The Tech Guy Episode 1878 Transcript

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

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

Leo Laporte (00:00:11):
Hi, this is Leo Laporte and this is my Tech Guy podcast. This show originally aired on the premier radio networks on Sunday. The March 20th, 2022. First day is spring. This is episode 1,878. Enjoy

... (00:00:28):
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Leo Laporte (00:01:01):
Listeners of this program. Get an ad free version. If they're members of Club TWiT $7 a month gives you ad free versions of all of our shows plus membership in the club, TWiT discord, a great clubhouse for TWiT listeners and finally the TWiT plus feed with shows like Stacy's book club, the untitled Lennox show the GIZ fizz and more go to TWiT.tv/Club TWiT. And thanks for your support. Why? Hey, Hey, how are you today? Good to see you. Leo Laporte here. The Tech Guy. It is, yes. It's time. Your favorite time of the week. Huh? Maybe time when we get together and we talk about nerdy things like come computers, the internet, smart phones, smart watches, home theater, digital photography, all that stuff. Actually I think Chris Markt will be back. He, he missed last week had to go visit his folks, but I think he'll be here this week.

Leo Laporte (00:02:01):
I'm pretty sure I saw Sam Abul, Sam, our car guy whizzing by in his Miata top down. It's beautiful day in Iolani he'll be coming up in just a few minutes. And of course as always we will have some fun with spaceman rod pile. That's all coming up today. Of course, mostly though, I'm here to take your calls. Talk about what's going on with technology. Yesterday Micah and I, Micah, who is Tech Guy too. And I talked a little bit about the new apple hardware, which was announced or didn't wasn't announced this week, but it arrived this week, Friday. He got the apple display. I played with it a little bit and I got the Mac studio. I sprung for the M one ultra the top of the line, cuz I wanted to see what it could do.

Leo Laporte (00:02:53):
And I've been running an experiment overnight. It's my wife's M one ultra. So I have to sneak in and and use it. So I said, honey, you're not gonna use the computer tonight, are you? No. So it's still running by the way. I started a process yesterday. It's been a total of, I think, 20 hours so far, it's still running. It's called photogrammetry. And my friend Alex, Linox, Alex Linox, Alex Lindsay, who is a kind of kind of a geek on this stuff. He designed for instance, as an example, he designed the remember in episode one of star wars, the fourth movie, which was called episode one, where at princess who's is it princess Lea or Amala? I think it's princess Amala has that shiny Starship. You remember that he did that. He did that. He designed that when he was working at Lucas film, he, he did all his spec highlights and stuff and reflections and stuff that has to be done in a computer.

Leo Laporte (00:04:04):
That's not a, there's nobody built that Starship. So he's a, he's a 3d designer. He does streaming stuff. Anyway, he sent me some images. Photogrammetry is the art and science of extracting 3d information and from photographs. So he sent me 228 photographs of a palace that he'd taken in India. And, you know, with just a regular digital camera, they were high quality digital, raw files. And he, and then we downloaded a program actually, interestingly from Russia, I had to you know, that's the, that's the software he uses. I had to my router at home blocks, traffic from China and Russia, or did cuz, cuz I, you know, I I didn't want to I don't know what I was. I was just think for security purposes, but he likes a program called meta shape from a company called AGI software.

Leo Laporte (00:05:10):
Maybe it's Aggie soft. I don't know. But they're outta St. Petersburg. So I had to turn off the security on my router to download it, but they have a 30 day trial, which is good, cuz I'm sure it's a very expensive program. So meta shape ingested the 228 image files and then started churning chunking, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. In this new Mac studio. And it's been saying for the last hour it's been saying, I'm almost done 10 minutes, almost done my poor wife. I said, can you leave it running just a little bit longer? She wants to use her Mac studio. I don't blame her just a little bit longer cuz I, I just wanna know what it's gonna take total, but so far more than 20 hours. But what it's building is a model, a 3d model that you could then use in a movie or whatever from these pictures.

Leo Laporte (00:06:06):
So you can rotate it. It's actually a really cool process, but it's a very, very compute intensive process. As you might imagine. First thing has to do is align all those photos, figure out where all the points are. We set it at the highest quality to really tax the thing. Here's the, here's the good news. First of all, it can do it. There's a lot of computers that would just break. That would just in fact, Alex has the 16 inch Intel I nine MacBook pro. He says it can't finish. I don't know if that's a must be a Ram. I don't know. This is a Mac studio, M one ultra 64 gigs of Ram. It's got 20 processors, 20 cores, 18 performance cores and two efficiency cores. And then it has, I don't know how many 32 GPU I think didn't use the GPU much.

Leo Laporte (00:06:55):
It's mostly I'm watching. I got some great pictures. I'll show you if you ever one, oh, that's your worst nightmare. Your neighbor comes over. Can I show you my CPU processing pictures got some great pictures of green bars maxed out CPUs all the way. Boom, boom, boom, all 20 of them all the way, which is something you probably don't see on that. Max duty. You very often, very few things will use all of that processing power, but that's why we wanted to try this. And we're, you know, I don't need this 3d model, but we're gonna, we're gonna do it anyway. Here's the interesting thing. First of all. Yeah, it's gonna complete, it's gonna complete probably in about a total of 20 hours. I don't know if that's good or bad yet. I'll have to ask Alex, but it didn't even get hot.

Leo Laporte (00:07:39):
And that was, was really surprising to me. You do this on an Intel machine. In fact, I'm doing it right now on an AMD with a Invidia RTX 30, 70 on my gaming machine just to see, just to compare times, but already it sounds like a tornado in my office. Whew, powerful fans blowing. The thing is hot. Cpus are working hard. You could tell if you feel like it's working the Mac studio, it just sits there. Gone quietly. It's got fans, but you don't hear 'em they're on all the time. It turns out I put my hand on the, on the Mac studio. Nope. Not even warm put felt the, the air coming out. It's I mildly warm, like, you know, like 72 degrees warm. It's not hot. So it's working and it's working well. I don't think, but I, and by the way, after looking at a lot of benchmarks from a lot of people, that's what we talked about yesterday with Micah.

Leo Laporte (00:08:38):
I think it's really important to understand that unless you are doing photogrammetry or something crazy, you don't need the M one ultra any one of the max running the new apple Silicon will be equally fast with browsing, email, all the things we normally do, you know, and even video games. When there aren't really very challenging games on the Mac, it's hard to find a game that challenges you on the Mac. They're not gonna benefit a whole lot. I think the bottom line, the messaging we should tell everybody is don't spend you know, the top. You can get spend $7,000 on a studio. They're very nice. These are the new max apple announced, but you don't need it. An M one max is gonna be fine, low end, which is only 4,000, huh? No, no. This was 4,000. The one I'm using, the one I got for myself, I got my wife, the nice one, the one I got for myself, like 2199.

Leo Laporte (00:09:33):
I think something like that, which is still expensive for a computer. But this, these are really beautiful design. Somebody named max tech that E has taken it apart and it's a really beautifully built wonderful thing. So nice job apple, I guess it's, you know, it's fast. I'll show you my CPU gauges. If you ever, if you wanna see 88, 88 ask Leo, there's plenty of other stuff to talk about. We will talk about it. I come back Leo, LePort The Tech Guy. Let's get let's, let's get on the horn and, and, and talk about tech stuff you care about. We'll have more right after this.

Leo Laporte (00:10:14):
There we go. So this is a picture of the max studio. So these are just the, the processors right there. The 20 processors, the blue line goes all the way to the top. That means they're fully maxed out. This is the GPU. It is not, which is interesting. This, these, so all these green things, this is more in more detail. I'm not sure what red means on this. I think red means it's it's peaked. Like it can't go any it's as high as it can go. The efficiency course peaked very early, but this is full on. And then you could see, this is what it's building and here's the timings. So it took three and a half hours to align the photos. So all the dots line up, no, the blowers did not ramp up. They what's interesting about the Mac studio. They that when you turn it on, the fans, come on immediately and stay on the whole time. They don't go up or down or anything. There was no appreciable difference in the blower. Speed took 13 and a half hours to build a dense cloud. Another 30 minutes to build the mesh. And now it's building the texture, which is gonna be about an hour. So, you know, maybe it's actually a total of 17 hours. Something like that. Now that's everything maxed down, everything maxed down.

Leo Laporte (00:11:43):
So I don't know. I don't know what if that's good or not? I mean, it's good that it finished and that it didn't get too hot. So I'm running it on the right now I'm running it on the AMD rise. Oh, I can't even remember what I have here. I'll tell you exactly. But this is for Mac break weekly on Tuesday. I think it'll be done by Tuesday. I'm hoping here she is. Ladies and gentlemen, the Blondie Kim Shaffer phone angel. Hello, Kim. Oh, let me turn on your microphone. Hi.

Kim Schaffer (00:12:26):
Hi.

Leo Laporte (00:12:27):
Welcome

Kim Schaffer (00:12:28):
Talking to myself there for a second's second. What's up.

Leo Laporte (00:12:31):
That's how the kids say what's up.

Kim Schaffer (00:12:33):
I still do that with a couple friends.

Leo Laporte (00:12:35):
Do you? Yeah. You don't do the old Budweiser head how's that?

Kim Schaffer (00:12:40):
No, I don't do that. I just go. Sup,

Leo Laporte (00:12:42):
Sup Sup. How's your,

Kim Schaffer (00:12:45):
My more young hip friends.

Leo Laporte (00:12:47):
Oh, well see then I feel good about sin. Sup. Yeah. So tell me about everything, the

Kim Schaffer (00:12:54):
Good old days.

Leo Laporte (00:12:55):
The good old day. I don't know. How's life.

Kim Schaffer (00:13:00):
I don't wanna tell you about the radio dream I had last night.

Leo Laporte (00:13:03):
Oh gosh. The radio dream.

Kim Schaffer (00:13:05):
Yeah. I won't tell you cuz I don't wanna give the colors. Do

Leo Laporte (00:13:07):
Other people like if, if does everybody in the world, if does do other people dream about their jobs? I guess they probably do. No, probably do they have anxiety dreams, but I don't know if they, like, if you were a forklift operator, do you imagine like, oh, I'm just pulling up to this big stack of things and oh no, the whole thing's falling over and I can't balance it. I gotta, unless something like that, I don't know.

Kim Schaffer (00:13:28):
They probably do

Leo Laporte (00:13:29):
What's so I'll tell you my radio dream. I the song is running out, even though I don't play music anymore. I was a DJ for years. The song is running out, come in the last few seconds and I, my headphones are all wrapped around me and I can't unwrap them and I can't find the, I can't get the next song. And it's about to run, you know, it's, it's one of those kinds of anxiety. Yeah. Dreams. Well, how about yours? What do you

Kim Schaffer (00:13:54):
I think the time running out thing is a very critical one, but no, I'm not telling you. I'll tell you off the air what this is about. Cause I don't sounds good. I need it to come true.

Leo Laporte (00:14:05):
I know I have a, I have a dream let's let's take a caller. Let's

Kim Schaffer (00:14:08):
Take a caller. Let's go to rusty and San Diego. He's fed up.

Leo Laporte (00:14:12):
I am mad as heck

Kim Schaffer (00:14:14):
Stick up and fed as I've

Leo Laporte (00:14:15):
Sick up and fed and I am not gonna take it anymore. Thank you, Kim. You're

Kim Schaffer (00:14:20):
Not gonna take it

Leo Laporte (00:14:21):
Anymore. Hi, Rusty Leo Laporte, The Tech Guy.

Caller #1 (00:14:25):
Good morning, Leo. How are you today?

Leo Laporte (00:14:26):
I am great, but I hear you're fed up and not gonna take it anymore. You're sick and tired of what

Caller #1 (00:14:33):
I, I didn't call just to Raven ran. I just need some help in finding an alternative. My cable provider, we, we get our internet, our television, and a landline from 'em has had the same recurring prob problem for six years.

Leo Laporte (00:14:50):
Well you're patient actually. You're a patient person.

Caller #1 (00:14:53):
And then we just had our 19th visit by one of their, oh

Leo Laporte (00:14:58):
My gosh. You are more than patient.

Caller #1 (00:15:00):
And this time the answer was, well, the boxes are outdated. So you gotta upgrade all that. And I just, all

Leo Laporte (00:15:08):
Right. Let's let's first of all, let's name names. You've gotta try triple play package from Cox, Comcast spectrum,

Caller #1 (00:15:16):
Spectrum,

Leo Laporte (00:15:17):
Spectrum. They're all just as bad. It doesn't really matter. They're they're interchangeable. So spectrum see this one thing that gets me mad. They always wanna try to sell you that triple play. I think some of them have quadruple play now. And, and when you put it all together, it's not that it saves you money. They really don't have a very compelling story that I guess that one bill is the story, but I don't know about spectrum, but with Comcast because they have all these different systems. It isn't even one bill. Maybe it is by now. But when I had a triple play, I wasn't so happy. So happens. Does it drop out?

Caller #1 (00:15:54):
It's just the television. It pixelates

Leo Laporte (00:15:56):
It pixelates, but your internet bandwidth's fine. And your phone line is fine. Yes. You don't get verbal sometimes when you're making a call. Anything like that?

Caller #1 (00:16:09):
It did, but that was a long time ago that hasn.

Leo Laporte (00:16:13):
So you're watching a TV and you're watching streaming or cable

Caller #1 (00:16:17):
Cable.

Leo Laporte (00:16:18):
Okay. So your, it sounds like your Internet's fine. And the phone, by the way, just so you know, is using the internet. So the, those two probably are, are okay. So the problem comes down to your television signal.

Caller #1 (00:16:33):
Yes.

Leo Laporte (00:16:33):
Yeah. And they say you are, you need the latest set top boxes to fix that.

Caller #1 (00:16:40):
Yeah, for years the, they said the problem was the cable itself, but nobody ever turned in a work order to replace it. Yeah. It, it did get replaced last month. There's a whole new cable and it still has the same. Are

Leo Laporte (00:16:54):
You in a house standalone house?

Caller #1 (00:16:58):
We're in a condo.

Leo Laporte (00:16:59):
You're in a condo. So, so the cable comes into the condo and go then goes to each unit separately. Yeah. So there's a few places. It could go wrong. Sometimes it's out in the curb, you know, the cable company has in your neighborhood somewhere kind of a head end where the big fat pipe from the cable company goes by. And then they have a little line coming off of it, into that head end, which then serves the neighborhood. So is sometimes the problem could be that far down stro. It could all the way downstream into the, you know, office downtown. But a lot of times they want to check that they may not have checked that because it's just, is it, is it on just some channels or all the channels?

Caller #1 (00:17:45):
All the channels. Okay. And what I really I'm, I'm tired of trying to work it out. I get nothing but a run around what would be comparable. I, I really like the speed of the internet. Yeah. So television packages, I could choose those from. Yeah. I don't care. I'm more concerned about keeping my internet speed. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:18:07):
You could be a court. You could be what they call a cord cutter. Nowadays. You don't need cable TV. You can, all you need is internet and everything else you want can come over the internet, what they call over the top. So yeah, but you do need good internet and here's the problem. And this is true. Most, I think it's something like 86% of Americans have only two internet service providers, the phone company and the cable company. And you probably have noticed that in San Diego, you don't have a choice of cable companies. No, you get what you're given because the cable companies have a monopoly. They have a, what's called a regional monopoly and this is true all over the country. There are very few places. There's more than one choice for cable. Cable's gonna be the fastest.

Leo Laporte (00:18:53):
So, well you have two pipes coming in the house, the phone company and the cable company of the two cables. The faster there may be faster ways. And I think they're coming. There's wireless methods, both T-Mobile and Verizon are now selling standalone wireless. It's basically cell service data coming in through a box. And if you are in a 5g ultra wide band neighborhood that's Verizon's term T-Mobile calls it ultra capacity. But if on your phones, you see UW 5g UW, or you see you're gonna get speeds that are comparable to your cable speed really, really fast. I get on my T-Mobile iPhone 12. If I'm near, I have to be near enough. The tower I get 500 megabits down and 80 up it's a lot, probably more than your cable's offering

Caller #1 (00:19:46):
And, and way more than I use

Leo Laporte (00:19:47):
And more than you'd ever need. Now you, so there is starting to be competition. This is good news, cuz it'll mean, you know, prices go down. There's always star link, which isn't quite that fast. Maybe a hundred megabits. That's a satellite dish. That's very expensive. 500 bucks to get started 90 bucks a a month. But that's that's from space Exelon, Musks company. There are gonna be more and more choices. And the good end, you know, then remember GA good Google started putting fiber in. They then said, well, we can't make any money at this, but there are companies that are saying, you know, if we just put fiber in this neighborhood, we could make the money back. If you're in a densely populated area, you're much more likely. So the first thing to do is see what your choices are probably though. And most, most, all of America, the fastest choice right now is your cable company. So you should really see what kind of a deal. Remember when you turn off the triple play, they charge you more for, for internet.

Caller #1 (00:20:39):
Yeah. I knew that was coming too. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:20:44):
So they, you know, I'm not answering your question by pixelation cuz it sounds like you just wanna get rid 'em anyway.

Caller #1 (00:20:51):
That's correct. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:20:53):
And frankly, if you've had all these problems with them, you may not want 'em as an internet service provider.

Caller #1 (00:20:58):
No, I, I wanna be done with them. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:21:00):
So you need to find out what's available to you go to broadband reports.com and reports.com. You can enter your zip code and you can at least see who the providers in your neighborhood are. Unfortunately, thanks to the FCC and extreme lobbying by the telecommunications company. Most of America doesn't have a choice, but that's changing. That's the good news. Leo Laporte, The Tech Guy car guy coming up. Yeah. So hold on. I have to had to take a break there. Sorry about that. So yeah,

Caller #1 (00:21:32):
I know you did. And thank you for giving me the extra time. Sure. that that's, I'll go to broadband reports and start looking from there. And then I have an old pixel three, a XL and a few weeks ago you were talking to someone about getting a, a replacement pixel that was actually reasonably priced. Yeah. The

Leo Laporte (00:21:52):
New five, a 5g newish six months old, 4 49, I think maybe 4 99. Very good choice.

Caller #1 (00:22:02):
And do I just go back to my Verizon store or can I, you can

Leo Laporte (00:22:06):
Buy it direct from Google store.google.com. You'll wanna get a new SIM probably because if you have that old pixel three, you probably don't have a 5g SIM Verizon has different Sims for 5g carriage, 5g carriage. Actually this is a good test because if you then put it in and you suddenly see, oh look, I'm getting 5g. U w that Verizon box. I think it's 60 bucks between 40 and 60 bucks a month might actually be a really good choice for you.

Caller #1 (00:22:37):
That would be for the phone

Leo Laporte (00:22:38):
That's for everything it's it's so you get a little box. It picks up the internet from the 5g towers. If you're close enough and the towers themselves are not congested, you can get really high speed. As I said, 500 megabits for 60 bucks a month or less.

Caller #1 (00:22:58):
Okay. And that's through Google.

Leo Laporte (00:22:59):
That's through Verizon. So Hey, I'm sorry. It's confusing. You get the phone at Google. You'll need to get new SIM from Verizon, but that will be a good test because when you put that 5g SIM in Verizon into your Google phone you will see an indicator about what you're getting and can even do a speed test, but you'll see, it'll say 5g, U little letters UW. That's their mid band. So there's three bands of, of 5g. The one Verizon always talks about millimeter wave. No one gets, you have to be next to a tower 80 feet with a within 80 feet of a tower. There's not towers for very many places, blah, blah, blah, 800 feet, I think. But there is this new mid band, which T-Mobile and Verizon and at T are all rolling out. That's the one that the federal aviation administration said slow down. It's gonna bring planes outta the sky, but it didn't that is really fast. That's the, all the promise of 5g. Finally, the low band, which T-Mobile's had out for a while is not, is not any faster than LTE, but both T-Mobile and Verizon now offer these residential service. You don't use your phone, you have a low box that gets the internet through the airwaves, through the cell tower. And,

Caller #1 (00:24:11):
And that would take care of my computers in my house.

Leo Laporte (00:24:14):
Everything it'd be like a wifi router that you'd get your TV, your computer, everything over. That's the cord cutting solution. So what you've to do a good cord cut. You have to have as, you know, good, good internet. And, and what we're trying to do is find a re replacement for spectrum spectrum. Internet's fine. Your Internet's okay. You just don't, if you don't wanna do business with them.

Caller #1 (00:24:37):
Right. So I'll, I'll get ahold of Verizon. See about that box and I'll go to the Google store to get a new phone. Yeah. And then, and I'll look up broadband reports and

Leo Laporte (00:24:47):
Yeah. And see, and see if you know, this, this new home 5g is very, very location specific. So it really is gonna come down to if your condo can get it. And Verizon won't know their coverage maps are useless. You actually have to have a 5g phone and look, but spectrum may also be a, a, you know, if you can bite the bullet and honestly, we didn't really address your TV issues. There may be some solutions that we don't know about, but we'll save that for another time. I have to go. Cause guess who's here. Sam Abu. Hello? Hello, Sam Abuelsamid.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:25:27):
Hello Leo. How are you?

Leo Laporte (00:25:28):
I'm well, how are you?

Sam Abuelsamid (00:25:30):
I'm doing fine.

Leo Laporte (00:25:31):
What do you wanna talk about today? That beautiful car behind you, right

Sam Abuelsamid (00:25:34):
There? Yeah, the lucid air and, and energy efficiency and EVs.

Leo Laporte (00:25:38):
Okay, here we go. Sam bull salmon is here. Car guy on The Tech Guy show. He's a principal researcher at guide house insights, those of the wheel bearings podcast, wheel bearings.media. Join us every week to talk automotive tech. Hello Sam.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:25:55):
Hello, Leo. How are you this week?

Leo Laporte (00:25:57):
I'm great. Has spring sprung and Alani.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:26:00):
It is in the process of springing.

Leo Laporte (00:26:02):
Got the top down. You did last week.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:26:04):
Yeah. The top tops down. The tops all was down. Yeah. I'm gonna take the sun is shining the temperature's over 50 degrees. So after we're done, I'm gonna go take the MI out for a

Leo Laporte (00:26:14):
Drive as they call it in Canada patio weather.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:26:17):
Exactly. Yes, yes, no, the snow is melted. There's no freezing rain or anything coming down. So it's patio weather. Yep.

Leo Laporte (00:26:25):
So today I see you sitting in front of very lovely vehicle. This is one of the, I think the best looking vehicles out there. It's an EV from lucid.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:26:35):
Yes. this week a few days ago, I was in Austin, Texas for my first ever visit to south by south. Oh,

Leo Laporte (00:26:44):
You went to south by

Sam Abuelsamid (00:26:45):
Nice. I, I, I did, yeah. I was there to to interview Peter Rawlinson on stage. And Peter is the CEO and chief technical officer at lucid. Prior to joining lucid some years ago he was the chief engineer on the Tesla model S and turns out that we, Peter and I first met a little over five years ago. And we had dinner the night before, and it turns out that over the course of the last 30 odd years we have just missed crossing paths multiple times prior to eventually meeting in 2016 at the various jobs that we had over the years he was at at Jaguar and Lotus and a couple of other companies,

Leo Laporte (00:27:34):
The car world is a small world. Isn't it? I mean, there's a lot of

Sam Abuelsamid (00:27:37):
It is, it is both very large and very small. Yeah. And it's, it's funny how, how you manage to, to just miss crossing paths or crossing paths with a lot of interesting people over that.

Leo Laporte (00:27:48):
There's a lot of circulation people go from company to company. They don't generally leave the industry, so yeah, you're running the same people over and over again. Yeah. So he's, it's interesting cuz he's both CTO and CEO. He's a technical guy running the

Sam Abuelsamid (00:28:03):
He's

Leo Laporte (00:28:03):
An engineer.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:28:04):
Yeah. Yep. And he started off as CTO there. And then when the prior CEO left they, they made him CEO as well. And I think he's, he's done a pretty remarkable job. The, the interview that we did will be posted on YouTube sometime in the next day or and I would encourage everybody to, to go check it out on the south by Southwest channel. But it was, it was a, it was a fascinating conversation that we had and lucid over the years between, between the time I first met Peter and, and, and Derek Jenkins, who's the chief designer at lucid in late 2016 and got my first briefing on what they were doing. And then in 20 or spring of 2017, they actually showed the car publicly. And then over the next couple of years, they were struggling to raise money and they, they nearly went bankrupt multiple times in that period. And wow, you know, they managed to manage to keep things going long enough that they got a big investment, which allow them to actually go forward and build their factory which is now producing these cars. And then also go public last fall through a spec transaction. And they're, you know, they're starting to ramp up production now. So far they've built, I think about 400 of these errors.

Leo Laporte (00:29:24):
Oh, not very many they're beautiful vehicles. I saw one on a TV show called Gotham. The bad guy pulled up in this cuz it is kind of a, it look, it's a luxury vehicle that looks like maybe the evil genius might be in the back seat, you know?

Sam Abuelsamid (00:29:40):
And, and one of the interesting things about this car and lucid whole approach to engineering EVs is they really focus on efficiency. And you know, when you think about an EV you know, you think, okay, zero emissions, you know, why does fuel efficiency or energy efficiency matter? But it actually matters a lot because despite the progress that's been made with battery technology batteries are still nowhere near as energy dense as liquid fuels. So it's really crucial to get as, as much work out of every kilowat hour of electrical energy that you have stored to as, as you possibly can. And in the case of the lucid air, I mean, this is a car that in its top form the, the, the current dream edition that they're selling, which is their, their launch model can produce up to 1100 horsepower. And I had a chance us to go for a drive for about an hour in this thing the other day in Austin. And it's, it's a fast car, it's a very fast car, but it's also one of the most efficient EVs on the road. With it's EPA rating is 131 miles per gallon equivalent. Wow. It has, it has an electric range of 520 miles. Wow. From a 118 kilowat hour battery pack.

Leo Laporte (00:31:08):
So I'm looking at the, the car behind you and the door handles, and you see this all the time in the EVs now are flush. Cause that that's one way you wind.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:31:18):
Yep. Aerodynamics is a, is a key part of this. They

Leo Laporte (00:31:20):
Do have side mirrors, I guess they can't get rid those yet.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:31:23):
Not yet. Yeah. They're working on that,

Leo Laporte (00:31:25):
But what else do they do? I mean, I mean, by the way, there's kind of a benefit to making it really aerodynamic, it looks good. Looks like a battery deal. Yeah. Does. Yeah. Yeah,

Sam Abuelsamid (00:31:34):
It does. So they did a lot of interesting things with the battery packed design itself with how they, how they configure the cells in the battery pack and connect them all up. They also their power electronic system, which is a key part of this. That's, you know, the battery stores energy is direct current and the direct current motors are not as efficient as alternating current motors. So you have to have some electronics in there that, that convert basically, you know, you have an inverter that turns that DC into ACD, into a alternating current for the motors. And, and then back again, when you're doing regenerative braking,

Leo Laporte (00:32:15):
Now Tesla used to be the king of this kind of efficient

Sam Abuelsamid (00:32:19):
And they are still, they are still very efficient. Yeah. Okay. But what, some of the things that lucid has done are, are go even beyond that. And then, then their motor design is also extremely efficient. And a division of before lucid was known as lucid, it was originally, the company was originally called a TIVA and they, they still have a division called TIVA. And that, that division is focused on the battery design Andiva supplies, the batteries that are used for formula E electric gracing. So you know, they've over the course of the last five years of, of supplying those batteries for formula E they've learned a lot about efficiency and thermal management of the batteries that, you know, make them more reliable, make the whole system more efficient. And so what you have here with the lucid air is a car that the car itself is also really efficiently packaged.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:33:12):
You have a car that's about the size of a midsize sedan, but has the interior volume of, of, of a, a luxury sedan. So it's, it's similar in size to a Mercedes E-Class on the outside, but it has the interior volume that exceeds a Mercedeses class, which is quite a bit larger. And it, it is very, very spacious inside. And it's also very quick, the, this, this version will go zero to 16, about two and a half seconds, which is not quite as quick as a Tesla plaid, but it, you know, it's more than quick enough for most people and, and what they wanted from this was all around performance, not just straight line performance. So they, they did a pretty remarkable job on this right now the, the dream edition, which is the only one that's available right at the moment is sold out and it's going for 100 and

Leo Laporte (00:34:06):
Uhoh Sam is frozen in a particularly compromising position. Okay, good. You're back 100 and what, oh, I don't have your audio. I have your video. I don't have your audio, Sam. Oh, there you go. You must have spectrum wifi.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:34:22):
No, I've got Comcast, which is almost as good. And then the coming this fall is the pure edition, which will start at $77,000 before the federal tax credit. Ouch. And that will still have a 420 mile range on it.

Leo Laporte (00:34:37):
Keep your IP El lucid is coming on strong. I didn't realize it only made 400.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:34:42):
Yeah. We'll they're ramping up production. Yeah, not yet.

Leo Laporte (00:34:46):
Sam is at guide house insights and joins us every week. Thanks Sam Leola, port Tech Guy. Oh 100. And, and we never heard the rests. It was just

Sam Abuelsamid (00:35:03):
160.

Leo Laporte (00:35:03):
There you go. Okay.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:35:06):
But 

Leo Laporte (00:35:07):
Well I'd love EUCD. They are so beautiful. Oh

Sam Abuelsamid (00:35:09):
Yeah. Well, the, like I said, the pure edition is gonna start at 77,000. Yeah. that one will have over 400 miles of range. And that's that one's rear wheel drive and doesn't have the glass roof. And then there's the 

Leo Laporte (00:35:23):
I like all wheel drive. Am I crazy to like all wheel drive?

Sam Abuelsamid (00:35:26):
No, not at all.

Leo Laporte (00:35:27):
It's I just, I don't know why nothing wrong

Sam Abuelsamid (00:35:28):
With it. The the touring, which is the next trim level up or

Leo Laporte (00:35:33):
Anything. Yeah. How much is the tour?

Sam Abuelsamid (00:35:34):
The touring starts at 95. Yikes. that gets you all wheel drive 620 horsepower and the glass roof and among other, among other features. And this they don't, they haven't enabled CarPlay and Android auto yet, but they will be that will be coming later this year with an OTA update. Am I still there? Okay. Yeah. Yeah, wasn't sure if I, I dropped off cuz you you're silent there. Oh, let's see.

Leo Laporte (00:36:05):
Shut up. Sorry.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:36:06):
No worries. Let's see. Mark from Plymouth or Mike mark, Plymouth, Minnesota says on hold for a question for for me and Leo hoping I can catch you before the top. Mark, what is your question? I can try and answer

Leo Laporte (00:36:22):
Or you can right now you can just take it. Can I can hang on. Yeah, hang on. All right. Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:36:28):
Then tomorrow March 21st Cadillac officially starts production of the lyric, their first EV I

Leo Laporte (00:36:36):
Saw the first ad for it. Yeah, it's good.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:36:39):
And so those will be hitting dealers in the next couple of months. I

Leo Laporte (00:36:42):
Also see Mercedes ads for their EQs, with the screen that goes all the way across

Sam Abuelsamid (00:36:48):
The hyper screen. Yes.

Leo Laporte (00:36:51):
So it's really heat not, but of course it's thanks to the, thanks to the gas prices.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:36:58):
Yeah. Right. Well, and I mean, you know, all these cars have been in development for several years, you know, long before we knew gas prices were gonna spike right. About now. So the, the timing is fortuitous. But yeah. The, the EQs has been available for a few months now. And this past week, Mercedes now it's the EQs SUV, which is based on the same plot form, but obviously an SUV instead of a sedan. But we've also got, you know, much more affordable options coming as well. We've talked previously about the, the Hyundai, a five, the ke six. Those are both out there and available now from dealers. And what else? Oh, they the Ford F-150 lightning customers that have ordered theirs have been getting their notifications that with their build dates for their cars for their trucks coming up in the next, starting in the next about two to three weeks.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:37:53):
So those should be hitting the roads very soon as well. In fact, I just gotta save the date for the media for that one coming up soon. So I'll finally get a chance to actually get behind the wheel instead of just riding along with an engineer. Let's see, Maverick 56 S have you heard of Rivian raising the price of the truck after a reservation has been secured? Many buyers are canceling. Yes, I am aware of this. And they they, within 24 hours, less than 24 hours after they made that announcement, they reversed course on that. And so anybody that, any customers that had already placed their orders, like converted their reservations into official orders

Leo Laporte (00:38:34):
And configured their trucks they will, their original price will get honored. They won't get a price increase, anybody who has not yet had their order converted. They will be subject to the higher prices which go up by anywhere from 12 to $20,000, depending on which configuration of the truck you have, Tesla raised all its prices, too. It Tesla raise the prices TWiTce in the past week. Is that is that just just trying to grab a little money or is it really getting more expensive to make these I think it's, it's a bit of both. They're, they're definitely getting more expensive to make but stick around. We're gonna do this call. All right. Leo Laporte, The Tech Guy, eighty eight, eighty eight, ask Leo the phone number and I'm I kept Sam around because mark is on the line and he had a question for Sam, so I thought it'd be great to and actually it's a good question. We're all asking. I mean, the EVs are taken off right now cuz of gas prices going through the roof, but it's been a slow build. It's kind of one of those things where everything's coming together at the same time, federal subsidies, EV production, these cars have been in design for a few years and then it's, you know, gas prices going through the roof. It all, it all kind of goes together. Mark, welcome from Plymouth, Minnesota.

Caller #2 (00:39:51):
Thank you. Thank you, Leo. And I wanna say a long time fan. It's been 15 years since, so I last called you, but I've never stopped listening.

Leo Laporte (00:39:58):
I'll expect your call in 15 years from now after this one, every, every 15 years, whether you got a problem or not. I wanna hear from you.

Caller #2 (00:40:07):
Thank you, sir. And I'll also say I learned bit torrent so that I could seed TWiT back in the day. Thank

Leo Laporte (00:40:13):
You. I tell that story all the time we, before we got I CDN we we, we had, we were desperate to get the hundreds of thousands of people who suddenly were downloading this podcast, a copy of it and thanks to people like you, who seated it on bit torn. Remember those days we were able to thank you, fortunately, we don't have do that anymore. Thank you.

Caller #2 (00:40:34):
My question. My question is I own a, a fair amount of tech stuff I told geek, but a lot of times I bought stuff that the manufacturer's gone under. They got sold, they lost interest. You know, I have a box full of wink, smart home devices. And I'm just thinking like these EV startups that are you know, like we just talked about lucid fi or even pulse start, even though they're connected with Volvo, how much of a risk am I, would I be taking, buying these that they're not supported in the future? And

Leo Laporte (00:41:05):
So you're not worried about buying one from the big three automakers. You're more worried about these little startups and whether they'll be around. That's actually a great question. What do you think that is? Yeah, no, that is, that is a very legitimate concern. And you know, the, the car business is extremely capital intensive. It takes a lot of money to get production launched and to build and support these vehicles you know, to distribute them.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:41:33):
So it, it is very costly. And the vast majority, if you go back and look, you know, over the history of the auto industry since 1886, when Carl Bens drove his first his first motor wagon out of his garage there have been thousands of automakers that have come and gone and, and you know, some of them, you know, very notable brands, like for example, Plymouth that, that are no longer with us. So it it's you know, it, it's a legit concern, you know, and if you're gonna be spending tens of thousands of dollars on a new car, ideally you would like it to to know that it's gonna be around for a while. And that's even more true now, as we get into the era of what's referred to as software defined vehicles, so much of the, the car, you know, this is something that Tesla, you know, kind of kicked off with the model S that a lot of the, the systems in the car are controlled by software.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:42:30):
And you you're a, a lot of times, you know, when the car is first shipped from the factory, it's not really finished and you're getting, you're getting, you're gonna be getting over the air updates to fix problems and fix security issues. And you know, it's, if, if the car, if the manufacturer, you know, suddenly goes away and you're not getting those fixes, it could be even worse. You know, at least in the past when, when a car manufacturer went away you know, it was mostly mechanical. It was not that hard to keep it running for the most part. But now with, you know, a lot of things being connected and, and software defined, you know, it's like, I O devices, you know, the car become an I OT device. So

Leo Laporte (00:43:14):
Market, you talked about your wink that was very appropriate. There was an IOT device where the company has suddenly said, I think we're gonna charge a subscription fee from now on if you wanna keep using well, GE

Caller #2 (00:43:25):
At the time when I, when I bought it. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:43:28):
Yeah. So that's that's happened in the industry in general, and I suppose it could happen probably will. I mean, there have been companies have already folded, gone under oh

Sam Abuelsamid (00:43:37):
Yeah. And, and there will be more you know, not, not every EV startup is going to survive. Some like Rivian you know, has raised a lot of money. They've got a fairly long runway you know, before they, before they're at risk of going under, but

Leo Laporte (00:43:53):
It is why I bought a Ford Mustang instead of another Tesla, cuz I really, I figured Ford would be around. And even if they weren't, they probably supported for as long as I was gonna own it. You know, the interesting rumor and I, we were talking to the king of apple rumors on Tuesday, mark Garman, he is convinced, he says, apple absolutely is gonna do a car 20, 25, probably maybe 20, 26. That's an interesting con you know, third way of going. Here's a company that's not known for cars, but they're not going anywhere. They're a $2 trillion company. Would you buy an apple car?

Caller #2 (00:44:32):
You know, I'd be first in line, I'd be lining up with my first iPhone for that one. I dunno if I could afford it. But I need to buy more apple, apple iTune gift cards to pay for that one.

Leo Laporte (00:44:42):
Yeah. It'll, it'll work very well with your all apple ecosystem. However yeah, so it's an, that's actually a question. People have lots of questions reasonably about EVs, including the issue of charging somebody in the charm saying, can the us grid handle everybody moving to EV what do you think Sam is that, is

Sam Abuelsamid (00:45:03):
That an issue? We, we have enough, we have more than enough power generating capacity. That's not the issue, but yeah, the grid, especially in certain parts of the country is not as robust as you would like it to be.

Leo Laporte (00:45:14):
I got solar panels, which is an expensive thing and it really doesn't pay for itself. It takes maybe 20 years to start breaking even, and, and even saving on your electricity even here in El California, where it's very expensive, but I've made me feel like, well, at least I have gen I'm gen the, the electricity I'm gonna be using with my EV yeah. Not challenging

Sam Abuelsamid (00:45:36):
As long as, as long as you have as long as you have a transfer switch that can switch over,

Leo Laporte (00:45:41):
If the grid goes down

Sam Abuelsamid (00:45:42):
And continue to power your house, when the grid goes down,

Leo Laporte (00:45:45):
I did, I got those Tesla power wall batteries, as you know, and that's that take those take over and the solar continues to charge them, so, okay. Yeah. You have to wire it that way, you know? Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:45:57):
Yeah. Well, and, and they you know, what we talked about last week with bidirectional charging tests that PG and E's gonna be doing with demand response is also, you know, that's one of the things that will help, you know, as you get more EVs out there, if the utility can can switch off your switch off your house from the grid when there's very high demand and let you power your house from your EV for a period of interest. Interesting, isn't it, they can use that to, to help balance the load. So you're not taking power out of your car to put back in the grid, but you're at least taking your house off the grid and letting your, your car power, the house, and the lucid does have bidirectional charging capability

Leo Laporte (00:46:37):
The way we oh, really? Oh, that's yeah. That's probably something you should look for if you're gonna buy an EP. Right? Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:46:42):
The F150 has it

Leo Laporte (00:46:44):
The way we set up our our power walls. They, they charge first, you know, so when the, when the sun comes out, the power walls always are at a hundred percent by the end of the day. And then we, if we have excess electricity more than we need in the house, it goes to the PG and E turns, the meter backwards, I guess. So it works out pretty well. I don't know how we would survive if there were no PG and E but yeah, having an extra big battery in a truck or a car would help as well. So what are you, mark? Do you have a, EV are you thinking about getting one

Caller #2 (00:47:17):
I'm, I'm thinking about getting one I'm, I'm playing with the idea of, I, I don't want a Tesla. I feel like it's becoming the Camry around town. And so just trying to think of whether it'd go a pole star because of the Volvo connection, but like you know, res are really intriguing. The Fisker SUVs really intriguing, but I just don't want be left holding the bag or had not

Leo Laporte (00:47:37):
Had any right. Drive the Ford Mustang. Ma just take a look at it. 

Sam Abuelsamid (00:47:41):
Also take, take a look at the Volvo C 40, which I drove earlier this week. Yeah. And there

Leo Laporte (00:47:46):
There's a lot of choices,

Sam Abuelsamid (00:47:47):
C 40 in the XC 40. We're

Leo Laporte (00:47:50):
Very happy with really nice with the Chevy bolt that we got actually very low cost, great little vehicle, you know they they're replacing the batteries, but if you can get one with a replaced battery I'd have no hesitation recommending the Chevy bolt. I think we got that for 20,000 after the incentives, the tax and incentives, which is pretty amazing. And it's a great little

Sam Abuelsamid (00:48:11):
Part, probably about mid twenties, probably about 25. I think.

Leo Laporte (00:48:14):
Lisa. Oh, thats great. Lisa works a hard deal. Let me tell you something.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:48:18):
Okay.

Leo Laporte (00:48:19):
She, she got a great deal, Sam, thank you for sticking around. And mark, thank you for your call. Yeah, I, it's a great, it's a great topic. I'm a big believer in EVs. And I think now with gas prices and what they are, a lot of people are coming around CLeo Laporte, The Tech Guy, All yours, Sammy

Sam Abuelsamid (00:48:40):
Peter on Thursday. One of things he did is he referred to the the Hummer EV as an electric gas guzzler. So it is far and away the least efficient electric vehicle you can buy today. It's rated at a mere 47 M PGE and it has a 200 and see it has 212 kilowat hours usable from its battery pack and has a range of only 329 miles. Which is, you know, that's double the size of the battery in the lucid air and about two thirds of, or less than two thirds of the range in part because you know, the thing weighs 9,000 pounds. So that's, that is kind of ridiculous. Let's see. What do we got here in the chat, apple car, the hood and the doors don't open? That's true. Yes.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:49:34):
They will all be sealed shut. Everything will be glued tight. You will not be able to access anything. There'll be no ports. It'll, it'll have mag charging probably and it'll be very expensive. Assuming they ever build it. And I still remain unconvinced that if even if they do build something, it will probably not be something that you can buy. It will probably only be available through mobility services. I, I don't see apple actually selling a car to consumers that it does not fit with their business model anymore. They'll want the service revenue see apple car, no button, no head, no no button, no headphones, Jack. That's true. Let's see. The sun delivers exactly as much energy as we need consuming all the past stored energy hasn't worked so well that, yeah, that's, that's a very good one redacted.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:50:27):
Let's see. Somebody here. Oh Kia. Oh, Kia Kia has that too. I'm assuming you're referring to bidirectional charging. Yeah. Kia and Hyundai under new EVs. They five and EV six and all their upcoming EVs have bidirectional capability on there. So you can get power out it's called vehicle to on there. It's not, they don't, there's, there's a set up a little differently, so you can't get enough power to power your house, but you can power a bunch of devices off of the car which can be very handy. Let's see. Only way swamp bra says only well I'll ever afford a new vehicle is if I win the lottery, unfortunately that's getting more and more true. Average transaction prices are now up to something like $47,000. It's gone up by about $10,000 in the last couple of years in part because you know, the supply shortages over the last year, especially mean that dealers no longer have to negotiate on pricing.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:51:23):
Cuz there's just not enough inventory. You in fact most, a lot of dealers are charging over sticker price for new cars. Jay says, I think I want a pre 25, 20 15 car with integrated iPad connectivity. No more computer slamming on my brakes while changing lanes in front of another driver. Yeah, the iPad. I don't know if I'd want iPad connectivity necessarily in the vehicle. That's not necessarily a great interface to be using while driving. And as far as the computer slamming on the brakes Phantom braking that is generally a pretty rare occurrence. Teslas have had a lot of issues with that because they've relied very heavily on cameras for their automatic emergency breaking system. And it's not as reliable a way to measure distance as a radar. And there was also this week a recall issued by Volkswagen for the Atlas.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:52:23):
They had a Phantom breaking issue, which was very different from what Tesla had Volkswagen on the Atlas has a system. They have electronic park electric park brake system, which most new cars do. And they have a system where when the vehicle's stationary and you open the door, it automatically applies to parking brake. Great. So car can't roll away, good safety issue. Our safety feature it, except that they had a problem with the wiring harness in the doors and then getting corrosion on the wiring harness, which was causing a short circuit, which in turn caused it to think the door was opening. While, sometimes while the car was in motion. And so slamming on the electric park brake while the car was moving. And in some cases, you know, cars almost getting rear ended by other cars. So VW is recalling about 250,000 of those vehicles to replace the wire harness and the doors that's and that, you know, that that is a genuine safety issue.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:53:24):
Let's see, wake me up up when Toyota and Honda have EVs, well ha Toyota and Subaru have their first EVs going on sale in the next few weeks. They're both the same car. They were codevelop by Toyota and Subaru Subaru calls theres the Soldera Toyotas is called the BZ four X. I recommend that you go by the Soldera instead, just despite Toyota for that keyless name. But they're the same vehicle. I will actually be driving the BZ four X in a couple of, or, well in about a, a week from tomorrow. I'll, I'll be getting it to drive the BZ four X and I will let you know if it's any good Honda has their first new EV coming out in 2024. The co-developed that with general motors it's built on GM's new LTM platform and they also have an Acura version of that coming as well.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:54:12):
And then Honda also just signed a, an MOU, a memorandum of understanding with Sony to look at potentially partnering with Sony on EV production. So that could be an, an interesting development. Sony's shown a couple of EV concepts at CES in 2020, and then again, this year in 2022. And, but didn't really give any indication of whether they want to get into the car business. Now it looks like they're going to partner with Honda on that both Honda and Toyota have been more skeptical. The EVs they've focused more, or at least on battery EVs, they've focused more on fuel cell vehicles over the years. But now, you know, by necessity, they're, they're getting into the battery EV game as well. Let's see what else we got here? Yeah. You know, Doug, em says 9,000 pounds to carry a 200 pound human is just dumb.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:55:06):
Yeah. In fact, the battery pack alone in that Hummer weighs over 2,900 pounds. So it weighs more than my wife's Honda civic. Twitsted, Mr. Says Volvo reliability is also not so great. It, it varies. You know, they, you know, they do have a great reputation for safety and you know, Volvos, you know, Volvos are great at that stuff at protecting vehicle occupants. They have had some challenges on reliability but their new EVs are looking very promising. I've driven, driven the C 40. Now this week, I've also driven a couple of their plug-in hybrid vehicles. We all before we over the C 40, this week, we got a chance to drive the updated version of the XC 60 plugin hybrid which now previously it had a rain, an electric range of 19 miles. It's now up to 35 miles of electric range, and I actually got about 39 miles on electricity before the engine came on.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:56:05):
And it's, it's quite quite impressive really nice vehicle. And it has a new Android automotive based infotainment system. So I was able to get in the car log into my pocket cast account, cuz pocket day had already preloaded the pocket cast app in there and get my list of podcasts to listen to. So I was I was listening to a bunch of stuff while I was out driving around in the car. See the Hummer EV sound looks like greenwash. Yeah, you could make that argument. It is kind of like that. CR one says, is it Bulletproof? I don't know. Let's see. Kilo tech says, are there any EVs that can recharge themselves using inertia? Well, to a degree, all EVs and all hybrids do that. They, they all have, what's known as regenerative breaking.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:56:53):
So when you lift off the accelerator pedal the motor is now driven by the wheels which causes it to generate electricity. It gets put into the into the vehicle or into the battery. And in fact we were driving the the XC 60 and the C 40 in Palm Springs. We drove from, from the city up into the mountains, up to coach olive valley lookout. And on the way back down the mountain in the XC 60 I was able, able to add about five miles of range back into the battery coasting down the hill.

Leo Laporte (00:57:28):
It's not amazing. So, yeah,

Sam Abuelsamid (00:57:30):
There's a, so you're never gonna get all the energy back, but you get

Leo Laporte (00:57:33):
Some of it. There's, there's a new e-bike that doesn't really need to charge Because it's got such good region and you still have to pedal more than you would on a normal e-bike. And so between the, your pedalling and the region, you don't really need to charge it, which is fascinating.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:57:50):
Yeah. That's, that's the amazing thing about motors, like

Leo Laporte (00:57:53):
Motors. Yeah. I, I have to figure out, I mean, I've had my Machi for a year. There's no service interval for it. I don't know what to do. I guess I'll bring it in and just say, Hey, yeah, rotate the tires. I guess I have to rotate the tires.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:58:08):
There's there's probably an interval for tire rotation and, and some other inspections I should.

Leo Laporte (00:58:13):
Thank you, Sam. See you next week.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:58:15):
All right. Bye.

Leo Laporte (00:58:22):
Well, Hey, Hey. Hey, how are you today? Leo Laporte here. The Tech Guy, time to talk computers, the internet, home theater, digital photography, smart phones, smart watches, all that jazz. 88 88. Ask Leo smart cars. That's the question. That's the phone number to ask a question? 8 8 8 8 2 7 5 5 3 6 website is Tech Guy labs.com. We put links to stuff we talk about up there. We put the show itself, audio and video, even a transcript of the show with time code. So you can find the part of the show that you missed right out and anything you need. And I think anything that's a link will be there. Tech Guy labs.com. That's free, no signup for that. When we were talking with Sam, I did drop in that little tidbit, mark Garman, who is the Bloomberg reporter, who has, I think it's widely agreed the best sources inside apple.

Leo Laporte (00:59:16):
He always seems to know exactly what Apple's gonna do before apple announces it, talked to him on Tuesday, seemed absolutely adamant. And Sam disagrees, by the way, this, the apple was gonna do a car in the next three years. Absolutely adamant maybe next four years. And the reason he feels that way is because Apple's spending so much money. Have they already have, you know, more than a thousand engineers working on it, they can't imagine them not releasing it. Now a company of the size and value of apple could of course spend billions of dollars working on something that they don't, you know, they decided after they go through all that. Yeah. Well, you don't think it's gonna make us money. Let's not throw any good money at after bad and we'll just cancel the project. So that's completely possible. Even, even mark Garman admits that that could happen, but he's fairly confident that apple is genuine about these these plans.

Leo Laporte (01:00:15):
What would an apple car be like though? Is the question. Sam thinks they'll never sell it to you and me they'll, it'll be a fleet. It'll be a, you know, it'll be sold as a taxi cab. That kind of thing. Maybe. I don't know. I don't know. I don't think four years from now self-driving vehicles are gonna be so predominant that that'll be a business. I think apple wants to sell 'em to individuals. No headphone Jack, obviously, but you know, I, it might be a good, it might be a good car. I don't know. You know, it's very, it's an interesting world. We live in 88, 88 ASCL as I said, the phone number, let's go back to the phones and Kenny on the line from cotton town, Tennessee. Hello, cotton town, Kenny.

Caller #3 (01:01:00):
Hello, Leo.

Leo Laporte (01:01:01):
Welcome back.

Caller #3 (01:01:04):
Hey, I just wanted a call. I wanted to thank you for yesterday's show because you helped me from making a big mistake financially, as far as Apple's new. Well, I'm just gonna call it SDT because that's what

Leo Laporte (01:01:18):
Yeah. There. So there's yeah, we were talking about the apples studio display, which they also announced a couple of weeks ago and started shipping. The first ones came in Friday. We got ours. It's a very strange device designed two years ago, which explains why it has the apple iPhone chip from two years ago, the, a 13 in it. It has an operating system. In fact, the weirdest thing it's it's the minute you turn, there is no on, off switch. That's another thing I didn't like about it. It, it just is, you know, if there's a signal it's on it has a fan as soon as it's on, it's blowing off of the top because apparently it's like a little iPhone in there and it even can crash. Jason Snell. Who's a well known apple report order from six colors.com used to be at Mac world to editor in chiefs. There posted a tweet of it crashing, crashing, because it's running an iPhone operating system. In fact, we figured out it's running iOS, the Mo the current iOS 15.4, but the biggest disappointment is, and you kind of said at the SDR, it is a four a 5k display. I mean, it's a high res display, but it doesn't do HDR. It's not particularly bright at 600 NIS. It is, it is a display from two years ago and it is a price from the future it's $1,500. So did, were you thinking of getting it?

Caller #3 (01:02:42):
Well, I was until I saw that it couldn't do HDR playback, cuz that was what I was expecting was HDR playback. Yeah. And I'm still gonna get the Mac studio, but I'm just gonna

Leo Laporte (01:02:52):
Love the Mac studio. But another tip do not overspend on the Mac studio for what most people do. The, the bottom of the line Mac studio is am. I mean, if you wanna add a little Ram or add a little storage, that's fine. But the, the M one max is already more processor than only specialized people need anything more than the, the M one max. And so for most of us, in fact, that's the one I got is the, is the base model. So saviors cuz he, because the one I got from my wife TWiTce as much, but she, you know, that's my wife, she deserves it. So yeah, but I think it's a beautifully boy. Is it a beautifully made device? Just gorgeous and you cannot get it to heat up. It is runs. Absolutely cool. No matter what you're doing. So it's a very impressive piece of hardware.

Caller #3 (01:03:41):
Yeah. That's great to hear. But I was wondering if you can recommend me a particular Mon monitor. I was looking yesterday while listening to your show and one that kind of caught my attention was an LG monitor. It's a 32 UL nine 50 that's class ultra fineing 4k. Yeah. That's he was under both or connected. That's what you have.

Leo Laporte (01:04:03):
I have, that's what my wife is running her. So we had ordered a Mac studio display for her when I saw the reviews of the camera. And this is the biggest flaw with a studio display, a flaw, apple says, oh no, no, no, we blew it. We're gonna fix it. There'll be a, but you know, okay, someday there'll be a software update for it, which it was also weird. But the camera's awful. In fact, Mike, a Sergeant who was here yesterday said somebody, he was using it to call a family member. They said did you have you cleaned your camera? It looks like it's all smear. And he said, yes, it's just came. I just got it. It's brand new. It's absolutely clean. So yeah, I would not. I would, you can save money by getting a standalone, good monitor with 4k HDR.

Leo Laporte (01:04:47):
The LG is what I got for Lisa. I canceled display. I put the LG in there with a Brio camera from Logitech couple hundred bucks and for half what I would've paid for the studio, I now have a much better camera and a much better display with HDR. And it's 31 inches. It's bigger runs great on the Mac studio. In fact, she's running it, this Mac studio. The other thing great about the Mac studio it'll run five monitors. So she's running that 4k display next to a double wide 39 inch display, which is equivalent of two HD H UHD displays 1440 displays side by side. So it, yes, it's very capable. That runs great on those. You could easily do better. Dell has excellent monitors for less apples, you know, it's the apple tax

Caller #3 (01:05:38):
You're right, absolutely right on that part of the apple tax on that. So yeah, I'll definitely recommend in getting an LG monitor.

Leo Laporte (01:05:46):
Yeah. Let me give you the, I think the one you just described and I'm just looking up on my Amazon orders to see which one I got cuz I, I think I got the same one that you just described. It was a 31 inch LG, but let me give you the model number anyway. I think, you know, LG makes the pan almost certainly makes the panel for apples display. So interestingly, you know, you, you, you're still getting an LG display. There are also O L E D displays out there. Yeah, I got the 32 U P 83, a w 31 and a half inch D 38 40 by 2160 IPS monitor with AMD free sync D C I P three 95% color gamut HDR, 10 compatibility. And that'll run on thunderbolts three using mini using display port rather or type C. It actually has two H DM I ports as well. So you can run it through H DM I on that Mac studio just fine.

Caller #3 (01:06:45):
Yeah. The one that I'm looking at now that I was looking at also runs on two H DM I ports, but I'll also check out that other one just to see.

Leo Laporte (01:06:52):
Yeah. I don't know what the difference is, you know, honestly, it's, I wish I could say I was a good Tech Guy and it all the research and every thing I just basically looked at the specs. Here's the one thing you might want. It, it only goes to 60 Hertz refresh rate. So if you might be looking for a higher refresh rate, I don't know if apple supports the higher refresh rate. I know it doesn't on the studio display and, and really, unless you're gaming, you don't need the higher refresh rate or watching high frame rate TV. And so some TVs will just deliver 120 frames. So you might want it for that reason, but those are the only that's the only,

Caller #3 (01:07:29):
Well, what I was kinda looking for was something that could play back YouTube videos at 60 frames for second while I can do other things.

Leo Laporte (01:07:37):
This does that and it looks great. And the Mac studio will handle that beautifully. In fact, it's one of the first things I did is I went out and got some UHD YouTube video from cost and it looks incredible. Turn on HDR. It's not on by default, but it looks incredible. You have to do that in the apple controlled panel system. Preference pain really looks great in a I'm sure that there are equivalently fantastic monitors. This, this one I paid 5 49 for, so I mean the apple displays 1500 bucks. So I just, I can't, I just doesn't make sense. Honestly, apple just didn't put the latest technology in it.

Caller #3 (01:08:19):
No, they're just trying to make you come back and buy more on it, which I can understand, but exactly. I think I'll just stick with the max studio instead and just get a different monitor

Leo Laporte (01:08:28):
Together. The computer. I have no complaints about. Thank you, Kenny.

Caller #3 (01:08:32):
Don't have complaints about it. Thank you. Have a good day.

Leo Laporte (01:08:34):
Have good day. Leo. Leport the tech I eighty eight eighty eight. Ask Leo the phone number toll free from anywhere in the us or Canada. Look, I'm gonna I'll I'll tell it to you straight I'm. I'm not paid by any of these companies. I'll give you my real opinion. Leo. Leport The Tech Guy In, tell us how you really I'm paying these companies. It bugs the hell outta me cuz you see all these YouTube guys getting free. I can't believe how many people got Got free. I guess they have to, but still who knows? I don't know. They never disclose, but everybody was doing their reviews the day before they were to arrive, which means apple sent 'em out stuff. Yeah, I think there's some very nice algae monitors. That's the only thing maybe I would do now. I have an OED monitor at home. My monitor in my office is a 55 inch alien wear OED. And it, yeah, I mean I just make sure the monitor doesn't stay on overnight. I have had no burning problems in over a year. I don't watch TV on it. I mean we have, we have O Ledd TV though. I never to let burn in. So

Leo Laporte (01:09:59):
Wouldn't worry about it Gaming or when there's very little content in 120 Hertz. So the I, the phones do it cuz you're doing a lot of scrolling, I guess it makes it for smoother scrolling, but you, you don't do that so much on a computer, cuz you have a bigger display. You don't need it by swipe, swipe, swipe, swipe, swipe. I don't know. My my EDD monitor is 120 Hertz. I don't notice much of a difference. Maybe, maybe Joe, I don't know.

Leo Laporte (01:10:54):
Yes, that's right. 4K versus 5k is all about pixels per inch. And in fact Lisa does not run her 4k monitor at 4k because her, she runs at 1440 because that's what her 49 inch predator on the right is running at 1440. So she wants the menu sizes and the text and everything to be the same. So she's running at the same resolution as the right hand monitor, which means I'm running at scaled. It looks great scaled. No, in fact my old it is turned off now while it's doing the photogrammetry. I left hers on all night though, cuz I didn't want them act to sleep, but I've got caffeine running on the photogrammetry.

Leo Laporte (01:11:54):
This is a, I love this shot though. I will show it again. I just love this picture from the Mac studio of all of the 20 processors, just cranking, cranking, cranking that's. I told Lisa you're never, ever gonna see this. Nothing you do will ever notice, by the way, the efficiency cores are pegged 1, 2, 3, 4, but the 16 performance cores kind of doing all right and this ran for three and, and a half hours, then 13 and a half hours and then half an hour. It should be done by now. I would guess this is another hour to build the texture. This is the photogrammetry. So Alex gave us this, this 228 shots, Canon raw shots of this Indian palace and Tuesday he'll he'll explain what all this means. Leo Laporte, The Tech Guy. You may not know this professor, Laura musical director, but that was the original theme song, I think for the show. Yeah. Before we had our very talented composer write The Tech Guy theme song and then it was remixed. So it's been through a few a few iterations, but yeah, we used to use it's a beautiful day. Eighty eight eighty eight. Ask Leo. That's the phone number Jim on the line for Oceanside cow, California. Hello Jim.

Caller #3 (01:13:38):
Hello Leo. Thank you for taking my call. Thanks for a update. I'm sorry.

Leo Laporte (01:13:42):
Yes, go ahead.

Caller #3 (01:13:44):
I have an update. My computer, when I'm on YouTube, I post my comments and then my computer. So nice to post my comments everywhere else that I'm looking. Oh

Leo Laporte (01:13:54):
Yeah. You called about that. Did you ever figure out why?

Caller #3 (01:13:59):
Well, I was on Google Chrome and so my kids helped me out going on safari and putting everything on safari and

Leo Laporte (01:14:07):
It doesn't do it anymore.

Caller #3 (01:14:08):
Safari now Three weeks later, there's my little east egg. Oh

Leo Laporte (01:14:14):
No again,

Caller #3 (01:14:16):
Again, not as bad as Google Chrome, but it's still happening. And so I have a Mac and I only use it for the internet. So it would've been smart of me to call you first. I could have got a, a Chrome book.

Leo Laporte (01:14:34):
Well, I wouldn't start getting new hardware just because of this, right? I'm sure it's a software glitch. I don't know. So let me just repeat this cuz maybe this time somebody listening can, can figure it out. We couldn't, but you will. So you you'll PO put a comment on a YouTube video.

Caller #3 (01:14:54):
Yeah, Leo's the best. I love Leo.

Leo Laporte (01:14:56):
I love Leo under my YouTube video. Go to your, keep that up arch

Caller #3 (01:15:00):
Enemy who hates you and also says, Hey, I love Leo. Hey, get out my website.

Leo Laporte (01:15:04):
So it takes the comment you just posted on one YouTube video and without you doing anything,

Caller #3 (01:15:11):
Anything

Leo Laporte (01:15:11):
Puts the same comment. I love Leo on somebody else's YouTube channel.

Caller #3 (01:15:17):
Right. And they comment what's this mean? What,

Leo Laporte (01:15:20):
Why are you saying I love Leo on my channel. Get outta here. Yeah. And, and, and is it, it does it again and again it doesn't just do it once.

Caller #3 (01:15:28):
Yeah. It just lays it like a little bunny rabbit. Just little, little gift or rather, right.

Leo Laporte (01:15:35):
Oh man, what is going on? You don't now did I ask you, well, you kind of answered this already by switching to safari cuz one thing to look and see if you have any weird Chrome extensions, do you have any YouTube downloader or other Chrome extensions going on?

Caller #3 (01:15:50):
Well, my son looked at into all that and yeah, he is a techy guy. I'm not. And he, he looked at my profile and see if there's anything weird in there. And we're trying to look to see anybody was trying to parlay in my account. And we opened up new accounts and did the, the double verification and all that kind.

Leo Laporte (01:16:14):
So did he, and this is another thing to try and really probably the best thing to try is resetting Chrome to the default settings. Just in case now I, it happened on safari again. So that tells me it's not a Chrome extension. It's not even really Chrome. Although it stopped. And then it started up again later,

Caller #3 (01:16:34):
Like it blurred like, Hey,

Leo Laporte (01:16:35):
Like it learned, oh wait a minute. This is Jim. We gotta post his comments everywhere.

Caller #3 (01:16:40):
Yeah. Safari. Now

Leo Laporte (01:16:41):
Are you now one? Okay. Here's a couple of things to try. And I don't remember if I told you this first, first thing, log outta Google. I mean a YouTube brother log outta YouTube and post a comment. Can you post a comment? Log out it, you must be able to post a comment logged out or under you can't so you have to create a new account, but create a new Google account. Just a throw away account, post a comment. See if it happens then cuz we're trying to figure out is this attached to your, your, your YouTube account, maybe your, your YouTube account is something going on. The other thing you can do is reset Chrome when you click the upper and the upper, right. You know, they've got the three dot more thing, settings advanced and you're on windows or Mac.

Caller #3 (01:17:27):
Well I, the

Leo Laporte (01:17:29):
It's a Mac. So under a settings advance, there's a reset settings entry. And you can restore settings to their original defaults. That will clear out Chrome. I bet you, your kid did that since if he's techy. He probably figured that out. But what you're gonna do is you're gonna change everything back to the way it was when you first downloaded Chrome, including tabs, search engine, pins, tabs, content settings, all the cookies will be wiped. All the cash will be wiped. All the extensions will be wiped and that let's see if that fixes it. Okay. If, if it went to safari, then it sounds like it's probably more likely tied to your YouTube account. So the that's the, maybe the first thing to do is log out of your YouTube account and log create another one just to see if the same thing happens.

Caller #3 (01:18:16):
And then can I change my name on my YouTube account? Yeah,

Leo Laporte (01:18:19):
Of course.

Caller #3 (01:18:20):
Yeah. Yeah. I got my name in it. I don't know everybody else doesn't have their name. I don't think I would have

Leo Laporte (01:18:24):
No. Everybody uses a handle these days. Yeah, I know. It's the kids. I use my name. You know, you wanna know where my YouTube channel is. It's Leo. Leport you know, now I, I kind of do that because I decided, look, I'm gonna make it the same everywhere so that people who are looking for my content can find it. You don't care. You're not, you're not, you know, dragging a, a fan club behind you. Are ya?

Caller #3 (01:18:49):
Oh no, I'm nobody.

Leo Laporte (01:18:51):
I'm nobody too. But I have to pretend I'm somebody you know, so Jim, I hate marketing. I don't know why I'm not a marketing guy, but that's the one thing I decided, well, I'll use the same name on TWiTter. And actually that's when it started in 2007, when I, I could have been Leo on TWiTter, I was so early TWiTter just started. I could have just been Leo and I no, cuz then I, there could be different Leos. I'm gonna be Leo. Leport that's me. That's the one. And only so that's what I use everywhere.

Caller #3 (01:19:19):
Well, it's good that you grabbed your name cause I know rush Luba. Wasn't able to, they,

Leo Laporte (01:19:22):
Yeah, he tried, you know, just teasing. Hey scooter X in the chat room is saying, one more thing you can do is check your comment history on my activity.google.com. So before you log out of your old account, check that the history of my activity.google.com. At least you can see what's going on there and see where it's posting. Maybe that I'll be a clue, but I, I like the idea of creating a new YouTube account at and then use yeah, use a handle. So nobody knows it's Joe promot or Jim's promotion side, use a handle. That's what all the kids do. Nobody in our chat room has their real name. Nobody. Well, Chris and Miami does because he's somebody speaking of Chris, Chris Markt photo guy coming up next And is the weirdest problem I've ever heard. Jim? It's so weird.

Caller #3 (01:20:20):
Yeah, I know. I just,

Leo Laporte (01:20:23):
And you got your son in to look at it and, and

Caller #3 (01:20:27):
Yeah, he's, he's pretty snappy on the computer. I, what I do notice is when my computer is buffering, that's when it lays him down.

Chris Marquardt (01:20:35):
Oh, ah, Ooh.

Caller #3 (01:20:39):
It's the complexity of the problem. So when it buffer And then when I'm looking, I gotta watch a video. I always wanna look at the review, the views to see this guy know he is talking about. And then all of a sudden it starts laying him down. I'm like, what the heck is this? But it seems to be a buffer issue.

Chris Marquardt (01:20:55):
Ah,

Leo Laporte (01:20:58):
That's really interesting. So buffering means that it's stopping. It's waiting until it gets ahead again. Cuz it got behind in the, in the packets. You're losing P how fast is your internet?

Caller #3 (01:21:13):
Well we went to what is it? Verizon or frontier? It's not the super fast one.

Leo Laporte (01:21:23):
Yeah. If it's buffering either your internet slow or the machine is slow and can't keep up. But I, if the machine were slow, I could see if the machine like paused that a command might be stuck in the keyboard or that's really odd situation. But if, but now that you say it's tied to the buffering, it sounds like, you know, for instance, keyboards have buffering. You've probably noticed this. If you pre, if you lean on a key for a long time, it'll start beeping. Cuz you've filled up the buffer. And if you let go, it continues to beep for a while because it's catching up. It's it's buffered all those key strokes and it's playing them back still. So the beeping continues sometimes for a very long time because it, it, it got ahead and it's now playing them out. I'm wondering if something like that is happening with a computer that you know, it, it, it got the post, but it started buffering before you hit return. I don't know cuz you've switched videos and then it does it again. I don't, it doesn't make any sense. You don't have any clip clipboard software or anything like that running in there, right?

Caller #3 (01:22:31):
No, it's just, it's just, just basic YouTube and it's baffling. My hobby sites. I go on nothing, nothing at all. It's baffling, 15 pictures and

Leo Laporte (01:22:40):
Maybe, maybe somebody listening knows try those two things I suggested and stay in touch. Cuz we're gonna, we're gonna solve this one way or the other.

Caller #3 (01:22:48):
I try to give you a victory report.

Leo Laporte (01:22:51):
Okay. Thanks Jim.

Caller #3 (01:22:53):
Thank you. Appreciate it.

Leo Laporte (01:22:54):
See ya. Bye bye. Hey Chris!

Chris Marquardt (01:22:59):
Hello? You have an email.

Leo Laporte (01:23:00):
Should I play it back or are you gonna take care of it?

Chris Marquardt (01:23:03):
No, I will. I will drive. I, I think his buffering might be a symptom of the computer doing some shenanigans, some script. Oh

Leo Laporte (01:23:10):
There's a script running. Yeah, maybe.

Chris Marquardt (01:23:12):
Possibly, possibly. And that's what makes it buffer or

Leo Laporte (01:23:15):
Makes it look like, oh

Chris Marquardt (01:23:18):
Maybe,

Leo Laporte (01:23:19):
Maybe there's some malware on there. Something

Chris Marquardt (01:23:21):
That could be Anyway. We are going to have an assignment review today and I have the fish ball ready for drawing the next one. Oh and I, when I'm I'm back for good, by the way.

Leo Laporte (01:23:38):
Well, you can take time off anytime you want. I

Chris Marquardt (01:23:41):
Know. I know. I knew

Leo Laporte (01:23:42):
You are not an employee.

Chris Marquardt (01:23:44):
I missed you.

Leo Laporte (01:23:45):
You're a contractor. You set your own schedule. I missed you too. Still.

Chris Marquardt (01:23:52):
I wanna be dependable. So,

Leo Laporte (01:23:53):
Oh, I love these pictures. Oh these are, I like that. Giraffe. That's hysterical.

Chris Marquardt (01:24:00):
Silly.

Leo Laporte (01:24:00):
I got three, three giraffe though. I need, I only need one User. I said, oh I see. I get it. I kept clicking that link. Thinking that was three. Got it.

Chris Marquardt (01:24:13):
No. The, the middle link is is,

Leo Laporte (01:24:14):
Is the giraffe.

Chris Marquardt (01:24:15):
The sharing was disabled or something. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:24:17):
Yeah. Yeah. All right. I got 'em all.

Chris Marquardt (01:24:20):
So I, I wasn't here for two weekends. How many cameras did you buy? In the meantime

Leo Laporte (01:24:26):
On, I spent all my money on max. Oh, okay.

Chris Marquardt (01:24:31):
I've sales type cameras.

Leo Laporte (01:24:32):
I've been saving up on those Mac studios. I bought 1, 2, 3, 1 for me, one for Lisa, one for Micah. And one for my son. I bought four max studios. Nice. What a, what? A apples got me like this, but they are nice. They are nice. Here we go. It's time for our photo guy. He's back. Ladies. Gentlemen, Chris mark wart. My personal photo. Say@Sensei.Photo. S E N S ei.photo. He is a professional photographer. He's an author. He's written so many good books of photography, including film, photography, wide angle photography. He does photo workshops, photo coaching. And of course hosts the original photography podcast tips from the top floor@tfttf.com. Hello, Chris. Mark.

Chris Marquardt (01:25:32):
Hello? What a nice introduction. I

Leo Laporte (01:25:33):
Had to give you the full one. You know though, the whole thing I'm

Chris Marquardt (01:25:36):
Actually, I spent several hours today working on the third edition of the film photography handbook. So that is there's, there's so much going on in the film photography world. It's amazing who would've thought this like 10 years ago that there would be news and new films and films

Leo Laporte (01:25:53):
Are film is backed up. The prices have gone through the roof. Somebody's shooting film. In fact, I saw somebody on Reddit this this morning posted a thought, what if one of the big camera companies like Nikon released a new film camera with all the technology?

Chris Marquardt (01:26:08):
I saw that exact post. I saw that exact.

Leo Laporte (01:26:11):
Wouldn't that be interesting?

Chris Marquardt (01:26:13):
Yes. Yes. It's not happening.

Leo Laporte (01:26:15):
It's not, we we've gone digital. There's no going back, but that's nice for people who like the film, the quality and Chris's book. You got me inspired. That's for sure. Today we're doing a photo assignment review.

Chris Marquardt (01:26:28):
Yes. It's about time to look at the photos that everyone sent in. We have a whole bunch of them here. Let me bring them on the screen. The

Leo Laporte (01:26:35):
Assignment is so silly. Was

Chris Marquardt (01:26:37):
It silly? A silly assignment? Yes, it was the here have the paper here we have.

Leo Laporte (01:26:43):
So no one can, can doubt this right

Chris Marquardt (01:26:45):
Next to the screen. No, I'm sorry. This is a reminder for myself. So we have a whole bunch of silly pictures or pictures that depict something silly. And I have again chosen three of them. There

Leo Laporte (01:26:57):
Were some very silly fun pictures. Thank you, everybody such good pictures. Yeah.

Chris Marquardt (01:27:04):
So you know, this is, this is goly eyes make everything silly. I love goly eyes so much. I have a, I have an entire box full of them at different sizes right in my drawer. So yeah, what George did is he put goly eyes on a bowl of fruit on every single fruit and put in on, on a lawn. So we have, we have a nice, well, we have a silly picture with a lot of like pumpkins and apples and things. The fruit

Leo Laporte (01:27:33):
Scared

Chris Marquardt (01:27:33):
Oranges. They're

Leo Laporte (01:27:34):
Scared they're gonna be eaten. They're all very upset. I think

Chris Marquardt (01:27:38):
They better be scared. And then there's this nice color contrast between the orange and right fruit and the green grass. And there's some spinach in the bowl and it's, it's a, it's a simple, but very silly photo. So I appreciate the effort here and George, George sacrificed a whole bunch of Gog eyes for that. And

Leo Laporte (01:27:57):
That's you George Sullivan? Well done. Yes. By the title is, oh no, we are next. So oh yes.

Chris Marquardt (01:28:05):
Yes.

Leo Laporte (01:28:05):
Very important. I know you like titles, so we gotta make sure that's very,

Chris Marquardt (01:28:09):
Very true. Very true. So Scott MCLE MCLE Picture isn't that giraffe and gaffs, I mean it does, it makes a silly face. Of course not making a silly face cuz Jaff don't do that. But it's silly from our anthropomorphic kind of point of view. So it's

Leo Laporte (01:28:31):
Chewing. I think

Chris Marquardt (01:28:33):
If I made that face, it would be a silly face.

Leo Laporte (01:28:35):
Yes, sure. No doubt. Really

Chris Marquardt (01:28:40):
Good picture. So also also it's, it's one of those very clear pictures, you know, there's nothing, the it's very clear what it's about. There's this giraffe, it's sharp, it's in focus. And then the backdrop is very plain, so there's no distractions there and that is slightly blurry. So let me just have a look at camera or doesn't have any, any data. So we don't know what camera, but I bet it's a camera with a bit of a larger sensor cuz then you can throw the background out of focus. And that just makes it a very, very clear photo with a clear focus point. Lovely.

Leo Laporte (01:29:12):
So

Chris Marquardt (01:29:13):
Lovely a portrait. Yes. portrait and last but not least another one with with a time titled by Larry Albo. No direction. No. So what we're looking at is, is a unicorn or someone wearing a unicorn costume at a street corner. I have no idea what unicorn's doing there, why it's there. But then at the same time we have a sign there that says no UTURN. So we have a U unicorn and the no you turn sign and this whole things pointing in directions, the unicorns horn pointing somewhere and the U-turn arrow pointing in the different direction. It's just this interesting mix of weirdness.

Leo Laporte (01:29:56):
So it tells a story that's for sure.

Chris Marquardt (01:29:58):
Oh it does. It does. Yeah. So yeah, that's, that's a pretty great find kudos Larry for for finding that and for capturing it, cuz that I, I think that's, that's what you need to do if you wanna. If you wanna get these street type situations like Larry, did you better have your camera ready? You better be ready to take the cuz these kind of situations are over within seconds. Usually

Leo Laporte (01:30:27):
It's yeah. It's all about timing. It's all about the right time. Good job. Yeah. Very nice.

Chris Marquardt (01:30:35):
So nice. That's the three pictures and I think we need another assignment.

Leo Laporte (01:30:39):
So you know what? That means. Time to get out the fish ball,

Chris Marquardt (01:30:44):
Its the fish, but it's fish ball time again. Here it is the fishbowl. And of course it's, it's still full, full of adjectives and I will draw one. I dunno what it is. Let me see. Oh, oh,

Leo Laporte (01:31:01):
Oh, oh

Chris Marquardt (01:31:03):
Expensive,

Leo Laporte (01:31:05):
Expensive,

Chris Marquardt (01:31:07):
Expensive.

Leo Laporte (01:31:08):
Wow. That's a very interesting one. So here's how this works. It's gonna be a month. You got four weeks to take pictures and by the way, you don't need a film camera. You don't need a fancy camera. You don't all a camera. Phone's fine. And Instamatic would be a Polaroid. Swinger would be fine. It doesn't really right. In fact, maybe that'll give you a little advantage to take an expensive picture with

Chris Marquardt (01:31:34):
An expensive film S SLR like an old seventies camera. Why not? When

Leo Laporte (01:31:39):
You get an image that you, that speaks to you and you could see we're looking for images that tell story that have interesting colors, interesting shapes. They could be black and white, just something that catches your eye and makes you go. That's great. If you get one of those, you can submit it to our flicker group. And and so flicker, flicker.com is a photo sharing site. It's still free. They've they've, they've kind of changed some of the rules, but you could still be a free member. So that's good. And this will work. Even if you're a free member. The Tech Guy group has tens of thousands of members you'll know you're the right place.

Chris Marquardt (01:32:13):
And I think as, as a free member, you can upload like a thousand pictures of something. So it has amples for you. So yeah,

Leo Laporte (01:32:19):
You're limited on the private pictures, but that's but this is public cuz you want us to see it? So you upload it, make sure you tag it though. So we know it's for this assignment, TG that's for Tech Guy, expensive TG expensive. You can upload as many as one a week. Renee Silverman, our moderator. She's great. She's been keeping track of the tech eye site for year is now she will, she will say thank you for your submission. She'll add it to the pool. And in about four weeks, Chris will pick three and just as he did today, review them, we'll talk about them. But the best part about flicker is really the whole idea of flickers. Put your photos up there and have other people gently critique them, give you some pointers and

Chris Marquardt (01:32:59):
Or way original social photography, social network. Yeah. That's what flicker is.

Leo Laporte (01:33:04):
Yeah. And you know, it was bought by SMU mug. We love the guys, the mescals at SMU mug. And I think, you know, they realized it's expensive to run flicker. So they've limited the free tier a little bit more, but it we're both pro members. We pay the money cuz it's worth it. But you can still play this game for free there's no, no, you still have a thousand photos for free. So that's fine. Again, flicker.com The Tech Guy group TG expensive. Now if you wanna take film pictures, when is the so you're working on the third edition. Wow. Well

Chris Marquardt (01:33:37):
I I'm working on the third edition of the German version now, so that,

Leo Laporte (01:33:42):
So get the second edition

Chris Marquardt (01:33:43):
Up by the American film.

Leo Laporte (01:33:44):
Isn't changing that fast.

Chris Marquardt (01:33:45):
Very current, very current. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:33:48):
Also I love the wide angle book and of course you can get coaching from chris@sensei.photo and someday in the not too distant future. Chris will start those workshops again and you could travel. Oh yes. I'm. I want to go to Bhutan with you Chris, as soon as you're doing that again.

Chris Marquardt (01:34:04):
I want to go there too. Yes.

Leo Laporte (01:34:05):
Yeah. Sense eight photo. Thank you, Chris. Leo Laporte, The Tech Guy more calls to come.

Leo Laporte (01:34:17):
So What's your prognosis for the hitting the road again? I know you did a local work

Chris Marquardt (01:34:24):
Or hit the road again. We, we do a couple of local workshops this year. There's the big, a one that we do in Southern Germany that takes like an entire week in an old Abbey. Oh that's

Leo Laporte (01:34:33):
Is

Chris Marquardt (01:34:33):
A, it was a bit of a photo event kind of thing. Yeah. we have a couple planned for the summer, like here around the house model, war workshops travel. It's just waits risk

Leo Laporte (01:34:47):
Right now.

Chris Marquardt (01:34:48):
Who knows? Who knows? I mean, we are looking at rising numbers again after they decided that we should open up everything again. So two, it is, it is unpredictable at this point. So doing something, I mean that's a financial risk because you need to pre-book things and pre-pay a lot of things. And then you still, you also have to offer people free cancellations cuz of the risk. So it's, it's diff it's really difficult at

Leo Laporte (01:35:18):
This point. Yeah. I wouldn't for a while. Yeah.

Chris Marquardt (01:35:21):
I'm I'm I'm holding back on the travel for sure.

Leo Laporte (01:35:24):
Yeah.

Chris Marquardt (01:35:24):
Yeah. I, yeah, We've got the thing, the

Leo Laporte (01:35:27):
Twitn crews coming up in July. I'm hopeful. I'm pretty sure it's it's to Alaska, so we're not leaving the country. I'm pretty sure it's gonna be okay. By July, but 

Chris Marquardt (01:35:38):
Yeah, our, our big ABB workshop is end of may and I think that will be all right. So

Leo Laporte (01:35:44):
Yeah, crossing our fingers. Thank you, Chris. Stay safe. Have a wonderful week. We'll see you next

Chris Marquardt (01:35:50):
Week. See you next week. Bye bye. Take care byebye.

Leo Laporte (01:35:53):
So Alex just mail me back. That photogrammetry workshop that took about 10 20 hours to do on the Mac studio on his I nine based 16 inch power book runs for three days than crashes.

Leo Laporte (01:36:12):
So I think, I think there's, it's definitely better. I I'm gonna be very interested and to see how it works on the Aurora, I'm running it right now. That's an AMD processor, not it's only eight cores, 16 threads 50 5,800 rise in seven. It has a hundred, it has a lot more Ram though. It has 128 gigs of Ram. So TWiTce as much Ram as the Mac did. It also has a and I don't know how much this is GPU bound. It looks like it's all CPU bound, but it does have the Invidia NTX Or I'm sorry, RTX 30, 80 in it. So It's a, it's a hefty PC and it's running on Linux, not windows. So we'll be very interested to see, I'd be interested to see DDR 428 gigs. The 30 80 has 10 gigs of GDR, six Very interest to see it doesn't look like on the, on the benchmark That it's using the GPU on the Mac studio, much The program is meta meta shape running. I think it's called meta shape from AGI soft it's what's nice is it's cross platform. So that's really good.

Leo Laporte (01:37:53):
So it has Linux windows and Mac versions. So, and you know, Alex's instructions were to turn everything up all to the max. So no limits on it. I thought, geez, you know, 18, 19 hours. That seems like an awful long time, but I guess it's a lot faster than three days. Leo Laporte Tech Guy coming back to you, springtime in the Rockies. In fact, in the whole Northern hemisphere, eighty eight eighty eight, ask Cleo the phone number is this the first day of spring? It's soon. Isn't it? Is it today? It's today. 8:30 AM. So it is spring has sprung happy spring. Now I understand the songs you've been playing professor Laura. She's been trying to tell me all morning, Chris is on the line from Miami, Florida. Is that your real name, Chris?

Caller #4 (01:38:45):
It, it what? Yes. My name Chris really is my it's not funny how that works. Coffee. You're

Leo Laporte (01:38:51):
One of the few people in the chat room. There's bill and Michigan, Chris and Miami, Doug, but almost everybody else is using handles for their name. Yeah. Yeah.

Caller #4 (01:39:01):
I, I could use a handle. Chris coffee or coffee. I'm well known as coffee Miami. So

Leo Laporte (01:39:06):
I coffee Miami. There we go. But we know who that was, Chris.

Caller #4 (01:39:10):
Yeah. Well, this is true. It, it is true. So no matter what I do, I can't hide. In fact, my business call two days ago, one of my friends said, I wonder if Chris and Miami is on the call.

Leo Laporte (01:39:21):
Oh, you're famous. Now

Caller #4 (01:39:23):
Go get I'm famous because of you.

Leo Laporte (01:39:27):
You, the Chris,

Caller #4 (01:39:28):
I said, let

Leo Laporte (01:39:29):
Huh, the Chris in Miami,

Caller #4 (01:39:32):
The Chris in Miami, my reply was, let me go get three more cups and I'll let you know.

Leo Laporte (01:39:40):
Can't really be sure unless you're fully caffeinated. He is a coffee achiever. What can I do for you today, Chris?

Caller #4 (01:39:47):
Well, I'm glad to be back on the air. Kim's in about two cups, professor Laura. I have to give her a shout out. I've been wanting to do it because she keeps playing music and I keep spending money.

Leo Laporte (01:39:57):
Wow. Laura they're what are you spending money on her music?

Caller #4 (01:40:02):
Well, some of her music that she plays is actually pretty cool. So what I do is I'll Shaza that music.

Leo Laporte (01:40:08):
Oh, smart. Yeah. We do put links on the show notes@techeyelabs.com. Usually it's Monday or Tuesday before we get the whole list up, but we will put links to all of the songs up there. I think they're YouTube links. So, but anyway, there, you know, there you go,

Caller #4 (01:40:23):
There you go. Now enough, there

Leo Laporte (01:40:24):
You go. Now you know how to get springtime in? Where is in, in the Appalachians, in the Rockies. There you go. Springtime in the Rockies. So what can I do for you, Chris?

Caller #4 (01:40:38):
Well, I wanted to, I got rid of you know, I have the webcast by Google five or so I now have two points and I'm flying at about eight, 900 megabytes per second.

Leo Laporte (01:40:50):
So jealous that so

Caller #4 (01:40:52):
Jealous. I know you mentioned that I stuck in my head now. I mentioned that to the tech. I said, I have an incredible fellow in California, Le Laport. He says, it's that guy? I said, yes. Oh nice. He so wants this. Yeah, yeah. You, I always mention you everywhere. Even if people are interested in tech, I'm like go to this, go to your browser type int thank you, YC dot. Thank you. BA the magic happens. So yeah. But voiceover IP, I got rid of all at and TERs except for now I got the landline and I'm paying $45 a month for something I don't really use. So I'm thinking, I like the idea of the physical device, but via voiceover IP is very interested. I'm lost on this when and figured I'd totally throw this back at you.

Leo Laporte (01:41:37):
Okay. So you wanna know whether you should have a landline from at and T versus using their internet based voice over internet service. There's

Caller #4 (01:41:48):
I wanna get rid of them completely. Oh,

Leo Laporte (01:41:49):
You don't want any at and T, but you could use, you could use your, your fiber, your webpa from Google fiber for a VoIP solution. There's lots of them like Luma and you know, there's a million of them you could even use Google's own, you know Google voice solution. Okay. So here's the good news and the bad news. I think everybody should have a real landline. Now the problem is, is that even a available anymore, a real copper based landline, where you have a copper wire in the wall that you plug your phone in into it. And that wire, if you traced it all the way down and out and down of the building and down the road and would end up the other end of it would end up at the central office for the phone company, if, and that's how it used to be, by the way, that's what a phone was.

Leo Laporte (01:42:35):
If you can get that kind of real copper based landline, there's an advantage to it. If your power goes out, you're in hurricane alley. If your power goes out your internet goes out, right? Everything goes out. That landline still works because it's getting power from the phone company. Now that's only, if you have a phone that's powered by the copper, not by the power and the wall. So you don't get a phone that plugs into the wall. You get like, you know, one of those old phones, like the old Western electric phones doesn't plug into anything, but the, but the phone line and gets everything, the ringing and everything, including the dialing out, gets it from the phone company. That's great in an emergency hurricane hits everything's out. You can still call for help. So that's why I recommend the landline. Now the problem is these are, these are harder to get than ever.

Leo Laporte (01:43:24):
I almost said rarer than hen's teeth, but then I would sound like it was springtime in the Rockies. They're rarer than hen's teeth because the phone companies don't want to maintain this infrastructure. In fact, a lot of times, for instance, when Google came in and web web, they might have, they might have cut the copper. Certainly Verizon will try to do that when they, if they give you fiber internet or you get UT and T at T's Uverse, they will often they're supposed to ask, but they'll often just say, ah, you don't need the copper anymore. Let's just cut that off. And so you can't get a landline anymore in those installations. So if you can, you're lucky enough, you should check with the it's an apartment complex condo, condo complex condo condo. Yeah. But you should check with a, a homeowner's association or whoever knows what the, what the plant is.

Leo Laporte (01:44:13):
The physical plant. Is this a real landline? Cuz a lot of times this is for instance, when you get the triple play package from your cable company, whoever that's a void line, everything's going over the internet. So if you can get real copper voice, I would keep it. You may never use it. The kids these days, they don't get phone lines, they have their cell. What do you, I need a phone line for. I got my phone right here in my pocket. I don't need a phone line. Right? So you know, most, I would bet you even now most of the condo dwellers, unless they're my age, probably don't have a, a landline in there so they may have disconnected it just cuz there was no no use for it, but if you can get it, but you're like to, if it's, if it's fiber to the apartment or if it's internet to the apartment and the phone's going over a void, but it won't matter.

Leo Laporte (01:44:58):
Power goes out unless they've got a battery backup. I remember I got the, a triple play bundle from Comcast. They put in a battery, but they never checked it five years later, that battery doesn't work anymore. It's worn out, but they never replaced it. And that's probably a case even if it's battery backed up. So these are less desirable for an emergency. Their other problem with VoIP is nine. One. One is not going directly to the local fire department or police department. It's going to a regional center. It's using what's called E 9 1 1. So it has to be redirect to the closest fire department or emergency facility near you. That that that's precious time potentially lost. And then VoIP of course is completely dependent on the internet and on a bad internet day, which seemed to be becoming more increasingly common. Your phone sounds will either sound terrible or, or are, are you, what are you on now? Are you on a cell phone now

Caller #4 (01:45:56):
I'm using my iPhone 12 pro

Leo Laporte (01:45:57):
Yeah. Yeah. So the truth is probably for most people, the cell phone is the next backup because even when the power goes out, often that cell phone continues to work. The cell towers are backed up. And so you will probably still have emergency services through your cell phone. So if you can't get copper, which probably be the safest, your cell phone is the next best bet. But the VoIP landline is gonna be the first thing to go out it, you know, in an emergency it's gonna be

Speaker 12 (01:46:23):
Gone. Interesting. Yeah. All right.

Leo Laporte (01:46:26):
Yeah. So that, so, and, and then quality is not as good, although it could be here's the weird thing could be better perhaps on your iPhone. You've turned on wifi calling for instance. Yes.

Leo Laporte (01:46:37):
Yep. Sometimes you get a really like, wow, are you in the same room with me? And that's because the way phones are designed, they're used as little bandwidth as possible so they can maximize the use of the copper. So it's equivalent of four or five bit sound. If you give it eight bit or even 16 bit sound, it's just gonna sound so much better than the low fidelity phone line. The way they figured out how high quality a phone line should be is how low quality can it be and still be intelligible. Okay, we'll do that. So your phone line sounds as poor as it possibly can and still be intelligible, which is ironic you right now, you sound like you're on a, a regular landline. You're not getting wifi calling higher quality calling, but I bet you you've had that experience with wifi where, wow, this is crystal clear. So, you know, that's an advantage of VoIP. You can get higher bandwidth, Leo port, The Tech Guy, you know, that's why, when you on your phone, if you use FaceTime, for instance, FaceTime, audio's gonna be much better than a phone call. Right.

Caller #4 (01:47:37):
That's true.

Leo Laporte (01:47:38):
Yeah. But you can't FaceTime us. So, you know, anyway I don't, I didn't answer your question. I don't know which you should get. I think probably VoIP probably you

Caller #4 (01:47:49):
Went.

Leo Laporte (01:47:50):
Yeah. I mean, that's, those are the pros and cons.

Caller #4 (01:47:53):
Well, and so to $45 a month. And, and to me, I don't, I don't like the land on the money thing, you know? I mean, I'm, I, I, I think that if that's the cost, but if I go with their lower, the lower system, it actually won't cost me more to go with non-digital so I'd stay. Yeah. But $45 a month is money that if people look at a like that, I mean, I, you know, you multiply that by 12. That's a lot of money I could put somewhere else.

Leo Laporte (01:48:14):
Yeah. I 

Caller #4 (01:48:16):
Is, is where

Leo Laporte (01:48:17):
I yeah, right. More coffee. I I, I have a landline at home for the originally got it for the burglar alarm. Okay. Never use it and at, and T is slowly jacked up the, I think it's 30 or 40 bucks now. And yeah. Be just, it's, doesn't make a lot of sense. I should probably change the, the Burg system could use a cell line and probably should change to that.

Caller #4 (01:48:42):
I'm just really over it. I'm, I'm over all of it. And when I got the webpa, Google fiber, my web, I just said, you know what? This is

Leo Laporte (01:48:48):
Amazing. Go all. Yeah, cut the cable at the phone company. Just use your internet for everything. I think that's what most people do. And you've always got your cell phone for backup.

Caller #4 (01:48:59):
Yeah. And then when the power goes, see, the reason I have a landline though, is, cause obviously I'm in hurricane territory, but if the, if the power goes out or if something's going on with the towers and something's not working right. And my cellular service goes down, I have I, another backup. The problem is, is the backup is becoming more controversial to me because I don't wanna pay that money anymore. And I want something that

Leo Laporte (01:49:18):
I'd say dump it

Caller #4 (01:49:19):
When the power

Leo Laporte (01:49:20):
Goes out, I'd say dump it. I think notice during the next hurricane, if your cell phone still works in most cases, it will cuz they, they, they back up the the towers with, with, so I think your cell phone nowadays is as good as anything else.

Caller #4 (01:49:37):
Perfect. That's what we do then. Yeah. All right. It's going all right. Yeah, of course. Thanks boss. Appreciate

Leo Laporte (01:49:42):
You too. Great to talk to you. Thanks Chris. Yeah, that's a good point. Somebody said Knox Harrington says if a storm or other disaster is bad enough to knock out cell towers, it's taken out landlines too. It's the power outages. The real one power outages are very common. Most of the time. I think now cell towers are backed up. So you, so that would solve that, right.

Leo Laporte (01:50:10):
Well, Hey, Hey. Hey. How are you today? Leo Laporte here. The Tech Guy, time to talk computers, the internet, home theater, digital photography, smart phones, smart watches, all that you eighty eight eighty eight ask Leo is a phone number eight, eight, eight, eight two five, five thirty six, toll free from anywhere in the us or Canada outside that area. You can still call, but it'll be you know, using that VoIP thing, you know, Skype out or something like that. 88 88 LIO website Tech Guy labs.com. I should have mentioned this last hour when we had Chris mark on our, in our, a chakra mentioned that do you know the YouTube channel smarter every day? Really good, really good YouTube channel. Dustin, who does that is doing a three part series on how Kodak makes film Kodaks film production. I think that sounds fantastic. Youtube's amazing. Isn't it? I mean for every stupid silly thing on YouTube, there is, there is something just incredible, you know and you know, you don't have to watch all the soup, stupid, silly stuff. How does film actually work? Well actually it looks like he started this last year. There's a lot of stuff on film. Interesting. Interesting. Oh yeah, they do. How does Kodak make film? This is a new one, I guess. I guess he, Destin is a is a film buff is a film buff. So he's got a Kodak factory tour up on YouTube, but right now channel is smarter air every day, 88. I'll give you a little plug test. Eighty eight eighty eight. ASEO the phone number on the line from Cooper city, Florida. Skyler. Hi Skylar.

Caller #5 (01:51:58):
Yeah. Hi Leo. Happy spring day to you.

Leo Laporte (01:52:00):
Happy spring. I didn't even know. I didn't even know.

Caller #5 (01:52:04):
I didn't either. I was a surprise to me.

Leo Laporte (01:52:07):
You probably in Florida, it doesn't matter either way, right?

Caller #5 (01:52:10):
No, it's always spring up a little few times in January few weeks in January. That's about it.

Leo Laporte (01:52:15):
You get winter for two, for a few weeks. What can I do for you today? Sky,

Caller #5 (01:52:21):
Well sometime ago, like just a few years ago, I started digitalizing family videos from VHS or high eight tape. Right. and I used the program. It was either Sony Vegas or one of the Adobe products. So I've got a about 80 tapes that I've done this to. I've got many holy

Leo Laporte (01:52:42):
Cow. Wow.

Caller #5 (01:52:43):
Yeah, a lot of them, a lot of the many years of family videos. And I've noticed that when I go to play the tape on the computer, it'll play the first few seconds of the video. And then the screen will change to a, a medium gray color with little dots in rows and columns. It looks like a checkerboard, but with tiny, tiny checkers, and I'm using windows media player, I've tried VLC and it doesn't get past those first few seconds. So what do you think could be the possible problem with all these videos that I've recorded?

Leo Laporte (01:53:19):
Oh, this is gonna make me cry. Yeah. It's it sounds like they were cap. They weren't captured properly. Your hope is, and it's my hope as well that the files are fine. It's just, you need to play them back in a certain way. But it sounds more like to me, did you monitor them as they were playing back?

Caller #5 (01:53:44):
Yes. Some of them, yes. When I did they play two hours at a time, I would play him and watch 'em.

Leo Laporte (01:53:48):
Yeah. And then wander off. But, but as soon as it seemed like it was gonna work I feel like what you are monitoring, even if it's on the computer is the playback as it's coming into the computer, but you're not monitoring what is being captured. And it sounds to of me, like it didn't get captured properly, but let's let's, I mean, if you did 80, that's the worst news possible. So I mean, good advice in future. Try, do one and make sure you got all the sendings right. So you tried playing it back here. I'll give you a few other things to try playing back with. One thing to definitely do is download video land client VLC from video land.org. It's free. It is a Swiss army knife of video playback. It's available for windows, Mac, Linux and it, it can play almost any file of any kind.

Leo Laporte (01:54:45):
So one, well, usually the thing that makes me nervous is usually what'll happen. If you try to play it back is the, is the program will say, oh, I don't, I don't know what format this is or I can't play it. It won't play a couple of seconds and then die. It'll either play it or not usually. So I'm hoping there's something going on. Maybe the rate is a little off or whatever. First thing to do, download VLC. It's free. You you'll get it five minutes from now. You'll be able to open those files and selectively open 'em instead of playing it from the beginning, jump to the middle. Maybe take a look. It'll tell you if there's anything in there. That's playable are the file, the sizes. Have you looked at those? Are they big?

Caller #5 (01:55:32):
Yeah, some of them are pretty big. Like, I mean, some of the tapes are like maybe 10, 15 gigabytes. They're

Leo Laporte (01:55:38):
Huge. Okay. Well that means you captured some data. Let's just hope it's not a gray screen with dots. I'm, I'm gonna hope it's a playback thing. Okay. And that, that the, what, what did you say you were playing it back with Sony Vegas?

Caller #5 (01:55:54):
Well that's fine. Capture

Leo Laporte (01:55:55):
Or windows. Yeah. Or windows, media play. Well, first thing to open in Sony Vegas and see if you can play in Sony Vegas. It made it if, if, if it made it, it should be able to play it back. So that's one way to see if you've got the data, right?

Caller #5 (01:56:10):
Yeah. Okay. Cause I, I did try VLC and it didn't play it as well. Did the same exact thing

Leo Laporte (01:56:16):
Did the same thing? Oh yeah. My, my, you know, the worst nightmare would be you got 80 tapes and nothing, and you have to start over that's 160 hours of, of hard work open it in Vegas, open in Vegas. See if you can see it in Vegas. So Vegas will play back that, that file. And if it does, oh, hallelujah. The data's there. It's just somehow stored in a format that even VLC can't see, but that's solvable, that's solvable. Vegas has a variety of ways to export the file. And so it's possible, completely possible to export in a way that just, you know, VLC and windows, media player just can't handle let's cross their fingers. That that's what happened. So whew. And you didn't throw away the tapes I'm sure. Right.

Caller #5 (01:57:12):
I still got 'em and I'm hoping that the old, the, the, the cam card is still works too.

Leo Laporte (01:57:17):
Yeah. Yeah. That's one of the problems, isn't it? Yeah. You gotta play 'em back. I have a bunch of high eight tapes. I don't have a high eight anymore. I gotta have to find a service bureau to do it open 'em in Vegas. See if they're there, then look at what you're exporting them as the best thing to export them as these days would be EG five, MP five, but for maximum compatibility, MP four. Did you wanna put 'em on a D V D?

Caller #5 (01:57:43):
Yeah. That might be an option in the future

Leo Laporte (01:57:45):
In Vegas. We'll have a DVD. Yeah. Vegas will have a BA way to burn it. D V D so yeah, I, I think that's the first thing you do. There are programs you can use to figure out what's in that file. What's the extension, the dot extension after the dot,

Caller #5 (01:58:05):
I believe Avis. I know some of the ones that are newer, the digital recorder they're MP, no NPS, but I think the old tapes more younger with the kids are younger. It's like more of an Avi.

Leo Laporte (01:58:17):
Yeah. So Avi is the windows container format can contain a variety of different codex. O is what QuickTime uses MPS. Not sure what MPS is. Probably it's an EG file format. Yeah. I would open them. I look, let's, I'm crossing my fingers for you. I'm feeling for you. Yeah. Open in Vegas. You made 'em with Vegas. You, you captured 'em with Vegas. If there's data there, Vegas will see it. And if you can see it and you can go through it and say, oh yeah, it's all there. Then the thing is to write it out in a format that's more compatible probably, you know, your best bet at MP four. The good news is the quality, you know, because you're taking it from HS and from high and from eight millimeter. Isn't so great. That MPA for B plenty for it.

Leo Laporte (01:59:06):
MP five is a little smaller file size with higher quality. It's the more modern standard. I think, I think it I'm, I'm gonna hope you saved it in a format that just, for some reason, can't be read by other things. It may be a vague that only Vegas can read. So open in Vegas and cross your fingers. I hope so. Otherwise, thanks. You got a long haul ahead of you. I'm sorry. 88 88. Ask Leo. There are programs. We'll put a link in the show notes programs like media info, which will look at the file. Tell you what's in there. If, if you, if you got that information put in our chat room, maybe they could help you. Leo Laporte, The Tech Guy.

Leo Laporte (01:59:55):
So do you do a dad joke of the week every week? Is that part of this weekend space, rod pile dad joke. Are those dad joke? A space joke? Yeah. Okay. They're dad jokes. Yeah, pretty much. You know, the first one was, was kind of a, a boy at the end, but, but your lovely crew finally came up with some sound effects and to my great delight, mine got collapsed and tars got great. So I appreciate that. Yeah. Hey, I really feel for your last caller. There you go. Oh yeah. Have you ever, have you ever done that ripped a bunch of 80 hours and the thing is he didn't check it. Yeah, no, I haven't done that because I'm an obsessive checker, but I have, I have footage archives going back to the eight late eighties. I have beta. I have dig beta.

Leo Laporte (02:00:46):
I have DV. I have mini disc, all this stuff in documentaries in the past. Most of us not digitized. So I hope when I put those tapes back of the decks that I was sitting storage that they play. Yeah. Oh my God. By the way, got my first blue land shipment. Oh, do you like it? It's sensational. I know. Just, just the unboxing ex I, I'm not an UN boxer, right? It's like, just get the pad. No, I love it. It's wrapped in tissue and oh, I know they do a nice job. These bottles are sensational. The colors are great. My girlfriend was thrilled. She's like, look, these are beautiful. And I said, yeah, they are. They don't have all that. You know, F weird labeling on 'em and all that stuff. No. Yeah. It saves you money and saves water, saves the planet. I think it's a good thing.

Leo Laporte (02:01:30):
Minimal. Yeah. So I was sponsor alert. That's a, that's a sponsor and I hope they sent you some, right. Well, they did. And from now on, I'm gonna be on some, oh, I ordered, I know you just love it. I ordered so much. I bought a bunch. In fact, I bought it for my daughter too. I mean, I'm a big, I'm a big fan. Yeah. And it's really cool to watch the little tablet fizz. I mean, I realize a big little obsessive here, but it's like, yeah, they're neat. You know? Well, the first time I overfilled the bottle, which didn't work too well, but yeah. Was that a show? Yeah. It's like Mintos and diet Coke. Oh yeah. Yeah. So now I realize there's a fill line. I'll fill to there. Actually. I'm ready to do a refill on my hand soap of my sink at home.

Leo Laporte (02:02:12):
I use it, I use it every day and I got the, I mentioned this in the ad. I got the Christmas package, which is like candy can and gingerbread, the whole house smells. Like's kinda fun. It's kind fun. Wash your hands with gingerbread. So by the way I sent, you got the pitch. Okay. Yes. You, I sent you the photos for the rollout. And the third episode arch this week of space is called the orbital junkyard just to case. Oh, I know. I heard you talking about it. Very cool. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Very cool. All right. I have your photos. I will be ready to launch if you will. Yes, sir. It's starts with photo two. Is that correct? You can really in any order. Okay. Yeah, I got some all, all right, sir, we're talking a bit. I'll be here.

... (02:03:05):
Let the show begin.

Leo Laporte (02:03:10):
I got my my stream deck slowly reprogramming it,

... (02:03:25):
Teacher, teacher.

Leo Laporte (02:03:30):
You can, I just have the I, you know, it was enough just programming the damn things. So I just have the names, but yeah, you could do that, but so I don't know why, but it, it, I, maybe I moved, I probably moved the files, so I have to fill them all up and I have several pages. So these, these are, you know, they lost the file. So I, I did the first page. I think I started the second page. Leo. LePort the tech I eighty eight eighty eight. Ask Leo the phone number, rock pile, spaceman, steely, eye rocket, man, coming up and just little bit, talk about Artemis. We're going to the moon again. Wow. But first Jeff in new city, New York. Hello, Jeff. Leo Laporte

Caller #6 (02:04:34):
Hey, Leo, how are you doing today?

Leo Laporte (02:04:35):
I'm great. How you doing?

Caller #6 (02:04:37):
I'm good. Thanks for taking my call. Two quick questions. One is, is there such a thing to program another universal remote using a universal remote?

Leo Laporte (02:04:49):
Yeah, that should work. It's universal remotes all the way down. Cause all, yeah. When you're programming universal remote, you just put it head to head with the original remote, press the button, the original remote press, the programming button, and then it learns it. And while it's looking at is the infrared. You can't see it, but there's light coming from the original remote that is invisible to the human eye cuz it's infrared. And then it goes into the programmable remote. And in order for the program over remote to work, it has to send those exact same infrared light signals to the TV. So it knows them. So you should be able to continue without any degradation, even program program program all the way down. Now this is kind of an old fashioned way of doing it more modern, universal remotes don't need to be programmed, but you know, if that's what you got, I'm sad because the company that made the best universal remotes, Logitech has discontinued their harmony line and harmonies were great because the harmony, you wouldn't have to program, they had a massive database of pre-programed and all you do is you download it to your remote log into your account.

Leo Laporte (02:06:04):
And it would, it would know, but you know, Logitech decided I, I'm not sure why that the, there wasn't a market for these anymore. So

Caller #6 (02:06:13):
Yeah, cause it's a universal company. It's actually universal RF 20. And I have the program for years and I keep going to eBay and buying replacements and they keep like, not working after a

Leo Laporte (02:06:25):
While. Oh, you can't program one or the other? Huh? Huh? Do you program, you program him as I described or you put, 'em kind of head to head and

Caller #6 (02:06:33):
Yeah. And I can do it now because it's still on its last leg. It'll allow me to do it, but I'm thinking of getting off that system, getting a different one, but I don't wanna reprogram everything over

Leo Laporte (02:06:42):
Again. I don't blame you. It looks like, you know, I, I, that's really interesting. Cause if you go to logitech.com, it looks like they're still selling the harmonies. Maybe they change their mind. That's the one I would buy for sure. The harmony there, there are a variety of 'em the most simple one I think was the harmony one. It looks like they don't sell that one anymore. Now these work, I think one of the reasons this changed is because of the voice assistants and a lot of TVs will work with Amazon's echo or the Google assistant. If you can't, I would get a harmony. If I were you you know, they see like the harmony hub is fine. That works actually the way that works is kind of interesting, that works with your smartphone. It's just a little puck you put in the TV cabinet.

Leo Laporte (02:07:35):
It has if it needs them, it has IR blasters that you can put closer to the instrument that you want to control. And then it uses your smartphone to talk to it. And that's 99 bucks. That's really a good way to do it, but they have a variety there including the home. And the pro I used to use a harmony one. I don't know if they still sell that one. Logitech said they're gonna sell remaining stock. Okay. So they've discontinued making them, but apparently they have a fairly hefty inventory cuz they're still selling them. So that's the one I'd recommend for sure, ex with a caveat that the, you know, there may not be making more of them. The other way to go is, and I would even maybe say, this is the way to go is to look at something like the fire, Amazon fire TV cube, the, the cube is a fire TV.

Leo Laporte (02:08:26):
So it's like a Roku, an apple TV. It's a streaming device by itself, but it works with voice commands and will control all the stuff. So it is still like a universal remote, but you talk to it so I can walk in the room. And I tell, I say to the cube cube, turn on the TV, or I can even say cube, let's watch the game. And it will know it, what to turn on the satellite dish or the cable box. It'll know what channel to tune to it'll turn on the tee, turn on the receiver, turn on the sound, do all of that stuff you could pre-program it. So I, my, my guess is that this is why Logitech kind of got out of the business because the, they saw their businesses being eaten up by these voice remotes voice assistance. So look at, yeah,

Caller #6 (02:09:13):
I looked into that, cause I know the new one, the cube, the new one, you can even hook up a camera to it. Yeah. I saw the second generation you could do. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (02:09:21):
And it's fairly cheap. The only negative on the fire TV stuff is it's a little Amazon friendly, so they're gonna, you know, they're gonna put the Amazon shows up on the splash screen and stuff like that, but the cube really works quite well. I mean, I was very impressed by, and I, I got the original cube. It's only 70 bucks, so it's cheaper than any remote.

Caller #6 (02:09:43):
Right. So if I'm looking into

Leo Laporte (02:09:45):
That yeah. If, if, if you can't get a remote and, and again, the harmony one is, you know, that's the best universal remote ever made as far as I'm concerned. The fire TV cube might be an interesting alternative, not exactly like a remote, but you use your voice. So pretty, pretty pretty cool.

Caller #6 (02:10:03):
Yeah, because the only reason I went to university RF is cuz it's hidden behind a wall and it's radio frequency, the one I'm using.

Leo Laporte (02:10:10):
Ah that's okay. Now I understand cuz it's not using IR, so it has to program it through radio frequency. That's interesting. So you don't have to point the heads at each other. You just have to have 'em nearby, but it's yeah, yeah. That's a big problem. So that's that I don't, I think RF might not work with the cube. You do get these IR blasters. So if you can get an I blaster through a hole in the wall to where the device is, it might still work. I don't know how it works with RF. That's an interesting question. So really what you want is a, a, a RF based radio frequency based universal remote, almost all the universal remotes out there that I know of are infrared or light based. 

Caller #6 (02:10:53):
Yeah, except for the one I have. Yeah. 20. Yeah. So yeah, which they don't make anymore. 

Leo Laporte (02:10:58):
I don't, I don't even know if the harmonies had RF capabilities. That's really an interesting question. Maybe the chat room does looking at the Logitech harmony six 50 6 65, if it does RF, cuz that's yeah. That's a whole different Ketle of fish. You have kind of a specialized situation cuz everything's out of sight.

Caller #6 (02:11:23):
Yeah. Cause I hit everything behind a wall when I designed a room.

Leo Laporte (02:11:26):
So yeah. Smart. Yeah. Smart. That's a good way to do it. Except for this one little problem. So for that actually the harmony that I talked about the little little puck, you put that behind the wall too, and then that's using wifi to be controlled from your phone. So cool. That would work sort of the same way. It's still RF, but it's, it's a little bit different kind of RF. It's using wifi,

Caller #6 (02:11:54):
An iPad for it too.

Leo Laporte (02:11:55):
Yeah. And then you can use an iPad. Exactly. So that'd be another way to look at it and you just you'd be putting that puck. It, it has a puts out a pretty broad field. Ah, now I have to think about it though, if you ha yeah. I'll have to do some research. Not sure if that'll work. Leo Laporte, The Tech Guy. Oh the cube has an RF blaster. All right. All right. So there's the good news. Thank you, scooter X as always the fire TV cube has an RF blaster. So that solves the whole problem. I like the cube and I'd be nervous about buying a harmony at this point because you know, if you've discontinued something, how long are the, the harmony relies on the server? This is funny from Logitech. We get lots of emails from customers asking will my harmony remotes control my RF device, all harmony models, including the harmony 300 can only control infrared devices.

Leo Laporte (02:13:00):
They cannot control RF devices. So no, but if your stuff in the wall does IR, if, if it's in the wall, I mean, I don't know if, how you hooked it up. If it only did RF, then you need to get, you need to get the the fire TV cube. It seems like that'd be the solution. Yeah. Use RF on the fire TV cube. Now I want to get my cube set up. Are you calling somebody on the bat phone there? Oh, sorry. What is that? Is that a bat phone? What do you have there? This is I was just thinking for later in the podcast for a video, when I got a call NASA that said, Hey gene, Crans Highline hotline, buddy hotline, hotline, look at the little button on it and everything. What is that? It's a, an air force. Red line handset. Yeah. Wow. So it's not working stuff like that. Yeah, I would too. If I currently not working because you know, I used to have the see if I still have it. You had one of everything. Cool. I think, oh, I had, I had a I had a handset, you know, Western electric handset that had a cell modem cell phone in it. And you could put it on the table and tie tile. Yeah. Like that. Yeah. Yeah. That's awesome.

Leo Laporte (02:14:30):
Batman. We need you reccon reccon joke. Oh God. Don't don't let me be Adam West. Hello citizen. Hello citizen man. Yeah. We're of a certain age. If we remember that, you know, I'm reminded every day when my son says, okay, boomer, okay. He say bummer often, actually every now and then it's just enough to put me back on my deals. Oh God kids today. I tell you. Yeah. Yeah. The problem is they're usually right. But we just weren't brave enough to say it to our fathers cuz they didn't laugh and go. Right. They said, I'm gonna backhand you junior. I used to have the in like Flint phone ring. Let see. Did you have that phone with a red button on the bottom? No, I would've liked. Oh. Cause those were, oh, I know what you mean. The ones that yeah, they were beautiful. Weren't they cool. They were really good. We talked about that. Somebody made a, made a replica. Didn't it end up in, in the museum. Modern art. Oh yeah. It was it classic. Yeah. Yeah. Those were kind of in practic. Yeah. They were very cool looking. What was the name of those? I remember talking about that with somebody. Yeah. It always reminded me of an updated version of the Adams family candlestick phone. You know you won you, you run. Oh LCH.

Leo Laporte (02:15:55):
Ooh. This is also the museum of modern art. Wouldn't mind that. Oh, look at that. Oh, I bet that's a pulse phone though. It just looks like a pulse phone. Yeah, those took I foolishly looked up MoMA and phone. Oh, oh you're gonna be shopping now. Oh, look at that emergency it's time for our rocket man. Rod pile is here. The author of space, 2.0 amazing space stories. Inter planetary robots. First blueprint for a battle star. I got all the books here first on the moon editor in chief of a Astra magazine from space, the international, the national space society, nss.org. And most recently host of this week in space with Tarric Mallek of space.com. How's that show going by the way. Great podcasts. Really great. It's it's going well, you know, we're having a good time. We're on our third public episode, which I guess is our seventh overall seventh or eighth. And it's just been a real pleasure. It's it's fun working with him. It's fun working through folks. And my, my favorite feature is the doling space jokes. That's always fun. Oh, they're sad. Aren't they?

Leo Laporte (02:17:18):
Dad's in space. Yeah, I know. I know. And we're both dads, so they perfect. Anyway, that's at TWiT TV slash T I S that's our podcast. Now work this in tech T I t.tv/this in space. I know it's confusing. T w I it is S TWiTst TWiT TWiTst. We're going to the moon baby. Wow. So first moon rocket in 50 years rolled out of the vehicle assembly building. Ooh, it's a big week too. Let me tell you big. And it's a little shorter than Saturn five it's Saturn five was 363 feet. I think this is 3 22 in its current configuration, but it's confusing cuz this is block one of the space launch system. So there's gonna be a block one block, one B block. What does that mean? Block one. Well, they get bigger upper stage. So you know, so this is the whole rocket.

Leo Laporte (02:18:14):
Well, this is the current configuration of the rocket. This is the first outing for this rocket. Let's bear in mind. This thing's been under construction or design at least in one form another for almost 20 years. And this is also is that why it's so rusty at the bottom there like that that's actually a space shuttle, basically a derivation of a space shuttle, external tank. That's orange foam. That's sprayed on it. That's insulation. Oh, okay. And then they took four space shuttle engines four actually. Is that what these little side things are? No. Well, no. Yes, but let's go from top to bottom. There's the escape rocket. So there's the escape cut rocket. There's the Orion capsule just below that, which looks a little like the Apollo capsule or the SpaceX dragon. It's about a third bigger than Apollo. Then you got that straight white part that you got the cursor on, which is the service module.

Leo Laporte (02:19:05):
And that's the engine that drives the Orion capsule in and out of blue north. So it's the, it's the engine to stay in the littlest engine. And it's just, it's just there to kind of, you know, tot around the universe, but not, not do anything more. Yeah. And, and much smaller than one Apollo had, which is, which is weird. Cuz we got bigger capsule but a smaller engine, but you don't need a lot. There's an arrange of it with the Europeans and it gets very complicated then got that comical stage. Yeah. That's empty right now. Okay. That's just an adapter. You say this space for rent. Is that what that says? Okay. Probably. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. No, it says this week in space, huh? Oh, look at that. Ron pile goes here. Well then that'd be great. And then underneath it, that's the rest.

Leo Laporte (02:19:48):
What I call the rusty, the foam orange foam covered stages. These are the big, the big rockets, the big, so that's liquid hydrogen liquid oxygen tanks. And then at the bottom of that are four legacy space shuttle engines cuz they wanted this to be cost effective using shuttle hardware at a ended up not being so, but the government, you know, and then on the side are two extended versions of the space shuttle, solid rocket boosters. So it's really different from the Saturn five. They keep trying to compare this to Saturn five, but the Saturn five was all liquid engines and it had three stages. This is liquids in the SA engines on the side and it's really just got the one main stage plus the two side boosters. So although it's touted as being more powerful than the Saturn five, it actually can't put as much payload up to earth orbit or to the moon in this configuration because of that weak, upper stage, that white area at the top that white cylinder.

Leo Laporte (02:20:47):
Yeah. Eventually it'll be bigger and, and have more mojo, but you know, this one is intended to, so right now they've rolled it from the vehicle assembly building, which is that big building with the two roll up doors out to pad 39 B, which is one of two pad launch pads in the Apollo era. It only launched one Saturn five, actually Apollo 10, but it launched a bunch of shuttle flights and so forth. But they've, they've leased 39 a to SpaceX. So 39 B is their remaining big launchpad. So it's rolling out there for the next couple of weeks. They're gonna do tests with it. They're gonna tank it up full of fuel. Then drain the fuel out. They test the computers, they test all the, that you see that fly off. When the rocket launches, you remember all those shots of the Saturn five with the swing arms and the oh yeah.

Leo Laporte (02:21:35):
Clams, the gantry. Right. And then they, they test the ground crew. You know, you gotta test all your procedures. So doing their very best to make sure everything's gonna work fine. Then they roll it back into the vehicle assembly building and hopes that have a it'll come back out and we'll have a launch in may or June or as I was betting tar on the podcast, maybe July. So we don't even know or the other Drake now the launch, what will it do? Just go up and down. No. So it's gonna take an UN crewed Orion capsule out in a very large looping trajectory out past the moon. Oh go in the lunar, but hang out for quite a while. Oh. And then, then come back. So this'll be anywhere from three weeks to a month. So they're gonna go all the way. Just not with a payload, not with people just to sure.

Leo Laporte (02:22:25):
You can do it. Yeah. It's testing life support. It's that's the flight. That's gonna test the the Alexa on. Oh, I said it, I'm sorry. Amazon echo board system. How they gonna do that? There's on board. They gotta a mannequin on board really? And yeah, they're gonna have a speaker next to 'em and it's so is this where in a, in a earlier, less enlightened day you'd put a chimpanzee or a dog in the, in the capsule or no? Yeah. We're we're don't do that then now we don't do that anymore. Although there are a couple of people I would, I would nominate for, you know, you're not allowed to do that. So Pete Davidson is not available apparently so apparently no. Yeah. So this is, you know, just some numbers. This is 322 feet tall. The Saturn five is 360 3. And you can see when this one's, you know, the vehicle assembly building door, the roll up door yeah.

Leo Laporte (02:23:17):
Was made perfectly sized for the Saturn five, just cleared on all sides. This one's a little short, but so it's a little shorter. Something they couldn make a bigger one because the door isn't big enough. No, no. It just means that again, they're trying to use as much leftover hardware from the shuttle as they could sure. Reuse, recycle. I know. And this is, yeah, it's it, you know, that was the idea, but it didn't really work out that way. It ended up being more expensive. And in fact, the latest estimate is for this thing, you're sitting down that's good. 2 billion with a B per flight. Oh that's the shuttle was retired partially because it was too expensive, but about 1,000,000,005 per flight. So it's not really working out to be cheaper and it's a throwaway rocket. So now you start thinking about, okay, what about SpaceX and Starship?

Leo Laporte (02:24:03):
See, we should have had Elon do this whole thing. Well, but you know, there's always that chance Elon could wake up one morning and say, you know, this rocket business is for the birds, right. I'm not making enough money. Right. Or something heaven for big could happen to him. You know, Jeff Bezos could. Yeah. But can I say something kind of obstacle, a little controversial? The problem is the Rockwells and the Lockheeds of the world have to spend a lot of money on Congress and they have a lot of lobbying power. And I, I have to think a lot of this is not that we're worried Elon won't stay in the business or Jeff won't, you can do it contractually. So they can't bow out. But just that they haven't spent enough money on Congress. Well, there's that? And they have shareholders, you know, and blue origins, SpaceX are privately held, but okay.

Leo Laporte (02:24:54):
Again, something happens to Elon and he's no longer in charge. You don't know what direction that company's gonna go contract. They have to fulfill the contract. They're not gonna, let's just call this. This is the, what if Mr. Lockkey gets tired of it. This is the safety rocket, right? This is the one that we know is gonna work. When will it go to the moon? It's gonna go. So the plans are, it should launch on that. UNC accrued flight in may or June. We hope. Yeah. But when will it, when will it, when will people be on the moon? When's the next Neil Armstrong year, two year and a half after that, assuming everything works out well. So keep your fingers crossed. In other words, not in my lifetime rod power now, now space dots. Do don't say that, don't say that or I'll have to, to call gene Crans on you call the reds, get the red phone, get the red phone.

Leo Laporte (02:25:48):
So this is the thing we were hoping. Maybe it'd be fun to get credentials to go out and see the launch. But if you don't know when it's gonna be, you can't really plan. Well, you're just gonna have to do three or four. Have to be flexible you for you at you'd have to do about 20 shows of four. Know if you out there for, yeah. You'd have to go out and, and yeah, I just, and if it didn't, you know, and it is probably a 50, 50 chance that you wouldn't launch that day and then you come back and do they, is there, how tight is the window to launching to the moon? Is it, is it, it sounds like it's not as tight as say going to Mars. It's not, but, but there are windows. They, they tend to extend for, for days and days.

Leo Laporte (02:26:26):
You know, the good thing is there's still enough of that old space, age stuff down at Coco beach. If you know, if we got a 24 hour delay, we could drive down and see all those wacky gogi style hotels down on the shore, just below Cape Canaveral where the, all the mermaids used to swim in the Aspen would be kind fun. Watch where Allen shepherd umbrellas drove his Mustang into the, yeah, that'd be fun. Yeah. That'd be fun. Relive the right stuff. Well, you know, I mean that, that was, I've always wanted to do that. I don't know. Maybe, maybe someday, maybe someday. Well, you know, my hope, I mean, I'd like to say that when they get to so less 3, 4, 5, then's gonna be yeah. More consistent. But I, I don't know if they're gonna get to three, four and five. I, I, I know they're gonna fly at least two of them.

Leo Laporte (02:27:16):
So Jerry Cornell always, always believed in citizen space, not government space. And of course he hated government. I mean, he was like, he was a John of Becher. He was pretty much anti-government. But I guess, you know, he's, he's maybe being proven, right? Because the commercial entities seem to be making much better progress, much faster. Yeah. But it's such a different approach, you know, there's, there's Elon who just, and I'm exaggerating here, but who just kind of puts it together, throws it up and then sees what happens. Happens. There's blue origin. Who's taking a slower approach, much slower. Yeah. Much slower. But they've got a huge new facility at Kennedy space center that is apparently just stunning. I haven't been inside, but it's, it's immense. So they're building big rockets out there. So we'll see that within the next few or year and a half.

Leo Laporte (02:28:07):
And then you've got space launch system, which is, as you said, you know, the traditional contractors and they're being very careful because if you're doing traditional contracting Congress, doesn't like it. If your rocket blows up, they furrow their brows and oh, Congress and mash their teams. Congress knows Congress. It's like guys, you know? Yeah. Let, 'em let, 'em have a little bit more leeway. This is the challenge. If it were easy, China would be doing it. Everybody would be doing yes. Lavia would have a, a heavy launch rocket. I know it's, it's, it's, it's hard to parse out and ultimately, you know, we're gonna have to lose some hardware, not crews, hopefully, but we're gonna have to lose some hardware to make sure all this stuff works. Ooh, what are we looking at? This is O space. Alex Lindsay's office hours. Global space launch. Oh, these are, these are amateur route. Those are fun. Yeah. And they did a whole thing. Like it's Walter Cronkite out here. It reminds me of my randomized launch computer that I used to use. Look at this. Look at rockets myself.

Rod Pyle (02:29:15):
I'm sorry. Can you repeat that question? It was cutting out and open. We're coming back here. The count the rocket.

Leo Laporte (02:29:21):
Wait a minute

Rod Pyle (02:29:22):
Then like that comes up grownups. Rock's nice. And far

Leo Laporte (02:29:25):
Here are the dads here. The dads look at that. Yeah. These are, these are high power Toyota. Oh yeah. This thing went pretty high and they're not toys. I, I, I got an email. Well, they're a little more expensive. One of our lists. They're not, I asked them, is this an STI? And they said, no, they're no, no, no. This these, these have engines. The size of your forearm. Yeah. Yeah. Come on. Launch that sucker. Come on. We wanna watch the launch. All right, rod, I gotta run. All right. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for letting me be your Tech Guy this and every week. I really appreciate the opportunity to talk to you all about tech. Thanks to professor Laura, our musical director, who brings you the tunes and presses the buttons and makes sure nobody does anything nasty on the air. She's got her finger on the, on the magic red button. Right? Right. And then and then thanks to she, hasn't had to press it yet. Good job everybody. Thanks to our wonderful phone angel Kim Shaer for taking your calls and putting you on the air. Thanks to everybody who listens. Thanks to everybody who calls. I am honored and delighted to be your Tech Guy. We have time for a couple more calls at 88, 88. Ask Leah before we wrap things up. Let's say hi to RO San Diego, California. Hi, Rob.

... (02:30:45):
Yes. Hi Leo. Welcome. I have a karaoke system that has an H D I output. Okay. So I, I had that cable connected to a, both home theater, five speaker system.

Leo Laporte (02:31:01):
Oh, nice. What songs do you what, what's your, what's your specialty? What song do you sing?

... (02:31:11):
My, you mean my background? No.

Leo Laporte (02:31:13):
Yeah. What's why didn't you sing karaoke? What do you sing? Yeah. What's your, what's

... (02:31:17):
Your, oh, just, just the regular. All

Leo Laporte (02:31:21):
I'm not gonna make you sing. Don't worry, Ron. All right. Anyway, so it's hooked up. It's hooked up to a very nice surround sound system via HDMI.

... (02:31:33):
And then, so the both controller has an HDMI output. I put it out to a 75 inch TV.

Leo Laporte (02:31:41):
Oh, nice.

... (02:31:43):
Yes.

Leo Laporte (02:31:44):
I want to come to a party at your house.

... (02:31:47):
My problem is somehow when I'm doing that, the voice seems to be delayed compared to the video.

Leo Laporte (02:31:56):
Yeah. Yeah. Cause so that's interesting. So this is a problem in general because video takes longer to decompress. So it's easy for the audio to get outta sync with the video. Oh, and how bad is it though? How close is it?

... (02:32:16):
Probably, I don't know. Maybe some microseconds or something. Yeah, but it, it's kind of kind of obvious.

Leo Laporte (02:32:26):
Yeah. Yeah. It's very annoying because we are very well tuned. Our, our brains and minds are very well tuned to lip sync. And if somebody's even a, you know, 10 milliseconds off one, 100th of a second off, you notice it don't you.

... (02:32:39):
So what could have been the thing that I missed?

Leo Laporte (02:32:44):
I'm not sure about the bows, many devices, like this will have a setting that will allow you to synchronize them and it'll do it by slowing down the audio. So look in the TV that probably the first place to look, does the bows have a, a, a menu, an interface? I bet it does. Yeah.

... (02:33:07):
It, I don't know if I can, does

Leo Laporte (02:33:09):
It go into it's so it's going from the karaoke machine into the bows sound system, which is not an AV receiver. It's a, it's a unit that then goes out to all the speakers, right?

... (02:33:22):
Yeah. Just like a, a controller or something.

Leo Laporte (02:33:24):
Yeah. Yeah. So there, I think there is an interface on that if you, if you go into the TV, but you might also look on the TV AVR systems AV receivers and TVs often almost always have a setting like this because this is a very common and problem and oh really? Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. It's because video, it takes longer to decompress than audio. So the audio's always ahead of the video by a

... (02:33:51):
Little bit. So what if I see what if I connect the karaoke direct to the TV,

Leo Laporte (02:33:57):
That would be better. The fewer things in the chain, the better, if you did that. In fact, that's one thing to try get the bows out of there. The bow, the TV can drive audio. So you could actually connect the TV into the bows. The bows probably has optical in. So you take the optical out of the TV. You H DM, I goes from the karaoke player into the TV. TV's optical out, goes into the BS system and that might improve it. Yeah. That might improve it TV.

... (02:34:27):
I see. Or, or even the good old left and right. Audio.

Leo Laporte (02:34:31):
You could do that. You could do that. Okay. Yeah. So, so that's the issue. It's it's just synchronizing audio and video. It's always a problem. Cause audio is ahead of video, but you can always fix that. And it's certainly by take, by getting some of the things out of the chain you would li you would reduce the amount of delay. So that's something to try, let for menu settings, you know, they say different things, but you know, to sometimes they say lip sync, sometimes they say delay, audio, things like that. And then, yeah, absolutely. I would suggest, I would say the best way to do this. Have the karaoke machine use the HTMI into the TV TV will then send the audio out through the optical and optical cable, which the bows has a, an optical and, and at least try that Joanna Los Angeles last call of the day. Hi, Joanna.

Caller #7 (02:35:25):
Well, thank you for taking my call. I've been trying to call for like an hour or so. Thank you for showing up.

Leo Laporte (02:35:30):
Sometimes people take weeks to get in, so good on you only an hour.

Caller #7 (02:35:34):
I'm blessed.

Leo Laporte (02:35:35):
Welcome. Welcome.

Caller #7 (02:35:38):
So, okay. I'll be quick deal. I have an iPhone six. Now I can afford any kind of phone I want, but I don't. It makes no sense to me to pay $1,300 for a Verizon phone. When all I do is text in email. You

Leo Laporte (02:35:57):
Don't, you don't use any of the apps on your, your iPhone. You don't play words with friends or, or anything like that?

Caller #7 (02:36:03):
No.

Leo Laporte (02:36:04):
Okay.

Caller #7 (02:36:05):
I'm just regular. So so right now I have what's call a hotspot. So I bought another Dell computer and Verizon said I had to upgrade my hotspot for $15 a month, but it's still not working sometimes. So it, if I, if I have to get a newer phone, that's fine. So what my question is, what kind of phone should I get when I am primarily concerned with connecting to the wifi on my laptop?

Leo Laporte (02:36:32):
So you're using your phone as your internet access on your laptop. You don't have any other internet access.

Caller #7 (02:36:40):
Well, I do have it at home. But when I'm out. Oh,

Leo Laporte (02:36:43):
Okay. So it's not all the time. It's occasionally when you're out, you want to use your phone as a hotspot.

Caller #7 (02:36:50):
Yes. But it doesn't connect to the computer.

Leo Laporte (02:36:53):
So an iPhone six is, is pretty old and and, and pretty slow. And it is not gonna be good, a hotspot as a more modern phone, but you don't need to buy the latest iPhone 13. There's all sorts of things. In fact, probably for you, the new, the apple just released it. Iphone se would be a very good choice. It is as fast as the iPhone 13 has the same processor in it, but it's a little bit smaller. It does do 5g, including the latest 5g, which the iPhone six will not do. And that's much faster. A Verizon has now ultra wide band in many areas. I suspect you're probably gonna be able to get it in Los Angeles. It depends where you are in LA, but that would be a much improved situation. Yes. You'll still have to pay Verizon the 15 bucks for hotspoting, but it will work much better. Yeah. So I would be so

Caller #7 (02:37:47):
Iphone

Leo Laporte (02:37:48):
Se the, the brand new, they just announced it a week ago. Iphone se with 5g really, really nice, fairly inexpensive under $500, half the price. And it is very modern. It's $429 at the bottom. And if you want to get more storage, which doesn't sound like you need, you could spend a little bit more before 29 is, is exactly what you want. That will be the best, best hotspot for the price.

Caller #7 (02:38:16):
Woohoo. Woohoo.

Leo Laporte (02:38:19):
It was worth it for an hour to wait. Thank you for calling

Caller #7 (02:38:22):
Was waiting for you. Thank you. Thanks.

Leo Laporte (02:38:27):
Bye. Bye. Yeah, actually, this is amazing. Really. It's got the, a 15 bionic chip, which is the same as in the iPhone 13 and because five G has gotten so much better and old iPhone and iPhone six won't work with the latest Verizon 5g. So get, get a phone that will you, especially, if you, you want to work with the ultra wide band, which is there's three bands, there's low band, mid band and high band, and the mid band is much more prevalent, easier to get and is very, very asked if you, if you're near the tower, it's amazing. Be a very good choice for high speed internet access. That's it for the show. Thank you all for joining me. I appreciate it. Bring the music up behind me, boys. It's time to say have a wonderful week. Stay safe, stay well. I'll be back next time. I hope you will too. This is Leo. Leport your Tech Guy and of a great geek week.

Leo Laporte (02:39:19):
Well, that's it for the tech eye show for today. Thank you so much for being here and don't forget. Twit T w I T. It stands for this week@techandyoufinditatTWiT.tv, including the podcasts for the show. We talk about windows and windows weekly, Macintosh on Mac break, weekly iPads, iPhones, apple watches on I O OS today's security and security. Now, I mean, I can go on and on and on. And of course the big show every Sunday afternoon, this week in tech, you'll find it all at 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.