
Farm to table. But very HOTT cuisine. It was yeah. Prefix like nine courses. It was really incredible. That's awesome. Oh my God. And it was tiny 70 tables. Oh my goodness. You sit. We sat, I guess, because it was my birthday. They gave us the table of honor. You're looking at the kit, the kitchen's right there. There's six cooks on the line. The line cooks are there and they make, and I say, is that the kitchen? Cuz it's tiny. It's big, small in this room. And they, yeah. I said they make everything there. I said, yeah. So you watching them prepare it. And then they start review, which is really cool. Not waiters. That's neat. So the, the line cooks who made it, bring it out and put it on your table. So it's really, it was wonderful. That's cool. Its a great experience for sons and daughters. It's called

Mikah Sargent (00:16:02):
Sons and daughters. Isn't perfect for you foodie.

Leo Laporte (00:16:05):
Yeah, I'm a foodie. I don't know if you're a foodie, but I'm a foodie. Ladies and gentlemen. The unbreakable phone angel Kim SHA Kimmy. Don't take any Shaffer, hello Kim. Good. day. <Laugh> good day. Good day, sir. Good day, day. Great. How'd you go? How'd you have a good week. I did. Yeah.

Kim Shaffer (00:16:24):
Very busy, but good. Yeah. And happy birthday to you.

Leo Laporte (00:16:27):
Well you, you know my birthday was last

Kim Shaffer (00:16:31):
Week. Do you feel older?

Leo Laporte (00:16:33):
<Laugh> oh God. Yeah. <laugh> it was one of those birthdays where you look at it and you go, you are now old, but it comes with

Kim Shaffer (00:16:41):
Its benefits though. Doesn't it? <Laugh>

Leo Laporte (00:16:43):
If you consider Medicare benefit <laugh>

Kim Shaffer (00:16:46):
Yes, I think so.

Leo Laporte (00:16:48):
You know the benefit is you're still alive. That's the benefit and healthy and healthy. Thank goodness. Knock, knock on. Knock on my mouse pad. But somebody told me they took my birthday out of the Wikipedia entry. You have two

Mikah Sargent (00:17:03):
Years on your

Kim Shaffer (00:17:04):
Birthday <laugh>

Leo Laporte (00:17:05):
It was two different Wikipedia. You meant you were born twice. I don't know.

Mikah Sargent (00:17:08):
It was it's like this year, this year. Cuz they were just saying they didn't know. And I was like, well no, now

Leo Laporte (00:17:13):
I know they used to know so many better update for a long time. It says 1955 or 90, 56. Yeah. That's strange. <Laugh> and they took the birthday out. But see the point of all of this is I don't edit my you're not supposed to touch the editor. Yeah. That's I know what my birthday is and I could go in there and fix it, but you're not allowed to oh you can't. I mean, do

Kim Shaffer (00:17:32):
You wanna say on your own

Leo Laporte (00:17:33):
<Laugh> no you can't but somebody else can, but I could say for the record, November 29th, 1956, if anybody wishes to fix it, there you go. <Laugh> but I don't really pay that much attention to it. It's it's mostly right. But not sometimes there's strange stuff in there because you know, with Wikipedia, you know, you get people going in and messing, making stuff, making changes. Yeah.

Kim Shaffer (00:17:59):
I'm glad I don't have a Wikipedia

Mikah Sargent (00:18:00):
Page. I knew you had two, two dates cuz I was trying to remember which of the days was your birthday so I could send you a text on the right day. You did. And I, when I went there it said this year, come this year and I thought that's I wonder why they don't know

Leo Laporte (00:18:15):
<Laugh> they used to. What's really strange. They used to know. So I don't understand how that changed. It came from a New York times, cover story plugin, boot up. Feel free to melt down.

Kim Shaffer (00:18:30):
I like the title. I

Leo Laporte (00:18:32):
Feel free to melt it very odd. Oh this is the story. The New York times did in 2003. Oh I thought it was about Y2K. Yeah. <laugh> feel free to melt it. So that's their reference, you know, you have to have a reference. So that's the reference anyway. Hello Kim. Hi. Who should I talk to first? 

Kim Shaffer (00:18:48):
Well let's go to Chime because I like the name. I love the name line one. Chime. Sounds

Leo Laporte (00:18:53):
Like a internet startup. Doesn't it? <Laugh> yes it does. Thank you, Kim. Hi, chime Leo. Leport the tech

Chime (caller) (00:18:59):
Guy. Well good after 11 there Leo good after 11.

Leo Laporte (00:19:02):
See perfect. That's right.

Chime (caller) (00:19:05):
That's specific, you know? Yeah, yeah. Next Tuesday we're getting our first ATSC 3.0 TV station here in LA and I need a tuner, but here with some odd things. I, first of all, I need one with text to speech and preferably with RCA jacks, because I have an older set up in the bedroom. I don't need to replace my insignia TV in the living room. Cause it's working fine. It I just want to get the 3.0 content in case there's something that's not on the 1.0

Leo Laporte (00:19:42):
On Tuesday, December 7th, a day that will live in infamy. That's right. KTTV channel. What is that? Channel? Seven 11. That's right. You

Chime (caller) (00:19:51):
Found you found it real fast, huh? Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:19:53):
Well this is something I should be talking about. We have a big audience on KFI in Los Angeles. So I guess I should, well

Chime (caller) (00:19:59):
I'm listening on the HD two stations that cause I can't bear to listen to analog am anymore. So

Leo Laporte (00:20:05):
ATSC three is kind of like that actually there's a, it's analogous to the analog. <Laugh> the ATSC is the, is broadcast television's response to internet and because they want to be able to do more with their broadcast signal and among other things they hope to do at interactivity, which will require the internet. It's gonna give them like it did with radio. It's gonna give them extra side channels and it's really gonna come down to whether you want it or whether it'll be worthwhile, what the TV channel does with it. There's no standard way to implement it.

Chime (caller) (00:20:46):
I like the fact that, you know, if there's an emergency you know, a weather thing that if it doesn't concern my

Leo Laporte (00:20:52):
Area, they don't have to interrupt my viewing. Yeah. That's that's nice. Is that what KTTV says they're gonna do cause no, well, no

Chime (caller) (00:21:00):
I'm not, I there's

Leo Laporte (00:21:01):
Capabilities, but whether they're gonna do it or not is unclear by the way, there is a public of announcement with this. Yes, you they're gonna change. This means their frequencies are gonna change and you're gonna have to rescan. So if you have one of those TV sets that you scanned all the available channels, if you have an over the year TV set or over the year tuner. Yeah, my,

Chime (caller) (00:21:21):
My, my insignia I, and I get a hundred, 188 channels here in Sherman Oakes.

Leo Laporte (00:21:27):
So you're gonna have to rescan after December 7th, after 10:00 AM Pacific <laugh> and then it'll still be channel 11. And if you have an ATSC 3.0 tuner and a lot of TVs are coming out now with ATSC three, this is one really, I should get Scott on. But he's not here this week. If you had that kind of tuner you, you would get, perhaps you would get other things. But again, this is completely up to channel 11. Yeah.

Chime (caller) (00:21:51):
But where do I find a tuner that will

Leo Laporte (00:21:54):
Meet? Yeah, I see your specs. I have no idea. Yeah. I mean, what

Chime (caller) (00:21:57):
I, what I, what I've been using since 2005 is a Samsung S I R T 4 51, but 

Leo Laporte (00:22:04):
It's out date. I, you know, you can look on Amazon and see, there are some ATSC three tuners, no idea if they'll fit your needs. Leo Laport, the tech guy. The good news is they they're some of them are as little as 25 bucks. So it's just gonna depend. We interviewed chime. We interviewed somebody from Sinclair at CES 20, 20 mm-hmm <affirmative> almost two years ago them about the ATSC three transition <laugh> oh. And then, and then the boss came and said, you can't use that, but it's all wrong. <Laugh> so I am a little confused about what will happen. My sense is it's really gonna very much depend on what the, what channel 11 does with it. Right? Mm-hmm <affirmative> it may not be. In other words, what I'm trying to tell you is it may not be worth it to, to run out and, and, and find this. But I do see some very inexpensive, the GE extend R TV, antenna supports ATSC three. Oh, well you'd need a tuner. Wouldn't you? Yeah. And the

Mikah Sargent (00:23:14):
ATSC website itself, atsc.org has some pages on its news news blog that have some suggestions that I, I see lots of different news releases talking about tuners that support it. There's also a, a site Tom's guide you may be familiar with. They do some reviews that has a Roundup of, of ATSC devices ATS three C, 3.0 devices. So there are a few sources that will kind of collect the ones. And that way you can compare between them, cuz it sounds like that's what you're wanting to make sure that you can get that VGA connection that you're looking for without having to make that upgrade.

Chime (caller) (00:23:50):
Yeah. I wrote to a zapper box and I, I asked them about text to speech and they said that they thanked me, they said, they'd look into it. So yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:23:57):
Great. Yeah. So you're blind. Yes. Yeah. So that, yeah. I mean, obviously it's unusable, if you, if you don't have text to Sean there I, again, <laugh>, I don't know, you know, given what I've seen about ATS three, it's very confusing what benefits you're gonna have and whether it's gonna be anything you really even want. And as I said there's a standard, but what the TV channel does with that is CR you know, you don't know has channel 11 said what they're

Chime (caller) (00:24:26):
Gonna do. I, I, I don't know. I mean, I've seen on the AVS forum, there's people talking about what channel numbers and who's gonna piggyback off it and everything like that. So that's how I know about this.

Leo Laporte (00:24:38):
Fox 11 ATSC plans. Let's see if they, I mean, all I've, all I found was that PSA that I, then I mentioned and their 30 day notification mm-hmm <affirmative> I guess they're putting that on your, on your TV too, but I don't see them saying, oh yeah, what we're gonna do is two side channels cuz they can do so you get a more bandwidth. So you could do 4k for instance, with ATSC mm-hmm <affirmative> but three, but maybe they won't the,

Chime (caller) (00:25:06):
Well, well right now, right now channel 11 has I think it goes up to 11.4 and then 13 takes up some of, I think 13 is also Fox zone and they have some more bandwidth than right. Does. Yeah. Right.

Leo Laporte (00:25:21):
So yeah. I mean, you, it sounds like you're you just like it, you just wanna it cuz you need it cuz it's the latest, greatest thing. Yeah. And you know,

Chime (caller) (00:25:30):
There might be more sub channels or something else.

Leo Laporte (00:25:33):
I mean there might be is the one yeah. There might, there might be let me see. Yeah. See, I can't, I, I wish I could. Oh, here it is. That's no that's yeah. I'm looking at their Fox elevens. Oh no, this is from w L K this is a different Fox 11. So <laugh> <laugh> and even this guy who has been doing it for longer, they're in Detroit. I think they even, they don't say what they're doing with it. So yeah. I don't, you know, I don't know. Maybe somebody listening will, will call in. What I would do is call Fox 11 and, and they'll put you on with their engineer and and you can say, here's what I wanna do. And they, maybe their engineer will know maybe. Yeah, maybe. Yeah. Yeah. I would, you know, this is a very bumpy rollout, much like HD radio was it took years for HD radio to actually become anything. Well, you know,

Chime (caller) (00:26:28):
The shame of it is before I had an HD radio, there were a lot of am stations here that had it on now all of 'em except for 1260 have turned it off. Yeah. You know, and exactly. I wish I had. I mean, but back then there were no portables with batteries. There was some reason about that, you know?

Leo Laporte (00:26:47):
Yeah. I have to run chime. Nice to talk to you. Let, keep listening. Maybe somebody will come up with an answer. That's the real hope of this show. Cuz I can't answer that one. Leo LePort the tech guy we are talking with chime about ATSC 3.0, which is the spec for or what they call a next gen TV. And you understand what's going on. The broadcast channels are struggling against internet television, right? More and more people are saying, well, I don't need, I don't need the broadcast channels. I just wanna watch my Netflix or my HBO max or Amazon prime or maybe I'll watch YouTube TV. And that's one of the reasons by the way, the price is for things like Hulu Hulu's price just went up the Hulu streaming portion. So did YouTube TVs. They're 65 bucks a month. Youtube TV went up again.

Leo Laporte (00:27:39):
No, no that, but that's a few months ago. Oh 65 bucks a month, which is what you pay for basic cable. Right? Mm-hmm <affirmative> and the, and the primary reason for these price hikes are these locals coming to them and saying, you need to pay us more cuz they're really saying, you know, the future is probably over the internet, but this ATSC three, I think, or next gen TV is this kind of last gasp attempt to stay kind of hip with the Youngs. But no young is gonna go to a special antenna, a TV tuner that can handle ATSC for something that is less than internet. Right.

Mikah Sargent (00:28:17):
Especially because they already have internet internet it's to add friction to the process is

Leo Laporte (00:28:23):
Not it. Yeah. So if you can help chime he's looking because he is blind. He's looking for an ATSE three tuner. There are lots of them they're cheap. But he's looking for one that has text to speech so that he, he can, he, he can hear what it's saying. This is channel 11 or whatever. So if you know, call 88 88, ask Leo, you can also leave a comment on the website, tech guy labs.com, tech guy labs.com O Vegas Waynes in the chat rooms in our IRC, irc.twi.tv saying why should local channels be able to charge for carriers to take their channel? Don't get me started on the FCCS. Must carry rules. It's very complicated. But if you wanna know more about it, you can Google FCC must carry rules. This started in 1965, which requires cable systems to carry the local channels, but gives the local channels some rights.

Leo Laporte (00:29:27):
And it's, it's, it's complicated. <Laugh>, it's very complicated. So in fact, I'll just read the headers from this article in the first amendment of encyclopedia must carry rules instituted by the FCC in 1965, appeals court found must carry rules incompatible with the first amendment mid 1980s, Congress reestablished must carry rules. 1992 Supreme court upheld the new rules. 1993 must carry scheme is altering to fit Digi digital television 2005. And that's just the first 20 years, 30 years <laugh>, you know, it goes on and on and on. So essentially a local channel can decide whether they can force the cable companies or YouTube TV to carry it or they can charge them. And most of 'em decide, I want to do. I'd like I'm making money on advertising, but I'd also like to make money from the cable company paying for access to channel 11, truthfully the best the best deal in television. If you can put in a antenna up and get the, the big stations from the nearby big city, that's the best deal in television, probably of the highest quality HD as well. And ATSC NextGen TV offers perhaps 4k perhaps because it's up to this channel, whether they implement it. You know, if there's a television station engineer listening who can explain all this to me, call me eighty eight, eighty eight, ask Leo, meanwhile, Trevor Fort worth this hello, Trevor Leo Laport, the tech guy.

Trevor (caller) (00:31:05):
Hello Leo, November 29th, 1956 when you were born. And also when my mom was born. Oh

Leo Laporte (00:31:10):
Nice. I'm not in co oh nice. Well happy birthday mom.

Trevor (caller) (00:31:15):
Yeah. So I have old Dell 17 inch and I've replaced a fan. I've upgraded the Ram of sharing the hard drives to solid state, but I feel it's time to get another 17 inch laptop. I do some video editing from time to time and I was looking for something that was quiet or fan less.

Leo Laporte (00:31:35):
You like a big laptop. Now there's another way to go, which is to get a quiet fan, less laptop with a smaller screen in to attach it to a big monitor, which would get bigger than 17 inches. You could drive a 32 or even a 49 inch monitor with many, many laptops. You don't wanna do that?

Trevor (caller) (00:31:54):
No sir. I I live here in Fort worth, but my mom lives in Houston and somewhere, her family live in Minnesota and Louisiana. So I travel around often.

Leo Laporte (00:32:03):
Yeah. So you wanna have a big laptop screen cuz you can wanna edit. The problem is almost always when they have screens this big, they are what we call desktop replacements, which means they'll have bigger you know, faster processors, which means hotter, which means fans. So it's very unusual to see a 17 inch don't still sells 'em by the way the XPS 17, which I really like. And I, I think a lot of times you're you're the trade off is power versus battery life or empower versus fans. But let me see. Let's look. Oh, the LG Graham is very lean. I, again, I don't know if it has a, so the couple I would look at are the Dell X PS 17, which is very it's it's their ultra books thin and light. And I would guess it, I'm sure it has a fan, but it may be not such a bad fan. You want it to be quiet? Is that the main reason you don't want a fan?

Trevor (caller) (00:33:03):
Yes. I also teach third grade and sometimes I make little videos. Ah, and that's that's like you know how to do multiplication or whatever. And then if a fan's really loud, you can hear the fan while I'm recording the video.

Leo Laporte (00:33:19):
Yeah, that's annoying. Isn't it? Yeah. let me just look on the X PS. I'm sure. Look anything that's gonna have a 17 inch monitor is probably gonna have a fan. You might be able to reduce fan noise by getting an I five instead of an I seven, the I seven S will always have a fan because they're so darn hot. Let me look at the LG gram, cuz that that is a very beautiful, thin and light. They do make a 17. I really like both the PS 17 from Dell and the LG gram. And often when you get really, really thin like this there's no room for a fan is running windows seven. It's so thin. Yeah, I don't, I'm not sure about the fan thing. I would, I would recommend either of these my guess is that the they'll both be pretty quiet. Because they're so let's see thin and light and they're not gonna want to have a big old fan in a little thin laptop like this. Be ideal if you could go in and try it, wouldn't it just hear what it sounds like when you crank it up?

Leo Laporte (00:34:32):
I would say the gram is probably the best bet for quiet because it's using it's not discreet processor. It is using an I seven, which is it's a 10th generat. If you could get the ice lake, I'm sorry. The what we call Theder lake, the Alder lake <laugh> you might, you might be able to get it fan less. That's a pretty hot too. All of these are so hot. Let me see on the gram, nobody puts with, they have a fan in here. You like your, I would look at the X PS 17, if you want really thin and light the LG gram 17 very nice system. I don't see on the specs, whether either one has a fan, I'm looking at the specs and they don't say, I'm gonna guess it does. It's rare that you could find a laptop these days without a fan. It would be a much lower power processor. They all have fans, but you want a quiet one. And I think either of those is gonna be fairly quiet.

Trevor (caller) (00:35:28):
And you said, you know, maybe going to I five, would that be a big trade off in performance for video editing?

Leo Laporte (00:35:33):
Yeah, not huge, but yeah. I mean, you know, look, the reason these fans ramp up is you're doing work. And, and, and I seven gets really, really hot. The I five wouldn't get as hot, but the reason is it's slower. So if you can, I think the thing to do is go to a, do they still have computer stores? <Laugh> go, go to a computer store and try and, you know, try something and see if you get the fan pumped up. I think both of those would be fairly quiet. You're just always gonna have a fan on you always are. I, you know, because you can't make PCs. That's where apple has a real advantage. Leo LePort the tech guy. Actually it looks like people are complaining. I'm looking at the chat room in the Dell community that the fans are always on when charging the X PS 17. You gotta keep it cool while it's

Mikah Sargent (00:36:24):
Charging. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:36:27):
So maybe that's not the one. Maybe that's not the one to get.

Mikah Sargent (00:36:31):
I think if you're doing video editing, you will have to deal with fans at some point. I can't,

Leo Laporte (00:36:35):
You know, there's, there's one Mac that doesn't have a, some MacBook air that's cuz it's the M one and it's a cooler processor and even it can't go at Mac speed mm-hmm <affirmative> because it doesn't have a fan passive cooling, just isn't enough for an Intel chip in general period.

Mikah Sargent (00:36:50):
Could video edit on the iPad <laugh> yeah. Skip the fan altogether. Well, thank you, sir. I appreciate it.

Leo Laporte (00:37:00):
Sure. I appreciate talking to you that, that sounds like fun. Making videos for your third grade class. That's awesome. That's really cool. And say hi to your mom. I sure will have a happy birthday. All right, Trevor. Thanks.

Mikah Sargent (00:37:15):
Yeah, it would be nice if there was a site scooter shared one in the chat sort of an official site that had with the laptop reviews that had fan noise review or a fan noise metric to go along with

Leo Laporte (00:37:28):
It. Thank you, Mike B for fixing my Wikipedia entry. Nice. So they're quoting that times thing, which said I was 47 in 2003. So they didn't know. Oh, that's why it's either of those year depending. Yeah.

Mikah Sargent (00:37:40):
Yeah. When, when during that year there's no

Leo Laporte (00:37:42):
Clock. There's how come my shot doesn't oh, the two shot because there's no. So they, now they want a clock for this shot

Mikah Sargent (00:37:51):
Too much to ask where I could

Leo Laporte (00:37:53):
Put it over your shoulder.

Mikah Sargent (00:37:54):
I'll just wear a clock over of. I could flavor the flavor and wear a clock here. Yeah, that's true. So

Leo Laporte (00:38:04):
Yeah, we do. Yeah. Get a, let's get a do we have anything? Oh, maybe you could put that that clock that's over in the end of the room over there,

Mikah Sargent (00:38:12):
But then you wouldn't have it. Get a clock,

Leo Laporte (00:38:14):
Get a, get a clock. Yeah. A little grandfather clock could be so cute. B <laugh>

Mikah Sargent (00:38:22):
Bong clock. Oh,

Leo Laporte (00:38:26):
Oh, I have that at home. But it, the problem is it does not keep very good time. <Laugh> I can I'll bring the gear clock in. Yeah. Oh, there you go. That's a good one. Hang it. Look, Brooke already has a clock and that's a, that's a wireless radio clock, right? No radio. I don't think about, oh, oh, I have one like that. That has a radio in it. I guess you could set it. That's what you have to do with all these clocks.

Mikah Sargent (00:38:50):
Think you put a lanyard on it and Mikey could just, yeah, I'll just

Leo Laporte (00:38:53):
Neck, like flavor of flight. Yeah. Also I did know Monterey has been built an internet speed test. That's what I was responding to when I said yes, I've added it to my EAX because there is a EAX package with OS 10 extensions and among other things that it'll allows you to call from E max internet speed test. So yes, I did know that as a matter of fact,

Mikah Sargent (00:39:23):
I'm running the test.

Leo Laporte (00:39:26):
Yep.

Mikah Sargent (00:39:27):
360 8 down

Leo Laporte (00:39:29):
1 68. I'm not really sure why they put that in, but oh yeah. Maybe maybe do you think used to Pegasus to did, did I, did you hear that story? No, I mentioned it on twig. So Roberto Hellman, I'm lying in bed on my birthday on Monday and my Alexa goes, boo, you have a message from Roberto Hellman and starts playing a birthday message. How did you do that, Roberto?

Mikah Sargent (00:39:54):
Oh, that's kind of terrifying.

Leo Laporte (00:39:57):
It was cute. It's very cute message. So I did, but it was just, it was strange. Yeah. I came outta nowhere. I don't know how he figured that out.

Mikah Sargent (00:40:04):
I, I does Roberto Hellman have your contact information? Probably. Yeah. I think if you, whatever, because I've used that service before and then stopped using it because I found it to scares people abrupt. Yeah. Yeah. Cuts into people. But yes. There's like a messaging system. Yeah. Happy

Leo Laporte (00:40:20):
Birthday. <Laugh> so cute. I'll play it for you. It was really cute. Our show today brought to you by it pro T V what a great place to be studying it. And it is, it's a great time to be in it. Talk about job openings in all area is, you know, desktop support security networking. I just saw the other day, 1.4 million open jobs for network security experts. That's the kind of thing you can learn at it. Pro TV start or advance your it career. If you're looking to break into one of the many it careers out there, or you're already a seasoned it professional, it pro TV has something for every one of you. If you just start now, you'll get the certificates. You need to get that first job. In fact, they're an official partner of compt, which means they're the best place to get your a plus or your security plus your network plus certificate.

Leo Laporte (00:41:13):
Those are frequently the certificates employers are looking for for your it job. And if you're already in it, getting re-certified may be very important, but just also getting new skills and it pro TV makes it easy. They are always up to date seven studios running full-time Monday through Friday means that they're constantly creating content. Why? Well, the exams change the questions, change software versions, change there's new certs that MCA se just got replaced by the Azure certs. So they're always making new content with they're very entertaining, but also very smart. Attainers it's great because when they make something in, in the studio, it goes from live and you can watch 'em do it live by the way, just like us. And there's a Chatman. Everything goes from live until the library into their library and within 24 hours. So it's, you know, right there, 5,800 hours of on demand training at it, pro TV just incredible.

Leo Laporte (00:42:10):
And they chunk it up too into 20 and 30 minute. So you can watch it your lunch hour, watch it, your convenience, and then get these skills this month. Python month. I know you wanna learn Python. It pro TVs focusing on Python for December webinar coming up on the ninth at 2:00 PM Eastern most in demand it jobs for 2022 that's with one of their entertainers running one long. I love Ronnie. You won't wanna miss that. Then next weekend, December 11th and 12th, they're free weekend. Featuring courses, introduction to programming using Python, Python, programming, object oriented Python, Python, data model Python for security. I think this is a great skill that goes along with all the other things they teach. Take advantage you this, in fact, I think you should start or advance your it career by becoming a member with their great instructors. It pro TV slash TWI.

Leo Laporte (00:43:04):
You'll get an additional 30% off all consumer subscriptions. As long as you stay active. When you use the code TWI three, zero TWI 30, that's a really good deal. It pro.tv/twi. The offer code TWI 30 gives you 30% off for the lifetime of your active subscription. It pro TV build or expand your it career and enjoy the journey. It's fun. It's great. And you're gonna love your new it career it pro TV, go to T pro.tv/twi. We thank him so much for supporting the tech guy. Thank you for supporting the tech guy by using that address that way they, they say, oh, they watched it on the tech guy. It pro.tv/twi stuck in the studio with you. Leo Laport, the tech guy, my Sergeant tech guy, Jr. We're answering your questions and call and thoughts at eighty eight eighty eight, ask Leo the website tech I labs.com. We are gonna make a change to tech.

Leo Laporte (00:44:04):
I labs.com. It turns out it's running. Boy, this goes back a few years. It's running on a content management system called Droople D R U P a L, which I love. In fact, I started using Droople back in the, the two thousands as a journalist familiar with drool. Yeah, yeah. Lots of CMS like the, the white house for a while. White house.gov ran on Droople. I don't think it still does, but it it's equivalent of WordPress or square space. It was a content management system and we use it for a long time. We got the tech eye labs.com was designed by a company that really great company called Lu LA bot. And they did a great job running it on Dupal, but it's an old version of Droople and unfortunately it's kind of like running a website on windows X, P the Drupal folks are saying, yeah we're gonna put out the new version, Drupal nine, it's already out, and we're gonna stop supporting, I think we're running a Dupal five or something. We're gonna stop supporting that in next year. And that means it might be a hazard <laugh> internet. And so we went back and forth. We talked to the company that maintains it for us and they said, yeah, we can fix that. We'll just upgrade about quarter million dollars. <Laugh>. And I said

Leo Laporte (00:45:25):
So we're gonna, what we're gonna do is we're gonna, we already have another site for the podcast network, twittered.tv. And in fact, this show is a podcast on that network. So what we're just gonna do is fold. You'll still go to tech, eye labs.com, but it'll look different cuz we're gonna fold it into the existing TWI website and shut down the old DRAL site, cuz it just won't be safe to use anymore. So just a, a heads up word of warning. Some things are gonna, we're not gonna have as many features as we, I don't think we'll have commenting. I don't think we have that capability. But we will the fundamental show notes, the links and so forth and video and audio from the show and all that will still be there. So just a heads up. That's gonna happen in a couple of weeks. We decided before the end of the year to decommission it. Yeah. The end of life of Droople is, was November 2nd. <Laugh> oh, well <laugh> oh, well so yeah, so that's so that's why we're we're just gonna decommission the thing. We're still getting security updates, but that won't last forever. So it's like we using windows XP, you just kind of at some point have to move on, except I don't, I don't want to buy windows 11 for a quarter of a million dollars. So we're just gonna, we're just gonna punt

Mikah Sargent (00:46:41):
And to reiterate, you can still type in tech guy labs.com that

Leo Laporte (00:46:45):
Will still work where you need to get. Yeah, I'm gonna keep saying tech guy labs.com. And what that will do is take you to the current episode, which is great. And you'll be able to get all the information and you want there. Oh, Mike B has to fix our Wikipedia entry. Thank you, November 29th, Mike, be not that I care. It probably is just as bad to tell somebody to fix your Wikipedia page as it is to fix it yourself. Maybe, maybe

Mikah Sargent (00:47:11):
There's a, what is that called? It's a, it's a party foul, but I don't think it's. I could just

Leo Laporte (00:47:16):
Hint. Yeah. Hint, hint. Gee, it's too bad. My Wikipedia side has the wrong birthday. November 29th, 1956 too bad. It's wrong? Such a shame, such a shame. <Laugh> let's go back to the phones. Ron's on the line from Yamo Washington. How Ron?

Speaker 6 (00:47:37):
Good, good morning.

Leo Laporte (00:47:38):
Good morning to you, sir.

Speaker 6 (00:47:41):
You said on the show, you that you use your Google nest hub to show pictures. So I purchased the nest max. Yes. I have many trips in windows, movie makers, which when loaded to Google photos will not show 'em a nest and many won't even show up. So I went directly to one drive where they play, but only for 11 minutes show showing all the slide. Any suggestions on how to fix?

Leo Laporte (00:48:14):
Yeah, I mean, I th I don't actually play back movies on my nest max, so I don't know what format it's wanting it. Obviously, if it'll play back in Google, Google photos, it will work. So the, so let's say let's forget this nest max, which by the way is a great photo frame. I just have it picking up photos from Google photos. And the nice thing is you can say, I only want pictures with my wife, me, or my kids. And then that way it's just family photos. I don't see a lot of random photos from my trips and travels or receipts or, you know, menus, the kinds of things I take pictures with. 'em My smartphone. So that's a nice feature. I don't know how you play movies back. Maybe you figured that out, but let's see if we can get it working.

Leo Laporte (00:48:55):
Google photos, probably the problem is the format that windows MovieMaker saves in is Microsoft's format an Avi file and that's probably just not compatible. So what you need to do is something called transcoding. It, this is a term that's used by video folks taking it from one compression format to another compression format. And I'm going to guess that the best compression format for the Google photos would be either MP four or the new high efficiency video Kodak five. So how do you transcode it? All right. Well, you've got the, you've got the Avi files on your windows, laptop. What, and you don't one drive doesn't matter because you want Google photos to see it. That's why that's how you get in the hub. So what you need to do is transcode. It there's a free program. There's a great job on transcoding called hand break.

Leo Laporte (00:49:52):
It's free it's hand break, B R a K E like the hand break in your car.fr it's. It was written by French school boys. And you think I'm kidding? It really was <laugh> well, I think they're college kids, but anyway hand break will take the Avi format and translate it into something that the Google photos can read. And I think probably your best bet is MP four. That would be the most compatible MP four. And I'm just looking on the Google photos. Yeah, I guess you can for like videos, which is kind of cool. I haven't started doing that, but it'd be kind of fun to have those motion picture ones in there. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> so, yeah, but just convert it to a format and then upload it to Google photos and they should have no problem playing it back.

Leo Laporte (00:50:42):
MP five is the newest version of video codec. We call the Kodak that's short for compression decompression. So when you VI you can't play back uncompress video in any circumstance. Video's huge. It's so big. No device can play it back. So you have to compress it, even at least a little and for playback on phones and laptops and, you know, Google nest frames. These aren't the fastest processors that needs to use a Kodak that they can play back pretty easily cuz they aren't the, they aren't big powerful processors. So the most popular Kodak for this is MP four which has now been kind of supplanted by this high efficiency video code, MP five. I bet you Google photos would take MP five, but just, you know, it'd be safe. MP four. The difference is MP five is a much smaller file. So that's, that's where the world is going. MP five. So hand break.fr. And as I say, we'll put a link in the shown to notes Fran on the line from studio city, California. Hi Fran Leo. Leport the tech guy.

Fran (caller) (00:51:54):
Hi Leo. You're my last hope. Oh no. <Laugh> I spent two hours with apple support on this problem and they couldn't fix it, but I'm having a wireless connectivity issue with my mid 20 MacBook pro. The MacBook pro has a fairly new solid state, hard drive in it and I'm running Catalina, you know, the latest upgrade of Catalina. I can connect via ethernet directly into my cable modem.

Leo Laporte (00:52:26):
Yeah, but wifi doesn't work at all.

Fran (caller) (00:52:30):
It, no, all my other apple devices in the house, you know, I iPad there. But

Leo Laporte (00:52:35):
Most likely when you put in that new drive, they knocked loose the antenna. There's an antenna internal antenna for the wifi. If that's not loose, you'll have no signal from wifi. And if it happens shortly after you put in that SSD, that's the best bet. Go to whoever, put it in and say, make sure that antenna, it's just a little connector that goes on the motherboard. Make sure that antenna is connected. I bet it's not Leo. Leport the tech guy four years. So say again, cuz I had to take a break there. So I didn't hear that last. I'm sorry.

Fran (caller) (00:53:07):
The, the solid, straight hard drive has been in the computer for about four

Leo Laporte (00:53:11):
Years. But your wifi stopped when

Fran (caller) (00:53:15):
When we did the, when I did the upgrade to Catalina 10 point 15.7. Now it could be a coincidence, but it just happened. Everything was working

Leo Laporte (00:53:26):
Perfectly. So let me ask you some diagnostic questions. I'm sure apple already asked you this. When you go to the wifi menu at the top of the screen WiFi's on, right? Yes. Do you see your wifi access point?

Fran (caller) (00:53:42):
It's my network.

Leo Laporte (00:53:44):
Do you see the name of your network underneath that little volcano of some? I don't know what I have to get a name for what that wifi logo is, but it's like an upside down volcano underneath that. Do you see the names of your network? Yeah, I do. You do see it and then you select it and, and you go, if you go into network cuttings, does it say it's on there?

Fran (caller) (00:54:08):
Well, here's the weird thing using airport utility the, I can see my base station, my airport extreme, everything that all has a green light, but the internet, the little globe is is orange and I cannot connect wirelessly right now. I'm looking at it, but it it's because I'm connected via ethernet. Right. but all my other devices work wirelessly perfectly.

Leo Laporte (00:54:40):
Yeah. I don't think it's your, I think it's that laptop obviously. Yeah. and do you, you see, there is, there should be signal strength information on there. Do you see the signal strength? Yeah, it's great. Okay. So then it's not, I was wrong. It's not the antenna. So you're getting a strong signal. You're seeing your base station, but what's happening is it's not connecting now. This is gonna be a little tricky, but in the network settings, it's gonna tell you what your IP address is when you're just on wifi, disconnect your ethernet for a minute.

Fran (caller) (00:55:14):
Disconnected. Okay.

Leo Laporte (00:55:16):
Because we wanna, we wanna see what your internet address is when you're on wifi. And it's gonna be my guess that it's a 1 69 dot something.

Leo Laporte (00:55:27):
Wait, wait, wait. Until it happens. It'll be in the network settings.

Fran (caller) (00:55:31):
I'm in the network settings.

Leo Laporte (00:55:34):
If, when when, when you get on a, a wifi signal, that's just the first part. That's the, what's some of they call it the physical layer. That's the connection. But then there's another layer where you actually make a connection to the internet. And if it can get assigned an address from your router, it will give you a local address, which is a 1 69 dot something that something does something address mm-hmm <affirmative>. And that will tell you, ah, I'm not getting an IP address from the router. So that's why I'm asking you that.

Fran (caller) (00:56:05):
Yeah. this is the weirdest thing as I'm on here, with's working you and I said two hours

Leo Laporte (00:56:13):
Of that it's working. Right.

Fran (caller) (00:56:14):
<Laugh> I now have it says it's connected to my wifi network now. I don't know if I can go online. That's the only thing I wasn't able to get a webpage. Yeah, let me see <laugh> this is crazy.

Leo Laporte (00:56:34):
<Laugh> no, this is my magic

Mikah Sargent (00:56:37):
Touch. This happens to people who do this. All we have to do is stare at the tech and then, so it's working for people I've had

Leo Laporte (00:56:43):
This happen. No, but then of course, as soon as you get off the call it'll stop working. So

Fran (caller) (00:56:47):
No, actually I, I can't get online. Okay. So,

Leo Laporte (00:56:52):
So, so you're tell me again what that IP address is. I'd like to know what that is.

Fran (caller) (00:56:57):
Okay. that would, how I just lost that. Okay. It's 1 9 2 1 6 8.

Leo Laporte (00:57:08):
Okay. That's that is good. So that's good. You're getting from the router, you're getting assigned an appropriate IP address, so that's good. Mm-Hmm, <affirmative> it's interesting that you're not getting internet from the router. So now I think it's almost certainly something's broken on the laptop. And, and, and what's not broken is hardware <laugh> so that's the good news, cuz that's the hard thing to fix. Oh, okay. Yeah. It's probably and you're on the, the, the wifi router that you expect to be on and all that you that to make sure you're on yours.

Fran (caller) (00:57:46):
Oh yeah, yeah,

Leo Laporte (00:57:47):
Absolutely. Yeah. And getting an IP address. So DHCP is working, but you,

Mikah Sargent (00:57:52):
You said at one point you connected directly to the modem and you were able to get a signal that way. She's

Leo Laporte (00:57:59):
Where ethernet works.

Mikah Sargent (00:57:59):
Yeah. But, but if you connected directly to the modem, not through the airport extreme, I've actually done that before. Oh yeah. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:58:06):
Messed some things you're connecting to the airport extreme. Not to the,

Fran (caller) (00:58:10):
No, no, I'm not. I'm connecting directly to my oh, you nailed it

Leo Laporte (00:58:13):
Mode. Yeah. Yeah. So when you do that, nothing else will work <laugh> so that's interesting. So

Fran (caller) (00:58:25):
That's what apple said.

Leo Laporte (00:58:26):
And you have, you have an airport extreme, that's your wifi router that you're using?

Fran (caller) (00:58:32):
Yeah. I mean, I have a, a couple of extended you know, I had a time capsule and it, and it's an old time capsule working perfectly. But I thought maybe that was the problem. So I disconnected the time.

Leo Laporte (00:58:47):
So look again at your IP address, cuz it shouldn't if with an airport it should not be a, a 1 98. Yeah. Usually it's

Mikah Sargent (00:58:55):
A, mm-hmm <affirmative> 10 dot something

Fran (caller) (00:58:58):
Right now in my if

Leo Laporte (00:59:02):
I'm looking, sometimes it takes a while when you disconnect the ethernet, it takes a while for it to

Mikah Sargent (00:59:07):
Do know my larger concern is that the modem might also

Leo Laporte (00:59:10):
Yeah. Does your mode route, does your yeah. Does your modem? Oh boy. Yeah. That might be it does your, so when you say you're connecting to the cable modem mm-hmm <affirmative> does it have multiple ethernet ports on it?

Fran (caller) (00:59:23):
It does. Okay. One is connected to my airport extreme. Yeah. Yeah. And the other is connected. I, I connected the other one directly to my

Leo Laporte (00:59:32):
Laptop. Your internet service provider gives you one address, not multiple ones. So unless you, and then do you know if you're, does the internet router who's it from Xfinity

Fran (caller) (00:59:46):
Spectrum spectrum.

Leo Laporte (00:59:47):
Mm-Hmm <affirmative> I wonder if it's you, right. I wonder if it's a wifi router, do you see? I think it's double NA

Mikah Sargent (00:59:57):
Yeah. That's what I'm starting to suspect. So the wifi that she's connected to is actually from the modem slash router and

Leo Laporte (01:00:03):
It's not going through yeah. You wanna in your airport, extreme settings, you wanna put it in something called bridge mode

Leo Laporte (01:00:14):
Bridge. Yeah. There'll be a setting when you go in the airport, extreme settings. And I, as I remember, it's been a long time since I used an airport extreme, but as I remember it actually says bridge mode. Sometimes they use other names. But what bridge mode will do is it'll say, oh, this spectrum cable modem is the router, not me. Oh. And that could be one of the problems is that you have two routers running. That's why maybe you work when the Ethernet's plugged in, because then you're using just one router. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> so make sure the airport must be in bridge mode for this to work.

Fran (caller) (01:00:55):
Okay. I'm I'm

Leo Laporte (01:00:56):
I'm looking at my, this is at this point. This is, so this is so complicated. Yeah, yeah. That at my, be difficult for you, for me to walk you through it. But it's in the, so the airport extreme run the airport extreme software that lets you look at the airport. Extreme settings.

Fran (caller) (01:01:15):
Okay. I'm yeah. I'm not sure how to do that. 

Mikah Sargent (01:01:17):
By launching airport utility

Fran (caller) (01:01:20):
I'm I'm on airport

Leo Laporte (01:01:21):
Utility right now, then network there'll be a router mode under network. I have 20 seconds. And under there it'll be bridge mode. Turn, click that, check that box.

Fran (caller) (01:01:34):
Okay. yeah, I don't think I'm gonna be able to do this. She kinda lost me. So

Mikah Sargent (01:01:39):
Fran, if you want to stay on the line after we hop off with you and give Kim your email address I might be able to reach out a little bit later.

Leo Laporte (01:01:46):
We'll that'll have mic. That'll be great. We'll have Mikah do the extra. Here we go.

Leo Laporte (01:01:56):
Hey, how are you today? Leo Laporte here. The tech guy, time to talk computers, the internet, home theater, digital photography. We got got your smart phones. We've got your smart watches. We got all that jazz. Eighty eight eighty eight ask Leo is the phone number eighty eight, eight eight two seven five five three six. Toll free from anywhere in the us or Canada outside that area. You could still call, but you have use Skype or something like that. Website tech guy labs.com will have audio and video from the show in a day or so. It'll also have links answers to the questions. So you don't have to write anything down. We put it all up there. Thanks to James dvo@techguylabs.com. Manny from Dakota, Minnesota. I like how that Ron? Hi. Hi. Hi Manny.

Manny (caller) (01:02:41):
Hello Leo. Thanks for taking my call.

Leo Laporte (01:02:43):
Thanks for calling.

Manny (caller) (01:02:46):
Hey first of all, thanks for a fantastic job that you and your crew do. I mean, it's very, very helpful to me and, and I enjoy your show all the time. Thank you.

Leo Laporte (01:02:56):
Your Samsung is telling you you got messages, man.

Manny (caller) (01:02:59):
Yeah. Yeah. I, I, it would start ringing now. No, that's

Leo Laporte (01:03:03):
Cute. I love it. Because you can often tell by the ring tone or the message tone. What kind of phone somebody has? Well, I kind of thought,

Manny (caller) (01:03:11):
Yeah, I'm talking to you on my iPhone. Yeah. And my Samsung is my backup phone.

Leo Laporte (01:03:16):
Yeah, that's fine. I'm just teasing you. I don't mind at all. What can I, but I also mentioned cuz if people are listening on the radio and they have Samsung phones, I picked up my phone to see if I was getting a message. So <laugh>, that's the other reason what can we do for you?

Manny (caller) (01:03:29):
Well, Leo let's see, you could probably explain this more better than I can, but you're familiar with the Corona mass injection from the sun, right? Yeah. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:03:41):
Solar flares, baby.

Manny (caller) (01:03:43):
Yeah. Solar flares last. I think it was October. We had a pretty big one. Yeah. and it kind of went you know, by the wayside there, it didn't hit the earth as strongly as, as some people anticipated, I kind of looked it up and I didn't realize there's several classes and the class X is the most dangerous one that can really do some damage to our satellites, to our electronic equipment. And you know, and I'm wondering, well, you know, one of those things really hit us. My question to you is what can I do as the average Joe, to protect, you know, my laptop, my smart phone and you know, my electronic equipment.

Leo Laporte (01:04:23):
That's a great question. Yeah, there was an X one flare October 28th, just a couple, couple of weeks ago. So solar flares, eject material from the sun, which continues to fly through the air at the speed of light and eventually hits us. It's such an important thing to pay attention to that actually ham radio operators pay attention to this. They pay attention to what's called space weather. There's even a website space, weather.gov because it definitely affects propagation. It sometimes positively. Sometimes it affects what you can do as a ham radio operator. So they pay a lot of attention to this. You don't have to really worry about your equipment too much because we are thank goodness protected by the atmosphere. So most of the damage that would occur from these particles hitting the earth are kind of mitigated by the atmosphere that it goes through.

Leo Laporte (01:05:24):
It is an issue as you might imagine for space flight. And in fact when you send a rocket up, you can't just put a regular old laptop in there. Although I guess Elon is putting iPads in his, in his SpaceX capsule, but generally you use for the important mission, critical computers, you'll use hardened gear often very, very expensive and often older processors that are protected against cosmic Ray that are actually that are shielded and they're very expensive. And what NASA does is they do rid Duncy, so they'll have multiple systems and then they actually have, they take a vote, they compare the results of the various systems. And if there's a, if they agree, if there's a quorum, they assume that that calculation is correct. If they don't well, they know maybe they got hit by some cosmic radiation on earth. It isn't much of a problem accept.

Leo Laporte (01:06:18):
And they mock me when I say this in the chat room from time to time on your hard drive, a cosmic particle can hit it and flip a bit. It's just enough energy to turn a one into a zero. And if that one is critical to say, booting windows, <laugh>, your windows will stop working. And that is a significant problem on hard drives. What they do to correct is they have something called ECC error, correction. That is your hard drive actually is suffering errors, constantly thousands of errors, all a minute. And the E is constantly correcting that modern hard drives. That density is so dense. So most hard drives will accommodate these bit flips and fix them. Chances are, it's just like a chance of a meteor hitting land. You know, the ocean is a great portion of their surface. So media rights don't typically, you know, aren't a problem.

Leo Laporte (01:07:16):
It's kind of like that your hard drive is a giant ocean of bits. Most of the time, any cosmic damage, cosmic Ray damage, isn't gonna cause a loss of data, partly because of E partly because most of the hard drive is just empty is sea water. So it's a good question. There's nothing you really need to do. All modern electronics is built to withstand normal space weather. It's can see, I guess that would be such a massive flare that would cause problems. It probably wouldn't cause a problem with your phone or with your computer. It might cause a problem with infrastructure, things like that. Exactly. You aren't directly able to help. Yeah. Yeah. Sort of. There's nothing really, you need to, you do you don't need to go out and get a military spec laptop or you mean, I shouldn't get like a far egg cage couch for my phone.

Leo Laporte (01:08:08):
And in fact, yeah, no. In fact, if you look at the cost of the chips that NASA uses at least used to use in their space flight, they were, you know, hundreds of thousands of dollars and they were old chips, but all of this because of the, you know, radiation, it's much worse in space, obviously. I think there is a move of foot to replace your regular Ram memory. You know, these memories that use in computing with E and I think that's part of the reason do the same thing that you do with your Ram, that you do with your hard drive, which is check for errors and correct for them before they cause a problem. I suspect. And in effect line tore vaults, the creative Linux made, made the made, made some hay about so six months ago when he said no one should be using regular Ram anymore.

Leo Laporte (01:08:58):
It's the cause of a lot of errors, computing errors that we attribute to other things, software problems and so forth. He, he says this was in January. Why don't PCs use error, correcting Ram cuz at Intel, the misguided and backwards policy of consumers don't need error, correcting Ram made the market for ECC go away. When you buy a server these days, you can pay a lot more and get E Ram leus says the arguments against EC were always complete and utter garbage. Now even the memory manufac are starting to do EC internally, cuz they finally owned up to the fact they absolutely have to. The reason is errors happen and, and some of it from cosmic rays and particles from solar flares and things like that, single bit errors and E Ram just like an E hard drive can rec in. Isn't that interesting.

Leo Laporte (01:09:59):
So ECC stands for error correcting check sum, and it's actually pretty sophisticated, but very interesting technology to discover errors and then fix 'em. So it's a, it's a great question, Manny, nothing you need to really worry about. I the last time I bought a P C I investigated buying E Ram instead of regular Ram for it. And it was so much more expensive. I decided not to, but there's a school of thought, including leus tour vaults, the creator of Linux who think lot of the errors that we attribute to bad software or bugs is actually because of Ram that is flipping bits because of solar flares and particles and things like that next time. I, yeah, I, I would love to see the industry start moving towards ECC Ram.

Leo Laporte (01:10:48):
He says that it's Intel's fault. I mean, isn't it all, it's all Intel's fault. So anyway, I'll, I'll put a link. This is a really good an article from January of last year where Linus is, is talking about this issue. 88 88, actually a great question, actually. You know, why, why, why don't these X one? Solar flares cause problems. They probably do. Yeah, but we just, we don't see it. We don't notice it. We just, we just don't notice it. Somebody says four bits is a dollar <laugh> shave and a haircut. I think it's half a dollar. Isn't two bits at quarter two bits. I think so. Yes I am correct. I'm assured by the the PE ear people, the keeper of bits. We're a bits he tells me yes. Monetary bits. Get your motor run. Leo. LePort the tech guy heading out on the highway. My sergeants here we are answering your questions at 88 88. Ask Leo Kelvin on the line from San Diego. It's our blind Def Potter. Hello Kelvin.

Kelvin (caller) (01:11:54):
Hey guys. How you guys doing?

Leo Laporte (01:11:56):
We're great. Come on over. What's up.

Kelvin (caller) (01:11:59):
I, I let me the phone, I was trimming some of my pieces while listening,

Leo Laporte (01:12:05):
So I hope you're hope you're getting a lot of people buying your pottery for the holidays.

Kelvin (caller) (01:12:12):
It's going well. And the shipping department is out, out on sea, on their cruise. So they gotta get back here to ship. 'em All out.

Leo Laporte (01:12:19):
How dare they <laugh> how dare the shipping department go on a cruise this time of year <laugh> don't they know

Kelvin (caller) (01:12:27):
Exactly. That's what I said. I get back here and start shipping out. I mean I, the Santa Claus making all the pieces, but the elves left

Leo Laporte (01:12:36):
<Laugh> those elves they're such slackers <laugh> so what can I do for you Calvin?

Kelvin (caller) (01:12:45):
So so on giving Tuesday, I did a live and those that were on YouTube, Twitch and Facebook. Yeah. Got the benefit of hearing my music. Nice that

Leo Laporte (01:12:56):
I had. Oh, are you listening to the mu to the radio in the studio while you're potting? Do you call it potting? <Laugh> yeah. What is that

Kelvin (caller) (01:13:05):
Throwing? Well, we call it play making or I don't know, ceramics. I like

Leo Laporte (01:13:11):
Potting while you're potting. <Laugh> are you listening to the radio while you're

Kelvin (caller) (01:13:16):
I? I was. And then I got up because I realized you couldn't hear me. So 

Leo Laporte (01:13:21):
But, and you're concerned that on your streams, people are hearing your background music.

Kelvin (caller) (01:13:26):
No, I want them to hear my background music. Oh. Because I can use an OBS for the live stream and then so they can hear, I have my boom mic over my head and then I want them to listen to Christmas.

Leo Laporte (01:13:41):
So this is complicated. So let's say you've got Ella Fitzgerald singing a swinging Christmas, and you want everybody to hear this while you're throwing the clay on the wheel and you're pot mm-hmm <affirmative> of course the public sure of that music owns the rights to reproduction of that music. And, and

Kelvin (caller) (01:14:02):
I bought those licenses. Oh

Leo Laporte (01:14:05):
Well for what? That's the important thing. You go to ASCAP BMI. These are that's the licensing organization and they'll say, oh good. What are you using it for? And it's different amount of money. You cannot buy licenses for YouTube. I mean, you could, I guess, but it would be prohibitively expensive. I get stuff taken down all the time. In fact, if you listen to this podcast on YouTube or other places, we take the music out. The radio station is licensed. The music, I just played born to be wild by step and Wolf. And that's licensed for airplay on the radio. So we are paying a goodly fee, ASCAP, PMI, but it does not license a it for other things podcast and so forth. So check your license. Now, this is one of the things TikTok did. That was brilliant. They license all the music.

Leo Laporte (01:15:01):
So you don't ever have to worry on TikTok. Twitch also has rights cleared music for creators, but it's not all music. Spotify. If you make a pod on Spotify, you're allowed to play music in the podcast, but you can't use it behind anything. You can only play this song and then come back to your podcast. So the right's very considerably. Youtube is very problematic for people because Google's running in the background, something called content ID, that F fingerprints, all the sounds. And even if it's just incidental music, you know, Charlie bit, my finger, and in the background you hear, you know Petulla, Clark's downtown. You're gonna get dinged. Content ID says, I hear patula Clark. And then when that content ID happens, the music company has several choices. They can say, take it down, take it down. And you can even get a copyright strike.

Leo Laporte (01:15:57):
You get three strikes, you're kicked off YouTube. So you gotta be very careful about these. More often, the rights company will say demonetize. He can't make any money on ads from YouTube, but put ads on there and we'll make the money. Those are the most common two choices. Sometimes they just say, oh, that's fine. You know, just have, 'em give credit. And it varies, but that content it on YouTube is really it, it catches everything. In fact it sometimes catches things. It shouldn't, we were streaming on one of the podcasts. NASA was launching a rocket or SpaceX wasn't. We were streaming the NASA feed, which is public domain. NASA makes it available and anybody can stream it. But national geographic had, I think probably accidentally copyrighted it. So national geographic took down our show because we had a NASA launch in it and that was wrong. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> by the way, that was wrong. So we had to fight it and we got, gotta put back up a national geographic, got some egg on their face and it was a bad thing. So it is, it is kind of a mess in other words. Yeah. And since you stream everywhere, right? Yeah.

Kelvin (caller) (01:17:06):
So what I did is I bought a license with a company called sound Stripe, right. And so it's like, and then I pay a yearly fee to use all their music and I can use it on livestream on the platform that I assign it to and then on my podcast. And then I can also use it for all my videos and

Leo Laporte (01:17:26):
It, and it says, it says you're licensed for all of that use. Yes. Nice.

Kelvin (caller) (01:17:31):
Only those uses not anything else, but only for those users. Yeah. And so, but what I wanna do is patch, and I just wanted to see if you guys had a recommendation, how to take the I'm playing music through

Leo Laporte (01:17:45):
My computer, how to get it into OBS ninja. I mean, OBS studio

Kelvin (caller) (01:17:50):
Into my pixel.

Leo Laporte (01:17:54):
Ah, you're streaming from your pixel. Yeah. So you're using OBS studio for some of the streams and that you, you figured that out, that's easy, cuz it could pick up all the audio on your computer, but you want to get it into your pixel.

Kelvin (caller) (01:18:07):
Yeah. Then that way people on tick pop and listen to the Christmas music music too, and then just use spining the wheel. And because

Mikah Sargent (01:18:15):
You use the pixel to create the TikTok that you're doing, so you wanna be able to choose the music from there. I, I, I mean, this should be as simple as, as uploading it to Google drive, downloading it from that site, uploading it to Google drive and then being able to pull it up on your pixel and play it. If it's a matter of just selecting the file, if it is a matter of, of trying to play the music through the stream, then you would need to do that through OBS in which case that gets a little more complicated, but I,

Leo Laporte (01:18:42):
And how you get it into the pixel is another,

Mikah Sargent (01:18:45):
I mean, yeah, exactly.

Kelvin (caller) (01:18:47):
So until think talk, lets me have that a bit.

Leo Laporte (01:18:52):
They haven't given me. No, no, yeah, yeah. Boy, hold on for a sec, we're gonna take a little break at the bottom of the hour, Johnny, Jet's coming up our travel guru and I'm gonna talk to you off the air. Kel Leo Laporte and Mikah Sargent, the tech guys. So there is an app. See, normally when people make TikTok, they just say, add this music to the TikTok, but you want to have it as ambient sound behind it. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> yeah. There's no something, the chat rooms come up with called Nova stream apps is for yeah. That's for Android. So let me see, let me open this in your browser here and see broadcast myself as a free Android client. No, this is not it because this is just an audio stream. This is like making a radio show. So that's not what you want. Yeah. Yeah. I know. Don't know how you mix really. The real question you're asking is you've got the video on your pixel. How do I mix audio into that video? Yeah. And I think what everybody just does is play it loud. <Laugh>

Kelvin (caller) (01:20:05):
Yeah. Well that, that's what I've been doing and, and it doesn't come over. Well, Mike and, and it's million for talking, it's not really designed for for 

Leo Laporte (01:20:17):
Yeah. So you, what you can get is a better mic for the pixel. In fact, come to think of it. You could get a mixer cause the pixel will allow audio coming in through the type C Jack. That's what I'm thinking you should do. So that's what you need is that's what I was thinking. I'm gonna have to go through yeah. An Audi. So let me see audio mixer for pixel <laugh>. I bet you, somebody makes some hardware that'll do this. Cause you can, you can do that

Mikah Sargent (01:20:53):
Because, so how are you plugging with a microphone microphone into the, the pixel to, to use that? Is it just USBC?

Kelvin (caller) (01:20:59):
So I have an output input audio splitter to three point five pen Jack. Okay. The so four a still have the hand Jack or he phone Jack. Oh, oh

Mikah Sargent (01:21:13):
Yeah. You see? Okay. That makes sense. Uhhuh. I wonder, could you, could you split between the mic as an input and just an MP3 player of some sort as an input.

Leo Laporte (01:21:25):
Cause basically you want treat? I would

Kelvin (caller) (01:21:28):
<Affirmative> go ahead. I was trying to find that I couldn't find it. Got it,

Mikah Sargent (01:21:31):
Got it. Yeah. I think you need some audio mixer that can basically mix down to just the ed headphone Jack or audio Jack in that you're doing right now. But

Leo Laporte (01:21:42):
See, all you have on the pixel is this type C, but I'm pretty sure that you can connect. You can certainly on an iPhone, you can connect a microphone yeah. To the lightning. He's using an

Mikah Sargent (01:21:51):
Older pixel so that it has, well,

Leo Laporte (01:21:53):
No, you wanted a new one, right?

Kelvin (caller) (01:21:55):
No, I don't want a new pixel. Oh, what I need is to be able to take the music from the computer, that's already mixed, which already putting out the microphone, audio and putting up the music audio, take that mix, push it out of the computer, into the pixel. So it, so you get both the music and yeah, I

Leo Laporte (01:22:15):
Understand the,

Kelvin (caller) (01:22:16):
Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:22:18):
And you're saying you use a he phone Jack to do that. Yep. So the he phone Jack can be an input so that, so on the older analog pixels, you can it's it's a headphone mic Jack. It's a headset Jack. I didn't realize that. Oh, I did. Actually. I did realize that cuz you can use a headset with it. Of course you can. That's why it's a headset Jack. So what you need is a mixer that will go into a headset, Jack. Exactly. I'm sure such a thing exists.

Kelvin (caller) (01:22:50):
Okay. Because I, I was trying to stay away from mixturing cause those are not necessarily always accessible, so

Leo Laporte (01:22:56):
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Do you have an at, are you using the at

Kelvin (caller) (01:23:01):
No. I'm using the road NTG.

Leo Laporte (01:23:04):
So the black magic ATM video mixer does have an audio channel and will take analog audio in and output USB out. That might work. I have one at home. I'll have to try it. That's Kelvin's keep listening. I, we don't have an answer yet, but that's a great question. That's a really interesting question. Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, children of all ages. It's time to strap on your wings and go fly with him. Johnny jet, Johnny jet.com. His website. He is our travel guru. Travel with technology. Hello Johnny.

Johnny Jet (01:23:47):
Hello, Leo and Mikah. Hello.

Leo Laporte (01:23:50):
So everything's different in the world of OCN. You said it would be this way last weekend. Now it is new travel restrictions, new rule. And we don't even know if it will continue to change. It might. Right.

Johnny Jet (01:24:05):
You know what they say? You gotta sit tight another week or two to find out how how bad this thing is gonna be or not. Hopefully it's not. But so the us government is going to Institute these new rules starting Monday at midnight. So it used to be a three day testing period, if you were UN vaccinated, but now it's gonna be one day before you a flight into the us, regardless if you're American or if you're vaccinated or not, you need to get this. But you know, it could have been a lot worse. The travel industry was worried that they were gonna Institute quarantines, mandatory quarantines. When you, when you arrived and also testing, they did not do that. So that's still on the table probably for down the line. If this new variant or another one is you know, dangerous as can be. But I think you know, they, we skated a little bit of a bullet right now,

Leo Laporte (01:24:58):
But it's just a constantly moving target. Isn't it? You know, I'm, we're doing as you know a cruise for our listeners, a podcast cruise in July cruise dot, twi.tv on Holland America and it's to Alaska, it's gonna be fun. And there we go. We they're cutting back the number of cabins that we have available. In fact, I think we're sold out because, because of COVID they're they'd not taken as many people they're spreading it out. So that's one way they're they're handling. And was that from a one? No, they just told us this. Wow.

Johnny Jet (01:25:31):
Okay. Yeah. It's a little early for the summer. Well, don't

Leo Laporte (01:25:35):
Our planning. We don't, you got, you gotta plan. You can't sell those cabins and then say, oh, you're right. Nevermind. You can't go because sometimes they

Johnny Jet (01:25:42):
Do <laugh> yeah,

Leo Laporte (01:25:43):
It does get that bad. Well, I think the cruise industry has definitely learned that there are perils in co of it and they, they, they responded, I think pretty well. Although boy, I gotta wonder how they're staying in business

Johnny Jet (01:25:55):
For sure. And I don't think this is a big deal with this new testing, 24 hours. You just came back from Mexico. When did you get your test? Was it the day before? Days in advance day before I think that's what most people are doing. And I think that's actually the smart way, because let's say we get tested three days before and then you go hang out at all these ranging clubs and then you get on the plane and chances are you've been infected. So I, I think

Leo Laporte (01:26:18):
The people should airport should do what lax is doing. They have free fast testing for arriving passengers right

Johnny Jet (01:26:25):
At the airport. Yes. Yeah. At the airport. There're starting that out. Yeah. So I think that's the, I think, and I think that is the future. That is the future. And we talked about this over a year ago when Hawaii started saying they were gonna start testing people. Yes. I remember it just it just makes sense also what makes sense

Leo Laporte (01:26:41):
Test before you go test on arrival test, test, test,

Johnny Jet (01:26:44):
And that's that's, that's what they're going to do. And that's what they're hoping to do. And that's why the Biden administration said, they're going to give these tests out for free. We'll see how that goes. But they also extended the mask mandate, which no one's surprised it was supposed to end January 18th. I feel now it's going to

Leo Laporte (01:27:02):
March. I feel weird. Now when I go in somewhere and don't wear a mask, it's it feels uncomfortable. It's because in Marin county, just to the south of us, they've lifted the mask mandate. So you can go into a restaurant without a mask. And I still go, where's my mask. I feel a

Johnny Jet (01:27:17):
Little weird. I walked into my hotel last week in New York city and no one's wearing a mask. I go, what's up? And the guy's like in New York city, if you're fully vaccinated, you do not need to wear a mask. Yeah, yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:27:27):
Get the boosters too. Right. That's what they're saying now.

Johnny Jet (01:27:30):
That's what they're saying. I got mine. My wife got my hers last night, by the way. And by the way, the trick on that, you cannot get on like cvs.com and it's impossible. Can't just walk in, just show up, just show up. And you,

Leo Laporte (01:27:41):
You get turned away. You may get turned away, but you may not.

Johnny Jet (01:27:45):
No. I mean, so that's, that's a little trick also the, who is recommending people who are, you know, who have core comorbidities. I can't even say that word core

Leo Laporte (01:27:54):
Morbidities core core. I'm a trained professional announcer. That's that's why,

Johnny Jet (01:27:59):
That's why I'm

Leo Laporte (01:27:59):
Your company. I try to say every Sable in order <laugh> core home comorbidities. Yeah.

Johnny Jet (01:28:07):
Yep. But they're also saying people over 60 should not be traveling, which I was surprised with that, but this is the who. Okay. So

Leo Laporte (01:28:15):
First I get Medicare and now I can't travel. What is with <laugh>?

Johnny Jet (01:28:21):
You

Leo Laporte (01:28:21):
Know, you know, most travelers are over 60. That's your travel, the only ones who can afford to travel or have the time.

Johnny Jet (01:28:27):
Well, it used to be now they are traveling a lot younger. But there, and if you are traveling, there are some good deals out there. Hawaiian airlines has a a $50 off a $500 gift card from Costco. So if you're a Costco member, there's also Alaska airlines has the same deal Southwest airlines. So that's, that's an easy way of saving 10% on the airfare. See they always do.

Leo Laporte (01:28:49):
They like to tease us. We can't travel, but they make the price really low.

Johnny Jet (01:28:53):
Well, that's been like that too.

Leo Laporte (01:28:55):
That's just teasing us.

Johnny Jet (01:28:57):
Yeah. Yeah. And then you know, if you're not traveling actually this week on black, on Mon on cyber Monday, I bought these mix tiles. Have you heard of them?

Leo Laporte (01:29:06):
No. What is a mix tile? So you

Johnny Jet (01:29:08):
Do it on your phone or your computer. It takes literally a few minutes. You just grab the photos and upload it. So whatever photos you want, you can do it for cheap on cyber Monday. It was half off. So I, I advise waiting for one of these big sales because you know, it's a great way to get your photos

Leo Laporte (01:29:25):
Up. I'm I'm surprised Micah doesn't know about this. He's a, I love, oh, you know about mix tide. This such's a great idea. Yeah. Yeah. You got a whole photo

Johnny Jet (01:29:33):
And you don't need to put nails in the wall. So I bought 'em for my dad's his senior home, because you're not supposed to put nails in there. They just stick to the wall. They're really light. And they're really cheap when they come. But from, from a distance, they look great. But when you feel 'em, they're like, wow, they are pretty cheap, but they look they look great on a wall. My

Leo Laporte (01:29:51):
Dad needs it for his peel and stick photos and they come already framed. They do.

Johnny Jet (01:29:56):
Yeah. And you literally takes a minute to upload them and you can crop 'em you can delete if you have too many. And I bought 16 for $89, that's a deal. Wow. That is a deal. So I was like, my dad's gonna have so many pictures of my, my kids.

Leo Laporte (01:30:10):
Very good. Yeah.

Johnny Jet (01:30:12):
So if you're not traveling right now, this is a good time. It's also a great time to do it for the holidays since. But again, they are really lightweight and kind of cheap, but Hey, you, you pay for what you get.

Leo Laporte (01:30:24):
Yes. would you book a cruise today? Knowing what we know now, would you, you

Johnny Jet (01:30:31):
Know, I, I would wait a week to find out how severe this is. Yeah. And then, yeah. And then go, I mean, honestly, I, I think we're gonna be okay, but if you're fully, then if you're boosted, they say the chances of you getting severe disease is, is rare. But you know, they don't know that's the problem. No one knows. Right. That's the most frustrating thing. Right. But you can't blame anyone because they don't know. You just have to sit tight and listen, people are traveling.

Leo Laporte (01:30:59):
It's a novel virus. I mean, knew. We don't know. We don't know what's gonna happen. Could be good. Could be bad. I

Johnny Jet (01:31:08):
Would travel right now, but I, I, I would use precautions. Like I have been, I've been wearing a N 95 mask or a K, N 95 mask. And I'm staying away from people. I, I spent my miles to fly first class. So I'm, I only had three people around me within six feet on the plane.

Leo Laporte (01:31:23):
I feel sometimes the time to use are miles, a little antisocial. If I keep my mask on, everybody's taking off their mask and I'm wearing mine and I'm, I don't, I'm like, sorry. Don't feel guilty. Just leave it on. No, don't feel guilty. No. Yeah. Cause yeah.

Johnny Jet (01:31:37):
Yeah. And, and on, on the plan they tell you do not take your mask off when other people are eating, just wait until you, they, food comes, let them eat it. And then you eat your

Leo Laporte (01:31:45):
You're supposed to take a bite and put your mask on, take a bite, put you,

Johnny Jet (01:31:48):
Well, no one does that. Nobody does that. <Laugh> okay. I, I, I I've been flying often lately and I haven't seen anybody do that. No.

Leo Laporte (01:31:56):
Lift your mask up, sip your beverage quickly. Shut it down. Nope. Nobody does that. Nope. Yeah.

Johnny Jet (01:32:02):
Nope. Yeah. Nope. How much

Leo Laporte (01:32:04):
Time we got 37 seconds. 34, 37 33. Okay.

Johnny Jet (01:32:08):
32. So in the news this week, George Clooney just turned down a 35 million commercial from an airline. And everyone's trying to figure out which airline it is. I think it's either one of three. Why

Leo Laporte (01:32:18):
Did he turn it down?

Johnny Jet (01:32:20):
Because he said the, the, the country's an ally, but they're the kind of Emirate, Ify. I thought it was maybe Emirates, but I'm thinking it's Saudi. Oh yeah. Former

Leo Laporte (01:32:30):
Saudi Arabia in airline.

Johnny Jet (01:32:31):
I wouldn't do an ad for, because they have big money. 35 million for one day of shooting. Yeah. No, I'm in the wrong business. <Laugh>

Leo Laporte (01:32:40):
Leo Lauri tech. I Johnny jet.com. Thank you, Johnny. Thank you. Our show today actually brought to you by user way.org. We have a lot of blind listeners. Radio of course is perfect if you're blind because there's no pictures, but the web is not quite the same. Is it? Very frequently. If you're blind, you'll get to a website. It's incomplete. You can't use it. The, the shopping cart doesn't work or the pictures are just blobs blank, empty on the screen. That's why the ADA, the Americans with disability acts and the worldwide web consortium have the woo C guidelines, the web content access guidelines, which say what you need to do as a website owner to make your site accessible to everybody, even people with disabilities. Now this is really important because not only, you know, there's three reasons, it's the right thing to do.

Leo Laporte (01:33:34):
That should be enough. It's right. You know, wanna make your site accessible, but it's also a legal requirement. You can get sued in. The big pizza company got sued. They went all the way to Supreme court. Supreme court said, no, you have to make your site accessible. They said, be your honor. And we have a phone number. Nope, that's separate but equal. It's not the same thing. So the Supreme court is ruled. You have to be ADA compliant because all websites are public public entities. The third reason, the real reason is well, another, the then they're all good reasons, but the another good reason is you're turning away business. If somebody can't use your shopping cart, they're not gonna buy from you. The, the solution is surprisingly affordable, very easy to implement. It's called user way, user way.org with one line of JavaScript user way can achieve more an entire team of developers.

Leo Laporte (01:34:22):
And I, you know, I know this because when, when we face this with our own websites, I was like kind of GLM thinking, oh, I got a lot of work to do user way. Makes it easy. Making your website accessible is absolutely overwhelming, but user way solutions make it simple, easy. It's very affordable. If you're worried, check out the scanning to it's free at the website. See if your site is ADA compliant, user way.org/ it's used by the biggest companies in the world, a million websites, including Coca-Cola Disney, eBay, FedEx, but it's also affordable for websites and medium businesses. Millions of people need user way just to purchase your products. And when you need a scale, Hey, if Disney can use it, you can use it. It'll work no matter how big you get auto generates the alt tag. So those pictures suddenly can be heard.

Leo Laporte (01:35:14):
The, the screen reader can say, that's a picture of the golden gate bridge. It uses AI for that. It'll fix those complex nav menus. Frankly, a lot of users need that Achilles heel for companies. These menus forms, shopping carts, popups are accessible. Vague links violations are fixed at any broken links and make sure your website uses accessible colors. And you'll get a detailed report of all the violations that were fixed on your site. It works with everything. It's a simple line of JavaScript. There's even plugins for WordPress Shopify wicks. It works with AEM site. Core SharePoint works with your hand coded site too user way integrates seamlessly with anything. And it lets your business meet its compliance goals and improve the experience for your users. Just ask the voice of Siri. Hi,

Speaker 11 (01:35:57):
My I'm Susan Bennett, the original voice of Siri. You won't hear me say something like this too often. I'm sorry. I don't understand what you're looking for. But every day that's what the internet is like for millions of people with disabilities user way fixes all of that with just one line of code

Leo Laporte (01:36:18):
User way can make any website fully accessible. ADA compliant with user way. Everyone who visits your site can browse seamlessly and customize it to fit their needs. It's also a great way to showcase your brand's commitment to millions of people with disabilities. It's just the right thing to do. User way.org/twi. You get 30% off right now. Their AI powered access solution user way, making the internet accessible for everyone. User way.org/twitter. We think of so much for their support of the tech guy show Leo. Leport the tech guy with Mike Sergeant, the tech guys. Plural. You get two today. Avocado Walt on the line from Fallbrook. Hello? Waltz. You call yourself avocado. Walt, as I remember because you run an avocado orchard. Walt, come over, come over to the phone. Walt you're on the air.

Manny (caller) (01:37:12):
Oh, Leo <laugh>. I'm in a store and I'm talking to the lady. Here's

Leo Laporte (01:37:18):
Do you have a phone? You have a a store on your farm.

Manny (caller) (01:37:23):
Actually. I'm at henings wood burning fireplaces. Oh, nice. Vista, California getting from

Leo Laporte (01:37:28):
Firestar. Yeah. Give, give up. Tell me you just got a big plug on on KFI in Los Angeles. The I thanks.

Manny (caller) (01:37:35):
<Laugh>

Leo Laporte (01:37:38):
So we talked to you all little while ago about your avocado orchard and you wanted to put sensors out there on the trees, as I remember.

Manny (caller) (01:37:46):
Well, no, my, I have two controllers. I have high tech.

Leo Laporte (01:37:49):
That's right. You have the controllers. You wanted to get them on the network. That's right. Yeah, yeah,

Manny (caller) (01:37:53):
Yeah. And I, and I, and I kept losing connection to one and it's critical because then my trees don't get watered. So I tried everything and I finally decided I'm calling Leo. He'll know what to do. Yeah. And you mentioned is I can say the name of the product. Yes. You may. You mentioned that. I get it. You mentioned that I should try an Orbi.

Leo Laporte (01:38:10):
Yeah. The ne gear Orbis. Yeah.

Manny (caller) (01:38:12):
Okay. Well they, the manufacturer of the controller said it won't work with a mesh system and I told you that. So you made some other suggestions to do this and do that and an antenna and a bunch of other stuff. But I called the manufacturer of the, thank you. I called the manufacturer of the controllers. And I said, Hey, Leo said that your controller it work with this mesh system. And so you better fix it cuz it was a, it was a security issue. Right? So they fixed it. Oh, so they said, they said it should, we don't wanna be bad mouthed on wow.

Leo Laporte (01:38:49):
The power of the tech guy show all over the country coast to coast. Wow.

Manny (caller) (01:38:56):
That's why I that's why I, so which

Leo Laporte (01:38:58):
Orbi did you get?

Manny (caller) (01:39:01):
Well they sell it at one of those big box

Leo Laporte (01:39:03):
Stores and they fixed it in the software. So you could buy the existing hardware and does it work?

Manny (caller) (01:39:09):
It it's unbelievable. I am so happy. I can't even tell you.

Leo Laporte (01:39:13):
Nice. And now we get the best alligator pairs in the business because of Orbi. Thank you, avocado. What's the name of your avocado? Farm.

Manny (caller) (01:39:25):
It's just my name where it's properties. But anyway, it's 

Leo Laporte (01:39:29):
So I wouldn't go there to buy avocados. You sell 'em to the stores

Manny (caller) (01:39:33):
I sell to index that sells to places like Costco and places.

Leo Laporte (01:39:37):
Okay. Cause I love an, I love a good avocado

Manny (caller) (01:39:40):
Man. They're good. Yeah. But we do sell the ones. No, they'll only buy hos from us because they hold up and the containers you put 'em and they weigh a thousand pounds full. So if I were to put my, for days in there, it'd be much by the time it got,

Leo Laporte (01:39:52):
But the Fortas are better. Huh? Well,

Manny (caller) (01:39:56):
A lot of people like days they're, they're more watery and they're creamier and mm-hmm <affirmative>. But so we do sell to local stores, but then I have to pick them and count them. And so I've finally got a guy that owns he has six fruit stands and what he does is he comes and picks them and pays me right there. That's

Leo Laporte (01:40:15):
What we used to do. And 

Manny (caller) (01:40:17):
Yeah, he, and so, and he pays me the same as the stores were paying me. So I don't have

Leo Laporte (01:40:21):
Nice. And he sells em at a little bit of a market. He makes a living and you get to put your forte out there in the world and I'm jealous. Now I want to go get some, I want to try a forte avocado. Now we had two avocado trees, but when I was grow up, but the real problem was the 40 perim trees cuz nobody, oh, I like per nobody wants persimmon. So we would do exactly the same thing. Guys, a group group, people come in, they'd pick 'em they'd sell 'em they'd give us a part of the proceeds. It was a great deal.

Manny (caller) (01:40:50):
I, I actually grow perim. I have several perim trees and I have CMOs and we have citrus and a bunch of other stuff, but 

Leo Laporte (01:41:00):
Make excellent cookies and bread. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We would freeze them. We'd freeze 'em and then yeah, yeah, yeah, no, cuz they're really hard. They're really hard to eat. What citrus do you have?

Manny (caller) (01:41:14):
Well, we have several varieties of orange trees. Nice. and all of

Leo Laporte (01:41:19):
This is in Fallbrook.

Manny (caller) (01:41:21):
It's in Fallbrook. Nice, amazing. Yeah. Fallbrook is a, just coming into its own right now. I mean the, the prices here have stayed about the same for years and years and all of a sudden prices have more than double just recently.

Leo Laporte (01:41:34):
Well how much for a good avocado? A good flirt day. Well,

Manny (caller) (01:41:41):
You can get 'em in, in town here in Fallbrook for a

Leo Laporte (01:41:44):
Dollar. Okay. That's a good price. I'm moving. I'm heading there now. We're going, we're on our way house for Simmons. I'm glad the Orbi worked for you. What I'm really in is, and kudos to neck gear that you called them. They said, oh, well we better fix that. And they did.

Manny (caller) (01:41:58):
No, no. It is the maker of the controller that I called.

Leo Laporte (01:42:01):
Oh the other way around. Yeah. The controller had to work. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Can I

Manny (caller) (01:42:05):
Tell you the name of that company? Sure. That that's hunter industries and their controllers are unbelievable. So the controllers that I have they're weather base and they have sensors too. So my controller knows if it's how much rain we've had in the last week. And if we've had more than one inch, it won't, it won't water very smart in the last 24 inches hours. It won't water. If the wind speeds 20 miles an hour greater, it won't water. And you set all these things yourself. Yeah. it, it plus I can water more frequently and so I can cut the time down. Cause the tree knows it's gonna get watered again in so many more days. And so it takes all the it, you know, it, it, it knows the temperature. It knows the water moisture level at five inches and a foot. So let's say the program I'm saying we should we should water. But the sensor says, wait a minute, it's still wet at five inches. It won't water.

Leo Laporte (01:43:02):
And, and probably these guys listen to their customers and they fixed the problem, which is awesome.

Manny (caller) (01:43:09):
Yeah. I love it. Well, they were afraid that they were afraid. They didn't want to, you know, they didn't want anybody talking bad about,

Leo Laporte (01:43:14):
Well now they're getting great big plug hunter industries.com.

Manny (caller) (01:43:19):
Yeah. The controllers are, I had, my controllers are called HCCs and it's just the programming that you can do on it. And once you get it set up, so let's say we're down in the Grove a mile and we're looking for leaks. So the system's running and you see a leak. I used to have, have to hop in my ranger, drive back up to the where the controller is. Shut it off, go down to fix it, come back up, turn it on, go down and find out it's still a problem. Go up and shut it off again. Now I just take my phone out of my pocket. I shut, I shut it off. We fix it. I take my phone out my pocket. I turn it back on again. And it's either, either we gotta fix it again or it's good. You know, the controllers are great. Awesome. And they do, they do a lot more than what I told you. They,

Leo Laporte (01:44:04):
They you know, you, you don't have to tell me the whole whole list. It's okay. Yeah. <Laugh> well, I hope you got a nice stove.

Manny (caller) (01:44:11):
You solve, you solved my pro. No, no. I was getting fire starters from my, from my wood burner. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But you solved my problem and hening's got a plug and everybody

Leo Laporte (01:44:21):
Got a plug. Everybody's happy. <Laugh> Hey, it's a pleasure talking to you again while thanks for the update. I, I really like hearing if a solution that we suggested work, actually you went the extra mile by getting hunter to fix their thing and that's great. Yeah. You made a lot of people happy of it. 

Manny (caller) (01:44:37):
And I, I, I appreciate you because I listen to you all the time, even though I don't understand 95% of what you guys are talking about, but it makes me feel smarter. <Laugh> by the end of day.

Leo Laporte (01:44:48):
Well, now I, now I know more about avocados and, and, and irrigation then I probably will ever name, but it's good to, it's good to have that there.

Manny (caller) (01:44:57):
Look at the label, make sure you're buying us avocados and none of those avocados from other yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:45:03):
No American made. Yeah. God bless it. Hey, thank you. Well, it's great to talk to you. Love your show. Thank you, sir. Ah, I'm glad there was a happy ending on yay. Always those Orbis are good. They're really good for distance mm-hmm <affirmative> that's, that's one of the things they do very well and they, the only thing I don't like about the Orbis is every six months they have a new model <laugh> and they're very expensive. And I go, oh man, I just bought the 6 1 6. Now they have six E oh my. So that's the only problem. But that's technology. They are

Mikah Sargent (01:45:31):
At the bleeding edge when it comes with the wifi technologies. Yeah. Some companies will stick with wifi six forever or for a long, long

Leo Laporte (01:45:37):
Time before they move up. You know, apparently, you know, CES is gonna be on in Vegas and it's coming up in January and get ready because wifi seven is gonna be announced. Please just stop the insanity. Yeah. I am still doing it. Rec con so day three, I got a little behind on the advent of code because well we went out to dinner, so it comes out it's bad timing. It comes out 9:00 PM, which is midnight east coast. So it's when the, you know, so December 1st at midnight was the first one did the first two problems quickly, easily three day three. I was out to dinner then as a, I mentioned chess championship went eight hours. So I didn't really get to it till later yesterday or the day before yesterday, I guess it was now, when was it? Yeah, it was Thursday. And it's all of a sudden, usually the first five problems are cake and then it gets hard, but this one was tricky.

Leo Laporte (01:46:32):
And I, I think it's probably be, cuz it's, I'm not, I'm missing something so often with the advent of code, there's the obvious naive solution. Sometimes a brute force solution and it takes a long time or whatever. This one isn't taking a long time. It's just ugly. It's just ugly. Which tells me there's gotta be an elegant, more elegant way to do it. So just to give you an idea, you got, you got so there's always a, a backstory to this in this case, Santa, for reasons unknown or the elves, maybe the elves, I don't know. Aren't a submarine for reasons, unknown. And first you had to chart the depth of the submarine and the distance. And then, but now you have, there's a error code readings and you're getting error code readings, which is a series of binary numbers. 1000 binary strings of 12 characters, each 1 0 1 0 0 1 1 0 0 1 1.

Leo Laporte (01:47:25):
You have to take those thousand strings, add up the each place individually, the first column, the second column, the third column, fourth column, all the 12 columns. Actually, you don't have to add them up what you're supposed to do. I figured out you can just do it by adding 'em up. But what you're supposed to do is figure out if there's more ones or zeros in the column, if there's more ones, then you, then you, then there's a one in that place, in the gamma number. If there's fewer ones, it's in the excellent number. Well, I figured out pretty quickly, oh, I just divide the count. I'll have to count up the number of ones in there. And I divide that by the total number of entries a thousand. No, no. If I, if it's, if it's greater than half of a thousand, if it's greater than 500, then there were more ones and zeros.

Leo Laporte (01:48:16):
There's either ones or zeros. So anyway, it's easy to figure that out. So you figure that out. Now you got a number, which is your gamma. You have to convert that binary to that decimal, which is the thing I just finished doing. And then you multiply gamma times Epsilon, and then you get the number and that's the answer you pro I'm sure there is something I'm missing about these numbers that you don't have to manually. Cuz basically that's what my code is doing. It's going through the thousand numbers one by one and then within each number it's going through the 12 places. One by one, it's adding 'em up. So it goes, so it goes through the list and it, and it adds up, it keeps, it keeps, you know, it adds 'em up. And then anyway, it's, it's, it's ugly. It just feels ugly.

Leo Laporte (01:49:08):
It feels like there should be some like mathematical thing. Like, oh, well, if you just added up all the binary numbers and divided by Sigma, you'd get the answer. There's something I feel like there's gotta be something cuz otherwise it's just ugly. But I mean it's doable. It's not hard. I it'd be pretty easy in an imperative language cuz it's just a bunch of four loops. It's a little more tricky in a functional language, but I'm pretty used to that. It cuz you're gonna do a lot of recursive calls. But anyway, yeah, I'm gonna, yeah. I mean I have a number of recursive calls. Are you doing it? Acid good. A assert zero.

Leo Laporte (01:49:50):
I can show you the, the problem <laugh> so it's, you know, it's doable. It's just a bunch of I'm using, I'm using folds to do it. Just a bunch of folds, but seems like I'm, I'm taking the long way around. I just can't figure out why, you know, sometimes you look to look at code and you go, oh that's that's too. That's inal. It seems in elegant. Well, Hey, Hey. Hey. How are you today? Leo port here, the tech guy, time to talk computers, the internet home theater. Did you photography smart phones, smart watches ag augmented reality. Virtual reality, reality reality. Eighty eight eighty eight ask Leo is the phone number eighty eight eight eight two seven five five three six. Toll free from anywhere in the us or Canada. My sergeants with me. It's the two tech guys. Hello? Hello, Manny Mo. And nobody answering your calls at 88 88, ask Leo. Should we go back to the phones? You think back to the phones back line, back to reality? Yeah, let's see Bud on the line from Anaheim.

Leo Laporte (01:51:06):
Hello, bud.

Bud (caller) (01:51:08):
Hello Leo. Can you hear?

Leo Laporte (01:51:12):
Oh, I can hear you. Oh yeah. Can you hear me? I'll be in that dead spot. No, no, there's something going on.

Bud (caller) (01:51:23):
Okay. Can you hear me now?

Leo Laporte (01:51:23):
I can hear you now, Mr. Verizon. Yes.

Bud (caller) (01:51:27):
Good, good. Okay. Yeah. It's my Verizon. Yeah. anyway, the question is I have a two story about 2000 square foot condo. I have a TP link router and I have a garage. And when you go in the garage, it's like a dead spot probably cause of the thickness of the

Leo Laporte (01:51:44):
Wall. Yeah. You probably have a firewall, most garages do in case there's a fire in the garage. Yeah.

Bud (caller) (01:51:49):
Right. So, so I tried an extender out there and it's, it's just the same way. It's just dead out there. Yeah. so, you know, everybody's been talk, talking to me, trying to talk me into a mesh system.

Leo Laporte (01:52:02):
No mesh is not gonna solve it this time, so let's not get a mesh system and here's why you, yeah, there might be metal in that all which is death to wifi. So the problem is these wifi signals are a very high frequency they're mic. They're actually microwave signals 2.4 gigahertz at five gigahertz, right? Microwave, if you know, radio doesn't, you know, the reason you don't get fried by your microwave oven, it then goes through things very well. And walls are a problem. Hu. Actually one of the biggest problems in wifi is human bodies, the big sex of water and the wifi just bounces off of us. So I don't think a mesh is gonna help that I could, if you can, you know, if a little bit of a signal could E through that wall, a mesh might help, but I think you've got better ways of solving this. You mentioned TP link. They make they mention they make something that I've used that I really like called a powerline networking.

Bud (caller) (01:53:01):
I, I heard of it. <Laugh>

Leo Laporte (01:53:02):
Yeah. And the idea is you're already have wires in your wall that go from your house into the garage. It's called your electrical. And as long as there isn't a fuse box or junction, or, you know, something interrupting the wire between where your router is and the garage, you can easily and fairly inexpensively by a power link setup. So what you would have is at your base unit, you'd take one of those ethernet wires and connect it to a teeth TP link, power line module that you plug in now. And in fact, you're plugging that ethernet into the wall, into the grid, the electrical power, and then on the other end in the garage, you plug in the other end. And that can be a wifi unit that could Bether net TP link sells a variety of things. Probably what you want is the wifi unit. You plug that in, and now it's going through the electrical instead of trying to get through that impervious imper impermeable wall. So I'm a fan of power line and you already, you have TP link gear. It would be you, you know, it's not very expensive. It works quite well. And I think that's probably gonna be it's certainly cheaper than getting a a mesh network. And if everything else is working, it's just that one spot. This would be the way to do it.

Bud (caller) (01:54:22):
Okay. Now one other quick question. I have, my son gave me an net gear or B R B S 50.

Leo Laporte (01:54:30):
We're just talking about that. Yeah.

Bud (caller) (01:54:32):
Yep. Oh, okay. And can I put, can I put that in bridge mode to my current router and use that satellite say downstairs in my bedroom where I got less of a signal.

Leo Laporte (01:54:46):
So he, he gave you, he gave you the RB 50.

Bud (caller) (01:54:51):
He gave me the satellite and the, and the, oh, he gave you

Leo Laporte (01:54:54):
Both. Oh, okay, good. Yeah. So that is a mesh system. You could best way to use it, frankly, would be just to take your TP link out and use the, or B base unit as in the same way, use your TP link. And then put

Bud (caller) (01:55:05):
A only, only pro problem is I got a ton of stuff home networking or home you know, smart home stuff. That 2.4 that talked to my router with, you know, with static IPS and all kinds of stuff in there that I really don't wanna redo all over again. So

Leo Laporte (01:55:29):
Yeah, so you want to put it in, in bridge mode, so you'll let the TEP link continue to route, but just use the Orbi as a wifi. You you'd want to turn off the TEP link wifi too, by the way, turn off the radio. Right. Okay. And just use the, or you don't want two wifi radios. They'll, they'll compete with each other, but just use the Orbi as a, yeah. You can do that. That would work fine. And it might even solve the garage problem. That's a mesh system. So and it's pretty powerful. So you might put that base. I dunno if you wanna put the, the the extender in the garage, but you try it and see if it works and you don't need to buy anything.

Bud (caller) (01:56:06):
Yeah. That's, that's a thought I saw it an extender work that essentially this

Leo Laporte (01:56:12):
It's not the same. Here's the, the, there are many differences, but the big difference, the way an extender works is a, a repeater. So it communicates with a base station. Okay. Here's the information base station talks to it, and then it repeats it on to you. That means the bandwidth is cut in half because half the time it's talking to the base station half the time it's talking to you,

Bud (caller) (01:56:35):
But the, the TP link extender has a different SS. I D so essentially it's radio, when you're talking to it, that's caused a lot of problems. I once had that set up and everything went down.

Leo Laporte (01:56:49):
My, you, you can, if you want set it up with the same SS I D

Bud (caller) (01:56:53):
That will that even cause <laugh>,

Leo Laporte (01:56:56):
That was really, yeah. Well, you know, this is hysterical because until, you know, 15 years ago, the, this was the pro the, the, the province of trained professionals who went to school and learned how networking worked. And it was, it was a very advanced form of computing. You know, we didn't ever talk about networking. All of a sudden everybody's in network guru in their own house. Right. And it is complicated, and there's all sorts of things you can do to, to be, bring it down. Our earlier caller, who I think had a, a problem with her wifi you know, it's easy to ma may mess it up because we're normal. We're not network gurus. So yeah. I mean, if you don't mind learning a lot of stuff, you can, you can use the same SS I D there's rules and so forth. But I think the be, it sounds like to me, this is gonna be a good solution.

Leo Laporte (01:57:45):
Keep your TP link router, put it in turn off the radios. So just, it's just a plain hardware router, hardwired router connect it to the Orbi base station. The Orbi base station should be in, in, and it doesn't work quite as well. Most mesh routers want to be the DHCP router, but this will work fine. Put it in Ridge mode. So it's not doing network address translation, and then it will still communicate with its its subunit in a better way than a an extender. As I said, the extender cuts it in half. The whole thing about mesh was, oh no, we've got a private back channel. So we're full speed. There are other benefits to mesh, but that's that, that's one of them. I like the Orbis, particularly for something like this. So you might be able to, you might be able to get into your garage just fine.

Bud (caller) (01:58:33):
Yeah. I've been in the ITBS business longer than God's been on earth. I all right.

Leo Laporte (01:58:38):
Well, you know, a little about this stuff then

Bud (caller) (01:58:40):
My first software program I wrote was in

Leo Laporte (01:58:43):
1965. So in Fortran, no doubt.

Bud (caller) (01:58:47):
No, no. It was actually assembly language. Oh,

Leo Laporte (01:58:50):
Even better for for a IBM system 70 or

Bud (caller) (01:58:55):
No UNIVAC. You ever heard of

Leo Laporte (01:58:58):
UNIVAC? Yeah. Yeah. Wow. Business for an 1108. Do you remember?

Bud (caller) (01:59:08):
11 0 8 11 7 11 0 7.

Leo Laporte (01:59:09):
Okay. At curtain moley. Yep. Yep, yep.

Bud (caller) (01:59:12):
Yep. <Laugh> still in the business. We still, we believe it or not. We have customers all over the world that are still using UNAC OS 2000 operating system, big, big system.

Leo Laporte (01:59:25):
And, and you still provide them with software?

Bud (caller) (01:59:27):
Yes we do. Wow.

Leo Laporte (01:59:31):
Yep. Well, you know my motto, if it ain't broke, keep it running for hundreds of years. <Laugh>

Bud (caller) (01:59:38):
We thought we, I I'm, I'm almost 80 years old. I thought we'd be, I had a business a long time. Ago's fascinating. Hoping, but it's we're still going strong and we still have software engineers taking care of it, so, oh, you bet

Leo Laporte (01:59:50):
You do. You bet. You do. You were probably in great demand. In 1999 as we headed into the year 2000 and the Y2K pro. Yeah.

Bud (caller) (01:59:59):
Yeah. Yep. Everybody was was doomed. We wrote some special software that allowed us to simulate the date change so that the customers could run their software, simulate the date change to see what was gonna happen to it.

Leo Laporte (02:00:14):
People, you know, when nothing happened on January 1st, 2000 people said, oh, see, it was overblown, but I knew better. It was people like you who put in many hours of, of, of, of work to make it so that we could survive the transition. Cuz there was a lot of stuff that broke

Bud (caller) (02:00:34):
That's that's right. Yeah. You know, we,

Leo Laporte (02:00:37):
We, we did a good job. Thank you. We

Bud (caller) (02:00:38):
Sold for that little transition.

Leo Laporte (02:00:42):
The next one's in 20, you know

Bud (caller) (02:00:45):
I'm I'm got kill a B here. <Laugh>

Leo Laporte (02:00:49):
So we don't have to worry about it. Hey, a pleasure to talk to you, bud. Thank

Bud (caller) (02:00:53):
You. Thank you.

Leo Laporte (02:00:54):
Advice. Yeah. Thank you. Great to talk to you now there's some history on the, on the ho as they say 2038. So the Y2K problem was us because a lot of programmers in the sixties and seventies and eighties took a shortcut instead of representing the year in with four digits, 2010, they represented it with two digits. So the problem was, you know, they represented 1978 is 78. The problem is when we in the at, at then they were in the two thousands. Is that gonna work 2078? What, what is, you know, so a lot of software might have failed dramatically if it weren't for people like bud, who, who, whose company went out and they, and they found the flaws and they fixed them. The next time that's gonna happen is when the Unix epic ends in 2038 we will roll over <laugh>.

Leo Laporte (02:01:49):
We will in 2038, we go back to zero and start over the UCH. Epic began in January 1st, 2000 or rather 1970. And didn't give it enough bits to survive past 20, 38. You know, why, why? Same reason the programmers said two digits are enough. They never thought this software would still be in use in the distant future of 20, 35 or 2038. They thought in the year 20, 38, if men can survive, they thought this is gonna be, you know, they'll they won't still be using Unix. Well, we are in fact more than ever. So that's gonna be the next one. Can people stop

Mikah Sargent (02:02:27):
Doing this then? Can we just say, oh

Leo Laporte (02:02:29):
No, no, we don't learn our lessons. We don't learn our lessons. Not at all. Why two K 38 get ready? <Laugh> I sure it won't be a problem. I'm sure everything will be fine. They're probably fixing it right now. Even as we speak. Yes, I hope that's right. I don't, I didn't, I don't know, but I hope you're right. He says outta St. Food knows, I think says most versions of Unix and Linux are using a larger time value. Oh, so they've started to switch in. Yeah, I can't remember if it was a 16 bit value or a 32 bit value, but it rolls over after 68 years. And mocha would be, we did a mocha thing last time, some ask this question and

Mikah Sargent (02:03:22):
We it's, I mean, how many people have XLR jacks in their garage? Not a whole lot of people.

Leo Laporte (02:03:27):
I think power is a more general. Yeah. It's a more general solution. One of the things I meant, I meant to talk about, talk about this with you. One of the problems people sometimes have with shows like this and I've had it with some of my other hosts is over answering. Like really when people call, they just want a simple answer, Uhhuh <affirmative> and a clear answer and it's we know multiple ways to do anything. Right. So it's always a temptation to, so it's a tr if, if at all possible I, my, I always, always try to make it as clear a path as possible. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> without a lot of on the other hand, or you could try or do this, and it's hard because we know all those things and many of them, you know, Monka might be better for somebody. So it's not bad to say mocha, you know, Monka and powerline, but you know, it's, it's okay to just one. Right? I see what you mean and make that answer be like very clear. Cause remember for him, maybe there is maybe mocha would be better. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> and what you don't want to go is like, but you probably don't have a cable Jack in your garage. Exactly. Just get big BOS it all down. Yeah. So the, so I wish I were an exemplar of this. I'm not, but the goal is to make it as linear and clear and

Mikah Sargent (02:04:44):
Laserlike as possible. I, and I, that was exactly the reason why I didn't mention mocha there because we, the collar did not say I've got a cable in my garage, anything like that. So why mention that if, you know, cause we don't have enough time. Good

Leo Laporte (02:04:56):
Instinct. We don't, we don't have enough time. Exactly. And we also wanna make it as intelligible as we yeah.

Mikah Sargent (02:05:00):
In are limited. I'm personally not a fan of power line because of some of the signal jitter issues that can happen with it. Oh, okay.

Leo Laporte (02:05:09):
And so that's why, but oh, okay.

Mikah Sargent (02:05:11):
But it is, they continue to improve upon it. And if you do have, and the pro is that I came from a house where the electric, not now, but

Leo Laporte (02:05:20):
House a more modern house. Won't have those ground. Exactly.

Mikah Sargent (02:05:22):
Yeah. Lived in a house where that was not the case. There weren't neutral wires in every room and everything. Well

Leo Laporte (02:05:27):
Also part of the thing that's harder to get is we're not really here to help anyone individually, individually. Yep. We're more here to kind of teach people about stuff. Yeah.

Mikah Sargent (02:05:37):
That that's the toughest.

Leo Laporte (02:05:38):
That's the hard one. Cuz you wanna you're and you're you're right. You wanna help 'em I don't care <laugh> they don't care either. By the way, they just want to call and be on the radio and have a good conversation. And I, I think a lot of, sometimes you can hear the pain in people's voices. They really do wanna so, but they're they shouldn't call us <laugh> if they really want help, they shouldn't call us. Now all the people listening are going, what the <laugh> this podcast brought to you by get ready for this. Are you ready? I'm ready. A and T it is 2021. Did you know, people can acquire self-driving cars. They can eat hamburgers made out of plants. They can even fly to space in rocket ships if they've got 28 million lying around. So if you can do all this futuristic stuff right now, the very least your phone should be able to do is stream a show without having it lag over and over again for that there's at and T five G at and T 5g is fast, reliable and secure makes it easy to download entertainment in the flash to stay connected across the city and helps keep your device protected.

Leo Laporte (02:06:52):
Even from spam calls.

Leo Laporte (02:06:55):
Wanna make sure your phone service keeps up with what you need from it. Get at and T 5g. It's not complicated. 5G requires a compatible plan may not be in your area. See at t.com/5g for you for details. Eighty eight eighty eight, ask Leo that's the phone number, the GWiz coming up just a little bit with a gadget kind of a junky gadget. <Laugh> that I'll probably buy anyway, cuz that's that's just, you know, he's such a good salesman. Chuck is on the line. Our next call from San Diego. Hi Chuck. Hey Leo, how are you today? I am. Well, how are you? Say hi to Mica Sergeant also with us today. Hello Chuck, the two tech guys.

Chuck (caller) (02:07:38):
Hey, I wonder if you, did you, either your gentlemen ever recall ever watching the great movie. This is spinal tap. Oh yeah, of course.

Leo Laporte (02:07:44):
It goes to 11 to 11.

Chuck (caller) (02:07:47):
Well, when I'm, when I'm watching Hulu and a commercial comes on, it sounds like it's going to get Marshall. I love it.

Leo Laporte (02:07:55):
It's going to 11. Yep. Yep. Yeah. There is an FCC rule about the volume of commercials, how loud they can be. They're not supposed to be louder, but loudness is also more than just the volume. And so I think often commercial sound mixers do tricks that, you know, it's technically the same decibel level. It's not supposed to be much louder than anything else. They're all supposed to be the same. And the TV station is supposed to regulate it. I don't know if on the internet, same. I was gonna say, that's what they do is they circumvent it by because it's not, may not be the same rules, but I bet I, you know, it's not in their interest to really annoy people, but they make things more punchy back in the days of am radio. For instance. You remember that sound?

Leo Laporte (02:08:42):
You probably don't remember it. Mikah you're too young, but boss radio had a real punchy sound cuz they, they would run it through a special system called a compressor to give it some pun lunch and it would make the levels of the quietest as, as loud as the levels of the loudest. And it all sounded much louder as a result. Of course the whole idea is you're turning down the dial back when we had radios, you're turning down the dial and they want the station to jump at you. And I suspect that some advertisers are doing that. There may be in your system, whether you're you have a AV receiver or a television, depending on what's doing the audio, there may be a setting to moderate that they have. Well, there's the mute

Chuck (caller) (02:09:26):
Button. Yeah. I have the TCL TV that I bought because you talked about it and it's got it's this volume leveling. Yeah, there you go. But that doesn't seem to do anything <laugh>

Leo Laporte (02:09:39):
Well, all it's gonna do is make it the same DB. So if they're doing other tricks, you know, if you put an echo on it, it would definitely jump out at you, but you would be the same volume. So that may be that they're doing the same tricks cuz the TV is supposed to level the volume. It may probably just on or off, right?

Chuck (caller) (02:10:01):
I'm sorry.

Leo Laporte (02:10:01):
Is it just our on or off? There's no, no, no other setting. It's not like do it 90% more or 10% less or anything. Yeah, no, no. Unfortunately,

Chuck (caller) (02:10:09):
No. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (02:10:10):
Unfortunately, no I mean you can buy other, you know, external stuff that will do that, but I don't think, think that's a unneed expense. Yeah. It's just annoying. It may be. It may be. And I, I haven't watched Hulu in a while. It may that they're saying, oh, that FCC rule, we're not broadcast. We can ignore that.

Chuck (caller) (02:10:29):
Well, I, you know, I just around a little bit and you know, there's a theory that, that they do it intentionally because they want you to pay for the commercial free version.

Leo Laporte (02:10:39):
Oh,

Chuck (caller) (02:10:41):
Oh. But you know, that's just, you know, that's just rumor.

Mikah Sargent (02:10:44):
I, I, I feel there, there are kind of two issues that are going on here. That is as a interesting one, but it's also the fact that all of these different commercials that they're getting coming from different places, they're not leveled to the same audio level. So you may have ones that are quieter are louder and ultimately yeah, without that kind of regulation there to say it has to be at this volume and no, no louder.

Leo Laporte (02:11:05):
It does. I love the name of the FCC rule. It's the calm, calm act. Yep. The commercial advertisement, loudness calm act. I guess the calm act probably. Oh

Mikah Sargent (02:11:19):
Yeah, look, yeah. I became very familiar with the calm act. Back when I was working in a news video publication because we started to broadcast and at that point we had to make sure that our videos were at this. But up to that point, we did not have to. So

Leo Laporte (02:11:32):
It's also the, a, the average sound. So part of it can be really loud and then they make the rest quieter and that will make it better. I, there are a lot of posts about this on Hulu. So maybe it is a problem. Leo Laport, the tech guy I'm looking@aluer.com article. The real reason Hulu commercials are so loud, the FCC doesn't regulate them. And Well, I don't know if they go on and beyond that, except they're not regulated.

Mikah Sargent (02:12:10):
They're allowed because they can

Leo Laporte (02:12:11):
Be they're loud because they can be and just complain to hula. It's interesting. I like the hand claps in this, this brought hand claps to mainstream media, Leo Laport, the tech guy 88. I don't know. Do you even know this song at the car wash? Of course. You know the movie, right? Oh, absolutely. I don't know about the movie car wash baby. I know the song. <Laugh> eight rose Royce is the name of the group. Oh,

Mikah Sargent (02:12:38):
That's clever. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (02:12:39):
Like rose Royce. Yeah. Yeah, but not, but not eighty eight, eighty Ashley on the phone number. Rose Rice. Amy on the line from Huntington beach, California. Hello Amy. Hi.

Amy (caller) (02:12:51):
Hi, laptop was recently stolen at, oh, I'm sorry. Yeah, it was from his dorm room with his Xbox as well. So both of them are kind of lost and we, we canceled the services and, and reported it stolen and changed his password and did all that. So we're looking at buying a, a, another laptop and I'm seeing on Amazon and Walmart, like refurbished or renewed. And I'm just wondering, are those worth buying? I don't really wanna spend 1500 on a, I don't blame you on a new laptop.

Leo Laporte (02:13:28):
So often refurbished means simply somebody bought it. Never used it, returned it. The box is open. They can't sell it as new. So if you go, if you get it from the right person, refurbished is fine. And by the right person, I mean the original manufacturer or perhaps the store that, you know, you're buying it from. 

Amy (caller) (02:13:47):
So it's a MacBook Air.

Leo Laporte (02:13:50):
I would only get MacBooks from apple. They have a refurb store, take a look at their prices. They're not gonna be as aggressive as Amazons, but it's much, much safer. What you want is you want to get it from the manufacturer so that when it's refurbished, it is factory new and the warranty is still there. What you wouldn't get in many cases, if you don't buy it from the manufacturer.

Amy (caller) (02:14:12):
Yeah. Amazon gives 90 days.

Leo Laporte (02:14:14):
Apple gives a year. Yeah. Okay. So check, go to apple.com/shop/refurbished and just see if you can, the problem is apples prices are not as aggressive. You might save a few hundred bucks. It's a risky thing to buy a refurbished laptop from somebody other than the manufacturer. The only exception I, I would give you is if it's from a big box store that has a long, you know, Costco, for instance, very long warranties and really good return policies. But you don't wanna buy it from Joe's refurb laptop store. Cuz what Joe probably did <laugh> you know, is wipe the drive, put a stolen copy of the operating system on it and sells it to you for a greatly reduced price. It may not be fully refurbished. It may not be very good shape at all. You, the risk of buying a used laptop is you're buying somebody else's problems often.

Amy (caller) (02:15:07):
<Laugh> right. And yeah, some of them say they have D or something. So it's like, was it dropped? Is there gonna be

Leo Laporte (02:15:12):
Yeah. What other things? Yeah. What's

Amy (caller) (02:15:15):
Renewed. There are some that say renewed. That

Leo Laporte (02:15:18):
Usually means they went in and took stuff out. It means basically refurbished. It, it depends who you're talking to. There's no legal definition of the terms. I would be careful with renewed. Renewed is basically used, you know, when you get a used car, what do they, they have all sorts of euphemisms previously owned, you know, certified that's like renewed.

Mikah Sargent (02:15:44):
We'll also include a link over on tech. I labs.com to the education refurbished

Leo Laporte (02:15:50):
Store. Cause he'll get a good deal. Education

Mikah Sargent (02:15:52):
Discount I'll get a better deal is a student. Yeah. So it looks like you can combine them to, you can go to the education store and, and get it refurbished. So they'll save even a little bit more money.

Leo Laporte (02:16:01):
The good news is right now you can get a MacBook air, their lowest and new based on the new processor, which is much faster than any Intel. And I bet you, he had an Intel Mac, you get a MacBook air for 800 bucks. So I would absolutely look at the MacBook air. It is as fast as anything he could possibly have had.

Amy (caller) (02:16:23):
Okay. And go through the, on the Apple's website. There's an education source. Yeah. You can get a disc. Yeah. You get

Leo Laporte (02:16:29):
The EDU discount on top of the refurbished discount.

Amy (caller) (02:16:34):
Okay.

Leo Laporte (02:16:36):
I'm sorry that happened to your boy. That's terrible.

Amy (caller) (02:16:38):
It's awful. It was, I know one day the Xbox was on the following day. His backpack was his laptop.

Leo Laporte (02:16:46):
What kind of crazy colleges he go to? Is this the school of hard knocks?

Amy (caller) (02:16:52):
It's a small college in Kansas. It's a Catholic

Leo Laporte (02:16:55):
Who would've thought. Right. And it's probably another student in that case.

Amy (caller) (02:17:00):
No it's yeah. Oh, I'm

Leo Laporte (02:17:02):
So sorry. I am so

Amy (caller) (02:17:04):
Sorry. It was 17 and he's happy with it. So it's like if I could find same computer. No

Leo Laporte (02:17:10):
You don't. Okay. So here's the thing with apple. They have now left Intel chips behind and they're doing their own chips. The good news about that is these are much faster than four years ago, much and at not an increased price. So he, if he was happy with the 2017, he will be 10 times happier. Absolutely. With, with the 20, 21 or, you know, just look at, make sure it's an M one based you don't. You want the newest processor. Okay. Apple has, has, has left behind Intel. And so that was gonna be obsolete sooner than later anyway. Okay. So there, there you go. See, you know what? Yeah. You better off. Yeah. You're better off, right? Yeah. They're much faster. The battery life is better. I think for a student, the MacBook air, the M one based MacBook air is the ideal laptop. It's they're amazing. And

Mikah Sargent (02:18:01):
With that M one chip, you know what else you get? What better ability to track it if it's ever stolen? Oh yeah. With fun. My Mac.

Leo Laporte (02:18:07):
Yeah. You know what? That's a good point. In fact, has he tried? He tried to find my Mac on the old one.

Amy (caller) (02:18:13):
Yeah. And so he said it to where it's supposed to ping him if they it's offline. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (02:18:19):
When they turn it back on, if they're smart, if they're, if it's a ring of Kansas MacBook thieves, then they might know enough to take out the drive and do stuff. But the M ones are much harder to get around that. Those that's actually another reason to do. It's much more secure.

Amy (caller) (02:18:37):
Okay. Oh, I'm so sorry. Is there a database of stolen, you know, where you can plug in the serial number and you should

Mikah Sargent (02:18:45):
Report it to apple, the stolen MacBook. Because yes. If apple ever sees that pop up for them, they, they will get, they will know in their database. Oh, this was a stolen device and they'll be able to, to handle it that way.

Leo Laporte (02:18:57):
The truth is bad guys. You should not. Yeah. It's not worth it. You should not be stealing any apple stuff because you probably will not be able to use it again. You might be able to find somebody dumb that can buy it. Exactly that's but that, but they won't be able to use it. So it apples really done a lot to make it undesirable to steal apple stuff, whether it's iPhones or max.

Amy (caller) (02:19:18):
OK, good. Good to know. Right.

Leo Laporte (02:19:21):
Well, I hope your son has has a better year this year at Leavenworth U and and things go better. I'm sorry. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Ah, that's terrible. It is terrible. It is something I bring up though. When people say I want to get a laptop for my college student, a desktop's harder to steal <laugh>. That is true. You know, that's true. And LA and you know, the other thing is you got a nice light MacBook air. You're gonna take it to the coffee shop. You can take it to class. You're gonna put it in your back, but you're gonna carry it around all the time. It's much more likely to get lost or stolen. Yeah. Get him a big, heavy, ugly desktop. <Laugh> this's not going anywhere. Something, no one would want. Yeah. I that's terrible. And they Xbox too. Yeah. So yeah. We'll put a link in the show notes, tech guy labs.com to the apple page. You go to, if your Mac is lost or stolen, I forgot about that. I'm glad you remembered that apple does keep those. And of course you should report it to the police as well. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> so it's on file. Yeah. Everybody should know. But yeah. That's that's I know

Mikah Sargent (02:20:22):
Sometimes occasionally they'll be credit card. If you bought out with a credit card they're occasionally

Leo Laporte (02:20:27):
Stolen. I mean, absolutely. Call, call the, they bought it 2017. It's four years old. I think, you know, honestly, it's time for a new one. Anyway. I think so. Yeah. And the M ones, it was a gift in the there's the silver lining. It was a gift. It was a

Mikah Sargent (02:20:40):
Gift to have it taken gift. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (02:20:42):
88, 88. Ask Leo, guess what? We've got another gift. This is the show that keeps on giving the GI is Dick D Bartos coming up mad. Magazine's maddest writer. He's been with mad magazine for five decades. He's gonna have a great but cheap and probably useless S gadget coming up in just a second. And we'll also tell you how you can win an autograph copy of mad magazine from collection. Tech guy.com is the website. Don't forget that because that's open year round <laugh> and always available for you. If you hear something on the show, that's where we put the links and it's free. No sign up tech guy labs.com, Leo Laport, the tech guy. It's time to say hi to our disco. Dick D Bartolo, mad magazines, Madis writer and, and the GWiz. Hey, Dickie D 1978. Wow. That's an old song. Hello? Dickie. D how are you Leo? I am very well. How are you?

Mikah Sargent (02:21:40):
I am good too. Thank you. Good to see you guys. Good to see you. How sent you some meds? And I included one from Micah. Thank you. I'm looking for, or

Leo Laporte (02:21:50):
To it. Postal service has it, and someday we'll release it. <Laugh> <laugh> so as, as I've been saying all day, you usually come by with something inexpensive, but okay. Irresistible. Oh,

Mikah Sargent (02:22:07):
No. All right. So I'll right. All right. So this is anyway. Yes, yes, exactly. So, so this girl, Sarah Bernard invented something at age 16. Okay. Yeah. At age 18. Got it. On shark tank. Oh, and now it's on Amazon. So this is kind of a success, a success story. All right. Yes. But I it's main it's it's for women for women. And she was afraid of bars where people would go in and spike drinks. Oh, okay. Yes. So she invented something called nightcap. That is a scrunchy that women can wear in their hair or on their wrist. And then there's a little tab on the scrunchy that you pull on <affirmative> and the night cap comes out. Wow. And it's an elastic cover that goes over glasses. I even tried it on some big cups because it it's supposed to fit pretty much anything and it does. And then there's a little hole in it. So you can put a straw right through the night cap. Wow. Awesome.

Leo Laporte (02:23:26):
You know, I think this is, I don't know how big a problem that is, but this seems like a good solution. It is it's yeah,

Mikah Sargent (02:23:32):
No, a a absolutely. And, and the backstory is she wanted to do it and she took her mother's I think a pair of panty hose and started designing it and her brother helped. And then I have to admit the family kicked, I think she said $18,000 to get it started. This is amazing. But on shop tank, she got a $60,000 investment.

Leo Laporte (02:23:56):
I hope she's making millions.

Mikah Sargent (02:23:59):
I hope so

Leo Laporte (02:24:00):
Night cap it.com.

Mikah Sargent (02:24:03):
You're right. And I like their slogan nightcap. You are covered.

Leo Laporte (02:24:08):
That's really clever. And it's, and the nice thing is it's just a scrunchy you could wear on your hair until you need it. And then you just whoop. I got it. And it's great exactly.

Mikah Sargent (02:24:16):
Or, or on your wrist. And it comes in different colors too. So I think, I think that's a,

Leo Laporte (02:24:20):
I think I'm gonna grow a ponytail just so I can use this. <Laugh> this is great. This is great. If you wanna know more, Dick has a link and in his own video, by the way, handmade, what do you call it? One,

Mikah Sargent (02:24:35):
I could wear one tag theater. I could wear it on my mustache. Cause that's the max hair I have on my face.

Leo Laporte (02:24:41):
You can definitely wear it on your mustache. She's got quite a must quite a mustache going on. If that's for, this is a neat story too. I really like the story. If you wanna know more, go to GI wiz.business, his website, G I Z w I Z dot B Iz. And there's a link there to the Amazon page, which is good. Cuz it can make a little money for Dickie D he's an Amazon associate. You can also see his video and you can find out more about it. I think that's a great

Mikah Sargent (02:25:12):
Story. And you can see the January 20, 22 med cover.

Leo Laporte (02:25:16):
Ooh, we're playing for that in the, what the heck is it contest? Yes. All right. So this is probably the easiest. What the heck is at contest ever, ever? How many correct answers have you got? Hell,

Mikah Sargent (02:25:27):
I must have 50 already. Okay. so we're looking for silly. Crazy.

Leo Laporte (02:25:32):
Yeah. There's six autographed mad magazines for the right answer. You have to have a drawing obviously among the, among the correct answers. Yes, exactly. And then there's 18 autograph cop copies of I'm sorry. 12, 12, 12, 12. Yeah. For the, so you have 18, total 12 for the best wrong answer, but the funniest one. So your best bet at this point is to come up with a clever, you know, like oh yeah. That, that's a that's a hot air balloon for cockroaches. <Laugh> you know, something like that, that, you know,

Mikah Sargent (02:26:03):
Know what that

Leo Laporte (02:26:03):
That's good. Yeah. That's that might win me an autograph copy of man

Mikah Sargent (02:26:07):
Mans. I might win you and probably are gonna get 20 entries with that now. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (02:26:10):
I'm sorry. <Laugh> now, now this is what you're playing for the January. I'm sorry. February edition of man magazine, which has the title. What? Me vengeance little Batman with Alfred E Newman, Gar our Goyle. Yeah. And it's all Batman.

Mikah Sargent (02:26:26):
It's an assortment of, of all Batman stuff and oh nice. You know, I, as I said, it's stuff from past issues, but I even enjoy looking at stuff I've written in the past because I, I could take off on the Batman animated series and I forgot that it star with the animated series is said to be based on the dark moody Batman movies. Personally, we think it's based on DC comics, insatiable, greed to ring every book out of the dynamic duo, which there's some irony here. That's exactly

Leo Laporte (02:27:01):
Because DC, but mad magazine after that, that DC

Mikah Sargent (02:27:04):
Owns mad mag. They own them at the time

Leo Laporte (02:27:07):
Fired everybody. But two people moved it to Los Angeles. So I think this is kind of appropriate. And what's funny is they still used, they still

Mikah Sargent (02:27:17):
Used it. They're still using it. Maybe this is why, why they fly at

Leo Laporte (02:27:21):
Everybody. That's hysterical. So, so you've got a parody in there and I'm sure there are many more and this it's, you know what, honestly, mad. Magazine's one of those things where I reread my old mags all the time at the marginalia and the fun stuff, there's always more to be gleaned from it. It's not one of those magazines, like, you know, the new Yorker or vanity fair or time or news or where you read it once. And it's now it's, it's Phish paper. You save your man magazine. So I don't mind in a way it's kind of fun to go back in time and see all of it. Yeah, it

Mikah Sargent (02:27:54):
Is. And the comment, another comment we get endlessly is I read this when I was a kid mm-hmm <affirmative> and I reread it with the reprints and I thought, whoa, did I miss all I wanted? Cause

Leo Laporte (02:28:05):
I, because it is one of those things where there's stuff at a kid level and then there's stuff for adults that the kid doesn't get. Yeah. That's absolutely true. Yeah. I love it. So you have on your website besides the, what the heck is it contest plus links to all the things he talks about on this show, you also have links to the things you talk about on ABC's world news now every month, but you also have really good holiday stuff. There's still a few copies left of memoir, good days and mad, which is a must for anybody. Who's a fan of mad magazine anecdotes from the bill gain era. It's just fantastic. And I hope you have another box left of those cuz

Mikah Sargent (02:28:45):
I, I have about 20 copies

Leo Laporte (02:28:46):
Left. Okay. So, so don't wait, but that's, that would be amazing gift for somebody who loves mad magazine. There's other mad memorabilia there's match game memorabilia get Dick for many years was the head writer on the match game game show saved it, frankly from a fate worse than death. He also has a GIW garb, little light up hats and things. There's all sorts of great holiday gifts there. So go to GIW G I Z w YZ dot B Iz and browse around. You'll also find his podcast there. The GIW show@giw.tv the co with Chad Johnson every week, always fun, lots more stuff like this all week long. Well

Mikah Sargent (02:29:27):
Thank you. You're very kind. And my you forgot Mike is a jams and J's dad <laugh>

Leo Laporte (02:29:36):
Jams and jellies and he, he also does these great corn cob dolls. They're just so much. Oh, they're

Mikah Sargent (02:29:41):
Gr oh great. I four, five or

Leo Laporte (02:29:44):
Eight. Thank you. Dickie D have a wonderful week. We'll see you next too. See you next Saturday. Yeah. So always, always fun to see. I mean, I grew up reading mad magazine. That's it's been, it was, it was so important in my in my Ute. My ills spent T Leo Laport and Micah Sergeant, the tech guys have a great geek week. Well, that's it for the tech guy show for today. Thank you so much for being here and don't forget TWI T w I T it stands for this week at tech and you'll find it@twi.tv, including the podcasts for the show. We talk about windows and windows weekly, Macintosh on Mac break, weekly iPads, iPhones, apple watches on iOS, today's security and security. Now, I mean, I can go on and on and on. And of course the big show every Sunday afternoon, this week in tech, you'll find it all at twit TV and I'll be back next week with another great tech guys show. Thanks for joining me. We'll see you. Next time.

Speaker 16 (02:30:43):
I.