The Tech Guy Episode 1872 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 in the premier networks on Sunday, February 27th, 2022. This is episode 1,872. Enjoy don't forget. Today is the last day to take the TWiT annual survey. We love hearing from you. We wanna know more about you. It helps us sell advertising helps us. Design shows helps us tailor our programming to match your interests. If you would just last, last time I'll ever ask you till next year, go to TWiT.tv/survey 22. And thanks in advance. The tech I podcast is brought to you by cash. Cash is giving away a complimentary detailed analysis of your current CDN bill and usage trends. See if you're overpaying 20% or more or more@TWiT.cash.com. Well, Hey, Hey. Hey, how are you today? Leo Laporte here. The Tech Guy, time to talk computers, the internet, home theater, digital photography, smartphones, smart watches all that jazz, 88, 88, ask Leo, you know, all that, all that stuff, anything with a chip in it, anything computery computery stuff.

Leo Laporte (00:01:29):
That's it. Eighty eight eighty eight. Ask Leo that's the phone number? You can call that from the us or Canada toll free, cuz it's a toll free number 8, 8, 8 is toll free, but if you're outside that area, if you're don't know in the Ukraine, you can call just use Skype out. And I guess if you're in Russia, you can't cuz the internet is the internet still working in Russia. Man, the technology folks are just they're jumping in. You see the tweet from Hilo fedora, vice prime minister of Ukraine and minister of digital transformation of Ukraine calling all hackers. The tweet reads, we are creating an it army. We need digital talents. All operational tasks will be given here and he gives out a Telegraph. I'm sorry, telegram address t.me/i T army of I think he left out a, a letter. It says Uran. I think he meant Ukraine. There'll be tasks for everyone who continue to fight on the cyber front. The first task is on the channel for cyber specialists. Wow. It is U reign. No, no it is you. Hmm. You know, now I'm thinking maybe I shouldn't have repeated that. I don't know is this he's not, he is checked. He has a check. Is it a blue check? 

Leo Laporte (00:03:00):
It's interesting. I probably wouldn't use telegram for that, But signal might be better. I, I hear that there are, there's a lot of signal messaging going on that for sure. The ruskis can't crack Really fascinating situation there from a technology point of view, a great many of the technology companies, you know, and use and perhaps love either started in Ukraine or have programmers in Ukraine as with most of the Eastern block. There are a lot of very talented computer folk. Ukraine was where Grammarly was started. And, and you know, the headquarters I think is in the us now, but the programming team's still in Ukraine. I use a photo editor. I love it called Luminar that's from a company called Skyla in Ukraine. In fact, if you go to their website they have a a banner up at the top there with the Ukraine colors the blue and gold or golden blue. And if you, if you, it says, save Ukraine, defend democracy. Wow. Skyla was proudly founded in Ukraine. Our core development center is based in Keve

Leo Laporte (00:04:28):
At this harrowing time. Ult unfortunately we cannot guarantee on time delivery of updates to Luminar Nero, Neo dudes, relax. It's okay. Don't worry about the software. It's okay. We understand Nobody's gonna be pounding on your door saying where's that update? No you, you take care of yourselves. It's really interesting to to watch. I mean, of course, you know, there's huge impact in, in, in lives. You know, and it's a, a horrible tragedy, however, just from the pure tech point of view, it's really interesting to see tech get involved. I think something like 17 million in Bitcoin has been donated it's interesting. Russia might actually have to turn to Bitcoin because their financial system is, is being blocked by sanctions. And so this is one thing Bitcoin's good for isn't it is bypassing the traditional financial system system, the swift system, the banking system, and just kind of person to person transfer. I don't think you can probably get a lot done that way. I don't know. Yesterday, the BBC reported millions in Bitcoin pouring into Ukraine more than 4,000 donations, one donor giving 3 million in Bitcoin to an NGO,

Leo Laporte (00:06:10):
The official TWiTtter account of the Ukraine government yesterday posted a tweet stand with the people of Ukraine now accepting crypto donations, Bitcoin, Ethereum, and U S D T. It is fascinating how technology changes everything even war. Now we've talked before on the show about cyber warfare and the risks to us here in the us. And of course the risks to, of people in Ukraine. And even in Russia, I expect a lot of cyber warfare to kind of crop up here and there ransomware hackers shut down in a couple of weeks ago, shut down the Bellus railway system for some hours, hoping to slow the transport of Russian tanks and troops to the F the Front line. I hate saying that word. On the other hand, Patreon has shut down Ukrainian non-governmental organization, NGO called come 'em back alive. They've been raising money for Ukrainian forces in conflict zones for eight years. Now that patron just noticed and shut 'em down saying we don't allow Paton to be used for funding weapons or military activity. I guess that's not unreasonable, but nowadays with crypto, you can just donate directly, right? In fact, the Ukraine government posted you know, their Bitcoin wallet,

Leo Laporte (00:07:45):
Just, it, it, all of the, you know, the humanity aside, I don't wanna say that first and foremost, that's really what matters is the loss of life. The, the tragedy that's unfolding. It's also a little inspire. I have to say. I'm a little inspired by the, the strength of the Ukraine people and standing up to this invasion, but all that aside, I think also very interesting how technology has changed all of this. It used to be the the first thing you do is you. If you're invading a country, you go and you shut down the newspaper and the radio stations right now would, would, I guess you'd shut down the internet. First. First of all, they weren't, they have not been able to do that. They have not been able to do that. Japanese billion Hiroshi Tani donated a billion yen to Ukraine. That's about 8.7 million. I don't know if he did it through Bitcoin. I don't know. I mean, how, I guess, are the banks still operating, I guess Kind of makes all of the video game warfare that people, you and I have engaged in over the last decade or so kind of seem childish, I guess.

Leo Laporte (00:09:16):
Of course. You know, the first thing you do is you shut down the radio and the newspapers, or you shut down the internet. Funny thing is funny, not haha, but a interesting thing is Russia has had to shut down Twitter in Russia. They don't want to hear any protests and they can't control it. And so they just turned it off Facebook two Facebook, two Maybe that maybe that tells you something about the value of social media. We always talk about the negatives, the disinformation, the Russians have used Facebook and Twitter against us with disinformation campaigns. Yeah, but it goes both ways. Doesn't it Goes both ways. Facebook confirmed that Russia's media regulator, Russ commons, or said it would partly restrict Facebook because Facebook fus to fact check or stop fact checking Russian state media. You mustn't say that you wasn't, you must Now remember these autocratic regimes. China, Russia have insisted a, that companies like Twitter, Facebook and Google have Offices, local offices in country that's so there's someone to arrest someone to put in jail, someone to punish Otherwise they're overseas companies. And of course they've also demanded, well, you have to keep data in the country. We must have all data from all users,

Leo Laporte (00:11:00):
American companies like Microsoft so far resisted that. In fact, it's one reason Facebook's being threatened in Europe. Facebook says, no, no, we wanna keep it in in the us. And the agreements, the SHMS agreements that were made with the European regulators are now saying, no, you, this isn't working Facebook saying fine. If that's how you feel, we'll leave Europe.

Leo Laporte (00:11:27):
I don't know if that's how long that's gonna stay. Anyway, we, we don't have to talk about all of that. This, I, I like to think of this show as a little escape from the, the day to day news of the world. So you know, but it is it's interesting. Eighty eight eighty eight, ask Leo the phone number eighty eight, eight eight two seven five five three six website always free, always available to you where audio and video from the shows, links to Tech Guy labs.com. Don't call us from a payphone. That's a,

Kim Schaeffer (00:11:58):
Not a good idea. No, first of all, we're, we're gonna be on hold for a long time. Where are

Leo Laporte (00:12:01):
You gonna find a payphone? And you're gonna bring a lot of dimes. Yeah. Do they still take dime payphone?

Kim Schaeffer (00:12:08):
I know they probably do credit

Leo Laporte (00:12:09):
Cards. You know, there are payphone in places. I know a guy,

Kim Schaeffer (00:12:15):
I

Leo Laporte (00:12:16):
Know a guy. I know a guy. I knows a guy,

Kim Schaeffer (00:12:17):
All the good stories start with, I know a guy,

Leo Laporte (00:12:19):
I know a guy who when the pay phones just, you know, everybody has cell phones, the pay phones didn't seem to pay. Yeah. At and T wanted to dump. 'em All he bought. 'em All. And he put cell phones in them. Oh, okay. So they don't have to be wired to the network or anything. And he says, you know, there's still lots of places, convenience stores and stuff where people don't have cell phones and they you know, railroad stations, bus stations. And and he does, he makes pretty good living going around, you know, collecting them the change from the payphone. And then and then he expanded out into frozen goods. But that's another story for another day. So the,

Kim Schaeffer (00:12:56):
The ferry terminal had one for the longest time. And he was able to like, when is this gonna go away?

Leo Laporte (00:13:02):
Buy these payphone for pennies on the dollar. Oh, I'm sure. Because you know, at and T said, it's too, it's too much to maintain. We don't, we can't make any money on it. 

Kim Schaeffer (00:13:11):
Yeah. So they just left in there. A lot of them, well,

Leo Laporte (00:13:14):
They, they sold the, they sold them to this guy, not this was in the, the bay area. I don't think he owns em all over the country. Yeah. But he he's makes a handsome, handsome living.

Kim Schaeffer (00:13:25):
But now he's in frozen goods.

Leo Laporte (00:13:27):
Well, he's expanded because, oh, so that's an interesting story because it turned out the payphone business was really a logistics business. Ha knowing when the quarter bin is full and having somebody go out there to collect all the quarters, it's a logistics business. It's all about timing. And he realize I could do the same thing with frozen goods. He put these frozen goods in bodegas and convenience stores all over the area, but they have little little MEMS, micro, electro mechanical machines in the feet that weighs the thing. And they know when they're running out of ice cream bars. Oh. Because it weighs less. And so it's turns out it's, it's, it's all a logistics business. It's fascinating.

Kim Schaeffer (00:14:06):
Nothing is really ever as it appears,

Leo Laporte (00:14:07):
Nothing is, as it appears, You know, McDonald's is a real estate business.

Kim Schaeffer (00:14:12):
And Uber, that's not a, I don't

Leo Laporte (00:14:15):
What, there's no business for Ubers.

Kim Schaeffer (00:14:17):
It's a it's. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:14:18):
Uber is a business that loses billions a year. There is no business for Uber. That's not a business model. I can't wait. Have it's coming. Maybe it's there already, but they're doing a show about Travis Callick and the founding of Uber. That's the new thing now on HBO and Netflix. Oh yeah. They're doing one for WeWork. And then they're gonna do an Uber, the Uber TV show. That should be interesting.

Kim Schaeffer (00:14:43):
They are interesting. I like stories about people. Yeah. That's

Leo Laporte (00:14:46):
Even,

Kim Schaeffer (00:14:46):
Even when they drive me crazy, like the Tinder swindler.

Leo Laporte (00:14:50):
Yeah. Did you watch that? I did. He's on cameo now in case you want to get him to do a birthday greeting or anything? Hi, I'm the Tinder swindling. And then the happy birthday to the the inventing Anna girl. That's a great show. All these out show out there. It's it's disgusting that profit Showtime is gonna have the Uber show it's called. I love the name. Super pumped, super pumped. Cuz he's super, I'm super pumped. Okay. Super pumped. I'll look out for it. Who should I talk to for let's go to David and orange. Super pumped to talk to David being scammed too. Oh, I hate that. I attempted scams. No more scams. No more scams. You didn't fall for the Tinder swindler did you? No. No I not. Maybe David did. I was not on that show. Thank you, Kim. Hi David. Leo Laporte, The Tech Guy.

Caller #1 (00:15:40):
Leo. I hope you can help me.

Leo Laporte (00:15:41):
Help me OB be one.

Caller #1 (00:15:44):
I want your advice. So every day I receive about a dozen email scams or from what they say are stores that, or it's an obvious scam cuz name of the stores or whatever they're promoting is misspelled. The only option is to click unsubscribe, which I never do

Leo Laporte (00:16:02):
Do not never. Cause that's really not unsubscribe. That's let us know if there's a real person at this address is what that button means. Exactly.

Caller #1 (00:16:10):
Yeah. So the other thing about it, everyone gets scammed emails. These are all addressed to people that I don't know that have different URLs. Is it a URL that you, you call it like different email account? Yeah. And I've called at and T five times I always get sent overseas where I can't understand them.

Leo Laporte (00:16:30):
So these are email and you have at Ts your email provider, is that yes. Okay. Cause we're also getting these as text messages, which is even more annoying.

Caller #1 (00:16:39):
A fraud department.

Leo Laporte (00:16:40):
Yeah. Email look, no one has the department to fight spam. It's so prevalent. Generally the best solution for spam is to use an email provider that has good spam filter. I'm guessing who does at and T use for their email. Is it Yahoo? Who do you, who's your email?

Caller #1 (00:16:59):
I believe it is Yahoo.

Leo Laporte (00:17:01):
So you might look at one of the reasons Gmail is so popular is they have pretty good spam filters. They do something that, that is effective, which is a sort of collaborative thing. What you would do is you'd see you that. Yeah. And at T mail may have this, you'd see that. And you'd go, yeah. Right. That's spam. And there'd be a button on the window. You press the button and says spam. And what happens at at least a Gmail is that collaborative filter. If they see, oh yeah, this email, which we're sending out to millions of people 350 of 'em said it's spam. It must be spam. It's much than a computer. And, and so it's a pretty good spam filtration system. However, spamers have gotten so sophisticated and it costs them almost nothing to send these out. So if, if the economics of it are, I send out 10 million junk email and one person responds great, cuz it only costs me a penny to send the 10 million. The economics of it are such that it is not gonna go away. There is a, you can report it. I would because that's helpful to any filters that they're using that are collaborative. Otherwise you can write your own filters. For instance, I have a filter that says if it comes from any country, but the us, I don't wanna see it. Things like that, but there's not much you can do. We're all bombarded with spam. It was got better for a while.

Caller #1 (00:18:31):
So why would it go to other people's emails? Oh,

Leo Laporte (00:18:33):
Cause it's just random. It's all random. So they're using, so they buy email addresses, they buy, you know, millions of them and they send it out. It's not, none of that's real what the real payload there generally is either something attached to the email or a link that you click that takes you to a malware site. That's why you don't in any way open or look at these Leo Laport, the Tech Guy. Yeah. So, so is it in the email that you see return address? Where is it you're seeing that?

Caller #1 (00:19:05):
No. There's no. 

Leo Laporte (00:19:07):
So where are you seeing other people's addresses?

Caller #1 (00:19:11):
It says, so it says like this one says Sam's club to CX

Leo Laporte (00:19:14):
CVV. Oh, oh the two address. Yeah. That's just random. That's garbage. None of it's meaningful. The return address isn't meaningful. My name

Caller #1 (00:19:21):
Never shows up on anything.

Leo Laporte (00:19:22):
No. How does it get to you? You're wondering,

Caller #1 (00:19:26):
And I, I would expect them to have a filter and when I called five different times, they say there's nothing they could do. There's no filters that they offer.

Leo Laporte (00:19:36):
Hmm. That's

Caller #1 (00:19:37):
Interesting. I've gone to the at and T store also and they don't know what to do.

Leo Laporte (00:19:41):
No, we're all suffering from this. Yeah. I mean it's funny because do they, do they smile at you when you go and say, can you do something about my spa? Do they, do they kind of snicker behind their hands?

Caller #1 (00:19:56):
Right. I just thought a, a major company like at and T would have that feature where you, you, you market a spam, but they don't, they don't

Leo Laporte (00:20:04):
Have a button

Caller #1 (00:20:05):
On

Leo Laporte (00:20:05):
Their that's really bad. Yeah. So that's one of the things Gmail does. Well although I, I used to use, I used to put, when I I've always had my own email address, it wasn't Gmail, but I always passed my mail through Gmail because of the spam filtering. And I actually stopped doing that some years ago cuz it didn't seem to be as effective. It used, it used to be the spamers are just very, very good at getting around these filters.

Leo Laporte (00:20:30):
Mm. Somewhere your email address is in there probably in the BCC field. So you can't see it. So the two address is a public address, but then so one of the things you could do is use a filter. I don't know. Are you, have you played with the filters on your, on your, at T now? No. No. So one of the things you could do and I do this for sure. If the email isn't to Leo Laport, like if it doesn't have in the two field, my name, I, I put it somewhere else. I don't throw it away. Cuz maybe I'm, CC'd on an important email from work something. But, but if it's, I should be in the two field for me to pay attention to it. So that's one thing you could do right now, cuz it's not because you're in the CC probably you're in the BCC fields.

Leo Laporte (00:21:16):
That's why you don't see your address. If you say, if you make a filter that says, I, what I do is if it's in, this is what I do. I have a, I have one filter that says if it's not in my content list, if the sender is not in my contact list, put 'em in a secondary folder. And then if it's not to Leo leoville.com, then I say, put it in a secondary folder. I'll look at it sometime I have an unimportant folder. I also have an important folder because if it's in, if it's somebody in my contact list or, and it's addressed directly to me, then that's important. That's not gonna be spam. In most cases you see, so filters are your best friend here. They're not gonna do it for you. I mean, I am surprised that Yahoo does not have some sort of spam filtering. That seems odd, but,

Caller #1 (00:22:07):
And it's so odd. The, these these spammers don't even try to make it look authentic. No, they don't care. They spell the name of the FAMs club or

Leo Laporte (00:22:14):
No, they don't even care.

Caller #1 (00:22:15):
Chase bank. It's

Leo Laporte (00:22:16):
Cheap. What they're. And honestly I heard somebody say, and this is interesting that they do it that way and ungrammatical cuz they cuz anybody intelligent enough to catch them in that is probably not gonna fall for whatever their scam is. They want people, people who are not paying attention.

Caller #1 (00:22:31):
Mm

Leo Laporte (00:22:32):
They're much, much, I don't know if this is true or not, but the, the, it wouldn't surprise me. They've got this perfect system feedback loop, right? They've sent out millions of these. They've been doing it for decades so they know what works and what doesn't work. And as, as spam filters get better or people get more savvy, they change their tactics all the time. And so that's why it's very hard for anybody. What I would say is you do a whitelist and not a blacklist. You don't try to filter out spam. You just filter in stuff. That is stuff, you know, you want, you know, if it's from my mom, I wanna see, I gotta run. I've got Mr. Sam. Abbu Sam here. It's car time. It's time for Sam at bull Sam. He is a car guy through and through principal researcher at guide house insights. He does a podcast called wheel bearings@wheelbearings.media. He's worth for car companies. He's he's been my car guy for more than a decade. Hey Sam, have you seen the new Uber show? Super pumped on Showtime? Have you seen that yet? I don't know if it's Sam, are you muted? I think you're muted. Sam. I got your turn. Yes.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:23:47):
There we go. Sorry about

Leo Laporte (00:23:48):
That. He was so quiet. Oh.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:23:50):
I wanted to make sure that I didn't make any noises that came through when it wasn't my turn. Yeah, no, I have not. I have not watched super pump. I believe that debuts tonight. Oh,

Leo Laporte (00:24:00):
Maybe it's tonight. Okay. Yeah,

Sam Abuelsamid (00:24:02):
I could be wrong.

Leo Laporte (00:24:03):
It'll be interesting. It'll be interesting to hear this story. I wonder how accurate it'll be.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:24:09):
Yeah. I mean, if, if it's typical of, you know, a lot of these kind of bio things, I mean there's only so much you can squeeze into two hours into a two hour movie.

Leo Laporte (00:24:18):
Well, I'm, I'm sure this is a, I,

Sam Abuelsamid (00:24:20):
Don't probably a lot of adaptation, lot of combining characters

Leo Laporte (00:24:25):
And the only thing I, I, I have high hopes. It's the guys who created billions, which is also a wonderful show on the show time. And it's Joseph Gordon Levit as Travis Callick should be, you know what, it's gonna be dishy. It's gonna be gossipy. It's gonna be full of stuff that you go.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:24:41):
Wow. It'll prob it'll, it'll almost certainly be entertaining. Yeah. You know how informative it'll be. Yeah. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:24:48):
We'll see.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:24:48):
Yeah. I, I'm not holding my breath.

Leo Laporte (00:24:51):
There are plenty of good books. If you want read this story, there are plenty of yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:24:54):
Including, including Mike Isaac's book that this is based on, which was

Leo Laporte (00:24:57):
Oh, it's based on Mike's book. Okay, good. Good for Mike Isaac. Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:25:00):
The, the option Mike's book. Yeah. So

Leo Laporte (00:25:02):
Long times tech reporter at the New York times and the book is super, is it's super pumped, so yep. Yeah. Okay. Okay. You're sitting in front of something I probably will never ride in. It looks like a shotgun shell, but supersize. So you could sit in it and then be shot through a tube at super Sonic speeds.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:25:25):
Well, that was the idea that that our friend Elon proposed back in 2013, the hyper loop, but it's but, but it's, but it's unlikely that anybody's ever going to ride in this thing at least, you know, not in any kind of widespread or commercial operations. There's there, there were a whole bunch of companies that popped up. And when, when Elon Musk first proposed the Hyperloop idea back in 2013, which was not in of itself an entirely original idea, you know, concepts like this go back more than a century really.

Leo Laporte (00:25:59):
Oh,

Sam Abuelsamid (00:25:59):
I didn't know. Oh yeah. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:26:01):
It's like a super fast train, right? I mean, yeah. It's underground

Sam Abuelsamid (00:26:04):
Basically like the pneumatic tubes that you're you might remember from, from the bank. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:26:10):
I don't wanna be in a pneumatic tube. That sounds it's,

Sam Abuelsamid (00:26:13):
It's the same, it's the same basic concept. You got a vacuum tube. You put you put a little container in there and it shoots off to some other place in the building. 

Leo Laporte (00:26:24):
They obviously they're gonna have to accelerate slowly and decelerate slowly. Your brain gets scrambled.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:26:29):
Well, I mean, the, they in lies part of the problem you know, the, the, the concept was you have these hun vacuum tubes you know, hundreds of miles long that pods would shoot through at speeds of up to almost 700 miles an hour. And he, you know, he said, you know, you could get from San Francisco to Los Angeles in 30 minutes. Yeah. Well, I mean, if you do the math and, and calculate it out you do have to have a very high rate of acceleration and a very high rate of deceleration. Well,

Leo Laporte (00:26:58):
That's not good

Sam Abuelsamid (00:26:59):
To, in order to achieve that, which is part of the problem.

Leo Laporte (00:27:02):
Great scrambling. Well, now he is got a new way, by the way, he posted this week, a picture of you know, going to Sydney in half an hour from New York. I'm thinking it's not the hyper loop. It must be rocket ships.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:27:16):
Yeah. I think, I think that's that's probably his point to point rocket idea which,

Leo Laporte (00:27:22):
You know,

Sam Abuelsamid (00:27:22):
As it's all own problems,

Leo Laporte (00:27:24):
I gotta respect the guy though. He's thinking out of the box. Right.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:27:28):
Well, I mean, he's, it's more like, you know, throw a monkey throw spaghetti at the wall. You know, any, anything that, that that, you know, that he puts up there, you know, somebody will pursue it, you know, and, you know, I mean the, the whole rocket thing, you know, if you've ever been anywhere near rocket launch, that's not something you wanna experience on a regular basis. And because it's very, very, very loud, so to do, you know, point to point, so called point to point, rocket launches, you know, you'd have to have launch pads, you know, several miles away from urban centers. You know, perhaps like, you know, some of the proposals he's had have been, you know, out in harbors and things like that you know, which means that you've got the time it takes to get out there, get loaded up, get, you know, send the thing off. Also these things consume a lot of fossil fuels. His rockets run on methane. So, oh, that's

Leo Laporte (00:28:21):
Not, I thought they were clean.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:28:25):
Oh, no, no, no. They, his, his, all the SpaceX rockets run on liquid methane. Oh. So not exactly carbon neutral, you know, and frankly, you know, if you have to get somewhere on the other side of the planet in 30 minutes, just get on a zoom call, you know, it's it's point, you know, it's ridiculous to, to, to, to try and have, you know, use rockets for that. But for the hyper loop, you know, the idea was you have these huge vacuum tubes and pods that float along on on an electro electromagnetic cushion on rails. And you would shoot these things through it up to 700 miles an hour. And when he proposed the idea, he said, this is not something I'm gonna build, or Tesla's not gonna build it, but I'm putting the idea out there. Anybody wants to build it, go ahead. And a bunch of companies popped up including one called hyper loop technologies which was founded

Leo Laporte (00:29:17):
By, oh, that's right. So he didn't

Sam Abuelsamid (00:29:19):
Spacex engine. He

Leo Laporte (00:29:20):
Didn't own the idea. He said, this is a good idea. You should do it.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:29:24):
Yeah. And so hyper, you know, Hyperloop technologies eventually became Hyperloop. One became Virgin Hyperloop one when Virgin bought controlling interest in it and is now Virgin Hyperloop. Well this week Virgin Hyperloop announced that they were laying off about half of their staff. And they were pivoting away from trying to carry people to focusing just on cargo. That

Leo Laporte (00:29:48):
Makes sense,

Sam Abuelsamid (00:29:50):
Turns out that, you know, carry, you know, shooting people through a tube at those kind of speeds is, is really hard.

Leo Laporte (00:29:55):
Cargo could handle it. And, you know, I mean, that could reinvent. They could look at all those S out in the Harbor waiting to get unloaded that could reinvent you could, if you got one of these tubes under the ocean,

Sam Abuelsamid (00:30:07):
Right. Which is something that Alex Lindsay talked about on MacBreak or TWiT years ago you know, that this would be the way to do it, you know, put these tubes under the ocean. But the thing you gotta keep in mind is that these tubes have to be sealed and you have to maintain AVAC cube inside the tubes for this thing to work. Mm. So

Leo Laporte (00:30:24):
It's hard

Sam Abuelsamid (00:30:25):
To build a lot of energy. Yeah. It's, you know, and so far, I mean, we've had, we've got a couple of, we've got a few, you know, prototype test tracks, you know, that run half a mile, a mile long where they've been testing this stuff. And I think they've gotten some of these prototype pods up to a couple of hundred miles an hour. Hyper Virgin Hyperloop actually did a test in 2020 carrying passengers in one. They got it to about a, just, I think just over a hundred miles an hour which is, you know, not particularly impressive, but it was a first test, but realistically, I think, I think this just, isn't a very realistic proposition, especially compared to, you know, what you can do, you know, with things like high speed rail, for example, you know you don't,

Leo Laporte (00:31:09):
It's too bad. Elon

Sam Abuelsamid (00:31:11):
Giant vacuum tubes

Leo Laporte (00:31:12):
Is sometimes if he would just kind of calm down a little bit, post a few fewer memes on TWiTtter and be a little more forthright in some of marketing promises, cuz you know, for instance, he announced that he's, that Starlink is coming to Ukraine to keep them online, that they're setting more terminals out. And if I trusted him more, I'd be more likely to report that as a real story. But you just never know with Elon. Yeah. Right. It's

Sam Abuelsamid (00:31:44):
It's like the the C P a P machines. He used C P a P machines that he bought in 2020 and sent to some hospitals saying here's some ventilators for you. Yeah. yeah. Which, you know, was not exactly what they were looking for.

Leo Laporte (00:31:56):
He's kind of a PT Barnham but yet some of the things, I mean, look at SpaceX, some of the things he does. Oh yeah. RJ, anyone are real, he transform. I mean, if it weren't for Tesla, I don't think we'd be anywhere near where we are with EVs today. So

Sam Abuelsamid (00:32:10):
No, absolutely. But

Leo Laporte (00:32:11):
He's, but he's a, he's also a PT barman. I wish he would knock off that side of it, but you yeah. You know,

Sam Abuelsamid (00:32:17):
Instead of, instead of, you know, going off pursuing every idea, just focus,

Leo Laporte (00:32:22):
Focus, focus, Sam of bull salmon, he's focused on cars. Thank you for joining us Leo Laporte the Tech Guy and, and, and you know, honestly, star lake might not be the best solution in Ukraine because you can easily see who's using it. So it's not maybe not the most anonymous of solutions. So I don't know, you know, you know, I, you never know with Elon, what's real. What's not real. You just,

Sam Abuelsamid (00:32:57):
Yeah. I, I absolutely, you know, give Tesla all the credit in the world for popularizing the idea of electric vehicles. I mean, they have,

Leo Laporte (00:33:06):
They started,

Sam Abuelsamid (00:33:07):
That was minimized. Yeah. They've done more to legitimize that concept than anybody.

Leo Laporte (00:33:11):
Yeah. It was my first EV now I'm all EV we've got three. None of them Tesla's but we've got three

Sam Abuelsamid (00:33:18):
Is as Lisa's car still running,

Leo Laporte (00:33:19):
It's working. It's great. She's back in love. So thank you for fixing it. I think we owe it to you. I didn't do any of that. Well, I think you rattled a cage. You rattled the trees something fall out. Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:33:31):
Well, I mean, you've, you've, you've, you've got a pretty loud platform yourself, so,

Leo Laporte (00:33:35):
Well, I'm just very happy

Sam Abuelsamid (00:33:36):
And, you know, and, and Lisa's got a follower too on TWiTtter where she was 

Leo Laporte (00:33:40):
Oh yeah. She

Sam Abuelsamid (00:33:41):
Got them being quite vocal

Leo Laporte (00:33:42):
About all us. Yeah. She got them jumping, hopping. Yeah. Yeah. And it's, you know, it's, I, I, I like it. The bolt's been great, although we still haven't got the battery replacement, but that's all right. We have to charge outside. That's a little weird, but I have to say the Mustang flawless. So in fact they said here, I just got an email saying I'm gonna get blue crews pretty soon as a beta tester, so, oh

Sam Abuelsamid (00:34:06):
Yeah. Sounds good.

Leo Laporte (00:34:06):
Should be getting that

Sam Abuelsamid (00:34:07):
Update soon. That was, I was actually just driving another vehicle this week that, that has has that on there. And we can, we can talk about that next Sunday.

Leo Laporte (00:34:14):
Soon as I get it, I'll let you know. I was hoping I get it before the show today, but, you know, I turned on the update a timer and said, go ahead. Anytime you want update, update, update.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:34:25):
Yeah. Well you know, they, they they've actually, you know, they were working Ford was working through some issues with their OTA 

Leo Laporte (00:34:33):
Platform. I remember that over,

Sam Abuelsamid (00:34:34):
Over the last several

Leo Laporte (00:34:35):
Months, but I think they must have, cause I think they're now the beta testers are getting it, which means that they must have worked them out. It,

Sam Abuelsamid (00:34:42):
Yeah. You know, they, they actually started shipping mocks and F one 50 S from the factory new ones, right. With,

Leo Laporte (00:34:48):
To build

Sam Abuelsamid (00:34:49):
Yous with it back in October,

Leo Laporte (00:34:51):
Right? Yeah. I've been seeing people talk about it.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:34:53):
Yeah. And, and the, the, but the people that got their vehicles prior to October have been still waiting for them to fix the, the OTA problems. So hopefully you'll get yours soon and I'll be, I'll be curious to see, to hear your impressions of it. I've got some, some fairly strong feelings about it, which we can talk about next week. 

Leo Laporte (00:35:13):
Oh, okay. And

Sam Abuelsamid (00:35:14):
Yeah. Okay. Yeah. I mean, it's, it's it's got, it's got some real strengths to it and some real weaknesses to it. Yeah. And I think, you know, it will, it will absolutely get better over the, over the next coming months and, and years because they, you know, they have that OTA capability now. But I'll, I'll, I'll want to hear what you think of it once you've had a chance to try it out and see how enamored you are with it.

Leo Laporte (00:35:41):
Would you like to stick around at the top of the hour?

Sam Abuelsamid (00:35:45):
I can certainly do that

Leo Laporte (00:35:46):
Only if you wish, but if you wish you'd be welcome to do so.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:35:50):
I, I have nowhere else to be, so, Okay. It's Sunday afternoon, although the sun is shining and after we're done I'm gonna go take Daisy for a walk. Nice. Enjoy the sun. I'm jealous. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:36:03):
I would like to get outside.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:36:06):
Yeah. yeah. Earlier this week Polestar announced the platform for one of their upcoming vehicles, the Polestar five it's gonna have a bonded aluminums base frame, so it's gonna be glued together, keep it nice and lightweight. Ooh. Yeah. And I'll, I'll talk a little bit more about that. That's

Leo Laporte (00:36:28):
Interesting. The

Sam Abuelsamid (00:36:28):
Next break.

Leo Laporte (00:36:29):
Okay. Thank you, sir. Hang in there. We'll be back with you in 10 or something like it.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:36:36):
All right.

Leo Laporte (00:36:37):
Our show today brought to you quite literally by cash fly cash fly is our content delivery network. Our C D N. And they are the best. In fact, cash fly really rescued the whole TWiT network. When we were first starting out, we could not figure out how to easily get our files to everybody. People were complaining, the downloads were slow and you know, the website was down. I actually, at one point asked everybody to set up a bit torrent seed, and we were using bit torrent. Finally, Matt Levine from cash light called and he said, Leo, what are you doing? Just Kim, can I help? And we've been using cash light ever since more than 10 years, I love cash. So they're content delivery network over 50 points of presence all over the world. That means when you download or files or you watch the stream on the website, you're getting it, not from our servers, but from cash line, they are the close to you delivery network, which is great.

Leo Laporte (00:37:36):
It also means cash can do something quite amazing. Ultra low latency, video streaming. That is amazing. You can make your content so scalable can more than a million continuous users could. At the same time, you can go live in hours, not days latency, get this less than a second ditch, that unreliable web RTC solution for their web socket live video workflow with cash flies, ultra low latency, video streaming, you're gonna dramatically increase your sites and application speed for global audiences anywhere in the world, cuz their pops are all over the world. You'll take a load off your origin servers. That was the big thing for us. Our website support hundreds of thousands of, of listeners. So we offload it to cash. And by the way, with Cash's new storage optimization system, they'll actually store your content. Offload that origin server bill, your S3 bill or whatever your cash hit ratio will be a hundred percent.

Leo Laporte (00:38:40):
That is a really good solution. When you, I tell you what go to TWiT.cash.com, bring your usage trends, your your bill right now for your current CDN. If you have one, see how cash like, and not only save you up to 20% over what you're paying now, but give you all these additional services like ultra low latency, video streaming and storage optimization, ask 'em about the elite managed packages too. A lot less than you think. And you get VIP treatment, 24 7 support response times in less than an hour. In fact, our experience has been most of the time. If there's an issue they'll know about it before we do, and they'll be fixing it before even get ahold of them. We've there's never been a case in more than 10 years where cash fly has been the hitch in our giddy up. It it's always our fault cash fly is super reliable, super fast, up to 10 times faster than the traditional methods we are using.

Leo Laporte (00:39:32):
They're on six continents, thirties, faster than other major CDNs, 98% cash hit ratio. And over the last 12 months, their availability a hundred percent, a hundred percent best of all, they have 24 7, 365 days a year priority support. So they'll always be there when you need 'em. We couldn't be happier with cash. I tell anybody who I'm telling you, if you need a CDN, maybe you don't even know if you're delivering content games, streaming video, you need a CDN. You need cash line. Get a complimentary detailed, no pressure analysis of your current usage trends. Your CDN bill. If you have one, you may be overpaying by 20% or more. Go to TWiT.dot com. Thank you. Cash fly. What a job you do for us. Twit.ly.com. And now back to the show streamed via a cash. Leo Laporte the jazzy Tech Guy, eighty eight eighty eight. Ask Leo the jazzy phone number back to of phones. We go Mike in Alhambra. California's next? Hi Mike.

Caller #2 (00:40:42):
Oh, hi. How are you doing Leo?

Leo Laporte (00:40:43):
Very well. Thanks for hanging on.

Caller #2 (00:40:45):
Oh, you're very welcome. I'll tell you. I got a, I got, let's see, I think back in March, back in whatever last year I got a Google and all you do is just tell what to play. Like I'll ask Google, what time is it?

... (00:41:00):
It's 11:47 AM.

Leo Laporte (00:41:01):
Look at that. And not only did it happen in your house, but all over the country. People's people's school assistance. Leap into action.

Caller #2 (00:41:11):
Oh, oh yeah. I made up my mind. I was gonna get something like that and I got it.

Leo Laporte (00:41:16):
It's fun. What do you think?

Caller #2 (00:41:18):
I like it. And you can also listen to music. You can, I'll tell you some of the oldie channels on there. There's there's a make out memories, radio. It's an oldie

Leo Laporte (00:41:27):
Make out memories. I like it. I like it.

Caller #2 (00:41:32):
What about, let's see, there's pop gold pop gold radio. 

Leo Laporte (00:41:37):
These are, you know, these voice assistants. Amazon was the, the first I think to put out the echo, these little devices where you could talk to 'em and then Google shortly followed suit and apple even has some Microsoft tried briefly with their voice assistant and they made a little device. It looks just like the Amazon echo by Harmon card that the Cortana device did not take off. I have one somewhere it's it was funny. It told its last joke about eight months ago and and went silent thereafter. It just became a plain old Bluetooth, but I think Google, apple and Amazon are in it for the long haul. And yeah, you know, what's interesting is the promise of this was quite amazing. You know, this was gonna be how 9,000. I'm sorry, Dave, I can't play make out memories right now, but it's only really ended up being what you're using at for what time is it set a timer? Do you use it to set timers when you cook things like that?

Caller #2 (00:42:40):
And, and we were just talking

Leo Laporte (00:42:41):
Notice, it's still talking in the background by the way.

Caller #2 (00:42:45):
I dunno why it does that.

Leo Laporte (00:42:46):
No, I know. And that's a problem with it. This is where it's not lived up to its promise. It's like having kind of a dumb neighbor in the house. They just pop, pop in every once in a while and say things that make no sense. I've got, yeah, I've got 'em all, you know, in fact, every room in the house has both Google and echo and a Siri in the, in the same room. It's it's hysterical. I have one in the living room we're watching TV every five minutes or so. One of 'em will go, Hey, what? Huh? Yeah, no, I don't know anything about that. And then go back to sleep. It's kinda cookie it's kinda cookie, but at the same now you're now I Kim tells me you're blind.

Caller #2 (00:43:30):
I am, yes.

Leo Laporte (00:43:31):
That's an interesting use for it. Cause you can, Yeah. Now you can talk to a computer and it talks back. That's a great use case for it. You know, you can make phone calls with it, things like that.

Caller #2 (00:43:46):
Yeah. Oh yeah. You can make phone calls with this thing here. I'm I have people that help me out. I'm in a program called people's care and I have an, I have an apartment. I have 20, so they can always help me if I need, oh,

Leo Laporte (00:43:58):
That's F so if you fell down or something, you can shout out to it and they can go get some help.

Caller #2 (00:44:05):
Yeah, the, my staff, you know, like I got, I have 24 hour staff.

Leo Laporte (00:44:10):
That's fantastic. So you're using it more like I think the original intention and I talk to blind listeners all the time who really love their voice assistants. Just even just saying, you know, play, make out memories is a whole lot easier than you trying to mess with an iPod or something, you know? I think that's great. I think it's great. And also

Caller #2 (00:44:35):
You can, you can also on iHeartRadio listen to, did you know they have classic American top 40 of K case in 24 7.

Leo Laporte (00:44:42):
Yes. And you can also say, Hey, you know who play the Tech Guy podcast and you'll hear me. So I

Caller #2 (00:44:51):
Hear it. You

Leo Laporte (00:44:51):
Know, we appreciate that. Thank you.

Caller #2 (00:44:54):
I, I can listen to it. Not only on Saturday and Sunday, but on, on any day, any

Leo Laporte (00:44:58):
Day of the week, we actually have a live stream. You can play. It's called TWiT live. It's funny. The syntax seems to change from time to time, but you can try it. You could say, Hey, you know who? And by the way, this should work with all three of them play TWiT live. Sometimes you have to say TWiT live. Sometimes you have to say on tune in it just,

Caller #2 (00:45:17):
I

Leo Laporte (00:45:17):
Might try or on iHeart or something. Yeah. It's oh yeah. But you messed with it until you find out. And then usually it stays that way for a while.

Caller #2 (00:45:24):
Let's see. I'll play TWiT live.

Leo Laporte (00:45:28):
Oh, now you're gonna get an inception. You're gonna hear me to talking to you, talking to me about me every, and then it's gonna hear the, okay. You know who, and it's gonna start up again and again and again, and it's, it's just a mess.

Caller #2 (00:45:43):
I, I hear your voice on there too.

Leo Laporte (00:45:45):
It's working. See Mike, I am glad you called you are a perfect example of why these technologies are really important, less, less. So for sight people, you know, unfortunately they really end up being a kitchen timer or, but although, you know, I have to say Google also makes and am and Amazon too, but I have they make devices with screens obviously less useful for you, but you could actually do this with your voice assistant. You could say. And I, and I, I, when the, when the war broke out in Ukraine, I would say, okay play CNN on YouTube TV and the ones with the screen would actually have it. So I could, I could kind of worry. And if it's just audio would just hear the audio as I walk around the house, when there's a big story like that, that's another use for it.

Leo Laporte (00:46:34):
I just, they're not quite how 9,000 yet. They're not quite there yet. And, and frankly, I thought they'd be there by now, cuz this has been a while they, when did the first Amazon echo come out, you know, it's, it's, it's been a while now. And the sad thing is you're just not making much progress. I they're kind of resting on their laurels. I'd like to see 'em I'd like to see 'em get smarter. Maybe that's a hard thing to do. Right? 88 88 asked Leo the first echo came out eight years ago. I'm just looking right now. 2014 was when you could March, 2014 and it release for Amazon prime and invited members. By the way, since that came out, the number of girls named a L E X a has dropped dramatically, very few babies named a L E X a anymore mark from north Florida, Leo Laporte the Tech Guy.

Caller #3 (00:47:38):
Hey Leo. This is mark. I missed my name. I guess you're talking to me.

Leo Laporte (00:47:42):
I am talking to you welcome super

Caller #3 (00:47:44):
Duper this pretty basic question. But at one point I lived on a street that I always had to spell the, the street name, cuz people just couldn't translate what they heard with the letters. I wanna avoid that with email. And I've heard you talk about fast mail and other providers and the value of, of paying for an email account and I'm ready to do that. But what I get kind of stalled with is I have, for instance, my last name.me as a right name, that I've

Leo Laporte (00:48:18):
Apple, apple owns the.me ex TLD. Yeah.

Caller #3 (00:48:25):
Okay. I was seeing one that related to a country called Mon Negro. Oh

Leo Laporte (00:48:30):
Interesting. Maybe they don't own it anymore. Maybe they never owned it. They had this thing called mobile me for a while. Yeah. Monte Negro. Yeah. I have I have I have is.is I think that's Iceland. Yeah, those are country codes.

Caller #3 (00:48:48):
And I don't know if a country is confusing. I, I can't get my last name.com, but I can do like variations. So

Leo Laporte (00:48:56):
That's an interesting point. So I use.email for my email and about one in five websites will say, no, you can't use that. You have to use a real address.

Leo Laporte (00:49:09):
And the reason is, you know, whoever wrote the code for the website, hardwired, this is, these are the legitimate top level domains. If it's not.com.net.org. And, and they need to keep it up to date because those those country codes and those additional TLDs are legit, they are completely jet they're, but they just haven't kept their code up to date. So you will, if you have a.me, you know, occasionally have problems. I think.me is pretty safe. That's been around for a while, but it's been my my experience at.email for instance sometimes gets rejected. Leo Laporte the tick guy. My not, not, you know, so I would say that's a good cuz. You're right. I can't get leo.com. I got leo.is, you know 

Caller #3 (00:50:03):
Okay.

Leo Laporte (00:50:04):
So, but I use it.email. I lose I, well, I'm not gonna say what it is, but I use it.email address. And most of the time that's fine. Sometimes it's not, I think dot email's great. Right. Cuz that says what you're doing.

Caller #3 (00:50:18):
Okay. I hadn't thought of that. Didn't know that one was there. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:50:22):
That's the problem though. Yeah. Not only you don't know some, some websites will not let you use it, so you're gonna need a.com just in case.

Caller #3 (00:50:33):
Okay.

Leo Laporte (00:50:33):
And you know, the.com it doesn't have to be, you know, mike.com it, you know, I I've had Leoville L E O V I L L e.com for years. And so that's always the fallback, right? So it's a good idea to have something as a fallback wizard link just gave me a link, which is great. T L D list.com. That's what these programmers should be looking at. They should, they should not hardwire their code. There are now 3000, 336 legal extensions, including.me.info.io.xyz. You know, there's a lot of them, so,

Caller #3 (00:51:19):
Well, I'm gonna, I'm gonna try and keep it simple. So I'll, I'll look for the ones that you

Leo Laporte (00:51:23):
Dot. Com's always the best dot. Com's always the best. I have people all the time say, you mean, you know, Leo, I have leo.fm for instance which is the shortest URL I have. I like short and it says Leo, but people will say, you mean leo.fm.com say, no, no, there's no.com that people are getting wise to that. I also have leo.am, which is Armenia. So

Caller #3 (00:51:50):
I would like to have my last name, but it belongs to a funeral home in Ohio.

Leo Laporte (00:51:54):
Yes, exactly. I can't get leport.com. Exactly. Yeah, no, be you can be a little creative. You know, if it's a business, that's another thing you really want to use the business' address, but you can be a little creative to be a website. All the good names are taken.com, something like that. Yeah. Have fun.

Caller #3 (00:52:17):
Thanks. Nice to appreciate your recommendations. I've, I've listened and tried many of them over the years. So keep on, keep on going, bless you a lot of times, it's the simple things. Basic things that me as a listener of many of your shows will, we'll just wait for some little, you know, nugget of gold to come along.

Leo Laporte (00:52:38):
I try to throw nuggets in as much as possible. I, I get it a lot. Most of what you hear is not useful, but the occasional nugget. I'm glad. Thank you. That's nice. I appreciate the kind words. Thanks. Have a good day. Take care. Bye. All right, Sam, I'm gonna get a cup of coffee. You're gonna get six minutes and 49 seconds. Okay. And fortunately, my last name is one that doesn't get grabbed a too often. So I have a ball, Sam. Yeah. But do you want to use it? Cuz it's hard to figure I do. You use it cause yeah. Feel uses my, do they know how to spell my, a personal address? And I mean any, anybody that, that needs to get ahold, let me put, they know how to spell your, anybody that I want to get ahold of me. Exactly. We'll figure out how to spell my name. Yeah. Right. But you could have like sam.is I could I got leo.ist? I don't

Sam Abuelsamid (00:53:29):
Think it's what is that one?

Leo Laporte (00:53:30):
It's German east.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:53:31):
Oh, okay.

Leo Laporte (00:53:33):
Leo east.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:53:35):
All right. Okay. So let's see what we got here. So somebody in the chat earlier had asked what the problem with Lisa's car was and apparently it was the power electronics module,

Leo Laporte (00:53:46):
The whole thing they had to replace the lithium ion battery and everything.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:53:50):
Oh, they replaced the battery too.

Leo Laporte (00:53:51):
Oh God. Yeah. The whole, whatever they call it, EME the whole mod, the, the everything

Sam Abuelsamid (00:53:56):
Or, oh, probably the battery management system. The

Leo Laporte (00:53:58):
Not though the battery, she was told the battery the whole thing. All right.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:54:01):
Well the, the battery management system I think is integrated into the battery.

Leo Laporte (00:54:05):
It's one unit, the way they made that many, they, they made it so that they could take the body and just put a thing in that makes it electric.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:54:13):
All right. So elsewhere we had questions about Subaru disabling some features in Massachusetts to fly with the right to repair law that was passed in the last election. And that, that law, that, that right to repair proposal was that manufacturers had to open up their access to their telematic systems to third party service providers to be able to remotely diagnose the vehicles. And they had to do it through an open platform, an open standard. And so what Subaru and also Kia now turns out and has done is they've just turned off telematics in for new vehicle buyers in Massachusetts. So if you, if you buy a Subaru or a Kia in the state of Massachusetts, or I should say the Commonwealth of Massachusetts you will no longer be able to get connectivity, the the telematics system.

Leo Laporte (00:55:13):
Wow. 

Sam Abuelsamid (00:55:14):
And you know, Subaru explained that, you know, in order to comply with the law, you know, there ha they have to comply. You know, they have to make it available through an open standard, which doesn't exist yet. No, no such thing exists. And, you know, to be able to do this securely you know, so that it, it, you know, can minimize cha risk of being of hackers getting into the system is really, is gonna be really difficult. You know, and this is why I I'm, I'm generally a supporter of right to repair. But this particular regulation I think was very problematic with the way that it was put together, the way it was worded. So I, I think that, you know, I think this wasn't well thought out in terms of what the consequences would be and what they would have to do to, to make it a reality.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:56:05):
And I expect, we'll probably see other manufac follow Subaru and Kia and, and just turn off their telematics for, for the time being in Massachusetts for owners and vehicles that are registered in Massachusetts. Also we had a question about Toyota and Honda and their upcoming EVs. So Toyota is gonna be launching their first purpose built EV the BZ four X with its really terrible name in later this spring probably I would guess sometime in April or early may, they should start hitting dealers. I'm actually going to be go doing a drive of that at the end of March, they're, they're gonna do in the first media drives of that vehicle. And that same vehicle, they, they co-develop that along with Subaru. So Subaru will have a version called the salt era that they're selling.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:57:04):
And I would recommend that if you're interested in this vehicle, it's a compact crossover roughly the size of a RAV4 or a Honda CR-V things like vehicles like that with about a 250 mile range. And I, if you are interested in that, I would suggest you go for Subaru, just because it has a better name. BZ four X is just a, a terrible name. But the, the vehicle itself looks promising. And I'm looking forward to driving it in, in about a month's time. Honda is not launching their first EV until 2024. Wow. And they're doing, they're doing a pair of EVs, a pair of electric crossovers in partnership with GM. They're gonna be based on GM's TM platform. And there's gonna be one for Honda called the Prolog and an Acura the same time that they have not announced the name for it yet.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:58:03):
And so they're gonna have to wait a little while for that. Duluth, Steve says he had his Maverick order canceled by Ford must say I'm super happy with the 2022 Bronco sport, outer banks, three cylinder turbo, surprisingly. Excellent. Yeah, that three cylinder turbo is a good engine. I'd be curious to know why they can sold the the Maverick order. My guess, is that probably based on when you get the order in, I know Ford has cut off orders for 2022 Mavericks. So it's, it's possible that you know, the dealer did not actually get the order in, in time. You know, they will, they will probably resubmit it as a 2023 model just because they have so many orders for it. They cannot fulfill all the orders for 2022 models. And sometime later this summer, when they switch from 20 twos to 20 threes they will, or before then, you know, sometime in the spring they will reopen the order banks for 23 models and start converting those orders over the 20 threes. It's Kapu Kapu 8 0 8 says that sounds like the kiss of death for the Honda EV I, I don't know. I think, you know, that's a, they've got a pretty good platform there. I, I would not rule that one out as a, as a viable alternative.

Leo Laporte (00:59:26):
Thank you, Sam.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:59:28):
You're welcome, Leo.

Leo Laporte (00:59:29):
Real pleasure. I'll talk to you next week. Take care.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:59:32):
All right, bye. Bye.

Leo Laporte (00:59:37):
He's good. Isn't he? He's good. Why? Hey, Hey, how are you today? Leo? LePort the Tech Guy time talk computers, the internet home theater, digital photography, smart phones, smart watches, all that jazz. Eighty eight eighty eight. Ask Leo the phone number eight eight, eight, eight two, and 5, 5 36 toll free from anywhere in the us or Canada. I'd love to hear from you. If you've got a question, a comment, a suggestion. You wanna talk high tech? I'd like to do it with you, Leo. Leport the Tech Guy, Curtis. He's Carl calling from fountain valley, California. Hi Curtis.

Caller #2 (01:00:21):
Hi, Leah. Welcome.

Leo Laporte (01:00:22):
Can you hear me? Yes, sir.

Caller #2 (01:00:24):
Good. thank you for taking my call. Thanks

Leo Laporte (01:00:27):
For calling.

Caller #2 (01:00:29):
I have an existing HP 86 20 office jet pro printer. Okay. It's about five years old. Okay. All of a sudden, all of a sudden it started giving me this the head appears to be missing or not detected or incorrectly installed ever.

Leo Laporte (01:00:48):
Is it a it's an office jet? Is that that's an ink jet, right?

Caller #2 (01:00:54):
Yes.

Leo Laporte (01:00:54):
Yeah. So I can't remember if HP, a lot of printer inkjet printer companies, when you replace the ink cartridge replaces the ahead. If they don't, they probably have a head replacement program, cuz those do wear out. But I'm not sure if this particular model can be repaired or not. And that's a question for HP. I'd send, 'em an email saying, this is the message I'm getting. Do you sell a replacement head? And some, some companies do because that is something that wears out in an inkjet and if not the then it's time to get a new one. The good news is inkjet printers. Aren't very expensive. So I would, I would, when you buy an inkjet, the main thing it consider is how often you print. If you don't print more every week with an ink, yet they get clogged and they, and then you have to waste ink cleaning the nozzles.

Leo Laporte (01:01:52):
And I don't think they're a smart buy if you're only printing very occasionally, it's probably better to get a laser printer, which can sit there for weeks at a time not being used and still operate just fine. But if you do use your ink and, and by the way in inkjet is the, is the best way to get color, to do photo printing, that kind of thing. So if you do use it frequently then you wanna look at the cost of consumables because inkjet printers can be very expensive. The ink in some, from some companies is so expensive, it's more expensive than human blood. It's so expensive that your cost per page could be as much as 10 cents or more per page. So which you wanna look at and PC magazine and others will do reviews of these. You wanna look at the cost per page age, that includes the ink, the paper, the cost of, you know, new cartridges and all of that stuff.

Leo Laporte (01:02:46):
There are companies that have responded to the complaints people have about the cost. There are a couple of companies now that make ink jets with tanks instead of little cartridges S don't hold much. In fact, if you've ever taken a part in ink jet cartridge, it's not full of ink. It's full of a sponge that holds a small amount of ink and they charge 30, 40, 50 bucks for this. So a, a tank is a much more affordable way to do that. Epton started it. They were a long time sponsor with her eco tanks. I think they're very good, but as soon as Epson's showed that this the way with this other companies have gone along with Epson and started producing ink jets that use ink tanks instead of ink cartridges. I honestly think that's a better way to go because the, the cost of the consumables is so much lower. I, you know, read the reviews. I, I don't try them all, but Canon now makes a tank printer along with the HP. They call HP calls it the smart tank.

Leo Laporte (01:03:52):
And of course the Epson eco tanks. I think those are gonna be a best, a good way to go. If you like your HP, you've been happy with it. If HP says you can't place the head, which they may, well, a lot of times, you know, these, these are designed to last a few years and that's it, which I think is shameful. Honestly, everything should be SHA replaceable, but do look at a tank. Now, the problem with the tank. And I remember talking to EP about this, their great fear when they first introduced these was that people would not underst and that, yeah, the printer costs a lot more up front because you're not gonna pay the, for the cartridges. And they all come with enough ink, probably, you know, for hundreds of cartridges. So people, if you just go to the, you know, office Depot and say, well, this printer is 99 bucks, this printer's 199 bucks.

Leo Laporte (01:04:40):
I'm gonna get the 99 buck printer. Well, it's the cost over time. So that's where you really wanna focus, especially with inkjet on the cost per page of the consumables. Laser printers typically are pennies per page three, four, 5 cents. Page inkjet printers can be 10 times more if you don't choose wisely. That's why you see ink jet printers for 50 bucks. They're losing money on the printer, but they make so much money on the ink. So honestly I think a tank is, is the best way to go. And as I said, Canon, which makes by the way, great photo printers. I think they're Pimas are fantastic photo printers HP, which is kind of the, the king of office printers. You have an office jet and, you know and Epson all three make tank printers. And I would take a look at I would take a look at those. They're gonna be a little more expensive upfront. If you print enough, they're gonna save you money in the long run. Carol Irvine, California. They'll look for The Tech Guy.

Caller #4 (01:05:38):
I hope you can help me. I hope

Leo Laporte (01:05:40):
So too, Carol. I pray that every day. Can I help Carol today? What can I do?

Caller #4 (01:05:46):
All of a sudden, all my Gmails are blank. Oh,

Leo Laporte (01:05:50):
I hate it. When that happens.

Caller #4 (01:05:52):
Oh, can you help

Leo Laporte (01:05:52):
Me? No, I have no idea. So, so you see the two address. Do you see a subject line?

Caller #4 (01:06:00):
Yes, I do. You

Leo Laporte (01:06:01):
Just look at the the thing and there's nothing on it.

Caller #4 (01:06:04):
So when I open it, there's nothing there,

Leo Laporte (01:06:06):
Nothing on

Caller #4 (01:06:07):
It, except the subject point. Right.

Leo Laporte (01:06:11):
Couple of things to try. The, the thing to understand about Gmail is it's really a web page. It's an application. It's in fact, one of the very first web apps anybody's used, they've been around for more than a decade. Now it was the very first web app. So things can go wrong in what we call rendering the page. The first thing I would try, what browser are you using?

Caller #4 (01:06:37):
Chrome. Chrome.

Leo Laporte (01:06:39):
Tr just outta curiosity, try another browser.

Caller #4 (01:06:44):
Okay. I, I should have said that. I did that. I used Bing. Okay. And it worked. Yes. Good. But everything I do is on Chrome. Yeah. Yeah,

Leo Laporte (01:06:53):
No, we wanna keep using Chrome. We just wanna narrow down the cause the culprit, the evil villain, the it's causing this to happen. So that's good. So it works in other browsers just doesn't work in Chrome. So the best thing to do at this point is to reset your Chrome. So what, what, the way it works is there's a lot of code JavaScript it's called that gets downloaded to run Gmail and to save time your saves, all of that stuff onto your, into what they call a cash. C a C H E. This is a well known technology used by computers, in a variety of places to speed things up, the premise being well, if you did it once, you're probably gonna wanna do it again. So let's remember that and save you time. So you'd have to go out and download all the of the Gmail JavaScript, but there's one problem with cash. If it gets corrupted or damaged or missing or something, and the, and the Chrome doesn't understand that it's damaged, this is exactly the symptom you'd get. Like, I, I, you know, I'm rendering the page, see, look at me, I'm drawing it and it's not doing anything so we can fix this by restoring or resetting your Chrome. Now there are different levels of resetting Chrome,

Leo Laporte (01:08:07):
The most extreme sets it back to like when you first downloaded it, which means it's gonna forget any passwords, any bookmarks. We don't want to do that yet. I think it'll be sufficient just to clear the cash clear the history and the cash. So if you go into settings, do you know where the settings is? It's that dot, dot, dot over on the right there. And you click that.

Caller #4 (01:08:29):
Oh, okay. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:08:30):
And yeah, settings, right, and more. And then you go into advanced cuz this is for professionals trained professionals. You'll see, there are some settings for reset, reset, and clean up what you really don't want. I wouldn't do the full reset, cuz that's gonna take you back to, to pay just, you know, when you start and you probably would lose some things you like, so

Caller #4 (01:08:53):
I don't see any of that.

Leo Laporte (01:08:54):
You don't see any that

Caller #4 (01:08:56):
I see settings. And then it goes to

Leo Laporte (01:08:58):
It's under advanced.

Caller #4 (01:09:00):
There's no advanced,

Leo Laporte (01:09:01):
There's no advanced. Okay. I know it's, it's there somewhere. I don't have a Chrome. I don't have Chrome in front of me. Let me see if I have Chrome on this computer. 

Caller #4 (01:09:10):
Somewhere

Leo Laporte (01:09:11):
It's somewhere it's in there, dig around in the settings. What I would start with is clearing the cash, killing the temporary files. Cause almost certainly that's what's wrong. The other thing to do is look at what extensions you've installed in Chrome. So Chrome you know, you can add little things, maybe a password manager. Have you added any extensions to your Chrome that you know of?

Caller #4 (01:09:35):
I have last pass.

Leo Laporte (01:09:37):
Okay. That should be all right. But one thing to try is, is, is to look through your, you should always look through extensions cuz that's another place that bad guys store stuff in, in malware is in a, is in your browser extensions. So another thing that might even just be the first thing to do a startup Chrome without at least go through your extensions and, and plugins and make sure that they all are things you want, you can do it temporarily. Sometime I can't remember with Chrome, I said holding down the shift key. No, it doesn't look like they have a, it doesn't look like they have a used to be browsers would have a way to do this because it happens so often. Yeah. It looks like you're gonna have to go into the extensions and just disable them by checking the boxes one by one.

Leo Laporte (01:10:31):
So even disable last best just temporarily just to see. Okay. And you might even do it, you know, we're trying to diagnose it. So see what's the culprit what's causing this. So you might uncheck check them disable 'em one by one to see if it fixes it that way. You'll know which one's breaking in ad blockers. Apparently sometimes do this. They're telling me. Okay, so, so you're gonna be digging around in your settings. Look for in settings for advanced there's in there somewhere and in the advanced settings, the you'll see that you can, it might be under content, but you can kind of clear the cash. That's the first thing I would, I, I would worry. It's settings more tools. Okay. Thank you. To the chat rooms, web 1211 log in just to help you. It's under settings more tools. That's what I was. That's where I was mistaken. Clear browsing

Caller #4 (01:11:24):
More. Okay.

Leo Laporte (01:11:25):
And, and so just try clearing out that cash. I'm my guess is that it's one of two things. Either you have so something, some extension that's doing that more likely the cash got damaged and by clearing it all will be better. All will be well, you're gonna reload. In other words, the Gmail JavaScript that runs that whole thing. It's almost like reinstalling Gmail. You're welcome. That's a terrible thing to have happen. The good news is your email is still there. You know that cuz you, you launched edge and it worked. So you know that, right? It's just just a question of what's wrong with my Chrome. Ultimately, if none of this stuff works, you can reset Chrome back to factory settings. That's also in there, that'll clear everything. But as I said, you'll lose a lot of the stuff that you may not wanna lose. Like your cookies and your bookmarks and stuff. You'll have to re-log into all the sites, things like that. You got last pass. That's not the end of the world. I'm glad you're using last pass. Do that too. Yes,

Caller #4 (01:12:23):
Because of

Leo Laporte (01:12:24):
You makes me happy because that's a very, any password manager doesn't have to be last pass. Very important. Very important. Turn on two factor two. Whenever you think of it.

Caller #4 (01:12:35):
Two factor. Okay. I've been doing that.

Leo Laporte (01:12:38):
Yay Carol. Yeah. I'll put a gold start right on your forehead. Thank you, Carol.

Caller #4 (01:12:44):
Take

Leo Laporte (01:12:44):
Care. Have a great day. Leo. Leport the tech I eighty eight eighty eight. Ask Leo the phone. Number more of your calls. All of you do that. Now get yourself a password manager. You want your gold star, right? Okay. Turn on two factor. Leo Laport, the Tech Guy,

Leo Laporte (01:13:09):
LA LA LA LA. Hey Chris, how was your, how was your family visit? Did you have a good time? Very good. Very good. Good. Yeah. There might be another one to the, to the in-laws next weekend. Quite all right. I don't mind. You should enjoy family while they're around. It's a good thing. And I know it's hard to work on the weekends. Trust me. I've been doing it my whole life. This is 1992. I've been working weekends. That's what you get for being in the entertainment industry. Holidays and weekends. You work times when other people have time off. Yeah. SI I wouldn't know what to do if I had Saturday and Sunday off. I don't, I don't know what I would. I'd be. I guess I'd go to a brunch. That's it? That's what I do. You have an email by the way. Okay. I'll check it. And we will talk. Of course, we're gonna look at photos and I will show them and you have a backup link. Good. We'll talk in 10.

... (01:14:08):
Thanks for listening to TWiT. Do you want customized host red ads that stand out then the TWiT network is the perfect place for your next advertising campaign. If you are tired of forgettable ad reads and want an authentic introduction of your products and services, then reach out today. Twit ads are compelling. Specialized in all of our shows include video, which means we can show off products, websites, and customize videos. Visit TWiT.tv/advertise and launch a tailored campaign. Now that's TWiT.tv/advertise.

Leo Laporte (01:14:39):
Leo. LePort the Tech Guy asking the tough questions. Jeff from Palm Springs. Hello Jeff.

Caller #2 (01:14:48):
Hello.

Leo Laporte (01:14:48):
Welcome to the show. The chairman tells me that that is called a a zero a Hmm. Anyway, go ahead. What what's what's on your mind, Jeff?

Caller #2 (01:15:03):
Well, I've got one drive that I use. Yes. It keeps sending me emails every day here. Tell me about pictures. I took a year ago.

Leo Laporte (01:15:14):
I hate that. Don't you hate that?

Caller #2 (01:15:15):
I hate it. I'm trying to figure out how to get rid of it.

Leo Laporte (01:15:20):
Turn off.

Caller #2 (01:15:22):
We send an email to their customer service and I got no response.

Leo Laporte (01:15:26):
Yeah. You know, they're copying Google and apple does this too now. Where they think because you store your photos there, you would like to see some, you know, memories.

Caller #2 (01:15:41):
Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:15:42):
And apparently you don't like what happened last year? Actually. None of us do do we 20, 21? Not a year to remember, or 2020

Caller #2 (01:15:50):
Actually. I've got some great pictures, but I, I just, I don't need them to help. Yeah. Yeah,

Leo Laporte (01:15:54):
Yeah. I understand

Caller #2 (01:15:56):
What I'm wanna look at.

Leo Laporte (01:15:56):
Yeah. So it's a form of notification. So you can do that from the OneDrive settings. If you go to right. Click on the OneDrive icon, you know, it's down there in the lower right in the task bar and you'll see help in settings.

Caller #2 (01:16:12):
Okay.

Leo Laporte (01:16:12):
And if you go to, to it, you'll see some check marks under notifications and you can edit, you know, you can change those including the one that says I don't wanna see when OneDrive suggests a new collection of my photos and videos. I don't wanna see that.

Caller #2 (01:16:28):
Perfect.

Leo Laporte (01:16:29):
No more stop notifications are a mixed bag. One of the somebody once told me, I think this is brilliant. The fir when you get a new phone, I just got a new Samsung go through it or a new apple go through it and turn off all notifications, just turn 'em all off. Cuz notifications are like a hook, you know? And you're the fish. Yeah. They're just grabbing you. You're trying to do something and oh, and I'll look at my photos when it's time. I, you know, I do the same thing. I see that on my phone. So they said go through and turn off all notifications and then very, very selectively, maybe turn on like, okay, I want alarms, cuz I'm gonna use it for alarms. Or if not, if you don't use it for alarms, don't turn that on. But really because notifications are a way for an app to get your attention. You know, Microsoft wants you to use OneDrive. One of them that really annoying notifications is when you're not using OneDrive. And it says, wouldn't you like to use one drive? You, you would really like, would you turn on one drive? They annoy the heck outta me. So notifications are really the bane of, of any productivity they're designed to just turn us all into little a D D squirrels.

Leo Laporte (01:17:42):
So I say, turn 'em all off. And then very judiciously turn 'em back on. I think honesty, there should be a button, a global button on any device, computer phone tablet that says, just turn 'em all off. Unfortunately there really isn't. So when you get a new device, just turn 'em all off you. Can you see there's other notifications in OneDrive when others share with me or edit my shared items and a large number of files that are deleted in the cloud before many files that I delete on my PC or move the cloud when sync pauses automatically. And then finally, when one drive suggests a new collection of my photos and videos, you know, they even, they even name this in a very confusing way. When one drives suggests a new collection of my photos and videos. Do you want that checked or not? It's very confusing. I think they secretly want you to see that cuz it's an advertisement for one drive Leo Laport. Thetic let's talk photos with Chris. Markt next it's time for Chris mark art photo man extraordinaire, my personal photo sensei@sensei.photo. He joins us every week to help us take better pictures. Hello Chris.

Chris Marquardt (01:18:56):
Hello Leo. How are you doing?

Leo Laporte (01:18:58):
I am great. How are things in in the view finder Villa?

Chris Marquardt (01:19:05):
Okay, good. The world's on fire, but other than that, than that

Leo Laporte (01:19:13):
Maybe Chris people don't know cuz Chris's quality of the sound is so good. He's not sitting across from me. He's actually calling us from Germany and you're not so far from the action, I guess. I mean close enough that you might be feeling some heat.

Chris Marquardt (01:19:28):
That's a few thousand miles, but yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Chris Marquardt (01:19:35):
Anyway, a bit, a bit strange. Yeah, but we wanna talk about photography today. Yes. And I have looked into yet another style of photography that this, a special kind of composition, I call them graphic compositions. So just, just imagine you have a photo that looks like it's from a drawing board, someone we're we're talking really stark lines. We're talking contrast, we're talking repetition. And that is, that is something that gives you a special style of photo as if it came from a drawing board and I'm, I'm a great fan of those cuz they always add an interesting kind of abstraction. And I just wanna go through a few examples here. Here's one that it's really extreme contrast. So we're, we're looking at a, I don't even know what that is. It's a light fixture maybe something you

Leo Laporte (01:20:33):
Can't tell, it's a photo it and, and maybe in context with other photos, then you go, oh, that's a nice photo. Otherwise, as you say, it looks like an illustration. It's just rainless it

Chris Marquardt (01:20:44):
Is an illustration, but, but it is a photo I, and this one, this one. I mean, if, if you wanna, if you wanna co copy that if you wanna wanna recreate that you would go into your, your photo app settings and look for white point black point settings and make it really high contrast and, and play with these kind of things so that all the detail is gone. But there's, there's graphic compositions also just in the way they have symmetry. For example, this, what we're looking at here is I don't know. I think it's a window of sorts and it's very symmetrical, like like very, a lot of are lines, a lot of repetition there, again, it is again, very abstract. Doesn't have to be for these types of compositions, but it really makes, I think something really pleasing to look at the, you have, you have a lot of space in these kind of compositions to put your own meaning in there. So it's for me that is a very engaging type of shot to look at. Or what we're seeing here again, it's it has a very industrial feel. It's a lot of repetition. It is.

Leo Laporte (01:22:02):
I like it's like a fence or a metal wall somewhere, but that's

Chris Marquardt (01:22:06):
1, 1, 1 of those roll down fences in front of a shop or something.

Leo Laporte (01:22:11):
It's

Chris Marquardt (01:22:11):
Cool effect. It's a very cool effect. It's also, it has it's this, these tiny little I irregularities in there. If you see these, these joints in there that are not exactly on the same line. So they're, there's a bit of variation in there, but it's still very repetitive or re enough to give you that feeling that this has been done on a drawing board. Here's another example again, no idea what that is. It looks like a shot from, from upwards and there are some possibly lights, but again, it might be a shot looking down something and they might be concrete pillars again, extreme contrast or something that's completely, you have no idea what it is. There's some wave view lines here that could be anything, it could be a window. It could be just two things that kind of overlay each other and, and create this type of wavy pattern that that looks weird.

Chris Marquardt (01:23:14):
But then of course there are also like regular photos that you will recognize as photos. Like here's a role of houses and they are, I love this. Yeah, very nice. They're the same, but they are shot in a way that again, gives it a bit of an abstraction. The lines are very parallel. The repetition is in there. It has an industrial feel of sorts. And that, yeah, again, that, that could be very, if you put some tracing paper over that you could easily make a, make a drawing of the at, with a, with a ruler and a pencil. So that's one of the marks architecture in general has a lot of these things. If you approach architecture with picking out details and, and trying to find these areas that look like they came from the drawing board, here's two one of those air vents of sorts that that are in front of a building and the building itself has very parallel vertical lines.

Chris Marquardt (01:24:17):
Again, repetition, the parallelism I think is a really important feature here, cuz it's not, not just parallel in itself, but it's the, those vertical lines are parallel to the, to the edges of the frame. So you have this, this looks like a very, this is a super deliberate composition. And if you look at the, at the parallel lines in the air vents, they are horizontal. So you have one direction, the horizontal and the other, the vertical I'm a great fan of that. Strong shadows is another area that, that, that lends to these kind of graphical compositions. Here's a, here's a, here's a building with a lot of balconies and strong sunlight. And now you have the repetition, you have the strong shadows. So that is fun to look at. Here's a, this is some more more of a photo photo, but again, we are looking at a per parallel lines, but not just that we are also looking at a very restricted color palette.

Chris Marquardt (01:25:24):
That's another thing that really helps if you find the play that doesn't have a lot of colors, then that will be interesting looking. And again, if you look at the lines and how they are at least parts of them parallel to the edge of the frame that is beautiful, or you combine elements that are more on the graphic side, like this this sidewalk, no, this crosswalk. And then what the photographer has done here is combine the orange lines of the crosswalk with the pretty much the same color of a car that's just driving over it. So you have the organic lines of the car and then the very straight and parallel lines of the sidewalk the crosswalk. So there's like, there's so many examples of graphic compositions that if you look for them, if you look for these also minimalistic compositions every now and then, or combine graphic elements with, with the, let's say more organic things like people than I think you're, you're onto a winner. So

Leo Laporte (01:26:32):
It's

Chris Marquardt (01:26:32):
Interesting go out and look for these kind of things. It's, it's amazing. I

Leo Laporte (01:26:35):
Think stairs appear a couple or three times in here, staircases stairs. They're very good for this kind of thing. Because they are so metric, in fact, buildings in general seem to be a good place. Yes. Modern architecture.

Chris Marquardt (01:26:48):
Absolutely. So, yeah, that's, that's not, it's not just about landscapes and things. Sometimes these things also work really well.

Leo Laporte (01:26:58):
I will put a link in the show notes to the gallery from flicker that Chris put together so that you can, could see the images he's talking about. And of course this is an encouragement to go out and take some pictures, but that's not the only encouragement. We also have an assignment. What is our assignment? Chris silly, silly.

Chris Marquardt (01:27:18):
The silly assignment is still ongoing for a couple of weeks.

Leo Laporte (01:27:22):
Go take pictures, illustrate the idea of silly, whatever that means to you does you don't have to have a fancy camera. Your camera phone fact nowadays, I've been playing with a Samsung galaxy S 22 ultra Chris. I mean it's practically a pro camera in a camera phone. Yep, though. That's perfectly fine. Once you get an image, you like tag it. TG silly uploaded to flicker to our Tech Guy group. Once a week, you can upload a photo couple more weeks to find silly photos. Crystal review. 'em In a couple of weeks. Chris mark art is@sensei.photo. Thank you, sensei. NA

Chris Marquardt (01:27:58):
Thank you, Liam.

Leo Laporte (01:28:06):
Oh, that, that gallery did not work. Did I click there? Oh,

Chris Marquardt (01:28:12):
Huh? They didn't work. Did

Leo Laporte (01:28:14):
Not. No, I pasted it in, but it must have must have failed. Let me 

Chris Marquardt (01:28:19):
Oh, sorry. Didn't see it. I, I,

Leo Laporte (01:28:20):
No, I see it. I'm seeing it. But when I pasted in the chat, it didn't work. Did it in the other, yeah. That did work in the must have done something. Must have something gone wrong in the pace. Let me try it again. There we go. That's okay. I see it pasted TWiTce. That's why double a double paste. And now you got,

Chris Marquardt (01:28:41):
Here

Leo Laporte (01:28:41):
We go. Ah, well, have a good week Le or do you know now if you're not gonna be home next week or

Chris Marquardt (01:28:48):
Yeah. I'd I, I I'm gonna call it now. It might be super tight. So thats fine.

Leo Laporte (01:28:53):
We'll skip it. Probably no

Chris Marquardt (01:28:55):
Better. Take this stress out. It's

Leo Laporte (01:28:57):
We'll see you too.

Chris Marquardt (01:28:59):
See you too.

Leo Laporte (01:29:00):
All right. Take care. Chris strive safely. Stay away from the Ukraine. Just, you know, keep to the west. Just keep to the west work, working on that. Yeah. Oh yeah. Yay. All right. Take care. Bye bye. Ah, those are some memories. Leo. LePort the Tech Guy, eighty eight eighty eight. Ask Leo the phone number Linda on the line from lake Elison or California. Our next caller. Hi Linda.

Caller #5 (01:29:26):
Hi, Leo. Welcome. been trying for a long time, but my question is can I get by with I having wifi in the house? I don't watch TV. I don't do nothing. And I have, I have unlimited on my cell phone cellular data.

Leo Laporte (01:29:49):
So you're already paying you feel like you're already paying for internet. Maybe you could use your phone as a hotspot instead of paying for home internet.

Caller #5 (01:29:57):
Yeah. That's what I'm, I'm I'm trying to make it clear, but you know, I read it and I read it and I still don't know what the right thing is.

Leo Laporte (01:30:07):
So usually you pay a little extra, depends who your carrier is. Some carriers don't charge extra for hot spotting. What you should do. Who's your carrier.

Caller #5 (01:30:16):
T-Mobile

Leo Laporte (01:30:16):
T-Mobile I don't think they do charge extra, but you should look at their terms. Most carriers kind of don't want you to do this because you'll be sitting on the same cell tower all the time. And as a result, as a result, you know you'll be using a lot of data from that one cell tower, but you know, you're a little different cuz you don't, you said you don't stream TV, you don't watch Netflix or anything like that?

Caller #5 (01:30:42):
No, nothing,

Leo Laporte (01:30:43):
Nothing. You just get email and do you do some web surfing?

Caller #5 (01:30:49):
I do it for my phone.

Leo Laporte (01:30:51):
Yeah. And now you would be doing it on a laptop. What do, but what do you do on your laptop? Is the question. What are you, what, what are you doing on your wifi that you're now gonna transfer to your T-Mobile plan?

Caller #5 (01:31:04):
Well, I I have, I don't have a laptop. I have a desktop and sometimes I just like to sit down for a little bit browser

Leo Laporte (01:31:13):
Around.

Caller #5 (01:31:14):
Yeah. Yeah. And then watch, you know, the news and, but everything emails. And so I do my, my phone, some

Leo Laporte (01:31:23):
Of that watching the news for instance can use a lot of data. So the first thing I would do is look at your T-Mobile plan and see if it allows hotspoting and then see what the limits are. There are almost always more limits on hotspoting that's what they call this. Hotspoting when you use your phone, there's a, you know, you in the settings, you go into settings and you turn your phone on and say, be a wifi access point for my home, my laptop that's called hotspoting. And most of the time they have some limitations on that, that they do not have on using the data with the phone. So you should first check those terms. Then I would also look at your internet service provider, the people who are giving you the wifi right now and see how much data you use a month. Cause it's, it's hard to estimate how much data you're using just, well, occasionally I sit down and watch the news. Maybe I'll surface some, we don't really know how much data we use. So the only way to check is to actually look at your bill depending on who your internet service provider is, most of them, you can log into their website and they will tell you how much data you've used in any given month. So I would check that out.

Leo Laporte (01:32:35):
And if that's low enough that it fits within the limitations that T mobile gives you. And again, that's going to de depend on, you know, what kind of plan you have with T-Mobile and so forth. You say you have unlimited, but unlimited usually. And I think this is true of T-Mobile applies only to data you're using when you're using your cell phone. They know when you're hotspot and that often has different terms. So you wanna check those terms, but if you are a light internet user, that's actually a completely legitimate way to go T-Mobile you should also know. I mean, I'm not recommending this cause it's probably not gonna save you. Money does offer home cellular internet for this re said, I mean, they really don't. None of these companies want you to sit on your computer, using your cell phone's data. You, by the way, you wanna plug your cell phone in, cuz it it's gonna kill your battery.

Leo Laporte (01:33:32):
You know, you wanna be aware of some things. You probably want to keep it in a kind of cool place, cuz it sometimes gets heated up depending on the phone. So T-Mobile sales home, they call it residential service as well as using your phone for that. Verizon T-Mobile both are going into the residential service business and sometimes it's a better deal. Depends what you're getting. You know, if you don't, if you're a very casual internet user, it sounds like you are, you don't stream a lot of video. You're not watching Netflix. Every, that kind of thing. Often you can get a really good deal from the phone company. They don't have very high speed. So it's not great for watching video. But they're cheap cable companies gonna be more expensive, but more suitable for streaming, a lot of data for using a lot of internet.

Leo Laporte (01:34:19):
So, you know, in most places, by the way, those are the re choices. You have a phone company, internet service provider at and T or frontier or whoever that is. You have your cable, internet provider, spectrum, Comcast Cox that like that. And then you have your, your mobile provider mobile. Provider's kind of getting into this business and in some places it's, it's probably a better deal to get the wireless depends on how much speed you get and so forth. Remember you're not gonna have the same amount of speed generally on a cell connection, but it might be adequate. So that's my advice. Check your plan from T-Mobile check your bill from your existing internet service provider. You might also want to try it because the speed on your phone is gonna be faster than the speed using your phone on a laptop. And that's a complicated sentence. Hotspoting is often slower than actually just using the phone for eighty eight eighty eight. EO the phone number bill in Kennewick, Washington. Hello bill.

Caller #6 (01:35:22):
Hi. Thank you for having me.

Leo Laporte (01:35:24):
Thanks for calling.

Caller #6 (01:35:27):
I'm all new to these iPhones and whatnot. And I'm trying to use this phone to plug into my laptop and use it as a motor or a dial up

Leo Laporte (01:35:38):
Same, same thing. Hotspoting yeah.

Caller #6 (01:35:40):
Well, okay, well how do I get this? How do I tell that computer to use this or dial this phone?

Leo Laporte (01:35:45):
So you're not gonna plug it in what you're gonna do. Your phone has an internet connection through the sales service. You're gonna go into the settings on the iPhone and you're gonna turn on the hotspot is how you do it. It becomes a wifi access point, which you then can join on your laptop if you go in the wifi settings. In fact, when you set up your hotspot, I'm, I'm, I'm looking at my iPhone right now. So I went to settings and there's an a settings item, personal hotspot. And again, this is gonna depend on your carrier, but when you go to it, it will tell you what your password is. It generates one and the name of the hotspot will be probably either provided by your phone. In fact, they even on the iPhone have connections. So yeah, it's my phone's name. And then the password that they provide me. So you'll do that. They actually have instructions on how to do this using wifi. You can use USB it's a little more complicated. It says, choose the iPhone from the list of network services in your settings. But honestly I would just use it's so much easier to do it wirelessly, but you can, in fact, they have, if you go to the settings, personal hotspot, apple, very kindly thank you. Apple provides instructions, how they use wifi, Bluetooth, and USB to do this.

Caller #6 (01:37:05):
So this phone will just see that computer wirelessly then or

Leo Laporte (01:37:09):
Yeah. So the phone is basically gonna be getting its internet from your cell service and turn it itself into a wifi access point, which will have a name. It'll be the name of your phone. You go to your computer, you click the wifi icon and you'll see, oh, Hey, there's my phone. And you'll, you'll say, okay, join that. And then you'll have to give it the password that is in the settings. You can change that password if you want, you can make it something easier to type or easier to remember.

Caller #6 (01:37:35):
Okay. But so that's not gonna be anything in control panel. It'll just pop up or something on, on the, well

Leo Laporte (01:37:40):
You're on a windows machine.

Caller #6 (01:37:42):
It's a, yeah, it's an old windows. So

Leo Laporte (01:37:45):
Usually in the task bar, down on the lower, right, there is a little icon that has to do with your connectivity. It's if you're if you're on wifi, it'll be that little wifi icon. Yeah, yeah. You just click on it and you can, you can say, oh, I want to connect. And then you'll see your phone as one of the things. Once you put the phone in hotspot mode, you have to put it in hotspot mode first.

Caller #6 (01:38:08):
I see. So just put the phone in the hotspot mode and, and then it'll find everything.

Leo Laporte (01:38:12):
And then it'll just like, yeah. Be just like joining wifi network anywhere else. Your phone suddenly is a wifi network.

Caller #6 (01:38:18):
Okay. So that doesn't matter. This isn't an se or any of that stuff. It'll just have that in settings. What

Leo Laporte (01:38:23):
Really matters is your carrier. Some carriers charge you for this. You have to turn this feature on. So you have to check and make sure that whoever's providing your cellular service allows this. But if they do, it's very Leo port VICA. Hello rod. Hey, how are you? I am will. How are you? I'm good. I have newly optimized zoom settings. Thank to, thanks to Burke. Wow. Let me see. Let me see how optimized this. Oh my God. You're amazing. Well, we didn't change the video. Never video. That was never rolled up. No, it sounds great. But thank you. Yes. Check a check it every time cuz they reset themselves by the way. Yeah. Yeah. How about every time? I think every time I unplug the computer from this workstation. Yeah. It's so annoying. Decides to go. Yeah, go through this all the time. Oh, I'm sorry.

Leo Laporte (01:39:17):
Oh, might even know. I'm sorry for you. I don't, I don't have to do anything. That's true. You just walk in and send out, show up. That's been my goal just to show up. I just show up. But you show up a lot, you know, I've been listening to more and more of your stuff later on. Oh my God. How many shows does this guy do? Well, how many, how hours a week do you prep for? Well, and Lisa will tell you this. You know, it's just, I'm always, what are you, where are you laughing, John?

Leo Laporte (01:39:49):
My life has been prep for this show. Yeah. I mean, I'm always, I've always, even when we're watching TV, I always have the computer open and I have my, I have like my tabs. So my number one tab is sumi.news, which is my newsfeed. Then I have Reddit open. I have hacker news open. I have my email open TWiTtter, open the community forms and, and I'm constantly going back and forth, checking out, you know, is anything new, anything new? What's going on? I'm doing it because we got TWiT coming up. But that's all right. I don't mind. I enjoy it. When you retire, you won't be able to, you know, oh, I totally be able to, I can't wait. I'm so tired. You say that to be checking all your stuff going, oh, I gotta be on the air. I have been planning. Oh, all along.

Leo Laporte (01:40:33):
I have been planning for this. I have a new, I have a concept, but probably should keep it secret. But for my, my once, once you know, I'm out of the business and I'm retired, which won't be for many years. But when that happens, I wanna do one podcast a week. But that in a way, as many podcasts a week and I've already set it up, it's called Leo on the line. And the idea is like, I, if there's a news space news story, I'd call you up. I'd say, Hey, rod Leo on the line here, what the hell is going on with the Chinese space rock? And you'd tell me, you know, in a couple minutes, I'd say, great rod, thank you. And that's part of the, so it would be a sh kind of like a, a summary of the, and you could, and I'm, I think I'm gonna way I'm doing it. Cuz anchor, lets you do this is I'll do all of those bits. That'll be available individually. Or you can get the end of the end of the week, Leo on the line, which has it all. It's Lale L otl.fun. If you went, I've had this for a while. I like it. I set this up a long time ago. Just like I said at my blog, I have all this stuff it's in the, in the wings ready and waiting so that if I do retire and then I go, oh crap, where's my audience. I'm so

Speaker 15 (01:41:44):
Depressed. I'm all alone. I got nothing to do.

Leo Laporte (01:41:47):
I could just do that. Well, and then what's the the segment. You do not a segment, but it's a whole show you do did recently the Genesis machine. Yeah, yeah, yeah. With Amy. Yeah. Those are fun. Yeah. Yeah. Well, so, so that's the same thing instead of, but instead of these being long shows, there'd be little, little or dudes, little tidbits, little pair. Ofts perfect. Yeah. And so this way I get my hit, TWiT fans will still hear from all the same people, but in little chunks. And the other thing that I've been thinking about, so there's a number of reasons that I wanna do this one is I could do it anywhere. I could be on a boat and do this cuz I can just, it's a phone call. So it's easy to do that. So they're all little bits, short little bits.

Leo Laporte (01:42:30):
Some of 'em are just, just me and Lisa fighting. It could be all different stuff, but you're already in Petaluma. How much? Closer to heaven can you get? I know. Well, we like to travel. That's the, the only real reason that's true. The only real reason I would retire and, and that's my other, I I'm so envious of you having a boat. I always wanted to own a boat, but then I know that that's a money pit. Oh my God. I'm gonna take off, oh your mind. I know I'm gonna take all the money. I would've spent on a boat and put it into a world cruise. So I wanna do the first thing I'm gonna do the day I retire. I'm gonna go, I'm gonna get on a boat and be gone for six months. But even then I could still do this. Right.

Leo Laporte (01:43:11):
Yeah. And then just upload when I get to a port, I'll upload it. So I feel like I could do so. That's the goal. Well, you don't even need to wait. You could get a star link by then probably. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. I signed up for star link just for that shoebox. Yeah. Just for that reason. So that's anyway, lots of stuff to talk about in space. You're here early. You bet. We'll talk in half an hour. Okay. Thank you, sir. My pleasure. Thank you for indulging. My end of life fantasy. It's that? Not end of life. My midlife, my midlife fantasy life goes on.

Leo Laporte (01:43:46):
Well, Hey, Hey, Hey. How are you today? Leo Laporte here. The Tech Guy talking computers, the internet, home theater, digital photography, smart phones, smart watches. How technology is changing everything in our lives, how we work, how we play, how we worship and how we go to war even. I mean, we're seeing this. Did you see this story that the, the Ukrainian army and intelligence services are using Google maps? They're using Google maps to keep an eye on where the Russians are. Researchers are tracking the Russian invasion of Ukraine and Google maps because you can see traffic reports, right? There's a story in the Washington post about a guy who is a professor specializing in arms control and nonproliferation. He said down the road a bit Monterey at the Middlebury Institute of international studies Jeffrey Lewis. And he was monitoring Google maps of the research team of students three in the morning in Russia, in Beru bill be Gora Russia. And he's watching, he's looking and he sees, oh my goodness, got a radar image. He's got Google maps. He sees traffic jams on the border road closures popping up. Boom, boom, boom. According to the post Lewis and his team realized an invasion was underway hours before the news became public. They were in California.

Leo Laporte (01:45:35):
Louis said in the old days, we would've relied on a reporter to show us what was happening on the ground today. You can open Google maps and see people fleeing Keve Ukraine using satellite imagery. And the, the thing is nothing goes UN observed anymore, right? That's what's changed so rapidly even just in the last decade or so nothing goes, UNS observed whether it's by satellites or smartphones, if you're savvy enough to collect all this data, there's no, you know, there's no fog of war anymore. Just fascinating. So even, even how we go to war and what a great tragedy of course in Ukraine, but even how we go to war is changed by technology. And the predo of technology is one of the reasons that Russia is shutting down parts of Facebook and TWiTtter. They don't, they don't like all that that free flow of information.

Leo Laporte (01:46:36):
And I liken that so much YouTube getting blocked in Russia, certain channels, they don't we, we don't want people to know what's going gun. Oh, but they do. And that's, what's great. Right? Eighty eight eighty eight, ask Leo, that's the phone number? (888) 827-5536. We're gonna talk another way of OB observation, the great web telescope in just a bit, it's getting closer and closer. What a miracle of technology that is rod PI else. Space guy will join us in about 20 minutes at the bottom of the hour. Talk about that and all the space news that's coming up. But meanwhile, let's go to Derek. He's in Los Angeles. Our next caller. Hi Derek.

Caller #7 (01:47:21):
Oh yes. Mr. Leo. Thank you so much for being there. Thank

Leo Laporte (01:47:24):
You for calling.

Caller #7 (01:47:26):
Yes. I'm hoping that I can through you and your contacts locate a defective, a replacement printhead. The one I, this is

Leo Laporte (01:47:39):
The second call in a row for a printed. I, it must be printhead day. So what kind of printer do you have?

Caller #7 (01:47:46):
EPON stylist photo 12, 8, 12 80.

Leo Laporte (01:47:50):
Oh, that was a great printer. Oh, mine is long retired. When did you buy that?

Caller #7 (01:47:57):
15 or more

Leo Laporte (01:47:58):
Years ago. Maybe that was a, that was the best. I used that to print black and white cuz it was large format. Right. Had a big carriage.

Caller #7 (01:48:05):
Yeah. By 17.

Leo Laporte (01:48:06):
Yeah. So I was able to get beautiful papers and print that print photographic prints, ads, classic photographer's printer. Do you do color or black and white with it?

Caller #7 (01:48:20):
Both.

Leo Laporte (01:48:21):
Interesting. Yeah. You know where I learned about it, a great photographer's website called you probably familiar with it. The luminous landscape, Michael Reich site. And he was a big fan of the 1280. So I don't, so you're saying that you can't, you've gone to EPON and they don't sell replacement heads

Caller #7 (01:48:40):
For it. Yeah. Well, I, I took it to an EPON authorized repair shop, a great one here in in the San Fernando valley. And they did replace the carriage that needed to be done. Okay. But then we got stopped with the defective print head and EPON doesn't offer anymore. I'm hop someone, has it out sitting on the shelf, maybe

Leo Laporte (01:49:05):
Somebody maybe somebody's listening. They never used one or they, yeah. That's the problem is you're gonna anything you're gonna buy. They, you know, you, I want an eBay today. In fact, I'm looking at an eBay listing for a 1280. But I think it's probably as old as yours is, so yeah, 55 bucks, not bad, you know, but maybe you, this is what people do, you know? For years people did this with cars, you'd pick and pull lot. You find some old beater card, somebody abandoned and you'd take the carburetor out. Right. Right. So, so that's possibly, oh, look at this. Scooter X in our chat room has found on eBay a kit printhead cleaning kit. Oh, but it's just for cleaning.

Caller #7 (01:49:52):
Yeah. It's been and, and the,

Leo Laporte (01:49:53):
The, cleaning's not the problem. You need a new printhead. Yeah,

Caller #7 (01:49:56):
Indeed,

Leo Laporte (01:49:57):
Indeed. I would go to eBay and look and you may just, you know, 55 bucks, it might be worth it just to buy a used EPON and let seems like there's an Amazon listing. That can't be, that must be sometimes Amazon, if you Google something, it'll have a listing. Yeah. It's not available. See, all buying options is the button and then nobody. Oh, well you know what? There are people selling new ones. Holy cow.

Caller #7 (01:50:26):
Yeah. There, there was, I did find one, but it was in China.

Leo Laporte (01:50:30):
Yeah. Be really careful. Lot of these third party sellers on Amazon, you know, it's gonna be hard. There's not gonna be a lot of recourse. I understand why you want, I had a 1280 for years. Loved that thing. What a great are you a photographer?

Caller #7 (01:50:45):
No, I do design architectural.

Leo Laporte (01:50:48):
So you're using it to print out your, your images,

Caller #7 (01:50:51):
Drawings and yeah. And images and yeah, just, it's been a great printer and I to go

Leo Laporte (01:51:01):
Maybe somebody listening has a 1280 and and they're willing to give you the print header. They know where they can get a print. This is a great place to call for that kind of information. It's kind of like the old user groups you stand up say, has anybody got, and there's, except that there's 50,000, a hundred thousand people listening. It's actually more like half a million. I think people listening. Somebody might have one. Yeah. Somebody might have one. Yeah. I, I, I share your love. I should say, you know, they're now EPON has even probably better printers, newer printers that are large format ink jet printers. You you've got this one, had a good run. Maybe it's time to get a new one. It did.

Caller #7 (01:51:42):
It did.

Leo Laporte (01:51:43):
It did. Yeah. But Hey, if anybody can find one, let us know check the show notes. Sometimes we get people coming in after the fact and we can put that in the show notes. Derek needs a 1280 print head, help him out.

Caller #7 (01:51:57):
Okay. Thanks

Leo Laporte (01:51:58):
Derek.

Caller #7 (01:51:59):
Thank you,

Leo Laporte (01:51:59):
Sir. Have a good one. Take care. That's a whole, this is a whole, whole new idea for the radio show I used to and, and, and you know what I think our mothership we're you know, this show started in 19 when did it start? 2004 on KFI in Los Angeles, the fi and KFI stood for farm information. And I swear in the old days, I'm not with KFI. It's always been a big time, big city station in my lifetime. But you know, you live in a rural area. There's always a station or two little, little station. There's a guy comes on. Do they still do this? Yeah. Joe's got a cow for sale in east Bumstead anybody looking for a good prime heifer, a couple of years old give us a ring and then people would sell stuff on the shows. You remember that? Or is that my imagination? I don't think anybody does that anymore. They do redacted says K G Cho in Aberdeen, Washington, 80. I've got a dozen. He will swap it for a goat. Anybody wanna help me out? Looking for Alpine? A good cheese goat, 88, 88. Ask Leo. That's the number? Leo. LePort the Tech Guy.

Leo Laporte (01:53:24):
Ron. Do you know? Don't remember that? Do you, is that just my imagination? You know what I do remember is TV channels that had a camera that panned across a barometer. Oh, that was in the, did you grow up in Rhode Island? No. They had that ear. If you went into the smaller market channel six in Wooster. Yeah. After the show hours, they just, just have the camera go back and forth on the, on the clock. The barometer, the wind speed indicator one. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Exciting television that, oh, actually, was that a new Bedford watching the test pattern late at night. I wanna see if that station's still there. Look, God, we ate new Bedford, Massachusetts.

Leo Laporte (01:54:07):
Oh man. What was the station? I didn't know. The F and KFI was for farm farm information. K farm information that. Yeah. But that was back when LA was just, you know, fruit orchards. Yeah. Many. Well, cause it started what in the late twenties. Yeah. I mean, it was already movie movie town by the time that was even before bill handle. Yeah. I think bill was there. I think he was the month in the morning, man. Let me see. On the Wikipedia entry for KFI they have a whole started 19 22, 22. Wow. The history. Yeah. I remember when I started working the, there I read up on this, the us government adopted regulations, defining broadcast stations in 19 21, 3 months later, KFI was lo licensed to Earl C Anthony for operation on the 360 meter entertainment, wavelength. Oh, it says the call letters were randomly assigned.

Leo Laporte (01:55:09):
But I think, well, I, I think they've, they used to say it stood for farm information. I don't know. Earl Anthony trained Cornell as an electrical engineer was best known as the owner of a Packard automobile dealership. KFI was originally located at Anthony's home using a 50 wat. He built personally on a kitchen table. They've come away since says come a long ways. 10 years after the sinking of the Titanic. That's right. If you put it in that, those terms. Yeah. Anthony moved quickly to expand operations studios and transmitter moved to the top of the packer dealership, building 10th and hope in Los Angeles with a $30,000 rooftop T antenna and a 500 wa at Western electric transmitter. The most powerful commercially of the, at this time. When did you start with him? Shortly after that? 2004, January, 2004 was my first KFI show. But I mean, that's not when I started in radio, that's just when I started at KFI. Right, right. Yeah. I've been continuously at KFI since 2004, 18 years. Kidding. That's amazing. That's freaking amazing. Thank you. Kay. Thank you Robin. Bertolucci yeah, our good friend. All you couldn't play these songs today. Wait a minute. We just did. Nevermind. Leo Laport, the Tech Guy. Thank you to our musical director, a deep, a deep cut from a professor, Laura, our musical director on we go to Heather. She's on the line from kinder hook. My favorite town in upper New York state in Hudson river valley. Hello Heather.

Caller #8 (01:56:53):
Hi. Thank you for taking my call. It is a beautiful town. It is. 

Leo Laporte (01:56:58):
We talked before, have we not,

Caller #8 (01:57:00):
We have talked before. I think you had a daughter who went to BARR.

Leo Laporte (01:57:04):
That's right.

Caller #8 (01:57:05):
Are you familiar

Leo Laporte (01:57:06):
With the area? You remember that? Yes I

Caller #8 (01:57:08):
Do. I do. Yeah, so, so thanks for taking my call. I have an iPad in my possession that is activation locked.

Leo Laporte (01:57:17):
Oh no.

Caller #8 (01:57:18):
I, it gets worse. I can't unlock it because it given this, this iPad, my friend asked me to help with this situation. My friend got the iPad from someone who didn't want it anymore, wasn't using

Leo Laporte (01:57:34):
It, but neglected to remove it from find my

Caller #8 (01:57:38):
Oh, and it gets worse. And that someone is now deceased.

Leo Laporte (01:57:41):
Okay. So you're, you're outta luck. That iPad is unusable. On the only way you can get that activation. So apple started doing this early on in with the iPhone. It was a prime target for phone thieves. People would get mugged for their iPhone. And Apple's response to this was to turn on this thing called activation lock, which meant essentially. And you know, we should get the word out out by the way, to all iPhone thieves or iPad, thieves too. It's useless. You can steal it, but you can't do anything with it because of activation lock. The previous owner has to release it. Now, the only way, the only hope is if you have a receipt for it. So if the late owner in his documentation or his records, or when he handed it over, see, this seems unlikely since he forgot to unlock it anyway 

Caller #8 (01:58:37):
UN unlikely.

Leo Laporte (01:58:38):
Yeah, but if he handed you the receipt, then you can go to apple. The problem is it's not in your name. So they're gonna say, oh, you stole it. Huh? From this guy. It's. So they're very finicky. They will not, without a receipt, without proof of ownership, they are not gonna unlock that. They can that's what's frustrating. They can, they know how there's a way, but it, it's not available to you and me.

Caller #8 (01:59:03):
Okay. And I, okay. I got that. Now I, I, I do see however that there are a lot, it seems that there are a lot of third party apps that claim that they no. Do you know anything about them?

Leo Laporte (01:59:14):
Don't

Caller #8 (01:59:16):
Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:59:18):
Don't they can't

Caller #8 (01:59:20):
There are. I don't know if you I've never looked it up.

Leo Laporte (01:59:22):
Yeah, yeah, no, it's a scam.

Caller #8 (01:59:25):
Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:59:26):
So you need either to, so, and this is important to remember when you have an iOS device, you need to remove it from fine mine. Apple tells you a hundred times before you wipe the device, make sure you, you know, remove it. If you cuz you'll and to do that, you need your apple account password. You need to be able to log in. Right. And of course you can, if you knew the account holder's email, you can go to forgot. I forgot, you know, dot apple.com, but then you gotta prove vote. It's they're very tr very, very finicky. Yeah. There is an activation lock web tool in the us, but in order to use it, you have to be the owner. You need proof of ownership. You need your data will be erased. They can't unlock a managed device and your device can't be in lost mode again, all of this to prevent theft. Yeah. So you know, if you could prove your ownership that's, you know, then you could do it, but

Caller #8 (02:00:23):
Yeah, it's that's I, and I get it completely and I appreciate apple for taking,

Leo Laporte (02:00:28):
I have an iPad for sure. It's been sitting in my office cause I can't bring it, bring it to throw it out. Some, an employee's iPad it, you know, somehow fell through the cracks. When the employee left, we didn't know how to, and I just can't get into it. And there's nothing I can do cuz I, I guess we don't have the receipt anymore or whatever. I wouldn't throw it out. I'd bring it to apple and, and say, look, you know, I can't unlock this. They can re they can unlock it, recondition it, sell it maybe, but you won't get any money for it.

Caller #8 (02:01:02):
Okay. I, I, yeah. Okay. Well, thanks. I, this is really just kind of symptomatic of what I think is a much bigger problem, which is, you know, what, what are we is our, our digital afterlife? What

Leo Laporte (02:01:15):
Happens? Very good point digital

Caller #8 (02:01:17):
Footprint. I mean, it's a huge issue that no one cares for people don't think about, no, you don't put it in their will.

Leo Laporte (02:01:23):
No. yeah. You know, and this is what you're using a password manager, which would simplify things if you did, because then almost all the password managers have a feature called emergency access or something like that. So I've set up my password manager so that my, if I pass suddenly my wife can request access to it. And the way it works is generally is, is a dead man switch, forgive the language. But the, the they'll send an email to my address, my the address associated with the password manager saying, Hey, you know, your designated recipient, your emergency contact says she wants in that. You're dead. Are you? And if you don't respond and you can set the time limit, by the way, you can say, well, if I don't respond in five days or a week or three weeks, then she gets access.

Leo Laporte (02:02:13):
So that's a reason to use a password manager and put everything in there. Cuz now you have a vault, you could assign an emergency or more than one, if you want which I do. I have several family members as emergency contacts and then they can get into it. If he had done that, by the way, you'd have his apple ID and you'd be able to log into it and you'd be able to activate it. So it all, you know, and the same thing, getting into financial, you know, bank accounts and in investment, in accounts, all of that stuff. So my, you know, all I need to do is designate that person. And then the other thing I will do and I, and just like you, I'm going, I really ought to do this is just a pace piece of paper I'll put in my desk drawer that says, in case of my death, here's the login to my computer and here's my password, man. Enter login. And after that, they're they can get in everything. So yes, I agree. There's something we gotta pay attention to.

Caller #8 (02:03:08):
Yep. Well thank

Leo Laporte (02:03:09):
You. Sorry. You're a nice person to try to help.

Caller #8 (02:03:13):
No, it's a,

Leo Laporte (02:03:14):
The word has clearly gone out throughout the Hudson river valley. If you've got a problem, go to Heather and kinder hook,

Caller #8 (02:03:21):
She can help you. Don't tell him that I just retired. I'm not having convinced all of my clients that that is the case I'm working on it,

Leo Laporte (02:03:31):
But this really shows how much this is needed. Right? it baffles me. We, we got this incredibly complex technology, very useful, but so complex. And the companies aren't very good at helping people. What do you go to a community college? Take a class. I don't know. We don't have this kind of network of support and it, we need it to be honest. That's why I do this show.

Caller #8 (02:03:52):
Yeah. That's great. Okay. So thank you.

Leo Laporte (02:03:56):
Thanks for trying Heather. And yeah. Don't fall for, you'll see a lot of these in every respect. Oh, we could crack it. Oh yeah. Give it to us. We could figure it out. No, cuz the first thing they're gonna do is say that'll be $199 and 99 cents please. I have yet to be shown by anybody that they can get into an activation locked iOS device. I feel like, you know, hair Houdini, if you, if you can prove I'm not offering a cash prize, but as far as I know and I've looked, there is no way around it. Leo Laporte The Tech Guy okay rod. Yes, sir. By the way I won't be here next Sunday. No, don't, I'll be in beautiful Des Moines, Iowa. Well, I'll be traveling. You're washing the big beautiful Des S the big launch in Des Moines. No, I'm going to a conference. They have an innovation conference every year. I saw that a couple of Apollo guys, which they're saying to miss will be in may now.

Rod Pyle (02:05:00):
Yes. Maybe, maybe. Yes, possibly. Well, so they had to slide the, the rollout date and then they have to do a wet dress rehearsals where the, they tank it up and check everything. They think they got the engine controller problem solved. And then they've got of course, you know, there's limits to when they can launch because the alignments of the earth and the moon and so forth. But they've also got SpaceX and other activity going on at the other pad, which is 39A, which is just across from 39B, which is where Artemis will launch from. So as a whole ballet, they have to do, but it's, it's mostly rocket delays. And just so it's set, this was originally slated for 2016, so, oh, we're a little late. Oh, I had no idea. What's a few more months. Yeah. It's rounding her now.

Leo Laporte (02:05:45):
You know? Geez. Yeah. Geez Louise. And oh, the podcast drops next Friday. I dunno if you have that near your next we're making that public. Yes, sir. Yay. No, let's plug the hell out of it. Happy to yay. We're having fun. And boy, what a team you've got. They're all over. They're good. Aren't they? Yeah. Yeah. They really are good people. It, I mean, after doing a podcast, a solo with, you know, some help from KFI, but really it was mostly just posting in the occasional occasional promo on the, on the, on the iHeart feed or something. This has been spectacular. Yay. Well, let's hope we get a lot of response there giving you some ads, I think, right? Yeah. That's that's fantastic. It's certainly in social media. Yeah, no, you guys are all over it. Yeah. Not they you, no, I don't actually do anything. It's Lisa. Well, I know, but I mean, it's, I have a deal with Lisa it's it's your empire. You do all the work. I'll take all the money.

Leo Laporte (02:06:44):
I like that. Well, she hadn't really agreed to that, but anyway now she knows, you just told no, whoops, no, we split it. We split it all 50 50. Well, no, see, that's the thing. We split the money. 50 50, she gets a hundred percent of the work. So it isn't really fair. And she knows it. I that's. All right. You've got a good system. I gotta do my thing. How to somebody's gotta do these shows. So yeah. Yeah. It's time to talk space with spaceman rod pile editor of first well editor of the ad Astra mags scene from the national space society space.nss.org. Also the author many books, including first on the moon about the Apollo 11 moon landing space, 2.0, and I'm proud to say host of a brand new podcast, which launches on Friday. It's this weekend space.

Leo Laporte (02:07:46):
Cue the Echoplex. Congratulations, rod, rod piles. Thank you. You're co-hosted this with the, for putting it together. Well, you, you mentioned you wanna do this. And I said, well, I'd like to do it too. If you want to be there episode zeros there, which is just a teaser but the first show will come out Friday, the website, TWiTt TV slash T I S this week and space will take you there. Or you could search for starting for, and your favorite podcast client this weekend space. And it might take a little while to get 'em in all the different players. We're pretty good about that. I think it's already up on iTunes and Google podcasts and so forth. It's on a bunch. Yeah. Yeah. This weekend space te Mallek will be your co from space.com. Hey, will every pushing out some news about this on space dot this week.

Leo Laporte (02:08:36):
Nice. We're covered from all directions. I want to get everybody, if you like Rod's appearances and I get lots of fan mail for you, rod. Oh, good. If you like, Rod's appearances on this show, you'll love the podcast. I, I, I know you want to talk about how the Russian war on Ukraine is impacting space, but before we do that, I just wanna mention though, James Webb has reached another milestone and has really yes. At this point, is it safe to say been flawless? It's flying through these steps. So they've got the big alignment phases done for the mirrors. They were locked in place a month ago and now they're aligning them. So I, I guess they're somewhat over halfway in terms of the overall alignment. So we now, yesterday they got all of the, all of the light from that single.in one place.

Leo Laporte (02:09:23):
Well, so, so they, they had 18 fuzzy images. Now they've got 18 clear images. So what we saw was those images, stacked, artificially. Ah, okay. So they still are, are 18 separate image. So they still steering for the, the, the tile. Cause remember these things move nanometers. So it takes, you know, month to, to move at the quarter inch or something, but they are, are cooling down the near infrared, Cama the near, near or near cam. And I think they've got another three to six weeks for that to reach the operating temperature. And then they can have a unified image. And man, you know, if that works $10 billion well spent well, and you can't send, there are a million kilometers out, you can't send a rescue mission to fix as we did with the Hubble to fix the lens. It's gotta work. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (02:10:16):
Although, you know, I, I occasionally I'll, I'll get a little bit of pushback on my, my Elon fan, Elon Musk fandom, but potentially a Starship could, could do that. If, if it was refueled enough, it'd be so expensive. And so risky would be expensive risk either think they're gonna do that. But you know, I mean, he might just do it because he wants to go. Yeah. You never know. Yeah. So that's good news. Now some not so good news. Yeah, of course this war that Putin has inflicted on the Ukraine tragedy tragedy for everybody. But it does make one wonder you know, Russia is very heavily involved in the international space station, aren't they? Yeah. And, and other efforts and we've already had, I mean, we saw after, after the annexation of Ukraine in 2014, we saw op proceeding pretty well.

Leo Laporte (02:11:14):
You know, the mission controls were still talking to each other here in Russia. And the crews were getting along well on the space station, but on the ground, of course we were, you know, spitting at each other and not having a good time of it. This is of course much bigger. And again, you know, we're talking about the space flight angle. I mean, this is not at all to manage the deprivations of suffering that are going on in Ukraine. It's awful, but it's something that's being talked about at NASA and elsewhere, because it's a big problem. So when the Soviet union fell in 1991, we made overtures. We had been planning a space station with European partners in Japan. We said, Hey, Russia, you've got these component. It you've been building for your replacement for mirror, their earlier space station. Why don't you come join the party?

Leo Laporte (02:11:59):
And they said, okay. So they control the power unit and they do the propulsion burns that, that reorient the thing and do the proper orbit and keep it there. And they have another number of other orbits and docking ports and an airlock and so, and forth other modules, excuse me, docu ports and so forth. And so their hardware's all over the station and they control it. And that's a piece of their national territory as our half is, oh, it's not international territory. It's it's Russia. Yeah. It's Russia. Oh, interesting. So they decide to uncouple and way that's a real problem potentially at the end of the station or if they decide to do some kind of scorched earth. Okay. We're, you know, and this is unlikely, I think, but if they did decide, okay, we're cutting the cables and, you know, taking a hammer to the interior of this thing, cuz we're angry at you, that would be bad.

Leo Laporte (02:12:50):
And that would be an early end of the space station that could happen as early as I suppose a could happen immediately. But the agreement on their end isn't solid past 20, 25. So while we're, we're talking about keeping up till 2030, they've been dragging their feet a bit on, on verifying their participation. So, you know, that's questionable, but there's other stuff too. We already know that that China and Russia been talking about building their own moon base is sort of a pushback on the us Artemis program with our European and Asian partners. So there's, there's that split already. But these sanctions also as, as you've I think been talking about are gonna really impact their technological imports, that cripples an already challenged space program. Their budget's gotten smaller and smaller over the last few years, we depend on them for cargo deliveries.

Leo Laporte (02:13:44):
We, as I said, depend on them for their progress modules to go up and reposition the, the is to keep in proper orbits. So while SpaceX could pick up that slack, I think a pretty short order, it would represent a major change. And now NASA says it's gonna be business as usual. Yeah, well they have to. Right, right. I mean, we're not, I mean, we're not, we're not gonna issue issue sanctions against the space station. No, but we're sanctioning their, a lot of their technology points and that's hardware. They may retaliate build their space. Well, and those go into their spacecraft. There's a lot of that stuff that they don't make cuz they don't have to they've just recently pulled their people out of French Giana, which is where European space agency in France have their launch facility. And so use had a launch facility there as they're pulling away from that.

Leo Laporte (02:14:34):
And you know, in, in kind of smaller bits, there's Russian and Ukrainian components in some of the products built by Northrop Grumman and other contractors here, including rocket engines. Although I, as I understand it, most of that inventory is already on us soil, but there's still bits that we want. So, you know, there's a lot, a lot going on here, a lot of moving parts and we're gonna have to see what happens. This trade space. There has been a little sword rattling, Dimitri Rogozin who's the director of Ross cosmos. And I, and I was hoping you'd read these quotes cuz you do have so much better. He says, do you want to destroy our cooperation on the? He tweeted, yes, yes in rush. But this is my best Russian, if you block cooperation with us who will save the IACS from uncontrolled deorbiting and falling into the United States or Europe, there is also option of dropping a 5,500 tons structure to India and China.

Leo Laporte (02:15:30):
So there's a lot of, you know, it's very Putin also threaten the use of atomic weapons. There's a lot of saber rattling coming out of Russia right now, which does not endear them to me or probably anybody in the west. I don't think they're enduring themselves to anybody right now, except possibly the Russia population. Reegan also went on to say to blame talented us B businessman for all the space debris. Oh please. Which is, this is coming from the guys who just blew. They blew up a satellite, right threatening. He said our own astronauts, the us has illness. Alzheimer's when it comes to space, which I thought, so he says out there, there is also option of dropping 500. It UN structured to Indian, China. Do you want to threaten them with such a prospect? The ISS does not fly over Russia. So the risks are all yours. Right. Are you ready for, but he's like, this is like a heavy out of a Quentin Tarantino movie or a bad James bonds or James books. Yeah. Leo Laport, the Tech Guy. Thank you rod.

Rod Pyle (02:16:33):
Thank you.

Leo Laporte (02:16:37):
He's this guy, a political hack and somebody we can ignore is he put, he's obviously put his man. Well he's the head of their, their space program. So he's really not somebody who can, but this is same guy that said, you know what? You're not gonna use our soils capsules. You're gonna buy some trampolines to get to your space station. Wow. You know, he's, he's been a big mouth in a hot, these guys are basically mobsters. It would be a shame. If anything were to happen to China, to your space station station, if anything were to happen, it would be shame. Well, you know, they could always go back to using vacuum tubes on their spacecraft. They were kind of the last people to do that. Did you already talk about Elon and the, and the Starlink connection with you?

Leo Laporte (02:17:21):
I did. And I, you know what I said, we talked about with Sam is I don't Elon has so mud the waters with previous nonsense tweets. I don't know. You know, he, he said he was sending ventilators and it was old burnout C pap machine. So I don't trust whatever Elon says and it's too bad cuz you know what, this may be legitimate and me may be doing a wonderful thing. But, but you, but he's muddied the waters. You can't, you don't know, you can't trust him. Yeah. In this case, I, I guess what gives me some hope is that he, you know, he's talking about shipping them Starlink bay stations, which you know, he's got 'em right. So it's just getting them into Ukraine. I guess the question is, and what, I don't know, I was actually texting Tarek to see if he knew to find out if he asked to actually retask any of these satellites the Starlink satellites in the new orb, much to give Ukraine more coverage or if they're already sufficiently dense there for that to occur.

Leo Laporte (02:18:16):
But I mean, anything's, anything's helpful when you've had your, so he says we're sending more terminals. That's the base station. The terminals. Yeah. Yeah. It's the little recline Recana I think they call it kind of a, the dish. Yeah. Right, right. So if Russia really determines to knock out the internet in Ukraine, I think that would be a pretty soft target for them. So I think so, but you can't knock out satellites, right? I mean they could try. Yeah. But the terminals, you can easily knock out. You can. And what's interesting, you know, both China and Russia have been testing to laser dazzle and take down satellites. Oh wow. But Elon has so many of 'em and they're moving so quickly in these low orbits that they'd be really hard to get at. It's easy to target a geosynchronous satellite, cuz it's just sitting in one spot.

Leo Laporte (02:19:06):
Right. So when you got things whizzing, overhead, every 90 minutes you'd have to target a lot of satellite. So he could end up, you know, playing a heavy role in national security. If, if he was taken into that and I wanna be clear, I think I know many Russians, the people of Russia are good people. It's the, and they, I don't think they're behind this. It's they're not behind this. This is the madman in charge. And I didn't realize son, my son called me this morning. And, and of course, you know, who knows what the news, you get all kinds of, of stories. But one of the stories coming out was that the, the troops, you know, that had been captured or being interviewed were saying, oh, they told us, we were just on size is the next thing you know, we're invading.

Leo Laporte (02:19:48):
I feel for them, you saw the, one of the, the teenager crying on the steps. They're kids, their kids. It's so sad. They're kids, but that's always the case. Canadians war, war is not, but it's just a horrific thing. And anybody who would just launch a war for no good reason, oh, it's E it's as evil as you can get. Well, it, it is. And, and you know, I, I, I kind of, I have to sympathize a little bit. It, it, if you kind of abstract yourself and put yourself in his mind, having been isolated for the last couple of years, as much as he is, you know, NA NATO encroachment could be scary if you are in his Russian mindset. I understand. But, but at the same time, you know, you see these images of, of Ukrainian Housewives and daughters filling up OV cocktails like it's 1944.

Leo Laporte (02:20:37):
Again, it's just, it's just amazing. All right, rod, have a good one. Thank you. Take care. Very good to see you. Nice to see you as always again, thank you for letting me be your purse Tech Guy this weekend. I love doing it. I'm glad you're here to let me do it. And thanks. Of course, the, my helpers, the little elves who helped keep this show on the air, professor, Laura, our musical director. And of course Kim Shaffer our phone angel. And you know, I, I can't really do a full credit Laura, cuz I there's other people at the, at the knock. And there's all of all the people who work hard to make this show happen. I appreciate all of you, even if I, no, it's just me. It's just you. Oh, nevermind. Yes. Not just you there's people in the knock aren't there. I don't know who they are, but I love you, man. I love you. But of course most importantly, thanks to you for listen, cuz without you, it'd be just me talking to myself and nobody wants that. So thank you as always for letting me do this back to the phones. We go last segment of the show for the weekend. Tom on the line from Anchorage, Alaska. Hi Tom.

Caller #9 (02:21:47):
Hello,

Leo Laporte (02:21:48):
Welcome.

Caller #9 (02:21:50):
First time I've ever called a radio show. So I'm really nervous.

Leo Laporte (02:21:54):
Oh there's no need to be nervous, Tom. That's it's just you and me. If anybody were listening well, I'd be nervous too, but it's just the two of,

Caller #9 (02:22:03):
I'm glad you

Leo Laporte (02:22:04):
Don't worry about it. Yeah.

Caller #9 (02:22:06):
You were my last itch effort because the man of my sharp 60 inch TV, it's an LC 60. Yeah. With a crystal 60 inch. Nice. I don't know. I lose track of time. How, how long ago I bought it? I would say maybe seven years. The TV works great. No problems with it whatsoever. And I'm trying to remember cuz I have a poor memory, but the factory remote quit working at one point. I think I got it working by spliting the case because you get dust under the buttons, whatever. I don't remember. Wow. I got, I got it. You know, you check the batteries off. So I did everything and at one point it quit working and I finally bought here's here's the thing I bought a a really cheap GE universal remote.

Leo Laporte (02:22:59):
Oh, that's a clever idea. Yeah. You

Caller #9 (02:23:02):
Used that for the longest time. The only thing it is, it doesn't provide all the functions of that big sharp TV. Awas it's an Awas TV remote, but it does the power and the channel and the volume. That's it. And it's kinda,

Leo Laporte (02:23:22):
Yeah, you probably could program it to do more, but without the work original, it's a little tricky, you know, you can't teach it. There are a couple of choices here. There are third parties that sell replacement remotes. I'm looking at a, a replacement remote for the LC 60 from a company called just fine. They're probably, they're probably outta China, $11 and 45 cents on am, Amazon.

Caller #9 (02:23:47):
Well, there's more things to tell you that like I said your last ditch effort and I, I expected the manufacturer to figure this thing out and they didn't. And so anyway,

Leo Laporte (02:24:01):
Sharp also sells replacement remotes. You can get one from Walmart, so, but what's so is there more than just the remote not working?

Caller #9 (02:24:08):
Well, no, no, the TV works fine. And the buttons on the TV works fine and the universal remote works. Oh good. Okay. So, so anyway, what happened was I, our, our original remote that was working for a long time after quit working, I called sharp and they I paid like 40 bucks, whatever for a new identical uni sharp remote. Oh

Leo Laporte (02:24:33):
Good. Okay. And,

Caller #9 (02:24:34):
And I knew as soon as I got it out of the box and I'm a mechanic, so I tested the batteries before I put em in and I, I was excited. I knew that new remote would work. Oh. So then,

Leo Laporte (02:24:48):
So now you're thinking it's not the remote, that's the problem.

Caller #9 (02:24:51):
Well, then I called them back and I told them it's not working. And then at one point I, I'm sorry, I've been working so many hours. I, I, I remembered, wait a minute. Like last year I had that universal remote. So I dug it out and it was covered in dust, cleaned it up. And, and I used it and guess what? It works every time to turn the TV off and on change the channels, change the volume and the brand new remote does not work. Then I called them a back about it, told them the new remote doesn't work. And then they ran me through all the test procedures and turning the TV off, turning it on, doing this, doing that, the remote on and on and on. I'm like, I've done that already, but okay. Just tell me what to do. I'll do it again. So the new remote did not work. And then they, they had me do a test,

Leo Laporte (02:25:44):
You know, I only have a couple minutes left. Can you let's get to the bottom line. What do you need? What's not working. What do you need?

Caller #9 (02:25:52):
Well, the second remote, they just mailed me does not work either. And they had me do that IR test with your phone. Yeah. Using your camera, which I've never heard of before. Yeah. Just to tell that it,

Leo Laporte (02:26:03):
You can see the IR blinking. Yeah.

Caller #9 (02:26:05):
Yes. And it works. And both remotes, new ones don't work. Why would two new remotes not work, but the old universal GE not work. Oh, let me throw one more thing out. I actually threw batteries in while I was on hold for you and they're working now.

Leo Laporte (02:26:21):
That's why we put you on hold by the way. Because most of the time people fix the problem while they're waiting. Wait a minute. The new ones work now,

Caller #9 (02:26:30):
They just worked as of 15 minutes ago and they didn't work for one week, but the universal works all the time. Huh?

Leo Laporte (02:26:40):
It does sound like there's something maybe wrong with the eye R receiver on the TV that it's maybe intermittent. That's the, as you know, as a mechanic, the worst possible problem is an intermittent problem because it doesn't happen all the time. If, if,

Caller #9 (02:26:55):
Well, the, the universal uses the same frequency. So why does that work every time? But the new ones don't, that's what I was thinking. The universal should have the same problem.

Leo Laporte (02:27:07):
Might have a stronger signal, might be a brighter IR light in it. You know, it's there is a company they've been discontinued, but Logitech for the longest time made the harm remotes. One of the advantages of the harmonies. You don't have to program them. I would look at the harmony database and see if it has that sharp LC, 60 TV in it. Cause if it does then their remote will do every function that your other remote does because it doesn't have to be programmed. It actually somebody's taken the time over the years to get that to work. I don't know why one remote works and one doesn't maybe it's brighter. I don't, I don't know. I I'm sorry that I'm your only hope I should. When did you buy this TV? I mean the LC 60, maybe it's time for a new TV. I hate to buy a new TV cuz the remote doesn't work don't you, but TV have gotten a lot better in the intervening years. I just don't know. I, I can't help you. Can't help you Jim, in the line on the line from Glendale, California. Hello, Jim Le Laport the Tech Guy.

Caller #9 (02:28:20):
Hi. How you doing? I'm I got a quick question for you. I'm the same person that call you before a want Android person? Not an apple person. You probably

Leo Laporte (02:28:29):
Yes. I love that. I remember that. Yes.

Caller #9 (02:28:32):
All right. I've got a S 21, which is great, fine. And I've got my service through up here talk now. Okay. I also got one of the free government phones that you can get when you're an employee, which I am and that SIM card is removable. I wanna use that SIM card in my old Samsung galaxy note four, which is far superior phone than the phone that I got for free. So I'd have it as a backup phone, but I don't want to be exposed vulnerable. Cause I'm not sure if the note four is software is still 

Leo Laporte (02:28:58):
It's not, it's far out of date. So there's two different kinds of software that you care about with the Android device, the Android version, which currently is 12. That's probably what is the version? Eight. Nine. You don't know, but you can check in the seven. Oh, you

Caller #9 (02:29:14):
Mean on you mean on my phone? I don't

Leo Laporte (02:29:15):
On the old phone. The, the four that you wanted, the note four you want to use?

Caller #9 (02:29:19):
Well, well let me say something else real quick. Before you go further. A couple of months ago, I did route this phone and I did custom recovery. However, I had not put in any custom rom yet. And I was asked, I was really wanting to find out what the safest rom to use would do for this purpose.

Leo Laporte (02:29:33):
So there's one that there are two that I like lineage is one that's been around for the longest time. It's a reliable source. And it will work pretty much as a generic Google phone lineage, os.org. The other one is a security focused rom called Kix C a L Y X.

Caller #9 (02:29:57):
Okay.

Leo Laporte (02:29:57):
OS. And that one is similar, but more focused on security and you're right using either of those will be more secure than the UNUP updated. And UNUP, updateable Android in that current note for Leo Laport, the tech, I have a Craig geek week, But lineage or call either one would be a good choice. Now, before you do this, what I would do, Jim is go to XDA developers.com. Are you familiar with the XDA developers site?

Caller #9 (02:30:30):
Yeah, it's been a while since I've been there, but yes, that's

Leo Laporte (02:30:32):
A, that's your much more than me definitive resource. And, and what you can do is enter that exact model number of that note and remember that there are multiple models of that same note and, and there will be a forum thread and there'll be a pinned entry on that for how to root it, what ROMs you can put on it and they will have some recommendations and there may be other ROMs that I'm sure there are. There's usually a, a lot of different ROMs you can choose from. But the two that I know and trust are Calex and lineage lineage is the, is renamed it's. I can't remember the original name, but it's the old Ron that everybody used for years.

Caller #9 (02:31:12):
It's CGEN

Leo Laporte (02:31:12):
Rod CGEN, that's the one. Okay.

Caller #9 (02:31:15):
And

Leo Laporte (02:31:15):
It's just, you

Caller #9 (02:31:15):
Know, I've, I've rooted the phone. It's been probably five years since I've done this. So I'm gonna have to scratch my head to remember how to do it. But I was just thinking that it would be safer to do that even absolutely free phone. Even the free phone they gave me has got very old software on. Yeah, yeah, yeah,

Leo Laporte (02:31:28):
Yeah. Secure. So what I was going to, and you know, this then say is that you've got the Android version. That's one thing, the other version, the other more important thing is the monthly security updates. You, and you're gonna be way behind on both of those. So lineage and Calex are the most professional. They're the least hobbyist focused lineage has been around as you know, forever. And so I don't know why they rebranded it, but they did. It's fantastic. And then Calex is very much more focused on security. But as I said, I would a, before you do anything, look at the thread about that exact model on XDA developers. Cuz if there are any caveats about rooting it, you know, a Samsung in that timeframe had this thing called triangle protect where they would they would break the phone if you tried rooted and there are ways around it now.

Caller #9 (02:32:22):
Huh? Right now when I boot the phone right now, when I booted, after it's been rooted, it still shows that it shows the warning at the top that a bit avoided, but it still works.

Leo Laporte (02:32:29):
Yeah. So that triangle is something you wanna avoid. But there are ways to get rid of it. So all of that's at XDA developed and by now, because that's such an old phone, that's the good news on that is there will be all sorts of great ways to fix this thing, you know, because it's people have been banging on it for so long. And frankly that note four is a classic. So there'll be a lot of people who are, you know, doing everything they can to keep it up to date.

Caller #9 (02:32:57):
Yeah. Well I just thought it would be a safer and pro I mean, I'm just gonna use it as a backup phone. I might occasionally use it to get some information off the internet, but I didn't want to be vulnerable, especially if I use, if I sign into my Google account to update, you know, can have the app

Leo Laporte (02:33:13):
Same. Yeah, no I'm with you. And that's why I think lineage and Cal are, are good choices because you know, they're well, well respected and well known. And I, and I think they're gonna be a lot less likely to have weirdnesses in them, but again, you can't beat XDA developers. Those are, those are people who really know what they're doing. And they've been very careful about, you know cool. How to get around things like the triangle alert and things like that.

Caller #9 (02:33:38):
Well, I appreciate the information. Sure.

Leo Laporte (02:33:41):
I think you're doing the right thing. That's a great phone. The only thing you're missing is the good cameras now. But the no four had replaceable battery. Right. And it had that's right. There had so many nice. It had a he phone Jack you're making me, I have a note four in my drawer somewhere. You're making me want to go back and recover it myself.

Caller #9 (02:34:00):
I hadn't used it in years, but when I put the SIM in there and tried the service and you know, it's T-Mobile is, is one of the providers for this free phone service. And it, it even had the high quality sound. I'm like, wow, this is great. Why don't use it in a good phone. Nice

Leo Laporte (02:34:13):
Old,

Caller #9 (02:34:14):
Old,

Leo Laporte (02:34:14):
Old open. Make sure it supports LTE otherwise. Yeah,

Caller #9 (02:34:17):
It does good. It does. Good. It's all good. All right. I appreciate your help. And I got more questions for you, but I'll save them for next time. Okay,

Leo Laporte (02:34:25):
Jim. Thanks. Take

Caller #9 (02:34:26):
Care. Good one. Thank

Leo Laporte (02:34:27):
Well. That's it for the Tech Guy show for today. Thank you so much for being here and don't forget. Twit T I T it stands for this week at tech and you find it a TWiTt to on TV, including the podcasts for this show. We talk about windows and windows weekly, Macintosh, a Mac break, weekly iPads, iPhones, apple watches on iOS today. Security and security. Now, I mean, I can go on and on and on. And of course the big show every Sunday afternoon, this week in tech, you'll find it all@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.