The Tech Guy Episode 1852 Transcript

Please be mindful, these transcripts are AI-generated and may not be word for word. 

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

Leo Laporte (00:00:10):
Hi, this is Leo Laporte and this is my Tech Guy podcast. The show originally aired on the premier networks coast to coast. Several hundred wonderful stage on Sunday, December 12th, 2021. This is episode 1,852. Enjoy the tech I podcast is brought to you by Wealthfront to start building your wealth and get your first $5,000 managed for free for life. Go to wealthfront.com/techguy. 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 with disabilities is not only the right thing to do. It's also the law go to user way.org/twi at 30% off user way's AI powered accessibility solution and by cash. Give your users the seamless online experience. They want power your site or app with cash flies CDN and be 30% faster than the competition.

Leo Laporte (00:01:19):
Learn more at twit.Cachefly.Com. Well, Hey, Hey. Hey, how are you today? Leo Laporte here. The Tech Guy, time to talk computers, the internet, home theater, digital photography, smart phones, smart watches space. We got a lot coming up a lot. There's gonna be a jam packed day full of goodness car guy, Sam Abuelsamid coming up in just a little bit. Next hour. We will we will talk about photography with Chris Marquardt and the following hour. We're gonna talk about space with Rod Pyle, between I'll be taking your calls. 88 88, ask Leo. A jampacked Sunday extravaganza 8 8 8 8 2 7 5 5 3 6. One of our chatters Kalia says it sounds like I say idiot. Idiot. <laugh> idiot, idiot. Ask Leo <laugh>. I am definitely not saying that. Okay. I don't know why you hear that, but it's not. It's 8, 8, 8, 8 as in the number 8 8 8 8 2 7 5 5 3 6. Or if you prefer idiot, idiot, ask Leo.

Leo Laporte (00:02:34):
<Laugh> the website where we put all at James ARVO writes us all down. He puts it up on the website, tech guy labs.com, tech guy labs.com. Thank you, James. What else? There's a chat room. I call him team tech guy. If you if you have a browser, you can go to irc.twi.tv or use an IRC client. That's the old fashioned form of chat predates even AOL's instant messenger. That's how old it is. Predates the worldwide web irc.twi.tv, not my chat room. Well, let me think about this. It might actually been doing this for a long time. First started using chat in the early nineties and it was IRC back then, even then IRC was kind of old. The world wide web was invented in 1989. IRC predates that. But I started doing that when I started doing this kind of a show that I wasn't, I hadn't yet earned the sober okay.

Leo Laporte (00:03:39):
Tech Guy. I was just a guy answering tech questions in San Francisco back in, I think that was B 93 94, thereabouts. And we had the chat room, which was, oh, you know, it's funny. I can't now when I don't, when I try to do something without a chat room, even brush my teeth, I don't, it's like, I don't know. I need the, I need the feedback. How am I doing so you can <laugh> you can, you can, you can join us in the chat room. I, and help me brush my teeth or whatever. 88, 88, ask Leo there. I think that's everything you need to know.

Leo Laporte (00:04:23):
There's a little bit of noise coming out these days. Remember when apple wasn't so long ago, was it a couple months ago? Ios? 15. Maybe it was even 14 to five came out and apple started popping up that thing. You've seen it by now. If you have an iPhone started popping up thing that said this app wants to track you, even when you're not using it. Is that okay? <Laugh> and really, I think apple, when it writes it, it's kind of saying it in its mind that way are you sure? Is that okay? And and of course, something like 80% of the people who see that say no, of course not you. Don't why I would, why would you know, Snapchat have to see what I'm doing with other apps? No, that's ridiculous. When I'm using Snapchat, that's one thing it could, you know, it needs to know perhaps my geographic location to put that on my snap or whatever.

Leo Laporte (00:05:14):
That's fine, but not when I'm not using you. No, don't be ridiculous. So people say no, and Facebook was all up in arms saying, oh, you Facebook, of course it's gonna hit their bottom line. If they can't track you everywhere you go, cuz they need to know everything about you so that they can go to advertisers and say, I have a 33 year old woman who lives in Virginia, who is just waiting to see your advertisement and the advertisers go well, it's nice. Cause I don't wanna get a 34 year old woman in Virginia. I only want the 33. That kind of thing. That tracking is very valuable to Facebook. So Facebook immediately now they can't really say, well it's gonna hurt us because you know, nobody cares. So they say that's gonna hurt small business, huh? Well, yeah, because those small businesses are advertisers on Facebook. They won't get the kind of granular information about who they're buying, what advertisements who's seeing your advertisements. So I guess you could, you know, it's not, it's not a complete lie to say, oh, it's gonna hurt small businesses except we are learning. Now, here we are a few down the road and it doesn't hurt anybody at all.

Leo Laporte (00:06:22):
It hurt any anybody at all seven months, we've had this just saw a study that said snap, Snapchats makers, Facebook and others have found perfectly valid ways to get around apples do not track. In fact, some are even calling it privacy theater, privacy theater. It's like, it's not real privacy. You just it's up on the pretend, pretend privacy. Of course there's always been the issue that apple could see everything anyway, you know, they could, they, they, they know exactly what you're doing with the phone at any, at any time that's called first party information. What apple was doing is blocking third party information stuff from a company's not apple. Google has proposed the same thing with cookies, no more third party cookies. They said only we only, we at Google the great Google, great not power for Google pay no attention to the man behind the curtain should know what you're up to.

Leo Laporte (00:07:24):
Facebook has plenty of first party data whenever you're using Facebook. Right? In fact, frankly, Facebook has a huge amount of data about you all the time. Because as you go around the internet, you know those like buttons, you see the little thumbs up buttons. You don't even have to click that for Facebook to know you're visiting that page. It just sends a little signal. It says, Leo's here. You don't even click it. Just the fact that you're visiting that page sends a signal back to Facebook. So Facebook, in fact, Facebook can collect information, but people who aren't even Facebook members carbo in the tech dirt blog, which is all about privacy and security. He said, advertisers cried like a disappointed toddler. Christmas. When apple came out with this in 14 five by September last, this couple of months ago, researchers began to notice, eh, Apple's opt out system, not too much.

Leo Laporte (00:08:16):
Anyway. It only really blocks makers from accessing one little bit of data. The what that apple calls the ID FA the ID for advertisers just turns that off. But as Carl points out, there are many ways for app makers to track you without that little ID FA and that's exactly what they, they started doing immediately, including Facebook, they collect just, you know, information about what IP address you're on, what your battery charges, what your volume level is. There's all sorts of stuff. How much storage is left? And you might say, well, what do they care about? How much storage I have on my phone? Well, you combine all these different points and it's like a fingerprint. It can start to identify you more specifically like, well, Leo had 38% battery charge. He's got this IP addresses volume levels, a seven he's only got 23 gigabytes left on his phone. That's Leo <laugh>.

Leo Laporte (00:09:21):
So essentially that when you check that box, do not track me. It makes you feel good, makes apple feel good or make money, which kind of is the same thing. But it's actually not doing anything. Privacy advocates in the press, not Carl Wrights. This is giving apple users a false sense of security without really fixing much financial times publishing articles, which they said seven months later, they said in English accent, cause they're from Britain seven months later, companies, including snap and Facebook have been allowed to keep sharing user levels signals on iPhones. So long as that data is, and I'm gonna put this in quotes, anonymized and aggregated rather than tied to specific user profiles. So they don't know what Leo's up to, but they know what people like Leo are up to. Unfortunately, as we have learned, you can't really anonymize data because of things like, well, I know your battery level. <Laugh> I know how much storage you have left. I know what size your screen is. And I, you know, pretty easy to de-anonymize this stuff.

Leo Laporte (00:10:25):
Carl says, people use this as a, get outta jail free card. Well we're anonymizing it. No, but, but inside they go, yeah <laugh> they believed it. <Laugh> Apple's opt out button. He writes is largely decorative helping the company brand itself as hyper privacy, conscious without actually doing any heavy lifting. Isn't that nice? I thought I just passed that along. Maybe I shouldn't, you know, it's nice. Just feel good. I think the real truth of the matter is everybody knows what you're doing on the internet. Just, you know, unless you're taking extreme measures more than any normal user would be willing to take. Everybody knows what you're doing on the internet. So, you know, chill man until we get real privacy laws until companies start adhering to those laws, not finding loopholes, none of which is gonna happen anytime soon, you might as well.

Leo Laporte (00:11:26):
Just assume if you're on the internet, Facebook, Google, apple, all know what you're doing. Eighty eight, eighty eight ask Leo is a phone number. Just sounds kind of down. Doesn't it? I mean, you know, what are they doing with that? All they're doing is selling advertising against it. I mean, it's not, I mean, okay, so maybe, you know, if police ask they, you, they, they could say, well, we know where Leo was on the night of December 10th at 3:00 PM. We know exactly where he was. I guess, you know, it's that kind of thing. What are you gonna do? 88, 80, 80, 88, 88. Idiot, idiot ask Le that's the phone number? Give me a ring. And again, when you hear something on the show, you don't have to remember it. I'll put some of these articles up on the show. No, it's, I'll give him to James to do that.

Leo Laporte (00:12:14):
He's he's the guy who does all the work so that you don't have to write anything down. It's all here for you, doctor. I need 9, 9, 9, which is, does doesn't do anything in the us. This guy must be from some other country. Hello, Kim, but idiot. Idiot. Idiot works. <Laugh> you know when, once golly has said that now I can't stop hearing idiot. Idiot ask Leo. And I, I think it's me. That's the idiot. When I maybe I'm just taking it too personally. No, 88, 88. I'm gonna say that very carefully. 88, 88, 88. Ask Leo, apparently cornea. Knock her Harrington, our chat room 9 99 is British for 9 1 1. Oh, okay.

Kim Schaffer (00:12:58):
Then, then, then it makes sense. We know where that art, who,

Leo Laporte (00:13:01):
Who is that? Who is that artist? Professor? Laura musical director. Milo. Oh, Nick low. Oh, Nick low Milo. Nick lololo. Is that like Dulo all right, globe. Who should I, I'm sorry. I'm a little punchy this morning. Yeah, me too. Yeah. Who should I talk to first? Let's go to

Kim Schaffer (00:13:26):
Jan Manhattan beach wants to, you know, you know, when you buy an appliance and they always try to sell you on the extra warranty. Yeah. Well,

Leo Laporte (00:13:35):
It's kind of like that, but kinda like that, but not kinda like that, but not all right. More with her website. Thank you, Kim sheer. You're welcome. Hello, Jan from Manhattan beach, Leo Laporte, The Tech Guy.

Jan (caller) (00:13:46):
Hi Leo.

Leo Laporte (00:13:46):
Hey Jan. I hear ya

Jan (caller) (00:13:49):
Okay good. I had to renew my domain names with Google.

Leo Laporte (00:13:56):
I did. Yes. They're a domain registrar.

Jan (caller) (00:13:59):
Yes. Remembering that you said good to okay. To go to Google and then maybe do my website with somebody

Leo Laporte (00:14:07):
Else. Yeah, I like doing it that way. Cuz then it's, you're not held hostage. So if you, you know, when you go to Goda and register domain name and do your website and you want, now you gotta move two things, but if you have it registered say at Google and your website's at GoDaddy, you just tell Google, Hey, I'm moving to WordPress and that's all you have to do. So what's going on?

Jan (caller) (00:14:29):
Well what they added was the full domain privacy and protection. Yes. For 20 more.

Leo Laporte (00:14:39):
Oh, well you don't want that actually. You might want that.

Jan (caller) (00:14:43):
Okay. What would it have done? They said if I didn't, I would be my website and personal info would be made available

Leo Laporte (00:14:53):
To the world. Yeah. It's kinda shocking that they charge 20 bucks. I'm a little disappointed to be honest with you. Oh one of the reasons Google domains is popular is because they're very, they're relatively inexpensive. How much was the price of your domain? The

Jan (caller) (00:15:07):
Domain was 38 bucks.

Leo Laporte (00:15:08):
Well that's well per a year, but

Jan (caller) (00:15:11):
This is no. It would've that's for two years.

Leo Laporte (00:15:14):
Two years, so 19 bucks a year. Okay. So a .com address should be around $10 a year. So Google. Okay. I'm gonna now change my attitude about Google's domains and say, well, maybe they aren't the best pricing. And, and on a, in my opinion, they should also give you domain privacy for free. Yes, because, so here's how, here's how it officially works. When, so Google is a, what they call a registrar, which means that they have been approved by the international corporation for assigned names and numbers I can, which is a non-government body that oversees the internet. They're the ones that keep the big phone books. There's 13 of them. The, they call 'em the DNS servers that, that match domain names to IP addresses. That's, that's how it works. Somebody will you know, enter in, in their browser Jans, great website.com and then their browser will look it up in the big phone book and say, oh, that's 1 64, 3 dot nine, two, you know, your actual phone number and go there.

Leo Laporte (00:16:20):
It needs that number, not the name. And the beauty of that system is you can easily change hosts and have a new IP address, but it'll still be Jan's lovely website.com. So that's why that works that way. So domain registrars are basically affiliates of, I can, I can't approve them and they can charge whatever they want for the domain name. I can't, I don't know what the actual I can fees are, but it's under $10 a year so they can charge whatever they want. But the all they're really doing is connecting you up to the I can thing. Now, the way I can works, is it the name of the administrator, the support, you know, all those email addresses that are really all just you, Jan, those all are public. They're in a public directory who owns this website needs to be public, according to I can.

Leo Laporte (00:17:07):
So what registrars do is they sell who is privacy. If you who is, is, is the directory search thing you could say, who is Jan's lovely website, and it'll give you the owner. And normally that would be your, your name, your address, your phone number, your email. But most people don't want that to be publicly available. So they use who is privacy, and that is a service that then when somebody looks up, Jan's lovely website, they get redirect to that service. And if they email that service, that service then goes, oh, we'll send that on a Jan. So they're hiding you shouldn't cost that much should not cost that much. I'm thinking of our we have a sponsor, hover.com that does domain registry and they throw that in for free. So I'm a little disappointed that Google's think they have enough money that they're charging extra for it. Do you want it? Yes. Unless you're using, as I do a post office box or a business address and a business email, and you don't care if people know that, but if it's your home address and home phone, definitely you should use privacy, Leo Laporte, The Tech Guy. So does that answer your question?

Jan (caller) (00:18:15):
Pretty much. Yeah, I,

Leo Laporte (00:18:17):
Are you sure you're going through domains.google.com?

Jan (caller) (00:18:21):
I'm going through Google. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:18:24):
Uhhuh domains.google.com. Actually it's domains.google. There's no .com. Domains.Google. Cuz they own google.

Jan (caller) (00:18:33):
I got a receipt from them. Yeah. Dot com. Domain renewal and it's Google. Huh?

Leo Laporte (00:18:41):
Boy that's I did not realize they charged that much. Yeah. Domains started $7 a year, email forwarding prime protection, one click click DNS sec, Google step two step verification included. So I'm wondering where you actually maybe ignore that. Look at you. See you can't it sounds like it might be a lie that it might be somebody posing as Google, cuz it's easy for them to see you register to Google domains. So did you send them any money? 

Jan (caller) (00:19:13):
I paid for it. I had 'em take off the two 

Leo Laporte (00:19:18):
Log to your Google domains account. Okay. With your Google account. Yes. I think that that was not Google.

Jan (caller) (00:19:27):
Okay.

Leo Laporte (00:19:29):
So that that's, you know, that would be a actually wouldn't be surprising that that would be a scam because it's easy for them to see who has domains registered Google then send a spoof email saying, oh, by the way, 38 38 bucks. What is it? A what's the don't tell me the domain name. What's the dot after the.com. Oh no, no that wasn't through Google. That that's way too expensive. Wow. Go to go. <Laugh> go to domains.google. Okay. you can move it over there. Boy, that's puzzling that somebody's posing out there as a domain registrar. That bothers me. Me too. Yeah. If you go to domains.google, that's the real deal. Not.Com. Just domains.google. Okay. Cause they own.google and then there's a button on the page that says transfer domain. You already own maybe, maybe you should do that. Cuz that's Google does not charge for who is they? Shouldn't yeah. And they don't charge that much. They charge $8 a a year.

Jan (caller) (00:20:37):
Mm. Okay. 

Leo Laporte (00:20:41):
That's something else went on there. It's possible. You do have it registered there. Somebody noticed that sent you a spurious email that looks like it was from Google saying, Hey, you gotta renew time to renew. And then, and then that was a lie. Let's see, here's a.com. It's $12. This is go. Golia sent this to me. And it says there's a check box for $12 for one year privacy protection is on. So whoever's charging you that $20 extra a year is not your friend and not Google.

Leo Laporte (00:21:17):
Wow. Unless, unless you have well, it's a.com. No. you know, you can now it's time for you to do the, who is if you type in, in the Google who is, and your name, one word who is, and you know the name of your website, it will give you the, who is record for your website. Actually it won't will it, you need to still go to a who is site, but you can look up your domain and see what registrar it is. And if it's not Google, it probably is Google. And somebody's just trying to get you extra money out of you, I would guess.

Jan (caller) (00:21:56):
That could be too. Yeah. Yeah. I, I can also cha challenge it with my credit card

Leo Laporte (00:22:04):
Company. Yeah. Well you wanna figure out what it is first, make sure, but it doesn't sound like Google to be honest with you

Jan (caller) (00:22:11):
Boy. But great, great

Leo Laporte (00:22:14):
Info. Thank you. Yeah. Thanks for asking. I'm glad you did. I've had this conversation with Abby before Abby sometimes will say to me, I wanna buy DOJ going. I've mentioned this before dad. I'm ready to, I'm ready to get into crypto. I say, Abby, how's your retirement savings going? <Laugh> she said, what? Retirement savings, Abby, my son too. You know, he's doing quite well. I say you're putting money aside for your old age, cuz guess what? You get old faster than you think. Or maybe you're saving for your kids' college fund or a house. It's fine. It's fine. You know, if you wanna play the market, you know, and be diamond hands and buy stocks. Okay, fine day trading is fun, but it is not a path to wealth building. So, eh, put a little fun money aside. That's fine. But really what you gotta be doing is growing your long term wealth for your future.

Leo Laporte (00:23:11):
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Leo Laporte (00:26:06):
Wealthfront.Com/Tech guy. Now back to the show, it's time to talk cars in automotive technology with Sam bull salmon, principal researcher at guide house insights and host of the wheel bearings podcast, which he just did this morning@wheelbearings.media. Before we get to your segment Sam, I just wanna mention talking to Jan off the air. I think maybe that was a Phish scam Google's domains. If you're getting a.com about 12 bucks a year, including who is privacy. So this 38 bucks for two years and another 20 bucks for domain privacy that ain't Google. So maybe that's a Phish scam or something like that. But Google I always thought Google was domains were among the most inexpensive Google's domains are at domains.google and yes, they do include privacy. So you shouldn't have to pay extra for it. Sam is sitting in front of a beautiful vehicle that Tesla wants to call the cyber truck. <Laugh> hi Sam.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:27:03):
Hi Leo. So yeah, we've probably all seen the Cyber truck at some point or another. Over last couple

Leo Laporte (00:27:10):
Of years, this was the best rollout of product rollout ever, where Elon Musk wants to show that the windows are Bulletproof and drops a bowling ball into it and it goes crash <laugh> smashes.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:27:22):
And then, and then <affirmative> and then just to prove that it was that it really was, they did it again and it smashed again, oh, two windows and

Leo Laporte (00:27:29):
Then the poor guy, and I shouldn't say poor guy, richest man in the world has to stand in front of the broken glass for the rest of his presentation. They apparently really didn't think it would break anyway, that that was a kind of a memorable event.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:27:42):
Yeah. And that was too, just about just over two years. Yeah, just over two years ago that that happened. Yeah. There's there's the video it's actually Franon halau, who's the head of design at Tesla who tossed the, they, their excuse was ball

Leo Laporte (00:27:57):
Bearing. It worked in rehearsal and maybe we weakened the glass after doing it too many times. Oh, Lordy. Lordy. Okay. So the cyber truck is still not out anyway, so

Sam Abuelsamid (00:28:09):
No, and it, it probably won't be for at least another year, probably into early 20, 23. From what we've heard the, the cyber truck is supposed to use Tesla's new, larger 46, 80 lith I on cells. And they are having some difficulties with scaling up production of those. And so they're, they're not ready to build this thing yet. And, and they've also had to do some re-engineering, but the, the, the reason I wanted to talk a little bit about it today is not so much about the Cybert truck specifically, but one of the questions that I offer and hear from people is, you know, you see these really wild looking concept cars at auto shows that, you know, oftentimes really cool looking. And then, you know, a few years later you get a production car and it's like, eh, it doesn't look so much like that concept car did.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:29:02):
There's a few little hints here and there, you, and I wonder, you know, why don't manufacturers build the concepts? And the, some new photos came out this week. Somebody was flying a drone near a Tesla facility in California and spotted what appears to be a new S saber truck prototype. You know, previous, prior to this, we'd only ever seen one example of the S Cybert truck, which was the same one that was at the reveal event two years ago. And that one, when we saw that had no side mirrors had no windshield wipers was missing a lot of stuff that you, you know, kind of need on production vehicles more

Leo Laporte (00:29:45):
Than need are legally required to have.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:29:48):
Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And, and even if it wasn't legally required, you, you definitely need those. You need to able to still windshield wipers. See how does the vehicle yes, yes. And so these, these new photos of this prototype among the more notable features in addition to the addition of the mirrors on the side is a really huge windshield wiper.

Leo Laporte (00:30:11):
Yeah. So one wiper for the whole giant windshield.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:30:14):
Yeah. One big one that stretches all the way up along if you were sitting in the driver's seat, it would be stretching up along the left hand side along the a pillar. And in fact, when you look at look at it from other angles, you can see there's actually two separate wiper blades on there because nobody makes a wiper blade this long <laugh> and, you know, just

Leo Laporte (00:30:35):
So Tesla, they just, nothing like anybody else does. That would be a mistake. Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:30:41):
The, and, and this, you know, this is an example of why, you know, production vehicles often don't look like concepts because a lot of things that designers will do on a concept just don't translate very well to production. Like in the case of the cyber truck, you know, it's got this shape, it looks like a giant stainless steel door stop. And when you look at it in profile, you know, there's basically a straight line that goes from the front edge of the hood all the way up to the peak of the roof. And then it slopes down from there, back to the back. So it looks like a triangle. The, you know, the result is that you have this windshield, you know, most cars, you look at the windshield, the windshield is roughly rectangular. You know, so <affirmative>, it's not as tall as it is white mm-hmm <affirmative> and you typically have two wiper blades, you know, one that's mounted on, on, in the middle and one that's mounted off to one side. You know, so you clears, you know, usually about 80 to 85% of the, the windshield area. Well, because the Cybert truck windshield is basically flat and also square. You need to have a really long windshield wiper blade to sweep all the way across the, we should point out though,

Leo Laporte (00:31:49):
This is a drone photo of a, of a vehicle in the parking lot could very well be it's no more a release version than the prototype was, or the concept was, this is just something else.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:32:01):
Yeah. Well, I mean, it, it looks, and it looks in a lot of ways, very similar to the, the original one that we saw. I mean, there are some other subtle differences. Yeah. But I mean, it

Leo Laporte (00:32:08):
Doesn't mean anything that you're seeing this in the parking lot. Thank you very much

Sam Abuelsamid (00:32:12):
True. <Laugh> but you,

Leo Laporte (00:32:14):
I wouldn't waste a lot of energy on it. Maybe when the cyber truck comes out, then we can say, oh, interesting. Yeah. I

Sam Abuelsamid (00:32:21):
Mean, you know, they've the, the indications from Tesla have been, you know, they will retain most of the the, the design of the original truck, the original vehicle that they showed. And if they do, I mean, this is one of the things that they're gonna have to do, you know, and, and because of the, the proportions of the windshield, you can't really do two wipers like you normally would because they would, they would be, you know, clashing into each other, you know, in order to reach all the way up to the top of the windshield, you need that long wiper arm there. And also the other problem with it here is that the, in the parked position, the wiper blade is up on long, the, a pillar. So it's parked vertically, which means that when you're driving along, you know, normally you already have a bad blind spot at the pillar there, and now it's gonna be even worse because you've got this blade, this wiper arm there, and you can't, you know, again, because they've got this continuous surface from the hood up to the peak of the roof you can't really park it.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:33:20):
There's nowhere to hide it down at the base of the windshield like you do on most cars. And so it's gonna be sticking out there and it's gonna cause a lot of aerodynamic drag, if you parked it horizontally the way you normally would. So th this is the kind of challenge that designers have trying to go from concept to production vehicles. Another example that you often have is you know, you'll see cars on a show stand that have rear hinged back doors and no B pillar, you know, so the so-called suicide doors and, you know, almost never do you see those actually make it to the production version of the car? They always revert back to normal front hinge doors. The reason why they do the concept that way is so they can leave out that B pillar. So you can actually see the interior of the car when it's on the show stand, you know, they wanna show off all the cool stuff they've done inside, but they know they can't actually build it that way and pass the crash requirements.

Leo Laporte (00:34:14):
So really the purpose of a concept vehicle, especially when you see 'em at trade shows is, is to cause buzz, not necess necessarily. Yeah. To say anything about what the final, in fact, many concept vehicles never make it out the door, right?

Sam Abuelsamid (00:34:28):
Oh yeah. Mo most don't although in recent years we've seen fewer of the, the really outlandish concepts and more of what gets labeled as concepts is really just a lightly disguised version of the print option vehicle.

Leo Laporte (00:34:43):
Well, they just tweeted Volkswagen, just tweeted that they're gonna make a camper out of their electric buzz. So I hope that's more than a concept <laugh>

Sam Abuelsamid (00:34:52):
Oh, that's definitely coming. They, they, they confirm that they are gonna build the ID buzz camper. I love that idea. We Don we don't know if the camper version's gonna come to the us market yet, but but gonna be available elsewhere,

Leo Laporte (00:35:02):
They call it the California version. It better come to California. Sam bull, Sam principal, researcher guide, house insights, listen to his podcast. If you love talking about vehicles, wheel bearings, it's wherever you get your favorite podcast wheel bearings. And of course, Sam joins us every week. Thank you, Sam.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:35:19):
Thank you. Leo.

Leo Laporte (00:35:23):
Lisa laughs. At her Chevy bolt. She calls it a clown car cuz the windshield wipers go like this <laugh> yeah. And I guess, I don't know. Maybe that's cuz it's so small. I don't, I I'm sure there's an engineering. Yeah. For,

Sam Abuelsamid (00:35:38):
Yeah. They, the, the bolt and some other cars have the the pivots for the windshield wiper arms at the outer corners. Right. And when, when you do that, you actually get more, more of the windshield area that's swept by the wiper blades. Oh. And that's, that's the other thing too about designed with the yeah. Cuz the

Leo Laporte (00:35:55):
Single wipe on this thing is, is the not gonna, it's gonna be staring out the rainy window.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:35:59):
Yeah. At least at least a quarter maybe close to a third of the windshield wiper isn't or the windshield isn't even gonna be swept by this wiper blade. Yeah. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:36:08):
It's funny. <Laugh> well again, I mean, who knows if this is

Sam Abuelsamid (00:36:13):
Yeah. I mean they may, they may come up with something entirely different, but you know, and the, the, the problem is, you know, you have the challenge of this oddly shaped windshield and how do you keep it

Leo Laporte (00:36:22):
Clean? Yeah. That's the question.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:36:24):
Yeah. So, I mean, there, there isn't really a good solution for this. I'm

Leo Laporte (00:36:27):
Gonna assume it, I may be wrong that the designers of the square windshield realize that this would raise an issue and thought about it. Maybe not.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:36:38):
Oh, I wouldn't necessarily assume <laugh> the designers may have Elon might not have cared.

Leo Laporte (00:36:44):
Yeah. Right. That's part of the problem. God, I'm seeing these all sorts of horrific stuff about full self-driving. 

Sam Abuelsamid (00:36:52):
Yeah. Well, and also I was on T w earlier this week with with Micah talking about the fact that they're you know, they're allowing games to be played on the screen in the car while the car's in motion. So geez. Tesla's had video games in their infotainment system for a number of years now and you know, that's fine. You know, if, if you're putting it there, you know, or Netflix, for example, you know, so while you're sitting at a charging station for half an hour or an hour, you know, you can play some games, you have something to occupy your time. Right. But the, you know, what you don't want is you don't want it to be AC you don't want it to be activated while the vehicle's in motion. Cuz you don't want the driver either playing games or being distracted by passenger Tesla said right. You know, well, it's be, we we're doing it. So the passengers can play except that it's right there in the driver's visibility. And you shouldn't, you shouldn't be doing that while the vehicle's in motion. That's just, that's just bad design. Yes.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:37:48):
I agree. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:37:52):
You gonna do your usual thing flying.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:37:55):
Yeah. I can do that. Do that

Leo Laporte (00:37:56):
Thing you do so well.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:37:59):
All right. So let's see what we had here. Oh, somebody was commenting see, oh, Neander bear says I'm surprised Tesla. Doesn't use blown air for wipers. Like some aircraft aren't there cars that already do that. No, there are not any cars that do that. And actually if you look at aircraft you know, aside from things like fighter jets, if you look at certainly any airliner, they all have windshield wipers you know, really every airliner out there. Yeah. If you, if you look closely, if you get a close up, look at the cockpit area, they have windshield wipers. You know, because the, the problem with blown air especially for a car, maybe a little bit less so for an aircraft is you can blow a lot of the the water off of there. But you know, when you get beyond water, you know, when you, if you get mud spray or if you live somewhere where, you know, you get road salt being used that road salt sticks on air bugs, you're not gonna get splattered bugs off your windshield with with blown air, frankly, most of the time, you're not gonna get it off with a wood show wiper either, but windshield wipers are far more effective than blown air.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:39:09):
One area where we are seeing air being used though is on some of the autonomous vehicles to help minimize the impact of bugs and other debris on sensors. So they're using air, basically air curtains to try to deflect things away from the cameras and other sensors. And then when they do get really dirty, still have a wiper blade to clean 'em off.

Leo Laporte (00:39:31):
Hang on. You wanna be here for the top? Sure. Hang on. <Affirmative> Leo LePort, <laugh> the tech guy, eighty eight eighty eight. Ask Leo the phone number, thanks to outta sync in our chat room for giving me the exact link that I should give. I should have given Jan to do the, who is look up on your domain. So if you have a domain, you wanna make sure if, if you think <laugh> that it's, that it's from Google, that it is from Google and not somebody else. My, my suspicion is she'd registered the domain with Google, but then she got email from a basically a, a scammer who noticed who knew that she had a Google account and and said, well, we're gonna send her what looks to be email from Google saying you owe us money. And I hope Jan didn't pay.

Leo Laporte (00:40:35):
I think she did not. She was concerned. One of I getting as she should have been. So Jan, here's what you do and anybody who needs this, this is a good to know, look up dot I can.org. Remember I said, I can is the internet corporation for assigned names and numbers, ICA n.org. And if you go to lookup, as in, look it up in the phone book dot I can.org, you can enter your do name and you'll get all the information that I can has about your domain name, including the registrar's name. And that's what you want. You want the registrar's name and it should say domains by Google, you know, Google or domains.google domains by Google, if that's the case. Okay, good. Now the good news is you can see if you have privacy, because you'll also get contact information in that lookup, including registrant, admin, technical billing, you know, for an individual that's gonna be well.

Leo Laporte (00:41:32):
And I'll, I'll give you if you wanna try it, I'll give you an example. You can do it for leoville.com, which is my one of my websites, L O V I L L e.com. That's registered at hover. So you should see under registrar two cows, which is the owner of hover as the as the registrar information. But if you look in the contact information, you'll see it says contact privacy incorporated. And there's a reason for that. I, you know, actually it doesn't matter to me because I'm pretty sure I register every domain with my business address anyway, but this is a good example. You'll see. The email is leoville.com at contact privacy.com, which means mail goes to them first and then is forwarded on to me. The phone number is a phone number in Toronto, not mine, obviously theirs mailing address is an address in Toronto cuz that's where contact privacy is.

Leo Laporte (00:42:27):
So that means essentially my personal information is hidden. That's what you generally will want. And Google, according to, you know, domains.google gives you that as part of the price. And Golia just showed me what it would cost to set up a domain at Google right now, a.com domain. It was 12 bucks a year. So she Jan said she was paying 38 bucks for two years. That's not right. And then they wanted an additional $20 for domain privacy. That's definitely not right. That'd be a total of $29 a year for something Google charges, $12 a year. So my suspicion is it's either not Google or she did register it with Google, but now somebody's figured that out and has sent her a spurious email asking for more money. Don't pay it, don't pay it. And what I would do, anybody who has a domain name is look up your domain name, just to see what's public information. Look up.ican.org, eighty eight eighty eight, ask CLEs the phone number Stanley is on the line from bets, Ohio. How is Stanley?

Speaker 5 (00:43:36):
Hello, Leo. Hello? Are you

Leo Laporte (00:43:38):
Stanley welcome.

Speaker 5 (00:43:40):
<Laugh> first of all, I wanna real quick say thanks for all the shows you've done over the years, cuz I've learned a ton and I really appreciate it because we're on the verge of licensing something we've created to ancestry.com real soon. So, and I'm a all self taught.

Leo Laporte (00:43:56):
I hope you're gonna make a ton of money Stanley.

Speaker 5 (00:43:59):
Well, I'll take you off to dinner if that happens.

Leo Laporte (00:44:02):
<Laugh> good luck. That's great. So you're selling, is it a program or con what are you selling?

Speaker 5 (00:44:08):
It's I guess it would be a program, but it's all internet based. Nice

Leo Laporte (00:44:12):
Ancestry. Ancestry wants it. That's great.

Speaker 5 (00:44:16):
They have a great platform for looking back on your lineage and looking back family history, ours looks forward. They don't have anything like that yet.

Leo Laporte (00:44:25):
How could you look forward? That's the future Stanley.

Speaker 5 (00:44:29):
That's right, sir. But we have conquered it, I believe. Oh wow. Not wow. Necessarily looking for predictions. I'm sorry. Is it a

Leo Laporte (00:44:40):
Prediction?

Speaker 5 (00:44:42):
No, no. It's a way to leave message. Oh and messages.

Leo Laporte (00:44:46):
I like that for your, for your descendants. Oh, I love that idea. So if they go to ancestry.com to say, what did grandpa Stanley do? He then say, look, he left me a message.

Speaker 5 (00:44:58):
Exactly. I love

Leo Laporte (00:44:59):
That idea. No wonder ancestry wants to buy it.

Speaker 5 (00:45:04):
Well, I'm sure we I'm sure. Hoping we'll wrap up the loose ends with them real soon. Congratulations. But I was real quick. I a six year old grandson in Dallas, Texas, I'm up here by the great lakes and I've got a message targeted the month and year that he should graduate high school. I hope I'm still here. Aw. I'm not June of 2034. I think it is. He's still gonna get that message from me at what I look like and sound like today. Oh,

Leo Laporte (00:45:31):
Oh. So it's an audio and video message. That's I love that idea. I really like that idea. I think that's so cool. Yep.

Speaker 5 (00:45:38):
Yeah, you can up upload your message right from your smartphone. You can make a message or delete it and do it or whatever. Oh neat. Yeah. We're we're really excited about it, but I, I, again, I don't wanna thank you because just being self-taught I've had to go through a lot of hurdles and learn a lot my own. So I thank you because you're one of the few people I've learned a ton from

Leo Laporte (00:46:01):
Oh, Stanley. You're welcome. I'm thrilled that it's working out. That's great.

Speaker 5 (00:46:06):
Yeah. Thank you sir. Real quick question. I'm got a Dell 24 inch all in one that I love. This has been one of my favorite PCs. I use it in my home. I have a studio on the back end of the home, but I use it in the home, but I'm gonna be swapping out at two one terabyte hard drive for a Dell supplied, two terabyte hard drive. And I'm crossing my fingers. When I ask you this question, Leo, back in the day, I thought I knew that I'm you can't transfer or clone your programs over. Well, this is

Leo Laporte (00:46:40):
A different situation because you're not changing the computer, just changing the drive. So if you were taking it, if you were taking the drive from the old on and putting it in a new computer would be problematic because the new computer has different hardware and different drivers. Oh, but in this case, you, my strong suggestion, in fact, Dell will almost certainly provide you with the program to do that. When you buy a, a hard drive, almost always the company that makes it. And they're only a couple left Western digital Seagate, Toshiba have all been merged together, but, but they will least give you a link to a drive cloning tool. And so the trick on that is to hook up that new drive to the old computer and clone the internal drive out to the external before you put it in. And at that point it should operate exactly the same because you're it's the same computer programs will go with it. Everything will go with it. Nothing's changed. You've just essentially swapped the tablecloth. Oh man, the settings should all be the same.

Speaker 5 (00:47:43):
Yeah. Oh, you've made my day actually my, the rest of my year, cuz I thought I don't have the software at hand on all the programs I use and all that

Leo Laporte (00:47:51):
Stuff. I don't know what Dell does, but my guess is Dell will provide you with software. That'll do the copy and you're right. That's the problem. Now that's one of the reasons I like, you know, let's talk about the future, the modern world, you don't buy DVDs or CDs or floppy discs of your software. You download it. You typically you log into an account at Microsoft or somewhere and you can then download it and install it. And so going to a new computer is not nearly the hardship it used to be. But yeah, if you have a lot of older software that has discs associated or serial numbers associated. Yeah. That's a pain, but this, because you're not moving computers, shouldn't be a problem.

Speaker 5 (00:48:30):
Okay,

Leo Laporte (00:48:30):
Great. Hey Stanley, what is what is, let me call us back when you sell your program so we can tell everybody, I guess if you, if you're an ancestry customer, you'll just be, you'll see it when it comes out. Well,

Speaker 5 (00:48:43):
We, we currently have 30, I think it's 3,700 and some customers just by

Leo Laporte (00:48:48):
One. What's the website.

Speaker 5 (00:48:50):
It is picture yourself, remembered.com.

Leo Laporte (00:48:54):
I love that. Picture yourself. Remembered.Com. Oh, we left out a dash. Did we? Oh, well picture-yourself.com. All right, Sammy, your turn. Now I turn to get a cup of coffee, your turn to take over the tech guy show.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:49:17):
Okay. Sounds good.

Leo Laporte (00:49:19):
You already have your cup of coffee, so that's only fair. That's just water.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:49:22):
Oh, sure. So yeah, in the chat earlier somebody had mentioned, and this is true. Tesla is not the only one that had an issue with video playing on the center screen in some of their cars while the vehicle was in motion. Mercedes-Benz on the new EQs, their new electric vehicle, their electric luxury sedan actually did a announced a recall earlier this week because was a, a software bug in some of them that did allow video to play on the large central screen in the, in the vehicle. And that's not supposed to be the case. So they, they issued a recall to update the software in those vehicles so that that could not happen. There are, I mean, there are some solutions to, you know, to this idea of what Tesla talked about, which is, you know, allowing passengers to play games or, you know, to do other stuff.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:50:22):
And that's to have a separate screen in front of the passenger that is polarized. You know, somebody talked mentioned you know, range rovers had that on, they've had a system on some of their vehicles where the driver and the passenger would see different things on the central touch screen. Earlier this year Jeep launched the new new generation of the grand Cherokee as well as the wagon year. And one of the options you can get in, there is a passenger side screen that's directly in front of the passenger and it's got one of these privacy filters on there. A lot of laptops have these as well that when you get off access basically you can't, you can't see the screen anymore. And so that's what what Jeep has done and, and some other manufacturers are doing at Mercedes also has that on, on the EQs they have a passenger side screen that has that sort of privacy filter on there.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:51:17):
That would be a better solution. You know, the, the other thing that you could also potentially do, which I talked about with Micah on tech news weekly the other day was you know, using a driver monitor system to, you know, make sure that the driver is not looking down at the screen, you know, to, to look, you know, to monitor what the driver is doing and make sure that they are paying attention to the road, which is what they should be doing that you know, that's a solution that, that could work. It's better to just not have that ability at all in the central screen, you know, have it, have it off for screens for the passengers, but not allow it at all for the central screen because, you know, if it's there you know, it can distract the driver let's see, user 39 90 in regards to the batteries for electric cars, it would be think to know how many times they, you can charge, recharge, discharge the batteries.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:52:12):
It would also be interesting to know what four GM Tesla do with the batteries once they reach end of life. I hear very little about that. So with current generation EV batteries there, there's different battery chemistries, you know, there's different vari different flavors of lithium ion batteries. The most ones used in EVs most EVs today, especially longer range EVs are nickel, nickel based chemistries. So it's usually a combination of nickel, manganese, cobalt, aluminum you know, or maybe just nickel, cobalt and aluminum. And these have pretty good energy density. The, but they're good for about maybe about 800 charge cycles and just as with your cell phone or, you know, any other battery you know, that would be a full charge, full charge and discharge from zero to a hundred percent in back. So if you do a partial discharge, if you go from 75 down to 50% and charge it back up to 75%, you know, that would only be a quarter of a charge cycle.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:53:15):
So generally, you know, the batteries should be good for a, at least eight to 10 years before the, the the capacity degrades to the point where it's not, it starts to become less useful for a vehicle. There's also other chemistries like lithium iron phosphate, which is more stable and has much higher cycle life can easily go well over 2000 charge cycles. And when we've heard Elon Musk talk about the in mile battery for vehicles, that's what he's actually talking about is, is iron phosphate batteries, lithium iron phosphate chemistries. The problem with iron phosphate, they're cheaper. They save about 30 to 40% relative to a nickel chemistry. But they also have about 30 to 40% less energy density. So you don't get as much range. So you're not gonna get 300 5400 aisle ranges with iron batteries like you will with nickel chemistries.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:54:10):
As far as end of life goes or even after they reach the end of their life in the car, you know, once the ch typically once the initial capacity drops to about seven or once the capacity drops to about 70% of its initial capacity. So, you know, let's say you know, if you had a 300 mile range initially, and it drops to about 200 to 210 miles or less, that's where it's generally considered, you know, mostly end of life, you know, for, for use in the vehicle, but it can still have a long lifespan in second life applications. And this is where the, they take the battery out of the vehicle and use it for stationary storage, for example. And this is something we're seeing a lot more of for DC fast charging stations, as an example because of the way electricity is charged for commercial customers, which is different from residential customers.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:55:05):
They they have what they call demand charges. And so if you go over a certain power demand, you know, at any given time, so say you're rated for a hundred kilowats and you, your power demand spikes up to 150 kilowats the utility will charge that commercial customer, a hefty premium what they call demand charges, because they have to build in capacity, extra capacity for that, those peaks that which don't get used very often. And so what they're increasingly doing for fast charging stations, EV fast charging stations is putting in batteries that they can charge asynchronously from charging the cars. And then when they have those peaks of demand, when the car is plugged in and, and needs that really high power, they can take it from the battery instead of from the grid. So that helps balance the grid.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:55:58):
It helps reduce the costs for the station charging station operator so that, and, you know, there's a lot of other use cases for stationary storage, you know, for backing up. So solar facilities, you know, to take store energy during the day when the solar panels are generating power and then Le leaving letting it back out during the night, or, you know, same thing for wind and other renewables. And then finally there's recycling. Every automaker is involved heavily in developing battery recycling, working with a lot of partners Redwood materials as a chem, as a company started by former Tesla CTO, JB stra they're working with Ford and, and others on battery recycling. And so they're, they're recycling processes that can recover about 95% of the key raw materials. The things I mentioned before, like Nick nickel, manganese cobalt, aluminum from batteries that are end of life that no longer have enough capacity to be useful, but now you can take those and, and recycle them, get those key materials out of them and put that into new battery again. So now you don't have to mine ver you don't have to mine as much of the Virgin material and process that you can reuse that. Now we haven't been able to do much of either second life or recycling up until now, because there simply haven't been enough batteries in the field to do that. But as we get more and more EVs in the road that reach the end of their life, now you'll have enough skin else to make those

Leo Laporte (00:57:24):
Practices. It's such good news that the Maki is such a success. How wonderful that is. I'm very happy.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:57:30):
The pumping capacity from 60,000 a year up to 200,

Leo Laporte (00:57:34):
200 a year. Yeah, I'm I'm right. I'm driving Lisa's Cooper today mini today because she wanted to drive my Mustang in the rain and I don't blame her. Thank you, Sam. Well, Hey, Hey. Hey, how are you today? Leo LePort here, the tech guy, time to talk computers, the internet, home theater, digital photography, smart phones, smart watches, all that jazz. You know, all the stuff we live with every day. It's kind of funny because here it is the most complicated device in whole life used to be probably your, your car was the most complicated thing in your life. Now, I would say, you know, the kind of the computing devices, and actually guess you have to include your car now because a car is a computer plus the car <laugh>, these are really kind of the peak of technological innovation. It's amazing what these these little boxes we have on our desks and these little slabs we have in our pockets can do.

Leo Laporte (00:58:34):
So that's what we talk about in this show. Eighty eight, eighty eight ask Leo's the phone number? It's nice. You know, I've been covering, I've been doing this since the, as I was talking about last hour, the early I nineties. So it'll be 30 years is that right? Yeah. 30 years been talking about computers and and, and now of course computers means more than it did then. It's nice. I could still be in awe of, of what we've accomplished. And I guess that's because we keep in vague in so many interesting ways. 88, 88, ask Leo, let, let's talk about tech. Don's next? Southgate, California. Hi, Don. Hello, DOD. Don come to the phone, you know, it's very quiet. Don is very quiet. So I'm gonna try, let me put Don on hold and go to Corll in Los Angeles. Hi, Corll hi. There we go. Hi, Corll. Hi, what's

Speaker 6 (00:59:38):
Up? Okay. I install Arlo camera, security, cameras, battery, and wireless. Okay. And have a house, large property. So to, towards the rear of the lot, they popped in a TP link access point. Cool. Yeah. Okay. Then next to their that's where the garage is. So the,

Leo Laporte (01:00:08):
So the thinking is it's so far away from your house that WiFi's not gonna reach out there. So they're extending it using the TP, like, is that plugged into power?

Speaker 6 (01:00:18):
It's Poe power.

Leo Laporte (01:00:20):
Yes. Okay. So it's well Poe, but the, the, the TP link. So TP link makes a variety of devices it's powered. But my question is, where is it? Its internet come from? Does it come from wifi or does it come from, is it an extender? Is that what they put

Speaker 6 (01:00:35):
In? It's an extender. Cause they all, they also have a TP call it an but the power antenna that goes,

Leo Laporte (01:00:46):
So this is a little confusing. So it's connected to your ethernet though, right? Yeah. But the ethernet is only connected to power, not to your internet.

Speaker 6 (01:00:56):
That's connected to the internet.

Leo Laporte (01:00:59):
Oh, it is. So it's a powered. So it's connected to powered internet router with Poe on it.

Speaker 6 (01:01:06):
Right. But that's in the main house. That's

Leo Laporte (01:01:09):
Fine. And so you've got a, you've got a big, long ethernet wire going out to that TP link.

Speaker 6 (01:01:16):
Yeah. Okay. Now they, they next to the, this office, which is part of the garage. They have a Kaban and if you sit at the Kaban with the computer, you could see an exterior antenna that has a cat five cable going okay. Underground all the way to the house. Yeah. So when I'm trying to hook up the Arlo cameras, the the cameras won't hook up to the system.

Leo Laporte (01:01:52):
Ah, all right. So just to make sure I've, I've got this

Speaker 6 (01:01:58):
Yeah. It gets a little confusing. Yeah. No, I think I have

Leo Laporte (01:02:00):
It though. You have a Poe TP link extend, which is closer to the Arlo and it has wifi. It's a wifi antenna, but it's getting its internet through your ethernet. That's how it's getting power and internet. Yeah. And so the Arlo should be able to see it. How far away from the Arlo is it?

Speaker 6 (01:02:19):
The, well, this is inside

Leo Laporte (01:02:22):
That it's like within a hundred feet. Okay. Well, it's a little distant. It be, it may be, it's possible. There's two possibilities. The Arlo, because you know, these are inexpensive devices may not have the best wifi radios. It may just be beyond the Arlo's capability to pick up a signal. That's one possibility. The other possibility is very common with internet of things, devices like the Arlo. They often don't work on five gigahertz. They only work on 2.4 gigahertz. Right. And I'm gonna bet that whoever set this up, you have one name for your wifi network, right? You don't have one that says two point 4g and two and 5g. You have just one name. No. Right. So what that means is there are devices, there are radios on both frequencies with the same name and the Arlo may be saying, ah, I'm gonna join this. And if it says I can it's 5g. So that's the other possibility. And this is not unusual.

Speaker 6 (01:03:23):
It is 5g.

Leo Laporte (01:03:25):
The, the Arlo is not, no,

Speaker 6 (01:03:27):
The Arlo is not. The

Leo Laporte (01:03:29):
Arlo Arlo wants 2.4. So what I do in, in a similar situation, I have ubiquity Poe wifi access points in my garage. I, I, I tell that only send out 2.4 gigahertz. It's just gonna confuse the cameras when there's five gigahertz. So if your, if your TP, is it the TP link used for anything else? Is it also used for the pool area?

Speaker 6 (01:03:55):
The no. That's only used for the office.

Leo Laporte (01:03:59):
They have. So the TP link is intended for the RLO and nothing else. Pardon me? The TP link is intended for the RLO and nothing else.

Speaker 6 (01:04:07):
No, no, no. For the computer, that's an office too. Like, like a, a separate office. So it's used for the person that's in the office or computer system.

Leo Laporte (01:04:18):
So one thing then one, what you could probably do. In fact, I would suggest doing this is check in the TP link settings. You probably can turn off the 5g radio, turn that off temporarily and pair the Arlo to it. The other, the other problem with 5g, even if the Arlo can do 5g, it doesn't travel as well. And since a hundred feet is right at the edge. It, even if it could see 5g couldn't could use 5g. Couldn't see it. So turn off 5g on the on the TP link. So it's only right now, temporarily 2.4, then try to get the Arlo onto it at that point, if the Arlo joins it and it's working, you can turn the 5g back on the Arlo. Won't switch frequencies.

Speaker 6 (01:05:01):
Yeah. Okay.

Leo Laporte (01:05:02):
Does that make sense?

Speaker 6 (01:05:03):
Yeah. It gets super, super complicated.

Leo Laporte (01:05:07):
Yeah, I understand. But I, but I kind of get what you're doing. It's actually smart way to do it. The only there there's two, again, there's two reasons. The RLO may not be able to see the wifi one is its distance. The other is its bandwidth. It's it's frequency. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> so check the frequency first. That's an easy thing to set. TP link will have a setting in there to turn off the five gigahertz radio. It should all work. If it doesn't. Now it may be just that it's distant. You could try moving the repositioning, the TP link, moving it higher, moving it close to a window. Different things, because radio is weird. You're a hundred feet. Yeah. Nominally 2.4 gigahertz. Wifi should go 150 feet, but that's nominal, you know, there's issues. There's stuff in the way. Maybe the, the walls can be a problem.

Leo Laporte (01:05:50):
So you can just, you don't have to extend something farther out. You might just be able to reposition the TP link and get the working. But first I'd try the, the frequencies. Okay. Nice to talk to you, corre. That's a nice setup. You got there. Is this your place? No. it's a client's house. Sounds like a movie star in Brentwood or something are talking about here. No, no names. ADE Pasadena. Well, Anna, right? Yeah. One of the older homes, but it, it, it's a nice home. Sounds very nice. Yeah. Give, give that a try. Yeah. And of course those movie stars, they're tough clients, you know, <laugh>, they just, it's not working. <Laugh> eighty eight eighty eight to ask Leo the phone number, but I'm glad to help. I'm glad to help. Radio is weird. RF guy in our chat room says radio's weird.

Leo Laporte (01:06:44):
Yes. RF guy, you know that radio frequency, he's obviously an engineer. Radio frequency is voodoo. And you know, sometimes you know that if you're old enough to remember rabbit ear antennas, you know, you remember standing on one leg holding the rabbit ear sideways so that the TV reception's. Okay. You remember doing that? Moving around, putting tin foil on the rabbit ears, kids are going, what is he, what Rabbiters are you talking about? Well, kids <laugh> no. Okay. In the old days, you're you used to have these in antennas on your TV that they call 'em Rabbiters cuz they had two rods sticking out, looked like a little, you know, Oswald mouse, Oswald, and they would be long and then you'd move 'em around until you got the right, you know, reception. And if the, I love Lucy was coming in funny, you'd move it around.

Leo Laporte (01:07:38):
Sometimes you'd stay in on one leg. You move very famous story of Steve WAAC the founder of apple computer and a kind of prankster in his own, right in college, you know, back in the day, that's exactly how the college TV and the basement worked. They had rabbit ears and he had a little DT tuner. He had built to keep his, his pocket with a little knob that would, would change the frequency, we'd mess with it. And so he would get one of his frat brothers to go over there and get the antenna and he'd wait till the frat brother was in the most awkward position possible and then tune it in. So it's perfect picture <laugh> if the frat brother put his foot down, tune it out again. <Laugh> so his poor frat brothers were standing in contorted positions holding the, an antenna just so they could watch raw hide.

Leo Laporte (01:08:27):
And, and they're in Lizza tail eighty eight, eighty eight. Ask Leo the phone number. That's that's how you old man, we could talk high tech, Leo Laport, the tech, have you watched the the what is it? Eight hours of the Beatles get back on Disney plus it's fun. One of the things I love about it and of course I'm a Beatles fan. Peter Jackson, the, the the director guy who did the Hobbit and Lord of the rings took I think it was 60 hours of film that was shot hundreds of hours of audio that was recorded of the Beatles planning, you know, to make their album, let it be and, and, and record their concert and make a documentary. And this has never, before been seen, he edited it all together. Upscaled it be beautifully, really looks amazing in 4k. Like you're there, but one of the things that's really cool is watching them from beginning to end write this song.

Leo Laporte (01:09:27):
It's fascinating. You know, you hear the first chords you go. I <laugh>, I think I know what they're writing. Same thing with, let it be, I think I know what Paul's coming up with here. Very cool. Very cool. 88. It's amazing. You know, I'm thinking what it made me think of is of course they were the Beatles. This is 1969. And because they were the Beatles, every move was recorded and photographed, but nowadays that's true for everybody. 50, 50 years later, every you go, everything you do, every little breath you take is is recorded somewhere and being safe for posterity. You could in theory, do the same kind of documentary for anybody in 50 years. Oh yeah, we got all his Instagram reels and tweets. We could put together a heck of a heck of a document. Pretty wild, pretty wild, eighty eight, eighty eight. Ask Leo the phone number back to the phones. We go coming up, Chris Markot photo guy, by the way in just 10 minutes, Don. Let's see if we can get him on the air from south. Get, I think you were muted. Don, are you unmuted?

Speaker 7 (01:10:33):
Yeah. I'm I'm Hey, you hear me? Yeah. Oh, perfect. Yay. You know, I get these, these photographs on my screen saver that I don't know where they came from. And at times some, some look like advertisements.

Leo Laporte (01:10:50):
Oh, that's not good. Now let me ask a question. First of all, windows are Mac windows, windows, and the screensaver using came from where?

Speaker 7 (01:11:00):
From my personal photos.

Leo Laporte (01:11:03):
But it's a, it's the, it's the screen saver that came with windows. It's windows 10.

Speaker 7 (01:11:08):
Yes. Yes. It

Leo Laporte (01:11:09):
Came with windows. It's not a third party screen saver.

Speaker 7 (01:11:12):
No, no, it's not.

Leo Laporte (01:11:13):
Okay. I am not I have never used the screen saver on windows, so I'm not sure, but I'm I'm thinking that when you open it up, you get to choose where those photos come from. Yes, yes. And are, and you're choosing a folder.

Speaker 7 (01:11:33):
Yes. Correct.

Leo Laporte (01:11:35):
Okay. So the folder is your picture folder, right? Right. Yeah. So how would anybody else's pictures get in there?

Speaker 7 (01:11:45):
That's what I wanted. <Laugh>

Leo Laporte (01:11:47):
Have you looked in the folder to see if they're in the folder? Yes. And are they no. No. Well now you got me mic, although you never know with Microsoft, it could be, they are in fact, including <laugh>, including what kind of pictures are you getting? 

Speaker 7 (01:12:09):
I'm getting pictures of other people. Some like it looked like an advertisement for it. Cookie or something or <laugh> Andy.

Leo Laporte (01:12:18):
Oh man. All right. First of all I wanna make sure you're using the one that came with windows. You're not, you didn't download and install somebody else's screensaver. No,

Speaker 7 (01:12:29):
For sure. So I'm using for sure. I'm using windows 11 too.

Leo Laporte (01:12:33):
Oh, well, okay. <Laugh> boy, I wish I had a windows 11 machine machine in front of me. That's my, my bad. I am thinking it's, you know, I use as an example, I use for my wallpaper, the Bing wallpaper, which gives me a new wonderful Bing photo every day, but that doesn't have any ads for keys in that <laugh> so I don't think, I don't think that's where that's coming from. It should only be, I think that means probably that you've got some ad wear on your system. That's smart enough to say let's put it in the screensaver, which is actually, I gotta give 'em credit. That's that's pretty clever. <Laugh> you shouldn't be you getting anything that's. Other than those, the photos that you took in that folder, as long as you're using the official windows 11 screen saver, and it's pointed to that folder and in, when you look in the folder, there's no ads for cookies in that folder. So that means something else is running on your system. And actually is now a little bit more cost for concern. I don't know enough about how Microsoft does that screensaver if it's using and it may well be, if it's using the edge browsers libraries to render it, it could be your browsers been hijacked. So I would look first in your browser. Do you use edge as your default browser?

Speaker 7 (01:13:58):
No. I use Google.

Leo Laporte (01:13:59):
Google, Google Chrome. Well, look both in edge, open edge. It's there. Even if you don't use it and Google Chrome, ignore all the requests from edge to please make me your browser. They hate, they hate it when you use Chrome. And I would check and see that you don't have any extensions installed in either browser that look strange to you. That's not something you specifically want. That's the number one way that that could happen. The number two way is just simply with something that was installed. And it's not unusual. If you go to a free software site, they'll put up these check boxes and say, you want this and this and this and you just go, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. So look in a remove programs and make sure that you don't have something else installed too. Leo Laport, the tech guy. Yeah. I it's almost certain. You've got some other thing running. The only question is where it's kind. Ah, yeah. So is

Speaker 7 (01:14:55):
There another, is there another 

Leo Laporte (01:14:58):
Screensaver I could do? Oh gosh. Yeah. There's a whole lot of them. But I want, and, and I'm certainly gonna encourage you to try another one, but I first fix this problem because it could be a sign of a larger problem. Okay. so you definitely wanna figure out, go to ad remove programs and just check that you don't have anything that, you know, that says like super duper ad software <laugh> in there. <Laugh> and, and then if it's not there, you might wanna check in your browsers just to make sure there's no browser extension. The only reason I mentioned that is I know it's not a browser, but sometimes windows, you will use the edge rendering machine to render images. And I'm not sure it's not not doing that as for windows 10 third party screensavers. There's a, a million of them. There's even a open source. One that every, that everybody seems to really like a lot. It just depends what you want. My favorite is called electric sheep. Depends. What do you like in a screen saver?

Speaker 7 (01:16:02):
I like to have my pictures displayed.

Leo Laporte (01:16:04):
Oh yeah. You want sorry. Nevermind. Cuz electric sheep. Doesn't do that. It's more like psychedelia. I love it though. Let me see for a windows photo <affirmative> yeah, your pictures. Yeah. You know what? You should fix this, this that's all you should need. It's already built into windows. We gotta fix this anyway. Cuz we wanna make sure we get rid of whatever that is cuz who knows what else it's doing. Yeah. Right, right. So don't download an anti SP tool. I, I think you can just do this yourself. Just it'll it'll either it'll it'll it won't be malware. It will be adware installed either as a standalone program or as an extension. And it might even be look at the screensaver settings and make sure it could, it's PO completely possible by the way, for a program to install new screens savers on your system and make it the default.

Leo Laporte (01:16:59):
Wow. And it's possible that instead of using the windows you know, provided your photos screensaver, you're using the Mrs. Fields, cookie screensaver. <Laugh> that is, that is leaving your photos with cookie advertisements. So look, that's another place to look is in the screensaver settings and make sure you're using the official windows one, not some other one that may also have been installed by due to ever download free or shareware programs from places like softed or download com. Yes. Yeah. So you gotta really be careful cuz you'll see that downloads.com for instance will encourage you to download their downloader. They'll pop up a lot of windows that says, oh, would you like this tool and that tool and that, and you have to really carefully say, no, these are dark patterns. They kind of, you know, think you're just gonna say, okay. Okay. Okay. And then they'll install stuff and they may have installed the Mrs.

Leo Laporte (01:17:52):
Fields' cookie screen saver. I don't think it's mad where it's malware. It's just adware. Okay. So check those three places. Browser extensions should always check those anyway. Ad remove programs. And now come to think of it. Check the screensaver control panel. Make sure you're actually using the official windows. Screensaver, not something else. Got it. Okay. One of those will surely fix the problem. I'm convinced. I know it will. Our tech eye show brought to you this week by user way, big fan, as you know of user way, because well, I've been really sensitized to this issue of accessibility doing the radio show for you years. A lot of we have a lot of blind listeners. They love radio cuz it's accessible, right? But then they go on the internet, they visit maybe your website and suddenly they can't see it. They can't there's empty places where pictures are they?

Leo Laporte (01:18:46):
The nav menus are in unintelligible. The and, and the thing maybe if you want to, they wanna buy something. The shopping cart, the forms, they can't use those. That's why user way is so important. User way wants to make every website in the world without exception accessible. In fact, that's the law Domino's pizza found that out when they said, oh, we don't have to make our website accessible. We got a phone number. Just call the number. We'll get you a pizza. Fought that one all the way to the Supreme court, the Supreme court. What do they rule? They said, no, that's called separate but equal. That's not okay. As a public entity, you have to be accessible. That's the Americans with disabilities act, the ADA Domino's set up, took notice remediated their site. Now everybody in the world, certainly in the us is making sure their sites are accessible.

Leo Laporte (01:19:37):
It's a federal law. It's a little challenging. If you own a website, you might go, ah, gosh, how much that's gonna cost? Well, let me tell you about user way. They have an incredible AI powered solution that tirelessly enforces the hundreds of web content, accessibility guidelines with one line of JavaScript. That's all you put one line in. Of course it pulls in other JavaScript, but that one line in your site fixes your whole website. It can achieve more than an entire team of developers and it does it all automatically using AI machine learning user way is used by over a million websites, including some of the biggest websites in the world. Coca-Cola Disney, eBay, FedEx, Walmart, all use user way to make their sites accessible to the 60 million Americans with disabilities. It's not just the right thing to do. It's the law now user way is making those best in class enterprise level accessibility tools available to small and medium sized businesses.

Leo Laporte (01:20:35):
And of course the beauty is when you scale, as you get bigger, don't worry user way can scale with you. If they can do it for Disney, they can do it for you and accessible and compliant website. Not to just the right thing to do. It also makes business sense. Cuz those people wanna be your customers. You know, you're turning away customers user way automatically generates image. Alt tags writes the image descriptions for you using their computer vision. It'll remediate complex nav menus so that people who use the screen reader or a other kind of accessibility tools can, can navigate your site. It'll ensures all the popups are accessible. It fixes vague link file license fixes, any broken links makes it possible for your users to customize your site. See every browser has this accessibility layer screen reduce, use it and other tools user way, make sure that accessibility layer has all the information in it needs. And you'll get a detailed report of all the violations that were fixed on your website. Simple to use. It works everywhere. Wordpress Shopify, wick, AEM site, core SharePoint, even on custom sites, cuz it's just that line of JavaScript in there. Tell you what go to user way.org, check out their free scanning tool to see if your website is ADA compliant. I, it may be if it is kudos, if it's not well, listen to Susan Bennett. The voice of Siri

Speaker 8 (01:21:58):
User way is trusted by more than 1 million websites and 60 million users with disabilities visit user way.org to learn how one line of code can make your website accessible

Leo Laporte (01:22:12):
User way can make any website fully accessible. ADA compliant with user way. Everyone who visits your site can browse seamlessly, customize it to fit their needs. It's great way to showcase your brand's commitment to millions of people with disabilities. Go to user way.org/twi. Right now it's very for to begin with and we're gonna add an even better deal. 30% off their AI powered accessibility solution user way, making the internet accessible for everyone. That is a mission I can get behind user way.org/twi. Let me thank of so much for supporting the tech I show. And now back to the tech. Okay. <Laugh> you have to look it's time for the photo guy. Chris Martz. Here he is my photo sensei@senseidotphotosensei.photo. He's also a very accomplished photographer. And as it turns out, our particular coach on this show. Hello Chris?

Chris Marquardt (01:23:16):
Hi Leo.

Leo Laporte (01:23:17):
You are, you are an always an inspiration to get me out there taking pictures. I, I owe my expensive habit. It all to you.

Chris Marquardt (01:23:26):
<Laugh> it's all my fault. Well do you go out at days like this? You, you told me earlier, it's kind of radio

Leo Laporte (01:23:34):
Bit of a

Chris Marquardt (01:23:34):
Gray rainy, not so nice thing. We have the exact same thing today here. So yeah, gray days. It's, it's one of those, it's one of those situations where you don't feel like going out and shooting, but interestingly enough, that's where it kind of begins becoming interesting. So this,

Leo Laporte (01:23:54):
I might just stay inside, take picture my Lego figures if that's okay.

Chris Marquardt (01:23:59):
Well, it it's nothing wrong with that, but this, this, the inspiration for, for what I wanna talk about today comes from real life events, cuz we've been out for a walk today and it has been one of these days where you go don't you

Leo Laporte (01:24:13):
Worry about your your phone or it is not pouring it's it's just gray.

Chris Marquardt (01:24:17):
It wasn't pouring it. Wasn't pour. It was just gray and a bit Misty and cold and wintery and well Northern hemisphere weather in December. Yeah. So and I, and I did take my phone to take pictures. I wasn't brave enough to bring, well, the camera didn't wouldn't really have suffered, but I was, it was like, yeah, it doesn't feel like it. And then I saw interesting things and and it gave me the idea to talk about shooting at gray A's with whatever camera you have and the, a few things that you want to maybe look out for a few ideas how to pick that into something interesting. And, and the, the first thing that comes to mind is a, a gray day like this, you have a severe lack of contrast. Everything is gonna gray. Everything is dull. This sky is boring, but that whole thing can actually be great because it places a bit of a limitation on you and makes you, makes you think a bit harder, makes you try a bit harder to do things.

Chris Marquardt (01:25:18):
So Misty foggy days there was a bit of that today. And a few of the examples I have are just like wonderful look for the light. That's always good. The, the mist will simplify things, visually simplify things. It'll take out the background view of interesting life coming in, maybe through a few branches the forest, I, I was, we, we did the walk today in the forest, so that's why I was reminded of that. Just, just, just be aware that the, the Misty weather will take away some part of the background, so it will simplify the scene. And that's what we photographers usually strive for. We wanna simplify things. We wanna take clutter out of a picture. So in that case nature does it for us. Ooh, these are so pretty.

Leo Laporte (01:26:07):
It also people who are not seeing the video, of course, it's a radio show will put a link to all of these@techguylabs.com. Cause some of these are just, it just shows you, you can get great photos on a gray day.

Chris Marquardt (01:26:19):
Exactly. Here, here, we're looking at a, at a, at a scene with trees and, and a foggy background and a person standing there. It's a, it's a bit of a silhouette situation. It add a

Leo Laporte (01:26:31):
Mystery to it. It makes it, it makes it kind of, if there's more of a story here,

Chris Marquardt (01:26:37):
It, it, it is. And it simplifies the whole scene. That's I think the, the main point for me and as soon as you start hiding things as with things in the dark or in the MIS you add mystery and that, as you said, is it, it adds a story and that makes makes it important or, or it makes it forces people to come up with a story in their mind. Another thing you can do with these kind of scenes, you know, they, they tend to go a bit monochro, there might be a colorful, but you end up with, well, it's not colorful. It's great. That's why we call it a gray day is playing with colors. So play with white balance, add a bit of blue tint to the photo by going towards that cool side of the, of the white balance or, or give it a greenish tint or something that it, that that's a, that's a great opportunity to play because you have a simplified color palette as well.

Chris Marquardt (01:27:32):
And, and adding some color there just by playing with these sliders in post processing or in your, in your photos app it's fun. It's fun to play. It's, it's a lot of fun to play. The other thing is it's winter. So there might be snow, which again, which simplifies the landscape even more, cuz it covers up all the detail on the ground with a white sheet. The, a great thing that you can do then is just find a strong subject, a, a big tree, for example, like in this picture that will we'll stand doubt because there's nothing really distracting from it, cuz the rest is just simplified again. Here's, here's an example. I love this. Someone just, just went to a forest shot upwards through the trees and there's birds in that hole in the sky. So even, even though the sky is not that interesting on a great day like this there is an interesting subject and adding color again, this is, this photo here has a, has a warmish touch, which is kind of counterintuitive. Cuz you would think it's cold, it's gray. You might want this a bit more bluish, but this gives it an interesting twist. I think I like this a lot. It's really neat. You know, this

Leo Laporte (01:28:49):
Is, this is inspiring because people sometimes look out the window go, well, there's no nothing to no photos to be taken today and it's quite the option. Yeah.

Chris Marquardt (01:28:59):
Right. And, and again, and, and it's, it's not even, it's not even a bad thing. If you have a lot of space left over in the photo, look at this, you can

Leo Laporte (01:29:06):
Hardly see anything

Chris Marquardt (01:29:07):
<Laugh> you, you see a building with a reflections, so there must be some water there, but then half of the pictures empty, just imagine making that into a greeting card and using that space on left to just put some copy on some greetings or something. I mean, that's, that's just it, this is an idea that that gets interesting. And if you have a, a really boring sky, leave it out, leave it out. Don't even show it just point the camera downwards at some details. And that's the next thing on a gray day, you might wanna look at a things in, in, in, in, on a more detailed level. Here's a, here's one of those beautiful shots where I think someone shot this through a windshield. So you have all these water drops on a windshield. Early in the morning, the car is covered in these drops and the camera focuses on the drops, but then there's something like a tree behind it, which change is the whole dynamics in this picture.

Chris Marquardt (01:30:04):
Turns into a bit of a mosaic kind of thing which is beautiful. Oracle will going really close. That might be a great day, but it there's, there's spiderwebs out there. If you're up early, if you're an early bird, that's a great opportunity to find to find spider or branches with drops of water morning due, hanging off of them. So those details are plenty of fun. And then last but not least, of course, why not go abstract a great day will allow you to work with like just, just moving the camera with a, with a longer shutter speed, getting some outer focus, getting some camera shaking there deliberately and just see what comes out. So that's just a few of the examples of the things that you can do with gray days and, and become oh really, really interesting. I really, really

Leo Laporte (01:30:59):
Like 'em so here's the thing you, you know, you're listening on the Ray radio. I suggest you go to tech guy labs.com. No charge, no sign up. We'll put a link there to all the pictures he's talking about now re-listen <laugh> to Chris's segment looking at them cuz there's so they're so beautiful and there's a lot of inspiration there. Maybe inspiration enough to get out and participate in our photo assignment, right?

Chris Marquardt (01:31:22):
The Laz sign,

Leo Laporte (01:31:24):
Don't be lazy. Take a picture that illustrates the word or concept lazy. This is actually if it's a gloomy day where you are a perfect day to do that at least the kind of lazy I am go go take that image if you like it upload it to our flicker group. Flicker.Com is a photo sharing site. Our group is called the tech eye group group. You can do one picture a week in a couple of weeks. Chris will will pick three to talk about. It's just an excuse to get out and take some pictures. Thank you, Chris sense. Thank you. Dot photo is his website S a N S E i.photo. And of course his podcast tips from the top floor@tfttf.com. Leo Laport, the tech guy. Perfect timing. Perfect timing. Oh, are you here next week?

Chris Marquardt (01:32:15):
Mom?

Leo Laporte (01:32:16):
Lemme check. Cuz it's getting, it's getting the 19th gonna get looked lot like Christmas cuz I won't be here. Okay. You can take the 26th off obviously boxing day who works on boxing day. I know what does and then we will, I will be here on January 2nd.

Chris Marquardt (01:32:35):
I should be here too. Yeah, I all. I'll be here on a second.

Leo Laporte (01:32:40):
We'll see you on the that's not a problem week and then a second.

Chris Marquardt (01:32:45):
Exactly. Perfect. And next week, by the way is the day after the James web telescope launch. Oh I have that

Leo Laporte (01:32:51):
Calendar. That'll be fun. I'm sure. Rod pile will be talking about that next hour and our space segment. Very.

Chris Marquardt (01:33:00):
Oh cool. I'll stay on and listen to <laugh>.

Leo Laporte (01:33:03):
Okay. Thanks Chris. All right, bye. Bye. See you take care. Do do Bobby do do Leo. Leport the tech guy, eighty eight eighty eight. Ask Leo the phone number Ryan on the line from Pittsburgh, PA. Hello Ryan.

Speaker 7 (01:33:20):
Hi Leo. How

Leo Laporte (01:33:21):
Are you? I am great. How are you?

Speaker 7 (01:33:24):
Good. I haven't talked to you since pre COVID, so it's good to talk to you.

Leo Laporte (01:33:27):
<Laugh> it. There really is now that a demarcation pre COVID and post COVID in the world. It's like absolutely. Yeah. I mean that, that really is a dividing line and we aren't quite post COVID. I I might add, but that the world before March, 2020 was very different. What can we, what can we do for you?

Speaker 7 (01:33:47):
Understood. I have a couple of questions for you. Most of 'em have to do with cell phones. Probably one of the big, the two big questions that I have is number one is my one of my sons is a a dual language major. Oh, nice. Close

Leo Laporte (01:34:00):
To your what

Speaker 7 (01:34:01):
Languages and Spanish and French. Nice. So he will be going to Spain, hopefully knocking on everything. Oh he's he's tried to go twice with school. They both got canceled. He should be going July-ish but my is on cricket. I actually am a MIT mobile customer. Thanks to you. Good. and I, how do you like it? But I love it. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:34:29):
Love it. It's good price, right? Yeah. Thousand

Speaker 7 (01:34:31):
Times better than I thought. Yeah. So yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:34:34):
I think I not, not ideal for international travel cuz one of the things mint mobile, which is an M V N O of T-Mobile T-Mobile is good for travel. In fact, I have a T-Mobile phone specifically for that purpose because they give you bandwidth everywhere you go. Right. My favorite travel carrier

Speaker 7 (01:34:53):
Is this is basically my question.

Leo Laporte (01:34:55):
Yeah. Is Google fi it works best on a phone from Google or one of the, there are a number you can Samsung and Motorola also Makey compatible phones fi is quite clever. It uses well, it used to use sprint and T-Mobile and obviously now that's just T-Mobile and it also uses us cellular and wifi. And so the phone has to be especially built so that it can switch seamlessly, switch from one to the other, but in the us that has the advantage of giving you more towers, which is great. Right. But fi also is good because it's essentially the same price in Europe as it is here, which is a fairly, I think, a fairly reasonable price. The way FYS pricing works is 20 bucks a month for voice and text unlimited. Both now you will pay for international calls, but it's not expensive.

Leo Laporte (01:35:46):
You can look up the price of Spain to the us for instance, and then the $10 per gigabyte, up to six gigabytes. And then it stops. But that's the same internationally. So what, when I travel, I take my pixel six with Google. Fine. I don't even think about where I am. There are a few countries when we were in Monaco a few years ago, it didn't work at the time, but we were so close to France and Italy. That didn't really matter. Eventually now I think MoCo is covered. So they have to make deals with all the carries in those areas. But that's a, I think for, if you want a phone that works in the us and will work the same overseas, Googley is a great way to go. And the pixel six is a great phone for that.

Speaker 7 (01:36:26):
Yeah. I mean, I have to tell you, he is not overly tech savvy. He's had an iPhone for forever. Oh, he wants an iPhone.

Leo Laporte (01:36:34):
It will work with the iPhone, by the way, it will work with the iPhone. Okay. Not his

Speaker 7 (01:36:39):
Four line. Yeah. We have a four line deal with cricket, unlimited a hundred bucks for four phones, as long as you own them. I'm thrilled with that. And he's only gonna be there for three weeks. So I was curious if there was more of like a buy a SIM

Leo Laporte (01:36:50):
Card or yeah. Yeah. And I can give you the, I can give you the other, the old way we used to do it. This has changed my life though, to have Google five, cuz I try as you, I used to, again, BC, I used to travel a lot. And so I didn't have to ever even think about it. I just take my phone and I'm good cricket. I don't know. But I suspect they're an MB of at and T I would guess it's similar even though they're owned and operated by at and T it's similar to mint in the sense that going international, you don't get the same deal as at and T customers get. So you might check to see what cricket offers, but generally, okay. Generally the us carriers are not the most economical way to, if he's gonna be in Spain for a long time.

Leo Laporte (01:37:31):
How long is he gonna be there three weeks? Oh, it's a short trip. Welly would work. You could get a SIM. Let me direct you to a week. That is really the, the best place to go for this, which is called prepaid with data. If you Google that, you'll get to the very long URL, which is prepaid data, SIM card.fandom.com. But it's the prepaid, <laugh> just, just Google prepaid with data. I got you, right? It gives you every country in the world and it tells you who the carriers are, what their costs are in most countries. You like Spain, you arrive at the airport. There is a little kiosk there. Sometimes it's the post office. It just varies in the country's. And this'll give you that information where you just say, good, I want a Spanish SIM. Now the negative is that he's gonna have a Spanish phone number.

Leo Laporte (01:38:21):
And for a short trip, that's a little in inconvenient because you know, you still wanna be in touch. But the, the nice thing now, the other thing that's changed over the years is the EU has new roaming rules. That mean every has to provide the same price in every other EU country. So you could really use any EU SIM, but if you wanted to use and so that's good news. If he's going to Spain and France, for instance, then he doesn't really, he doesn't have to worry. You could use orangs, which is the French carrier or movie star, which is the Spanish carrier. Wouldn't matter.

Speaker 7 (01:38:53):
I, I traveled from work often. I'm I'm with Verizon. So I'm in whenever I'm in Vienna or Slovakia Alava wherever they just flip a switch and it's an extra 10, 15 bucks a month and I'm covered. Yeah. That's not bad when it comes to my, yeah. And when it comes to my family, I just don't know what to do. So that was very helpful. I, I got one more question for you and it's based on Android and the only Androids I've ever used is pixel, which I love. Yep. But my other son uses he's very much in pain. He's kinda like your daughter, he breaks phones a lot. <Laugh> and he's in love with the 

Leo Laporte (01:39:25):
How do you know that about my daughter? Oh, I've mentioned it, but a hundred times, you all the time. My poor daughter <laugh>

Speaker 7 (01:39:32):
So he, he is in love with the Samsung gal, see eight active, but it's starting to get a little long in the tooth. And if you go out there and just Google, like rugged Samsung or rugged Android phones, you'll get about a billion different ones. Yeah. And I don't even know where to begin.

Leo Laporte (01:39:50):
You know, it's funny somebody called yesterday and asked about a phone I'd never heard of it from a Dutch company called Ze <affirmative> and they make a three or $400 super rugged phone. The Zeer P 10, that is drop proof. It's IP 68. It's like crazy probably not a great phone, but a great phone to drop.

Speaker 7 (01:40:13):
Sure.

Leo Laporte (01:40:14):
And a, and a fairly reasonable price. Amazon's I think overcharging for it. I think it's 430 bucks, but if you shop around, I think you can get it down under four, under 300. And I, so he,

Speaker 7 (01:40:26):
I was gonna say he drives for DoorDash for his go job. He's one of those gig economy kids. And, you know, he keeps telling me, I gotta, you know, reboot my phone after every third call or a very, oh gosh, fourth dash, I'm thinking, oh gosh, breathing, your phone's getting long in the tooth. We, we can do better.

Leo Laporte (01:40:42):
The other thing is maybe just get a Samsung galaxy, you know, you get 'em at 10 20, 21 one of the more recent galaxies and just get a really good Otter box case. And I honestly think the Otter box cases are as good as any ruggedized phone. Has he looked at Otter box?

Speaker 7 (01:40:59):
I I'll say this much. I hear what you're saying. I will tell you he's on the spectrum. And he thinks what he thinks. And he likes what he likes. Just

Leo Laporte (01:41:06):
Like my daughter. He doesn't have to have a case. He doesn't wanna case at all. Okay. Does zer is basically a phone with a case built in, I mean, it's it, that's what it is essentially. Exactly what I want. Yeah. Zeer Z E E K E R. I don't know anything about it. It was the first I'd ever heard of it yesterday. The reviews are fairly good. And it's the, and it's designed to be rugged. There's a tech radar review. You could read that says it's not bad. You know, performance. Isn't great. I bet your son doesn't really care about that. No, he doesn't want the FA I mean, if he's using an SA, he doesn't care if it's the fastest phone in the market. Exactly. Yeah. He just wants it to be reliable and drop proof. Exactly. Yeah. I think this would be a good choice.

Leo Laporte (01:41:54):
Just at least give it a try. I think I might get it for Abby next time. <Laugh> I buy her? I, I am able to convince her to wear a case, although she has this thing and I don't think it's true, but she says she swears the cases you give me, press the buttons so that my phone is like always doing something weird, like turning itself up, or it won't work properly. I said, honey, how could that be? People sell these cases. It can't. But she says, no, I swear. So that's a similar issue. So I have to find just the right cases. But I get her, the Motorola G series phones, which I think are very, very good as well. Well, Hey, Hey, Hey. How are you today? Leo? Leport here. The tech guy, time to talk computers, the internet, home theater, digital photography, smartphone, smart watches space.

Leo Laporte (01:42:41):
And a little bit. We're gonna talk with you rod pile Wright about, yes, sir. He's ready. <Laugh> the web telescopes launching in his space. We'll talk about all sorts of stuff that the, the mystery hut on the moon. Not anymore. Not no, no mystery left. Sorry to say. Well, we think coming up, coming up. Yeah. 88, 88 ask Leo. I love it. When rod comes in early, cuz I like to talk space. I just found, I have, I didn't realize in the, in the books that you sent me, one of Rod's books is called blue blueprint for a battle star. I love this. The <laugh> the the space science in some of the sci-fi worm holes, battle stars even has had to build a death planet of your very own. So rod pile coming up in just a little, meanwhile, we'll keep taking your calls, talking about tech eighty eight, eighty eight. Ask Leo the phone number Rob in Riverside, California. You're next. Hi Rob. Hello, Rob. I think Rob is a breather. He's a breather. I'm gonna put Rob on hold and, and let you talk to him. Kim Ben on the line from Escondido, California. Hi Ben. <Laugh>.

Speaker 10 (01:44:05):
Hi, Leo. How are you doing today? I'm

Leo Laporte (01:44:07):
Great. How are you?

Speaker 10 (01:44:09):
I'm well, thank you. Appreciate to call.

Leo Laporte (01:44:12):
Well, maybe Rob fell asleep. You think that was snoring? I bet it was wake up Rob. Anyway, what <laugh> what can I do for you Ben? <Laugh>

Speaker 10 (01:44:21):
I have a Sonology 15, 15 hook to my desktop computer. Me too. And I bought, yeah, I knew you did. Yeah, I have a I just put, purchased a new computer and I want to hook it up to my Sonology, but I'm concerned that I have three external SD drives because I travel a lot with my laptop. And I'm concerned that with the new computer, the drive addresses will wipe out the, for example, CD and E that are existing being no,

Leo Laporte (01:44:55):
No, no, you don't have to worry about that, but let me ask you about generally the way you want to use a Sonology is not hooked directly to a computer, but on your network. That's

Speaker 10 (01:45:06):
How it is. It's hooked through my network. Oh

Leo Laporte (01:45:09):
Good. All right. You can hook it up as a USB drive, but would maybe you would do that when you were first copying everything over just to do that quickly, but generally a Sonology just sits connected to the ethernet connected to your router so that it's available to all the computers. And in that case, it doesn't show up as a CD or E drive. It gets mapped using the network mapping I've, you know, sharing protocols in the case of windows it's SMB and Mac might be using something else, but Mac has its own file system or can use SIFs, which is the kind of the open source file system. But there are a lot of ways of doing it, but in no case, will it interfere with the local drives? You're windows, Mac Linux is smart enough to make a distinction between an shared network drive and a, and a local hard drive. So it shouldn't make any difference at all.

Speaker 10 (01:46:02):
Well, I guess Leo, what I what's happening is I, I have each one of my drives being backed up to the Sonology. So when I go to the, I see backup drive that it Sonology, I get C, D E F and so forth. Yeah. And each one of those are mapped. So if I hook the new computer up, I have a new C

Leo Laporte (01:46:24):
And a new D the new computer will map it as you specify. And it won't allow you to map it to a I'm not, not sure when you say mapping, you don't mean it. Sh do you mean it pops up on your disc, on your desktop as a C drive or that you're backing up your C drive to the Sonology?

Speaker 10 (01:46:45):
I am backing up all of my drive. Yeah, yeah. To the Sonology. Yeah. With a label that's called backup when I go to Sonology and then when I double click on Sonology it says CD F and

Leo Laporte (01:46:59):
G that's, just its own internal. Yeah. And that's probably a, a name you gave it. I don't ever see that because I don't use windows particularly. So for me, all the Sonology names are just names, but in any of that, it should not collide because it's really not C it's something like Sonology calling back slash slash C. It's got a, it's got a ma name. Then the fully qualified name is unique to theology.

Speaker 10 (01:47:28):
Well, if I did connect my existing computer and plug in, no, my

Leo Laporte (01:47:33):
New computer, you don't have to worry. You'd have to, you have to set it up. You may not remember when you had the existing computer and set it up, you set it up to back up to those drives. You will do. You will have to do the same thing with a new computer won't happen automatically.

Speaker 10 (01:47:47):
Right. But when the new computer had as a, for example, a D drive, which has different data than the Sonology D drive, won't that mess it up? 

Leo Laporte (01:47:57):
Well, it depends on what you set up. You can, you can back up to the D drive and it won't erase anything from the D drive. It'll just add to it, which for most people is what you want with a backup. You kind of want, you know, you have so much storage on a, a Sonology. You're not really worried about deleting stuff. So it won't delete anything on theology. Unless you specifically say synchronized deletions, which is not the default and is not what you should say. You wanna keep everything. You never wanna delete anything from this Sonology. So in that case, it'll just say, oh, more stuff for D and copy it over. Or you can give it a new name if you want. You could new computer D

Speaker 10 (01:48:34):
Okay. So the, the three external SD drives that I have plugged in, plugged into my USB port. Now, when I plugged them into the new computer, will they, will they back up the same?

Leo Laporte (01:48:47):
That's different. Of course, those drives will they back up the same? No, you'll have to set it up because though you plug those drives into your new computer, they may or may not have different Le. This is really the, this <laugh>. The real problem here is, is, is Microsoft's. And it goes back to the days of dos naming drive, C D E F G. That's just nuts, no modern operating system, including windows does that, but it cuz Microsoft will never leave anyone out in the cold. They continue to, you know, show those drive letters. That's a little confusing. And I understand your confusion because a C drive on windows on a computer a is not the same as a C drive on computer B. You're asking is the Sonology gonna another difference? Absolutely. Mm-hmm <affirmative> absolutely because the Sonology is not it's Linux. It's not, it's not, it's not going oh, anything with the letter C is the same.

Leo Laporte (01:49:45):
It's not, it knows that's the C drive, the fully qualified name, includes the name of the computer. So it, it it's even if you, in fact, even if you name the computers the same, it wouldn't be because there's a good associated with it and would say, well, this has a unique ID. That is not the same. Must be a different drive. Must be a different volume. They don't even think of it as drives. That's also a legacy <laugh> concepts. So short answer, plug in those external drives to the new computer. When you set up backup on the new computer, you'll have to say back up these drives, you can say back 'em up to the same place. I was backing up the old ones in the Sonology. I would do that. Why not? You already have most of the data on those drives there anyway.

Leo Laporte (01:50:29):
Right? Right. The main thing. And you'd have to really work to change this. The main thing to remember is backup does not synchronize deletions. Now I know that's kind of a complicated thing. Backup means you never delete anything from the backup. You just put more stuff there. That's one of the reason is the Sonology is so huge. It's cuz you never delete anything. What you do not wanna do is synchronize deletion so that if you delete something on the main computer, it deletes it on the Sonology that's ex that is not backup. Now, now that's synchronizing. That's keeping two folders the same. You do not wanna do that. That's the only time when you've risk data loss. Yeah, of course you didn't. Yeah. That's good. I didn't. Yeah. Yeah. So now it's just gonna, it's just gonna sh it's basically you got a big bucket and it's gonna slop everything. It sees into the big bucket. If you use the same name for those external drives, it'll go, oh, I already have that date. I'll just take whatever's different and that's kind of what you want, I think. Yeah.

Speaker 10 (01:51:27):
Yeah. Oh, right. Well thanks Leah. Appreciate it. Listen

Leo Laporte (01:51:30):
To you every weekend. Good. My pleasure. Thank you. Thanks for the call. Yeah. <laugh> this is, you know, this is an example of where you know, Microsoft has as part of its mission statement. I think the, the desire of new, never leaving anybody in the, in the cold, in the dust. And it's like, it's, it's good. It's cuz they have so many business users using XP and maybe even still Ms. Doss, I don't know, but because back in the day of Ms. Doss, a very, very, very, very primitive operating system, they didn't have the, remember you only had eight characters dot three re characters, things like that. They didn't have the capability of, of paying attention to drives by name. It was just by letter and the drive, whatever drive booted on the machine. That's the C drive. Then the next drive it sees is the D drive.

Leo Laporte (01:52:23):
Then the next dive have is the E drive. Remember that? Well, there's no reason for any modern computer to do that. That's nowadays on any modern computer, a drive can be named my big drive, stuffed full of stuff that I don't ever wanna lose.com or whatever you can name anything you want. And that's how it should be. And that's how it is. But Microsoft, you know know then, but what about those poor people still using Ms to us? We gotta make sure they can see it. So they still might, you know, they do show C D E F. That's silly. That's silly. Ah, you're right. Our Chandra very, very picky. He says not. So if you boot it from a floppy disc on a C was still the hard drive. Okay. You're right. I forgot about floppy discs, but you know what Microsoft didn't? No, they sure didn't. If you plugged in a floppy disc, it would still work. How are you today? Mr. Rod Pyle?

Rod Pyle (01:53:21):
I'm good. How are you? Very good. My face looks like a bundled flame. <Laugh>

Leo Laporte (01:53:29):
We'll put you in the flame if you want

Rod Pyle (01:53:31):
Wait homey. Oh yeah, there you go. You know, there's some people that would probably agree with that, that I know.

Leo Laporte (01:53:35):
Put that head, put that head in the burning flame. Yes. You'd be like the wizard of Oz. Just floating there. Pay no attention to the band in the fireplace.

Rod Pyle (01:53:45):
No attention to that. Oh, you'd be like

Leo Laporte (01:53:47):
You'd about the green screen. The ghost of Christmas past.

Rod Pyle (01:53:51):
Oh, somebody's invoking M C on your chat. That must be somebody who remembers

Leo Laporte (01:53:56):
Gomer pile Gomer pile. You're no relation to Gomer.

Rod Pyle (01:54:00):
Oh good.

Leo Laporte (01:54:01):
But growing up you must been hard. Yeah.

Rod Pyle (01:54:04):
Yeah. I mean, I I'm, I, you know, we all have

Leo Laporte (01:54:07):
Issues showing my age. I think of Ernie pile. Thank you.

Rod Pyle (01:54:11):
We

Leo Laporte (01:54:12):
Like Ernie and the author of the Knight of the round table. What was his first name? It was,

Rod Pyle (01:54:20):
Well, it was it was the art, the

Leo Laporte (01:54:23):
Artist. The illustrator was yeah, the illustrator. That was yes. Yeah. Howard Howard pile. Thank you. Fine

Rod Pyle (01:54:29):
Illustrator. And just about the time I got old enough that I'd gotten away from the whole Gomer thing, then full metal jacket comes out with private pile who, you know, wipes out his

Leo Laporte (01:54:39):
Sergeant, at least you weren't named Mayo.

Rod Pyle (01:54:41):
<Laugh> yeah. There's that, but still it's like, you know, I just escaped that then suddenly, now it's like, oh, private Dan. See, I

Leo Laporte (01:54:49):
Think there's all these great illustrious piles like Howard PI and Ernie PI. And instead you get Gomer, it just doesn't seem fair.

Rod Pyle (01:54:57):
Well, it probably had something to do with my disposition as a young man growing up. Did you say go

Leo Laporte (01:55:02):
A lot?

Rod Pyle (01:55:03):
No, but I was, but I was destined to be kind of not a loner, but oh,

Leo Laporte (01:55:07):
You know, so were

Rod Pyle (01:55:08):
We all we're introvert out on my own? Yeah. That's why we do what we do, right?

Leo Laporte (01:55:11):
Yeah. We're introverts. Yeah.

Rod Pyle (01:55:12):
It's to, to force ourselves to become extroverts.

Leo Laporte (01:55:15):
Yeah. Was that why? I never, I don't know. Well,

Rod Pyle (01:55:19):
It was for me, I, I found that if you're working in the television business and you're an introvert, people tend to ignore you just fine. That's really true. You're an extrovert. I eventually you

Leo Laporte (01:55:28):
Become one. Almost everybody in this business is introverted. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. Isn't that interesting? Yeah. Johnny Carson very famously go to, go to a party and sit in a corner and read a book. <Laugh> was he that introverted? He was painfully shy, but you know, I also often wonder if it could certainly in me it's interpreted not as shyness, which it is, but it's hottiness as snobbery, right? Yes, yes. That, that does happen. You don't want to have, and you have to work to get past that, right? Yeah, yeah. Yeah. You, you think you're too good for us? Don't you? Yeah. No. Well actually I do. I did. And that was, they sussed that right away. Oh, you're too good for us. Yes I am. Yes. That's why I'm not hanging out with is a good thing. Yeah. Oh man. If I, if <laugh>, if I thought you were halfway ways intelligence, I am, I hang out with you, right? What's talk to a few. I'm just checking your sound. <Laugh> Leo for the tech guy. Eighty eight eighty eight. Ask Leo the phone number, Rob on the line from Riverside, California. Hello, Rob?

Speaker 7 (01:56:36):
Yes, sir.

Leo Laporte (01:56:37):
Well, he, he's up with you, my friend. What's going on?

Speaker 7 (01:56:41):
Oh, I'm having trouble. I've got nerve damage in my hand. So I have a lot of trouble with touch screens. Okay. So I bought a untz foam.

Leo Laporte (01:56:54):
Oh, okay.

Speaker 7 (01:56:56):
It looks a lot like the old Blackberry passport, but it's even a little bit bigger. <Affirmative> and I had trouble with it. You know, I'm not,

Leo Laporte (01:57:09):
It's designed for, they say for people of all kinds it's designed for people who like you who have trouble manipulating a phone or <laugh> who just love their old Blackberry <laugh> does it have, does yours have a keyboard?

Speaker 7 (01:57:27):
Yes. It, it looked, it looked a lot like the old Blackberry passport. Is

Leo Laporte (01:57:31):
It, is it the Titan? The Titan pocket? What was that? It's called the Titan pocket. Is that it I'm looking at? No, mine was the full size full size. Oh yeah. This is a little one. This is kind of cool. You know, in a day and age, all phones look the same. They make one with a watch on the back of it. They actually they're selling that on Kickstarter. They wake one that looks like a, a Blackberry.

Speaker 7 (01:57:55):
Okay. Yeah. The, the one that looked like the the Blackberry was the first one that I saw. It was on Kickstarter for a little while. Cool. Yeah. And I bought it and like I said, I had trouble with it from day one. Yeah. And I kept calling them and they finally said, look, do a, do a factory reset. Yeah. So I did that. And I'm now the proud owner of an inert.

Leo Laporte (01:58:22):
I'm so sorry. I am so sorry. 

Speaker 7 (01:58:27):
At and T says, they're not gonna support it next year anyway. Oh,

Leo Laporte (01:58:30):
It's a, it's a 3g radio. It's a 5g, but at, and T says, no, anyway,

Speaker 7 (01:58:37):
Yes. We're not gonna support it.

Leo Laporte (01:58:39):
Well, there must be something about it that huh. Maybe it's not, I mean, who are these guys anyway? Who is this? Who is this Ertz? Who is, who are they? <Laugh> some Chinese, Chinese company. That's right. Yeah. Yeah. So you're getting all of the support you would expect from a, a company that doesn't, you know, doesn't speak English basically. You know, and by the way, almost all of our phones, these days are made in China or South Korea or Taiwan or they're made in Asia. So I mean, I'm not gonna, I don't wanna sound you know, like I'm, I'm against Chinese, make your man manufacturers because my iPhone was made there, but I don't know who, you know, this company, obviously they don't have a commitment to excellence. They're from Shanghai. So what, what do, what's the question <laugh> is there a way to resurrect it?

Leo Laporte (01:59:35):
Is that what you wanna know? <Laugh> suggestions. Yeah. I think you're outta luck. They're saying, Hey, you had you know, almost a year. Yeah. That's all we expected. <Laugh> what's the problem. <Laugh> yeah, I think you're, I think you, I think that I don't know what the answer would be. I, it's a good word of warning for anybody who might be thinking of buying one of these phones. But I think this is not unusual. You were talking about the Zeer earlier, you know, who knows what the tech support is. If you're buying it, even if you buy a phone from Google, a company that is somewhat well known you, you know Google was support is not, is not the best in the world. So I don't think you'd expect much from from a company that was advertising on Kickstarter.

Leo Laporte (02:00:30):
So it's, I mean, I guess let's see, what could you do first place? I'd go is XDA developers.com. This is a forum for Android enthusiasts. See if they have a thread about this phone, they may. Well, probably do they have threads about almost every XPA XD as in dog, a.com develop developers.com. I'll put a link in the show notes, xda-developers.com and search for that phone. And if you don't find it, then leave a question, cuz anybody has that phone and is having similar issues. They'll talk about it there. And most, mostly I recommend it because that's the place to go. If you have an Android device that you would like to modify chiefly what they call rooting it, which is giving yourself administrator permissions on the phone and then putting some other software on there. This, if you have a brick phone, for instance, this is the way to revive.

Leo Laporte (02:01:29):
It is to, to put new firmware on it. Now you probably don't wanna put their firmware on it. You could, but you may be, you know, generally Android phones, this is running a media tech processor. It's probably pretty stock parts. So you may be able to put other third party firmware on there and it may revive. It may even turn it into a decent phone, but I'm not promising that. I'm just saying you're gonna have to a, you're gonna have to support yourself. Cause clearly this company, you know, you got a year out of it. What do you want? What do you want, dude? They're not gonna support it. Well, it is almost either. <Laugh> almost a year. There is a and many months is almost a, there is another place to go. Thank you, scooter X in our chat room, there is a Reddit forum on it as well.

Leo Laporte (02:02:15):
The uni hurts tighten. So if you go to I dunno if you're familiar with Reddit, it's a con Naone, it's a forum site. It's great site useful for this kind of stuff. Reddit, R E D D itt.com/r/un Hertz, Titan. Leave a message there too. Leo port, the tech guy. Yeah, the, the, the, at least there's other Titan users there, here's one guy saying I've had a Titan for a few months and now, and I've always had a problem. <Laugh> sounds familiar. <Laugh> oh, here's one. Is there any alternate operating system for the Titan that preserves? So that's, that's the question, basically. You're asking, you've got a bridge Titan. You could leave a message here. My Titan bricked and I'd is there any way I can get it back to life? And you know, at least you're talking to probably every one of the other Titan owners there is in here. It's not super active, you know, but at least there's a shot that most recent is a couple of, is it a yesterday? So there is somebody in there. Okay. Thank you very much. All right. My pleasure. You have a good one. You too. Yeah. Buyer beware, I guess. When you buy a phone from Kickstarter,

Leo Laporte (02:03:45):
Uni hurts it's it's uni and it hurts here's here's one Chinese symbols on the screen. Does anybody know how to get rid of it? <Laugh> too good. Be true at and T compatible question, mark. Anyone having issues with the mess to Jeff a minute goes on and on this episode of the tech guy brought to you by quite literally cash cash is our CDN our content delivery network. When you download a copy of the tech, I show you're getting it from cash. They've been innovating content delivery since 1999, we've been using and practically, since Wes started, we needed a solution because it, it was hard to get our stuff cash flow solved that. Now they're taking the next step with their ultra low latency streaming. We're not talking the web RTC solution. That's let you down in the past. Cash streams have less than one second delay.

Leo Laporte (02:04:40):
They've got a great HTML five player with an SDK. So you can put in support anywhere, mobile websites, applications, a any platform because they are a completely global CDN. They've got the fastest CDN for through, but globally with over 50 points of presence distributed all over the world. Your video streams will be streaming quickly, anywhere that you have viewers or users, wherever, whatever continent they are on. And man, its scale cash wise, ultra low latency video platform can deliver video to more than a million users concurrently in just thousand of synchronous streams. Reliably RTMP R TMPs S RT. They can ingest it all and deliver ultra low latency S SLDP and HLS streams at the same time. Plus you'll get a custom and this is why we love cash. You'll get a custom built solution based on your needs, your usage trends, your spikes all built the top of their reliable, robust global network with ingest and delivery anywhere in the world.

Leo Laporte (02:05:43):
You need it. And the best support, 24 7 365. And I will vouch for that. We never have to worry about whether our our streams are down cuz of cash lie. You would love this cash lies. Infrastructure can support more than a million conc current streams today, five times faster than other CDNs because of their reliable throughput and scalability. And don't forget it's the world's most reliable CDN with a 100% S L a cash line. They're giving away a complimentary detail analysis of your current CDN bill and usage trends. See if you're overpay 20% or more for your CDN right now. No pressure. Just information. Go to twi.cash line.com. We love them. We thank them for what they've done for us. Twi.Cash.Com strongly encourage you to check him out. And now thanks to cash back to the tech guy, Leo Laport, the tech guy, time to talk to our spaceman rod pile. I found it in my pile of pile books. <Laugh> I have one, you know, I've got amazing stories of the space age by rod. There you go. I've one. My planetary robots, true stories of brought all in exploration by rod pile. I have first on the moon, all about the Apollo 11 and landing by rod pile. But this is my favorite blueprint for a battle star, serious scientific explanations behind sci FI's greatest inventions. You've you're a prolific writer. That's

Rod Pyle (02:07:13):
One word. Yeah. And that book was particularly fun. It was supposed to be, I think, how to design a death star. And then about two months before all the publication deadlines, Disney bought the star wars franchise and the publisher Atler <laugh> yeah. Not

Leo Laporte (02:07:28):
Legal issues. I don't mind if Lucas. Yeah. Yeah. Well, that's good. That weren't that far, it was death from a, but it was a real blast to write building a death planet.

Rod Pyle (02:07:39):
Yeah. That was the other thing. We couldn't call it a death star anymore. We had to call it a death planet and I just raised such a stink that they said, look, there's nothing we could do. It's lawyers and it's

Leo Laporte (02:07:50):
Yeah. You did mention in the text that it's called the death star, so we know what you're talking about. Snuck it, it in

Rod Pyle (02:07:54):
There, I don't like you weren't figuring it out. I

Leo Laporte (02:07:56):
Don't think that's a problem. I think it's good. But it was

Rod Pyle (02:07:58):
Just, it was a kick of a have to do. And actually ended up kind of making some inroads into this, the stem

Leo Laporte (02:08:06):
Curricula. Yeah. For, for, for kids, cuz it is, it's kind of book a high schooler. We go, I I'm gonna devour this. Yeah. And learn something accident

Rod Pyle (02:08:16):
With pictures.

Leo Laporte (02:08:18):
<Laugh> it's got pictures. So speaking of pictures, when are we gonna get pictures from the new telescope?

Rod Pyle (02:08:25):
Well assuming everything goes great, which we're going to assume will happen because I don't like to curse lately. It's been pretty good.

Leo Laporte (02:08:34):
It's been time since the Hubble was needed spectacles. Well,

Rod Pyle (02:08:39):
But don't forget that the the retaining, one of the retaining bands did its thing on, on, on the web a matter of weeks ago, but they, they

Leo Laporte (02:08:47):
Took, did they fix that? Okay. So yeah, they all goes well, December 22nd, the 22nd

Rod Pyle (02:08:52):
Goes launch space, James web

Leo Laporte (02:08:54):
Space, telescope

Rod Pyle (02:08:56):
Fly out a million miles and do its commissioning. Some of that. It does on the way some of it does after rivals.

Leo Laporte (02:09:01):
Well, I'm gonna think it's gonna take a while to go a million miles

Rod Pyle (02:09:03):
Away. Well, there's that? And then the commissioning, I mean, you've gotta unfold. All those mirror cells that 21 foot, 20, 21 foot wide mirror, and you've gotta then, you know, the one we're all grinding heat about is those five or six layers of cap have to unroll below it cuz there's a 600 degree differential between the, the sun lit side and the cold side. Right. Which is why those things are so ingenious. That's if it's in the sun, it won't be in the sun most of the time. But those things have Toro perfectly and, and then hopefully fingers crossed it works. And what's so great about this besides the fact that it's huge and expensive is it's observing an infrared. So, you know, that allows you to see further and further back in time than ever before, because of course the universe expands, you get Redshift, right? So everything's Redshift is so the old of stuff is very red. So you wanna see in red plus red light in intra red light travels through gas and clouds and so forth better. So the views we're gonna get some of the answers we're gonna get from back. You know, they're talking a couple hundred million years after the big bang. You're really kind of looking at a minute minute after midnight there

Leo Laporte (02:10:18):
That's really amazing, isn't it? So we don't know what we're gonna learn if we did, we wouldn't have to learn it. But that's right. <Laugh> potentially this what they could learn. Well they could answer some questions like what, like <laugh> how old we know how old the universe is roughly. We know it's expanding, right? That's been resolved.

Rod Pyle (02:10:39):
I mean, if you see a giant godlike hand suddenly going, well, that's not gonna happen then, you know? Well, who knows? We might see a mystery,

Leo Laporte (02:10:47):
A mystery hut, oh, now you intimate that, that has been debunked is that the case is the I this last week, there's this it's square rock that the Chinese Rover saw on the dark side of the moon. It's on its way over there at about inches a minute. So it's gonna be a few months

Rod Pyle (02:11:03):
And it may not be a rock. It might be an outhouse. You don't know. But according to, there are a couple of articles by prominent astronomers and planetary scientists who said, look, you know, we can see this thing from orbit. We can't see it well, but we could see it looking at the region it's in the kind of shadowing and all that. It's just a rock. It's just a rock. Okay. And, and the, the sort of intimation was that, that the Chinese agency or the people handling their PR to be more specific. It's good. It's or a little click baby. Yeah. It's click bait, but it works. It's good. <Affirmative> but speaking of not click bait, we also had the third crude flight of blue Origin's new shepherd yesterday. Did Michael stray

Leo Laporte (02:11:42):
Hand go up in

Rod Pyle (02:11:42):
That? Michael stray hand went up yawn. Very handsome guy. You don't watch good morning

Leo Laporte (02:11:48):
America apparently. Cuz he's, you know, he's this TVs guy and he's a football star, so

Rod Pyle (02:11:52):
Yeah. Yeah. I watched oath and yawn, but anyway, but nothing against him, it's just, you know? Yeah. So

Leo Laporte (02:11:59):
His teeth he's cool. He's a funny guy and oh, and

Rod Pyle (02:12:02):
He's big. So he was like the tallest guy by a couple inches. Oh I bet fly. 10 minute flight, 65 miles again, you know, these aren't gonna be news for a lot longer, but Lou origins are very clever cuz straighten flew the daughter of Al she flew, I think that's astronaut. This, this

Leo Laporte (02:12:19):
Spacecraft, his name for a she's called a new shepherd. He was the first man in us man in space.

Rod Pyle (02:12:25):
And she was wearing a live long and prosper necklace commission by the Nimo family shortly after Leonard Nemo's death. Oh, that's not. So they gotten that rolled in. Okay. And then much more quietly a gentleman named a great guy named Dylan Taylor, who is the CEO of a space investment firm called Voyager holdings. But he also runs a, a publisher company, which I'm involved in a few projects with and a nonprofit called space for humanity. Whose goal is to raise money, let people from all different walks of life fly. So everything from people in the us that can't afford it, which is most of us to people in Africa, you know, who, who really can't afford it because Dylan has this idea that the more people understand this, the more people get the quote overview effect and Frank White author of that is also involved with this group space for humanity. The sooner we realize we're all in this together and it's it, you know, it's a very aspirational goal, but it's rare that somebody in his position of a very high net worth investor says, yeah, I really wanna put my life's work into this now. Yeah. Which I think is, is cool. So, and then a couple of other six

Leo Laporte (02:13:39):
Who, who paid for the trip because I'm thinking some of them were, they're just there for the publicity and for

Rod Pyle (02:13:44):
Free. Yeah. I, you know, they never really say, right. So you have to kind of gather, you have to vacuum that info info up about

Leo Laporte (02:13:51):
The don't the lane and Cameron best the first parent child pair they paid,

Rod Pyle (02:13:55):
As I understand. Yeah. And, and she's blogger,

Leo Laporte (02:13:58):
That's an expensive that became an to bring your daughter on <laugh>. Well, it

Rod Pyle (02:14:03):
Is. But you know, if, if you've been doing real estate deals deals for the last 20 years or VC investments and making tens of millions of dollars to an and 50,000 of seats, not, you think

Leo Laporte (02:14:12):
That's what it was, is it, is it, we don't know,

Rod Pyle (02:14:14):
Do we, well, we don't know, but you know, early days like this, I, I bet there are people getting discounts, but I, you know, I'm guessing I really am. Yeah. But this was the first flight to six people. So this is flying at capacity. Okay. Completely automatic. And I think one of the things that I'm, that I'm amazed about this is, you know, you talk a lot about, about Teslas, right? And, and they're so called auto drive capability. Right. That's two dimensions. This thing's gotta go up in a space to come

Leo Laporte (02:14:41):
Back. There's not a lot of traffic though. And there's no stoplights, there's not a lot of traffic, but

Rod Pyle (02:14:45):
There's a lot of computations to be done if something changes like the amount of, of boost coming out of that, right. Not engine for instance, or a thruster gets stuck or something like that. And obviously from the ground, they have manual control and it's not that far away so they can joystick it if they need to suppose. Yeah. So I mean, it's

Leo Laporte (02:15:01):
Cool the

Rod Pyle (02:15:02):
Fact that it works as well as it does just blows

Leo Laporte (02:15:04):
Me and, and you know, so there, we've got SpaceX, we've got blue origin, we've got actually a lot of private prizes. And of course traditional companies like Lockheed and Northrop doing this stuff for NASA. I think it's great. Blue origin just got a contract from NASA to help design the space station. Yeah, that's gonna replace the ISS. So yeah, this is exciting times for space and that's why it is

Rod Pyle (02:15:33):
A lot. And you could read all about it in space, 2.0, which is on sale for $5 on Amazon.

Leo Laporte (02:15:39):
Wow. Thanks for the plug space. Two, 2.0, look for it. That's Rod's book or he also has the ad Astra magazine with the national space society. Ns.Org. Thank you, rod.

Rod Pyle (02:15:49):
Thank you.

Leo Laporte (02:15:52):
Five bucks. <Affirmative>

Rod Pyle (02:15:54):
Yeah. Well for Kindle version. Oh,

Leo Laporte (02:15:57):
Well that's good,

Rod Pyle (02:15:58):
But, but that's still half off. Hey, I didn't get a chance to, to mention though in the next few days or week or so, if you feel like going out of the cold with a para binoculars, I guess you can see comment Leonard about a, a half hour after sunset, just between Venus and the horizon. All right. Just look below me, which is nice. Cuz the last one I've forgotten the name of it already, but the last comment it took me like five nights to find it. It was faint and I was not in a dark enough environment if you're really in the dark, it kinda looked like a fuzzy Q-tip out on the horizon, but this one's right between Venus and the horizon. So that one makes it should be easier

Leo Laporte (02:16:38):
Spot. And so if you got a clear sky and when is that?

Rod Pyle (02:16:41):
The next next four or five nights

Leo Laporte (02:16:42):
Next four or five nights. Yeah. And.

New Speaker (02:16:43):
Then John says he, he wanted you to talk about what is it, John rocket lab burning my fuse out here alone. <Laugh> what, what is rocket labs, John? 

Rod Pyle (02:16:55):
Rocket labs, a company that's developing a kind of a small mid-sized booster for smaller payloads. Oh, I don't remember. I think it's up to 10,000 pounds. And they've got a rocket called the neutron, correct me if I'm wrong, John, which is getting to notice because it's working and, and made fun of

Leo Laporte (02:17:15):
Basics

Rod Pyle (02:17:16):
<Laugh> well, yeah, but I mean, you know, the scale is so different. Yeah, but I mean, they're doing a lot of cool things. They're 3d printing, a lot of components along with relativity space and other companies. So I don't know if there's something else specific you to talk about, but it's, it's, they're coming along and they're a company out in New Zealand that also that co-founded New Zealand in the us

Leo Laporte (02:17:36):
Love at first insight, they launched two black sky vehicles. All right. Yeah. John loves space. So, you know, well, that's

Rod Pyle (02:17:47):
Why we love John. Yeah. And, and plus he make stuff work

Leo Laporte (02:17:51):
And without him, I would be sitting at home in my Jam's <laugh> would that be so bad? Really? Not really.

Rod Pyle (02:17:59):
<Laugh> it's that time of year

Leo Laporte (02:18:01):
After, oh, last week they asked the neutron mega constellation launcher. Oh wow. This is cool. Yeah. Okay. That's really cool. More

Rod Pyle (02:18:09):
That I did also wanna mention just real quick story, which we could talk about next week. It's not that big a story,

Leo Laporte (02:18:16):
But I'm sorry. You probably didn't even wanna talk about the web at all. And I brought that

Rod Pyle (02:18:19):
Up. No, actually I did. But, but there's this cool story out of European space agency. So the Chinese Yong Rover, which landed last year excuse me, early you this year in may has exceeded its primary mission and they want the orbiter to go do other stuff. So they change its orbit. So the European space agency said, you know, we've got a Mars orbiter. We can help down link data from the Rover. If you need help. The Chinese said yes, what makes it really fascinating to me is it can only work one. The orbiter that the, the European orbiter can receive the rovers uplink, but they can't transmit back down to the rovers. They've got this three way dance going, where info comes from the Rover up to Mars express European orbiter. They send it back down to Europe and China. And then China sends a command back up through the Chinese orbiter back down to the over. And this is all this wasn't planned. This is just something that they figured out how to do. And I thought that's extraordinary. You know?

Leo Laporte (02:19:20):
That is amazing. It's incredible.

Rod Pyle (02:19:24):
It's incredible.

Leo Laporte (02:19:29):
Okay. remember next week we're here the week after we are not okay. It's Christmas the day after C. Yeah, but we are gonna, I am gonna do a show January 2nd. Excellent. Just shows your nose. Thank you, sir. And have a wonderful week. You too. Thank you. You too. Thank y'all. Bye. DETA. Goodbye. So long farewell. No VI in. Thank you for letting me do my thing every week. I can't believe it. I'm so lucky. Thanks to professor Laura musical director. What she, she does a great job spinning the diss, choosing our music. Thanks of course, to Kim Shaffer, who's answering all your phones and thanks most of all to those of you who call and listen to the show cuz without you I'd be, I'd be home in my jammies. Eighty eight, eighty eight, ask Leo the phone number eighty eight, eight eight two seven five five three six, toll free anywhere in the us or Canada. I think we have time for a couple more. At least Darcy on the line from Canada. Hello Darcy.

Speaker 7 (02:20:44):
Hey, how's it going?

Leo Laporte (02:20:45):
It's going great. How are you?

Speaker 7 (02:20:48):
You know, it's a warm day. It's t-shirt weather. It's just about freezing. We're open

Leo Laporte (02:20:52):
<Laugh> so patio, weather. Not exactly. We're in, we're in Canada. Are you

Speaker 7 (02:20:58):
Winnipeg dead center?

Leo Laporte (02:20:59):
Oh, Winnipeg. I remember I remember Metallica saying that the coldest summer ever was their concert in Winnipeg called us winter.

Speaker 7 (02:21:09):
I, I would believe them for sure. <Laugh>

Leo Laporte (02:21:12):
So what's up?

Speaker 7 (02:21:14):
I have an update, an answer and a question all rapid fire folks. Holy

Leo Laporte (02:21:18):
Kao. Go ahead.

Speaker 7 (02:21:19):
Yes. My update is on the Google nest using it as a baby monitor. I called in maybe a year or two ago. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I remember security. Yeah. Yeah. It's worked great. Other than the fact there's no temperature readout, which some people like to see

Leo Laporte (02:21:32):
Like what temperature your kid is or what temperature the room is?

Speaker 7 (02:21:36):
The room. The room. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So we're, we're pretty confident in the temperature, but it does alert you when she rolls around. Nice talk to her. It's been fantastic. So if anyone, you know, isn't has a newborn, don't hesitate to go with Google nest works pretty well. I,

Leo Laporte (02:21:50):
I like that idea. All right. So which one? Which nest are you using? Cause there's a bunch now.

Speaker 7 (02:21:56):
The nest indoor.

Leo Laporte (02:21:58):
Okay. It's a camera, not the, not the nest hub max, which also has a camera, but this is the cast standalone camera.

Speaker 7 (02:22:06):
Yeah, just a standalone camera. The indoor one. It's worked very well. We just wall out to it, ran a cord safely and it's working great.

Leo Laporte (02:22:14):
And you can see the, your little baby on, well, she's not a baby anymore.

Speaker 7 (02:22:19):
No, she just turned two. Not too long ago. Is she in

Leo Laporte (02:22:21):
A big girl in a big girl? Bad. I remember that was a big deal. We're holding

Speaker 7 (02:22:25):
Off on that. As long as we can cuz once she can have access to the whole house at night, it's 

Leo Laporte (02:22:29):
It's troublesome scary. Well, we actually only did it once she learned how to climb out of her crib and do that. We thought, well, I guess we it's time for the big girl bed.

Speaker 7 (02:22:40):
<Laugh> yeah, we, we had a close call, so we just turned the crib around and tried to, you know, hold it up.

Leo Laporte (02:22:45):
Yeah. Build, build the wall higher, build the wall higher.

Speaker 7 (02:22:50):
So what we had a person asking about the Google nest outdoor camera, the doorbell camera. This is a few quite a few episodes ago there. Wondering about how cold it can get and still oh yes. I can tell you might minus 42 at the holy

Leo Laporte (02:23:06):
Moly. If it works in Winnipeg it'll work anywhere.

Speaker 7 (02:23:10):
Yeah. It's been fantastic and it hasn't skipped a beat. I even have an indoor one in an uninsulated garage and I mean, these things are beasts. That's

Leo Laporte (02:23:17):
Awesome. Yeah. I have the same hello camera, but it doesn't get really, we might get a freeze once in a while. That's about it. Nothing. Nothing like Winnipeg. So that's

Speaker 7 (02:23:27):
Good to know. Yeah. I guess it's kinda a dry cold here though. <Laugh> yeah.

Leo Laporte (02:23:30):
Right. A white cold. Yeah. They always say that. Oh, it's a dry cold it yeah. No big deal. It's like a dry heat. It's no big deal. Yikes.

Speaker 7 (02:23:38):
Pretty much yet. Yikes. And then I have a quick question for you if I have time please. My, my grandma's been dealing with the vertigo about, oh, I'm sorry. 80 something years old. Yeah. Yeah. She, she loves using the internet. She loves using her email and her Facebook and all sorts of stuff. She's really proud of it.

Leo Laporte (02:23:55):
Sure. It stays, she stays connected. She stays, she stays part of the world, which is great. Yeah.

Speaker 7 (02:24:01):
Yeah, of course. But she finds that the computer screen can kind of make it act up. If you kind of having suggestions for like, did it make overlays or maybe just turn the that's interesting down. We,

Leo Laporte (02:24:12):
Let me think. Why would I bet it's the flicker. I don't know why she

Speaker 7 (02:24:18):
Has a, she has a decent E D screen.

Leo Laporte (02:24:21):
I'm not sure why it would well, E D's flicker, believe it or not. I'm not sure why it would cause to go. So I'm not an, I'm not a physician. I'm not an expert on that. But I know that I, I, I would think of a couple things, first of all, check the lighting in the room, make sure it's it is not in fact, L E D or fluorescent, cuz both of those do flicker, they flicker and perceptively they're at a rate. People can't see doesn't mean that won't cause problems. That might be a good a case for if you could still find it an incandescent bulb. Right. And that's the thing. If it interacts in a weird way with the frame rate of the screen, that's when you might have problems, try just having her, turn the lights out and use it and see how that will works. If that doesn't cause the vertigo, then, then maybe you wanna think about an interaction between the lighting and the room and the screen. It's a good it's you said it's a good LCD monitor with L E D back lighting.

Speaker 7 (02:25:22):
And she's right by the window. So we try to use it all. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (02:25:24):
Daylight should be okay. Yeah. Daylight doesn't flicker obviously. Unless maybe in Winnipeg it does. I don't know. I hope not. It might dim out a bit. <Laugh> what could cause what about the screen could cause vertigo, I'm trying to think flick brightness, you said you, you toed it down. It could be, you know, people often run their screens too bright. Boy, I just, I don't know because I'm not sure what the connection is between the screen and the vertigo,

Speaker 7 (02:25:56):
So it can just be psyching yourself out too, but figure that

Leo Laporte (02:26:00):
Well, certainly, you know, and I, I will experience a I will get nauseated from playing video games because the motion of the screen, if the, especially if the screen's big and, or it's a VR helmet and it occupies a lot of your vision doesn't correspond your position in space. And so your body goes something's wrong. So I'm wondering it could be related. The other thing I do do this and I do recommend it never had vertigo, but blue blocker glasses might help. I wear a special computer. I actually got my opt optician to create some glasses for me that I just wear at the computer. They're slightly magnifying like readers, which I'm sure would help her. And they have a filter against blue light blocker and that really reduces eye strain for me and makes it much easier to see the screen. Those you can buy off the shelf. Does she probably does wear glasses. So the next time maybe you get glasses, you should inquire about getting some computer glasses for her or go,

Speaker 7 (02:27:02):
I'll tell you what, right after I end this call, I'm gonna her with that idea. Yeah, that's a great,

Leo Laporte (02:27:06):
It helps me a lot. I don't have vertigo, but it certainly helps me with eye strain, you know, after looking at the screen for a long time and it makes it much easier, you know, the, what the vertigo may be merely a side effect of her straining to read the screen. So helping with that would help a lot.

Speaker 7 (02:27:25):
Okay. Well thank you very much for your time. I really appreciate

Leo Laporte (02:27:27):
It. Thanks for the update Darcy. Appreciate it. And congratulations on your little one. That's great. Last call of the day. Mari and Riverside. Hi, Mon

Speaker 12 (02:27:39):
Real quick here. I know you're on short time. I got a minute

Leo Laporte (02:27:43):
And a half left. That should be plenty.

Speaker 12 (02:27:45):
Okay. First off got a large metal building. Got an am receiver in it and I get a lot of static outta my fluorescent lighting. Is there such thing I should know this? Cuz I had a, an appointment for my novice ham ticket years. Oh I love it. Yeah. Yeah. I got stories on that one. You

Leo Laporte (02:28:06):
Didn't yeah, take it. You didn't make it, but you had already studied for it. So you know all about RF.

Speaker 12 (02:28:11):
Oh yeah. I had my, my key down and so they were required. Oh

Leo Laporte (02:28:15):
Wow. You you, yeah. See nowadays you don't have to do Morse code. Oh really? Yeah. Makes it much easier. I couldn't have done it if I had to do Morse code

Speaker 12 (02:28:23):
As I go do, do do do

Leo Laporte (02:28:26):
<Laugh>. So go to C crane. I'll I'll I'm gonna just give you the quick answer, which is C crane.com. C crane, C C R a N E. Bob crane owns it. He's a radio nut and he is one of the last people in the world that still sells am radio antennas, external antennas. You can stretch out the window or even just, you know, it'll just boost the signal and it might overpower any noise you're getting from RF or the metal building. Okay.

Speaker 12 (02:28:57):
That's a great one. CC crane,

Leo Laporte (02:28:59):
Just see crane, C, C R a N e.com and they're not expensive and they are they're gonna make a huge difference. An external am, radio antenna, Leo LePort the tech guy have a great geek. 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 the week at tech and you'll find it@twi.tv, including the podcasts for this show. We talk about windows and windows weekly, Macintosh on Mac break, weekly iPads, iPhones, apple watches on iOS today. 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@twi.tv and I'll be back next week with another great tech guys show. Thanks for joining me. We'll see you next time.