Transcripts

The Tech Guy Episode 1869 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 (00:00:11):
Hi, this is Leo Laporte and this is my tech guy podcast. This show originally aired on the premier eradio network on Saturday 19th, 2022. This is episode 1,869. Enjoy. Our annual survey is almost done. We'd like to get your thoughts. We want your feedback. Go to twit.tv/survey 22 to take it now, before it closes at the end of the month survey helps us understand our audience so we can make your listening experience even better. Just shouldn't take more than a few minutes. Go to twit.tv/survey 22 to take it. And thanks in advance. If you'd like to support the TWiT podcast network, you could join club TWiT for $7 a month. Ad free versions of all of our shows. We also give you access to the club, TWiT discord and shows like Stacy's book club. The untitled Linux show this week in space and a whole lot of special events.

Leo Laporte (00:01:11):
Plus the TWiT plus feed with material that doesn't appear in any other podcast club, TWiT $7 a month. Go to twit.tv/club TWiT. And thanks for your support. 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, all that jazz. 88 88. Ask Leo, if you wanna talk high tech, I'd love to talk hot tech with you. 8 8 8 8 2 7 5 5 3 6, toll free from anywhere in the us or Canada outside that area still reach us. You could still call us, but you gotta use Skype or something like that. 88 88, ask Leo there's a website. I say this ahead of time so that, you know, if you hear something, you go, oh, wait a minute, let me write that down. No, no, no. We'll write it down for you and put it all at the website.

Leo Laporte (00:02:11):
Techguylabs.com for your perusal later, after the fact everything will be recorded. Everything shall be recorded and, and posted there. Techguylabs.com. We actually put all the links that I mentioned, plus a transcript of the show with time codes and the time codes are useful because later we'll post the audio and the video from the show. And you could jump to that part of the show and refresh your memory if it's not in the links. So it all should be there. Techguylabs.Com Samsung galaxy S 20 twos. The variety of flavors should be starting to arrive this week. Fact, some people are saying, in fact, I got my, my text updates saying it would come Tuesday. So we'll talk about the S 22 ultra next weekend reviews, early reviews make make it look like a pretty good alternative.

Leo Laporte (00:03:15):
Say to the iPhone. Those are the pretty much the big two in the us iPhone and Samsung phone, but I think a lot of people rightly so there. I know I get a lot of questions are saying, well, isn't there something less than a thousand dollars I can use for a smartphone. And yes, and I often recommend the Motorola, a brand, the motor G nine, the G power. Those are good APO. Now one plus I guess, or is it APO now? I can't remember one plus makes some very nice phones. They're good phones. They're fine. Phones. Samsung makes some less expensive phones, but I don't know why we focus on those. We call 'em flagships. Except that those are the ones with the most resting parts, right? That's really, I mean, that's that's, that's the human way. You focus on things with the most interesting parts the fastest chips, the best screens, the best cameras, all that stuff.

Leo Laporte (00:04:14):
And then all it all trickles down a couple of years later, you'll get, you know, those high end and features in lower end phones. So it all is good. It's all good. I didn't buy the new iPhone this year though. And this is part of the problem. All these companies have, even if you are a fan of, of the bestest parts, you may look at these and go, well, do I really? I had the best parts last year. Are they that much better this year? No, not with the iPhone. Maybe they are. I don't know. It's interesting. We geeks have a different scale of measuring these things. I I've seen a number of posts for instance, well, the Samsung process or whether it's the Qualcom or the XOs and depending on which region of the world you're in, you'll get one or the other us gets Qualcomm aren't as fast as the latest processors, the a 15 and the apple iPhone 13.

Leo Laporte (00:05:16):
Yes, that's true. But I think most people Aren saying, oh boy, I wish I had a faster processor in my phone. Maybe if you have a really old one, but even then I, I don't know. I hear a lot of people with, you know, S seven S or iPhone sixes who say, yeah, it's fine. It's too bad. Apple and Samsung and Google aren't updating 'em anymore. And I have to get a new one. They they're just fast pull fat, your phone. You don't, you're not running the you're not running the, the highest and most difficult programs on the phone for the most part. You know, what are you using? Your Instagram, your Snapchat, your Facebook, your TikTok. Oh yeah. You make phone calls and you send text messages and that's about it. And it could do all of that. Even if you're shooting video, you're probably not doing high end video editing on your phone.

Leo Laporte (00:06:06):
So I'm not gonna worry so much about the best parts. And in fact, I've, I haven't noticed any difference between the iPhone 13 and the iPhone 12. Now I did skip a couple of years on the Samsung, so I figured, well, it's time to get the S 22 ultra and just see what the differences are. Mostly these days, we focus on the camera. There are other things to think about the storage, the speed of the storage, the, the amount of Ram, all of those do impact the overall speed of the phone. Or maybe even more of the is features like how many things can run in the background, how aggressive the phone is about killing processes, killing programs that aren't in the foreground. You know, that can be an issue. If you're uploading photos from Google photos and it gets, you know, on the iPhone, for instance, it shuts it down after 15 minutes, your photos aren't gonna get uploaded. You, you want, you know, on the other hand, they're aggressive cuz of battery life. That's the biggest issue. If you ask me in fact, one, cause for concern with this Samsung, the new S 22 ultra $1,300 phone is it doesn't have the biggest battery. It's only got a 4,000 milli amp hour battery. It's got a relatively small bucket compared to the bigger buckets in other their phones.

Leo Laporte (00:07:20):
But, but that's, you know, you can't just talk about that by itself, cuz the, the processors do their best to, to sip at the battery. And then that's where it comes in with the operating system, closing stuff down in the background to improve battery life. So it's all a, it's all you know, a holistic system. I had to use that phrase. It's all a holistic system. And so looking at the processor speed alone of the amount of Ram alone of the, You know, the operating system, lot of that's gonna tell you the whole story. So what's the bottom line on what I'm all of this is. Don't worry. You like your phone, keep your phone, your phone, getting old. You feel like you need a new one, get a new one. You don't have to buy the most expensive one. That's just for us geeks. That's the one we talk about. That's all, that's the one. That's the one we care about. Cuz you know, we're, we're looking at the high end, fancy stuff. I'm waiting to see if there is a fewer over this Microsoft change in windows 11. Maybe there will be maybe there won't be windows 11 home. There's two versions home and pro the business. One in the home. One for, since windows 11 came out you needed to have online access to sign up and you must have a Microsoft account to use it.

Leo Laporte (00:08:47):
There's little, you know, fidly ways around it, but you know, not recommended. And then the you know, the answer to that was always, well, you can get pro and you don't need that. Well now Microsoft says Windows 11 will also require a Microsoft account and online access To use. It'll be the only major consumer operating system requiring that you on a Mac, you can skip, you know, you probably won't, but you could skip having an apple account with a Mac. You can even skip that on iPhones and iPads. You do need to get online eventually to activate the device. I guess Android needs an internet account for activation, but doesn't require are signing, signing in to the Google account. Windows 11 though. Does, what do you think Is that unreasonable, Microsoft Certainly convenience. If you forget your password, they can fix it for you, But there's also some control isn't there. If Microsoft has decides for some reason to discontinue your Microsoft account, there goes your windows. You don't really own it. Do you? And what about them knowing everything about you and you know, keeping track of you. There's a privacy concern there too. I guess the workaround is gonna be going forward. If you go to windows 11 and you don't want Microsoft to kind of be looking your shoulder is to create a dummy Microsoft account

Leo Laporte (00:10:20):
That you use to activate and log in and then Log out and create a local account and never use the other one. Again. Shouldn't have to do that. I don't think I seems, I don't think you should have to do that final, only good news from Google. They're gonna follow Apple's lead and, and add privacy to your Android phone. That's good. Apple. According to Facebook is costing Facebook, $10 million on Mike next year because they won't let Facebook track you on the iPhone. Well get ready Facebook cuz Google ain't won't do it either Today. They said we're announcing a multiyear initiative. Oh, that's a bad sign multiyear to why don't you just turn it on now to build the privacy sandbox on Android With the goal of introducing new, more private advertising solutions limit. Sharing of is your data with third parties. I like that check operate without cross app identifiers check. We'll see when they turn that on

Leo Laporte (00:11:29):
Multi-Year sounds like maybe 20, 25. I don't know. One of that is anyway. Let's this is good. This is good. We encourage Google do WiTRthis just like apple did. And if it costs Facebook a little bit so they can't afford it. The estimate is that that just the rebranding from Facebook to meta alone cost 'em 500 million, half a billion dollars just to change the name. They can afford it. Eighty eight eighty eight ask Leo is a phone. They can afford it. That's gonna be my new slogan used to be. It's not your fault. The computer, your phone's not working. It's not your fault, their fault now it's they can afford it. 88, 88, ask Leo, Leo, the tech guy, your calls next That's for Kim Shaffer, our phone angel who looks like she just broke outta San Quentin. You're wearing your your stripes.

Kim Schaffer (00:12:28):
I don't think this would be allowed there.

Leo Laporte (00:12:30):
No, it's pretty hip. And I

Kim Schaffer (00:12:31):
Think they have to wear khakis.

Leo Laporte (00:12:33):
Well they do. They don't wear prisoners. Don't wear stripes anymore. I'm

Kim Schaffer (00:12:36):
Not exactly sure. Yeah. That's I to go visit? A friend of mine used to work there and they have tours every, a few times a year. And there's you kidding? Very specific things that you can wear.

Leo Laporte (00:12:46):
Can't don't wear that.

Kim Schaffer (00:12:47):
You can't, I couldn't wear the, you can't wear jeans.

Leo Laporte (00:12:49):
Really?

Kim Schaffer (00:12:50):
Yeah. Okay. Yeah. And the shirt, the shoes are very specific to

Leo Laporte (00:12:54):
Orange is the new black, as they say.

Kim Schaffer (00:12:57):
Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:13:00):
Ms. Kim Shaffer answers the phones. When they ring eighty eight, eighty eight, ask Leo she's in charge. The lines seem to be full. They

Kim Schaffer (00:13:07):
Are.

Leo Laporte (00:13:08):
Who should I start with?

Kim Schaffer (00:13:09):
How does that happen? I don't know. Terry's in the seal beach and he has a warning, actually,

Leo Laporte (00:13:14):
A warning,

Kim Schaffer (00:13:15):
A warning warning.

Leo Laporte (00:13:16):
Are there sharks at seal beach?

Kim Schaffer (00:13:18):
There might be.

Leo Laporte (00:13:19):
All right. Thank you, Kim. Good to see you. You too. Hello, Terry LIO. All right. Gato.

Caller 1 (00:13:27):
Most people don't really know what the original translation of KCI wa was. Would you like to know? I would. It was. Hey, Hey. Hey. How are you today?

Leo Laporte (00:13:40):
I don't think so, but I like it. I will start saying UA from now on.

Caller 1 (00:13:46):
So I do indeed have a public warning to everybody listening about as Keith Overman. Would've said the worth company and the world.

Leo Laporte (00:13:55):
Oh boy.

Caller 1 (00:13:57):
Frontier communication.

Leo Laporte (00:13:58):
Oh gosh. They're well known as the worst company in the world.

Caller 1 (00:14:02):
I indeed. And let me just tell you very briefly about my experience and how I finally got their attention. I was with them for two years, 22 out of the 24 monthly billings were incorrect. 

Leo Laporte (00:14:15):
I probably spent that's pretty bad.

Caller 1 (00:14:18):
I probably spent close to at least half an hour to an hour each month trying to get my bill corrected. And not only are they incompetent, but they lie. And a number of times when they actually acknowledged that they had made a mistake, the customer service person would promise me a callback the next day. Guess how many callbacks I got?

Leo Laporte (00:14:42):
I'm thinking in the order of zero.

Caller 1 (00:14:44):
Exactly. Yeah. And so finally I'd had enough with them. I disconnected and transferred my three services to spectrum.

Leo Laporte (00:14:56):
See, you're lucky you had a choice there. A lot of people don't have a choice.

Caller 1 (00:14:59):
Well, I, if you're in a place where all you have is frontier and you do have a choice, you can sign a contract with a devil and the ladder

Leo Laporte (00:15:10):
Sell you sell. So yeah.

Caller 1 (00:15:12):
Yeah. Well, you will sell your soul if you deal with frontier. This

Leo Laporte (00:15:15):
Is, this is why competition is so important

Caller 1 (00:15:19):
Indeed.

Leo Laporte (00:15:20):
And there is a lack of competition in the internet sphere and it's why we often suffer. Most people. I think it's 86% of the people in the country have only two choices, the phone company in the cable company and, and, and a portion of them only have the cable company. And if that's all, you've got boy and it's frontier. Although, you know, I talked to somebody last week who said their frontier had gotten better. So maybe there's a future. They're kind of notorious for doing all sorts of shenanigans. Cory doctoral is very scathing about them. He's for the electoral frontier foundation, ironically named he's very about, you know, they're complaining about lack of bandwidth while they don't put in enough bandwidth, et cetera, et cetera. So I'm sorry. So you, did you switch to spectrum? Is it better?

Caller 1 (00:16:05):
I, I, it much, much better. I had actually, I, the only reason I switched from spectrum two frontier more than two years ago was because the rates went up. But lemme tell you what the cherry on the ice cream Sunday with frontier was they failed to port over my landline number of 22 years.

Leo Laporte (00:16:23):
Oh, they have to. They're required to, but well, and they can slow walk it of course. And that's probably what they're doing.

Caller 1 (00:16:29):
Not only, no, no, they actually, it took me 10 day days of going back and forth, like a ping pong ball between spectrum and frontier and finally frontier acknowledged that they had released the number and the only way that I could retrieve it after 22 years of having it was to reopen a landline. Yeah, of course. With them for 100, it

Leo Laporte (00:16:52):
Was a clerical. Oh, we are so sorry.

Caller 1 (00:16:55):
No, it was my fault of course.

Leo Laporte (00:16:56):
Oh, it was your fault.

Caller 1 (00:16:58):
Yeah. Wow. So you know how I finally got their attention. I filed a complaint with the FCC.

Leo Laporte (00:17:05):
Yeah, yeah. That gets there. Yeah. That gets their attention.

Caller 1 (00:17:07):
FCC notified them. Guess who called me within 24 hours. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:17:12):
Unfortunately, I mean, you should, didn't have to do that, but unfortunately that's often the case, the public utility commission of the FCC and just, and just complain. They, you know, they went through some hard times I'm not making any excuses for 'em. They probably deserved it, but maybe they're getting better. I hope they are. I'm glad you have a choice. And it's a word of warning. A lot of people in the Southland had their internet changed and their phone system changed without permission in effect because the company got, I can't remember who it was got sold.

Caller 1 (00:17:47):
It was Verizon,

Leo Laporte (00:17:47):
Verizon sold that portion of the Southland to frontier. You, were you swept up in that?

Caller 1 (00:17:55):
No. I was with spectrum at the time. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:17:58):
Yeah. It's really too bad. I don't, you know, and I don't know what the answer is except that well, I do know what the answer is, but I don't know if there's a solution to it. The, the reason all of this exists is be not, you know, you it's tempting to blame the FCC. That's set up the duopoly in the first place, but really that was because they were lobbied heavily and the telecommunications companies are among the highest spenders for government lobbying in the country. And as a result, they get sweetheart treatment in Congress with the FCC, and they've been allowed to create this really untenable situation here in the country where the internet began. We have among the worst internet in the world for the most highest price. It's really shameful. What we need is competition. I think there, I think it's coming Elon Musk with Starlink Google with their fiber, you know, it's interesting wherever Google put fiber and suddenly the costs of fiber from Verizon and at and T plummeted. Cause it was competition. That's what we all need. I'm sorry you had that trouble. I'm glad you found a better solution. Leo Laporte the tech guy

Leo Laporte (00:19:06):
Apologize. I had to, had to quit out on you cuz of the, how that is with the network. What, what's your question?

Caller 1 (00:19:14):
Well, the exact opposite of my experience with frontier was with a cellular company that I loved and I've been with them for 11 years now. Yeah. And I remember several years ago you were talking about your mom getting cellular service. And I was like yelling at the radio. We tell her about consumer cellular. Okay. But, but here's the thing I heard you. I cut the, you know, I, I, I have to apologize. I get a little distracted during football season, So my

Leo Laporte (00:19:46):
Attention, congratulations, especially

Caller 1 (00:19:48):
On Sundays when I'm watching Red zone and listening to, oh,

Leo Laporte (00:19:53):
That's a lot, you're watching 12 games and me.

Caller 1 (00:19:56):
Oh, I

Leo Laporte (00:19:56):
Have to. Are you a Rams fan? Did you, did you get to celebrate last week?

Caller 1 (00:20:01):
No, I did not. Take part in the typical or the Los Angeles riot that happens when one of our, but let me, here's my question. I, I, I caught the tail end of somebody else asking you a couple of weeks ago. About Googley.

Leo Laporte (00:20:18):
Yeah, I usey, yeah. What

Caller 1 (00:20:20):
Really caught my attention is I'm hoping to start traveling again. And I really like the idea of the international data that yeah. Able to roam in other countries, the SIM card, especially in Japan, where it's a completely different system and I always have to go to big camera in Tokyo and have them actually change the SIM for me.

Leo Laporte (00:20:43):
Oh, crazy. How often do you go to Japan?

Caller 1 (00:20:47):
Well, I've only been there a couple of times and it's like the,

Leo Laporte (00:20:50):
I love Japan. I would love to go there again soon.

Caller 1 (00:20:54):
Well, you know what Anthony Bordain said about Tokyo and what he said, it's like taking acid. You never see anything the same way after you go.

Leo Laporte (00:21:03):
I think that's true. Yeah. Yeah. It's very true. I it's true. You realize how civilized life could be. And ever since I went to Japan, I carry a handkerchief because they don't have paper towels in the men's rooms. And I just dry my hand on my handkerchief like they do. And I love it.

Caller 1 (00:21:18):
Well, you may not recall, but you and I have talked before in the air about Japanese toilets. Yes.

Leo Laporte (00:21:24):
Yes. That's another thing we have in, in common.

Caller 1 (00:21:29):
And you know, I have to tell you, I'm an ordained minister in the universal life church

Leo Laporte (00:21:33):
As am I a third thing we have in common? Yes.

Caller 1 (00:21:36):
And with the same age? Yes.

Leo Laporte (00:21:38):
Well, my God, I'm talking to my Doppel ganger.

Caller 1 (00:21:41):
I am your Doppel ganger, your worst fear, You know, kinda looping back to what you dressed at the top of the show. One of my concerns about going with GoogleFi is Google knows everything already. Yeah. Privacy concerns.

Leo Laporte (00:21:58):
Honestly, I think Google's better than any cellular carrier. I mean, if you know, I mean, let's be honest, the cellular carriers are not notoriously consumer friendly. Any of them I maybe consumer cellular is, was.

Caller 1 (00:22:13):
Yeah. And one of the things I really liked about them and that's another thing I have my reservations about Google fly is the customer service.

Leo Laporte (00:22:21):
Actually customer service is pretty good and I haven't had to use it a lot, but because you're a paying customer as opposed to a free customer for most of Google services, they actually have support. I've been very happy with fi I mean, I, I have everybody, I have Verizon I have at and T I have T-Mobile. I used to have sprint and I have ting and I have mint mobile. I do not have consumer cellular, but I have to say I've been very happy with, with a fi Hey, I got, I have to run, unfortunately,

Caller 1 (00:22:52):
But I have a one last fast question. Yes, I did you go to Bailey's antiques when you were in Waikiki?

Leo Laporte (00:22:58):
No, we didn't. We missed it. Sorry, Terry,

Caller 1 (00:23:02):
You were staying right by there.

Leo Laporte (00:23:03):
I know I was supposed to go and I forgot

Caller 1 (00:23:07):
$3,000 shirts. I

Leo Laporte (00:23:08):
Forgot. Thanks Terry. If you're tuning in for Scott Wilkinson home theater geek, he is in the process of a move right now. He's moving, he's leaving. After 30 years in Los Angeles, he's moving to Santa Cruz where the sixties never died. And if he's gonna fit right in with his tight eye shirts and his long beard and is Scott, I can't remember. Is he gonna be back next week, John? Or is it yes. So this is the second week of his two week hiatus. So save your home theater questions for next week. Scott will be with us once again, this time from Santa Cruz, cotton town, Tennessee. Hello, Kenny.

Caller 2 (00:23:52):
Hello you. How are you doing?

Leo Laporte (00:23:53):
I am great. How are you?

Caller 2 (00:23:56):
I'm doing okay. I do have a tech question, but I have a little super bowl story. I wanna tell you about all

Leo Laporte (00:24:03):
Right. Since we weren't the super bowl this year, even though we ought to have been, go ahead.

Caller 2 (00:24:10):
I know, but Hey, at least the NFC west team did win.

Leo Laporte (00:24:13):
Okay. Yeah, no, I'm glad the Rams won. Actually. I was very happy, especially people like 

Caller 2 (00:24:19):
Yeah, I was pretty, I was pretty nervous up until abound, but we were watching it on regular OTA TV. Yeah. And somewhere along the line door was opened by someone else and it was like a little mini party and we lost the, the frequency on the local channel. But thank goodness for YouTube TV, if nothing else,

Leo Laporte (00:24:38):
You know, I watched the whole thing on YouTube TV. I like how they do the highlights and all that stuff. And I just enjoyed it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was. And you know, it was a great game and to watch big wit with a little tear in his eye, get finally getting that ring made it all worthwhile. So I was happy about that. So

Caller 2 (00:24:56):
Yeah. Imagine everybody there won't have to worry about buying a beer. We share a Boulevard except for effort, but,

Leo Laporte (00:25:05):
Well, what's wrong with Matthew Stafford?

Caller 2 (00:25:09):
Let's just say at the celebration they had Wednesday. Oh

Leo Laporte (00:25:12):
Yeah.

Caller 2 (00:25:13):
We forgot to mix in some water yeah. On Brady,

Leo Laporte (00:25:15):
But yeah. Yeah, he, yeah. You know what, that seems to be a standard now standard of operation. So what can I what can I what can I for you?

Caller 2 (00:25:29):
Well, I'm kind of been looking in the market for some time for an apple watch only plan. That's basically for, just for the apple watch. And I happen to come across a group out of the United Kingdom, known as true phone, T R U P H O and E. Those offer surface here domestically it's 9 99 a month. And you have like a seven day free trial. It ha says it has unlimited data, voice and SMS. And the nice thing that I like about it is that it works outside of the carrier that you have for your iPhone. And it's a company that they say they worked well with apple for years. My question is, are you familiar with that company per se? Cause they do have plans for iPads and iPhones. And do you would, if you do, is that something you may wanna recommend or anybody on the chatroom recommend?

Leo Laporte (00:26:22):
Yeah, this is new to me and I'm looking at it right now. That's cool. You still need a smartphone, an apple own iPhone to set up your apple watch, but now apple does have a way of setting up a watch for seniors and kids that allows you to, you know, walk away, you set it up with your iPhone walk away. So you could have a friend, I guess, set it up for you and put the true phone. Yeah. There's no SIM, but you know, established connection with true phone using that an

Caller 2 (00:26:47):
EIM with a family

Leo Laporte (00:26:48):
Set. Yeah. Yeah. And you use a family setup. Do you have an iPhone?

Caller 2 (00:26:52):
Yes, I do.

Leo Laporte (00:26:53):
So that doesn't matter. That's not really what you're looking at. You're just looking at the cellular connection. And most of the time, most of the big guys charge 10 bucks a month. You, you wanna use true phone because it's less expensive or

Caller 2 (00:27:08):
Well that, and just the fact that I don't want to go into a postpaid contract. I've been, ah, prepaid pretty much my

Leo Laporte (00:27:14):
Adult life. Yeah.

Caller 2 (00:27:15):
I, I don't like the idea of having to mortgage something that you can just go ahead and pay for.

Leo Laporte (00:27:20):
Yeah. And of course, true phone is, is global too. So if like our last caller you're traveling that would be a good solution. I have no experience with it. And I didn't know, I've, I'm familiar with the company, but I didn't realize that they sold apple watch only plans, which is really kind of cool. That's a, that's a great idea. Ironically

Caller 2 (00:27:42):
Enough, go to Google and there, it was basically.

Leo Laporte (00:27:44):
Yeah. I'm just looking to see if anybody in the chat room has been using them and it doesn't seem like yet, but I'ma keep an eye peeled or maybe somebody will call in and you keep listening Kenny, because that's a really cool idea. So I see, let me look at the us pricing cause I'm looking, you know, it's starts up with the UK pricing, so it's still $10 a month, but the idea is it's prepaid. Right. You see, that's what you want. You want prepaid. Yes. Yeah. And no contract. And

Caller 2 (00:28:17):
It's, it sounds like a, a good idea. So I may just go ahead and try.

Leo Laporte (00:28:20):
It's tempting. It's tempting. Yeah. And it's tempting. Yeah. I wonder who's I wonder who's this is the other question for them. And maybe it's somewhere on the webpage whose carrier service they use, cuz obviously there's no such thing as true phones, cell towers in the us. So they're buying they're riding on somebody else's cell towers. And the question is who's is it T-Mobile or somebody else that might that might re impact you because you know, depending on what you've got in cotton town, it may or may not be a good connectivity. That would the only thing I I'd pay attention to I don't see on the, I'm

Caller 2 (00:29:00):
Looking at the reviews right there and it's sort of a mixed bag. Yeah. Depending on technical issues and customer service. But on said if it's, if I get a free day, seven day, yeah. Try it trial. It's worth try.

Leo Laporte (00:29:12):
Almost always it's that's the solution with any cellular system because it really there's no, you know, oh, it works great for me. Doesn't mean it's gonna work great for you. It really has to do with what, what cell towers true phone is using and what's available in, in your area and where you go and you know, where you work, where you live, where you travel to all of that's, you know, gonna impact your experience. It's a good idea. Week is not very long, but at least you can try it. It's an E SIM. So you don't have to wait for them to send you a SIM. And I would suggest driving around as much, you know, all the places you might want to be in that week to really make sure it's it's okay. You don't really need full-time connectivity with the apple watch either. Remember it doesn't if it's not, if it's not, you know, it's not your, you're not really taking phone calls on it so much. It just, you want your notifications, you know, and stuff like that. Yeah. I'm never using an apple watch without an iPhone, so I don't, but you're gonna use your iPhone. So you'll be all right that way. Yeah.

Caller 2 (00:30:08):
Yeah. It'd be worth to try it out. There's one little quick thing before I let you go. I listened to your show last week and you were talking about radio to some extent you mentioned CBS as far as own and operated radio stations. They don't own radio stations anymore. I don't know if you're familiar with Intercom.

Leo Laporte (00:30:26):
Yeah. Intercom owns them. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. No, I know that

Caller 2 (00:30:31):
CBS, I thought,

Leo Laporte (00:30:31):
Oh, I know it it's the fascinating media time because thanks to the internet all sorts of things are going on. CBS via is for sale. CBS radio stations got sold a long time ago. Yeah. It's a very interesting unstable situation as the old Chinese proverb goes. May you live in interesting times? And if you're in old school media, there is no more interesting time than right now. Cable companies disrupt radio disrupted newspapers, Meredith just closed six magazines, including entertainment weekly, the old time magazine's been around for a long time. Yeah, the internet is, is reeked havoc and I hope that it all gets better in the long run. Yes. Thank you. Yeah. I, I think I did know that Kenny, I might have been spoken last week, but I, I do remember

Caller 2 (00:31:26):
Well I wanna recommend one service. That's sort of an alternative to tune in real quick known as my tuner radio, which by the way, does have TWiT on there. And what I like is it has a great apple watch app where you can excellent pause and play and go through favorites and recents. They just updated it last Sunday as a matter of fact, and it's a really good apple watch app, so excellent. I recommend my tuner radio,

Leo Laporte (00:31:49):
My tuner radio. I'm looking at it right now. I'm looking at which stations it supports looks like. It's got a complete selection. That's great. Thank you. Good suggestion. You're

Caller 2 (00:31:58):
Welcome. You have a good rest of the show, man. Thank

Leo Laporte (00:32:00):
You, Kenny. Always great to hear from you. Leo Laporte tech guy, more calls right after this Eighty eight eighty eight. Ask Leo the phone number. Leo Laporte, the tech guy and from Los Angeles Al is on the line. Hi Al. Or is it AI?

Caller 7 (00:32:21):
Leo? It's Al

Leo Laporte (00:32:22):
Al okay. Hi Al. How you doing? I'm good. How are you?

Caller 7 (00:32:26):
All right. All right. Hey, I'm calling. Because I heard of there was a, there was a free Google software update for Google Chrome.

Leo Laporte (00:32:37):
Yes.

Caller 7 (00:32:38):
And they're saying that they could take your laptop and if you install this software,

Leo Laporte (00:32:44):
Oh, I know what you're talking about. Yeah. For Chrome OS, you're talking about to turn it into a Chromebook.

Caller 7 (00:32:51):
Yeah. It turns it into a Chromebook. Yes.

Leo Laporte (00:32:54):
This is really exciting news from Google. So there's a called cloud ready that Google or a companies called never wear, but they made a program called cloud ready that allowed you to install ChromeOS on older laptops,

Caller 7 (00:33:11):
Right.

Leo Laporte (00:33:12):
Google bottom. And now they've got something called ChromeOS flex, which will even install an old Intel max, which is really cool. Now, the way it works is you put it on a USB key and then you, you put it on your computer. The first thing I do though, before you spend any energy on it is go to the ChromeOS flex website and look at the certified models list, which are shows you by computer man manufacturer, which models are supposed to work. But what a great way to take an old computer that really is too old to put windows or Mac OS on and turn it into something useful. I think the intent is mostly schools where they have a lot of these old computers and they don't know what to do with them,

Caller 7 (00:33:56):
What they said. They said mostly it is for like schools that, you know, they can. And if you had old computers that you put on there and then they could donate them to schools. Yep.

Leo Laporte (00:34:06):
It's a great idea. It's a great idea. So, and I have heard from people who say my computer wasn't on the certified list, but it does work. So but you know, if you, is this for you or are you gonna donate it?

Caller 7 (00:34:21):
No, it's for me. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:34:22):
What, what's the computer?

Caller 7 (00:34:25):
I have a, I have an older model HP. I don't have it with me but I use that for work, but it's really slow. Yeah. Personal finance. I have a MacBook.

Leo Laporte (00:34:40):
See, this would be good. Good for anything that you wanted to take online, cuz it would be, you know, that nice thing about ChromeOS is very secure. I'm looking at, there's quite a few HP models that are verified to work. There's a few with minor issues, which I wouldn't hesitate installing it on, but there are some with major issues expected and those are the ones you probably, you know, would stop on, but they have a whole list of them on the website. So it's a that if you just search for ChromeOS flex, you'll find it. And and it's, I think this is really thank you Google for doing this. There's so many old computers that end up getting kind of tossed. You could probably install Linux on almost anything, but you know, a lot of people don't wanna take, it's hard to do. This is a much better solution for people. They can put it on a USB key and install it. So absolutely. You know, if you don't mind, the time spent putting it on a USB key, try it.

Caller 7 (00:35:34):
Okay. And what, what, okay, so I just need to get a USB key.

Leo Laporte (00:35:38):
Yeah. In fact, they have step by step instructions on the website. Now, remember this is the pre-release. This is, it says ChromeOS flex is currently released for early access testing and is not suitable for production use. But you know, this is just like

Caller 7 (00:35:52):
The first model is like the first model of a new car coming out.

Leo Laporte (00:35:56):
Exactly, exactly. Expect some problems, but this is in a way you're helping because if you have issues or you should report it, send fee, there's a send feedback button and say, here's my model number. And here's what happened, cuz you're adding to the database. So that's also a way, but they have a step by step on that page. Chromeos flex that says create the USB install. You can follow it, see if it works, what to do and all of that. It's pretty straightforward. You need an eight gigabyte or bigger USB drive to do it.

Caller 7 (00:36:24):
Okay. Eight gig.

Leo Laporte (00:36:26):
You probably have a few of those thumb drives lying around, you know, the little, little devices. Yeah. Yeah. They used to come in cereal boxes. Yeah. Yeah. No, not yet. Hey, it's a pleasure talking to you. I I've thank you for bringing that up Al cuz I've been mean to mention that. I think that's a that's big news.

Caller 7 (00:36:42):
Yeah. Okay. Well thanks Leo.

Leo Laporte (00:36:44):
Thanks Al. Have a good one. Chromeos comes from Google. Basically. It's a, it's a Linux operating system, but it's locked down in such a way that it can only run the Chrome browser. If you're already using Chrome, you kind of know you're gonna get and for people who do everything in the browser, get their email search the web shop bank, that kind of thing. It's a much more secure operating system cuz it's so locked down. And so a great way to take an old Mac and Intel old Intel Mac, for instance, that, you know, can't run the modern version of a Mac OS and and put that on there an old laptop. I think this is, thank you, Google for doing this. And you know, they bought this company Neverwhere they bought 'em and and I think that they've really put some effort into this to make it work, which is really, really, really good. Really, really good mark on the line from north Florida. Hey mark. Leah, the tech guy.

Caller 4 (00:37:41):
Hey Leo. I wanted to ask you about peripherals for a Mac mini that I'm hoping to get when the next bunch comes out. Okay. But I think it might help to tell you where I come from. I've been listening to Twitch shows starting back when I had iTunes on a PC, I would subscribe to stuff and damage bless you.

Leo Laporte (00:38:02):
Bless

Caller 4 (00:38:02):
You. Rewriteable CD

Leo Laporte (00:38:04):
Back when it was hard. Yeah.

Caller 4 (00:38:06):
Listen in my car. Nice. I would take a little disc player that I plugged cassette adapter to my work truck.

Leo Laporte (00:38:14):
That's what, you know, when we that's, when podcasting was brand new and it was hard work to listen to one and I'm very grateful. Thank you.

Caller 4 (00:38:23):
And just for technical background, I worked for the FAA since 1975. I'm an electronics technician. Cool. To me something new is 10 years old.

Leo Laporte (00:38:33):
Yeah. Yeah. Cause flight safety comes first. Absolutely. Thank you.

Caller 4 (00:38:39):
I, I work on systems that were designed in the seventies and eighties still.

Leo Laporte (00:38:44):
Where do you come down on this 5g and altimeter thing?

Caller 4 (00:38:49):
Well, one of the things and, and I'm a technician, I'm a, I'm a, I'm a, you know, bottom of the food chain guy in the, in the world,

Leo Laporte (00:38:57):
I call that you're on the ground. You're at, you're where the rubber meets the road. That's the most important person of all.

Caller 4 (00:39:04):
Yeah. I'm I'm you see the little orange, white buildings out on airports. That's the world that I'm, that I'm around.

Leo Laporte (00:39:09):
Awesome.

Caller 4 (00:39:10):
So one of the things the FAA is, is always been, and I think really good about is what do you call it in the windows world where they consider the old software and

Leo Laporte (00:39:24):
All legacy, legacy legacy.

Caller 4 (00:39:26):
Exactly. So the FAS big on legacy treatment of, of aircraft and you know, there's a lot of places pilots can go and not even have a radio. So in that respect, the 5g hearkens back to the FAA, allowing equipment that was designed a long time ago to still be in service.

Leo Laporte (00:39:47):
That's right.

Caller 4 (00:39:48):
So as far as 5g, I, I agree to the emphasis of safety of white to, to block it if necessary. Yep. But I'm certainly somebody that in the technical world, I always look forward to the newest thing, which takes me to a lot of your comments on the Mac mini with, with different shows that

Leo Laporte (00:40:11):
I was, we're very excited cuz it looks like the evidence is getting stronger and stronger that they will announce that new many March 8th.

Caller 4 (00:40:19):
I hope so. I'm ready. 

Leo Laporte (00:40:20):
Me too.

Caller 4 (00:40:21):
I use, I use my 10 year old doit yourself PC.

Leo Laporte (00:40:25):
Oh, it's time.

Caller 4 (00:40:25):
Occasionally. Occasionally for audio editing. I, I do a podcast and occasionally I get pressed into duty to, to do the edits of our, of our calls and I can make one change and it'll choke my old computer for five minutes.

Leo Laporte (00:40:40):
Yep. Yep. You need, oh, you're gonna love your new mini. So what can I do to help?

Caller 4 (00:40:46):
Well, question is, I've seen the Mac keyboards and the, and the, to me what looks like an odd mouse that apple,

Leo Laporte (00:40:52):
You can use any PC keyboard and mouse on it.

Caller 4 (00:40:56):
Okay. There's no advantage to their product.

Leo Laporte (00:40:59):
Just that the windows key has an apple logo on that's the only difference. There are some special keys that are unique, but there's always a mapping. So yes, you can use any USB keyboard and mouse they'll work fine. Laporte the tech guy. I do. I do myself. I I don't use Mac keyboards for the most. So

Caller 4 (00:41:21):
Talk about keyboards and the things you like, but I'm not a typist. So I, I have to two finger everything.

Leo Laporte (00:41:26):
The one thing I am gonna do there's there's a keyboard actually. I already have it that lets you switch back and forth because I'm gonna have a Mac mini and a PC on the same monitor. And I want to be able to press a button on the keyboard now, have it be typing to the Mac, press another button type to the PC. But, but it's all, they're all, there's a standard for keyboards, they're human interface devices. And the, that standard is is adhered to, by both Mac and PC. I would never get an apple mouse ever, ever. I always fact this is the mouse I use on my Mac right now is a standard old fashioned 10, probably 10 year old Microsoft and tele mouse. And it it's, it's perfect. And you can, you know, you can always map everything 

Caller 4 (00:42:12):
Easily appreciate the value of something that works.

Leo Laporte (00:42:15):
Yes, yes, absolutely. I bought, I, you know, this just like you in this case, I think I bought 10 of these in Teles a few years ago cuz I was afraid they were gonna stop making 'em and you know, I have a little reserve in my in my wire closet of, of unopened mice in case I need 'em and then yeah, the only thing is the command key versus the windows key, but you quickly learned that, oh, well that's not a windows key. That's a command key. So you've never used a Mac.

Caller 4 (00:42:45):
I've got an old MacBook pro that's like eight or so years old that I picked up used last year. Just play with, but not very much because it's, it's slow and old. So it's a little tiresome.

Leo Laporte (00:42:58):
Yeah. Yeah. So you're familiar with the essentials of the Mac operating system. So yeah. Yeah. I don't, I think that you're gonna be very happy. These new minis with this new apple Silicon should be killer. I've been saving my pennies for a year waiting to get this. I'm

Caller 4 (00:43:15):
Very excited. Is there anything wrong with my thinking about going for a pro or a max, assuming that they come out?

Leo Laporte (00:43:21):
My suggestion, unless you know, you need a max is to save the money and go with a pro. I did that with the laptop. The big difference is the amount of G the graphics processor. So the, unless you're using software that, you know, wants a high end GPU, you could save money by getting the pro and every other respect, the pro is just as good, including by the way, it has that playback chip. So it plays back pro re and all of that natively on a specialized chip. So it's really just for things like maybe Photoshop or final cut if you're doing a lot of rendering, things like that.

Caller 4 (00:44:00):
Yeah. My main thing will be audio, which it'll be, you don't need that Adobe suite.

Leo Laporte (00:44:04):
Yeah. You don't need, you don't need a G I mean, you might, I, I Adobe often uses the GPO. I, I can't remember if audition does or not, but boy, the, well, the, the, the pro is gonna be so much faster than I think you you've ever seen anyway, that you're gonna be very happy with it. I don't know how much difference there'll be in price. It might only be a couple hundred bucks. I'm I'm thinking the same thing. Should I get the max just kind of for future proofing, I'm gonna look at the price and see how much difference there is. Mostly what you really want is to get a lot of get as a lot of Ram. Although again, these apple Silicon is much more economical with Ram than the old Intel pro parts were. So getting, getting you know, the others stuff, you know, the, the quality of life stuff first. And then if you still have a little money leftover, you can get a max, but I don't think you're gonna need a max.

Caller 4 (00:44:59):
Okay,

Caller 4 (00:45:00):
Cool.

Leo Laporte (00:45:01):
Cool. We'll both be we'll both be watching, talking to you with March 8th. Hey, thank you for listening.

Speaker 9 (00:45:06):
Thank

Leo Laporte (00:45:06):
You, Leo. It's my pleasure meeting you take care. Thanks for the good work you've done. Air travels, so safe, Safest way to fly Or drive or walk or bicycle. We don't know dwindle. We don't know they haven't they haven't really done A pro desktop yet, so it really will depend on, we just don't know what those skews will be. In theory, you could go a lot more, but remember these, you know, the way they do this Unified memory is a little different. So 32 is probably enough for anybody. You know, Alex, Lindsay's gonna wanna want get 64 or 128 or 2 56, or It just really will depend on how they do it. If they put, they may do dual CPUs, you know, we just don't know Currently. It's yeah, 32 On the laptops. There's a lot of questions that will be answered on March 8th. If they have that event in March 8th, What did we get? Anthony, We got the max. I think What's the max unified memory. I think it's 32. Yeah, yeah, no, there's 64. Nevermind. So we got him a 64 gig machine. God, that's gotta be enough for anything. The nice thing about the unified memory you get the max is the max uses that memory for the GPU as well. So you in, in theory have a better G you know, more GPU space last week's Mac break weekly. I asked Alex Lindsay, this exact question. He talked about it from a pro perspective. He says, you know, the high end Invidia cards are still better. Mostly because they

Leo Laporte (00:47:19):
Support things like Is it CUDA that are not supported by the

Leo Laporte (00:47:27):
Apples?

Leo Laporte (00:47:29):
Yeah. See, that's the big difference. You don't get CUDA, but you get a lot of Ram for textures. So if you have giant texture, maps and stuff, you know, that's the, so it's a mixed bag. Alex did a good job explaining that It's exact right dwindle. That's, that's a good way to put it.

Leo Laporte (00:47:58):
Leo. Laporte the 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. Johnny Jetar travel guru coming up in about 25 minutes. Dick D Bartolo, our Gimo guy also ahead. Now I said something I should probably clarify. I had, you know, we need to wait to put asterisks and radio shows footnote. Whenever I mention a date of an apple event, that's speculate pure unadulterated speculation on my part, but the rumor, the rumor mill and past history and a few little clues indicate apple may have an event coming up in the next month or so they've, they've done 'em in April. In the past, the clue is the central Asian product database. The, when you release electronics product, you have to go to the FCC in the us and the various radio telecommunications agencies in other countries to show them the device to make sure it it's compatible.

Leo Laporte (00:49:08):
You can sell it. You know, you have to get that certification before you could sell it. And in the past, this has been a good indicator of an upcoming product from a variety of electronics companies, cuz they have to get these in the database ahead of time. In this case, apple put four new Macintosh's in the database four, we have never seen four new model numbers. We've never seen are all running macOS Monterey. That's usually a pretty good indicator that a, a, a new product is imminent imminent. There's also this rumor that March 8th will be an apple event. That's a little less well founded, you know, comes from the rumor mill people like mark Garman. Who's very, very accurate from Bloomberg. So putting two and two together, I think it's, you know, a high likelihood better than 75% that apple will have an event.

Leo Laporte (00:50:05):
Next month, probably March 8th, the dates a little bit funny, but probably March 8th, possibly they later. And that, and the real question mark, a lot of people have had is, well, you know, it's pretty clear that in that event, as usual, they'll announce a new iPad air they'll announce probably possibly maybe an iPhone se update. That's typically when they would do that, a 5g se two, something like that, not do they not necessarily would they introduce new Macintosh computers? They've got the worldwide developer conference coming in June. That is often when they announce computers. But the fact that these four max are in that database gives us hope. Hope it tells you that there might be new max coming out in a couple of weeks. And if it is what we're, what I, and obviously are Al and others are hoping for is new Mac mini.

Leo Laporte (00:51:07):
They they've updated almost everything. Now with apple Silicon, these new chips, there's only a few Intel things left. There is already an M one based Mac mini Mac books, M one and M one pro and M one max, even an iMac with an M one, but they 13 inch Mac books and the iMac and the mini and the MacBook air all have the first M one chips, which are a little bit lower power, the kind of low end devices, the only ones with the high end M one pro and M one, max are these new MacBook, very nice by the way, love them. And I think that it's likely we are, you know, they said, this is the year that by the end of this year, everything will be updated. So we expected iMac pro a Mac pro and pro versions of the Mac mini and maybe an updated version of the MacBook air sometime this year.

Leo Laporte (00:52:02):
And I think this spring, most likely a Mac mini. And I'm actually more, I've mentioned this before more of a fan. I had an iMac pro very, very expensive iMac, their high end iMac. And it's the problem is that the screen is tied to the processor. Yeah, that's nice. That's elegant on their desktop, fewer wires. It's pretty, but it's not very upgradeable because it all integrated in. And I kind of like the idea of separating the screen from the, you know, I have a nice big 55 inch OED screen, a computer screen that apple doesn't sell. I would like that to be attached to a Mac. So a mini make more sense for me, some, just a desktop or maybe a Mac pro anyway, that's why a lot of us are interested in the Mac mini it's traditionally been LA apple, least expensive Macintosh. And there's only a kind of a low end one in the apple Silicon. So that's, that's the asterisk. That was a long asterisk. That's the little footnote, the little footnote to the show is everything I say is speculation. Cuz we don't know. It's all just the rumor mill back to the phone. It's eighty eight eighty eight ask Leo actually that was mark. Not Al wasn't it. Mark's looking at the Mac mini David's on the line for Venice beach, California. Hi David

Caller 5 (00:53:25):
Ho Hoy. Ho who is it?

Leo Laporte (00:53:27):
Oh, ho Hoy. Does that mean

Caller 5 (00:53:30):
That was Dutch or Hey, Hey. Hey, how you doing today?

Leo Laporte (00:53:32):
Oh, say it again.

Caller 5 (00:53:35):
Hoy, Hoy. Hoang.

Leo Laporte (00:53:37):
I love it. Hoy. Hoy. Ho that's good

Caller 5 (00:53:40):
Kash.

Leo Laporte (00:53:40):
Yeah, I don't there go. Good. Thank you. Are you Dutch?

Caller 5 (00:53:45):
Belgian actually Belgian, which is one of the national languages. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:53:48):
So you're from the low countries. They're all kind of the same.

Caller 5 (00:53:51):
That's right. Yeah. 

Leo Laporte (00:53:55):
What can I do

Caller 5 (00:53:55):
For you? I like my phone, my, my iPhone E now David.

Leo Laporte (00:53:59):
David. Were you the guy who called last week from Venice?

Caller 5 (00:54:02):
No.

Leo Laporte (00:54:03):
Okay. Cuz I guy had a guy, I think his name was David call from Venice beach last week and was accosted during the phone call had to hang up cuz some guy was yelling at him. They almost got in a fight. And I just wanna know if that was you so you're fine. Anyway. Oh,

Caller 5 (00:54:17):
I was the one who picked a fight. I was the David who picked

Leo Laporte (00:54:21):
Okay. Belgian are notoriously notoriously. No, not at all. Very peaceful people. What

Caller 5 (00:54:30):
Exactly.

Leo Laporte (00:54:30):
So you have an iPhone se.

Caller 5 (00:54:32):
Yeah. And I dropped it and there's one crack and of course the crack in the screen is exactly in front of the lens. The picture I know. So my pictures are funny now they look weird, not what I want now my question is of course would apple fix that for me? Would it be free? Would it be expensive or is the website that you would know

Leo Laporte (00:54:55):
Apple will fix it? In fact now they now finally thanks to apple. You can go to a third party and get it fixed and they'll give 'em the parts. So you can go to somewhere like I, you break IFI or the local guy down the street and he, he will probably be able to get the parts for that. So I don't remember what apple charges for a screen replacement. It's not horribly expensive. It might be a hundred bucks. The one thing I would say is maybe you heard me with my big, long asterisk. We might, we probably will see a new iPhone se in, in two or three weeks.

Caller 5 (00:55:31):
Oh

Leo Laporte (00:55:32):
Yeah.

Caller 5 (00:55:34):
Nice. So, and do you make it cheap for us?

Leo Laporte (00:55:37):
Eh, it's not gonna be, it'll be, you know, $400 range, four to $500. The same as the old I se this is the replacement version basically.

Caller 5 (00:55:46):
Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:55:47):
So you, you know, it, you, you can't use this, the camera it's kind of annoying. So you might wanna say, just look, I'm gonna replace it. It's not horribly expensive. There, there is a pricing chart on if I will put it up in the show notes at the apple support for, I don't see an se see 12, 11, 10, 8, 7 se screen replacement. You have the second generation. Well, it doesn't matter 129 bucks. So it's not horrible.

Caller 5 (00:56:21):
No, it's true.

Leo Laporte (00:56:22):
It's less than buying a new phone, but you know, so it's up to you. You a new phone will have some new features.

Caller 5 (00:56:30):
All right. Well, yeah, no, I don't need the features. I just need to make phone calls and get them in and texted that

Leo Laporte (00:56:35):
And do your selfies. You just need your selfies, man. I need my selfies, All the why is there? Why are always a crack across David's selfies? Well, now we know what

Caller 5 (00:56:47):
Exactly. All right. Well, all

Leo Laporte (00:56:49):
Right, David pleasure talking to you. Ho ho bye. 88 88. Ask Leo that's the phone number? Yeah, well this is actually a good chart. I haven't seen this before from apple iPhone screen repair accidents happen. If your screen gets cracked, we can help. And then you just bring it to the apple store. But third parties are now doing it too. Officially Leo Laporte the tech guy, Leo Laporte the tech guy, eighty eight eighty eight. And ask Leo the phone number Christie on the line from Southern California. Hello, Christie.

Caller 6 (00:57:28):
Hi Leo. How are you today?

Leo Laporte (00:57:30):
I'm well, how are you?

Caller 6 (00:57:31):
Oh, just ducky.

Leo Laporte (00:57:34):
Just ducky. Well, that's pretty darn good.

Caller 6 (00:57:37):
Yeah, but I, I do have a really important question that I'm wondering about, and I hope it's not too political for you. I'm not a tech know anything. So so I'm, I'm coming to you. I'm just curious if our country had a cyber attack, what is that? What is oh, care of that and how would it affect me and my little play time?

Leo Laporte (00:58:01):
I don't wanna scare you.

Caller 6 (00:58:03):
I know, I didn't know if you want to answer

Leo Laporte (00:58:05):
That. I don't wanna scare you. You know in the lead up to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, whether that happens or not, there have already been a number of cyber attacks. In fact us intelligence believes that the Russians often use Ukraine as a test bed about 75% of the ransomware attacks we experience worldwide come out of Russia. There is a very active, very skilled set of hackers in Russia. You know, organized crime criminals who use technology to Rob, you know, people don't need to Rob banks anymore. If you've got the skills it's much easier and much safer to do it online. So there's a lot of people out there with these skills, if for some reason, China or Russia, both of which have very active, very con accomplished hackers decided to attack us. There are a number of points of vulnerability.

Leo Laporte (00:59:12):
What Russia did for instance, in the Ukraine last week was bring down the banking system with a denial of service attacks. So it wasn't for very long, it was probably just a morning shot if you will. But if I were going to attack the United States, if I really wanted to hurt the United States, there are a couple of places I would go after. One is the financial system. It's highly computerized. It's very vulnerable, even more vulnerable is our electric grid. So in fact, we already know, because the electricity in this country is run not by the federal or even state and local governments, but is often run by private companies who are franchise to do that. They have varying degrees of skill and protecting the scale themselves, many, many local a electrical companies are not at all protected. And and when CSA, the us cyber security group goes in and looks at these, they have reported that many of them have already been compromised that there's already malware in their networks, not triggered, ready to be triggered.

Leo Laporte (01:00:24):
And so there's been a very, there's a, the federal agencies, the cyber security and infrastructure security agency, C I S a and their job is to protect our infrastructure against such attacks. And so they're being very active. They're only about four years old. They're very active in going to these power companies and other infrastructure companies and helping them lock it down. If we ever were to be attacked. Those are two areas where we could grind to a halt, but there are many others. You know, we only have five days worth of food in our food supply at any given time. So if you wanna do it attack a company, a country, especially a country like ours, that's very highly computerized going after the food supply would be another place where you could really attack them. I've read a number of books about this. There are a lot of experts who believe that that is the next front. Okay. So I didn't wanna scare you. So here's the other side of that story

Caller 6 (01:01:27):
That, well, no, that's okay. I want the

Leo Laporte (01:01:29):
Academic it's, it's good to know. We are vulnerable and there are many points of attack, but financial electrical and food would be three, you know, massive vulnerabilities. Imagine, you know, if, if you didn't have electricity for three weeks imagine if you couldn't, if, if if we didn't have food in our food supply, where would you get food? Where would you go? There's nowhere unless you're growing tomatoes in your backyard. And then of course the financial infrastructure in this country imagine a mass, the stock market crash, time's a hundred. So there's some areas you could really attack. The reason that I don't think it's gonna happen is because a, we have similar capabilities. Remember the thing that kept nuclear war from happening was something kind of a crazy idea called mutually assured destruction or mad. The idea that if you attack us, we're gonna attack you and neither is gonna survive.

Leo Laporte (01:02:26):
So there is some deterrent in the fact that we, I believe I would hope the NSA and other very sophisticated intelligence agencies within the us have similar capabilities. So that's number one, number two at least with China, for sure. We are economically tied together. It would hurt China if our economy collapsed most definitely. So, you know, I, I think in, in some ways the best prospect for world peace is world trade is, is, is becoming interdependent. We are we're interdependent, whether you like it or not. Russia is a little bit of a outlier in that we don't really rely on Russia and they don't really rely on us. So that may be another issue entirely, but at least with China, I think that the fact that anything they do to us, she's gonna hurt him in one way or the other just as badly is, is, is perhaps protecting us. So I don't, I don't, I think it's, it'd be foolish to be running around scared. 

Caller 6 (01:03:31):
Yeah, no, I'm not bad.

Leo Laporte (01:03:32):
Yeah. Wouldn't be a bad idea to have some,

Caller 6 (01:03:35):
Has some retaliation.

Leo Laporte (01:03:37):
I do believe that we, I don't know a fact because of course the best way to, you know, cultivate something like that is to do it in secret. But I I'm, I know the NSA is, is pretty darn sophisticated. And I would imagine that they're doing the same thing. Now, a country like China has some very good abilities to lock itself down, you know, because they're totalitarian know authoritarian regime they don't have the same situation with, for instance, the electrical grid, because they can enforce rules, you know, strongly. And, and so their grid may not be as vulnerable, certainly their, you know, paying attention to this kind of thing. Their food supply is they've had disruptions in the past. They had a famine that killed millions not so many decades ago. So I think, I think we're all in us together these days. And I think you know, I, I, and many others have thought that we should make cyber warfare. One of those forms of warfare that's protected by the Geneva Accords or something, a modern Geneva Accords that we, and say, look, we're not gonna do this cuz it's, it would be too devastating to the civilian population. That's why the Genevo courts exist. And maybe it's time for us to do the same thing with cyber warfare. It, it, it could be devastating. Absolutely. Because we're so dependent these days, right?

Caller 6 (01:04:58):
Yes.

Leo Laporte (01:04:58):
And that's that's just the nature of modern society, but so are they, so were they, that's the good news, I guess?

Caller 6 (01:05:05):
Well, well that was great, Leo and your voice is so soothing. I already feel better. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:05:10):
I don't think it's something to worry about. Yeah. I mean, look, there's no,

Caller 6 (01:05:14):
I was mostly just curious. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:05:15):
How it, how well we're ver we're vulnerable because well, we are and we, we just rely on computer technology. And one of the things ransomware has taught us is that we aren't very well protected against attack of any kind, whether it's just malicious organized crime or nation states in particular nation states. They have very, very good skills. Chris, see fear, not sleep soundly. We'll all be okay. It's a pleasure talking to you.

Caller 6 (01:05:41):
Thank

Leo Laporte (01:05:41):
Have a great day. Bye bye. Oh yeah. He's been everywhere, man. He's our traveling guru. He helps us travel better with tech, Johnny jet he's here and in the house, Johnny jet do coms the website well in his house anyway, in

Johnny Jet (01:05:59):
My house exactly.

Leo Laporte (01:06:01):
In a house. He's also on the Twitter, Johnny jet, Instagram, Johnny jet. Do you have a TikTok?

Johnny Jet (01:06:09):
I do. But you know, I, I don't, I mean I do, but I don't use

Leo Laporte (01:06:12):
It, but I need to, I mean, I have a to, but I don't use it you know, leave that to the kids, John.

Johnny Jet (01:06:18):
Well, you know, my wife's on there a lot, not, not posting she's, you know, monitoring and 

Leo Laporte (01:06:23):
Monitoring it. That's what they call it. Right. I know my wife's monitoring it when she laughs out loud, every 30

Johnny Jet (01:06:30):
Seconds. It's a time. That's

Leo Laporte (01:06:31):
A problem. It's totally a time sink. So Johnny jet couple of things I wanna ask you, I know you have some things to talk about the they announced the DOJ that they're gonna prosecute 80 people for disrupting flights. Yup. Which I thought Bravo until I saw that it's tens of thousands in the last few months alone or something. I mean, it's incredible.

Johnny Jet (01:06:54):
I know it's this ridiculous. Although they say the numbers are going to down from last year and the year before, but there's still a lot of Insane people out there. There

Leo Laporte (01:07:06):
Don't be kooky on a flight. They should, you know, just stop serving alcohol and planes. I guess that's when there'd,

Johnny Jet (01:07:12):
It's not really not the alcohol. Oh, I, I think a part of it is it, but you know, a lot of the planes stop serving it during the, during it, because of first of all, it costs a lot of money. Right. And that's probably the number one

Leo Laporte (01:07:23):
Reason they don't make money though. I mean, they charge for drinks.

Johnny Jet (01:07:26):
No, I think just to get, I'm not sure if this is accurate, but I heard like just to get a can of Coca-Cola through the security, cuz everything has to be screened is like four or $5.

Leo Laporte (01:07:36):
Oh, all right. So they're losing money when they sell you beverages. Yeah. Oh,

Johnny Jet (01:07:40):
Interesting. I can understand. I mean, it's just ridiculous. There's some airports by the way, like Pittsburgh, where, you know, on the other side of security, they can only charge, they have a mall full on mall where they can only charge regular prices, which I used to love. I haven't been to the Pittsburgh airport, probably a decade, but I'm I heard they're still doing it. But anyway, that's another story. FA does pass them a lot of

Leo Laporte (01:08:02):
Money, investigates, unruly passenger incidents at current a year to date 384 94 reports of unruly passengers, 255 of 'em related to face masks of those 3 94, 59 enforcement cases initiated. So most of the time they may pull, pull over. They may let you off, they may arrest. You put you airport jail.

Johnny Jet (01:08:28):
They say, although it seems like it's more than that. But the CEO of Delta, you know, has been trying to get this ban. No, you know, no fly list for anyone who's been convicted. Although this week Republican politicians have actually opposed it because they say it's not fair. And because most of it's because of masks, right?

Leo Laporte (01:08:50):
It's politicized that along with everything else, totally $37,000 her violation up to for an unruly passenger. Just keep that in mind and be nice fly. Nice. Put your shoes on. Don't put your hair over the back of the seat. Don't kick the seat in front of you and don't jump up on the cart and imitate king Kong. None of that allowed it's out for sure. The other,

Johnny Jet (01:09:16):
Did you hear about that one woman cruising around Orlando airport on a motorized luggage? No. A motorized luggage.

Leo Laporte (01:09:22):
Well, we've seen those in fact, D Bartos mentioned those many times. You can.

Johnny Jet (01:09:26):
I I've written one. They're great. Yeah. Although I think they're illegal in the airports, but

Leo Laporte (01:09:29):
Oh really? Oh,

Johnny Jet (01:09:30):
She was evading police in the Orlando airport cuz she was too drunk to get on the plane and

Leo Laporte (01:09:36):
I'm driving off my luggage.

Johnny Jet (01:09:39):
I mean she got arrested. She spit on the cops. She defecated police car.

Leo Laporte (01:09:43):
Oh no. Oh

Johnny Jet (01:09:44):
This is that. I mean don't Google. Where

Leo Laporte (01:09:46):
Do these people come from? Go away, go, go live on another planet please. But,

Johnny Jet (01:09:51):
But the good news is, you know, things are opening up TSA yesterday had 2.2 million people passed through security checkpoints two years ago on the same day, pre pandemic, 2 million. So up over 200,000. So

Leo Laporte (01:10:04):
We're traveling more than ever.

Johnny Jet (01:10:06):
Well, we're getting there because actually in 2020, right before the pandemic hit, there was actually a little bit more. But we're getting there. Wow. but also, you know, Canada announced this week that they're gonna relax the rules on COVID testing instead of doing that expensive PCR test, you can now do an antigen test or a molecule test. Is that how you pronounce it by the way

Leo Laporte (01:10:29):
PCR you mean?

Johnny Jet (01:10:30):
No, no, not the PCR. There's antigen and there's a molecule.

Leo Laporte (01:10:33):
Oh, there's a, there's a fast, it's another fast one,

Johnny Jet (01:10:35):
But you can't do the home tests on these. Okay. But if you're UN, if you're UN vaccinated and you're a foreigner, you cannot get into Canada. But if you are vaccinated, you, you don't have to quarantine. And all I, which you couldn't before, I mean, you didn't have to do before, but

Leo Laporte (01:10:51):
Anyway.

Johnny Jet (01:10:52):
Right. But also Vietnam is gonna open up. Japan said, they're gonna start loosening up. Mongolia, Papa, new Guinea, Austria by the Australia. We talked about last week. Austria's also gonna start lifting a lot of their restrictions, which have been really tough and and Germany and Switzerland and Slovakia. So it's, it's, it's the world is getting bigger.

Leo Laporte (01:11:14):
Wow.

Johnny Jet (01:11:16):
Which is good to

Leo Laporte (01:11:17):
Hear. I yes. Yeah. You know, whether, whether it's over or not, we it's over. That's what I like about it. It's like, eh we're we are done. We, we don't wanna do this anymore. Let's let's

Johnny Jet (01:11:27):
We don't wanna do the lockups

Leo Laporte (01:11:29):
No more. Yeah.

Johnny Jet (01:11:30):
They're saying if you're vaccinated, boosted, you know, it's very little risk. Yeah. Unless you have

Leo Laporte (01:11:36):
Comorbidities, I feel bad for people like your dad people who are vulnerable. But you know, I guess they have, but he got it. He got it. I know. And he he's. Okay. He's fine. Yeah. Cuz he was vaccinated. Yeah. Good for him. 93,

Johnny Jet (01:11:50):
He got it twice.

Leo Laporte (01:11:51):
There is a kid he's 19 he's in school who realized that every plane in the country is attracted by a federal database. That's open to the public. Anybody could see. So he decided to get down to get the, get the tail numbers for a few big people's planes like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos and bill gates. And he has Twitter handles that you can follow and, and see of these guys are Elon hates it. He says it's a security issue. No one should know where I am to be a mystery, but it's public. Right.

Johnny Jet (01:12:23):
It is. But I would hate it too. If I was, if I was famous also these guys are, you know, always saying that they're working for the environment, but they're cruising around and these big private jets,

Leo Laporte (01:12:32):
Well, that's the other thing. They talk about how my much fuel they use and how much environmental consequence, but still, it's just fascinating to watch. You know, I was watching Jeff Bezos, he left Palm Springs, flew to Barcelona, stayed there for a couple hours, I guess, to refuel and then on to somewhere else. And I's kinda like, I feel like, boy, that's kind of the life of a jet set. I, how, how fun is that

Johnny Jet (01:12:53):
For sure. Neighbor used to be Robin Williams, private flight attendant.

Leo Laporte (01:12:58):
Nice. And she,

Johnny Jet (01:12:59):
And, and actually I gave her a bunch of Johnny jet hats and she put one on in the plane, I guess he wore it once. I wish I had a

Leo Laporte (01:13:05):
Picture of that. Wow.

Johnny Jet (01:13:06):
But anyway, you know, she would, she would be going to Japan one day, a week later, they're going to Europe or Mexico and

Leo Laporte (01:13:12):
Amazing. So these guys,

Johnny Jet (01:13:15):
He's

Leo Laporte (01:13:16):
Amazing. There's nothing wrong with you can't stop somebody from going to the ADSS B exchange and, and, and looking up the tail number and finding 'em where it is.

Johnny Jet (01:13:26):
You can go to flight radar 20 four.com. Yeah. That's one of my favorite apps by the way. And you pay, I think it's 3 99 or 4 99, and you hit the AR in the upper left hand corner. And whenever there's a plane cruising by and we live close to lax and I'm usually playing volleyball and all of a sudden I'll see like a Emirate, a three 80 taken off. And my I'm like there's Emirates. And they're like, they're not Emirate, you're lying. I just pull out the app and I just click it. And there

Leo Laporte (01:13:48):
You go. I was 15 hours day. I was in the backyard, a jet flew over. I, I wouldn't see a lot of jets flying over our small town. So I did the same thing. I looked up it up in the database, they were flying to Mexico. So it's kind of cool to look up there, go, oh, there they go. They're on their way. I like that.

Johnny Jet (01:14:03):
You know, one of the best place, places of spot planes at lax is in and out burger or the proud bird restaurant. And I often there when I'm there and I bring out that app and people are like, are you kidding me? This is the coolest thing. They just start downloading it. And then other people are like, this is really risky. I can't believe they're they show this information. Isn't that a security risk. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:14:23):
So I mean, that's, Elon's contention is that you know, a stalker could use this to follow, but he's not, you can't take the 10 numbers off of these planes. Right. They have to have a transponder. They have to be, it has to be public record. Should it not be public record?

Johnny Jet (01:14:37):
Do you think? You know what? That's above my pay grade. I don't know.

Leo Laporte (01:14:43):
Yeah. Yeah.

Johnny Jet (01:14:44):
You know, I could, I could see it being a security risk, but you know, what can you do

Leo Laporte (01:14:49):
If you're curious. It's Twitter. It's Elon jet yellow. N J E T. And you, you are Johnny jet, interestingly enough@johnnyjet.com. He know that

Johnny Jet (01:15:03):
I didn't

Leo Laporte (01:15:03):
Have, wasn't always cracks here about interviews where they go. You are Johnny jet. Yes. I know that. Thank you.

Johnny Jet (01:15:10):
It's Elon Musk, by the way.

Leo Laporte (01:15:12):
No, it's just Elon jet.

Johnny Jet (01:15:13):
Is it then? There's two.

Leo Laporte (01:15:15):
Oh, it's called Elon Musks jet. But it's at Elon jet.

Johnny Jet (01:15:21):
This

Leo Laporte (01:15:21):
Is the Jack Sweeney one.

Johnny Jet (01:15:23):
So with two Ts, that one I'm looking at it

Leo Laporte (01:15:25):
Right now. Not two Ts, one T E L O N J E T.

Johnny Jet (01:15:29):
Okay. Cuz I'm the one I follow is the one with just Elon Musk.

Leo Laporte (01:15:32):
No wonder you were bored.

Johnny Jet (01:15:37):
Yeah. He's got 22,000 followers.

Leo Laporte (01:15:38):
Yeah, no, this is the real 1, 380 4,000 followers. This

Johnny Jet (01:15:43):
One is Elon Musk jet.

Leo Laporte (01:15:44):
No. Yeah, but it's the wrong one. It's I'm just telling you.

Johnny Jet (01:15:48):
All

Leo Laporte (01:15:48):
Right. He's got 384,000 followers. E L O N J E T. It's Jack Sweeney.

Johnny Jet (01:15:54):
I gotcha.

Leo Laporte (01:15:54):
Yeah. Yeah. That's the real one. It's anybody could do it though. That's the point? It's an easy thing to do. You just have to, but Jack's Jack does a bunch of other people too. He's got like 30 different. He's just, he's just some kid.

Johnny Jet (01:16:09):
Yeah. Well Elon Oscar offered him five grand and he, he turned it down. He wants, he wants a Tesla now.

Leo Laporte (01:16:16):
Yeah. He's always wanted a Tesla and getting a Tesla. Well,

Johnny Jet (01:16:19):
I think first he wanted him to pay for his school, which is

Leo Laporte (01:16:21):
A yeah, no, sorry Jack.

Johnny Jet (01:16:23):
Yeah. He's like, I'm not negotiating. No, no.

Leo Laporte (01:16:26):
Let me see. He has a list of all the all the people he follows. Celebrity jets. He's got quite a few auto us air force V I P tracking. He's Floyd. Mayweather's jet.

Johnny Jet (01:16:45):
Wow. I got a question for you, mark.

Leo Laporte (01:16:49):
Walbergs jet. Yes.

Leo Laporte (01:16:53):
That you should follow that one. Celebrity jets. Okay.

Johnny Jet (01:16:57):
Celebrity

Leo Laporte (01:16:58):
C L E B, J E T S. Cuz then you get all the celebrities. Jim carries jet land at van eyes just 46 minutes ago.

Johnny Jet (01:17:09):
These guys don't mess around. They really don't

Leo Laporte (01:17:14):
Floyd Mayweather. It's hysterical. Mark. Walberg

Johnny Jet (01:17:20):
My sister was at a really nice resort in Barbados a couple years ago with mark Walberg during Christmas and Barbados. What's it called? Cindy lane. And my cousin, my nephew worked out with him every single day. She said he could not have been any nicer. And every day he was like, let's work out. And, and my, my nephew was late once and he gave him a hard time. Oh,

Leo Laporte (01:17:40):
That's cool.

Johnny Jet (01:17:40):
And he is teaching him. He's like, you gotta be on time. Always be on time. I'm like, of course you're always on. You should be on time for everything. So

Leo Laporte (01:17:46):
You don't have to be on time for your workout.

Johnny Jet (01:17:48):
Well,

Leo Laporte (01:17:49):
Come

Johnny Jet (01:17:49):
On. You know, if you're meeting somebody, if you're meeting with

Leo Laporte (01:17:51):
Somebody, if you're meeting somebody, I guess. So if you're meeting Marky, mark. Okay, fine.

Johnny Jet (01:17:55):
Yeah. I guess he was counting at him to be his, to hold

Leo Laporte (01:17:58):
The wait for him. Oh. To spot him spot it. Oh, okay. Yeah. You can't, you can't let Marky mark lift his own. Do his own bench press, man. You gotta keep, somebody's gotta keep an eye. Especially how much

Johnny Jet (01:18:09):
Weight this guy pushing. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:18:10):
I bet. Arod Taylor swift. Kylie, Kylie Jenner. I'm amazed at who has private jets actually

Johnny Jet (01:18:24):
That's super bowl. You could see them all.

Leo Laporte (01:18:27):
Jay-Z's yeah. That was a funny, that was a fascinating, they didn't have apartment. Yeah. Yeah.

Johnny Jet (01:18:33):
Anyway,

Leo Laporte (01:18:34):
Drake's jet just landed in Las Vegas. Okay. One

Johnny Jet (01:18:41):
Day.

Leo Laporte (01:18:43):
Okay. And have

Johnny Jet (01:18:44):
You ever been in a private jet

Leo Laporte (01:18:44):
By the way? Never. Never. And at this point in my life, I don't think I ever will.

Johnny Jet (01:18:51):
I've been fortunate to be a few times and you know, it's, it's amazing the way to travel, except I don't think I'd want to fly over seas unless it's a much bigger jet. I think I've been in the G five is the biggest I've been in

Leo Laporte (01:19:03):
G five. Ain't bad. That's okay.

Johnny Jet (01:19:05):
No, not bad, but still I prefer like big wide bodies. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:19:09):
Yeah. If I were gonna have my own private jet, I'd have a 7 37 at least. All right, Johnny,

Johnny Jet (01:19:14):
Take care. See

Leo Laporte (01:19:15):
Ya. Bye. Leo Laporte, the tech guy, eighty eight eighty eight. Ask Leo. That's the phone number? On we go with the show. Kevin on the line from Riverside, California. Hello, Kevin.

Caller 7 (01:19:28):
Well, good afternoon, Leo.

Leo Laporte (01:19:29):
Good afternoon.

Caller 7 (01:19:31):
Hi. Hey, a an old computer ended up getting the blue screen of death uhoh and we ended up getting the data off the hard drive, transferring it to a new computer, but now I've got this hard drive that I wanna get rid of that data. Yes, but, but the computer won't boot. So

Leo Laporte (01:19:49):
This is a very legitimate concern. A Simpson Garfinkel, who is one of the guys who talks a lot about data erasure did an experiment. He was an MIT, I think at the time. And he bought a bunch of old, hard drives off eBay. None of them had fully erased and many of them were from banks. There were a few from ATM machines and every transaction was still on the hard drive. Okay. So, so now he says, interestingly, cuz he's an expert in this that you know, a lot of the data erasure tools, you talk about do a I'm gonna do a department of defense wipe, which means you write one's over it. You erase it, you write zeros over it. You erase it. You do that numerous times, which takes of course a lot of time. And that's the only way to erase it.

Leo Laporte (01:20:37):
He says, you know, you don't ever have to worry about erasing it multiple times as if you overwrite it once you're okay. There, there, you know, there's always this presumption, well, somewhere in the CIA's basement, they've got some magic device that can read trace amounts of magnetic material and can tell what was on your drive. Unless you've got the CIA going after you. I wouldn't worry about it too much. There's also the the M thet secret service. What is that? The MI five, their, their rules are that you do that. You erase the drive, then you disassemble the drive. Then you powder the drive. You grind it down into small fragments and then you store it locked in a safe in the basement of MI six. So, so you can go a little crazy. You can go a little crazy. I would say there's a couple of things you could do.

Leo Laporte (01:21:35):
If you wanna donate that drive or sell it, then you probably do wanna wipe it. Non-Destructively and there's a free program called Dand Derek's boot. And no that is designed to do this and it, the many, many wipes and all of that stuff. It's free DBA n.org. But as you say, you no longer have access to the computer, but the good news is you could put that on any other computer hook up this old drive with a temporary interface. You can buy those for 30 or 40 bucks, it'll let you attach it and then erase it and then throw it a away. If you don't care about, if you're, if you're just gonna dis discard it, you don't care about selling it, but you just don't want anybody to be able to take anything off of it. The other thing you can do is kind of like what the MI six does, which is you can open it up and you can smash the platers or bend the platers, and nobody's gonna be able to recover anything from that.

Leo Laporte (01:22:27):
So you can physically do that. Those are your kind of your, your two choices. Oh, actually truthfully, even without opening it up, it might be enough just to run a big magnet over the thing. I, I tell you what, open it up, run a magnet over it. Cuz the problem is the platers are inside a metal case. The magnet may not get through it. So open it up. Take when do the platers careful with those platers? My we did this once on this was a popular subject on the old TV show I did 20 years ago, mostly cuz it was good for TV. One of my co-hosts Kevin Rose decided to use thermite to destroy a drive, almost burned his house down. That was a bad idea. Don't do that.

Caller 7 (01:23:08):
That's a little over

Leo Laporte (01:23:10):
Then. My friend Patrick Norton, my dear friend, Patrick Norton decided, well, we'll take a hammer, we'll open it up, take the platers, take a hammer to it. What he did not know to his and my detriment cuz I was a little close by is that sometimes these platers are made a glass and this one was, and it shattered in a million pieces. I'm just glad it didn't strike me in the eye. But we survived that one, but be careful. In other words, they're not, I think it's enough just to do a secure a race. Again, if you've already dis you know, the computer's not starting up, you can go out newer tech and others sell all these USB interfaces that you just take the drive out of the machine, plug it in and then you can run Dand or even the secure erase that comes with your operating system will work just fine. Max, come with a secure erase. I think windows does as well, but you don't have to overwrite it 29 times who ain't nobody. Ain't nobody got time for that. Just overwrite it once or twice is fine.

Caller 7 (01:24:08):
Absolutely. Thank you

Leo Laporte (01:24:09):
Very much. Hey, my pleasure. No, thermite

Leo Laporte (01:24:15):
Somewhere on YouTube. I believe both of those incidents live on. Yes. In fact, I can see it right now. Our discord chat do not do not hit these with a hammer in case they are made of glass. I will find Simpson Garfinkel's excellent article on this and I will put it in the show notes. Let me see if I can find that cuz he, he really is the expert and this is, these are from maybe 15, 20 years ago. He was a digital forensic expert disc forensic expert, John on the line from St. George, Utah. Hello John.

Caller 8 (01:25:00):
Hi Leo.

Leo Laporte (01:25:01):
Hello?

Caller 8 (01:25:02):
Yeah, I just I'm, I'm a pretty basic cell phone user. I use track phone.

Leo Laporte (01:25:09):
Okay.

Caller 8 (01:25:09):
I like a good value. Yep. And they've been good for me but I wanna upgrade my phone and I was wondering what, if you had an opinion about NOK phones, they have a a 5g one, the G 300 and on paper, the specs look good, but 

Leo Laporte (01:25:35):
You know,

Caller 8 (01:25:36):
No, I don't know if they're gonna be, if they're gonna live up to those or if they're really reliable I've, you know, seen some com not, not a lot of information on the internet, but some complaints. And 

Leo Laporte (01:25:49):
So Nokia, which is of course was one of the most famous cell phone companies until this upstart called apple came along and put 'em outta business. Actually what really happened is Microsoft bought em then put 'em out of business. Noke was famous for making tires before phones. They went back to making tires, sold their phone division to a company called H M D global. So those phones are not made by NOIA they're made by Hm, MD, which is, as it turns out just across the street in Finland they're good phone. They're not NOK, they're just Nokia branded. But yeah, they're good phones. Maybe not, you know, their, their market is the less expensive phones there, but their Android kind of Android phones for a couple of hundred bucks. I prefer the Modo phones myself. I would Moto G nine just for comparison purposes.

Leo Laporte (01:26:47):
But if you know, you, if you want a keyboard for, you know, these, these slide out phones, no key is kind of the last company still making those. So it depends on, on what features you want any Android phone. Here's what you're really looking for. Ideally you'd be getting Android 12, which is the current version. No, no older than Android 11. And you wanna guarantee from the manufacturer that they will continue to push out security updates in a timely fashion for, at, for as long as you think you might wanna be owning the phone. Nobody goes more than four years. That's the current Samsung and Google standard, but you'd want at least two or three years, you don't want a phone that in a year is gonna be insecure. And so I don't know what Nokia's commitment is in that regard. But I would investigate that. Let me just see if they say anything on their website, cuz that's really

Caller 8 (01:27:44):
Important. That's the thing with track phone I don't think they have the G nine.

Leo Laporte (01:27:49):
Oh yeah. You want to get something Motorola

Caller 8 (01:27:51):
What you're talking about, but you know, they have more basic phones, right? I, I don't, I don't need very anything very demanding again.

Leo Laporte (01:27:58):
It's just about security. Nothing, nothing wrong with these phones. I just don't, I'm looking to see if they have a, a statement somewhere about this.

Caller 8 (01:28:07):
What I've gathered is that Motorola for the track phones is not really guaranteeing much in the wave updates,

Leo Laporte (01:28:17):
Then you don't want it

Caller 8 (01:28:19):
Behind on updates and things like that.

Leo Laporte (01:28:22):
And that may also be related to track phone because there's a bandwidth concern and some of these less expensive companies don't want to do the bandwidth thing. So I'm gonna look and see what Nokia's commitment is, but you also have to ask track phone because you know, they have to push it out to you. Leo Laporte, the tech guy. Yeah. You know, and that's the that's how fast are they gonna update it? And how long are they gonna keep it updated are very important. I'm just looking,

Caller 8 (01:29:01):
Samsung has been I guess committing more to that like four years.

Leo Laporte (01:29:06):
Yeah. They there's maybe to OS it looks like,

Caller 8 (01:29:10):
Are you saying not have a, anything less than Android 11 because of security?

Leo Laporte (01:29:17):
Yeah. that's a bad sign if they not, at least at 11, Eleven's been out for a year and a half, so that's a bad sign, but it looks like I'm looking at I'm looking at counterpoint research, which says that in fact Nokia is very good about this. So it sounds like maybe even security patch, frequency share for top manufacturers through Q2 2020 Nokia is a hundred percent on the monthly updates. That's better than anybody. So you are on the right track. This is from I'll put a link in this counterpoints 20, 20 trust rankings. So I was able to find that information sounds like Nokia's a good choice, very solid. You should still ask track phone, you know, what's your policy about pushing 'em out? Cause they have to, you know, NOIA provide them. But then that track phone has to push 'em out.

Caller 8 (01:30:20):
It sounds like their screens, my I crack easily, but maybe, maybe

Leo Laporte (01:30:24):
It's all screens crack easily. They're made of glass. Yeah.

Caller 8 (01:30:30):
Well, I mean, I mean the, the complaints are, are like you know, just way too easily cracked, you know, if drop of like three inches or something like that. But 

Leo Laporte (01:30:41):
And NOK guarantee three years by the way of monthly security updates. That's his, that's fine. That's really good. So yeah. I don't know about reliability. That's interesting. I, you know, that's a, that's a really good question. I don't have any data on that at all. They look like pretty good phones. NOK has always made phones again. It's H MD now, but I would bet that these are no less, no more of vulnerable than the, any other manufacturers look at that two full sets of OS software updates. They are guaranteeing Android 12 and three years of monthly security updates. That's pretty good. That's pretty darn good.

Caller 8 (01:31:26):
Would the, the only purpose of a dual SIM be if you wanted like two phone numbers on the same phone?

Leo Laporte (01:31:33):
Yes. And it's much more prevalent in Europe where you have multiple carriers in a, in a single region. There are many, you know, you'd be, be moving just a little bit and all of a sudden you need another SIM rarely do you need DOSIM in the us. There are some special reasons you might, especially if you travel.

Caller 8 (01:31:49):
Yeah. If I were traveling abroad, right. What I guess a different SIM for that country, but would it be require GSM?

Leo Laporte (01:32:02):
Yeah. Yeah. I'm sure all these NOIA phones are, are now compatible with modern networks. I don't think that's gonna be an issue. The second SIM is nice because normally if you, if you took, bought a SIM in France and used it, you'd have a French phone number, but you can with a dual SIM phone say look, phone. I, it should be on my old SIM and data should be on my new SIM. And that's typically what you would want,

Caller 8 (01:32:26):
I think with the, with this phone though it's CDMA. So is that a

Leo Laporte (01:32:30):
Oh, cause it's track phone.

Caller 8 (01:32:32):
Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:32:33):
Ah, track phone. Yeah. You're not gonna wanna travel with that. They're you can go to Japan lot anyway. Yeah. Traveling overseas with a CDMA phone, usually problematic.

Caller 8 (01:32:46):
Okay. One more quick question. I have a Mac mini and I, I was wondering I I've got you know, I, I wanna upgrade my monitor, but is there I don't do gaming or anything like that. So I'm just wondering, is there anything wrong with using like a, a small 4k TV as a monitor,

Leo Laporte (01:33:09):
Nothing wrong with it? What they are is not as high resolution, the demands of television, aren't the same as the computer monitor. So you should look at, you know, you may find that 4k is pretty good, but the text may not be as crisp, you know, 4k is the right resolution, but it's not merely resolution, so it may not be as crisp, but try it you know, I, it may just be fine. It's how close are you gonna be to the monitor?

Caller 8 (01:33:34):
Even if it's just a TV, it's not portrayed as a monitor.

Leo Laporte (01:33:38):
Yeah. Well, that's the difference? So computer monitors tend to be higher, higher quality for text. So they're CRISPR, but the TV, a 4k TV at least has the resolution you want. I think you'd probably be all right. Yeah. Yeah. As long as you're not sitting too close the monitors that's right. But there's a, a reason. Yeah. So in general, I, I prefer to use computer monitors, although I'm using essentially a TV, a 4k TV right now, and it's fine. So I think that a good 4k TV should be fine.

Caller 8 (01:34:17):
Oh, is that your 55 inch?

Leo Laporte (01:34:19):
Yeah, that's an old lid. It's sold a, is a gaming monitor. It's 120 Hertz refresh and all that. And text is fine on it. Doug M has an M one minis using a LG 32 inch 4k with, he says it's perfect. So I think probably probably a modern 4k TV is fine. Can look at the text first and see if, if you're comfortable with that. That's where it'll fall down. Maybe

Caller 8 (01:34:48):
Is your 55 inch monitor. Is that a TV?

Leo Laporte (01:34:51):
It is not sold as a TV. It's sold by Adele as a, as a com as a gaming screen. Oh,

Caller 8 (01:34:57):
Okay.

Leo Laporte (01:34:57):
Yeah, but it is just a 4k. I think I suspect four. It's a ed. I suspect these days, 4k panels are probably the same for TVs and monitors. The circuitry in the monitor might be more tuned, refresh weight rate and and aliasing might be more tune to a computer, you know, I'm gonna have to rethink my I've always said always get a monitor, but now with a resolution of modern TVs, you're probably okay. You're probably okay. Oh, wait a minute. That, that 32 UN eight 80 is a monitor. Not a TV. Yeah. It's RGB versus 4 22. And that's, that's the the issue. I, you know, if you could try before you buy, I would, John is saying something. Yeah, you, you, you're using your LGTV or 37 inch as a monitor, John and, and it works fine. It's 27 47. Okay. C class, O L E D. And you drive your Mac mini. Yeah. So he, John says he uses TV with his, and it's great. As long as you get the 4k, you're probably fine.

Caller 8 (01:36:13):
Oh, great. Yeah, like you know, I've seen high sense at Costco and like 32 inch.

Leo Laporte (01:36:21):
Yeah. They're cheap for

Caller 8 (01:36:22):
About $150. Yeah. With a Roku built in. Yeah. Looks attracted. Yeah. And they have such a great return policy.

Leo Laporte (01:36:32):
Well, that's the thing, take it home and see. And the thing to do is put a lot of text on the screen and see if it's, you know, if it's fatigue.

Caller 8 (01:36:40):
Okay. Great. Well, thanks a lot. I appreciate your help.

Leo Laporte (01:36:43):
My pleasure. He says, John says, turn off the local diming in your settings. If you're gonna use it as a monitor, that's true. You wouldn't want that. Yeah.

Caller 8 (01:36:51):
Oh, okay. Why is that?

Leo Laporte (01:36:53):
Cause you get shadows around stuff because it's doing local dimming. You want it to be consider across the whole back light.

Caller 8 (01:37:01):
Oh, I see. Yeah. Okay. Wonderful. Thank you. You're

Leo Laporte (01:37:05):
Welcome. Take care. No, that's the beauty Tokyo. Tony, if you use whole drive encryption or any encryption on your computer, that stuff is gobbly go. It's completely random. So you don't need to worry about that.

Leo Laporte (01:37:23):
Well, Hey, Hey, Hey or Hoy, Hoy. Hoy. How are you today? Leo Laporte here, the tech guy hour three of the tech guy show. We talk about computers in the internet and home theater and digital photography and using a TV set as a monitor and track phones and anything with a chip in at eighty eight eighty eight, ask Leo is the phone number (888) 827-5536. Toll free from anywhere in the us or Canada. You can also call from anywhere in the world. As long as you use Skype out or something like that, shouldn't cost you anything. 88, 88. Alio all the stuff we talk about. Ends up on the website, tech guy, labs.com. There'll be links there including links to professor Laura fabulous musical selections. They'll also be transcripts and audio and video from the show. It should all be all be there for you sometimes takes a couple of days after the show to get it up there. Tech guy labs.com. George Santa Monica. Leo. Laporte the tech guy. Hi George.

Caller 9 (01:38:26):
Yeah. Good afternoon, Leo. Good afternoon. I've been watching, I've been watching a video or on YouTube. It's hobo shoestring. He's a hobo that travels on trains around the world.

Leo Laporte (01:38:39):
Oh, that's so cool.

Caller 9 (01:38:40):
United States and so interesting. And I've been trying to find out his email so I can email him a gift card so we can buy food as he travels. Cause I, I want him to have food.

Leo Laporte (01:38:54):
What an interesting YouTube channel. I wonder how he is uploading this. He says I've been riding freight since 1989. I've gone over 2.7 million steel rails in 49 states, eight provinces in Canada, 14 states in Mexico last year, he got an apartment because of medical issues. Ah, now I understand he, he says it's hard having walls and a roof. I hate to be outside. I still stay gone riding more than I stay in the little apartment. Yep. Wow.

Caller 9 (01:39:27):
He mentions that he, when he travels, he stops at libraries in the cities he's in and he downloads his stuff.

Leo Laporte (01:39:35):
Oh, isn't that cool. Oh, so I'm, I'm looking on his YouTube channel. If you click the about tab, there is, he says for business inquiries, here's my email address. I'll save you some time. Oh, okay. Well maybe I shouldn't. Oh, okay. Anyway, it's there. He, he does. He has a little capture there to make sure you're not a robot. I don't think we have any robots listening to this show. Train rider, underscore mark yahoo.com. What a story? 115,000 subscribers. This is a really good example of why we live in very interesting times. I mean, that makes a great YouTube channel. Doesn't it?

Caller 9 (01:40:14):
Yeah. It's, it's great. I enjoy watching him try and

Leo Laporte (01:40:18):
It's amazing that he can do this, you know? Yeah. I mean in the past, you'd have to get the travel channel to back you and you know, you'd have to have a camera crew and microphones and all that, and he's just got a smartphone and he goes to the library

Caller 9 (01:40:33):
And he's got a, a, a what he call it a solar panel. So when he is traveling it, the sun shining, he can recharge his phone and his, you know, his camera

Leo Laporte (01:40:45):
Now do I see I'm watching one of the videos he's living under a, under a car. Does do they chase him off?

Caller 9 (01:40:54):
Sometimes he'll get a, he'll get a notice to leave the, you know, not trespassing the,

Leo Laporte (01:41:01):
There it is busted, but rolled on conductor at switch. Seen me the boom slack action, always deafening. What, you know, if, if you need an example of how the internet has democratized media, this is it. You know, somebody like this would never have had a voice in the past and now has a voice. In fact, not only has a voice, this particular video I'm looking at has 630, 20 3000 views. That's more than watch CNN and prime time. He's got, he's got 1.2 million views in his most recent. I mean, it's amazing. Well, thank you for telling me about that, George and yeah, his, his email's in the about section there and I, you know, it's in, you know, I kind of honor the guy for not saying, Hey, give me money. Isn't that? He's just, he's just doing, I don't think he wants the money, but well, I think he'd appreciate an offer of support. Yeah.

Caller 9 (01:42:01):
Yeah. Thank you. Thank you

Leo Laporte (01:42:02):
Very much. It's a pleasure talking to you. What, you know, we live in at very interesting times. You're talking in the first hour about how it's difficult for established media news, magazines, books, TV, radio, to, to kind of navigate our way. And I say our cuz I'm an old school media guy in this new internet, 17 years ago, I had been fired at tech TV. They sold the channel to Comcast to prompt the, he destroyed it. But I, I left, they canceled my show. That's what, that's what you call in TV. I was canceled. They canceled, my show, went up to Canada. I keep doing it. But at that time I thought, you know, I, I like, I like talking about technology. I've been doing it on the radio for years. Why don't I just do my own thing.

Leo Laporte (01:42:54):
And this thing, a podcasting had appeared in 2004, late 2004. I did this radio show as my first podcast in October, 2004. And the next year we started a podcast network and it's, you know, basically been what tech TV was over the internet for a much smaller cost. I might add anybody, you know, blogs started this where you, you could just, all you needed was a website for a few bucks a month and you could write your own columns and articles and photographers can post their own images and artists can post their own paintings and, and on and on and on. And now with YouTube, what an amazing thing YouTube is this shows on YouTube, everything I do goes up on YouTube. We don't have a huge audience there. I, I maybe don't fit the YouTube mold that well, but boy, this hobo riding the rails does, he's got a lot more followers than I do. I think that's a truly interesting, thanks for telling me about that. George Steven on the line from Los Angeles, Leo, Laporte the tech guy. Hi Steven.

Caller 10 (01:44:03):
Well, thanks for taking my call. I really appreciate it. So I did the windows 11 upgrade and when I go into outlook, I, you know, by, in my contacts, like pay bills or whatever and I did a search. It said no results found, which really like freaked me out and made me start cause I had to take under shower. So sweating so bad.

Leo Laporte (01:44:26):
Wait, no, no results. I've never heard of a search with no results. I know I,

Caller 10 (01:44:31):
I see all these contacts for stuff that I don't even use anymore. And so, you know, there's like the top 10 that you use for paying bills or whatever websites you go to. And so then I thought, well, I'll just create a new contact and change the password. So then I'd go create a new contact and then it would say this already exists. Do you wanna update it? I'm going well then smarty chance, Mr. Gates, where is it? And then I noticed that I think that in when I look at the top, it says it has one of my email addresses that I kinda used for spam. So it seems like the contacts are linked to one. I don't know what's going on. They're

Leo Laporte (01:45:09):
Tied to, and this is something I was talking about last hour, which is Microsoft now requires you to have a Microsoft account to use windows 11. So everything's tied to your Microsoft account. Did you set, when you set up windows 11, you set it up with a Microsoft account? I presume. Yes.

Caller 10 (01:45:25):
Probably. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:45:26):
Yeah. That's what, it's all. That's where your contacts live. That's where your calendar lives. You have an outlook mail at that address. There's all sorts of stuff. Your one drive. So you, you can U you can create new accounts and you can use other accounts, but whatever account you use to set up windows 11, that's the default account. Unless you go through some steps to change it. Maybe that's the one you use for spam. Now. I don't know if that's, what's showing up at the top of the screen. That's probably the account you used to sign up. Maybe you thought, well, I'm gonna use this cuz I don't want Microsoft to, you know, know it's me. Well, bad news, that windows install and all, all the data that's associated with it is now tied to that account. So that's what you need to know is what Microsoft.

Leo Laporte (01:46:11):
And you can find that out. If, if you look your your windows about this machine, you could find out what account it is. That's your so-called MSA, Microsoft services account. That is the default account for everything. You know, this, this is the way things are going. Facebook wants you have an account. Google wants you out of account. My apple and Microsoft all want you to account why? Well, they're gonna give you a lot of reasons, but I think we know why, so they can associate it with you and track you. And now Microsoft's gonna make everybody, even with windows 11 pro have a Microsoft account to use the operating system. It's kind of unheard of. It's kind of the way we're going. Eighty eight eighty eight. Ask li the phone number more of your call coming up in just a little bit. Dick D Bartolo, our gizmo hound just around the corner too. 8 8 8 8 2 7 5 5 3 6 more calls right after this Eighty eight eighty eight. Ask Leo the phone number (888) 827-5536 Toray may. Where the us or Canada? Moala on the line from orange county, California. Hi MOCA.

Caller 11 (01:47:26):
Hey Leo. How is it going?

Leo Laporte (01:47:27):
It's going great. How are you?

Caller 11 (01:47:29):
Good, good. So I got a quick question. So I had an old iPad line around and I was thinking maybe I can use that as a, a display on my card, you know mirror my phone to it and use it as a CarPlay. Is there a way to do that? Maybe?

Leo Laporte (01:47:46):
Oh, that's an interesting idea. So you'd hook the iPad up your, your sound system in the car. Is that what you wanna do?

Caller 11 (01:47:53):
Basically I wanna mirror my phone to that iPad. Yeah.

Caller 11 (01:47:59):
I fix the iPad on the car, make it

Leo Laporte (01:48:01):
Like, yeah. Mirror your phone to the iPad. I don't, I mean, honestly the iPad has the capabilities of the phone except for the internet. So the easiest thing to do would be to hotspot your phone and give the iPad that internet capability, and then just use the iPad, mirroring your iPhone to your iPad. I'm trying to think if I'm missing something. I don't think you can do that. I don't think there's a, I think

Caller 11 (01:48:26):
There is a way, but it's, it's kind of mirror.

Leo Laporte (01:48:30):
You can, you can mirror to an airplay device which would be an apple TV. Okay. I don't think there's a way to mirror to an iPad specifically.

Caller 11 (01:48:44):
I know there is an, an

Leo Laporte (01:48:45):
Wait a minute. Somebody somebody's got something here in our chat room, Kev, brewers. How to mirror iPhone to iPad. Wow. I can't believe it. This is from a tenor share. Can I screen mirror phone to iPad? Apple allows us devices through airplay, but these would've been mirroring your phone to a TV. Okay. No. How to mirror iPhone iPad. Many apps are available. Okay. So you need an app to do that. Okay. So he here's one screen mirror, iPhone iPad by easy cast, easy cast is the app. You put it on the iPad and the iPhone on the iPhone. You choose broadcast. Okay, fine. Yeah.

Caller 11 (01:49:25):
There is an app actually called ignition

Leo Laporte (01:49:28):
Ignition, but

Caller 11 (01:49:29):
It works only on the job break devices. Yeah,

Leo Laporte (01:49:32):
Yeah, yeah. You don't want, believe me, you don't want a jail break. That's so it looks like you can also do it with, with VNC compatible device software team viewer, for instance, you can run team viewer on your iPad. Looks like you might be able to do it with airplay. Huh?

Caller 11 (01:49:55):
How about cables? Is there any cables, connections maybe we can use?

Leo Laporte (01:50:01):
No, no. You know, there's one, there is one thing I don't think this is gonna help be with mirroring an iPhone. Apple is now with Monterey. This will be coming out in 15 four, allowing you to mirror your, not mirror, but control both your iPad and your computer. That's not gonna solve it either. Yeah, I think you're gonna have to I think I, I, I think you're gonna have to use something like team view or some third party software and it's gonna be tricky cuz you're, I mean, I'm not even sure why this would be preferable cuz your iPad is gonna have to be on the same network as your iPhone.

Leo Laporte (01:50:43):
I do know a lot of people who've taken iPads and mounted them on their dashboard. That that premise is okay. But I would say it'd be a lot easier not to try to tie it to your iPhone. If it, you know, if you need the network connection, certainly you can share your hotspot, your iPhone to the iPad. But I don't think mirroring it is, is the best way to do it. I'll tell you what, I'll put a link to the show notes for a couple of things, things that programs that'll do this particularly to this article, but I don't, I think this is gonna be kind of a funky solution. Somebody's mentioning duet display, but that is from Mac to iPad. I don't think that's from iPhone to iPad. Interesting question. It's definitely do it yourself and do not jail break. Jail breaking these days is really just a recipe for disaster. I think mark on the line. Grand rapids, Michigan. Hi mark. Laporte the tech guy.

Caller 12 (01:51:41):
Hi Lee. Good to talk to you again, my friend.

Leo Laporte (01:51:43):
Nice to hear from you. What's up.

Caller 12 (01:51:46):
Hey my debit card, Jill recently expired and now got a new one in the mail and I bank with chase. So I got the, the new card in the mail and there's a fire in there that says, well, gee, now that you got this new card, you can sign it up to apple PLA or pay or Google pay, right. Samsung, right?

Leo Laporte (01:52:08):
What? You can sign any credit card up with those, by the way, it doesn't have to be that particular debit card. In fact, you'd be better off not using a debit card, but using a, a credit card only because banking rules mean you're more protected with a credit card against fraudulent charges than you are with a debit card.

Caller 12 (01:52:27):
Right. But what's the benefit of using that versus just using the car?

Leo Laporte (01:52:32):
Oh, they're pretty minor. But there are some apple pay in particular is more private. So you've probably been to this grocery store or some store where you could tap to pay. Yeah, you can either use your phone or if you have an apple watch, you can use your apple watch. I use that all the time. And when you're using iPhone, I don't know if I don't think Google pay, maybe Google pay does this. I'd have to look into it when you're using an iPhone, it doesn't actually send your credit card information or your name or anything to the store. It gives 'em a token. The there's a system for doing this sends a token, which they use to charge that account without getting any personal information. So there's one advantage is privacy. Mostly though it's convenience cuz you don't have to have, you don't have to. In fact, I had plenty of arguments when apple pay first came out saying, well, what's so hard about taking a credit card out, right. Especially my modern credit cards, which tap to pay. So if you, if, if you like the tap to pay feature a lot of credit cards. You look for that, there's a little logo, it looks like a sideways wifi logo. And that means you can tap the credit card on the device. So the biggest convenience is, oh, I just took out my phone instead of my wallet. Okay, fine. And,

Caller 12 (01:53:46):
And then one of the things that said in the brochure or the flyer was that you actually, at some ATMs, you don't even need to have your card

Leo Laporte (01:53:53):
That's right. Nowadays you can, you'll go up to an at ATM and you'll see a tap to pay logo and a little, you have to have a little device there cuz you you're, you're using NFC nearfield communications to signal the it you're nearby. So yeah, so that actually I'll give you one argument that chow just mentioned, Brian W. Good, good catch. There is a problem these days with credit card readers in public ATM machines, gas stations, things like that. Bad guys have been known to slip in little devices that capture your mag card. And then they come back later and they have all these mag cards. They have all, all the credit card information. So if you're that, that that's one other reason to maybe use this. It might be a little bit more secure

Caller 12 (01:54:38):
So we can go around the skimmer.

Leo Laporte (01:54:39):
It goes around the skimmer. Exactly. I use it all the time just for convenience. And I think all of them NFC, which means G pay as well as Samsung pay and apple pay, give you that kind of privacy feature. So that's another good reason Leo Laporte, the TechCon I have to say I have become, but I'm I'm wearing an apple watch. So I become, especially during COVID I don't want to, I don't wanna touch anything. So I love the touchless payment. Use it all the time now. So that's, that's the argument for it. You know, and I guess somebody, that's the other thing somebody brought up, you know, you lose a credit card, they can use it, but these touch to pay systems are authenticated, usually using fingerprint face. So it's more secure that way as well. So actually there's some, there's some pretty good arguments for using it. Try it. There's no cost. The point is there's no cost except your time to set it up. And it doesn't take that long,

Caller 12 (01:55:40):
No cost to me, but somebody's gotta be

Leo Laporte (01:55:42):
Paying yeah. The credit card fees pay for it. Just like they always do.

Caller 12 (01:55:47):
Well, the, the stores probably get stuck with some fees, right?

Leo Laporte (01:55:50):
Stores were required to update their systems by the credit card companies to support well, they, they required to update to support pin and chip, or guess it as chip and sign is the new technology. And they were required to do that a couple of years ago. And when they did it, they added, in most cases, they had touch to pay something like 80% of all retail institutions now accept touchless payment. So they did absorb that cost. They had to do it anyway for, for federal regulations, but, and they, and they pay, you know, three, four, 5% credit card fees. So they're paying that. Yeah. I, I don't think it's, I think it's the same thing as a credit card. It's just a little more secure.

Caller 12 (01:56:34):
Right.

Leo Laporte (01:56:36):
And I actually love it stuff, you know, and do it. I would do it. I there's, no, I can't think of any downside. Well, there's one potential downside, which is Google now is gonna have a record of your transactions.

Caller 12 (01:56:50):
You pretty much already have all that anyway.

Leo Laporte (01:56:52):
Yes they do. I gave up Warren about that a long time ago too. Yeah. They know all this. What, so what big deal, right? Just don't Rob a bank.

Caller 12 (01:57:05):
No,

Leo Laporte (01:57:06):
No

Caller 12 (01:57:06):
I wouldn't.

Leo Laporte (01:57:08):
Yeah. It's easy to catch you these days. No, I think it's, I, I use it all the time. I use Samsung pay Google pay and apple pay. I've used all three. Samsung pay has one additional feature. I think they still do in the current devices, which is it doesn't work just with touchless pay. It works with the old school mag strip systems. They have kind of a magnetic projection system built into the phone. So you, you, you can use anything, which is kind of neat.

Caller 12 (01:57:35):
Yeah. One thing you said early on after my question was something I really should do is get away from using the debit card and just use a credit card. Yes.

Leo Laporte (01:57:45):
Yeah. There's a, there's a strong argument for that. In terms of risk. Although I use it, I use debit cards a lot. You know, the thing about Google pay and apple pay is you can attach any payment system you want and it's as convenient as a debit card.

Speaker 16 (01:58:03):
So,

Leo Laporte (01:58:04):
You know, did they stop scooter X saying they stop emulating the mag Stripe? Oh, well I'm getting a new Samsung phone. So I guess I won't have that feature anymore. Fortunately, very few people still require Mac stripes.

Caller 12 (01:58:16):
Hey, one other thing you talked about the Chrome flex earlier. Yeah. I was looking at that and the list of approved max and there are no fully approved max in their list,

Leo Laporte (01:58:27):
But they say minor, minor problems. And I think one of them is the keyboard on laptops. I'm not sure.

Caller 12 (01:58:33):
Yeah. Yeah. And it's not a very big list. Not a very big list. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:58:38):
Yeah. I'm not surprised. I mean, it's hard to put Linux on a Mac too. They have so much proprietary hardware.

Caller 12 (01:58:44):
Yeah. That's what you were telling me a long time ago. Yeah,

Leo Laporte (01:58:45):
Yeah. Yeah. Hey, a pleasure talking to you, mark. Stay in touch. Don't don't don't be a stranger

Caller 12 (01:58:55):
Always.

Leo Laporte (01:58:56):
All right. Hey, thanks. Take care. Leo. Laporte the tech guy, eighty eight eighty eight. Ask Leo that's the phone number. If you have a question, a comment, a suggestion. You wanna talk? I tech let's do it. We got a few more minutes. And then Dick DeBartolo, our gizmo wizard stops by with a gizmo or a gadget. Craig is on the line from Australia, from Sydney. Hey Greg.

Caller 13 (01:59:24):
Hey Leo. How are you?

Leo Laporte (01:59:25):
I'm great. You're up early?

Caller 13 (01:59:28):
Not too bad. It's past eight in the morning.

Leo Laporte (01:59:30):
Oh, that's not so bad.

Caller 13 (01:59:32):
We've been up a little while.

Leo Laporte (01:59:32):
Good.

Caller 13 (01:59:33):
That's correct. But until Sunday morning for us.

Leo Laporte (01:59:35):
Nice.

Caller 13 (01:59:37):
Leo. I've been a long time fan. As long if you can help me with some questions, I'm drowning in photos.

Leo Laporte (01:59:45):
Oh, I'm living that life.

Caller 13 (01:59:50):
So, so here it's actually, it's actually a double barrel question if you can help me out. Okay. So I've got like everyone, we've got a, a iPhone or a camera phone and I've got a nice Sony camera and you take the memory stick out. Or I, I take the iPhone and I download the pictures and I put them into my folders, which is a window machine. And we categorize the folders, you know, by year. So, you know, 19 86, 19 96, et cetera, et cetera. And then the month, and then maybe even the event. And I put that in light room and it's, it's fantastic. And I can't get light room to sync in the cloud because once we created the folders, unless I create catalogs, which means doing it all over again, it won't sync. So I said, okay, after that, we'll try Google for it. And Google photos has changed because all my photos that, that were on my computer that I sync to Google photos, they don't sync.

Caller 13 (02:00:53):
You've gotta keep re-uploading it. So that's that issue. So all I'm doing at the moment is syncing into the cloud is Dropbox, but Dropbox is great file sync. It doesn't allow my buddies or family to look at my photos. Right. You know, as we edit them, it's, it's not a viewer, it's a file viewer. It's not like Google photos or light room. So I was wondering if you can help me regarding something that I can see to the cloud, but if I make a change in light room or on the a file, it gets sync and it gets those changes get reflected in the cloud if you know where I'm coming from.

Leo Laporte (02:01:29):
Yeah. And of course Adobe, the, what they changed was they want you to buy their cloud and which is not cheap. And then it will all work. But I don't, I don't wanna spend money.

Caller 13 (02:01:42):
I bought their cloud in

Leo Laporte (02:01:43):
And it still doesn't do what you want to do.

Caller 13 (02:01:46):
Well, you, you sort like in classic, it has the folders. Yeah. Which you can create, but then you've gotta create collections.

Leo Laporte (02:01:54):
Yeah. They want you, they probably want you to use the new light room and I bet it all works. Yeah. These guys all have economic motives. They're kind of trying to, you know, lead you like a rat and maze down the right rabbit hole. Oh, I've confused. Marsupials. And no, they're not Mars. 

Caller 13 (02:02:17):
I get that.

Leo Laporte (02:02:19):
So I think Google photos is a good choice. There is a Google photos, uploader for desktops. Have you used that?

Caller 13 (02:02:30):
I have, but they, I dunno.

Leo Laporte (02:02:32):
It's not keeping it up to date.

Caller 13 (02:02:35):
No. So if I load a photo from, from last week and I made a change today, it, it uploads the change today in addition to last week.

Leo Laporte (02:02:46):
Oh, I see you. You wanted to update the photo. Yeah. So he doesn't have the intelligence to do that. It doesn't. Yeah. It ha would have to know that that's the same photo and it doesn't. Yeah. Correct. Yeah.

Caller 13 (02:02:59):
And that's just, I just, I just, I, I don't want to just, if I took a picture last week of my kids in the playground and I, I made, and I made it black and white today this afternoon, then I'll upload that second photo. I don't want that. I just want, yeah. That photo last week with the adjustments and I just, I don't know what to

Leo Laporte (02:03:18):
Do. So the one solution would be instead of a editing, it locally is edit in Google photos. If you did that, obviously it would know, oh, this is the same photo, but you took the red eyes out and something like that. But

Caller 13 (02:03:31):
That's, that's a good

Leo Laporte (02:03:31):
Idea. Yeah. The, you, you understand why I can't do what you wanted to do? People would get upset because they'd say, well, wait a minute. I, I wanted both copies. They're not gonna ever delete the original in favor of the edit. Lightroom will do that. Because Lightroom knows what edits you've performed and all of those are non-destructive anyway. So it just applies those to the existing photo. And you can always get the original back at any time. That's why you would use light room, but if it's not synchronizing to your satisfaction Hmm.

Caller 13 (02:04:06):
All the things need to my next, like the, the second part of my question, which if you've got the time and it's okay. Is I use my phone to take pictures, proper pictures of, of my family and young kids, et cetera, you know, of going out on holiday. But I also use my phone to take pictures of everything, like, like a receipt of, of, of yes.

Leo Laporte (02:04:29):
As do I license plates, parking spots. So I can find my car again, all that, all that junk. I

Caller 13 (02:04:35):
Don't want all of that junk twisted into the cloud.

Leo Laporte (02:04:39):
Well, and that's both Google photos and apple are starting to say, oh yeah, we get it. You have photos of stuff. You don't really want to treat like your family photos. And Google will periodically say, you want me to sweep these into the archive cuz I know you don't want that receipt. So that's where you can trust Google somewhat to do that job. Somebody's suggesting. And I think this is true. I use this. I love SMU mug. If you're a serious photographer, you might be familiar with them. They're not owned by any big company they're owned by the MCC McCalls, SM U G M u.com. They bought flicker recently and there is a sync Lightroom tool. That's very good. That will, in fact, I believe distinguish between edits and originals, that will actually say, oh, you've got an edit. Let me replace the original with that. So SMU mug is not, that would be

Caller 13 (02:05:35):
Super.

Leo Laporte (02:05:35):
Yeah. I would look at the SMU mug support it, but they're saying it'll do that. I've been a SMU mug pro member for as long as they've been around. I'm a big fan. That's where I store my best pictures. They're not free. That's the that's the disadvantage. Well,

Caller 13 (02:05:49):
I don't, I don't mind paying for it because I spend so much time curating and doing it. Yeah. You guys, you know, they're entitled to a living then and run a, a service. It provides.

Leo Laporte (02:05:58):
I prefer precisely.

Caller 13 (02:05:59):
Absolutely. Because if I have to spend, if, if I'm spending so much time, as I said drowning, because I'm deleting photos and right. It's mucking up my sink.

Leo Laporte (02:06:10):
If you're not paying for it, they're paying for it. Somehow I would far prefer to pay a reasonable amount of money for, for service that I really use and not have them spy on me and stuff like that. No,

Caller 13 (02:06:25):
Exactly. I agree with you. A hundred percent

Leo Laporte (02:06:27):
SMU mug has that sharing feature. The other reason I like SMU mug is I can tell people, you can buy a, they, if they say I want a print. Oh no, no problem. Just go to the page and you can order a print right there. I don't have to worry about it. Take a look at SMU mug. They have for Lightroom classic, they have a plugin and then they have a connector with Lightroom CC the new one. And I may be mistaken that it might be the same situation where you need Lightroom, CC. I'm not sure, but take a look at their plugin for classic. I will,

Caller 13 (02:07:01):
I will.

Leo Laporte (02:07:01):
I

Caller 13 (02:07:01):
Think, okay. That's

Leo Laporte (02:07:03):
The, and these guys, you can email them or, or chat with them. They're very, very good. They're very proactive. Cuz it's a family run small business and they want do a good job and I, they deserve I should give them more. Well

Caller 13 (02:07:18):
Your sponsor before. So be a long time this semester. I really appreciate.

Leo Laporte (02:07:22):
Thank you. Yeah. Well they're, they're not a sponsor. I, I wish I were, but I am happy to give 'em a plug Greg and I'm so happy you listen in in Sydney, one of my favorite cities in the world,

Caller 13 (02:07:33):
You've got a big fan base here and we love, I've been, I've been to Petaluma, but I've been to the states. I love we've got family Irvine. Nice. It's it's a great part of the world. So but thank you very much for your help and you have a great day.

Leo Laporte (02:07:45):
Good. I hope it helps you have a wonderful Sunday all the way in Sydney where it is tomorrow already. Yes. I should give mug mug more plugs cuz I really love these guys. And I think they have a great services. It's where leo.camera, which is my personal P site really is just a SMU mug gallery. They do that a nice job of that as well. The GWE is coming up next. Leo Laporte, the tech guy. Oh that's the way he likes it. Dancing into our studios. It's disco, Dick de Bartolo mad magazine's Madis writer and our Giz Wiz. Hello Dickie D

Dick DeBartolo (02:08:31):
Leo. How you doing?

Leo Laporte (02:08:32):
I am great. How are you?

Dick DeBartolo (02:08:34):
I am good. You know, a few minutes ago you were talking about TWiT and your career in different shows

Leo Laporte (02:08:41):
Career. I guess you could call it that, but okay. No,

Dick DeBartolo (02:08:44):
Its a career.

Leo Laporte (02:08:46):
Okay.

Dick DeBartolo (02:08:46):
Only cause you got nothing else going.

Leo Laporte (02:08:48):
I got nothing else going so that's right. Well, you know, it's a hobby, it's a career, you know, but anyway, so

Dick DeBartolo (02:08:54):
Tomorrow yes, tomorrow, February 20th, 16 years of GizWiz.

Leo Laporte (02:09:00):
You're kidding.

Dick DeBartolo (02:09:02):
No. Did you?

Leo Laporte (02:09:03):
That's amazing.

Dick DeBartolo (02:09:05):
Yeah. Although the first one was February 20th, 2006,

Leo Laporte (02:09:10):
As I think about it for you, this is nothing you've been writing for. You've every issue of mad magazine for five decades.

Dick DeBartolo (02:09:21):
Yes. So podcasting was new.

Leo Laporte (02:09:27):
I have the thank you for the autograph

Dick DeBartolo (02:09:30):
Mad. Oh yeah. No, no problem. No problem.

Leo Laporte (02:09:32):
Look up in the sky. It's absurd. It's insane. It's super be mad. Is this in that Superman?

Dick DeBartolo (02:09:42):
The No it's you know, DC comics. I think it might be next week is coming out with, I think it's super pets. Yes.

Leo Laporte (02:09:49):
The movie. Ridiculous. So this is pets and

Dick DeBartolo (02:09:51):
That's and that dogie is in that movie. I do

Leo Laporte (02:09:55):
Believe. Ah, and here's a spy versus spy with a kitty cat. Yeah. And what is, what, what did you write in this issue?

Dick DeBartolo (02:10:02):
I did. I did the takeoff on Willard. Do you remember Willard

Leo Laporte (02:10:05):
Willard? The brat? Yes.

Dick DeBartolo (02:10:07):
Yeah. And I called it Willys.

Leo Laporte (02:10:09):
Willie, give me the wills. Yeah. Give me the Willie. Very cute. Oh yeah. With the Ernest bine.

Dick DeBartolo (02:10:16):
Yes.

Leo Laporte (02:10:17):
Yes. Oh it is very good. The Willie very good. Yes.

Dick DeBartolo (02:10:20):
The willies.

Leo Laporte (02:10:21):
Wow. So Dick joins us every week, not just to talk about mad magazine, although frankly I'm a, I'm a huge fan, but also to talk about a Gimo or a gadget, something he's excited

Dick DeBartolo (02:10:32):
About. So I, I have mixed feelings about this and you can tell me your feeling. I have a ton of things plugged in around my desk and I thought, let me see, what is the biggest power strip I can buy? That's not a huge form factor. And I found the 22 outlet power strip.

Leo Laporte (02:10:56):
What? That looks like a joke. Holy cow.

Dick DeBartolo (02:11:00):
Yeah. Plus six USB charging ports. Okay.

Leo Laporte (02:11:05):
That shouldn't be enough for, but that whole house is gonna come down around your head. You plug that in.

Dick DeBartolo (02:11:10):
I know, I know. Now the thing is when I, I, I, I quickly looked at the description and it said UL and then after I got it, I was rereading it and it says plug and, and power cord UL approved. Yeah. But it didn't say anything about the unit itself.

Leo Laporte (02:11:28):
I'm not sure you should plug 22 separate devices into a single outlet. 

Dick DeBartolo (02:11:33):
I'm not sure. You know, it's still 15 amp. So it's, it's a max of 1,875 Watts. The thing is all the L E D lights around here are like six Watts.

Leo Laporte (02:11:44):
One is yeah, no, that's a good point. Yeah.

Dick DeBartolo (02:11:46):
You know it it's yeah. It's I paid 40 bucks on,

Leo Laporte (02:11:52):
On, and it's from the, the wellness own company, super Danny. So you know

Dick DeBartolo (02:11:56):
What? They actually have a very impressive store,

Leo Laporte (02:12:00):
The super Danny store

Dick DeBartolo (02:12:03):
Store. And also it got 4.9 stars from 400 and now it's up to 440 reviews and all but two meaning they bought the unit.

Leo Laporte (02:12:17):
Wow. All right. So I'm very tempted cuz there's never enough plugs.

Dick DeBartolo (02:12:22):
No, no, absolutely not. And in fact, so it had, I know

Leo Laporte (02:12:25):
I wanna take it to a hotel room because you know, you go to the, unless it's a modern hotel, there's very rarely more than one plug socket. You know,

Dick DeBartolo (02:12:35):
This will be as many plugs as you want. And all the outer plugs are big. They have a lot of space for transforming.

Leo Laporte (02:12:43):
Are they tilting ones too? Do they do

Dick DeBartolo (02:12:44):
That? I wish they were

Leo Laporte (02:12:46):
In the photo. I thought they were they're and when I got them,

Dick DeBartolo (02:12:49):
Yeah, I thought they tilt it out, but they don't. They make it so that you can bolt to a wall if you want to there those

Leo Laporte (02:12:56):
Littles in the back. Oh, that's tempting and six USB outlets, huh?

Dick DeBartolo (02:13:02):
Six USB outlets. It's 2100 jewel surge protection and it's three little LEDs up top that show you that's grounded that the surge protection is in use. And then's a little yellow L E D light that will come on to tell you if the surge protection has tripped.

Leo Laporte (02:13:20):
I think super Danny, by the way, is in that new DC comic, the new DC morning. I see. That might be super Danny right there. Yeah, yeah,

Dick DeBartolo (02:13:27):
Yeah. It could be.

Leo Laporte (02:13:28):
It could be. So you, so you didn't blow a fuse when you plugged it, did you plug to use every everyone?

Dick DeBartolo (02:13:34):
No. I, I, now I have to buy stuff to plug in. I, I only, I only had 17 things to plug in, so I have to, I have to buy five things. Do you think

Leo Laporte (02:13:43):
They just like, they, they sent just the cord in a couple of plug sockets to the UL underwritings lab and said test these.

Dick DeBartolo (02:13:51):
I, I don't know because interestingly I could not find I, I search for UL approved power strip and a, a different ETL comes up as certified. Oh some other.

Leo Laporte (02:14:04):
And is it also have 22 plugs and six USB points?

Dick DeBartolo (02:14:07):
No, no, no. This is the most that I could find anywhere.

Leo Laporte (02:14:10):
This, this looks like a joke. Like,

Dick DeBartolo (02:14:14):
Well it almost does, doesn't it? Yeah. It almost, it almost looks like something mad.

Leo Laporte (02:14:18):
A mad magazine thing.

Dick DeBartolo (02:14:20):
Yeah, exactly.

Leo Laporte (02:14:21):
The super Danny surge protector with 22 AC outlets and six USB charging ports, 1,875 Watts, you know, that's not much more than a blow to so 15.

Dick DeBartolo (02:14:33):
No, that's absolutely right.

Leo Laporte (02:14:34):
Yes. 2100 jewels. I always wonder how many jewels? 6.5 foot flat plug heavy duty extension cord for home office dorm gaming room black or get it in white either way. Oh,

Dick DeBartolo (02:14:48):
It seems to disappear in white. If you go,

Leo Laporte (02:14:50):
The, it goes away. Doesn't it's there You notice sometimes. Now this one, they don't do it. They sometimes they charge more for a better color. Oh

Dick DeBartolo (02:14:56):
They do. They charge a ridiculous amount. Like it color

Leo Laporte (02:15:00):
Is more. Yeah. It's like, cuz I'm making it red. You're gonna charge me eight bucks more.

Dick DeBartolo (02:15:04):
Yeah. And

Leo Laporte (02:15:07):
All

Dick DeBartolo (02:15:07):
Right, you can get a little heavy duty extension for a buck

Leo Laporte (02:15:10):
For super Danny ladies and gentleman. And if you would like to win an autograph copy of this super pets mad magazine, there is a way to do that. Go to gizwiz.biz. That's again, website G I Z W I Z dot B I Z. And click the button that says, what the heck is it contest? And you can identify close up of a gizmo or gadget. The game's almost over, right? It's the end of end of

Dick DeBartolo (02:15:37):
February. End of February

Leo Laporte (02:15:38):
Nine more days before before the prizes are awarded, there are six autographed copies of mad magazine for the right answer. 12 for the best wrong answer. Funniest. Wrong answer. Cleverest. Wrong answer. Yeah. any, has anybody gets the end?

Dick DeBartolo (02:15:54):
One person so far, but I have, it's a hard one through

Leo Laporte (02:15:56):
The wall. It's a tough one.

Dick DeBartolo (02:15:57):
Yeah. Thank after the last one where it's like 75 people.

Leo Laporte (02:16:02):
Yeah.

Dick DeBartolo (02:16:02):
Yeah.

Leo Laporte (02:16:04):
And while you're there, there's mad magazine memorabilia, all the things he mentions on this show, all the things he does on ABC's world news. Now he appears there every month. All sorts of great stuff. It's a great site. gizwiz.biz. Don't forget. Fabulous podcast with Chad Johnson every week. If you like this gadget, there's like many, many more.

Dick DeBartolo (02:16:24):
Yes, exactly.

Leo Laporte (02:16:25):
Lots of stuff. gizwiz.tv. Thank you. Dickie D.

Speaker 19 (02:16:29):
Okay buddy. See you

Leo Laporte (02:16:30):
Next week. See you next week. My thanks to professor Laura, our musical director who picked a lot of train and prison songs today.

Leo Laporte (02:16:43):
Thanks also to our phone angel Kim Shaffer answering the phones. Thanks. Most of all for to you for joining us, for listening in, for calling in. Really appreciate it. If I didn't have this, I'd have to get a real job. So I thank you very much. Be back next time. Website tech guy labs.com has links to all the stuff we talked about today. So you don't have to write it down or search around tech guy labs.com, no sign up. And I'm about to go off and do an interview with my friend, Amy Webb about her new book on on biotech, synthetic biology. That's even scarier than a cyber attack. So I'll see you next time. Bye-Bye

Leo Laporte (02:17:28):
Well, that's it for the tech show for today. Thank you so much for being here and don't forget TWiT T W I T. It stands for this week at tech and you'll find it at twit.tv, including the podcasts for this show. We talk about Windows and Windows weekly, Macintosh on Macbreak Weekly, iPads, iPhones, apple watches on iOS today. Security and Security Now, I mean, I can go on and on and on. And of course the big show every Sunday afternoon, this week in tech, you'll find it all at TWiT TV and I'll be back next week with another great tech guys show. Thanks for joining me. We'll see you next time.

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