The Tech Guy Episode 1868 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. This show originally aired on the premier networks on Sunday, February 13th, 2022. This is episode 1,868. A quick reminder. Our TWiT audience survey continues for a little more time. We really like to do this just once a year because we don't track you. We don't know anything about you. We'd like to get to know you. The survey helps us plan programming, and of course helps our advertising. It helps us a lot. It should only take a few minutes, but it's not mandatory. Twit TV slash survey 22. If you wanna give us a hand in, thanks in advance. Now on with the show, the tech I podcast is brought to you by cash cash lies, giving away a complimentary detailed analysis of your current CDN bill and usage trends. See if you're overpaid 20% or more, learn more@TWiT.cash line.com.
Leo Laporte (00:01:08):
Well, Hey, Hey. Hey, how are you today? Leo Laporte here. The Tech Guy, time to talk tech. You know what I mean? You know, we're talking computers, the internet, home theater, digital photography, smart phones, smart watches, all that jazz. Eighty eight eighty eight ask Leo is the phone number. If you have a question, a comment, a suggestion. If you'd like to talk high tech 8, 8, 8, 8, 2 7 5 5 3 6, toll free from anywhere in the us or Canada outside that area. Yes, you could call, but you'll have to use Skype or something like that. It's free in the us of Canada. So it shouldn't cost you anything outside of that. What's going on in the world of tech? Well, I don't know if this is true or not, but according to a reliable source, the guardian they're quoting an insurance company called Aviva. They say that there has been a 31% jump in home. Insurance claims involving VR headsets last year,
Leo Laporte (00:02:16):
A 68% overall increase since 2016. Well, yeah, they didn't have 'em in 2016, not in the home. Anyway, what happens? Oh, you know, you're wearing a VR helmet. You're playing a game and there one guy punched his ceiling fan, which probably punched back a lady slammed into her furniture, a guy smashed through a lighting fixture. And of course it actually goes back to the days of the, we, you remember at the the Nintendo, we had game controllers and you'd you'd use, it would sense your motion. So using to play baseball or golf and people kept throwing them into the TV. So they, they came out with the wrist straps. So you'd, you'd never drop. 'em The average VR related claim for accidental damage. Aviva's a British company. So this is Britain, I guess only UK, only 650 pounds often from yeah, broken TVs. One customer launched a controller at his TV when a zombie jumped out during, in the game, By the way that doesn't work in the game or in life.
Leo Laporte (00:03:29):
Multiple people reported cracking TV screens, according to the guardian one child smashed two humble figurines on the mantle piece. When his game demanded a swipe move. Oh yeah, sure. That's his story now, mommy, I was just playing a VR game. It was zombies. I didn't do it. Avera says we settled all the claims. These devices said the Ave spokesperson, whose name is Kelly Wittington. Kelly witington says these devices can be a great source of fun, but we'd encourage people to be mindful of their surroundings and take a look at their home insurance to make sure it suits their needs. Oh, there's, there's the, I knew there was something in this one you might want to buy VR insurance. Now I am subscribing to a new Reddit forum related to this Reddit. I don't know if you know, I love Reddit. Reddit has good and bad evil and good, but you choose what Reddit sub they call 'em sub Reddits groups to follow. And so I only follow interesting ones, mostly technology and a Mac PC, that kind of stuff. But I'm gonna start following this new subreddit VR to ER,
Leo Laporte (00:04:54):
People doing dumb things and virtual reality. Then there's a lot of it. Surprisingly large amount. This is something I don't know if mark Zuckerberg really thought about this when he started talking about the meta, Did he mark, did you, did you know, did you think this might be an issue in the meta Word of warning? Fake windows, 11, upgrade installers are out there. This is from a site. I read a lot bleeping computer bill. Tulu writing threat actors. Isn't a great name. I always think of like, I don't know, Sylvester Stallone. When you say threat actors, I'm going to, I'm gonna flood you.
Leo Laporte (00:05:42):
That's not what they mean. They mean, they mean hackers, bad guys. Threat actors have started distributing fake windows, 11, upgrade installers to windows, 10 users, tricking them into downloading and executing the red line. Steeler malware. I bet you. That's not the only one. I bet you they're all. Once they figure this out, they're all gonna do it because you've seen it right? If you have windows 10, Microsoft is start putting up popups saying, oh good news. Windows 11, upgrade now. Oh, good news. Not necessarily good news, but definitely not good news. If you see a popup that, and by the way, it looks just like that Microsoft window, you click the link. It takes you to a site that looks just like Microsoft, except look carefully at the URL, not the padlock. That's locked it's and I bet you, by now it's been, you know, disabled, but windows upgraded.com. You might even fall for that. Right? Windows dash upgraded. Of course. That's what Microsoft would would do. Now. Now it's malware.
Leo Laporte (00:06:52):
In fact, I think that, you know, blueing computer says it's the bad guys wear, wait, just wait for Microsoft to put those popups out so that they could do the same thing. If you click the download now button on that popup. And I bet you, there are people listening right now who are going, oh, what? Wait a minute. Don't do it. Don't do it. If you click the download now button on this mic, Microsoft looking popup, you'll download something called windows, 11 installation, assistant.zip. What could possibly be wrong with that? Except it doesn't come from Microsoft. And when you open it and run it installs malware. What does the malware do? Well, anything I guess, you know, let me see. Let me just this article, doesn't actually say what red line Steeler does, but I that's a name should tell you something. It doesn't, it isn't, you know, no, don't do it. This is a it a big problem. Because it's hard enough for you and me to catch these. You know, I've almost fallen for this stuff, never yet, but I've almost fallen for this stuff. But think about uncle Tom and aunt Betty, they're you don't listen to this show. They're not, you know, they're just normal people. And they see a popup that says it's time to upgrade to windows 11. They're gonna click download. Now the site looks real. They're gonna click it. They're gonna run it. And boom, there they go.
Leo Laporte (00:08:37):
My general solution to this is normal people. Shouldn't be running windows. I know, I know you yell at me when I say that, but it's absolute truth. Normal people, unless you wanna become a security expert, unless you want to be smart and sophisticated and savvy enough to see this happening and not do it, not fall for it, which is pretty hard. You shouldn't be running windows. It's too dangerous because it's a general purpose operating system. It can do anything it's designed to do whatever you want it to do. Which means if you let bad guys in, they can do whatever they want to do. So get uncle Tom and aunt Betty you know, a Chromebook or an iPad. Something where this stuff doesn't happen. If you went to this on a Chromebook, you'd see the popup. It would say your Chromebook can now be upgraded to windows 11. You might in fact, if your uncle Tom and uncle, aunt, Betty, even say, well, that's odd. I'm not run windows 10, but maybe you, maybe you go, oh, good. Finally, Google's giving me windows 11, you click the button, the download proceeds. And nothing else happens cuz it can't be opened and it can't run. And you'll go, well, I guess I don't get windows 11 after all. No, you don't get red lines Steeler.
Leo Laporte (00:09:58):
I, I don't know what else to say. If you're gonna tell people to buy windows and see I don't, but if you're gonna tell people to buy windows, then I think it's on you to, to go over their house whenever they get infected and fix it. That's a disincentive. Isn't it? 88 88. Ask Leo car guy, Sam Abuelsamid, Sam coming up in about 15 minutes. We've got rod piles, space guy and Chris Markt photo guy and all of your calls too. It's gonna be a great day. Super bowl Sunday with a Tech Guy. That's what they should have named a Washington football team. The red line Steelers. You're right. There's aunt, aunt Bettys in there. I guess Leo low H be a windows bigot. Well, not always, but I have to say I, this should be, this should be yet another brick in the wall. Hello Sam.
Sam Abuelsamid (00:10:59):
Hello Leo.
Leo Laporte (00:11:00):
Hello Sam. How you doing?
Sam Abuelsamid (00:11:03):
I'm doing all right.
Leo Laporte (00:11:04):
How's the weather in Ilan?
Sam Abuelsamid (00:11:07):
It's gotten cold again. Oh, I was 17 this morning when I went to wa Supposed to, I think we supposed to a high about 21 or 22 today. Oh,
Leo Laporte (00:11:17):
We're getting up to 74 today, which is honestly not good. It's too early. You know, all the trees get confused. The cherry tree across me plum and it's not good supposed to. And it means may, you know, we don't want winter to be over. We need more rain.
Sam Abuelsamid (00:11:32):
So yeah.
Leo Laporte (00:11:34):
However we
Sam Abuelsamid (00:11:36):
Did put, spend a couple days in Chicago this week for the auto show. Oh,
Leo Laporte (00:11:39):
Was that
Sam Abuelsamid (00:11:42):
Not a whole lot there. It was, it was kind of a small show, but had a lot of good conversations with people and a bunch of us went out to dinner on Thursday night and we had a fantastic dinner at a Peruvian restaurant.
Leo Laporte (00:11:54):
Ah, I love Peru.
Sam Abuelsamid (00:11:55):
Yeah. At this great mix ceviche plate.
Leo Laporte (00:11:59):
Nice. Yeah. They're really amazing with seafood.
Sam Abuelsamid (00:12:02):
Yeah.
Leo Laporte (00:12:03):
So The BMW dealer in San Francisco called Lisa on Friday, said, Hey, your park came, who did you call? He said, I've never seen this happen. So they got the part, which is the part is the battery, everything. And they put it in.
Sam Abuelsamid (00:12:21):
I, I I actually I was on a briefing call, a press briefing call with mini on Tuesday. Oh,
Leo Laporte (00:12:30):
Maybe that's who you call.
Sam Abuelsamid (00:12:31):
And I, you know, they were, they were announcing some special edition minis and during the Q and a, I raised that question. I didn't bring up your name or anything. Thank you. But I did, I did mention that it was, you know, a dealer, a mini dealer in Marin that didn't know what to do with it. Right.
Leo Laporte (00:12:46):
That's
Sam Abuelsamid (00:12:46):
A question had to do with, you know, are they
Leo Laporte (00:12:49):
Trains
Sam Abuelsamid (00:12:49):
Dealers to actually, you know, get you know, prepared. Yeah. And you know, mentioned, you know, without mentioning your name or anything, just, you know, that there was a dealer in Marin, so maybe they looked into it.
Leo Laporte (00:13:00):
Maybe thank you. Then we owe you a debt of gratitude. No worries. But it's a big problem, Mike. I, for instance that Mustang that Mustang ma recall came out in December. My dealer still has, you know, when I call him, we can't figure out how we, we gotta find a glacier who can put the window in. And it's like, dudes, this was recalled three months ago. What's going on? I think dealers, I'm really not a fan of dealers anymore. That's one thing Tesla probably did. Right.
Sam Abuelsamid (00:13:29):
It's well, but I mean, Tesla has their own problems too because their, their, their customer are, has gotten pretty bad as the number of vehicles have grown.
Leo Laporte (00:13:37):
Yeah. It's
Sam Abuelsamid (00:13:38):
Hard. They've not grown their important work. Yeah. And Tesla, the customers often wait months for parts as well. Yeah. And you know, there's, there's only 145 Tesla service centers across the us. And there are 3,300 Ford dealers. Right. And, you know, similarly
Leo Laporte (00:13:56):
That's a S nevertheless, If my windshield flies out, I know who to call.
Sam Abuelsamid (00:14:04):
Well, you know, and the thing is, that's not an EV specific thing. That's just, they've got something big, a big piece of glass on there, the
Leo Laporte (00:14:11):
Particular, both the windshield and the sun roof. However, I love my Maia. I'm not complaining. And, you know, at, Lisa's decided to stick with the mini because she's, she just read John do's book about climate change. And he said, no one should be buying a gas vehicle ever again. And she said, you know, you're right. Okay. If they fix it and it works fine, it will be all right. You know, anyway, we'll talk in a few, they thank you for your, your intercession, Leo Laport, the Tech Guy. I'm not sure what this has to do with Kim Schaffer, but
Kim Schaffer (00:14:45):
It's eye of the tiger Bengals.
Leo Laporte (00:14:47):
Oh, I get it.
Leo Laporte (00:14:50):
So are you, and are you wearing a tiger print?
Kim Schaffer (00:14:52):
No.
Leo Laporte (00:14:52):
If the tiger were green,
Kim Schaffer (00:14:54):
If the tiger were green. Yeah. There are stripes and shorts.
Leo Laporte (00:14:57):
Yeah. It's the eye of the Bengals now I get it. Yeah. So this is a question that's we 49ers fan have to deal with, you know, today is the superb owl, big football game between not our team.
Kim Schaffer (00:15:10):
No. The team that beat us,
Leo Laporte (00:15:12):
The team that beat us, the Los Angeles Rams and the Cincinnati Bengals. But so Lisa, my wife says, no, you have to root for the NFC. You have to root for your wrong. Yeah. I wanna, I want, I want the Bengals to beat those sons of guns. So do I, they beat us now. I want them it's time
Kim Schaffer (00:15:27):
To take revenge. Plus
Leo Laporte (00:15:29):
The Bengals have never won a super bowl. Yep. The last two times they were in the super bowl we beat 'em. Yep.
Kim Schaffer (00:15:36):
So
Leo Laporte (00:15:37):
It's their turn. It's their turn. I'm I'm gonna, I'm gonna root for Cincinnati. Yeah. So am
Kim Schaffer (00:15:40):
I?
Leo Laporte (00:15:41):
Yeah. And, and that's why you wear your green tiger strips.
Kim Schaffer (00:15:43):
Yeah. My green tiger strip.
Leo Laporte (00:15:46):
So who should I talk to today?
Kim Schaffer (00:15:48):
Oh, let's go to Neil and Chandler Arizona with the call word. Cutting question. That is so popular these days.
Leo Laporte (00:15:55):
You think maybe after friends, the name Chandler Arizona had a different meaning,
Kim Schaffer (00:16:00):
Perhaps
Leo Laporte (00:16:00):
Just a que, just a rhetorical question. Hi, Neil and Chandler, Arizona. Leo Laport, the Tech Guy
Caller #2 (00:16:07):
Happy. And Leo, I take my call.
Leo Laporte (00:16:09):
Thanks for calling you happy
Caller #2 (00:16:11):
To, so go on.
Leo Laporte (00:16:13):
Happy to talk to you.
Caller #2 (00:16:15):
Well, thank you. Listen. I have been in my current place for a couple of years and when I moved over here, I got a Cox cable service. And now my two year agreement is up. So now they're ready to Jack my rates to over like $200 or so.
Leo Laporte (00:16:29):
Yeah, isn't that great. They, they all do this. All the cable TV companies do this and for internet too, and everything else is they give you a great introductory rate and then the fine print it says, and we lock you in. And by the way, when your contract expires, stand back here comes the bill. But I went into the Comcast store once and the guy told me, don't worry about it whenever your contract's about to run out, come in or call us. But I think coming in is better. Cuz you can look right in their eyes and we'll give you the next, you know, deal. So you could cable cut. I mean, that's what most people are doing at this point is cord cutting and saying, okay the heck with it. Right. And I think that's what you're I suspect that's what you're plan is. Right,
Caller #2 (00:17:14):
Right. So I've had like TA I have television from them and I have home life, which is like their camera and all that stuff. And I have internet right. Three, 300 megabits, which is works fine. But then I thought, you know, I can just get straight internet and they, they have up to, Gigablast a gigabit service here if I want it. Yeah. and then I could just get, if I went, even if I went, if I got that and went to I lost the work YouTube TV. Yeah. I'd still be cheaper events. And over 200 bucks, I would still you'll be saving some money. Yeah. Even with YouTube TV,
Leo Laporte (00:17:47):
See what they charge for bear internet. Cuz most of the time what these companies do is they increase the fee, you know, to kind of make it well, you're not getting TV. Oh well, okay. That's good. But usually it's not a whole lot 10 bucks more maybe. So, so find
Caller #2 (00:18:01):
The question. How much, how much
Leo Laporte (00:18:04):
Three hundreds, plenty.
Leo Laporte (00:18:06):
Three hundreds. Plenty. And unless you've got multiple people trying to watch TV or YouTube or, or whatever at the same time. So if, if you've got a bunch of people in your house, then you might want more because it's all shared. Right. I end up putting in gigabit cuz we've got our 19 year olds going to college on zoom. My wife is mostly work at now. So she's on zoom and other meeting systems a lot. I want to be able to, you know, watch Netflix when they're working. So all in all we decided to go for gigabit, it's expensive, but then you never, then you, you know, you kind of guaranteed enough, three hundreds, plenty though. If it's just how, how many, how many other people are sharing your internet?
Caller #2 (00:18:49):
Well, actually it's just myself and I have one other television. So when I have guests and we have, you know, two televisions potentially you're golden. That's about it.
Leo Laporte (00:18:57):
You're golden. If you had 50 megabits, you could watch D 4k on Netflix. And so three, hundred's got plenty over, over overhead as long as it's really 300 now, you know, Cox, just like everybody else over sells a, they've got the other thing to look at is what the upstream is. If you're gonna be zooming or Google meet or you know, any kind of video calls, FaceTime, then upstream is important too. But if you've got 15 megabits, 300 down, 15 ups, something like that, which is typical. I think that's more than adequate. What is your upstream? Do you know?
Caller #2 (00:19:29):
Well, according to my router is says like at about 30,
Leo Laporte (00:19:34):
That's great. You're golden. The reason that's important is if you saturate your upstream, doing something, you know, zooming or uploading or whatever, it actually slows down your downstream. Because every time at a packet on the downstream, you gotta send it an acknowledgement. So if you're, if you saturate your upstream, even with backup like iDrive, you know, that's why iDrive never uses all your bandwidth because it, otherwise it would cut off in effect cut off your internet so that you, but I think 30 is more, I can't imagine you need more than 3,330 is pretty good. I'd be, I'd be happy with that.
Caller #2 (00:20:14):
The only thing I would ask you then to follow up is okay, if they, they cap or they, they give you 1.2, five terabytes per month. Ah,
Leo Laporte (00:20:21):
That's where they get you. I
Caller #2 (00:20:23):
Up, am I gonna run up against that? Yeah. By switch the fall television.
Leo Laporte (00:20:26):
Yeah. That's where they get you. That depends how much you watch, but it's easy to go over 1.5 terabytes in a month. I ended up when I went to the gigabit, I also said, all right, fine. You win. I'll get unlimited. Comcast offers both. I don't even want know. I haven't looked at the bill. I don't wanna know how much I'm paying. But yeah, the most cable providers, if you hit the cap will give you more. But they'll charge like 10 bucks a gigabyte they'll charge a significant amount of money. So, or maybe, maybe not that much 10 bucks a terabyte maybe, but it's still it. And usually they give you a few months. So what I would suggest is keep what you've got and see. And they'll warn you. They'll say, I don't know about Cox, but Comcast gives you three months and I, I bet you, Cox is similar where they'll say, look, you went over, oh, you went over again. If you do it no more time, one more time. We're gonna have to charge you. And at that point it's easy to call and say, okay, I'll take the unlimited, but don't buy it unless you need it. And you right on the edge, just depends. If you watch five or six hours of TV night, you can easily go for one and a half.
Caller #2 (00:21:30):
Okay. Well thank you so much. That's what I need to find out so I can get the right service plan or right.
Leo Laporte (00:21:35):
Internet plan. You, you could probably look at your Cox bill or go online with Cox and see how much bandwidth used you've used in past months. So that'll give you a good idea. But of course, you're right. I know what you're thinking, but now I'm a cord cutter, so it's gonna go up and you're right. It is. I, you know, we end up, even though I still have cable, we stream most of the time. You know, the next time my contract is up, I probably will cancel the TV because we stream all the time. But that's at one more little tip that everybody should know is that all these companies have retention departments that are designed to key. Keep from losing you. And they'll often re reup your better deal or something. You know, if you if you ask or just even threaten say, I'm outta here, I am outta here. Hey, a pleasure talking to you. What's the weather in Chandler today.
Caller #2 (00:22:25):
It's actually really nice probably in the seventies. Beautiful. the eighties during the week. So it's really nice out here now. Now it's the time to be
Leo Laporte (00:22:33):
Here. Yeah. This is the best time of year in Arizona. Isn't it?
Caller #2 (00:22:36):
Absolutely. Yeah. It's only like it's really hot, like five months outta the year. The rest of the time. It's really pretty pleasant here.
Leo Laporte (00:22:41):
Yeah. I had a girlfriend in Phoenix, made the mistake of visiting her when I was a young man in in the summertime that roommates did not last a pleasure talking to you, Neil. I don't think she had AC that's part of the problem. Everybody in Arizona has AC Leo Laport, the Tech Guy, Sam bull coming up to talk cars And We're clear. We do have 10 gigs at TWiT. From Sonic. We have 10 gigs, SIG symmetric from Sonic 10 gigabit. Isn't that nice. Can't get it at home. Unfortunately. So Patrick, if you're listening, somebody just accessed the TWiT geo cash. It was fun of during this whole call. I'm watching this. When she got out of her car, she's looking around. She can't figure out where the geo cash is. She's she goes back to her phone. She's looking. I dunno. Maybe you might even be able to see it out the window. I guess you can't.
Leo Laporte (00:23:42):
No, it's too bright out there. She's just out of you, but she access the geo cash. Oh Nope. She's going to put something back. Good for her. You take us, take something and you put something back. Oh, good for her. She's putting it in. Good, good job. Professional geo cash. You're at work right on. I wish she, I wish you were listening. I wish you were listening. Oh, it's too late. Don't show her license plate, but we will show you where the geo cash is. John is setting up a camera. I have to go route it. Yeah. Yeah. That's okay. That's okay. That's awesome. It's funny. It happens a lot when I'm at work. I guess probably it happens when I'm not at work too. I don't know. How does anybody keep track of our geo now that Patrick's back east? I don't know. Do you know what geocaching is? Sam? You know what that is, right?
Sam Abuelsamid (00:24:38):
I do. I long when my kids were younger, we used to go and do it sometimes.
Leo Laporte (00:24:43):
Yeah. It's really cool
Sam Abuelsamid (00:24:44):
GPS on all our phones. Yeah. I haven't done it for long time, but yeah, we've done it before.
Leo Laporte (00:24:49):
I'm two degrees of separation from everybody because I used to do Regis and Kelly, which means pretty much everybody
Leo Laporte (00:24:58):
When I was one of the advent of code problems was essentially that, and I realized as I'm solving it, oh my God. I could do a little six degrees of separations thing by scraping IMDB. It'd be very easy to, to create that. All right. So let's see the geo cash. You can't see the car, if she goes back to the geo cash, you'll see her, but the geo cash could look it's somewhere in this picture. Okay. I won't say a thing. This is why it was hard for her to find it. She, she, it is funny. I was watching, she was looking at it. She was looking, she was looking, she was looking, she wasn't sure she looked at her up. She's leaving there. She goes. So cash successful. Isn't that cute? That's so cool. Patrick, thank you for doing that. That's so cool.
Leo Laporte (00:25:59):
Yeah. Patrick works remotely. He and vet and their kids moved kids or kid. Can't remember just one, right? Just Caden. Yeah. Oh, you know, who's confusing me is Lou Maka. Who's got like 15 children. Patrick moved back east. So did Lou Patrick moved back east a year or so ago, but he still works for remote. He still does the same thing. He always did. He works for remotely for us. It's a beautiful day in Petaluma. Look at that. See the cherry trees very used, well, I guess it's February. Shouldn't that's maybe that's when they're supposed to come out. Very confused.
Sam Abuelsamid (00:26:36):
When I decided to not go with the T-Mobile 5g home internet service, I call it Comcast. See what they could do for me. And they gave me a 900 megabit per second plan. Nice. Yeah. I was previously on a two 50 plan. Exactly.
Leo Laporte (00:26:53):
900
Sam Abuelsamid (00:26:54):
For $15 a month. Less than what I was paying before.
Leo Laporte (00:26:57):
You should always, always call them and check with them,
Sam Abuelsamid (00:27:01):
But it's but it's only 25 megabits up. Oh,
Leo Laporte (00:27:05):
Well that's enough. That's enough.
Sam Abuelsamid (00:27:07):
It'll it'll do, I'd rather have more, but
Leo Laporte (00:27:10):
Yeah, I love our gigabit, but yeah, it's only like, I can't remember what it is 30 yet, but here at studio, it's just a 10 symmetric. So it's nice.
Sam Abuelsamid (00:27:18):
Yeah. Comcast doesn't do symmetric internet.
Leo Laporte (00:27:20):
No, no, no, no. Com no. Consumer provider does even the, their business is isn't symmetric and I'll think there might be a, here might be here. I don't know. But Sonic is amazing. They have symmetric fiber, ah, time for me to talk about cash fly. If you are listening to this show, you can think cash cash fly is our content delivery network. Our C D and we've been using 'em for over 10 years. We love 'em cuz they're super reliable. They have the best support ever. They're really great people.
Leo Laporte (00:27:58):
And now cash life's done something brand new, which I think is very exciting. Sub ones, second latency, video streams. What, how can that even be? You know, if you watch our video streams, sometimes there's 30, 40 seconds latency, you know, between the the ENCO and then the transmission, and then going out on the internet and then going out through the CDM, we should start looking at this cash. I'll tell you what this is. This is not that unreliable web RTC solution we've seen before. This is something that scales to millions of users. They call it cash, ultra low latency, video streaming, and your, your users, your audience are gonna love it with 50 plus locations around the globe. Cash pop will deliver your content closer to your customers than ever before, because they have also something in should really looking at this called storage optimization system.
Leo Laporte (00:28:56):
We, we started using this ages ago. They now offer it to everybody. Take a load off your origin servers, reduce for instance, your S3 bills increase your cash. Hit ratio 100% with cash storage optimization system. It's amazing. And of course with their elite managed packages, you get VIP treatment, 24 7 support response times in less than the hour. In fact, most cases they already know of any issues and it'll be working to fix 'em before your team does, before you even know we ever had an issue with cash light, they are amazing. It's always on our side, never on theirs. They're just fantastic. So with cash light, ultra low latency video streaming, they deliver video to more than a million concurrent users, lightning fast gaming, which delivers downloads faster with no lag, no glitches, no outages, mobile content optimization, offering automatic and simple image optimization. So your site loads faster on any device.
Leo Laporte (00:29:51):
That's nice. And of course, multiple CDNs for redundancy, reliability, failover, they intelligently balance your traffic across for providers, giving you the shortest route, mitigating against performance glitches. That's how cash lie can be 10 times faster than traditional methods on six continents, 30% faster than other major CDNs, a 98% cash hit ratio. And over the last 12 months, we're not talking 5, 9, 6, 9, 7, 9 as a hundred percent availability. Best of all, the best support with one really wonderful people, 24 7 365 priority support. They'll always be there when you need 'em. If you are interested, if you are delivering content all over the globe, as we are, please do yourself a favor, bring your usage trends, your CDN bill. If you have one to cash, they're giving away a complimentary detail analysis of your current CDN bill and usage trends. See if you're overpay 20% or more for your CDN TWiT.cash line.com TWiT.cash.com.
Leo Laporte (00:30:56):
See if you're overpaying 20% or more. Get the service we do from the best in the world. Twit.cash.com. Thank you. Cash. You've been a boon to this network for more than a decade. And I bet they can help you too. Twit.cash.com. Leo Laporte the Tech Guy time for the car guy, Sam bull Sam. He's a principal researcher at guide house insights, his podcast wheel bearings, the car podcast to listen to wheel barings.media joins us every week. We are very fortunate to have salmon. Sam has interceded for me numerous times with auto manufacturers. So I wanna thank you. We had, I had told the saga of my wife and her electric mini, which she loved. She, she did something you should never do with the pets farm am well pets. You could do not with farm animals or cars. You shouldn't name 'em cause cuz then it makes it hard.
Leo Laporte (00:31:51):
So she named, she had her little bright red mini Cooper. So cute. She called it pepper cuz it's bright red like a chili pepper and 800 miles in it just died. It died big time. And we got a to, and the, the dealer local dealer couldn't figure it out. The one we bought it from, so he sent it down to BMW of San Francisco. They said, it's gonna be three to four weeks. We gotta get the part from Germany. The part by the way was the entire lithium ion battery assembly. The, the whole, the drive train everything. And they said, and, and by he said it's all dead and we can't figure out what's wrong with it or why it went dead until we get a new one and put it in. So on Friday they call and say, I don't know what you did. Who, who did you call? We got the part already and it's never happened now. I found out I owe it all to you, Sam. So thank you. Well,
Sam Abuelsamid (00:32:43):
I don't necessarily wanna take the credit. I mean, I, I asked on a, on a call with some folks from mini. I, I asked a question more generally about if they were going to be doing anything with their dealer network, as they, the number of EVs that they offer to to help get them better, trained, to diagnose and fix problems with the EVs.
Leo Laporte (00:33:06):
And this has been a, a problem. I see this all the time on Reddit too, where people just complain about their dealer. They often, you know, they'll send you things like, oh, it's time for your oil change. And it's just like, they don't really, it's a new thing for them and they don't don't really understand it yet. Training's important.
Sam Abuelsamid (00:33:22):
I know I mean the, the, what I, you know, I had given as an example that I had a friend who bought a mini E in Marin, you know, from Marin oh, you told the Marin mini dealer. Yeah. I didn't mention your name or anything. Yeah. and you know, explained that, you know, they couldn't figure it out and it had to go to the B M w dealer in San Francisco and, you know, what were, were they working with their dealers? And, you know, they didn't really say much to the specific question, but they said that they would look into it later. They
Leo Laporte (00:33:51):
Did. Maybe,
Sam Abuelsamid (00:33:53):
Maybe I, maybe I had some impact, maybe not.
Leo Laporte (00:33:54):
I don't know. And of course, I'm just glad you,
Sam Abuelsamid (00:33:56):
I'm just glad you're getting the car back
Leo Laporte (00:33:57):
Angry tweets probably didn't didn't
Sam Abuelsamid (00:33:59):
Help me. Yeah. I'm sure that those, you know, you'd be surprised those do get attention up the chain. Yeah. So but anyway, what I wanted to talk about today was if you're watching the stream over my shoulder, you can see there's this bright blue little car it's it's a new model. It was announced this week. It's called the alpha male to N
Leo Laporte (00:34:18):
Alpha. Ooh, I love alpha for Mayos.
Sam Abuelsamid (00:34:21):
Yeah. They're great
Leo Laporte (00:34:22):
To like a station wagon or A's
Sam Abuelsamid (00:34:24):
A crossover.
Leo Laporte (00:34:26):
Yeah. It's,
Sam Abuelsamid (00:34:26):
It's a
Leo Laporte (00:34:27):
Compact crossover. It sports over sports car to me, but yeah.
Sam Abuelsamid (00:34:29):
Well, I mean, alpha already has another crossover, a little larger one called Stelio, which is, you know, pretty fantastic to drive. And the Tali is a little bit smaller. It's about the size of a BMW X one or Mercedes GLA and the, the car itself, you know, it seems very nice. I'm, I'm looking forward to getting a chance to drive it later this year. It's, it's gonna have an optional plug-in hybrid powertrain, but what I really wanted to talk about was it's gonna come with an NFT and there's been a lot of discussion of NFTs late. And most of it is, you know, basically struck me as being a little more than a scam, you know, but buying links to pictures of a board ape, you know, for hundreds of thousands of dollars, to me, that's a scam. Yes. But what Alpha's doing, it may well be one of the first actual useful applications of NFT technology that I've heard about because what they're doing you know, alpha as while their cars are great to drive, they don't have the greatest reputation for reliability. And so as a result that has hurt some of their resale values. So what they're doing with the, the NFTs is they're they're actually setting up a, a, a digital, a secure digital certificate that will contain the vehicle's entire service history, tie that to an NFT. So it's all gonna be in the blockchain. Ah,
Leo Laporte (00:35:55):
You know, what that a good use of blockchain cause
Sam Abuelsamid (00:35:58):
It, yeah. So you it's imutable service recordable of the vehicle. Yeah. Or at least as imutable as it can be. That's
Leo Laporte (00:36:04):
That's not really an
Sam Abuelsamid (00:36:05):
That's not entirely imutable, but that's
Leo Laporte (00:36:07):
A whole, that's just, that's just putting a repair record on the blockchain, which I think is a very good idea. Yeah. That's a good use of the blockchain.
Sam Abuelsamid (00:36:13):
Right. And so when you take your car into, when taking you take it to now, or any other future alpha mail into the dealer for service, it will have you know, that service record will be recorded to that to that tied to that NFT and all record recorded in the blockchain. Which as I said, I think, I think that's actually a good idea. There's nothing, you know, that, that seems perfectly reasonable. Whether or not that'll actually help alpha Romeo's residual values. We'll, we'll, we'll have to wait and see, we'll see in a few years, you know, how that works out for them, but this
Leo Laporte (00:36:48):
Is like, so people go to Carfax right now, right. To get the, and I did that when I bought a used car a couple of years ago, and then you get the, but, but who's guaranteeing it. I don't artifact if it's on the blockchain, there's no fudging it. Right.
Sam Abuelsamid (00:37:02):
That, that is, that is ideally, that's the, that's the theory now, you know, I have read some interesting articles about blockchain and, and NFTs of late and real came to the realization that there have been instances where even though the blockchain is supposed to be IMT and you're not supposed to be able to reverse transactions. There have been cases where what they've done and I think open C has done this on a couple of occasions where they just fork the blockchain and basically go back a couple of steps and start a new one. The
Leo Laporte (00:37:34):
Reason they can do that is because you have to, if this is the NFT, the biggest NFT seller, you get the blockchain information from open C so they can change it in effect. But that's not a real blockchain, a real blockchain. Everybody has a copy, there's no central place for it. So you're right. Alpha's gonna have to be careful to make sure that there's nobody maintaining that quote chain, cuz you're right. If, if, if that's the only place to get it, there's nothing to keep it. The whole idea of blockchain is that everybody has a copy.
Sam Abuelsamid (00:38:07):
There, there is also one downside potential downside to this. Right. and I, I spoke with the, the head of alpha north America a couple of days ago. And they're still working out all the details on this. But right now only dealers will be able to actually put information in that, in that service record, in the blockchain. If you take the car to a third party service provider right now, there's no mechanism for them to do that. They're working on how to make that a reality, whether that actually happens we'll see. But if they don't, you know, if, if it remains a dealer only thing, then that could be something that undermines the whole idea to
Leo Laporte (00:38:50):
Repair. It's like open C. Right.
Sam Abuelsamid (00:38:52):
Well, but it also, it all undermines right to repair. Right. You know, your, your ability, you
Leo Laporte (00:38:57):
Have to
Sam Abuelsamid (00:38:57):
Go through the deals to service the car yourself or to take it anywhere else to get
Leo Laporte (00:39:00):
There as a catch. Yeah. That's obviously the plan
Sam Abuelsamid (00:39:04):
There's good and bad to all of this.
Leo Laporte (00:39:05):
Hey, is Carfax reliable now, now that we've mentioned it, I wonder
Sam Abuelsamid (00:39:11):
As far as I know, it's generally reliable, where
Leo Laporte (00:39:13):
Do they get their data?
Sam Abuelsamid (00:39:16):
It it's, I think it's entered by dealers, dealer service providers. Yeah. But the, one of the problems is that they, they get the, the vehicle identification number information, the VIN number from state registration departments from TMV. Right. And they
Leo Laporte (00:39:34):
So in theory, all, they said attached to a VIN number. So you should be able to search and find everything that was ever done to that VIN
Sam Abuelsamid (00:39:41):
Number as long, as long as they have accurate information of, of the, the VIN number and who owns that VIN. I, you know, I'm still getting notifications from Carfax for a car that I haven't owned for a year and a half. Oh. And, you know, because they, they just didn't get updated registration information. Yeah.
Leo Laporte (00:40:00):
DMV didn't update it.
Sam Abuelsamid (00:40:01):
Yeah. You know, it's, it's a, it's a, can be a bit of a crapshoot.
Leo Laporte (00:40:05):
Sam bull, Sam principal researcher at guide house insights. If you love car tech, you will love his podcast wheel bearings@wheelbearings.media with Robbie. And is it Nicole? Nicole. Yep. Yeah. And always some interesting conversations there. Thank you, Sam.
Sam Abuelsamid (00:40:23):
Thank you, Leo.
Leo Laporte (00:40:27):
Yeah, that makes sense. Alpha would say, oh, and by the way, you must repair it with us, but I bet you, they say that anyway. Right.
Sam Abuelsamid (00:40:34):
Well, certainly, you know, when it, when it's still under warranty most people are going to take it in to the, to the dealer to have it repaired. Yeah. So at least, and you know, the, the Talis gonna have a five year warranty on it. So probably for the first several years, almost all the work will be done by dealers. And hopefully by that time, they'll figure out a way for third party providers to to be able to input that information into the service record as well.
Leo Laporte (00:41:00):
Hey John, can you put my Mac into the three so I can show Sam Myakka. Oh, why is it dark? Why is it dark? Is that me? Maybe I'm disconnected. There you go. Thank you.
Sam Abuelsamid (00:41:23):
Twitsted. Mr. Says you can't reverse a transaction or an alpha.
Leo Laporte (00:41:26):
I know. I thought that was very funny.
Sam Abuelsamid (00:41:28):
I've I've never had an, I've never had a problem putting an alpha reverse.
Leo Laporte (00:41:31):
It was just mocking me Alpha's repair status, or,
Sam Abuelsamid (00:41:35):
But they, they are glorious machines to drive, especially if you get a quadrifolio like,
Leo Laporte (00:41:39):
See, that's what I'd like is a little portfolio car. Yeah. Like a 2002 or something like the BMW 2002. They just look yeah. Little sporty. Well,
Sam Abuelsamid (00:41:47):
The, the, the, the Julia and stelvia quad fol models, they're, you know, it's a, it's a mid-size or more of a compact sedan and, and a, a similar crossover. And the quad fol model is the, the high performance model. It has a TWiTn turbocharge, 2.9 liter V6 that was designed by Ferrari.
Leo Laporte (00:42:07):
Yeah. That's the one
Sam Abuelsamid (00:42:08):
I want. That's about 505 horsepower. Oh.
Leo Laporte (00:42:11):
And
Sam Abuelsamid (00:42:12):
When you on it, you put, you know, it's got when you put it in dynamic mode and step on the accelerator, it sounds so glorious. And this,
Leo Laporte (00:42:22):
This is,
Sam Abuelsamid (00:42:22):
This is the thing, you know, I know, you know, I know that a Tesla model three performance will actually accelerate faster. Yeah.
Leo Laporte (00:42:30):
Quietly too, by the way.
Sam Abuelsamid (00:42:32):
But, but it does it quiet,
Sam Abuelsamid (00:42:35):
But, but missing that sound of that engine, I know, you know, it's, it's just, oh, it's an amazing visceral feeling that you get, you know, and, and you can feel it down your spine. And it just, it really adds so much to the experience. Yeah. But back to Carfax yeah. Carfax does have service records that have been submitted by dealers and, and service providers, shops as well as repair and, and damage records. I know that, you know, I regularly get notifications from them for, for the the cars I have you know, saying, Hey, reminding, you know, it's time, time to go you know, get your oil changed or get your tires rotated. So they, they do get, you know, all the maintenance information in addition to crash information. Let's see oh, Phoenix warp. I think this is a question for you actually. Leo, did you end up getting a new car? No
Leo Laporte (00:43:31):
No. She's gonna stick with the alpha, I think. Okay. cuz because she's gonna stick with electric, we'll see, you know, it depends what's wrong with it. And I mean, my attitude is she loved the car. If it, if they fixed it and it's okay. I just, we worry like what would've happened if the drive train had failed on the highway, what would that have looked like? You know?
Sam Abuelsamid (00:43:53):
Yeah. I, I presum
Leo Laporte (00:43:55):
Of it. Would've rolled to a stop, but who knows?
Sam Abuelsamid (00:43:57):
Yeah. It'll, it'll just roll to a stop. Yeah. Unless like the transmission seizes up or something. Right. web 47 30 S my friend got sued because she was still linked to a car she sold says be careful. Yeah, I mean, in this case, you know, the, the registration, you know, as long since expired you know, my Michigan red registration. So I'll hand it back to you now.
Leo Laporte (00:44:19):
All right. Thank you. My friend. You're gonna stick around for the top. Sure. All right. I appreciate it. We're playing a little game professor. Laura likes to do that. She's a musical genius. So she picks songs from performers that have performed the super bowl. And then it's my job to say what year? Of course I have to identify the artist first, which I'm not so good at 88, 88 as Leo. And then I have no idea which super bowl she is gonna perform today at the super bowl. What I know rich on the line from west LA, our next call. Hi Richard. Thanks for hanging on.
Caller #3 (00:44:55):
Thank you, Leo. Thanks for taking the call.
Leo Laporte (00:44:57):
Thanks for calling.
Caller #3 (00:44:59):
When I turn on my machine, it's a windows 10 HP connected to a monitor. If that means anything. Okay. I get a, a, a screen that I can deal with. And then I, I load one of the browsers and do my thing. Then when I get out of it, the screen then shows literally two, two inch by one and a half inch. I don't know what you call 'em icons. Yeah. Of
Leo Laporte (00:45:25):
Various they're giant
Caller #3 (00:45:27):
Giants. And not the ones I want if one of the ones I wanted, it was on that. So I wanted to go back in and maybe go to bank of America or one of those that would be fine, but none of the ones I want and it started happen two weeks ago.
Leo Laporte (00:45:42):
If, if it were displaying the windows, the normal windows screen, but at an extra large size that I could explain. Where do you think these icons are coming from? Have you ever seen them before? Even at, not at the two and a half inch size, but at a normal size.
Caller #3 (00:45:59):
Yes. A few of them. Yes. And a few of them are, I think they're hidden somewhere okay. In the machine, but I, yes, a few of them, I, I have seen before
Leo Laporte (00:46:07):
It is relevant that you have an external monitor sometime. So is the HP a laptop?
Caller #3 (00:46:14):
Yes.
Leo Laporte (00:46:14):
Yeah. So sometimes what happens windows can get confused. The, the monitor has a different resolution and refresh rate than the internal display. And so it might be when you switch to the monitor and switch back getting a little confused.
Caller #3 (00:46:31):
I don't switch. I never, I never used the, the screen on the laptop. I have almost never used. In fact, I don't think I've ever used it in the three and four years. I've had this
Leo Laporte (00:46:42):
Thing. Yeah. But it's, but windows season and knows it's there. So yeah, it might get confused by by that. It does sound like a though it doesn't sound like it's that it sounds like it's a bug in windows. And what, and when it does that, what do you do? How do you fix that?
Caller #3 (00:46:58):
Well, I'm ready to turn off the machine. I right quickly that start button.
Leo Laporte (00:47:02):
If you re restart it, fixes it,
Caller #3 (00:47:05):
Machine goes
Leo Laporte (00:47:05):
Off, restart it and it fixes it. But but I
Caller #3 (00:47:09):
Don't go back to the original desktop where I have maybe three dozen of those goodies at the right size. And one of the reasons I I'm interested in the above is that one of the things I have is the is a tax program. Now I, I found a way around that and just was filming with it before I called you, in fact, and I'm able to get into the tax program in another way. And I'm gonna have to do that soon, obviously, but it's just annoying. It's not critical. I can do what I want. I can get my email and I can go to my bookmarks and all the rest of it once I load a browser.
Leo Laporte (00:47:46):
Huh. So the browser's in normal size. It's just those icons that are giant.
Caller #3 (00:47:50):
Yeah. Yeah. And at the end, not during, whenever I'm doing, I never see the original ones that I used to. I've seen for years. And, and I'm not sure that I've done anything cuz I'm not smart enough, frankly.
Leo Laporte (00:48:04):
No, no, clearly this is windows doing something and something it wrong. I'm confused. Honestly. I don't. So let me see if I can walk through this and you tell me if I've got the picture of it. Right. Cause remember I have to visualize what's going on. Oh, of course. So you're in a browser, you're doing your thing, whatever.
Caller #3 (00:48:24):
Right.
Leo Laporte (00:48:25):
And then what do you do that the icon suddenly get big. You close the browser.
Caller #3 (00:48:30):
Yeah. I, I, what I do, I don't actually do I close the browser? What? I usually close the browser. I right. Click on the start menu. Okay. Because I wanna go into sleep mode. Yeah. And then these things pop up.
Leo Laporte (00:48:42):
Are they in the start menu?
Caller #3 (00:48:45):
Not that I know of. Well,
Leo Laporte (00:48:46):
I mean, so the start menu has kind of a region pops up with big icons on the right and, and stuff on the menu, on the left. Do you know about that? Right?
Caller #3 (00:48:57):
I know about that.
Leo Laporte (00:48:57):
Okay. So it's not those icons on the right. Is it in the, what, what I'm asking? Is it in that region that pops up when you click the start menu?
Caller #3 (00:49:07):
No,
Leo Laporte (00:49:07):
No. It's on the desk top. So you pop, you click the start menu and suddenly the desktop has giant icons on it.
Caller #3 (00:49:16):
Exactly.
Leo Laporte (00:49:23):
It's interesting. That's interesting. I'm not sure what's going on. You click the start menu. Does the start menu look completely normal? Include the icons in the start menu.
Caller #3 (00:49:33):
Yeah, I right. Click it's because all I'm doing, I wanna put it into sleep mode and then I, it, it, it goes into sleep mode eventually, but these icons pop
Leo Laporte (00:49:42):
Up and when you restart windows, everything gets better. And it's, it's usable again until
Caller #3 (00:49:47):
Around it's it doesn't start the way it used to, but you know, that's the way life is
Leo Laporte (00:49:51):
What happens when you start windows.
Caller #3 (00:49:54):
Okay. I, I, I, I started from sleep mode by clicking that
Leo Laporte (00:49:58):
No, no I'm talking about restart. So you click that start menu and instead of setting sleep, selecting, sleep, you select restart. Have you ever done that?
Caller #3 (00:50:07):
Let me think for a second restart. Restart. No, I don't think I asked. Yeah. You
Leo Laporte (00:50:11):
Wanna do that from time to time. Anyway, windows does not do well over a long period of time. I bet you, I'm just gonna suggest this at you know, kind of off the cuff because I, I'm not sure what's going on, but I bet you, if you click that start menu and you know, you have the on, off icon, you click the on off icon and you you've been choosing sleep. And sleep is what's confusing. It, I think probably it's hibernating and it's getting confused, but if you choose restart and the behavior goes away I think you are right. You don't need to actively select sleep, sleep. It'll go to sleep. You can change the timing in your power settings, but it'll go to sleep after a period of time. If you want you, you can change it to five minutes.
Leo Laporte (00:50:54):
So it goes to sleep almost right away. You don't need to manually sleep it. Oh, I've good to not too. I, yeah. And I, and I think that there, you know, windows is notorious for having trouble with a setting called hibernate. So, so to understand this, you need to understand the difference between sleeping and IBER nation. And it's not like a bear sleeping merely as you know, turns off the screen and 10 tells the computer, okay, you can go into a low power mode, not off, but a low power mode. And the reason sleeping is good is because for instance, memory Ram has to constantly be refreshed or it forgets everything. And so sleeping is always it's, you know, it's a few Watts, it's a lower power, but not lo not off mode. Okay. That there is a mode called hibernate which is notoriously problematic in windows where it takes the contents of your memory, the stuff that wouldn't be preserved, if you didn't stay in a low power mode and saves it to the hard drive, and then in effect turns off it, it is a zero power mode.
Leo Laporte (00:52:04):
But the problem with that is when you wake it up, it has to load what it saved to the hard drive. And that can cause a problem. It's no, what kinda a problem? Well, like what you're describing all kinds of problems, cuz windows hibernate doesn't do very well. It's enabled by default. I often tell people to turn off hibernate. In fact, there's a couple of things to turn off that make windows more reliable. And they're related. One is the fast startup feature, which is essentially hibernating before shutdown. And one is hibernate. Both of those are bad because the, the com I mean, if I were to anthropomorphize the computer, it's groggy. Oh if you let, so it's just like a bear. That's been sleeping in a cave for six months when it first wakes up, it's kind of confused. And hibernate often is a confusing situation for a windows. The programs don't know they've been stopped. And so a lot of of things get confused by that. I suspect this is related. I think what's happening is your system might be hibernating. So the first thing is restart instead of sleep for the first time. And from then on don't click sleep anymore. If you wanna change a power management to have it sleep sooner, you can, but you don't need to manually do that. Let windows do it. Leo Laport de TECA.
Leo Laporte (00:53:35):
It's also the, you know, hibernate A lot of issues with windows come up with hibernate and what's they call fast start. So one thing you might do is turn off fast start. That might be all you need to do. But restart your machine. Actually, first thing I would do is turn off fast, start in windows, your windows 10, right? Yes. Yeah. It's a little tricky cuz you have to big bring up an old school configuration dialogue. Maybe I, maybe I don't need to walk you through this
Caller #3 (00:54:09):
Dealing with the wrong person. Yeah.
Leo Laporte (00:54:10):
I'm afraid that's not gonna be a good idea. It's a, you know, windows key, you type power config dot CPL you hit in. It's not yet. You don't wanna do that. Try just restarting it. I think that might, it might be if you haven't done that in a while, Richard, sometimes windows I would say windows should be restarted every few days for reliability.
Caller #3 (00:54:31):
One other thing to tell you, by the way, cause this is obviously an odd situation. I was the nuts who called you about that buzzing on, on yeah.
Leo Laporte (00:54:41):
Did you ever figure that out
Caller #3 (00:54:43):
Your hands?
Leo Laporte (00:54:44):
Yeah. I threw my hands
Caller #3 (00:54:46):
Been almost exclusively on Netflix videos. Yeah. Film
Leo Laporte (00:54:52):
It's it's something to go to do with Netflix. And I think it's, I still think it's something to do with Netflix choosing the wrong audio configuration, choosing a a Adobe or something like that, that your, your receiver can't handle. I'm almost positive. That's what
Caller #3 (00:55:05):
It's really weird. I, I talked to a friend of mine who seems to be pretty good about audio stuff and he threw up his hands. Yeah. He said, try this, try that. And I did, you know, it's nothing horrible cuz as I told you, I just switched to the horrible. Did you,
Leo Laporte (00:55:21):
Did you do the, the thing I suggested, which was to go into your TV settings and where's the audio coming through? Is this coming through a stereo? Right? You have a receiver,
Caller #3 (00:55:32):
A stereo, an UX receiver ox order.
Leo Laporte (00:55:34):
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Those are good. Yeah. Yeah. I have an onco as well.
Caller #3 (00:55:37):
I turned it them off. I go through the tin sound of, of the Visio.
Leo Laporte (00:55:41):
Yeah yeah. Yeah. What you wanna do is tell the Visio cause a Visio is feeding the on on cue. Tell the Visio to not send Doby. I think your onco can't handle Doby and Netflix is sending Doby or maybe going to Netflix and just, you wanna look at the audio settings and Netflix and say, I don't want any fancy surround sound. I just want the bit stream. I honestly, I think that'll fix it. Don't you don't need to right. Click the start menu, by the way, you could just left click it and it'll come up. I'm not sure why you're right. Clicking it. And that may have something to do well now I don't think so. Here's what you do when you, when you shut down, do this once, do the restart. So left click the start menu, click that on off switch icon, you know, the circle with a dash in it,
Caller #3 (00:56:27):
Right?
Leo Laporte (00:56:28):
Hold down the shift key. Then click restart. That turns off fast, restart. It'll clear out that hibernation file and that may be enough to fix it for good.
Caller #3 (00:56:39):
Okay. You know, it's not something I today be before I called it, I said, I wanted to get, see if I can access my block tax program. And I found a way to do that. Oh, good. It's hard to
Leo Laporte (00:56:51):
Just, but it shouldn't be doing that. It shouldn't be doing, I'll give you a shortcut. If you, you know, on your keyboard, there's a windows key, right? It's a weird key with the, if you, if you hit that, you can start typing the first few letters of any program and, and then hit return. It'll pop up. So if you hit the windows key and type, what's the H and R block tax program called taxes
Caller #3 (00:57:14):
H and R block. I don't know the exact
Leo Laporte (00:57:16):
Windows key type B L O C K, and hit return.
Caller #3 (00:57:20):
Oh, okay.
Leo Laporte (00:57:21):
And that'll quickly launch it. You don't need icons at all.
Caller #3 (00:57:24):
Right. Okay. Thank you. It's weird.
Leo Laporte (00:57:26):
Yeah, there's a, there's a, there's a, a workaround. Hey, I always like talking to you, Richard. You, you, you come up with the toughest problems. Thank you. Sorry. Oh, no. I love it. Have a good day
Caller #3 (00:57:37):
And a good day to later this afternoon. Yeah.
Leo Laporte (00:57:39):
Oh gosh. Good luck. All right, Sam let's let's get, oh, I gotta take it back. John's been messing with the two hickeys here. All right. All right. Now it's your turn, my friend.
Sam Abuelsamid (00:57:51):
All right. So in in Chicago this week, there, there wasn't actually any new vehicles revealed that hadn't been shown before. There was a few that were, hadn't been at an auto show previously, but like vehicles like the Chevy Silverado EV that's coming out next year. The the new Ford Bronco Raptor and some others, but there were no actual new vehicles. The actual actually the probably the biggest story out of the Chicago auto show this year was found by a friend of mine named Larry ake who writes for automotive news. He was at an event on Wednesday night and he was talking to the the head of the Chicago automotive trade association, which is a dealer group that runs the show and found out an interesting tidbit about the camp Jeep display.
Sam Abuelsamid (00:58:43):
So back about 15 years ago at the Chicago show Jeep started doing an indoor driving demonstration facility for for Jeep vehicles for their off-road vehicles to show 'em off. So customers, when they come to the public days of the show could try them out, you know, try climbing steep Hills and going over boulders and things like that. And they called it camp Jeep. And part of that was they had this 18 foot hill with very steep ramps that you would, you could drive a Wrangler up, you know, climb over climb over this, this hill. It was, it was about 18 feet tall. This, you know, it was a steel rig last year that when they did the Chicago show in July, it's usually in February, but they did it in July last year because of COVID Ford had just launched the new Bronco, which is a competitor to the Wrangler.
Sam Abuelsamid (00:59:36):
They did their own driving demo area. They up with Bronco mountain turns out Bronco mountain was 21 feet tall, about three feet taller than the Jeep display. So this year at the Chicago auto show Jeep was back with a new mountain for their driving display. And turns out it's 28 feet tall. Can tell that executives in the auto industry are very, very competitive people. And Jeep did not want to be shown up by their, by their new competition from Ford. So they built the tallest hill. They could possibly fit inside of the McCormack place center, McCormack place convention center in Chicago without having the roofs of the vehicles hitting the, the roof of the, of the, the show hall. So they built a 28 foot tall mountain that you can climb over in a Wrangler.
Sam Abuelsamid (01:00:34):
Other than that, there wasn't a whole lot of actual news at the show. But and, and alpha Rome Tali that I talked about earlier was actually announced a, a couple of days before the show and was not actually in Chicago, but the Tali will be going on sale in Europe, in June of this year. And as it's coming to north America this fall so probably in the fourth quarter, you'll be able to get a Tali complete with an NFT. Let's see what else we got here. An interesting, another interesting tidbit of news that came about last week was with Tesla with their response to the chip shortage in in China. They, the vehicles for the last several years have had a dual circuit power steering system which was designed to provide a redundancy if, and when they ever enabled full self-driving, because for full self-driving, you've gotta have redundant systems for for steering and braking.
Sam Abuelsamid (01:01:41):
And, and some other things is if you have the possibility that there won't be a human driver in there that can take over steering control if something like power steering system fails you've gotta have a backup system to do that. And in order to save on the number of chips, they had to install on the model three and the model Y built in China, they simply remove that secondary circuit or the controller for the secondary steering circuit. And while that's not a problem for those vehicles, as long as they're being driven, I mean, it's basically the same as most other cars on the road. Cuz if the, if the power steering fails, you can still steer the vehicle. You just have to put more effort into into the steering wheel to do it. They didn't bother to tell their customers that they were doing this.
Sam Abuelsamid (01:02:29):
And so those vehicles now without going back and doing a retrofit at some point in the future will probably not ever be able to enable full self-driving, which is something that Tesla has been touting for many years, that all of their cars will be capable of doing, which is software updates. They will actually have to go back and do a hardware fix to those vehicles to make that, to enable that. But those vehicles have not come to they're sold in China and in some European markets, but they're not sold over here. So but they didn't bother to tell their customers in China about this change until somebody happened to stumble across it. But it's one of, one of the things that many automakers are doing, which is removing to get around the chip shortage.
Leo Laporte (01:03:12):
Thank you. My good friend. Hope to see you next week.
Sam Abuelsamid (01:03:17):
Yep. I'll talk to you next week later.
Leo Laporte (01:03:18):
You coming out anytime soon?
Leo Laporte (01:03:22):
Tell those over
Sam Abuelsamid (01:03:23):
Nothing's scheduled yet, but hopefully, hopefully to
Leo Laporte (01:03:25):
Carmel. Thank you, sir. 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, security. Anything you can think of that has to do with technology. Even buzzing speakers and giant icons. 88, 88. I did not help. I did not help at all our last call. Eighty eight eighty eight. Ask Leo that's. The phone number fast startup on windows is, is kind of notoriously a pro problem in windows. It's kind of complicated to disable it. It's a control panel that Microsoft has hidden, that still exists.
Leo Laporte (01:04:10):
Remember the old school windows, I guess windows seven, for sure. Maybe windows eight control panel. They started as migrated. I thinking windows eight and by windows 10, they, they went to these kind of user friendly control panels. This is always a problem in computing. User friendly often means sophisticated, hostile. It's easy to use means you can't do as many things as you used to do. And one of the thing, things a lot of users want to do is turn off fast startup or hibernation. So, but the Microsoft in their wisdom, I guess this was wise or maybe Lacey, cuz they didn't wanna take it out, left the old control panels in. You just can't get to them unless you know the magic ENCA, maybe they left it so that people can look like wizards. I shall now invoke the magic incantation to bring up the control panels of yes to year.
Leo Laporte (01:05:17):
You ready for it? Windows key. Plus R brings up the run dialogue. That's just where you type in some text windows key plus R and then you type P O w E R C FG dot C P CPL. It means control panels. The old control panel, extension and P I think you could figure out what P O w U E R C F G is power config. Yes. It's the old power options control panel. The one you can't see anymore, if you hit enter, then you can see it. And then you can turn off. Maybe you could do it from the new control panels. I just like using, I like being the wizard with the in eighty eight eighty eight ask Leo's a phone number. That's that's how you get ahold of me from Corona Delmar, California. One of my favorite places on the coast chip. Hello chip.
Caller #4 (01:06:12):
Hi Leo. I'm thinking of getting the Samsung S 22 ultra. Ooh, me
Leo Laporte (01:06:17):
Too. Me too. Me too. Probably
Caller #4 (01:06:21):
Probably gonna get it with the five 12 gigabytes. My concern is what's the best way to get protection for it, you know, insurance for drops and that sort of thing.
Leo Laporte (01:06:32):
Yeah. Samsung offers protection like that. However, it is not cheap. In fact I've no some people complaining because for the S 21, if you bought the protection, I think it was like $39 to replace a cracked screen. It was a good price and it's gone up a lot and it's more than a hundred bucks now to replace a cracked screen. So it's
Caller #4 (01:06:53):
Not $250 for the S 22 ultra. Is
Leo Laporte (01:06:56):
It holy cow? Yes. That's for the insurance or that's just to replace the crack screen.
Caller #4 (01:07:03):
That's what it says to replace the screen on the Amazon website.
Leo Laporte (01:07:06):
That's if you have the insurance,
Caller #4 (01:07:09):
I chuckled that's
Leo Laporte (01:07:11):
Cray Cray. Now I know why people were complaining. I didn't, I didn't. What, what, so I don't use, in fact I never do. I bought the S 22 alter when it came out on Wednesday and, you know, pre-ordered it for having a couple of weeks, but I never buy the the insurance because that's a real profit center for all these companies. And when I hear profit center tells me they're charging more than it's worth, right. They're charging more than of costs them. So I always choose to self-insure. But on the other hand, I don't drop phones. I haven't cracked a screen in a long time, but that seems like an awfully high price. You know, what you might do is call ire, you fix, or one of these, you know little kiosk phone repair companies and say, well, how much would it cost? Do you know yet what it'd cost you to replace the S 22 ultra screen? Cuz it can't. I bet it wouldn't be 256 bucks, unless there's some magic potion that Samsung's using on those screens. That's a that's after insurance 256 bucks. Crazy. Do you, do you break your screen a lot?
Caller #4 (01:08:22):
No, actually I use one of those holsters with the two part. There's a shell that goes on the phone and the, on your waist. It's got a kickstand and I've never broken a screen on anything. The only problems I've ever had is when the phone itself internally starts to get wonky and goes bad. I've through Verizon, I've replaced two phones in the last 16 years or 18 years all the time I've been paying the insurance through Verizon.
Leo Laporte (01:08:52):
So you're a good candidate to self-insure you would've saved money obviously, cuz you don't break things. Yeah. I see. You know, at least Samsung to their credit on the, on the website puts that right up front, add Samsung care plus for extended coverage. Your phone with added peace of mind, crack screens repaired for merely $249. What, and by the way, you're paying for two years, 220 bucks for the insurance service fees range from 99 to 250 bucks coverage for accidental spills from handling. Yeah, except the deductible, right? That's what you care about. I never buy that stuff, but that's outrageous. That's really outrageous. There's Lee square trade and others, you know, there are other companies that offer insurance, if you want insurance and you know, you can go around and look, see what square trade for instance, which is probably the best known in fact Samsung for all I know, uses them. But go to square trade is run by all state and go check them. Now I have to say bought square,
Caller #4 (01:09:57):
Uses a Syrian,
Leo Laporte (01:09:58):
A Syrian. Okay, well, so see if there's competitive pricing from all state from square trade. I have to say we use square trade to warranty our our dishwasher that has not worked out well. Not at all. I've think I've hold this story before bar dishwasher. This couple of weeks ago stopped draining. You know, that happens with dishwashers and I being a handyman. No, not at all. You know, did all the things you're supposed to do took the, the hose off the, you know, to the air gap and made sure everything was clear and it cleared everything out, it drained, but then it failed again. So we called square trade. We got a, we got, we bought the warranty. My wife did. I never buy warranties. Anyway, she bought it. They sent a guy out who didn't do anything. He put his hand on the motor and said, oh, I think it's okay. And left.
Leo Laporte (01:10:55):
Now we can't get anybody to return our calls and all state says has sent us parts, but they say, we do. You gotta have to find, you're gonna have to find somebody to fix it cuz we don't have anybody.
Leo Laporte (01:11:08):
What? So now, and I'll fill you in as this proceeds, but now we're trying to say, well look, we bought insurance. You you're not fixing it. You need to give us a new dishwasher. Ah, that will be interesting. No, the motor wasn't the issue. It turns out, I think it is the you know, these, all these devices now are controlled by sophisticated computer chips. So this might be related to the problem. Oh no, wait a minute though. We have the part, I was gonna blame the, everybody blames now the the shortage, the chip shortage. Well, no, we have the part. So it's not that I guess I could try putting it in, but that seems a recipe for disaster,
Leo Laporte (01:11:51):
But should I invite Burke over Burke? I'll make you a brisket. If you'll fix the dishwasher. Now that's a square trade. Eighty eight eighty eight. Ask Leo the phone number. Not a whole brisket. You'll share it with me. Okay. And, and you bring the creamed, corn and beans. He's got a lot, apparently Leo Laporte the Tech Guy. Yes. Steam. I think that's exactly right. Ari steam gets into the control panel. It's not the first time this has happened. And it short circuits. The circuitry. Yeah. It will avoid the warranty except what good is the warranty if they won't fix anything.
Leo Laporte (01:12:35):
We, we don't have anybody that can fix a dishwasher. What are you talking about? So should I should John, you would know how to do that replace that. Oh, you're good. Well, I'm tempted. I mean we have the circuit board so they sent the pump and then Donny came out, put his hand on the pump, said, no, it's not the pump. And it was something else. Maybe it wasn't the pump. But anyway, he took the pump part with him. Cuz what I would've liked is replaced the part, but he didn't. He said, no, no I feel the pump. I, the pump He's the pump whisper. So but Lisa was mad because the previous, we, this is not the first time we've had dishwasher wo the previous dishwasher. She says that like 20 guys came out ne nobody could fix it till we got the one guy who brought D actual diagnostic equipment who said, oh yeah, these boards are fried and replaced them. And it worked Till it must have died again. Cuz we got a new dishwasher at some point. But anyway, Yeah, I did all that. Yeah. It's it's it's like error E nine R one or something and
Leo Laporte (01:13:59):
Yeah, Well that's my, my fear, you know, I couldn't, the drain hose was so deep inside the thing. I couldn't really get the other end off. So I got the one end it's honestly, but Lisa won't do that. There's there's just three of us. It's easy to, I don't mind hand washing the dishes. I like to do it, but I guess we paid for a dishwasher it's only a year old. Yeah. And we paid for square trade. But now square trade says, well we don't, we don't have anybody.
Leo Laporte (01:14:35):
So we, so it's my job. Now on Monday I was supposed to do it on Friday, but I was too tired. I was, I have to call every dishwasher, repair man in the nine state area. And and see if anybody can come the, and I would say, you know, Hey, we've got the part, so I'm gonna do that. And I guess they'll reimburse us. If we can find somebody who can do it.
... (01:14:59):
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Leo Laporte (01:15:33):
Leo Laporte half a point. Leo Laporte the half a point Tech Guy, eighty eight eighty eight. Ask Leo that's the phone number? (888) 827-5536. Toll free from anywhere in the us or Canada. Gale is in Texas canyon lake. Hello Gale.
Caller #5 (01:15:49):
Hi Leo big fans since the car days. Oh,
Leo Laporte (01:15:53):
It's great to hear from you. Thank you.
Caller #5 (01:15:55):
Well I have a question. I get my star link in this week.
Leo Laporte (01:15:59):
So jealous.
Caller #5 (01:16:01):
Yes. I ordered it a year ago this month.
Leo Laporte (01:16:05):
So I should check. Did you get an email? Is that how you found out it was available?
Caller #5 (01:16:10):
Yeah, because
Leo Laporte (01:16:11):
I put the hundred bucks down about a ago. So I should check. Yeah. Yeah,
Caller #5 (01:16:15):
You should. Yeah. Well they'll tell you Anna, but I would like, I was checking like Bailey the last you know month.
Leo Laporte (01:16:22):
Yeah. Yeah. You're excited now. What's your inter what's your current internet provider's situation?
Caller #5 (01:16:28):
Well, we're rural. We're like we're in the middle between Austin and Antonio.
Leo Laporte (01:16:34):
So how do you even get online? Is it a phone call or what
Caller #5 (01:16:39):
It it's where like the rural co-op phone provider or our satellite. Okay. These are options. Yeah.
Leo Laporte (01:16:48):
Yeah. And, and traditional satellite exceed Hughes. They're not good. They have bandwidth caps. They speed limitations. Yeah. Yeah. So Starlink seems like a good bet. It's expensive.
Caller #5 (01:17:02):
Well, for me actually, because they make you keep your landline, even though you don't need it because they tell you, oh, it's more expensive if you don't have your landline for
Leo Laporte (01:17:12):
Internet. Oh,
Caller #5 (01:17:14):
Oh
Leo Laporte (01:17:14):
Yeah. So you can get rid of that.
Caller #5 (01:17:16):
So it's actually gonna save me. I'm paying 140 now, so it'll be 99. Oh,
Leo Laporte (01:17:22):
You're saving 50 bucks.
Caller #5 (01:17:23):
Exactly.
Leo Laporte (01:17:25):
That's exciting.
Caller #5 (01:17:27):
So my is, and I'd like, I'll keep you updated as best as I can get ahold of you, but should I go with telescopic or a fixed pole and I have to do 20 feet and I could do a pivot fixed pole, but a telescopic. I wonder if it wobbles more that's
Leo Laporte (01:17:44):
Here's the issue? The Starlink needs to have a very clear view of the sky cause the satellites are moving.
Caller #5 (01:17:51):
Correct. That's why I need 20 feet. So
Leo Laporte (01:17:54):
Do you have a lot of trees around the house?
Caller #5 (01:17:57):
Just one,
Leo Laporte (01:17:58):
Just one you need to get above. You need to have it be ideally anyway, not doesn't have to be, but it would ideally be able if you were sitting on that pole to see the horizon, it all the way around.
Caller #5 (01:18:11):
Yeah. And that that'll be 20 feet, but I guess my question is, would a telescopic wobble more?
Leo Laporte (01:18:17):
I don't have any experience with them. So I don't know. Maybe the chat room has tried it. The nice thing about the telescopic is you can adjust it.
Caller #5 (01:18:25):
Right?
Leo Laporte (01:18:26):
And you, you, you know, the Starling gives you a nice bit of little saw software that will really help you position it and, and, and they give you feedback all the time about obstacles. So you really know how it's affecting you. Yeah. Yeah. So so I would look at reviews from Starlink users on the telescopic. You're not getting it from Starlink. You're getting it from a third party. Right?
Caller #5 (01:18:49):
Well, I it's an option. I mean, they sell
Leo Laporte (01:18:53):
It,
Caller #5 (01:18:54):
They sell it on Starling. They sell one, but I mean, we have metal poles at our
Leo Laporte (01:18:59):
Oh, okay. Yeah. There's a lot of companies that sell 'em I see one called Aluma tower. Yeah, you can get it on Amazon. That goes up to 34 feet. Even if it's telescopic or not, the higher you get it. Of course some more it's gonna sway, but swaying isn't the end of the, the world unless
Caller #5 (01:19:17):
Okay. That's not an issue. That was my concern. Yeah. If it sways more, if that is a problem
Leo Laporte (01:19:23):
Because of the way star, well, I don't have any experience with it yet cuz like you I've been waiting. But my understanding is because of the way star, our link works, the dish moving a bit's not gonna be a problem.
Caller #5 (01:19:36):
That's what I'm kind of thinking too. You're constantly hooking up to a satellite, I guess somehow
Leo Laporte (01:19:42):
Cal Sage gives me the words I've seen wobbly polls work fine with Starlink since it's a phased array.
Caller #5 (01:19:51):
Ah, look know.
Leo Laporte (01:19:53):
So there you go. I don't know what that means, but that's good. So yeah. I mean I've seen here's one a 30 foot telescopic kit. Yeah. I would just, you know, this is where Amazon's your friend look at reviews for people. Who've tried it with Starlink and see it is gonna sway any, whether it's telescopic or not the higher it is, you know, it's just the nature of a, of a pole it's gonna sway unless it's really thick and big. And you know, I mean you could, you could put in a, a flag, you know, they have flag poles that don't sway.
Caller #5 (01:20:26):
Right. Well it's only 20 feet and we'll have like a good solid one and a half inch, two inch post, you know,
Leo Laporte (01:20:33):
I think you, I am so jealous. Yeah. Yeah. And you're gonna, and you're gonna suddenly be in, in the real world because these days a lack of internet is, is terrible. Terrible, right?
Caller #5 (01:20:47):
Yeah. We're we're small business owners and we need the internet. That's everything we do. We're we're an hour drive to either city. So yeah. Or
Leo Laporte (01:20:57):
But now in fact this is one of the reasons I, I ordered when I don't need it where I am, but I, I have this fantasy of doing doing the radio show every in the world.
Caller #5 (01:21:08):
Well, me too,
Leo Laporte (01:21:10):
You could work anywhere now. Currently Starlink is tied to your location. They don't allow you to move around with it, but they say coming down the road they will be, they will be doing that. And that's what, that's why I wanted to get in early on this. Well, I'm this, and for those who don't know what we're talking about, this is Elon Musks, SpaceX strategy. In fact it's, it's kind of an, it's got an interlocking financing situation where he is getting one to pay for the other, but they've been launching satellites. They lost, they lost, I think it was 40 satellites last week because they got hit by a solar storm, but that's okay. They're making a hundred a week. Their idea is to get 12,000 sta satellites up in the sky, lower earth orbit, very low earth orbit and provide internet to every square inch of the planet, which wow. Is pretty ambitious. And yet he's doing it,
Caller #5 (01:22:03):
He's doing it.
Leo Laporte (01:22:04):
He's doing it. And he's a thinker. Yeah. He is, you know, this is really and he's, and he's, you know, he's, he, it was in beta for a while and now they're starting to roll it out and you have to go to Starlink and sign up and give him a hundred bucks. It's
Caller #5 (01:22:18):
Small club right now.
Leo Laporte (01:22:19):
Yeah. It's a small club. And that's the other question is what's it gonna be like is more people use it, but there are so many satellites. I don't know if that's, it's not designed for a huge, no people to use it.
Caller #5 (01:22:31):
So, and he's launching away and making rockets every month or
Leo Laporte (01:22:36):
I know it's amazing. Yeah. So the last email I got from Starlink was August 20, 21. Your payment has been processed well for your, your deposit. Yeah. On my deposit. So I better log in. Cause if you're getting it in Texas, maybe I'm gonna start get that's exciting. Congratulations. It was a
Caller #5 (01:22:57):
Year. So in February.
Leo Laporte (01:22:59):
So it takes a while. It takes a while. Let's see starlet expects to expand service in your area in 2023. So I'm still a little bit.
Caller #5 (01:23:10):
Oh wow. Wow. Oh, I might have snuck in there right before the whole COVID
Leo Laporte (01:23:16):
Good job.
Caller #5 (01:23:18):
Whatever. What
Leo Laporte (01:23:18):
A lifesaver though, for you, what has your speed been?
Caller #5 (01:23:22):
Well, you know, right before, well, when I called you, I did do a little test on, I forgot the website, but it said 2 68 down and 81 up
Leo Laporte (01:23:33):
268 megabits.
Caller #5 (01:23:34):
Yeah.
Leo Laporte (01:23:35):
Oh, well you're doing fine. I don't think you're gonna get that much with Starlink. Well,
Caller #5 (01:23:40):
I, well, I, you know what, but I don't like the, the $50 little,
Leo Laporte (01:23:46):
So they must, so what they're doing, yeah. They're running fiber out to their location. This is actually a good solution. And they're providing community internet.
Caller #5 (01:23:54):
Exactly. Yeah. That's what, yeah. We're in an older part. Cause the new, the new building around here is all fiber.
Leo Laporte (01:24:03):
Yeah. So they've got fiber and they're just selling it off. Yeah. But it's expensive. Starlink is gonna be, I, I can't wait to hear how it works for you. Good luck. I'll have fun. Leo Laporte big Tech Guy. Ah, yes. Whenever I hear that song, whether I'm in a grocery store or, or on the radio. I think of Chris mark, the photo guy. He's my personal photo sensei@sensei.photo joins us every week to talk about, get better pictures, Chris. I ordered the new Samsung galaxy S 22 ultra.
Chris Marquardt (01:24:38):
Oh, you did?
Leo Laporte (01:24:39):
Well, I, you know, it's part of my job. Thank goodness. It's the main reason I'm doing this to get, to get all this stuff. Great. Excuse you. Yeah, it's a good excuse. When I asked my wife, she says, you have to. I said, oh, okay. It's part of my job. Cuz I'm curious about the cameras. I tell you it's a real horse race between Google, apple and Samsung to make the best cameras. So I'm very curious. And one of the things, all three purport to be able do is take pictures of the night sky.
Chris Marquardt (01:25:11):
Yes. And that's what I wanna talk about. Yeah.
Chris Marquardt (01:25:15):
The night sky, the, and for everyone. Okay. We'll we'll, we'll try to, I'll try to get to the, to the smartphones at the end of this, but just, just in general, there are things in the night sky and if you have a kind of a modern niche camera than or even a DSLR or something, then you'll be able to take pictures of things. And I wanna look at four different things here. The first one being kind of the, let me bring up some photos here kind of being the easiest one to shoot is the star trails pictures. Like when you put the camera on a iPod and then just expose hour,
Leo Laporte (01:25:50):
How long has this exposure hour there? They're just an interest. One, one sec, one hour. Yeah, there
Chris Marquardt (01:25:57):
Maybe half an hour. That, that, that should be 15 minutes, maybe half an hour. So you put the camera up on a tripod, you use a remote shutter of sorts there. You might have an app on your phone for that now and just long expose it. So the camera to bald mode use a low ISO and, and, and just, just go for it. And the longer you can go with your camera, the longer those star trails will be. There's also software that lets you take there's software that, that, that lets you take multiple short, shorter pictures and then just stack them together later on. So there's different ways to do that, but it's a fairly simple entry way into shooting pictures of the night sky. The second thing that people wanna shoot is of course the moon and that is easier than you might think because the moon is the Sunshine's directly at the moon.
Chris Marquardt (01:26:54):
The moon is really bright in the sky. It's so bright that usually when you point your smartphone or a camera automatic mode at the moon, it will just open. We'll just overpower things, cuz it's so bright. So you end up with a white blob in a black sky, but if you have a telephoto lens the longer, the better. So like your, your one, 100 millimeter lens, won't really do you any good? So we're talking 5, 600, 800 something longish. Then you can even shoot moon photos handheld. You don't even need a tripod for them. It's relatively simply the one thing you wanna look up for that is it's called the Moony 11. It's kind of a ruler thumb that will give you the, the settings to set your camera to, to get a good exposure of the moon all. And again, Moony 11 is the, is the thing to look for. I think it's even on Wikipedia and this way you can shoot moon photos with the telephoto lens handheld, I've done it and it comes out tech sharp not too hard. Of course, if you have a, a bit of a sh let's say not super telephone, 200 millimeter, something, then the moon might come out a bit smaller on the photo. But
Leo Laporte (01:28:12):
You could zoom in on that, right? You could crop in,
Chris Marquardt (01:28:15):
You could crop in yes you could crop in cuz today's cameras. They have, I don't know, a gazillion mega pixels. So you have enough enough pixels there. Just crop it out. That's just fine. Of course you can. If you, if you catch the moon, not as a full moon, but somewhere in the middle, then you'll get this a nice lesson in photography, which is that the, the, the, the light coming from the side brings the textures out. So you get the craters in everything when the light comes from the side, which is very cool. And of course if you have a really good long lens, then you can get all, all the details of the moon that you want. Of course bonus points. If you add other stuff in there, this is an example of a, of an airplane, a silhouette of an airplane in front of the moon. So that is pretty cool. Wow. But that requires planning and, and some luck, I guess. Second thing in the sky is the Endra galaxy. That one is up to six times as big as the moon is just not as bright. So we don't really see it. But if you are in a really dark area, you can actually see it with your eyes. So
Leo Laporte (01:29:25):
This isn't a telescope. This is just what, what, how, how you,
Chris Marquardt (01:29:30):
You, you can, that's a 300 millimeter lens. Okay. Trust, believe it or not. It's just 300 millimeters on an APSC sensor on a, on a regular normal sensor. And for that you need, you need a, a, what's called a tracking mound, something that you put on your tripod that keeps the camera motion moving with the sky. So
Leo Laporte (01:29:51):
Cause you're gonna have to
Chris Marquardt (01:29:52):
Time
Leo Laporte (01:29:53):
This, how long is this?
Chris Marquardt (01:29:54):
You have to time lapse this, we're talking 30 seconds a minute, two minutes, maybe depending on your setting,
Leo Laporte (01:30:01):
As slow as that, that is you would still that this, if you didn't have a motorized mound, the stars would streak.
Chris Marquardt (01:30:07):
They would. So, so motorized mounds more, a bit of a, a bit specialized of course, but for someone who's really into that kind of Astro photography, that is kind of a must. And then of course the Milky way, the Milky way is out there. Well, depending on, on, if the moon's not up in the sky, it's easier to take a picture of the Milky way. And of course that one you can actually, with modern smartphones, you can actually take a picture of the Milky way with the smartphone. Wow. And that is maybe not like this one, cuz that is, that's a really a really good one. But if you have a slow shutter app or a night app, or even the, the latest smartphones have a, have a night mode that will help you take pictures of the stars that, and a bit of post pro production will give you we'll give you the Milky way on a smartphone.
Leo Laporte (01:31:05):
Beautiful, beautiful.
Chris Marquardt (01:31:07):
And then of course, what, what you can do is to just add some interest, you can combine a, a really interesting foreground picture with a picture of the night sky taken from the same location, a bit of editing magic. And then you end up with something like this, where you have the car the car lights streaks in the foreground and the Milky way on top of
Leo Laporte (01:31:30):
It, credit credit to Lu Lucas Schlag for that, because that is maybe the, one of the most amazing Astro photography pictures I've ever seen. That's incredible
Chris Marquardt (01:31:40):
And credit credits to everyone who who, who, who takes these pictures and puts them on flicker. Yeah. And allows others to put them in their gallery galleries. That's what I've been doing here. I've been scouting these and, and selecting pictures that other people have taken. We put
Leo Laporte (01:31:55):
A, we put
Chris Marquardt (01:31:55):
A link it's really amazing.
Leo Laporte (01:31:56):
We put a link to the gallery in our show notes. I also put it in the chat room. So you can see them for yourself cause I know it's radio and you can't, but boy, those are beautiful. Were any of those taken with smartphones or were they all with professional?
Chris Marquardt (01:32:11):
I don't think so. Not sure. Not
Leo Laporte (01:32:13):
Sure. But Google has made a lot of hay about how we can do Astro photography now in the pixel six. And Apple's starting to do that. I'm sure Samsung will do it.
Chris Marquardt (01:32:22):
Yeah. Get a, get a, get a tripod and a little holder for your phone. And then you are set to take star pictures with
Leo Laporte (01:32:29):
This market and find somewhere without a lot of city light scattered through the
Chris Marquardt (01:32:34):
Sky. It helps. Yes.
Leo Laporte (01:32:36):
You live far away enough from the, the city lights to be able to get good sky photos where you are.
Chris Marquardt (01:32:42):
Yeah. It's, it's not too bad out here in the countryside, but I mean, I've been to some deserts and spaces where that's where you, it is really dark and that's when it becomes really interesting. Yes.
Leo Laporte (01:32:53):
What's our assignment this week, Chris Mark Martin,
Chris Marquardt (01:32:57):
The silly assignment is still up.
Leo Laporte (01:33:00):
We're looking for pictures to illustrate the word or concept silly if you find one and by the way, we don't judge you based on the camera. You're using use an Instamatic. If you want, if it's a silly picture, that's all that matters. And tag it though, upload it to flicker with the tag TG for Tech Guy, silly TG silly, submit it to our Tech Guy group. If we've got a few more weeks for you to take a silly picture, then Chris is gonna do a Roundup of three of his favorites. Thank you, Chris sensei.photo take care.
Speaker 16 (01:33:35):
Excellent. Excellent.
Leo Laporte (01:33:40):
Thank you my friend. Very good.
Chris Marquardt (01:33:43):
I will have to skip next Sunday.
Leo Laporte (01:33:47):
Okay. We'll make a note of that. Laura and John know Chris, next Sunday.
Chris Marquardt (01:33:52):
I'll visit my parents. Aw,
Leo Laporte (01:33:55):
That's good. Aw. Yeah.
Chris Marquardt (01:33:58):
Haven't seen them in way too long. So
Leo Laporte (01:34:00):
Good.
Chris Marquardt (01:34:01):
It's about time again. Good.
Leo Laporte (01:34:04):
All right. Right. So thanks Chris.
Chris Marquardt (01:34:06):
See you in two weeks. Take care. Take care. Bye bye.
Leo Laporte (01:34:10):
Happy Valentine's day tomorrow. Yeah. Is this the first time the superb owl and Valentine's day have been two consecutive days. I who cares? Eighty eight, eighty eight. LIO is the phone number (888) 827-5536. Toll free from anywhere in the us or Canada from Northridge. Alex is on the line. Hi Alex.
Caller #6 (01:34:37):
How are you?
Leo Laporte (01:34:37):
I'm great. How are you?
Caller #6 (01:34:39):
Awesome. technical question a little bit. So we have an executable file exe.
Leo Laporte (01:34:48):
Yeah.
Caller #6 (01:34:49):
And we use a device. We prototyping a device to load that E XE file on it, using FTDI chip to program the micro controller. The current P windows machine that I have windows 10, all of a sudden, it just does not. It, it goes into the terminal and it just
Leo Laporte (01:35:13):
Doesn't run it quits.
Caller #6 (01:35:14):
Yeah, it quits, right? I'm like, okay, fine. Maybe it's my, maybe it's the code. Maybe it's my device. So I went to best buy, bought a one of those cube Lenovos plugged it in. It worked the, the, the, the do loads once
Leo Laporte (01:35:31):
Interesting four
Caller #6 (01:35:31):
Times, four times now it reaches to like number seven and it quits no longer are able to do the executable like what's going on here. So I reset, you know, when you go to the prompt and reset this PC, I reset the PC. Then it works again up to seven times and then puts
Leo Laporte (01:35:50):
Again. So what you're running into is the auto run issue. Auto run. If you think about it is a danger, because if you plug in a device and it automatically can run an, an executable,
Caller #6 (01:36:04):
It's not automatic. You have to double click on it. Oh,
Leo Laporte (01:36:07):
Oh, it's not, you're not using auto run dot inf to get it started. No, no, no. So you're plugging in a, a store mass storage device of some kind.
Caller #6 (01:36:15):
Yeah. It's basically, it's a base based on an, got 8 32 P with, you know, just a small device that we use,
Leo Laporte (01:36:23):
But it appears to windows as a mass storage device as a, as a drive. Okay, exactly. So you're plugging it in windows of course has to do plug and play. It goes D doom and says, I see a new drive and it go doom do it, does that. It does all of that. And you can look at the drive, you can open the drive window. And the first seven times you try it, you can double click the Axe and it runs. Yep. The seventh time, it just brings up a terminal with nothing.
Caller #6 (01:36:48):
Well, the, the terminal almost starts, but then it shuts down automatically instead of writing bunch of hashtags and reading and writing, it doesn't even get to that point anymore. It just quick.
Leo Laporte (01:37:00):
That is a really interesting conundrum.
Caller #6 (01:37:03):
So I tried it on my neighbor's computer. Yeah. And there no problems keeps running and running every time. And I asked them, what kind of computer do you have? Like, I don't know, just a normal computer, I guess
Leo Laporte (01:37:17):
You plug in the device. It wrecks recognizes it even even when it won't run the program, it'll recognize it. Is there something about THEC that's unusual? It's your code?
Caller #6 (01:37:27):
No, because remember it works the first seven times.
Leo Laporte (01:37:31):
Yeah, but it's your code?
Caller #6 (01:37:33):
Yes.
Leo Laporte (01:37:33):
Okay. Boy, that's a really interesting, I'm not sure. I think this is one where you've gotta, I'm gonna almost, I'm gonna put it on you. There's a bug in your software that is triggering something and I'm not sure what you know, it might be a security issue because remember nowadays we're very, windows has to be very cautious about what people are running. Sure. And so I might be a security issue. The seven times is a hint to you that something's happening the seventh time of
Caller #6 (01:38:12):
The neighbors. It goes 10. No, there's no limit on my neighbor's computer.
Leo Laporte (01:38:16):
All of them, it just runs and runs and never stops. It's yeah, never. And is it, is it an older computer? Is it the same version of the operating system?
Caller #6 (01:38:24):
Understand?
Leo Laporte (01:38:28):
Huh. So it's modern, modern OS.
Caller #6 (01:38:31):
So I thought maybe there is something that is like a, on my Mac at some point when I used to do it on my Mac, when I go to my network, I would see all of those FTDI chip serial numbers. Yeah. All of them like hundreds of them, because every time you plug it in the Mac registers it in the the network list, basically like, oh, okay. That's interesting. So is there anything on windows that other than resetting the stupid computer every time? Is there, is there a way to
Leo Laporte (01:39:07):
I'm I, I think you, what is your, what does this E exe do?
Caller #6 (01:39:11):
It flashes this particular device that we're working.
Leo Laporte (01:39:14):
Okay. It's a flasher. It, it's not your software. It's the software from the, it is
Caller #6 (01:39:19):
Using yeah. Theo. I export the X file,
Leo Laporte (01:39:23):
But it's so it's something you wrote, but the, the loader the, is their loader, right. It's not your loader or do you use your own loader code?
Caller #6 (01:39:32):
No, it's just my own code and what it is, it's just a batch processor basically. Okay. A terminal and it
Leo Laporte (01:39:38):
Loads, so it calls up a terminal and then executes a bunch of commands in the terminal. That's right.
Caller #6 (01:39:42):
That's right.
Leo Laporte (01:39:43):
So that shouldn't be a problem. There's not a memory leak issue or anything like that seems like though, that there's, there's something critical going on. That's triggering windows at some point to say, I don't wanna load the us anymore, but I, I have exactly. Yeah. Yeah. And I have I'm I'm, you know, it sounds like it might be a security thing. It's, it's possible, completely possible that the neighbors, you know, have a slightly different version. I would look at the, you know, all of the numbers in the windows 10 version to see if there's a different thing in the version.
Caller #6 (01:40:19):
But, but there's nothing for windows that you can clear cash. Even if I turn off the computer, I turn it back on. No go.
Leo Laporte (01:40:25):
You have to reinstall windows,
Caller #6 (01:40:27):
Reinstall, windows.
Leo Laporte (01:40:29):
See, again, that sounds to me like it's resetting some sort of internal counter and I don't know why it would be. I think you need to, you need somebody more sophisticated than I to help you to diagnose this. I don't know of any, oh, don't,
Caller #6 (01:40:45):
Don't have to estimate
Leo Laporte (01:40:47):
Yourself. I love this kind of problem. You know, as somebody who loves to code as a hobby, I you know, this is the kind of thing you run into. Why is it breaking? And it's usually a, a logic problem. It's something you can rationally figure out if you can get all the information. Yeah. Is it, it is okay. So red con five says it's resetting the clock interesting on the clock. So take, so that's interesting. I, I, you know, I just, I'll be honest with you. I can't be any help, Alex. It's a, it's a high level issue. It's a fascinating issue, but I don't think it's something I'm gonna be able to help you with. If that would be a good one to go to Reddit on or stack exchange age. But I think Reddit would be more valuable maybe go to the, the PC subreddit or there's developer subreddits.
Leo Laporte (01:41:39):
There's probably subreddits for that. AR do we actually, that might even be the best, best place to go and say, look, what is going on here? Or just go to the windows, subreddit somebody somewhere, some gray beard will say, ah, you know, windows after seven tries decides it's not going to launch that program anymore. Is it sounds like what's going on. Right. I would also check your neighbors exact release number for windows 10, make sure they're same release, same hot fixes, all of the same things. Cuz maybe this was something Microsoft added. Microsoft is always putting in little security latches. Sounds like you're triggering something. Oh, here's an yeah. Okay, good, good suggestion from the chat room rather than resetting the computer.
Leo Laporte (01:42:34):
When you build that PC, the first time you build windows, create an extra or two user account, a new user profile, cause one, this is always a good diagnostic tool for Mac and PC. If something is odd, logging into an unused user profile and trying the same thing, we'll give you some idea at least of where the problem lies. I'm gonna bet. I'm gonna bet you get seven more tries in a new user profile and then seven more tries after that. And seven more tries after that. Maybe not. Maybe it's setting a global flag in windows, but in it's it's interesting. Chatroom's guessing maybe your program is corrupting the registry. I doubt. I mean, if he's issuing just terminal commands with his E exe. Yeah. You might try doing it by hand and see if anything triggers anything. Leo, Laporte the tech now.
Leo Laporte (01:43:33):
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. Some might watch his technology of any Stripe. 88, 88. Ask Leo. Yeah, Stripe two eighty eight eighty eight. Ask Leo the phone number. That's toll free from anywhere in the us or Canada outside that area. You can still call, but you gotta use Skype or something like that should still be free. 88, 88. ASEO all the things we talk about. All the links are@techguylabs.com. This is episode 1868. We've got out the civil war. We're we're we're in reconstruction now 1868. You can go right there. What we do now because we've switched around with the website. We had show shut the old one down because we couldn't afford to update it with new software. There were, you know, software had aged out and now we have links. We also have a transcript that's new that you can search to find a part of the show that you're interested in with time codes. And then it takes a day or two to get that up a day or two to get up audio and video from the show. But then you can use that transcript to search and actually find the part of the show you're interested in. So it's all up there. Tech Guy will labs.com back to the phones. Gr North Carolina, Christopher on the line. Hi Christopher.
Caller #5 (01:45:01):
Hey there, Leah.
Leo Laporte (01:45:02):
Welcome. I hope you don't have a question about your R Juno crashing after seven restarts.
Caller #5 (01:45:09):
No, this you might, I think you can answer my it's it's it's something that everybody can probably use. I'm trying, there's all these cloud services to back up your photos on your phone that you take. Yes. And I, I, I need some advice if it, does it make sense to go at the cloud service from like the big companies or is there a, what I'm really curious about is is can you do cloud storage on your own? Yes. You
Leo Laporte (01:45:38):
Can
Caller #5 (01:45:38):
Have the yeah. Have a hard drive, have it at your house.
Leo Laporte (01:45:42):
So here's, here's the reason of course you wanna do this is it's essentially for backup, right? Photos. Yeah.
Caller #5 (01:45:48):
It's the same. It's I'm using it the same exact reason people use eye cloud on their, on phone. Yeah.
Leo Laporte (01:45:55):
You don't wanna ever lose a photo plus, you know, there's a benefit like with iCloud, you don't keep have to keep all the photos on your phone, so you don't run out of scarce memory. But you'd also like multiple copies in multiple places. Well, maybe you would. I mean, I take pictures, all sorts of stuff. It just took pictures of the serial number of my dishwasher. I'm not gonna need that after a few days, I would think so. Some things you wanna save for a few days, some things you wanna save for a lifetime wedding photos, baby photos, that kind of thing. I have 60. Go ahead.
Caller #5 (01:46:26):
Well, I'd like the way I'd like it to work is, is I can take my smartphone, which I'm gonna be using. I did buy the S 22 ultra. Mm I'm gonna be that's I'm already using S 21 ultra and I, I, I, I was crazy and had to see what the, I just wanted that pin and a little better camera, but yeah,
Leo Laporte (01:46:45):
I'm a I'm with you. I didn't buy the S 21. I actually last Samsung I own was the flip three and I'm trading that in for the ultra, but I'm a note fan. I used to love the galaxy notes. And so that stylist is back baby, and I can't wait. I'm excited,
Caller #5 (01:47:00):
But, but like, here's the, here's the meat to the, what I'm asking. I'd like to be able to take a picture on my S 22 ultra and it, it automatically send it to my local cloud. Yes. And like, I would have the hard drive on site. Like what do you know any brands or cause like I saw one, but the only problem with the one I saw was kind of expensive, but I'm, I always video and 4k and 60 frames and, and it, the, the hard, the, it would have to support that.
Leo Laporte (01:47:32):
So video is another matter entirely. So because video's big. And so there are a lot of ways to do this. This is a very popular thing. I would submit you want more than what you're asking for. You're saying, I just wanna take a picture and have it offload from my phone to local storage. So I have it available, but I think you probably want it in more than one place and that's the one problem with, okay, good. That's but that's the one problem with storing it locally is, you know, if I have it in the house and the house burns down while everything's gone, so any good backup strategy. And I would submit that even though you're saying, no, this is just offload the phone, you're still wanna back it up, should have both onsite and offsite storage. Now, if you're gonna delete it from the phone, that means, you know, you're putting all your eggs in this, in this basket at home.
Leo Laporte (01:48:21):
So there are a lot of ways to do this, but that's why a cloud solution is often a good idea. Even if you're doing your own cloud, there are all sorts of ways to do this. You know, if you wanna do it at home, there are network attached storage devices. They call 'em NASAs NAS from companies like Sonology my favorite. But there are others that will do this. In fact, Sonology has a photos app that is very much like Google photos that runs on the, on the network of attach storage server. From your point of view, your phone, it's still a cloud server. It's just at home instead of somebody else's cloud, there's an app on your phone. So you can see the photos just as you would with Google photos. So what Sonology has tried to do is create an analog to Google photos that is completely private and I've tried it, it works quite well.
Leo Laporte (01:49:12):
I, I can recommend it. They even have, you know, things like face recognition, you know, automatic organization, a lot of the things that Google photos now, nothing does as well as Google photos. I have to say that. And unless you're worried about Google having access to your photos, I still think Google photos is a pretty good deal. So it's got one, the cloud benefit. I mentioned, even if you're storing locally, even if you're using Sonology or a NAS or an internal hard drive, it does in fact store it as a secondary backup. You know, I have, I have to, I, a couple of years ago there was a company I can't even remember the name of it. Or if I would tell you that made a little vault, that you would put on your network at home, you'd put their app on your phone.
Leo Laporte (01:49:57):
It would automatically copy the vault. This was a great idea. I loved it. Even had a screen on it. So it did a little slideshow and they turned off the service made, making it a, you know, a $400 purchase that was useless because they turned off their servers. So ever since I've been a little leery about buying an expensive solution that relies on somebody else out there, but Google photos, if you're an Amazon prime member, Amazon prime actually backs up originals. Now you mentioned video and with all of these there's video takes up so much space. There might be restrictions. For instance, Amazon prime gives you free unlimited storage of the original stills photos, but only 10 gigabytes of video storage. And you can run through that pretty quick, cuz video's so big. Then you'll be paying for storage, Google photos, same thing. They give you a small amount, not a, not a tiny amount, but a relatively small amount of free storage.
Leo Laporte (01:50:55):
You'll be paying for extra iCloud. Same thing, the nice thing about Sonology once you pay for it and it's very expensive, cuz you have to buy the enclosure and a bunch of drives it's free after that except for bandwidth. So there are a number of different ways to do this. Another free solution that people sometimes forget is the photo printing sites like Shutterfly, because Shutterfly has a real interest in printing your photos. Whether for you, for, you know, prints that you, you know, put in a photo album or for family and friends and they make mugs and calendars and anything you want out of those photos, they will give you free unlimited storage of originals as well. With the presumption that you know, we're gonna make some money off this guy now that we have his photos. But again, no video cuz they can't print video.
Leo Laporte (01:51:42):
So video is always a little bit tricky because it's so big and that's the other, you you'll be using quite a bit of bandwidth on your smartphone. If you're taking a lot of videos and you will, by the way that Samsung ultra the S 22 ultra the brand new one, that's gonna, that's gonna take eight K video at 24 frames a second. I don't know how much that's storage that's gonna use up. I'll find out when I get the phone in two weeks, but it's probably a lot. And you know, that's another time where you might wanna think, do I really need to shoot eight? K? Yeah, it's cool. But do I really need to shoot eight K video? Who's gonna be watching it on eight K nobody. So often I end up shooting just HD 10 80 P because I don't want to blow my storage out.
Leo Laporte (01:52:33):
So there are a lot of ways to do it. You mentioned Samsung, they'll also back it up, but a couple of things I would say, first of all, really consider putting it in more than one place. That's, you know, so important backup. We talk about the 3 21 rule of backup three copies of everything, two different forms of media, one offsite that holds for photos as much as anything else, maybe more 3 21 backup. So have an offsite third party cloud service. Plus there are a lot of good I use P cloud where you can buy an annual subscription at P cloud and get two terabytes of storage or buy it annually. But P cloud.com it it's a really good, lesser known cloud storage solution, but you buy that lifetime pricing, which is kinda a couple hundred bucks. Then you have it forever, and you got terabytes in the cloud forever.
Leo Laporte (01:53:26):
That's a lot of storage and they don't care if it's video or not, cuz you don't. You're not, you know, it's not the what you're storing. It's how much it takes up. So I that's another thing to look at all the cloud services are good. This is an interesting solution problem, but there are definitely solutions. In fact, there may be more solutions in this arena than any other 88, 88. Ask Leo coming up. Rod piles spaceman in about 20 minutes. More of your calls to 8 8, 8 8 2 7 5 5 3 6, toll free from anywhere in the us or Canada. We'll talk in a bit. Are you giving me things that happened in 1868? I love it. I'll take 1868 for a hundred Alex. Hello rod.
Rod Pyle (01:54:24):
Hey, how are you?
Leo Laporte (01:54:25):
I'm good. How are you?
Rod Pyle (01:54:27):
I'm good. I have a question. Yes,
Leo Laporte (01:54:29):
Sir.
Rod Pyle (01:54:30):
We are running NSF is running a new contest where we're gonna give away money for designs for how to live in space. Can I announce that on the air? Yeah,
Leo Laporte (01:54:40):
Sure.
Rod Pyle (01:54:41):
Okay. It's $16,000. It's not gonna oh wow. Anybody's life for long, but it's, you know, it's money and it's it's cool. It's it was set up by Martin Rothblatt who started Sirius XM and then United therapeutics and who just, they just transplanted their first custom grown genetically modified pig tissue, heart into a person and it worked.
Leo Laporte (01:55:06):
Wow.
Rod Pyle (01:55:07):
So you and I can live to be 150,
Leo Laporte (01:55:09):
Man. I think I read that story. Yeah. Yeah. The guy guy survive. Not only survived, but he's doing okay, right?
Rod Pyle (01:55:15):
Yeah. Yeah. So they're to the point where they can grow almost anything now. Oh, just audio sound bad.
Leo Laporte (01:55:24):
Don't don't watch. What are you looking at? The chat room for Rob? Don't be look, get at the chat room. What do they know if I have a problem with your audio? I'll tell you.
Speaker 19 (01:55:32):
I'll let you know. I'll tell you
Leo Laporte (01:55:35):
It's a little crunchy. Make sure you're using original sound. It's fine for the radio.
Rod Pyle (01:55:39):
Oh, oh yeah. Let's
Leo Laporte (01:55:41):
Check. That's what it is. It's original sound. So it's $500. Now when I got bought P cloud lifetime, it was less than that, but it's 500 bucks. But if you thought you'd use it for more than a few years, that'd be a great deal. They do have a Valentine's day special. Let's see what the Valentine's day special is. P cloud's good. I like P cloud. It's all. It's all my fault, Joe. I have ruined life for you. 500 gigabytes, $122 premium. Oh, oh, I see. Yes, there is a deal. Oh lifetime. Oh $245 for lifetime for two terabytes. So 500 gives you four terabytes lifetime. So right now Valentine's day special at P cloud 500 gigabytes, lifetime lifetime, 122 bucks. So you get it forever. Nice. No noise. Did you turn on original sound? Rod? What are you doing with your thumb? What are you doing?
Rod Pyle (01:56:54):
I got arthritis in a finger. I'm too young for that.
Leo Laporte (01:56:57):
Yeah, you are
Rod Pyle (01:56:59):
The sound. Okay.
Leo Laporte (01:57:00):
So I just looked up, my life expectancy is a 65 year old man in the United States. I got 18 years. Yeah. Yeah. Somebody wanted a 19 year loan. No,
Rod Pyle (01:57:13):
We're no we're gonna live longer cuz we're just gonna start replacing stuff. Which I, I there's a lot of things I'd replace. I'd I'd start with my with my bad body's fat content.
Leo Laporte (01:57:24):
I don't oh God. Yeah. Oh God. Yeah.
Rod Pyle (01:57:29):
You go to the gym, you see these people with like 3% body fat. You're thinking, how can you even be alive?
Leo Laporte (01:57:34):
They say it has to do with your waist to hip ratio or whatever it is. Yeah. Yeah.
Rod Pyle (01:57:43):
So it's supposed to be bigger, small
Leo Laporte (01:57:47):
You you're well basically the fatter you are the harder you fall. Right.
Rod Pyle (01:57:52):
And it's all that stuff in the middle. That's
Leo Laporte (01:57:54):
The worst. Yeah. The middle fat get rid of the momentum. They've got a chubby momentum.
Rod Pyle (01:58:00):
You, you Repulsing
Leo Laporte (01:58:02):
It's internal fat it's yeah. Yeah.
Rod Pyle (01:58:05):
That thing.
Leo Laporte (01:58:07):
No, I know I'm on I'm back on my, no, I gotta be. I don't wanna, I wanna get more than the 18.2 years out of this.
Rod Pyle (01:58:14):
I'm using supernatural on VR. It's
Leo Laporte (01:58:17):
Oh, that's a good idea. Yeah. That's really a work. Isn't it? Yeah. Yeah.
Rod Pyle (01:58:20):
I'm doing like two hours a day and I love it. Oh
Leo Laporte (01:58:22):
Nice. I should try that. That's a good idea. Leo Laport, the Tech Guy, 88, 88, ask Leo. I mentioned P cloud. Not a very well known cloud provider. I actually like 'em I use 'em they're out of, I think Switzerland, but they offer a lifetime cloud storage, you know, I guess the lifetime of P cloud, not your lifetime, but nevertheless, they're having some pretty big sales for Valentine's day. So let me, let me update that information. We were talking about where can I store my photos P cloud. They have apps for iOS and Android. They have apps for Mac windows, even for Linux. That's why I ended up using them cuz I could run P cloud on Linux. And I bought some years ago, two terabytes of lifetime storage. They're right now they're doing a big deal. They they're even selling four terabytes of lifetime storage.
Leo Laporte (01:59:18):
That's 500 bucks. That's a lot of money, but rent that's one time only two terabytes, 245 bucks. You know, if you think what you spend a year on cloud storage with a Dropbox or somebody like that, that might be a good deal. Assuming peak cloud sticks around, they sell 500 gigabytes for a hundred twenty two fifty probably should try peak cloud first. Although I guess this Valentine special is probably not gonna be around much longer, so maybe not. They will automatically copy over your Dropbox, your Facebook, your one drive, Google drive and Google photos. So that's kind of nice and they offer. And one of the other reasons I got P cloud, they offer it's not encrypted, but there is an encrypted vault. You can have that. No one can read even P cloud except you obviously. And because they're in Switzerland, I think that that's probably a pretty private solution. So then not a sponsor. I get no money from them. In fact I spend money. I spend money on them, but I think I like P cloud a I've been very happy. They have a 10 gigabyte free trial. So you might try before you buy Robi space guy coming up in just a little bit, meanwhile, back to the phone's graces on the line from Whittier, California, or is it Whittier? Hello?
Speaker 20 (02:00:39):
It's Whittier Whittier. Hi. Hi Leo. It's such a pleasure to, to talk to you. Thank
Leo Laporte (02:00:44):
You, grace. Pleasure talking to you. Thank
Speaker 20 (02:00:45):
You. I'm kind of a dinosaur, not that bad of a dinosaur, but every now and then on my, I get messages on my iPhone and it doesn't say who it's from. It's either different telephone numbers or different emails and they're pornographic pictures. Oh
Leo Laporte (02:01:02):
Lord.
Speaker 20 (02:01:03):
And I, you know, I
Leo Laporte (02:01:04):
Mean that is not right.
Speaker 20 (02:01:05):
Well, I'm a senior, but I'm not that much of a PR. I know what they, what it's
Leo Laporte (02:01:11):
You, you recognize the picture, but you just don't wanna see
Speaker 20 (02:01:14):
It. Oh, I even shared it with my husband, but I go And then I've had some young kids that are very high tech and all that and they just tell, they see it and they say just delete it or blah them, which I do. But then they come back after a while than about a month,
Leo Laporte (02:01:28):
You can't block them because they don't use real phone numbers. So this is a illegal B reprehensible. See something many of us are getting is it's hard to avoid these days. D something the FCC should absolutely do something about, and they're not. But finally the, somebody who can do something is your phone company.
Speaker 20 (02:01:54):
Oh, okay.
Leo Laporte (02:01:55):
So the point of these pictures, there's two points. I mean, if it's linking back to a pornographic website, it's to get you to subscribe, I think they're barking up the wrong tree. Am I right grace? But the other point, which is much more nefarious is to get you to click that link. And the link is often a malicious link to a malicious content. So it's not about the porn. It's about hacking your phone. So your kids are right delete 'em don't look at 'em, don't click the links. I wish you could. It's actually even dangerous just to let those through because there have been in the past on iPhone and Android that a link, even if you don't open it, just the very fact that you see it and your notifications can trigger malware. So it's very dangerous. It's not a good thing. The problem is you can't block it by phone number, cuz they're not using a real phone number. I think you probably realize that. Yes, yes. Yeah. And like with any spamer the, the reply address is bogus. Otherwise we could track those sons of guns down and punish them.
Speaker 20 (02:03:05):
Well, why, why did they just, they just selected my phone number or what happened.
Leo Laporte (02:03:09):
It's random. They have a random number generator. That's spitting out numbers cuz it costs some, nothing to do this or virtually nothing like spam. It exists because it's cheap to do so even though one in a million and you're gonna click on that link. Hey, if it only costs you a cent to get a million people that's worth it. Okay. So right. Well thank you now. Well I'm not, no don't give up yet because who's your carrier
Speaker 20 (02:03:32):
At and T
Leo Laporte (02:03:33):
Okay. At and T has spam blocking. So they, they absolutely have tools to protect you in fact
Speaker 20 (02:03:44):
Contact them and, and
Leo Laporte (02:03:46):
You don't even have to they have, what was the name of it? They were a sponsor for a long time. I'm trying to remember the, the name, the name of their technology, but they have special technology for this look in oh, what's the name of the at and spam protection. Oh my goodness. I'm gonna look it up now because I know fraud, fraud alert. What is it? Call protect. No, that's not the, there's also a a anyway, it's an app. So go to your app store and look at the apps that at and T offers. And there will be an app who block spam texts that will help the active armor. Thank you. That's the name of it? I did their ads for months at T active armor. It's not complicated.
Speaker 20 (02:04:34):
Okay. I can
Leo Laporte (02:04:34):
Do that. Yeah. So they have spam and fraud blocking technology. It won't be a hundred percent, but it's a heck of a lot better than what you're getting. And it's shameful that you're getting and I'm just, it's awful.
Speaker 20 (02:04:48):
No, it it's. It's disgusting that that's what it is. It's very disgusting.
Leo Laporte (02:04:51):
It's disgusting. I, how dare they? I know I'm offended that they even do that. But so all the phone companies now, all the cell companies now are offering something like this, but at, and T's active armor is actually quite good. If you go to your app store and look for it, there'll be several different programs. All of them are free. They do not charge. They're. They do it for spam calls. Cause we're all getting robo calls too. Right. And then they'll do it for spam tech. You'll need both of those Leo. Laporte the Tech Guy. That's horrible. Oh, it's terrible. She sounds like doesn't she sound like She sounds like such a sweet. She's not that old. She said, but she sounds like sweet. She sounds like the little old lady from I taught, I taught Puy. TA what is, you know what I'm talking about? Sylvester, wait a minute. I'm gonna play your voice. And you could tell me, actually,
Rod Pyle (02:05:51):
She, she sounds like she's not any older than, than I am, but no,
Leo Laporte (02:05:55):
She's not. That's the irony. Isn't it? Yeah. Granny, her name is granny is the little old lady in the Sylvester. Yes. cartoon. You
Rod Pyle (02:06:06):
Beat that buddy alone?
Leo Laporte (02:06:07):
Yes. Oh, you
Speaker 21 (02:06:08):
Three behave while I check her.
Speaker 22 (02:06:14):
That's perfect.
Speaker 23 (02:06:14):
Spark it off
Leo Laporte (02:06:15):
Normal. Huh? I think it's it's all what's his name? Mel blank.
Rod Pyle (02:06:20):
Oh, probably. And the music
Leo Laporte (02:06:21):
Was all he does Sylvester. Oh, I love the loony tune's music. In fact there's albums of, I have a, like a double album back when we used to get albums of loony tune's music, Carl Stallings, Carl stalling, you know? Yeah. How do you know that?
Rod Pyle (02:06:36):
Because my father was a musician in the LA Philharmonic and my ex-wife was a musician. Did he,
Leo Laporte (02:06:43):
Did he play for Carl stalling?
Rod Pyle (02:06:45):
No, but they
Leo Laporte (02:06:46):
Did a lot. I had a Carl stalling double album. Yeah. They did a lot
Rod Pyle (02:06:49):
Of studio work and they did record in LA cuz it
Leo Laporte (02:06:51):
Was Warners. It was June foray. Who's the voice. And you know, who knows June foray? My, my dear friend Terry comes by. I once in a while former Kya jock. And he has some great stories. Yeah. It's called the stalling project. That's right.
Rod Pyle (02:07:06):
Yes, that's right. I remember that. And you know, when you read about those guys, they had so much fun. They were in this bungalow, in the back of the Warners lot and Jack Warner barely knew they were there. Oh
Speaker 24 (02:07:18):
Cheer. Could you direct me to restaurant?
Leo Laporte (02:07:21):
Yeah. That's Jim for? I recognize it now. Yeah. Oh man. The great Jim for Yeah. Can you, you know, you forget when you're watching these, especially as a kid, there's an orchestra playing this. I mean, in these days was
Rod Pyle (02:07:36):
So high. It's not
Leo Laporte (02:07:37):
A, it's not a sense. It's, there's a bunch of musicians sitting in a room,
Rod Pyle (02:07:42):
My umbrella and then not to offend anybody. But we went from that as young people to watching the Hannah Barb stuff. And even as a kid, I
Leo Laporte (02:07:49):
Knew junk
Rod Pyle (02:07:50):
And then remember gigantic the Japanese stuff.
Leo Laporte (02:07:53):
Oh, even worse or speed racer. Oh garbage.
Rod Pyle (02:07:58):
Ah,
Leo Laporte (02:07:59):
Yeah. I have the Carl stalling somewhere. You know what? I'm gonna go home and listen to that during the super bowl. It'll be perfect. Yeah.
Rod Pyle (02:08:06):
Oh, that's true. Cuz you're not, you don't care what happens now? Huh? Nice. Kitty.
Leo Laporte (02:08:12):
June four a is the OST or?
Rod Pyle (02:08:15):
Well, since the only one confused, she was born in 53.
Leo Laporte (02:08:19):
What
Rod Pyle (02:08:20):
These cartoons are done in the forties and fifties. That's not
Leo Laporte (02:08:22):
Right. No, that's knock it on. That's when she was active. Maybe. I don't know. No.
Rod Pyle (02:08:28):
Okay. But even before
Leo Laporte (02:08:29):
That, well this isn't that old. This is from
Rod Pyle (02:08:35):
Oh. Oh, you offended somebody with speed racing.
Leo Laporte (02:08:38):
Oh,
Rod Pyle (02:08:40):
Artistic classic.
Leo Laporte (02:08:41):
It really depends on how old you are. Reputation.
Rod Pyle (02:08:43):
I won't rest, honey. Well, I think if you were, if you sort of came of age for that. Yeah, yeah. But if you came of age, you know, just after Looney tunes,
Leo Laporte (02:08:51):
Can we get Carl stalling music for our intra advertis? He music instead of this, that would be awesome. Oh, it was B Benette originally Ah, 37 through 53. That's why she sounds different. And then June four 11. Yeah. Cuz June foray was part of the Ernie Covax and she was of the later generation. The TV generation, right? Yeah. Come on. You might have loved speed racer, but the animation and speed racer was God awful. Wasn't a animation.
Rod Pyle (02:09:28):
Did you ever see the max Fletcher? Superman cartoons.
Leo Laporte (02:09:30):
Oh, I love max Fletcher. I don't know. I, that
Rod Pyle (02:09:33):
Animation was
Leo Laporte (02:09:34):
Yeah. Astonish. This was like, we're gonna take a piece of paper, put it on a cardboard cutout, slide it around.
Rod Pyle (02:09:44):
It was, it was better than clutch cargo with some
Leo Laporte (02:09:47):
Terrible, well, yeah, but clutch cargo was funny.
Rod Pyle (02:09:51):
Yeah, but the, the lips,
Leo Laporte (02:09:53):
No, I know that was hysterical. I, I have made people very unhappy with my speech.
Rod Pyle (02:10:01):
I was afraid of that. Oh dear.
Leo Laporte (02:10:04):
I think it's gonna be a long, long time to touchdown and then et cetera. It is time to talk about space with our space guy. The wonderful, talented rod pile author of so many Bo looks about space editor in chief of the ad Astra magazine@spacedots.org and host of our new space podcast this week in space with Malik, from space.com. Rod pile. Hello rod. Hey, how are you? Can people hear your podcast yet? Or is it still in beta? I think it's still in beta. I think
Rod Pyle (02:10:39):
It's still in beta. So it'll be in club TWiT for at least another few weeks. And then, then it'll
Leo Laporte (02:10:44):
Go. We'll announce when you can subscribe to it in public. Yeah. But if you love hearing rod on the radio show and I know many of you do cause I get lot of cards and letters, the cards and letters keep coming in saying, so you will love this week in space. Terra's great too, between the two of you. Yeah. You're just a great team.
Rod Pyle (02:11:04):
He's dynamite and, and he's just, you know, the guy he, he has to do daily space news. I only have to do it quarterly. And then weekly for you when you're having to stay up till 3:00 AM to follow a story. You're you're
Leo Laporte (02:11:17):
A true person. He probably was right on top of that space weather fiasco with SpaceX and their satellites. Holy cow. So what do, what do you wanna talk about today? Anything, anything you want to talk about?
Rod Pyle (02:11:30):
Yeah. The first thing I wanna do is, is bring money to your audience. So the national space society is running a contest courtesy of Martin Roth, blat, who was the one of the founders of Sirius XM. And then later the founder of United therapeutics. And she's very interested in the human migration to space. So she's chartered us to run a contest. Top prize is $16,000. Second is I think $8,000 and third is $4,000 for a business plan that is relevant to some aspect of the human migration to the space. So it's very specific. So we have a website to explain this better, cuz I can't do it a short period of time called space BI plan.nss.org at space B I Z plan dots.org. And if you go there and you want to enter, we'd love to have you.
Leo Laporte (02:12:21):
Yeah. But wait, now not this isn't somebody with a crayon and some construction paper.
Rod Pyle (02:12:26):
You, no, this is gotta be a real business plan, but, but it doesn't have to be a, it's not 50 pages, you know? Okay. It's like, okay, give us a solid 12 pages of your ideas and word, good shape. Cause
Leo Laporte (02:12:36):
Frankly, so really anybody could enter this
Rod Pyle (02:12:37):
Anybody. Yeah. Oh nice. And there's a video there of her giving a couple of talks and she is such a visionary. You and I were talking on the break, you know, here's a woman who was making a doing very well at Sirius XM. Her daughter had a congenital illness. So she sold all her shares in serious to start United therapeutics, to learn how to grow genetically modified organs that can be translated into human beings.
Leo Laporte (02:13:02):
Wow.
Rod Pyle (02:13:03):
I mean, how cool is that?
Leo Laporte (02:13:04):
It worked. I think they've done it, right? Yeah.
Rod Pyle (02:13:07):
They've done it with a bunch. They've done it with lungs. They've done it with the heart.
Leo Laporte (02:13:09):
They've always used like pig valves and hearts and stuff like that. But yeah,
Rod Pyle (02:13:13):
This
Leo Laporte (02:13:14):
Is a little different, this is not taking a, a valve out of a pig and putting in a heart.
Rod Pyle (02:13:19):
This is, as I understand it, this is actually growing from stem cells with modification so that there is no immune response. Right. So this is like putting your own organ back in you. Right. It just happens to be from pig tissue.
Leo Laporte (02:13:31):
Yeah. Cuz we, Lisa talks about a relative who got her heart, you know, valves replaced with pigs and they didn't want to tell her cuz they, they knew she would be upset.
Rod Pyle (02:13:41):
Honey, why are you making those funny noises
Leo Laporte (02:13:43):
At dinner? But no, it's a life saving technology. It's really, really cool. So good. All right. So, and
Rod Pyle (02:13:50):
It of her interest is that this will also go into space with us because we're gonna have issues with radiation with low gravity. Microg all that. It just makes sense to be able to not necessarily replace organs, but at least modify possibly the
Leo Laporte (02:14:03):
Ones you have. I think you should just short circuit the whole thing and puts pigs in space. If you, that was a bad joke. Bad joke. Yeah. Space BI plan B I Z P a dots.org.
Rod Pyle (02:14:18):
So in addition to that, an apologies for, for the people that did list of the podcast, cause I'm gonna go over some repeats
Leo Laporte (02:14:23):
Here. Oh, don't worry. There's no overlap. It's okay. He
Rod Pyle (02:14:26):
Safe. Elon Musk gave a talk on Starship this week, which we were all waiting for. Not big gone facts and figures but sociological
Leo Laporte (02:14:35):
Experience. So that's nothing.
Rod Pyle (02:14:37):
Sometimes he, he does give us a little more to chew on this one is basically, look we're moving ahead. Things are great. It was a love letter to Boca Chica. Nice because you know, no love, no launch. So he was making nice with Boca Chica. He is building a launch for facility and fabrication facility at Kennedy space center, just in case cuz Boca, Chica, there's been some pushback. The FA and EPA are doing environmental reviews and he may not be able to continue doing what he's doing there cuz his original license was for the Falcon heavy. And the next thing you know, he is building this monster Starship bigger than this, a five. So people kind of going, wait a minute, we got concerns here. So that, that was part of, it talked a lot about his work with NASA. Interestingly, just from a sociological perspective, he opened up with, you know, he was showing how the Starship is gonna be refueled in orbit by going to belly to belly with another Starship. Right? What, and it looked like made whales. I admit that it did, but he started making these off color jokes. I was thinking,
Leo Laporte (02:15:38):
You know,
Rod Pyle (02:15:38):
He's can you imagine Neil Armstrong? No. Or Walter Cronkite or James Webb, head of NASA in the sixties making tongue and cheek off color comments such as, Hey, it's a fluid transfer or
Leo Laporte (02:15:50):
Please Don, could you not, you don't need to hear that. And it's like, come on, come on. But 10 years old, you know,
Rod Pyle (02:15:58):
He did go on. Well. Yeah. And, and honestly that's part of his charm though. He looks like a fifth grader giving his first book report, polishing his shoes on the back of his pants
Leo Laporte (02:16:07):
Legs. Yeah. Yeah. But
Rod Pyle (02:16:09):
So, and you hear, you know, he wants to be flying these things three times a day. A lot of him on the engines, he's got all these big aspirational ideas about how many times a year he'll fly 10 years ago. If he had said I'm gonna build the biggest rocket in history and, and test it on my own money. You
Leo Laporte (02:16:23):
No, it's true nuts. It's true. I grant you
Rod Pyle (02:16:25):
So every time I think he's, he's pushing the envelope too
Leo Laporte (02:16:28):
Far. It's a mixed bag with Elon. It is he, he lacks personal something, the social
Rod Pyle (02:16:36):
Cues, a little, a few of the social cues get
Leo Laporte (02:16:38):
Missed. But at the same time, he clearly, I don't know if he's a genius, but he has a business genius that allows him to put together amazing things. And he seems to have no limits to his imagination, which is a real benefit because he dreams big and often succeed.
Rod Pyle (02:16:55):
And he talked again about point to point on the Earth's surface, being able to go from, you know, LA to Singapore in 40 minutes. That sort of thing. Interesting. This first time I heard this, he said the capital efficiency of a rocket is actually better than it is for an airplane and thi over long distances because a plane is tied up for 20 hours, getting to Asia, for instance, rocket could do it in about 45 minutes. So if they're easy to turn around, once he gets 'em right, you get a lot more
Leo Laporte (02:17:23):
Efficiency. Yeah. But don't start counting at a time man miles, because there's no comparison at all.
Rod Pyle (02:17:29):
Well, it's gonna be a little expensive. Yeah. And, and I'm not gonna do it for the first couple of years because the going up is one thing the coming down and getting caught by the big arms on the launch platform. That's
Leo Laporte (02:17:40):
The chopsticks, isn't that a
Rod Pyle (02:17:42):
Wild, the monster chopsticks, which
Leo Laporte (02:17:45):
Again, it
Rod Pyle (02:17:46):
Mentioned that that that's been as difficult and expensive as developing the rocket was developing at launch
Leo Laporte (02:17:50):
Platform. Well, duh, who would, I mean, there's a perfect example. So if for those who haven't seen, you can go to YouTube and look at the video. He's basically created a launch gantry that has giant grabber arms.
Rod Pyle (02:18:03):
Speaking of gigantic is gonna,
Leo Laporte (02:18:05):
Is gonna catch the inbound rocket before it hits the, and then can move it around and put it back on another rocket to go again crazy who would've
Rod Pyle (02:18:17):
Thought that. And so we thought, okay, we thought, oh, that's wild. I also didn't know is that he's bought two retired oil derricks and is building floating launch and recovery platforms with that CI them on them. They're gonna be at sea as well. So it's just
Leo Laporte (02:18:35):
So, oh, that's interesting. So the chopsticks will be everywhere.
Rod Pyle (02:18:39):
Well, cuz the idea is, you know, it's gonna be so noisy. There aren't that many places that are cleared down range of people. You know, you don't want to drop a rocket
Leo Laporte (02:18:47):
People.
Rod Pyle (02:18:47):
Yeah. So if you can launch ocean, land it sea,
Leo Laporte (02:18:50):
What's the name of his platform again? It's
Rod Pyle (02:18:53):
Well I call it chopstick
Leo Laporte (02:18:55):
Monster. No, but he has a name for the platform. John knows it's like oh,
Rod Pyle (02:18:58):
Oh, oh yeah. Crime of your river. Or Just follow the instructions as one of them. Oh I,
Leo Laporte (02:19:06):
I love you. I love something with love. Right? It's perfectly Valentine's day. Yeah. Rod pile and space.nss.org. Thank you, sir.
Rod Pyle (02:19:15):
Thank you very much.
Leo Laporte (02:19:16):
Beam yourself up
Rod Pyle (02:19:18):
Beaming.
Leo Laporte (02:19:21):
The Dr. Of course I still love you. Is the drum show. Of
Rod Pyle (02:19:25):
Course I still love you. That's it. And the proper quote for beaming is I don't
Leo Laporte (02:19:29):
Want ly my molecule tools scattered
Rod Pyle (02:19:31):
All over the galaxy,
Leo Laporte (02:19:33):
Be the beam. The platforms are called DEOs and FOBO after the satellites to what is it? Pluto?
Rod Pyle (02:19:39):
Well, the, the moons of Mars.
Leo Laporte (02:19:41):
Moons of Mars, that's it? Yeah.
Rod Pyle (02:19:42):
Yeah. And he, my favorite part I think was his sales pitch, which said here's my sales pitch. Mars will be dangerous and tough and you might die.
Leo Laporte (02:19:51):
Yeah. That's and that's understating the danger.
Rod Pyle (02:19:56):
Oh yeah. Well what he doesn't say is how you're gonna die. So of course we imagine, oh, we might crash. But if he doesn't figure out this radiation issue, you're gonna bake like a potato on the way out there. So he's got some work to do. Yeah. And to their credit, the press grilled them on, on the radiation. They grilled them on life support. They grilled them on. Okay. Exactly. How many orbital refills does it take to get your a hundred tons to the moon? Oh my God. And he didn't actually give a number, but, but when you think of his payload capacity, he could carry 25 perseverance rovers in one mission to Mars.
Leo Laporte (02:20:30):
He's exactly the, the, the tech billionaire from don't look up. Have you seen that?
Rod Pyle (02:20:37):
Yes. He's
Leo Laporte (02:20:39):
A cross between mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk. He's
Rod Pyle (02:20:41):
He's a little more charismatic than that guy was I think. And, and you know, that guy had the kind of classic. Okay. I'm gonna look over your shoulder whenever I'm talking to you thing. Yeah. I think Elon can't actually look into your eyes, but I do guess what you're saying. Yeah. It was a brilliant film. I, I thought it was remarkable as opposed to moon fall, which we already talked about. So I won't go off on that anymore. But
Leo Laporte (02:21:02):
Mark Reland says, in fact it was Elon Musk, who was his his role model for that care. Are
Rod Pyle (02:21:09):
We
Leo Laporte (02:21:09):
Surprised? Yeah. Isn't that funny? Yeah. Isn't that funny? I thought it was a little mark Zuckerberg in there as well.
Rod Pyle (02:21:16):
Yeah. You kind of assumed it was a mixture of
Leo Laporte (02:21:18):
Two or three people, but Brian, Lance, who does it and what a brilliant act. I love mark Reland.
Rod Pyle (02:21:24):
He was so fuzzy two. It was incredible.
Leo Laporte (02:21:27):
Yeah. Oh, it was, you know, I have to watch that again. I don't think it was a great movie, but boy, there were moments there. Now I just saw it. There's outtakes of Meryl Streep as the president make, she had to make a phone call and she did 20 takes 20 different phone calls. She added, added the whole thing and, and they're hysterical.
Rod Pyle (02:21:48):
Apparently there's a lot of ad living in the film. And I have to say when they skewed and it landed, it landed hard. I mean, yes. That's what
Leo Laporte (02:21:55):
Got me. That was the problem. Is it? Didn't always, but that's all comedy. It was hit and miss, but when hit,
Rod Pyle (02:22:00):
But when they nailed it, they really nailed it.
Leo Laporte (02:22:01):
Yeah. I thought she was amazing as the president. Yes. Well, and you
Rod Pyle (02:22:05):
Can't, you know, everybody from either side of the political spectrum said, wait, you're making fun of my guy was
Leo Laporte (02:22:10):
Both. It was both perfectly fearless, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Because
Rod Pyle (02:22:14):
It's a woman, but there's Donald Trump Jr. There
Leo Laporte (02:22:18):
The whole, it was it was amazing. Very crafty nominated for an Oscar.
Rod Pyle (02:22:23):
Oh good for a
Leo Laporte (02:22:24):
Screenplay. No best movie. Wasn't it better? Am I wrong? I think I, I think it was, I think it was anyway, rod. I hope it gets a couple ti a pleasure always and a joy have a wonderful evening and I will see you next week and I'll and see you next Friday. Enjoy what's left to the super bowl. Is it over already? I don't know. Thank you. I don't watch it. Thank you. Bye. See ya. Thank you for letting me be your guy again. Leo Laport, the Tech Guy timed almost out. I understand there's some big game gonna happen. I'm not sure when or why, but I'm glad you're here. 88 88. Ask Leo is the phone number for this weekend every week. And I thanks so much our musical director, the wonderful, the talented profess Laura without her. I don't know. Well, we wouldn't have any music, so there you go. I do know we wouldn't have any music, but thank you professor Laura. We also thank Kim, Shaer our phone angel. She's a miracle of patience and indulgence. And I'm talking about me, not you. Thanks to all of you for calling. I really appreciate it. And listening even more so we couldn't do it without you. Thank you. Donna on the line from Rochester, New York. Hello Donna.
Caller #5 (02:23:56):
Oh, hi Leo. Thank you for taking my call. Oh,
Leo Laporte (02:23:58):
Hi Donna. Well, you're welcome.
Caller #5 (02:24:00):
Thank you. Happy Valentine's day tomorrow, by the way. You
Leo Laporte (02:24:03):
Too. Yes.
Caller #5 (02:24:05):
Well, I have a question and I I'll try to explain it the best I can. I'm sure you'll understand. I have a friend that has wifi in her house. Yes. She has a roommate that moved in and a roommate uses her. My friend's wifi. Of course. And, and yeah. Yeah. Cuz that's the only one she could have. That's
Leo Laporte (02:24:24):
The wifi. Yeah.
Caller #5 (02:24:25):
Yeah. And so, so my friend said that because her roommate clicks on everything, even stuff you shouldn't be clicking on, she clicks on everything. It didn't really, it affected my friend's computer.
Leo Laporte (02:24:39):
Not really, probably not.
Caller #5 (02:24:41):
Well, that's what I wondered because she
Leo Laporte (02:24:44):
It's theoretically possible. Generally when you click on anything, you get infected. There are infections that are what we call worms that can go through the network and affect her computer. But they're not common these days and Mo and if she's using an UpToDate version of windows, she's probably not suspect what she should do is look and see if her wifi will allow for a guest network.
Caller #5 (02:25:08):
Oh,
Leo Laporte (02:25:09):
Okay. And if it does, it can have a separate password. Give that to a roommate. And that will be additional protection on modern wifi routers in not all cases, but most cases, the guest network is somewhat isolated from the main network. So then, then you can let her, her roommate can click on bad sites to her heart's content. I mean, she shouldn't, I wouldn't recommend it, but no, no, at least it won't affect your friend.
Caller #5 (02:25:38):
Oh, okay. Somebody told my friend that that she said all, this is real. This guy, she knows real techy guy said, oh yeah, that happens all the time.
Leo Laporte (02:25:47):
It can happen. And I explain how it's with a network worm. So there are, you know, for instance, ransomware, one of the things ransomware does is, goes out and sees if it could find other machines on the network to infect. So if your room, if her roommate somehow got ransomware on her, it could very well pass through the network to her computer. So get her on that guest network. Most commonplace malware does not warm itself. That's really malware aimed at businesses because, you know, I mean, it's, there's not much payoff to do that on a home network, but there's a lot of payoff to do in the business.
Caller #5 (02:26:22):
Right. Makes sense. Yeah.
Leo Laporte (02:26:25):
That makes sense. So her, yeah. I don't know what router she has. You probably don't either.
Caller #5 (02:26:29):
I don't know.
Leo Laporte (02:26:30):
Yeah. But chances are it supports a guest network?
Caller #5 (02:26:33):
Is it, is it significant? Is it important? What router she has?
Leo Laporte (02:26:37):
Well, older routers won't be as protect. She won't be as protected and some don't have guest networks, but any modern route or any certainly any of the mesh routers she would be protected and, and a guest network would be even more so.
Caller #5 (02:26:51):
Gotcha. Okay.
Leo Laporte (02:26:53):
More modern is better. That's all. Yeah. I'm glad you asked. It's a, it's an excellent it's no, it's a really good question. Yeah. There are viruses malware. You can get on your home machine that will then go out and look at the network where this is very common and, and is a real concern for it. Managers, you're working from home on your laptop. You click on a bad link. You go to a website, you get infected. Then you come into the office with this infected laptop and now it goes out and infects the whole network. And that's a lot of time how ransomware gets into a commercial network. But, and so it is com I mean, it's not impossible. It's just that most of the run in the mill malware, you get on a PC most of the time. It's not that it's, it's just, you know, it's ad wear it's stuff like that. So I guess it's completely possible. You know, that she, you know, really got some nasty stuff on her system that's spread. But generally it's not the case. So yeah. Isolator. That's the, that's the key isolator. Jim Laguna beach. Leo. Laporte the Tech Guy.
Caller #7 (02:28:02):
Hi, lovely Leo.
Leo Laporte (02:28:03):
Hi, are you, are you, is this Jim
Caller #7 (02:28:07):
This? No, this is pat because Jim made the call because he can't explain my problem.
Leo Laporte (02:28:12):
No, well you should do it pat. Absolutely go right ahead.
Caller #7 (02:28:16):
All right. So three days ago for some reason on my HP computer, I could no longer receive my MSN email. They told me that my password was no good and I would have to redo it, but I can receive it on my iPhone. No problem. I have now tried to follow their instructions to redo the password. And I answer all these questions and I fill out all this stuff and it, nothing happens. I've tried.
Leo Laporte (02:28:51):
Are you using the MSN interface or have you gone over to outlook.com? Like Microsoft wants you to
Caller #7 (02:28:57):
I've tried both.
Leo Laporte (02:28:59):
Okay. And they both face. Yes. Cause Microsoft is essentially shuttered MSN. I mean, it's still around. You can still, you're still paying for it, but they want you to use outlook.com and that's going forward the future. Okay. So if you're using the MSN butterfly, do you still see the butterfly? Yes. yeah. That might be the problem. The, the butterfly is deprecated. There's no more butterfly,
Caller #7 (02:29:25):
But I get it on my iPhone.
Leo Laporte (02:29:28):
Yeah, probably cuz yeah, I don't know. You know, maybe cuz I don't know. Why are you using an MSN app on your iPhone?
Caller #7 (02:29:39):
No I just where it says phone, I go in and it says outlook MSN iCloud. Yeah. I always use the MSN.
Leo Laporte (02:29:49):
That's fine because that's yeah, although that may also end up getting phased out, but for now that's fine. You're you setting up the email using apples mail, connecting to your MSN account. That's in a sense what you're gonna be doing? Outlook.Com. You're gonna set up outlook.com to access your MSN mail. The butterfly has been is being phased out. So you, if you can still get the butterfly to launch, you can, you can export all your mail. Otherwise. what you wanna do is go to outlook.com, click sign in and you should be able to use your MSN email name and password to log in. Now, if it's saying that's the, and that's the one where it's saying it's wrong.
Caller #7 (02:30:36):
Yeah. no, it will not allow me to do that. It says that Nope, the password is wrong.
Leo Laporte (02:30:41):
Yeah. so the that's where you wanna do forgot my password,
Caller #7 (02:30:46):
Which I did
Leo Laporte (02:30:47):
And, and it's still not working.
Caller #7 (02:30:49):
No, I can't get through the having done this three times. They send the code, I put the code in and they a, the questions I answer and then I do everything they ask and
Leo Laporte (02:31:03):
It still doesn't work
Caller #7 (02:31:04):
Goes nowhere.
Leo Laporte (02:31:05):
And that's a different problem.
Caller #7 (02:31:07):
I know I've talked to the geek squad. I've talked to HP, I've talked to apple,
Leo Laporte (02:31:13):
It's really a Microsoft. It's all about Microsoft. You, you wanna get your MSN, which is Microsoft network account port it over to a, an MSA, which is a Microsoft account. And I'm looking up a w to see if there's a way to do that.
Caller #7 (02:31:36):
You won't be my new hero.
Leo Laporte (02:31:37):
Yeah. The don't your I, your phone still works because you had it all set up. If you were to get a new phone, it wouldn't work again. So get that. Keep you. That's what apple told me. Yeah, it's set up, but it's cuz it's got a token. It's not looking at your password anymore, but if you were, you're gonna have some problems. I have run out of time. I'm gonna put some links in. I think it's a call to MSN support. That's what I think. Leo, Laporte the Tech Guy. 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@techandyoufinditatTWiT.tv, including the podcasts for this show. We talk about windows and windows weekly, Macintosh a Mac break, weekly iPads, iPhones, apple watches on iOS, today's security and security. Now, I mean, I can go on and on and on. And of course the big show every Sunday afternoon, this week in tech, you'll find it all at TWiTt TV and I'll be back next week with another great Tech Guy show. Thanks for joining to me. We'll see you next time.
