The Tech Guy Episode 1857 Transcipt

Please be advised this transcript is AI-generated and may not be word for word. Time codes refer to the approximate times in the ad-supported version of the show. 

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

Leo Laporte (00:00:11):
Hi, this is Leo LePort and this is my tech guy podcast. Yes, we're back live. This was episode 1,857 broadcast casting coast to coast and the premier networks on Saturday, January 8th, 2022. Enjoy the tech I podcast is brought to you by it. Pro TV. Are you looking to break into the world of it? Get the introduction you need with it. Pro TV, visit it pro.tv/twi for an additional 30% off all consumer subscriptions for the lifetime of your active subscription. When you use the code TWI 30 at checkout.

Leo Laporte (00:00:52):
Well, Hey, Hey. Hey, how are you today? It's Leo. Leport the tech guy. Yes, we're back live, took Christmas in new year's day off. Hope you enjoy of those best OFS shows, but we're back answering phone calls and talking high tech for a brand new year, eighty eight eighty eight. Ask Leo is the phone number. If you wanna talk about technology 88 8 8 2 7 5 5 3 6, toll free from anywhere in the us or Canada, outside that area. You can also reach us, but you probably have to use Skype or something like that to call websites changed a bit. And I want to explain that, and I know some people are a little disappointed. Tech guy labs.com now goes instead of to a dedicated site, which it used to has been for years since 2004, I guess it goes to the main podcasting site, which is twi.tv. And there's a, you know, kind of a technical reason for that.

Leo Laporte (00:01:50):
We run the both sites on a a content management system called Drupal. Excellent. I chose it years ago and we've been running on it ever since. Drupal constantly gets updated in the latest updates have kind of left the old versions behind this happens sometimes in technology and you know, we're kind of using the windows XP of Droople. The problem is they're gonna stop doing security updates, and we don't really want to run a public website without those security updates, but this will sound familiar. Anybody who runs a business, we went to our the company that does our stuff and said, well, I guess it's time to update. And they said, yes, that'll be a quarter of a million dollars please. And I went, <laugh> no way, are you kidding me? It's apparently a, a big upgrade. Everything has to be rewritten or something.

Leo Laporte (00:02:42):
So that meant either spending a lot of money or since we already have the other site, we're gonna update that site. It's still expensive, but at least I don't have to do two sites which I guess would be half a million dollars. <Laugh> so I'm saving a quarter of a million dollars. So we're gonna, we're moving everything over to twi.tv. You'll still have a page for every show. This is episode 1,857. That page will have all the links I mentioned. We've, you know, done some interesting things to get those links up there for you. And our editors will put them. We also are replacing James RVO with a robot. James. Our scribe had been, you know, painstakingly writing each question and answer, but it turns out we can get a transcription program to do that. So we're gonna run that.

Leo Laporte (00:03:34):
So there will be on every page list of all the links. So you can just click those a link to a transcription of everything, which with time codes and everything. And then of course, after a couple of days, the audio and video from the show. So I I'm hoping that, that I, and already I've heard from some people saying, well, I liked how you divided it up into hours and segments and stuff. And we just can't do that. It's gonna be one page per show, but all the information you need will there tech guy labs.com still works, but just so you know why it looks a little bit different when you go there. But it is still free. Okay. <laugh>, that's an important point. It's not gonna cost you anything. <Laugh> so you know, that I'll foot the bill to for the update, but we just really, I couldn't really, I couldn't get my eyes around the quarter of a million dollars.

Leo Laporte (00:04:24):
That seemed like an awful lot of money. All right. Let's take a look at what's going on in the world around us. Again, these will still be linked these news stories at tech guy labs dot com. So fear not news. And we'll talk about it tomorrow with the rod Pilar space guy, but the NASA web telescope, the new space telescope, which is on its way to the, the wrong point. It's about three quarters of the way there has gone through the most difficult part of the process, which is the unfolding of the older shield. And now the unfolding of the mirror. Anything had gone wrong and any of this $10 billion out the window, it's even more expensive than a website. But everything went well. So the mirrors have completely deployed it's in its final form.

Leo Laporte (00:05:20):
And now all it has to do is get out there to the Laroche point. It'll do that in about, I think on the 29th, couple of three weeks. And then according to NASA, five months of alignment in calibration, all, you know, it's all a little tricky, for instance, you know, it's got a cool down, it's been in the hot sun all this time. It's gonna cool down and they can calibrate it in line. And, and then, and then we will get pictures of all sorts of interesting things, including the beginnings of the universe. So the battle station is nearly armed and operational, and I can't wait to see what we get. We'll talk about that tomorrow with our space guy, but I just wanted to give you an update on that. Very good news. You remember Google glass came out, oh my gosh.

Leo Laporte (00:06:14):
Seven years ago. I think it was that was the glasses you wore with a little screen on the, over your left eyebrow. You could take pictures and stuff. One of the creators has a new project he's working on. It's a smart retainer. You know how kids and sometimes adults, when you get braces, you have to, after your braces are done, you put the retainer in to kinda keep, keep it in shape and you take it out at night and stuff. And then it's expensive. And you know, spent a lot of time rooting through dumpsters, trying to find my daughter's retainer in the, in the good old days. Well, this guy, one of the creators of Google glass, Thad Starner, Thad Starner is creating a smart retainer. He calls it silent speller. It'll allow <laugh> middle schoolers. <Laugh> I guess, to send texts by spelling out words with your tongue, it tracks the movement of your tongue. They say 97% accuracy for letters, 93% accuracy, for words, pretty much like your smartphone. And I, I, Sally, would you like to answer the question? I can't I'm texting, I'll be right with you.

Leo Laporte (00:07:33):
<Laugh> it's out of the Georgia Institute of technology. It's a research project because Starner is a professor there. So I don't, you know, actually there's some real uses for this I'm being facetious, but there are some real uses for people, for instance who can't, who are in chairs, who can't control their hands or their legs, but can't control their tongues. This would be a really great way of communicating in if you became adept at it. I mean, you could use it for handsfree communicate. Anybody could use it for handsfree communication, 124 sensors in the retainer. So I <laugh>, we'll keep an eye on it. Shall we? Okay. We'll keep an we'll let, I'll let you know CES going on this week. I don't know how big it is. A lot of exhibitors dropped out, but not enough to, to shut it down because of course of Macron and the fear that it's gonna be a breeding ground as it is anyway, it's the big trade show us, you know, and it's heyday 150,000 people from all over the world would gather at the convention center in Las Vegas to trade gossip and inventions and bacteria.

Leo Laporte (00:08:45):
It's pretty typical for somebody to come back from CES with a bad cold. At the very least, they, they didn't really do it last year, but they decided no it's safe. Let's go ahead this year. I'm not sure I agree, but let's go ahead. So CES is ongoing, a lot of PCs in Astro. Talk about some of the announcements, nothing really spectacular these days. Tech companies can announce things, you know, via press release, have their own events, apples shown the way there, right? Apple doesn't care. None of the big companies were there. The TV companies were actually, I'm very curious. Scott Wilkinson our home theater guy is gonna join us in about 20 minutes. He wa I don't know if he went, but he certainly was following closely. He had told me, I have been told about a brand new TV technology.

Leo Laporte (00:09:31):
That's going to be announced at CES. That's gonna be very important. <Affirmative>, we'll find out what that is in about 15 minutes, 20 minutes. Scott Wilkinson will explain whatever it is. I don't know. I have some thoughts, but I don't know. So another event went, went on yesterday. The worst of CES. This was from the right to repair point of view, some of the worst things in our CES and I, there were a number of different categories in the automotive category. I have to give credit to Mercedes, which showed off its new EV it's electric vehicle. The EQ S when you, when you're in the, a warning screen pops up on the vehicle's beautiful, big old screen saying, do not open the hood. Only this specialist personnel of a qualified specialist workshop should open the hood access by customer, not permitted to open the hood, consult a qualified specialist workshop.

Leo Laporte (00:10:43):
Now of course, immediately somebody on YouTube has figured out. There's a way, you know, there's a panel, you pull off and you there's a latch underneath there, and they don't want you to op open the hood. It's an electric vehicle. You don't need to go in the stay out, okay? <Laugh> sure, whatever, whatever you say. Cindy Cohen, who was one of the judges she selected for the worst privacy, a smart health monitoring light bulb that you put all over your house that monitors your sleep in that you know, in the living room, in the bedroom, your sleep, your heart rate, your body temperature all over the house. The, the excuse they gave is, well, we'll put this in grandma's house. So if she's not feeling well, you'll know, I have to feel bad. I have to <laugh>. Our, our elders are suddenly the subject of mass surveillance. This is just one more way. <Laugh> Cindy Cohen, executive director of the electronic front to foundation said the idea that you need your light bulb to monitor your heart rate is just creepy, weird and unnecessary. Oh, also it's not clear what happens to the data. There are, there may be ulterior motives. There may be ulterior motives. There are three people in the house. Two of them in the living room, presumably watching TV there, heart rate went up when Manx arrested. The criminal it's is manic still. I don't think so.

Leo Laporte (00:12:17):
Samsung has a new NFT aggregation platform. Also an award winner. <Laugh> a way to display a cell and buy your NFT artwork from your ginormous Samsung O led TV. I don't think that's what Scott's thinking of at the future television. Anyway, we'll have more, we'll have more CES news as the show goes on eighty eight, eighty eight, ask Leo the phone number. Scott. Wilkinson's coming up. Your calls are next. Leo. Leport the tech guy, Ladies and gentlemen, boys, and curls geeks of all ages. It's time to welcome the unbreak of Kimmy sheer. Our phone angel Kimmy don't take no sheer. Hello, Kimmy.

Kim Shaffer (00:13:19):
Hello. An old classic <laugh>. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:13:22):
Professor Laura decided to take it easy. She worked hard. She was here. All was here during the holiday time we were gone. Yeah. So I feel like she deserves all all by herself.

Kim Shaffer (00:13:32):
All I've been there, girl, I've been there, spend many, a holiday that way.

Leo Laporte (00:13:37):
Empty radio station. I've done that. I've done.

Kim Shaffer (00:13:40):
I had somebody eat my burrito once on a Thanksgiving. It was really sad.

Leo Laporte (00:13:45):
Wait a minute. You weren't alone. I was no someone inside the house. No, no, no.

Kim Shaffer (00:13:50):
Somebody at the overnight, at the radio station, I had left like half a burrito so that you would have something in for my Thanksgiving mea the next day that's really, it was gone. I was, I was,

Leo Laporte (00:13:59):
But as somebody who has done overnights at a radio station, are you

Kim Shaffer (00:14:03):
That desperate though, that you eat, eat somebody's half eaten burrito.

Leo Laporte (00:14:05):
You feel so put upon that you have to do this horrible job that you feel like a world owes you a burrito. That's all I can. <Laugh> who should I start? The show?

Kim Shaffer (00:14:14):
Let's go to Darrell in Santa

Leo Laporte (00:14:17):
Barbara, Darrell and his brother Darrell and Darryl <laugh> from Santa Barbara. Thank you, Kim. Hello, Darrell.

Caller #1 (00:14:24):
Hello, Leo. How are you?

Leo Laporte (00:14:26):
I am well, welcome to the show. How are you?

Caller #1 (00:14:29):
Hey, I gotta ell you something before we start. I am what you might consider a levy leftover

Leo Laporte (00:14:34):
A levy leftover. Wait a minute. <Laugh> that was many years ago. Yes,

Caller #1 (00:14:40):
It was. I used to listen to him religiously. Now I

Leo Laporte (00:14:43):
Listen to you. He has, I'm sad to say passed away. Oh, I'm sorry to hear that. Yeah, he was the original tech guy on KFI had had the temerity, the nerve to go across the street, as they say, in radio to another radio station, a arch competitor. So Jeff became the digital doctor over there. For many years. He and I were head to head and he passed away about six years ago. Yeah. So, wow. The great Jeff Flay, who I had been, I had been on his show many times and I think he was a great guy. So yeah.

Caller #1 (00:15:20):
Yeah. I started off with my little am radio.

Leo Laporte (00:15:23):
Yep. Yep. It's kind of a radio. It's a small fraternity of us getting smaller all the time. Sad to say, what can I do for you today?

Caller #1 (00:15:35):
I wanna find out something about something called group Google. Now here's what's happening about three months ago, I started getting a, a text on my phone. Yeah. It's not from another number. It's from it looked like an email address or, or web address. Yeah. And you know, it had a bunch of different links. Some were poor and adult stuff. Yeah. And I, I just simply

Leo Laporte (00:16:01):
It's spam as you have incorrectly intuitive. Sometimes it's just spam. Sometimes it's actually malicious though. Those links can lead to malicious sites. That'll try to infect your computer.

Caller #1 (00:16:12):
Well, in the beginning, the first two or three times, I just would put stop. And you know, I wouldn't get another one for two, three weeks. Yeah. Well, yesterday morning I got one and I, I put stop in it. I guess I must have not gotten it. The very first one that came in because it started overwhelming letting my phone,

Leo Laporte (00:16:35):
Like, let me tell you what stop does. <Laugh> stop, which would in a normal, like if somebody, you know, like your dentist is texting you or a political campaign, stop would normally stop it to a spamer all stop does is say, Hey, we got a live one. This guy's reading these. So guess what happened? The opposite of stop? There's no, just like, there's no point in responding to spam email. There's no point in typing stop to spam or malicious text messages. That's not gonna do anything. And you know, it's interesting. I've started to get a lot of calls here. This, I got a call last week from somebody saying, oh, what do I do about this? And then immediately after he called, I started getting 'em too with porn links and stuff. So really, really important. There probably isn't anything you can do to stop this.

Leo Laporte (00:17:25):
Okay? These people are not law. Abiding citizens. Typing stop is not gonna stop it more than blocking that number is gonna stop it because that number isn't their number. Really? That's not their real phone number. No, of course not any more than a spamer return email is their real email. They're not dumb. They're not gonna use a real phone number. They could be tracked down. So they just make up a return phone number. It's being texted from a nonsense number. The point of the message is not for you to respond to it. Actually, if you respond, stop, it might not even go to them. Although it sounds like it did in this case, the point of it is to get you to click those links and some cases it's rare, but in some cases we know of this being PO merely opening. The text is enough to infect your phone.

Leo Laporte (00:18:19):
Now that's a really important little tidbit that I wanna say again, merely looking at the text can be hazardous. So the only thing to do, if you're on an iPhone is once you see a text like that, swipe right, and delete, do not open it. I forgot what you do on Android, whatever you do on Android to delete it without looking at it. That's the only thing to do. You could complain to your phone company. You should cuz they're the ones letting these things go through, but there's nothing you as an individual, all can do. Sorry. Leo Laport, the tech guy

Leo Laporte (00:18:57):
Saying stop <laugh> is like telling a robber with a gun in your face. Stop, stop. He's not gonna stop. I'm not gonna stop. So lemme see what business insider says. I don't, I think that's link BA because I don't believe there's anything you can do. The phone company needs to do it. The phone company needs to do it. And the fact that they're not is really bad. So business insider says, I'll save you the link, the click don't respond. Well, duh, that doesn't do anything about it. Report them to your cell provider. Okay. But that requires copying the offended message and sending it to 77, 26.

Leo Laporte (00:19:44):
Not gonna do any good. I mean, I, maybe it will. I mean, maybe they have some sort of spam filtering they do in fact, but they haven't implemented it. It's very annoying. There is a system and all the major cell carriers theoretically supported called stir shake. And it was mandated by the FCC. They have to re support it in which they reject phone calls and messages from unauthenticated sources. They don't do it. They ought to do it. They're supposed to do it, but they don't do it. And their rationale is, well, I don't know. They have some theoretical rationale. The real rationale isn't often they make money from these.

Leo Laporte (00:20:26):
So this actually article has some useful things. They say block specific spamers you can't block 'em and robo killer is not gonna block 'em there's not much you can do if the, probably I think the one thing maybe reporting them is a good, good idea. So again the problem is I don't want you to open them and that can be risky. So you have to forward it without opening it, which I think is not possible. But if you can forward it, text it to 7, 7, 26 that's for at and T T-Mobile and Verizon and report it spam. I'll tell you why. I don't recommend that. A if you're open it, there's there 'em a small risk just by opening it B it's not gonna do anything because what are they gonna block? But it is the only real power of that is you're letting them know, Hey, you're letting stuff through. Stop it. Cuz they don't have to he's back from a very exciting weekend, pretending to be in Las Vegas. <Laugh> Scott Wilkinson, home theater, geek contributor@techhive.com. Normally you go to Vegas, you walk 20 or 30 miles seeing all the exhibits you skipped it last year. And I, I think wisely decided to skip it this year. Well every, yeah,

Scott Wilkinson (00:21:40):
Everybody skipped it last year and I skipped it this year too. And so did most of my colleagues. Yeah, very, very few journalists. Were there a lot of the big companies as you know, skipped it, but they still had it there. It was. They shortened it

Leo Laporte (00:21:53):
By a day. <Laugh> yeah. I don't understand how that helps at all, but okay. I don't either. I don't either. They don't want to call off these events because they buy hotel rooms. They oh yeah. It's a huge expense. They've you know, some of it's insured, but a lot of it will be at to pocket. So they put these things on, even though they're maybe it would be ill advised from a public health point of view. We'll see if people go home from their visit to Vegas and bring bring lots of little germs home. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> indeed, indeed. I'm glad you didn't go though. I, I think that a lot of what you wanna do at CES these days can be done online.

Scott Wilkinson (00:22:27):
Absolutely. <affirmative> there's no question about it. And there were some, there were some live streamed events, some things weren't, but you know, you get, you get emails of, of the news afterwards and it was fine.

Leo Laporte (00:22:38):
Yeah. And yeah, I mean, Samsung had its event online bunch of us. So you had promised and you couldn't say anything, you were under nondisclosure agreement to tell us about a new tell technology that would be announced this week. Was it, did it and it, is it, what is it? Go ahead. Yep.

Scott Wilkinson (00:22:55):
Yes, yes. And yes, <laugh>, it's called QD OED, ah, for quantum OED

Leo Laporte (00:23:05):
When I saw this Sony announcement mm-hmm <affirmative> I thought this must be what Scott's talking about.

Scott Wilkinson (00:23:10):
That's that's what it is. Sony was the first out of the gate with an actual product.

Leo Laporte (00:23:15):
Their Bravia will use it

Scott Wilkinson (00:23:17):
Cur well, yeah. Bravia is their sort of overarching name. Yeah. For their high end TVs. Yeah. But Samsung display, not Samsung electronics, Samsung electronics makes the TVs that you buy. Samsung display makes the underlying panel technology just like LG display makes the underlying OED technology for LG and everybody else's OED

Leo Laporte (00:23:42):
Tvs. So if you buy an OED TV, it's an LG panel, but it might be for correct Sony or Samsung or somebody else correct this well, this so, so probably it's Samsung that is making these QO lens undo studio lens. Yeah. All right. What now quantum dot we've heard of before for an LCD, for back lights for LCDs. Correct. How does this apply to O L E DS?

Scott Wilkinson (00:24:04):
Well, it's, it's, it's a new application of quantum dots. So in LCD TVs, you have a, you have blue LEDs and a, a layer of green and red quantum dots and all that light combines together to make white. And then the white light passes through the L C D layer and through filters than the subpixels, the little tiny subpixels have red, green or blue color filters that give you the full color image on same process, more or less on an L on an OED TV, except that each little sub pixel has its own backlight, essentially. So the each little sub pixel of Ole the red, the green and the blue has its own tiny little back light that produces white light. And then that goes through a filter, either red, green, or blue, or in the case, in the case of OED. Sometimes there's a clear one as well that lets the white light through, give it, make it brighter.

Scott Wilkinson (00:25:06):
And each pixel can be individually controlled how bright it is, which means it can go down to full black, which means that O EDS have a better black level than LCDs. Do what quantum dot OED does is it puts a blue OED material behind each sub pixel at the base of each sub pixel and that blue O Ole light strikes a, a layer of quantum dot that is either red or green. And then there's a, a clear one for the letting the blue light straight through. So this is called color conversion te and so it takes blue light from, from behind the little quantum dot layer and the quantum dot layer converts it to red or green, the results, the, the, the benefits are many, including greater brightness, much greater brightness, because

Leo Laporte (00:26:03):
This has always been an area EDS have lagged behind L and LCDs is that they're just not as bright. So we don't often recommend them for, you know, rooms. You can't dark really bright. Does this solve that?

Scott Wilkinson (00:26:16):
Yes, it does. It absolutely solves that problem. So when, when a light goes through a, a filter, a color filter, you lose three quarters of it. You lose most of the light that's coming from behind it. This,

Leo Laporte (00:26:33):
So it's like sunglasses for your TV. Exactly, exactly. The light, the filter's blocking a lot of the light

Scott Wilkinson (00:26:39):
Block block, most

Leo Laporte (00:26:40):
Of the light. So that's why they're darker.

Scott Wilkinson (00:26:42):
That's right. And now LCDs use the same technology. They use color filters, but the LEDs behind them can get much, much brighter. Okay. So you can lose a lot of light and still have a lot of light coming forward. Ole material doesn't get as bright intrinsically. Therefore you lose a lot of light. It doesn't, it's not as bright and it's, you have to use it in a dark room. This solves that problem. Quantum dot color conversion is like 98% efficient.

Leo Laporte (00:27:11):
Wow. So you're losing almost no light at all. Wow. so it's, it's really quite remarkable. And so we saw one product actually announced at CES and that was from Sony. Interestingly enough Samsung display, for some reason, we don't know why gave Sony first dibs at an actual product. <Laugh> Samsung didn't announce one, but, but they made the panel for the Sony. TV's interesting. Yep. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So is there gonna, they might not be a huge amount of difference between Sony's and other companies when they announce theirs.

Scott Wilkinson (00:27:48):
Probably not. Although all those companies are gonna say, oh, well, the big difference with us is our processing. Yeah. There's other

Leo Laporte (00:27:55):
Stuff. Other stuff. Yeah, exactly. So how expensive are these much more expensive?

Scott Wilkinson (00:28:01):
We don't know. Sony didn't announce. They

Leo Laporte (00:28:03):
Didn't announce a bit.

Scott Wilkinson (00:28:05):
Okay. Nope. Nope. They didn't. And certainly Samsung didn't cuz what Samsung Samsung display, which is where I first heard of this and I was under NDA to them and, and they said, you can't talk about this to anybody. They they just announced that yes, we have this panel. Okay. But they didn't announce a product.

Leo Laporte (00:28:22):
Right. So have you seen these Q D OS? No. Nope.

Scott Wilkinson (00:28:28):
Not yet. That's

Leo Laporte (00:28:29):
Why you go to CES by the way. So exactly that little bit of information you can actually say I've actually seen it

Scott Wilkinson (00:28:35):
And actually actually put eyes on it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We didn't get to do that. But the technology itself is interesting enough and I've known about it for several years. It's been coming down the, the pike, but as Mike, he in the chat room said it's gone beyond being a science experiment.

Leo Laporte (00:28:50):
Well, it's also confusing because Samsung's been selling Q led TVs, which are LCDs lit mm-hmm <affirmative> back lit by quantum dots, quantum dots. Correct. And they, and I think they chose Q led because it kind looks like OED per they're not they're LCDs. 

Scott Wilkinson (00:29:07):
That's right. That's right. It's a marketing thing.

Leo Laporte (00:29:09):
We've always liked OED.

Scott Wilkinson (00:29:11):
Mm-Hmm <affirmative> I always prefer it unless you have a super bright room. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:29:15):
We always told people, well, you know, it's not QED is not OED, but now it is in a way Q the quantum dots have come to OED. Correct. And would, in a way you say, once we see the pricing and so forth that this will be the OED display technology going forward, the way to do it. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Absolutely. Because it solves that problem.

Scott Wilkinson (00:29:33):
It solves the

Leo Laporte (00:29:34):
Brightness problem. Any other, does it solve the burning issue or the blue issue? There's well,

Scott Wilkinson (00:29:38):
You know, Mike, he just, or somebody, maybe it wasn't Mike, some, somebody just sent me in the chat room, an article, a link to something, something about burning issues with QD on the Sony. I have no idea that they could even have had it long enough to test that. Yeah. But I'm gonna look into that cuz that I hope that's not much of a problem. Another thing that it actually improve, believe it or not is viewing angle now O led viewing angles already. Really good. Yeah. Unlike LCD, which you have to be standing almost right in front of it to get the best picture. Right. But O led you, you've got a wide viewing angle. This QD led makes it even wider.

Leo Laporte (00:30:16):
So I guess the bottom line is it's coming. We don't know how much we don't know what other issues there might be, but we'll keep an eye on it. And I bet you, by the end of this year, we'll start to see our first, absolutely old led TVs. Oh yeah. Scott Wilkinson home theater geek. Thanks. Mm-hmm <affirmative> do you want to stick around?

Scott Wilkinson (00:30:41):
I'd very happy to

Leo Laporte (00:30:43):
Okie dokey. I'm giving you your screen.

Scott Wilkinson (00:30:47):
Thank you so much. And with the the clock is very good too. Go get yourself a cup of Joe. 

Leo Laporte (00:30:53):
I shall, I shall. So that's interesting. I mean, I I didn't realize there was a filter layer on EDS as well, to be honest with you. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> yeah. So that's in front of the panel,

Scott Wilkinson (00:31:06):
Correct. And the, and the only difference between with the R the big difference between OED and LCD or L or L E D TV, is that in an LCD or L E D TV? The back light is one continuous plane. Yeah. And it's brightness is controlled by the darkness or lightness of the L C D shutter layer with an OED TV. Basically each sub pixel has its own independent backlight, tiny, tiny, tiny little white light, which is actually made up of a stack of blue and yellow OED material blue and Y blue blue plus yellow equals white.

Leo Laporte (00:31:46):
So the native O led display is not a color display.

Leo Laporte (00:31:53):
I th cuz I thought it was direction. Not in that scent.

Scott Wilkinson (00:31:55):
We were looking at, it is direct

Leo Laporte (00:31:56):
Pixels that were actual color, but they're not,

Scott Wilkinson (00:31:58):
They're not they're color filters, they

Leo Laporte (00:32:00):
Colored. And then the filter, they go through a filter. Right.

Scott Wilkinson (00:32:03):
But they don't go through a shutter. Unlike L C D L C D has

Leo Laporte (00:32:09):
Sub has. It's a passive filters.

Scott Wilkinson (00:32:12):
It's just, yeah, it's just a red filter. Green filter or a blue

Leo Laporte (00:32:15):
Filter. Oh. So each pixel has three filters of three sub pixels. Okay. Three subpixels red, green and blue.

Scott Wilkinson (00:32:22):
Right. And actually an OED. There's a fourth one with just white.

Leo Laporte (00:32:25):
And, but then, so then they must be opened and closed. No,

Scott Wilkinson (00:32:28):
No, no. The, the OED material behind each filter is darkened or brightened electronically. Okay. And so the OED material behind the color filter can be electronically taken down to zero, which is how come they get full black or brightened up to some maximum.

Leo Laporte (00:32:49):
But how do it know? So which color <laugh> I don't understand. Oh, I see. There's really four different OED. Exels and they can brighten red, green and blue independently, independently. Got it. Yep.

Scott Wilkinson (00:33:05):
Yep, exactly.

Leo Laporte (00:33:06):
Got it. So the Ole is in fact shifting the filter isn't the filter, all three, all four filters are always active, always going on.

Scott Wilkinson (00:33:14):
Always, always this they're static. They're just, and so it just like putting a filter up in front of your eyes.

Leo Laporte (00:33:19):
I get it. So it just brightens the portion of the screen behind the app, a certain amount to get the proper color. Correct. H's Q saturation and luminance or whatever it's yeah. Okay.

Scott Wilkinson (00:33:32):
Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And the, again, the difference is be that be in Ola there's oh,

Leo Laporte (00:33:37):
You have tiny little luminance. Yeah. Okay. Yeah.

Scott Wilkinson (00:33:39):
You'll all you have to change is luminance. And then you can do that by sending different amounts of electricity to each, to the <inaudible> material behind. I did not

Leo Laporte (00:33:46):
Realize thats. I did not realize now why does this improve viewing angle?

Scott Wilkinson (00:33:51):
That I'm not a hundred percent sure about it has to do with the fact that color filters actually affect the viewing angle. Yeah. Clearly.

Leo Laporte (00:33:59):
So when you better,

Scott Wilkinson (00:34:00):
When you, yeah, these are better. Cause there's no color filter. There's no filter. Oh, there's no filter at all. There's no filter at all. Oh the, the, the blue light behind the red sub pixel is stimulating the red quantum dots to glow directly to emit directly. There's no color filter whatsoever.

Leo Laporte (00:34:18):
Pretty amazing. Actually it is Emitt.

Scott Wilkinson (00:34:21):
Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:34:21):
Yeah. What a technology. Yeah.

Scott Wilkinson (00:34:25):
So yeah. It's, it's most exciting thing that's happened in TVs in a long time. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:34:30):
And the cost will be roughly tied to how hard these are to make initially. Exactly.

Scott Wilkinson (00:34:35):
Yeah, exactly. And, and the quantum dots now are being ink, jet printed. So

Leo Laporte (00:34:39):
They may be so that's may not come outta the box. So hugely expensive possible.

Scott Wilkinson (00:34:45):
It may. It may. Yeah. Cause inkjet printing is cheap, pretty

Leo Laporte (00:34:48):
Cheap. All right. You wanna stick around for the top? You bet. Our show today brought to you our podcast today brought to you by it. Pro T V. I know a lot of people listen to our shows on the network are are like enthusiasts tech enthusiasts. And I think many of you perhaps have thought, boy, it'd be nice. If I could kind of work in this field, I love so much. Maybe you're thinking about getting into it. This is the place to go. If you're looking to break into the world of it, partly there's a conundrum cuz there's, it means a lot of things, you know, we think of it maybe as the desktop support person at your company comes around, you know, and fixes your computer. And that's one kind, it, the person who sets up the network, that's another kind person who secures the network.

Leo Laporte (00:35:34):
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Leo Laporte (00:36:27):
You can go to it pro TV, get the training. You need to take those tests. They even have practice exams. You can take, they have, if you're, if you're studying how to configure windows cert versus for instance, they have virtual windows servers. You can run in your browser and do all the work. You don't even need to have any of the hardware. It's a really great place to learn. And it all starts really with their EDU entertainers experts in the field. They start by being it experts, but who are expert at communicating? That's what makes it pro TV. So good. So fun. It's it's like our it's like it's like TWI, but for, for it professionals for getting the certs, if you already have the certs for re-certifying, if you've already got a job in it, it, but you want to expand for getting new skills to update your skills.

Leo Laporte (00:37:09):
I just love it. Pro TV every month in the last six months they've been doing themes. January is perfect. Getting started in it months. They have a free weekend next weekend, January 15th and 16th. So if you wanna dip your toes into it, listen to the courses, it'll be free comp Tia. They're the official training video training partner of comp Tia. So they have some great comp Tia courses. They do the ITF plus those will be free. And the a plus those will be free. This coming weekend, Lin essentials Ms. 900, that's Microsoft 365 fundamentals, hands on PC build from the bench. That's just fun for everybody. Cisco CCT routing and switching that's 100 dash four 90. That's the cert information. If you wanna be AC CSP, apple certified support, profess they've got that for the latest Mac OS. These will all be free this weekend.

Leo Laporte (00:38:03):
Next coming weekend, January 15th and 16th. I think it pro TV is fun. I think it's easy. They, they divide. They, they have studios working Monday through Friday, all day. So there's always new content. They wanna keep everything fresh. It goes from studio to library and to 24 hours. So it's there right away. Everything is divided into 2030 minute segments. So you can do it during lunch hour. It's very convenient. You can watch anywhere too, by the way, they have apps for every device. The content is up to date. The certs are up to date. I think they're just fantastic. If you're getting ready for exams, you can dig those virtual labs, the practice tests also they do these monthly webinars. These are also free January 13th. This week, they'll be discussing cloud computing, confidential secrets to leveraging the cloud in your organization. So there are plenty of companies who have not yet moved to the cloud for lots of reasons.

Leo Laporte (00:38:59):
This would be a very good webinar. Maybe share that with some other members in your organization. If you're looking at breaking into the world of it, or if you're already in it and you want to get better at it or get a new job or new skills, it pro TV is what you need. Visit it. Pro.Tv/Twi for an additional 30% off your consumer subscriptions for the lifetime of your active subscription. Just use the code TWI 30 TWI three zero. That is a great deal. 30% off forever. Go to it. Pro.Tv/Twi, use a code TWI 30, an additional 30% off. As long as you stay active, it's still 30% off. And that could be for years. I just think these guys are great big fans, Don and Tim and the gang at it pro TV it pro TV build or expand your it career and enjoy the journey.

Leo Laporte (00:39:52):
Don't forget that free weekend is coming up. It pro.tv/the offer code TWI three. Now back to the tech guy, Leo LePort the tech guy. I want go back to the spam text message issue because it really is a problem. It's getting to be more of a problem. The FCC implemented something called shaken and stirred and required. This protocol. It's an authentication protocol to be adopted by phone companies. And it was it's attended for robo calls, but I'm gonna guess actually, maybe I shouldn't guess that it also would apply to text messaging because text messaging is tied to a phone number.

Leo Laporte (00:40:37):
So shaken stir and shaken should be also used or could also be used. I would think for messaging as well. And the idea is that a phone company could say, look I am only gonna accept phone calls from authenticated numbers from an actual number. And that really cuts down on spam because as I mentioned earlier, spamers don't want to use their phone number <laugh> to call you or text you. They spoof 'em. And if spoofing isn't allowed in effect, that should severely limit them. The there's a little problem. The companies are dragging their heels to implement this for a variety of reasons, mostly financial, you know, they, they, they kind of make money off of these calls and stuff. So that's one problem is that the phone companies, the cell companies, which probably could do a much better job of blocking this tech spam as well as robocall spam is slow to implement this stuff. The FCC is gonna make them, but they keep putting off the deadline. So what can you do? I'll put a link in the show notes, tech eye labs.com to a PC magazine article by I Lance Whitney just from a few weeks ago, how to block robo texts and spam messages. But I want to caution you a little bit because not it's possible that some of these methods will not work <laugh> and could even expose you to malware. So as I, even the act of opening, the message can be dangerous.

Leo Laporte (00:42:19):
You know, ideally you don't ever even look at the contents of the message as soon as you see it. And you can kind of tell, if you look at your incoming text messages, you can kind of tell there's a problem you should, at that point, either delete it, or if it's possible for it to the phone companies. I don't think this is gonna do much good, but they do have a special short code, 7, 7, 26 that's spam. If you look on the keyboard and it works for at and T Verizon, and T-Mobile, it maybe will work for the other smaller companies. I'm not sure, but so, so you've forward it now to do this. I would not copy the message. I would not open the message. I would just forward it now on Android, you can long press it and say forward, I suspect you can do the same on Apple's messages.

Leo Laporte (00:43:09):
You don't. Yeah. See when I long press it, it opens it up. So this advice while, you know, maybe good advice is some is potentially risky. How do so I should explain why people are sending you these messages. It's not so that you'll respond to them or text 'em to stop. Do not send anything back to that message. That's just a signal that there's all we got a live one. This is a real phone number. Keep sending 'em stuff. Do not even if the message says, send zero to stop or text, stop to stop, ignore that. That doesn't work. That only works with legitimate non-criminal textures. You know if it's, but if it, you know, if it's an advertiser political campaign, if it's a store, you frequent, whatever stop will work. I'm not saying it won't work in those case, but the problem is this criminal spam.

Leo Laporte (00:44:00):
So texting back is not gonna work cause it's not a real number opening. It is potentially dangerous because there have been known flaws in the messaging programs on iOS and, and on Android. When they render a message that renderer that they use, if there's an image in it, for instance sometimes has a bug in it, which could allow a bad guy to get into your phone. So it's potentially even risky to open the message. We call this a zero click exploit. There aren't very many of them. They're very valuable. They're primarily used against by nation states by by governments, against dissidents and journalists and terrorists. And that kind of that they're, I, it's sad that I have to <laugh> lump dissidents and journalists in the same bunch as terrorists, but that's, those are the three groups not related that often get it targeted by governments.

Leo Laporte (00:44:56):
Remember we talked about the NSO group and their Pegasus malware. Well, the way they would get the malware on your phone is with a zero click exploit. The problem is, you know, they're, these things are few and far between they're very expensive. So usually it's only nation states that can afford to do this. So it's a low risk. The, the images and so forth are not low risk. And there have been some widespread cases of text messages with images or weird Unicode symbols in them crashing your phone. It's a short step from crashing your phone to taking it over. So you really don't wanna open these messages. You don't wanna display 'em. You don't want the renderer to work on 'em. And frankly, even the, no, the preview that you see might be sufficient. That's why this is a big problem.

Leo Laporte (00:45:38):
Now, the, usually the real payload on these, if they're not a nation state, if they're not a government trying to hack its its dissidents is the link itself. They want you to click the link, maybe just cuz they wanna drive traffic to a porn site, but maybe be because that site has more malware on it, that if you go there and your browser will be activated, so whatever you do, whatever you do do not click the links, do not follow it up. Even if it says you've just won a million dollars, click here to that's the whole trick.

Leo Laporte (00:46:12):
You fall into that trick. And, and so I think for the phone companies for T-Mobile Verizon and wireless say, Hey, just forward, it's the message. It's a little risky. It's a little risky. If it's just link spam, then it's not risky. Do you wanna take that risk? Given the fact that there's probably not a lot gonna do happen because of it cuz they already, the phone companies don't care. They're not doing much. Should you, if you, if your phone company offers spam protection, take it in most cases, these are it's free. Now there are third party programs you can buy, buy like robo killer, which is 30 bucks a year. The problem is everything you get has to be forwarded through these services. It's like a filtering system. And then they look at it and they say, well, you know, the good news is by doing that, you're probably eliminating a lot of it and you're not gonna have the risk of seeing it. So it's not gonna impact your phone. It costs money and it's not gonna be a hundred percent effective.

Leo Laporte (00:47:15):
There is a free service called spam hound, kind of works the same way. The folks who do robo killer often offer a free program. You can use in your phone call, text killer. It's more like a spam filter. It looks for certain words in the texts and blocks those. And it will learn from your actions. If you say this is spam, but again, I'm, I really don't wanna recommend opening up these messages that could be risky in and of itself. In my opinion, the, the, unless you're completely bombarded by them. The best thing to do is to lead them. If it comes from a political campaign, a store, a business, something more legit stop will work and stop is the right thing to do. Sometimes it's hard to tell though, and if it's a criminal, if it's a criminal stop is just gonna be like saying to a guy robbing you, Hey, stop.

Leo Laporte (00:48:09):
It's not gonna do any good. Might even irritate them. And it will certainly give you more messages. I'll put a link. There is, you know, this is how to block robo text and spam messages from PC week or I'm sorry, PC Mac, in my opinion you know, all of these things have some value, but it's always not. It's not guaranteed that they're gonna help. And it, some cases they could even hurt. I, I wish Lance Whitney who wrote this, had put a little more information in about that. We, you know, and really the, the blame completely falls on the phone companies, the cell companies, they need to do a better job. This should not be happening. You know, I think they've they've hurt themselves badly for a long time. Nobody wanted to answer the phone to make the phone less useful as a phone because of robo calling. They finally started to take that seriously. Now it's become less useful as a spam as a text messaging tool because a spam we got, I really think we should fix this. I honestly think this is their problem. And, and the FCC really needs to hold their feet to the fire. Leo Laport, the tech guy we'll take more calls in just a bit eighty eight eighty eight, ask Leo the phone number.

Leo Laporte (00:49:31):
And now it's you Scott Wilkinson home theater geek. Woohoo. Puerto Rico

Scott Wilkinson (00:49:36):
Is the new go to destiny. Thank you. Hey hun. As it happens, my lovely wife, Joanna is here and wanted to say hi to the chat room. Hi Joanna. So to

Leo Laporte (00:49:49):
Hi Joanna.

Joanna (00:49:50):
Hi everyone. Hey, happy new year. Hope you're all doing well.

Scott Wilkinson (00:49:56):
Happy new year to everybody. We are up here in Santa Cruz, getting our new temporary house set up and ready to go

Joanna (00:50:05):
Getting oriented. And it's wonderful, wonderful, sunny, clear day here. And we just hope everybody stay safe and healthy and get through and have a, have a

Scott Wilkinson (00:50:17):
Happier year. Indeed. Look how many people are saying happy new year to ya.

Joanna (00:50:24):
Great. Got the wrong glasses on to read at this. <Laugh> Give my aging eyes,

Scott Wilkinson (00:50:27):
It's Mrs. Home theater geek. <Laugh> oh, in Phoenix, four one loves your blue streak. Oh, thank you. <Laugh> it's my O it's my O dis semi retirement. No more dress codes. More dress codes. Yay. <laugh> well, there you go. Thanks honey. Thanks. So happy new year two. You all, may it be better? Had come in peace and health for everyone and Dr. Mom, grandma let's hear it for working in bunny slippers. <Laugh> yes, no more, no more dress code Phoenix warp one says we are so cute. Thank you very much. Oh, and big island a H says happy new year to both of us from Hawaii.

Scott Wilkinson (00:51:36):
<Laugh> happy. Ortho Christmas. Indeed. Thank you. Yes, we we're enjoying it up here very much. Leo said that Petaluma was kind of gray and cloudy, but it's gorgeous. Gorgeous here. Alan Gabriel, best TV at CES besides cute QD led. I don't know. I haven't digested all of the information yet and I had didn't see any of 'em. So it'd be difficult to to make that at determination, I'm gonna read the best TVs of CES. A couple people in the chat room have produced links, have sent links on from articles about best TVs at C. I'm certainly most excited about QD led but TCL introduced a 98 inch mini L E D LCD TV for $8,000, which is, you know, half the price would normally be. So somebody else in the chat room asked whether or not these 98 inch and a hundred inch TVs were gonna replace projectors.

Scott Wilkinson (00:52:44):
The projectors are gonna go buy by. And it, you know, if the prices keep coming down, then yeah, could, could very well be. Phoenix war warp one says, congratulations on your retirement. She was a speech pathologist still is, but she worked at a hospital and retired from the hospital. So Mac bookies says 83 inch OLET or a hundred inch short throw laser projector for a cinema room. Now, a cinema room if, if it's a really a dedicated cinema room and you can paint the walls dark and control the ambient light very well. Projector still has a, a, I think a good place in such a room and you know, at, at $8,000, a 98 inch TCL is gonna look pretty good. And, and pretty comparable, probably projectors except CS don't generally have very good black levels.

Scott Wilkinson (00:53:47):
The EPS have pretty good black levels. The JCS have excellent black levels. But you're gonna spend 8,000 bucks probably on a good JVC projector with screen. So you know, the, once the pricing of those big giant TVs come down to a certain point I think whoever wrote me that earlier about will that will that kill projectors? Not entirely. There's something to be said for a projector in a dark room as being more cinematic, the LCD TV's gonna be so bright that you're gonna, you know, you future so bright, you're gonna wear shades.

Scott Wilkinson (00:54:31):
S Mike Case says, I doubted for a variety of reasons. Also Heen said they have an eight K native trial. It's not native eight. K I I'm pretty sure it's a DLP with a quad pixel shift. I, I'm not sure about that, but I think that's what it is. A, and that should be very interesting. You're exactly right. Retro G says they're practically giving Walmart's practical, giving away 55 inch 4k TV. So that's true. B master, what are my thoughts on the HD MI Alliance saying H D I 2.0 is now all we labeled HD I 2.1, if that it's the case, I'm a little surprised because they never wanted to use those numbers in the first place. They really don't want to use version numbers, but maybe they finally succumbed. That's a very good question. Let's see how much time have I got left? Oh, I got three minutes left. Can you,

Leo Laporte (00:55:26):
Yeah. You get a long break cuz we don't have an ad at the bot top. If you wanna stick around, we have a caller who has wants to ask you about the Q O QD. Sure. Okay. Sure. So keep going and then stick around after don't hang up. Right.

Scott Wilkinson (00:55:39):
Okay. Okay. All right.

Scott Wilkinson (00:55:48):
Beat master at what? High me a link to what high-fi any H DM I connection can now be labeled as H DM I 2.1 and that's not okay. I would agree any H DM I connection. You know, I guess does H DM I 2.1 have to have 48 gigabits per second bandwidth? I, I don't know. I have to look at, I'll have to look at at that a little more closely, a web 93 0 3. What are all the direct view video technologies less? I don't know what that is. CT plasma, QD OED. Anything else? Well, direct view LC D SRA, LCD LCD, C R T plasma OED, and then QD, EDD. I would make a distinction between those two. I can't think of anything else. That's direct view rear projection TVs. <Laugh> when they were around they're long dead, but I suppose that might be, let's see, scooter X has high sense HK variant of the tri TV tri Chrome. I don't think it's tri chroma is powered by an eight K imaging chip set with embedded artificial intelligence that Combs through every visual scene pixel by pixel to optimize the picture, blah, blah, blah. Yeah, I still don't think it's native eight. K I think it's DLP and uses pixel shifting.

Scott Wilkinson (00:57:31):
Let's see. Let's see. Okay. I gotcha. Yeah. You didn't mention LCD TV. That's the other direct view? The major one these days in Hollywood yeah we are moving north, but I'm still gonna be doing tuba Christmas LA I'm gonna, I can do it all remotely. And all I have to do is fly down for the day. So that's, I'm gonna continue to do it because it's so near and dear to my heart. There's just no two ways about it. Yeah, these big, big flat panel TVs. The other thing about big flat panel TVs is that they consume a heck of a lot of power. So that may be another reason why projectors might be preferred. So they don't consume quite so much. Scooter X, I can apply for a passport to return to LA. Yes, I will do that. Maverick 56 what's the best TV I own do. I own a lot of TVs. I don't own that many TVs actually own. I've had a lot come in and out. My Sonny lead is my favorite. It's the best one by far. And I can get a QD OED. I probably will.

Leo Laporte (00:58:51):
Well, Hey, Hey. Hey, how are you today? Leo Laporte here. The tech guy, eighty eight eighty eight. Ask Leo the phone number. Let's talk high tech computers, the internet, home theater, digital photography, smart phones, smart watches, anything with a chip in it 88 88 ask Leo. Dave is on line from San Diego, California. He's next? Hi David.

Caller #2 (00:59:15):
Hello. I had a, a question for Scott Wilkinson. Is he still there?

Leo Laporte (00:59:19):
Amazingly Scott has never left. <Laugh> no, we saw that. I saw that you never leave. You wanted to talk to him. So I thought I'd get him to stick around. He's very kindly nice.

Caller #2 (00:59:30):
I have a, what do you call a crystal ball I'm looking into and I see Scott, your future. You're gonna get that a 95 K Q J quantum dot. But my question is has to do with the company that makes the quantum dots, the nano fifth mm-hmm <affirmative> for years and years and years, they have been putting on their website about this ultimate goal that they were shooting for called electro luminescence, which is they don't use a back light, a blue, black light. They were using electrical fields to stimulate the quantum dots to do what quantum dots, what would you, what we love about quantum dots to do their thing? Have they achieved that goal? Because when I went back onto their website, they changed everything. They changed everything about the look of it and the way they talked about it. So they have

Leo Laporte (01:00:18):
Added QD led, I noticed to their roadmap. Oh yeah. So that now they're being honest about it, but it's interesting cuz yeah, their roadmap nano again is the company that makes this quantum dot the actual quantum

Scott Wilkinson (01:00:31):
Do little microscopic and the film. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:00:34):
Yeah. And then their website, they start on the road roadmap with Q D then QD led the next one, micro L E D. I didn't realize quantum dots were involved in micro L E D production.

Scott Wilkinson (01:00:47):
They, they can be, you can put quantum dots inside of a, of a micro L E D

Leo Laporte (01:00:52):
And then nano L E D, which I guess is smaller than micro. I don't <laugh> I know print. They wanna, they wanna unlock the possibility they say of printing low cost and flexible displays that can wrap any object, big or small. That's kind of wild.

Scott Wilkinson (01:01:09):
That's flexible. And, and we've seen flexible EDS in the, in the roadmap. Do they have actually electroluminescent I don't bottom

Leo Laporte (01:01:18):
Dot. I think they, they take that out. It looks like they took it out.

Scott Wilkinson (01:01:20):
David. That's very interesting because they, they have talked about it for years. You're exactly right. And I'm sure that that that will happen. I've talked to, to NA I know the people there pretty well and they said, yeah, we're still working on electro luminescent, but it's still several years away. They have done it five years ago. <Laugh>

Leo Laporte (01:01:42):
Is it to display technology? What, how, how it be used?

Caller #2 (01:01:47):
Oh, it it more efficiency thing.

Scott Wilkinson (01:01:51):
I'm sorry.

Caller #2 (01:01:52):
It's more of a power efficiency thing. You guys are talking about, not on the era, but I heard you talking and you said something, somebody had texted you about how the power consumption for these panels is like really great. If if nano could achieve electro luminescence power consumption would go way down in other way down, very efficient panel way down. Yep. And they wouldn't need a back light. They wouldn't need all this filtering processing. It would be the best thing even

Scott Wilkinson (01:02:19):
Simpler by the way.

Caller #2 (01:02:20):
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. One, one other thing I wish you would do. And you could do this on tech co if you could, for everybody is just, could you just explain the difference between micro L E D macro L E D? And that thing that <laugh> came up with, which was the mini

Leo Laporte (01:02:35):
There's mini L E D too. Yeah. Yeah. And then apparently according to nano there's nano E D. So there's gonna be nano

Scott Wilkinson (01:02:42):
E D. Yeah. Yeah. I can do that. Sure, sure. That's a good idea, actually, to explain what those are

Leo Laporte (01:02:47):
That actually leads into my other query, which is in years past, we've said that micro led would be the future of television do, is that no longer the case you think? No,

Scott Wilkinson (01:02:58):
I, I think, think micro L E D has a definite place in the television universe. It's

Leo Laporte (01:03:03):
A direct few like O led, but it has some advantages. It also has some disadvantages. It's

Scott Wilkinson (01:03:09):
Much brighter. It can be any size you want, you can make giant

Leo Laporte (01:03:13):
Video walls. Yeah. Make giant

Scott Wilkinson (01:03:15):
Video walls, which you can't do with, with any other technology really. And it's super expensive, super expensive. Cuz the placement of those micro LEDs has to be so precise and perfect. You can't have a single error. So what I think

Leo Laporte (01:03:33):
People want, let's think about this. What do they want a TV? They want big, if we can fill a wall, you know, like in science fiction. Great. But, but we also want it to be bright and vivid. And in other words, we want it to look like a giant glass window to another world,

Scott Wilkinson (01:03:50):
Which micro L E

Leo Laporte (01:03:51):
D does micro LD does that. Okay.

Scott Wilkinson (01:03:54):
Already does. But if you got a million bucks. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:03:57):
Well <laugh> all these things coming down. Impressed. David did, did that answer your question? It's an interesting question.

Caller #2 (01:04:03):
Pretty much. It's a, it's a perfection, there's a moving target. Scott have a great new home environment and you and your wife. And thank you. Thanks. You Leo. Have a good day. Thank

Leo Laporte (01:04:13):
You, David. Have a good day. Mike heist, your colleague who is in our chat room, Scott says he thinks Samsung may not actually use nano films and quantum dots. They made, they bought a company that another company that they're, they may also be using

Scott Wilkinson (01:04:28):
Instead. They did, but I must, I thought they did. You know, I'm gonna have to go back and look at that. I'm not a hundred percent sure

Leo Laporte (01:04:35):
It's, you know, I mean, look there's all the question of how good does it have to be at some point I'm talking about with this with aunt Pruit, who's our photography guy on our on our hands off photography says at some point you know, the, the TV screen is as good as your eye. It doesn't need to be better than you can perceive. And it sounds like we're getting close to that, to be honest.

Scott Wilkinson (01:04:57):
Oh we're we're beyond it. Eight K eight K is beyond that range I think. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:05:03):
So, so, so if we're gonna make progress, it's not necessarily gonna be higher resolution, right. It's gonna be,

Scott Wilkinson (01:05:08):
It's gonna be greater color or,

Leo Laporte (01:05:10):
Or things like wrapping everything in video screens or <laugh>, I mean, you know yeah. That's not a TV that becomes a different application. I'll give you an example. We were at the Exploratorium in San Francisco's wonderful hands on oh great place. Experiential museum. And they have, one of their displays is a giant moon. It's huge. It must be 30 feet in diameter sphere. It's hanging there and it looks like the moon because projected onto it are satellite images of the moon. So it feels like you're looking at a giant giant for a room, but not as big as the real moon, but a big moon. And it's very detailed. It's very vivid. That's an example of, it's not built, it's actually a images project, your projector on, on a actual sphere. There is a sphere. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, but that's what the kind of thing electro illumines could do.

Leo Laporte (01:06:00):
It could bring video to all kinds of interesting surfaces, correct? Correct. I think that's kind of an intriguing idea. Yep. I agree. Especially for advertisers who would like to put advertisements on every surface in your house, <laugh> Scott Wilkinson home theater geek. Thank you. It's always great to have you. I, I agree with David, I'd love to see an article, just kind of running down all these different technologies. It's it's. I, that sounds like a great idea. I'll I'll start on that right away. Thank you. <Laugh> thank you. <Laugh> Scott Wilkins. It's nice. He sticks around after his segment and and is often available answer additional questions, which is really great. 88 88. Ask Leo. I'll tell you what I'll go. We'll get one more call in here before we take a break. Gloria on the line from north Hollywood, California. Hi Gloria. Hi Leo. Hey, it's good to talk to you again. Happy new year. Happy new year.

Caller #3 (01:06:56):
My problem is that I tried to sign up with OMA to get rid of the at and T bills. A technician came over. I'm sorry. Let me get I'm getting ahead of myself. OMA set up the service. And they said that they could port my landline number as soon as they port my number. Everything went off the phone.

Leo Laporte (01:07:18):
Yeah. So OMA, we should, plane is voice over the internet. And so that means, instead of using those phone lines, you'll be using your internet connection to make phone calls in the transition. It sounds like they, they disconnected when you reported the number they disconnected your, your traditional mob be phone. And maybe they hadn't connected the Uma right away. So there was a period of time where you lost service. That sounds like,

Caller #3 (01:07:43):
Yes. I wish I had known

Leo Laporte (01:07:44):
That. Yeah. That's always a risk, but you know, it's hard to know how to do that. Otherwise, unless you get a second number.

Caller #3 (01:07:51):
Oh, anyway, the company that I had, the internet service with wouldn't let me back in.

Leo Laporte (01:07:58):
They wouldn't let you back in. They said

Caller #3 (01:08:00):
To, they wouldn't let me back in, in the same, under the same service.

Leo Laporte (01:08:04):
Oh, you're on DSL extreme. And they want you to use their true speed. Don't they? Right?

Caller #3 (01:08:08):
Yeah. And when I went to, I said, okay, after crying for a week, I said, okay, the technician came over. He went outside to look at things. And he said, I have bad news. He says, this building that you live in was probably built in the thirties. Yeah. And we can't help you.

Leo Laporte (01:08:23):
So there are two ways people get internet. Typically one is through the phone lines, those copper lines coming into the house or the apartment building. And yeah. Many of them are very old, which means the quality's not good, but also true speed requires two phones, phone numbers, four wires. And they maybe couldn't put another pair of wires into your house. So in fact, I suspect that's what was going on. So he couldn't offer you that service it's it requires two phone lines.

Caller #3 (01:08:51):
Well, he mentioned something about a cat five cable. I don't know.

Leo Laporte (01:08:55):
Well, that's another way you could do it. So the, I said there are two ways to get, you don't have it here. That's no, you don't. No. There's two ways to get internet one is the phone company. That's usually the worst way the other, well, actually there's more than two ways now, but they're most areas. There's two ways. Phone company and cable company. Can you get internet from your cable company?

Caller #3 (01:09:16):
I have satellite.

Leo Laporte (01:09:18):
Okay. But you, but you may have cable available to you in your neighborhood. I bet you do.

Caller #3 (01:09:24):
I'm so ignorant about

Leo Laporte (01:09:26):
This. No, I understand. You don't have to get TV. Cable implies to people TV. It's not just TV. Oh, you don't have to get TV from the cable company. You can just get internet. You can get there's three services they offer. All of them are basically data services. There's TV, there's internet and there's phone service. They'll try to upsell you. They don't want you just to buy internet. They hate that, but you can just buy internet from them. And usually it's more expensive, much, sometimes 60, $70. And usually it's also much, much faster. The problem with Uma's gonna be in order to do voice over the internet, you have to have a pretty decent internet connection.

Caller #3 (01:10:08):
Well, I canceled Uma.

Leo Laporte (01:10:10):
Yeah. I don't think, yeah. It might not have worked very well on phone, you know, on DSL. Certainly not on a two pair DSL. It might have, but I'm just saying it might not have, so now you're without internet and phone service

Caller #3 (01:10:23):
All. No, I have the phone service I called at and T oh, to whatever. Yeah. Keep your at and T on everything that they were offering me, including caller ID, everything. I wanted everything stripped down. I have the phone to, but I haven't had internet all last year. Yeah. Because every company I call, if I mention the cat five cable, which is what this technician told me, when he came in to look things over, they said we can't help you.

Leo Laporte (01:10:50):
So there's newer ways. I'm I'm gonna have to take a break. So hang on. And I'll hand help you offline, but there's newer ways to get this wireless is probably your best bet at this point. T-Mobile and Verizon offer cellular based wireless Elon Musk, Starlink offer satellite based wireless there. Your satellite provider probably offers wireless internet as well. So there are other internet choices between nowadays besides the phone and the cable for years, phone and cable owned that space. But hang on. I'll, I'll help you a little bit off the air. Leo LePort the tech guy. So you haven't had internet in a year, Gloria? No. Oh,

Caller #3 (01:11:32):
Dear technician came here. He says, what you need is to have an electrician come over here and set up the wiring. He said, and the owners would have to pay for it. And I thought that there's no way I don't even want them to know that I'm doing this. They're not gonna pay

Leo Laporte (01:11:45):
For it. It's an older house. And the, in what I think they're saying is that the inside wiring is inadequate. Yeah. do you have, have you noticed there's a, a, a cable drop anywhere in your house? Cause I, you know, everywhere in north Hollywood is on the cable system, I would guess.

Caller #3 (01:12:04):
Well, I've tried to talk to everybody in this building is new. I've been here for so long. Everybody is <laugh> is an

Leo Laporte (01:12:10):
Apartment. It's an apartment building. Yes. Okay.

Caller #3 (01:12:12):
And I've come to realize that when you move, you don't take the internet company with you unless they can set it up where you're

Leo Laporte (01:12:19):
Going. Yeah. Yeah. They're really geographically restricted. So didn't know. That's the one thing to ask is look for your, your younger more tech savvy neighbors.

Caller #3 (01:12:27):
<Laugh> well, they have mentioned, I've asked three people, ask them what

Leo Laporte (01:12:30):
They do. Yeah. What do they do?

Caller #3 (01:12:31):
Yeah. They, the all three said spectrum. Yeah. That's cable. Oh, that's cable. Okay. so

Leo Laporte (01:12:39):
That's good. What that means is that's available to you. I'm almost certain your apartment has, it will look like a phone, little plastic phone Jack, but instead of a phone, it's got like a cable, a cable, a co axial cable coming out of it. That's a cable drop. I would look in your bedroom and living room for that. If you've got that, then it's a call to spectrum. They mail you a thing that you connect to it. And now you've got spectrum internet, wifi,

Caller #3 (01:13:09):
Any other suggestions? 

Leo Laporte (01:13:10):
So that's one way the other thing to do is to check with T-Mobile and Verizon, both of them are selling residential cellular service now. So they similar idea. They have a little box. You put it in the window though. Cuz it's got an antenna. It's a wifi adapter that is getting internet from the cell tower. And because you're in an urban area, there'll be a cell tower near you. You might actually get very good service if you go to T-Mobile and their web. Well, you can't cuz you <laugh>, you don't have the internet. Yeah. You could see what a disadvantage, why, how important it is that we have universal internet. Yeah. You just get left out. So T-Mobile does offer residential internet service and so does Verizon and so it depends on your neighborhood, so you're gonna have to call them and give them your address and say, can I get this in my neighborhood? And then the most important question, how much will it be? Yeah.

Caller #3 (01:14:12):
So what, between that and the other one that you spectrum that you mentioned, I mean, what would you think would be a good solution to some, well,

Leo Laporte (01:14:23):
Some of this is budget. You don't need probably a super high speed. Right? You wanna be able to do email, right. Surf the net, you know, do your banking, that kind of thing. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> so some of this will be how much do you wanna spend? The nice thing about DSL extreme was it was very inexpensive.

Caller #3 (01:14:41):
Yes. And they said that the people who are still with them can continue as they are the

Leo Laporte (01:14:45):
Older people, the problem is they ride on at and T's phone lines or whoever owns the phone lines and, and at T and T does not like them. They're only doing it cuz the FCC makes them do it. Oh, so there's this tension. And and I think what DSLs trying to do is move everybody to a, a better service DSLs, not a great service, but if you only, if you are fine with DSL speeds, you're not gonna find anything for 20 bucks a month anymore. Right. Right. But if you can spend 40 or 50 bucks a month, then I would check with T-Mobile or Verizon, do you have a cell phone?

Caller #3 (01:15:19):
I have a free cell phone, which is yeah,

Leo Laporte (01:15:21):
Yeah, yeah. Minimal. So it doesn't have a lot of data. No.

Caller #3 (01:15:24):
Yeah. I was willing to pay the at and T to sign up with DSL extremes new, but again, that's what that they can't do

Leo Laporte (01:15:31):
It. Yeah. Yeah. Can't do it. I think spectrum is probably your best bet I would call them and see what it would cost

Caller #3 (01:15:37):
Now is this wiring like it used to be where they come into your apartment and set up cables on your floor and no.

Leo Laporte (01:15:42):
Oh, okay. No, that's why I mentioned that cable drop on your wall. Hey, I gotta run Gloria call spectrum, and then maybe price are with T-Mobile and Verizon.

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Leo Laporte (01:16:28):
Leo Laport, the tech I eighty eight eighty eight. Ask Leo that's the phone number? (888) 827-5536. Actually Gloria, are you still on the line? Yes I am. She mentioned, you mentioned that you're on a subsidized cell phone. Yes. Which means you probably can get subsidized internet as well. Now I've just made this a lot more complicated <laugh> but, but and then unfortunately the the Congress has not renewed this subsidy plan, so it went up 10 bucks, but there is a subsidized internet plan. And I'm not sure where you go to get the subsidized internet. Let me just see if I can find that I have access to the internet here, fortunately. Yeah. And, and of course it's an, it's a website, but let me see if I can find a phone number, the subsidy as I said, Congress lapsed. So now it's not as much as it was the congressional allocation. Oh, let's see. Who can you call? Spectrum does have it. So when you call spectrum, say I I have a Obama phone and I want to get subsidized internet and that might be as little as $20 a month. Oh, wow. So it is worth calling the cable company. Okay.

Caller #3 (01:17:51):
Okay. That's the only one that you suggest though. Just

Leo Laporte (01:17:54):
I think because that's what everybody else in the apartment complex is using. We know it works. Oh, we know it works subsidy and the subsidy would actually, it's $15 a month for the first year. Okay. But you have to be a recipient of certain public assistance programs. Right. I suspect the subsidized phone is one of them and

Caller #3 (01:18:14):
Spectrum. No, T-Mobile for subsidy.

Leo Laporte (01:18:17):
T-Mobile does it as well, I believe. Yeah. Oh, okay. Verizon does anyway. Yeah. This is the good news is there's a little more competition in this internet space. It's thank you so much. It's just starting Gloria. Thank you. I, I appreciate it. Thanks for hanging on. Bye bye. Bye bye. Yeah. It's you can see, I mean, how <laugh>, how do you, how do you find out how to get subsidized internet? Well, you go online. Well, wait, I know I'm not online. How do I do it? You can see how it's a disadvantage nowadays, not to have any internet access.

Leo Laporte (01:18:48):
And I, and I really, I think it's a shame that Congress did not renew the subsidy. It's really important, but there are ways to get low income internet service. Spectrum has one, it's the spectrum internet assist program and that's her local cable company. So that's the first place I'd start. It's part of the FCC affordable connectivity program. And it can save you as much as 30 bucks a month. I, I think that's a big deal. We need to do more, even more. I mean, this is becoming, it's like water electricity these days, right? We just need it. David's on the line from Santa Clarita, California. Hi David Leo Laporte The Tech Guy.

Caller #4 (01:19:24):
Hi. Hi Leo. Great to talk to you. In fact, I think it's a phone call 20 years in the making <laugh>

Leo Laporte (01:19:31):
Well, it's about time.

Caller #4 (01:19:32):
Welcome. Yes, it is. No, actually about 20 years ago I went to a very sketchy little neighborhood to watch the taping of the screensavers. Oh my and, and Patrick was there and all the gang was there, but you were shirking your duties actually. I'm sure you were.

Leo Laporte (01:19:51):
I was so sorry. I apologize that I wasn't there. Yeah. That we were in the Potrero district of San Francisco. It was a sketchy neighborhood, but I'm glad you made it and saw it. That's cool.

Caller #4 (01:20:02):
I, no, it was I'm sorry. I missed you. I got a, I still have a t-shirt that has a spot for your signature that next. Well, we

Leo Laporte (01:20:10):
We'll arrange for that anyway. <Laugh>

Caller #4 (01:20:14):
20 years later. I really appreciate it. Yeah. But I really appreciate your being here today. Listen all the time. Normally be a podcast with my son on the way to school. Nice. So he'll get a chance to hear this later. Thank you. Anyway my question for you is so I use my, the iOS camera app a lot for just, you know, although I, you know, like taking nice pictures every now and then the family scenery, but I use it actually I lot more for just very mundane blah stuff. Oh, here's my parking

Leo Laporte (01:20:52):
Spot. Yeah, I do that all the time. Yeah. Yeah, exactly.

Caller #4 (01:20:55):
And then the other thing that I use it for, or want to use it more for is I do a lot of resale stuff, you know, eBay sure. Online, perfect for that. And all those apps have like their own built in camera portion. But if I wanna do it on multiple ones, it it's easier to take it in the camera app and then load them back in. Yeah. Use

Leo Laporte (01:21:17):
Apple's photos. Yeah,

Caller #4 (01:21:20):
Exactly.

Leo Laporte (01:21:21):
So I'm gonna have to take a break. Hang on just a second. We gotta take a little break for the bottom of the hour. Johnny jet travel guru is waiting in the wings. We'll do a little Johnny jet and take more of your calls. 88, 88. Ask Leah. Sorry about that. The network never rests. Oh no, but I'm still here. And the podcast, the podcast is still here. So if you listen, what's your son's name? 

Caller #4 (01:21:48):
Hi Timothy.

Leo Laporte (01:21:49):
Hi Timothy. Hi Timothy. <Laugh>

Caller #4 (01:21:52):
He's. He's gonna be in for quite a slack. Actually. They're doing their, I don't know. Are you familiar with first league robotics? Oh, he's in first.

Leo Laporte (01:22:01):
Oh, that's so cool.

Caller #4 (01:22:03):
Yeah. And today's their big day because they announced the new game. So he's at, you know, session at school there, you know, how exciting they just found out what the new game is. Yeah. I'm very proud of him. And you

Leo Laporte (01:22:15):
Should be, do you, do you get to help out at all or does he have to do it all on his own?

Caller #4 (01:22:19):
So it's kinda an interesting dynamic there. Yeah, I, unfortunately, it's hard for me to be involved because of commitment I have here, although I'd love to, I, I tell him all the time son, I was born about 30 years too early.

Leo Laporte (01:22:37):
Oh, I know first is really, really cool. And Steve Wak friend old friend was very involved in the beginning of first and was a coach I think, down in San Jose and

Caller #4 (01:22:50):
Some awesome schools from the bay area.

Leo Laporte (01:22:52):
Really, really cool Dean came and fatted it. Yeah, really great. So cool. First inspires.org. If people are curious about it, your school, every school should do it. It's just a wonderful idea to get kids into science and technology.

Caller #4 (01:23:06):
And the robo warriors are looking to do excellent this year. So good had a tough year cause of the, because of the pandemic last year, everything, they were lucky. They got to go to one competition and the whole season had a full, it was really sad for a lot of the, especially the older kids, you know, who were looking for that. You want me to wait until we're back on the air for the, no, go ahead. Ask.

Leo Laporte (01:23:31):
And I'm I'm I'm basically, I think I'm gonna say, just use Apple's photos app, cuz that's so well integrated in. Why don't you want to use that?

Caller #4 (01:23:41):
Well, no, I actually, I don't mind using the photos app. Here's what I'm looking for. I'm actually looking for an alternative camera app because here's the thing and it, it, it almost feels petty, but so a lot of times it's like, oh, Hey, I wanna take a picture right now on the fly B Baba, you know, 3, 4, 5. And then the problem is after you take, you know, those 5, 6, 7 photos in a getting them into, it's just the management afterwards. It's like, okay, then I gotta open this, the share panel, click here, click here, click here, move it into a separate album because otherwise then I end up with a whole bunch of photos. I don't want in the general camera role, just because, oh,

Leo Laporte (01:24:22):
So you just want a camera app that has its own role. Not, you don't want it in photos, particularly

Caller #4 (01:24:29):
In some ways that would be good. Although a lot of the apps depend on being

Leo Laporte (01:24:33):
Able to that's the thing share has to work. Yeah. So there's certainly, there is no lack of third party camera apps for the iPhone. Right. In almost every case. They're more complicated, not less.

Caller #4 (01:24:46):
Exactly. And someone recommended camera plus, and I actually haven't done it yet. I've been chatting with the developers, but it's a slow process cuz it just couple days, that's the

Leo Laporte (01:24:55):
Old solution. That was one of the very first third party camera apps. In fact yeah, I know the developers pretty well. I'm glad to hear, they're still doing it to be honest with you. I think

Caller #4 (01:25:05):
It's, you know, and I may have given you the wrong name being very often, maybe camera two plus or something similar. Okay. But, and I haven't done because like I know it sounds petty, but you know, it's a 10 bucks download and you know, I don't, I don't like asking for money back, you know, but they didn't have enough in there to tell me this is the feature I, you know, that I'm looking for. Cause ideally it would be like, Hey, those last 10 picture one click to here. Here's the album they should go into. Cause especially a lot of times I'm doing this one handed.

Leo Laporte (01:25:33):
So really what you're looking for is not so much a camera app as what we call a dam, a digital asset management app. And honestly the best one on apples platform on iOS is probably photos. I don't know of. Yeah. A lot of other choices. The nice thing about camera plus is if it's the one I'm thinking of it has its own camera role. So at least you're separating it out. Hang on. I gotta, I gotta go do Johnny Jet. Hang on. Hey Johnny.

Johnny Jet (01:26:07):
Hello? Happy new year. Happy

Leo Laporte (01:26:10):
New year. Thanks for the chocolates. Those are good. Harry and David chocolates. Yeah. Thank you. He's been everywhere, man. He's breathing the mountain air, Johnny jet, our travel guru travel better with technology. He helps us every week do that. We haven't been doing a lot of travel in the last couple years, but America's come back to traveling TSA numbers through the roof. Right? Johnny?

Johnny Jet (01:26:39):
Well, they're 1.5 million yesterday. The two years ago, pre pandemic was 1.7. So we're pretty much on par. I think it's 82% of what we were pre pandemic. So you know, this Amron is not deteriorating. A lot of people, although it did deter my family and I we're supposed to be on a plane right now to Hawaii. Oh we postponed it because all of our neighbors are sick and I have some friend who are pilots and flight attendants. And they're like, this is not the time to go right now. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:27:08):
Just the Nu the COVID numbers are through the roof. The good news is for vaccinated people, especially if you're boosted it seems to be mild. Nevertheless, nobody wants to get COVID

Johnny Jet (01:27:18):
And especially when you're traveling and when you have little kids, I one that's UN vaccinated

Leo Laporte (01:27:22):
And not vaccinated. Yeah. Well don't be

Johnny Jet (01:27:25):
So yeah. I mean it's funny. That's why we postponed

Leo Laporte (01:27:28):
In the first round of COVID not every few of us knew other people who had gotten it. Now. Everybody knows a lot of people who, oh my,

Johnny Jet (01:27:37):
Honestly I know at least

Leo Laporte (01:27:41):
50 people it's also become a problem because there aren't pilots, there are aren't flight attendants. There aren't bus drivers, truck drivers. There aren't waiters a lot. So many people are out sick that everybody's hobbling along. So that's another reason maybe not, not to travel. Lisa and I are gonna do a local, we're gonna drive down to Carmel by the sea, spend a couple of nights there, drive back. I feel like that I can handle a you know, instead of going to an airport and all that stuff, but that's not till next month. I think it's gonna get better after

Johnny Jet (01:28:11):
I do too. I do too. And, and we didn't cancel it. We postponed it. So, and right now, if you are traveling, no doubt that you've seen all the numbers, cruises

Leo Laporte (01:28:21):
Are being canceled too. Right? They

Johnny Jet (01:28:23):
Are. But you know what? I have friends that would say they still much rather be on a cruise because the, the cruise ship with the most caseloads, I think was Royal Caribbean with 4,800 passengers. And there were 48 cases of COVID that's only 1.5% yeah. Of a caseload. Yeah. Compare that to any other place in America. That's really low. And so everyone on the cruise has to be vaccinated. And if they do and they test all the time, if you, and if you do test positive, they quarantine you.

Leo Laporte (01:28:51):
So it might be safer, you know, we're going we still are doing our TWI crews, our podcast cruise for all our listeners to Alaska and July. <Laugh> I I'm thinking maybe by then everything, I'll be a little more back,

Johnny Jet (01:29:05):
Even if it's not, people are managing it. And honestly I have friends right now on cruise ships right

Leo Laporte (01:29:11):
Now. We were supposed to go on a cruise, Lisa and I in about three weeks. But, but it started in Hong Kong. You can't get into Hong Kong, <laugh>

Johnny Jet (01:29:19):
You can't. And if you do, I was, is reading a story this morning about, you know, if you test positive in Hong Kong's yeah. You have to go to the hospital and you stay there, even if you keep testing. Yeah. Even if you show no symptoms. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:29:30):
There's a three week quarantine for foreigners coming into the country. That's why they canceled that cruise I'm sure. But there are still a lot of con countries open. We have good friends, definitely. My and his wife are going to carnival and Venice next month

Johnny Jet (01:29:48):
You can get some deals right now, by the way, I was just looking Hawaii, 1 99 round trip from the west coast from now until the mid of mid-March. And then it only goes up to like 2 30, 8 round trip. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:29:59):
So I really guess it depends on your, your your tolerance for risk. And and I think a lot of people are obviously traveling taking advantage of this and then some of, of us like you and me staying at home, but that's, you know, everybody get to choose what they want to do. Yeah.

Johnny Jet (01:30:14):
I mean, if you don't have little kids and you're healthy you know, I, I would, I would be traveling right now, but you know, I can't take a, a chance with little kids. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:30:23):
Oh, I don't blame

Johnny Jet (01:30:24):
You. Yeah. Because of this, you know, last year was one of the last year's hottest travel trends was trip stacking what's that we might have talked about this trip stacking is when you have a, you know, you want to go to your dream vacation, let's say you want to go to Europe, but because you never know it's gonna happen with COVID. I mean, these days entry requirements for countries just change on a dime. I mean, you really have to keep checking all the time. So what you do is you have a backup plan, so you have a backup trip. So in case Europe is not gonna work out a few days before you cancel that trip and you do your backup, which is, might be Florida or Hawaii or California, something that's not. So not so difficult to get into those places are not so risky.

Johnny Jet (01:31:07):
And this way you don't lose your vacation, you don't have to stay home. And if you, you know, as a travel advisor and they book you refundable fairs and hotels, there won't be any problems. Or you can just wait till last minute and then just start booking. At least for your hotels, I would wait, but I would book your flights in advance. And when you do book your flights in advance, make sure you're booking on a us carrier, because in case let's say you don't go to Europe because of COVID, you know, instead of booking on air France or British airways or Singapore airlines, whatever you want, you know, at least you can use that credit to go somewhere in the us, if you book on United American Delta. So keep in mind when you're booking these international trips. It's, you know, although I love international carriers and, and for the most part, they're better than us carriers in terms of, of, you know, service and luxury, depending on which ones and which class of service, but this is a safe bet right now.

Leo Laporte (01:32:03):
Oh, okay. What what other advice do you have

Johnny Jet (01:32:06):
For us? And, and because today, because it's early January, I always tell people, make sure you go find, find your passport, look at the expiration date and find out when it's expiring. Because a lot of people find out last minute that you know, gonna expire in June and you know, it's may, and you're gonna really have to scramble. And the state department's already advising four to six months in advance to do it.

Leo Laporte (01:32:28):
My, my daughter has an date passport. She couldn't find it. She was going to Mexico for Christmas, with the rest of the family, but she had her passport card. She found out when she got to the airport, the passport card's only good for land and sea travel into Mexico. Yes. So she had to fly down to San Diego, take an Uber to Twan, to the there's, a bridge, a land bridge. Yep. Across into Tijuana, which actually goes right to the airport. There. It does. So she walked into Mexico, used the tra the passport card worked that way and then flew the rest of the, to Cabo San Lucas for Christmas. It's smart.

Johnny Jet (01:33:02):
It works. It's also, it's also a way to save a lot of money if you live here in Southern California, because the FARs out of Tijuana are usually much cheaper.

Leo Laporte (01:33:11):
Yeah. Yeah. Now, now somebody in the Uber on the way back said, oh, you can fly into the United States with the passport card. You just can't fly out. Is that true? That I told her, take the Landbridge don't listen to the Uber guy. You know what it says on those passport cards only good for land and seed travel.

Johnny Jet (01:33:31):
Yeah. I don't think so, but because you're an American citizen. Yeah. They have to let you in.

Leo Laporte (01:33:36):
Yeah. They may not like it. And they may make you sit in your cool in your heels for a while.

Johnny Jet (01:33:41):
The big challenge will be getting on the plane because the the gate agents will be like, sorry, no, you don't have a passport. Sorry. So that's gonna be the problem. But once you get into America, they have to let you in. If you're an citizen,

Leo Laporte (01:33:51):
She had a bit of an adventure. It was, it was, it worked out fine. It was a kind of an interesting trip. Yeah. And,

Johnny Jet (01:33:58):
And also another deal it's expiring today, ho Costco and Hawaiian airlines, you buy a $500 gift certificate for $450. So you get $50 off if you're flying Hawaiian, actually, they also have it for Alaska airlines and Southwest, but the Hawaiian part expires today.

Leo Laporte (01:34:16):
Our hotels, cruises, airfare are still pretty low because of COVID or if they started come back to normal levels.

Johnny Jet (01:34:22):
Oh, no. Right. For right now they're so low. You can fly across country, you know, LA to New York for, you know, a hundred dollars right now. Yeah. So they're super low. This is the time actually under a hundred dollars each way. Yeah. Yeah. So this is the time if you're go, if you're healthy and or if you've even had COVID before or recent, the you know, you're gonna get some really good deals and New York city, by the way, has a deal until February 13th, 22% off select hotels through their tourism board, New York city go I'll have to tweet that out

Leo Laporte (01:34:57):
And I can send it to you for your show notes. Very nice. You could find out all about traveling, even if it's just to dream of travel someday in the future, by going to Johnny's website, Johnny jet.com, his newsletters are free and absolutely a must subscribe, Johnny jet.com/newsletter. He's also Johnny jet on Twitter at Instagram. He's got a podcast he's even got a YouTube channel where he asks travel questions. And I think you've interviewed me twice for your YouTube channel. I have. Yeah, let's go. Let's go for three. <Laugh> right. Hey, Johnny safe travels. Great to talk to you. You too. Leo. Leport the tech guy.

Leo Laporte (01:35:43):
Yeah. I'm thinking, you know, two weeks, we would've been on our way to Asia, but I guess that's not gonna not gonna happen. I, listen, I just got my trip at notification that my departure, oh, I know. I hate those. I was leaving and I was like, oh man, right now we would be, we'd be almost in Hawaii. And we're just Jones in a go. But chatroom says that the positivity rate in Hawaii is 20% right now. I think you made the's crazy. Right. Choice. Crazy. Yeah. Def I, I, there's no doubt, but it's still, I just dream of Hawaii. I know. And I love it. I feel lucky that we kind, you know, there was this kind of interim between Delta Andron, where we went to Hawaii, he went to Mexico. We, you know, we kind of skated by without problem. But now I just think, you know, driving to Monterey is gonna be the, the highlight of our trip.

Leo Laporte (01:36:28):
We're fortunate to live in California. I mean, we got it all here. Yeah. So Lisa and I you know, we, we said, okay, well, we're just going to see some of the sites in our area and go to the best restaurants in our area and enjoy that. I mean, do you know any people around the world dream of going in California? And I know, you know, for years, I didn't even know where I live in Los Angeles. So cuz I was spending most of my time traveling internationally. How many people live in San Francisco have never been to Alcatraz or pier 39 or people up my iWave been on. I went to my first wine tour a few years ago. <Laugh> I've lived in the wine country for years. So I grew up 40 miles from New York city. And I'd never been to the statue of Liberty.

Leo Laporte (01:37:08):
There you go. I'd never been to, to the grand canyon. I was born there neither way. I have been to the grand canyon and I love it. Yeah. I want to go. These are, these are my bucket lists. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, our, our engineer Russell who likes he's a fan of the death defying went to Budapest, spent the last two weeks wandering around Budapest. Nice. <laugh> yeah. He didn't get sick. He's fine. It's a beautiful, oh I love Budapest. I do too. Yeah. Especially at night and going up the, the Dan. Oh, isn't that a beautiful, yeah. Lisa and I really want do repeat that river cruise. We did Amster am to Budapest. You did the Christmas one cuz we did a Christmas. One's one. We did the Christmas markets is the one we want do. Yeah. Well they're great, but they're cold and, but there's less people.

Leo Laporte (01:37:55):
So that's the nice thing. Now's a good time. <Laugh> yeah, but I dunno. I, I, you know, I feel like we're all gonna get it now. It's just so contagious. It's just inevitable. All of my friends who've had, it are all fully vaccinated and I think, and most of them are boosted and almost all of them have been mild cases. Not all, but all almost. Yeah. That's the problem. Not all. I have 2, 2, 2 people I know who are not vaccinated were anti vaxers. Both of both of whom. Got it over Christmas, whole family. Got it. Fortunately you know, no serious complications, but they were pretty sick. Same thing with my, one of my good friends. He's not anti-vaxer but he's against his VAX scene and his kids were really sick. Like 104. Yeah. See, I don't, I don't wanna take the chance.

Leo Laporte (01:38:41):
No, no. I don't wanna lose my sense of taste and smell the other night we went out to a restaurant on Thursday night in San Francisco and I woke up that after the meal. I think I've lost my sense of smell. No. And I rolled over and I, I sniffed Lisa's head and I said, oh no, I did. I'm okay. Oh <laugh> I hope it was a good smell. It was good. No, no, no, no. Yeah. I like how she smells. It was good. Oh God. I could still smell my wife. I'm okay. I'm fine. But it was funny cuz I woke up in the middle, like going I've lost my sense of smell. That's my new diagnostic. I, I moist sniffing and tasting just to see is the coffee smell good? Oh, I guess I'm okay. Well Dr. Mom will tell you more, but I think it's more a scratchy throat.

Leo Laporte (01:39:22):
This, this one. The Omero yeah. Yeah. It doesn't go in your lungs as much apparently, but which I yeah. Oh no. She says Omero is not Ning. The sense of smell and taste. Oh. Not as much or not at all. Cause my son, I more of a sore throat. So Henry's got it for the second time. He's fully vaed he's gotten gotten COVID twice. I figured he's just gotta be immune by now. You would hope when would I? I have, I have multiple friends. Who've had it multiple times, at least twice. All right. Thank you. Johnny. Take care. Lay port Dave tech guy, eighty eight eighty eight. Ask Leo the phone number before Johnny. We were talking to David and Santa Clara. Thank you so much for hanging on David David. And I think this is not an unusual request actually, which is why I wanna spend a little time with it takes a lot of camera, phone pictures, but he wants an easy way to kind of manage the ones he takes for personal reasons, whether it's business or you know, just parking spots aside from the stuff, family, photos, and so forth. Is that, is that accurate, David? Is that an accurate description?

Caller #4 (01:40:26):
Yeah, that's pretty close. Cause yeah, I like we discussed a little bit, you know, I'm familiar with how to use the different albums and photo, but basically it would be ideal to within the actual camera itself with right. This is a big do it just kinda pre tag it like, Hey, these next 20 pictures, just throw 'em in, in the trash pile because you know, I'm not gonna need 'em cause what ends up happening is then I forget to do it. And then later now I've gotta go

Leo Laporte (01:40:52):
And see a lot of junk in there. This is a big category on desktop. It's called digital asset management or dam. Yeah. And you know, light room is famous for this. Every photographer has to deal with it. There's capture one. There are more far more choices on the desktop, even back to, you know yeah. Programs like Picasa from which Google killed, unfortunately. But I don't know of a, a, a lot of choices on either Android or iOS iOS probably because Apple's photos is, does do that. The one thing I might point you to is Google photos does do something kind of interesting Google's photos, which you can use

Caller #4 (01:41:31):
Side by side with Apple's photos. You can just turn on the features. It says when I take a picture upload it. The nice thing about that is it's now available on the web it's available everywhere and they do some classification. In fact, one of the things they do is directly in response to what you're talking about. If they see receipts screenshots, there's a whole category of things that they then will say to you when the next time you open Google photos, Hey, I see all these photos I'm betting. You don't wanna keep these in your main album. You wanna, should I move 'em to the archive? So that's kind of nice. That's using AI to kind of understand what your pictures are and then know if those photos by default going to the camera roll as well were into 

Leo Laporte (01:42:14):
Photos. So the, the workflow in on iPhone is that's good is yeah. An iPhone. The workflow is photos first. And then if you have Google photos installed, you can turn it on that. It will also upload to Google photos. So you have 'em in two places, the CA the categorization only occurs in Google photos, not in apples photos. I would imagine because of this feature, we'll soon add something similar. They're they're always trying to have feature parody with, with Google. So I wouldn't be surprised if at some point apple photos said, Hey, these look like, you know, I don't know how they're not junk photos. They're something else, I don't know, picture of things you want to keep, but don't want to have in your photo album. I don't know what, yeah. So, so back in Philly's telling me in the char you can search on receipts in apple photos, but I don't know about the automatic categorization yet. Google does that, but I don't know if apple, I don't think apple does that. So they're both getting smarter. This is AI. This is this is image recognition, but built into the phone or in the service. And, and they're definitely getting better at that.

Leo Laporte (01:43:23):
Okay. I don't know of any camera program that does it. If somebody does give us a ring we want a, a cam, a camera program for iPhone that does, does better digital asset management. And I, I don't off the top of my head in my note. No, and this is one of the problems when Microsoft does this with windows or apple does it with iOS when they have a program built in, it's rare that you'll see somebody try to compete directly with it because everybody has the free version already. And apple makes it doubly rare because apple also has the right in their app store to reject any app that duplicates functionality that's already on the iPhone. So if you came along and said, you know, I wanna make an apple photos, that's better, you know, does the same thing only better they say, I know <laugh> you can't put that in the app store. So yeah, I, there are lots of camera apps, but managing the photos that's I don't know of anything that does a good job of that. Dave, Lex, Richmond, Virginia Leo. Leport the tech guy. Hi Lex.

Caller #4 (01:44:29):
Good afternoon, Leo. Thanks for, I've got maybe a low tech question this time for you. Sure. It's the new year. So I'm thinking about doing plain text journaling, and I'm sort of excited about getting into it.

Leo Laporte (01:44:41):
I love that. I do that every January. I plan that and by January 30th, <laugh> I'm done. I, I always want to, everybody says it's such a good idea. Keep a journal. Yeah. I

Caller #4 (01:44:56):
Dunno why. Well, I'm, I'm a fountain pin guy too, so I like writing on paper three plus years. I've used a, a paper journal. Very nice journal. I mean, my, my planner as well. Yeah. Calendar planner. Yeah. I think I'm gonna do it on plane for a while. And the beauty of it is just, you can open it anywhere on anything, but I, I fear select all, any key. If you know what I'm saying, <laugh> you can make, you can make it all go away with just a key

Leo Laporte (01:45:26):
<Laugh>. So you wanna pro so I, when you say plane text, you mean you are gonna do this on a computer or a phone. Exactly. Not with your, not with your beautiful fountain pen on your beautiful, handmade Japanese paper. You're can do it on the computer. That, by that way, that's a big step right there. Yeah. The advantage of it is it's searchable. It can exist on many platforms. It can persist for, you know, for a long time. There's not just one copy of it. So I think there are advantages. It's not as aesthetic. My suggestion I'll tell you the program I love and use is called obsidian. It's it's a free to use from obsidian.md and the MD tells you something in the website, MD stands for marked down. So it's plain text, but markdown is an additional kind of language within plain text that lets you indicate in plain text.

Leo Laporte (01:46:22):
This is bold. This is underlined. But more importantly, this is a link and this is one of the things obsidian does very well. You go double bracket type of word, double bracket. You know, now created like a Wiki, a page that is linked to that word. And for some kinds of note taking that's really valuable. If you write a lot about cooking, for instance, whenever you type the word recipe, you can make that link to a recipe box. Oh, wow. Yeah. So that is a feature you can't obviously do very well in handwriting obsidian though is plain text. And now here's why it answers your conundrum. It's immediately saved locally, but there is a, it also has a sync feature. That's very fast that will sync to and obsidian works on Mac windows, Linux, iOS, and Android. So it will automatically sync to all those platforms. So even if you control a delete, <laugh> your entry there? It, it, it, it, it keeps versions. It will, it'll still exist. There is are you on iOS?

Caller #4 (01:47:30):
I'm a windows Chromebook, Chromebook, Chromebook, and Android phone user.

Leo Laporte (01:47:35):
Okay. So obsidians on Android. I don't know if it works in the browser. I don't think it does. Let's think of another solution for Chromebook. What

Caller #4 (01:47:46):
About just Google docs and then send out once a week to a text file. That's a great

Leo Laporte (01:47:51):
Idea. Google docs also does versioning. So if you accidentally delete something, you, I'm pretty sure you can go back and say, before I did that, what did it look like?

Caller #4 (01:47:59):
Well, they they've got that go back button that has my hide.

Leo Laporte (01:48:03):
Yeah, exactly. So Google docs would not be a bad choice at all. That has a lot of the same advantages.

Caller #4 (01:48:10):
Well, thank you for that. Yeah. Can I hit, hit you with another quick question? Sure. Importance of VPN. If you don't leave home much

Leo Laporte (01:48:19):
<Laugh> I would say zero. So there is a it's interesting, Brian X. Chen just wrote an article in the New York times saying, do we really need VPNs anymore? And he makes a pretty strong that because most sites are now encrypted. You probably a VPN is of less value than it used to be. There's still reasons to use it. One is to kind of hide your presence on a public net. If you're sitting in a coffee shop and you're not using a VPN, people can see your machine there and can attack it or attempt to attack it. Also the geographic thing where if you wanna watch Netflix in Japan, a VPN can let you do that. But if you are at home, yeah, you don't need a VPN.

Caller #4 (01:49:00):
Well, that's, that's helpful. I mean, I'm in a hotel once a month and I I've kept a VPN just to use it there, but that's, that's helpful info. Thank you. Yeah. I

Leo Laporte (01:49:08):
Think if you're in a public place, there are arguments that you still need. I'll put a link in the show notes. So to Brian's article, cuz he makes a pretty good case. Leo Laport, the tech guy. Thank you, Leo. Yeah. Hey, thanks for the call.

Caller #4 (01:49:20):
Thank you. Bye

Leo Laporte (01:49:21):
Bye. But do you do do, do, do, do, I mean, there's still reasons to use it which Brian didn't kind of talk about, but he says it's time to stop paying for VPN. That also raises the issue of, you know, there are plenty of ways to do VPN, like stuff, you know Google on Android has a VPN apple on iOS has a VPN private relay or VPN like capabilities. So I think a lot of the functionality that you absolutely had to have a VPN for in the past you don't really, you don't really need to anymore. He also raises the issue, which is legit that, and I've always said, you know, can you trust your VPN? Remember you, you know, it's important that you trust your VPN because they do have just like your ISP, they have access to everything. He says, some people still benefit for using a VPN and not all providers are bad at the very end. Right. Okay. Fine. <laugh>

Leo Laporte (01:50:54):
Why, 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 journaling, eighty eight eighty eight. Ask the phone number (888) 827-5536, toll free from anywhere in the us or Canada. There is a really good journaling program. I wanted to give them a little bit of a plug. I just love it. If you, if it was your new year resolution to, I gotta start keeping a journal, take a look. It's not free. At a program called day one, D a Y O N E app.com. It's really pretty much iOS and Mac. Although I, they used to have an Android version. I don't see it on their website anymore. So maybe that they have stopped trying to compete on, but if you're on iOS or, or Mac or both just love day one day one app.com and it does some really cool things cuz journaling's hard.

Leo Laporte (01:52:01):
So, so it'll pull in your social media posts. It'll pull in your location. It'll even pull in the weather and start your daily, a journal post. They have prompts you can use. I just it's it's it's one of those programs every, every year about this time I <laugh>, I, I start right around now I start saying, oh, I really ought to be journaling. I just wish I had done this my whole life. And then I never get very, you know, five days, six days, and I'm done people. People swear that journaling is a great thing, but I don't, I don't have the discipline, I guess. Anyway, if, if there were one application to do it, this is, this is the one I wish I, you know, it's funny. I think they did have an Android and even a windows version. And I think they've must have discontinued those not free by the way. Iphone, iPad, Mac there's even an apple watch version, but no, but it's all it's all apple. Well, wait a minute. Day one companion app is available for Android. So it's not as full featured, I guess, day one journal. They were bought recently by the folks that do the WordPress software automatic. And to me, that's good news. That means day one will probably get some more resources put behind it. 88 88, ask Leo Paul on the line from Columbus, Ohio. Hello, Paul. Leo Laporte here.

Caller #5 (01:53:24):
Hey Leo,

Leo Laporte (01:53:25):
How you doing? I am. Well, how are you?

Caller #5 (01:53:27):
Oh, happy new. You're doing all that good stuff. Thank you. You too. I'm doing OK. Doing OK. Couple of quickies for you. I hope. This one issue's been going on for quite a while. I noticed then I thought it would clear up and it hasn't. And that is when I wanna listen to TWI the TWI fee on the tune in on the, a devices. Yes,

Leo Laporte (01:53:50):
The echoes. Get it on. Yes, the echoes. Thank you for not saying the, a word we don't like to say that on <laugh>. I know, I know.

Caller #5 (01:53:59):
Anyway, I can get it on one wireless device, which is a poll soundbar. That's connected to TV. Okay. Okay. And I can get it. I can get it on the let's see the cube.

Leo Laporte (01:54:16):
So you say you say a word.

Caller #5 (01:54:19):
I can't get it on. I can't get it on a standalone, like a device.

Leo Laporte (01:54:23):
Yeah. This drives, this drives us in the podcast world. Crazy because the syntax is inconsistent. It's hard. I, you know, I like to listen to podcasts on these voice activated speakers, whether it's Google or Amazon because you just, you know, I'm shaving or whatever. And I say, Hey, play the latest F1, you know, formula one podcast. And you know, about eight times outta 10, it'll do what I ask it to do. The other times it'll play something completely random. Or, and this is the most frustrating. It'll say I have no idea what you're asking me for. And I don't think it's what I'm, it's not

Caller #5 (01:55:00):
A, yeah. This, this is saying the, a device says repeats the name TWI TWI live and says, TWI live not available.

Leo Laporte (01:55:09):
Yeah. Even though you know, it is cuz you're listening to it on another Alexa device somewhere else. Oh, I said the, a word exactly. <Laugh> yes. Yeah. I wish I knew what the answer was there. Isn't a set syntax and I'll, by the way, I'll be generous and say this isn't just for me in my podcasts. But is for all podcasts, the syntax varies. You're using tune in so you can use a variety of different applications more and more. These voice activated speaker systems have allowed you to say, I want to use Spotify or I want to use tune in, or I wanna use Google podcast or apple podcast and you can do that in the setting. So that's one thing you might wanna do is look at different providers. It was for years. That's how you did it. You would say Madam a play TWI live on TuneIn and it would play,

Caller #5 (01:55:59):
It works on the tune in app, on my iPhone. I know, know,

Leo Laporte (01:56:03):
I

Caller #5 (01:56:03):
Know. Well, I'm gonna call, I'm gonna call and yell at at the, a people about that because I've got an issue with the cube also. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:56:12):
I, I, I don't, it seems like, it feels like they've got different versions of the, a, a word software on the Polk bar and on the cube than on the standalone device. I would guess the standalone device is the most up to date cuz both Polk and the fire cube are made by not, you know, made by well fires made by Amazon. But I, who knows, I don't know.

Caller #5 (01:56:34):
Well, switching over to the cube thing for a second, I love the device visually impaired. It works usually great on everything now, but, but sling <affirmative> and it worked wonderfully on SL until SL said, oh, we have this wonderful new software that we were gonna do. And that was back in June. Yep. Since then it has been total crap on slang.

Leo Laporte (01:56:57):
That's the problem with all these streaming devices is there, they're really not they're a computer that you install apps on and when sling, for instance changes their apps, they can break it and, and Amazon has, you know, has no control over that. I guess.

Caller #5 (01:57:15):
So. Yeah. Well I've called both and I've just, I, they, the person at sling said, well, you know, we're trying to do improvements all the time. I said, yeah, I understand. Yeah, you broke it. Look up the, look up the definition of improvement,

Leo Laporte (01:57:27):
Not improvement.

Caller #5 (01:57:29):
I mean, it was working Leo, it was working perfectly. You could fast forward do everything by voice. And you'd say it, get a specific channel, went right to it. I can't, you can't even use the cursor manually and get to it and make it work right all the time. Yeah, it's stupid. But every, every other app, Hulu, you know, Netflix, all of them are great except for the well,

Leo Laporte (01:57:51):
And to further complicate matters, the software that's running on say an apple TV is probably very different than the software running on the cube on the fire TV.

Caller #5 (01:58:01):
Well, I actually tried it on my, on my apple TV and the sling app is still a piece of crap saying <laugh>,

Leo Laporte (01:58:08):
It's terrible there too. Huh? I you know, it's software that's that's the real bottom line. And it's what

Caller #5 (01:58:15):
Other, what's an equivalent service besides besides sling that is reasonably priced. I know YouTube sounds good that it's expensive. It's not

Leo Laporte (01:58:24):
Reasonably priced, but it's the best of the bunch easily. Yeah. Hulu, Hulu also has has one. So I think they're the last men standing. The reason these are expensive is because the locals, you know, if you want live locals, they, they charge for these and the price keeps going up.

Caller #5 (01:58:43):
They don't get any advertising, you know? It's oh gosh. Yeah. Exposing their ads to everybody. You'd think

Leo Laporte (01:58:50):
It's free. If you have an antenna, you're charging me to watch it on the internet. What? Yeah, exactly.

Caller #5 (01:58:55):
I've, I've got a, I've got a local antenna with a, with the the device. I can't think of the name of it off the top, but with the, the antenna, the connect and all stuff so I can record nice. Yeah, it works. That part works really good.

Leo Laporte (01:59:11):
I, I have to say I've said this before, we're in this kind of in between period where we've gone from live local broadcast as with antennas to cable. Now over the top through the internet and all three are jockeying for position mm-hmm, <affirmative>, it's the old Chinese curse. May you live in interesting times, we're we're in this transition period. And even this even affects the streaming devices that we use, it isn't settled yet. So as a result, the experience changes. It's inconsistent. It doesn't work a lot of times. That's just par for the course unfortunately, and it's too bad because I think if you could get something that was reasonably priced that worked all the time, that was voice activated. If you could check all those boxes, you'd be very popular, but it just makes people crazy. It,

Caller #5 (02:00:03):
Yeah, the cube itself works great on a together app and as it did in sling to begin with yeah. And then they had to try to get fancy or something, but the it's recast is what I couldn't think of. And ICAST yes. Tend to hook up to that. Yeah. And that works really well with the, with all the stuff that's quite nice.

Leo Laporte (02:00:21):
I don't have a solution for you. You, I think try different syntax with your Amazon echo devices. The syntax seems to change why? I don't know, try different sources, not just tune in, you know, try Spotify or your podcast player, Google, or apple until, and, and just, and it changes and what once worked, it drives us as podcasters. It drives us crazy because we would like to be, I would say on every show, Hey, and if you wanna listen to me on your Amazon echo, say play the tech guy podcast on Amazon echo. And usually that works, but if it doesn't, then I'm gonna get a lot of emails thing. It doesn't work. And I don't want that either, but try it anyway. Pleasure talking to you, Paul. I appreciate your trying anyway. <Laugh> trying, trying to listen. Youtube TV is expensive 65 bucks a month now. But I like, I just like it with the DVRs and stuff. I just really like it. I'm getting this close to cutting the cord on the cable. Leo Laporte the tech guy. Let's let's try it here. What, what voice? What word? Who do I? Hey, computer echo. Melissa.

Leo Laporte (02:01:51):
<Laugh> say play TWiT Live on tune in

... (02:02:00):
Twi. Live from Leo's tune

Leo Laporte (02:02:03):
Twit Live on TuneIn. Yeah. See that worked

... (02:02:07):
Twit live from Leo's tune. <Laugh> I on TuneIn? Yeah. See that worked TWI live from Leo's tune <laugh> I've on tune. See that worked.

Leo Laporte (02:02:23):
Hey, stop. Mikah remembered. I'm using Ziggy. Oops. Hey stop. There's a problem because Ziggy is close to Siri. So every time I say at home, I have.

... (02:02:40):
According to an Alexa. Answers, contributor owners, Luin Kumar, Wil Kumar. Did that answer your question?

Leo Laporte (02:02:48):
Yes.

... (02:02:50):
Thanks for your feedback.

Leo Laporte (02:02:51):
<Laugh> it really has become comical with these things. There's one episode of succession at Lisa and I like succession and we like it so much. We keep watching it over and over <laugh> and there's one episode that we noticed every time we watch this episode, at one point in the episode, all of a sudden our Google device starts going on and on it somehow gets triggered for something really long. It's really weird. It happened to in the other night. <Laugh> every time we watch, I think it's season three episodes. I think it's, it's the Kendall's party episode. It triggers it. Ziggy play TWI live on TuneIn,

... (02:03:42):
TWI live from Leo's TuneIn

Leo Laporte (02:03:46):
Play TWI live on TuneIn. Hey, stop. See that's the thing is I say, Hey, you know, sir, and that triggers, sir. So, but I forget that. I don't have to say Hey to Ziggy. I just say Ziggy. So I have to remember. So I'm sitting there cuz in my office at home, I have all three. I have Google, I have echo and I have Siri. I have all three sitting right there. And so I have to remember who's who, and if I say, Hey, both the echo and the Siri perk up and try to do whatever I said. So it's quite comical actually. Okay. TWI live works on the newer ones, but not the echo one.

Leo Laporte (02:04:38):
That's crazy. <Laugh> and now our succession animated gift of the week, <laugh> Leo, LePort the tech guy. It actually has gotten the point where it's kind of fun to tease your voice assistance <laugh> and tie them in knots. This is exactly what's wrong with Silicon valley. To be honest, they come up with something that has some promise, but it just doesn't work quite right. And then it gets worse, send it degrades over time and then they have different versions and it doesn't behave the same way as it used to. And pretty soon you just throw your hands up in the air and say, I'm just gonna go sit in the garden and read a book. Eighty eight eighty eight, ask li of the phone number, Tom on the line from Richmond, California. Hi Tom. Tom <affirmative>. Oh Tom.

Caller #6 (02:05:41):
Sorry. I had you on mute for there for a moment. Hi. Yes. From Richmond and the, your screener said oh you're local. And I said, well, I used to live in Petaluma. Oh

Leo Laporte (02:05:51):
My that's really

Caller #6 (02:05:52):
Local opportunity to come by your studio when, when it's tours

Leo Laporte (02:05:57):
Or as soon as the air clears <laugh> yes, we will reopen the studio. But yeah. Right. You know, it's funny. We've been, we've been shut down now for almost two years. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> wow. Hard to believe. Well, I'm glad to glad to meet a neighbor. Hello Tom.

Caller #6 (02:06:13):
My topic was a music player other than iTunes, but I wanted to broaden momentarily. I have caliber and I love it for eBooks.

Leo Laporte (02:06:23):
Caliber is an open source book reader that not only lets you read eBooks, but lets you translate them from one format to another from Amazon's Kindle format, for instance the mobi format to the opesource standard EUB and vice versa. Now I just really think caliber is a great free open source tool. The only thing lacking is it's a little funky looking, you know, it has that open source look. Yeah. That's all right.

Caller #6 (02:06:51):
I can live with it. It also plays PDFs and I mean you can read

Leo Laporte (02:06:54):
Pdfs. Oh I installed on every machine. I completely agree with you. Very nice to have. So

Caller #6 (02:06:59):
I'm spoil, I love to have something like that. Itunes used to be good. It's a little bit more difficult now for cataloging and playing my own music because it's, it's really geared toward pushing everyone toward buying streams.

Leo Laporte (02:07:16):
I isn't it annoying. Yeah.

Caller #6 (02:07:20):
Workable. But I wanna be able to have a firewall between music and non-music audio lectures

Leo Laporte (02:07:30):
Spoken word versus yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Caller #6 (02:07:33):
Yeah. And I think I used to be able to do that sort of some kind of work run with iTunes. I'm finding it impossible and I, well, it

Leo Laporte (02:07:40):
Just depends how you play stuff. Do you just say play everything in my iTunes library? Cause then you'll get whatever's there. But if you said play, play classical music, it wouldn't play, it shouldn't play any spoken word stuff.

Caller #6 (02:07:59):
Well, I'm not sure about talking to it. I'm not,

Leo Laporte (02:08:01):
Well, I don't, well you can talk to it, but you can trigger it by clicking as well. If you just, you know, open iTunes and say shuffle everything. Yeah. You're gonna get whatever's in there. That's why they give you playlists and genres and other things so that you can say, you know, click the thing that says, I just want you know, classic rock and roll and I'll play that. The other choice would be to set. The other choice would be to find something like caliber for spoken word and get everything out of the iTunes library. Is that what you wanna do? Yeah. Yeah. So there a number of other tools for playing back stuff. It, are you on windows or Mac? I'm on Mac.

Caller #6 (02:08:46):
Okay.

Leo Laporte (02:08:47):
You know, it's a shame because this is another example of as soon as apple started putting out a program to do this, all the great alternatives kind of dis I use something called Vox V O X. Yeah. And, and that is a, a music player. It's at VO x.rocks, RO C Ks. It's a music player, but you, it will play back. MP M what did they M four BS, which is how apple did audio books. It will play those back. It won't play back copy protected stuff like audible. So it depends where your spoken, where it's coming from apple will play copy, protected, audible stuff back. But if, if the stuff you have is not copy protected V might be a good choice. It has a cloud solution, actually a great music player, cuz it'll play back high res music. It's kind of a nice, simple player. It's on the iPhone and on Macintosh. So that's one, I would take a, a look at, especially if you want to use the cloud that it's free, if you don't need their cloud, but the the, the, the way they get you is wouldn't you like to store everything in the cloud <affirmative> which I do pay for it's worth it.

Leo Laporte (02:10:02):
There are other choices,

Caller #6 (02:10:03):
Number ones, including V. Yeah. And I don't know if it was that one, but there was one of 'em that had, you know, has a free version. The paid version was $18 a month. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (02:10:13):
That's not, that might be VX because they now have a streaming music service. Like everybody, it's very, it's very frustrating. Like everybody else, let me see, what are some other, by the way, the streaming music service they sell is from France. <Laugh> it's, it's Q O B U Z. You tell me how to pronounce it Cubase. So that's something new. They just started doing. Let me think of what other music players, like, as I said, there used to be a lot does it have to work on iOS as well as Mac?

Caller #6 (02:10:50):
What I wanna do is it be a, a, a cataloger of what I have so that I can then export it one way or another, right. To do the, to the iOS for got it.

Leo Laporte (02:11:03):
Yeah. Take, there is an open source. Since you like caliber, you might like Clementine, which is, yeah. Clementine is an open source music player. It's on iOS and I think, but it's definitely on Mac, windows and Linux. I don't know if they're keeping it up to date. It works pretty well. It's named Clementine after the orange. So it has a cute little orange slice as its icon. And, you know, I don't think just because it hasn't been updated in a few years, I don't think there's anything wrong with that. Since music, it doesn't change a whole lot and it is free. So that would be one to look at Clementine. It has the cataloging. Sure.

Caller #6 (02:11:41):
Or do I get that over the web?

Leo Laporte (02:11:44):
It's I don't, it's not in the app store, I don't think. Yeah. yeah, no results. You can use it to store. Yeah. Just look I'm let me see what the web addresses is here. If I can find it for you you can use it to store music you can use Dropbox or one drive with it as well as Google drive. I think there's some, I think there's some nice features to that one. I think just a Google search for Clement tunnel. Pull that one up. Anybody else have choices for their favorite? Let me know. Leo Laport, the tech guy.

Leo Laporte (02:12:18):
See what's up, up to date. Clementine is great, but I guess, I guess it's a problem. It's Clementine player.org. Thank you. Micah Clementine player.org V is free for the basic stuff. It's it's definitely up to date. Let's see what else is out there? What you really, what you really want is not so much a player as an organizer. Yes. Yeah. Right. This is kind of like our caller in the first hour who wanted a photo organizer again? Apple does it. It's kind of takes the incentive out of the, you know, it takes all the air out of the room and everybody says, well, I'm not gonna try to enter that market. Apple's already out there. I see a whole bunch of different choices, I think maybe out of date. I don't know. Here's an article@ltimma.com, best music players for Mac. They have their own of course, L media, which is on the Mac app store. I haven't tried it. E L M E D I a. That is on the apple Mac store. 

Caller #6 (02:13:33):
What was the name of that again?

Leo Laporte (02:13:34):
L media E L M like Elm, but media <laugh> or L media. I'm not sure which audio receiver, media library, playlist features, it looks like it'll do all the things that you want. For completely free. They mentioned VLC. I don't know if I'd recommend VL. VSC is like, kind of like caliber. It's a, it's a, it's a video music player designed to handle every format known to man, not the greatest interface. But, but it, but it does work. Oh, here is one. Andy NACO loves Eina. I, I N a I, I N a it's pretty basic though. I don't think it, I don't know if it has the organizational tools you want, it looks like it's mostly a player. Anyway. There's some to, to try the L media might be the one that looks pretty good. I'm gonna have to try it. There's a free version of that.

Caller #6 (02:14:38):
Okay. Yeah. I'm downloading it now. Yeah,

Leo Laporte (02:14:41):
That looks pretty complete. Yeah. Yeah. Cuz you just, so the idea is I'll put all my spoken word stuff in here and then it won't pollute my iTunes, me music. But if I wanna listen to spoken word just as if I want to read books, I go to caliber. If I wanna listen to spoken word, I'll listen on V or whatever. I have all my all my audible books on V but you have to de decoy protect them first. Mm-Hmm

Caller #6 (02:15:08):
<Affirmative>, which is, well, I have, but I have a twin stuff that, you know, audio, you know, MP3 is basically off of YouTube or right. Or various other sources that are lectures.

Leo Laporte (02:15:18):
And when well, VLCs gonna be great for that. Cuz it'll handle, you can throw anything at it. Audio, video, any form format at all and it'll handle those. But it's organizational, it's pretty weakened in the organizational things. It does have playlists and it has folders and stuff like that. That might be another one. If it might be sometimes video, sometimes audio, then VLCs probably a good choice.

Caller #6 (02:15:41):
Yeah. The L media looks actually titled as a video player, so it'll do both

Leo Laporte (02:15:45):
Right. There's if you use Plex, I don't know if you've ever used Plex Plex is a media servers solution. People often run it on their network attached storage that plays back all audio, all content, including audio and video. And I've been watching with interest, although it's early days been watching a Plex book player called book camp. So you would store all of your books, all of your content on a network device, running Plex, and then it would serve it up. And in fact it would even serve it up over the public internet. So you could be walking around and, and you'd have a URL that you could go there. But bootcamp is ear book, camp rather is early and I've seen some people complaining about it. But I think in time it might be a very good choice. That's book, camp.app, Leo Laport tech guy.

Leo Laporte (02:16:42):
I gave Tom a few more, a few more, a handful, more music players for Mac and the iOS. There actually turns out to be more of them than I thought. When, you know, when apple got in the business, a lot of them went away, but there's, there's still some stuff out there and we'll put links to all of that in our show notes. Again, the show notes have changed a little bit. They're still@techguylabs.com, but they're no longer on a dedicated site and they look different. And I know that's disorienting to some of you, but here's what we on. If you go to tech guy labs.com, it'll take you to our podcast networks, site, twit.tv. This is episode 1,857. So you'll see all the current episodes. You can click that link. It won't happen right away, but our editors, as they, as they, you know, go through the show will put all the links from the show things like the various audio players that I just mentioned to Tom up on that website.

Leo Laporte (02:17:35):
So all the links will be there. There'll also be a link to a full transcript. Now it takes a couple of days to get that up, but we do put a transcript of the show up there that makes it easy to search through and find it. And of course then there's audio and video of the show also a day or so later. So between the transcript and the audio and the video, I think you should be able to find everything that happens on the show. It's it looks different though. So I just wanted to warn you that's that's the, the change tech guy labs.com and we will have links to all of those various audio apps that Tom was looking for 88, 88 as Leo, Dick DeBartolo, the GWiz coming up in just a little bit, but right now let's go back to the phones. Jim's on the line from LA. Hello, Jim.

Caller #6 (02:18:16):
Well, Hey, Hey. Hey. Hey. Hey. Hey, I've been, listen. I've been listening to Leo Laport too long. <Laugh> I, I go back to the Jeff Levy days in the early days of Leo

Leo Laporte (02:18:27):
Laport, 20 it's now 28 years ago that I took over this show. Can you believe not that can't be right. Eight, wait a minute. 2004 that's 18 years ago feels like 28 years. 18 years ago. Well, I,

Caller #6 (02:18:42):
Well, I just turned 80 last week. So, you know, I don't know where 80 years went. I know

Leo Laporte (02:18:48):
What you mean. I'm just went zoom. I just turned 65. And I, you know, when, when you're 20, you think 80 is ancient, but your mind, if you're lucky is the same as it was when you were in your twenties. So you just wonder what the hell happened. <Laugh>

Caller #6 (02:19:07):
Yeah. Mine wants to go do stuff. The body says I'm still in bed. I'm in

Leo Laporte (02:19:13):
It's it's a very much, I think young people and I mean, anybody under say 50 or 60, I think they don't really understand. It's not like you feel old. All of a sudden you don't,

Caller #6 (02:19:27):
You just look old, sneaks up on you from behind. It does. <Laugh> you know, you're just, you're just minding your own business. And the next thing you know, you're blowing out 80 candles. <Laugh>

Leo Laporte (02:19:38):
Well, happy birthday. Happy birthday. That's a good age. My mom just turned 89 and we have this same. Conversation's like, what happened? Did you ever think you'd have a son in his sixties? No.

Caller #6 (02:19:52):
Hey, before we get to my subject, yes. We're talking about that Amazon device. Well, mine used to be named, but there's this guy on the radio on Saturdays. Oh, oh. Kept saying yes, it would turn it on. So to be sneaky, yes. I changed it to echo. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (02:20:12):
And now I say echo all the time. He

Caller #6 (02:20:15):
Doesn't stand anymore. <Laugh> now my dang. Echo's talking. I'm sorry. Talking about her.

Leo Laporte (02:20:22):
We, we have yet to solve this conundrum and feel really bad for anybody whose daughter is named a L E X a right incidentally. The, the, the choice to name your kid Al E X a has plummeted <laugh> over the last few years. People have wised up to that. Yeah. But now I can call my device and I, you might wanna try this. If you have a later model, Amazon echo, you can name them Ziggy. And of course now I've just triggered all the people who were smart enough to take that name.

Caller #6 (02:20:56):
Well, there's one problem with that. When you're 80 years old, remembering something that complicated, not easy, you calling it spread and Ralph and zebra Zilo. And if, if you,

Leo Laporte (02:21:09):
If you wanna laugh, Saturday night live did a hysterical bit about they, I think they called it the echo silver Amazon echo for seniors. That is just a hoot and a holler highly recommended. Yeah, Amazon silver. Just, just watch it. Don't be insulted. I'll <laugh>

Caller #6 (02:21:31):
I'll watch it and won't be insulted. OK. I, I, even though I'm old, I'm still adventurous. Yes. I have put windows 11 on my computer.

Leo Laporte (02:21:42):
Good man. You're living in the future. My

Caller #6 (02:21:45):
Oh yeah. My, my, my analysis is that they took windows 10 windows XP and windows seven and said, what are we gonna do with all these? Oh, let's put 'em all together. Well, I'm in a

Leo Laporte (02:22:00):
Blender.

Caller #6 (02:22:01):
<Laugh> that's my that's. You're not far off of this thing far.

Leo Laporte (02:22:06):
You're not far off.

Caller #6 (02:22:07):
I have no idea why they did what they did because nothing is intuitive. Yeah. That's what I've discovered about it. It's not an, it's not intuitive.

Leo Laporte (02:22:18):
Well, and this is always a problem. When, when there's an up big up update to the user interface of an operating system, everybody's, you know, we've all got the muscle memory. We've learned how to use it and now we've gotta relearn it. And I think the only reason honestly, to do that is, is kind of anti-US it's to sell more computers. Oh, I, you know, it's remember we're old enough to remember them putting fins on cars, right? Because new cars, the new model years, there wasn't much of a change. But what Detroit realized is if we make them look different people, people will feel like, oh, I'm driving the old Cadillac. I need the one with fins. And the fins got bigger and bigger and weirder and weirder. And it was all really a psychology game to make you feel like you were using obsolete vehicle. The vehicles were not obsolete in any more than windows XP or windows seven or windows 10 is obsolete. But if we don't make it look new and fresh, nobody will wanna buy a new computer.

Caller #4 (02:23:19):
Well, you know, what's interesting is that all of the stuff is, as I've played with it now for a while, the stuff is all there. Yeah. You'll get used to

Leo Laporte (02:23:30):
It. Find it you'll get used to it. There's just this cognitive burden of having to retrain yourself.

Caller #6 (02:23:36):
So, so the reason I wanted to talk about windows is to tell people it's gonna be a bit of a shock when you first look at it. Yeah. And try to figure it out out, but hang with it. Everything's there. <Laugh>, it's just, it's just, you may have to reach back into your XP or windows seven days and pull out a few nuggets here and there, because that's what it kind of reminds me of is they're all lumped together

Leo Laporte (02:24:04):
To paraphrase the late great Microsoft, all of your capabilities are exactly where you left them. Yeah. <laugh> yeah. Actually windows 11 and truthfully windows 10 under the hood are really essentially the same as windows seven windows XP. There are a few changes. The driver model changes stuff, but the basic underlying operating system is the same. What they're doing literally is putting fins on the Cadillac. They're moving things around. They're doing new capabilities. They're centering the start menu. Instead of having it on the left, they're moving the buttons on the windows to, to zoom them open and close them. And, and it it's to mix my metaphors. It's moving the deck chairs in the Titanic. It doesn't add to the experience.

Caller #6 (02:24:53):
Well, it, it using your fins thing. Yes. Windows 11 reminds me of the 59 Chevy when they gave up putting the fences vertical and decided let's put the fins for

Leo Laporte (02:25:05):
<Laugh>. That's basically it

Caller #6 (02:25:08):
For the 59 Chevy.

Leo Laporte (02:25:09):
Yeah. For rounded, for fins used rounded corners. And you'll get the whole idea. It's cosmetic, right? There's no need to upgrade to windows 11. Eventually you will. Microsoft says we're gonna support windows 10 until 2025. We won't make anybody move. So you've got a few years. If you wanna be, you know, hip and with it, like Jim, go ahead and move. Cuz as Jim says, everything is still there. It's just in a different spot. Kind of Jim, thank you for calling. Yeah. If you want, if you, if you wanna be adventurous, go for it. Go for it. That's what all, that's how you stay young. Happy birthday, Jim. Keep up the keep. Thank you. Keep up the good work. Thank you, sir. I appreciate it. Leo. LePort the tech guy, the GWiz next. That's a great call. I completely agree. Completely agree. I love it. The disco in those days they had the swirling violins. I have to think that these studio, violin players are not in great demand as much as they were really in the, in the disco days. There he is. Disco Dick Debo. Our Tolo mad magazine's maddest writer and our gizmo wizard. Hello, Dickie Dean. How are you pal? Very well happy new year.

Dick DeBartolo (02:26:34):
Oh, and the same to you. Did you, did you hang it around the house? Did you go to times square? <Laugh>

Leo Laporte (02:26:39):
I did you have a timesing pet woman? I I, no, I did watch Anderson co and Andy Cohen get wasted. Oh my gosh. And and Andy Cohen, who is I don't know who he is. He's a, he's a, a B list celebrity, I guess. Got, got so drunk that he started yelling at the former mayor. Alosio <laugh> yes. Say, why are you dancing? Get off my nice stage. It was, it was what, you know, one of those things, you, you can't take your eyes off. It was kind of a car wreck, but that was my new year's Eve. And the nice thing is living on the west coast. That was at 9:00 PM. So we could just, we watched the ball drop and go to bed. Oh, okay. Yeah. Oh, that sounds good. Yeah, we do a new year's in Christmas kind of a thing. Did you go down to times square? No, no, no.

Dick DeBartolo (02:27:28):
We, a little thing. We, we do a little thing over@gwi.tv for people who are home alone and we just that's nice.

Leo Laporte (02:27:38):
You know, we used to do them. We did on the podcast for a couple years. Oh my God. Used

Dick DeBartolo (02:27:42):
To 20 years to do 24 hours,

Leo Laporte (02:27:44):
24 hours of new year's cut. It came from a time when I was a little disappointed, cuz we were watching Dick Clark's rocking new year's Eve and it ends in the California at 9:00 PM. And then you go, well now what do we want? So I thought, what if we did? Because that happens everywhere. Right? It's what if we did happy new year, every hour on the hour for 24 hours and celebrate new year's the world. And that was exhausting, but it was a lot of fun. We raised $85,000 for UNICEF. Oh great. So yeah, it was really fun. You came out for one of those, I think did you? I did. Yeah, I did do that really fun. We don't do that anymore. I'm too tired. No. So every <laugh>

Dick DeBartolo (02:28:23):
Every week. Gosh. So we're gonna talk about CES 20, 22. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (02:28:27):
That's another thing you didn't do this year. No.

Dick DeBartolo (02:28:30):
Well Chad Johnson and our producer, Josh Chaney did go. They went, they went,

Leo Laporte (02:28:36):
How are they feeling? Are they okay? <Laugh>

Dick DeBartolo (02:28:39):
So far. They're good. Wow. and at show stoppers they carried me around on a laptop. Oh,

Leo Laporte (02:28:45):
So you got to go virtually. Exactly.

Dick DeBartolo (02:28:48):
I actually went to a bar in order to drink and it was great. I could tell by their roaming around that attendance was way down. It

Leo Laporte (02:28:59):
Seemed kind of quiet.

Dick DeBartolo (02:28:59):
Yeah. Yes. So a actually CTA yesterday released the figures. There were a, it was a 75% drop in people. So it was a little more than 40,000. Oh, that's

Leo Laporte (02:29:15):
A big, I didn't realize it was that big a drop. It was

Dick DeBartolo (02:29:18):
Well over 40,000 for this past CES that just ended. Whereas in 2020, the last full in person, it was 170,000.

Leo Laporte (02:29:30):
You and I were both there for that. Oh

Dick DeBartolo (02:29:32):
Absolutely.

Leo Laporte (02:29:33):
Absolutely. Wow. 40,000, I guess it'll be back next year though. Right in full force.

Dick DeBartolo (02:29:40):
I unless there's some variant that <laugh>, I didn't even wanna think about it.

Leo Laporte (02:29:46):
That's not gonna happen. No, no, no. So this is, we're talking about what would normally begin the year? The consumer electronic show. It used to be called and it's we used to be a really, a lot of fun. You see all sorts of gadgets. So did you find anything at CES?

Dick DeBartolo (02:30:01):
You know what I've I went to a million press conferences and got a, a trillion press releases. I found two things. None of neither one of us can use, but I thought are so clever. One is two guys who started a company. I don't know why they call it this. They call it spooky action. Spooky action.

Leo Laporte (02:30:20):
That's a spooky action. That's a physics term. Oh it is. Oh, okay.

Dick DeBartolo (02:30:25):
Yeah. So one thing that they're building that is wildly useful and successful is called the flying cell tower <laugh>

Leo Laporte (02:30:36):
And it's booty action at a distance

Dick DeBartolo (02:30:38):
At a distance. So it's something that you bring to emergency areas where all cell phone services out. Cool. And then you fly a drone with a wire down to a truck that's powering it. And the guy said that it could stay up there for up to six days, helping people get phone signals. They have one that they sell in Africa to hunt poaches.

Leo Laporte (02:31:08):
Oh, how interesting.

Dick DeBartolo (02:31:10):
This thing can really cover a lot of ground

Leo Laporte (02:31:13):
That affordables cell tower, you know, they do affordable. They I've seen those even at CES and other big trade shows when there's, you know, 170,000 nerds coming T-Mobile Verizon sprint at and T all would bring big trucks with mobile cell tower. Yes, but

Dick DeBartolo (02:31:28):
This is a drone.

Leo Laporte (02:31:30):
Oh, it flies. It

Dick DeBartolo (02:31:32):
Flies that. That's why it's so unique. The guy said it can pretty much fit in the trunk of almost any vehicle. So if you need this as an emergency, I'm not sure if they're selling them or renting them, but on their website, it says, tell us what you need it for. And we can provide a quote for what we can do with one of our drones. Wow. So I thought that was interesting. And the other very interesting thing was John Deere. They had a video and I believe they have taken it from CS and put it on the G the, the John Deere website, the farmer sitting in the farmhouse, running his tractor, which is autonomous and can run 24 7 if he needs it. And one of the spokesperson said, the great thing about the autonomous tractor is if it sees something in its path, it doesn't recognize it can just stop dead and not worrying about traffic piling up into the back of it, because it's just running the farm by itself. And John Deere building 20 to 40 of them this year and

Leo Laporte (02:32:44):
A self-driving tractor and the farmer can stay in the stay in the farmhouse.

Dick DeBartolo (02:32:48):
In, in the farmhouse, it has six stereo cameras. It has lights. So it can run 24 7 if he wants. And he just controls it from his phone or his tablet.

Leo Laporte (02:33:00):
So I just hysterical, you know, that's a perfect place for self-driving vehicles because there's no other motorists you could run into or pedestrians. And you know, the worst you could do is knock over some cornstalks. So yeah, exactly,

Dick DeBartolo (02:33:13):
Exactly. Pretty cool. So I thought they were need, and then the other thing is I'm, I'm getting more info. What do you know about why toothbrush is where you can brush all your teeth in 10 seconds?

Leo Laporte (02:33:25):
I only have 43. So all my teeth,

Dick DeBartolo (02:33:30):
Yes. Okay. In 10 seconds. I don't think so. I said to, I said to the CEO, I said, do you have one that works? And he said, well, come by the booth and I'll let you use one. I'm thinking, even if I was there, no, I'm not gonna come with.

Leo Laporte (02:33:42):
I'm not gonna bad enough. They got COVID throughout the conference hall, but now you're gonna share a toothbrush with some stranger. I don't think so. Yeah, exactly. So what is it? It's got brushes for all the surfaces. So you put this big

Dick DeBartolo (02:33:53):
Thing in your mouth. It has like 130,000 bristles. You put it in, you bite down on the top and then you just, you just move it back for people who are

Leo Laporte (02:34:03):
Really in a hurry. <Laugh> really a big hurry.

Dick DeBartolo (02:34:07):
Yes. Yeah. You take it out, you flip it over and then you do the other set of teeth. Okay. you know, I'm not, I'm not a, I'm not rushing to Bible.

Leo Laporte (02:34:15):
I don't mind taking a couple of minutes every, every morning and night brushing my teeth. I feel like, yeah, I don't need it's time. Well used, I need one of these it's Y brush.com the letter Y or w H the letter Y okay. Dash brush Y brush.com.com. Why brush? Why brush every year? It's thees when you and I have gone, there has been something like this. That's just kind of goofy and silly. Yeah. It just seems like that's kind of the thing actually. That's what they used to call us when we went to see. Oh, that, yeah. That's cuz we were there goofy and silly Dick DeBartolo, his website, GI whiz.bi you'll have links to those and lots more great gizmos and gadgets. Also what the heck is a contest? Is it a brand new game? Yeah. Oh, how fun identify. And you were right.

Leo Laporte (02:35:03):
Everybody in the world knew the other one, like, like a hundred people. It was it a ring that you wear and you squeeze it and sports. The guy. Yeah. Just the sport ring sport ring. Exactly. Yeah. That's what I thought. This one's a little harder go there. If, if you could identify this gizmo or a gadget, you might be in the running for an autograph copy of mad magazine, GI whiz.biz. Thank you, Dickie D thank you. Okay, buddy. Take care, everybody for joining me, have a great geek week. Leo. Leport the tech eye. Well, that's it for the tech eye show for today. Thank you so much for being here. And don't forget. TWI T w I T at Dan is for this week at tech and you'll find it@twi.tv, including the podcasts for this show. We talk about windows and windows weekly, Macintosh, a 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 at TWI and I'll be back next week with another great tech guys show. Thanks for joining me. We'll see you next time.