The Tech Guy Episode 1876 Transcript
Please be advised this transcript is AI-generated and may not be word for word. Time codes refer to the approximate times in the ad-supported version of the show.
... (00:00:02):
Podcasts you love from people you trust. This is TWiT.
Leo Laporte (00:00:10):
Hi, this is Leo Laporte and this is my tech guy podcast. This show originally aired on the premier networks on Sunday, March 13th, 2022. This is episode 1000 to 876. Enjoy The Tech Guy podcast is brought to you by zip recruiter. According to research, 90% of employers plan to enhance their employee experience this year. And if you need to add more employees, well there's zip recruiter, zip recruiters, technology finds qualified candidates for your job, and you can invite your top choices to apply. Try ZipRecruiter free today. Ziprecruiter.Com/techguy and 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@TWiT.cash dot.
Leo Laporte (00:01:04):
Oh, Hey. Hey, how are you today? Leo Laporte here. The Tech Guy, time to talk computers, the internet home theat or digital photography, smart phones, smart watches, augmented reality. The new Macintosh's, the new iPhone, all of that. Eighty eight eighty eight. Ask Leo that's the phone number? The new Galaxy S22 ultra. Just to be fair. Eighty eight eighty eight. Ask Leo the phone number. If you wanna talk high tech, that's toll free in the us and Canadian outside that area, you could still reach me, but you'll have to use some sort of magic Incan, something like Skype. If you want to do that, 88 88 ask Leo website tech guy labs.com has everything you need. If you're listening to the show and you say, wait a minute, what? Wait, what, what? By the way, w U T that's how the kids spell it. Wait, what? It doesn't apply kind of a woo.
Leo Laporte (00:02:07):
If you say, wait, woo. You can go to the website. Techguylabs.com. Links will be there as will all the audio and video from the show a couple of days after the fact plus the transcript. So you can find whatever you need. Techguylabs.com, happy daylight, saving time. I'm not a fan. Are you a fan? No, I like daylight saving time. I don't like going the other direction, but I have to say once you've gone the other direction, going back to daylight, savings time. No fun. Cuz now we lose an hour last night, right on the worst night you could lose an hour Saturday night. That's the that's that's the night. I mean, at my age, I go to bed at nine doesn't really matter. Anyway, I'm glad you made it. You're on time. Welcome. Good to see you starting a little early because the clocks sprang forward and then nowadays in most case of their own accord, which is kind of cool, John, you probably had to come in here and change a clock or two though.
Leo Laporte (00:03:14):
I bet there's five clocks in my office alone that are manual that are not attached to the internet somehow. But your phone changes and your computer changes. Yeah. And we have a smart clock that ain't so smart cuz it has the wrong dates cuz it was made before the dates changed in what is it? 2008 or something in my house. It's the oven and the microwave they're too. They're too stupid. But everything else, I, I try to buy those clocks that you know, get their time from the radio waves, WWT or V WWV and and most of the time that works pretty well. Most of the time that works pretty well. So the that's cool. Anyway, happy daylight, saving time. Also happy apple event, new apple stuff. It's a funny picture. Apple announced a new computer, which we were waiting for with baited breath.
Leo Laporte (00:04:16):
You know, the lesson of the apple event last week is not to believe the rumor mill. They, they pretty much got a lot of it wrong. Now they were right about there's a new iPhone se 5g. That was a pretty safe bet. They were right about that. That's a, that's a four to 50 bucks. Good choice for anybody who wants an iPhone, but doesn't wanna spend more than a thousand bucks for one, it's got the same processor in it as the current iPhone 13, it's better than my iPhone 12, but smaller still has a fingerprint reader that home button. So it's, you know, makes people, I don't, it's interesting that apple keeps that they take, they get, they got rid of it on everything else, but for some reason they keep it on the iPhone. I see. And I, I think it's maybe they, they think, oh, this is the phone for people who can't change with the times or something thing.
Leo Laporte (00:05:03):
I don't know. Like why, why keep that? I dunno, I dunno apple in its infinite wisdom. They also announced a new iPad air, which you know, is starting to catch up now with the iPad pros and the sh not only the design, but they have a type C connector, no more lightning. I think that kind of starting to pave the way for the of lightning across the board beat type C should be everywhere. New iPad. Its very nice, not the best selling iPad. The best selling iPad is the iPad. Nothing we call it has no just designation. And it is a 3 29. So that's a great price. But this one comes in at 5 99 close to the original iPad price. So that's nice. Got a fast process, sir. It's got the M one in it, which is the apple desktop processor.
Leo Laporte (00:05:48):
So actually processors are really the story of Tuesday. Last Tuesday, apple is just, just like PO they're just, they're just leaving everybody in the dust because they're designing their own and they can design 'em to work with their hardware. And most importantly, with their operating system to work better, they said, we have a secret feature. You didn't know about ha ha you thought you knew everything with the leaks. We got a secret feature in our processor that allows us connect 'em together like Lego pieces and, and, and talk to each other at a super high speed. Now, by the way, Intel does this, AMD does this. Everybody does this. When you get a quad core, you have four processors connected together, but the interconnect, the way the processors talk to each other on the new apple stuff is reputedly. The, you know, nobody's tested yet, but repeatedly, according to apple, really, really fast, really, really fast.
Leo Laporte (00:06:45):
So that's good. That means apple can, you know, snap these things together and make, so this time they've got two die, each of its own unified memory and a fast interconnect to the other die so they can act as one. And boy, the speeds they're getting. So this was the ultra. They have a Mac M one that's in the iPad air and the original M one computers, the M one pro, which came out last year. No, this yeah. Last October M one pro M one max, which you'd think, I mean maximum means the maximum, but no there's one more step. At least the M one ultra is the new one. And while we saw, we thought maybe they'd announce a new Mac mini. They didn't. It was only the day before that people said, wait a minute, it's not a Mac mini, it's a Mac studio.
Leo Laporte (00:07:33):
And it doesn't look like the, all of the rumors at all, have a plexi glass top. None of that. Now you might ask, well, were they making that up? Probably not. Apple probably did have a prototype that had a Plexiglas top. You know what happened? I know what happened. They put these chips in and they went, whoa, that's hot. Cause the, the heck many small it's really compact enclosure. Whoa, that's hot. How are we gonna solve this? Oh man, I know we'll make it a little taller. Not quite TWiTce as tall and put, you know, they're not fans, they're turbines in there that take the air from, you know, the hot air from the chip, make it an L turn and blow it out the back and they're gonna do it quietly. Cuz they're big old turbines and you know, the bigger, the more air they move, lower RPM, blah blah, blah.
Leo Laporte (00:08:31):
Interesting. We're learning now that the, the ultra Mac mini ultra, I'm sorry, the Mac studio ultra is to two pounds heavier than what looks like exactly the same size case of the M one max in the max studio. And it is because instead of using aluminum cooling fins and things, they're using copper, which is much more expensive these days and heavier. So that kind of tells you something, why would they use copper? Cause it's hot. They need all the cooling they can get. So that makes sense. So probably apple did and the rumor mill, you know, probably noticed it. Somebody in China said, here's a picture, look, we're making, 'em make prototypes with the Plexiglas top and the same thin thing. And then they realize, oh this is too hot. So they changed it. Forgot to tell the rumor mongers. It does leak out, you know, like the day before it leaked out.
Leo Laporte (00:09:27):
Because when you're, when you're recording these events, which apple does still they don't, they don't have a studio audience coming into Cupertino or anything like that. They do all record it ahead of time. So to bring in contractors, eh, these guys, you know, you can't completely control them, so it leaked out. But yeah, if you were paying attention to the rumors, you might have missed the excitement anyway I will I will have mine for next week show. So I can talk a little bit about that. Now it's the new monitor too. There was a rumor again, the rumors got it wrong. Oh seven K. They said it'll be a seven K monitor. I don't know why anybody want a seven K it'll be a seven K monitor. And it wasn't, it was, it was just your standard 4k monitor, but it was designed to work with the Mac studio.
Leo Laporte (00:10:17):
And that's really the bottom line I think. And we're starting to see this now leak out is that's the new iMac. They're not gonna make an all in one high-end iMac. They still have the 24 inch for people who want beauty. It's in color. It's super thin. It's gorgeous. If that's what you want in your living room, you get the 24 inch iMac. But if you want power tool, you're not, there is no new iMac pro or high end or big screened iMac. This is it. But when you pair the Mac studio, it's even got a little tray on the new monitor on top of the Mac studio monitor, they go together perfectly. But here's the, the only really interesting thing in all of this. Well, I mean, it's interesting cuz apple is just making super fast off that nobody seems to be able to keep up with that's of interest as well.
Leo Laporte (00:11:01):
But the other thing that's kind of interesting in all of this is that for some reason, they've put a iPhone chip in the Mac, monitor the Mac studio monitor as fast as an iPhone, 11 it's of a 13 bionic. Why, why is this monitoring need an iPhone inside? I think maybe is there gonna be a TV? Is it gonna be, I mean it does. Hey Schlomo, Hey, you know who, but you don't need a, a 11 or a 13 for that iPhone 11 chip for that. It does. It does the, the center stage thing where the camera zooms in on you moves around. You don't need a you don't need that fast. See process for that. There's something else they wanna do with this monitor. Why else would you put, unless you had a warehouse full of a 13 chips you couldn't sell.
Leo Laporte (00:11:49):
Maybe that's why. I don't know. I think there's something there, another secret, but we'll, we'll find out. Eighty eight, eighty eight ask Leo is the phone number. I want to talk high tech and I wanna do it with you. It's silly for me. Just sit, sit here, going on and on. Nobody wants to hear that. So give me a ring. 88, 88, ask Leo we'll talk high tech next on the tech. I Sam, will Sam coming up to the cargo? Well also you don't need it because they even said for, for use with Siri, you need a computer. So it isn't doing the Siri work. It's just doing the listening. There's more, it meets the eye in that one. Well, there's another shoe to drop unless apple just said, Hey, we got all these a thirteens, just put 'em in the monitor. I, I think they're up to, I think they they've got something else going on there. Either face ID, even that you don't need a 13, four, but you know, you need better. I think, I think it's gonna be a home kit hub maybe. And then Alex Lindsay said, you know, this is there's one step closer to that apple TV everybody's talking about. This is a faster processor than is in the apple TV, the high end apple TV. It's a faster processor than that.
Leo Laporte (00:13:11):
Yeah. It's like an iOS monitor. You should definitely call 88 80 ask Lee. Oh, you'll talk to this person right here. Our phone angel Kim sheer. Hello Kim.
Kim Schaffer (00:13:24):
Hi.
Leo Laporte (00:13:25):
Was it hard set getting up an hour earlier. Yeah, yeah,
Kim Schaffer (00:13:29):
Yeah. And you know what really sucks? What dogs don't care?
Leo Laporte (00:13:33):
You know, I was thinking that
Kim Schaffer (00:13:35):
I'm taking don't that for some reason, light clockwork gets up at 6:48 AM.
Leo Laporte (00:13:41):
Now 5 48.
Kim Schaffer (00:13:42):
He got up at 6:48 AM. Didn't matter. Yeah. It was 5:48 AM. In
Leo Laporte (00:13:47):
My mind, I was thinking that I was looking the little birds come to feed in our bird, feeders in the backyard, the little birds, no sent them the memo. Nope. That we were gonna set the clock little birds
Kim Schaffer (00:13:58):
And it was darker. So I don't know why the heck he was up,
Leo Laporte (00:14:01):
But it wasn't darker. It's the same exact as it was yesterday, he see they're going by the sun. Not by the clock.
Kim Schaffer (00:14:09):
Didn't think that there
Leo Laporte (00:14:10):
Was, we made up this thing called the clock.
Kim Schaffer (00:14:12):
I let him out in the dark. So
Leo Laporte (00:14:13):
Yeah, but it says, you know, right. 5 48 is still five 40 at sun time. It's very confusing. You know, they're not changing the clocks in in Europe till later. So now we're outta sync with the rest of the world. Again.
Kim Schaffer (00:14:26):
You mean another month or another
Leo Laporte (00:14:28):
Later this month? A couple of weeks. I can't remember. Yeah. So it's just, I, you know, stop the insanity. We
Kim Schaffer (00:14:34):
Just need to stay here. I just, this time
Leo Laporte (00:14:36):
Just need to stay. People say that that California voted, voted.
Kim Schaffer (00:14:39):
Yeah, we
Leo Laporte (00:14:40):
Voted. But you can't do that because that requires more than just us saying, Hey, we're gonna stay this time because it's our time zone is, is global. You know, that, that, that time zone we're in is not just us. It's everybody in our, in our longitude is at time zone. So you can't just, you know, say I don't want to be in our time zone. You're in it, dude. So if we, if we stuck with the time, it would be standard time, which would be bad. In fact, that's why, even though we voted for it in California, ain't gonna happen. So that's what Arizona and Hawaii are in. I don't understand how they get away with it. Well, Hawaii's a different time zone, so that's okay. They're allowed Arizona, but what did they stay with standard, right? They didn't stay with daylight saving they're mountain, whatever the mountain standard though.
Leo Laporte (00:15:32):
Right? They're not I can't keep track. Yeah. So you could stay with standard. You don't need a special rule to do that. Like Arizona does and parts of Indiana or whatever, but you could stay with your standard time, but you, I don't think you can just say, Hey, you, Hey world. We're now saving time. And that's a, what everybody wants problem is that's what they want in the summer. You don't know if you want in the winter. I don't think you want in the winter. I don't know. It's complicated. I know. I'll tell you what. Just like to not do this. I don't mind falling back, but the springing forward thing screws me up. I'm just gonna tell you, you, you want my vote for president fix this one? Yep. That's all I care about. The only issue. It's the only issue. One issue. Inflation. Don't worry about it. Warren Ukraine, who cares? Fixed daylight, saving time. And can you do something about the orbit of the moon says John, who's our space nut. Okay. Who should I talk to here? It's go to garlic country or garlic? Garlic. Capital of Gilroy, Gilroy Gilroy. Hello, Gilroy. Thank you, Kim. Hi. Hey Chris, how are you? Welcome to the show.
Caller #1 (00:16:37):
I'm doing good. Leo. we spoke back in June. I had bought a MacBook air and I was talking about dual monitors. Yes. And you helped me out with the plugable. So I wanted to thank you for that. My wife
Leo Laporte (00:16:48):
Did that work. Were you able to get two monitors working?
Caller #1 (00:16:52):
Yes, I, my ultra wide monitors working with it. Nice.
Leo Laporte (00:16:56):
Did you have to, you had to put some software on it or something?
Caller #1 (00:16:59):
Display, link,
Leo Laporte (00:17:00):
Display, link the driver. Yeah. So the, the, the original M ones, including your air didn't nominally support two monitors, but there is a way to make it work,
Caller #1 (00:17:12):
Correct? It just needs to have the, the display link docking station,
Leo Laporte (00:17:18):
Right?
Caller #1 (00:17:19):
Yeah. And then my, my wife was nine months pregnant at the time. So
Leo Laporte (00:17:23):
Congratulations. Did you, did, was it a boy?
Caller #1 (00:17:27):
Yes, he is a boy.
Leo Laporte (00:17:28):
He's a boy
Caller #1 (00:17:29):
Was seven months old on Friday.
Leo Laporte (00:17:31):
Oh, wow. Isn't it amazing. That's been seven months already and he he's a big boy. Nice.
Caller #1 (00:17:36):
It is a, lot's actually been going on in that seven months. I decided to become a small business owner and bought a farmer's insurance agency in working.
Leo Laporte (00:17:44):
Congratulations. That's awesome. Thank
Caller #1 (00:17:47):
You. So yeah.
Leo Laporte (00:17:49):
Exciting move. You know, having a kid, certainly for me, got me more serious about my career. It's like, I gotta pay for college in 18 years. I gotta get a little more serious about what I'm doing. Yeah.
Caller #1 (00:18:02):
Yeah. So I, I took over officially on the first and so still in the beginning stages and agent I bought from was in business for 45 years since like 1976.
Leo Laporte (00:18:13):
Nice established business. That's a smart way to do it. Yeah, that's good.
Caller #1 (00:18:17):
Yes. Yeah. And so she has really old paper files and you know, me watching you for 20 years and everything like that, you know, when I come down from Gil to go away from Travis air for workspace, visit my parents and everything and building computers, I wanna move things into the digital age. So I'm looking for a decent duplex scanner. We do have an EP eco tank in the office, but it's not a duplex scanner. So
Leo Laporte (00:18:44):
When you say duplex, you mean two sides at once?
Caller #1 (00:18:50):
Yes.
Leo Laporte (00:18:51):
Just to define terms. So instead of having to flip it over, which is really annoying, although some of the, some duplex scanners actually do flip it over, they just do it organically. But the best way to do it is to have two cameras, one on each side, and then you can scan both sides at once. EPON does make a scanner called the fast photo. It's expensive for this reason that we'll do that, scan both sides. I have that. And it's, you know, they call it the fast photo cuz they, you know, they call it a photo scanning system. The reason it's got both sides, it'll scan the back. So if you've written notes on your prints and stuff, but it turns out the feeder, the sheet figure is very good and then it holds regular paper. And so it's a regular scanner as well.
Leo Laporte (00:19:35):
It's also high speed, which you kind of need for duplex cuz otherwise it would take TWiTce as long. You don't want that. Right. So Epton does make a few duplexes. I think they're very good. I like the fast photo, 88, 88 ask Leo am coming up. Let me see if I can find you a review PC mag. You know, I don't, I can't review all of these there's too many of them. Ah, yes. Right. Let's see PC magazine, which usually does the printer reviews and the scanner reviews. Let me see if they break, get down by by duplex. I've been very happy with the fast photo. I mean, that thing is amazing, but maybe that's, but it's like 600, 700 bucks. It's very expensive. So maybe there's a better way to do duplex for less. You, cause that would be a lot faster. What is this? Fuji Fujitsu scan snap. It's 400 bucks. It has it looks like it might be duplex. Let me see if it is
Leo Laporte (00:20:44):
Okay. Yeah. They really, they really ought to be clear anybody in the chat room have a recommendation. Oh Irvine. Rob has one. Irvine, is this a duplex? Like he put one thing in and it'll scan both sides. One on one pass. He's got, he's got one of these. He says, I love it. I love it. PC magazine pick. But I'm trying to figure out if it's duplex. It was very fast 40 pages a minute. Wow. Wow. Wow. or you can get the 500, which is 50, 30 pages a minute. See, that seems like that by itself with a sheet feeder. Of course. And that's kind of what the fast photo does. I'm it looks so much like the fast photo I'm gonna guess. Yeah. It's duplex. I'm gonna guess it's probably the same, you know, probably Epson gets it from Fujitsu would be my guess.
Leo Laporte (00:21:38):
So and PC magazine loves it. The Fujitsu scan snap and there's the 500 or the 600, but there's super fast duplex. And, and, and, and you know, you can kind of tell when you look at 'em cause they got a sheet feeder, right. And, and that kind of implies well, you, you know, cuz duplex, if you put, so what you put one thing in and it scans both sides. No big deal. The idea is you're gonna scam both sides as you go. The 600 is $419 right now, PC Mac. Hmm. This is weird. It looks like the 500 is more expensive. Maybe cuz it's older and then they also have a 300 is less expensive. I don't know if that's duplex, but I would. Yeah. Irvine. Rob says it scans to other PCs network. Great software says, Dan boy, the Char's going crazy.
Leo Laporte (00:22:24):
They love this scan, this scan snap. So in fact now it makes me wanna, I one sold Fujitsu scan, snap IX, 1600 is right now $419 at Amazon. It is expensive, but I think that's, that's in the nature of things for a duplex. Cause you have to have cameras on both sides. This might flip it over. I don't know. Does it flip it over Irvine Rob? I don't think at that speed. It could, it, it has to be doing both sides at once. Right? One past duplex color scanner. EPON has a clearance sale right now on the fast photo. Oh, oh. Or the Epson ES 400 now down to 3 29. Yeah. TWiTst to Mr. Says there are two sensors. So does Irvine Rob on this, on the Fujitsu. I think the Fujitsu looks like the right one. I'll put a link in the show notes to PC magazine. It's their, it says reader favorite and editor's choice. So I think PC magazine likes it a lot. Xerox has a duplex scanner for, or 2 59, the Xerox duplex combo scanner. That's also an interest trace. You know, if you look at that article, I think it's gonna give you some ideas of the pros and cons. Congratulations on the baby. What's his name?
Caller #1 (00:23:41):
His name is Dylan Alexander. Oh, so yeah.
Leo Laporte (00:23:45):
Isn't it interesting how it kind of spurs you to go, oh I gotta, I gotta get grow up here. I gotta buy. I gotta,
Caller #1 (00:23:53):
I was, I was definitely content being a district life manager for farmers insurance in south San Jose. But yes,
Leo Laporte (00:24:00):
This, oh, this is perfect. So it's already a business, you know? Well, Yes. Perfect. Absolutely perfect.
Caller #1 (00:24:06):
So, and if you need, if you need some insurance, let me know.
Leo Laporte (00:24:10):
I will. Thank you, Chris. Always, always be selling, always be closing, right? Absolutely. Always be closing. Thanks Chris. Have a great day.
Caller #1 (00:24:21):
I appreciate it.
Leo Laporte (00:24:23):
Leo Laporte tech guy, Sam. Well, Sam is here. Our car guy. We're gonna talk cars, but before we do the chat room went crazy. When I mentioned the Fujitsu scan, snap scanner, duplex scanner they all love it. They said the best software works very well in an office. It sat and by the way, PC magazine gave it a very high and in fact said it's their it's their editor's choice. So I think we've converged mentioned that the fast photo, which is good, like this looks a lot like a fast photo. So I wonder if it might even be the same guts as the fast photo Fujitsu's scan snap for duplex two-sided scanning. Sam has a beautiful auto behind him, a lemon yellow Volkswagen. I could tell from the VW on the front, but this is a special kind of Volkswagen.
Sam Abuelsamid (00:25:17):
This is after many, many, many, many years and multiple different concepts that have been shown by VW over the last 20 years. It's finally the return, the classic bus.
Leo Laporte (00:25:29):
Oh my gosh. I love it. I always wanted a VW bus cuz that's how I'm an old hippie.
Sam Abuelsamid (00:25:34):
Yeah. Well this is this, this is this is probably the ultimate hippie. It's the the VW ID buzz is what it's called. And that ID is your clue that this is a lack trick. That's the, that's the branding that VWs using on all their, all their electric models. So this is based on the same platform as the VW ID three and the ID four and other upcoming electric Volkswagens. So that means it's got the battery under the floor. So you got a nice flat floor throughout the thing. Wheels are pushed out to the owners, just like the original microbus it's rear wheel drive. But instead of a flat four cylinder air cooled engine at the back, you've got a little electric motor back there. That's pushing it around
Leo Laporte (00:26:19):
A different kind of sewing machine.
Sam Abuelsamid (00:26:21):
Yeah. Very different kind of
Leo Laporte (00:26:25):
You know, there's a lot of nostalgia for this, but you think it would be a good vehicle?
Sam Abuelsamid (00:26:30):
Oh yeah. I think it's gonna be fantastic. And you know, I know a few people that have that got a chance to drive a prototype in Hamburg about a month or so ago before they officially unveiled it this past week. And
Leo Laporte (00:26:43):
Miriam ARD was able to see that south by Southwest in Austin this week.
Sam Abuelsamid (00:26:47):
Yeah. They're, they're doing demo rides this week in Austin.
Leo Laporte (00:26:50):
It's fun cuz they have it parked next to the original VW bus. Yep. So it's kind of fun to see the two of them side by side, it looks like I thought it first looked a little smaller, but it's the same, it's roughly the same size as the original.
Sam Abuelsamid (00:27:03):
Yeah. It's it's, it's actually pretty close to the same size, you know, mini vans have gotten a lot bigger over the years.
Leo Laporte (00:27:08):
That's probably why, right? Yeah. Yeah.
Sam Abuelsamid (00:27:11):
This is, this is actually pretty close in size to the original bus. The, the original VW type two. But this is not the version we're getting here in north America. This version is for Europe, so this is a shorter, we base two row five passenger model. Okay. here we will get a slightly longer version. Oh. With three rows of seats. Oh good. So it's, it's closer to size, more competitive with the likes of the Chrysler Pacifica. The Kia carnival Toyota Toyota Sienna and Honda. Odysey
Leo Laporte (00:27:40):
One of the things the buses has is hums in the middle for the wheel. We Wells you don't, you're not gonna worry about that in these because of the battery it's flat and the wheels are moved down a little bit.
Sam Abuelsamid (00:27:50):
Well, the, the hump, the hump in the in the, in, you know, in the the middle of the old bus, the
Leo Laporte (00:27:56):
Transmission,
Sam Abuelsamid (00:27:57):
Or, well, you had, you had the engine in the transmission at the back, so you had that hump at the back, right. And then up the front, you were actually, she's sitting on top of the wheels cuz it was, you know, a cab forward set. So you were actually sitting in front of the front wheels on that one, you know, that's, that's no longer, you know, anything that can pass any kind of crash standards. So the, the now, you know, they've pushed the wheels out to the corners. So you got a long wheel base, lots of room inside and you're sitting behind in the front
Leo Laporte (00:28:25):
Axle. So it's a little safer, I, those SN noses make me nervous cuz I feel like I'm right in the front, like I'm riding on front of the, of the
Sam Abuelsamid (00:28:32):
Yeah, no, you're, you're still sitting back far enough back and you know, these have to pass the same crash standards as, as every other modern vehicle. And actually because the wheels are pushed out to the corners, the, the toughest crash require arm is what they call small offset rigid barrier test. Yeah. which kind of simulates what you, what is actually a very common kind of scenario in the real world, you know, where you got oncoming vehicles in opposite directions, one kind of swerves over the center of the road and you don't have a straight head on crash, but you have a partial overlap. That's, that's what this test does. And not, it's actually a really hard test to, to provide passenger protection from. And so the you know, this has gotta pass that, that new small offset crash test and pushing the wheels out to the corners like that actually makes it easier because the, the problem with that test is older vehicles. Often the wheels will intrude into the passenger compartment and break legs and, and other, other bad things. And so having the wheels pushed out to the corners like that, it gives them more room to get it. So that in that kind of a crash, the wheels will actually move out and back around the passenger compartment.
Leo Laporte (00:29:45):
Nice. I mean, not nice cuz you don't want to have that happen, but well,
Sam Abuelsamid (00:29:49):
I mean it's, it's better to, you know, if that, if you get, if you're in that kind of crash, it's better for that to happen than for it to come into
Leo Laporte (00:29:55):
The Don eat the wheels. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That wouldn't be any fun. What is the purpose of this form factor? Can you take the seats out and make it be kind of a cargo van camping it,
Sam Abuelsamid (00:30:07):
Yeah, you can take the seats out. In fact in Europe they're even off, they're even selling it as a cargo van for small businesses to use, they're not gonna sell the cargo van version here in north America because of the dreaded chicken tax which puts an extra 25% a tariff on imported trucks. But we will get,
Leo Laporte (00:30:25):
Why do they call that the chicken tax?
Sam Abuelsamid (00:30:27):
It's a long story and I'll, I'll explain it during the break. Okay. But
Leo Laporte (00:30:31):
Yeah. It's okay. Leo we'll explain later. So when will this be available in the us? I, I think this is the cutest little thing
Sam Abuelsamid (00:30:38):
It's coming here in 2024. So if you're in, you'll be able to get it this late the summer. Go, they start taking orders in may goes on sale late summer. And then it'll be here in 2024, the longer wheel base
Leo Laporte (00:30:51):
Version. I'm thinking for me, it might be, you know, I, my lease runs out on my Mustang Mae that at that time I thought it might be, this
Sam Abuelsamid (00:30:57):
Would be a good replacement,
Leo Laporte (00:30:58):
Good replacement because we were thinking they're pick on something. Oh, they're doing
Sam Abuelsamid (00:31:02):
Well. They're doing a California camper version too with the popup, like the old west FA campers.
Leo Laporte (00:31:07):
Oh, those are so fun. It's just nostalgia really for me. Yeah. But you think this is pretty practical and it'll be a good vehicle. What's the absolutely what's the mileage
Sam Abuelsamid (00:31:16):
Doors on both sides. They, they haven't said yet, but it should be probably somewhere between 250 and 300 miles. So the us version, because it's longer, I think they might put a larger battery, bigger battery. So it could, could do even better
Leo Laporte (00:31:28):
Is the whole bottom a battery. Yeah. Okay. Yep.
Sam Abuelsamid (00:31:31):
Right. Everything between the axles is the battery. You
Leo Laporte (00:31:33):
Know, that's actually a good thing for drivability cuz it gives you a very low center of gravity. It makes it very stable. It does. That was always, I'll never forget driving a VW bus bridge top.
Sam Abuelsamid (00:31:44):
It
Leo Laporte (00:31:44):
It a little scary.
Sam Abuelsamid (00:31:49):
Hey before we run outta time I want give a plug for something I'm gonna be doing this week. I'm actually I'm gonna be at south by Southwest this week for the first time, my first time. Oh,
Leo Laporte (00:31:58):
You're gonna love it. It's so much fun and they're back and they had to cancel a couple of them because of COVID. So
Sam Abuelsamid (00:32:04):
I've been, I've been invited to interview Peter Rollon on stage at the convention center on Thursday afternoon. Peter is the CEO and CTO of lucid motors.
Leo Laporte (00:32:14):
Oh, that'll be interesting.
Sam Abuelsamid (00:32:16):
So
Leo Laporte (00:32:17):
Now do I have to be at south by Southwest to see this? Or will they scream it or
Sam Abuelsamid (00:32:20):
Anything? There's they're they're doing south. So by, as hybrid this year. So it is both online and in person. So if you're, if you're attending online, you can see it online as well. And Peter, in addition to currently, you know, running lucid motors his previous job before that is he was the chief engineer on the Tesla model. S so I get a whole hour on stage with Peter to ask him all kinds of questions. So if you are in Austin on Thursday attending south by Southwest, please come by the convention center the main stage there. And I will be, I'll be talking with Peter Rawson at one 30 central standard time.
Leo Laporte (00:32:58):
Nice. My friend Amy Webb is speaking right now with our emerging tech trend report. Neil Stevenson is gonna be back doing his traditional keynote. Some of these things will be free. Like you can watch Beck for free, but then there's also an online pass. And I think your talk, you have to have the online. Yeah.
Sam Abuelsamid (00:33:16):
Yeah. You'll have to have a pass to see mine. Yeah.
Leo Laporte (00:33:18):
South by is back. I'm so glad. S S SX S w.com and Sam. I'm glad you're down there. Have a great time in Austin. I know you will. Ghouse insights is his employer. He's a principal researcher there and don't forget the wheel bearings podcast. Le Laporte The Tech Guy. Oh man. I'm jealous. Now. I want to go. That's fun. I love south bay.
Sam Abuelsamid (00:33:45):
It's not too late.
Leo Laporte (00:33:46):
No, I guess not. It's just kind of kicking off today. Really?
Sam Abuelsamid (00:33:50):
I started on Friday,
Leo Laporte (00:33:51):
Friday. Okay.
Sam Abuelsamid (00:33:52):
Yeah. So my, my my session with Peter will be on Thursday afternoon.
Leo Laporte (00:33:57):
Nice. That'll be interesting. What are you gonna ask him?
Sam Abuelsamid (00:34:01):
Oh, I've got a whole list of questions to talk about you know, talk about, you know what lucid is doing. You know, what kinda, what their overall strategy is. Talk about. That's,
Leo Laporte (00:34:12):
That's the other one. I wouldn't mind having listed. I, but I think those will be more expensive than the buzz.
Sam Abuelsamid (00:34:18):
Yeah. although there there's a cheaper verse of it coming next year
Leo Laporte (00:34:23):
I'm gonna have a lot of choices, 20, 24. It's got, yeah, yeah,
Sam Abuelsamid (00:34:27):
Yeah. There would be plenty of shoes from John
Leo Laporte (00:34:29):
Wants me to get an electric land Rover.
Sam Abuelsamid (00:34:32):
Those, those will be a few more years yet before those show up. But yeah, we'll be talking about their focus on efficiency, energy efficiency, why that's so important for an EV and all, all kinds of stuff. I've got a whole long list of questions for him. Nice. you know, kinda what, what is, what is the company's long term strategy and maybe we'll even get him to spill little tea gossip about about Elon.
Leo Laporte (00:34:56):
Nice. What does he know about, did he work for
Sam Abuelsamid (00:34:59):
Well he, yeah, he was the chief engineer on the most.
Leo Laporte (00:35:01):
Oh, oh, that should be interesting.
Sam Abuelsamid (00:35:06):
Yeah. He's, he's responsible for what the model S became.
Leo Laporte (00:35:09):
Yeah. Well, that'll be really interesting.
Sam Abuelsamid (00:35:12):
Yeah. So it should be fun. I've, I've talked to Peter on several occasions before. I did a panel with him at a conference a few years ago and first met him back in 20 and all was a really interesting guy, actually. Lucid just launched a new YouTube series called a YouTube lucid tech talks. And if you want to do a deep dive on all geeky things related to EVs, you should check this out. I will find the link and, and send it to you. I'll put it in the chat. The first episode is like 35 minutes long going into batteries and why they size the batteries the way they did. And, and he he's his, the table that he is standing at, you know, is, is a whiteboard. And he's got samples of the batteries and cells and modules, and he's writing out equations going through the math, showing you how they figured out what they wanted to do on the, on the lucid air. And it it's, it's great, you know, for this audience. I think the, you should definitely check it out. It's it's a lot of fun. Nice,
Sam Abuelsamid (00:36:16):
Nice.
Leo Laporte (00:36:18):
I'm gonna have, I'm gonna have a lot of choices in 2024. I don't know what I'm gonna oh
Sam Abuelsamid (00:36:21):
Yeah. I'm do well. As a, you know, last year as of last fall, there were 20 different EV name plates available for sale in the us. By the end of this year, there'll be 40. Wow. By the end of next year, it'll be probably close to double that again. So, so
Leo Laporte (00:36:35):
Really I'll have the choice to anything. It'll be more like buying a regular vehicle where I, I can choose what I want.
Sam Abuelsamid (00:36:39):
Exactly. Yeah. You're gonna, you're gonna have stuff at all. Different price points, different sizes, different different body styles and different different types of
Leo Laporte (00:36:47):
Vehicles. We, we didn't get to the chicken tax. And then I also was gonna ask you, Ford is announced that they're gonna start shipping vehicles missing some chips, which they'll send to the dealers later.
Sam Abuelsamid (00:36:56):
Yeah. Well, GM's you been doing this for a while?
Leo Laporte (00:36:59):
Yeah, I know they didn't have seat warmers. Some of the GM vehicles. Yeah.
Sam Abuelsamid (00:37:03):
So I'll, I can talk about the chicken tax in the next segment. Okay.
Leo Laporte (00:37:09):
And I will be asking, of course, for your advice in about two years on what to do, I love my ma there's nothing wrong with it. So it's a, a good choice, but it's a lease. So part of the reason we lease it is so I can try other vehicles.
Sam Abuelsamid (00:37:23):
Well, I'm glad, I'm glad, I'm glad it worked out well for you so far.
Leo Laporte (00:37:26):
I think the buzz would be a good
Sam Abuelsamid (00:37:28):
Cause we need, yeah, we
Leo Laporte (00:37:29):
Need a car. Eventually. It's gonna be our only vehicle. And then we need a cargo, you know, vehicle as well.
Sam Abuelsamid (00:37:36):
Yep. Well, the, the buzz would be great for that. You, because it's a van, so you can fold the seats down, take 'em out, use it for all kinds of stuff. Right,
Leo Laporte (00:37:44):
Right.
Sam Abuelsamid (00:37:45):
And if you get the camper, you can, you know, camp in it.
Leo Laporte (00:37:49):
Oh, all right. Talking a few. All right. The Tech Guy show brought to you today. Bye. Zip recruiter. Oh you. Yes. I saw, I saw a a post talking about employees and how to keep 'em happy. 90% of employers are saying, you look, retention's important, right? You train somebody, you get 'em fit into your company. You want to keep 'em. 90% of employers are working on enhancing the employee experience in 2022. I think that's a really good thing. We, you know, we've got better benefits for our employees this year. We've got a four day work week, a month of vacation time, that kind of thing. But even just using, you know, making your employees part of the process, asking 'em questions can make a big difference, more learning opportunities for employees, you know, funding their education, more flexible work schedules just, you know, considering their feelings.
Leo Laporte (00:38:53):
Ziprecruiter says, this is all important. And if it's time to add employees, they want you to know ZipRecruiter has the technology that help you find the right people for your team fast. Right now you can try ZipRecruiter free at ziprecruiter.com/tech guy. Ziprecruiter makes it so easy to post you. Put it up on recruiter goes to a hundred plus job boards and social networks and so forth. So you cast the widest possible net, but ZipRecruiter does something unique. That's wonderful. They have I think a current count, a million current resumes in their database cuz employees come to ZipRecruiter to look for work and they will go through those resumes, match them to the job opening you've got. And if there's a good match, they will tell you, Hey, you should ask this guy to apply. He's gonna be good. They use their technology to find and match the right candidates up with your job and then present those candidates to you.
Leo Laporte (00:39:46):
And by the way, we know when you invite a candidate to apply to a job they're flattered, they're much more likely to apply. Show up for the interviews to, to take the job. They're gonna be a better employee. It's a great way to encourage people to apply faster. Just one of many reasons. Ziprecruiter's the number one rated hiring site in the us. That's from G2 ratings, by the way, in fact, ZipRecruiter's technology is so effective that four out of five employees who post on ZipRecruiter get a quality candidate within a first day in our experience, we've used zip recruiter many times it's often within the first hour people go, oh yeah, it's incredible. Find the right employees for your workplace right now with zip recruiter, try it free our special address. Make sure you use this now. Ziprecruiter.Com/Tech guy. Please use that. So they know you saw it here. Ziprecruiter.Com com slash T E C H G U Y. Ziprecruiter. The smartest way to hire. Thank you, ZipRecruiter. It's right. Leo Laporte The Tech Guy, 88 88. Ask Leo, Doug on the line from St. Louis, Missouri. Hello, Doug.
Caller #2 (00:40:55):
Hello, Leo. How are you today? Hi,
Leo Laporte (00:40:57):
Am great. Welcome. What's up?
Caller #2 (00:41:02):
Well I'm wanting to get a smart watch and I was just kinda wanting to know what your opinion is on the, the tick watches or if you ever heard of them or, or
Leo Laporte (00:41:13):
So really the, when you get a smart watch, you're really gonna be looking at I think what phone you're gonna use. So if you're gonna use an iPhone, you're gonna get a an apple you know, watch obviously, if you're an Android, then that is a little broader range of choices. So this is, this tick watch is from M O B V O i.com. And it's like you know, it's like the, you know, the Fitbit or the, you know, the other the Garin. I don't have any direct experience with it. So I can't give you an exact you know input it again. It would kind of work with an iPhone cuz it's, it's, Google's wear OS, but it would work best with an Android device. So if you're an Android user, then that's the whole world opens up cuz there's Samsung watches. There's fossil makes Android wear watches. Google we're pretty sure is gonna at some point in the next few months and has their own smart watch. This one looks pretty cool, but I don't know anybody who has one. So I guess I'm gonna have to get one one of the advantages is they make one with GPS. Are you a runner?
Caller #2 (00:42:27):
No, but I, I do like that feature yeah, but just have, you know,
Leo Laporte (00:42:32):
So neither the app watch Northern Samsung watch have GPS built in, they rely on the phone for location tracking, but if you wanna run or, or, you know, if you pay attention to where you're going, maybe a hiker using Strava or something like that. Yeah. Having a builtin GPS in the watch is great. Now that's gonna affect battery life obviously. And it's gonna make the watch bigger. They have a a hundred dollars ver it's the prices are low on these things, which is kind of interesting. They have a hundred dollars version that looks just like an apple watch. The GPS are gonna cost you a little bit more. Yeah, but they, yeah. What, what would you use a smart watch for? Why, why do you want a smart watch?
Caller #2 (00:43:13):
Well just so I don't have to dig my phone outta my pocket.
Leo Laporte (00:43:16):
So it's the alerts. Yeah. So there are various reasons people wear a smart watch. One of them is notifications. The smart watch is kind of like a side car on a motorcycle. It doesn't do everything. The motorcycle does. It needs the motorcycle, but if you want the notifications so you don't have to pull out your phone. Some people actually use these smart watches to see what time it is. That's rare, but that's another feature. And you wanna look for some, if that's the case, you wanna look for an always on capability and then, then really the issue then becomes you have things like GPS, always on notifications is what kind of battery life are you gonna get? And I don't know what the tick watch. Let me just see.
Caller #2 (00:43:53):
It's supposed to be pretty good. Always on, you can do always on, plus it has a secondary display where it's just kind of a,
Leo Laporte (00:44:01):
That's the watch part. Yeah.
Caller #2 (00:44:03):
All the fancy stuff, you know?
Leo Laporte (00:44:05):
Yeah. Low kind of a low power version of it. That's what, you know, the other thing about a lot of these watches, if you use 'em for fitness is when they're doing the fitness tracking often they're includes heart rate that re suddenly the battery life goes way down. You know? My, my wife who is much fitter than I doesn't get nearly the battery life on our apple watch that I do because she's using, she's tracking her, her exercise. So that's another thing to keep in mind. So there's notifications, we, we mentioned health, which is a big one activity monitoring. Some of these will coach you through workouts, things like that. There's also, let's not forget you can use these for payments, which is I use my apple watch all the time. Now COVID really kind of propelled that. Cause I didn't wanna touch anything.
Leo Laporte (00:44:51):
I didn't want to take out money. They didn't want my money or my credit card and just the ability. And now I just use it everywhere. It's like, oh good. I'll just use my apple watch. Everybody's got that. If it supports touchless payments, that is definitely a a, a plus. Now we do have one guy just one in the chat room who has a tick watch wizard lane. He says terrible experience for him. It was awful. He had the S two. Now it might have gotten better. He said two little Rams, slow buggy, unreadable screen, and sunlight, bad battery life. On the other hand, Aaron Kay lap in the chat room says I have a tick watch. And I really like it. And may come down to which model you get. He had the S two, which was kind of the lower end tick watch. So I can't, yeah,
Caller #2 (00:45:39):
I was looking at the newer
Leo Laporte (00:45:41):
One. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. The S two's the older model. So they may have gotten back. I just don't know this company. They make a variety of things, including a, a T. And they're, they're an interesting business Mobo Mobvoi, Mobvoi, Mobvoi Mobvoi I wonder, I wonder who they are and where they're, where they're from. They also make earbuds and a $449 treadmill, which is a very inexpensive treadmill. I don't, I don't don't know anything about 'em so I don't know. And I haven't used this, an AI company focusing on advanced voice interaction and hardware, software integration. They've been around since 2012. That's a good sign. Ex Googler JFE Lee with the am J JFE with the aim to, okay. So it's the only firm in China equipped with its own Chinese voice recognition, semantic analysis, blah, blah, blah. So they are a not surprising a Chinese company. They make 'em in China, but so does, so does everybody, right? That's not a knock in any way. Looks like they're based in Hong Kong. So so Aaron kLab doesn't remember which model he says, it's based on where OS says are all the current models. I, you know, if you're, so you're an Android user, I would guess. Yeah.
Caller #2 (00:47:06):
Yeah. I have a Galaxys 10 plus. Yeah.
Leo Laporte (00:47:08):
I have to say I've been very impressed. And have, I do have this Samsung new Samsung gear watch and it's very nice. I really like it. And it will do all those notifications. One of the things I like about the, the Samsung gears, especially the one I have the newest one is it has a TWiTst, a rotating bezel, which is a very nice control feature. I wouldn't,
Caller #2 (00:47:32):
Yeah. I saw that. I wish the, the bot wish the tick watch had that, that, that would be,
Leo Laporte (00:47:36):
It's a very nice very nice feature. So you might, I mean that, you know, that's what I have the watch for classic. You might be comparing it to the watch for classic. I think it's a good looking watch, not the best looking band. I wish they had you know, one of the things apple did that was brilliant was make it really easy to change the bands. And so you accessorize the apple watch by having more than one band and Apple's smart cause they've charged a lot for their bands, make a lot of money. I would say, you know, not having any experience with the tick watch. But, but I do have experience with the gal galaxy watch several galaxy watches. I had a S3 frontier. Now I have the watch for classic, really do a good job, the heart. Rate's excellent.
Leo Laporte (00:48:16):
That's another thing to consider apple, I think of all of the activity, monitors has the best heart rate, maybe Garin, but apples could done a very good job using AI to make sure that their heart rate really works well in a variety of circumstances. I think both the Samsung and apple are smart about what you're doing. They'll say, Hey, it looks like you're rowing or you're taking a walk as for notifications. They all work about the same. The nice thing about that bezel on the Samsung is that's an easy way to get to the notifications is to rotate the bezel. You just turn a little bit counterclockwise or actually clockwise, and there is there's all your notifications. So I don't know, I don't know anything about the tick watch, but you've got two people who have 'em one likes it one doesn't
Caller #2 (00:49:06):
So, so
Leo Laporte (00:49:08):
I don't, I don't know. Apparently Aaron says our Android show did review it all about Android sw.tv/aa did review it a couple of weeks ago. So you might take a look at that. Aaron has the tick watch pro three with GPS. So that's interesting. Yeah. That's yeah. That's interesting. That seems to be the, you would probably get right the higher end with GPS. I love GPS. I wish
Caller #2 (00:49:36):
$99.
Leo Laporte (00:49:37):
Yeah. That could be good or bad.
Caller #2 (00:49:41):
Right, right. You know
Leo Laporte (00:49:44):
Great price. Yeah. I would probably read more reviews if possible, you know? I don't know anything about it though, but thank you for calling. Keep watching, keep listening. Chatroom has a couple of opinions and I'll keep looking for more. Maybe get a review from somebody Leo Laporte The Tech Guy Don't given my awful support, experie, this wizard link making you pay for returns, taking ages. If the caller does go with a tick watch, don't buy direct from Mobvoi unless you're close to Hong Kong, I suppose. Okay. That's good to know as well. All right, Sam, guess who it's you?
Sam Abuelsamid (00:50:27):
Ah,
Leo Laporte (00:50:28):
Chicken.
Sam Abuelsamid (00:50:29):
Yeah. Well, before, before that one, one more thing. The Invidia GTCs coming up week after. Oh
Leo Laporte (00:50:35):
Yeah. I wonder if we should stream
Sam Abuelsamid (00:50:36):
That. Not this week, but next week.
Leo Laporte (00:50:37):
Yeah. Should we stream you and do what we did last year?
Sam Abuelsamid (00:50:39):
Possibly I, I'm not sure yet. I know there's gonna be some interesting announcements. I haven't been briefed yet. But the, the keynote Jensen W's keynote is on March 22nd at 8:00 AM Pacific. Oh I know it's before your, before
Leo Laporte (00:50:55):
Your I'm so lazy. I am so lazy. 8:00 AM, March 22nd is a Tuesday. Yeah. So that is right where iOS today is. I think we're gonna pass this year, I think. Okay.
Sam Abuelsamid (00:51:07):
No worries.
Leo Laporte (00:51:08):
I'll let you know, let me talk to the editorial team and see if they want to, if they think we should do it. If, if they decide we wanna do it, then I will. Of course it will do it with you. I wouldn't wanna do it with anyone else.
Sam Abuelsamid (00:51:21):
Okay. I'll be watching it anyways.
Leo Laporte (00:51:22):
Yeah. Yeah. It might be worth watching. It was fun doing it last year, especially after we found out the Jensen was digitized for some of it. Yeah, that's true. That's pretty wild. All right. I'm gonna get a cup of coffee tax. Yes, I'll be listening then.
Sam Abuelsamid (00:51:36):
So, okay. So the here, the, the deal on the chicken tax, it was imposed by president Johnson in 1964 in response to a tariff imposed European countries on us chicken imports. American farmers were dumping chicken in the European market. And so west Germany and other European countries imposed a hefty tariff on us chicken imports. So in response president London, John, and imposed a, a countervailing tariff on a variety of products, including potato starch. And what else here? Potato starch and, and and trucks, imported trucks. It was the, the big thing. That's the only one of those tariffs that is still in place. The other stuff is long since been dropped or, or lowered. And there's a 25% tariff on imported trucks, which is one of the reasons why, for example, when Japanese auto makers started ramping up sales of pickup trucks in the us market one of the first vehicles that they started assembling in the us was pick cup trucks.
Sam Abuelsamid (00:52:50):
Nissan did it with their, their little compact pickup trucks in the 1980s. Toyota did it with the Tacoma and now with the Tundra Honda does it with the the Ridge line. And so they, they all these are all built domestically because otherwise they would have to pay a 25% import tax. And then, and this has led to some peculiar business policy decisions over the years. Like for example back in 2010, when Ford first started importing the transit connect, which is their compact van to the us market, they had been selling it in Europe for a long time. They started bringing it to the us market and the, the previous gen version was built in Turkey. The current one is built in Spain. They actually bring them in the, the tax only applies to trucks used for cargo.
Sam Abuelsamid (00:53:49):
They're primarily for cargo so pickup trucks, cargo delivery, vans, that sort of thing. When when Ford started bringing the transit connect to the us, they imported all of them as passenger vans that had windows all around and, and seat saw around. And then at the port, after they had cleared customs, they were sent to a special facility, a, a, a special partial disassembly facility where they took off the sliding doors with the windows ripped out the seats and much of the interior and installed panels where the windows were before and to, to create the cargo van versions. And the other parts were thrown away the seats, and it seems kind of wasteful, but compared to the 25% tax, it was a lot cheaper. So this is why VW has decided not to bring the car, the ID buzz cargo van to the us market because they would have to pay that 25% chicken tax.
Sam Abuelsamid (00:54:51):
Okay. So other other things about the ID buzz the one of the interesting features that it has is bidirectional charging capability. So this is something that is coming to more and more vehicles now and actual, sure. There was an announcement earlier this week from PG and E and general motors and then later forward was added to that as well that they're gonna start bidirectional charging pilot program this this summer, and then in with lab testing this summer and then bring consumers into the pilot program in the fall. And the idea here is you've got this big battery in your EV that you know, during times when there's high demand or if there's power outage or whatever, you should be able to use some of that power, power, your house, and actually your house surprisingly enough takes generally takes a lot less power than your your vehicle does. So you know, a vehicle like the ID buzz with a 78 kilowat hour battery pack can actually power your house for, for at least a couple of days for
Leo Laporte (00:56:00):
Is everything showing that in their ad for the lightning, for,
Sam Abuelsamid (00:56:02):
Yeah. The F-150 lightning one, the, so you could do it
Leo Laporte (00:56:06):
With, if you just had an alternator, right?
Sam Abuelsamid (00:56:09):
Yeah. An inverter
Leo Laporte (00:56:10):
Inverter, I mean,
Sam Abuelsamid (00:56:11):
Right. And that's, that's what Ford is doing. Ford is partnering with Sunrun, the solar installer. And so the, the vehicles are all equipped with the bidirectional charging capability so they can put power out as well. But you have to get this inverter from Sunrun installed. So it's got a transfer switch and see, we had
Leo Laporte (00:56:30):
Two Tesla power walls, and those are basically old Tesla batteries, I think. Right.
Sam Abuelsamid (00:56:36):
Well, they're, they originally, they were old Tesla batteries. Now they're made from new cells cause they use the different, they use different cells now from the ones that are into cars.
Leo Laporte (00:56:44):
We have two of them. So the idea
Sam Abuelsamid (00:56:46):
Beings, that's only 14, that's only 14 kilowat hours. Oh,
Leo Laporte (00:56:49):
Is that all really? Oh,
Sam Abuelsamid (00:56:51):
Okay. Yeah. They're only seven kilowat hours each, but that's enough to keep you going through the night, at least. Right.
Leo Laporte (00:56:57):
And we have the solar panels, which could in theory charge 'em during the day and then
Sam Abuelsamid (00:57:00):
Yep. And, but you know, so the, the, the system that Ford is selling the intelligent power backup is designed to automat the inverter automatically detects if the power goes out and flips the transfer switch. So it cuts off the circuits of your house.
Leo Laporte (00:57:16):
That's exactly what the,
Sam Abuelsamid (00:57:18):
So it takes you off the grid. Yeah. And then it draws power from the truck and at, you know, full, you know, like if you're, if everything in your house is running, you know, it should be able to run most houses for at least three days. Wow. And if you start turning stuff off it can actually go, you know, if you start, you know, turning off unnecessary stuff, right. You could power your house for up to 10 days.
Leo Laporte (00:57:40):
The number one thing we'd need to run is the well, and that, unfortunately, because it takes a lot of cranking power cause it's a pump.
Sam Abuelsamid (00:57:47):
Yeah. But so the, the thing, the thing with this PG and E program that is slightly different, that the Ford system is completely controlled locally at your house. What they're also incorporating with PG and E is what they call demand response so that they can proactively, you know, if they're seeing, you know, really high demand for power, instead of doing these rolling blackouts that they've been doing for the last several years and turning off power to people's homes, you know, within a whole area for some number of hours or days they are instead for anybody that's in enrolled in the demand response program, they can, you know, they do this for things like air conditioning. It can turn off your air conditioning remotely to reduce power consumption.
Leo Laporte (00:58:30):
Oh, that's interesting. Now,
Sam Abuelsamid (00:58:32):
Now with EVs, they can control the smart inverter remotely as well, so that, you know, if they, if they need to reduce the load on, I
Leo Laporte (00:58:40):
Don't want PG any involved in my power in any way, shape or form, these guys are crooks, but,
Sam Abuelsamid (00:58:46):
Well that's, anyway, that's a whole other conversation.
Leo Laporte (00:58:47):
The power company may not be PG in your there.
Sam Abuelsamid (00:58:50):
Yeah. Any, any utility could do this. Right. And so they can one of the reasons
Leo Laporte (00:58:55):
We have solar and power walls is so we don't have PG involved. So are all electric vehicles eventually gonna be able
Sam Abuelsamid (00:59:03):
To do this? Yeah. Eventually they, they should all be able to do
Leo Laporte (00:59:06):
This. So it sounds like I should get the next one. I should get an inverter. Yeah. And in, in conjunction with my power walls, obviously.
Sam Abuelsamid (00:59:15):
Yeah. because then you can use the power that's in your, in your batteries of, of your vehicles. Right. Cause they're gonna be considerably larger than your power wall. There's considerably higher.
Leo Laporte (00:59:23):
I didn't realize that. Yeah, you're right though. They're not very, I think I have the power wall too, so it's a little more power, but still,
Sam Abuelsamid (00:59:28):
Yeah. So that's like 13, I think. The but the, the the lightning for example has 131 kilowat hours.
Leo Laporte (00:59:37):
Yeah. Huge.
Sam Abuelsamid (00:59:38):
So huge. You, it can, it can power your house in
Leo Laporte (00:59:40):
My, for has 88. So yeah. That's a big difference. Yeah. Yep. Sam have a great week. I love you, man. It's great to see you. And we'll talk next week. All right. Take care. Bye. I got a cup of coffee.
Leo Laporte (01:00:01):
Hey, Hey. Hi. How are you today? Leo? Laporte here. The Tech Guy. Yes. It's time to talk computers, the internet, home theater, digital photography, smart phones, smart watches, all that jazz automotive technology, 88 88. Ask Leo is the phone number. If you wanna talk eye tech with me, 88, 88, ask Leo to free from anywhere in the us or Canada, outside that area. You can you can still call. You just have to you know, do Skype out or something like that. Some sort of technical wizardry to reach the phone lines. (888) 827-5536 website free and no charge open all tech guy labs.com. We put links there of all the stuff we talk about. We put links in and actually I should get Sam to write up the chicken tax story probably can go to Wikipedia and read about it. He explained it off the air to me and had something to do with a tariff.
Leo Laporte (01:00:57):
And this is any part of the problem with tariffs that LBJ in LBJ you 1964 instituted in response to a European tax on American chickens. And here we are, what is that? 60 years later, we still got a 55 years later, still got a chicken tax and it makes, you know, the car manufacturers have to jump through all sorts of hoops to make their to make their light trucks. Well, I guess in a way it's a good thing. Make it, encourages them to manufacture 'em in the us. Yeah. I'll put a link in the show notes to the definition of the chicken tax. So you, you can read all about it. It all comes down cheese, 88, 88, ask Leo, let's go back to the phones. Lamar in Bellflower. California's next? Hi Lamar.
Caller #2 (01:01:54):
Hey. Okay. There you go.
Leo Laporte (01:01:56):
There we go.
Caller #2 (01:01:58):
I take you off speaker phone. I'm hoping that you can help me. We're hoping that you know, somebody in my area that can help me here. I'm I kind of caught up in this whole 3g
Leo Laporte (01:02:13):
Box. Oh yeah, they're cutting it off.
Caller #2 (01:02:16):
Yeah. and what's worse is I got, you know, I, I was one of the casualties that got swallowed up by T-Mobile I'm an old sprint customer and T-Mobile's give me some of the worst customer service I've ever had.
Leo Laporte (01:02:30):
Oh, I'm sorry. Yeah. You got transferred over when they bought it. And of course they're gonna shut down those sprint towers and their own towers end of the month. Yeah. So you need a new phone that,
Caller #2 (01:02:43):
Well, the problem, the problem is that the new phone I've got, I've got a phone that a problem is getting, getting my data transfer over. Let me give you a little history of where I'm at. I used to be a NTEL customer that's Sprint swallowed them up. Yeah. And so when sprint swallowed them up, I went in, I had to go get a new phone.
Leo Laporte (01:03:06):
You've been through this before,
Caller #2 (01:03:09):
When I, yes. When I, when I got it, when I got a new phone, they took my old phone and plugged it in with a physical
Leo Laporte (01:03:16):
Yeah. Copied it over. Yeah.
Caller #2 (01:03:18):
And, and transferred over all my, all my contacts and, and such like that. And now I've gotta take that phone and transfer all my contacts and data into a new phone. But the problem is, and this is where the port customer service comes in. I get mocked whenever I go into a T-Mobile store and say, oh, you should have got a, a long time ago. You should have, you should have
Leo Laporte (01:03:43):
No don't mock people cuz they have old phones do not mock them.
Caller #2 (01:03:47):
Yeah. Well the worst, the worst part is I, I wanna stick with a, a, a feature flip phone and I've got
Leo Laporte (01:03:55):
Ah, yeah, they are they're they're they're snickering behind their hand. I hope they put their hand over their mouth. They're
Caller #2 (01:04:01):
Not, they're not snickering behind anything. They're just, they're doing it straight to my face.
Leo Laporte (01:04:05):
Oh, I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry. Yeah. So you need a feature phone that will work on LTE basically.
Caller #2 (01:04:14):
Well, I, I, what I need is a patch cord or some
Leo Laporte (01:04:17):
Oh no, no. So yeah. So, okay. So let me kind of talk about that a little, but that, I mean, I've done it. That used to be, you'd go to, in fact, my suggestion is go to an independent store, not a company owned store. Don't go to a T-Mobile store, but a, a third party like parrot or whatever that sells all of them. Cuz those guys are old timers for the most part. And they'll have that machine T-Mobile stops. Stop doing it because you said, pardon me?
Caller #2 (01:04:44):
Did you say parrot?
Leo Laporte (01:04:46):
Yeah. You remember parrot cellular?
Caller #2 (01:04:48):
No.
Leo Laporte (01:04:49):
Well it depends on that's probably, they might be a local place. I don't know what they have in bell Bellflower, but there, there are places you'll see 'em they have in the store window T-Mobile at and T Verizon they'll have all the companies in and all the different phones. They're independent, third party cell phone stores. Okay. And those guys in my experience, I have a good friend who runs one in in our little town here in Petaluma, up north. Those guys travel.
Caller #2 (01:05:15):
Yeah.
Leo Laporte (01:05:16):
Yeah. You might wanna, those guys are old school geeks they're frankly their days are numbered. Right. Cuz the company stores are taken over, but they have that machine still. I promise you. Okay. Cause I've gone in there and done that. The reason nobody has it anymore is with a smartphone and your feature phone may even do this. You log to Google on an Android device or apple on an iPhone device and they sync everything. So when you, when I get a new Android phone and a new iPhone, I just log into my account and all my contacts come back, all my calendars come back. It'll even remember what apps I have. It'll even remember if I ask it to all my passwords. So it really simple fives. And that's what they want. They wanna make it easy for you to spend money with them. Right. So it simplifies the move. That's why they're snickering mostly because it would be very trivial. And it is for most people these days, if you had a smart phone doesn't mean you can't do it with your phone. Which kind of phone do you have right now?
Caller #2 (01:06:16):
Oh right now it's a, how you pronounce it? Kai or
Leo Laporte (01:06:20):
Kiera. Yeah. Those are good phones. Yeah.
Caller #2 (01:06:22):
It's a D Dax.
Leo Laporte (01:06:24):
Dax. Okay. Yeah. so I'm just gonna look it up here and see, yeah. That's that's the old sprint sprint phone. It even had pushed to talk. Didn't it look at that, right?
Caller #2 (01:06:35):
Yes.
Leo Laporte (01:06:35):
Did you still use the push to talk after you went to sprint,
Caller #2 (01:06:40):
You know, sadly, sadly when I changed companies, no I didn't. I mean, I, you know, I about
Leo Laporte (01:06:49):
That's
Caller #2 (01:06:49):
Too 5, 10, 5, 5, 6 years ago, my company used it nuts that's oh
Leo Laporte (01:06:54):
Yeah. It was widely using construction anywhere where you had employees need to be in touch and it, you know, I mean, I remember, you know, you you'd know because it, what really loud.
Caller #2 (01:07:05):
Oh, it was, it was, it was a great feature.
Leo Laporte (01:07:08):
Oh yeah. And people were going LA, Marty, are you there? I got a I got a big load coming in at 4 0 3 and I need you to be down here and yeah, it was a, it,
Caller #2 (01:07:19):
It was great. Especially when driving, you know? Sure, Sure. You know,
Leo Laporte (01:07:23):
Apple, you know, it's funny apple realizing there was a market for this, tried to do it on the apple watch. They had a walkie talkie feature. I imagine they still do, did not catch on here's some good news. Ki Sarah does make a successor to that. That is LTE compatible that you'd be able to use.
Caller #2 (01:07:41):
Yeah. But I, I don't think T-Mobile has it.
Leo Laporte (01:07:45):
Yeah. So here's okay. I'm gonna give you some ammo.
Caller #2 (01:07:48):
Okay. Okay.
Leo Laporte (01:07:49):
You could try the third party store buy it from them. You know, there probably is an unlocked version of this it'll work, but if not you know, the, you have to have the new phone and they'll have move it over for you. Maybe they'll charge a 50 bucks or whatever to do it. Cause right. They'd have to make some money. The other option is to say to T-Mobile oh fine. I see Verizon has this phone. I think I'll be moving my business over there. Remember they're getting a nice, hefty monthly fee from you. Right. All you have to do is, is say I'm willing to move and I bet you they'll jump through hoops to keep
Caller #2 (01:08:22):
You I've I've threatened that. And they, you know, they just,
Leo Laporte (01:08:26):
They say, please move. We don't wanna support this phone anymore. Get outta here, get Eddie here with you. Keys Sierra. Well, Verizon does sell this phone, do X XV. It's it looks very similar. You'll like it, you know, this is the phone you have. And I guarantee you, if they're moving people over, they have a way of moving your data over with it.
Caller #2 (01:08:50):
Okay. Okay.
Leo Laporte (01:08:51):
It may be that it's time to say goodbye to T-Mobile so yeah. Look, I'm a sprint customer and you you've not been treating me with the dignity. I deserve mocking my flip phone.
Caller #2 (01:09:05):
No, that the XD, who is that with
Leo Laporte (01:09:08):
That's Verizon sells that,
Caller #2 (01:09:10):
Right? Oh, Verizon.
Leo Laporte (01:09:12):
Yeah. There may be others that the nice thing is it's LTE. So that means it works with all the current networks. It's not an old 3g phone. And then, you know, you're not alone. A lot of people, even with smartphones, there's, you know, there's Samsung phones that will not make this transition. They've gotta get, in fact, I got a letter from at and T saying, you know, that phone you're using, you've gotta cha I hadn't used the phone in years, but they, you gotta cha they still I'm using some old phone. So yeah. All of this by the end of the year, every one of these cell phone companies is turning off those three G towers.
Caller #2 (01:09:44):
Yeah. I'm in, well, in fact, I I've gotta go through this again in, was it June? I think it is. In fact, maybe you can gimme advice on this. I've I've gotta oh, is it a Metro PCs phone? Yeah, same.
Leo Laporte (01:09:58):
I think they're running on at and T I can't remember who Metro, maybe it's T-Mobile
Caller #2 (01:10:03):
Yeah, they run on T-Mobile. That's that? That's the, that's the rub, the whole reason. The whole reason I got the Metro PCs phone was it was on a different system right. Than my sprint phone. Right. And, and part-time gig as a chauffer. I wanna make sure that I have backup.
Leo Laporte (01:10:21):
I have
Caller #2 (01:10:21):
Phone contacts. Sure. So now that, now that it a T not at Metro PCs and T-Mobile the same, I need to find another phone or another Jeep carrier.
Leo Laporte (01:10:32):
You might, you, yeah. You, you, so Metro was purchased by T mobile. So they're not an M V N O anymore, but there are a lot of companies that sit on T-Mobile or at straight talk as an example, you can get that at Walmart that, that sits on either at and T or T-Mobile or Verizon, depending on which one you pick. So that's another way to go. I, I think I like your phone. I want you to keep that phone or something like it anyway. So that, that, that Kiera has been replaced by a more modern phone that will still work on various networks, maybe, you know, going to the T-Mobile store saying, I want, I want this you know dura, VX. I want it X V rather dura X V. I want it. Get it. Or maybe you can get it unlocked, you know, or maybe call 'em because if you call 'em you get a retention expert, when you say, you know, you're forcing me to move off the network, can you help me here? And maybe they can maybe cuz you're, you're spending a lot of money with them. You got Metro PCs and T-Mobile
Caller #2 (01:11:33):
Well, yeah, like I said, I was, I've been with 'em since, since next till, so I just yeah.
Leo Laporte (01:11:38):
Yeah. So there are a variety of different MV N OS a lot of them use T-Mobile because T-Mobile makes the best deal for these mobile virtual network operators. Oh yeah. But there's Republic and and our sponsor mobile. And there's quite a few of these if you want to get off of T-Mobile then then I think moving to Verizon might be a, might be a smart move. It's a little more expensive in my opinion, but Verizon is the quality network
Caller #2 (01:12:07):
Really. Okay. Okay. Yeah.
Leo Laporte (01:12:09):
Trust and you might, I mean, it's okay. I'm not snickering. Just wanna make that clear.
Caller #2 (01:12:14):
That's okay.
Leo Laporte (01:12:14):
I might be time to look at a smartphone. I mean you know, I'm pretty good these days, you know, they, they do a lot and
Caller #2 (01:12:22):
Okay. I, I have a confession to make, I, I, I have what I call a tablet, you know, it's, it's actually a note. What is it? Note eight. Oh
Leo Laporte (01:12:30):
Yeah. That's a nice phone. Yeah.
Caller #2 (01:12:32):
I, I use as a tablet though. I, I think I don't, I think I maybe made three phone calls on it since I got it brand new, you know, to me, I just between you and me since nobody else is listening. Yeah. The reason, one of the reasons I love the feature flip phone is it has physical button. Yes. And if you, if you know, if you know how to use a 10 key by
Leo Laporte (01:12:55):
As you're driving, you need that. I completely understand exactly, exactly. That's why I will never snicker, you know, everybody gets what they want. You should have what you want that's and by the way, I know a lot of drivers use flip phones for that very reason. That's very common. Yeah. Yeah. Walt who gives Walt, who gives us a lot a ride up here once in a while. He's on a flip phone. I know it. Yeah. I know it. Hey, it's a pleasure talking to you Lamar.
Caller #2 (01:13:19):
Thank you. Thank you, Leo.
Leo Laporte (01:13:20):
You got, you got some leverage you can go to T-Mobile. I I'd. Everybody should find this independent guy in every town has one. They're kinda a little more run down. They're in the strip malls or whatever they sell. 'em All these guys are the true hackers of the cell. They know everything and they can and solve it. And they have that machine. Why would they throw it out? They plug it into the the old Kiara sucks up all the information. Plug it into the new Kiara. Boom. You got it all over there. Eighty eight, eighty eight. Lios the phone number? (888) 827-5536. This is a no snicker zone. A free snicker free zone here. I will never mock you for using older technology. I will honor you you're frugal. Oh, I got this thing, John. I need the shortest mic cable. You can find.
Leo Laporte (01:14:13):
Yeah, here I'll show you what I got. This is so exciting. This is from zoom. Yeah. Six inches will be fine cuz it's got, you know, it's used as XLR and I was thinking, I'll use the SM 58 with this thing. Maybe a little yeah. Six inches would be like, it plugs right in. Oh you can. Oh, I didn't even think of that. I don't even even need a cable. I could just make this a, a standing mic. And I put in a 256 gig card, which gives me a hundred hours of record time. But the cool thing about this is this 32 bit, which is something new to me.
Leo Laporte (01:15:02):
32 bit means you've got so much headroom, so much resolution. You can't clip it. See how light it is and see you can put it. I've actually seen people wear 'em on the wrist. You put a Velcro. I mean, sorry you hook it and loop through here and you could put it. You could wear on your wrist or the ideas. You could put it on a mic, boom or that kind of thing. It's a field recorder, but I'm see, I'm trying to figure out how I can do podcasting from anywhere. Well, it is resolution, right? Isn't it because sample rate 44, 48 kilohertz that's the sample rate, right? But the bit each sample is 32 32 bits instead of 16 or 24 CD quality 16. Right?
Leo Laporte (01:16:00):
Unless I'm completely misunderstanding. Am I misunderstanding it? 32 bit float files. Thank you. Red con. This is from sound device. Traditional 16 bit files have 65,535 resolution. Oh yeah. That's perfect. I, I could, I never, no. See. Oh, whoa. Yeah, no, no, no, but I wouldn't really want do that cuz I wouldn't want to break it off. Even, you know some knowing me, look at that. That's perfect. Oh man, I'm gonna play with that in a bit. Thank you. Can I keep this? The Tech Guy show brought to you this week through the auspices. I mean literally brought to you through the auspices of our content delivery network. Cash, love the cash fly. How do we know? Cash's amazing. Well, I've been using 'em for over 10 years. I remember when we first started TWiT 50 10 years ago, I thought, oh, people just downloaded from the website.
Leo Laporte (01:17:05):
No that doesn't work HLS or whatever it was in those days. That's slow unreliable. Plus the bandwidth costs on the website were huge. So then we said, well, maybe we could do BitTorrent. Remember I was asking begging people to be bit torrent seeds for the podcast in the early days. That's when Matt Lavina cash. I said, he called me up, say Leo, no, let's help. You need a CDN. I needed cash. Like we've been with them ever since we love cash line. Now, I mean they've added features all along from the very beginning we use Cash's local storage to avoid cash misses and origin expenses. You know, transferring files from our, our servers to their servers. Now that's actually a, a business for them. That's something they offer storage optimization system, casualized S OS, which takes the load off your origin servers reduces your S three bills or whatever, reduces your bandwidth and increases your cash.
Leo Laporte (01:17:59):
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Leo Laporte (01:19:01):
Ultra low latency, video streaming more than a million concurrent users, lightning, fast gaming, zero lag, glitches, or outages, mobile content optimization that offers automatic. I love this and we don't use it, but this, if you've got a website, you would love this automatic, simple image optimization, which means your site loads faster on any device. They've got multiple CDNs for redundancy and failover. They intelligently balance your traffic across multiple providers. That gives you the shortest route mitigates against performed, make glitches on, on, and on and on. And the best 24 7 365 day year priority support. They're always there when you need 'em. We have never had a problem in more than 10 years with cash. We've done nothing but happy. You will be too. In fact, take advantage of this cash is giving away a complimentary detailed analysis of your current CDN bill and use suit trends. See if you're overpaying 20% or more. See what cash I can do for you. All I can say is they're the best. You gotta try it. Twit.cash.com. Thank you cash for making TWiT possible. We literally couldn't do without 'em TWiT.cash.com. Leo Laporte The Tech Guy, eighty eight eighty eight. Ask Leo the phone number. We go back to the calls, John on the line from Calgary, Alberta, Canada. Hello, John.
Caller #3 (01:20:21):
Yes. Hi Leo. How are you today? I am. Well,
Leo Laporte (01:20:23):
How are you?
Caller #3 (01:20:24):
I'm good. Other than the allergies. So it's still
Leo Laporte (01:20:26):
Got the allergies too. They're just, there's all this poly of the air.
Caller #3 (01:20:30):
Yeah, no, I don't have them here because we're still,
Leo Laporte (01:20:34):
You're still frozen. The frozen Tundra.
Caller #3 (01:20:37):
Well, yeah, sort of anyways, my, my wife and I each have the Samsung galaxy S seven S yes. You know, and I think it's time. I think you would mentioned at one point that they weren't being updated effective last October,
Leo Laporte (01:20:51):
Sad to say. Yeah.
Caller #3 (01:20:53):
Yeah. And that makes me a little nervous now. I'm not really prepared to go up to it. I think it's a 22, you know, because that's
Leo Laporte (01:21:02):
The new one.
Caller #3 (01:21:03):
Yeah. Yeah. And I know somebody had phoned in two or three weeks ago and ask this same question. What is it? And I couldn't find it unfortunately, but what is a good alternative you know I don't need all the real fancy camera and stuff, but a real dependable phone. That'll be updated often. And you know, what, what, what would be best?
Leo Laporte (01:21:24):
So is it price that's keeping you from going to the 20?
Caller #3 (01:21:28):
Yeah. Yeah. I just you know, we're hard now.
Leo Laporte (01:21:31):
Oh, you don't and you don't need all the wizzy features. I mean, when you get an S 22 ultra you're, you're paying through the nose $1,400. I know. Cause I just bought one, right? Because you want the latest cameras and the most Ram and the most storage, et cetera, et cetera, cetera. And most people don't, I don't need that. No one needs that. We,
Caller #3 (01:21:50):
We don't either. No
Leo Laporte (01:21:53):
We
Caller #3 (01:21:53):
To do alternative
Leo Laporte (01:21:54):
I love Moto M O T O Motorola. They make some really excellent phones in the $200 to $300 range. If you're willing to spend a little bit more, my favorite would be the Google phone, but not the latest Google, the pixels six, but the pixel five, a
Caller #3 (01:22:12):
Five a now it would be continued to be updated for.
Leo Laporte (01:22:15):
That's why you get a Google phone. They have the most, the, you know, it's up to date now when you buy the five, a 5g, you're getting the latest Android on it. You're getting security updates and you get 'em fastest from Google, faster than Samsung for like the S 22 ultra still on the January security update. What month is it March? Oh, that's not good. That's not good. You wanna have those monthly updates are the most important.
Caller #3 (01:22:39):
Now what, what's the difference, Lou, between a and G you said five a.
Leo Laporte (01:22:43):
So when Google releases a flagship phone, in this case, the current flagship is a pixel six halfway through the year, coming in June, they'll do this. They released the six a oh, which is essentially, it's a very, very similar, but maybe they give a few specs up and they sell it for less. So the pixel five a is the most recent of that. It has 5g, which I, you may or may not want. I think 5g actually, I'm kind of coming around on 5g. I'll explain why in a second, but that's 450 bucks. Not cheap.
Caller #3 (01:23:15):
No, no.
Leo Laporte (01:23:16):
Motorola is gonna be less. Yep. But I think with getting it from, Google's get, if, if, is guaranteeing the most security updates longest lifetime.
Caller #3 (01:23:26):
Okay. That's that that's important. I mean, I, I don't know how old the seven is, but it's, it's, you know?
Leo Laporte (01:23:32):
Oh yeah. It's probably, maybe it's probably Android 10 and most, you know, the, the version of Android is not as important. That's more about features than the security updates. I understand you go in your settings and your phone and see when the last security update was. If it's more than a few months ago. Yeah. You're at risk. And at, and then the seven, they're not even gonna send anymore out because Samsung doesn't wanna do it. Your phone company doesn't wanna do it. No Google makes 'em available. But that doesn't doesn't mean they're gonna be updated. So yeah, I would look at if, if that's what really matters, it is half as much as the, as a, you know, flagship, but it is very, very good. They're they're really great. Phones
Caller #3 (01:24:07):
Sounds. Sounds good for us. As long as we're with TES here in Canada, as long as they, they oh,
Leo Laporte (01:24:11):
They'll carry it. Yeah.
Caller #3 (01:24:12):
But I, and the, now the other thing I wanted to do mention to you is about cyber warfare. This is a deep worry for me. And part of the reason is I read a book. I don't know if you're familiar with the book by Ted kale.
Leo Laporte (01:24:26):
No, I didn't know. He'd written a book.
Caller #3 (01:24:28):
Oh, it's it was published in 2016.
Leo Laporte (01:24:30):
Former Nightline host. Yeah.
Caller #3 (01:24:32):
Yeah. I would suggest you have a look at this. I would almost suggest that having him as a guest, but anyways, if he was prepared to do it, I,
Leo Laporte (01:24:39):
I really like him. Yeah.
Caller #3 (01:24:41):
Yeah. But the books called let's out, sorry, lights out. A cyber attack, a nation dump prepared, surviving the aftermath of surviving the aftermath. Yeah.
Leo Laporte (01:24:51):
That's yeah. Came out in 2017. So whatever he says in 2017 is probably 10 times worse than 2022. Well,
Caller #3 (01:24:58):
Hopefully
Leo Laporte (01:25:00):
Things are more
Caller #3 (01:25:00):
Hardened. I mean, I just
Leo Laporte (01:25:02):
Yeah, it's an interest. So we really thought with the war in Ukraine, that there would a simmering cyber war going on alongside, right. And some, and there have been some surprises here, and I'm not sure why maybe because Russia is reluctant to step it up at that level because they're vulnerable too. They certainly have the capabilities, but so do we, I should point out I'm they, the NSA has been very aggressive in hiring hackers, developing tools. We know this, thanks to Edward Snowden's revelations and, and others that the NSA is certainly not toothless in this regard. Right. So maybe, maybe Putin's saying I don't wanna start anything cuz we're pretty vulnerable.
Caller #3 (01:25:47):
The one open, the a kinda worms, you
Leo Laporte (01:25:49):
Know, the other interesting saying, oh gosh, we went right through the break. Well, I'm still TA I'm still talking to you. So it's not a problem. I wish I were talking on the air. Cause I think this is I'll, I'll bring it up. But the other thing that's happened, that's surprising Putin always used Ukraine as a testing ground for cyber attacks. You might remember a couple of years ago he brought down the grid, the elect entire electric grid. Yep. But what's and in fact, when the war began, when the invasion began, I shouldn't even call it a war. When the invasion began they shut down briefly the banking system, it came back up though within a couple of hours and they have yet to shut down the grid they're instead trying to bomb the nuclear plants. I think Ukraine took it seriously and they, and they hardened their defenses and Russia has been stymied cuz I, I think they would use it in Ukraine. Right? No doubt about it.
Caller #3 (01:26:42):
I have no doubt.
Leo Laporte (01:26:43):
So that's encouraging to me that it's possible to defend the us, you know if we have a, an agency in the us called CSA C I S a and their entire mission is to prepare and protect. And that's something by the way that we didn't have in 2017, their entire mission is to, is the cyber security and in infras structure, security agency infrastructure it's under DHS. They were founded in 2018 maybe cuz of Ted Coppel, you know, there was a lot of talk about cyber warfare. Yeah. And their entire job has been to go around and secure power grids. They have found malware in these power grids cuz you know, in the us many electric companies are run as independent private industry. And so they're, that's
Caller #3 (01:27:28):
Probably the problem.
Leo Laporte (01:27:29):
Yeah. There's a very much varying capabilities to defend. But I think that we are better protected than we used to be.
Caller #3 (01:27:36):
Oh well that's good. I show, you know, we, we have, we very, some have power failures, you know, our power, but if the power was ever to go off oh right right now I would, I would, it's the end of the world nervous until I came back.
Leo Laporte (01:27:48):
Yeah. There's there's, there's four areas that we are very vulnerable. Somebody asked me this couple weeks ago and I've been kind of thinking about it. One is the grid. Our financial system is completely computerized. Bring that down. Our food system is completely computerized. Bring that down who there was a, I can't remember what the fourth one was, but there we are absolutely dependent now on all of this technology. Oh for sure. Absolutely. Good, good question. I appreciate it. And I will look at this book. I'll get it. Thank you, John.
Caller #3 (01:28:16):
Yeah. You're welcome. Thanks Leo.
Leo Laporte (01:28:17):
Have a good one. Dancing in the Moonlight or whistling past the graveyard. One of the other Leo Laporte, The Tech Guy. We a great conversation about cyber warfare and unfortunately got a little bit cut off. So let me kind of update that. Our last caller was he's calling from Canada, but you know, we're all in this together in the west real fear from Russia, China, North Korea, they all have their hackers, their hacking group. The big hacking group in is called fancy bear by some which is a very fanciful name for something that is not quite so fanciful. They, they are, of course they're, they're associated with probably run by the Russian military intelligence GRU. And they have been in the past very active. You know, I think if you talk to intelligence agencies, they'll say, you know, a lot of the ran ransomware we've been experiencing is probably at least count if not funded and supported by the Russian government, 75% of all the ransomware activity comes out of Russia, the Russian ransomware groups.
Leo Laporte (01:29:33):
And at the very least Putin's turning a blind eye towards them. More likely he's supporting them because what do they attack? They attack the west. It's very destabilizing. So cyber warfare is a real concern, but there's some, cause I think for optimism one, it hasn't happened. I think there was a real fear that once Russia invaded Ukraine they let loose the hounds of hacking and we'd see cyber warfare everywhere. In fact, right before the invasion, he shut down the banking system in the Ukraine a couple of years ago, not the Ukraine in Ukraine a couple of years ago in Ukraine. The electric grid was brought down for a few hours in both cases, Russia hackers. And the thinking was Russia uses crane is a test bed for its cyber warfare capabilities, but here they are in a hot war in an invasion and they haven't used them.
Leo Laporte (01:30:30):
And so there's a couple of thoughts, possibilities. I guess one is that Ukraine having been warned hardened its defenses and is in fact much less, less vulnerable than they used to be. That would be really good news if that's possible. That would be very good news. We know though with all the zero days, all the nation state attacks, we know that all these countries are including us, by the way we're doing it too, are looking very hard at ways to wage a cyber war. In fact, the news reports said that president Biden had been presented with options for cyber war, but elected not to use 'em I, the white house denies that. But I think it's likely, so maybe Ukraine was able to harden itself. Maybe we've been able to in 2018 we founded something called CSA. The and this has been, I think, a real improvement in our, in our posture or the cybersecurity and infrastructure security agency. They've spent a lot of money hardening our weak points, like our grid electrical grid.
Leo Laporte (01:31:34):
And I presume the NSA and others are working on offensive technologies. And it may also be the Russia that Putin is, is reasonably concerned that if he, he were to launch a cyber war, we would retaliate and it would be as it was in the nuclear era, a mutually assured destruction. And he doesn't wanna bring that down. So it's, it may, maybe it's a combination of kind of trepidation on Putins part and a better security posture on our part on the part of the west. It's certainly the case that ransomware has not Abed, cyber scams have not abated. You, you look at your email, your spam filters. You probably see every day I know I do emails trying to take it, you know, hack me in one way or the other con me in one way or the other. And any company is getting those regularly for Phish attacks.
Leo Laporte (01:32:26):
Mostly I think that's for financial gain, but you know, there's a, a blurred line between fancy bears, nation, state attacks for geopolitical results and, and, and you know, the various malware groups in Russia trying to do it for money. I think there's a, there's a mutual they're well aligned. There's a mutual benefit. So should we worry about cyber warfare? Yeah, we should certainly be prudent. And if you run infrastructure, if you run the banking, 'em, if you're in the food system, you should make darn sure that you're hardened. You know, the colonial pipeline attack. Remember this last year brought down an oil pipeline and caused gas panics in the Southeast. You remember people lining up and filling up, you know gas cans and various other things with gasoline because of the pipeline attack that was last summer. That was a call to action because that's infrastructure, right? It's probable, we don't know, but it's probable that, that hack came from a nation state, probably Russia.
Leo Laporte (01:33:50):
And it was ransomware, right? They wanted money, whether it was the Russian government had just Russian located hackers. Again, that line is blurred, but I think it was also in two ways it was a called a hack. And one, it was a call from CSA and others to say, look, infrastructure attacks are off limits. You do that. You're you're in trouble. And then also to harden those systems, this, this, this hack was ridiculous. They got into colonial pipeline because had a password from a leak, you know, a breach, a colonial employee used the same password on various accounts. And then the hackers got it. And they tried and yeah. Oh, look, we're in, we're in, it was a Russian cyber crime group called dark side, probably for money, $4.4 million ransom. And it's thought that maybe Putin said, knock it off to these guys cuz they kind of disappeared.
Leo Laporte (01:34:52):
Knock it off. Because I don't wanna bring, you know, down the I of the west, on our head we're vulnerable. It certainly woke us up. It was a wake up call for the us and perhaps it was a maybe something to keep the Russians UN control. I don't know. They don't seem like they're in much control. Do they? So should we worry about it? Yeah. Should we be prudent? Yeah. Should we work hard to harden our defenses? Absolutely. But there seems to be some positive news that it hasn't happened. And so it's reasonable to say why, why hasn't it happened at least in Ukraine, he could apparently lost his ability to, to disrupt power grid cuz they had to start attacking nuclear plants, trying to bring the power grid down that way. Hmm. That's interesting. 88 88 ask Leo that's the phone number? Eighty eight eight eight two seven five five three six. Bill's on the line from Lomita, California. Hello bill.
Caller #4 (01:35:54):
Hello Leo. How's everything in pet.
Leo Laporte (01:35:58):
Well, the sun is out. The birds are singing and the trees are blooming and my allergies are going crazy. That's how it is. What's up. What's up in your world.
Caller #4 (01:36:09):
Capital of the world, right? Pardon
Leo Laporte (01:36:10):
Me?
Caller #4 (01:36:11):
That's the arm wrestling capital of the world. It
Leo Laporte (01:36:13):
Used to be. Yeah, this is this is where they world championship for arm wrestl was held for many, many years.
Caller #4 (01:36:20):
Yeah. Did you partake?
Leo Laporte (01:36:22):
I did not. I don't like losing arm wrestling, especially to my wife. That that is just, you know, so I've stopped. I've retired. Yeah. She beats me every time I'm calling.
Caller #4 (01:36:33):
I'm calling for Lamar. Yes, I too was a a sprint Samuel cry customer.
Leo Laporte (01:36:42):
What did you get to what'd you get to replace it?
Caller #4 (01:36:45):
Mine was a 2010 3g and I got the same notice from sprint. Yep. You know, you gotta replace it. Yep. And I didn't wanna buy a smart phone. I wanted buy a phone.
Leo Laporte (01:36:55):
Yeah.
Caller #4 (01:36:56):
So I went on the T-Mobile side and also I switched from sprint to T-Mobile. Okay. went on the T-Mobile site, found a very nice flip phone. It's called a cat C a T short for caterpillar equipment.
Leo Laporte (01:37:13):
So it's nice yellow. Okay.
Caller #4 (01:37:15):
Yeah. It's yellow. It's a heavy duty phone and the buttons are large push buttons bigger than the
Leo Laporte (01:37:22):
Perfect they're maid mighty. That's their slogan bill. I appreciate it. So does Lamar get a cat phone and by the way, butter and eggs day still going on in petal, come up for that. Leo port, The Tech Guy ma mighty rugged is inau blood to be tough. Are you in construction bill or
Caller #4 (01:37:44):
Yeah. Yeah. I'm I'm a worker.
Leo Laporte (01:37:46):
So you, you don't want a phone. That's gonna fall off your belt and break.
Caller #4 (01:37:50):
I do appliance repair, kitchen laundry.
Leo Laporte (01:37:53):
Oh man. Yeah. I wish I'd known you. I
Caller #4 (01:37:55):
Needed a, a heavy duty phone. The person worried about dropping
Leo Laporte (01:37:58):
Nice. Made by a made by caterpillar. That's hysterical. Oh, it does 5g. Do which one do you have? Do you know?
Caller #4 (01:38:06):
The yellow one,
Leo Laporte (01:38:07):
The yellow one.
Caller #4 (01:38:12):
I just use it from phoning.
Leo Laporte (01:38:14):
Yeah know they have a B 40, which is 4g.
Caller #4 (01:38:17):
All the diamond and
Leo Laporte (01:38:18):
Whistles. Yeah. Nice. That's inter I wonder who I, I feel like it's probably unlikely that caterpillar makes these, they probably put their name on it. And somebody else, I be
Caller #4 (01:38:30):
Surprised that they had a manufacturing shop.
Leo Laporte (01:38:33):
Yeah. But they, but they, they have standards and you know, they wanna make sure that if they're gonna put their name on it, it's gonna be a good product. And you, you you're how long have you had it?
Caller #4 (01:38:44):
Six months.
Leo Laporte (01:38:45):
Nice. And it's been reliable and yeah. Oh, they're mill spec. Wow. IP 68 and mill spec. Wow. Tough. Rugged. I like the yellow one. All right. Hey, I appreciate it, bill. Thank you for the tip. I'm sure Lamar's still listening. All right. Have a good one. All right. Take care. Yeah, they have a, quite a variety actually.
Leo Laporte (01:39:13):
They even have smartphones. Look at that. The cat B 40 and the cat B 26. Look like the and they're more like the candy bar style than the flip style. I'm charming. Leo. Laporte The Tech Guy. Ooh, Ooh. Eighty eight eighty eight. Ask Leo the phone number website. Tech guy labs.com I think. Do we have Rod Pyle? I know we don't have we didn't have Chris Markot this week. Cuz Chris Markot was detained. I don't know. He was busy. He was doing something else. Maybe forgot to get up cuz of daylight saving time. I don't know. But rod Powell's spaceman will join us about 45 minutes. Jim is on the line from Glendale, California. Hello? You Jim?
Caller #5 (01:39:59):
Hi Jim K I six G U here
Leo Laporte (01:40:02):
We oh, nice to see you. W six T WT.
Caller #5 (01:40:06):
Well, here's the deal. I'm the guy that likes Android and I've been resurrecting. My note
Leo Laporte (01:40:11):
For you're the guy who doesn't just like Android hates apple.
Caller #5 (01:40:17):
The more time that goes on. The more that seems to be more the case. I'm loving this old Samsung phone now that I've brought some life back
Leo Laporte (01:40:23):
To it. Which, which one did you get? I forgot.
Caller #5 (01:40:25):
Well, I, I remember I, I have a, a note. I mean S 21 is what I have that I currently use. And this old note four
Leo Laporte (01:40:31):
Note four, that's it? Yeah. Yeah. So
Caller #5 (01:40:34):
A lot of things have changed. I went you know, but I talked to you before about rooting it. I went to the X, the developers website, and it's been six years since I've done this. And of course some things have changed. I had a little trouble navigating this site, but now I know what I'm
Leo Laporte (01:40:47):
Doing. Yeah. They changed it. I dunno why people changed things, just leave it. But anyway, they did. Yeah.
Caller #5 (01:40:52):
I thought, as I recall, there was, it's very usable. You could go to, and you just looked up your phone and then showed you everything. But anyway, so I tried some different things back when I did this last, we used OIN now, I guess we're using TWR P so I got that working got T w R P. I tried to install one of the rhymes you recommended and didn't have an, the luck with that master. I think it's because I was using the wrong combination maybe of T w R P. And that run. I'm willing to try that again, but what I've ended up getting loaded is apocalypse X Tron pro version 8.1. Okay. That, and that's working, everything's working great. I got my gaps on there. That was a project to get that. But everything's working now. I'm this was just to learn how to do this again. I'm willing to wipe the phone and do all this.
Leo Laporte (01:41:40):
Well, that's the fun part of it. Isn't it is, is once you put T R P on there, which allows you to load any other firmware, you know, I used to change my firmware daily, you know, depending on my mood.
Caller #5 (01:41:53):
Well, I don't know if I'm that enthusi. I'm enthusiastic enough to question.
Leo Laporte (01:41:58):
Let me, let me explain to people going, what are they? I don't understand what, what they're. So if you have an Android phone it's really just a Linux computer. That's what Android's based on. And unless the manufacturer has taken steps to prevent you from doing this and some do, including Samsung, you can easily modify that phone and put a different flavor of the operating system on there. We call 'em ROS, cuz they're firmware, but you need a tool to put on there to begin with a, a custom recovery tool and their variety. But the most widely used now is from team win. It's T w R p@twp.me. But again, you would definitely want to go to XDA developers and, and get some advice before you do this. You have to be fairly, you know, it's a little tricky and you don't want a brick your device. You wanna turn it into unusable. So, but T w R P is a really good customer recovery tool, probably the best one. And then at that point you can put on a variety of different and things I had recommended CGEN the Syngen successor, which is lineage Joes. You weren't able to get that working though. Huh?
Caller #5 (01:43:02):
I tried to do that, but I think maybe I had the wrong version of TWR could
Leo Laporte (01:43:06):
Be it's complicated. Right? It's just, it's very complicated. And, but there, there are other, I, don't not familiar with this apocalypse X I love,
Caller #5 (01:43:16):
I was gonna ask. It's kind of cool looking it's older, it's version 6.1 of marshmallow. And they have some that I was thinking about trying called a pop APO apocalypse X, M premium version 1.0, but I'm not sure I, whether I wanna do that or not. I don't know the differences.
Leo Laporte (01:43:33):
I don't either. And that's one really, that's definitely one for the XDA folks. What, what you'll find with this stuff is the qu widely varying quality, because some of it's just written by some guy in his basement and, you know, he's kind of got a crazy idea and he wants to do this. And some of 'em are written by teams. That's why generally lineage is a good choice, cuz that's a established team. That's been doing it for a long time. They're quite talented. And so there, they can be kind of quirky to, to be honest. I mean, I think the apocalypse ex is named after the the Xmen that's where the XM comes from. So it gives you some idea of, you know, what you're talking about here. It's a, you know, so,
Caller #5 (01:44:20):
Well, it just happened to be the first one that I got to work. I,
Leo Laporte (01:44:23):
I would, I would go and, and go to the forums, look at what else people are using. I, you know, this I think is from us single guy, this EC, this apocalypse XM. And so if he's a really, the nice thing is it does work on the note four. I mean, it's designed the note four marshmallow is really old. Yeah. But that's one of the benefits of these ROMs. If they can keep a more up to date, even with an older version of Android, Android's open source. So it's an easy thing for them to modify. You could put the Google apps on it the gaps as they call 'em, which is nice, cuz an Android phone without Google is kind of like a day without sunshine. Right. you know, I don't, I don't have anything against it. I don't know if I would want to pay any money for it. Right. Unless you've used it for a while and you say, Hey is working pretty well.
Caller #5 (01:45:14):
Well, what I'm gonna, what I wanna do is, again, I I'm gonna try this. The, the one you recommended, which I got right here in front OFC line,
Leo Laporte (01:45:23):
If you can't, if you can get lineage working, I think that the other one that's kind of more security focused is called catalyst. And that one is designed to be privacy and secure security forward. So
Caller #5 (01:45:41):
I just wanna be able to use this phone mostly just as a backup phone, I'm probably gonna surf the internet. I wanted to ask you since we know it's not gonna be as secure as a currently supported factory rom, what thing should I avoid do on this phone to keep from exposing my
Leo Laporte (01:45:56):
Good, great question. You know, the main risk,
Caller #5 (01:45:58):
I just use it to make phone calls, obviously that's but what
Leo Laporte (01:46:01):
Else can I, the main, the main risk absolutely on Android is downloading apps. And even apps in the Google play store sometimes have malware in them. Google's pretty aggressive about scanning. And you know, if, if you, if you're gonna download an app, I would suggest you get it from a known entity, you know, a Microsoft, a Google and I'd be very careful about 'em. I would not download Russian wallpaper apps for instance, you know, you know what I'm talking about. So that's where you wanna be kind of careful. That's the biggest risk. I don't think going to websites is gonna be a huge risk. That is potential. So the, the, the ways look, some in order to hack any device, computer phone, laptop, whatever, they've gotta get software running on your computer. You have to, to, you know, they have to get by your defenses and you have to agree to install and run some software for them. That's typically done in a variety of ways. App is on a mobile, that's the number one ways buy an app. They can send you a link in a message or an email if you click it and it goes to a website potentially that's risky. So, and certainly any downloadable attachments those are, but you know that those are right after well
Caller #5 (01:47:14):
That's usual stuff. I mean, surfing the web or using Facebook, I think
Leo Laporte (01:47:17):
You're fine.
Caller #5 (01:47:17):
Not doing business on
Leo Laporte (01:47:19):
App. No. Just, just careful about clicking links, downloading software, the way a website can attack you is if there is a known vulnerability on, on your device website has an exploit sitting on it. You, it can be by the way, a reliable mainstream website that got hacked. One of the things hackers do when they hack websites is they put malware packages on there. Little, little tools that look and see, what is he running? What is he running? Oh, he's running Android, marshmallow. We've got something for that. And then, and they set off an attack that in effect, without your permission, without your knowledge, a zero click attack will download same thing though, download software and run it on your phone. It just does it without your intervention. So that's the other risk. That's a very low risk. That's not a huge risk. The biggest one is that you download and install something. That's no good.
Caller #5 (01:48:09):
I'm pretty cautious. I about that already.
Leo Laporte (01:48:10):
I think you're fine. Really the whole point of doing what you're doing with your note four pretty old phone is for fun. It's a hobbyist thing.
Caller #5 (01:48:18):
Absolutely. Right. It's a lot of fun actually. I'm enjoying it now that I'm kind of figuring out what I'm doing again, I, and I managed not to break it in the process, learning how they to use TW you know, the things that we didn't have before
Leo Laporte (01:48:29):
Yeah, cat, not cat at, by the way. It's Kix. I misspoke C a L Y X. Take a look at that or graphine. Those are both privacy focus. Leo. Laporte The Tech Guy. Thank you. 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. Eighty eight eighty eight. Ask Leo is the phone number (888) 827-5536. Toll free from anywhere in the us or Canada outside that area still call. But you Skype or something like that? 88 88. Ask Leo back to the phones. We go Rob house coming up by the way, our spaceman in just a little bit, but let's first say hello to Mike in Gulf shores, Alabama. Hello, Mike.
Caller #6 (01:49:18):
Hey Leo. How are you doing?
Leo Laporte (01:49:20):
I am wonderful. How are you today?
Caller #6 (01:49:22):
I'm doing great. I'm sitting out here by the Gulf of Mexico enjoying this warm weather.
Leo Laporte (01:49:28):
Oh, nice. Do you fish?
Caller #6 (01:49:30):
No, I don't fish. Is
Leo Laporte (01:49:32):
There good fishing?
Caller #6 (01:49:33):
I may have to
Leo Laporte (01:49:35):
Just to keep my body and soul alive. A lot of lake.
Caller #6 (01:49:39):
We have a lot of lakes around there and stuff that you can fish at, but yeah.
Leo Laporte (01:49:42):
Yeah. well you just, you just like to sit in the dock of the bay and watch the tide roll away. That kind of thing.
Caller #6 (01:49:49):
You got it. Nice. And all the, all the women in the bikinis.
Leo Laporte (01:49:52):
Oh, I don't. Oh, don't even get me started. So, so it's like a beach.
Caller #6 (01:49:59):
Yeah.
Leo Laporte (01:50:00):
Oh, nice.
Caller #6 (01:50:01):
Yeah. We're right on the beach.
Leo Laporte (01:50:02):
Nice. And the weather's good right now.
Caller #6 (01:50:05):
It's right. Really nice. It's about 65 degrees out and
Leo Laporte (01:50:09):
I get, I bet I'm getting it around August. It gets a little hot and muggy there, but
Caller #6 (01:50:13):
It does. Yeah,
Leo Laporte (01:50:15):
Yeah. Yeah. So what can I do for you, Mike?
Caller #6 (01:50:18):
Okay. I have a, an apple MacBook. It's a 2016. Okay. And for the last four years I have used download 4k to download videos from YouTube. Yeah. And they come in fine. I can put 'em in the the apple video deal and do whatever I want. Want to with him?
Leo Laporte (01:50:51):
The, the eye movie. No
Caller #6 (01:50:52):
Problem. Yeah. Yeah. The eye movie.
Leo Laporte (01:50:54):
Okay.
Caller #6 (01:50:56):
The last month or so the videos are now downloading through tele V V Z R televi. Huh?
Leo Laporte (01:51:09):
I don't know what that is. I
Caller #6 (01:51:10):
Don't, I have no idea. I
Leo Laporte (01:51:13):
So you're downloading from YouTube mostly. Or where are you downloading files from?
Caller #6 (01:51:17):
Yeah, from YouTube.
Leo Laporte (01:51:18):
Okay. This 4k downloader sounds like maybe somebody else is now owning it or you're going, they're download, loading it locally on their server. And then it's coming from their server to you. There might be another product you might like better than this, which is called Downey. I would, I would take a look at it. It's a YouTube video downloader, same thing. Downey, Downey, D O w N I E four. It's 20 bucks. But you can try it for free. You might try that and see if you like it. In fact, if you, I I've been thinking I should get it with, there's a bundle with it with his program per mute, which allows you to take those 4k videos and to change, to re encode them for other purposes to play back on a phone, for instance, or an apple TV, that kind of thing. Yeah. But I would, I would take a look at Downey, all the, all the folks I know that use that YouTube downloaders use Downey. I'm not familiar with this download 4k. Okay. It sounds like they're going through a server is what it sounds like they're doing. And that that's.
Caller #6 (01:52:26):
Yeah. I, I, I deleted that tele these or whatever it was yesterday. And now when stop working. Yeah. Down when I download the videos it comes in to the text edit box.
Leo Laporte (01:52:42):
Yeah. Cause it's not video. It's just data doesn't know what to do with it. Soer is another tool. That's a video downloader, which makes me wonder what download 4k is for. Maybe it's a front end Ofer. I'm not sure. Right. It's getting me nervous now. It's getting a little too complicated from my taste. Take a look at Downing.
Caller #6 (01:53:05):
Okay. I will. You got one more. I got one other problem. Yes. On this MacBook. I've had it for, I think six years.
Leo Laporte (01:53:16):
Okay.
Caller #6 (01:53:17):
About two years ago, this screen has developed bubbles and
Leo Laporte (01:53:22):
Oh, that's not good. You did put a screen screen protector on it is just by itself. Yeah. Yeah. Just
Caller #6 (01:53:30):
By itself. And I just wondered if apple had put a real light coating of a plastic on it or something
Leo Laporte (01:53:37):
Possibly. Bubbles sounds like it did, to be honest with you, I'm not familiar with that. I have that exact laptop and I've never noticed it. That is not, yeah. Bubbles are not good. That that's annoying. Isn't it?
Caller #6 (01:53:54):
Yeah. I mean, it's you know, when you're using it, you really don't notice it, but you know, on a black screen or something, you can just, you know, they're prevalent.
Leo Laporte (01:54:02):
This is news to me. Lemme see if apple uses a, a screen protector on its, on its max. Cuz that's, that seems weird. You did. So you got this new.
Caller #6 (01:54:16):
Yeah.
Leo Laporte (01:54:17):
So you didn't get it from somebody else?
Caller #6 (01:54:21):
No. Oh, that
Leo Laporte (01:54:22):
Cause I mean there are screen protectors you can buy for max, right. For privacy and so forth. But I don't think apple puts a screen protector on their, their displays. It may just be that the this, and this would be bad news that the LCD itself is laminating that the, there is, there are layers on an LCD screen and that one, the top is starting to come off. That seems more likely. And that, I mean, as long as it doesn't bother you, I would live with it. It'll it'll probably get worse. You know, I'm thinking the humidity and the Gulf there might be impacting it. You probably noticed that in other situations, that stuff doesn't last as long cuz of all the, the heat
Caller #6 (01:55:05):
Humidity. Well, it might be time to get in there when
Leo Laporte (01:55:07):
It is, the new ones are great, highly recommended, much faster. They've gotten rid of the Intel chips. I don't know how you feel about the touch bar. I never really was fond of it. And they got rid of that. I think the new ones are very, very good. Highly recommend them.
Caller #6 (01:55:21):
Yeah. Okay. But
Leo Laporte (01:55:23):
Again, if you could live with it until it goes bad, I'm gonna, yeah, because you're down there in the Gulf, you gotta all that heat and humidity. It may well be that it delaminated, you know, we've gone back to the days of CD rums. People used to complain who lived in your area that the CD rums would rust out. There was so much humidity that the metallic layer on the CD where on the reflective layer would actually rust out would, would oxidize. So I don't think it's that a screen protector, apple put on. I don't think they do that. I think it's probably delaminating under the heat and humidity. And as long as, as long as you can use it, doesn't bother you live with it. I don't think there's a fix for word except replacing that screen. And if you're looking for an excuse to get a new one, this is a very, very good time to get a new apple laptop.
Leo Laporte (01:56:11):
I should mention, you know, we had that apple event on Tuesday. They did not announce laptops. They announced new Mac computers, the Mac studio, which is effectively their iMac replacement. The studio plus monitor is an iMac. They're just not connected. You know, they're, they're deconstructed iMac, but that tells me that they will, you know, they announced new laptops last fall that we are probably gonna see, they said, there's one more Mac to be updated from the Intel ones. That's the Mac pro I'm gonna guess that will be June at the worldwide developers conference. That's a developer's tool. And I would expect that they will have new Mac laptops using the new M two chip either in June. It's hard to tell or in the fall that's, that's kind of your choice. So if you're in the market for a Mac laptop, I guess the question is, should I wait three months to see what apple announces in June? Possibly. I think the current, I have the MacBook pro for 14 inch with the M one pro that's an amazing laptop. That's as good a Mac as they've ever made. In my opinion, 88, 88 ask Leo is the phone number eighty eight, eight eight two seven five five three six toll free from anywhere in the us or Canada. Give me a ring Rod Pyle space guy coming up in about 15 minutes. Leo Laporte, The Tech Guy Uh spaceman Rod Pyle, spaceman extraordinaire,
Rod Pyle (01:57:39):
Better treatment than I get anywhere. How are you?
Leo Laporte (01:57:42):
I don't know. Is that good treatment to call you a spaceman? I am well a space you're out there in floating over Mars or the moon or whatever it is.
Rod Pyle (01:57:51):
Way better than nothing against Iowa, but it was really cold.
Leo Laporte (01:57:55):
Oh, that's right. Yes. Yeah. Oh, it gets so cold in Des Moines that they have an entire underground and aboveground tunnel system. So you can go. Yeah. Yeah. It looks, it looks very blade Redish.
Rod Pyle (01:58:07):
So the, the day I left, you know, every year I get there and the guy who hosts this conference, who's a, a dear friend, Tony poin says duke. It was 50 degrees last week. And every time you show up, it goes down like 24 degrees that's fault. The day I was leaving, it was gonna be zero at midnight. Oh.
Leo Laporte (01:58:24):
You know, there's a lot of people that the are used to that, but I'm a thin skin Southern California, right? Yeah. Yeah. So for me, I'm not wearing shorts and t-shirts and zero degrees like those guys, but it was fun. Yeah. And, and I got to meet some cool people and I, I think I sent you a clip for our segment today. Oh, good. Let me look at the male, because I'm gonna go a little off, off our normal and do a little fanboy gushing on sci-fi if that's okay. Oh, of course. Cause I got space have a lot in common. Well they do. And in this case in particular, so yeah. And it was, it was, the conference was off. It was great fun. Here it is star.
Rod Pyle (01:59:06):
Oh.
Leo Laporte (01:59:08):
Oh,
Rod Pyle (01:59:11):
I got to hang with Q that's pretty cool.
Leo Laporte (01:59:14):
Yeah. Q is very fan friendly. I, I hear about him. Yeah. I mean Franks is probably not. Franks is probably the fan friendliest guy. I've met LA Burton too. Yeah. But Delanie is really easy going and turns out lives about three miles away from me. I didn't realize that. Oh wow. Nice. It's interesting. He and Robert Ricardo, the doctor from Voyager, I guess live like I think a half a mile from each other nice up in yeah, same. But yeah, that was, that was the hoot.
Speaker 12 (01:59:47):
Thanks for listening to TWiT podcasts. If you'd like to take it up a notch, you can get all of our shows without ads by joining club TWiT, whether you're a loyal fan or once you give your employee something special with our corporate plan, you'll get the bonus TWiT plus feed with extra behind the scenes, outtakes and access to a member only discord all for just seven bucks a month. It's a great way to get just the content support TWiT TV and be a part of the tech community. Learn more and join club TWiT at TWiT.tv/club. Twit
Leo Laporte (02:00:20):
Leo Laporte the tech I we're getting ready for Rod Pyles visits our, our spaceman in just a few minutes, but there's time to take more calls on the line from Hatfield, Pennsylvania, my friend, Jerry. Hello, Jerry.
Speaker 13 (02:00:33):
Hello Leo. I've got a problem,
Leo Laporte (02:00:35):
Jerry. What's a matter.
Speaker 13 (02:00:38):
Well remember about a month ago or so I called you and told you that they're telling me I needed a new phone from my 5g. Yes. I said, well, I don't believe it. Just credit cell phones. Well, they sent me a new phone, a OIA G 300. Oh for free. Oh. So that I don't really care for the phone, but
Leo Laporte (02:00:58):
That's nice of them. I mean, that's kind of a, yeah, that's a budget phone, but those are good phones. Good.
Speaker 13 (02:01:05):
Yeah. Well, so, so what happened is that they I'm all set up there and I, I go to text I go get a line with my bank and they send me they text me a code for two party authentication. I can never get the the text I can get thanks from from T-Mobile Verizon. But apparently they go through at and T and I called up their, their, their trouble desk at and street talk and we long life forever. And I hear that chickens in the background.
Leo Laporte (02:01:49):
Well, nowadays, a lot of customer service reps work at home and obviously you got one that did. Yeah.
Speaker 13 (02:01:54):
So anyhow, she says procedure. And they said, well, want to send you to up to another degree in troubleshooting? Yeah. They
Leo Laporte (02:02:04):
Trans they'll send you the cow guy.
Speaker 13 (02:02:06):
They transfer me either. They never answer. Or they hang up on me.
Leo Laporte (02:02:09):
Oh, I hate that. They terrible phone system. Yeah.
Speaker 13 (02:02:11):
What can I tell them on the first level of troubleshooting to do, to get my team? So
Leo Laporte (02:02:18):
You're getting text messages from everybody except at T
Speaker 13 (02:02:23):
Apparently. So, which
Leo Laporte (02:02:24):
Is weird, cuz you're running on at and T right Straight, straight talk. Is it, is your straight talk using at and T they use a variety of carriers.
Speaker 13 (02:02:34):
Apparently all three of them. I turn my phone on. It says it says track, phone, turn my phone on, but I'm still going through with talk.
Leo Laporte (02:02:43):
Yeah. So yeah. So straight talk is an an NVM O right? No, no. Talk about these guys all the time. Mobile virtual network operators. MVM O then basically licensed by bandwidth from the phone companies. Now, if you see track phone on yours, that means it's Verizon. So, okay. And so the way text messaging works, every company has their own internal system. And then they have gateways that go to the external system. You're saying you can get some text messages, but not all
Speaker 13 (02:03:21):
I get, I get em from T-Mobile Verizon, but apparently at and T doesn't come through.
Leo Laporte (02:03:28):
Yeah. And so you're not on at and T you're on Verizon. If you see track phone, if it's coming up, that's what you're on. That's
Speaker 13 (02:03:33):
What happens. Yeah. I told em, I don't care for their phone. I wanna buy another phone. And they said they, they wanted the I, the number of the phone, I said, well, I don't have a phone yet. So they sent me three different SIM cards. T-Mobile one for
Leo Laporte (02:03:48):
18. Oh, there you go. Yeah. And did that fix it?
Speaker 13 (02:03:52):
Well, I didn't, I didn't buy my new phone yet.
Leo Laporte (02:03:54):
Oh, I see. So yeah, it's a problem with the gateway and it could be, and this is why probably it call to tech supports a good idea. It could be a setting in the phone that is incorrect. Is misconfigured phones are supposed to download their proper settings once they get on a network, but maybe it didn't. I think the first thing to find out is what service you're using with straight talk, cuz as I remember straight talk and use a variety of services including at and T and T-Mobile, and it it's it's, it sounds to me that the gateway between it's interesting, you've noticed that you can get text messages from two, but not all, all three carriers. So it seems to me that that's a problem with their gateway. In fact, they should be seeing the same problem, unless there's something about your phone settings, they should be seeing the same problem for other customers as well. The fact, what
Speaker 13 (02:04:51):
Should I tell them to do?
Leo Laporte (02:04:53):
Well, they're supposed to tell you I don't, you know, you've given them all the information they need. The problem is you get these, the, these level one people with chickens and he's just got a he's he's just got a notebook and he's just going, well, let me see. Page 22 says, I don't know, page 24 says, oh well. And I think he did the right thing. Transferring you. Unfortunately their phone system sounds kind of funky and it's not working very well. I don't know if there's a you've you've, I'm sure done this, but what you might do is power the phone all the way down, take out the SIM, put it back in, power, the phone all the way up and hope that it goes, oh, I'm silly. I was on the wrong network and and get everything working. That kind of thing. I
Speaker 13 (02:05:43):
Power. Should I power the phone back up with, without the SIM card in it?
Leo Laporte (02:05:47):
You could, if you want, you still have to power it down before you put the SIM in. You probably shouldn't put the SIM in when it's on. I mean, you can. I do
Speaker 13 (02:05:52):
Understand, understand.
Leo Laporte (02:05:53):
Yeah. The idea is just kind of turn it. It's the same thing as kicking in. You're just kicking it to see if it'll wake up
Speaker 13 (02:06:02):
Means a hammer.
Leo Laporte (02:06:03):
Yeah. A hammer might also work that's in the military, they call that percussive maintenance.
Speaker 13 (02:06:09):
We call it broken maintenance.
Leo Laporte (02:06:11):
Boom. Just hammer, just hit it on the side. But in the fact that's what this is turning it all the way off and on again. You could be so track phone, which is actually owned by Verizon, I believe. And they sell under the names straight talk at Walmart, which is where you got this, right. They offer service from all of them. So, and you don't know who you have. I think if you somebody's saying, and this makes sense, if you did a speed test, you'd see whose network you were on. And it's not gonna be at and T cuz that's who you can't get messages from. But, and I'm not sure. I, I, I have to, I'd have to ask somebody who's an expert on this stuff. Who's responsible for the gateway. If you're on an M V N O I would assume it's the parent company.
Leo Laporte (02:07:01):
So if you're on T-Mobile it's T-Mobile's responsibility, but of course you can't call T-Mobile. That's one of the reasons it's low cost. T-Mobile says, well, we'll sell you the data. We'll sell you the phone service, but you can't use our cert reps. That's expensive. And that's, by the way, why you have a rep, who's got chickens in the backyard, they're save, they're saving a little money. I mean, you gotta cut somewhere if you're gonna cut somewhere. So, so it's so track, phone's owned by Verizon, but they also resell service from everybody else, including Verizon T-Mobile and at, and T the fact that you can't get text messages from one carrier means the gateway to that. Carrier's not working reset the phone. Maybe it will go, oh, oh, it redo its, you know, it's AP and other settings to, to get working again. That's my, that's my best guess.
Leo Laporte (02:07:49):
You should, you could ask them, they will have this in the notebook. What the say settings, the data settings should be for your phone. They call 'em the access point name or AP settings. And if those are incorrect, that could be part of it. So the way, and you can look in your settings, you can actually, if you go to the, the connection settings for carriers, you go into the carrier, you'll see what your APN settings are. You could ask them, Hey what should my APN settings be? Honestly, you're gonna get a better result by Googling it. I think
Speaker 13 (02:08:22):
I, I tried all that kinda stuff. Resetting you use Google. Nothing happens. Nothing.
Leo Laporte (02:08:26):
No. Yeah. The look for the so if you Google AP settings for straight talk and put the model in and, and see if you can find it, I bet you, those AP settings do not go to T-Mobile sprint or at T they go to straight talk instead. But if they
Speaker 13 (02:08:43):
Would that be a road island, red
Leo Laporte (02:08:46):
Is yeah. Say, Hey, you know, I love the blue eggs. You got any blue eggs? Isn't that funny? My my personal trainer, I work out in his barn and he has 20. I found out he has 24 chickens. That's a lot of eggs. That's a lot of, but he has five boys. So he needs them. He needs them. Hey, and maybe he's also working on the side for straight talk. I don't know.
Speaker 13 (02:09:09):
No cause hardly understand them. Yeah,
Leo Laporte (02:09:12):
Yeah. Yeah. You got some farm somewhere, Jerry. I, I don't have a better our answer for you. Give that a try. Le Laporte, the tech I spaceman next. So here he is on straight talks website, AP settings,
Speaker 13 (02:09:26):
Tech
Leo Laporte (02:09:26):
Spaceman. Let me see if I can AP settings first. I have to say, I'm not a robot. Now I have to show pictures of chimneys. Oh, I hate this. I hate this. All right, we're gonna do the capture. Here we go. Text, ah, try this. How to update your settings. Try this. This might work, Jerry. This is from straight talks. Webpage text AP to 6, 11, 6 11.
Speaker 13 (02:09:57):
Okay.
Leo Laporte (02:09:58):
They will send you back what your setting should be. You could also on the straight talk page, enter your phone number or SIM for detailed programming instructions. This is the one thing I think it would be worth trying. This is at the, I'll put the link in our show notes to the straight talk page. It says how to get your AP settings.
Speaker 13 (02:10:16):
Okay.
Leo Laporte (02:10:18):
APN is just for data, but it may well be that they're doing texting over data most. Well look at this and here's another article. Seven ways to fix track phone, not receiving text messages, not connect to mobile data, unresolved issues with your texting app, problematic third party apps. Change your location, reboot your track phone. That's the one we suggested. Update your software. I'm sure you're up to date. Clear your messaging, apps, data and cash. Wipe out cash. Anyway, I'll put this@techeyelabs.com and you can try these. All right. Yeah. These seven things are, we just are just spitballing, but they're Hey, it gives you something to do. I try that APN settings thing. See if that fixes it. Okay. Getting frustrating. I know. Thank you. Thank you, Leo. There's no support in the world. The world is support. Take care, Jerry, always a pleasure, right?
Leo Laporte (02:11:12):
Bye. Bye. It's time for radio broadcasters in space. Rod PI is here. He's our spaceman, the author. First on the Moony 50th anniversary, beautiful coffee table book, featuring a forward by buzz Aldrin. He's also the editor in chief of ad Astro magazine for, from the national space society. And he joins us every week to talk about space. You were in Iowa last week, Iowa was in Iowa at the celebrate innovation live conference, which I've been to three or four times. Now. I had a very cool panel with Jerry Griffin, who was a flight director during the Apollo, most all of the Apollo program, part of Gemini and most of the shuttle and Andy Aldrin who's Buzz's son, but who's also a force of nature in, in commercial space flight himself. So that was cool. But as you know, cooler still was my encounter with far point because one of this speakers, this conference was John Delan, who of course famously played Q and star Trek.
Leo Laporte (02:12:19):
All he's, he's quite the geek actually. He's a great great guy. I know, I don't know him personally, but I know a lot of people who do know him and they love him. He's he's fun. He played Q, which was the best character on well and yeah, on generation on the next generation and beyond. And what's kind of interesting about that character. I mean, you know, he's, he's, he's Shakespearean in aspect at all times, right? Yeah. So that character, as he said in his talk, he said, you know, that character wasn't that much of a, of a stretch because I really am kind of a snarky, sarcastic guy, but, and he is, he's very clever, but he's, he's very, very versatile. And the series was kind of struggling at the end of middle of season two, they were, they were having trouble finding their audience ratings were down and then they brought in Delan back.
Leo Laporte (02:13:09):
He had been in the pilot, but they brought him back as Q in an episode called Q who, which is a terrible title and the Borg at the same time. And it just, all, all boats lifted really. I loved the pork too. Great to the series. Yeah. Well, and, and what great two characters. If you wanna open up your, your story arcs, you get this guy from the continuum who can do anything at the snap of his fingers. It's magic right now you have a sourcer on the ship and then you bring in the Borg who this kind of faceless collective metaphor for communism in the eighties and all that. And it was just brilliant. And I just re-watched that episode last night and I thought, okay, yeah, that really did pivot. But as I, as I so pardoned my gushing I'm of a fanboy, but we, we, he walked in the room and we had met once or TWiTce, but because actors are smart and, and they make sure that they remember everybody, he said that we met and I said, yeah, you know, for like 30 seconds on the set.
Leo Laporte (02:14:04):
And we got the talking and I didn't realize he was the son of an Al player in the Philadelphia Philharmonic symphony. Wow. And I was the son of a horn player in the LA Philharmonic. And I knew that he had done some kids concerts with, with Los Angeles and other orchestras, but I didn't realize he was an orchestra brat. Like I was, but he's taken it on. He directs opera. Oh, he does all these orchestra collaborations. So he is really a versatile and fascinating guy. And like you said, very, very smart and very interested in science. Yeah. Yeah. How fun. So what was, so what was this conference? Was it it it's, it's called celebrate in innovation live and it's put on by provost at a, a college in Des Moines named Anthony post. And it's it it's a really cross-cultural selection of thinkers and doers.
Leo Laporte (02:14:58):
So he had a, a, a hacker on there. Oh. He had a woman who was the science consultant for star Trek. He had dLAN he had me and the Apollo guy, new space guys, and then lots of other I mean, people from music, people from the arts, he had a glass blower, but they're all tops in their field. Yeah. So they come and they do these hour long talks. And then the next thing, you know, you're switching to something completely different. Maybe a guy who raises chickens and Petaluma could be anything I'd like to volunteer. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I think you should come and talk about podcasting. Sure. You know, that's my opinion, but, and, and, and he pays the speakers, which is nice too. That's very nice, but it's just a, it's a very nice small regional I like the idea of that are changing the world cross discipline, because sometimes we get in our little silos of information with the people who are all working in the same field.
Leo Laporte (02:15:52):
And you don't, you don't get a lot of, out of the box thinking when you do that. So it's nice to bring people from different disciplines together. I love that. Yeah. And you're not, when you're talking to your, your, the people you meet at the conference, you're not just talking to other space, people or other radio people or other guitar players, you know, you're talking to people from all different backgrounds. And of course you go to a place like Des Moines, which is a smaller community. And, you know, I write books, but I'm kind of a B list author. So there's a couple of me lying outside the liquor store and the gutter all over Los Angeles. So people don't pay attention to us, but there oh, you've written books. Yeah. And how much time do we have left? We have three minutes and 54 seconds, but who's okay.
Leo Laporte (02:16:34):
So, well, we do have a couple of stories. So Scott, Kelly one of the two Kelly brothers, Scott and mark commander, Kelly, as I call him, yes. Commander Kelly went up and did the year in space for the TWiTn study. Amazing has been getting a little him, a TWiTter battle with the, the cornball head of the Russian space agency who we don't like anymore. And he gave back the medal that the Russians gave him for his year in space. Yes. To protest the Eva Ukraine. I love this. He said this guy's a Patriot. He said, please give it to a Russian mother. Son died in this unjust war. Oh, wow. And then he immediately got blocked on social media or course, whatever of it survives over there. We don't like it. It's terrible. Yeah. Making fun of, but before and after he got into a bit of a, a TWiTter battle with the head of the, of the Russian space agency, it goes.
Leo Laporte (02:17:30):
And what did he say? Kelly said, without those flags and Ford exchange, they bring in your space program, won't be worth a dam. Maybe you can find a job at McDonald's. Oh, if McDonald's still exists in Russia. Oh. And reg and wrote back, get off you more on otherwise the death of the international space station will be on your contents. Oh Lord. Yeah. We shouldn't get TWiTter battles or nobody ever wins a TWiTter battle. They're not productive. Are they? Now they did threaten to abandon the American astronaut on the ISS. They're not gonna do that. Are they? No, this is just, you know, loud talk at sayin he is a political appointee. He's not a scientist. He's there. No, it he's a put bits guy. You know, I, I, I may be going a step too far, but he's a bit of a court jester.
Leo Laporte (02:18:16):
Yeah. You know, he does run the program nominally, but the scientist wouldn't, it operates without him. Yeah. No, nor would the engineers and nor would the other mid mid-management people, unless Putin came along and said, I got a little radio active pellet in my pocket. I'm telling you, you ought to do this things. And you go, R himself said, recently that van Dehe will come home. That we, we're not gonna strand out there. Yeah. Well, and even if they tried, I mean, we've had issues where people have stayed over on the space station longer than they were supposed to, and you just come home in another rocket. So that could mean that the next ASAP flight, one of the next few SpaceX flights that goes up takes two people instead of three or three instead of four. And then you bring home whoever's left. So it's, it's not a disaster on track to break Scott Kelly's record.
Leo Laporte (02:19:04):
Isn't he? Yeah. Yeah. I think he is. Yeah. The, the bigger problem is, you know, if the Russians decide to take their toys and go home, which, you know, they have, I think five modules on the station now, and they're integrated into the, of it would, would that'd be the end of the ISS. You know, if they actually try to decouple them, that's probably the end of it. But if they just kind of leave them there and say, we don't like you anymore. And you know, demand, extort some money from us for them, then we could continue running it just by having those things in place. Vanai scheduled to come back March 30th on a sous capsule landing at Kazakhstan. I'm not sure if I'm him, I might say, can I stay a little longer? And wait for the other guys. I just, I wanna take a different bus today.
Leo Laporte (02:19:42):
Could be a chili reception. I, more ways than one. Yeah. And you have to stay there a while, right. To get debriefed and everything you can. In his case, there might be a little bit of recovery time, but I suspect we'd scoop him up pretty quick, cuz he doesn't, he's been up there since April to be last year, April, but you don't need to be debriefed by the Russians. You, you know, you just need to be, they might want the debrief. What do you know, when do you know who telling? We don't know where the capsule came down and also I'd be nervous. Spacex has been continuing to defend their, their Starlink ability in Ukraine. So maybe we could talk about that a little bit next week. Good. That's Mr. Rod Pyle in chief@astrosspacedots.to get your subscription. Thank you, rod Leo Laporte.
Leo Laporte (02:20:36):
He will have the American record for longest human space flight mission 355 days. Almost a full year in micro gravity. The poor guy probably gonna be a little weak for a while. Yeah. It's really tough when you get back. Yeah. So we, Hey, we did our, our second public this week in space. Yay. Oh, I forgot to plug that. I will plug that next. Yeah, no sweat. And it was fun. We got to talk about amateur rocketry. Get the, a few moron deaths of, I will be on your conscience. You'll fly your co rockets through silly medic swine silly boy. Oh my gosh. Oh man. It's it's not good. And, and I, I just don't, you know, there's plenty of opinions out there from the thinkers. I'm not sure I see a forward for this Alliance and it hasn't been that great for us.
Leo Laporte (02:21:32):
Anyway, this was an olive branch held out to rock that's right. I think we were doing them a favor. Yeah. Well, and you know, we paid for, depending on how you parse the dollars and what numbers you see at least two thirds of the space station. Right? So they had rockets, they had a few modules, but it was really as how Chinese are they involved in the space station? No, they are precluded legally from being involved by the Wolf amendment and various ITAR restrictions, which is why the Chinese and the Russians now have a new space Alliance. Right. They're gonna go do their moon base while we're trying to go do our moon base with our Artemis partners. So yeah, it's doing this again. Yeah. We've been here before Leo. We called it the space race. Now we call it the angry competition. What's the world what the world.
Leo Laporte (02:22:18):
Yeah. But, but it's interesting, you know, watching China kind of be very sort of center rail on what's going on now. I, it it's irritating a lot of people, but at least they're not immediately falling into that camp a hundred percent. Yeah. Yeah. So, oh, and here's a, here's the cue picture I should have been showing. Oh, that sea was so embarrassing. And you know, those Toros unwrap plastic bags, like five minutes before the scene. Right. They look, they look pretty fresh, straight, but he did, he did bother with the fingerings of the trumpet cuz he's an orchestra. Guy's kinda that. That's kind of cool. That's a little over the top. That's really funny. That is funny. Welcome to the afterlife, John Luke. You're dead. You're dead. And now LAN's back in the new Picard series. Oh nice. So now they're both old. Yeah. That's cool. Yeah. Call the rest of us
Leo Laporte (02:23:22):
Care. All right, rod, have a great week. You too. Nice time. Take care. Byebye. Thank you for letting me be your tech guy. One more time. Leo Laporte, The Tech Guy, thanks to professor Laura, our musical director. Thanks to Kim Shaffer, the phone angel. Thanks of all people. Most of all to you. Thank you for listening. Couldn't do it without you. Hey, also, thanks to our folks on team tech guy in the discord chat, we have found out what that bubbling is. Well, there you go. Thank you. I guess Kev brewer posted this apple has launched a quality program. Now this was five years ago. So I don't, this was not the one that this was not the, that our caller was talking about. He had a 2017 MacBook pro, but apple did have a quality problem with MacBook pro anti reflective coding issues. And they were bubbling up very much like he described. So contact your apple store. Maybe this is that problem cropping up again on later MacBook pros, but they do in fact, put an anti glare coating on there. At least they did. They called it stain gate
Leo Laporte (02:24:37):
Stain gate, but this was for the 2015 MacBook pros. But the fact that it happened then maybe as an indicator that maybe there was a problem. And I have, I've seen that actually now that I see the pictures this is an article from Mac rumors. Now that I see the pictures of Mac rumors, I go, oh yeah, I know what he's talking about. Now. I also neglected to mention that rod does a show now for our podcast network called this in space with tar Mallek from the space.com folks, if you're really interested in space and you like listening to rod, talk about it with the tar, you can find that at TWiT TV slash T I S this in space episode two was published yesterday. So that's great. I forgot to plug that, TWiTsts this in space back. The phones we go, John is on the line from, I'm gonna guess Leger, Pennsylvania. How do you pronounce that?
Caller #7 (02:25:34):
Hello, Leo it's Legonire.
Leo Laporte (02:25:37):
Hello, John. Welcome.
Caller #7 (02:25:40):
Thank you.
Leo Laporte (02:25:41):
What can I do for you? My friend?
Caller #7 (02:25:44):
Well, I have a, a issue with my desktop HP. It's a it's an older one, but not super old. And it's been freezing its startup. And let me also add that. I don't where I live here. I don't have any internet service, so I don't use it to get online. Okay. I only use it to watch DVD movies and listen to music. Okay.
Leo Laporte (02:26:13):
How old is it?
Caller #7 (02:26:16):
It's probably seven, eight years old. All right. So it is pretty old. Yeah,
Leo Laporte (02:26:20):
But not ancient, you know, just a middle aged, shall we say? Yeah. Or a laptop. So you turn it on. And does it make, do you hear it kind of powering up, you hear fans starting up and lights and beeps and stuff?
Caller #7 (02:26:33):
Yeah. Yeah. It, it, it powers up. Sometimes
Leo Laporte (02:26:35):
Windows comes up and you see windows, which version of windows are you using?
Caller #7 (02:26:39):
10.
Leo Laporte (02:26:40):
10. So it comes up and you even see the menus and all that stuff, but then at some point it just freezes up
Caller #7 (02:26:46):
At some point. Exactly. It just freezes it'll freeze in the middle of a DVD movie.
Leo Laporte (02:26:51):
Is it, is it most often in it with a video running?
Caller #7 (02:26:56):
No. No, no. Sometimes it'll, it'll freeze it, right. It, when it's booting up it.
Leo Laporte (02:27:02):
Ah,
Caller #7 (02:27:02):
Okay. And I'll have to hard
Leo Laporte (02:27:04):
Hard boot it and get it back and it starts up again. Yeah. So there's a few, the reason I'm asking some of these symptoms are helpful in diagnosing it. There are a few things that can cause this one is overheating a computer to protect itself when it gets too hot will stop. And it'll look like it's frozen. It is in effect. It's just stopped. It's halted the processor that can happen with an aging computer, a middle aged computer because the cooling there's, they use a, a little substrate of of heat conducting chemical in between the processor and the fan that's glued onto the processor that can dry out the thermal pace they call that can dry out. Yeah. Right. Sometimes in that case, and it's not easy on a laptop, you can open it up and re paste. It could be, the fans have died or are clogged. Sometimes hair, other dusts gets into the, the fans don't work as well. Sometimes opening it up, blowing it out. Helps those.
Caller #7 (02:27:59):
I'm sorry. Let me clarify. This is a desk.
Leo Laporte (02:28:01):
Oh, it is a desktop app. Well, that makes it much easier. Yeah. You can at least look inside and make sure the fans are turning.
Caller #7 (02:28:06):
I did. Yeah. I, I had it apart the other day and I cleaned it and I was thinking it might be the the power supply.
Leo Laporte (02:28:14):
Well, that's the thing. So now that's what I mean is there are multiple possible causes. That's why I'm asking if it happens after you use it for a while, but it's even when you're just booting. Sometimes it happens. Usually if it's heat, it you'll run it for a while. And you'll particularly, you'll be doing things that generate more processor activity and cause it to be hotter if it dies immediately. Yeah. Power supply could be, although usually it won't even boot up with a power supply, but that's a cheap component and fairly easy on a desktop to replace just a few screws. Don't open up the power supply cuz you can shock yourself. But the box itself, you can unscrew put a new one in. But then there are other possibilities, the most common failure on any computer is the moving part, the hard drive.
Leo Laporte (02:28:55):
And I'm guessing given the age of that computer, it has a spinning hard drive, not a solid state drive inside, correct? Yes. So that can also be a problem. Not, you know, obviously it's working well enough to boot it up, but it could be that there is part of the operating system has gotten corrupted and as a result, it's freezing there it's in other words, there could be, could be hardware. So that was the first two things we talked about or it could be software. Yeah. So, and it's very hard to diagnose usually what I would recommend. You know, you always wanna do the easiest thing first before you go out and install a new power supply is, is try either resetting windows or maybe booting to an external drive with windows on it. You wanna try and see if it's the software on that internal hard R it could be the drive itself. It could just be damaged software. Okay. So you wanna somehow boot without it. One of the easiest ways to do this, download a copy of Linux, any Linux. So Buntu is a good one, put it on a USB thumb drive and boot to that. And if everything works and you don't have any freezing, then you know, it's a software issue.
Caller #7 (02:29:58):
Okay. Because
Leo Laporte (02:29:59):
You've in fact replace the software, including the video driver. That's another thing that sometimes is a problem video driver having a, a bug and crashing over time. The fact that it crashes on first boot sometimes eliminates kind of heat, eliminates the issue of bad video driver. Okay. But it could easily be the hard drive or software on the hard drive. So the first thing I do is download a Buntu put on USB drive. You might have to go into your bio setup and say boot to the USB drive boot up and then play with it. See if you can get it to crash. If you can. Now, you know, it's hardware, you've eliminated software completely.
Caller #7 (02:30:34):
I, I did get one error message that which was unexpected Colonel mode trap.
Leo Laporte (02:30:41):
Good. And that's a good sign that, that, that lends, it leads me more to being a software problem, although that can happen with hardware as well.
Caller #7 (02:30:51):
Oh boy.
Leo Laporte (02:30:52):
Yeah. Okay. Like, you know, it's because these are really complicated beasts, right? And so there's a whole lot of things that can go wrong. So troubleshooting is really trying to kind of narrow it down. The fact that a Colonel that, I mean that software, but if you had a bad power supply that was giving it low power, that could trigger the same kind of error message, you know, there's a whole variety of things, but I, that that's good. Let's hope so boot up in the Linux, see if it's working right. Do all the things that, that usually crash it, run video, try to really break it. And if it all remember, it's gonna work a little slower, cuz it's running off a USB key instead of off the internal drive. But if everything works fine there, good news. Just wiping the driveway. Reinstalling windows. You'll be good.
Caller #7 (02:31:33):
Okay. Okay. I'll give that.
Leo Laporte (02:31:35):
If not you're right. Power supply is a very common failure. The tube, most common are power supply cuz it's heating and cooling, heating, and cooling while I expansion and the spinning hard drive for same reason. Those are the two most common things. Check, check out, check, check a bio update. That could also be it. There's a lot of different things that can cause something like this, but
Caller #7 (02:31:56):
Hopefully I'll get I'm waiting on Starlink for inner
Leo Laporte (02:31:59):
Oh exciting. You're gonna finally get some internet. How have you survived in Lier, Pennsylvania without access to the outside world.
Caller #7 (02:32:08):
It's it's and I barely get a cell phone signal here.
Leo Laporte (02:32:10):
Wow. But it's beautiful. It's gorgeous, right?
Caller #7 (02:32:14):
It is. It's the Laurel Highland. It's be beautiful up here, but it's 20, 22. I don't have internet service. That's That? There's something wrong
Leo Laporte (02:32:24):
With that. Hey, it's a pleasure talking to you, John, have a great day. I hope you find the problem. Those are very hard. Those intermittent problems. Very hard to to track down. Hey thank y'all for being here. Don't forget. Tech guy labs.com. We'll put all the links tech on the, on the website. We'll put audio and video from the show, the transcripts too. Leo Laporte, The Tech Guy, folks have a great geek week. Bye on. 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'll find it@TWiT.tv, including the podcast for the show. We talk about win and windows weekly Macintosh a Mac break, weekly iPads, iPhones, apple watches on iOS, today's security and security. Now, I mean I can go on and on and on. And of course the big show every Sunday afternoon, this week in tech, you'll find it all@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.
