The Tech Guy Episode 1884 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 (00:00:06):
This is TWiT. Hi, this is Leo Laporte and this is my tech guy podcast. This show originally aired on the premier networks on Sunday, April 10th, 2022. This is episode 1,884. In enjoy. The tech guy podcast is brought to you by Acronis. Keep your digital world safe from all threats. With the only cyber protection solution that delivers a unique integration of data protection and cyber security in one Acronis cyber protect home office. You may remember it as Acronis true image. Go to go.acronis.com/techguy. And by Blueland stop wasting water and throwing out more plastic. Get blue land's revolutionary refill cleaning system. Instead. Right now you can get 20% off your first when you go to blueland.com/tech guy. Well, Hey, Hey. Hey, how are you today? Leo Laporte here. The tech guy it's yes. Time to talk tech eighty eight eighty eight. Ask Leo the phone number eighty eight eight eight two seven five five three six.
Leo Laporte (00:01:19):
Toll free from anywhere in the us or Canada. It's high that area. You could still call, but you would call using Skype or something like that. Skype out should be free cuz we're free. 88 88 ask Leo and coincidentally. So are six lines free 8 8 2 7 5 5 3 6 website toll free website is also toll free. There is no requirement to pay no subscription fee. It's tech guy labs.com and everything lives there. Links that I mention audio and video after the fact even a transcript. So you can go there search for what you're looking for and find it. I think I hope, I assume fairly quickly. Tech guy labs dot calm. Here's an interesting use of Twitch. You know, about twitch.tv. It's where people go to stream themselves playing games or sitting in hot tubs or whatever, you know, just stuff, mostly gaming it's owned by Amazon Amtrak set up a Twitch channel the other day with ANM D railroad line on it.
Leo Laporte (00:02:26):
It's the bay St. It's in bay St. Louis, Mississippi empty railroad track in front of a parking lot. Birds chirping. Otherwise nothing happens. The reason Amtrack they're in a little, a little fight, a little slap fight with the freight lines that you that line Amtrak wants to run. Two round trip passenger trains a day between the cities of new, new Orleans, new Orleans and mobile. You say mobile, mobile, Alabama, NAS and mobile, but two freight crop companies CSX in Norfolk, Norfolk Southern use it and they say, you can't, you can't put freight. You can't put passenger trains on that, cuz it's gonna hurt the freight trains. Amtrak says, well, there's hardly any freight trains and they, so they put up the Twitch stream. So you could watch it to which the CX CSX, the freight company says, well, look, of course not, there's only eight to 10 trains a day Or all the one to three coal and grain trains and numerous local trains.
Leo Laporte (00:03:37):
And it's a complicated story because freight trains are long and and there's just a single track line. So they'd have to get out of the way. And it's hard to get something that big out of the way you'd have to build side. Anyway. I just thought it was, I'm not gonna weigh in on the battle, although it's nice to have passenger train service. And I guess if you live in mobile or Nolan, you'd like that, but you know, the freight trains are there too, but I think it was interesting that they're using Twitch To lobby. Look at this beautiful empty track. Nothing, nothing happening.
Leo Laporte (00:04:14):
Yeah.
Leo Laporte (00:04:15):
Okay. You got, you got, you got your point there, Amazon. I didn't know this. So the national retail Federation did a survey found that a lot of merchandise gets returned every year. How much would you guess merchandise gets returned? Let's put it this way. It's it's more than the us spends a national defense in a year 761 million of merchandise was returned. People bought it and sent it back or took it back. What What's going on? You guys don't like nothing. Amazon won't say exactly, but but the national retail Federation estimates that 16.6% of all of our sold on the holiday season was returned. That's up by the way, a lot of returns more than 56% from the year before. I think probably I'm guessing. I'm just gonna guess wild guess here. A lot of people who used to shop in the store and would try stuff on and say, this doesn't fit Had to turn to shopping online during the pandemic. And so as result, they're sending stuff back, cuz it doesn't fit. My wife does that. The Tryon show her a bunch of stuff. She, she gets, it tries it all on. If it doesn't fit or she doesn't like it, she sends it back.
Leo Laporte (00:05:33):
That's how you get A giant jump. 56% jump in. The number of things returned For online purchase is the average about 21%, right? Of course. Yeah. Yeah. Up up from 18% in 2020. So given Amazon's net sales of 469 billion, Multiply that by 21%, you're gonna get almost a hundred billion in returns. Every year. Us returns generate 16 million metric tons of carbon emissions because they've gotta be shipped back 5.8 billion pounds, pounds of landfill waste, cuz they're often not sold again. Billions upon billions upon billions of dollars of waste, the byproduct of consumerism run a muck says Mark Cohen, director of retail studies at Columbia business school, former CEO of Sears, Canada. I like that re consumerism run a muck. It's kind of the story of the a show. Isn't it? Amazon sends no items. They say to landfills, they told CNBC, but relies on energy. Recovery is a last report, which mean resort, which means you burn in That's what are you doing? What are you doing there? I'm doing energy, energy recovery. You burn in your, your Gar no it's energy recovery. Okay. remember seeing last year, the, the videos of pallets of returned goods. And I have seen people, apparently you can buy a return pallet
Leo Laporte (00:07:13):
And they'll ship it to you. Site unseen. You don't get to choose. It's like the ultimate surprise gift. Wow. I don't know what I'm gonna get, but it's gonna be a deal. Returns are important. Aren't they aren't they right. If you're buying online now I think so. Wow. I didn't realize though it was, it was, it was 706, 1 billion worth of returns every year. Apple announced an event this week. They're gonna have their annual worldwide developers conference. It'll be online again this year in a couple of months, it'll be in June. I think as June 6th through 10th,
Leo Laporte (00:08:01):
Something like that. And that's a big event for developers. They go, or in this case watch, they don't go anywhere. They sit at home, watch as apple explains their new versions of iOS and Mac OS and gets developers ready and tells 'em about new stuff they want 'em to do. And so the rumor mill is you know, they're talking, what are we gonna, what are we gonna see? Cuz every time apple does an event, they often take advantage of this to announce new products and the mark Garman, the guy, the man, the myth, the legend, the rumor king for apple says expect a new MacBook air. Now I rumors are not my stock and trade cuz it's just a rumor. Apple never says ahead of time. But the only reason I, I mention these sometimes is if you're in the market, for instance, for a MacBook air and you can wait until June 6th, maybe you should cuz maybe, maybe not get from guarantee. Maybe there'll be something, something new. And of course the big story of the week before we get to phones, I'll give you the big story of the week. Elon Musk buys 9% of Twitter, large shareholder. Now Twitter might as well be an owner.
Leo Laporte (00:09:15):
We don't know yet, but I'm sure there'll be leaks from Elon speaking to the Twitter employees they actually had in all hands because he has such a huge, a town hall, Cuz he has such a huge amount of Twitter stock further more. He's kind of a Twitter prankster. He tweeting all sort of stuff about, you know, what Twitter should do and whether we should shut it down and is free speech reel on Twitter. And should there be an edit button and Twitter's kind of, yeah, whatever you say boss. So the town hall is a way of I guess reassuring the staff. I don't know. I don't think it'll be that reassuring. I don't know what Elon will say. We'll see. Elon's been, you know, if you follow him on Twitter, he posts all sorts of Cray, Cray stuff. He's Cray, Cray. He he's the strangest dude ever and all sorts of weird stuff about what he should do with Twitter. And I honestly, I just think he's having fun. I don't think he's who knows. Does he really wanna run Twitter? Doesn't he have a space operation and a car company to run isn't he?
Leo Laporte (00:10:26):
So then, then he said like the, like to like yesterday he tweeted, should we delete the w and Twitter? Elon? What? A nine?
Leo Laporte (00:10:37):
What do you
Leo Laporte (00:10:39):
Convert? The Twitter San Francisco headquarters to a homeless shelter since no one shows up anyway,
Leo Laporte (00:10:44):
What do you
Leo Laporte (00:10:46):
Elon? I should look at these polls by the way. Yes. Is winning on delete the w and Twitter, which is not gonna happen convert the Twitter headquarters to homeless shelter. What do you figure? Of course, yes will win. Yeah. 91%. He's got all sorts of ideas, all sorts of ideas. Exactly. The worst thing you can imagine For your boss and now a number of tech blogs are saying, you know, with nine point, whatever 2% of Twitter, he probably is gonna be the next CEO. He's got a board seat. He could say, look, I'm either gonna do a hostile takeover or Twitter. I got the money. He's the richest man in the world. Or you could let me run it without that. And I think that's, what's gonna, I think that might happen. Does anybody care? I don't know. You know who cares the media in this country? Cuz they live on Twitter. That's it's like for them, Twitter's everything. It's the whole thing.
Leo Laporte (00:11:46):
Eighty eight eighty eight. Ask Leo the phone number eighty eight, eight eight two seven five five, three, six, toll free from anywhere in the us or Canada. Give me a ring. Let's talk high tech. You, me, everybody. We're all in this together. So let's do it next. You wanna see the rep? I don't know if you can see the replacement setup. Let's see. So here's the curved 31 inch Samsung. You can't see the iMac it's under there. It's over there in the back there in the corner. The, I I'm a Mac mini it's over there was, it's kind of an iMac replacement though. And actually exactly. So we got, we found a a, the proper cable, which is a Thunderbolt three to display per port, full size display port. Was it the mini display port or was it that it was a Thunderbolt to connector? Not a video connector. I think that was the issue. Yeah. So if you're gonna do that as always, you want to get exactly the right cable for the job. So I got a couple of them from cables go. I have one at home that also works with the studio and it's nice cuz I get 120 Hertz. There, I can't get 120 Hertz here because they would confuse the scan converter we're running. So
Leo Laporte (00:13:11):
I'm stuck. That's a good question. I'm pretty sure it's one, four the one at home is one four for sure. Cause I'm getting one 20 Hertz. Maybe it's just, maybe that's all it is. Maybe I just need to, but I I'm figuring cuz the scan converter's mirroring. I can't,
Leo Laporte (00:13:32):
I can't get CR I can't go crazy here Then we'll know system Doesn't look
Leo Laporte (00:13:47):
Like it has a setting for that.
Leo Laporte (00:13:51):
Can you have me? Can you
Kim Schaffer (00:13:55):
Little too loud. I had those headphones. Crank can you can,
Leo Laporte (00:13:58):
You can hear me.
Leo Laporte (00:13:59):
So you're awake.
Kim Schaffer (00:14:01):
I am awake.
Leo Laporte (00:14:01):
You're awake. Welcome. Welcome.
Kim Schaffer (00:14:04):
Welcome one. And all
Leo Laporte (00:14:05):
That is Kim. Scheffer the phone angel. She's in charge of the phones. She runs the phone. She is the phone master.
Kim Schaffer (00:14:14):
I turned them on and off.
Leo Laporte (00:14:16):
Well that's important. And
Kim Schaffer (00:14:17):
Then I picked them up.
Leo Laporte (00:14:18):
What, what is more, what is more powerful than the ability to, to turn something on and off,
Kim Schaffer (00:14:24):
Especially for a talk show
Leo Laporte (00:14:27):
Or anything? If you could, you know, if you could turn me on or off, you'd have absolute power flip the switch and I go, Fortunately, I'm not a robot. Who should I talk to?
Kim Schaffer (00:14:44):
You're still thinking about that. Aren't you? No, John was making funny.
Leo Laporte (00:14:47):
She wants the button. She wants the button that says turn off Leo.
Kim Schaffer (00:14:50):
Oh, oh, John was trying to tell me he has the button.
Leo Laporte (00:14:53):
He can turn me on or off. He's actually got the button. He does. I mean, I'd still be here talking, but you wouldn't know him. I'd be talking to myself.
Kim Schaffer (00:15:01):
Well, let's go to Paul in Westchester. Cause I think he's got an issue that you just dealt with over the last couple weeks.
Leo Laporte (00:15:07):
Well, Paul must know something. I don't know. Cuz issues that I have dealt with are long, are long, long, long list. Thank you Kim. You're welcome. Hello Paul. Welcome.
Caller 1 (00:15:20):
Hello Leo. How are you?
Leo Laporte (00:15:22):
I am well, how are things in Westchester?
Caller 1 (00:15:25):
Finally cooled down. We got out at 90 degrees at the beat. So it's really nice to be back in the
Leo Laporte (00:15:31):
Yeah, yeah, same here. We had that little mini heat wave. That was weird. So, so what's going on with you?
Caller 1 (00:15:40):
So I have a old Mac mini and like millions of others. I think I want to upgrade it to the M one M one it's
Leo Laporte (00:15:46):
Worth. Yeah.
Caller 1 (00:15:48):
So I'm going that way. But what I I've been reading, I'm totally confused. Or I was confused about the displays it will work
Leo Laporte (00:15:56):
With, as you should be. I
Caller 1 (00:15:57):
Understand apple changed a lot of things.
Leo Laporte (00:16:00):
Yes. You should be. Apple changed a lot of things. You didn't really explain it very well. So the new Mac mini the current Mac mini, which is based on the M one chip has capabilities beyond that, of the M one based MacBook air and MacBook 13 inch MacBook pro. So otherwise they're very similar, but there is a slight difference in the Mac. Many it can drive two monitors. It has, it has an H DMI port on it. But as I have learned not only with the Mac minis, but the new Mac studio and even the MacBook pros, that's an H D I 2.0 port. So it is not the port to use. If you're gonna drive, if you wanna drive a high resolution high frame rate display for that, you'll want to use the display port. Now there is no display port on it, but there is a Thunderbolt port on it, thunder bolt for on it and you can get the right cable. You can drive a display port. So if you want two monitors and many do one will be HGM I, and one will be display port. There is no third monitor.
Caller 1 (00:17:06):
Okay. I understand that. I do have an ultra you know, like millions during COVID. I bought an ultra sharp 24 inch beautiful that's 1920 by 1200 resolution. As I understand it, I think as long as I'm gonna run native resolution, I'm okay. All the people that are complaining out there on the internet are the ones that are not running native because then you've gotta get into the scaling problem. And as I understand at apple is saying, we're only gonna provide, and it might make sense. You're only gonna provide scaling if we're in a retina situation, meaning 4k, because then we have enough pixel that we can. And I think what apple does is they, they make a virtual screen in memory, they do double the resolution and then they, and then they allow you to use your scale bar and reduce it down. So yeah,
Leo Laporte (00:17:59):
So I'm running, I'm gonna buy I'm running this LG monitor or, or sorry, the Samsung monitor that I have at 10 80 P because I'm sitting two feet away from it. So I just need it to be bigger. It will go up to 25, 50 by 1440. And as, as you will see in the display control panel, scaled only gives you a subset of all the possibilities because apple in their infinite wisdom says, well, you don't wanna scale it in kind of a resolution that is non non, you know, non-native
Caller 1 (00:18:29):
Non integer. Yeah.
Leo Laporte (00:18:30):
Non integer, you know, like you want a half a quarter, but not a third because then the, but in my experience, that's actually not the case that, you know, and in fact there are Mac apps that will let you scale kind of at, at anything the monitor can do. So if you really get to the point where, you know, you could try it. But honestly I switch. So the program I'm mentioning is called switch Rex
Caller 1 (00:19:00):
And I've heard
Leo Laporte (00:19:01):
Of it. Yeah. And you can, you can try it and see what you like, see what you like. Apple does all sorts of funky things. You know, this retina thing is just marketing term for, for a dots per inch and the 5k. They do 5k for their monitors because they can, and that sounds like it's better than 4k, but I don't know if that's really the case, you know, dots per inch is a factor of the screen resolution and the screen size,
Caller 1 (00:19:28):
Right?
Leo Laporte (00:19:29):
So if you have a a hundred inch screen, even if it's at 4k, those dots are gonna be visible, right. But if you have a 27 inch display at 5k, you can't see the dots. That's what they mean by retina, by the way, is at a normal viewing distance. You can't see the dots. It's not a very scientific term. So, right.
Caller 1 (00:19:51):
So if I, if I buy a 24 inch 4k display,
Leo Laporte (00:19:55):
You'll be fine. It'll
Caller 1 (00:19:56):
Be too tiny on real estate, but then I can do the scaling yeah. Of two times. And it'll be just like a nine 80 by 10 20. Yeah. It'll probably be like what I got and be for sharp. Then
Leo Laporte (00:20:07):
That's what I often do. I have a, so I go back and forth. So I have a 55 inch 4k display at home. And I go back and forth between native 4k display and a not by the way, not an integr division resolution, but a slightly smaller division resolution, which looks fine by the way. And I, I go back and forth cuz my eyes. But you know, there's ways to accommodate it. The menus are small, but you can make bigger. I think it's one of those things you wanna play with and don't hesitate to, and don't let apple tell you what you can do. That's the bottom line Leo Laport detail
Caller 1 (00:20:41):
Really help us with is spa and the SDC, who do we write to? I'd love everyone to write in. Cuz I'm getting so much spam on my iPhone. It's not funny.
Leo Laporte (00:20:50):
Oh, isn't it terrible. You're right to your phone company. And just hope that they will wise up. We, we talked about this last week there June things should start to ease up as, as this new stir shaking is extended to more smaller carriers. And then ultimately that, so the only ones who CA who don't have to do it as of the end of June, are the ones who, who have a facility like they're a real phone company, but they're in Barbados or somewhere. So they don't, they're not a big phone company, but they at least they have a, an operation center. But right now you could be a virtual phone company and not, not do this authentication, which means you can be they're the ones sending all the spam. But I, but my sense is we'll see if the FCC backs down. But my sense is if this, if this does happen on schedule, as it's supposed to, that's really gonna cut things down by the end of the month, next month. Oh, perfect. In June. Yeah. Yeah. If you can just hang out for a few more months, so
Caller 1 (00:21:45):
Get mobile, your one of your sponsor. Oh good.
Leo Laporte (00:21:47):
Yeah. So they're a T-Mobile and VN O I don't know what they're if I think they probably have the same policies as, as far as tech spa is T-Mobile cuz they're going through T-Mobile. So anything T you know, T-Mobile uses stir and shaken, they have to. So I think you'll get the benefit of it. End of June.
Caller 1 (00:22:07):
Thank you. Yeah.
Leo Laporte (00:22:08):
And as far as monitors, I would, I, you know, I've had 5k, I've done 5k. I think 4k is fine, especially at 24 inches, even 27 inches. Well, first,
Caller 1 (00:22:20):
First thing I'll try to do Leo is try my 20, my Dell ultra sharp, which is a, you know, 1920 by 1200. If that works sharp, I think
Leo Laporte (00:22:28):
You'll be fine. Yeah. And I, and honestly I've used screen Rex. I don't, I don't know if it works on M one. I have to look and see. I'm sure it works, but I don't know if it's it probably doesn't run in the background, I would guess. So you probably just use it even if it's Intel, if, if it's using Rosetta, but so that gives you complete control you every possible resolution that the screen can handle.
Caller 1 (00:22:52):
I don't, yeah. I'm happy with the natives. So on that, I'm just hoping it's just as sharp with the M one just cause it is so many people are saying there's display problems, but they're not clear on what they are so,
Leo Laporte (00:23:02):
Well, I think it's just as clear. I mean the display problem. Yeah. Apple did some weird stuff I think. And I'm not really happy with some of the things they did, but I think in that case, you'll be all right. Yeah. I'm running my 4k with a studio just, you know, Mac studio and it, it looks great. Even a native resolution or even at a third of the resolution. It looks great.
Caller 1 (00:23:25):
Yeah. I would think you could run a native because yeah. You'd be a QD.
Leo Laporte (00:23:29):
Yeah, fine. I'm a, I'm an arms length of way. And I just, you know, for, for programs that I like my browser, I just have the text be bigger than normal. That's all. So I can
Caller 1 (00:23:39):
Read it. Hey, I'm your age. Yep. Yep.
Leo Laporte (00:23:43):
All right. Gotta run.
Caller 1 (00:23:45):
Right. Thank you, Leo.
Leo Laporte (00:23:46):
Pleasure talking to you. Thanks. Thanks so much for calling Paul. Take care. Okay. Bye. Hey. Hey. Hey Sammy.
Sam Abuelsamid (00:23:51):
Hey. Hey Leo. How are you? You're
Leo Laporte (00:23:54):
You're somewhere.
Sam Abuelsamid (00:23:57):
I am at Wal central high school today where I have been spending the weekend judging the first robotics region. Oh, fun.
Leo Laporte (00:24:03):
You're doing it first fun.
Sam Abuelsamid (00:24:05):
Yeah. This is my fourth time doing this.
Leo Laporte (00:24:08):
So you sound fine. You look fine. As long as the bandwidth holds up, we'll be good.
Sam Abuelsamid (00:24:12):
Okay. I'm standing in a spot. That's got a good, strong wifi signal at the moment. Oh good. And okay. Got my pixel bloods in my ears.
Leo Laporte (00:24:20):
Good. Is that what the audio's going through? Yeah. Yeah. It's not, I mean, it's not great, but it's not horrible. You sound like, you know, you're on the phone. That's fine. Yeah. All right. We'll see you in a minute.
Sam Abuelsamid (00:24:31):
Okay.
Leo Laporte (00:24:32):
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Leo Laporte (00:27:20):
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Sam Abuelsamid (00:28:54):
Right now I am at Walback high school in which is Northwest of Detroit. This past this weekend, I have been acting as a judge for a first robotics competition.
Leo Laporte (00:29:06):
Oh, that's neat. I I'm a big fan of first. That is so cool. Good for you.
Sam Abuelsamid (00:29:12):
It's it's a, it's a fantastic program, you know, and you know, we, we talk every week about automotive technology and you know, all the, the stuff that, you know, that goes into transportation, but, you know, somebody's gotta create that stuff, which means we need engineers and design and accountants and everybody else that that's in part of the business. And first robotics was created back in the mid 1990s by Dean Caman who you may have heard of you
Leo Laporte (00:29:38):
Invented the
Sam Abuelsamid (00:29:39):
Segue segue. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But before he did the segue, he did first robotics among lots of other stuff that he's done. And so it's a, it's a fantastic program. And I think it's really, really critically important because so much of what we depend on today in, in the world is based on technology and getting people to move into the technology space. You know, it's been, the studies been found that, you know, if you don't capture kids, you know, in a very early grades, like by third or fourth grade, you know, a lot of kids who would potentially be really good at this stuff often get sidetracked off onto something else. And so you need a pipeline you know, to, to get kids interested in this and get 'em to the developing and, and learning the skills that they need all the way from the lower elementary grades all the way up through high school and on to onto college.
Sam Abuelsamid (00:30:31):
And first robotics, you know, there's multiple competition levels within this. It starts with, you know, down at the pre-K level with the first Lego league then where they start to learn some of the really basic stuff about, you know, how to design and put stuff together and build really basic robots with Legos, and then moving on to the first technology competition. And then the, the first robotics competition, which is at the high school level and, you know, here at this regional competition today we've been had 41 teams from schools all over Michigan competing to try and capture a spot in the state competition next weekend. And hopefully from there, go on to the world finals in Houston at the end of the month. Oh,
Leo Laporte (00:31:16):
Neat.
Sam Abuelsamid (00:31:17):
Yeah.
Leo Laporte (00:31:18):
What do you do as a judge?
Sam Abuelsamid (00:31:21):
So there's a, a bunch of awards that we have to give out. So there's, there's two phases to the competition. There's the actual on field competition. The, the, the teams build robots that they, they have to have, or they can have some autonomous component to them, some autonomous operation component to them. They can be shooters, shooting, picking up balls that look like giant tennis balls about basketball size tennis balls and shooting them into hoppers and then a climbing competition. And you know, the, each year they redesigned the game. So they, they have a different design for the play field. And they have to, the students have to optimize the robot for summer, all of these components of the competition. And so they compete head to head and team three team alliances competing in the game, which lasts about two and a half minutes for each match.
Sam Abuelsamid (00:32:15):
And then the judges we go around and we interview the students from all the team, and we give out a bunch of different awards such as things like engineering, inspiration gracious professionalism, you know, some of this, you know, our team awards that are focused on, you know, building the kind of attitude, good attitude that you need for, for, to be successful in engineering. And then there's also the, the machine awards for things like innovation and control, quality engineering excellence, and, and autonomous control. And so we go and judge all those, and we, we gathered back together and we argue for several hours about who should, which team should win, which awards. And then we write up scripts for 'em and that we have the awards ceremony at the end, after the competition's all done.
Leo Laporte (00:33:05):
Oh, fun. And these are kids who, so many of them will go on to stem careers. So it really gets them excited.
Sam Abuelsamid (00:33:13):
Yeah. A lot of it, yeah. A lot of the kids that I've talked to in the last two days, you know, have told me you know, they weren't necessarily interested in getting into engineering or, you know science or, you know, any kind of stem related career until they got involved with first. And that, you know, really got them interested and realized, you know, what kind of neat things they could do, you know, problem solving techniques and, you know, the teams all have adult mentors, you know, sometimes it's alumni of the programs from the school that come back, you know, college, you know, students that went off to college and come back to help out their, their te their school or teachers or parents or just other people wanna volunteer to, to, to help these kids out. And it's, it's a great program.
Leo Laporte (00:33:58):
Nice. Do you know know of any, any, I guess how long has first been around?
Sam Abuelsamid (00:34:04):
It started in the mid 1990s. I think's 95 or 96. So
Leo Laporte (00:34:07):
There should be some people working in the auto industry today.
Sam Abuelsamid (00:34:09):
Oh, yeah. There's a lot of people. In fact probably about a third of the judging team here today, we had about 15 15 judges, about a third of them actually came up their working as engineers today. And they came up through first. They competed in first as students went off to, to school, became engineers and have now come back and are volunteering in various ways, including judging.
Leo Laporte (00:34:35):
Oh, that's so cool. So great. Yeah. So this high school you're you're at, is it a, is it in in your neck of the woods? Is it an Alani or,
Sam Abuelsamid (00:34:43):
Yeah, it's, it's, it's, it's about 40 minutes from my home. Yeah. so it's Northwest of Detroit
Leo Laporte (00:34:47):
And your kids are out of high school, but did they, did they do first when they were in high school?
Sam Abuelsamid (00:34:52):
Unfortunately my kids were not interested in going down of path. They decided of not, they decided to take a different path in life. Yeah. but but I, I strongly encourage, you know, even, even if you don't necessarily want to get into engineering, you don't feel like you're good at math or science. You know, it's a great way to learn problem solving skills to learn leadership skills. And even for those that aren't necessarily on the science and technology side of it, you know, they need others to participate as well to do things like finding sponsors, working up business plans, getting into budgeting. Yeah. Organizing. So there's a lot of opportunities in first that are beyond just, you know, building this stuff.
Leo Laporte (00:35:30):
Many, many high schools all over the country have first teams first stands for four inspiration and recognition of science and technology. So it's a little bit,
Sam Abuelsamid (00:35:39):
Yeah. It's actually a global program.
Leo Laporte (00:35:41):
Yeah. All over the
Sam Abuelsamid (00:35:42):
World. There's there's teams from all over the world to come to the finals. It's so neat in Houston.
Leo Laporte (00:35:46):
And even if your team doesn't go to the finals, it's just a great opportunity for high school kids to learn about all of this stuff. It's extracurr curricular usually. Right. It's not part of the regular
Sam Abuelsamid (00:35:57):
Curriculum. It is in most cases, but, but in some schools they do have robotics classes. Oh, that's nice. Where first is actually part of the curriculum. Yeah. So depending on what school you're going to, I mean, it's definitely something we're checking out.
Leo Laporte (00:36:09):
I think my kids' school, they did do that. And like your kids, my kids had no interest, but I, I certainly encourage them on doing it cuz it's just, it's very cool. And you don't to be a judge. Do you have to be a roboticist? I guess not,
Sam Abuelsamid (00:36:23):
No, you, you don't you know, anybody that, that wants to volunteer and be a part of this and, you know, help support the kids and, and learn more about it can, can participate go to, I think it's first inspires.org is the website and you can sign up to be a volunteer or nearing the end of the, this year's program Jens at the end of end of April with the, the world finals. But you know, definitely go and sign up. You know, you can be a mentor, a volunteer, you know, working with a school, even if your kids aren't going to school there. Or if you wanna volunteer at these events, they need a lot of there's. A lot of people involved tier was actually putting on the event building the play field and, and so neat all the equipment. So it's, it's a great program. I
Leo Laporte (00:37:05):
Remember my friend, Steve Nia founder of apple co-founder of apple was a, a first judge in Santa Clara. He was a big fan of first big supporter of first in 2020, there were 3,898 teams, 97,000 students, 29,000 mentors, 34 countries. So it is truly a global competition have fun, Sam. Yeah. It's great to talk to you. Talk Leo and great to talk, talk. You too. Are you like rooting for one team? I guess you can't. You're a judge.
Sam Abuelsamid (00:37:38):
No, I, I can't really root for one team, but I'm rooting for all of them to succeed.
Leo Laporte (00:37:42):
Go teams. Thank you, Sam. Laporte the tech guy. We won't we won't make you continue on. Yeah, you got probably tired holding that phone. So anyway, thank you for doing that. That's really good. I'm glad we could do a plug for first cause it's a great,
Sam Abuelsamid (00:38:05):
Yeah, my pleasure.
Leo Laporte (00:38:06):
Yeah. Have fun. Yeah.
Sam Abuelsamid (00:38:07):
This is my fourth. This is my fourth year judging. It's been a lot of fun. Oh
Leo Laporte (00:38:11):
Yeah. So are you just getting started or are you beginning or you?
Sam Abuelsamid (00:38:16):
No, we're actually, we're, we're winding down wind doing the, the elimination rounds right now. We've we've made all our decisions about who's getting which awards and they're doing the elimination competition right now. And then we'll do the awards ceremony after that. Nice. About an hour and a half or so
Leo Laporte (00:38:32):
Have a have fun.
Sam Abuelsamid (00:38:34):
All right. Thanks Sam.
Leo Laporte (00:38:34):
I'll talk, talk to you next week. Take care. Bye-Bye Leo. Laporte talk to me. The tech guy. I'm here for you. Talk to me, Rob Tarzana, California. Hello, Rob.
Caller 9 (00:38:47):
Hey Leo. My wife doesn't receive the majority of her voicemails until a few days after oh. Were left for her. Yeah.
Leo Laporte (00:38:56):
That's no good.
Caller 9 (00:38:57):
No, she's had this problem with several different iPhones and two different carriers Verizon and T-Mobile. And since this problem has occurred, you know, with a couple different carriers, several different flagship iPhones. I wonder if the problem isn't her SIM card or her phone number and wanna know what your thought is.
Leo Laporte (00:39:16):
Yeah, I mean, normally I would blame the carrier because, but remember the iPhone does this visual voicemail thing, is she using that?
Caller 9 (00:39:27):
Are you using that honey?
Leo Laporte (00:39:29):
The visual voicemail. So that
Caller 9 (00:39:30):
Nodding her head? No.
Leo Laporte (00:39:32):
No. So, so there's two ways to get voicemail on an iPhone. One is to, you know, press and hold the number one and actually dial the phone company for your voicemails. My guess is her voicemails would be if she did, that would be on time. But the other way to do it is to go into the I the phone app and look at the, the voicemail, the so-called visual voicemail, they call it visual because you can see the voicemails. You can select them, you can delete them and so forth. And that I think takes some processing from apple. So the trick is for her to check the voicemail through the carrier first, see if it's there. It should be, should be there the minutes somebody leaves it.
Caller 9 (00:40:17):
Is it there, honey? No, she's nodding her head. No
Leo Laporte (00:40:19):
Press and hold long, hold the number one on your phone to dial it. And you're actually dial it's a pain. Nobody wants to do it. You're dialing the carrier. Okay. And the carrier has, has copies of it. What happens then is that then goes to I, I think I'm not sure, but I think it then goes to apple for processing in addition to the, the visual voicemail. Now, if she's there's other things that she could possibly be an issue. So she, so she's saying if she pre, she goes in the phone app and long presses, you know, the dialer long press is one which calls her voicemail. She's saying in that case, she does still has a delay on her voicemail.
Caller 2-A (00:41:10):
Let me, I, this is Gabby. Rob. Hi
Leo Laporte (00:41:12):
Gabby. Yeah. Gabby. Hi. So give that a try. So I, so I would show you, but it it's radio.
Caller 2-A (00:41:20):
It seems to be a miscommunication because my problem is that I don't see or hear that any messages were left.
Leo Laporte (00:41:33):
You don't get notifications either. Yeah,
Caller 2-A (00:41:35):
I have no. And it's turned on, on my phone. Yeah. So I've gone to all the settings. I've done everything.
Leo Laporte (00:41:41):
So is it just a notification issue or when you go to voicemails, even if you haven't notified, you still don't see that voicemail.
Caller 2-A (00:41:48):
I do not see it. And I do not hear it. Yeah.
Leo Laporte (00:41:51):
You will only get a notification from visual voicemail when it arrives in your inbox.
Caller 2-A (00:41:55):
I don't, but you see, I don't get that. You don't, the visual does not appear. The message does not appear. And then maybe five days later, I get 12 messages that all came in last week. You're laughing. But my clients,
Leo Laporte (00:42:09):
No, that's no good. I agree. Right. So we're gonna solve this though. We can solve it. So the first thing to do is, is launch the, the call button, you know, the, the, the green button with the phone on it, launch that, go to the dialer and press and hold one. That calls your phone. Company's voicemail service.
Caller 2-A (00:42:28):
Yeah. I see
Leo Laporte (00:42:28):
That. Yeah. Call. And if all the voicemails are there, even before they get to visual voicemail, we can diagnose that as a separate problem. If they're not in there, even then, there's something you gotta, there's something wrong with the phone company. I suspect that's not the case cuz you've tried it with two different phone companies. So the press and hold long one will give you your current voicemails directly from the phone company.
Caller 2-A (00:42:51):
Yeah. There's nothing there. It's now there's no voice mails there.
Leo Laporte (00:42:54):
So have your husband call and leave a voicemail and then see if you get it immediately. That way.
Caller 2-A (00:43:01):
Well, you see the problem is it's intermittent in
Leo Laporte (00:43:05):
That. Yeah. Yeah. I understand. I'm I understand. But bear with me on this, cuz I'm trying to diagnose this where the issue lies. If you do not get voicemail, when you press and hold the one and you go to the company's voicemail line you're and one just dials. That number is a number for your voicemail. Dials that number. If they're not there, then the only recourses to call the company. My suspicion, my I'd be shocked if they're not there. My suspicion is, is, is it's a failure getting from there to your visual voicemail, which most I users use. And there are a couple of places to look. If you're having trouble with visual voicemail, one is your carrier settings. So make sure that your carrier settings are accurate. And sometimes especially if you change Sims that doesn't update. So you go to settings in general, where you go to about you just check to see if the carrier settings are up to date and you wanna make sure they're up to date.
Leo Laporte (00:44:02):
You can even reset your network settings by going to settings general reset. And there's a entry for resetting network settings that will kind of rehash it. Sometimes that is the problem. The other thing is some carriers, Verizon, yes, T-Mobile maybe have their own visual voicemail. So the next thing to try is downloading the visual voicemail app from your carrier, the one that you're using today. So that may work better. The, the, what I'm trying to diagnose and what I'm trying to say is somebody calls and leaves you a message. The carrier now has it on their system and it should show up immediately. If you call the carrier system, that's why you get the dial number. You put, nobody wants to do this, but this is, this is the old school way of getting voicemail. You remember you would dial a number, press four, to delete, press six, to save.
Leo Laporte (00:44:58):
Remember all that dumb stuff. Apple. When it first came out with the iPhone in 2007, that was one of the big selling points they made a deal with at and T and by the way, it required cooperation between apple and at and T. So visual voicemail wasn't even available when the iPhone spread to other carriers. Initially, that's why the carriers have their own third party, visual voicemail apps, even to this day. So that's an interface between apple and the service. So you want to go press that one, go to the voicemail, do the old school, just like we used to before visual voicemail. See if your message are there. If they're not nothing, the phone can, nothing that can be done to the phone will fix this. That's an issue with your carrier. You gotta call the carrier and say, why are my voicemails coming through?
Leo Laporte (00:45:41):
That's something wrong with their network. I'd be very surprised if that's the case, much more likely. There's a hitch in the get up between that the, the carriers system and the apple them, and the ways to get around that. Granted make sure you update your carriers settings. You gotta have the right data settings. The, the APN settings have to be correct. Sometimes they're not. And the carrier is I, I'm not sure how this works. My guess is the carrier sends a push notification to apple and then sends the data to apple, apple processes. It sends a push to your app. It's internal visual voicemail app, which is then supposed to notify you. If you don't. If, if you have visual voicemail, you never got the notification. Then go check the, the, the call, the phone settings and make sure you've got notifications turned on.
Leo Laporte (00:46:29):
That's another thing. So there's a whole bunch of things along the line. I'd be shocked if it's the carrier, but if it is, then you have to go to the carrier. Then you have to go to the carrier. If, if it's going to the carrier, but not getting your apple, then there are solutions around it. You might try the carrier's third party visual voicemail solution that might solve it for you. It's kind of kind of complicated. And that's because we have this new way of doing it. And by the way, Google phones now do it too. Everybody does visual voicemail, cuz it's such an improvement who wants to call. Do you, do you remember those days in the dim dark days of, of of voicemail where you'd actually dial the phone company's number? I can still do it. I can still do it on my phone. I just have to go to phone and you can still do it on your phone. Pre usually now it may not be set up press and dial one, but if not, then you'll look up the phone number, but usually on most phones, press and hold one. See it's calling my voicemail, 10
Phone (00:47:29):
New voice messages and one fake
Leo Laporte (00:47:32):
Message. Remember those days, and then you press four delete that's. That should work. That should work. If that doesn't work, then you gotta call a phone company. All right, eighty eight eighty eight, ask Lee. I'll tell you what I will put. We have a number of articles that that chat and come up with and all this stuff. I'll put those in the show. Notes, tech guy, labs.com how to reset your carrier network settings. Those could be wrong. Your voicemail, if it, you know, if it's not working call a phone company, that kind of thing. Laporte the tech. Well, Hey, Hey, Hey. Hey. How are you today? Leo Laport here. The guy, time to talk computers, the internet home theater, digital photography, smartphone smart watches, email voicemail, eighty eight eighty eight. Ask Leo the phone number (888) 827-5536, toll free in the us or Canada outside that area. You could still reach us.
Leo Laporte (00:48:29):
You'll have to call using Skype or something like that. 8 8 8 8 2 7 5 5 3 6 website tech guy labs.com. For Gabby will put up a article scooter X has found for me from Mac reports.com voicemails delayed, how to fix it's the same stuff. Pretty much I was talking about. I don't know if it's a, a current problem, you know, like there's a thing going on. I don't think so. I don't think so. I think it's you know, it's one of those technologies when they are interacting, it becomes complicated, you know, and everybody, we, of course, when you have multiple per you, you know, people involved, everybody blames the other person. If you call your phone company, they'll say, oh no, that's Apple's problem. You call apple and say, oh no, that's a phone. Company's problem, George, on the line from Columbus, Ohio O hello, George.
Caller 3 (00:49:24):
Hello, Leo. Thanks for my call.
Leo Laporte (00:49:26):
Thanks for your call. Is exactly what I would say. Welcome. What can I do for you? You?
Caller 3 (00:49:31):
Yes. my cable ISP allows me to receive a monthly discount if I use my own modem, which I recently installed a Netgear cm, 1000 version two, which
Leo Laporte (00:49:47):
That's what I used. Very, very, very good cable mode. You
Caller 3 (00:49:52):
Okay? And I thought I did my research correctly on that.
Leo Laporte (00:49:57):
Yeah, doc is three one. They may not offer it yet, but at some point they will and you'll be ready.
Caller 3 (00:50:02):
Oh yes. I, I get, I get a consistent from, you know, the speed test app and other online speed test. I get a consistent 500 to five to 50 upload. Yeah. Or I mean, download in, I get 50 to 55 upload.
Leo Laporte (00:50:18):
I'm using a net gear cm, 1000 with Comcast. I have gigabit service from Xfinity and I get 980 megabits. It works really well. It's
Caller 3 (00:50:28):
Perfect. And okay. The problem was after I installed this net gear modem, I was getting the same, same exact speeds basically with the supplied is P modem. And, but, and as this, when I'm used, but my upload speeds are just, it's like watching paint dry compared what I was getting with the company supply.
Leo Laporte (00:50:56):
Oh, interesting. So the net gear doesn't do as well. Upload, what are you getting upload?
Caller 3 (00:51:01):
Well, like I said, now, if I use the, the speed test app, it shows same. It's what I've noticed is when I upload like say a video file to my OneDrive or, or to P cloud, or like if I upload manually photos to my, you know, Google account, those are just so much slower than they were with the company's the flight mode.
Leo Laporte (00:51:32):
That's interesting. So why would speed tests be faster than these other uploads? The biggest difference between it is speed test is sending a relatively small number of packets. Yes. And you're sending a much lower number package over a longer period of time. A lot of times what cable companies do is they call it burst, which is it's very fast at first. So it looks like it's going fast and it's test well and speed test, and then it, it slows down, but there could be other issues as well.
Caller 3 (00:52:07):
Yeah. And I'll just give you a few tips. I'm I have very poor vision as I'm legally blind, but you know, through the wonders of windows and high contrast collar schemes and enlargement, I'm, you know, able to do things like this on my own. And I do don't, I don't want to mess up things within the router unless I know specifically what to look for and to do. And since I, I lived the first 45 plus years of life on dial up until
Leo Laporte (00:52:46):
I you're not dying here. This is a lot faster than that. No matter what
Caller 3 (00:52:50):
Until, oh yeah. Until I moved about three and a half years ago, and now I have the wonders of high speed, you know, cable mode.
Leo Laporte (00:52:57):
So the chance is it's interesting. You're using the same router with the, the cable company provided or no,
Caller 3 (00:53:04):
The, the mode, the modem. No, I always have used my own. It's a links ax 60.
Leo Laporte (00:53:10):
Yeah. So the, so even if you're, so what you're swapping in and out is simply the net gear CMS 1000 or cm 1000 versus the cable company's cable mode. This is the only thing that's changing. The routers are saying.
Caller 3 (00:53:23):
And the, and the cable, the cable company supply modem was a, I think it was a scientific.
Leo Laporte (00:53:31):
Yeah, but the okay. But that's what I'm asking about is not that, but so the router is the same cause honestly, I wouldn't blame the cable modem as much as I might blame the router. Now, sometimes the cable company's cable modem comes with the router together.
Caller 3 (00:53:44):
You, it was a combo modem router, but I did not use the router. I, I had turned off the radio on the router to begin with. I I've always used my own wifi router, which I said,
Leo Laporte (00:53:58):
Well, okay, turning off the radio is not enough to turn off the router though. You also have to put it in bridge mode, so it's not doing yeah. And you did do that network address. Oh, okay. Translation. No,
Caller 3 (00:54:08):
Like I said that, it it's just, like I said, the, the, the router, you know, part was out of the equation, obviously.
Leo Laporte (00:54:16):
Yeah. That's what that's, what I'm getting at is, you know, we, when we're doing troubleshooting for stuff like this, we wanna kind of eliminate as many variables as possible. The routers, the first thing that I, I would always suspect if you're getting poor upload speeds, you know, you would wanna make sure your router is not doing something in the middle. Is it always the same computer you're uploading from? Yes. Okay. So then that's the next thing to look at? In other words, I'm not suspecting the, the I'm honestly not suspecting the cable modem. They're dumb devices. They're not doing much at all.
Caller 3 (00:54:50):
Yeah. And I, and I just did not, you know, like I said, I I've got experience, but I don't have experience in the cable modem.
Leo Laporte (00:54:59):
Right. And I mean, it is possible, I guess, you know, you could have a, it could even be a bad cable modem. Yeah.
Caller 3 (00:55:08):
And I was just simply wanting to touch bases and see if you, or somebody in the chat room, you
Leo Laporte (00:55:14):
Know, what is the speed you're getting just outta curiosity.
Caller 3 (00:55:18):
Well, I, I, I'm supposed to be getting 500 megabit,
Leo Laporte (00:55:21):
Which no, but what is the upload speed? You're you're getting
Caller 3 (00:55:24):
Okay. Like I said, the speed test still shows a consistent, you know, 52 to 55 upload. But if I do the old fashioned stopwatch and say like a four gigabyte video file, it comes out to only about four to five megabit uploads.
Leo Laporte (00:55:47):
Yeah. I think that's probably just what the software is doing. It's weird though, that it would be, this is the, the weird thing is that you have tried switching out cable modems with everything else identical. Right. And the, and so the only difference is the cable modem and the, the, the cable modem provided by the cable company is fast, like noticeably faster when you upload those files.
Caller 3 (00:56:12):
Oh yes. It, it would only, it would only take, say like a, a, a three and a half or gig by video file, maybe five minutes, top. I could get a cup of coffee and check my email and it was done. Now it's like a 25 to 30 minute process.
Leo Laporte (00:56:29):
Well, in theory, you've eliminated every possible variable, but the cable modem, right. As long as you're doing exactly the same thing and it's just the cable modem is the difference. Then there's something wrong with, I would think there's something wrong. Neck care. The neck care certainly can do a lot more. I can't remember what my, yeah, that's what
Caller 3 (00:56:47):
I just know if there was any settings for uploads specifically?
Leo Laporte (00:56:52):
Not that I know of. Yeah.
Caller 3 (00:56:54):
One in, I logged into it, it shows I'm connected on 32 channels. It, you know, it shows no errors or gives in anything unusual as far as I can see. Yeah. And even on the cable, the cable companies test page to test your modem shows everything
Leo Laporte (00:57:12):
Well, it's tricky because it, it's not showing up on speed tests. It's only showing up on longer term uploads. And yeah, I, you know, I don't know of anything that the cable modem could be doing unless that's just not working properly. And that, that that's gonna be my, my guess, it's gonna be hard to justify though, because this doesn't show up in the speed test. So certainly signal quality to the cable mode from the outside is important. You know, maybe the scientific American is just a little bit better. You know, at that, or maybe the connection I would look at, maybe the way you're connecting it to the cable modem, make sure that that coax, maybe even try some different coax. That's all I can think of 88, but if somebody else can, maybe they can call or, or, or chat with me and, and, and tell us eighty eight eighty eight, ask Leo, that's the phone number. If you have a better idea, keep listening, George, I'm sorry. I couldn't be more help. Leo. Laporte the tech guy, photo guy, Chris mark coming up. It couldn't even be at the cable company. Right. Old gear says it's probably that cable cover to get back at you for using your own modem
Leo Laporte (00:58:33):
Could be, Could be hello, Chris mock Watts.
Chris Marquardt (00:58:39):
Hey, Leo Laporte.
Leo Laporte (00:58:41):
Do you want me to get an email from you or anything like
Chris Marquardt (00:58:43):
That? No, I didn't send you anything. Driving this whole thing.
Leo Laporte (00:58:47):
All right. Driving, driving, driving. Cool. Yeah. It's all yours. Easier.
Chris Marquardt (00:58:52):
Easier. That
Leo Laporte (00:58:53):
Way. We'll talk in 10.
Chris Marquardt (00:58:55):
Absolutely.
Leo Laporte (00:58:56):
Thank you, sir. Thank you. There is a reset button on the back panel that you can do a factory reset. Sure. I'd also call a comp cable company, make sure that they have the Mac address for the cm 1000. It, they must cuz it wouldn't work if they didn't, but just make sure that they've got everything set properly. You know, cable companies do. One of the reasons there is such a thing as Dous is so that the cable companies can manage your connection. So it's completely possible for the cable company to say, no, I don't want you to have so much zip code. So that's, that's worth kind of calling the problem is you gotta get somebody, a friendly person at the cable company to tell you the cm 1000 manuals actually got a lot of good information in it, but, and I'm looking at troubleshooting here and doesn't mention slow uploads as being something. Yeah. I mean that's why, that's why there's doxy. That's why they want you to use doxy is so that they can manage the connection in all sorts of arbitrary ways. So it's completely possible for them to say, oh yeah. After 30 seconds let's slow him down completely possible. Leo Laport, the tech guy do do do boom. The photo guy, Chris Markot just around the corner, but let's take more calls on the line. Brian from Santa Maria, California. Hi Brian,
Caller 4 (01:00:35):
How you doing Leah?
Leo Laporte (01:00:36):
I'm great. Welcome. How you doing?
Caller 4 (01:00:38):
I'm doing good. I have a, I'm looking for a video, a platform streaming service that I can host independently on my own website. I have a YouTube channel where I, I live high school sports.
Leo Laporte (01:00:52):
Oh neat.
Caller 4 (01:00:53):
And I had some problems recently where YouTube randomly decided to close down my channel and then through a five, I was able to get it back, but I don't want to face that problem.
Leo Laporte (01:01:05):
Yeah. So this is a, you know, the advantage of YouTube is, is free and I'm gonna tell you any other solution, you know, might cost you money. Twitch would be the other, the other reasonable competitors, twitch.tv. I don't know if you've tried them yet.
Caller 4 (01:01:21):
I have not. Yeah.
Leo Laporte (01:01:22):
So that's is Amazon service in both cases, Google and Amazon kind of flexing their network. Prowes showing off what they can do. Streaming hundreds of thousands of video streams simultaneously. And all of that. I suspect that for at least for Amazon, that's why they have Twitch is to show off what AWS can do. Youtube makes money for Google, quite a bit of money for Google. So there's no question why they, why they do it. The problem is, yeah, you, you know, there's terms of service and, and there's also unfortunately quite a bit of automation and enforcing those and they make mistakes all the time. But at least if you're, we are on, for instance, we stream on both Twitch and YouTube. So if one of them knocks you off, unless you have the other one as a backup and it's not too hard to do both, to be honest with you, it's not, you just have to have the capability of sending two streams at the same time instead of one.
Caller 4 (01:02:17):
Yeah. I, I currently use OBS as my yeah. Broadcast and through the way I have it set up only one is free and then I have to subscribe in order to get two or more outlets.
Leo Laporte (01:02:28):
Right. And you also have to have a lot of bandwidth and I, I imagine you're streaming from the stadiums. Right.
Caller 4 (01:02:35):
I, I streamline from the stadiums on a, on a 5g hot.
Leo Laporte (01:02:38):
Yeah. So you're, that's gonna be the biggest qualm in sending two stream simultaneously is limited limited bandwidth. So yeah, you probably should stick with one, try Twitch. Twitch is free. It's very much the same as YouTube. Except that unlike YouTube it's focused on live streaming, YouTube of course makes most of its money on downloads. Do you want the, and, and you can do this on Twitch. Do you want it to record your stream?
Caller 4 (01:03:05):
Yeah. Well, what we're looking for is as the company I work for, we were kind of looking for a, to put a paywall up on videos that aren't live, ah, on like our collection. So if you wanna watch a video, that's not live, you have to, to pay a value to yeah. Prevent scouting from other teams. Oh,
Leo Laporte (01:03:27):
Clever. Oh, that's interesting. Oh, that, that's why you do that. Huh? Twitch has probably some ways to do it, but they're not, they're not so much focused on store and forward. In fact, what you could do with Twitch is do it live. You can record as you're doing it either on Twitch or in OBS, and then upload those videos to YouTube where you already have a pay system set up. That would be one way to do it as well. And then you still have, and by the way, you know, then you, then you kind of have both platforms if you want. The, another way to stream live, I guess. Do, how many viewers do you have?
Caller 4 (01:04:04):
Depending on the score, we didn't get anywhere from three to a thousand. Oh, okay. 300 to a thousand, excuse me. Okay.
Leo Laporte (01:04:11):
300 to a. Okay. So there are other platforms like telegram. I'm not sure what the limit on telegram is for the size of a group, but you can you could video stream from telegram. For instance, there are a lot of services like this Facebook telegram and so forth. The thing is the number of people. Let me see how big you can make a telegram group. I remember they expanded it significantly. Oh, they say unlimited. Okay. Wow. So that's another one you could look at and that would give you some capabilities in terms of you could have it be a private group. People could have, have to get an invitation and so forth. So that's another way to do it for people to use it though. They'd have to have telegram. I think they could do telegram in the browser.
Leo Laporte (01:04:58):
I think they do have a browser version of it. Just a little more complicated. Everybody ons stands how to stream YouTube. Probably most people could figure out how to stream Twitch. It's very similar. You give 'em an address and they click it and it goes there. Something like telegram or Facebook might make it a little more complicated. Facebook would be another good one to look at. I think now I don't know about VI now there's chat room saying Vimeo, but does Vimeo do live streaming chat room? I don't remember them doing live streaming. Oh yeah. Host virtual events. So Vimeo, the problem with Vimeo, the only reason I'd worry a little bit about Vimeo is they've, they've moved more towards a pay model. They really want big companies to pay for that. And I don't know if you want to pay for your streaming or not.
Caller 4 (01:05:41):
I I'm interested in, in putting a small budget towards it. Okay. To, to create my own base on my own television station on the internet.
Leo Laporte (01:05:50):
Yeah. That's kind of what we do. Yeah. if you go to TWiT that
Caller 4 (01:05:55):
What I was looking for and then, and then using Twitch and YouTube as secondary outlets to, you know, to gain revenue through, through short clip videos.
Leo Laporte (01:06:06):
So we, we stream live@livedottwi.tv. You can street, see this show there streaming live. It's like a TV station when we aren't doing live stuff. We have reruns. And we do that on YouTube live U stream, which is owned by IBM. And I think we're grandfathered in there. I think you have to pay a new stream, but that's another one to look at. They're designed to be doing exactly what you're talking about. And Twitch Vimeo does it as well. Facebook does it as well. Facebook might be best for your audience cuz they probably all are on Facebook video Vimeo. Now that I look at it absolutely does live streaming. That's a big part of their business model. So that's another, I, I really like Vimeo. I just worry about how much it would cost in the long run, but you could talk to them and see, And OBS, OBS would work. Twitch has its own version of OBS, which is basically a OBS. So if you're already familiar with OBS, you could either use OBS and give it your Twitch endpoint or you could do it using their somewhat simpler OBS tool.
Leo Laporte (01:07:10):
So the main thing, this is an expensive thing to do, you know? I mean we're very lucky that there are companies like Twitch and, and YouTube. It'll do it for free cuz it lot of bandwidths. Yeah. How fun are you? Do you do the play by play? Are you the engineer? What do you do?
Caller 4 (01:07:26):
I do every actually I do a little bit of everything. I, I am the play by play guy, but I, I set up the, the broadcast every game. I, I, I, oh, fun. I program the, I program the network for the, for YouTube and
Leo Laporte (01:07:38):
That's awesome.
Caller 4 (01:07:39):
The B system and everything well
Leo Laporte (01:07:41):
Have fun. That's great. Leo Laport, the tech guy, camera guy coming up. That's really cool. And, and is it just regional? Which region is it's just around Santa Maria or
Caller 4 (01:07:54):
Yeah, I, I, I work for mission college prep. Oh neat. It's a out of San Lupo the private high school. So
Leo Laporte (01:08:02):
It's all their games.
Caller 4 (01:08:04):
Yeah. It was all their games football and basketball. And we, we travel the company I work for called prep sports network. Ah okay. And we travel with the team.
Leo Laporte (01:08:14):
I would think that they would've, that company would have all sorts of ways of handling this. Yes.
Caller 4 (01:08:20):
Well, well we're, we're, we're a startup company is what we are and got it. We started, we started in radio using
Leo Laporte (01:08:27):
Audio only. Yeah,
Caller 4 (01:08:29):
Yeah. Doing audio only. And then the pandemic brought us into video and, and now I'm trying to expand the video model into something bigger and better than what it is.
Leo Laporte (01:08:40):
Great idea. Yeah. Great idea. Vimeo would probably be a good company to talk to because that's, you know, they're, you know, then you would have a deal as prep sports with Vimeo and they would give you all sorts of capabilities. You wouldn't have, otherwise you'd get more, much better service, but at a higher price.
Caller 4 (01:08:58):
Yeah. So that's why I was looking at possibly a, a, a pay channel. Yeah. You know where I'm paying for the service.
Leo Laporte (01:09:04):
Yeah. You might be able to make it back. Exactly. Exactly.
Caller 4 (01:09:08):
So I'm not getting knocked off the air either. Cause cause that creates headaches. When parents start calling go
Leo Laporte (01:09:14):
Where's my where's my kid.
Caller 4 (01:09:16):
Yeah. I, I, I, that, that drove me insane for a week. Everybody asking me where it is.
Leo Laporte (01:09:23):
Oh, I'm sorry. Yeah. That's that's terrible. What did they knock you off for?
Caller 4 (01:09:27):
That's why like the, the only way to do that is to create your own.
Leo Laporte (01:09:31):
Why did they, what was their excuse
Caller 4 (01:09:34):
Originally? They said it was full or content. It was inappropriate content. What? And I'm like, we're a high school sports chem. What inappropriate about that. And then they said it was hate speech. And then I'm like, oh
Leo Laporte (01:09:49):
My God, that's the problem with these automated tools. That's exactly the problem. They're completely automated. There's no human. Obviously when you appealed, finally got a human involved. They said, oh yeah sorry. Oh, but, but you, but that took you a week. That's crazy. Over
Caller 4 (01:10:06):
A week. It took me over a week and they said it was hate speech. So I, I, I narrowed it down to, I guess when I said somebody took a bad shot.
Leo Laporte (01:10:13):
Oh, you're kidding.
Caller 4 (01:10:15):
You know? Oh,
Leo Laporte (01:10:16):
That's hate speech.
Caller 4 (01:10:17):
Oh, that must be hate speech.
Leo Laporte (01:10:20):
He gave him an elbow. That's hate speech. No, you know, it's all, it's completely automated. And you know, that's the problem you can't argue with robots. So look at, I think Vimeo might be a better platform for you just for that reason alone.
Caller 4 (01:10:33):
I appreciate that. Hey, I
Leo Laporte (01:10:34):
Appreciate your call. Thanks. Let me know how it works out.
Caller 4 (01:10:37):
Hey, you will
Leo Laporte (01:10:38):
Cool. Brian, take care. Hey, we're gonna have more tech guy in just a bit, but I want to tell you about this thing. I discovered I am using it religiously. Now. I think we're all concerned about pollution, about saving the planet about plastics in the ocean. I am, I am in every way in my life trying to get rid of single use plastics and blue land provides me with this incredible solution that saves me money, saves water, saves transportation costs and saves plastics. Do you know an estimated 5 billion with a B plastic hand soap and cleaning bottles are thrown away every year. I love liquid hand soap. It's very convenient, but I don't love the waste. Well, another problem by the way is 90% of that cleaning solution or the hand soap or any liquid product that you use in the home. 90% of it just water.
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Leo Laporte (01:12:21):
You've got foaming, ham soap. It's great. And by the way, they have some of the best scents ever at Christmas. Do this next Christmas. I got all the Christmas scents. So now when I wash my hands, I have 'em all over the house. But the, when I want my hands at the kitchen sink, I smell like gingerbread. I love it. I know it's weird. They have lots of beautiful scents that are appropriate year round, Iris agave para lemon, lavender eucalyptus. I think I have a cucumber lemon in my in my bathroom. I just love it. It's not just hand soap though. It's all that household cleaners. And they come in these beautiful, full bottles. Those in that case, they're lightweight plastic, but you don't throw 'em out at the end of the bottle. You put a tablet in, you put the water in your water, no shipping and you get these great cleaners.
Leo Laporte (01:13:05):
They've got toilet cleaners. Oh, in fact, good news because they sell out of this every time the Blueland tablet, toilet cleaner is back in stock. You're gonna want to, before it sells out again, these are great. You throw it in the toilet. You go do the rest of your chores. Do some vacuuming, whatever. Come back, scrub the toilet you're done. It's fantastic. They have kits. So it's great. You can start with the clean essentials kit. There's a hand soap duo kit. It was by the way, housewarming gift for my daughter. When you moved to a new apartment, gave her the whole thing was a wonderful house, warming gift. They have laundry, tablets, dishwasher, tablets, plastic free. So they really, this is a great way to do it. You put 'em in just, you know, and they do a great job on the laundry.
Leo Laporte (01:13:49):
Actually, Lisa did an experiment on me. I didn't even know it. She said, instead of using the other ones, I'm not gonna tell you you win, but I'm gonna swap in the blue land. I didn't couldn't tell the difference. Oh, we use their dryer balls. They get these they're wool dryer balls. They're fantastic. I it's kind of, that's an old fashioned solution. I guess I'd never seen 'em before. I love it. Instagramable bottles. They're beautiful. You will love them. They don't have a lot of advertising on it. They're just very simple, but they're forever bottles. They started $10 when you buy a kit and you use them forever. You can always get new ones if you decide. But that's the idea is to really eliminate the single use plastics. The refill tablets started just too dollars. So you're saving a lot of money. You're saving the planet, saving the money and you're not, you know, I think sometimes people think, well, it's gonna be a sacrifice.
Leo Laporte (01:14:38):
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Chris Marquardt (01:15:49):
Hello. Just finishing up the, the, the manuscript for the third of the film photography book, which exciting we just found out is going to go back into a translation. So it will be out. Oh,
Leo Laporte (01:15:59):
Good. In English. Oh, good. Do you do the translation? Cause your English is perfect.
Chris Marquardt (01:16:04):
It's not perfect. And I, I, I look over it. I try to supply whatever I can and then a native speaker.
Leo Laporte (01:16:13):
Yeah. So I think 90% of the people listening go, what do you mean? He's not a native speaker? No, he's from Germany. This guy this guy's English though is impeccable. I think you could probably do your own translations
Chris Marquardt (01:16:25):
30, 40 years to learn
Leo Laporte (01:16:28):
To
Chris Marquardt (01:16:28):
Practice. So it does help. It does help.
Leo Laporte (01:16:30):
It does help. So today what is our top?
Chris Marquardt (01:16:34):
Well, so here's the thing. Do you, do you, you probably are the guy with a camera in your surroundings. I'm the guy with a camera in my surroundings. And a lot of listeners will be the person with the camera. And of course you get asked to take photos at events, a party, or you know, the best company and you can make a photographers, tell them you have such a great camera. It must take great pictures. Can you take some for us? Of course that's never the camera. It's it's the photographer, but you will be the person who gets asked to be the party photography event photo, maybe even the wedding photographer or there's some, some social gathering of sorts.
Leo Laporte (01:17:14):
I always say no to that too much pressure.
Chris Marquardt (01:17:17):
Yeah. But you, you, well, it might be good practice, you know, that's the thing and or someone might pay you for it. So what I did just the other night is I did cover an event. So I want to just briefly go over a few things there that have helped me in the past to make that a compelling to make the, the result, a compelling product or story or something that people will like to look at. What I tend to do is, well, first of all, use whatever camera you have. Okay. Especially today's even smartphones have night mode. They're good. And some events might be a bit on the dark side. So you can get away with quite a lot there. Of course, if you have a bigger camera with swappable lens and so on, then that is your tool of choice, but I've S shot the other night with my DSLRs, but also with my smartphone iPhone perfect tool for a
Leo Laporte (01:18:21):
Lot of these, if somebody hires you to shoot their wedding, you're shooting it with a camera phone. I, I might be,
Chris Marquardt (01:18:26):
I'm not necessarily saying a wedding. No, of course not. But, but here's the thing, here's the thing. There are three or four shots that I took throughout the night that I couldn't get any other way, like a panoramic shot of the audience, kind of that kind of stuff. That was the best way to do it with a smartphone and throw them in and no one has complained. So Hey, so I tend to to split these kind of things into phases. There's a let, let me just bring up a few slides. There's just a few photos here from that event. So first thing is you have a preparation phase, which is before the event, then you have during the event, then you, after the event. And the thing I like to do is this, and this is kind of a reportage.
Chris Marquardt (01:19:10):
This is a, a, just, just me tagging along and looking what's going on here. During the setup, don't forget the details. Don't forget the, even the juxtapositions, here's an example of a, of a mixing board the look over a mixing board onto the stage. So this was a performative event on a stage. And it was a fairly, a fairly big setup. I think we are talking about thousand a thousand people in the audience. So and it's good to be there early. It's good to be, to make yourself familiar with the venue. So, you know, what's going on and then
Leo Laporte (01:19:47):
Look for angles too. I always look for places. I could go to shoot something different in interesting, like,
Chris Marquardt (01:19:53):
And, and look for
Leo Laporte (01:19:54):
A great angle, right? Going up to the sound board.
Chris Marquardt (01:19:57):
Absolutely. And, and look for angles and also look for, for these things before. So when in this case, when the lights are out, you'll have to fight your way through like black curtains and things. And then it's better to know where to go. When you check that out up front the whole setup procedure is it is part of the story. It's part of the story and what you'll also notice is that it works better if you have what we call coverage and coverage is not just what's on the photo, but how it's shot. It's more like a throw in a few wide angle shots, throw in a few Teleo shots. This is this is your, your chance to play with all your fancy lense. Or if you have a new iPhone with all the built-in cameras there, the telephone or the wide angle, the, the medium sides. I like behind the scenes stuff, cuz that's what people usually don't get to see right. People in the audience, people out in the front. So this was, this was a, a proper, like a television product. So I was I just enjoyed being backstage and looking over people's shoulders and they have all these nice mixers and these nice panels with a lot of buttons on them and screens and things. It adds context. It adds context later.
Leo Laporte (01:21:24):
It's also interesting, as you said, especially people don't get to go back to stage. It's always fun to see backstage
Chris Marquardt (01:21:30):
And, and for, and for people like us who are more on the techy side, you know, it's, it's, that's, that's exciting. That's very exciting to see. And even you probably after all these years, you still like to play with the technology. Oh
Leo Laporte (01:21:42):
Yeah, absolutely. That's
Chris Marquardt (01:21:44):
Definitely has. There's definitely an, an attraction there. And then details of people here's here's a hand of one of the performers holding his glasses.
Leo Laporte (01:21:54):
I like this. This is not something you would normally see in event photography. Just a simple detail. All you're seeing is the hand in the glasses, but it's, it speaks volumes. It's great.
Chris Marquardt (01:22:04):
And hands do speak volumes. All hands are so important and it's a detail and, and it, it tells a bit of the story. Maybe there's some anticipation that hasn't started yet. And, and there's some concentration going on. There's all of these things that you can place in a photo like that. And then of course, like there's a screen with something on, take a picture of that screen from a weird angle that's of an art seat kind of shot you in, in the setup. And then again, a wider angle shot, a Teleo shot, just combine these and cover whatever you get. And then during, during a performance like that find a different perspective. You can shoot from the front, but I've actually managed to make my way behind the stage and stick the cat camera or stick the lens through some curtains and shoot a picture. That's more from the perspective of the performers. And don't forget the audience. And if you are not sure about, I mean, this is, this was a massed audience because we are still in the pandemic. So everyone was wearing a mask and it ended up being a lot of photos from behind, like up around the soundboard and behind
Leo Laporte (01:23:14):
Because you didn't want to get the masks or,
Chris Marquardt (01:23:17):
Well, this leaves out the mask is also, it's a privacy thing in Germany. That's yeah. So you, you end up, you end up trying to find ways around whatever things are there.
Leo Laporte (01:23:26):
Germans crack me up because while they have no hesitancy to all get naked in a sauna they really don't want their pictures shown on, on the screen. They really want their,
Chris Marquardt (01:23:39):
Or, or you combining the pictures on a sauna. That's a definite note. No,
Leo Laporte (01:23:42):
That would be a note as well. I'm sure. Yeah, yeah. Is it's a, it's a fascinating in fact we sometimes call it blur because in Germany Google maps has to blur the F the fronts of buildings of homes, because people don't wanna see those. None of them. Yeah. Only bond request. Yeah. Yes, I do. People don't want their homes seen on Google maps. Hey, Hey, Hey, whatever, whatever these are, this is great advice. It's something you're right. People don't normally think about, but if you are the guy with the camera or gal and you get to be known that way, you are going to be asked to do this. And even if you're not the opportunity to, I often maybe cuz I'm anti social, take the take advantage of it and say, I'll be the photographer. So I don't have to a be at the party. Chris Markt is@photosensei.photo. Our, our word of the week or of the month is
Chris Marquardt (01:24:35):
Expensive.
Leo Laporte (01:24:35):
Expensive. Take a picture, illustrating TG expensive tag at TG expensive upload to our flicker group. We'll talk about it next week. Thank you, Chris MEA will no longer allow the sharing of publicly available private home addresses. Well, I would hope not. That's called docking. Thank you. That was a, I really enjoyed those photos. I especially like the, one of the speakers sitting there thinking about the, the, what he was gonna say and the shots I didn't get to the speakers.
Chris Marquardt (01:25:09):
I didn't get to the after party. That's
Leo Laporte (01:25:13):
Oh, this is great. What was the, what was the event?
Chris Marquardt (01:25:18):
This is a, this is a German podcast. Nice. A, a big German podcast and they do their life sometimes do a live show in front of an audience. How fun
Leo Laporte (01:25:27):
This
Chris Marquardt (01:25:28):
Was a fairly big production, this town around, so,
Leo Laporte (01:25:31):
Yep. Yeah.
Chris Marquardt (01:25:32):
It's fun.
Leo Laporte (01:25:34):
Very cool. It's fun. Very cool. It is nice to be asked to do stuff like that. Don't ask me though.
Chris Marquardt (01:25:41):
All right, Chris, it was also the first, the first time in years. And you were with that many people. I
Leo Laporte (01:25:46):
Know. Isn't that great. It's such a good feeling. Yeah. Well, I know things are getting rough again, but maybe we can bully our way through this one and
Chris Marquardt (01:25:58):
Get to
Leo Laporte (01:25:58):
Get to normal. Thank you, Chris.
Chris Marquardt (01:26:02):
Thank you. Take
Leo Laporte (01:26:02):
You again next week. Byebye. Bye. Bye. Leo Laport, the tech guy, 88 88. Ask Leo Shane on the line. Our next call from Indianapolis, Indiana. Hello, Shane.
Caller 5 (01:26:14):
Hey Leo, can you
Leo Laporte (01:26:15):
Hear me? Come on, closer to the phone.
Caller 5 (01:26:19):
Let's see. I'm trying to figure out which mic
Leo Laporte (01:26:22):
You're you're on the other Mike, the other one. Not, not that one. The other one. Anyway, what what's going on and we'll figure I, I can, I can hear you. It's just your distant.
Caller 5 (01:26:33):
Okay. All right. Yeah, so here's my problem. I'm beginning my Twitch street and my feel is my stick is sugar skulls and I wear a skull mask and I play guitar in music. I
Leo Laporte (01:26:54):
Right. Sounds awesome.
Caller 5 (01:26:56):
That right.
Leo Laporte (01:26:56):
Sugar skulls are feature of the Mexican day of the dead. Yes. In fact, when you see the day of the dead iconography, I didn't not know this. That's, that's actually sugar, skulls, not human skulls. When you see those all over. So is it Twitch, TV slash sugar skulls?
Caller 5 (01:27:12):
I believe that's it. Yes.
Leo Laporte (01:27:13):
Awesome. And what kind of music do you play?
Caller 5 (01:27:17):
All kinds of music. Like I, I write like funk, I write heavy metal. I write just all kinds.
Leo Laporte (01:27:24):
Nice.
Caller 5 (01:27:26):
So here's where the problem lies, right. Is Bluetooth for some reason. And I am, I'm a desktop engineer by trade. Yeah.
Leo Laporte (01:27:39):
Which, which means Bluetooth to you is an anomaly, an abomination, a crime against humanity. Okay. Go ahead. A
Caller 5 (01:27:48):
Place all users have of, I can't connect my Bluetooth.
Leo Laporte (01:27:51):
It's terrible. It's terrible.
Caller 5 (01:27:55):
You're not allowed to do that. Stop doing that. Anyways, so what I was planning on doing was taking some Bluetooth head Budds and putting them inside the mask. And that way I could hear or monitor books going on. Well, for some reason, windows 11 does not like Bluetooth or any of the Bluetooth I devices I have. And I've also seen this, like I've got of course windows 10 devices, but, and they, they seem to connect fine. But of course, you know, I, on my personal PCs, I've, I've updated the windows 11. And then I tried my phone or phone link, I guess, is what it's called now to see if you know, I can work out some kind of connection there. Well, well even the phone link will gives me an error that says I've got some kind of Bluetooth.
Leo Laporte (01:28:47):
And by the way, I think that's the problem right now is that your microphone is not connecting.
Caller 5 (01:28:55):
I dunno which one it's
Leo Laporte (01:28:59):
People sometimes say, you're the tech guy. Why do you have technical difficulties? Because there we go, whatever that is, that's the microphone. That's the microphone that loud one there people always say, why aren't you having so much problems tech guy, because I'm the tech guy. I use more stuff and I mess up more often as a result. So
Caller 5 (01:29:17):
This, this is better.
Leo Laporte (01:29:18):
Yes. So much better. So the issue is that you want this micro tell me again, cause I'm, I'm a little confused.
Caller 5 (01:29:27):
I want to use the Bluetooth as like a, a, a wireless monitor, right.
Leo Laporte (01:29:32):
So you can listen. Okay.
Caller 5 (01:29:34):
So I can listen. And if I hold the okay, so let's say I,
Leo Laporte (01:29:39):
Most of the time, I gotta tell you when you have a microphone that you're using with a computer very often, they'll like the Yeti and the audio Technica, ATR microphones they'll have their own headphone Jack on them because Bluetooth adds some latency. And the worst thing in the world, if you're talking is having even a few hundred milliseconds latency. Cause it sounds like your Lou Gehr at Yankee stadium it's well,
Caller 5 (01:30:04):
Playing music really messes with, and
Leo Laporte (01:30:06):
Music's even worse
Caller 5 (01:30:07):
Are moving. You're like, wait a minute. I'm oh yeah.
Leo Laporte (01:30:09):
You don't want that lag at all. Yeah. So maybe the trick is not to do Bluetooth monitoring
Caller 5 (01:30:15):
Wire, you think? Yeah. Okay.
Leo Laporte (01:30:17):
Bluetooth adds latency, inevitably, cuz of the way it works,
Caller 5 (01:30:21):
Which you did had answer a question a while back where I was talking about asking about the Bluetooth mini connectors and you were right. They do add latency. Yeah. So as you're in your music, you know, you're like, okay, well this is digital music should be fine. But
Leo Laporte (01:30:36):
The case of death for musicians is this latency. And unfortunately it's, as you know, as an engine air, it's predominant in computing a lot of musicians will not use Linux because until recent or Android, because until recently the Linux Colonel had issues with latency, they've worked very hard with pipe wire and other solutions to fix that. And I think they have fixed it, but you know, that's important. One reasons, I think a lot of musicians use max to cause very, very low latency. Non-Existent latency.
Caller 5 (01:31:06):
Yeah. That's the one thing that I do use a Mac for, for yep. Of course. The other good thing is promoting into a windows box. Right? If you're, If you're a windows admin man, the that's about to the only thing you can do. Yeah.
Leo Laporte (01:31:19):
Okay. Anytime you ever try to do a happy birth, everybody knows this. When they're doing remote work from home. If you try to sing happy birthday to a colleague on zoom, it never works because you're not in sync. Everybody's a little bit different and a little bit off. And it's the worst thing I ever heard,
Caller 5 (01:31:37):
Which is something I've been looking for for like ever is a wait for all musicians to collab on a song through either teams or
Leo Laporte (01:31:48):
There are ways there are because of this, there are companies that have formed to do this and software and, and all sorts of stuff because during COVID everybody's wanted to do remote collaboration. Right, right. It's a historically hard thing to do. And I don't have experience with the ones that do this, but there, if you search for it, you'll find many tools that purport to do this. They're trying to do this. This is something everybody's trying to solve. It's hard because compression, compression's the real problem. You gotta compress it before you put it out over the pipe and compression takes time and time equals latency. So there is somebody in the chat room. Thank you. Retcon five says there is a monitor for latency in windows called relend or from relend.com C monitor for windows 11. It checks it for process real time, audio processing. That's kind of interesting.
Caller 5 (01:32:48):
Is this a app that I would have to? Yeah.
Leo Laporte (01:32:51):
And I don't know. It looks like it. I don't know if they charge for it. Doesn't look like they do, but it's, it's a, it's a real time. Audio suit, bill checker. I hope it has a big thing that says this is unsuitable Shane. I I, so sugar skull, huh? And you are not at twitch.tv/sugar skull. So but S U G a R S K U L L on Twitch TV. And you're gonna do live guitar performances.
Caller 5 (01:33:24):
It's spelled a little different it's with S H for sugar.
Leo Laporte (01:33:29):
S H U or S H a S H U G a R sugar, sugar skull. SHSU sugar skull. That's a French purse. Okay. We're gonna work that out. Shane. You're gonna call me back and you're gonna tell me so we can give you a plug. How about that? We'll do I love watching live music on, on Twitch and YouTube. It's great. Reddit has a live channel. Our pin amazing.
Caller 5 (01:33:55):
Like we used to have to go through bars. Yeah. And everything else. And yeah, new, new kids and, and new musicians are on TWiT and are Twitch. And I'm like what?
Leo Laporte (01:34:07):
I see so much. I see so much great music. What it reminds me though. I, I had this epiphany. I was in the New York subway and there's a person there, brilliant musician playing like their heart out just for a few pennies. As somebody walks by in a subway way. And the epiphany was, there are many, many very talent musicians that never get to perform and never make a living doing it.
Caller 5 (01:34:30):
You just tip somebody five bucks on Twitch and they're ecstatic about it. And you're like, well, budget coffee is all. Yeah.
Leo Laporte (01:34:38):
Yeah. They, there are people making some pretty good money on Twitch. They're millionaire on Twitch. We know this cuz it leaked out. But most of them, I don't think are playing guitar. I think mostly they're playing video games. Hey, good luck to you. It's
Caller 5 (01:34:51):
Yeah. It's sugar. S H U G a S K U L L Z
Leo Laporte (01:34:56):
S H U G a S K U L L Z.
Caller 5 (01:35:02):
Yes.
Leo Laporte (01:35:02):
Well there's one way to stand out sugar skulls. I'll look for it. Hey, thank you. It's great to talk to you, Shane.
Caller 5 (01:35:11):
All right. Thank you very much.
Leo Laporte (01:35:12):
It is transformative for creatives, YouTube, Twitch, Reddit. I mean it's, we live in an amazing times for somebody who, who wants, you know, to perform for others. It's really remarkable. Leo. Laporte the tech guy. Oh, Hey. Hey. Hey. How are you today? Leo Laporte here. The tech guy time talk computers, the internet home theater, digital photography's smart phones, smart watches. Well that jazz 88 88 ask Leo 8, 8, 8, 8 2 7 5 5 3 6, toll free from anywhere in the us or Canada hour. Number three of the tech guy show kicks off with Charles in Springfield, Illinois. Hello, Charles.
Caller 6 (01:35:58):
Good afternoon, Leo. Good
Leo Laporte (01:35:59):
Afternoon.
Caller 6 (01:36:02):
I've got a a radio sync problem with trying to get local broadcasters for video that's on like cable TV.
Leo Laporte (01:36:15):
Oh, you wanna watch a ball game, but you don't wanna listen to the terrible TBS announcers. You wanna listen to your fine home team announcers.
Caller 6 (01:36:25):
Exactly. Yeah. And for the LA for the last few years, I've had a portable radio called a sports sync radio, which would do that in half, second increments. Oh, cool.
Leo Laporte (01:36:37):
Yeah. Just to turn them yeah, yeah, yeah.
Caller 6 (01:36:40):
Up to 16 seconds. But now the delay's gotten more than that
Leo Laporte (01:36:45):
Really that's a lot,
Caller 6 (01:36:48):
It's more like 25 to 30 seconds on some broadcasts and this radio has got a new one, supposedly that will go up to a minute. But for the last nine months it's not been available. So either it's a chip shortage or it yeah.
Leo Laporte (01:37:04):
Probably
Caller 6 (01:37:05):
Container chip off the LA coast.
Leo Laporte (01:37:07):
Yeah. Yeah. These chip shortages hurt so many, so many things. I it's a cool idea. I didn't know. There were such things these radios that would actually do the sink
Caller 6 (01:37:20):
Software solution.
Leo Laporte (01:37:21):
Yeah. In fact, a lot of these days. So I used to, you know, I, when my giants were in the world series some years ago same problem. I didn't wanna watch the national announcers. I wanted to hear my good local guys and many TV. Well, I, I guess I did it with my I'm trying to think how I did it. Oh, I know how I did it. So I had the, I had, I would I had the game on the TiVo, but you could do this with the DVR and I'd pause it. And the trick is to pause at the back crack and I'm listening on the radio and I'm waiting for that back crack, cuz that's as close to an instantaneous sound as you can get. And as soon as I hit here, the back crack press play. So that's a very, that's a poor man's way of doing that, but it worked. And then I could listen to play by play on the radio. The back crack might be off by a little bit, but not enough to be annoying.
Caller 6 (01:38:15):
But the radio's always ahead.
Leo Laporte (01:38:16):
Yeah. Yeah. Well,
Caller 6 (01:38:19):
In
Leo Laporte (01:38:19):
This case I'm thinking the radio's behind, you're saying it's more than 25 seconds ahead.
Caller 6 (01:38:26):
Yes. Wow. Cause it's, it's like over the air from a local station and it's not bouncing off a bunch of satellites for the video.
Leo Laporte (01:38:35):
Yeah. And you can't make a TV signal, move, move, move into the future. Right. So I guess that system, I don't know, maybe I was, I wonder why, how that worked for me somehow. It worked yeah. If the radios, if the audio is ahead, that's a little more tr challenging. There are, there are ways to do that. There is a, a something called Learfield the chatroom's just given me called sync my game. Oh. And you use an app. Okay. So this is an app and you do the same thing that I did, which is you pause, you mute your TV, audio, pause the game at, say the back crack, open the app, wait for the audio to catch up. In other words, the app is in the other direction it's behind intentionally and then you can sing 'em up just like I did. So that's one way to do it with a, with an app. And in fact, I think if you use the MLB app, it probably is behind streaming. Audio is often way behind, right. Cuz of the nature of how streaming audio has to be put on the internet. So use the M is it baseball?
Caller 6 (01:39:48):
Well, I've done NFL. I've done college sports and now baseball. Yeah.
Leo Laporte (01:39:53):
So so that's what I would try with baseballs try the MLB app.
Caller 6 (01:39:59):
Well, I can't get my local announcers on the
Leo Laporte (01:40:01):
Oh yeah. Okay. Tune in. That's what I use, you know, I bet you that's what I was doing. So I'd pause the TiVo and tune in was way behind. That's what it was. That's why this system worked. So tune in, which is a radio and there are a number iHeart has radio. But tune seem to have all my ball games on it. I guess it had the local radio station. In fact, sometimes with tune, I've noticed you can listen, they'll give you a choice. Do you want, which team's announcing team, do you want to hear barring blackouts? This is gonna work great because TuneIn is behind because it's streaming audio.
Caller 6 (01:40:37):
Okay. So,
Leo Laporte (01:40:38):
So does that make sense? So you get the, you get the game, you pause it right at some vital moment that you can time. Listen, then be listening on the TuneIn app. Tunein does NFL. I don't know if it'll do your, your high school sports probably does some college sports and certainly does major league baseball. And that's an app on your smartphone.
Caller 6 (01:40:59):
Okay. I saw, I saw on the internet that there, there was some software that like you would you would do audio out from the radio into the computer.
Leo Laporte (01:41:11):
Yeah. I mean, a computers could completely capable of doing this obviously then you,
Caller 6 (01:41:15):
But, but I'm on a Mac and I can't seem to find anything that will work on a Mac.
Leo Laporte (01:41:21):
Yeah.
Caller 6 (01:41:22):
So
Leo Laporte (01:41:23):
I'm trying to the, the one I always use was replay radio and I think that is windows only come to think of it. Yeah, yeah. From aply and let me see if they have a Mac, a Mac version. Yeah. It's windows, unfortunately. Yeah. Replay radio would probably do that as well. Be the same idea as you kind of tape delaying your audio. I'm I'm sure any Mac actually that would work with any, what you would want is a Mac thing that would record and play back later. That's an, I bet you, there are tools maybe from rogue Gamba, which does a lot of audio tools, rogue, gamba.com. They have tools like loop back and audio hijack. I bet you, they have a way I'd have to look, but that's a place I would look, they're kind of the king of audio capture on the Mac. And, and I wonder if, if they haven't, you should write to them and they would make it because I bet you they're baseball fans and they would make a way for you to watch the, the network broadcast, but get the local announcers. I completely with you on that. Did you, boy, I they're talking about in the chat room about apple team, V's doing Friday night baseball now and they're trying to do it all happily and it's terrible.
Caller 6 (01:42:41):
Well, that's another reason that
Leo Laporte (01:42:43):
The picture is 4k. Beautiful picture. I even like the graphics, they're trying to do some kind of modern graphics that are not like major league baseball on network television graph graphics, but then they have these awful announcers who I don't think have done much announcing. And, and the thing that really annoys me, they put background music behind the graphics. For some reason, like you might be bored. So there's like bad background music behind the graphics. Anyway, that's a perfect example. Watch the 4k signal from apple T and listen to your local play by play guys for some decent play by play. Very good idea. I like it. I'm gonna do that. Do just tune in, try that anyway. CBS has its own iHeart has for the iHeart stations but TuneIn really, they even have a major league baseball section on TuneIn radio. It's an app for iPhone and iOS and Android. Yeah. Hey, thanks for the call. And who, who are you rooting for?
Caller 6 (01:43:44):
St. Louis Cardinals
Leo Laporte (01:43:45):
St. Louis. So you're closer to St. Louis in Chicago.
Caller 6 (01:43:49):
Yeah. I'm about an hour and a half to St. Louis. And about three hours to Chicago. Yeah,
Leo Laporte (01:43:53):
We we are hereditary enemies. So I'm sorry. No, I forgive you. I forgive you from many years ago, the cards beat the giants and the playoffs. It was in the Ozzie Ozzie Smith days. And I was very angry, but I, I forget giving you now 20 years later. Okay. It's over pleasure meeting you, Charles. It is. Thank you. It is baseball season. We're back, we're back. And I love that 88 88 ask Leo. Yeah, here's the part of the problem is that video decompresses generally slower than audio. So audio tends to get ahead of video. So almost all receivers have a way of fit that TVs too, but this is a slightly different issue.
Leo Laporte (01:44:42):
Oh, that's no good. So John's telling me audio hijack does have a sync module, but unfortunately it only goes to a thousand seconds, milliseconds even worse. One second, that's even worse. So that's more for other solutions. That's how I did it. I had a TiVo. I'd pause the TiVo. When I saw the bat about to hit the ball, I'd pause it. Then I'd use black, can't say bless to the socks. I was not born in the Bronx. I was born in Manhattan. Mike B let's get it straight. And the Mets didn't exist when I was born. So I guess I'm a giants fan though. I think I have to be considered a giants fan. Well, we had the New York city. Metro let's see Dodgers and giants were both gone, although, because my dad was a, was a giants fan in his youth. When we moved to California, he was excited. Then we went to see a giants game and they had at the time, a candlestick really ugly stained as stroke turf, which they replaced quickly. But he was so turned off by that. He became an ACE fan and he, to this day, he's still an ACE fan, so
Leo Laporte (01:46:04):
Black, but I grew up in Providence and of course the red Sox were our team in Providence. I am wearing, I should point out my opening day braces. I don't think you can probably can't see that. Let's see. I don't think I have a closeup of those, but there's a scoreboard and a guy hitting a ball and running the bases. I wear these once a year.
Leo Laporte (01:46:37):
I have so many quad candlesticks, so many, actually one of the, one of the regrets I have, I had a giants hat that was rimed all the way around with quad candlestick. It was so cold at candlestick park that if you survived nine innings of a night game, as you were leaving the game, they would hand you a pin. They called it the QTA candlestick, which had the giants logo covered in snow. And, and I had so many Q candlestick that I put 'em on my hat all the way around. And I Don I've lost them now somewhere. I don't know. Wow. Rocking and rolling here at the tech guy show 88 88, ask Leo. Thanks to professor Laura. Our musical director. Mark is on the line from Los Angeles. Hello, mark.
Caller 7 (01:47:22):
Hello. Leo got a smartphone question for you. Yes. Recently got a pixel five. A I went to activate it with T-Mobile. Yeah. And I was told through the T-Mobile website that this phone can use an EIM and it is just as safe as a SIM card.
Leo Laporte (01:47:44):
Oh, I'd say safer.
Caller 7 (01:47:46):
Oh, is it safer that oh yeah. I'll call you to see if that's true.
Leo Laporte (01:47:50):
So you know, the SIM card is that little tiny chip that you, you can find in your phone. I think probably a lot of people have never even looked, but most modern phones have a little tiny drawer. You could see a little hole. You could push that hole in with a little SIM picker. You push it in, it pops out. There's a little SIM in there. It says I see it's an integrated circuit that contains the information. The phone company needs to identify you. It's what makes your phone, your phone? But most new phones now support. EIMS certainly all the iPhones do, which means no more drawer and no more SIM card. It's just hardwired into the phone itself. So why is it more secure? Well, first of all, nobody can steal it, which is a huge benefit. You'd have to steal the phone, right.
Leo Laporte (01:48:39):
And it is possible for somebody. If you leave your phone, lying around, to pop out your SIM, take it, and then you could do all sorts of things with it. Besides making phone calls, you might do it, use it for the two factor authentication codes and things like that for entity theft. That's, that's one issue. I think also the Sims E IMS are more flexible because many phones have both a regular SIM drawer and an E I, which means you can have dual Sims, which means you could have a work number and a home number. You can say, I only wanna do data on one and only do phone calls on the other. I'm just looking at my iPhone. Yeah. It still has a SIM door. But it could also use an EIM. And in the case of that pixel, you could do both.
Leo Laporte (01:49:20):
So, oh yeah. So I think that there are advantages to the EIM. You you're right to raise the issue because it is software based, right? That means possibly somebody could hack the phone and without stealing your phone or getting a physical access to it, somehow steal your EIM. But I'm looking at a, a FAQ from the FCC that says it's more secure. They certainly want people to go to EIMS. And, and all the companies are doing it too. Easier to change service providers and keep the same phone. When traveling internationally, you don't have to replace the SIM card. You just can choose from an EIM, a new carrier, a local carrier and you don't have to use that paper, clip, unlock the compartment. I've seen people I've done it, almost done it anyway, try to poke the microphone hole instead of the EIM hole, which is a bad idea. So I, yeah, I think ES IMS are the wave of the future. So, and as far as I know, no, I have not seen any security flaw associated with ES IMS.
Caller 7 (01:50:21):
Okay. Well, that's reassuring. Yeah.
Leo Laporte (01:50:23):
Enjoy in other words, right? When are you get in the phone? Are you gonna get the phone?
Caller 7 (01:50:29):
Oh, I, I got the phone already. Oh,
Leo Laporte (01:50:31):
Good. You like it?
Caller 7 (01:50:32):
Well, I, well, it's all right. It's it's magic or anything, but
Leo Laporte (01:50:37):
That's the right answer by the way. We often we geeks act like they're magic. They're not, it's just a phone mark. You've got, you've got a good head on your shoulders. S well done.
Caller 7 (01:50:48):
Thank you.
Leo Laporte (01:50:50):
Your mom raised a good child, Dan, on the line from New Jersey. Hi Dan.
Caller 8 (01:50:55):
Hello, Leo. I
Leo Laporte (01:50:56):
Love it. It's not magic. You're right. Hello, Dan, what can I do for you?
Caller 8 (01:51:03):
My son enjoys things like eclipses, so eclipses, eclipses. Nice.
Leo Laporte (01:51:11):
That's gonna be a nice, expensive hobby for you.
Caller 8 (01:51:15):
Well, he, it could be. I'm gonna, once again, I guess I want you to help spend some money.
Leo Laporte (01:51:20):
I went all the way to Australia for a total eclipse of the sun. We went with a a geek cruises, scientific American cruise. We had astronomers with us. We had scientists with us. We were on a cruise ship because it was out. You had to kind of go out off of Cairns nor Australia to see it. And the cruise ship captain decided at the last minute that he was gonna have clouds and he moved. And man, the astronomers on the boat were very angry, Man. So what kind of, so there's one coming right?
Caller 8 (01:51:54):
There is one coming, I think, in the next weekend or something like
Leo Laporte (01:51:57):
That. Well it depends. I'm talking about solar eclipses. I think we're two years for the next solar eclipse, but he wants, he likes lunar eclipses as well.
Caller 8 (01:52:06):
He likes any eclipses and he
Leo Laporte (01:52:09):
I love it. I, I do too.
Caller 8 (01:52:10):
He does animations. Oh, neat. Like where the, from what, what the moon is gonna look like or the sun, depending upon where you're gonna be in the world.
Leo Laporte (01:52:19):
So cool.
Caller 8 (01:52:21):
Completed is so he's like, and so anyway, he's been wanting to tried and failed pretty much. He wants to stream the ECS is live.
Leo Laporte (01:52:33):
Ah, people do that. Absolutely. People do that. Yeah. The next one is gonna be visible from north America is the blood moon May 15th. So you have a month to get ready for it.
Caller 8 (01:52:48):
Very exciting.
Leo Laporte (01:52:49):
Very exciting. So ideally you'd have a long lens, a telephoto of some kind to stream it.
Caller 8 (01:52:58):
Now he's got that. He's got that. Okay.
Leo Laporte (01:53:00):
He just wants to know how
Caller 8 (01:53:02):
So what happens. And he is a night camera. Nice. Not, not a not a DSLR, but it's a, something like a nine 50 has like an amazingly long lens. Perfect. It can fill the
Leo Laporte (01:53:14):
Perfect. He'll want to tripod obviously.
Caller 8 (01:53:17):
Right? Got that. And so we've tried it, but apparently the Nikon, when you finally look up how to stream live, it says can, and gams are great. But
Leo Laporte (01:53:30):
So which Nik icon does he have? Again,
Caller 8 (01:53:33):
It's like the P nine 50 or something like that.
Leo Laporte (01:53:37):
D D nine 50 maybe. Yeah. So what you want something called clean HDMI. So there is an HTMI port on that in most cameras, it sends out video, but most of the time it sends out video with camera information superimposed on it. That's less than ideal. I mean, honestly, you could still stream it. Nobody cares, but it's, you know, in fact it might even look cooler, but that's the, the issue is getting the clean HTM. I out the cool pick nine 50 does have clean H DMI. So that's the good news. Okay. But you have, you have to go in the settings of the camera and, and there is a setting under H DMI for clean H D I output.
Caller 8 (01:54:25):
Okay. I'll try that.
Leo Laporte (01:54:26):
So, so then that output, which is gonna be four, oh, wait a minute. You can't do 4k, U H D output. It looks like it's gonna be a little lower resolution. So that's just something to be aware of if you wanted, okay. UHD, you're not gonna be able to send 4k. But you can, we
Caller 8 (01:54:42):
Just wanna get it going, you know, get it working. Yeah.
Leo Laporte (01:54:45):
Worry about. So I'm gonna put a link to the nine 50 manual in the show notes and you can go straight to it and it has a way to get clean. H DMMI you will press the movie, you know, you'll go to a movie button, you'll press, you have to press record. And so that may be another issue is it may stop recording every 30 minutes, something sometimes a little tricks, see sometimes a little Trixy, but the other issue could be, well, you, you probably have to get a special, HTMI usually have a micro or mini HTM. I on the camera side going to an HTM, I out then you'll go into a computer. And I, has he ever streamed before? Does he stream gaming or anything like that?
Caller 8 (01:55:27):
He's this just he's done. I forget exactly. He's done it a little bit. So he'll know the problem
Leo Laporte (01:55:34):
You're gonna use OBS.
Caller 8 (01:55:35):
It was like the, like the power from the camera wasn't enough or something like that.
Leo Laporte (01:55:39):
You can do it. I think it times out probably after 30 minutes and that's a tax thing, believe it or not, but there'll be ways. Look in the manual. Leo, Laporte the tech guy, worst case. He has to turn it off and on again, every 30 minutes.
Caller 8 (01:55:56):
But I feel like, I feel like the problem was he needs to boost the signal to the, to the, to the computer. Like it wasn't strong enough coming from the camera. And we, like, I was doing research for him like a while back. And it seemed like there are some of needed, like an intermediary device. I don't between the,
Leo Laporte (01:56:17):
I don't think that's true. You need, you need something that would take video in,
Caller 8 (01:56:26):
Right?
Leo Laporte (01:56:28):
A most computers the HTM I port is out only. So you need a way to capture that video. That's coming in off of it. That's probably what they're talking about. And that's usually a capture card or a capture of a device. There are many devices that you could take the HGM. I, this is intended to record TV or record video and stuff like that goes into that thing. It's either USB or on a laptop. Or if you have a desktop tower with slots, you can buy a card. You're gonna get an external USB device. Almost certainly. It'll turn that into. Go ahead.
Caller 8 (01:57:05):
Go ahead. No, go ahead.
Leo Laporte (01:57:06):
It'll turn that into bits, which then go into the computer, which then you can stream with OBS studio or whatever it is he uses to stream with.
Caller 8 (01:57:12):
Right? Right. That's
Leo Laporte (01:57:13):
So that's probably what they're talking about. It's not a booster. It's just something that, that can that's. The real problem is an a, a computer does not have an video in port. Most computers, some do most do not have a video in import. The one we like John is saying, and it's because it's cheap. And we are cheap is from a company called a J and it's called the UAP U T a P HTM. I to USB capture card, actually a J makes very good stuff. This is not cheap apologize. This is $400. How, how much does your son like doing this?
Caller 8 (01:57:51):
I know exactly. Thanks.
Leo Laporte (01:57:52):
Thanks, John.
Caller 8 (01:57:54):
Start going low. The low end. Cannon's gonna cost 400.
Leo Laporte (01:57:56):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, no. Don't, don't get that. A J AJS for professionals. There's a company in long island has the worst name ever. HAPO H AE. Do you know them?
Caller 8 (01:58:08):
Yeah. I used to live in long island.
Leo Laporte (01:58:09):
Oh, you know, HAPO then hapo.com. They also sell converters for a much lower cost. Here's their HDP VRR pro 60 4k in, out for vMix zoom, Skype, YouTube live and Twitch. You know, because this is such a hot thing. These days. There's a lot of people who make this kind of stuff. This is nice, cuz it's H USB three, which is fast enough to give you decent video. You probably won't be doing 4k though. You'll probably be doing 10 at EP, but that's plenty. That's fine. Let me just see what this one costs. HAPO this is 150 bucks. So this is a little less, but there's even less,
Caller 8 (01:58:45):
But that, so that, that that's okay. Yeah, it's worth it. And, and so what's it called again?
Leo Laporte (01:58:49):
Or this is from HAPO you know how to spell it. You're one of the few, the proud, the long islands and it's the HD P V R pro. And they specifically say it's for streaming.
Caller 8 (01:59:01):
Okay, beautiful.
Leo Laporte (01:59:02):
I will put a link in these show notes as well. Oh, wait a minute. Now you have a Mac or PC
Caller 8 (01:59:10):
Mac.
Leo Laporte (01:59:11):
Oh, crud. All right. We'll find one. It says it works with Linux. Let me see if it works with, with this, with the Mac. If not, there are plenty of companies that make these El Gado used to, I think they got out of the business, but I'll but just, if you search for video capture card, max, you'll find a bunch of them.
Caller 8 (01:59:30):
Perfect. That's what, it's a capture card. Yeah. Okay.
Leo Laporte (01:59:34):
Hey, that sounds like fun. I'll be, look, where's he gonna stream it to Dan?
Caller 8 (01:59:39):
He's got like a YouTube channel, which of, I don't can't think of the name. I'm too nervous to think of. Right. Oh,
Leo Laporte (01:59:44):
Okay. That's so cool.
Caller 8 (01:59:47):
That's you'll do it on YouTube and you know, record it and, and, and make comments. And you know, it's amazing though. He's got thousands of people who watch these things. Oh yeah. We used, we used to hold up the iPhone or the I piece of the, of the camera. Wow. It's it's stream from the
Leo Laporte (02:00:04):
Iphone. This is a little better than that. It's
Caller 8 (02:00:06):
Wobbled.
Leo Laporte (02:00:07):
Oh, I got something though. For you. There is a program that will turn an iPhone into a camera, but it's not gonna have enough zoom. Nevermind. El Gado, El Gado makes the HT 60 S capture card for the Mac. The next should make a number of capture cards as little as a hundred bucks. El Gado.
Caller 8 (02:00:26):
That's good. Delgado. Yep. That's it. All
Leo Laporte (02:00:29):
Right. That's what I need. Have a good one. Okay. Thanks a lot.
Caller 8 (02:00:31):
Bye. Okay. Thanks.
Leo Laporte / Rod Pyle (02:00:34):
Meanwhile, back on earth, actually he's in Mars or somewhere right now, Mr. Rod. Hi, spaceman on Leo. Laporte the tech guy show. Hello rod. Hey, how you doing? I am well author of space, 2.0 and first on the moon. And he's the editor in chief, a ad Astra magazine from the national space society. And we always love talking about space host of this weekend space on the TWiT podcast network. So for non, with TARC Malick, with tar bolt, do you wanna give Tark credit? Okay. Can't stop you. Yeah. He's at space.com. He's a great guy. It's a good, it's a really good show. Really show up on Friday. Cuz he was, he was at a, a SP the biggest space conference of the year in Colorado and got stuck the night before and rerouted through Chicago. So he was actually on the plane. See, when Elon's got recording, when Elon's rockets get, you know yes are.
Leo Laporte / Rod Pyle (02:01:29):
And you just, you could fly from Denver to LA and in minutes, minutes, I tells you just punch through that. Yeah. Plus get your astronaut wings. Speaking of astronaut wings. Yes. Four non astronauts are on the space station. Well three non astronauts and one retired astronauts. Yeah, he should. He should still be at astronaut. He's been in space before. Yeah. Oh, I he's not only been at space. He holds a space walk record. I mean, he's one of those soft spoken chronic over achievers that drive me crazy. Cuz you know, you sit, I feel like I should, I should be. I met him at a bar at an airport bar for an interview, but I felt like I should be sitting at his feet going, just touch me, just touch my head. That's it. They are kind of great heroes. Aren't they astronauts. I just, they are.
Leo Laporte / Rod Pyle (02:02:13):
And, and, and most of 'em especially current day are just, they're so humble about it. Wow. You just kind of wanna give 'em a hug and say, thanks for being you, man. Cuz you give me inspiration. And if I can, if I could come up to your ankles, you know, but yeah. So they, they launched they were in, in orbit for about 20 hours. Cuz you gotta chase down the space station orbit. That's kind of thought that's a high, that's a high, high speed chase of an another color there. That's exciting. Well, and, and you get time in the spacecraft, you know, and for these guys who are all flying for the first time for 55 million each at least we don't know, but that's the estimate 55 million to be a space, probably more 10 NASA for the, for the space station. How much training do they have to do?
Leo Laporte / Rod Pyle (02:02:59):
Well, they don't have to do much. It could be a matter of weeks, but this particular crew trained for I think nine months because they wanted to contribute to the science. So each of them carried up experiments or instructions for experiments for various institutes mostly medical in nature male, but they're not, they're not of others. Traditional scientists is an Israeli businessman and a Canadian investor and Ohio based real estate magnet, people with lots of money, but not necessarily scientific training. And then of course Michael Lopez who you interviewed, right? Who is a former NASA astronaut, it's his company, Axiom that was doing this launch right with SpaceX's rocket, a partner in it. And, and they're also, so they're gonna do a number more launches over the next couple of years, but also as I think we've discussed in 2024, they're gonna start launching their own modules up there.
Leo Laporte / Rod Pyle (02:03:51):
So they're gonna connect modules to the space day so they can have a hotel up the habitats. They could have a hotel research facility. And the idea is to prove out that private industry can do and then eventually disconnect from the space station when it's time for it to be, do butted probably about 2030, maybe 20, 28, and then hook up those private modules together to create their own free flying space stations. I love this idea. Something I love this idea do with Orbi. Yeah. So ultimately you don't have the government gosh, I think the ISS and total, not all us money, but I think the total investment was estimated we about 150 billion. But it's, I mean it's a miracle in orbit, so it was, it was well worth it, but well, just think of this by the way, your 55 million does not cover meals.
Leo Laporte / Rod Pyle (02:04:37):
That's another $2,000 a day meals, toilet facilities to, you gotta pay for those wow air. Right? You gotta pay for all that stuff. But they will be contributing. So, and, and, and it's, you know, it's fair to say. I hope he got a, got his name, right? The Israeli guy was I think a major or in the Israeli self defense force. Larry Connor is a pilot of some renowned as well. So, so these are not just people, these got schlubs off the street. Well, they're not me. Yeah. There schlubs with 55 million bucks. They're slightly lesser overachiever than, than Michael Lopez, the leg grant. So yeah, you know, but you have to be there. He, the, the steer, what do you call it? The pilot. Well, did he have to be the steer? Yes. But you know, at this point it's, it's a, an open question whether that's really necessary because the inspiration for flight didn't have a professional as, or not in charge.
Leo Laporte / Rod Pyle (02:05:31):
That was also on a crew dragon. Yeah. But that didn't dock with the ISS. So I think for the first few, they want to have a professional astronaut, a retired astronaut up there steering to make sure yeah. That, that process you're looking at, but it could be completely auto, automated. Well, it is wow. They just don't do it that way all the time, but it can be completely automated. They had a problem a video view from the space station that helps them. Renou glitched for about 45 minutes. So they held off and just drifted nearby, but they were able to complete it and ultimately it should be something they could do automatically. And in fact, the Russians have been doing automatic docking roundabout docking for, I think 30 years now. So it's easily, easily done. There's a couple of things I wanted to cover before we run outta time, you had a body eclipses.
Leo Laporte / Rod Pyle (02:06:20):
Yes. He wants son wants to stream it. Yeah. Which is great. I mean, there's lots of people doing it. He should, he should add his, his signal to the, to the, to the mass. You know, Lary eclipses are great. You go out, you see the moon, get a little red, little gray, a little red, but I think you've seen a solar eclipse, right? Yeah. This is a blood moon. The, the solar to me, a lunar eclipse is cool. Total eclipse is life changing. Yes, exactly. Same words. So we've got 20, 24, which you mentioned that's on April 8th, 20, 24 enters the us around San Antonio, Texas enters or exits around Maine and goes near us, Austin, Indianapolis. Oh, near Detroit and through Montreal. So I'm definitely going cuz I saw the one in Oregon in 2017. And like you said, that was just so, so did John, John, you went up right to see the, the one in Oregon.
Leo Laporte / Rod Pyle (02:07:11):
Yeah. Yeah. This'll be the last one until 2045 in the us. So you really do wanna go see this well and if it's gonna be, and I'm gonna miss it, I'd rather drive to miss it than go on a cruise ship. Well, that was the frustrating thing. Something we saw some of it. And then the captain decided to move the boat which was weird. Ask the passengers cuz they paid the money. Right? Well it's his boat. You know, the captain gets to do whatever he wants. Lawrence Krause was on board with us. He's a very famous science writer from Arizona state. And Lawrence was not, was upset, verbally excited over the whole matter. He cuz he got on the, he went all the way to Australia got on the boat just to see the eclipse. So you, this is not an inexpensive thing.
Leo Laporte / Rod Pyle (02:08:04):
No, but at the same time it is something you really wanna see. There's something magical happens when the sun goes out. Actually I'd prefer to do it on land because it gets very weirdly quiet. The animals all go, Ooh, the animals flip out. Cause it's an unscheduled night time. Yeah. And you can it on land, maybe it's sea too. But on land you kind of see the shadow coming towards you and you can hear the rush of airs it cools down. And then at the, at the moment of totality, the sky turns kind of silver, almost pearlescent. Yeah. And I, I didn't know an of that, you know, I had seen video of it, but that doesn't communicate what really happens. Yeah. So you can see why primitive cultures went bonkers. Oh yeah. It's like what happened to the sun? It's that's noon, right?
Leo Laporte / Rod Pyle (02:08:47):
Oh yeah. And you even in your body, even though we are in theory, civilized also kind of go oh yeah, yeah. Yeah. It's not, it's not like, like one of the people you chat said, I'm stepping in a closet. It's not quite the same. No. Cause you're you're outside and this shouldn't be some of the fun's taken away cuz you can't look straight at it. You, you really wanna look straight at it. You really do. Oh you could get your eclipse glasses. Yeah. Get your eclipse seconds at a time. Just make sure. And we'll talk about this before the next one. You gotta be really careful to buy ones that are vetted. Oh yeah. Yeah. We did that. Buy the Chinese knockoffs. Yeah. We went on and on about that one. Yeah, that was, and I, I had actual I had card a cataracts and I was in my fifties because as a kid, you looked at the telescope. Yeah. Solar don't do it, all that stuff. Don't do it. Rod pile space, dots.org. If it's off the planet earth, he loves it. And that's why we love him. Thank you. Thank you there. Thank you, sir. It's great. Rod Leo. Laporte the tech guy.
Leo Laporte / Rod Pyle (02:09:52):
So some, some good totality in the us. I'm looking at the oh man. I'm I'm looking at the Stripe of totality. Wow. you know, Dallas Fort worth Austin, Evansville, Indianapolis, Cleveland, Buffalo, Burlington, Montreal. This is good. This is gonna be a good total clips of the heart. I want to get a McLaren F one and see if driving as fast as I can in the proper orientational extent, the totality of John says it's important to get right in the middle because that's where the totality is. The longest. Of course. Yeah. I think up to four minutes on this one, somebody's saying that, you know, ideally that's true. Although getting in the middle, depending on where you are, can be a bit of a bus wreck in terms of crowds and stuff. So I was offline on 2017, but it was still 90 seconds or something. Yeah. Which was fantastic. And I was in a park in Pineville, Oregon, which had not been mobbed. In fact it was almost empty. It was a public park. Beautiful. You know, it's Oregon. Right. So it's like being in the middle of the Midwest somewhere. And there was hardly anybody there. Where did you go, John? To see it? You were in Oregon. He was on a mountain in Oregon. Yeah. Did you have clear skies, John? Yeah.
Leo Laporte / Rod Pyle (02:11:10):
He, he says he really, it was beautiful. Yeah. so it's a CJI so get ready baby. For the CJI C, C don't hurt me. It's a, CJI Cy. Don't hurt me. Everyone in the us will see at least a partial eclipse. That's kind of cool too. Yeah. But I've seen a lot of partials and not the same. No, no. Yeah. The fun thing about a partial eclipse is playing with it. You can do things like I remember when we had one we were outside the brick house and, and if you just hold up your glasses or something, you see the partial eclipse projected onto, you know, the sidewalk and stuff. It's kind of cool. It's fun things you can do with it anyway. Yeah. And if you go next to a tree, because of all the little points of focus, it creates of the light coming through the leaves, you'll see a hundred little tiny suns, so cool.
Leo Laporte / Rod Pyle (02:12:01):
Which is really cool. The first time I saw it, I thought what the, oh, look at that. By the way, I ran outta time on the air. But before I forget, yes. The podcast this week we talked primarily about the Apollo 16 anniversary, which if you were you and I were alive, then if you saw it of the lunar landing missions, that was, that was one of the most engaging because those guys, John Young and Charlie duke were just, it was like a comedy show. It was like Abbot and Costello on the, it was hilarious really? Was that the one where they were playing golf or was that another one? No, that was 14. This is the one that has the, a famous click bait moment where John Young, not realizing he was on open mic as talking about all the orange juice they were making these guys drink because they thought it would smooth out their cardiac rhythms.
Leo Laporte / Rod Pyle (02:12:46):
Oh, dog Glo at Charlie will go the farts again. And he starts cursing and talking about what it's like that flash once inside 220 cubic feet to pressurize or module. And finally NASA is able to break it and say, Hey, John, just wanna tell how long has that been going on? So that was kinda funny, not exactly a high science moment, but a lot of great stuff in that mission. So if you get a chance, it's definitely worth checking out on YouTube highlight reels. Oh right. Apollo 16, gosh, long time, 50 years. 50 years. Wow. April 16th, 1970. I think that we did that in an era when transistors were only a few years old. It was hard to believe primitive. Yeah. Yeah. Just incredible hard to be leave. Yes, sir. Okay. Thank you, sir. I will see you in a week. See you next week. Have a great show in between. Thank you. I will. Thanks a lot. Bye. Thank you so much for letting me be your tech guy. One more time. Leo Laporte the tech guy. Thanks. Of course the people make the tech guy show possible all up and down the premier networks, including lady Laura, our musical director. Thanks so much to Kim Shaeffer, our phone angel who answers all the phones mostly though. Thanks to you for listening and calling cuz I could and do without you the tech I show last segment of the day cat on the line from Anchorage, Alaska. Hello Ken.
Caller 9 (02:14:19):
Hi Leo. How are you today?
Leo Laporte (02:14:20):
I'm great. How are you?
Caller 9 (02:14:22):
I'm doing fantastic. As they say, long time listener, first time caller. I love your program. Welcome
Leo Laporte (02:14:29):
Welcomes. Good to have you.
Caller 9 (02:14:31):
I a quick question. I, I just bought a shiny new laptop. That's still in the box. I've heard, seen some YouTube sort of things about the idea of backing it up before you, before you let it do all of the connects and downloads and such. So you have a clean backup of the way you got it. Yeah. Worth doing.
Leo Laporte (02:14:52):
You know, it just depends on these days. I think it's less important because windows has built in a recovery process that will get it back to the factory state. So in effect you already have an image on your computer of a it's in a hidden partition. So, and, and then, and windows 10 and 11, make it very easy to do. You can just do a system recovery and boom go right back to that point. So yeah, you know, it used to be in the old days, I would image it when I did the first clean install. That way you have an install image, you can blast on very quickly. I would install everything, put in the passwords, do everything I like to do, get all the software on there, like, and I'd get an image of that. And so the advantage of having those images is you can quickly get back to that point in time and in a matter of minutes, cuz images restore very quickly after that.
Leo Laporte (02:15:43):
Of course though, that's when you start using the computer, things start changing and that image rapidly gets, you know, out of date. So it just depends. It's pretty easy to get back to the factory state nowadays on any modern PC. So I don't think it's as important. I don't think you need to, unless, you know, you know, it's a little extra thing we used to do. If you're nostalgic, I would make a make sure you back up as you use the thing because the restore will not restore your data stuff that you're adding. So it is a very important thing to have a backup, but that doesn't need to be of the operating system of your applications. Those are those, you know, you're gonna restore those when you restore windows, you really want to back up the documents, the things you only create once. And I think it's important to get a, a, a backup service on your system that does it automatically.
Leo Laporte (02:16:33):
So you don't have to think about it. Windows comes with its own backup. It's not the best. You know, we used to have a sponsor eye drive. That's a very good way to do it. There are a number of companies like that where you, you pay a monthly fee and it just runs in the background all the time. That's nice. If you're on a Mac, they have something called time machine that does pretty much the same thing. That's probably a good idea as well, just having that continuous backup cuz you will, you know, things happen. You will throw out something, that kind of thing.
Caller 9 (02:17:01):
Yeah. I, I use, I drive perfect. Based on your recommendation
Leo Laporte (02:17:05):
Then you're set. Yeah. Yeah. So it's a good question. Do you want to image it? Yeah, it depends on, it's kind of a nice feeling. Once you've done the image. Now you have on a thumb drive, you know, everything you'd need to get back to today, but it doesn't get back to tomorrow. So that's, that's where their backups come in.
Caller 9 (02:17:24):
Is there a particular program that you would recommend for doing that? Just an
Leo Laporte (02:17:29):
You can actually do it with windows. The windows backup has an imaging tool built into it. I don't, I don't know if it's still on windows 11 and windows 10. It was called the, I think they windows seven legacy backup or something like that, but there was an imaging tool on there, but there are third party tools. Our sponsor Kronos makes a very well known imaging program, but that's not free. There's a free one available from E S E a S E s.com I think that's free. And there are free open source imaging tools. Maybe not quite as easy to use, but there's certainly out there. So there are lots of ways to do it. It's, you know, it's kind of a geeky thing to do. You probably don't need to.
Caller 9 (02:18:11):
All right. Very good. Thanks so much. Hey,
Leo Laporte (02:18:12):
My pleasure. Yeah. Do I'm trying to think, do I still do that? No, I don't think I do because that this windows recovery is really, you know, gets you back to the day you got it installed. It is true that you're gonna install stuff after that. You know, the apps you like set up your wifi password, put your password in manager and stuff on there. You might want, you know, a copy of that, but they get out date. As soon as you start using the machine, you add new passwords, you know, you add new files. Some a backup really is the best solution. Overall, Ken, that was Ken. How about vie from Costa Mesa, California. Hi VI.
Caller 10 (02:18:48):
Hi. They my son wants to know how you are able to connect to your mom's computer. If she is having a problem that she can't be solved. What do you
Leo Laporte (02:19:00):
Use? Are you the mom that your son is trying to connect to?
Caller 10 (02:19:04):
Yeah, because sometimes I, well I made, you know, I'm oh, 85, you know, and, and I do stupid things and some I then I don't to get out of,
Leo Laporte (02:19:13):
It's a great thing to have my mom's 88. You're absolutely right. So it depends on the kind of computer you have. There are all sorts of ways it's called remote access. Windows comes with remote access. Yeah.
Caller 10 (02:19:25):
I have windows
Leo Laporte (02:19:26):
10. Yeah. The one that we recommended and I used for a long time is remote PC boy. This company's getting, they're no longer advertising the show after the beginning of the year, but they, I drive remote PC, still getting the plugs. So that's fine. Cuz it's good. It's a good product. Remote PC there's many other companies that do something similar. Log me in is another one team viewer is another one. What do you use? Remote PC.
Caller 10 (02:19:51):
Remote PC.
Leo Laporte (02:19:52):
It's very inexpensive. Yep. There is built in and depends on how, how techy is your son?
Caller 10 (02:19:59):
Oh, he's pretty good. Yeah. He's, he's a pretty good tech guy, but
Leo Laporte (02:20:04):
So he may have a, a preference window 10 has something called quick assist built. You're using windows.
Leo Laporte (02:20:11):
Yes. Has something called quick assist built in, which is exactly for this purpose. So you, you already have it. He, if he's using windows 10 or 11 already has it. It's called quick assist. It's right there in the start menu. And so he can do so for instance, if you had a problem right now and you haven't had a chance to start or install anything he could just say to you, oh, mom just hits the start key type quick assist. In fact, do this right now, type quick assist. And you'll see there's two choices. There's assist another person, which is what he would use. And then he would send a six digit code to you. You'd run quick assist, enter the six digit code and he'd be in and then he could take control of your computer. That's probably given, you're not gonna be using this all the time. And it's built in probably the best thing to do.
Caller 10 (02:21:02):
It's built
Leo Laporte (02:21:02):
In yeah. Comes with windows.
Caller 10 (02:21:04):
Okay. And if it wasn't just, cause I'm not on the windows right now. Yeah.
Leo Laporte (02:21:09):
Just tell him, just tell him. Leo says windows quick assist.
Caller 10 (02:21:13):
Okay. Windows quick assist. Okay.
Leo Laporte (02:21:15):
And you already have it. That's the advantage of it. There are other features that, you know, sometimes geeks like, but for the point of view of he helping you out because you already have it, it's built up, it's built specifically for this kind of support. I think that's a great way to go. Yeah. Quick assist. Well,
Caller 10 (02:21:32):
Okay. Thank you so much.
Leo Laporte (02:21:34):
So you can, and if you're on your end, you can click start type, help, help. And, and then it has a button that says, invite someone to help me fix this computer and you invite your son, help me, but gotta tell you this very, very important. Only do this with somebody. You absolutely trust.
Caller 10 (02:21:54):
Oh, I know we have so many, these people,
Leo Laporte (02:21:57):
People are always calling up saying, hello, I'm calling from windows. You've got a problem. Give me access to your computer. You just say no. Yeah.
Caller 10 (02:22:05):
I've already had that call a couple times.
Leo Laporte (02:22:08):
Good. Good. Your son will. Thank you for that. Cuz then he's got really got a problem to fix.
Caller 10 (02:22:13):
Oh I know. Yeah. I'm kinda aware of
Leo Laporte (02:22:16):
Only give somebody you really know and trust access to your computer. Never give it to anybody else.
Caller 10 (02:22:22):
I, I agree with you. I'm very trying to be very, very careful. Okay. Thank you so much for
Leo Laporte (02:22:27):
Thank you. Vie. A pleasure talking to you. I'm glad I could help out. Okay. Thanks. Yeah. Windows quick assist. Yeah. Makes sense. It's built in, you know, for quick remote PC and other tools like team viewer really designed for work from home and stuff like that. If he's just like, oh, I don't know what I did. I I installed something or I need to do something and, and your son wants to get in and fix it. That's probably the best way to do it. Quick assist. I love it. You can click, click, hit the windows key and type help, help. And that'll, that'll do it. Hey, that's what I'm here for. Thank you so much for letting me be your tech guy this week. We will you back next week. Michael, join me on Saturday. I hope you will too. Have a great geek week.
Leo Laporte (02:23:11):
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@twi.tv, including the podcasts for the show. We talk about windows and windows weekly, Macintosh on Mac break, weekly iPads, iPhones, apple watches on iOS, today's security and security. Now, I mean, I can go on and on and on. And of course the big show every Sunday afternoon, this week in tech, you'll find it all at twit TV and I'll be back next week with another great tech guy show. Thanks for joining me. We'll see you next time.