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. 

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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 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 house for TWiT listeners and finally the TWiT plus feed with shows like Stacy's book club, the Untitled Linux Show, the GizFiz, 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, maybe time when we get together and we talk about nerdy things like computers, the internet, smart phones, smart watches, home theater, digital photography, all that stuff.

Leo Laporte (00:01:19):
Actually I think Chris Marquardt will be back. He, he missed let week had to go visit his folks, but I think he'll be here this week. I'm pretty sure I saw Sam Abul, Sam, our, our car guy whizzing by in his Miata top down. It's beautiful day in Alani. 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 to talk about what's going on with technology. Yesterday Micah and I, Micah, who is tech guy two. And I talked a little bit about the new old 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.

Leo Laporte (00:02:12):
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. And I've been running an experiment over 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?

Leo Laporte (00:03:12):
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 specul highlights and stuff and reflections and stuff that has to be done in a computer. 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 from photographs. So he sent me 228 photographs of a palace that he'd taken in India and, you know, which is 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 cause cuz I, you know, I I didn't want to I don't know what I was.

Leo Laporte (00:04:30):
I was just thinking for security purposes, but he likes a program called meta shape from a company called AGI software. Maybe it's Aggie sot. I don't know. But they're at 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 max 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.

Leo Laporte (00:05:24):
But what it's building is a model, a 3d model that you could then use in a movie or whatever from these pictures. 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 a line. 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 lack of 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 PA performance cores and two efficiency cores.

Leo Laporte (00:06:17):
And then it has, I don't know how many 32 GPU I think didn't use the GPU much. It's mostly I'm watching. I got some great pictures. I'll show you if you ever, 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 the CPUs all the way. Boom, boom, boom, all 20 of them all the way, which is something you probably don't see on that Mac studio 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, we're gonna do it anyway. Here's the interest, same thing. First of all. Yeah, it's gonna complete, it's gonna complete probably in about a total of 20 hours.

Leo Laporte (00:07:01):
I don't know if that's good or bad yet. I'll have to ask Alex, but it didn't even get hot. 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 times, but already it sounds like a tornado in my office, powerful. The 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, but felt the, the air coming out. It's mildly warm. Like, you know, like 72 degrees warm. It's not hot.

Leo Laporte (00:07:53):
So I's working. It's working well. Don't don't think, but I, and by the way, after looking at a lot of benchmarks from a lot of people, this is what we talked about yesterday with Micah. 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 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 $7,000 in a Mac studio. They're very nice. These are the new max apple announced, but you don't need it.

Leo Laporte (00:08:45):
And M one max is gonna be fine, low end, which is only 4,000. 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. I think something like that, which is still expensive for a computer. But this, these are really beautiful design. Somebody named max tech that em 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 'em 88, 88 ask Leo, there's plenty of other stuff to talk about. We will talk about it. When 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 off you care about. We'll have more right after this.

Leo Laporte (00:09:40):
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. The what's interesting about the Mac studio. They that when you turn 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 extra, 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 out, everything maxed out.

Leo Laporte (00:11:10):
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 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, the phone angel. Hello, Kim. Oh, let me turn on your microphone. Hi. Hi. Welcome talking to myself there for a second. What's up? That's how the kids say what's up. I still do that with a couple friends. Do you? Yeah. You don't do the old Budweiser head how's that? No, I don't do that. I just go's ups up. What's up? How's your, my more yell hip friends. Oh, well see then I feel good about saying sup. Yeah. So tell me about everything, the good old days. The good old day. I don't know. How's life.

Leo Laporte (00:12:27):
I don't wanna tell you about the radio dream I had last night. Oh gosh. The radio dream. Yeah. I won't you cuz I don't wanna give the callers. Do other people like if, if does everybody in the world, if do other people dream about their jobs? I guess they probably do, right? No, probably do they have anxiety dreams, but I don't know if they, like, if you are 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. But they probably do what's so I'll tell you my radio dream. I the, the song is running out, even though I don't play music anymore. I wasn't 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 an, I can't get them next song. And it's about to run, you know, it's one of those kinds of anxiety. Yeah. Dreams. How about yours? What do you I think the time running out thing is a very critical one. Common, 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 don't need it to come true.

Leo Laporte (00:13:32):
I know I have a, I have a dream. Let's take a caller. Let's take a caller. Let's go to rusty in San Diego. He's fed up. I am mad as heck, sick up and fed as I've sick up and fed and I am not gonna take it anymore. Thank you, Kim. You're not gonna take it anymore. Hi, rusty Leo. Leport the tech guy.

Caller 1 (00:13:51):
Good morning, Leo. How are you today?

Leo Laporte (00:13:53):
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 (00:14:00):
I, I didn't call just to Raven rant. I just need some help in finding an alternative. My cable provider, we, we get our internet, our television and landline from him has had the same recurring prob problem for six years.

Leo Laporte (00:14:17):
Well you're patient actually. You're a patient person.

Caller 1 (00:14:20):
And then we just had our 19th visit by one of their,

Leo Laporte (00:14:24):
Oh my gosh. You are more than patient.

Caller 1 (00:14:27):
And this time the answer was, well, the boxes are outdated. So you gotta upgrade all that. And I just, all

Leo Laporte (00:14:35):
Right. Let's let's first of all, let's name names. You've got a triple play package from Cox, Comcast spectrum,

Caller 1 (00:14:43):
Spectrum,

Leo Laporte (00:14:44):
Spectrum. They're all just as bad. It doesn't really matter. They're they're interchangeable. So spectrum, see, there's 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 what happens does it drop out?

Caller 1 (00:15:21):
It's just the television. It pixelates

Leo Laporte (00:15:24):
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 (00:15:36):
It did, but that was a long time ago that hasn't happened.

Leo Laporte (00:15:40):
So you're watching a TV and you're watching streaming or cable

Caller 1 (00:15:44):
Cable.

Leo Laporte (00:15:45):
Okay. So your, it sounds like your Internet's fine. And the phone, by the way, just so you know is using the, so the, those two probably are, are okay. So the problem comes down to your television signal.

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

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

Caller 1 (00:16:07):
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. Good. There's a whole new cable and it still has the same. Are you

Leo Laporte (00:16:22):
In a house standalone house?

Caller 1 (00:16:25):
We're in a condo.

Leo Laporte (00:16:26):
You're in a condo. So, so the cable comes into the condo and go then goes to each unit. So separately. Yes. So there's a few places that could go wrong. Sometimes it's out in the curb, you know, the, 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 into that head end, which then serves the neighborhood. So is sometimes the problem could be that far down through. It could all the way downstream to 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 (00:17:12):
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.

Leo Laporte (00:17:25):
So

Caller 1 (00:17:25):
Television packages, I could choose those from. Yeah. I don't care. I'm more concerned about keeping my internet speed. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:17:34):
Could be a court. You could be what they call a court 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. 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 (00:18:20):
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 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 Ultrawide band neighborhood that's Verizon's term T-Mobile calls it ultra capacity. But if on your are 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, probably more than your cable's offering

Caller 1 (00:19:13):
And, and way more than I use. So,

Leo Laporte (00:19:14):
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's very expensive. 500 bucks to get started 90 bucks a a month. But that's, that's from space. XON Musks company. There are gonna be more and more choices. And the good, and you know, then remember GA 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 you, your choices are probably though in 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 (00:20:06):
Yeah. I knew that was coming too. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:20:11):
So they, you know, I'm not answering your question by pixelation cuz it sounds like you just wanna get rid of 'em anyway.

Caller 1 (00:20:18):
That's correct.

Leo Laporte (00:20:19):
Yeah. And frankly, if you've had all these problems with them, you may not want 'em as an internet service provider.

Caller 1 (00:20:25):
No, I, I wanna be done with them. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:20:27):
So you need to find out what's available to you. Go to broadband reports.com com broadband 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 Laport, the tech guy car guy coming up. Yes. So hold on. I have to, I had to take a break there. Sorry about that. So yeah,

Caller 1 (00:20:59):
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 for 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.

Leo Laporte (00:21:19):
The new five, a 5g newish, six months old, 4 49, I think maybe 4 99. Very good choice.

Caller 1 (00:21:29):
And do I just go back to my Verizon store or can I,

Leo Laporte (00:21:33):
You can 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 (00:22:04):
That would be for the phone

Leo Laporte (00:22:05):
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 (00:22:25):
Okay. And that's through Google.

Leo Laporte (00:22:26):
That's through Verizon. So they, 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, from 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. 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. You 80 feet with a within 80 feet of a tower. There's not towers, very many places, blah, blah, blah, 800 feet, I think. But there is this new mid band, which T-Mobile and Verizon and at and T are all rolling out a 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 serve this. You don't use your phone. You have a little box that gets the internet through the airwaves, through the cell tower. And,

Caller 1 (00:23:38):
And that would take care of my computers in my house.

Leo Laporte (00:23:40):
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 replacement for spectrum spectrum. Internet's fine. Internet's okay. You just don't know if you don't wanna do business with them.

Caller 1 (00:24:04):
Right. So I'll, I'll get a hold of Verizon. See about that box and I'll go to the Google store to get a new phone. Yeah. And then I'll look up broadband reports and yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:24:15):
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 a 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 no of the time I have to go. Cause guess who's here. Sam Abu ABO. Hello? Hello. Samoo salmon.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:24:54):
Hello Leo. How are

Leo Laporte (00:24:55):
You? I'm well, how are you?

Sam Abuelsamid (00:24:57):
I'm doing fine.

Leo Laporte (00:24:58):
What do you wanna talk about today? That beautiful car behind you, right there?

Sam Abuelsamid (00:25:01):
Yeah, the lucid air and, and energy efficiency and EVs.

Leo Laporte (00:25:05):
Okay. We go, Sam bull. Sam is here. Car guy on the tech guy show. He's a principal researcher at guide house insights. Does the wheel bearings podcast@wheelbearings.media joins us every week to talk automotive tech. Hello Sam.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:25:22):
Hello, Leo. How are you this week? I'm

Leo Laporte (00:25:24):
Great. Has spring sprung and hips. So lane,

Sam Abuelsamid (00:25:27):
It is in the process of springing.

Leo Laporte (00:25:29):
Got the top down. You did last week.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:25:31):
Yeah. The top tops down the tops all was down, but 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 drive

Leo Laporte (00:25:41):
As they call it in Canada patio weather.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:25:44):
Exactly. Yes. Yes. So the stove is melted. There's no freezing rain or anything coming down. So it's patio weather. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:25:52):
So today I see you sitting in front of a very lovely vehicle. This is one of the, I think the best looking vehicles out there. It's an EV from lucid.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:26:02):
Yes. this week a few days ago, I was in Austin, Texas for my first ever visit to south by south. Oh,

Leo Laporte (00:26:11):
You went to south by

Sam Abuelsamid (00:26:12):
Nice. I, I, I did, yeah. I was there to to interview Peter Rollinson 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 (00:27:01):
The, the car world is a small world. Isn't it? I mean, there's a lot of it

Sam Abuelsamid (00:27:04):
Is, it is, it is both very large and very small. Yeah. 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

Leo Laporte (00:27:14):
That. There's, that's, there's a lot of circulation people go from company to company. They don't generally leave the industry, so yeah, you you're running the same people over and over again. So he's its interesting cuz he's both CTO and CEO, he's a technical guy running the music company.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:27:30):
He's an engineer. Interesting. 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 so. 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 be 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 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 near 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 allowed them to actually go forward and build their factory which is now producing these cars. And then also go public last fall through a back transaction. And they, you know, they're starting to ramp up production now. So far they've built, I think about 400 of these errors. Oh,

Leo Laporte (00:28:51):
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 in the back seat, you know?

Sam Abuelsamid (00:29:07):
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 for 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 dents 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 ofish that they're selling, which is their, their launch model can produce up to 1100 horsepower. And I had a chance 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 its EPA rating is 131 miles per gallon equivalent. Wow. It has, it has an electric range of 520 miles from 118 kilowat hour battery pack.

Leo Laporte (00:30:35):
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 (00:30:45):
Yep. Aerodynamics is a, is a key part of this.

Leo Laporte (00:30:47):
They do have side mirrors, I guess they can't get rid of those yet.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:30:50):
Not yet. Yeah. They're working on that,

Leo Laporte (00:30:52):
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 battle deal. It deal. It does. Yeah, it

Sam Abuelsamid (00:31:01):
Does. So they did a lot of interesting things with the battery pack design itself with how they, how they configure the cells in the battery pack and connect them all up. They also their power electronics system, which is a key part of this that's, you know, the battery store's energy 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 breaking,

Leo Laporte (00:31:42):
Now tell Tesla used to be the king of this kind of E

Sam Abuelsamid (00:31:46):
Efficiency 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 was originally, the company was originally called Ava and they still have a division called Ava. And that, that division is focused on the battery design Andiva supplies, the batteries that are used for formula E electric racing. So you know, they've over the course of the last five years of, of supplying those batteries for formula E they've learned 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 (00:32:39):
You have a car that's about the size of a mid-size sedan, but has the interior volume of of 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 Mercedes S 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 remark 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 (00:33:33):
Oh, Sam is frozen in a particularly compromising position. Okay, good. You're back 100 and what, oh, I don't 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 (00:33:49):
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 (00:34:04):
Keep your IP El lucid is coming on strong. I didn't realize they only made 400.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:34:09):
Yeah, well, they're, they're slowly ramping up production. Not yet.

Leo Laporte (00:34:13):
Sam is at guide house insights and joins us every week. Thanks Sam Leo port, the tech guy. Oh 100. And, and we never heard the rest. It was just

Sam Abuelsamid (00:34:30):
Hundred 60.

Leo Laporte (00:34:30):
There you go. Okay.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:34:33):
But 

Leo Laporte (00:34:34):
Well, I'd love El lucid. They are so beautiful. Oh

Sam Abuelsamid (00:34:36):
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 (00:34:50):
I like all wheel drive. Am I crazy to like all wheel drive?

Sam Abuelsamid (00:34:53):
No, not at all.

Leo Laporte (00:34:54):
It's I don't know why nothing wrong

Sam Abuelsamid (00:34:55):
With it. The, the touring, which is the next trim level up or

Leo Laporte (00:34:59):
Anything. Yeah. How much is the tour?

Sam Abuelsamid (00:35:01):
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, I wasn't sure if I, I dropped off cuz you you're silent there. Oh, let's

Leo Laporte (00:35:31):
See. Shut up. Sorry.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:35:33):
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 (00:35:49):
Or you can right now you can just take it. I can hang on. Yeah, hang on. Right? Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:35:55):
Then tomorrow, March 21st Cadillac officially starts production of the lyric, their first EV I

Leo Laporte (00:36:03):
Saw the first ad for it. Yeah, it's good.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:36:06):
And so those will be hitting dealers in the next couple of months.

Leo Laporte (00:36:09):
I also see Mercedes ads for their EQs, with the screen that goes all the way across

Sam Abuelsamid (00:36:15):
The hyper screen.

Leo Laporte (00:36:18):
So it's really heat not, but of course it's thanks to the, thanks to the gas prices everything's

Sam Abuelsamid (00:36:24):
Looking. Oh 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 announced the EQs SUV, which is based on the same platform, 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 EV six. Those are both out there and available now from dealers. And what else? Oh, they the Ford F150 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 (00:37:20):
So those should be hitting the roads very soon as well. In fact, I just gotta save the date for the media drive 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 asks have you heard of Rian 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. So anybody that, any customers that had already placed their orders, like converted their reservations into official orders 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,

Leo Laporte (00:38:19):
Tesla rates dollars, its prices too. Is

Sam Abuelsamid (00:38:21):
That Tesla raise the prices twice in the past week.

Leo Laporte (00:38:23):
Is that is that just just trying to grab a little money or is it really getting more expensive to make these

Sam Abuelsamid (00:38:30):
I think it's, it's a bit of both. They're, they're definitely getting more expensive to make, but stick

Leo Laporte (00:38:36):
Around. We're gonna do this call. All right.

Leo Laporte (00:38:39):
Leo Laporte the tech guy, eighty eight, eighty eight asked 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 bill. 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 (00:39:18):
Thank you. Thank you, li and I wanna say a long time fan. It's been 15 years since I last called you, but I've never stopped listening.

Leo Laporte (00:39:25):
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 want to hear from you.

Caller 2 (00:39:34):
Thank you, sir. And also say I learned bit torrent so that I could seed TWiT back in the day.

Leo Laporte (00:39:40):
Thank you. I tell that story all the time. We, before we got a 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 seeded it on bit torn. Remember those days we were able to thank you, fortunately, we don't have to do that anymore. Thank

Sam Abuelsamid (00:40:00):
You. My

Caller 2 (00:40:01):
Question. My question is I own a, a fair amount of tech stuff 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 Fiker R or even pole star, 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 so

Leo Laporte (00:40:32):
You're, 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 Sam?

Sam Abuelsamid (00:40:43):
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. 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 and gone and, 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 he would like it to to know that it's gonna be around for a while.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:41:39):
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. 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 their updates to fixed problems and fixed 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 IOT devices, you know, the car become an I device.

Leo Laporte (00:42:40):
So mark, when you talked about your wink, that was very appropriate, there was an IOT device where the company suddenly said, I think we're gonna charge a subscription fee from now on if you wanna keep using GE

Caller 2 (00:42:52):
At the time when I, when I bought it. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:42:55):
Yeah. So that's that's happened in the industry in general. And I suppose it could happened probably will. I mean, there have been, EV companies have already folded, gone under

Sam Abuelsamid (00:43:04):
Oh 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 have got a fairly long runway you know, before they, before they're at risk of going under, but it

Leo Laporte (00:43:20):
Is why I bought a Ford Mustang Mae instead of another Tesla, cuz I really, I figured Ford would be around. And even if they weren't 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. There are $2 trillion company. Would you buy an apple car?

Caller 2 (00:43:59):
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 iTunes gift cards to pay for that one.

Leo Laporte (00:44:09):
Yeah. It'll, it'll work very well with your all apple ecosystem. However yeah, it's an, that's actually a good 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 (00:44:30):
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 we'd like it to be.

Leo Laporte (00:44:41):
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 California where it's very expensive, but it made me feel like, well, at least I have gen I'm generating the, the electricity I'm gonna be using with my EV you know, not challenging

Sam Abuelsamid (00:45:03):
As long as, as long as you have. As long as you have a transfer switch that can switch over,

Leo Laporte (00:45:08):
If the grid goes down and

Sam Abuelsamid (00:45:10):
Continue to power your house, when the grid goes down,

Leo Laporte (00:45:12):
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. Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:45:24):
Well, and, and the you know, what we talked about last week with bidirectional charging test that PG and E 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 time. Interesting, isn't it, they can use 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 just letting your, your car power, the house, and the lucid does have bidirectional charging capability

Leo Laporte (00:46:04):
The way we oh, really? Oh, that's yeah. That's probably something you should look for if you're gonna buy an anything. Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:46:10):
Four 50 has it, the

Leo Laporte (00:46:11):
Way we set up our our power walls, they, they charge first, you know, so when the, when the sun comes out, if 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 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 do you, are you mark, do you have a EV are you thinking about getting one

Caller 2 (00:46:44):
I'm, I'm thinking about getting one I'm, I'm playing with the idea of, I, I just 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, ribbons are really intriguing. The Fisker SUVs really intriguing, but I just don't want be left holding the bag or had not

Leo Laporte (00:47:04):
Had right. Drive the Ford Mustang. Ma just take a look at it. 

Sam Abuelsamid (00:47:08):
Also take, take a look at the Volvo C 40, which I drove earlier this week. Yeah. And

Leo Laporte (00:47:13):
There's a lot, lot of choicest

Sam Abuelsamid (00:47:15):
40 and the XT 40. 

Leo Laporte (00:47:16):
We're very happy with, 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 incentives, which is pretty amazing. And it's a great

Sam Abuelsamid (00:47:38):
Little part. It's probably about mid twenties, probably about 25. I think.

Leo Laporte (00:47:41):
Lisa. Oh, thats great. Lisa works a hard deal. Let me tell you so,

Sam Abuelsamid (00:47:45):
Okay.

Leo Laporte (00:47:46):
She, she got a great deal, Sam, thank you for sticking around and mark, thank you for your call. Yeah, it's a great, it's a great topic. I'm a big believer in EVs. And I think now with gas prices, what they are, a lot of people are coming around. Leo Laporte the tech guy, All yours, Sammy

Sam Abuelsamid (00:48:07):
Peter on 30 day. One of the things he did is he referred to the the Hummer EV as an electric gas guzzler. So because it is far and away the least efficient electric vehicle you can buy today. It's rated at a mere 47 MPG, G E. 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.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:49:00):
That's true. Yes. 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 if charging prop 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, it does not fit with their business model anymore. They'll want the service revenue let's see. Apple car, no button, no head, no no button, no headphones, Jack. Yeah, 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 (00:49:54):
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, power out. It's called vehicle to load 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 Brett 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 has 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 (00:50:50):
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 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 break 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 (00:51:51):
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 vehicles stationary and you open the door, it automatically applies the parking brake. Great. So car can't roll away, good safety issue or safety feature, 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 VWs recalling about 250,000 of those vehicles to replace the wire harness and the doors that's and you know, that that is a genuine when safety issue.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:52:51):
Let's see, wake me 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 co-developed by Toyota and Subaru Subaru calls theirs. The Soldera Toyota's is called the BZ four X. I recommend that you go by the Soldera instead, just despite Toyota for that ridiculous 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 week in 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. They 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 (00:53:39):
And then Honda also just signed a, an MOU, a memorandum of understanding with E to look at potentially partnering with Sony on EV production. So that could be 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 on 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. It's see what else we got here? Yeah, Doug, em says 9,000 pounds to carry a 200 pound human is just dumb.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:54:33):
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. Twisted, Mr. Says Volvo reliability is also not so great. It, it varies. You know, they, you know, they, 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 drove the C 40 this week, we got a chance to drive the updated version of the XC 60 plug-in hybrid which now previously it had a range, an electric range of 19 miles. It's now up to 35 miles of electric range.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:55:27):
I actually got about 39 miles on electricity before the engine came on. 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. They had already pre-loaded 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 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.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:56:18):
They, they all have, what's known as regenerative breaking. 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 back into the into the vehicle into the battery. And in fact we were driving the the XC 60 in 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 to add about five miles of range back into the battery coasting down the hill.

Leo Laporte (00:56:56):
Isn't that amazing? So, yeah,

Sam Abuelsamid (00:56:57):
There's a, so you're never gonna get all the energy back, but you, some of

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

Sam Abuelsamid (00:57:17):
Yeah. That's, that's the amazing thing about motors, like

Leo Laporte (00:57:20):
Motors. Yeah. I, I have to figure out, I mean, I've had had my Mockey 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 

Sam Abuelsamid (00:57:32):
Yeah,

Leo Laporte (00:57:32):
Rotate the tires. I guess I have to rotate the tires.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:57:35):
There's there's probably an interval for tire rotation and, and some other inspections I should.

Leo Laporte (00:57:40):
Thank you, Sam. See you next week.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:57:42):
All right. Hi.

Leo Laporte (00:57:49):
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, 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 (00:58:43):
He always seems to know exactly what Apple's gonna do before apple announces it. Talk to him on Tuesday, seemed absolutely adamant. And Sam disagrees by the way that that apple was gonna do a, 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 'em 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 decide it 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 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 plan. What would an apple car be like though, is the question Sam thinks they'll never sell it to, but 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, it might be a good, might be a good car.

Leo Laporte (01:00:14):
I don't know. You know, it's very, it's an interesting world. We live in 88, 88 ley, 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 (01:00:27):
Hello, IIO.

Leo Laporte (01:00:28):
Welcome back.

Caller 3 (01:00:31):
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 (01:00:45):
It's yeah, there. So there's yeah, we were talking about the apple 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 up the top. Apparently it's like a little iPhone in there and it even can crash. Jason Snell. Who's a well known apple reporter from six colors.com used to be at Mac world 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, the current iOS 15.4, but the biggest disappointment is, and you kind of said it, 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 (01:02:09):
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

Leo Laporte (01:02:19):
Gonna 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 ample. 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 to 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 twice as much, but she, you know, that's my wife, so 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 (01:03:08):
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 day kind of caught my attention was a, an LG monitor. It's a 32 UL, nine 50 that's classes, ultra fine 4k. Yeah. That's what was under both reconnect. That's what you have. That's what

Leo Laporte (01:03:30):
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 the studio. You display a fly. 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. He said, yes, it 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 (01:04:14):
The LG is what I got for Lisa. I canceled this display. I put the LG in there with a Brio camera from Logitech, couple of 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 to a double wide 39 inch display, which is the 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 (01:05:05):
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 (01:05:13):
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 the 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 G 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, U H D 38 40 by 2160. I PS 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 DMI on that Mac studio. Just fine.

Caller 3 (01:06:12):
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. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:06:19):
I don't know what the difference is, you know, and honestly it's, I wish I could say I was a good tech guy and did all the research and everything. 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 support it's 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, well,

Caller 3 (01:06:56):
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. This

Leo Laporte (01:07:05):
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 HD YouTube video from cost study and it looks incredible. Turn on HDR. It's not on by, but it looks incredible. You have to do that in the apple controlled panel system, preference pain really looks great. And 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, it doesn't make sense. Honestly, apple just didn't put the latest technology in it.

Caller 3 (01:07:46):
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 Mac studio instead and just get a different monitor

Leo Laporte (01:07:55):
Together. The computer. I have no complaints about. Thank you,

Caller 3 (01:07:58):
Kenny. Don't have complaints about it. Thank you. Have a good day.

Leo Laporte (01:08:01):
Have a 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 TECA That 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 return them, 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 EDD monitor at home. My monitor in my office is a 55 inch alien wear EDD. And it, yeah, I mean I just ha make sure the monitor doesn'ts day on overnight. I have had no burn problems in over a year. I don't watch TV on it. I mean, we have all, we have an Ole TV though. I've never had Ole burn, so

Leo Laporte (01:09:26):
I didn't wanna worry about it Gaming or when there's very little content on 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. 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.

Leo Laporte (01:11:02):
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. This is a, I love this shot though. I will show it again. I just love this picture from the Mac studio of all, all of the 20 processors, just cranking, cranking, cranking that's I totally said you're never, ever gonna see this. Nothing you do will ever notice, by the way, the efficiency cores are pegged on 2, 3, 4, but the 16 performance cores kind of doing right and this ran for three 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 cannon, raw shots of this Indian palace and Tuesday he'll he'll explain what all this means. Leo Laport, dek 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 from Oceanside, California. Hello Jim.

Caller 4 (01:13:05):
Hello Leo. Thank you for taking my call. Thanks for, I have a update. I'm sorry.

Leo Laporte (01:13:09):
Yes, go ahead.

Caller 4 (01:13:11):
I have an update. My computer, when I'm on YouTube, I post my comments and then my computer is so nice to post my comments everywhere else that I'm looking.

Leo Laporte (01:13:21):
Oh yeah. You called about that. Did you ever figure out why?

Caller 4 (01:13:26):
Well, I was on Google Chrome and so my kid helped me out going on safari and putting everything on safari and

Leo Laporte (01:13:34):
It doesn't do it anymore. Sorry.

Caller 4 (01:13:36):
Now Three weeks later, there's my little east egg. Oh

Leo Laporte (01:13:41):
No again,

Caller 4 (01:13:43):
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 so I could have got a, a Chromebook.

Leo Laporte (01:14:01):
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 4 (01:14:21):
Yeah, Leo's the best. I love Leo.

Leo Laporte (01:14:23):
I love Leo under my YouTube video to your, keep that up

Caller 4 (01:14:27):
Arch enemy who hate you also says, Hey, I love Leo. Hey, can I, my website.

Leo Laporte (01:14:31):
So it takes the comment you just posted on one YouTube video and without you doing anything,

Caller 4 (01:14:38):
Anything

Leo Laporte (01:14:38):
Puts the same comment. I love Leo on somebody else's YouTube channel.

Caller 4 (01:14:44):
Right? And it, they comment. What's this mean? What,

Leo Laporte (01:14:47):
Why are you saying I love Leo on my channel. Get outta here and, and, and is it, it does it again and again it doesn't just do it once.

Caller 4 (01:14:55):
Yeah. It just lays it like a little bunny rabbit, this little, little gift that were used to rabbit, right?

Leo Laporte (01:15:02):
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 4 (01:15:17):
Well, my son looked into all that and yeah, he was a techy guy. I'm not. And he, he looked at my profile. See if there's anything weird in there. And we're trying to look to see anybody was trying to par in my account. And we opened up new accounts and did the, the double verification and all that kinda stuff.

Leo Laporte (01:15:41):
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 the, that tells me it's not a Chrome extension. It's not even really Chrome. Although it stopped. And then it started up again

Caller 4 (01:16:00):
Later, like it blurred like, Hey, like

Leo Laporte (01:16:02):
It learned, oh wait a minute. This is Jim. We gotta post his comments everywhere.

Caller 4 (01:16:07):
Yeah. Safari. Now are

Leo Laporte (01:16:08):
You now one? Okay. Here's a couple things to try. And I don't remember if I told you this for first thing, log outta Google. I mean YouTube brother log outta YouTube and post a comment. Can you post a comment logged out? 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 to 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 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 right? More thing, settings advanced and you're on windows or Mac.

Caller 4 (01:16:54):
Well a, I know it's just a Mac,

Leo Laporte (01:16:56):
It's a Mac. So under 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 4 (01:17:43):
And then can I change my name on my YouTube account?

Leo Laporte (01:17:46):
Yeah, of course. Yeah.

Caller 4 (01:17:47):
Yeah. I got my name and I don't know everybody else doesn't have their name. I don't think I would've

Leo Laporte (01:17:51):
No everybodys 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 Laport. 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, I can find it. You don't care. You're not, you're not, you know, dragging a, a fan club behind you. Are you?

Caller 4 (01:18:16):
Oh no, I'm nobody.

Leo Laporte (01:18:18):
I'm nobody too. But I have to pretend I'm somebody you know, 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, Twitter. And actually that's when it started in 2007, when I, I could have been Leo on Twitter, I was so early Twitter had just started. I could have just been Leo and I thought, no, cuz then 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 4 (01:18:46):
Well, it's good that you grabbed your name. Cause I know rush Luba. Wasn't able to, they got, yeah,

Leo Laporte (01:18:49):
He tried. He, 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, 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 and then use, yeah, use a handle. So nobody knows it's Joe for promotion or Jim's promotion site 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, but because he's somebody speaking of Chris, Chris Markt photo guy coming up next. It is the weirdest problem I've ever heard. Jim. It's so weird.

Caller 4 (01:19:47):
Yeah, I know. I just,

Leo Laporte (01:19:50):
And you got your son in to look at it and, and

Caller 4 (01:19:54):
Yeah, he is. 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.

Leo Laporte (01:20:02):
Oh, oh Ooh.

Caller 4 (01:20:06):
The complexity of the problem. So when it buffer and then when I'm looking like I watch a video, I always wanna look at the reviews, the views and see this kind, what he is talking about. And then all of a sudden it starts laying 'em down. I'm like, what the heck is this? But it seems to be a buffer issue.

Leo Laporte (01:20:22):
Ah, that's real interesting. So buffering means that it's stopping. It's waiting till it gets ahead again. Cuz it got behind in the, in the packets. You're losing packets. You, how fast is your internet?

Caller 4 (01:20:40):
Well we went to what is it? Verizon, our frontier it's not the super fast one.

Leo Laporte (01:20:50):
Yeah. If it's buffering either your Internet's 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 an 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 filled up the buffer and if you let go, it continues to beep for a while because it's catching a up it's it's buffered all those keystrokes 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. Cause 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 4 (01:21:58):
No, it's just, it's just a, just basic YouTube and baffling. My hobby sites. I go on nothing, nothing at all. It's baffling. 15 pictures and maybe,

Leo Laporte (01:22:07):
Maybe somebody listening. No, 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 4 (01:22:16):
I'll try to give you a victory lab report.

Leo Laporte (01:22:18):
Okay. Thanks Jim.

Caller 4 (01:22:20):
Thank you. Appreciate it.

Leo Laporte (01:22:21):
See ya. Bye bye.

Caller 4 (01:22:22):
What?

Leo Laporte (01:22:23):
Hey Chris?

Chris Marquardt (01:22:25):
Hello? You have an email.

Leo Laporte (01:22:27):
Should I play it back or are you gonna take your

Chris Marquardt (01:22:30):
No, I will. I will drive. I, I think his buffering might be a symptom of the computer doing some shenanigans, some script.

Leo Laporte (01:22:36):
Oh there's a script running. Yeah, maybe.

Chris Marquardt (01:22:39):
Possibly, possibly. And that's what makes it buffer or

Leo Laporte (01:22:42):
Makes it look like, oh

Chris Marquardt (01:22:45):
Maybe,

Leo Laporte (01:22:46):
Maybe there's some malware on there or something.

Chris Marquardt (01:22:48):
That could be

Leo Laporte (01:22:51):
Interesting.

Chris Marquardt (01:22:53):
Ah, 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 (01:23:05):
Well, you can take time off any time you want. I

Chris Marquardt (01:23:08):
Know, I know. I know

Leo Laporte (01:23:09):
You are not an employee. I

Chris Marquardt (01:23:11):
Missed you.

Leo Laporte (01:23:12):
You're a co contractor. You set your own schedule. I missed you too.

Chris Marquardt (01:23:18):
Still. I wanna be dependable. So,

Leo Laporte (01:23:20):
Oh, I love these pictures. Oh these are, I like that. Giraffe. It's hysterical.

Chris Marquardt (01:23:27):
Silly. I

Leo Laporte (01:23:28):
Got three, three giraffes 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 (01:23:40):
No. The middle link is is,

Leo Laporte (01:23:42):
Is the giraffe?

Chris Marquardt (01:23:42):
The, the sharing was disabled or something?

Leo Laporte (01:23:44):
Yeah. All right. I got 'em all

Chris Marquardt (01:23:47):
I wasn't here for two weekends. How many cameras did you buy in the meantime?

Leo Laporte (01:23:53):
None. I spent all my money on max. Oh, okay.

Chris Marquardt (01:23:57):
I, those have cameras.

Leo Laporte (01:23:59):
I've been saving up on those max studios. I bought 1, 2, 3, 1 for me, one for Lisa, for Micah. And one for my son. I have a four Mac studios.

Chris Marquardt (01:24:11):
Nice.

Leo Laporte (01:24:12):
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. Markt my personal photo sensei@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 (01:24:59):
Hello? What a nice introduction. I had

Leo Laporte (01:25:00):
To give you the full one. You know though, the whole thing

Chris Marquardt (01:25:03):
I'm 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 (01:25:20):
Are, the film is backed up. The prices have gone through the roof. Somebody's shooting film. In fact, I saw somebody on Reddi 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 (01:25:35):
I saw that exact post. I saw that exact.

Leo Laporte (01:25:38):
Wouldn't that be interesting?

Chris Marquardt (01:25:40):
Yes. Yes. It's not happening now.

Leo Laporte (01:25:42):
It's not, we've gone digital. There's no going back, but that's nice for people who like the film equality and Chris's book is excellent. You got me inspired that's for sure. Today we're doing a photo assignment review.

Chris Marquardt (01:25:55):
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 assignment

Leo Laporte (01:26:03):
Silly. Was it

Chris Marquardt (01:26:04):
Silly? A silly assignment? Yes, it was the here have the paper here. We have

Leo Laporte (01:26:09):
Silly. So no one Right

Chris Marquardt (01:26:12):
Next

Leo Laporte (01:26:12):
To

Chris Marquardt (01:26:13):
The screen. No is a reminder for myself. So we have whole bunch of silly pictures or pictures that depict something silly. And I have again chosen three of

Leo Laporte (01:26:24):
Them. There were some very silly fun pictures. Thank you, everybody such good pictures. Yes.

Chris Marquardt (01:26:30):
Yeah. So, you know, this is, this is googly eyes, make everything silly. I love googly 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 go eyes on a bowl of fruit on every single fruit and put those in on a, 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 is scared, oranges.

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

Chris Marquardt (01:27:05):
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, it's a simple, but very silly photos. So I appreciate the effort here and George, George sacrificed a whole bunch of Gog for that. And

Leo Laporte (01:27:24):
That's thank you, George Sullivan. Well done. Yes by is. Oh no, we're next. So, oh yes.

Chris Marquardt (01:27:32):
Yes.

Leo Laporte (01:27:32):
Very important. I know you like titles, so we gotta make sure that's

Chris Marquardt (01:27:36):
Very, very true. Very true. So Scott MCLE MCLE Isn't that giraffe giraffes. I mean, it, it does, it makes a silly face. Of course it's not making a silly face cuz gaffs don't do that. But it's silly from our anthropomorphic kind of point of view. So

Leo Laporte (01:27:58):
It's chewing. I think

Chris Marquardt (01:28:00):
If I made that face, it would be a silly face.

Leo Laporte (01:28:02):
Yes, for sure. No doubt. Really

Chris Marquardt (01:28:07):
Good picture. So also also it's, it's one of those very clear pictures, you know, there's nothing, 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.

Leo Laporte (01:28:38):
Lovely. So

Chris Marquardt (01:28:40):
Lovely a portrait. Yes. A portrait. And last but not least another one with with the title by Larry Al Boer. 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 the 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 a no UTURN 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 this interesting mix of weirdness. So

Leo Laporte (01:29:23):
It tells a story that's for sure.

Chris Marquardt (01:29:25):
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 pictures cuz these kind of situations are over within seconds. Usually

Leo Laporte (01:29:54):
It's yeah. It's all about timing. It's all about the right time. Yeah. Yeah. Very nice.

Chris Marquardt (01:30:02):
So nice. That's the three pictures and I think we need another assignment.

Leo Laporte (01:30:06):
So you know what that means. Time to get, get out the fishbowl.

Chris Marquardt (01:30:11):
Its the fish, but it's fish ball time again. Here's 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,

Leo Laporte (01:30:28):
Oh, oh, oh

Chris Marquardt (01:30:30):
Expensive,

Leo Laporte (01:30:32):
Expensive,

Chris Marquardt (01:30:34):
Expensive.

Leo Laporte (01:30:35):
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 know, all a camera phone's fine. And Instamatic would be fine. 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. It also

Chris Marquardt (01:31:01):
Be like expensive film S SL like an old seventies camera. Why not?

Leo Laporte (01:31:06):
When you get an image that you, that speaks to you and you could see we're looking for images that tell a 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 (01:31:40):
And I think as, as a free member, you can upload like a thousand pictures of some things. It has ample space for you. So

Leo Laporte (01:31:46):
Yeah, 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 eyesight for years now. She will, she will say thank you for your submission. She'll add it to the pool. And in about four weeks, Chris, 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 of tastes.

Chris Marquardt (01:32:26):
It's the original social photography, social network. Yeah. That's what flicker is.

Leo Laporte (01:32:31):
Yeah. And you know, it was bought by SMU mug. We love the guys, the McCalls, that 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, you wanna take film pictures, when is the so you're working on the third edition. Wow.

Chris Marquardt (01:33:04):
Well I I'm working on the third edition of the German version for now, so that,

Leo Laporte (01:33:09):
So get the second edition

Chris Marquardt (01:33:10):
Up by the American

Leo Laporte (01:33:11):
Film. Isn't changing that fast. Very

Chris Marquardt (01:33:13):
Stern. Very current. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:33:14):
Also I love the wide angle book and of course you can get coaching from Chris at sensei dot and someday in the not too distant future. Chris will start those workshops again and you

Chris Marquardt (01:33:26):
Can travel.

Leo Laporte (01:33:27):
Oh yes. I'm. I want to go to Bhutan with you Chris, as soon as you're doing that

Chris Marquardt (01:33:31):
Again, I want to go there too. Yes.

Leo Laporte (01:33:32):
Yeah. Sense eight photo. Thank you, Chris. Leo Laport, the tech guy more calls to come.

Leo Laporte (01:33:41):
Oh,

Leo Laporte (01:33:44):
So what's your prognosis for the hitting the road again? I know you did a local workshop

Chris Marquardt (01:33:51):
Or hitting the road again. We, we do a couple of local workshops this year. There's the big ABB one that we do in Southern Germany that takes like an entire week in an old ABB. Oh that's

Chris Marquardt (01:34:01):
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, smaller workshops travel. It's just wait, who knows risky right now? Who knows? Who knows? I mean, we are looking at rising numbers again after they decided we should open up everything again. So yeah, too. Eh, it is, it is unpredictable at this point. So doing something, I mean that's a financial risk because you need to prebook things and prepay a lot of things and then you have still, you also have to offer people free cancellations cuz of the risk. So it's, it's diff it's really difficult at this point. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:34:46):
I wouldn't for a while. Yeah.

Chris Marquardt (01:34:49):
I'm I'm I'm holding back on the travel for sure. Yeah. Yeah. I, yeah. We've got the,

Leo Laporte (01:34:54):
The TWiT cruise 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 (01:35:05):
Yeah, our, our big ABB workshop is end of may and I think that will be all right. So

Leo Laporte (01:35:11):
Yeah, crossing our fingers. Thank you, Chris. Stay safe. Have a wonderful, we'll see you next week. See

Chris Marquardt (01:35:18):
You next week.

Leo Laporte (01:35:18):
Bye bye. Take

Chris Marquardt (01:35:19):
Care. Bye bye.

Leo Laporte (01:35:20):
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 PowerBook runs for three days then crashes. So I think, I think there's, it's definitely better. I, I'm gonna be very interested 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 twice 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 its does have the Envidia 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 interested to see DDR 428 gigs, the 30 80 has 10 gigs of GDR. Six. Very interesting to see it doesn't look like on the, on the benchmark

Leo Laporte (01:36:57):
That it's using the GPU on the next 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 (01:37:20):
So it has Lennox, 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 lot faster than three days. Leo Laporte the tech guy coming back to you, springtime in the Rockies in, 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 all 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 5 (01:38:12):
It it what? Yes, my name Chris. Really? It's not funny how that works. Coffee.

Leo Laporte (01:38:17):
You're one of the few people in the chat room. There's bill in Michigan, Chris and Miami, Doug, but almost everybody else is using handles for their name. Yeah. Yeah.

Caller 5 (01:38:28):
I, I could use a handle. Chris coffee or coffee. I'm well known as coffee Miami. So I

Leo Laporte (01:38:33):
Coffee Miami. We go, but we know who that was, Chris.

Caller 5 (01:38:37):
Yeah. Well, this is true. It, it is true. So no matter what I do, I can't hide in fact on my business call two days ago, one of my friends said, I wonder if Chris and Miami is on the call.

Leo Laporte (01:38:48):
Oh, you're famous. Now

Caller 5 (01:38:50):
Go get I'm famous because of you.

Leo Laporte (01:38:54):
You're the Chris?

Caller 5 (01:38:55):
I said,

Leo Laporte (01:38:56):
Huh? The Chris in Miami,

Caller 5 (01:38:59):
The Chris in Miami, my reply was, let me go get three more cups and I'll let you know.

Leo Laporte (01:39:07):
Can't really be sure unless you're fully caffeinated. He is a coffee achiever. What can I do for you today, Chris?

Caller 5 (01:39:14):
Well, I'm glad to be back on Eric. 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 (01:39:24):
Wow. Laura they're what are you spending money on her music?

Caller 5 (01:39:29):
Well, some of her music that she plays is actually pretty cool. So what I do is I'll Shaza that music.

Leo Laporte (01:39:35):
Oh, smart. Yeah. We do put links on the show notes@techilab.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 5 (01:39:50):
There you go. Now, you know, there you go.

Leo Laporte (01:39:52):
Now, you know how to get springtime in, where is in, in the Appalachians, in the Rockies. There you go. Spring day in the Rockies. So what can I do for you, Chris

Caller 5 (01:40:05):
Weakness? 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 (01:40:17):
Jealous that. So jealous.

Caller 5 (01:40:19):
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 the tech guy. I said, yes. Oh nice. He, so was this. Yeah. Yeah. I always mention you everywhere. Even if people are interested in tech, I'm like go to this, go to your browser type in TV. Thank

Leo Laporte (01:40:40):
You.

Caller 5 (01:40:40):
BA the magic happened. 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 interesting. I'm lost on this when it figured I'd totally throw this back at you.

Leo Laporte (01:41:04):
Okay. So you wanna know whether you should have a landline from at and T versus using their internet based voice over internet service. No,

Caller 5 (01:41:15):
There's I wanna get rid of them completely. Oh,

Leo Laporte (01:41:16):
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 can even use Google zone, 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 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 the building and down the real 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 (01:42:02):
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? Everyth 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, the phone line and gets everything, the ringing and it, 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 a landline. Now the problem is these are har these are harder to get than ever.

Leo Laporte (01:42:51):
I almost said rarer than hen's teeth, but then I would sound like it bring time in the Rockies. They're rarer than he 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 a fiber internet or at UT and T at T's Uverse, they will often they're supposed to ask, but they'll often just say, ah, you, 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. Yeah. But you should check with the homeowners association or whoever knows what the, what the plant is.

Leo Laporte (01:43:40):
The physical plant, is this a real landline? Because a lot of times this is for instance, when you get the triple play package from your cable company, whoever that's a VO 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. 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, boy, I'd sure 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 won't matter, power goes out unless they've got a battery backup.

Leo Laporte (01:44:28):
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 replace it. And that's probably the 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 redirected 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 you, what are you on now? Are you on a cell phone now

Caller 5 (01:45:23):
I'm using my iPhone 12 pro. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:45:25):
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, you know, in an emergency, it is gonna be

Caller 5 (01:45:50):
Gone. Interesting. Yeah. Right.

Leo Laporte (01:45:53):
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 (01:46:04):
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, and 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 a, 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 wipe. You can get higher bandwidth, Leola 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 the phone call. Right. That's true.

Caller 5 (01:47:04):
Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:47:05):
But you can't FaceTime us. So, you know, anyway I don't, I didn't even answer your question. I don't know which you should get. I think probably VoIP probably

Caller 5 (01:47:16):
You answered

Leo Laporte (01:47:16):
It. Yeah. I mean, those are the pros and cons.

Caller 5 (01:47:20):
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 will cost me more to go with non-digital so I'd stay. Yeah. But $45 a month is money that if people look at it 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 (01:47:41):
Yeah. I 

Caller 5 (01:47:43):
Where

Leo Laporte (01:47:44):
I yeah, right. And 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 has slowly jacked up the price. I think it's 30 or 40 bucks now. And yeah. Be just, it doesn't make a lot of sense. I should probably change the, the Burg system could use a cell line and it probably should change to that.

Caller 5 (01:48:08):
I'm just really over it. I I'm, I'm over all of it. And when I got the webcast, Google fiber, my web, I just said, you know what? This is

Leo Laporte (01:48:15):
Amazing. Go all yeah. 18, cut the cable, cut 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 5 (01:48:26):
Yeah. And then when the power goes, see, the reason I have a landline though is cuz 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 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 (01:48:45):
I'd say dump it when the power 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. Cause they, they BA they back up the the towers with, with power. So I think your cell phone nowadays is as good as anything else.

Caller 5 (01:49:04):
Perfect. That's what we do then. Yeah. All right. It's going all right. Yeah, of course. Thanks boss. Appreciate

Leo Laporte (01:49:09):
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, that would solve that right.

Leo Laporte (01:49:37):
Well, Hey, Hey. Hey. How are you today? Leo Laporte here. The tech guy, time talk computers, the internet, home theater, digital photography, smart phones, smart watches, all that jazz jazz, eighty eight eighty eight ask Leo is the phone number (888) 827-5536, toll free from anywhere in the us or Canada outside that area. You can still call, but it'll be you know, using that void thing, you know, Skype out or something like that. 88 80 website tech guy labs.com. I should have mentioned this last hour when we had Chris mark on our Chandra in our chat room 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 Kodak 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's 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 every day, 88. I'll give you a little plug Destin. Eighty eight, eighty eight. ASCL the phone number on the line from Cooper city, Florida Skylar. Hi Skylar.

Caller 6 (01:51:25):
Yeah. Hi Leo. Happy spring day to you. Happy

Leo Laporte (01:51:27):
Spring. I didn't even know. No, I didn't even know.

Caller 6 (01:51:30):
I didn't either. I didn't either. I was a surprise to me.

Leo Laporte (01:51:34):
You probably in Florida, it doesn't matter either way, right?

Caller 6 (01:51:37):
No, it's all spring next up little, few times in January, few weeks in January, that's about it. You

Leo Laporte (01:51:42):
Get winter for two, for a few weeks. What can I do for you today? Sky,

Caller 6 (01:51:48):
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 or one of the Adobe products. So I've got a about 80 tapes that I've done this to. I've got many.

Caller 6 (01:52:10):
Wow. 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 (01:52:47):
Oh, this is gonna make me cry. Yeah, it 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 6 (01:53:11):
Yeah. Some of them, yes. When I did it, cause they play two hours at a time. I would play 'em and watch 'em. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:53:15):
And then wander off. But, but as soon as it seemed like it was gonna work I feel like what you were monitoring, even 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 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 few, try, do one and make sure you got all the settings, right. So you tried playing it back here. I'll give you a few other things to try playing it 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 a available for windows, Mac, Linux and it, it can play almost any file of any kind.

Leo Laporte (01:54:12):
So one what, 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. They'll either play it or not usually. So I'm hoping there's something going on. Maybe the bit 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 fi how the file sizes. Have you looked at those? Are they big?

Caller 6 (01:54:59):
Yeah, some of them are pretty big. Like, I mean, some of the tapes are like maybe 10, 15 gigabytes. They're huge.

Leo Laporte (01:55:05):
Okay. Well that means you captured some data. Let's just hope it's not a gray screen with dots. I 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 6 (01:55:21):
Well that's probably capture or

Leo Laporte (01:55:22):
Windows. Yeah. Or windows media plan. Well, first thing to do open in Sony Vegas and see if you can play in Sony Vegas. It may 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 6 (01:55:37):
Yeah. Okay. Cause I, I did try VLC and it didn't play it as well as the same exact thing

Leo Laporte (01:55:43):
Did the same thing. 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 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 in 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 they 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 6 (01:56:39):
Right. Still got 'em and I'm hoping that the old V the, the cam card is still work to

Leo Laporte (01:56:44):
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 recorder 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 MP4, did you wanna put 'em on a D V D?

Caller 6 (01:57:10):
Yeah. That might be an option in the future.

Leo Laporte (01:57:12):
Yeah. Vegas will have a DVD D 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 6 (01:57:32):
I believe they're 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 of younger with the kids are younger. It's like more of an Avi. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:57:44):
So AV is the windows container format can contain a variety of different codex. Umm, mov 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. I appreciate 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 VHS and from high and from eight, eight millimeter. Isn't so great that Mick for be plenty for it.

Leo Laporte (01:58:33):
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 Vegas format that only Vegas can read. So open to Vegas and cross your fingers. I hope so. Otherwise, thanks. You got a long haul ahead of ya. I'm sorry. 88, 88. 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 you, if you got that information put in our chat room, maybe they could help you. Leo Laport, the tech guy.

Leo Laporte (01:59:22):
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? 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 side effects and to my great delight, mine got collapsed and tars got gross. So I appreciate that. Yeah. Hey, I really feel for your call. 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 (02:00:14):
I have DV. I have mini disk, all this stuff in documentaries in the past. Most of us not digitized. So I hope when I put the, as tapes back of the decks that I was sitting storage that they play. Yeah. Oh my God. By the way, got my first Blueland shipment. Oh, do you like it? It's sensational. I know. Just, just the unboxing. I, I'm not an UN boxer. Right? It's like, just get the pack. No, I love it. It's rat and tissue. And I know they do 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, 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. Minimal. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (02:00:58):
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 we 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, yeah. I'm a big fan. Yeah. And it's really cool to watch the little tablets fizz. I mean, I realize a big little obsessive here. It's like, yeah, they're neat. You know? Well, the first time I overfilled the bottle, which, and didn't work out too well, but yeah. Was that a show? Yeah. It's like Mintos and diet Coke. Yeah. Yeah. So now I realize there's a fill line. I'll fill into there. Actually. I'm ready to do a refill on my hand soap in my sink at home.

Leo Laporte (02:01:39):
I use it lot. I use it every day and I got the, do I mention this in the ad? I got the Christmas package, which was like candy cane and gingerbread, the whole house smells like it's fun. Yeah. It's kind of fun. Wash your hands with the gingerbread. So by the way, I got okay. I, you, the photos for the rollout and the third episode we can space is called the orbital junkyard just in case anybody. Oh, I know. I heard you talking about it. Very cool. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Fine. Very cool. All right. I have your photos. Okay. I will be ready to launch if you will, sir. It's photos. It 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 in a bit. I'll be here.

??? (02:02:32):
Let the show,

Leo Laporte (02:02:37):
I got my my stream deck slowly reprogramming it. You can, I just have the 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 file. So I, I did the first page. I think I started the second page.

Leo Laporte (02:03:32):
Yeah. So I,

Leo Laporte (02:03:38):
Leo Laporte day tech I eighty eight, eighty eight, ask Leo the phone number, rock pile, spaceman, steely ID rocket, man, coming up in just a little bit. Talk about Artemis. We're going in the moon again. Wow. But first Jeff in new city, New York. Hello, Jeff Leo Laport tech.

Caller 7 (02:04:02):
Hey Leah. How you doing today?

Leo Laporte (02:04:03):
I'm great. How you doing?

Caller 7 (02:04:04):
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 (02:04:16):
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 program and more remote. And, and in order for the program and remote to work, it has to send those exact same infrared light signals to the TV. So it knows 'em 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, 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 harmony were great because the harmony, you wouldn't have to program, they had a massive database of pre-program settings.

Leo Laporte (02:05:25):
And all you do is you download it to your remote log into your account. 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 7 (02:05:40):
Yeah, cause it's a universal company. It's actually universal RF 20. And I had a program for years and I keep going to eBay and buying replacements and they keep like, not working after a while.

Leo Laporte (02:05:52):
Oh, you can't program one or the other, huh? Huh? Do you program you program 'em as I described or you put of kind of head to head and

Caller 7 (02:06:00):
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 all

Leo Laporte (02:06:08):
Over. 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 changed their mind. That's the one I would buy for sure. The harmony there, there a variety of them, 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 be because of the voice assistance 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 (02:07:02):
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 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, they 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 (02:07:53):
So it's like a row O co and 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 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 what to turn on the satellite dish or the cable box. It'll know what channel to tune to it'll turn on the TV. It'll 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 business is being eaten up by these voice remotes voice assistants. So look at,

Caller 7 (02:08:40):
Yeah, 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 (02:08:48):
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 7 (02:09:10):
Right. So if I'm not looking through

Leo Laporte (02:09:12):
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 7 (02:09:30):
Yeah, because the only reason I went for university RF is cuz it's hidden behind a wall and it's radio frequency, the one I'm using. Ah

Leo Laporte (02:09:37):
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 IR 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 7 (02:10:20):
Yeah, except for the one I have. Yeah. 20. Yeah. So yeah. I, which they don't make anymore. 

Leo Laporte (02:10:25):
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 to see 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 7 (02:10:50):
Yeah. Cause I hit everything behind a wall design the room,

Leo Laporte (02:10:53):
So yeah. Smart. Yeah. Smart. That's a good way to do it. Except for this one little problem. Got it. So for that actually the harmony that I talked about the little the little puck, you put that behind the wall too, and then that's using wifi to be controlled from your phone. So that's 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 that's using wifi. You could use an

Caller 7 (02:11:21):
Ipad for

Leo Laporte (02:11:21):
It too, right? 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. 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 Laport, the tech guy hope 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 (02:12:27):
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 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 could said, Hey, Jean Crans Highline hotline, buddy hotline, hotline, look at the little button on it and everything. What is that? It's an air force. Red line handset. Yeah. Wow. So it's not working stuff like that. Yeah. Well 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 talk to I yeah, like that. Yeah. Yeah. That's awesome.

Leo Laporte (02:13:57):
Batman. We need you Rehan Rehan joke. Oh God. Don't don't let me be Adam West. Hello, citizen. Hello citizen. 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 doesn say bummer often actually, but every now and then it's just enough to put me back on my heels. 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 like my go. Right the same. He said I'm gonna backhand you Jr. 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. Talked about that. Somebody made a, made a rep didn't it end up in, in the museum. Modern art. Oh yeah. It was it classic. Yeah. Yeah. Those were kind of in practice. Yeah. But 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 you, you run. Oh lurch.

Leo Laporte (02:15:22):
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 vote. Yeah. I, those took foolishly looked up MoMA and phone uhoh you're gonna be shopping now. Oh, look at that

Leo Laporte (02:15:45):
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 ad Astra magazine from space, the international, the national space society, nss.org and, 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 your folks. And my, my favorite feature is the doling space jokes. That's always fun. Oh, they're sad. Aren't they?

Leo Laporte (02:16:44):
Dad's in space. Yeah, I know. I know. We're both dead. Absolutely. Perfect. anyway, that's at twit TV slash T I S that's our podcast network. This in tech T I t.tv/this in space. I know it's confusing T I it is twist TWiT twist. We're going to the moon baby. Wow. It's so first moon rocket in 50 years rolled out of the vehicle assembly building. Oh, it's a big too. Let me tell you it's a big end. It's a little shorter than Saturn five. It's Saturn five was 363 feet. I think this is 3 22 and it's 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 stages. So you know, this is the whole rocket.

Leo Laporte (02:17:41):
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 sprayed on it. That's insulation. Oh, okay. And then they took four space shuttle engines four, actually 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 co 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 (02:18:32):
And that's the engine that drives the Iran capsule in and out of blue north. So it's the, it's the last engine to stay in the littlest engine. And it's just, it's just there to kind of, you know, toot 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 you got that comical stage. Yeah. That's empty right now. Okay. that's just an adapter say this space for rent. Is that what that says? Okay. Probably. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. No, it says this week in space. Oh look at that. Ron pile go here, then that'd be great. And then underneath it, that's the, what I call the rusty, the foam orange foam covered stages.

Leo Laporte (02:19:19):
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. It ended up not being so, but it's 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 a Saturn five, but the Saturn five was all liquid engines and it had three stages. This is liquids in the center, solid engines on the side. And it's really just got the one main stage plus the two side boosters. So although it's touted 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 (02:20:14):
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 launch pads. 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 connections 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 yeah.

Leo Laporte (02:21:01):
And clams stuff, the gantry, right. And then they, they test the ground crew. You know, you gotta test all your procedures. So, 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 we'll 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 need to know the other drink now the launch, what will it do? Just go up and down. No. So it's gonna take an uncured Orion capsule out in a very large looping trajectory out past the moon. Oh. Going to lunar abit, 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.

Leo Laporte (02:21:48):
Just not with a payload, not with people just to show sure 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 nobody on, they gotta a mannequin on board really. And yeah, they're gonna have a speaker next to him 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 more, don't like, 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 not no foot. Yeah. So this is, you know, just some numbers.

Leo Laporte (02:22:35):
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. 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. Does that mean they couldn't 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 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.

Leo Laporte (02:23:23):
So it's not really working out to be cheap and it's a throwaway rocket. So now you start thinking about, okay, what about SpaceX and the ownership? 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 you, but can I say something of obstacle, a little controversial? Sure. 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 along. Won't stay in the business or Jeff won't, you can contractually. So they can't bow out.

Leo Laporte (02:24:09):
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. Again, something happens to Elon and he's no longer in charge. You don't know what direction that company is gonna go contract. They have to fulfill the contract. They're not gonna, let's just call this. This is the, what if Mr. Lockey 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, should launch on that accrued flight in may or June. We hope 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 Powell. Oh, now now space dots dot. Don't say that.

Leo Laporte (02:25:06):
Say that, or I'll have to call Jean Crans on you. Call the reds, get the red phone, get the red phone. 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. Be flexible for you, for you at you'd have to do about 20 shows of Florida 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.

Leo Laporte (02:25:47):
It's not, but, but there are windows. They, they tend to extend for, for days and days. 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 astronaut used, it would be kinda 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 SLS 3, 4, 5 dentists gonna be yeah.

Leo Laporte (02:26:35):
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. So Jerry per always believed in citizen space, not government space. And of course he hated government. Yeah. I mean, he was like, he was a John Becher. He was pretty much anti-government. But I guess, you know, it, he's his maybe being proven, right. Because the commercial entities seemed to be making much better progress, much faster. Yeah. But it's just 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, a slower approach, much slower. Yeah. Much slower. But they've got a huge new facility at Kennedy's base center that is apparently just stunning.

Leo Laporte (02:27:27):
I haven't been inside, but it it's immense. So they're building big rockets out there. So we'll see that within the next year, year and a half, 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 fur their brows and oh, Congress match their teeth. Congress 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 lunch rocket. I know. It's, it's, it's, it's hard 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. Oh, what are we looking at? This is O space. Alex Lindsay's office hours. Global space launch. Oh, these are, these are amateur rocks. Those are fun. Yeah. Yeah. And they did a whole thing. Like it's Walter Cronkite out here. It reminds you of my randomized launch computer that I used to use. Look at this, look at this rock. It's my,

... (02:28:42):
Oh, I'm sorry. Can you repeat that question? He was cutting outta li and tail open. We're coming back here in the count and the rocket.

Leo Laporte (02:28:48):
Wait a minute.

... (02:28:49):
And like that comes up. Grownups rockets. Nice. And far

Leo Laporte (02:28:52):
Here. The dads here, the dads look at that. Yeah. These are, these are high power toys. Oh yeah. This thing went pretty high and they're not toys. 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 may 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. Hi, we gonna time for a couple more calls at 88, 88 as Leo, before we wrap things up, let's say hi to RO San Diego, California. Hi Ram.

Caller 8 (02:30:12):
Yes. Hi, Leo. Welcome. I have a karaoke system that has an HD I output. Okay. So I, I had that cable connect. Two, both home theater, five speaker system.

Leo Laporte (02:30:29):
Oh, nice. What songs do you what's your, what's your specialty? What song do you sing?

Caller 8 (02:30:38):
My, you mean my background?

Leo Laporte (02:30:40):
No. Yeah. What's didn't you sing karaoke. What do you sing? What's your,

Caller 8 (02:30:44):
What's your, oh, just, just the regular oldest.

Leo Laporte (02:30:48):
I'm not gonna make you sing. Don't worry, Ron. All right. So it's hooked up. It's hooked up to a very nice surround sound system via H DMI, both.

Caller 8 (02:31:00):
And then, so the both controller has an H DMI. I put it out to a 75 inch TV.

Leo Laporte (02:31:08):
Oh, nice.

Caller 8 (02:31:10):
Yes.

Leo Laporte (02:31:11):
I want to come to a party at your house.

Caller 8 (02:31:14):
My problem is somehow when I'm doing that, the voice seems to be delayed compared to the video.

Leo Laporte (02:31:23):
Yeah. Yeah. Cuz 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?

Caller 8 (02:31:43):
Probably. I don't know. Maybe some microseconds or something. Yeah, but it, it's kind of kind of obvious. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (02:31:53):
Yeah. It's a very annoying because we are very well tuned. Our, our brains and minds are very well tuned to lips. And if somebody's even a, you know, 10 milliseconds off one, 100th of a second off, you notice it don't you.

Caller 8 (02:32:06):
So what could have been the thing that I missed?

Leo Laporte (02:32:11):
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 be the first place to look. Does theose have a, a, a menu interface. I bet it does. Yeah.

Caller 8 (02:32:34):
It, I don't know if I can, does it

Leo Laporte (02:32:37):
Go into it's so it's going from the karaoke machine into, to 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?

Caller 8 (02:32:49):
Yeah. Just like a, a controller or

Leo Laporte (02:32:51):
Something. 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 AV systems AV receivers and TVs often almost always have a setting like this because this is a very common 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

Caller 8 (02:33:18):
Little bit. What if I see what if I connect the karaoke direct to the TV,

Leo Laporte (02:33:24):
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 to the TV, you HTM. 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.

Caller 8 (02:33:54):
I see. Or, or even the good or the life and right. Audio.

Leo Laporte (02:33:58):
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, look for menu settings, you know, they say different things, but you know, just 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 H DM I into the TV TV will then send the audio out through the optical and optical cable, which the bows has an optical in and at least try that Joanna Los Angeles last call the day. Hi, Joanna.

Caller 9 (02:34:51):
Well, thank you for taking my call. I've been trying to call for like an hour or so. Thank you for showing.

Leo Laporte (02:34:57):
Sometimes people take weeks to get in, so good on you only an hour, if

Caller 9 (02:35:01):
I'm blessed.

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

Caller 9 (02:35:05):
So, okay. I'll be quick, bill. 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 and email.

Leo Laporte (02:35:23):
You don't, you don't use any of the apps on your iPhone. You don't play words with friends or, or anything like that?

Caller 9 (02:35:30):
No.

Leo Laporte (02:35:31):
Okay.

Caller 9 (02:35:32):
Just regular. So so right now I have, what's called a hotspot, so 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 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

Leo Laporte (02:35:59):
Laptop? So you're using your phone as your internet access on your laptop. You don't have any other internet access?

Caller 9 (02:36:07):
Well, I do have it at home. But when I'm out.

Leo Laporte (02:36:10):
Oh, 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 9 (02:36:17):
Yes. But it doesn't connect. Yes. The computer.

Leo Laporte (02:36:20):
So an iPhone six is, is pretty old and and, and pretty slow. And it is not gonna be as 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 E would be a very good choice. It is as fast as the iPhone 13, it 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. 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,

Caller 9 (02:37:14):
The iPhone

Leo Laporte (02:37:15):
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 wanna get more storage, which sound like you need you could spend a little bit more before 29 is a, is exactly what you want. That will be the best, best hotspot for the price. Woohoo, Woohoo. It was worth it for an hour to wait. Thank you for calling was waiting for. 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 5g has gotten so much better, an 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 it to work with the ultra wide band, which is there's three bands, slow band, mid band and high band.

Leo Laporte (02:38:17):
And the mid band is much more prevalent, easier to get and is very, very fast. 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 Laport. Your tech guy have a great geek week. Well, that's it for the tech guy show for today. Thank you so much for being here and don't forget. Twit T w I T. It stands for this week at tech and you'll find it@twit.tv, including the podcasts for this show. We talk about windows on windows, weekly, Macintosh on Mac break, weekly iPads, iPhones, apple watches on iOS today. Security and security. Now, I mean, I can go on and on and on. And of course the big show every Sunday afternoon, this in tech, you'll find it all@twit.tv and I'll be back next with another great tech guys show. Thanks for joining me. We'll see you next time.