The Tech Guy Episode 1864 Transcript

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

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

Leo Laporte (00:00:10):
Hi, this is Leo Laporte and this is my Tech Guy podcast. The show originally aired in the premier networks coast to coast on Sunday, January 30th, 2022. This is episode 1,864. Enjoy this episode of the tech eye is brought to you by cash fly cash flies, giving away a complimentary detail analysis of your current CDN bill and usage trends. So see if you are over paying 20% or more for a CDN, learn more at twit.Cachefly.com. Well, Hey, Hey. Hey, how are you today? Leo Laporte here, The Tech Guy. Time to talk computers, the internet, home theater, digital photography, smart phones, smart watches, augmented reality, virtual reality, real reality, all that stuff. 88. Me verse, I guess I should call it verse. Now that's the, that's the new phrase? 88 88. Ask Leo is my phone number. If you wanna talk oh, high tech or, or whatever, I'd love to talk with you.

Leo Laporte (00:01:12):
88 88, ask Leo that's toll free from anywhere in the us or Canada outside that area. You could still call, but you gotta use Skype or something like that. Website techguylabs.com techguylabs.com looks different. Yes, I know we shut down the old site because it was it was gonna be insecure and, and it was gonna be expensive to fix it. So we just moved it over to the podcast site, which is twit.tv, but you could still go to techguylabs.com and it'll still take you there. This is episode 1,864. So you go, you go to that episode. We are still putting links up there. People are asking about your songs, professor Laura, when professor Laura emails us the song list at the end of the weekend, we put those up there as well as links is a link to Spotify professor Laura, what do you YouTube?

Leo Laporte (00:02:06):
I think YouTube. Okay. You think don't you make them don't you know, <laugh> no so it's a link to somewhere where that song lives. And then and we'll after the fact, you know, it takes us a day or so to get it up there. I put a, a transcript to the show, which is that's a new feature so that you can actually, you know, search the transcript, find the part you wanted. It has time codes on the transcript. So you can jump to that part because we will also post the audio and the video from the show. Couple of days later, we wanna, you know, we want you to listen to the radio. If you can, techguylabs.com.

Leo Laporte (00:02:48):
We talked yesterday about Spotify, but just, you know, that's why I asked professor Laura. I don't, I'm not sure I'm gonna join the boycot, but a lot of people are it's costing Spotify, some money, all because they're, they're hesitant to censor Joe Rogan. And I understand, I mean, it's, it's tricky, it's tricky. You don't want to, I think you don't need to censor him. You maybe you wanna put something at the front that says Joe's funny least a comedian, but don't take his medical advice, something like that, you know, opinions of Joe's guests or their own and off an ill inform something like a little thing, a little thing like that. And I betcha Neil young and Neil's Loftin and Jonie Mitchell and the other artists who were kind of lining up, it hurt Spotify, by the way, it hurt Spotify. I think their stock went down 12%, something like that.

Leo Laporte (00:03:40):
I don't know if it'll stay down. Usually those, those, you know, stock is weird. Stock is weird. I don't, you know, I don't think it's useful in, in terms of understanding technology it's, you know, useful in terms of trying to make money, but not, not so much in understanding what's going on. Let's see, what else is, what else is news in the world? Did you see that the, the big article in New York times this weekend about how the FBI was was gonna purchase and try Pegasus, which is the malware that we've been yelling at Israel about this company in Israel NSO group. In fact, we the United States has enforced sanctions against Israel in the NSO group because of this it's used by wealthy individuals, not individuals, nation states. Nobody's that wealthy. Well, I guess, I guess if you were Elon Musker, Jeff Bezos could use it, but generally it's used by governments to spy on, they say terrorists, but you know, terrorism is in the eye of the beholder. Usually it's activists and journalists, at least in the case of authoritarian regimes, NSO group says, well, we don't sell to those people, but they do.

Leo Laporte (00:04:58):
What we didn't know is in 2019, the FBI bought a version of Pegasus. Now Pegasus has been around for a while, but the FBI remember, wants to crack into smartphones. They've, they've harassed apple, trying to get them to to let them into their smartphones Apple's position. And I think it's a, it's a hard one. Understand maybe cuz you know, we all, we don't like terrorists and, and, and you know, a terrorist smartphone is full of all sorts of useful information. The problem isn't the terrorists. The problem is us. As soon as you give the FBI a back door or anybody, a back door, or maybe weaken your encryption, the bad guys will get it. The history is clear or you know you could, you can lock it up. You could put it away, but eventually it leaks out. And then we're all less secure by trying to make us more secure. You see, you see why it's a problem. That's what apple says. And I think they're right. So what did the FBI do? They will, they thought, well, let's see if we get this malware and we could put it on bad guys' phones.

Leo Laporte (00:06:08):
Pegasus was used to capture El Chappo according to the times, thwart terrorist plus plots fight crime in one case, take down a global child abuse ring. Yes, this is the problem. Yeah, that's useful for those things, but it's also useful to suppress dissidents in authoritarian regimes to sh to, to follow trace arrest, sometimes execute journalists you know, and all this comes down to this tension between law enforcement, which doesn't like encryption and not just criminals and terrorists who do like encryption, but you and me who like a little privacy from time to time.

Leo Laporte (00:06:52):
So even even though it was well known by 2019, when the FBI acquired Pegasus, the Pegasus had been used for instance, by the UAE to hack the phone of civil rights activists, who they threw in jail in Saudi Arabia against women's rights, activists to spy on Jamal Khashoggi, the Saudi journalist who was eventually killed and dismembered by Saudi operatives. So the, you know, it's a checkered past, this is the first time we've learned that our own, but you know, <laugh>, you may not have known it for a fact, but don't don't you just figure, well, yeah, probably we're doing it too. Sure. We are probably we're doing it too. The DEA secret service, the us military's Africa command had all held discussions with the NSO group. The FBI was actually now buying it as part of their training. FBI employees bought new smartphones at local stores, set them up with dummy accounts, using SIM cars from other countries cuz Pegasus was designed.

Leo Laporte (00:07:59):
That was a good thing to be unable to hack into American numbers, but that's just a switch. That's just, that's easy to change. Then the Pegasus engineers, as they had in previous demonstrations around the world, I'm reading from the New York times, open their interface, enter the number on the phone and began the attack. It's a zero click. In other words, you, you don't have to do anything. They just send you a text BA boom they're in what the FBI could see. Minutes later on these dummy phones, every piece of data stored on the phone, every email, every photo, every text thread, every personal contact, they could see the phones location they could take control of its camera and microphone. What a Greaty device we're carrying around in our pockets. Wow. They just sent a text message to it and all of a sudden they could see what you're doing, hear what you're doing. See where you are. Read your email. Now that's great. If you're going, you know, after drug Lords and terrorists, that's so good. If you're going after a journalist, you don't like interesting story. It's in the Sunday magazine in New York times, the Israeli anger about the American band <laugh> was kind of justified. Wasn't it? They said you guys are hit. You're using it. <Laugh> you're using it too.

Leo Laporte (00:09:23):
That's pretty funny. Isn't it on? I, you know, I don't know if the right hand knew what the left hand was doing. <Laugh> FBI finally, by the way, last summer decided not to use NSOs Pegasus. They decided not to use it. They say in this story partly I think because of all the attention it was getting, right? <Laugh> like, Hmm, eh <laugh> maybe. Yeah, boys, maybe you better get rid of that thing. We don't need that anymore. The FBI spokesperson said the bureau examines new technologies, quote, not to just explore a potential legal use, but also to combat crime and protect both the American people in our civil liberties.

Leo Laporte (00:10:11):
Yeah. But they decided not to use it. The CIA, the DEA, the secret service Africa command had no comment on this story. A spokesperson for the government of Jui said the country never acquired a use Pegasus. I don't know why that's in there. Maybe they mentioned earlier. So yeah, just, you know, filling in, just letting you know, giving you the deeds. So, you know, it's an informed public is very important. And then you can make your decision about, you know, is it worth sacrificing our privacy and security to fight the bad guys? I think to a certain degree, a lot of us think, yeah, a little bit, a little bit. Not a lot. The problem is it's hard to open the door just a little bit. Once you open it, it's open eighty eight, eighty eight. Ask Leo that's the phone number. If you have a question, a comment, a suggestion. 8 8, 8 8 2 7 5 5 3 6. Your calls next. Yeah. The hi Sam. Hello, Leo. How are you? Good. You look good. You sound good. It's good to hear sitting in that Chevy there actually that's it's a yeah. Yeah. So here here's the latest on Lisa's Aston or not Aston mini Cooper. <Laugh> yeah, I pretend it's an Aston Martin. <Laugh> so I guess the dealer in San Rafael didn't know what the hell to do with it. So they had it towed to San Francisco to a BMW dealership. Cuz that's an I three, I guess in Wolf's clothing. I don't know,

Sam Abuelsamid (00:12:00):
Basically. Yeah. And it's, it's all I three hardware I three motor and electronics and

Leo Laporte (00:12:04):
Everything. Yeah. So they sat on it. They didn't even look at it till Friday. And then they sent Lisa a message saying, yeah we're gonna order a part. It's gonna be three or weeks. So sit back, relax and enjoy your at least gonna give her a loaner. Yeah. But we have to drive to San Francisco to get it, which is oo. So

Sam Abuelsamid (00:12:25):
They should, they should just send somebody up with it to drop it off. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:12:28):
I mean they said, well, we'll get you an Uber. I mean, we're going through San Francisco on vacation. <Affirmative> so we'll pick it up next week. She, you know, she says I'm never buying an electric car again. I'm buying a gas car. I sell this as soon as I get it back, if they won't buy it back, what are the lemon laws? You have to have it shop a lot. Typically.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:12:46):
It's it's usually like three Times's. I

Leo Laporte (00:12:49):
Thought that

Sam Abuelsamid (00:12:50):
They don't fix it. They

Leo Laporte (00:12:51):
Can't fix it. Yeah. Well we may get there <affirmative>

Sam Abuelsamid (00:12:55):
Well, is this the first time it's happened or has it happened before?

Leo Laporte (00:12:58):
It's the first time, but she's only had it a month. Yeah. Hasn't had time.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:13:05):
Yeah. So yeah, it's typically three, three times I think is what, what it is for a long, not,

Leo Laporte (00:13:11):
It's not a length, not like, well you're losing use of the car for six months that wouldn't do it right?

Sam Abuelsamid (00:13:17):
No. well I'll have to look there, there, there may be some, something like that in there as well. I don't know. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:13:25):
And I keep selling her. It's not electric cars. This could happen to any car, you know, these things happen. No, nothing's perfect. It's really a question of measure of the,

Sam Abuelsamid (00:13:34):
I hate, I hate to say it, but you know, there, you know, mini has frequently ended up at the bottom of various quality and reliability's

Leo Laporte (00:13:42):
Rankings what she said. Yeah. She said I should

Sam Abuelsamid (00:13:43):
Paid attention long before they started selling EVs.

Leo Laporte (00:13:46):
Yeah. She said I should have paid attention.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:13:47):
Yeah. They're a lot of fun to drive. Maybe not so much fun to live with. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:13:52):
Well she says, as soon as I get it back, I'm selling it. If they want, won't buy it back soon. I actually asked for a buyback, but if they won't buy it back and I'm sure they won't. 

Sam Abuelsamid (00:13:59):
Yeah. Well, right. These, these right now, I'm sure. Probably actually wouldn't be that hard to sell. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:14:06):
Right. Don't tell anybody.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:14:11):
You could probably probably get all you paid for it in the first place to if you sell it just cuz there's so little inventory still out there. Exactly.

Leo Laporte (00:14:20):
Yeah. So that's what she'll do. Some will,

Sam Abuelsamid (00:14:25):
Will want it. I, I had the a conversation the other day with the CTO of a major chip maker and we talked about the, the shortage and he doesn't expect us to really ease another one. Doesn't expect us to really be alleviated for until at least the end of this year. Yeah. Or next

Leo Laporte (00:14:43):
Yeah. In the

Sam Abuelsamid (00:14:44):
Next year. Yeah. But you, the funny thing is, you know, he said that they're, they're actually making more chips now than they ever have. It's just that there's so many more chips going into cars and other stuff. They just can't

Leo Laporte (00:14:58):
Keep up. Oh, the vehicle's outta service because they're pair of any number of problems with manufacturer or agents for a cumulative total more than 30 days since delivery of the vehicle. I think we're gonna hit. That. Could be, I think we're gonna at that. Yeah. I'll tell Lisa about that. Yeah. I'm sad cuz I love electric vehicles, but it is a little bit of a beta situation. My Ford's been very reliable, but you

Sam Abuelsamid (00:15:23):
Might wanna take a look at the Hyundai five or the key E

Leo Laporte (00:15:27):
I know people are raving over that. Yeah. I

Sam Abuelsamid (00:15:30):
I've, haven't driven the EV six yet, but I've driven the ionic five and it's, it's an excellent car.

Leo Laporte (00:15:34):
Nice. I will check it out. Why are you calling? They just wanted to talk to you Kim Shaffer the phone angel answering our phones and dressed today in a stunning variety of red and gold attire. Is there something going on I should know about? Oh, you're an not on. I'm sorry. There you go.

Kim Shaffer (00:15:53):
There's another game, a game. There's another game. As far as I'm concerned, the super bowl was last week when we, I kicked Aaron Rogers behind, I can't

Leo Laporte (00:16:00):
Believe we snaked through that way in snow, but, but that was

Kim Shaffer (00:16:04):
Good. I don't know if there's gonna be anything as good as those four games last week, but maybe, maybe this week will.

Leo Laporte (00:16:10):
So as you know, I have a, another show to do after the radio show, we do the big podcast, the twitt podcast. And it normally goes till five or six.

Kim Shaffer (00:16:19):
It's getting cut short today. Not this time.

Leo Laporte (00:16:21):
<Laugh>, I'm hoping to make the second half lately. It doesn't matter what happens in the first half. No, it doesn't. It's the second half and not the last two minutes. Yeah. The last, yeah, this is what matters. Yeah. So yeah. I think I'll, I'll get home in time. I think you'll get

Kim Shaffer (00:16:37):
Home in time to get a good good dose of what

Leo Laporte (00:16:40):
Actually happens anyway. I like your, I like your attire. My son is there and his buddies decided to go to we call it Levi stadium south. Yeah. Yeah. It, it is 65% Niners fans. It's gonna come on LA Ram fans. What the heck? Yeah.

Kim Shaffer (00:16:57):
Back

Leo Laporte (00:16:58):
Transition years back your team. I guess. That's it. When you're in new team. Anyway, who should I talk to first?

Kim Shaffer (00:17:02):
Let's go to Dan in New Jersey too bad. Scott's not here today cuz I, I think he's doing a home renovation and has some home audio.

Leo Laporte (00:17:09):
Question's fun. Good. I like that stuff. Thank you Kim. Hello Dan in New Jersey. Leo Laporte The Tech Guy. Hello Leo.

Caller #1 (00:17:16):
Hello? Hello. The last time we spoke, we discussed the etymology of the tap Z bridge. <Laugh>

Leo Laporte (00:17:24):
Yes, I remember that. That was an educational call. Thank you. I learned a lot. Exactly.

Caller #1 (00:17:30):
You always like to get this task avoidance. Let's talk about something else. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:17:36):
So

Caller #1 (00:17:37):
Anyway, we're doing a big renovation in the house. I'm actually gonna have to move out. Oh wow. Tear out the ceilings and the floors and things. And someone suggested that we put in like a home audio system with speakers and the feelings, you know, and I've heard you guys talk about whatever Sonos and other yeah. Products now. In one way I just questioned the wisdom of doing it anyway because you know, I, we, we all don't agree on news or podcast case. And if it starts broadcasting all over the house, it's just gonna be an annoyance. However, if we do

Leo Laporte (00:18:20):
Turn down that rock roll, you kids

Caller #1 (00:18:26):
Who is this Leo Laport

Leo Laporte (00:18:28):
That cast off. Yeah. Now it's the kids yelling at the parents. I, so I, you know, I was a big Sonos proponent and I realized there was a flaw in my thinking speakers are great speakers, don't age out. You know? I mean, speakers are speakers who haven't really, you know, changed much in years. Unfortunately, a electronics do. And the idea of a lot of these systems is there are little computers with speakers built in and while the speakers in your ceiling will always work as speakers, the problem is the electronics behind them. And Sonos, for instance, deprecated, their earlier systems said, yeah, it's not, it's not good enough. We're gonna move new system. Your old system, won't interoperate with the new system. You'll have to use a new app to use the new system. Oh. And you'd obviously, if it's built into your ceiling, you'd have to replace the speakers in your ceiling. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So yeah, I guess you could, you know, you could still use, and we do old Sono speakers, but there's a risk in tying, in other words, a risk in tying speakers. So my, to the technology. So my suggestion would be put normal speakers in there. And instead of wiring the internet to each speaker, just use, treat 'em as speakers and have some centralized technology. That's playing them. Do you see what I cause that you can swap out without taking the ceiling down?

Caller #1 (00:19:58):
Okay. So, but are these speakers like, why even are they wireless? Are they wired to each

Leo Laporte (00:20:04):
Other? They could be wireless. They could. So the that's the other thing and Sonos is suing by the way, they're unhappy with Google and they won. I, I bet you apple paid him a license fee, but Sonos claims, oh, we own the idea of having many speakers in a house playing the same music at the same time party mode. We own that. And, and so Google, which, and this is the problem is all these other Bluetooth speakers, other systems are building this in now and Sonos is going after 'em saying, no, can't do it. You gotta license it from us, which seems odd. But I'm, you know, the courts have ruled in their favor. Yeah. I I've

Caller #1 (00:20:38):
Been running speakers on a wire throughout my house since I was you know, I

Leo Laporte (00:20:42):
Know. So, you know, the reason you needed technology, this is again, technology got in the way. So if you just had speakers, you were work fine. In fact, many, remember the stereos used to have zone a zone B and you could turn on all the speaker, but as soon as you were using the internet, wifi and or Bluetooth and technology, there was an issue of echo. The speakers wouldn't be synced up. Right. So then it was weird. You were like in a scary, he haunted castle <laugh> same song, different timing playing all around the house. It didn't work. So Sonas figured out how to synchronize wireless music. But with, but again, you avoid all this. If you, I mean, if you're tearing it out, I would, and you really wanna put, speak, build in speakers. I would do what you did just build in regular speakers with speaker wire and then have a centralized thing which could be changed out. You'll solve the problem of, you know, echo cuz they're all in the same system and you'll solve the problem of technology obsolescence because now I guess it's a little more tricky. Do, do you, I mean, I, I, I guess what I'm saying is don't be, don't be swayed by the promise of this gorgeous golden future where everything is wireless because it introduces all sorts of other problems. Right? Right. Same thing happened when they got rid of headphones, Jackson phones wanted to just run wires through the, just run wires,

Caller #1 (00:22:06):
But then I can, I, I toggle them like, what if I do want music

Leo Laporte (00:22:10):
Just in, well, yeah, you need then a, a, a system. As I said, remember, the old receivers would have a zone, a and a, B you need a system that you can, you can, and, and, you know, Celestron and others, a lot of the crest, was it Crestron? I can't remember. But a lot of the companies that make these kind of whole home systems have these kinds of systems, they tend to be expensive.

Caller #1 (00:22:27):
That B then instead of, instead of Sonos,

Leo Laporte (00:22:29):
Well, for one thing, Sonos no longer has a monopoly on this whole idea. Right. So right. You could put Google speakers, you could put apple speakers. At some point, you know, Google's gonna solve, make a deal with Sonos and solve it. I just worry about putting the technology in the speaker, Leo Laport, The Tech Guy. So, you know, I'm not being very helpful. Sonos is still a great way to go, I think. And I think they've made, if you you're now gonna be getting the second generation Sonos products, so you've got at least 10 years before you have to tear your ceiling apart again. Yeah. Make it, make it easy to swap 'em. So Sonos does make ceiling mounts speakers. Right. And presumably if at some point it'll happen, cause technology moves in 10 years, they'll say, oh, now you need series three. It shouldn't be so hard to swap it out. You know, it'll be the same form factor. I'm sure.

Caller #1 (00:23:26):
But now when you said though, use like Google speakers or apple speakers, you're you're just not talking about the ceiling ones anymore. You're just talking

Leo Laporte (00:23:32):
About yeah. I mean, I honestly it de it just really depends on your aesthetic. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> I understand why you wanna put 'em in the ceiling. It's actually not ideal for sound. It's fine for podcasts and you know, that kind of thing, but for music that's right. I know. Well,

Caller #1 (00:23:46):
The whole thing, I wasn't even thinking about it. Somebody brought it up and it's always like, well, since you're doing

Leo Laporte (00:23:51):
It, here's what I would say since you're doing it right as well. Yeah. Put, put conduit in the walls. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> and then you can run whatever the hell you decide to run easily. The real thing is the, having an outlet and conduit leading around to some wire closet somewhere. Then if you wanna put an ethernet, you wanna put in speaker wire, you wanna put just power, whatever you wanna put. You've got conduit. That's that's the most, I think, flexible long term plan.

Caller #1 (00:24:20):
Okay. Well, how does one thing I don't understand about conduit is how it actually works. I mean, you could have a conduit that goes,

Leo Laporte (00:24:28):
Well, they, they put, they'll put a string in there that you could pull, they'll put a wire pull in it.

Caller #1 (00:24:33):
That's what it is. It's like a string. Yeah. And then it's like, but where does it go in the ceiling? Like, what if it goes to the middle of my ceiling? Well,

Leo Laporte (00:24:41):
You have to decide. Yeah. You have to decide ahead of time. <Affirmative> a, where this, where the central point is, you know, a closet, we have a closet, the wire closet where all our, you know, routers and everything are. Right. Right, right. So that's the first thing. That's the central part, wherever that is. And then you kind of do have to decide where you wanna put the outlets ahead of time. Right. Because that's where they're gonna be. If you do it in the ceiling, it's not so bad. If that's all space, you can get up there easily. You can just kind of run something there and move it. It's not so hard to move it.

Caller #1 (00:25:13):
Yeah. Gotta plan, plan ahead. Oh no.

Leo Laporte (00:25:17):
Well that's yeah. I mean, or you know, and I have friends who've done this, just put in the Sonos, it works fine. And then, then not worry. And 10 years from now, you may have to. Yeah. And then you saw wireless. It it's much easier. You

Caller #1 (00:25:29):
Just put a hole of the ceiling.

Leo Laporte (00:25:30):
Yeah. They look like can lights. They're just like, it's just like a speaker in the ceiling. Right. That's that's by far the easiest, just as long as you understand, you know, what, if sun else goes out of business, what if they decide, Hey, version two is no good. We're going to version three. But you know, I could still use my Sono series. One speakers, just fine. We use, we have there all over the place. We just can only use that old software and just have to hope Sonos does at some point say, right. Well, we're gonna, you know, we're through with that.

Caller #1 (00:26:02):
And I know you're probably running out of time, but I also saw like poke and other products. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:26:06):
A lot of company do this. Crestron is the one that makes the whole home sound, but that's really old fashioned that's, you know, that's the, that's the way they used to do it in Beverly Hills, you know? And you have a central controller and all that stuff. I think Sonos is actually, I don't, I don't really, I don't wanna put it down. I think it's actually the easiest way to do this.

Caller #1 (00:26:27):
Okay.

Leo Laporte (00:26:29):
Right. But I just think you need to understand the, what you're getting into.

Caller #1 (00:26:33):
Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:26:33):
Thank you. You're welcome. Nice to talk. And the nice thing with the new Sonos support, echo or Google voice. So you now have a voice assistant in the ceiling too, so that's kind of cool. Have fun. And why are you tearing this out? Did you have storm damage or are you just in the move?

Caller #1 (00:26:48):
No, no, no. It's the house is like 1880. Oh yeah. Wow. And that's like where I am in the get all the, a lot of beautiful, beautiful neighborhoods, big old trees and things. Nice houses are all. Oh, so beautiful. Literally. And we bought it about the place 20 years ago and then it was kind of worn out. There's no sub flooring. You can look through

Leo Laporte (00:27:07):
The floor and you got post tube wiring everywhere. <Laugh> have fun. I gotta run. Nice to talk to you again. Take care. Leo Laport, The Tech Guy, that car music says to me, Sam Abul, Sam principal researcher at guide house insights, podcaster@wheelbearings.media and our, my personal car guy. Hello Sam. Hello,

Sam Abuelsamid (00:27:32):
Leo. How are you this week?

Leo Laporte (00:27:34):
I am very well. You're sitting in a Ford. Looks good. I have a

Sam Abuelsamid (00:27:39):
And noticed that the, the driver has no hands on the steering wheel.

Leo Laporte (00:27:44):
Yes, I th now is that the new self-driving it's not full self-driving it's

Sam Abuelsamid (00:27:49):
No, it's not. Self-Driving do not call it. Self-Driving because it's not, it's a driver assist system. All right. This is what I wanted to talk about. Yes,

Leo Laporte (00:27:56):
I'm with you. This is for,

Sam Abuelsamid (00:27:57):
This is, this is Ford blue crew GM has their super crews, which is very similar. Other manufacturers coming out with similar systems

Leo Laporte (00:28:05):
Forge just sent out a notice that we're gonna get the blue crew in the mocks. Oh,

Sam Abuelsamid (00:28:10):
Excellent. Soon. Yeah. But I was listening to this week in Google, Google earlier this week, our podcast. Yes. And listening, listening to that, you know, and hearing, you know, two very smart people like Stacy Higgin, B and, and Jeff Jarvis, clearly not understanding what all this autonomous driving technology please and driver assist technology means. You know, I thought if, if those two don't get it, then, you know, it's clear that probably most people don't get it. And, and I understand why, because between market automaker, regulators and Elon Musk, you know, politicians, you know, and Elon, you know, Elon has announced it. They just make it more and more confusing.

Leo Laporte (00:28:54):
Elon has announced that full self-driving will be here next year. Like real, the real deal levels.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:28:59):
No, he said by the end of this year, by the end of this year,

Leo Laporte (00:29:00):
He said that for

Sam Abuelsamid (00:29:02):
It's 20, 20 years in a row, it's still 20. It's still 2017. Isn't it? It is it's right. Yeah. So, so we'll be here by the end of this year. 

Leo Laporte (00:29:09):
So, so some, some twitsted, Mr. And the chairman says, you should call it full self crashing. I don't think it's quite that bad. It's more about the label than what these things can do, cuz they they're useful. Right. And,

Sam Abuelsamid (00:29:21):
And the, the, the labeling is often very con fusing because, you know, first of all, there's no standard labeling for this stuff. Right. you know, there, there is, there's one standard taxonomy which society of automotive engineers came up with, which is these levels of automation. Yeah. Which only makes the problem worse. It's it's a terrible system level four level five level five is like completely autonomous. And this is the thing, you know, listening to Jeff and Stacy go back and forth. You know, they were confused, you know, they, they, they don't, they don't know what those levels mean. 99% of people don't have any idea what those levels mean, including Elon Musk. So it, what I wanted to get at today was, you know, we it's, you've got this system of levels that I think most people should just ignore. Anytime we hear somebody start talking about levels, just tune out, you know, unless they actually tell you what the system does, you know, the actual functionality and the way that I like to describe it.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:30:19):
And I've got a, an article goal that's coming out soon on this. And I, I'm not, I didn't actually create this this way of describing it. And I, but I, and I honestly can't remember who it was, but if, if you hear this and you know who originally who originated this idea, please let me know so I can give them credit. Yes. But it's the idea of, you know feed off, hands off eyes, off brain off <laugh>. So, so you've got, oh, that's easy to keep track of this is your four, four levels. Yeah. So you know, with a traditional vehicle that doesn't have any driver assists it's everything's on feet on hands, on eyes, on brain, on you're you gotta be paying attention. You gotta watch the road hands on the wheel feet on the pedals. Yeah. As you get to things like cruise control, now it's feet off, but hands on eyes on brain on when you get to something like blue crew or super crews, it's hands off, but it's still brain on because and eyes on, because you do have to watch the road all the time and you and you have to be paying attention and be ready to take full control, put your hands back on the wheel, put your feet on the pedals at any moment.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:31:24):
And then, you know, when you go eyes off now but you're still brain on this is where things get really nasty. So everything you know what Tesla sells today with autopilot and even full self-driving, the full self-driving beta is still hands on eyes on brain on. Okay. Autonomous is not until you, which get is funny, cuz a lot of Tesla loaders turn everything the brain off. So maybe I know. And that's the, that's the problem mm-hmm <affirmative> yeah. You're, you're not actually autonomous until you can go everything off, feed off, hands off eyes off brain off, then you're autonomous. Anything less than that is not autonomous. It's not self-driving it's driver assist system and that's the way it should be considered as a driver assist system. Now what started this conversation on twitg earlier this week was I think Jeff brought up, you know, something that came up in England you know, where they're looking at some regulations.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:32:20):
And one of the things that they're talking about is this idea that for autonomous systems the, the manufacturer should be liable for it. If something goes wrong and what they're actually talking about in, in the UK is for a truly autonomous system where it's brain brain off, where you do where the human driver does not have to supervise that I fully support the idea that that should absolutely. You know, if the, if the, if your brain off the, the the system, the, the, the manufacturer, the creator of that system as the, because when we drive, if we make a mistake, we're liable for it. Right, right. You know, we, we we're wants to get a ticket. Whoever's driving the vehicle is liable for the, for the way that vehicle behaves. If that happens to be a piece of computer software and a human is not involved in that process and the operation of that vehicle, then the manufacturer of that whether it be the automaker or a supplier that they're working with to do that should be responsible. They should be liable. If anything goes wrong, anything less than that, then the human is going to be liable. In fact, a Tesla

Leo Laporte (00:33:33):
Driver is being prosecuted right now. Cuz he let the car go through a red light and hit people. And the car was never designed to stop at a red light, at least in those days. Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:33:45):
And, and even now it's, they, you know, even though they, if you have the FSD beta, they technically say, you know, it'll respond to red lights or respond to traffic signals. Sometimes it does. Sometimes, sometimes it doesn't, which is why they explicitly tell you, you must keep your eyes on the road and hands on the wheel. Now how about this

Leo Laporte (00:34:01):
Blue crew you got here? The guys or gal's hands are not on the wheel, but she's looking at the road. Right.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:34:08):
So she's responsible. Okay. So if you, if you're using, if you're using a system like blue crew where it's hands off, but it's eyes on and brain on, you're responsible if your brain's on you're responsible, but you

Leo Laporte (00:34:18):
Know, the reason I like it is especially in commute traffic, it's nice to put my hands down, keep my feet down and, but I'll pay attention obviously. But it's still a much more relaxing way to travel. Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:34:32):
It certainly can be. And you know, I'm, I'm not saying that we shouldn't do that. I'm just, I'm reminding people that you, you are still ultimately responsible when you're using that. Yeah. You cannot lay back and take a nap. You can't climb in the backseat

Leo Laporte (00:34:44):
Tempting as it may be. You can't

Sam Abuelsamid (00:34:46):
Text, you still have to be watching the road. Now there are a couple of systems. There's a recently Mercedes-Benz launched their drive pilot system in Europe, which they call a level three system. This is a system where you don't have to watch the road still brain on, but you don't have to watch the road. And Mercedes explicitly says that when the system is active, we are liable for anything that happens. If there's a crash while the system is active, we are liable for it. So the driver, the human driver is not responsible in that case. And Volvo was actually the first company to come out and say a, when we do launch systems like that, where the, the driver is not required to supervise, then we will be liable for that. Oh, that's

Leo Laporte (00:35:30):
Interesting. That's what the discussion was by the way on the podcast is who's liable. And yeah, it makes sense. As long as any part of you is turned on, wait a minute, that didn't come out. Right. you're liable, you know?

Sam Abuelsamid (00:35:42):
Yeah. And, and you know, I, you know, I, I personally think that's, that's the way it should be. You know, the manufacturer should be liable in that case cuz they are effectively, the

Leo Laporte (00:35:52):
Driver people are talking about though building, living rooms on wheels where there's no controls at all. I mean, obviously you're not liable in a case like that. Is that ever gonna happen though? It seems like we've got a long way to go. It's

Sam Abuelsamid (00:36:02):
Gonna be, it's gonna be a long time. Yeah. you know, we're, we're, you know, we've got some, you know, robo taxi type vehicles, you know, on the road being tested, but you know,

Leo Laporte (00:36:10):
But even those, as you were talking about with the halo system, sometimes they get stuck and you gotta get a guy, you know, control them into

Sam Abuelsamid (00:36:18):
The they're monitored. Yeah. Yeah. When, when they don't know what to do, then, then a remote operator takes over a long

Leo Laporte (00:36:22):
Way to go. I think Sam apples, Sam guide, house insights. He's also a podcaster@wheelbearings.media. Thank you Sam.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:36:31):
Thank you, Leo. Talk to you next week.

Leo Laporte (00:36:35):
I'm not sure I'd want to get, are there few goes down with no controls?

Sam Abuelsamid (00:36:41):
Not, not ones that carry that are carrying passengers. Not yet. So like the neuro vehicles, they're the little delivery vehicles. Obviously they don't have any controls cuz they're not designed to carry carry passengers. They're designed to carry groceries and packages and things like that. It still

Leo Laporte (00:36:55):
Seems problematic. I mean, I,

Sam Abuelsamid (00:36:57):
I feel like the crew, the cruise origin has no controls. You know, and that's being tested on the track now, it's it hasn't, hasn't been, they're gonna start testing in San Francisco probably later this year with that one. And the plan is to, I think next 20, 23, they wanna start deploying those. The the zoo's robo taxi has no controls at just before CES Waymo showed off a vehicle that they're developing with Zeer, which is a Chinese company, which is gonna be a robo taxi. Purpose-Built robo taxi. It has no controls. So they are coming. But again, these are, these are not vehicles that you're gonna buy. These are vehicles that are gonna be operated in elites. Right. in various types of service models, that's fine.

Leo Laporte (00:37:42):
Yeah. Cause you know, they're gonna take away my driver's license in a few years and I want that to be around. I figure I got 10 more years of driving. So at that point I'd like

Sam Abuelsamid (00:37:51):
You could probably go longer than that. Well, I don't know. I'm you're only 65.

Leo Laporte (00:37:54):
I'm still, I'm still alert, but I don't wanna be one of those old people who, you know, backs are I into the neighbor's yard because they put the feet on the wrong pedal. So

Sam Abuelsamid (00:38:04):
Yeah. And, and, and that's, you know, that that's that, that is one of the reasons, you know, one of the rationales for developing this kind of technology for developing automated driving technology is to enable people who can't drive. You know, whether it's because they elderly or, you know, they have some physical limitations, you know, whether they're blind or you know, what, whatever else it might be that are unable to drive to still have freedom of mobility. That's, that's exactly, that's a, and that's a great reason for doing this too. Yeah. To allow people to get around, you know, get out of the house. And you know, hopefully it'll be safe enough to actually leave the house someday. But you know, that, and, and, you know, I, I like that. I think that's a, that's a great, a great reason for doing this. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:38:52):
Yeah. Well, it's not why they're doing, I mean, the, the reason there's all this energy put into it is cuz of companies like Uber who, you know, really don't make any financial sense unless you can eliminate drivers, truckers and all that. Yeah. There's financial reasons. It's not to help Leo when he gets old, get around.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:39:12):
Yeah. But you know, in, in the long term, you know, as more and more companies you know, get these technologies out there. I mean, that's, that is one of the, the rationals, oh,

Leo Laporte (00:39:21):
We have an aging population there. Yeah. Somebody's gonna need to drive them. Ain't gonna be my kids. <Laugh>

Sam Abuelsamid (00:39:31):
Kelo tests and ke tech. So have grant theft auto used for driving tests. Yeah, actually you you'd be surprised. A number of companies that are developing automated driving technology actually do use gaming platforms for simulation for doing their simulation testing. A lot of the simulation platforms are based on unreal engine. And so they're, they're using gaming engines to do the do Theis for the, for the other agents. You know, the other road users as they're doing these simulations. So they'll, they'll find scenarios that they want to test when they're doing their, their on-road testing. They'll capture that data. And then they will put feed that into the simulation with the gaming engine generating other vehicles generating pedestrians so they can get all of these different, you know, different variations on that scenario. So they can do broader testing than you could ever replicate in the real world.

Leo Laporte (00:40:29):
Right. I can't wait to try blue crew. What car? That's not a Mockey what is that? Is

Sam Abuelsamid (00:40:34):
That a F150? That's that's an expedition. So

Leo Laporte (00:40:37):
They have the big screen too,

Sam Abuelsamid (00:40:38):
Huh? Yeah. It's the same system. That's that's in your mock, the 20 it's the 20, 22 expedition. I'm actually getting an F-150 on Wednesday. That's got blue crew on

Leo Laporte (00:40:48):
It. Can't wait to see it. Hey, gotta run. You gonna stick around for the top. Sure. Okay. Thanks. Our tech I podcast brought to you this week by cash flow. I literally brought to you by cash. How do we know? Cash's amazing cuz we've been using them for 10 years more than that I think. And we love 'em. We couldn't do it without 'em cash fly is our content delivery network. They're the best. But now they offer video streaming through cash too. So cash, which I, as the best throughput and global reach is making your content infinitely. Scalable. You can go live like in hours, not days, sub one second latency. What? Yes, this is not that unreliable web RTC solution. This is web sock at live video workflow. That's scalable to millions of users. Nobody wants content to take forever to load. Nobody wants long buffering times, long latency times with cash lives, ultra low latency, video streaming.

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Leo Laporte (00:43:45):
Just get the information. See if you're overpaying. You may be by by 20% or more twit.cash.com. So what we did more than a decade ago, and we never look back, we are so happy. Twit.cash, fly.com. Thank you. Cash fly. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Now back to The Tech Guy, Leo Laporte The Tech Guy, eighty eight eighty eight. Ask Leo the phone number. Coleman's next from France, France. Hey Leo. Hi Coleman. You mean France in France? <Laugh> the, yes, the country France. Oh, wow. Yes. Or frost as they say, we just <inaudible>. Yeah. Where in France are you? Just south of Paris.

Caller #2 (00:44:31):
Nice, Nice. Outta 20 miles south of Paris. So yeah. A nice area.

Leo Laporte (00:44:36):
Yeah, we stayed stayed roughly there some years ago in the Jengo Reinhardt's small town San Westen. It's beautiful area. I

Caller #2 (00:44:47):
Yeah, yeah, no, definitely. Yes. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:44:49):
So what can, so what can I do for you and France?

Caller #2 (00:44:52):
Well, I was actually calling because well, as a kid I used to enjoy, I mean, this might sound a bit geeky, but I used to enjoy making databases with file maker pro ah,

Leo Laporte (00:45:03):
The good old days, you know, it's still around. Exactly.

Caller #2 (00:45:06):
Yeah. But I mean, from what I can tell it's it's pretty pricey. It's really aimed for it's professional it's business. Yeah. It was as well, but yeah, I mean, as a kid, I got my hands on in and I, I mean, there was also the, the Claris works version of it as well. 

Leo Laporte (00:45:19):
That's right. Which was so apple, you know, used to own both these companies file maker and Claris works. They, they kind of sort of do, I think they've spun 'em out, but file maker was great because it allowed you to design it. It was a database program, but it allowed you to design a beautiful front end. It was really an application making tool. And I, I wish they would kind of continue to do that because there's a lot of people like you and me, frankly, who would use it, you know, people would make CD databases and you know yeah.

Caller #2 (00:45:49):
I collect mechanical keyboards and keep, so that's took key caps and I wanted to be able to perfect make an inventory of all that. And FileMaker, like I thinking back, I was like, oh, FileMaker would be perfect for this, but I just can't find any alternative.

Leo Laporte (00:46:00):
It was very visual, which was nice. So UI came first, the user interface came first and then you could hook up the database to the fields and so forth. I, yeah, it was really good. This is a good question. Is there anything like that today? I think, you know, I've been tempted to download file maker and play with it just because I like you have these fond memories of the early days. I think there's still kind of a inexpensive enthusiast version of, of file maker. There's a free trial. Certainly. Let me just look, you don't have to have a server in other words. Oh yeah. See, now it's $19 a month. That's not, that's not, that's not affordable. Is it?

Caller #2 (00:46:41):
I'm willing to get a standalone? Yeah. Not going to pay a subscription.

Leo Laporte (00:46:46):
So what we want is a rela it's called a relational database, which is pretty sophisticated that has a great graphic design tools and allows you to make a pretty thing. I mean, the chat room is saying, and I know this will not be a solution for you. Access Microsoft access part of the Microsoft office series.

Caller #2 (00:47:05):
It, well, I mean, I ideally I would want this to be accessible. So a Mac PC, are you Mac, windows and iPhone. So if I could access this, my iPhone, that'd be great. Wouldn't that be nice? Like a little extra, that'd be an extra, but

Leo Laporte (00:47:17):
Yeah. Yeah. So file makers cross platform, which is, is nice. Yeah, they've really changed it. I wish they had kind of like a file maker, enthusiast license, one minute single licenses for individuals that don't need to share data with others. Let me just look at that. And then you're in frost. You have your own region. Oh, suddenly it's gonna be in French 576 euros. Forget about it. That's some that's real money, man. Wow. So there is a stay and alone version, but it ain't cheap. Holy

Caller #2 (00:47:52):
Cow, for now the best solution I found was using numbers with my Mac. And the unfortunate part is you can only input images from a Mac. You cannot do it on the web version.

Leo Laporte (00:48:02):
It's not cross platform. I've had this. That is the good news is Apple's I work package persists and has become very good, but it's only Mac and Mac and, and iOS. And you know, I mean, it's got all the presentation features between pages and in keynote. I, you know, Alex Lindsay on our Mac. Oh,

Caller #2 (00:48:24):
Well I saying, that's the thing with the iPad version. You can, you cannot input images. Yeah. Yeah. Use the Mac version for that. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:48:32):
Another suggestion from the chat room and I haven't tried it, but Libra office, which is, you know, an open source,

Caller #2 (00:48:39):
Tried looking into that. And I, yeah, I got a little bit confused. I mean, I might have to try looking into it again, but they

Leo Laporte (00:48:44):
Have a program called base, which is their version of access or version of yeah. The world is moved on. You know, I think databases now are perceived as something way too complicated for mortal men. And yeah,

Caller #2 (00:48:56):
If you look up database online, you're basically just finding a results for like SQL and all that.

Leo Laporte (00:48:59):
Yeah. Yeah. Somebody sh you know, it's the same thing with HyperCard, which was another technology that, oh, yeah. That was beautiful back merged on the Mac and really empowered anybody, including kids to create amazing things. And it's disappointing that those don't exist anymore, or if they do their toys, like, you know, the, the swift playgrounds that apple puts out on iOS, they're not, they're not really powerful. It's possible to do both. We did 20 years ago. I guess the market doesn't exist. I don't know why any other suggestions from the chat room, I will more than welcome them, but yeah, I don't know of anything off the top of my head. I think the closest there's also and this is gonna be very similar to, to file maker Soho office has. And I, that, you know, when I was looking, what I was at is maybe making some line of work software for our podcast network.

Leo Laporte (00:49:56):
And and I thought file maker, would've been perfect for this. Then I looked at Zoho, Z O H o.com. They also have a database that's very programmable. I think they might have a completely free tier cuz they wanna get you in just like go Google does with the, you know, their workspace. They want to get you in as a business. But I, you might take a look at that. Yeah. I'll look into that. I'm I was very impressed with, you can make full standalone applications that are completely across platform. It's, it's a, I think it's a really interesting product, but I just haven't spent the time to play with it. A lot of times what happens with this stuff is it's kind of a dead end and you, and you know, just as you were with file maker, you, you have to rely on the kindness of Stranges in this case, apple to continue to make it and make it available at a reasonable price. And I unfortunately stranger's priorities do not often align with our own. Unfortunately I like your eye. Now you speak beautiful English Coleman. Are you French or are you from the us? 

Caller #2 (00:50:58):
I'm from the us before moving to France, back around 91, I was actually in your neck of the woods. I was actually over in Greenville. If you know that

Leo Laporte (00:51:05):
I know Greville very well in the I'm in the, in the wine country. Now, what, what brought you to France?

Caller #2 (00:51:11):
I was a kid. I moved moved to France with my mother when she 

Leo Laporte (00:51:15):
Worked out nice. And you stayed? Yeah, exactly. I love it. I think it's beautiful. Yeah. And you could take the train into Paris anytime you want. That's living, that's living. We love Sam ween. Well, I, you know, we'll keep looking for something for Coleman because I agree with you, FileMaker was an amazing thing. Cross platform I think Zoho is gonna be your best bed Zoho office. It's fairly inexpensive. Well, I

Caller #2 (00:51:41):
Had a site pulled up, so I'll look into yeah, they

Leo Laporte (00:51:43):
Have it's confusing cuz they do everything. <Laugh> they do email bookkeeping meetings you know, they have financial software, CRM, software sales and marketing software. But in there deep down, if you dig, they have databases that let you make completely custom solutions for multiuser or single user. What do you wanna make keyboard? Database or

Caller #2 (00:52:07):
Yeah, exactly. I collect a mechanical keyboard. Nice custom made stuff. And so, yeah. And just wanna make a little catalog of what I have. And

Leo Laporte (00:52:16):
What's your favorite? You like the clicky clicky keyboards?

Caller #2 (00:52:19):
No tore. I I'm a tore fan tore actually rubber dome, but fancy rubber dome. Let's say

Leo Laporte (00:52:25):
So. That's that's the key cap key cap maker that you like not

Caller #2 (00:52:30):
No, no, no. The actual type of switch

Leo Laporte (00:52:33):
It's a T O P right. Okay. I'll have to check it out.

Caller #2 (00:52:38):
T O P R E. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:52:39):
Yeah. This is, this has become, you know, you know, there, it it's become a thing. People are like, oh no, I'm a Tora guy. I don't know. <Laugh> I don't do use those. Oh no, that <laugh> the clicky. All those red keys. No, those are terrible. I don't use those. Oh

Caller #2 (00:52:56):
No. The reds are linears. I mean, I, I have them all, so yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:52:59):
I bought many moons ago for great price. A re refurbished IBM keyboard. It has a wonderful spring. Oh yeah. Mechanism sounds like I'm in the office,

Caller #2 (00:53:11):
People might get a little mad

Leo Laporte (00:53:12):
At you. Sounds like artillery when I'm typing. <Laugh> Hey, a pleasure to meet you Coleman. Thank you for calling all the way from beautiful PA. Have a great day. My call take care. Tore. I'll have to look at these while they're expensive. Good keyboards are electrostatic capacitive. Noncontact keyboard switch from Japan. All right, Sammy. I am gonna get a cup of Joe. You get to whole eight minutes in some seconds to all right. To take over. It's a Sam bull Sam takeover.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:53:57):
Okay. So we had a couple questions in here in the chat about plugin hybrids. D NA was asking about whether plug-in hybrids are a good alternative and for a lot of people, they are you know, yes, they are more complex than a battery electric vehicle or a standard internal combustion vehicle, because you do have two two different power trains in there. You got an electric power train and an engine and a bigger battery. But depending on, for example, where you live, what your use case is, it can be the right solution for you. You know, the reality is vast majority of people, you know, upwards of 75% of people drive less than 40 miles a day. And you know, there's a lot, there's a number of plug-in hybrids that get, you know, 35 to 40 miles of electric range on a charge.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:54:50):
So that means that you can use, you know, you know, if you plug it in every night you can get enough charge to do almost all your daily driving on just electricity. And then when you, you know, occasionally need to take a longer trip, you can just keep going. You don't have to worry about landing where you're gonna stop and charge and, and all this you know, so it does add some cost. But for, you know, for a lot of solutions and, you know, one of my favorite vehicles is the Chrysler Pacifica hybrid, which is a plug-in hybrid. It's a minivan. And Diven hard. Who's regularly shows up on this week in tech and he's a senior editor at, in gadget. He just bought one of these and, you know, it's a great solution, you know, if you've got young kids to haul around, you know, I think minivans are a much better solution than SUVs or crossovers.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:55:42):
If you've got young kids, they're just so much easier to get everybody in and out of them. And you, the sliding doors are, are great for much better access than regular hinge doors. Yeah, they don't look as cool, but you know, there there's the right solution for a lot of people. But with the you know, with the plugin hybrid version, you get about 33, 34 miles of electric range. So you can, you know, drop the kids off at school, go to work, whatever, you know, do your shopping never use any gas or almost never use any gas. And then when it's time for a road trip to go visit the grandparents, you just keep going. You don't have to worry about planning. Where am I gonna stop for half an hour or an hour, you know, every couple hours to charge it up.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:56:24):
It just drives like a regular hybrid at that point. You know, other really good options for plug-in hybrids are the Toyota RAV4 prime and the Ford escape plug-in hybrid, both of which get about 40 miles on a charge and really, really fuel efficient vehicles. There, you know, I think twitsted, Mr. Was asking about, you know, whether it's bad for the engine. So what, what they do with plugin hybrids is they, they have a maintenance mode on the engine that periodically you know, if you haven't used the engine, if, if you're just if you, if, if you're just driving it you know, on all the time, it will occasionally start up the engine. Usually every couple of weeks you know, maybe every two or three weeks it'll start the engine, run it long enough to get everything warmed up, get the fluids warmed up, circulate the fluids.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:57:16):
It also forces you to go through the gas that's in the tank and PHEVs use really have a, a smaller fuel tank than, than a regular internal combustion model cuz you're using, you're using on an electricity more of the time. You know, I know back when they launched the the Chevy volt a decade ago you know, that was one of the first plugin hybrids that was widely available. It was designed, it only had an excuse me, a nine to gallon gas tank. It was designed to go through a tank of gas in the course of a year, so that, you know, you would have to periodically put fresh gas in there. And you know, that's because gas, you know, will get oxidized over time and it, it, won't your engine won't run as good on that.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:58:04):
So you know, it, it's in, they, you know, the engineers have done a lot of work on these, they know you know, how much the engine has to run, you know, to keep it in, in proper working order. CR one asked about the F150 I'll be testing this week. It's no, it's not the electric yet. Those are they're they're, they don't have in a press fleet yet. We haven't had a chance to drive them. They've done some ride alongs with them. That'll be coming probably in a couple of months, time too prob probably sometime in April or may. I'll get a chance to drive that this is gonna, this is actually gonna be the F-150 hybrid that I'm driving which is also really good. It's quite, quite fuel efficient, full, or a full size pickup truck.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:58:47):
And this one will be equipped with the blue crew system. So I'll be doing some handsfree testing with it. Some of the other things that were in here going back to automated driving see with one of the challenges with systems like blue crews or super crews, or, you know, any of these lane centering systems is, yeah, it is, humans are bad at supervising automation. Let's put it that way. So when you know, when something works most of the time we tend to tune out. We, we get very confident with it very quickly. And that's a bad thing. And this is when Google, you know, for it was Waymo when it was the Google self-driving car project. This is actually one of the things that they were looking at early on was doing a highway driving system, a handsfree highway driving system.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:59:44):
And in their testing, you know, they had a bunch of employees go out and drive these things and tried out you know, on, you know, take them home overnight. And they had cameras in their recording. You know, how the vehicles performed, you know, what the drivers were doing. And they were alarm at the way drivers were using these things, you know, they were reading, they were putting on makeup, you know, they were doing all kinds of things that they shouldn't have been doing when they should have been watching the road. And they realized that this is a terrible idea, which is why they decided to focus on fully automated systems. And for the systems that are coming out there, the, the hands-free systems are out there on the market. One thing that every manufacturer doing a hands free system is doing and again, Tesla's exception here is putting a driver monitor system in there.

Sam Abuelsamid (01:00:33):
So they they're using infrared cameras that are watching the driver's head pose and eye position to look for where you're look, you're watching to make sure that you're continuing to watch the road. So if you start looking away from the road for any length of time, for more than a few seconds you know, you can look down, you know, to, you know, put you know, put something in the, the navigation system or change the radio station or whatever. But if you are looking down for more than about four or five seconds, they, they don't they, they will start to alert the the driver and, you know, depending on the vehicle, it may, you know, there may be, there'll be visual alerts, you know, in the dashboard GMs using a light bar in the steering wheel. There may also be haptic alerts and also audible alerts to say, Hey, you need to watch the road, keep your eyes on the road.

Sam Abuelsamid (01:01:25):
And, you know, if you don't respond then the system is designed to actually start slowing the vehicle down. So for example, you know, if you become incapacitated, if you have a heart attack or stroke, you know, while you're using the system and, and you can't respond, it will start slowing the vehicle down and bring it to a stop and turn on the, the four way to alert other drivers around you that, Hey, there's a problem here. And this, you know, this is a, I think this is something that should be in all vehicles anyway. And I think we'll be with one of the things that was included in the infrastructure bill to mandate that manufacture that actually the national highway traffic safety administration develop a regulation to, to try to prevent drunk driving which still accounts for half of all the fatalities on the road.

Sam Abuelsamid (01:02:10):
So the you know, these driver monitor systems are very effective at detecting, you know, if the driver is distracted. So even if you're, even if you're not drunk, you know, it can detect if you're drunk, but it can also detect if you are you know, just texting or not paying attention to the road and, you know, alert you to try and get your attention back on the, on the task of driving. And then if you don't respond, you know, then you can bring the car to a safe stop. This is something we're gonna see on all new vehicles going forward. Somebody asked if RS in trouble probably too early to say you know, they've certainly got some challenges with with ramping up their production volumes. So we'll, we'll have to wait and see, they've got plenty of cash in the bank. So it's, it's, I don't think they're in any danger of going bankrupt anytime soon.

Leo Laporte (01:03:04):
All right. Thank you. My friend, you are welcome.

Sam Abuelsamid (01:03:07):
I'll talk to you

Leo Laporte (01:03:07):
Next Sunday. Yes, sir. All right,

Sam Abuelsamid (01:03:10):
Bye bye. Bye.

Leo Laporte (01:03:13):
Wow. Hey, Hey. Hey, how are you today? Leo Laporte here, The Tech Guy. Time to talk computers, the internet home theater, digital photography, smart phones, smart watches, all that jazz. Eighty eight eighty eight ASCL is my phone number. We can talk about keyboards too. 8 8 8 8 2 7 5 5 three eight toll free from anywhere in the us or Canada uh back to the phones. We go here, our next caller coming in from Cooper city, Florida, Skyler on the line. Hi, Skyler.

Caller #3 (01:03:45):
Hey Leo. How's it going

Leo Laporte (01:03:46):
Today? It's going well. How are you?

Caller #3 (01:03:48):
Real good. Thank you. Real good. Nice and sunny down here in Florida. Nice.

Leo Laporte (01:03:52):
I'm jealous.

Caller #3 (01:03:54):
Pretty good. Very good.

Leo Laporte (01:03:56):
Cool. So what's up, got a couple,

Caller #3 (01:03:58):
Got a couple questions for you today. They're kind of not related it all. Yes. But the first question is I've got an Android phone and I've got an existing Google voice number assigned to it. So I have my carrier number and Google. Yes. I also have several other Google accounts for email, maybe three or four on the same phone calendar, things like that. Is there a trick to assign and another Google number to my same phone, my same carrier, number,

Leo Laporte (01:04:27):
Another Google number to the same phone. In other words, could you set up a second Google voice account? Have that on the phone as well?

Caller #3 (01:04:36):
Yes. So I have another, another option for another phone calls.

Leo Laporte (01:04:41):
Number that's an, that's an intriguing question. Yeah. I don't see why you couldn't have multiple Google voice numbers cuz you know, when you set up Google voice you, you tell it what phone numbers to forward to. That's what you're doing. Right. So you have a Google voice account and you say, and you have your real number 1, 2, 3, 4. And you say, when somebody rings my Google voice number, have it come up on 1, 2, 3, 4, right, right. Yeah. I don't see why you couldn't do that with as many Google voice numbers as you want. I don't think they check to say, I don't think they goes, oh, well you already have another Google voice number forward in that phone. I don't think they care.

Caller #3 (01:05:24):
They don't care. Okay. So good. So I can have them all come back to the number one I

Leo Laporte (01:05:28):
Believe so. Yeah. You should try it. Okay. Scooter X has found a little support document from Google voice. How can I get two Google voice numbers linked to one phone number? Yeah. The two ways, yeah, it looks like you, you can do that. You can add a second number to Google. Voice account is one way to do it or create a different Google voice number with a different Google account. So I think that's what probably what you wanna do. Google restricts the use of a phone number from obtaining multiple Google voice numbers to prevent abuse. Oh, maybe they don't do that. Maybe they do see that anyway. We'll put the link to this support document. Sounds like you, maybe you've seen it. 3 1 5 1 2, 2, 4. Have you looked at that support document?

Caller #3 (01:06:20):
No, not, not.

Leo Laporte (01:06:21):
We'll put a link to that@techilabs.com. It's in our chat room as well. Or you could just, if you search Google voice help, how can I get two Google voice numbers linked to one phone? I guess there might be an issue and that makes sense. They wanna, you know, avoid, spamers getting 400 numbers associated with a single phone. <Laugh>

Caller #3 (01:06:41):
Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:06:42):
That's that's true. So, but there, it looks like they've got two different ways, two different workarounds and they've got the pros and cons of it to, so I, if it's gonna work, it'll work this way. I could see maybe now why they would kind of try to say, oh yeah, you're already using that phone.

Caller #3 (01:06:58):
Yeah. Yeah. That makes sense. Okay. Perfect. Well thank you.

Leo Laporte (01:07:00):
Hey, good luck. Yeah, let me know. Let me know how it works out, actually. Skylar, I'm curious. I might do the same thing myself. The other thing is to not use Google voice for that other number. There's plenty of other systems besides Google voice that allow you to have another number that rings to that phone. There's I think there's something called. I think my wife uses second law. She has a business line. That's a business number, but it rings her cell phone. OB obviously you would want it to do that. So I think there are lots of ways to do that. I use a system called my S U D O my pseudo, my S U D o.com. And it will give you additional phone numbers. That's actually useful tool for when you're signing up for stuff. <Laugh> I I, once literally two years ago sent in a card, you know, you get 'em in the mail saying would you be interested in solar installation?

Leo Laporte (01:07:52):
And I sent in the card big mistake. What was I thinking with my phone number or email address? And they still call me, I've told them a hundred times. No, no, yeah, we were interested. We got one, I don't need one. They still call me. I said, take me off your list. They still call me cuz I think what it was, this, this postcard came from some company that really is just selling leads to a bunch of different solar installers. And I was just one of those leads. And so a bunch of different people had been calling me if I had used. And that's why I signed up for my pseudo cuz if I had used my pseudo, I could have had a dedicated phone number just for those inquiries, a dedicated email, just for those inquiries. And as soon as I wasn't in trust, I could turn it off. I could disable it. I could forward it to somewhere else if I wanted to be mean that would've been a good solution. So I think, I think just look around if Google voice won't do it, you will find an alternate way of getting this done. Susan and Lancaster, California. Hello Susan.

Caller #4 (01:09:00):
Hey Leo. How are you?

Leo Laporte (01:09:01):
I am well, how are you?

Caller #4 (01:09:03):
Good. I'm just ducky. Thank you. I have a sister who is extremely computer phobic and doesn't want do anything extra on a phone except take calls and texts.

Leo Laporte (01:09:21):
Yes. Like we used to do in the old days.

Caller #4 (01:09:24):
Like yes. Now she has a five now an iPhone five and it's really starting to wear out and

Leo Laporte (01:09:33):
Well, wait a minute. That's a computer. So she, she just doesn't use it for anything. It's just <laugh> she just uses his phone and text thing. She never adds apps or anything.

Caller #4 (01:09:43):
Yeah, exactly. Got it. So you know, every now and again, she'll get a picture

Leo Laporte (01:09:47):
Or a video. So the, the replacement for that is the iPhone se.

Caller #4 (01:09:53):
Oh, okay. That's the best one. And that's probably,

Leo Laporte (01:09:57):
It's their less expensive when it's designed for people like your sister. It's small too. In fact, it's roughly the size of the five. But it's more up to date. It has up to date guts in it. And I should tell you that it is expected that in March, apple will announce an updated iPhone se that supports 5g and probably has the new, a 15 ship in it. But the iPhone current iPhone se is an update. I think for her. Is hers wearing out or?

Caller #4 (01:10:24):
Well, yeah, it is. And I don't know if there's any way to stop the iPhone. They're getting so complicated.

Leo Laporte (01:10:35):
Yeah, I know it's gonna be the good news is apple has not. They under apple actually understands your sister <laugh> and they really, in fact, that's one of the reasons there are a lot of people geeks like me who go, oh, I don't like an iPhone. I wanna customize this and make other cut. Do they? Your sister doesn't wanna do that. And so iPhones are pretty much the same interface they've always been and you can simplify it for her by dragging away or just, you know, hiding apps so that you can make her home screen just look pretty boring with just text, you know, phone calls and that's it. Yeah. The se is an equivalent of an iPhone eight. So it's three generations later. But what she'll like about it is it's the same design as her iPhone five. So it looks, it's just a more modern version.

Leo Laporte (01:11:24):
What she's already got with a home button and everything. As I said, if she could wait two months, there'll be a new se, but I'm my guess is it won't have the home button, the fingerprint reader, it'll be more like an iPhone 10 or 11 and you should, right. I think that may be too much for her. So se would be a good choice. Yeah. But okay, perfect. Thank you so much. Hey, thanks for the call. I appreciate it. See, that's what I'm here for. You wanna buy something? Call me first for the geek or the non geek. I also wanna say something cuz I think there are a lot of people out there that I don't want all this computer stuff. You know, I just want it to be like, it used to be with a phone as a phone and all that. And I'm, I am, you might think, oh Leo's not gonna be sympathetic.

Leo Laporte (01:12:07):
I am, I get it. Nobody should be forced to do, you know, this technology stuff happen to love it. It's my thing, man. But don't feel bad if you don't like it and don't want to use it nothing wrong with that. There are some advantages I admit to being connected in the modern world, but there are plenty of this advantages to 88, 88 ask Leo. I'm just glad you listen. Lee, one of your calls coming up, I once asked the captain back in the day, how he felt about Napster and all the music systems that you know, people were complaining, you know, Metallica was complaining about stealing our music and all that stuff. I thought, well, you know, captain probably captain Tenne probably have a few songs on Napster. He said, I don't care. He said, I don't know. You should ask Neil Suda.

Leo Laporte (01:13:02):
He's the guy I'm making the money. And it's <laugh> and it was important. Actually it was a learning, it was a learning experience for me because in fact, you know, royalties are generally not so much for performances. They are for com composition. So captain toil, weren't all that worried about making money from the performance. It was the, it was the songwriter who was losing out. I don't care. He said, I don't care. At least that was my interpretation. So and you know, if you do, if you are curious about this and you kind of want the artist to get rewarded probably worth looking at the streaming music systems, you can find this online, I'll put a link in the show notes, how much each of them pays the artist. And there's a big difference. There's a big difference between the most and the least how much do artists get from streaming? Let me see if I can, I can give you, give you that streaming royalties. I don't, I don't actually know how this has gotten public. Spotify's kind of in the middle of the pack as I remember. Well that's complicated. It's, it's complicated. I'll have to look it up and find it for you. 88, 88, ask Leo. Anyway, I think based on our license fees, right? Professor Laura, we pay the captain Neil a penny and a half just cuz we played that, you know, so yeah. Oh yeah. They got at least a penny, 88 88 ask Leah, let's go to Vegas baby. Ed's in Las Vegas. Hello ed.

Caller #5 (01:14:48):
Hello Leo. How you

Leo Laporte (01:14:49):
Doing? I'm great. How are you?

Caller #5 (01:14:51):
I'm doing just great. Just great. I talked to you back in September and told you about apple doing an update that affected the entire blind community because yes, you would no longer read voicemails or yes, missed calls or any of that. And if I can complain about it, I can also give credit where credit is due for anyone in, in your listening audience who is not aware. Apple has reversed it. They have listened. And I got an update a couple days ago. I think it's 15.2 0.1 or whatever the latest one is that restored Siri being able to read that's

Leo Laporte (01:15:30):
Your voice, fantastic

Caller #5 (01:15:32):
Missing your emails and all

Leo Laporte (01:15:34):
That. That's fantastic.

Caller #5 (01:15:37):
Because the you know, the voiceover that they wanted you to use is so cumbersome for the blind. Yes. And no matter where you touch screen, it backs up and gets you out of it. So I'm glad that if anyone in apple is listening as well I hope they know that the blind community appreciates them listening. So I guess you can't find city hall, you know?

Leo Laporte (01:15:58):
Well, you know, that kind of underscores my, I was curious like, did they do this on purpose? Or was it an accident? What was going on? I'm just, I think

Caller #5 (01:16:06):
They did it on purpose. And then of course we're taking her under advisement. Yeah. What you had announced, but they finally listened and reversed and I am so grateful. Otherwise I didn't know what the hell I was gonna do with my iPhone.

Leo Laporte (01:16:20):
Yeah. Yeah. That's such an important thing. So these, and it's not just people are blind. I mean, there are lots of people who use it for a variety of things. I mean, getting Siri to read your email or, you know, to send your location is very used full for everybody. And it was weird that apple took it out, especially since it was a big issue for the blind community. So I'm so glad to hear they put it back. The current is 15 three, but it might. Yeah, they did do 15 2 1 or whatever the last one is. Yeah,

Caller #5 (01:16:47):
Yeah, yeah. I know my wife told me that she was using my phone and she said, well, you've got an update here, says you updated. So we tried it and sure enough, they, everything, which, you know, cause other than that, I had to ask my wife, well, do I have any miss Pauls? Do I have any voice? You know, and it's

Leo Laporte (01:17:05):
It's and not, everybody's got a wife who's gonna read their phone to 'em. So that's exactly right.

Caller #5 (01:17:10):
Yeah, exactly. Right. So, but I just wanted to pass that on to your listeners and who doesn't already know that to go in and try it again or try to do your update to make sure that that it's working for you. It should be fine.

Leo Laporte (01:17:22):
Fantastic. I really appreciate the update cuz that was something bugging me. I talked about it many times. I'll be glad to give up a little bit of props for listening and bringing it back. Thank you, ed. Well,

Caller #5 (01:17:32):
And so do I, so yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:17:34):
Thank you. Thank I appreciate it. Take care. It's great to have you as a, as a listener now. Oh, one more thing. If you would ask them to release a Mac mini in March, that would make me and a lot of other people very happy. I just, you know <laugh> since you seem to have sway with the the fruit company down there in Cupertino Courtney on the line from Huntington beach, California. Hello, Courtney Leo Laporte de TECA. Hi Leo.

Caller #6 (01:17:58):
Hey, thanks for taking my call.

Leo Laporte (01:17:59):
Thanks for calling.

Caller #6 (01:18:02):
Hey, I have a Nokia 33, 10. I've had it for the past few years and I really like wait a

Leo Laporte (01:18:06):
Minute. Past few years. You've had it for 20 years. The,

Caller #6 (01:18:09):
Well it was the new

Leo Laporte (01:18:10):
Release. Oh that's right. They redid it. Yeah. This is the old, the old candy bar. Nokia. That was so popular that they rereleased it awesome. Yeah. What color is yours?

Caller #6 (01:18:21):
It's orange. It's so cute. Cause they

Leo Laporte (01:18:23):
Cuz they were, they they with all different colors. Yeah.

Caller #6 (01:18:26):
Yeah. You never lose it in your purse. No.

Leo Laporte (01:18:28):
Or your pocket? Nice. The thirty three, ten a legendary phone.

Caller #6 (01:18:33):
But I got a letter from T-Mobile saying that. Oh no, July. I would've to upgrade to a 5g enabled. Oh no phone.

Leo Laporte (01:18:41):
Oh no.

Caller #6 (01:18:42):
Is there any sort of comparable device I can use? Whoa

Leo Laporte (01:18:46):
Man. I bet you NOIA. Well, so they rerelease the 33, 10 a couple of years ago. In fact, I really wanted to buy one cause it's such a classic. If, if folks, if you saw a picture of it you'd know immediately what we're talking about. It's the old, it's not a smartphone, it's a candy bar phone. And they rereleased it because enthusiasts love this phone and people like you. It's awesome. Coat and Courtney immediately bought it. They release it in various colors. But there's one problem apparently, which is it's a 3g phone and all the phone companies T-Mobile actually, I think the first to do it is gonna be, somebody's doing it February 22nd. And I've said at and T or, or Verizon, maybe it's Verizon, Verizon. I said, I think says they're gonna wait until the end of the year. But all of the companies are turning off those old towers, which means older phones will not work. I would've thought that Nokia, when they rereleased the candy bar phone, would've put more modern radios in it. But apparently they didn't.

Leo Laporte (01:19:53):
So because this, you got this in 2017 when it was when it was rereleased. So mm-hmm <affirmative> I am now wondering, I guess what, they rereleased it, they didn't even really modernize it. <Laugh> so you're kinda let me look, cause I'm looking at some articles from mobile world Congress in 2017. Yeah. I just wanna lose my T nine skills, you know? Yeah. Do you use T nine? Wow. You have to don't you? Yeah. Oh, oh. Oh, the alarms going off. I'm gonna just cut the mic just briefly until you fix that. So yeah. I don't know. One would hope that Nokia has got such a good response from this where he released that they would do another one.

Leo Laporte (01:20:38):
So what, so you know, I there's, it's sad, but there's really no good answer for this. There's no good answer. It's an out date, phone, and nobody's gonna support it anymore. Leo Laport, The Tech Guy, there are still kind of candy bar style phones out there. They're not very good, but mostly they're intended for seniors. <Laugh> people like, like, or people like you, Courtney, who just don't wanna live in the 21st century tree anymore. You could go to your phone, go to the T-Mobile store. I think they owe you. I think you should go to the T-Mobile store and say, Hey, you're making this phone stop working. What do you got? They'll be nothing as cute as the 33 10. And, and yeah, I'm looking at the specs and it's it's based on two point 5g. So it's really outta date. Those radios are gonna get turned off.

Leo Laporte (01:21:37):
Golly, I wish I had a better answer for you. Okay. Well thank you. I'm sorry. I'll keep looking. Courtney, keep listening. If I find something I will let you know, that's that's too bad. That's a too, too bad. So T-Mobile does have some flip phones, you know user fifty three oh six in our chat room has given us a link to some flip phones from T-Mobile. I would just go in the store and say, what's the closest thing you can give me since you are making me lot, you know, get rid of this beautiful work of art.

Leo Laporte (01:22:15):
I don't think any of the flip phones they have will be anywhere near as elegant. Nokia really should update it. Nancy should update it. So it's the reason this is happening is, and I cuz I was curious cuz yeah, LTE is still here. 4G is still here. This phone really is outta date. It's two point 5g. It's not even 3g. In fact I'm surprised it works at all, but what's happening is they're replacing the voice signaling system, which used to run on 3g. And so it they're gonna turn the 3g off. You won't even though you'd think, well that's just data, right? You should be able to make phone calls. No it uses LTE or, or 5g for data for voice signaling for phone calls as well. So yeah, you're kinda outta luck. Oh the 27 20 let's look at that. Is that as pretty? No it's you know, it's not bad. It's a flip phone. It's 4g. So that would work. It's smart though. That's or semi smart and it looks like only Verizon carries it. That's pretty though. I like it. The, the, the, you know, that's clearly in, in the, kind of the same vein releasing the 33 10, it's kind of a cute phone.

Leo Laporte (01:24:01):
It's kind of, you still be able to use your T nine. But it's so it's still a, it's a Smartish. It's still a dumb phone. It's a feature phone. You know, that's actually not a bad phone. And I think folded up probably is the same size as 33 10. Look at that. That's what phones used to be 26 days of standby time. <Laugh> you know, that might be your best bet. Unfortunately, it's sold by Verizon. I bet you though. You can get a unlocked one that works for T-Mobile. You just need a GSM unlocked one.

... (01:24:46):
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Leo Laporte (01:25:20):
Don't take away my coat of Chrome. I need it. Well, no I don't cuz I have a camera phone, but <laugh>

Chris Marquardt (01:25:28):
It's and there's no Mo Coda Chrome and

Leo Laporte (01:25:29):
There's no more anyway. They already took it away. But fortunately we do have Chris mark wet my personal photo sensei at sensei. Not photo here to help us get better pictures. Even with Coda Chrome, if you can find a role somewhere. Hi Chris.

Chris Marquardt (01:25:44):
No, you won't. You won't get anyone. You won't find anyone very low. No one will be able to develop it. Cuz that's Koro had a very

Leo Laporte (01:25:52):
Specific development process. It's hard. Yeah, but you still shoot

Chris Marquardt (01:25:56):
Film lab equipment. I, I do shoot film. I know

Leo Laporte (01:26:00):
You, you did a, you did a whole book on a film photography. What film are you using? This

Chris Marquardt (01:26:05):
Dance? Yeah. I'm I'm I'm very firm in the black and white cam. I love my, my Kodak X Trix.

Leo Laporte (01:26:14):
My, my Trix ASA 400,

Chris Marquardt (01:26:17):
400 form kind of

Leo Laporte (01:26:19):
Got that nice. That's yeah. Beautiful.

Chris Marquardt (01:26:23):
It is beautiful. I love tri there's so many great films out there.

Leo Laporte (01:26:26):
The nice thing about Trix. You can develop it yourself. It's the, chemistry's very simple. It's a simple process. It

Chris Marquardt (01:26:33):
Isn't, isn't not, it's not hard. It's not hard at all. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:26:35):
I bet you those chemicals though. Probably a little bit toxic. I don't know. Back in the day we didn't,

Chris Marquardt (01:26:43):
It's not that much. They smell bad. So color chemistry is way more toxic than the black and white one. Sure.

Leo Laporte (01:26:49):
So today we're gonna talk about the difference between correct and right. What's that? Yes. What do you mean? So,

Chris Marquardt (01:26:56):
So, so, so there we go. The, when, when you look at photography, you will find a whole bunch of rules and frameworks where the way you're supposed to do things and I'm pretty sure everyone has a bunch of ways to, to do it in a correct fashion. But I mean, I'm talking about simple things like how, how to expose a photo, how bright it should be where to focus in a photo

Leo Laporte (01:27:22):
Technically. Correct?

Chris Marquardt (01:27:24):
Technically correct. And yes. I mean, there's nothing wrong with getting things technically. Correct. But of course, down here in your heart, somewhere in that,

Leo Laporte (01:27:36):
Yes, he's pointing to his heart folks. When you say you're on the radio, you gotta be careful when you say down here, you mean your heart is what you're talking. No, no, no.

Chris Marquardt (01:27:46):
I was pointing for hard gut. The gut, the gut is what the gut, it will it'll either feel right or not. Yeah. That's the difference between correct and bright and not always the same and in photography. I mean, let, let's go through a few of those things. For example, the the, the saying that you have to expose correctly. Right? Right. You have, you have to see things in a, in a photo. Like if you take a picture of a person, you gotta see the person, right? Yeah. but who's, who's saying that you couldn't just take a silhouette of a person, cuz that might be the one that feels more right. Then if you have the proper exposure of that person,

Leo Laporte (01:28:29):
Here's an example you're showing of a guy sitting on a river Brank. You don't see the guy, you just see his silhouette, but boy, what a beautiful

Chris Marquardt (01:28:36):
Picture. It's just a black cutout and you don't really get any detail of him, but just the pose in front of that bright, brighter river with the, the sky reflecting in it. That is, is, is it just feels right. The same with your kids at the beach. No detail in the kids, but just their silhouettes and the shadows back lit by the warm sun. And that is just, that's just a photo that feels more right than if you had it exposed all the

Leo Laporte (01:29:03):
Way through. Well, for one thing, if you exposed it correctly, the kids you'd be able to see. But then the background would be just a big, bright white flash, cuz it's so bright. You'd need to do this. Right. You'd need a fill flash, you'd need lights. You it'd be very hard. And,

Chris Marquardt (01:29:19):
And, and of course you can't do this. Here's an example of a cat sitting on, on the edge of a couch in front of a window is looking outside and everything that's outside is overexposed. It's very bright. And the cat is well exposed. So you can see the fur, you can see the detail in it. But the moment you add the one, you, you do it in, in an, in air course in the wrong way you end up getting well you end up adding interesting new things to the picture in this case, a bit of a mystery, right? Yeah. You don't see everything you are going to fill in the blanks. Who is

Leo Laporte (01:29:55):
You? That cat? What is he thinking? Who,

Chris Marquardt (01:29:58):
Yeah, you don't, you don't even know what color the cat. You're not

Leo Laporte (01:30:00):
Exposing it wrong. Exposing it for the background, not the foreground.

Chris Marquardt (01:30:05):
And it

Leo Laporte (01:30:05):
Feels right. And it feels right. Even

Chris Marquardt (01:30:07):
Though the things about the cat. So the cat is the kind of the focus point in this picture. Speaking of focus, that's another thing that you can, of course do correctly. You can focus on things, have them in focus. The cameras do that automatically. The, the auto focus. That's why it's called auto focus, kind. It automatically tries to figure out where to focus and then make that thing in the picture sharp. But out focus. If you go out focus, here's a picture of a Ferris wheel out of focus. That adds mood. It adds a mystery element and it even might add some tension cuz you can't really see what's there. You can. I mean, in the case of a Ferris wheel, that's quite obvious what it is, even if it's on, on, in focus. But by getting this out of focus, by doing it wrong in air quotes, you are changing the mood you are adding even more in. I would, I would say cuz now all those different point lights. If, if you look at the InFocus version, yeah. Those point lights sources are there, but they're tiny. If you throw that out of focus, you're giving them more space. You're giving them more weight in the picture. What this

Leo Laporte (01:31:17):
Really is about though is asserting your point of view as the photographer. If you know, not every picture has to be exactly right for the object. That's in the picture. In this case, the photographer saying, I wanna see the lights, the colors. So you're asserting your point of view as a photographer.

Chris Marquardt (01:31:39):
Exactly. And you, and you, at that point, you just don't care about what is correct anymore. No, I say, I say

Leo Laporte (01:31:46):
What's correct. I'm the photographer.

Chris Marquardt (01:31:48):
It's the way it's supposed to be. Yes. there's another thing. We are taught from the beginning that to hold that camera still to not get any camera shake in it. But again, same thing. Adding deliberate camera shake to a picture will make it a different one. Here's a group of people. In a, I don't even know what place that is. It's all shaky. You know, the photographer is moving that camera and everything is kind of it's motion blurred. It's it's it, again, it adds that mystery element. It adds that that, that mood to the picture that is wonderful. It's really the

Leo Laporte (01:32:24):
One area. It's a different picture. And you're saying as the photographer, this is what I was interested in in this picture.

Chris Marquardt (01:32:30):
Right? Yeah. And the one area where I, where I, that I love to play with is colors. If you take a normal picture that you let the camera do a everything, then mm-hmm <affirmative> yeah, you will get neutral colors. But if you add some weird white balance to it, some, some post-procesing you end up with like wacky colors in some cases or over exaggerated colors that can give a lot of interest to a picture. Maybe, maybe wrong colors. Like here's an example of car is in the snow and everything has a green tin to it. Even the snow you can see really well in the snow. It's the, snow's not green, is it? But it gives that it's picture in this picture.

Leo Laporte (01:33:10):
Different mood.

Chris Marquardt (01:33:10):
Yeah. Love it. Very different mood from, I would be. And that, that is, that is not correct. That is clearly not correct. That is. But it's the right thing for the picture. I think, you know,

Leo Laporte (01:33:25):
They, when Picasso was a young artist, he learned how to make exact beautiful drawings. He was an amazing artist who could really draw. So you do have to learn the basics of your art. You have to learn the basics of photography, know how to make a good exposure before your true art comes out and you can, and you can go beyond that. And so I don't, I think it's good to learn how your camera works, the technology, how to get a perfect focus, how to get a perfect exposure. Then you can break the rules.

Chris Marquardt (01:33:55):
Yes. And, and, and break 'em to your heart's content.

Leo Laporte (01:33:59):
Actually. you might wanna break the rules on RSA assignment. This month we only have one more week to take a picture bright. Is that

Chris Marquardt (01:34:06):
Right? The bright assignment, right? Yes. Perfect time. That's

Leo Laporte (01:34:09):
Where we are to overexpose something. <Laugh> if you get a great picture, upload it to The Tech Guy group on flicker.com. It's free to do so make sure you tag it TG bright. I'm thinking maybe week or the week after you wanna do it next week. We'll do our photo, I think next week, next week. Sounds good. Get those pictures up there. One more chance. Tech guy group on flicker.com. You'll find Chris mark@sensei.photo. Thank you, Chris.

Chris Marquardt (01:34:35):
Thank you.

Leo Laporte (01:34:37):
And tips from the top floor. How can we forget? That's that's a really good subject, correct versus right. It's right in your gut. I remember. Yes. When I was doing that photo safari in Tasmania with one of the, a great famous national geographic photographer, I said, how do you know? And I was asking a bunch of how do you know when you got a good shot? And he says, you feel it right here. He says, but my gut doesn't go. Ooh. When I see it,

Chris Marquardt (01:35:11):
It's not it. But he also, he also probably had like 35 years. He has a good gut. Now that that helps, that helps build your gut feeling. You gotta, you

Leo Laporte (01:35:21):
Gotta build it. That's a good point. Yeah. It doesn't, it's not,

Chris Marquardt (01:35:24):
It does help to have some experience. And, and, and it also means that to get really good at anything, you just need to spend time. That's right. That's

Leo Laporte (01:35:32):
Why is what we have these, yeah. Chris, a pleasure. You staying healthy and everybody's okay.

Chris Marquardt (01:35:39):
Everyone's okay. Everything is good. We're we're, we're keeping away from

Leo Laporte (01:35:44):
As much as we can. Well, we had to, you know, Michael got it. And was he's living with us. So we, we had a lock in, oh yeah, you, you, but we avoided it. You did Lisa and I did

Chris Marquardt (01:35:54):
Not. I heard you say that the PCR came out negative, so good for

Leo Laporte (01:35:58):
You. I've been tested three times since he got it. And all negative as has, has Lisa, but it just shows you can take care of a COVID patient. If you know, you know, you're careful and not get it. And your vaccinated probably had something to do

Chris Marquardt (01:36:08):
With it and up, and your mask doesn't isn't is not just a good filter, but also a good fit. Yes.

Leo Laporte (01:36:15):
More important. Yes. Yeah. It's interesting. Now all the good masks are getting expensive again, as people realize those silly surgical masks. Really?

Chris Marquardt (01:36:23):
No, we have a supply. We have a supply here. We stocked up. Good. Yes we did.

Leo Laporte (01:36:27):
All right. Stay safe. All right. Okay. Take care. See you next week. Take care, Chris. Bye. Bye. Leo Laport, The Tech Guy, eighty eight eighty eight. Ask Leo the phone number. A chat room came up with maybe a, kind of a nice replacement. I don't know for your Nokia. 33 10. We were talking to Courtney who has a classic Nokia 33 10, which unfortunately, even though it was bought in 2017, only five years ago will not be working on the team of mobile networks this year, as they turn off all those old radios. And Courtney said, there's gotta be something like this. It's a, you know, you, you remember the thirty three, ten classic candy bar phone, in fact, so classic. So beloved Nokia made it again a few years ago, as I said just for the fans, I was tempted to buy it. It's just, everybody knows that candy bar.

Leo Laporte (01:37:19):
No, Okia I, you know, I don't know if they're still making it, but they, I don't think they are. I don't think they've updated it, but somebody in the chat room said you should Courtney should look at the Nokia 27, 20 V flip, which is pretty nice. And Courtney, you'll still be able to use your T nine for texting cuz it's, it's, it's a, it's a, a smart, dumb phone. It does have WhatsApp. It does have Facebook on it, but it's not really a, a smart phone. It's it's what they call a feature phone. None of the Nokia phones that are out right now. Well, you know what maybe go to T-Mobile and see, because there, there are 4g Nokia's that are similar to the 33 10, the 6,300 is 4g and the 2 25 and they're inexpensive. The 2 25 is a 50 bucks and it come in gold, no Noah orange, but it does come in gold. So maybe there are some, I like the 22 27 20. That's actually a pretty nice looking phone. So thank you to the chat room as usual chat room to the rescue, irc.Twit.tv. If you want to join him in there, Paul's on the line from Columbus, Ohio. Hello, Paul.

Caller #7 (01:38:36):
Hey Leo. Good to talk to you again. Congratulations on the test results. That's wonderful. Yes.

Leo Laporte (01:38:43):
Passed, passed again with a negative test, which is positive. <Laugh> I mean, it's good. <Laugh>

Caller #7 (01:38:49):
Yeah. One of those kind of deals. Well, I got a couple points to make and I'll try to make it quicker. I got a few, but the gentleman that was having had problems with his iPhone first of all, I'm a blind user have been an iPhone for quite a while. Yes. And yes, we are all happy that they went that iTunes and okay. Itunes, apple went back on that removal. Did they put back

Leo Laporte (01:39:13):
All the features that you used that, that you were missing? I, yeah. Well,

Caller #7 (01:39:17):
What, what I missed the most was they changed limited what you could say for commands when you're doing a, a dictated, like email or something or, or voicemail. Yeah. And it was, I got the, I got used to using it without, but it sure a lot nicer to be able to use them. Well, wanted to say is I I really, and this gentleman's position he sounds like he's an older person. I'm 73. I don't know whether he, he lost his vision recently or not. But my point is I don't want any blind or visually impaired person to be discouraged about voiceover. Voiceover is the most, one of the most fantastic thing us for blind people that ever been

Leo Laporte (01:39:58):
Developed. Ed said he didn't like voiceover particularly well, cause

Caller #7 (01:40:02):
He maybe he's, he didn't get any training about how to

Leo Laporte (01:40:06):
Use it. That's right.

Caller #7 (01:40:07):
There is, there is actually a training feature in the, in voiceover settings, in, in settings, under voiceover. There's a training session that you can run yeah. Help you to use it. Nice. The problem is if you, if you find a local like maybe even the senior center or if there's a disability assistance group or, or a government entity, even to get somebody that could give you some training, because if you hand that phone to somebody that isn't visually impaired, never use voiceover a, a sided person is not gonna relate to it the same way, because it's the main difference is a couple, some things we do two or three taps on instead of one or two, and that, you know, it can be as simple or as complicated as you want to be. But if he's able to use a, an iPhone at all, he would be able to use it with voiceover.

Caller #7 (01:41:00):
Once he understands what what's going on. It just sounds like he's blocking. I wanna try this. You know, I can't do it. You can do it. You just need to clear your mind and try to get somebody to local. That, that has one and can show you how, how it works. But I, because this has been such a great thing for the blind community in the last, well, when it came out 10, it was 10 years ago, whenever 12 years ago. It's, it's, I just didn't want that to get kind of lost in. And

Leo Laporte (01:41:33):
I, I think a very, very good point. And how long have you been blind your whole life?

Caller #7 (01:41:37):
Well, I've been blind my whole life, but I did have some better vision for up until a few years ago. And now it's, it's going to almost no, nothing, but I can still use the iPhone and yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:41:48):
And I think that, that you, you, you guessed and I, you might be right. That ed is newly blind. And I think that that's this is one of the reasons I don't cover accessibility except to get people like you on the air. And Julian Vargas her friend, because if you're not blind, it's hard to know when I try voiceover, I go, oh my gosh, why would, how could anybody use this? It's so much work. Well, look

Caller #7 (01:42:09):
At the, bring up the training of

Leo Laporte (01:42:12):
I will I'll play with, but again, I think anybody who has sight, it's just gonna be hard to sympathize or understand, or even, you know, objectively review this stuff,

Caller #7 (01:42:22):
At least that gives you an idea of what, right.

Leo Laporte (01:42:24):
I will try it. I didn't even know they had training. Yeah.

Caller #3 (01:42:27):
Yeah. There's a training thing. But again, it could, it can be just as simple as tap, you open a, a, a, a voicemail or a text message. You tap the screen and it reads it to you. I mean, it can be as simple as that. It's not, it, it isn't as hard as if you, you just get, you get afraid of things. It's the apprehension. I would suggest that the, to get ahold of Julian and maybe he can even help him out more or get him directed to a local entity that could

Leo Laporte (01:42:54):
Help. I, I just, by the way, was interviewed by a friend, John Cal, who's doing a piece on Julian. I can't remember who he's writing it for maybe PC magazine. He writes a lot for PC magazine about this very issue about accessibility and so forth. Julian Vargas is kind of a our, our angel here. And he's yeah, he is he volunteers on a regular basis on this show to help people to help 'em understand at least to refer 'em to resources. So yeah, exactly. Yeah. It's we want to mention him and let me just real quickly also mention his website again, if you haven't heard me talk about Julian, it is what is it is, I can't remember off the top of my head it's I don't recall exactly. Do you, you remember what it is, right?

Leo Laporte (01:43:43):
Yeah. Yeah. It's tech jv.com. I don't know why. I can't remember tech jv.com his phone. Number's there, his emails there. Of course, it's an accessible site. Thank you, Kim. I'm glad you have a better memory than I do. And thank you, Paul, for reaffirming it, and I'm glad to hear that apple has at least backed down on that and and put those features back. Yeah, it wasn't just blind people. I've talked to other people who used it with their wife or, you know, older people. It it's just a very series useful. Why take away capabilities. It makes no sense. Well,

Caller #7 (01:44:16):
Oh yeah, exactly. One other point I'd like to make too, you were talking about the Josh Rogan situation, you know, the government under the first amendment, can't absolutely laws. And most

Leo Laporte (01:44:31):
Spotify can there's no first amendment you can't. Exactly.

Caller #7 (01:44:34):
Yeah. There's no. Yeah. I mean, but you still can't yell a fire in a, in a right.

Leo Laporte (01:44:40):
In a crowded. Well, and, and we talked about this a little yesterday. The FCC does regulate broadcast does regulate this show. Exactly because we use public airwaves, but the internet is not regulated by the government. And probably shouldn't be the first amendment protects that. And Joe Rogan is absolutely protected by the first amendment, but I think it's also because Spotify pays him and owns him maybe incumbent upon them as a private company. Not necessarily to censor him, just put a warning on there. You know, Joe's a comedian, not a public health expert. <Laugh>

Caller #7 (01:45:09):
Exactly. And you know, if if people wanna listen fine, but know, know what you're getting. Yeah. And they, the companies that all these companies set companies, social media, whatever they, if they don't take some responsibility, they're gonna get legislation that won't that's right. Won't

Leo Laporte (01:45:27):
Like at all. That's right. I think that's coming down the pike anyway, but that's exactly right. Yeah. Hey, I appreciate it. It's great to talk to you, Paul. One more. Go ahead.

Caller #7 (01:45:36):
Yeah, one quick. We, I got a new iPhone this week. I had on 11 a couple years ago, I had a deal from Verizon. They couldn't pass up. They gave me as much money as I paid for it initially. So I got a, now I have a 13 Promax nice battery level battery. Isn't

Leo Laporte (01:45:52):
It an amazing, incredible, unbelievable. Leo Laport, The Tech Guy. <Laugh> you heard the music coming. I think you, I think you knew what was coming, Paul <laugh>

Caller #7 (01:46:03):
Oh yeah. I listened. I was, I called I've called several times. Yeah. It's great to talk to my dog from GB and whatever, but no, the yeah, compared him the 11, even the 

Leo Laporte (01:46:12):
Do you mind to sign weight? Cuz I've heard some people complain a little bit, cuz it is a lot bigger. Well,

Caller #7 (01:46:18):
My, my wife got the pro pro and I got the pro max. I, I like it for the, a little bit bigger screen. Not that I can see much more on it, but it's you know, you, you've got some pretty small real estate to work with there depending on how tight a selection might. If you move the whole quarter of an interest, nothing think eighth of an inch, it changes what you're on. Right. So I like it from that and the battery capacity is great. Now, if I did it again, maybe I would just use the pro or get the probe, but they're, they're great fun. I feel like it's one of those things where you start to do something, the phone is reacting before you even touch it because they know what

Leo Laporte (01:46:53):
You want. It's kind of amazing. I mean the pro I was, we were watching a, a TV show, an old show and they had a craze, super computer on it. And my wife said, what's that? And I said, oh, that's from, you know, the early seventies. Yeah. And I thought, you know, I wonder how powerful that was compared to it's half the speed of that iPhone in your pocket, a multimillion dollar supercomputer, half the speed, write something

Caller #7 (01:47:18):
About that the other week. That's right. Giving examples. And I thought that was phenomenal. And I love Rob pile. He's fantastic. Give him a longer segment. Sometimes

Leo Laporte (01:47:29):
We're giving him a show. So oh yeah. Yeah. We we're we're we're beta testing it right now in club twit. And if it goes well and there's a audience for it, we're giving him a space show on the podcast network. So yeah, cuz I think you're right. I think this is a very interesting time and Rod's the greatest, he's just wonderful.

Caller #7 (01:47:47):
He does a good job of explaining some people that aren't techy can understand better at least what what's what's going

Leo Laporte (01:47:55):
On. I agree. He's great. Well, he's coming up. Stay tuned. Good. Will do. All right. Pleasure talking to you. Thanks Paul.

Caller #7 (01:48:01):
Take care. Yep. Later.

Leo Laporte (01:48:04):
Well, Hey, Hey. Hey. How are you today? Leport here. The Tech Guy, time to talk computers is the internet home theater digital photography. We've got your smart phones. We've got your smart watches. We got all that jazz. Eighty eight eighty eight. Ask Leo is the phone number. If you have a question or comment or suggestion or wanna talk iTech 8 8, 8 8 2 7 5 5 3 6. That's toll free from anywhere in the us or Canada, you can call me from even outside that area and even France, but just use Skype out to, to call us. And then it won't cost you anything. Shouldn't anyway, 88 88, ask Leo. Let's go back to the phone's. Lucky is on the line from Santa Monica. Hi, lucky.

Caller #8 (01:48:49):
Hi. I'm so I I'm an Xbox and basically I have this external storage device. And when I plug it in, it doesn't register. It's been registering for like three or four years. It's been fine. And this is the front I've ever had

Leo Laporte (01:49:03):
With it. And suddenly it doesn't see it anymore. Huh? Yeah. Do you have a lot of saved games and stuff on it? Yeah, correct. Yeah. I hit my, which Xbox do you have outta curiosity?

Caller #8 (01:49:13):
I have the Xbox one, the original one from like 2013, I believe.

Leo Laporte (01:49:17):
Yeah. Yeah. I have the one X or one S whatever it was. Yeah. And I, I, cuz you run outta space. They don't give you a lot of space. So I plug in a USB drive and save games onto it and all that stuff. If the drive, if you can't see it anymore, a couple of things you might, might try, first of all, unplug it and plug it into a computer. See if you can see it on the computer. It may be. Does the drive have a, a detachable cable or is it, is it built into the drive? Can

Caller #8 (01:49:44):
You UN no, it just it's one cable from the terabyte to, well, it does have a detachable actually does have a detachable cable.

Leo Laporte (01:49:52):
So you might, if you can take the cable off, some, some external drives the cables, what we call it normal, then it's wired into the drive. And so you can't remove it, but if the cable cable couldn't go bad, right? So if you, if you can use a, another USB cable to see that's another way to diagnose it, I'm this is how you do troubleshooting. Lucky you, you, you kind of eliminate all the possibilities and I always start with the easy ones. So the easy one would be to plug it in another computer. See if you can see it switch the cable. That's an easy thing to do. If you can switch the cable out, see if that works. There is the possibility that drives died. I mean, they do, right. You know, that hard drives, fail. And yeah,

Caller #8 (01:50:35):
But it seems to be working properly. Cause like it has like this light that shines on when it's, well,

Leo Laporte (01:50:40):
The light means it's getting power, but there's all sorts of ways. Drive can go bad. So it is, is there, is there stuff on there you really don't wanna lose like save games?

Caller #8 (01:50:53):
Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:50:55):
Okay. So it is possible to recover the data on a drive if it has, if it's damaged, if it's, if, if it's gone bad. So there's lots of ways drives can go bad. That's a USB drive inside. Do you know if it's a spinning drive or a solid state drive? Did you, do you, can you tell that? Do you know if it's that old? It's probably a spinning drive?

Caller #8 (01:51:19):
I don't know the difference. Is it

Leo Laporte (01:51:20):
Big? <Laugh> yeah. Yeah. It's big. So it's a spinning drive. So spinning. So spinning drives have ways they can die that are unique to spinning drives. They're moving parts, bearings, there's little ball bearings in there that let it spin. Those can fail, freeze up. The head can get knocked. Was there any did the drive get fall over or get pushed over or did your cats, you know, knock it down or anything like that? Is it any, any recent calamities as with the drivers? You just been sitting there quietly?

Caller #8 (01:51:52):
No, it's been sitting there quietly. I've always kept taking care of it. It's always been kinda fine. They

Leo Laporte (01:51:57):
Still die though. That's, you know, lucky Dr. You know, especially with moving parts, anything with moving parts is gonna wear out. So, and you have, you had it since you got the Xbox?

Caller #8 (01:52:08):
No, but I've had it for fair amount of time. Probably 2017.

Leo Laporte (01:52:12):
Yeah. It might be worn out, but again, it's not, it's not, it's hard to tell. So the first thing to do is unplug it from the Xbox, plug that into a laptop or a desktop with a USB port. See if you can see it, if if and by seeing it, it may mean that you can't read it. Cuz I don't remember off the top of my head, how the Xbox form Matts hard drives my guess, is it formats them in a, in a fairly standard way? You know, it's not it's cuz it's, it's basically windows. So I'm gonna imagine that you could plug it into a windows machine and even read the data. If you can read the data, you might wanna copy it just to make a backup and you know, so you don't lose it since you do have stuff on there, but if you can read it then, okay, good. Then the drive's okay. The cable's okay. Maybe there's something wrong with the Xbox. That's the least likely. And of course the biggest pain in the butt, cuz they're not really repairable. You'd have to buy a new Xbox unless you want to convince mom and dad to get you a new Xbox.

Caller #8 (01:53:12):
Hmm <laugh> I re it's mom. But even if we got a new Xbox that wouldn't help the drive, would it?

Leo Laporte (01:53:21):
No. Well, depends what's again, this is what depends. What's what's wrong. So if the, the Xbox is broken. Yes it, but I think that's the last thing. Again, we want to troubleshoot with the cheapest, easiest things to do. First thing, plug it into a laptop or desktop. See if you can see it, change the cable. If it's easy to change, it use a different USB cable cables fail that can happen. It could be the drive itself has failed and the beginning a new Xbox will not fix that. That's right. Sometimes you can run data recovery stuff on drives to fix them. I think it's not likely fixable, but if that's the case, if it's died, cuz these drives, they die in all sorts of interesting and not necessarily a parable ways. So is, is the, is, is your big concern, lucky losing your, losing your saved games. Yeah. Yeah. I don't blame you. Which game? What, what game do you play?

Caller #8 (01:54:14):
I play quite a few. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:54:16):
What's the one you really don't wanna lose. Like you a lot of progress you play in Skyrim and you got almost to the end of the game. Something like that.

Caller #8 (01:54:23):
Yeah. Yeah. I have, I have a lot of those games and mean I have that's a, I

Leo Laporte (01:54:29):
Don't, if I lost my Val Heim saved games, I'd be so depressed. Cuz that's hours, hundreds of hours <laugh> lost for good. But you know, what I do is I make a backup. And so this is a very important lesson for everybody uses a computer. If all, if important data is on a single drive, you that's risky. Cuz if you lose it, you lost it. So, you know, make a backup. You can make backups of drives. It might be a good time if you can get it into a computer and make a backup of it right now. And if you make a backup that you can restore onto another hard drive, then just get another hard drive, then I'll solve it. So there's a bunch of steps to data. Recovery is a whole, you know, area all and of its own. And I think it'd be a good thing for you to learn. How old are you lucky?

Caller #8 (01:55:16):
I'm 13. You're in

Leo Laporte (01:55:17):
Eighth grade. Ninth grade. Yeah. Yeah. So this is you kind of, are you kind of computer savvy? You're kind of The Tech Guy in your neighborhood.

Caller #8 (01:55:26):
I mean, I know fair about, about tech. I mean not really, not much new cor, but this,

Leo Laporte (01:55:31):
This is chance to become an expert. <Laugh> how about that? Data recovery is, you know, there's all sorts of things. There's software, there's all sorts of tricks. The problem with a USB drive like you have is the USB interface kind of hides the internals of the drive. So if if you brought this to me in my little computer shop, which doesn't exist for good reason, but if you brought it to me in my little computer shop, I would open up the USB case inside it. There's a normal drive. I'd hook that up to a computer so that I could see it on over the SA connection. Then I could run software like spin, right? Which could diagnose the state of the hard drive. I might use file recovery tools in case, you know, just maybe the directory got damaged, but the files are still there.

Leo Laporte (01:56:21):
There are lots of little software tools you can run to try to recover it. You know, I asked you if it had gotten dropped, if it gets dropped, the head gets bent or there's a scratch on the drive. A lot of times you can't recover that that's a hardware failure, but I don't think that's what's happened. It may just be the drive war out. But the first thing again, take that drive, plug into a computer. See if you can see, change the cable, see if you can see it. That's the first thing to do. Okay. Okay. All right. And then maybe it's time to become a data recovery expert. Depends on how badly you wanna save that Overwatch data. Yeah. What's your favorite game? Come on. You got one?

Caller #8 (01:57:02):
My favorite probably the halo games

Leo Laporte (01:57:06):
Halo. Awesome. Awesome. Are you playing halo infinite yet?

Caller #8 (01:57:11):
Yeah, I have. That's actually, that's not a few games. That's on my internal storage, so that's fine. But yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:57:17):
Sometimes, and I think sometimes the Xbox does in fact save games internally. Even if the game itself is external. So you may not be luck.

Caller #8 (01:57:26):
Yeah. But the thing is I can't have, cause you know, games getting like really big now. Right? Oh

Leo Laporte (01:57:33):
I know. Oh know, I know. And that's one of the reasons I asked you what kind of Xbox you have cuz the newer machines, you PlayStation five Xbox series X, you have to get special internal to drives or you otherwise the external drive is just a backup drive. It's not, you can't play off of it. It's too slow. Yeah. But on the O on the older Xbox ones, like I said, big fan, great, great game machines. You can use the external drive and I do too. I do the same thing, but they, but don't trust any drive. If it's, if you don't have a backup of it, you could lose it. So luck. There's some places to start. Okay. Become a, you're gonna become a geek. Now this is how it happens. Did I, mom, are you still there?

Caller #8 (01:58:15):
Yeah, I'm here. So he's trying right now to read it on the computer. Is there anything he needs to check to read it? Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:58:22):
You may not be able to read the data, but would you, if you are, is it a win?

Caller #8 (01:58:28):
Yes. Yes.

Leo Laporte (01:58:30):
So if you hit windows key X and you, you do the you can look at system windows, key X will give you a popup menu and you can look at the drive manager and you could actually see if the, at least if the drive is visible, the drive manager is a special partitioning program. You could at least see if the drive's visible. You could see if it's partitioned.

Caller #8 (01:58:53):
He doesn't see it on there

Leo Laporte (01:58:54):
Right now. Yeah. It's a bad sign. That means probably the drive's dead. It could die. A lot of ways could be the power supply in that box could be the circuit board in that box could be the drive itself. All of those are expensive and hard to recover, to be honest. So at this point he may be outta luck.

Caller #8 (01:59:13):
So there's no way to take it to like a computer.

Leo Laporte (01:59:16):
You could take it, you know, you could take it. If you could find somebody who's smart, you know, go to the geek squad. And if you find a smart one you could take it to somebody who's smart enough to take it out of the enclosure and test it. And actually they may be able to recover it. But now you're paying labor and can get very expensive. Okay. Yeah. I feel I'm sorry. Lucky was a little unlucky on this in this one. I apologize. Yeah. Sorry. Lucky. Make your lucky you learn the lesson that will keep with, stay with you for the next 70 years back up your data. <Laugh> all right. Lucky. I'll see you in. I'll see you in master chief in halo land. Have a great day. Leo Laporte deep tech out. Hey rod.

Rod Pyle (02:00:03):
Hey, there

Leo Laporte (02:00:05):
You sound good on the boat. Good. Thank you. On the boat on boat, on

Rod Pyle (02:00:09):
Boat. Come down and do a little maintenance. So yeah, won't do this very often. Oh, I

Leo Laporte (02:00:14):
Don't mind today was unavoidable. It's a radio show. Well,

Rod Pyle (02:00:17):
I know, but still it's more fun to be on video. <Laugh> Hey, your crew was great this week, man. My crew. Yeah, we did the, the first podcast for

Leo Laporte (02:00:29):
You did the first show. What is the name of the show this week in space

Rod Pyle (02:00:32):
This week in space. Love it. And they were sensational. This Lisa Lisa was there. Jerry was, I mean, nice. Thank you. You got a great bunch of people you really do. And

Leo Laporte (02:00:40):
Did deter have fun?

Rod Pyle (02:00:43):
Yes, he was. He was nervous as a sack of cat before we started, but he said, I talked to him later. He said, by the time we were done, he said mm-hmm <affirmative>. That was really fun. Good. I've never done anything with that much support and I could meet your brother

Leo Laporte (02:00:56):
<Laugh> well, and that's one of the reasons we wanted to debut it in the club and give you a chance to get comfortable and, and all of that. Sure. Yep. So good. I'm excited. Me too. Really happy. We'll we'll give it a plug. Although again, it's not available to the general public only. Yeah. Not for a while. Only to the smart people who have joined club

Rod Pyle (02:01:17):
To it. <Laugh>

Leo Laporte (02:01:20):
Leo Laport, The Tech Guy space guy, rod pile coming up. Lots of space. News is week again, Jim, on the line from Brownsburg, Indiana. Hello Jim.

Rod Pyle (02:01:30):
Hey Leo,

Leo Laporte (02:01:31):
How you going? I am great. How are you, sir?

Rod Pyle (02:01:35):
IM most of the, the snow, but I probably get hit on Wednesday and Thursday.

Leo Laporte (02:01:45):
Yeah. My, my mom's sitting in under two feet of snow in Rhode Island that they, that hit him hard. That's right. It's winter. It's supposed to do that,

Rod Pyle (02:01:55):
But you know, I came out here five years ago from

Leo Laporte (02:01:58):
Southern California. You're not used to it. <Laugh>

Rod Pyle (02:02:02):
Not yet. Not yet.

Leo Laporte (02:02:04):
See, I'm a new Englander. So I, I actually miss it. Although I suspect if I were in it, I wouldn't miss it so

Rod Pyle (02:02:11):
Well, we get the four seasons, which is

Leo Laporte (02:02:13):
I love, I love the seasons. Yeah. Fall. Yeah. I love fall

Rod Pyle (02:02:19):
Of no losing on the trees for four months.

Leo Laporte (02:02:23):
Yeah. Well meanwhile in California, it's getting green cuz we had some rain. So do you have a space story I hear and I really want to hear this. This is about you and your dad.

Rod Pyle (02:02:33):
Actually it goes back to 1954. My grandfather started a screen printing company as called Steven's screen print, but he hooked up with Lockheed Northrop, McDonald Douglas and all the other industries to get his business going and at a, a screen printer back then old school, it was done by real film to do separations and screen printing on vinyls, cutting out by hand. Wow. Were result them by hand. And my grandfather got hooked up with NASA to do a special project for the Apollo 11.

Leo Laporte (02:03:11):
What? So now rod is on the line. Cause I think rod I'm brought him in. Cause I think he's gonna want to hear this. You know, he wrote a book first on the moon about Apollo 11 as you know, we're all big fans, the first mission to the moon. I trying to hook up.

Rod Pyle (02:03:25):
I've been trying to hook up with you guys for a while because I know that he loved that whole, he followed 11. 

Leo Laporte (02:03:31):
Oh yeah. So what did your, what did your grandpa and dad do, did they do the logos on the, what did they do?

Rod Pyle (02:03:38):
So it was a 1967 the year out today I was born and they were commissioned to do all the labels and decals for the Apollo 11 to go on the actual capsule, outside the capsule, outside of the space, the, the launching at everything. So if it said launch, it was a label, my dad made it if it said if it was the Eagle with the moon, we made the decal.

Leo Laporte (02:04:06):
Oh, I'll never forget that, that picture of the Eagle with the moon. Oh wow. Wow. Isn't that cool rod. That's a that's great. And I was gonna ask, did he also do the, the the screening? I dunno if it silk screened or what for the inside instrument panels. Yeah.

Rod Pyle (02:04:24):
Yes. Everything was so screened. Oh, everything. Everything was done by hand because they didn't have, yeah. Any image set. They didn't have anything to do lettering. So my grandfather actually did everything by hand and sketched everything out, color separations, all screen printed, one image at a time, all the details were hand cut and dye cutted with a rotary dye. Cut. Wow. But it was done by my grandfather and my father.

Leo Laporte (02:04:51):
Did, do you have, or do they have any pictures, Jim? I'd love to see pictures of those decals being printed and cut.

Rod Pyle (02:04:59):
Well, all we have left was what NASA sent us, which was a portfolio of the decals and the, the astronauts wearing the jerseys or everything they had so cool. And my grandpa, they sold, they sold the company in 1985, but the company is still strong right now called Stephen label corporation in Senate based Springs. And they still do work for north R and or not use that door for it, but Hughes aircraft and all the other ones that bought out. So but I, the whole thing, which I love is my grandfather actually, the artwork sent to him and all the color separations were done by hand on bellum and Ruby list. Wow. And all color separated and then shot individually.

Leo Laporte (02:05:50):
Isn't it amazing. We were able to get to the moon <laugh> even though we had so little technology compared to today what a, what an amazing story. I thank you so much, Jim, for sharing that with us. That's that's fascinating. Must have a little, little touch, little kind of touch of the moon there. That's very cool. Yeah.

Rod Pyle (02:06:12):
Wow. My, my father, my grandfather won. My grandfather passed away quite a little quite a while ago, but it's just something that the Stephen family still holds.

Leo Laporte (02:06:23):
Sure. Which is you're part of history.

Rod Pyle (02:06:26):
1967. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (02:06:27):
Yeah. Our designs went to the moon. Not a lot of people could say that. <Laugh> it's really, it's hard to do that stuff then. Yeah. It's funny. Still there right now. Yeah. Still there, you know, someday when we colonize the moon, when we set up those moon habitats, <laugh>, I'm sure that that first landing, that Apollo landing site will become a, a museum school. Children will go there and they will see your father and your grandfather's work right there on the on the lunar module or whatever's left. Thanks call. Hey, it's great to talk to you, Jim. Rod pile, our space guy is coming up. We will talk more space when we come back. Leo Laport, The Tech Guy now that's cool. That was cool. Did you take print

Rod Pyle (02:07:15):
Shop when you were in,

Leo Laporte (02:07:16):
In high school or? No. You know, I remember in roughly that time period, my dad was writing a book and he was doing the illustrations for the book and he did it all with those transfer letters. Yes. And I remember him sitting there going transferring one letter at a time. It was a lot harder

Rod Pyle (02:07:35):
In those days. Now, are you talking about the wax ones? Yeah. You just scrape 'em all. Yeah. Yeah. And you got, you got to the end of the word and you fouled up the last one. Oh, what a mess to start over. Oh, and they cost a fortune. Oh yeah. And the stuff, the stuff that your collar was talking about, I mean, all those separations and the, the screens and the, I wonder if they

Leo Laporte (02:07:53):
Saved original art in any or anything. 

Rod Pyle (02:07:56):
I wonder it's been republished a bunch of times, actually. Some guy, some group of, of people did a Kickstarter campaign a couple of years ago and reissued, I think it was the 1972 NASA graphics book or something. It had all the measurements and how wide did that was so, and what the colors were and all that yeah. Was pretty neat.

Leo Laporte (02:08:15):
They when they restored Houston mission control. Yeah. I wonder if, how they, they must have I don't wonder what they did. I mean, did they

Rod Pyle (02:08:29):
I actually know a lot about that cuz I was teaching a, a leadership course in mission control back in 2010, 2011 before they restored it and they let us like take the class in there and show up on their team on the, on the screens. That's so cool. So I ran up and I grabbed Jean Crans chair and I'm sitting there at the red phone. So now you go in there, I mean the, the restoration was beautiful. They sent there's museum and Kansas there's

Leo Laporte (02:08:55):
Ash trays. There there's cups of coffee. Well,

Rod Pyle (02:08:58):
Did I tell you the ashtray story? No. So they got little bean bag ashtrays that, you know, with the, with the plaid bottoms. Right. You remember those and you know, they, it was such a, a incredible restoration. They wanted to put some cigarette butts in em, but the who is it? Not E EPA, I guess said not, I can't do that. This are poison.

Leo Laporte (02:09:18):
You can't put those in

Rod Pyle (02:09:19):
There. <Laugh> and, and they said, you know, you can't put them in there unless they're original because we don't allow new tobacco in buildings. Right. EPA regulations. And they they're looking around, there's no cigarette buts anywhere. They're about to give up tobacco. They ripped up a console and they looked under the ITD floor and there were thousands of cigarette, but it's mostly Chester fields and LMS and they had all they wanted. So I sprayed 'em with varnish. Now they're sitting in the ashtrays, they look so good. It looks

Leo Laporte (02:09:49):
Like, you know, Jean just got up for a minute and it'll be right back.

Rod Pyle (02:09:52):
It's so cool. That's right. It is. You can, unfortunately you can't sit in them anymore. They're roped off. That was kind of a loss, but that was a tough restoration. Cuz there was a lot of asbestos and nasty toxic chemicals and the transformers, the consoles and stuff.

Leo Laporte (02:10:06):
They did a nice job. I really want to go there. And, and, and were we going to watch Artemis launch?

Rod Pyle (02:10:12):
You want to, yeah, I would. We should.

Leo Laporte (02:10:17):
We should do twitst from OUS launch.

Rod Pyle (02:10:19):
I would love to do a field trip. I'm just concerned. You know, they get, I, I remember waiting for a shuttle launch lunch launch once for 10 days. So it kinda depends on how long you can leave the shot.

Leo Laporte (02:10:30):
Yeah. When is it?

Rod Pyle (02:10:33):
Well <laugh>, that's a good question, Leo. We're hoping March.

Leo Laporte (02:10:41):
I don't think we'll be ready to do it in March,

Rod Pyle (02:10:43):
But no, God

Leo Laporte (02:10:45):
I'd love to. I've never seen a, a watch, but you're right. There's no guarantee of anything, but there's no guarantee, you know, but you

Rod Pyle (02:10:52):
Know, if you just wanna do a, a quickie, I, I mean, SpaceX launches at Vandenburg all the time. You can drive down there and you don't even have to go on base. There's a, I mean, I got friends that could probably get us on base, but I

Leo Laporte (02:11:05):
Remember driving down there past Travis or something and seeing stuff, getting, you know, going up. But they were like little minute men missiles or something.

Rod Pyle (02:11:12):
Nah, I'm gonna on for a Falcon nine. That would be

Leo Laporte (02:11:14):
Cool. Yeah. I wanna feel the ground thunder.

Rod Pyle (02:11:18):
Yeah. No, but I would love to see the SLS go. I just, I, I suspect one's gonna have to have a week to hang around and wait <laugh> before they, they get everything, but you never know Michael, the first time I'll

Leo Laporte (02:11:30):
Have to beg Lisa media accreditation started through,

Rod Pyle (02:11:36):
Well, call me if you wanna do that cuz I can

Leo Laporte (02:11:38):
Help you. Oh, I can't. I can't. I got responsibilities.

Rod Pyle (02:11:43):
No, but I mean, if you decide to go for media, I

Leo Laporte (02:11:45):
Gotta be so cool. I will. Of course I have friends in the biz. Yeah. It's time for our rocket man himself, rod pile. He is the author of space, 2.0 and so many books about space, including that first on the moon coffee table book. If you love Apollo 11, that whole history. That's a great, great thing to see. He's the editor in chief of ad Astra magazine from the national space society, which@spacedots.org, he joins us every week to talk about space. Hi rod.

Rod Pyle (02:12:22):
Hey, so let's talk about China on

Leo Laporte (02:12:25):
The March. Oh no. What's what's now they still have a Rover up there. Right? 

Rod Pyle (02:12:30):
They got a Rover on Mars. They got a Rover on the moon. Yeah. But the big news the last 10 days or so was a report that came out through the Chinua news service. Did I pronounce that? Right? That's your area of expertise more than mine.

Leo Laporte (02:12:47):
Sh

Rod Pyle (02:12:49):
Sh thank you. New lunar plans. So I love this quote are quote, mulling over a human landing on the moon within the next five years. Now we had people following this stuff have been conversing then, ah, you know, maybe 20 35, 20 36, 20 38, but a few surprises in this report and there had been rumors of this, but sounds like they're seriously looking at the 2030, which may not be too much after we get there at the rate we're going. And we be the us and they have developed are developing, but have test flown a new lunar capable capsule. So as you probably recall, they were using a licensed version of the Russian. So to do their orbital flights with people, but they've been very quietly developing this new lunar capsule and a lunar capable rocket called the long March nine. There's actually a couple of rockets they're looking at for that, but that's the, the main one, the big heavy lift one that's kind of a SLS class and you know, they just, they're the tortoise and we're the hair. You know, we, we jumped ahead in the sixties, did it tossed all that hardware away and built the space shuttle. Now we've tossed that away. We've been building SLS for, depending on how you look at it, 10 to 20 years. And I just, you know, I'm praying that the next administration change in this country whether you're talking about Congress or the presidency, depending on which way you're looking at it, that they maintain the funding for this, that we don't have any more reversals and cancellations, cuz we just gotta stick with it.

Leo Laporte (02:14:30):
How much of this, you know, this is the the plot of a lot of science fiction novels of, you know, space, race on the moon and all that. But aren't, aren't these, all of these national efforts, somewhat collegial and like we work with them and they work with us or is it really gonna be a race once again, as it was to the moon between the us and the Soviet union between us and China, how much of it is you know, for national prestige, how much of it is just for humanity?

Rod Pyle (02:15:03):
Well, so, so I'm gonna do a little pining here because you know, it's hard to be objective about it. I would say that there is an appearance of collegiate with the Russians. There is certainly good collegiality in space, very strained on the ground right now, but space agencies do talk and work together with the Chinese. We don't get much, there's a little bit of exchange of information on the robotic expiration side, but on the human space flight side, it's really hard to get much out of it I'm course. You know, anybody that works for the us government is banned legally from exchanging any potentially advantageous information with the Chinese by ITAR, the Wolf amendment and all that. So there's not a lot of cooperation and it is starting to feel like the sixties again, with the difference being, you know, at the time, as we both remember, we were aiming a lot of missiles at each other and a hair's breath from pulling a trigger at times with China and the us. I mean, we're their best customer <laugh> they produce, you know, 90% of our consumer goods. So we've got a lot of motivations to stay peaceful, but yeah, the, the competition's getting pretty fierce. And as we've talked about before on the military side, especially with hypersonic missiles and they're doing a lot of tests with anti-satellite laser systems and so forth. So there's a,

Leo Laporte (02:16:23):
I hate for the moon to become a battleground you know, the moon

Rod Pyle (02:16:26):
Won't yeah. Politicized orbit orbit will

Leo Laporte (02:16:29):
Eventually earth orbit because of course, yeah, those are launch platforms. We say, and if funding continues, we're gonna be on the moon humans on the moon, 2025. Right.

Rod Pyle (02:16:42):
Roughly we kind of say that. Yeah, roughly it sounds more like 26 to 27. Now here's a problem. What

Leo Laporte (02:16:48):
Is the Chinese? Are the Chinese sending humans to the moon? What is their five year plan? Are they gonna

Rod Pyle (02:16:54):
Be their, their, it sounds, sounds like another great leap forward, right? Yeah. Their five year plan is, you know, they've developed the capsule. They've test flown it. They wanna put humans up there. Yeah. They're gonna, their plan is ostensibly to put humans up by 2030. Now we're trying to beat that. But you know, we don't even have mood suits anymore that program's behind a couple years. So we built them in the sixties, but those are long gone. There's one good thing about companies that made 'em are still around, but we don't have an

Leo Laporte (02:17:27):
EV EVAs. There's one good thing about competi. We saw this in the sixties when it was the us versus the USSR, it was a great spur to invest and move forward. I would hate for the, the moon to become a battleground, but at the same time, if it gets the us Congress, it's a fun NASA and it, it gets people working hard to get us on the moon. And maybe, maybe that competition's not a bad thing, make it competitive, not, not war. Exactly.

Rod Pyle (02:17:55):
And you're exactly right. And I did a, a talk at the California science center a couple of days ago and Charlie pre court was on stage with me. He was a shuttle nut and chief of the astronaut office. Really great guy. And we were talking about this very subject and you know, he's, he's a chronic overachiever insider, right? <Laugh> I'm, I'm this author next to him sitting there thinking, what am I doing on stage with this guy? But he made the excellent point. Very eloquently of the us always does better when it's in competition. Yeah. Yeah. And or when it feels threatened and this pressure, maybe what it takes to get us off the market gets serious about.

Leo Laporte (02:18:27):
Yeah. Maybe, maybe very it's in interesting time we live in and I am glad we've got our spaceman rod pile. We're working on a podcast Rod's gonna be doing called this week in space. What, so tell us about your co-host and about what you plan to do with the show.

Rod Pyle (02:18:45):
So TARC Mallek is my co-host, he's the editor of chief over@space.com. We've been friends for years, very knowledgeable. I have to be carefully. Doesn't make me look like I'm not talking about, well, you need know what I'm

Leo Laporte (02:18:56):
Talking about. You know, I'll just from my own experience, you need one dumb guy on the panel. So, so you can say, what, what does that mean? You know, what's that right. You know, and that's my job. That's obvious questions.

Rod Pyle (02:19:07):
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I'll play that role. And so we had a lot of fun. What about the half an hour? And we, so we're gonna open with we're gonna do a quick segment where we chat headlines and then after the break we come back and do a deep dive. So the first one's gonna be on what we're talking about today, the race back to the moon. Nice. And then we, we close with, if there's something special that week, like, you know, an interesting alignment in the sky or a launch or some, some news to look forward to like, you know, the continuing the commissioning of the web or something like that, then we close on that. So it was, it was a blast

Leo Laporte (02:19:43):
Sensational news. Now I hesitate mentioning cuz it isn't yet public podcast, we're doing it in in stealth mode. Kinda like the Chinese astronauts in the back of the moon. We're kind of keeping it quiet <laugh> but at some point if interest is sufficient, we will, we will go public with it. If you are a member of our club, twit podcast club you can listen to it now. The first show is already out and you're gonna do a few more on on the club. Twit feed that for more information about that. It's seven bucks a month. So I know that's probably too much for some of you, but if you go to twit.tv/club twit, you can find out more about that.

Rod Pyle (02:20:19):
And actually I think they're posting it next week.

Leo Laporte (02:20:22):
Good. So it's not yet on the feed, but there will be a feed I think, on the feed. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. And you, are you gonna do it live in front of a studio audience or you gonna do it in secret? Have you decided, I

Rod Pyle (02:20:32):
Think for the first month, while we're on club twit, we're gonna get used to ITP records. Yeah. Yeah. And then and part of that's cuz Terry's schedule is a little variable for a couple weeks and then, then we're hoping to go live because of course you're wonderful fans like to write in and ask questions and stuff and it great to respond to that.

Leo Laporte (02:20:49):
Absolutely. Absolutely. Do we have any time left? Nope. Okay. That's okay. You've got a show now. <Laugh> well,

Rod Pyle (02:20:57):
I'll save it for next week. Talk about the Rover

Leo Laporte (02:21:00):
Space, dots.org. If you love reading about space, especially if you've got a young person, you wanna get them excited about what's going on. That's a great place to go space. Thats.Org. Thank you rod. Thank

Rod Pyle (02:21:11):
You.

Leo Laporte (02:21:17):
Nice noise. All right. Mr. Pile,

Rod Pyle (02:21:25):
Enjoy your pulse. So I tell you, man, if you're gonna sit on a stage and talk, this is the young president's organization. There are a few better places to do it than sitting under the wing of endeavor down there. Oh man. It was so they clear the room out, they set up dinner. So everybody's eating under the heat ti under the heat tiles and you know, we were off to the side, but sitting there next to Charlie, he's looking up and before a talk starter, he saying, yeah, that's the area over there where we lost a tile on my second flight and oh my goodness. It's just so

Leo Laporte (02:21:55):
Cool. Even better to sit with Charlie under the endeavor,

Rod Pyle (02:21:58):
Right? Yeah. I mean the dinner was fun, but you know, but just to be able to sit with somebody who had flown it, it such a gift. Super cool.

Leo Laporte (02:22:05):
It really was nice. All right, rod, have a great week. Good with te and this, when when's your record day

Rod Pyle (02:22:15):
We're recording on Fridays at 11. Okay.

Leo Laporte (02:22:18):
And at some point once you get comfortable, we'll make that public. We don't, we, we don't want, we don't wanna make you uncomfortable by any means. No, everybody, everybody seemed cool with the first one and our marks perfectly on the next one. Fingers crossed. Good. Perfect. To get anyway. Yeah. Yeah. All right. So thank you so much for for putting this together. Oh, I'm thrilled that we could do it. Thank you. It's wonderful. All right. Have a good one, rod. You too. Take care. Scrub your deck. <Laugh> raise them. ISN. Hoist them. Ballards whatever it is. One does. Thank you for letting me be your tech guy. I really appreciate it. Leo. Leport The Tech Guy be back next week, answering all your calls. Don't forget if you hear something on the show and you wanna know more. We have a website techguylabs.com. This is episode 1864. You can go there. There's links with professor Laura's music playlist up there a couple of days later, transcript to the show with time code. So you can search for the part you're interested in. There'll be audio and video of the show there as well. Tech guy, lab abs com. And of course that's free. There's no, no signup. Are you kidding me? No, John's on the line from Wiki watchi, Florida. Hello, John.

Caller #9 (02:23:37):
Hi Leo. Thank you for taking my

Leo Laporte (02:23:38):
Call. Thanks for calling. Welcome.

Caller #9 (02:23:41):
I have a TV question for you. Okay. I received a solicitation from spectrum TV. That's our, we have them for television down here. And it was about switching over to their phone system. I told him I didn't wanna switch over to a phone system because I'm on with our daughter. And we're on a family plan. So he says, well, I see you've been with spectrum for quite a while. How do you like it? I said, I hate it. I'm I'm <laugh>

Leo Laporte (02:24:08):
Good for you.

Caller #9 (02:24:10):
Then, then he got all cranked up and he said, well, wait a minute. What are you switching for? I said, look, we, we live on a dead end street. I'm the last customer on the, on the street. And my television fades out. And so I said, I'm getting in the lousy signal here. He says, no, that shouldn't, that shouldn't happen. He said signals are the same all over the

Leo Laporte (02:24:34):
Place. Oh no, he doesn't know what he is talking about. Okay. Go on. Well, at

Caller #9 (02:24:38):
Any rate,

Leo Laporte (02:24:39):
Did you, did he transfer you to the retention expert?

Caller #9 (02:24:44):
No, I didn't get to that. No, I didn't get that.

Leo Laporte (02:24:46):
When you really, when you call to quit, they will transfer you to these people who are, who are specialty, is keeping you from quitting. <Laugh> almost all these companies have retention experts. I wish they'd spend that kind of money on quality experts, but go

Caller #9 (02:25:01):
Ahead two weeks ago and a retention expert told me there was no I'm 79 years old. And there was no, no senior citizen planner or anything like that at this time. He said, but keep calling back there. There may be something coming up. So anyway, with this guy from, from spectrum told me that when I, I told him when I turned my TV on it's it lights out. Yeah. But there's no picture. Oh. And then after I wait a minute and a picture comes on the screen, but it's not in full color. It's faded color. Then I wait another minute or two. And the full color pops up.

Leo Laporte (02:25:43):
It's probably your TV, not spectrum. I'll be honest with you.

Caller #9 (02:25:47):
Well, that's what he told me. Yeah, he's probably right. Then he told me, he says, look how old is your TV? I said, look it, I put the TV in the house when I built the house back in 2000 and 12. Okay. So it's like

Leo Laporte (02:25:59):
10, 10 years. 10 years

Caller #9 (02:26:00):
Old. Yeah. And it's a Sony or Samsung, I mean, and I have had no problem with it. And that's what he said. It's probably the TV is dying on yet. So

Leo Laporte (02:26:11):
If I were a

Caller #9 (02:26:12):
Roku, a Roku TV. Yeah. And, and the reason I'm calling you is I never heard of a Roco TV. Okay. And, and lo and behold, I go into Walmart, looking at TV and they're all you

Leo Laporte (02:26:23):
Can see is Roku TVs

Caller #9 (02:26:24):
Everywhere. Exactly. And I never heard of them before.

Leo Laporte (02:26:28):
It's not a TV brand. It's still Samsung, LG Visio, that kind of companies, but they build Roku smart TV into the TV. And what Roku is, is a streaming box. Have you heard of apple TV for instance? Yeah. Or Amazon's fire TV. These are little devices and they really hark back to a day when TVs were just dumb. They didn't have any inter internet connection. Probably very much like you're sowing right now. It doesn't have an internet connection. So the way you get streaming stuff over the internet is you buy a little box that does hook up to the internet and then connects via normal H DMI cable to the TV. And that little box is basically, it's a computer that can see Netflix and Amazon prime and Hulu and all the streaming

Caller #9 (02:27:15):
Services. He told me and he says, yeah, I won't need the box. I have a spectrum box now that I have to,

Leo Laporte (02:27:19):
Well, if you wanna get rid of spectrum, if like you're really unhappy with the cable company, you're, you're, that's the category we call cord cutting. You're a cord cutter. The cord you're cutting is the cable cord. Unfortunately, in this day and age, you really can't cut the cord because then you need to replace the cable company with an internet service provider, which is wow. The cable company. <Laugh> right.

Leo Laporte (02:27:44):
So you can't, you can't of get away from 'em. There are other people providing internet and competition, I guess someday will come to Wiki watch. But, but for now, probably you're gonna end up with spectrum anyway. But you'll just be paying for internet instead of cable TV, right?

Caller #9 (02:28:00):
Yeah. Yeah. And they also had, I think the high sense TVs, that's

Leo Laporte (02:28:06):
A Chinese brand. They're good TVs. I have a high sense at home. Oh, you do?

Caller #9 (02:28:10):
I do. Cause it, it said it had Roku built in Roku built

Leo Laporte (02:28:14):
In baby. Yeah. Yeah. They all do these days. I don't actually think that's a great idea. I like, I think it's, you're better off having an ex external standalone box, but there are lots of reasons for these TV makers to do this. I think chief among which is they then know what you're watching and can sell that information to marketers. In fact, there are some TVs that now pop up ads. When you're seeing, let's say you're seeing a Pepsi ad, they'll pop up a little thing that says, and here's a 50 cent off coupon from target for that Pepsi. Absolutely. Which I find incredibly annoying. <Laugh> but that's why they're building these smarts into the TV, in my opinion, being a cynic. And I suspect you share my cynicism, John is, is that they want to, it's it easier for them to spy on you to sell stuff to you? So you don't you, but the problem is you can't get away from it. You're gonna have a smart TV. Are you gonna buy a new TV? Is that your plan? Well, yeah,

Caller #9 (02:29:11):
I am with this. He said, this thing is gonna die on me someday.

Leo Laporte (02:29:14):
Well, you know, it may not. So before you go out and buy a new TV, they're probably worth seeing you have a bad cable, you know? Not the actually truthfully spectrum should have set. They don't hate this. They don't like to roll trucks. It's expensive, but should have set a tech out to at least measure the signal going into your house. But then what happens once it's or you in an apartment or in a standalone house?

Caller #9 (02:29:40):
No I'm gonna standalone

Leo Laporte (02:29:41):
House. Then what happens is, and they're not really responsible for it, but it's very common in a lot of houses. The cable goes into your house. It's a single line coming out of the, off the telephone pole or on from an underground cable comes into your house. They'll measure that signal. That signal may be fine, but then it goes into your house underneath in the crawl space or above in the attic. And if you go and follow it, you'll see splitters little splitters splitting the cable up 1, 2, 3, 4, however many cable drops you have in your house. And every time you split it, especially if you use a cheap splitter, you're degrading the signal. So the next thing I would do, if I spectrum, I test the cable at your house, make sure it's proper, cuz they can see how strong the is, and then go in the house to your TV, measure the signal there. And if they see a big drop, then they're gonna say to you, well dude, you know, you gotta, you gotta fix your wire, your internal wiring. And they, they can do that too for a price. And there, there may be a lot of splitters. And you said you built the house?

Caller #9 (02:30:40):
Yeah, no, there there's only I got my cable coming underground, goes into this. I, I don't know. I guess it's a splitter it's got about, it's got about 18, 15 ports in it and I'm only using three of them.

Leo Laporte (02:30:55):
You probably, if you got something like that, it's probably high quality switcher, but you wanna make sure the signal IST being degraded by splitting it up into three and, and a good switcher, a good splitter will not, you know, you there's good and bad. So that's the first thing to do is make sure you just don't have a bad signal going into the TV. Next thing is make sure that the cable box has a good cable going into the TV. Those HTMI cables. Actually you can get a bad one or they can fail. They can be a problem before buying an expensive TV. I would check all of that. And then if you wanna get a TV, I mean, 10 years later, TVs have gotten really good. My favorite is LG Sony. You've already have the kind of the king of the hill and Sony Samsung makes excellent TVs and yeah, they're gonna have those smart features built in.

Leo Laporte (02:31:40):
I'm sorry. That's this impossible to get away from. Pleasure talking to John pleasure talking to all of you, but I am outta time. I gotta get outta here for the next guy. Thank you for being here. Thank you to professor Laura. Thank you to Kim Shaffer. Thanks to all you who listen. All of you call. I hope you have a great safe geek week and I, I hope you come back here next week so we can do it all over again. Leo Laporte The Tech Guy have a great geek week byebye. Well, that's it for The Tech Guy show for today. Thank you so much for being here and don't forget. Twit T I T it stands for this week@techandyoufinditattwitt.tv, including the podcasts for the show. We talk about window on 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@twit.tv and I'll be back next week with another great tech guy show. Thanks for joining me. We'll see you next time.