The Tech Guy Episode 1891 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.

Leo Laporte (00:00:02):
Podcasts. You love from people you trust. This is TWiT. Hi, this is Leo LePort and this is my tech guy podcast. This show originally aired in the premier networks on Saturday, May 7th, 2022. This is episode 1,891 in join. The Tech Guy podcast is brought to you by UserWay. Dot org UserWay is the world's number one accessibility solution. And it's committed to enabling that fundamental human right of digital accessibility for everyone. When you're ready to make your site compliant, deciding which solution to use is an easy choice to make. Do what we did go to userway.org/twit. You'll also get 30% off UserWay's AI powered accessibility solution. And by ItProTV. Itprotv has everything you need to level up your it skills while you enjoy the journey, visit it pro.tv/twit for an additional 30% off all consumer subscriptions for the lifetime of your active subscription.

Leo Laporte (00:01:09):
When you use the code TWiT 3, 0 30 at checkout. Well, Hey, Hey. Hey, how are you today? Leo LePort here. Yes, it's tech guy time, your worst nightmare. A nerd with his own radio show. <Laugh>. Hi, how are you? Good to see ya. This is the show we talk about nerdy stuff, computers, the internet star Trek, star wars, home theater, digital photography, smart phones, smart watches, star Trek, star wars, woo, light SAS. You know that kind of thing. Eighty eight eighty eight ask Leo is the phone number? No, we, we won't talk about star Trek or star wars. Just just technology. Okay. 8, 8, 8, 8 2 7 5 5 3 6 to free from anywhere in the us or Canada outside that area. You could still call, but you have to use Skype out or something like that. 88 88 ask Leo website where we put all the links. Everything we're talking about here is tech ilab.com.

Leo Laporte (00:02:12):
And I mentioned that so that you don't have to feel like, oh, I, you know, I gotta get a pad and paper and write down all the wonderful things. Leo saying you don't, but you don't have that urge. Well, if okay. For the, oh really? Oh, well, if you did, you wouldn't have to, because we'll write it down for you. Put it all at the website tech guy labs.com. That's free. There's no sign up. You just mosey on in. This is episode, I don't know, 1000 891, 1 8 9 1 for May 7th, 20, 22. So you can go right there and there'll be links to all the things to talk about. In fact, it sometimes takes a little while, maybe a little day or two afterwards, audio and video from the show will show up on Sundays. We put all of the all of the links to the music, our musical director, professor Laura, take a bow.

Leo Laporte (00:03:07):
If she's with her Baton, she she puts on the show. So cuz I know people always wanna know what was that great song you played? That's all all there, audio video. Oh, what else? One other thing, one, one relatively new thing. We've added transcripts. They're written by a computer. So <laugh> they may not be perfect, but they give you an idea transcripts and that way, in fact they have a time code. So once the audio and video get up there and you've got the transcripts up there, you can easily jump to the part of the show. You want to reiterate regurgitate repeat 88, 88, ask Leo, okay. Somebody in the chat room saying, but what we want star Trek and star wars. I it's on my mind because you know, they have a new star Trek show. And I haven't watched it yet, but everybody's going crazy about it.

Leo Laporte (00:04:00):
So that's why it's on my mind. It's the prequel, the captain pike prequel. See, I did, I talked about star Trek. I didn't mean to sorry about that. You know us nerds, we can't, we can't not frontier. <Laugh> when I say the name frontier, a chill goes down the spine of many people. Many of them in the Southland of California because frontier took over for the the local phone company and caused. I remember when that happened a few years ago and man, we got the calls, the nightmares, federal trade commission PDO in may of last year and on Thursday, frontier agreed to a settlement with the FTC and district's attorneys in Los Angeles county and Riverside county representing the people of California. Frontier must pay says the FTC eight and a half million dollars to California for investigation and little litigation costs. No, you don't get any of that.

Leo Laporte (00:05:02):
That's to California, you can <laugh> you get $250,000 distributed to frontier customers. In other words, you're gonna get buck 25, sorry, but you do get the satisfaction <laugh> of knowing that frontier has been mildly spanked. Just a tap, just little tap frontier must also make changes. CCHA as letting customers cancel service at no charge, <laugh> always bugs me. When the cable companies do this, they charge you to cancel service. They charge you. It's like, well, you can't leave us unless you pay. I can't believe that's would even be legal. What if you decided to, you know, I, I don't wanna use the dry cleaners down the, at the street. I wanna use the one across the street and they charge you that'll be $80 to, to quit. What? But that's what the cable companies often do. Anyway, frontier can't do it anymore. They also must discount the bills of California.

Leo Laporte (00:06:00):
Customers could be you who is well, not if you're not in California, but who have not been notified that they are receiving. And this was one of the big complaints, DSL service that is much slower than the advertised speed. That's the FTCs talking. It was much slower. Frontier lied said Sam Levine, FTC bureau of consumer protection director, frontier lied about its speeds and ripped off customers by charging high speed prices for SL service today's proposed order. I don't like that word proposed. What does that mean? Today's proposed order requires frontier to back up its high speed claims back it up. Beep beep beep it also arms customers lured in by Frontier's lies. Excellent with free easy options for dropping there's slow service. Ah, it's proposed cuz a judge has to approve it in the us district court for the central district of California. The FTC approved the order in a four, nothing vote.

Leo Laporte (00:07:09):
Ah, yeah, that there's pretty much agreement on that. Frontier did not admit or deny the lawsuits allegations. However frontier did say it. The FTCs complaint included baseless allegations at disregarded important facts, but we settled a lawsuit in good faith to put it behind us so we could focus on our business of ripping you up. No, I mean of you for providing high quality, but slow and inconsistent DSL anyway, it's, you know, it's more a moral victory cuz if you're one of those frontier customers who is unhappy, you're not gonna get any money. Well, you might get a buck, 50 buck and a quarter something in there. It's just it's just good. It took them. It took a while and it, I mean we've known this has been going on frontier. Oh, it's a long sorted, sad story. Probably not over they they intentionally kind of underbuilt their physical plant and did all sorts of stuff. But the FTC caught 'em busted.

Leo Laporte (00:08:19):
Okay. Who else was busted this week? This is the week of being busted Intuit 141 million settlement over free and turbo tax ads. You've seen the ads it's over now. Right? I have like many of you fell for it. Oh free. That's good. I do my mom's taxes for her and frees. Good. I always end up paying $89 somehow though. And two, it will pay 140 million million to customers across the United States who Arele were deceived by misleading promises of free tax filing services. According to new York's attorney general on Wednesday under the terms of the settlement signed by the attorney's general of all 50 states, all 50 states, Intuit will suspend turbo taxes free, free, free, not it's not free. Once it's free. Three times free free, free, free that's free frees ad campaign and pay restitution nearly 4.4 million taxpayers. Let me divide. Well, after you took out the fees and divide 141 million by 4.4 million, again, you're gonna get about a buck in a corner.

Leo Laporte (00:09:38):
We've all seen those ads. Have you, have you fallen for it? And did you, and did you end up paying? I know I did. <Laugh> it's a small price to pay, to keep my mother out of jail. So <laugh> well, no, because you have to pay your taxes. That's why. No, I don't think they threw an 80 nice 89 year old lady out in jail for not paying her taxes. But I think it's probably a good idea. So I'm gonna do it. What else is in the in the news is that enough news off news, AI renowned AI researcher fired again from Google. They keep firing the AI researchers cuz they tell them things they don't want to hear. I think the next web's headline, AI research is a dumpster fire and Google's holding the matches scientific research they say is no match for corporate greed.

Leo Laporte (00:10:38):
Oh boy. Oh boy, you see AI everywhere right everywhere. You know, everybody's claiming, well we have AI, even if they don't, we have AI cuz it's it's just, you know, it's like it's the flavor of the month. We've got AI. So you should you should like what we do a lot of times when they say it's AI, it's called a, it's a computer program. <Laugh> you know, it's not AI, it's a computer program. You know enough of that. Enough, enough about that. What about you? What about your technology? How is it working for you? Eighty eight, eighty eight. Ask Leos the phone number (888) 827-5536, toll free from anywhere in the us or Canada outside that area. You can still call. You should use Skype out Leo. Leport the tech guy. Your calls next. Hello? I somebody, some wa <laugh> you know how they put those you know, signs for missing cats up on telephone poles? Yes. Somebody put on a telephone pole. Picture of Lionel Richie. Yes <laugh> hello? Is it me saying, saying underneath the hello? Is it me? You're looking for, I have seen that. Have you seen it? Yes. Very funny. Hello, Kim Schaffer.

Kim Schaffer (00:11:55):
Hi again.

Leo Laporte (00:11:57):
Hi Kim and I were whistling during the break. Yeah, we were. We do, we do it to annoy our engineers cuz they, they don't like it when I apparently, when we do that, how are you today? Good. How are you? I saw you yesterday. I

Kim Schaffer (00:12:09):
Saw you yesterday again. It's become a thing.

Leo Laporte (00:12:11):
We run into each other in the beautiful Marin area. Yeah. As I go down to have lunch with my daughter. That's so nice Friday. Yeah. It's fun. We catch up and you apparently do the same with your, with

Kim Schaffer (00:12:23):
My friend. Who's daughter goes to Tutu school and oh

Leo Laporte (00:12:27):
Yeah. Two.

Kim Schaffer (00:12:27):
And what I understand, there's not a whole lot of dancing that goes,

Leo Laporte (00:12:30):
But they get to wear tutus and that's all the, when Abby was little, my daughter was little that's it? When she was two or three that's she just wanted to wear a Tutu all the time. Yeah. Something

Kim Schaffer (00:12:38):
About it. So she does, I I guess her favorite part is coloring <laugh> yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:12:42):
Wearing a Tutu and coloring. Yeah.

Kim Schaffer (00:12:44):
And then she gets a donut afterwards. She's been conditioned. She knows that she a

Leo Laporte (00:12:48):
Donut. Right? There's donuts involved. That's now I'm interested. <Laugh> who should I talk to? Let's

Kim Schaffer (00:12:54):
Go to mark and Santa. Anna,

Leo Laporte (00:12:56):
Mark and Santa Anna. Nine one. Hello, mark. Leo Laport. The tech guy. Thank you, Kim. Mark. Mark. Are you there mark? He's not there Kim. What should I do?

Kim Schaffer (00:13:10):
<Laugh> okay. Put him on hold. Can you hear? Oh, there he is.

Leo Laporte (00:13:13):
He just came over. He come, came running around the corner. Rage. Yes. I can hear you now. Mark

Caller 1 (00:13:17):
Specialty is putting myself on mute with my Android phone.

Leo Laporte (00:13:21):
It happens a lot. Yeah.

Caller 1 (00:13:22):
Yeah. Sorry about that. No, no. That's

Leo Laporte (00:13:26):
Not, not a problem. No, I think that, that, yeah, people calling cell phones. It's so easy to accidentally with your cheek. Hit the mute button that this happens a lot. Yeah.

Caller 1 (00:13:34):
I got the blue parrot. Oh, at your recommendation. I got the blue

Leo Laporte (00:13:38):
Parrot. Are you on the parrot today? Yep. Sounds good.

Caller 1 (00:13:42):
Yeah. Okay. So frontier, just so you know, my high school history teacher got it. And it was such a nightmare. I went up there for weeks and then they wouldn't show because of all that. And the only way this is ever gonna get fixed is when the fines hit the C-suite compensation. I

Leo Laporte (00:13:57):
Agree. I agree. Otherwise

Caller 1 (00:13:59):
Everybody else gets penalized who shouldn't be penalized and they still get their bonuses.

Leo Laporte (00:14:03):
They make plenty of money. And these fines are slaps on the wrist. And I, I do, you know, the, in Europe, they've got it right. The fines are tied to your revenue and they're a significant portion. So if you violate GDPR, the fines can be as much as 10% of your global revenue, which is, you know, not insignificant. I think we needed to do that anyway. Thank you for weighing in on that. Yeah.

Caller 1 (00:14:29):
Yeah. So I had a question about windows media player. I'm trying to move music from windows, me media player on windows seven to windows 10. I copied the music directory and there's also a, in the root, a, another music directory. That's all tied in, but what, and the music plays, but all the stuff that was put in manually. Yeah. either lists or all that stuff. And I cannot figure out how to move the, either the song, you know, manually put in song names or lists. I don't know where that is. I don't know if, if there's a program that can just move it or

Leo Laporte (00:15:05):
Yeah. So the obviously if you think about it, the music itself, that's easy to find. You can see it. That's a song it's a MP3 or a WMV or, you know, some form of music. And so it's easy to move, but there's what we call I call because I'm cool and hip metadata, which is data above and beyond the song itself, like playlists likes anything that you've added and that isn't stored necessarily with the song it's usually stored in a separate file. So what you do open windows media player and go to your playlists and just right. Click on the playlist. And you'll see in the popup menu, open file location. And that is the easiest way to figure out where, where the heck have you stored this? It'll be in a folder and you'll see in the folder, all the playlists and you can copy those over.

Caller 1 (00:15:55):
Excellent. I thought that was gonna be harder than I thought.

Leo Laporte (00:15:58):
Yeah, there may be. And I'm not, I'm not exactly sure on, on windows media player. But this is true of iTunes. It may be a, an additional file or number of files that are either indexes, cuz they want to speed up searches or XML files describing settings and stuff. So in that area, probably not in the playlist folder, but maybe a folder above there may be other files with a dot XML. You might want to copy those as well.

Caller 1 (00:16:25):
Okay.

Leo Laporte (00:16:26):
Otherwise cool. You're done.

Caller 1 (00:16:29):
Yeah. And Hey, in the next event you're at, I'll take, keep taking your pictures.

Leo Laporte (00:16:33):
Oh this is my good friend. Of course. I should know mark from Santa and I know who you are. Thank you. Yeah. Yeah. We haven't done anything more than two years since COVID.

Caller 1 (00:16:45):
Yeah, I know I would go on the cruise, but it requires vaccinations and I don't have one and I've already got COVID.

Leo Laporte (00:16:51):
Oh, I'm sorry. So, and it was get a vaccination cause it is, people are starting to get it now. I know many, many people, including some of our employees who've gotten it and thank goodness they're vaccinated. So it's my it's like for them, it's been like a cold. It hasn't been too bad. However, you know, there are people at our place of work and not sure many places of work who can't get it for various reasons and maybe they're immune compromise and stuff. And those are the people we still have to protect. So believe it or not. You know, you probably noticed Mike is not here. We once again, shut down our studio required mask wearing because enough people around us are starting to get it again. It's I guess it's that BA two variant, but the good news is at least in our circle, those people are doing okay.

Leo Laporte (00:17:38):
Cuz they're vaccinated hard. Not to note that this year, this week we passed a milestone 1 million deaths from COVID over the last two years and some months. That's just so horrible. So tragic. So stay safe, mark. And if you can, I know some people can't, but if you can get that vaccine, get that booster. I, I got, I got boosted once. I, my wife's getting boosted right now as we speak she's over at Safeway, getting a shot for her second booster cuz for the we're we're all going on a cruise with our podcast listeners, the twit crews in Alaska, in July and both of us wanna make sure that we are not only we're okay, we don't get it. We don't wanna be carriers. So yes. Still not open to the studio. In fact, we are our employees, we sent 'em home. It's interesting. Apple wants to bring in many of its employees to work. They said, okay, it's time to come back. And it's estimated about half of 'em are willing to quit, willing to quit rather than come back. Not cuz of COVID, but because Hey, it was kind of fun working at home. We don't really need to come in, be bothered by other coworkers. Scott Wilkinson coming up next home theater, stay tuned, stay tuned.

Leo Laporte (00:18:54):
Double

Leo Laporte (00:18:54):
Boosted,

Leo Laporte (00:18:56):
Double

Leo Laporte (00:18:57):
Boosted, double boosted, double boosted, double.

Leo Laporte (00:19:01):
And Kim put her mask back on. After I said all that <laugh> did you just go, oh whoops. No, it was cuz I was walking down the hall <laugh> I tested Burke tested and, and John Al we all tested this morning before we came in. I tested yesterday. Yeah. Micah does not have COVID but Micah decided not to. I should be very clear about that. Micah does not have COVID but we changed the rules in the studio. So he can't even if he wanted to, he can't come in, but we all tested before we came in too. So yeah, just have to be safe. You know, we were at a concert on Thursday night in a, in know, in an auditorium <laugh> about, you know, the halfway through I'm I'm I'm I've put a mask on. I went, I don't I'm this makes me nervous. Makes me nervous. Hello Scott Wilkinson.

Scott Wilkinson (00:19:53):
Hello, Leo Laport. How

Leo Laporte (00:19:54):
Are you?

Scott Wilkinson (00:19:56):
I'm doing fine. I'm starting to get a little nervous. I'm going next. I'm planning should be going next week up to San Jose to a conference. Yeah, an actual conference.

Leo Laporte (00:20:05):
Yeah, I think we're I think we're going back into the little bit of a mini hibernation.

Scott Wilkinson (00:20:12):
Well, yeah, take a chance at this point, at this point, I'm still going, I'm gonna wear a mask everywhere, I think. Except you except I'm on camera.

Leo Laporte (00:20:18):
Yeah. I think if you wear a mask it's okay. Yeah. I, you know,

Scott Wilkinson (00:20:23):
I go my second booster.

Leo Laporte (00:20:24):
Yeah. Well that's the, that's what I've noticed is, and, but man, all of a sudden I know a lot of people who have it, you know, I don't wanna name names, but they're just all over friends and friends of friends and family of friends are getting it in the area.

Scott Wilkinson (00:20:39):
We just had a very close friend of ours in Santa Cruz.

Leo Laporte (00:20:41):
Yeah. Yeah. It's

Scott Wilkinson (00:20:43):
It's and we spent time with last weekend.

Leo Laporte (00:20:45):
Yeah, there you go.

Scott Wilkinson (00:20:46):
So there

Leo Laporte (00:20:47):
You go. But I, but all of them been testing. Thank goodness. Knock on wood because they're vaccin mild. It's been like sore throat mm-hmm <affirmative> Cory doctor was saying, it was just it was the worst sore throat he he's ever had, but it was just a sore throat and you know, a day or two later, he's fine. And thank God for the vaccine.

Scott Wilkinson (00:21:07):
Mm-Hmm <affirmative>

Leo Laporte (00:21:09):
But still you don't want to get somebody who is not vaccinated or is immunocompromised or that kind of thing. Right, right. Sick. So that's kind of half the reason I put the mask on. It's not just to protect me, but just so in case I had, for some reason I wouldn't. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Unknown

Scott Wilkinson (00:21:24):
A symptomatic.

Leo Laporte (00:21:25):
Yeah. That's why I tested this morning before I came in. I thought,

Scott Wilkinson (00:21:27):
You know, we're supposed to go to Cleveland in June for my wife's nephew's wedding. And at this point we're still planning to go, but we're gonna wear masks the whole time.

Leo Laporte (00:21:40):
Yeah. Well that's the other side of it is I think we're a little more willing to risk it because it seems to be because those of us who are vaccin and are getting mild cases, even if you got it, it's gonna be mm-hmm <affirmative> it's gonna be mild. Now I'm trying to decide. I wanna see my mom next month. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> and I'm really trying to, she says, don't come

Scott Wilkinson (00:22:02):
Out east coast, right?

Leo Laporte (00:22:03):
Yeah. She says, don't come out. It's just spiking here. I said, yeah, but, but I really wanna see her. So, and of course I don't want she's vaccinating, but I don't wanna she's you know, 89. I don't wanna risk her. So

Scott Wilkinson (00:22:14):
Yeah,

Leo Laporte (00:22:15):
Of course. I don't know what to do. I'm gonna get the fourth shot. I I think before then

Scott Wilkinson (00:22:22):
Check dinos that wondering what change I've made to my background. See if you can find it, there is a change there.

Leo Laporte (00:22:27):
I think you, well, I won't say anything. I know what it is.

Scott Wilkinson (00:22:30):
<Laugh>

Leo Laporte (00:22:34):
I see a couple of changes actually.

Scott Wilkinson (00:22:37):
Yep. Tell you what I'll move out of the way and you can see a couple things. The lighting on the, on the bookcase might be a bit too bright.

Leo Laporte (00:22:54):
What do you wanna talk about Mr. Scott Wilkinson?

Scott Wilkinson (00:22:57):
Well, I, I wanted to finish my thought from last week about ATSC 3.0 and MIMO

Leo Laporte (00:23:05):
MIMO

Scott Wilkinson (00:23:06):
MIMO.

Leo Laporte (00:23:08):
This episode of the tech I brought to you by our good friends at UserWay.org UserWay.org. I'm talking about making your website, ADA compliant, accessible. Not only is it the right thing to do because you're opening up your website to a much larger group, 60 million plus people, you have a responsibility to make your site accessible. It's a public entity. So you gotta make it accessible. And with UserWay it's easy. That was my biggest concern was, oh, I can't afford it. Or it's gonna be too hard. No UserWay's really affordable. And it's really easy. An incredible it's AI powered that tirelessly enforces all the accessibility guidelines though. W C a G WCA guidelines. And I love this. So do our engineers. It's one line of JavaScript. That's it? Because UserWay is so good. It's used by more than a million websites, including the big guys Coca-Cola Disney eBay.

Leo Laporte (00:24:02):
These are companies that really have to be accessible and UserWay can do that. As you get bigger, they scale with you. If they can handle Disney, absolutely they can handle you. They make best in class enterprise level accessibility tools available to you, your small or medium sized business. And then as you scale, you need UserWay and you're ready. It just makes business sense. Some of the biggest problems, nav menus, very difficult. So the way this works, if you're blind or you're using accessibility tools, there is what they call an accessibility layer. That's what the screen reader sees. So really what UserWay does, is make sure that all the information available to the front page to the sighted user is available to the browser in the accessibility layer. It changes colors. Now you've got your Pantone color for your business. Of course we do too.

Leo Laporte (00:24:51):
Doesn't change that, but it adjusts human luminance. So it's easier for people with vision issues to read. So UserWay will generate all tags. That's one of the reasons it needs AI. It can actually see the picture and generate an all tag that matches the picture automatically. You can go in if you want, you can modify it. Of course it fixes violations like vague links, fixes broken links makes sure that your website uses accessible colors and you'll get a detailed report of all the violations that were fixed on your website. So you know exactly what it did. Plus you can work with it UserWay, integrates seamlessly with your site builder software, let UserWay help your business. Meet its compliance goals. Improve the experience for your users UserWay can make any website fully accessible, ADA compliant and everyone who visits can browse seamlessly, customize it to fit their needs. It's a great way to show your brand's commitment to the millions of people with disabilities. It's the right thing to do

Leo Laporte (00:25:51):
Where big fans UserWay can make any website fully accessible in ADA compliant with UserWay. Everyone who visits your site can browse seamlessly and customize it to fit their needs. It's also a great way to show your brand's commitment to millions of people with disabilities. We do it. You should too go to userway.org/twitt. You'll get 30% off UserWays. AI powered accessibility solution UserWay, making the internet accessible for everyone. Visit userway.org/twitt. Today me thank UserWay for supporting the tech guy show and you support us when you use that address, lets them know you saw it here. Userway.org/twitt. He is hip. He is Scott Wilkinson our home theater guru at youtube.com/avs forum. That's where his fabulous AVS forum show is every week on the YouTube and joins us every week to talk about home theater. Hello Scott.

Scott Wilkinson (00:26:48):
Hello Leo.

Leo Laporte (00:26:48):
Welcome Micah taking the day off because he's fine. Thank goodness. Good. Glad, glad to hear it. But we, we had a little COVID outbreak here in in the studio studio. So we good land. Yeah. We're sending people home and wearing masks and all that stuff as usual. Yeah. Back.

Scott Wilkinson (00:27:04):
I'm going up to a, I'm going up to a convention in San Jose next week, the first, you know, real in person convention I've been to in all this time, two years plus and I'm starting to get a little worried cause you know, there

Leo Laporte (00:27:19):
Lisa and I went to see an Ann Wilson concert in an enclosed theater on Thursday and about halfway through, I started to go, ah, and I put on my mask, I put on, I had my air plugs and my mask on, I was barely there, but at least I could feel the bass drums <laugh> Through the floor. So I had, I had something, it was nice to be around people, but I got nervous too. Yeah.

Scott Wilkinson (00:27:45):
Yeah. Well, I'm gonna be on wearing my mask except when we're on camera, we're gonna be recording the podcast. It won't be live this next week.

Leo Laporte (00:27:51):
Okay.

Scott Wilkinson (00:27:52):
Because getting, getting a, an ethernet hard wire into a booth.

Leo Laporte (00:27:57):
No, they can't do that. What conference is it?

Scott Wilkinson (00:28:00):
It's called display week. Oh put on by the society for information display and it's a super geeky display technology conference.

Leo Laporte (00:28:10):
You mean like TV sets kind of displays 

Scott Wilkinson (00:28:13):
Deeper, yes. TV sets but deeper into it. What are, what is the technology

Leo Laporte (00:28:19):
Behind

Scott Wilkinson (00:28:19):
The television?

Leo Laporte (00:28:20):
Oh,

Scott Wilkinson (00:28:20):
So there's gonna be a lot about quantum dots and there's gonna be a lot about HDR. Yeah. but, but the deeper technical aspect. So we're gonna be in the NSIs booth, which is the primary maker of quantum dots, the raw quantum dots. Yeah. And they work with Samsung and other companies to, you know, make the films and the things that they need to implement the quantum dots in their TVs. So hopefully we'll be talking to somebody from Samsung display

Leo Laporte (00:28:50):
Fun

Scott Wilkinson (00:28:50):
And, and somebody from NSIs. I I'll tell y'all about it next on next week's show. Okay. for now though, I wanted to finish a thought I had last week that I was about to talk about, but then of course you ran out of time regarding ATSC 3.0, this is the new broadcast standard for television around the world. Actually. It's not just us. Mm. And one of the things that they showed at the NA B show a couple weeks ago was an experiment in what's called MIMO multi input, multi output broadcasting, which has been around in cell phones. I think for some time you, you undoubtedly know about it. Oh

Leo Laporte (00:29:34):
Yeah. It's been around in wifi as well for

Scott Wilkinson (00:29:37):
Some time and wifi as well. Well now they're gonna do it. They're they're working on implementing it in broadcast television. So what it is basically is you have electromagnetic waves, which are what broadcast all broadcast is cell phones, wifi, television, everything. And you can have a, a, this wave, this electromagnetic wave that has a horizontal component and a vertical component. So this is called horizontal polarization and vertical polarization. And it turns out you can transmit data on both of those polarizations independently, which means you could broadcast two different signals, one in the horizontal polarization, one in the vertical polarization, or you could combine them together to double the bandwidth of the data that you can transmit. So it at, at B, they were talking about actually transmitting an eight K video signal using this MIMO technology. And so over, over the air over ATSC 3.0 over the air. Hmm. So I find that very interesting because as you probably will say, and I would agree with you most broadcasters, once this becomes available will use it to transmit more different signals at lower resolution.

Leo Laporte (00:31:06):
Yeah. Well for sure, not eight K cuz there're so people that can see it, that wouldn't be right.

Scott Wilkinson (00:31:12):
Although that's, that's gonna increase.

Leo Laporte (00:31:14):
Yeah.

Scott Wilkinson (00:31:15):
At the moment, there aren't even any stations that are, that are up and running with ATSC 3.0 that are doing 4k.

Leo Laporte (00:31:22):
Somebody told me KTLA in Los Angeles. Is

Scott Wilkinson (00:31:26):
I just, just just an hour ago, I was emailing with the PR guy for ATSC. Yeah. And he said that as far as he knew, nobody was actually doing it,

Leo Laporte (00:31:36):
Maybe for special events,

Scott Wilkinson (00:31:38):
Maybe for special events, maybe for sports,

Leo Laporte (00:31:41):
The thing is they make money by having multiple channels, they can make more money.

Scott Wilkinson (00:31:44):
Exactly. Yeah, exactly.

Leo Laporte (00:31:46):
So it's gonna be hard to convince them not to make money.

Scott Wilkinson (00:31:49):
On the other hand, remember when HD high definition first came out, there was very little content and it ramped up as more and more people got HD TVs. And I think the same thing is happening here. There is 4k content streaming, certainly. And on dish net satellite once in a while. Not dish direct TV, sorry. And Netflix does it and apple TV does it. And there are a few streaming providers that do it. There's a there's a provider in Idaho. That's actually dig this. They're actually providing content in 4k over using the ATSC 3.0 protocol, but they're streaming it. It's not going over the air. And I asked Dave, well, what's the difference between that and a and a streaming, just any old, regular streaming platform. Well, it's a slightly different format, blah, blah, blah. It's a behind baseball kind of thing

Leo Laporte (00:32:48):
Inside baseball,

Scott Wilkinson (00:32:50):
Inside

Leo Laporte (00:32:50):
Baseball. You don't wanna be behind the baseball.

Scott Wilkinson (00:32:52):
<Laugh>

Leo Laporte (00:32:53):
Actually, you don't wanna be inside it either, frankly. Okay.

Scott Wilkinson (00:32:55):
Yeah. That's true. Yeah. That's true.

Leo Laporte (00:32:56):
It's something in other words that aficionados want, but not normal people.

Scott Wilkinson (00:33:01):
Well, yeah, yeah. Still over the

Leo Laporte (00:33:04):
Age, poor normal people, we really poor normal people. We give 'em a hard time, like their needs and wants and desires. They're so limited. They're just, oh, you poor normies. But

Scott Wilkinson (00:33:15):
Now here's one. Here's one interesting thing about MIMO though, is that it requires a slightly different type of antenna, which is bad because okay, you need to buy another antenna. The good news is it's compatible with fixed wireless 5g

Leo Laporte (00:33:31):
Compatible with

Scott Wilkinson (00:33:32):
It mean means if you have a MIMO antenna for, for your TV, it will also receive 5g.

Leo Laporte (00:33:41):
Okay.

Scott Wilkinson (00:33:42):
And distribute that through your home.

Leo Laporte (00:33:44):
Oh.

Scott Wilkinson (00:33:45):
Allow you to distribute that through your home.

Leo Laporte (00:33:47):
Interesting. So, so it's the same frequencies as what you're saying. Correct. interesting.

Scott Wilkinson (00:33:51):
And, and the same technology. Yeah. So which I guess MIMO 5g uses MIMO to increase its bandwidth. It's higher bandwidth than 4g. Right? Sure. So yeah, I'm pretty sure they're U they must be using

Leo Laporte (00:34:02):
MIMO tends to eat up the spectrum. In fact, I know there have been problems with MIMO, overly aggressive MIMO wifi. Your neighbor could basically blast you out of existence.

Scott Wilkinson (00:34:14):
<Laugh> really,

Leo Laporte (00:34:15):
But I guess if, since the FCC protects the individual frequencies for these channels, it's okay for them to be extra powerful. No one's competing with them.

Scott Wilkinson (00:34:23):
Well, right. Plus the fact that it's not increasing the number of, or the bandwidth or the frequency

Leo Laporte (00:34:28):
That you're using. No, that's right. It's the same frequency. It's the same frequency. Yeah.

Scott Wilkinson (00:34:31):
It's just two different polarizations within that frequency.

Leo Laporte (00:34:34):
Right.

Scott Wilkinson (00:34:35):
So, so being able, and this fixed wireless, I think is around now you, if you have wireless towers and 5g, you need more wireless towers, cuz it's range is more limited, right. If you have one near, near enough to you, you can pick it up by this new antenna and then you have it

Leo Laporte (00:34:55):
In your house rebroadcast inside your home.

Scott Wilkinson (00:34:58):
That's right. Well, and you don't need to have a, you know, a cable installed into your home for, for faster service.

Leo Laporte (00:35:05):
You don't. I do feel like this is all stuff. Nobody really cares about

Scott Wilkinson (00:35:10):
<Laugh>

Leo Laporte (00:35:12):
To be, to be Frank. This is because again, like I said, with ATSC three in general the, the broadcasters are fighting a, a rear guard action against internet. And I, I just think internet is already one.

Scott Wilkinson (00:35:28):
Yeah. Well,

Leo Laporte (00:35:29):
But I don't know that may be, I Don that may Scott Wilkinson follow him on YouTube, youtube.com/avs forum. And

Scott Wilkinson (00:35:36):
Of course, right here he is our home theater geek, more calls coming up right after this.

Scott Wilkinson (00:35:55):
Oh, oh, you are Scotty for four whole minutes. Have you seen the new star Trek? No, not yet. I'm I'm Steve Gibson was, was very happy with it, which is a good really. Yeah. Okay. Well I'm, I'm glad about that. I'm just starting a Picard season two. I'm behind the curve. Yeah. So nobody gave me any Bacard spoilers. Yeah. But and then strange new worlds. I'm really looking forward to it. I just haven't sat down and watched it yet. Strange new world. I have to get used to that. We have to S N w is the acronym S N w oh yeah. Strange new. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Of course we have TN G <laugh> right. We have all this Ts original series. All the, all the star treks. Yeah, yeah, yeah. DS nine. Yep. Now we have SN w and I guess we have P for Picard <laugh> yeah.

Scott Wilkinson (00:36:53):
I don't know what we call Picard. Yeah. <laugh> Mick and the chat room is saying, be sure to Cleveland is in my neck of the woods. Be sure to pack heat. If COVID doesn't get you. Well, I'm gonna be fine. Cleveland's great. Don't knock Cleveland. Cleveland's a wonderful town. Yeah. And we're out, we're out about an hour outside of, oh, that's too bad. Cause you could go to the rock and roll hall of fame, which is well worth the trip. Okay. Cleveland's fantastic. Well, we're gonna be in, apparently there's a wine country near Cleveland and we're gonna be in that area. Oh. Who, who doesn't love Ohio wine. <Laugh> well, I'll tell you, I'll give you a report. Let me know back. Yeah. Yeah.

Scott Wilkinson (00:37:40):
Yeah. Dr. Mom, grandma says the accounts are going back up again. Yeah. So I'm a little nervous about this conference next week, I guess. I guess I'll go, but I'm gonna try to be really, really careful. Dr. Mom, grandma says also remember to let the rapid test percolate for 30 minutes. Yeah. I don't, I that's not what it says on the box. In fact it says no, the box says 10 actually. Yeah. It says do not read it after 15 minutes. So, so should, should we I would, I would follow the instructions in the box. Follow the instructions on the box. Hey Phoenix warp one. Good to see you always good to see everybody here in the chat room.

Scott Wilkinson (00:38:22):
No one has yet identified what change I've made in my background. Lawn dog says, did you build the lighted cube or did you buy it? I bought it. It, it actually, it was no, I, I actually bought it. That's right. I thought it was maybe a gift, but no you can build one. They actually sell kits. The same company. Look up hyper cube. I forget the name of the company. That might be the name of the company. The product is the hyper cube. I believe. Anyway, they sell kits. You can, you can buy a kit and build it. I didn't Let's see. Oh, Dr. Mom, grandma says it's the new guidelines. The box instructions are old. <Laugh> okay. A redacted the Buddha, there's a Buddha. I changed it. Its position. That's true. It's now sitting on top of the googly eyes clock in front of the sparkly lava lamp. But that had been there before, not easily seen, which is why I put it there, cuz it made it a little easier to see, but there's a brand new item up there that I hope somebody will see.

Leo Laporte (00:39:40):
Is it a geod?

Scott Wilkinson (00:39:42):
It is a geod. You found it.

Leo Laporte (00:39:45):
<Laugh> I gave all the time and now I'm afraid the time is up. So I'm gonna give you the answer and turn over all the cards, stick around for the top. You bet. All right. Thank you sir. Leo LaPorte tech I eighty eight eighty eight. Ask Leo the phone number on the line from Rancho Santa margarita, California, Tom. Hello, Tom.

Caller 2 (00:40:10):
Hi. enjoyed the whistling by the way.

Leo Laporte (00:40:13):
<Laugh> we try not to do that on the air, the engineers up in the knock. Get very upset. <Laugh>

Caller 2 (00:40:20):
All right. Well I have an issue with a 60 inch plasma display. Yes. I have a pioneer elite pro Ooh, F150, FD. It was one of the first plasmas from the curve.

Leo Laporte (00:40:35):
Yes. In fact I had one of those without that not I had one, a curl plasma, Scott said, keep it right Scott. Cuz oh, those are, are, I love it. Precious, precious TVs. They don't make 'em anymore.

Caller 2 (00:40:49):
It is the best. Yeah. So the problem is, is that it's about 14 or 15 years old? Yes. I also have a pioneer lead pro AV receiver VX X vs X 52. And I had it, I had this whole thing professionally installed. They put a power conditioner in a pro a PAX power conditioner a surge protector on the TV. I had an electrician come in and put a separate circuit breaker for the entire system. And 

Leo Laporte (00:41:26):
All of that, a very good idea. Especially the surge protector. I think people don't realize how sensitive a lot of these electronics are to surges. So if you spend a lot of money in a home theater system, that's a really good idea.

Caller 2 (00:41:40):
So that search protector is the same age as the TV. Wow. And I also have an ATV sorry, an apple TV set up with it and an Xbox and everything goes into the receiver and then one line goes out to the TV.

Leo Laporte (00:41:55):
Nice.

Caller 2 (00:41:57):
So lately my plasma display just turns itself off. It's probably. And I'm wondering,

Leo Laporte (00:42:05):
I'm gonna guess it's overheating. Scott, what do you, what do you think Scott?

Scott Wilkinson (00:42:10):
I, I think, I think you're right. It's probably overheating and that the power supply might very well be failing.

Leo Laporte (00:42:17):
Yeah. That happens too. 14 years is pretty old.

Scott Wilkinson (00:42:20):
That's pretty old.

Leo Laporte (00:42:20):
Sad to say.

Scott Wilkinson (00:42:22):
Yeah. When

Caller 2 (00:42:23):
You the power supply, are you talking about the search protector?

Leo Laporte (00:42:27):
No. You the internal power supply on the TV?

Scott Wilkinson (00:42:30):
Yep.

Caller 2 (00:42:30):
Oh, I see. Okay. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:42:32):
Yep. And I doubt pioneer has I doubt there's people out there who can fix that at this point,

Scott Wilkinson (00:42:36):
Do you think? Well, there may, may not be on the other hand last time I visited pioneer, which was some years ago they did have, <laugh> sort of a rack of pioneer curls online, just waiting in the warehouse because they have, they have to, they have to keep up the warranty. Right. They have to be ready to fix things for

Leo Laporte (00:42:58):
Not much of a warranty after 14

Scott Wilkinson (00:43:00):
Years. <Laugh> well,

Leo Laporte (00:43:01):
Hey, let you know, somebody's saying it could be the search protector, but you have it all plugged into the same surge protector. Right. So the other things aren't turning themselves off.

Caller 2 (00:43:11):
Yeah. Everything is, everything is plugged into the Panama power conditioner.

Leo Laporte (00:43:16):
Okay. So if nothing else is turning itself off, then the Panama is fine. Not the, although you should know that those things also wear out the capacitor in them can age, but also if it's got a battery in it that probably needs to be replaced, but that's

Caller 2 (00:43:30):
Well, I recent, I recently switched plugs with the TV on the PAX. And after I did that, that's when the TV started to exhibit this kind of event. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:43:44):
Plasmas get very hot. That was one of the negatives of plasmas. Do they have fans in them Scott to cool them?

Scott Wilkinson (00:43:51):
Some of them do. Yeah.

Caller 2 (00:43:54):
I don't think this one does when I walk by it after a night of watching TV, basically warm.

Scott Wilkinson (00:44:00):
Oh yeah. That's, that's a room heater.

Leo Laporte (00:44:02):
Yeah. So I'd make sure that all the venting is clear and there's, you know, dust gets in there that could be, it could be causing overheating. If you can be careful taking back off of any TV, but if you can, oh seriously, if you, if you can carefully, <laugh> not touch anything, take the back off and make sure the dust there's no dust clogging it in there. But it also could be the power supply. And if you, you know, you can go on eBay and probably find a replacement power supply.

Scott Wilkinson (00:44:30):
Oh, undoubtedly

Leo Laporte (00:44:31):
People, people, you know, pick and pull from old TVs

Scott Wilkinson (00:44:34):
And, and call, call your local TV repair shop, they might be able

Leo Laporte (00:44:37):
To, they might have some yeah. It's worth. Is it worth, so here's the question. Is it worth keeping that alive?

Scott Wilkinson (00:44:46):
Oh, that's a good question. Depends on how much it is. Cuz TVs are so cheap now

Leo Laporte (00:44:50):
And frankly, as good as that plasma was as good as that plasma was, the OS are better.

Scott Wilkinson (00:44:57):
Correct.

Caller 2 (00:44:58):
That's what, that's what my next question was, was we're, we're, I've been listening to you forever and, and hearing about the OS, but we want a bigger TV. This one's a 60 inch and we'd like a 70, 75 or 77 inch.

Leo Laporte (00:45:15):
Yeah. Get a, get as big as you can get and you can get a nice old lead to that size. It'll be brighter. Those PLA that plasma after 14 years is probably considerably dimer. Weirdly plasma is a gas, little gas cell and it, they leak slowly, but the, but they get dimer over time. As the plasma gas leaks out, the, the way they work is there's gas in there that gets charged. And and it's as it starts to kind of slowly leak out it gets dimer and dimmer. So you would get a, I think if you put an old 78 inch OLET in there or even bigger you'd be blown away.

Scott Wilkinson (00:45:52):
Oh, completely. Is there, it has a

Caller 2 (00:45:54):
Specific brand. Is there a LG brand that LG is better than the others? I, I heard, well,

Scott Wilkinson (00:46:00):
L LG, LG and, and Sony are the two main brands and they're both excellent. They're both based on LG panels.

Leo Laporte (00:46:07):
Sony won the shootout this year.

Scott Wilkinson (00:46:09):
That's that's right. But LG came in, you know, all the

Leo Laporte (00:46:12):
Time close second. I don't think there's that much difference.

Scott Wilkinson (00:46:14):
Yeah. There's not that much difference. I was just looking myself at the LG 77 inch C2, which is their current model.

Leo Laporte (00:46:23):
I want it. That

Scott Wilkinson (00:46:24):
Sounds great. 3,500 bucks. Oh

Leo Laporte (00:46:25):
My gosh. That's great. You know,

Caller 2 (00:46:28):
Say it again.

Leo Laporte (00:46:29):
LG 30, 77 inches. Yep. Which is nice size,

Scott Wilkinson (00:46:34):
Nice size. C2 is the current model year.

Leo Laporte (00:46:38):
Actually, if you're willing to go back a year, you can get it for 26 96 on Amazon

Scott Wilkinson (00:46:44):
For the

Leo Laporte (00:46:44):
C1. Yeah. For the C1. And you know, I don't think they change that much year over year.

Scott Wilkinson (00:46:48):
They don't, they, they improve the video processing year by year, but there isn't a major shift. I, I believe actually now, and I'm thinking about it, the 20, 22 model, they might have migrated their Evo panel down to the Cline. It used to

Leo Laporte (00:47:02):
Only be in the, so it would, might be better to get the, yeah.

Scott Wilkinson (00:47:05):
It might be better to get the 20,

Leo Laporte (00:47:06):
24,000 for the 83 inch, 2021 on Amazon.

Caller 2 (00:47:12):
So what, what was the LG part number again on that on that 77 inch,

Scott Wilkinson (00:47:17):
It's called 77 C2 for the 20, 22 or 77 C1 for the 2021.

Leo Laporte (00:47:25):
Get it. The number is the year <laugh> <laugh>. Although that breaks when they get to 2020, but that's another

Scott Wilkinson (00:47:31):
Matter. Well, actually 20, 20, they used an X. Yeah. For, for 10, like, like apple did with their iPhone.

Leo Laporte (00:47:37):
So C2 is the current one and that's probably the one you'd want, if you just search for LGO led and then you'll, you'll see they range from 48 inches to 83 inches and the price ranges equivalently,

Scott Wilkinson (00:47:49):
Indeed.

Caller 2 (00:47:49):
Okay. Thank you.

Scott Wilkinson (00:47:51):
You're gonna get HDR. You're gonna get HDR with that huge differe. You don't have that on the pass on it. Pioneer

Leo Laporte (00:47:56):
Bad news. You now are entering the upgrade cascade <laugh> because

Scott Wilkinson (00:48:03):
You

Leo Laporte (00:48:04):
Probably that pioneer amp. Isn't gonna do 4k either. So you're gonna need to get B receiver. That's if you have a less than 4k apple TV, you're gonna wanna upgrade that to the latest, same thing with your Roku. So all that stuff has to be upgraded. The H DM I cables have to be upgraded. Probably. Yeah. You're replacing everything

Scott Wilkinson (00:48:25):
If they're 14 years old. Yeah,

Leo Laporte (00:48:27):
Yeah. Yeah. Well you want HG I 2.1, if you can get

Scott Wilkinson (00:48:29):
It correct.

Leo Laporte (00:48:31):
So all of that may add up lovely, but you will get a beautiful, I mean, I, oh,

Scott Wilkinson (00:48:38):
Unbeliev

Leo Laporte (00:48:38):
My wife, when we look at our LG O led, she says it's too real. Let's go back in the other room. I feel <laugh>. I feel like I'm there and I don't wanna be.

Scott Wilkinson (00:48:48):
I disagree with her philosophy on

Caller 2 (00:48:50):
Her. My wife complained, my, my wife has complained about that with the Visio. It looks too much like a video cassette.

Leo Laporte (00:48:57):
Yeah. Turn off. So that's because smoothing. Yeah. That's cuz you have motion smoothing turned on and that does make it look, plastic ear, the soap opera. Perfect. That's cuz it's interpolating frames. You're not, it's not getting 120 frames, so it's making up what's in between and it gives it a very icky look that should be turned off on all televisions. Thank you. Great questions. Thank you for sticking around Scott Wilkinson Leo Laport, the tech guy more calls coming up. Stay here. Woo-Hoo That was a very fun call. I'm so glad you were here for that. Actually

Scott Wilkinson (00:49:34):
It really was. It was perfect.

Leo Laporte (00:49:35):
Yeah. It was exactly what we should be talking about. All right. All yours

Scott Wilkinson (00:49:40):
For the next. Oh yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:49:41):
Eight minutes and something.

Scott Wilkinson (00:49:44):
All right. Sorry if I, if I, this week and last week got a little

Leo Laporte (00:49:48):
Too. Oh, I don't mind. No, no, no, no, no. I don't mean that when I say we should be talking, I don't mean it that way. Okay. No, I like it when you get people like it, when you get geeky, that's fine. <Laugh> that's fine. ATSC, there's a lot of interest in ATSC three mm-hmm <affirmative> they really wanna know, you know? And I understand that, you know. Well, good. Yeah.

Scott Wilkinson (00:50:08):
Okay. Bleep blurp says it's now hard to find a 70 inch or under 1200 bucks. Well, yeah, that's true. A good one. Anyway, you know, you could probably get an insignia or a Westing house or one of the third tier TV brands, maybe a 70 inch for under 1200. I'd have to do a little research on that, but I don't recommend it. I mean, you know, in the, in a sense you, and, and in many senses you get what you pay for. And I've often talked about the price performance ratio, right? So you chart price on the vertical and ho performance on the horizontal. However you wanna define performance. And as you increase price, you increase performance, maybe price on the horizontal and performance on the vertical. Yeah. I think that's the way it is. That's the way it is. So as you pay more, you get better performance, but there's a point at which the performance part of the curve starts to level off and you pay more and more and more and more and more to get a smaller and smaller increment in performance.

Scott Wilkinson (00:51:16):
And so where I like to recommend people go is to find that what's called the knee where price and perform price performance goes up, as price goes up steeply. And then at some point it settles, it levels off. And that point where it levels off, that's where you wanna be. You're gonna pay more than a super cheapy, but you're gonna get much better performance. And you don't have to spend more than that because your increase in performance is only gonna be marginal. So that is my recommendation for that particular thing. Wow. A bunch of people are joining all of a sudden look at that. Wow. Why is that? I wonder anyway a loquacious always good to see you. My my Renaissance fair friend. We didn't get there obviously this year, cuz it's down in LA. We're thinking about going to the Northern one, which is in the fall.

Scott Wilkinson (00:52:31):
<Laugh> but it's the it's it used to be in Novato, which was great. I used to play it that fair and it was wonderful. And then it was in Vallejo and I never went there. Now it's at Casa DETA, which is east of Watsonville, sort of in the Hollister area and I've never been to it yet. So I don't know, but I would suspect it's not exactly isolated from the rest of the world. I, I have that problem with the Irwindale location in Southern California as well. You can look out and see modern houses and it's got concrete paths and it, it's not truly a recreation of the Renaissance. And I doubt that Casa Deru, which is, and has been for a very long time, a kind of a fruit stand stopping point on the highway from the coast into highway five, I guess. And so I don't know. I don't know. We met go this year just because why not?

Scott Wilkinson (00:53:40):
Burke? Yeah. Buy a new, better, bigger TV damn straight. Keith five, 12. Yeah. Plasma display would overheat at the end of its life. It, it, it overheats it's it gets hot. It's a room heater. <Laugh> I remember at CES years and years ago, Panasonic had 102 inch plasma that you basically had to either crane or helicopter into your house before you put the roof on you otherwise you couldn't get it in the house, but I'm sure that thing was man. Talk about a heater. Yikes. So look at all these people who have joined all of a sudden, wow.

Scott Wilkinson (00:54:32):
Eric Tuckman says I wait till things break before I replace 'em. I tend to do that as well to tell you the truth. I, my cars, certainly I do that. I drive 'em into the ground and then I go get a new car, but I keep cars for at least 10 years and more, my current car is now 10 years old and it's only got 65,000 miles on it because well COVID but I work at home anyway. So I don't really drive it a lot. And I recently took it into Toyota and they said, well, you're taking really good care of your car, except for one thing you don't drive it enough. <Laugh> so okay, well I'm gonna keep it as long as I can, but I'll okay. I'll drive it a little bit more.

Scott Wilkinson (00:55:18):
Oh, Burke says the IRC server crash. So everybody's returning. Am I not in here? Did I, did I get kicked out? I still see the chat room. How weird I'm not in the list. Look at that. Do I have to log back in? That's kind of weird. Oh, and now all of a sudden I'm back. Oh, I, I jump back to the beginning. Oh, huh. Well, if, if you guys can hear me, can you hear me still? Am I still on? Can you hear me now? IRC is hiccuping. Look at all the rebounds, huh? Oh, that's weird. If you can still hear me, I'm gonna still talk.

Scott Wilkinson (00:56:19):
Owen, look, a new home. Just came up on Redfin. Loquacious. Yeah, I do miss the fair days I do too. I do too. We really want to go. So like I said, we'll probably go to Casa DETA this fall, cuz that's within driving distance. Pacheco pass. I believe that's correct. Brian w de ENA, did I play tuba at the Renaissance fair? No, of course not. There were no tubas in the Renaissance. I played sack, but which is the Renaissance trombone. And that is I played in the Queen's own band and we paraded around the fair and played for the show on the main stage when the queen shows up in herion around the Shire. I certainly don't parade anymore. I don't March anymore. I am not in the chat room, but I can see the chat room I'm guess 61, 5 38. Huh? Hmm. How do I go ahead and change that? Oh, look at that. I am guess 61, 5 38. How do I change my name? Someone there can tell me I'm sure. Side shop says

Leo Laporte (00:57:42):
Slash Nick.

Scott Wilkinson (00:57:44):
Oh, slash Nick. Yeah. Let's see if that works.

Leo Laporte (00:57:55):
Yes. You are now known as Scott Wilkins. Sonian

Scott Wilkinson (00:57:58):
<Laugh> okay. Well I just did that and so here I am. The Wilkin Zian anyway. Yeah, I was just talking about somebody who just played, played trumpet in the, at the Renaissance fair. Anyway, I I would, I would object to playing modern trumpet at the Renaissance fair only because there were no modern trumpets in the Renaissance now a bar a natural trumpet.

Leo Laporte (00:58:35):
But, but of

Scott Wilkinson (00:58:35):
Course, but of course I played sack, but in the Queen's own band and that was loads of fun. Jojo dancer asked how much is the LGC two, the 65 inch is 2,500 bucks and the 77 inch is 3,500 bucks.

Leo Laporte (00:58:52):
Such a good deal.

Scott Wilkinson (00:58:53):
Yeah. Really good deal.

Leo Laporte (00:58:54):
Go run and get one. Thank you, Scotty.

Scott Wilkinson (00:58:57):
My

Leo Laporte (00:58:58):
Pleasure. Have a wonderful. Now you, you said you're gonna have a regular show this week?

Scott Wilkinson (00:59:03):
No, no,

Leo Laporte (00:59:04):
No. This week off. And then you were gonna record the show and it'll come out the week after.

Scott Wilkinson (00:59:09):
Well, a couple days after,

Leo Laporte (00:59:10):
Couple of days after. Perfect.

Scott Wilkinson (00:59:12):
That's it. Thank you,

Leo Laporte (00:59:12):
Sir. Thanks. Why? Hey, Hey. How are you today? Leola port here, the tech guy, time to talk computers, the internet and home theater and digital photography and smartphones and smart watches and anything with a chip in it. Eighty eight eighty eight, ask Leo the phone number (888) 827-5536 tollfree anywhere in the us or Canada outside that area, Skype will do Skype out will do. And should, should still be free. Should still be free. Website tech, guy labs.com, tech guy labs.com. And that's where you'll find links to anything we talk about on the show. Plus, including we'll put a link in there to the LG OED that Scott just recommended. And you also find transcript of the show and all sorts of stuff after the fact, including the audio and the video, Bob, on the line from Quincy Washington. Bob's next? Hi Bob.

Caller 3 (01:00:10):
Hello, Leo port. How are you, sir? I

Leo Laporte (01:00:13):
Am great. How are you?

Caller 3 (01:00:15):
I'm excellent. So after about 33 years in the radio business, that uniquely qualified me to get into the luxury golf cart business <laugh>

Leo Laporte (01:00:24):
And well, I'm glad to know there's a future for me. That's good to know.

Caller 3 (01:00:28):
Yes, you can build luxury golf cart,

Leo Laporte (01:00:30):
Luxury. Now what is a luxury golf cart?

Caller 3 (01:00:34):
All right. So it is they're anywhere from about 15 to $20,000 and they have every accessory and option and paint, and they're just really cool. You can my website and see 'em shame. What's

Leo Laporte (01:00:47):
What's yeah, no plug away. What's the website. <Laugh>

Caller 3 (01:00:50):
It's B O Y D R E c.com.

Leo Laporte (01:00:54):
Boy rec.com. Boy wreck.com. Makers of luxury golf carts. Now usually when you go to a golf course, don't I don't play golf, but when you go to a golf course, don't they have the golf carts there already.

Caller 3 (01:01:08):
Well, you know what? I don't play golf either, but <laugh> And I survived 33 years at radio.

Leo Laporte (01:01:15):
<Laugh> yeah. How did you do that? No wonder. I wonder you're at a radio. All the, all the, all the executives. That's all they do all day. Play golf. Oh, look at this.

Caller 3 (01:01:23):
I was one of them.

Leo Laporte (01:01:24):
This is very cool. I want one of these. So how do you get it to the course? You like this? The course must buy it, right?

Caller 3 (01:01:33):
Well, no. So what happens is the courses use real basic carts. Yeah. And that's what you get when you play around the golf. Yeah. But at luxury resort communities, which are popping up,

Leo Laporte (01:01:44):
Of course, that's what it is.

Caller 3 (01:01:45):
That's what they get around.

Leo Laporte (01:01:47):
Yeah. Cause I'll drive the golf cart from my house to the course. Here's like the club car offroad. Pacific blue. Oh, all of these are expired. I wanna buy one just to drive around town.

Caller 3 (01:02:00):
Oh, oh my God. My length are expired. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:02:02):
You better get going here. I do like the one on the front page though. That's cool. Very nice. Yeah.

Caller 3 (01:02:07):
That one is beautiful.

Leo Laporte (01:02:08):
Do you have any with a built in bar?

Caller 3 (01:02:11):
Well, I've got one with a built in cooler, so that's good. But if you wanted one with a built in bar, I would build it for you, my friend

Leo Laporte (01:02:17):
<Laugh> because then maybe I'd take up golf. So what can <laugh> so what can I do for you, Bob? <Laugh>?

Caller 3 (01:02:25):
Well, unfortunately I spend about two hours a day on the computer ordering stuff and doing all my books and all that. And I've got one of those HP all in ones. It's a 2017 that I picked up at Costco. Yeah. And it will not allow me to log in anymore and it gives me a CMO C M O S error. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> mm-hmm <affirmative> so I checked online. They said, well, replace a little 20, 32 battery

Leo Laporte (01:02:51):
Lithium battery in there. Yeah,

Caller 3 (01:02:53):
Exactly, exactly. So I did that and it did absolutely nothing different. Oh. So all my data, which is not backed up. Save the lecture, please.

Leo Laporte (01:03:01):
The hard, no, no. The hard drive's fine. Here's the good news. So the CMOs, the complimentary metal oxide, Silicon is a part of memory that is well semi volatile. You know, your Ram, when you turn off the machine goes away, that's why you have to save stuff to a hard drive. Everything that you're working on, all the programs you're running, they live on the hard drive, which lives in between boots. But the Ram is cleared out each time. Well, there's something kind of in between called the CMOs. It needs to have a battery to keep it going, but that's where settings are kept on the machine so that it knows what kind of hard drive you have, how much memory, what the day and date is, things like that. There's stuff you want to persist and you don't store in the hard drive. So if it dies, usually it's just cuz the battery died. And how old is that? HP?

Caller 3 (01:03:54):
2017. So it's about,

Leo Laporte (01:03:55):
Oh yeah. It's not that old. So it's possible. The battery died. It sounds like since you replaced the battery and you sure you put it in right. And all that.

Leo Laporte (01:04:03):
Yes. It sounds like it might be there's a larger problem. You know, if that C it's a chip, the CMOs chip, if that, for some reason got fried, then you wouldn't be able to see it. Now that doesn't mean anything's wrong with your hard drive. You could take the hard drive out, put it on another machine. It'd all be there. So you haven't lost anything. All you've lost is your CMOs settings, but it can't boot without those. Right. right. There's a couple of things you might try before you give up on this. See if you could download the manual for this thing from HP, sometimes those motherboards. And I don't even know if you have access to the motherboard in an all in one, but if you can see it have jumpers that you can remove to reset the SEAMASS and replace. Sometimes that'll do it. If you can get into bios, can you get into the setup? You know, when you tap F1 or escape or delete, can you get into that?

Caller 3 (01:04:55):
Yeah. Get into bios with the F 10. Good. And that allows me to, to mess around, but I reset everything to factory settings and it still wouldn't work. It still wouldn't work. It shows the screen, it shows the startup screen. But it won't allow you to hit enter and then enter your password. So you can, it

Leo Laporte (01:05:11):
Shows the startup screen for windows.

Caller 3 (01:05:16):
Not, well, not really windows.

Leo Laporte (01:05:18):
It says HP on it.

Caller 3 (01:05:21):
Yeah, it does a little HP dance and then it pops up with just like a screensaver picture. That's as far as you can go is

Leo Laporte (01:05:28):
A's that may be in fact that CMOs died, but something else died at the same time in a kind of coincidental mass suicide. So <laugh> I, you know, you, you might have trouble with your hard drive, which case you, your data may be at risk. I don't know. There's one setting you might look for in your setup. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> clear ES CD. That's the enhanced or extended system configuration data. And this goes I don't think it's old enough to have S C D, but it's worth checking. It's one more thing to reset in effect in that bio, but you reset everything else, which is kind of interesting. I'm worried. That is it does it does the time when you go into bios and it shows the date and time, is that accurate?

Caller 3 (01:06:15):
Yes, I check that. It is.

Leo Laporte (01:06:17):
Okay. So that means that the battery that you replaced works because that's how it's remembering. That is with the CMOs mm-hmm <affirmative>. So the fact that you can see the time and date and it's accurate in between boots, like turn it all the way off, turn on again. And the time and data are correct. That means the CMOs is working. So now I'm a little nervous when you boot up, does it show your hard drive? You may not see this. HP likes to hide these things. And if you're seeing the HP slash screen, if you hit escape, it should UN take it off the screen. What you wanna see is part of the boot sequence on a PC shows what hardware's attached and you wanna make sure it can see the hard drive. Now, when you say no, it may be because you're, it's being hidden. Not that it's not being seen.

Caller 3 (01:07:11):
Right. I think that's it. Yeah. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:07:12):
I think that's so you could also go into bios and say, don't, don't do all that. I, I want what you wanna turn on is all the diagnostics. So the slow boot, cause normally you don't want that. Cuz check's memory checks all this stuff and it's so slow this time you do. Okay. Yeah. You want it to see all of this stuff. And then one hopes that it's gonna see the drive. I, you know, mm-hmm, <affirmative>, somebody's saying you might not be a bad idea also unplug the machine and you know, just give it a complete, you know, restart.

Caller 3 (01:07:48):
Oh, I did that. Okay, good. I've done that back up a dozen times. I've got about five or six hours wrestling with this thing and it's winning

Leo Laporte (01:07:57):
I'm thinking and it would be a weird coincidence, but weirder things have happened that the hard drive died roughly the same time. <Affirmative> or maybe the CMOs error was SP a lot of times the errors you get from computers are not really what's going on. The computers, just trying its best to figure it out. And it, and it made a mistake. So it may not have been a CMUs at all be says, this has happened to me all the time. So Burke, what should he do? Berk's our engineer here fixes things. <Laugh>

Caller 3 (01:08:25):
I used to have one of those.

Leo Laporte (01:08:27):
I know radio stations have to have there's that guy right in the back in the engineering room. He's got the soldering iron. He's got wires. He's got little magnifying glasses on his spectacles. Yeah, that guy that's Burke. He says, I don't know what was

Caller 3 (01:08:39):
Wrong. Dark in there too. Yeah. It's dark

Leo Laporte (01:08:41):
Have donuts. They don't. Yeah. They always have donuts. They may be a little stale, but if you've got a craving, you know, it's funny. When I started in radio, the dream for most everybody working on radio was someday to own their own radio station.

Caller 3 (01:08:54):
I did it. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:08:56):
And

Caller 3 (01:08:56):
Now I did it and

Leo Laporte (01:08:58):
Now you're just making golf carts.

Caller 3 (01:08:59):
Nevada.

Leo Laporte (01:08:59):
Why happened? Did it not? Did you not like it was it too much work?

Caller 3 (01:09:05):
No, none of that. It we just couldn't make it. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> couldn't get the revenue to go

Leo Laporte (01:09:09):
RA radio's hard. You know, so in effect, harder than it used to be, I IOT a radio station without a transmitter tower or license cuz it's a podcast network and we got a bunch of shows. And so I kind of feel like I'm living that dream as well. And I can't wait to make custom golf, golf carts in retirement. <Laugh>

Caller 3 (01:09:26):
Well you are legend. My friend that set of pipes you have is amazing. Thank you. I can see through all the impression and, and the fancy microphones and I know what an incredible

Leo Laporte (01:09:35):
You're very, you're very kind. It's a, it's an honor. And a privilege to meet you, Bob. Boyd rec B O Y D R E c.com. I want the big speakers on my golf cart. That's a Rodney Dangerfield move though. Right? To have a boombox on your golf cart, you

Caller 3 (01:09:52):
Gotta be a little,

Leo Laporte (01:09:54):
You gonna come watch out. <Laugh> plan through

Caller 3 (01:09:57):
You gotta be aware. You gotta do it. <Laugh>

Leo Laporte (01:10:00):
Those are big speakers. I love the wheels though. These are neat. Yeah, you may have a problem with the hard drive. So at this point I would say the thing I would do if I were, you know, there, or if you had Burke would be to take the hard drive out of that all in one. Can, can you, can you access it easily? Sometimes all in one, the stuff bear you can no,

Caller 3 (01:10:21):
No. The the back pops right off. You can access the

Leo Laporte (01:10:24):
Whole thing. Thank you, HP. So pop, pop out that drive and put it in another machine. You can go on a newer tech and buy for 50 bucks, a little adapter that takes any drive, turns it into USB drive. You, you wanna check that drive cuz that's what's sounds like that's, what's getting stuck and check that, you know, you can bring it to a, a savvy tech repair guy. If you're, if your old if your old chief is around, bring it to him and <laugh> and see if he can see if he can bang on it.

Caller 3 (01:10:55):
Tom Pearson and Guro radio. I gotta go look him up.

Leo Laporte (01:10:58):
God bless him. Gotta have that first ticket guy in there, man, that guy's gonna keep you alive. Hey, it's a real pleasure to to meet a, another radio. I love radio. I love the medium. Really is a great medium. And I've been doing a little longer than you. Believe it or not 46 years now.

Caller 3 (01:11:16):
Gosh, you have. Yeah. Holy

Leo Laporte (01:11:18):
Cow.

Caller 3 (01:11:18):
Wow. I started back in the, in the early eighties.

Leo Laporte (01:11:20):
Holy cow. Am I nuts?

Caller 3 (01:11:23):
<Laugh> I nuts? No, you're an amazing talent. Just keep worry it on the side. You got nothing to worry about. I

Leo Laporte (01:11:29):
Hope I hope we can. I hope I helps a little bit, Bob. I don't, I know I haven't really solved anything, but that's that's I think at this point, all you can do is is see if the hard drivers fail, cuz it sh what you did fixed the CMOs. So, and I know you did cuz the time's correct.

Caller 3 (01:11:46):
Mm-Hmm <affirmative> well I think you, the adapter is the right idea. Yank.

Leo Laporte (01:11:50):
Yeah. Get the adapter and see what you can see. Yeah. Cuz that's where your data is. And next time back it up 88, 88, Leo. I, I had to sneak in and it just a little nudge, little nudge. Don't feel no way should feel guilty. Just, you know, just do it. Leo port tech guy. I love these golf carts. I'm now you make me wanna play golf, Bob. This is 

Caller 3 (01:12:18):
I'll chippy one.

Leo Laporte (01:12:18):
No, no, no, no.

Caller 3 (01:12:19):
Where do you play up in Seattle? Where what's your network up in Seattle? Cause you were never on chiro or commo. I worked at both of those and for got 22 years ago.

Leo Laporte (01:12:27):
Ah, I, you know it, the problem with affiliate relations, first of all, I, I don't, they don't tell me, I think we were in king for a while. The sisters, right? Yeah. 10

Caller 3 (01:12:39):
90.

Leo Laporte (01:12:39):
Yeah, the

Caller 3 (01:12:40):
Sisters, the bullet sisters. Yeah. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:12:41):
The bullet sisters gone. I yeah, they're long gone and I, and then I feel like we might have been on chiro for a bit. Usually we're on the clear channel stations cuz it's premier. But

Caller 3 (01:12:51):
It's not, oh, that's right.

Leo Laporte (01:12:52):
It's not always like we're in San Francisco. We're on a Cumulus station. So go figure. <Laugh> I you know, I just don't know. And, and as you probably know, maybe you don't cuz it's business has changed a lot, but weekend radio has become pretty much brokered. So it's harder and harder to put a regular radio station radio show on the weekends because mm-hmm <affirmative> because they broker the whole thing, which means they sell it to, you know, the vitamin company

Caller 3 (01:13:18):
Or yeah, we made, we made a fortune doing that.

Leo Laporte (01:13:20):
Yeah. Well, exactly. That's why

Caller 3 (01:13:23):
You had to there's there's no more money you have to that's the problem

Leo Laporte (01:13:26):
You have to, I'm sad. Sad to say. And so that's how most radio stations are surviving is brokering their weekends. But that means there's no room for the tech guy, the poor tech guy.

Caller 3 (01:13:37):
So I know, well, I mean Seattle was a $250 million radio market today. It's about 50 mil.

Leo Laporte (01:13:43):
Isn't that sad?

Caller 3 (01:13:44):
That's Ugh. That's why I got out. Well, I just couldn't think the stress was unbelievable.

Leo Laporte (01:13:50):
<Laugh> I feel very fortunate that in 2005 we started doing podcasts and that's been, you know, it's a, it's, it's been an eight to $10 million a year business. And it's pretty, you know, it's pretty solid ad ad supported. Yeah. So I mean I plow, we plow most of it back into the stuff, but you know, we can take a little bit out, but yes. So it's been successful. It's like owning a small radio station. Really? Yeah. But without the headwinds of radio. Yeah. Cause we're heard globally.

Caller 3 (01:14:23):
Well thank you for not taking goofy sponsors. Like George Nori does. Good Lord. He sold the damn thing

Leo Laporte (01:14:28):
House. Well, I don't think premier likes me too much because I say no a lot more than I say yes.

Caller 3 (01:14:34):
Good for you. Heavy integrity. How much longer are you gonna do it?

Leo Laporte (01:14:38):
Not much longer. <Laugh> I'm tired. I miss my weekends. I wanna play golf.

Caller 3 (01:14:45):
Yeah. Are you working during the week? Are you doing a shift

Leo Laporte (01:14:48):
Or yeah, no, no, no. I do the radio show on the weekends, but I have five other shows podcasts that I do. So I, I do a podcast Sunday after the radio show and then Tuesday, Wednesday I do two shows each. So I'm basically working like a five day a week radio gig in four days. Geez. Well, no, it's fine. I don't mind doing that. I like doing it. <Laugh> I like doing it, but you know I'm 65. I think at some point I, I wanna see the world. I wanna join the merchant Marine and see the world.

Caller 3 (01:15:16):
Yeah. That's what we, we cruise six months a year, all over the world.

Leo Laporte (01:15:20):
Oh, I'm so jealous. That's what I wanna do.

Caller 3 (01:15:24):
Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:15:25):
That's what I wanna do. What cruise line do you, what line do you like

Caller 3 (01:15:30):
NCL? Mostly mm-hmm <affirmative> and Royal. Secondly, yeah. See, you want a quieter experience than Holland?

Leo Laporte (01:15:38):
We're going on Holland to Alaska with the fans in July. And I've done. I have 113 days on Holland America, but

Caller 3 (01:15:47):
Oh my you're

Leo Laporte (01:15:48):
Welcome. I know. Yeah, no, but, but I honestly, these days we do silver sea cuz we want a little smaller boat, little more luxurious. Yeah. But I couldn't afford six months a year. <Laugh>

Caller 3 (01:16:00):
Well, that's how we do it as we, you know, we average about 500 bucks a week per person for the two

Leo Laporte (01:16:04):
Of us. Oh my God. Two of us. Oh these are like $1,500 a day. These are crazy.

Caller 3 (01:16:09):
Oh man. Yeah. Crazy. That radio. Wasn't that good?

Leo Laporte (01:16:13):
Yeah. No these are, but, but then I'm spoiled though. That's the problem <laugh>

Caller 3 (01:16:18):
Oh, I get it.

Leo Laporte (01:16:20):
Yeah.

Caller 3 (01:16:20):
You'll find everything wrong with an NCL or Royal when you get

Leo Laporte (01:16:23):
On. Yeah. I've been on MC I NCL. We did, we did Royal Caribbean with a kid cuz it had bumper cars and stuff, but it was so big. It was 5,500 people. I just, it was crazy. So the nice thing about silver seats, about three, three or 400 people on a boat. That's great. We're gonna do a couple more river. River's nice. We do a lot of river cruising.

Caller 3 (01:16:43):
Do you really? Yeah. We like, we like the big, the bigger the boat, the better.

Leo Laporte (01:16:47):
Oh, interesting.

Caller 3 (01:16:48):
Back on the

Leo Laporte (01:16:49):
Cause you like more stuff?

Caller 3 (01:16:51):
Yeah. We like the entertainment that's

Leo Laporte (01:16:53):
Oh yeah. I gotta go in the air. You're right. <Laugh> thank you. Our show today brought to you by it. Pro TV. I know these guys. Well and I'm big, big fan. I've been with ItProTV. They've been with us since they started some years ago. Always I think the place to go for it training if you wanna get in the business, the it business you may already have everything. You need all the skills you need, you know, you're good. Right? You listen to this show, you probably, you know, total tech enthusiast. It's still hard to get that first job. That's why there's a certification program. The idea is you take a test. If you pass a test, you know, you have your future employer knows you have the skills to do the job. And of course the, the one most people start with for desktop support is the a plus cert.

Leo Laporte (01:17:47):
In fact, all the compt certs are really good search to get a job in it. If you're looking to get into it, you gotta find an it training platform that is up to date has the most certs that can help you figure out what kind of it you're into and makes it fun and easy to get that training. And that is absolutely ItProTV. It's the reason they exist. They're fantastic. Seven studios running Monday through Friday, all day with their fabulous entertainers who are entertainers, what they call 'em, cuz they're experts in the field. That's obviously that's the first prerequisite, but they also care about it. They're passionate. They love it. And that passion comes through, making it more interesting, more fun. They, they love what they're doing and you will love watching them and learning from them and then doing it yourself. All the courses go from their live studios to the library within 24 hours.

Leo Laporte (01:18:42):
So they're always up to date and you have to be cuz software changes. The tests change. You know, the concepts up are up to date. And so is ItProTV, 5,800 hours of on demand programming. There are full transcripts for everything. They divided everything up into 20 to 30 minute segment. So it's very easy to watch consume. You can jump to the part you need. Just take one, one of the videos or take the whole course. They've just released a new course comp Tia's a plus. Remember I mentioned that was the kind of basic certificate for desktop support core one and core two series it's designed for professionals who support today's core technologies from security to networking, to virtualization. And more, in fact, if you, you know, study for this exam, take these, take these classes. You will be really ready to get that first job in it.

Leo Laporte (01:19:33):
And if you haven't done this yet and you're already in it, I strongly suggest it fills in the gaps, right? In your knowledge compt is a plus certification is the industry standard for launching it careers in today's digital world, you'll learn about hardware operating systems, networking, security troubleshooting. You'll come out of it, an expert, ready to tackle any problem on the job. Itprotv is really the place to get any it training you can learn and get certified on your own schedule. So if you have a re a day job right now and you want to train to get a new job in it, this is a great way to do it. May is ramping up for summer. So is ItProTV? Their free Azure weekend is next weekend, May 14th and 15th. How exciting head to their website, free courses and a great introduction to your next it career.

Leo Laporte (01:20:23):
There also will be two free webinars this month for you to check out. They just did one called what is Azure bicep? I'd like to know myself with Adam Gordon, west Bryan. That's on demand right now. I think they did it earlier this week, coming up May 19th, 2:00 PM. Eastern. It's nice to be their live cause you can ask questions, all things, cyber security that's with Daniel Lowry and John Hammond. They do these webinars is a great way to introduce you to new concepts, new topics, because even if you get that job in it, even when you're working it, you've got to always expand right, learn new skills, which helps you get a better job or, you know, get promotion at your existing job. Both of these webinars will be available on demand to watch if you can't make it to the May 19th, 2:00 PM Eastern time don't forget about your it team.

Leo Laporte (01:21:10):
Itprotv has great business plans too. Visit it pro.tv/twit for an additional 30% off all consumer subscriptions for the lifetime of your active subscription. When you use the code TWiT three, zero, TWiT 30, again it pro.tv/twit offer code TWiT 30, an additional 30% off the lifetime of your active subscription. Itprotv build or expand your it career and enjoy the journey ItProTV slash TWiT. Please use that address. So they know you saw it here. It really helps us. And thank you. Itprotv. You really helped the tech guy both with the knowledge and the and the ad support it. Pro.Tv/twit. Now back to the tech guy. Oh, the great Billy Joel, is he still, still doing, is he still the house band at the Madison square garden is still, did he come back to do those things? He used to do 50 or 60 shows a year at Madison square garden. Leo LePort the tech guy. Now that's working Sam on the line from Winston Salem, North Carolina. Hello Sam.

Caller 4 (01:22:21):
Hey Leo. I just got a crazy question. Is there a limit on IOT devices that you can put onto a network?

Leo Laporte (01:22:30):
If there is, I haven't hit it and I have 80 of them.

Caller 4 (01:22:34):
I got 400, well

Leo Laporte (01:22:36):
That's a lot. <Laugh> what are you doing? <Laugh> what does each plant in your house have its own monitor? What are you doing?

Caller 4 (01:22:46):
No. I actually I've had to upgrade my routers cuz they don't, they keep on dropping the devices. Yeah. I had a Nighthawk then I upgraded to a Aus. Then I finally just liked to bit the bullet and did like you and go system. Yeah. and I got a dream machine, got six access points around the property and 13 switches and a few other things,

Leo Laporte (01:23:11):
But that's a nice that's a nice setup.

Caller 4 (01:23:14):
Yeah. But they, like I said, some devices keep dropping and I don't understand why. I

Leo Laporte (01:23:19):
Don't think it's a, I mean, ubiquity should tell you if there's a limit, but since you have six access points, it probably is a limit per access point, you know, 250 per access point, but you have so many access points. You're probably not hitting the limit there. Here's what I would, I would look at. This is what I've done with my network. And one of the things about the ubiquity system you have, that's great is it makes it easy to create virtual lands

Caller 4 (01:23:44):
And I've already got one. I built one just with 2.5. Perfect. On the camera. Yeah, I got one just yeah, my okay. You're ahead of me one just for all other devices.

Leo Laporte (01:23:54):
Yeah. So I that's what I did. I made an IOT land. It was only 2.4 gigahertz. Because a lot of IOT devices don't do five and they work better on 2.4, 2.4 has a better range as well. So for cameras that are on the outside of the house, things like that 2.4 is better. And then so I, and also you have the advantage of by using a virtual network, separating them from the, the, in the more secure network with your computers on it. You don't want anybody to get in through a you know, a plant watering device into your home network, so you can isolate those. Right. But you're already doing that.

Caller 4 (01:24:31):
Well, see, I've got like seven vacuums. I've got three, three lights <laugh>

Leo Laporte (01:24:36):
When do the vacuums work? Do they work in the middle of the night?

Caller 4 (01:24:40):
No, they work during the day while you're

Leo Laporte (01:24:42):
At, I've got 'em you're out and about. Okay.

Caller 4 (01:24:44):
Yeah. But I mean, I've got different buildings on my property, so I've got, and each one has different floors, so I've got 'em in different floors, different areas. So

Leo Laporte (01:24:53):
Are the, are the devices that are dropping? Are they in separate buildings from the dream machine?

Caller 4 (01:25:00):
Yes they are.

Leo Laporte (01:25:01):
Yeah. And how do you get the access points? Are the access points wired?

Caller 4 (01:25:06):
All of them are wired except for one, I've got one in my pond and it is not wired through the pond, but there's I've got cat fives in most of 'em cat six to the rest of 'em. And all of 'em wired up to other UBI switches between five port and eight port. And I got for

Leo Laporte (01:25:25):
You should make sure you got a hell of a network here. You should make sure that you're not using a, a net mask. That's too small. Cuz you could, if you were 2 55, do 2 5, 5, 2 5, 5, 0, that's only 255, 2 56, actually 2 55 devices because you have one for the router. So make sure your net mask is is not 2 55 dot 2, 5, 5, do 2, 5, 5, try 2 52 on the third number, give you more devices, right? That would be one limit. But since you have, since you have a segmented land, I think that that's gonna solve that problem. Boy, that's interesting.

Caller 4 (01:26:07):
That's interest and they're random my Google voice. My Google speakers, I've got set up.

Leo Laporte (01:26:12):
You need, what you need to do is as a map, your network get a, get a something like frame that will let you map all the signal strengths all over the network. Leo LePort the tech guy. Yeah. Cuz you, I think that you need to actually kind of see what's going on and so their devices,

Caller 4 (01:26:35):
The topography whatever it was and yes. And I've also went to drawn out that I did the map through ubiquity for each, each building. Oh good. Where the signals were. Oh good. And all the, all, everything has a good signal. Everything is set. Even across the road, I've got wiring across the road and everything over there is fine. Everything all over is good. It's just certain, it's like my Google speakers, the nest speakers they will just stop working or they actually sound like they're broken records and they'll ah, phone off on, off on off, and then cut off.

Leo Laporte (01:27:09):
Yeah. Stop. So you wouldn't be able to get an IP address at all if you didn't have a big enough range. So that's not the problem cuz they all are working sometimes. So they're all getting an IP address. Yeah. It's just it's.

Caller 4 (01:27:21):
I can get everything to work if I reconnect everything, everything will work right now. And then tonight, tomorrow, sometime one or two devices won't work anymore and I've got to either like my lights, I have to turn 'em off. Count to 15, turn the light back on. Oh, that's interesting. Reconnect.

Leo Laporte (01:27:38):
That's interesting.

Caller 4 (01:27:41):
I've contacted ubiquity and I've contacted a couple different companies. I've got,

Leo Laporte (01:27:45):
I wish their support were better. I'm afraid their support. Isn't all do good. Yeah.

Caller 4 (01:27:48):
It's not

Leo Laporte (01:27:49):
Go on go on the go on Reddit. Have you gone on Reddit? Go to the ubiquity forum on Reddit and and ask there. Cause honestly a lot of times we have to support ourselves. Right? We have to do our own support. Right. And other users are often the best. I don't know if Reddit has a ubiquity forum or just a networking forum. Let me see.

Caller 4 (01:28:10):
I've been on the UBI. I've been on ubiquity and done their forum. Yeah. Their forms are and gotten some, I got some help, but most of them tell me that it's the devices I'm using I'm so, ah,

Leo Laporte (01:28:21):
I don't know, go to slash R slash ubiquity and ask there. This is the place that I always go, you know, this is where everybody's bitching about, you know, bad firmware and stuff. And so that'll give you some idea. I think if you mention this, they're more likely to have some experience with it. There it's all sorts of things that can be going wrong. That I, I don't know about, you know, that might be limitations of the ubiquity. You shouldn't be flapping like that. That's and it sounds like you're in a rural area. You're not, you're not getting interference from neighbors or anything.

Caller 4 (01:28:58):
Oh no. My, my closest neighbor is probably about half a mile away. Mm

Leo Laporte (01:29:05):
Yeah. So it's definitely not that

Caller 4 (01:29:08):
No, I've got two and a half acres of land right around me. That is all open that. And I've got outdoor access points all over to control where I got signal all over my property. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:29:20):
And how many segments do you have? It sounds like you have more than two. You have like several, several VLANs, right?

Caller 4 (01:29:28):
Yeah. I think I got like six total.

Leo Laporte (01:29:30):
Yeah. This is way beyond my expertise <laugh> it shouldn't be happening. I feel like with the ubiquity and, and six access points, you're, you know, you're in good shape, but you do have an awful lot of devices. So this would be a good one to go, go to slash R slash ubiquity on Reddit. I think,

Caller 4 (01:29:49):
See I've got wise cameras and I've got wise cameras and I got,

Leo Laporte (01:29:53):
So those cameras, those cameras why is not so much, but any camera that's sending all the time, those are, they use a lot of bandwidth, but it shouldn't knock something off, you know, it should not knock something off. Yeah. And, and, and you're not seeing any reports in your ubiquity dashboard of mm-hmm <affirmative>, you know, cuz it'll show you, you know, say where the usage is, is problematic and so forth. Right. I, I think this is you're not gonna get much support from ubiquity. So try to get some support from the community, reddit.com/r/ubiquity. They, they really, they love stuff like this. They'll dig into it, but give 'em a very complete summary of what's going on. I think they'd be very useful. Good luck. I'll be watching the posts and see, see what they say. Yes, we are here, but you know, who's not here, Johnny jet, our travel guy normally occupies this slot. Johnny's taking the day off, probably going somewhere, doing something fun. He'll be back next week. Meanwhile, that means good news. I got more time for you. Micah in Maine, our railroad enthusiast is back. Wait a minute. It was real. It was ocean liners. I think it was yes.

Caller 5 (01:31:03):
Well, like I kinda like ocean liners, but as you know, I'm far more into airplanes. In fact, as I'm talking to you in writing an article on the Boeing 7 0 7, but that's another story.

Leo Laporte (01:31:12):
Yeah. We talked about that last week. He, the airplane guy podcasts. Yes.

Caller 5 (01:31:16):
Air, airplane, geeks,

Leo Laporte (01:31:17):
Geeks always get it wrong.

Caller 5 (01:31:19):
Airplane, geeks, podcast, airplane geeks. But, but, but it's, it's okay that you get it confused because I'm also involved with my good friends, another podcast, the airline pilot guy and both the airplane geeks and the airline pilot guy listens to you to you. Hello?

Leo Laporte (01:31:34):
Hello. I'll be taking an airplane soon. I'm so excited. I haven't been on one in quite some time. You it's, it's gonna be fun and I don't have to wear masks anymore. Although I will be, <laugh>

Caller 5 (01:31:44):
Definitely wear a mask. The numbers are going back up.

Leo Laporte (01:31:47):
I know I will

Caller 5 (01:31:47):
Be the highest numbers in the country right now. And you know, and it's not that bad wearing a mask. You know, I flew to, to, to London back in February and I took a circuit circuitous route. I, I flew from Portland to San Francisco first and then San Francisco to London.

Leo Laporte (01:32:02):
How crazy is that?

Caller 5 (01:32:04):
I wanted to meet a friend and oh, okay. Flying in first class and oh, we were originally supposed to meet in Chicago. The flights got a little fouled up. So sometimes

Leo Laporte (01:32:12):
I wish those Chicago, when you're flying up front, I wish those flights were were longer. <Laugh> can I have a couple more meals? That's fine.

Caller 5 (01:32:19):
Exactly. Rather than sit in Chicago in O'Hare for six hours. Why didn't I sit in first classes?

Leo Laporte (01:32:26):
Sit up front. Yeah. Great. So what can I do for you today, Micah?

Caller 5 (01:32:30):
Well, I got an email from the evil monopoly spectrum telling me that they

Leo Laporte (01:32:35):
There's only one thing worse as we now know the evil monopoly frontier. Okay. But spectrum. Yes. Okay. Mm-Hmm <affirmative>

Caller 5 (01:32:43):
Well, they told me they raised my, my internet speed to 200 megabytes per down. Nice. It would still be 10 up. So I did an internet speed and sure enough, I was getting 50 megabytes down. Oh. So I called and they sent out a a tech and I knew it wasn't me, although I didn't think it was me. And he tested it directly from my modem as I did as well. And yeah, I was getting 200 megabytes from my modem, but oh, getting it from my router and I have a net gear Nighthawk, R PR 700 P router and can't figure it out. It's reasonably new. And he said, get a new router. So I ordered one, but then I did some searching and I found a setting on the router all over the internet called dynamic QoS.

Leo Laporte (01:33:26):
Yes.

Caller 5 (01:33:27):
And I turned it off. Yes. And I, he shot up to 250

Leo Laporte (01:33:31):
<Laugh> so QoS quality of service is in theory, a good thing. The idea being you'll get quality of service. It's prioritizing some packets over others. So when you're playing a game, you don't, you don't want all the packets to go to the email or the web. You want 'em to go to the game. If you're doing a Skype call or video call, you want the packets to be prioritized there. So QoS is usually used to prioritize packets for stuff that's sensitive to packet loss, packet dropping slow, slow speed. Sounds like <laugh>. It was it was prioritizing something you don't care about. I don't know what the lawnmower, I don't know. And everything else was slow.

Caller 5 (01:34:20):
Yes. And, and, and I, I couldn't find a whole lot about it or what it was. And even net gear says, if you have speeds over 300 megabytes per second, turn it off.

Leo Laporte (01:34:28):
Oh, interesting. I red said, oh, that's interesting. Turn

Caller 5 (01:34:30):
Off dynamic QoS. And as soon as I did the speeds jumped and it's, it's just a good thing. I thought

Leo Laporte (01:34:35):
That's a good tip. Yeah.

Caller 5 (01:34:37):
Yeah. And I thought you'd want to know to listen to your, tell your listeners because 

Leo Laporte (01:34:41):
Even by the way, even net gear says, if you use a gigabit internet connection or anything above 300 megabits, you don't need to use QoS. So so, so I guess the way I would understand this is your router is a computer. It's not a very smart computer. It's not a very fast computer. And maybe having it do things like resolve traffic congestion is actually gonna end up slowing everything down because it's, you're asking it to, to think harder, to do more. And yeah, I don't, I think that that's a really good tip and anybody listening, who has a Nighthawk, actually many, many, many routers have QoS settings. That's a good thing to try and you're you're right. I, if you'd called and said, why is it slow? I would not have said, oh, turn off QoS. That's not the first thing I would've thought of. So that's, cuz it's not, it's supposed to be the opposite, right?

Caller 5 (01:35:35):
Yeah. I mean, it's supposed to speed things up, but it obviously didn't, you know, as soon as I turned it off sent the route, didn't even open up the new router sent it right back. Everything's great.

Leo Laporte (01:35:44):
So a lot of times the QS setting you is not dynamic. And I think that might be the problem with the, with the Nighthawks. You would say, I prioritize this kind of traffic. I want Q OS on Skype or I want QoS on my games and you wouldn't let the router decide. It sounds like the router here is not deciding properly.

Caller 5 (01:36:05):
Yeah. Now I have another quick question for you. Cuz as I was in the router settings, I was looking at all my attached devices and I could identify all of them, but one mm-hmm <affirmative> and can't quite figure it out now I've blocked internet access to it. So that, that way, if you know that way, I might notice what it is, but I haven't noticed anything yet.

Leo Laporte (01:36:24):
What, how, what does it identify as

Caller 5 (01:36:26):
It says zero an unknown and 

Leo Laporte (01:36:30):
Can you see the Mac address cuz that would help you?

Caller 5 (01:36:33):
Yes. Okay. I looked at the Mac address and I looked it up and the first four or five digits say that it's a TP link. Something. Okay,

Leo Laporte (01:36:39):
Good. Yeah. The Mac address, which every device in the world is supposed to have a unique Mac address. The Mac address has in the beginning, the first few digits, the manufacturer. So you were able to figure out the manufacturer TP link.

Caller 5 (01:36:53):
Yeah. I, I think that's what it is. It's it's C or colon. Oh eight.

Leo Laporte (01:36:59):
Do, do, do you have, do you have a ma a TP link hardware anywhere?

Caller 5 (01:37:04):
No. The only TP link device I have is my modem and it's a different Mac address. So, and it wouldn't the modem wouldn't show up on the router anyway that I can figure out. So it's

Leo Laporte (01:37:15):
Not unusual. I, for instance, when I look at my ubiquity, I try to assign names to everything, real names. So I know, you know, that's, Lisa's computer, that's my computer, that kind of thing. But it's not unusual to see when you do this, some surprising things show up on your, on your wifi. You know, my TiVos for instance, have a wifi access point built in for some reason. So it's not unusual to see maybe even a single device with two Mac addresses and two connections.

Caller 5 (01:37:47):
Now, obviously I have, you know, good password on there and, and, and, and I'm locked down and everything and I, again, I blocked the internet access to it. Should I be concerned? Should I

Leo Laporte (01:37:56):
Probably not. No, no, no, no, I don't. I don't think so. You have, as long as you have a password on your wifi, nobody's able to use it. It's it's and, and that's the, the point is this is something that you own may even be another device that has TP link hardware built into it, like a TiVo, for instance, that is showing up it wouldn't have been able to get on your network if it weren't, if it's password protected, if it didn't have real access. So it could very well be that you have a device that has joined twice and you just didn't know about the second one. I wouldn't worry about it.

Caller 5 (01:38:35):
Yeah. Okay. Then if you say not to worry, Leo,

Leo Laporte (01:38:37):
I'm not gonna worry. I, I wouldn't worry. Somebody's saying that great wifi AP on the TiVo is for TiVo to TiVo transfer something I never do. And it annoys me because I <laugh>, I don't want my TiVo to be establishing a wifi network in my house without, without any good reason. So yeah, it just happens. It is almost certainly your TB link router is connecting. It's connected via ethernet obviously. Right. Cause it's a router, but it's also

Caller 5 (01:39:05):
Connected via ethernet and that's yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:39:08):
It's also establishing, you know, it's getting on the network twice in effect and I, yeah, I think that's nothing to worry about. It's interesting. You were able to disable it and nothing went wrong.

Caller 5 (01:39:18):
<Laugh> yeah. Should I continue to leave it black from

Leo Laporte (01:39:20):
The internet? No, I would not. I would put it back on.

Caller 5 (01:39:23):
Okay. Yeah. That's what I'm good

Leo Laporte (01:39:26):
Question mic. Yeah. Thank you. I appreciate it. And thank you for encouraging me last week to show pictures. Did you see some of the pictures I showed of the old oh, beauty, pretty Mary in the United States. Yeah. It was fun. Yeah.

Caller 5 (01:39:38):
Yeah. Thank you so much for that. I really,

Leo Laporte (01:39:39):
Yeah. Real pleasure. Thanks

Caller 5 (01:39:41):
Mike. And I'm glad I could be a, it it's a real honor to be able to be on when Johnny's not here because I really respect Johnny. You know, we correspond back and forth. I've written some articles for him, so nice boy to come on at the same time, he would be what an honor for,

Leo Laporte (01:39:52):
Yeah. You're the tra you were the travel guy, this segment, Leo LePort the tech guy. <Laugh>, that's kind of funny. I didn't even think of that. Michael will do our travel segment today. <Laugh> and,

Caller 5 (01:40:06):
And frankly, you know, I was gonna say, now that we're off the air, if Johnny can't make it, sometimes I should want somebody to fill in on travel Delio, happy to do

Leo Laporte (01:40:14):
That. Delio. I didn't even think of that.

Caller 5 (01:40:16):
That's you know, I've, I've got the mic. I could, you know, I've got a connection. I could certainly do that for you. Let

Leo Laporte (01:40:21):
Me put you on hold and I'm gonna have Kim get contact information so that if if Johnny doesn't make it I can email you

Caller 5 (01:40:31):
Johnny, you know? Yeah. I could never replace Johnny, but if he would be comfortable with me filling in for him, I'd be happy to that.

Leo Laporte (01:40:37):
Oh, I'd be comfortable with it. That's great. Yeah. Hang on the line. I will we'll get your contact info. He, he doesn't miss that often, but you know, cuz of travel and stuff, it'd be good to have somebody to back you up, back him up and you'd be great. So hang on, Micah. I'm gonna give you, put you on hold and go ahead Kim and get his info. That's great. Nice. That's nice. Oh and yeah, yeah. Yeah. Mica Sergeant will probably can probably handle that. Leo Laport, the tech guy, 88, 88 LIO. Mike is sorry. Michael had Michael on the mine. Michael is on the line from Torrance, California. Hi Michael,

Caller 6 (01:41:22):
Dr. Leo

Leo Laporte (01:41:25):
Nurse Michael. I don't know what should I call you? Should I? No,

Caller 6 (01:41:28):
But doctors and nerd them

Leo Laporte (01:41:30):
Doctors in nerd them. Hello, my fellow doctor, Mr. Michael.

Caller 6 (01:41:35):
You've been speaking my language with the last few callers. Oh talk about QoS. Yeah. And net mask and IP addresses. <Laugh> 

Leo Laporte (01:41:47):
We, you know, now that you mention it, we're getting a little nerdy in here. Yeah.

Caller 6 (01:41:51):
Well it, it is. And it's kind of cool, but the last call I think was talking about QS on his local

Leo Laporte (01:42:00):
Route. Yeah. He had a, I had, I think he had an Nighthawk router that was over ambitious. You know, it struck me after I let him go that maybe the QoS was saying, well, whatever you did with this speed test, you don't need all those packets. So I'm gonna cut you off. It could have actually been doing its job and saying, no, no, no. We've got more important things to do with that speed test

Caller 6 (01:42:26):
And QLS will, if you've got a Cisco rack Mount 

Leo Laporte (01:42:30):
Work. Yeah. Well, no, if you have a fancy, like a real system. Yeah. But even then you probably don't do automatic Q OS. You tell it what to prioritize, which ports and things. That's correct. Yeah.

Caller 6 (01:42:42):
You gotta program memory, adult memory.

Leo Laporte (01:42:45):
I think that's the problem is that this little Nighthawk with this little tiny P Brainin was not really capable of doing dynamic QoS, you know,

Caller 6 (01:42:54):
Was he the one that was having problems with multiple devices? No, that

Leo Laporte (01:42:58):
Was another, another networking issue.

Caller 6 (01:43:00):
Okay. So that was the one, I was gonna say

Leo Laporte (01:43:03):
400 OT devices, including eight vacuums <laugh> on on his ubiquity network. That's pretty impressive.

Caller 6 (01:43:11):
Did he want his own IP addresses or 

Leo Laporte (01:43:14):
Like static? Are you sorry? Static. IP addresses.

Caller 6 (01:43:18):
No like cyber block or something like that. A classless internet domain.

Leo Laporte (01:43:23):
I don't think 400. He needed a cider block. <Laugh> he should have an <laugh>, you know, we're running out of IP addresses. Let's not waste them here.

Caller 6 (01:43:34):
Well, that's why they went to cider at

Leo Laporte (01:43:36):
1990. I know. No, in fact he could have his own because it's internal and it doesn't, it doesn't occupy any space in the correct public network.

Caller 6 (01:43:43):
U use ARP you know, address resolution protocol to figure out the devices on the

Leo Laporte (01:43:49):
Network. He's got, it's not as fancy as your Cisco rack mounted do Hickey. I

Caller 6 (01:43:53):
Don't have a Cisco rack next year

Leo Laporte (01:43:55):
<Laugh> but he has a, a fairly nice system. One that I have at, at home as well. It's kind of a prosumer system called from ubiquity. That should handle, especially since he's got 'em segmented, that should easily handle all of that. I'm not sure what's going on, but you know yeah. After all radio frequency is voodoo, it, it, yeah. You know, it's all sorts of things can screw with it.

Caller 6 (01:44:18):
Well, I just like to randomly do an, an ARP dash, a <laugh>

Leo Laporte (01:44:23):
Help, gotta watch out for ARP cashing and a poisoning though. My friend. Well,

Caller 6 (01:44:28):
Well, yeah, that's true too. 

Leo Laporte (01:44:30):
Somebody, somebody called some time ago and said, can you explain how an art poisoning attack works? And I said, no, <laugh>. I said, no, I won't. It's

Caller 6 (01:44:41):
Very, very complex.

Leo Laporte (01:44:42):
<Laugh> I refuse to take valuable air time explaining I'm explaining our poisoning, but we do on our security show. As you know, Steve Gibson is an expert in our

Caller 6 (01:44:53):
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So, no, I just got geeked out on hold

Leo Laporte (01:44:58):
So, well, I'm glad, I'm glad you enjoyed it. I am. I'm glad. Yeah. Now you were gonna ask something about the windows insider programs, speaking of geeks.

Caller 6 (01:45:07):
Well, yeah, the first thing I was gonna criticize you. I, I hate to criticize you, but 

Leo Laporte (01:45:12):
No, you must because how am I gonna get better?

Caller 6 (01:45:16):
Well, you were talking about strange new worlds and S and w yes. As an acronym

Leo Laporte (01:45:21):
For the new star Trek series. Yes.

Caller 6 (01:45:24):
Yeah. S and w is not an acronym.

Leo Laporte (01:45:27):
It's not,

Caller 6 (01:45:29):
No, an

Leo Laporte (01:45:29):
Acronym has to be what pronounceable,

Caller 6 (01:45:32):
Correct? Like scuba

Leo Laporte (01:45:34):
<Laugh>, but I can pronounce SNU.

Caller 6 (01:45:36):
Yeah. You can say ITSN <laugh>. But how do you, yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:45:39):
Okay. So what do you call it? If it's just to the abbreviation? That's not pronounceable,

Caller 6 (01:45:44):
It's an abbreviation. Oh,

Leo Laporte (01:45:46):
I guess. All right. Okay.

Caller 6 (01:45:49):
Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:45:50):
Okay. I stand corrected

Caller 6 (01:45:53):
And Scott Wilkinson don't have a fall in Casada because I oh, yeah,

Leo Laporte (01:45:58):
Yeah. Casa Frida. Yeah.

Caller 6 (01:46:00):
He doesn't have to worry about any you know, slabs around there or pads or, or homes it's in the middle of nowhere and it's a spectacular little place. Nice locomotive train. Now wine tasting.

Leo Laporte (01:46:16):
Yeah. Yeah. I feel like I've, I feel like I've whizzed past it on the I five.

Caller 6 (01:46:22):
Well, yeah, yeah. If you're to the five. Yeah, yeah. Through a OI and

Leo Laporte (01:46:26):
The beautiful CA I was very disappointed. I wanted to take my my lovely wife to the giant artichoke restaurant and they, and they were closed. So Apparently the COVID has even even affected the giant artichokes, but the giant artichoke was there and she did post for a picture with the giant artichoke. So that's okay.

Caller 6 (01:46:48):
Well,

Caller 6 (01:46:48):
There you go.

Leo Laporte (01:46:49):
And, and this just in there, it's, it's called an initialism. It's an initialism. Oh, okay. If it's, if it's not pronounceable, if it's pronounceable, according to the ants in the chat room, if it's pronounceable <laugh>, it's it's an acronym. Otherwise it's an initialism. Thank you, Michael time for one more. JT, Irvine, California. Hi, JT.

Caller 7 (01:47:15):
Helio. How are you, man?

Leo Laporte (01:47:16):
I am. Well, how are you?

Caller 7 (01:47:18):
Yeah, doing well. Thank you. Long time listener. Hard time, caller. Welcome. Talk to you. Thank

Leo Laporte (01:47:22):
Nice for, thank you. Nice to have you, what can I do for you?

Caller 7 (01:47:25):
Yeah. So just a quick question regarding first would you recommend buying use MacBook? And my primary concern is the budget, but I am a Mac person. I am in the apple ecosystem love using Mac. I've always kind of for the past. I would say almost a decade. Always been a Mac person.

Leo Laporte (01:47:44):
If you know, used is fine. As long as you, the source is good, you know, you it's somebody, you know, or, you know apple sells refurbished, Macintosh gear, and that's certainly trustworthy cuz it's apple. And and they, of course don't as a result, discounted by very much. So you're not gonna save, you're gonna save a couple hundred bucks maybe, but that's probably the preferred place to get it. But if it's a refurbisher you trust or you're buying it from a party that, you know, and trust, just remember when you buy a used computer, you're buying the problems that the guy who owned that computer had. And and so you need to trust, you know,

Caller 7 (01:48:23):
The source, would you recommend like buying from a place like eBay where the seller has decent reviews and they say that, you know, they describe that it's

Leo Laporte (01:48:30):
Yeah. You're taking your chances, but again, yeah. The, the, probably it is a good time to buy used max because there are a lot of Intel max that people are getting rid of even late model Intel max, because they're ready to, they want to get the new chips. The M one chip and, and apple is probably gonna announce the M two in just a few weeks about a month at the worldwide developers conference, which means you may see a bunch of M one S come on the marketplace, as people say, oh, I gotta get the newest, latest and greatest thing. So maybe for instance the predictions are, there'll be new MacBook air June in June. Then you might look at a MacBook air M one, the first generation, which is gonna be two years old now. And those are solid state. There's not much that can go wrong with those. There's no moving parts.

Caller 7 (01:49:17):
Yeah. That makes sense. So yeah, I might actually then wait til WWC 

Leo Laporte (01:49:21):
Yeah. What I, what I would be careful with, or just be aware of with the M one S is there isn't much difference in speed between the lowest end M one, the MacBook air and the highest M one, the max studio mat ultra, because the single core clock speeds the same across the board. So for most of what we do day in, day out, it's gonna be the back book. Air is gonna save you a huge amount of money, thousands of dollars, and be just as fast. So got it. I wouldn't hesitate in getting a MacBook air if price is a consideration right now in brand new ones, 950 bucks. So 

Caller 7 (01:50:00):
You know, yeah, yeah. Cool. Alright then it's happening in June? You said, right? So next month,

Leo Laporte (01:50:05):
June yeah, I think June 10th, June 7th. Yeah. Next month WWDC. Okay. It is expected. Apple will announce a bunch of new hardware at that time. They may even announce the M two chip. Here's the gonna be the dirty little secret in the M two it's only about 10 or 20% faster than the M one. So the M one is still a very good thing to buy Leo Laport, the tech guy.

Leo Laporte (01:50:38):
All right. I've got these lovely, thank you, Burke. I guess you really didn't want 'em cuz you left him on the front desk. So I thought, well, I, if, no, if you don't want 'em I'll take them. I just didn't wanna take your valuable, I guess you were clearing out all your old tech TV memorabilia. I'm gonna take this on the Alaska cruise. Take him out. See if anybody notices. Well hello. Hello. Hello. It's time to talk tech with me. The tech guy, Leo Laport, eighty eight eighty eight. Ask Leo is my phone number. If you have a question or a comment or a suggestion, if you want to talk high tech 8 8, 8, 8 2 7 5 5 3 6, toll free from anywhere in the us or Canada outside that area, you can, you can still reach me. All you have to do is you Skype out or something like that.

Leo Laporte (01:51:30):
88, 88 ASIO should be tollfree from anywhere in the world, anywhere in the world. The website tech I labs.com. That's where you'll find links to everything we talk about on the show, all the answers, all the questions there's even audio and video there. After the fact of the show in its entirety, plus a transcript, something new we added so that you can, you know, there's a text file you can search for what you're looking for and it has time codes and jump right to that part of the show all there and all free tech guide labs.com. Just look for episode 1891. We're almost in the 20th century, Michael, on the line from Torrance, California. Hi, Michael Leo. Leport the tech guy.

Caller 8 (01:52:14):
We were talking, I don't know if I hung up on you or, or what, but oh

Leo Laporte (01:52:19):
Yeah, we were talking before, but I picked you up again,

Caller 8 (01:52:22):
So. Okay, good.

Leo Laporte (01:52:23):
Yes. So you never got to the question, so go ahead.

Caller 8 (01:52:26):
Ah <laugh> okay. So when for the idiots that are still using windows like me, yeah. You know, I'm on the 

Leo Laporte (01:52:34):
That's not, you're not an idiot for using windows. I'm sure you have an excellent reason to do it.

Caller 8 (01:52:40):
Well, I, I, yeah, I need to 

Leo Laporte (01:52:42):
You're a masochist. You like to beat yourself up. That's a good reason. You like to suffer when you use an operating system. That's a good reason. Well,

Caller 8 (01:52:50):
Anyhow, as far as the insider Ray, I, I was on the beta channel and about three weeks ago, somehow the dev channel and the beta channel merged.

Leo Laporte (01:53:03):
Yeah.

Caller 8 (01:53:04):
Did you hear about that? Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:53:06):
Yeah. Microsoft changed the rings.

Caller 8 (01:53:10):
Okay. So what I was getting was new builds every single day. And restoring you had to screwed up all the libraries

Leo Laporte (01:53:21):
Again, and you had to,

Caller 8 (01:53:23):
Again,

Leo Laporte (01:53:23):
Reinstall, you're just reinforcing what I've been saying, and I'm saying it somewhat facetious. I know, but yeah, it, you have to have a certain amount of willingness to suffer, especially as an insider.

Caller 8 (01:53:40):
Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:53:40):
So yeah, Microsoft rearranged the rings. Remember we were talking about this on our windows weekly show with Paul throt and Mary Jo Foley, the rings for those who don't know you know, when you, most people should never even have to think about this. You download windows, you don't even download it. You buy a machine, it has windows on it and you continue to use it updating regularly. Whenever there's a critical update, which is every second Tuesday of the month to make sure that all the security patches are applied and that's that you don't think about it. Yeah. But you and many others, you're not alone. Millions of others want to try pre-release versions of windows. And for that, Microsoft has the insider program and within the insider program, as you know, there are rings, which used to be fast and slow <laugh> and now as you know, they've renamed them and they've changed them. And everything's a little bit different now. Yeah. So what ring you were on the witch ring? <Laugh>

Caller 8 (01:54:46):
I was on, well, the, the beta channel. Okay.

Leo Laporte (01:54:50):
So that, and the intention now what I think, as I remember when you do it on windows, it says if you would like to have, you know, kind of the final release of the next version of windows ahead of time, that's the beta channel. Is that right?

Caller 8 (01:55:03):
Yeah. Dev channel. Yeah. Dev channel is for that's

Leo Laporte (01:55:06):
That's cutting edge. Yeah. Yeah. So there actually, no, beta's the middle. So there was the release preview channel. That's the one, if you wanna do this most people, unless you're really brave should be on the release preview channel. That's gonna be the

Caller 8 (01:55:21):
Only problem is yeah. On the beta channel, but they merged dev and beta and it got really screwy. So my recommendation to everybody, unless you wanna suffer, like I have, do not get on the insider ring <laugh> and if you don't need to run windows, don't do it.

Leo Laporte (01:55:44):
Yeah. I agree.

Caller 8 (01:55:45):
Don't get back 11, 7 80 or something. Run Lennox, run Unix. 

Leo Laporte (01:55:52):
Yeah. Well, a lot of people need windows. If you're a gamer, for instance, all, you know, all the best games or run windows, if you're in business, you know, all of our business office uses windows, cuz they want Excel and so forth. I understand that. Yeah. there is a blog, post blogs.windows.com where in which they explain the rings, the problem is <laugh> it's, it's a moving target. This blog post. Let me look here. It's a windows insider blog. This is June 15th, 2020. And I think it's yeah, it's even changed from then. But in this one they changed fast and skip ahead, rings into dev channel, slow ring into beta channel and release preview, ring into release preview channel. But I think even that has changed since, so it

Caller 8 (01:56:43):
Definitely has. Yeah. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:56:45):
So you were on, you were on the beta, the, which they say is right for early adopters, get builds tied to a specific upcoming release. These will be, this is important. According to Microsoft two years ago, these will be reliable with updates validated by Microsoft, a reasonable ring to be on except not cause you're getting not anymore screwed you up. Yeah,

Caller 8 (01:57:08):
No, yeah, no, it did. And also put a little text on your desktop. It said this version of windows will expire September 1st, 2022 <laugh>, which made me think what the heck is going on. <Laugh> and I did some research and now it's gone. They fixed that. But anyhow, my, my advice just if you don't need windows, you know, get a Chromebook <laugh> 

Leo Laporte (01:57:42):
You're sounding like me now, Michael. I thought you were gonna offend it. <Laugh>

Caller 8 (01:57:47):
Oh no. I, the only reason I use it, I need to use it. Yeah. But you know, I've done a

Leo Laporte (01:57:53):
Lennox. I actually, because I'm sitting right now in front of a Mac on my left and a Linux computer on my right and no windows computer here. And I've realized that that is a gap in my my knowledge and my tech array here on the show. I need to have a windows machine. So I ordered a Dell XBS 15. I also wanted to test the new 12th generation Intel processors, which sound like they're much improved. So I ordered, I ordered that, unfortunately, you know, because of supply chain issues, I won't be getting it for some time, but I'm hoping by July anyway. I th there are many reasons people should run windows and, and I, I, I know I sound dismissive of windows. People are always writing me saying, why are you so mean to pour all little Microsoft? And I don't mean to be mean, I have the same message as you do, unless you need windows and you know, you need windows, you'd be better off using something else.

Caller 8 (01:58:53):
That's correct.

Leo Laporte (01:58:53):
And if you are using windows, whatever you do, don't go on the insider rings.

Caller 8 (01:58:59):
That's correct. What are you nuts? <Laugh> don't be an idiot.

Leo Laporte (01:59:05):
<Laugh>

Caller 8 (01:59:05):
Don't,

Leo Laporte (01:59:07):
Don't be like Michael folks.

Caller 8 (01:59:09):
That's right. Yeah. Don't

Leo Laporte (01:59:11):
So it's screwed up your it's screwed up your library. Are you just gonna have to reinstall or what are you gonna do? I

Caller 8 (01:59:17):
Install, yeah. I reinstalled some programs, but it, but the builds come every single day. So yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:59:27):
That's not what you want. Yeah, no, yeah. That's why, and they, and we say this all the time when we talk about the insiders program is this is really for hardcore enthusiasts who are yeah. And you shouldn't put on a production machine, et cetera, etcetera, et cetera. But nobody does that. Nobody does that.

Caller 8 (01:59:44):
Well, that's, that's why I've got three running computers, two backups. Yeah, one main. And

Leo Laporte (01:59:50):
If you, and if, and, and, and, and most of the people listen to this show are completely competent to run windows. If you are your own it department, and you're willing to, you know, maintain the security of it. And you're, you, you know, you, you know how to run it. It's fine. It's just that, you know, it's probably overkill for a lot of people. So I, I take your advice to heart. I think you're right.

Caller 8 (02:00:10):
Well, I hate helping. I always, it support for my family. Right. For the last you know, 30 years. Right. I've now the business for 20 years. Yeah. So

Leo Laporte (02:00:22):
Yeah, for them, I say, don't get windows. Yeah. I don't think anybody in my family's running windows. I think they've, they've learned their lesson. Michael. Thank you. I'm glad we get you back on <laugh>.

Caller 8 (02:00:31):
No, that's cool. Thank you. Take

Leo Laporte (02:00:33):
Care. Have a great day. Leo Laport, the tech I eighty eight eighty eight. Ask Leo the phone number more of your calls still to come stay right here. Leo Laport, the tech guy, eighty eight eighty eight. Ask Leo the phone number, Jim, on the line from Glendale, California. Hi, Jim.

Caller 9 (02:00:51):
Hi, Jim here again for the third time.

Leo Laporte (02:00:53):
You third time in your life.

Caller 9 (02:00:56):
Yep.

Leo Laporte (02:00:56):
Not the third time today.

Caller 9 (02:00:58):
No. Oh,

Leo Laporte (02:00:58):
Thank goodness. <Laugh> welcome.

Caller 9 (02:01:01):
A real simple question for you here. You remember, I, I tried iPhone for a while and you went back on the Android. Ah,

Leo Laporte (02:01:06):
Yes. That Jim. I know which one you are now.

Caller 9 (02:01:10):
Yes. I won't comment on the previous call right now. I wanna get right to the point.

Caller 2 (02:01:14):
<Laugh>

Caller 9 (02:01:14):
Okay. What I wanna ask you about is something that I got in the habit of using that I'd never used before, when I was on Android, when I had the iPhone, was the you know, talking to the phone, whatever you call it, Siri, or what have you. Yeah. So to get directions

Leo Laporte (02:01:29):
And by the way, Google does that too.

Caller 9 (02:01:32):
Yeah. And I'm using what is it? Okay. Google. I do that.

Leo Laporte (02:01:38):
Yeah. You could say, okay, go there Google. I don't know why they abandoned this last generation of phones. Pixel four, you could squeeze the phone <laugh> and it would and talk to it, which I thought was a nice feature. <Laugh> they took that out, unfortunately.

Caller 9 (02:01:53):
Well, here's what happens consistently. I live in Glendale today. I went over to Pasadena to take care of some business. And while I was over there, I wanted some ice teas. So I said, okay, Google, find a McDonald's near me. Ah, and it found me some McDonald's near where I live in Glendale. Very

Leo Laporte (02:02:09):
Nice.

Caller 9 (02:02:09):
I was in Pasadena. Yes. And here's a little troubleshooting I did. And what I can tell you if I 

Leo Laporte (02:02:16):
I do that all the time, by the way, we were in Napa on Thursday or Friday morning, and I said, find a breakfast near me. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> and we, and we found a lovely breakfast place. So

Caller 9 (02:02:27):
As long as it's near you and not near where you were two hours ago. Oh,

Leo Laporte (02:02:30):
Well, that's not Google's fault. <Laugh> well,

Caller 9 (02:02:33):
Let, I know, I'm trying to get an answer here. So what, what I here, if I tell if I go to Google and say, okay, Google, where am I? It tells, it told me I did this today. When I was in Pasadena, it gave me my home address. I'm not at home.

Leo Laporte (02:02:45):
Ah, it's not my point.

Caller 9 (02:02:47):
Yeah. And the other thing I found out is if I go and tell, and if I go into Google and say, okay, Google show my location on the map, it will show my accurate location on the map. And then after that, if I ask it to find the McDonald's, it will find one near me, but why is it, why would it do that from the beginning?

Leo Laporte (02:03:04):
So there's a couple of things at play here. As they will tell you turn on your wifi. I know you're not using the wifi, but it uses wifi in conjunction with GPS to find your location. So that's one way you can make location information more accurate it on the other hand, what it sounds like to me is you have not given location permissions to okay, Google, whereas you have given it to Google maps, they're separate things. So the maps have permissions to always, and you want it because you're using it for GPS navigation. You want it to always have a precise location. And so you do that in the settings. You can go into your settings and look at location settings, or look at the settings for that in all the individual apps. I think for the Google assistant, it's probably called Google assistant. You wanna make sure that those are turned on and they're precise location information.

Caller 9 (02:04:01):
Okay. I know that I went in and cause I was thinking along the same lines I went in and I made sure that the maps had full access to the location at any time. But I didn't

Leo Laporte (02:04:09):
Check. Yeah. It's not just maps. It's the assistant.

Caller 9 (02:04:13):
Okay. I'll do that. Maybe that's the solution to my problem.

Leo Laporte (02:04:16):
Yeah. And then do you leave wifi on or do you turn it off?

Caller 9 (02:04:19):
Well, I leave it on all the time. Yeah,

Leo Laporte (02:04:21):
You should. Because it, what it, what they do is they send those Google cars out and they actually using the GPS built into the car. They will triangulate visible wifi signals. And they'll say, well, if you're 15 feet from this one and 20 feet from that one and 30 feet from that one mm-hmm <affirmative>, you're at GPS location X and they now know. And so this is an assistant and it helps helpful if you're in areas where the GPS is weak. The other thing to know about GPS is it's not instantaneous. When you first use GPS device in any area for the first time, it'll do something called build a GPS Almanac, which it stores that's information about where the satellites are, et cetera, et cetera. And that Almanac really helps it work faster. But the first time you use GPS in any location, it's not gonna be very fast. It has to build the Almanac first. So there's a couple of things at play that could impact this. If you don't ever go to Pasadena, that could be it

Caller 9 (02:05:20):
<Laugh> well haven't been there in a while, but yeah, it's, it's something that happens. I mean, it, it happens

Leo Laporte (02:05:26):
All the time. I suspect it's because of location permissions and this is all for privacy, right? We mm-hmm <affirmative>, you know, and this is sometimes look, I am now a fan of privacy restrictions. I've been in the past kind of saying, well, you know, all it is is targeted advertising. What's the harm in that, but we're starting to see governments, police agencies, and others use this information even without a warrant. And I think it's problematic. So I'm starting to get serious about that. And it's because of this, that we have lots of limitations on what these phones can do and you know, in a perfect world, if location information was used judiciously you would wanna leave it on all the time because it is mm-hmm, <affirmative>, it's useful, but we gotta remember that, you know, others have access to this information. In fact, there's a big issue with data brokers now who are buying this information, collecting it, and then selling it on to other people, including sad to say law enforcement. So that's an issue. I think that's become an issue. Yeah. Yeah.

Caller 9 (02:06:24):
Well, that's what I wanna know incidentally real quickly, I will tell you that I worked, I heard you, your previous collar. I worked in radio too for about 10 years, but it was a long time ago,

Leo Laporte (02:06:34):
Radio, you know, it's funny you get it in your blood, don't you? Absolutely. In college, I got into the college radio station and it, it, it infected me and I fell in love with the medium. There's something about radio. I still love it. There's something about radio. It's an intimate medium, because I'm talking right in your ear. And there's just something that goes on. That's just, I think wonderful. But unfortunately, as a business, it's got, it's gotten worse and worse and worse. And my company, the company that owns this show, premier radio networks, which is owned by iHeart iHeart understands that they've, they now call themselves not the world's largest radio company, but the world's largest audio company cuz they understand it really it's about audio and that's why podcasts have become so important. People do like the idea of hearing somebody I think live and local is really great. And that's one thing radio does better than anybody.

Caller 9 (02:07:25):
I think radio is better because it leaves a certain, it leaves more to your imagination. You

Leo Laporte (02:07:29):
Much better than TV. You don't need pictures. Absolutely. It was very hard for me working in TV, cuz especially when you're talking about abstract things, as we often do in technology mm-hmm <affirmative> they always have to have a picture. So you always see a lot of pictures of hands on mice, computer screens going <laugh> because they have to cover it with something. But it's an abstract idea. And once you become, once you realize that they're just filling the space, it kind of becomes an annoyance. So yeah. I like audio. Yeah. Especially for abstract ideas for concepts, for thoughts, for feelings. I think it really works well.

Caller 9 (02:08:02):
Well, I started in radio did 10 years of radio. I actually had overlapped. I, it was was most of it was part-time doing weekends and fill in, but I did about 10 years of radio from the time I was well from high school to my early twenties and that led into television and television production, which is how I actually earned my living.

Leo Laporte (02:08:19):
You were smart as anybody would be about that. You moved on. I didn't smarter. I continue. I'm going down with the ship. Hey, I always a pleasure to talk to you, Jim. Thank you. Take care. Take care. Eighty eight eighty eight. Ask Leo the phone number. See Jim, you could tell Jim worked in the business. He knew exactly when it was time to wind up the call because we have to take a break. We'll come back. Dick de Bartolo, our GIS coming up in 15 more of your calls right after this. Ah, love this song. Leo LePort the tech guy, eighty eight eighty eight. Ask Leo the phone number back. We go to the lines Richard on the line from Redondo beach, California. Hi Richard.

Caller 10 (02:08:59):
Hey Leo. Hi. Hey,

Leo Laporte (02:09:01):
Welcome.

Caller 10 (02:09:02):
Last year, I think it was about Thanksgiving ish about my dad's computer. But you and I talked off there about Myro photography.

Leo Laporte (02:09:12):
Yes.

Caller 10 (02:09:13):
Yes. So I have a new problem for you. Not as photography related. Okay. I just got the news Z seven Nikon. Yeah, not the, the new one, the two. Okay. And I traded in my D five and my old Z seven and all of my F lenses more or less because I ordered the Z nine. So I'm prepping for trying to get the Z nine to tether and any studio work I do in the meantime with the Z seven and white room is ignoring me.

Leo Laporte (02:09:48):
Yeah. You're shooting raw. Now are you shooting raw? Yeah.

Caller 10 (02:09:52):
Yeah. Capture one, worked great. I had to reinstall it as much as all pros say, you gotta use it. I hate it. 

Leo Laporte (02:09:59):
<Laugh> so here's the deal. And I don't know why companies do this, but they do the raw format changes almost every time. There's a new camera. Adobe for a while was pushing this digital negative format. The DNG format, hoping that camera companies would adopt it. So they wouldn't have to do this, but every time a new camera comes out, they have to add that camera's raw format to Adobe camera, raw Adobe camera raw is what takes the file that you've created. If you just open that raw file, you probably know this could be, it'd be black and white. It'd be weird looking. But the Adobe camera raw knows how to turn that into a image on the screen. It's the same processing that's going on in the camera to create the JPEG thumbnail that you see. So you can get the thumbnail. If you were shooting in JPEG, you can get that. But the raw, you have to wait until ACRs updated. Apparently it's not been updated yet. That would be my guess. Meanwhile capture one has updated it cuz they use it different. They, they have their own raw engine

Caller 10 (02:11:04):
Understood, but I have a different issue. CA light room will not even see that the camera exists.

Leo Laporte (02:11:11):
<Laugh> so you, you mean when you connect it via USB, it won't see it.

Caller 10 (02:11:15):
Correct. And I even get

Leo Laporte (02:11:17):
Outta, can you use a card reader on the card and import it?

Caller 10 (02:11:21):
No. No. Oh. I, I could probably do that, but that's that's

Leo Laporte (02:11:24):
You don't wanna do that. Okay.

Caller 10 (02:11:27):
I have to shoot tether on these jobs.

Leo Laporte (02:11:28):
Oh, you're tethering. Oh yeah. That's another matter entirely. Yeah.

Caller 10 (02:11:32):
So, so what happens is when you go to the Nik icon and go to the setups and say network connect to PC, it gives me a screen that I, I haven't seen in years. I used to be an it capable guy. I'm not so much anymore, but it's actually giving me an SS I D and a network ID and saying, you know,

Leo Laporte (02:11:52):
It's doing it via wifi, not by the cable,

Caller 10 (02:11:55):
But it said that's under the PC connect settings and I'm like, that's wrong? <Laugh> I gave up and I reinstalled capture one and I plug in the USB cable and I turn on the camera and I'm shooting away.

Leo Laporte (02:12:09):
Yeah. So I'm looking at community dot, adobe.com. And apparently they've been slow to get the tethering working on the Z seven or the the Z seven two, I should say. Right. So they have to actually, they actually have to build that in. If, let me go to help x.adobe.com/lightroom-classic/kb/tethered camera, support dot HTML, and see what it supports. And if it doesn't, those are Nikons. Let's see tethering with the following models may be unreliable on Mac OS when birth shooting. No, not that one. So, so in other words, they build this support into this software, which is ridiculous. You want live view, right?

Caller 10 (02:13:00):
It'd be nice.

Leo Laporte (02:13:01):
Yeah. It says Z seven. Yes. It does support the Z seven. I do not see support for Z seven too. Even though that, that camera's been out for more than a year, right?

Caller 10 (02:13:11):
Yes.

Leo Laporte (02:13:12):
Crazy. Thank you, Adobe. Maybe they want you to use Lightroom CC. Do you think they want you to use Lightroom CC? I've been waiting for Adobe to do this so light, no one who uses Lightroom wants to use Adobe creative clouds, light room, the more modern light room million imaging it's million it's missing features. It's terrible. So everybody uses what Adobe calls, Lightroom classic. And we're all waiting for Adobe to finally say, yeah, that's it. You gotta U CC except Adobe. Isn't doing that. Cuz they know they would lose everybody to capture one in other other programs. This is, I bet you anything. If you try it Lightroom, CC, and you should get it. It's part of your subscription. You can download it. I bet you, it works.

Caller 10 (02:14:00):
It's interesting. Okay. I was debating if I had to format my laptop and started over and then

Leo Laporte (02:14:08):
I'm looking and I'll put this in the show notes. I'm looking at the page tethered camera support and for Lightroom classic and last updated August, 2021. I hated Adobe. I don't. I understand. I, I use Lightroom two and I have a giant Lightroom catalog with tens of thousands of images. Honestly, I think capture one's better. In fact, honestly, I think we're rapidly if you're using a Mac anyway or move into a world where Sarah's affinity photo and pixel made are, are better choices cuz Adobe is just a greedy bad company.

Caller 10 (02:14:46):
But that still puts you back into the getting in and out. I know without any secondary steps, I know little stuff like that when you're dealing with, you know, 5,000 images and you're popping through, nobody's been able to keep up with, I mean, even capture one is a nightmare when you go in and out of Photoshop.

Leo Laporte (02:15:06):
Yeah, of course, because Photoshop's from Adobe. So honestly I think people are abandoning creative cloud entirely and using instead of Photoshop using affinity photo they're using their variety of camera raw and tethering programs you can use that are actually FA Adobe Lightroom, a pig. That's true. Right? It's really slow.

Caller 10 (02:15:29):
It's it's fast enough for corporate head shots and things like that, where you're sitting there going banging through and you just wanna pick your nice one as you go. The advantage to that is when you're done, you're in light room, you've got your selected files and you just go to work on the 40 images you need to work on and you know, you take the green.

Leo Laporte (02:15:49):
Yeah. Then it's fine into

Caller 10 (02:15:51):
Right.

Leo Laporte (02:15:51):
You know, so a lot of people do that. They'll use some sort of raw front end to do the selection that's fast and then they can work in light room and we're all, we all have the, you know, muscle memory of light room. You know, I, all those keys are built into my fingers. But Adobe, I it's very frustrating. They I don't, I don't know what to say. I was a huge Lightroom fan, big support of Lightroom. Still have to use it I guess, but I'm looking more, I, I, I bought capture one. I'm starting to use that instead. There aren't very many, there's nothing that's a direct replacement yet, which is weird.

Caller 10 (02:16:30):
Is there any solution to importing my existing, you know, half a million images catalogs, various catalogs over the years?

Leo Laporte (02:16:43):
Not that I know of. No, not that I know of. And that's why people still use it. Right. this is a huge opportunity for some company to come along. It must be harder than we think the the company Skyla for years they do some interesting and nice tools more for amateurs, but they have been promising a digital asset management rep, you know, plug-in replacement for Lightroom for, for years. And it still hasn't come out. There's gotta be a re it must be hard to do, I guess, because what a business opportunity, if somebody came along was something that was compatible, they could just take your millions of Lightroom images and put them in a more modern, better, supported, less expensive solution. They'd win. Adobe's ripe for the plucking. I don't understand why it hasn't happened yet. I really don't.

Caller 10 (02:17:35):
It, it doesn't even have to be less expensive in all I,

Leo Laporte (02:17:38):
No, I know. In fact, yeah. Cloud's not that, I mean 10 bucks a month for the photo package, Photoshop and light room is not bad. It's worth it. If you're, especially if you're a pro, I don't know. You know, it's so apparently the answer to your question is they don't support that camera yet. <Laugh>

Caller 10 (02:17:53):
Leo. Did you ever get my email?

Leo Laporte (02:17:55):
Well, hold on a second. I gotta take a break and we'll talk off air Leo Laport, the tech guy, the GIW coming up. I'm sorry. Richard, your email. What was your email about

Caller 10 (02:18:09):
You asked me about my Astro photography. I sent you a couple of,

Leo Laporte (02:18:13):
I did and they were beautiful. Did I not respond? I apologize. I did see that.

Caller 10 (02:18:17):
You had mentioned, you wanted me to talk to somebody about something having to do with your show. That's the only reason I'm

Leo Laporte (02:18:22):
Asking. Oh, now I don't remember. Yeah, we were talking about Astro photography was with Chris. I don't remember. Let me look for, let me look for your email. And maybe, maybe if I find the email, it will jog my memory cuz I do remember seeing the pictures. They were great. I'm terrible with email. I get so much and I just,

Caller 10 (02:18:44):
I can imagine. That's why I was surprised when you told me to email it

Leo Laporte (02:18:47):
<Laugh> well, yeah, and I did see it and I looked at the pictures, but I didn't follow up on whatever that was that I was thinking. Yeah, cuz we were at one point maybe, well, it might have been aunt. I think aunt was doing a hands on photography about Astro photography here, here, here, email a NT twi.tv and sent him those images. And I think that that was a timely thing. Like he was about to do hands on photography on Astro photography, but he might still be interested. Okay. And certainly I know he'd love to see the images. Yeah. I'm pretty sure it was now that I think about an an it's aunt Pruitt, a N T P R U I TT, but his email is aunt twit.tv.

Caller 10 (02:19:33):
Okay. I'll see if I can remember that long enough.

Leo Laporte (02:19:35):
<Laugh> <laugh> Hey, I really appreciate it. So you still doing Astro photography or is that more of a hobby?

Caller 10 (02:19:42):
Well, it's always been a hobby. The problem is that when I talk to you last, I had, you know, I was living on seven acres in Rancho Verdes.

Leo Laporte (02:19:49):
Yes. So you had nice dark skies,

Caller 10 (02:19:53):
Right. That went away and I am now in a condo on the re in, at the Redondo pier.

Leo Laporte (02:19:59):
Yeah.

Caller 10 (02:20:00):
So no, I am good for once a month up in the mountain. Nice

Leo Laporte (02:20:04):
About it. Nice, nice. Yeah, those are beautiful shots. And I think I was interested in, in your setup and how you were doing it. And I think aunt would've been interested in that as well. Just email him say Leo Leo forgot to pass this along to you. Just to let you know, you know and I'm still around and if you ever, if you ever wanna do another show about Astro photography I'd be glad to, you know, be here for you or something like that. Cool. Hey, it's really nice to talk to you. Thank you. And I'm sorry about Adobe. We're all sorry about Adobe. Oh geez. I

Caller 10 (02:20:38):
Just, I thought for sure, by working it out on the Z seven two, I'd be set before the Z nine gets here.

Leo Laporte (02:20:45):
Yeah, you think so,

Caller 10 (02:20:47):
But now I'm frightened that when the Z nine gets here, I won't be able to tether it.

Leo Laporte (02:20:51):
I bet you anything Lightroom, CC tethers with it. I would not be surprised at all.

Caller 10 (02:20:58):
That's interesting. I I'll have, I hate that just because I have so many.

Leo Laporte (02:21:01):
No, you don't want to, well, they want you to use both and maybe gradually move over. I don't know. They haven't, they still have many features missing from CC that are in Lightroom classic. So I don't understand what their strategy is. I just don't. Yeah. Yeah. I don't, I don't get it.

Caller 10 (02:21:19):
So, oh, by the way, remember my original. Well, you don't remembers no way. My original phone call to you was about trying to get my father. Who's losing his vision back on the wall street journal.

Leo Laporte (02:21:28):
Yeah. Did you figure it out?

Caller 10 (02:21:31):
We, I literally figured for him to do the podcast.

Leo Laporte (02:21:37):
Well, that's good. That's probably satisfies his yen for financial news.

Caller 10 (02:21:43):
It's hard enough. It's hard for him to read the headings on the podcast. Oh well enough to figure out,

Leo Laporte (02:21:51):
Oh, we're all headed that way. 

Caller 10 (02:21:54):
I know,

Leo Laporte (02:21:54):
Right? Oh Richard. A pleasure talking to you.

Caller 10 (02:21:58):
You too. Thanks Leo. See

Leo Laporte (02:21:59):
Ya. Hello Dicky day. Hey Leo. How you doing? All right. How are you? I'm okay. Thank you. What's the matter <laugh> oh, no, I'm fine. I'm fine. You sound where's Micah. We had a little COVID outbreak at the oil radio ranch and had to send everybody home. Oh my gosh. He's fine though. Gosh. Okay, good. He's fine.

Dick DeBartolo (02:22:29):
I feel love. I feel <laugh>. I

Leo Laporte (02:22:31):
Feel oh no, it's not love. It's just the GIW still sends a chill down. My it's same thing. Same thing. Dick de Bartolo. Our disco Dick is here mad. Magazine's maddest writer and I call him our GIW our gizmo wizard. He joins me every week to talk about his favorite Gizmo's or gadgets. Hello? Dickie de

Dick DeBartolo (02:22:52):
Leo. How are you doing pal?

Leo Laporte (02:22:53):
Well, after that, Donna summer's impression. I think I'm my I'm a little bit in pain here. I don't <laugh> which is better than the listeners who are absolutely

Dick DeBartolo (02:23:02):
Suffering. Yes. Yeah. Well, they were in worse pain, but that's okay. Yeah. I, I lowered my volume.

Leo Laporte (02:23:06):
Good smart man. Always do that before I come on. So Dick usually stops by with something fun or interesting. What do you, what do you have?

Dick DeBartolo (02:23:14):
Yeah, well, you know what? I have two interesting things. Last week I mentioned I went to pep com and they had, they had two shows now health and now home and at the home part, I found two kitchen gadgets. One. I think everybody might be interested

Leo Laporte (02:23:29):
In. I'm a big fan. I love kitchen gadgets.

Dick DeBartolo (02:23:31):
Oh, well one you might be interested. <Laugh> okay. Lisa won't

Leo Laporte (02:23:35):
Let me buy anymore. She says counter faces at a premium please.

Dick DeBartolo (02:23:39):
Oh, wait a minute. The, the first one will solve that.

Leo Laporte (02:23:42):
Oh good.

Dick DeBartolo (02:23:42):
Actually they both will solve that.

Leo Laporte (02:23:44):
Oh good.

Dick DeBartolo (02:23:45):
Black and Deckers coming out with in July kitchen wizard. So it's a hand

Leo Laporte (02:23:49):
Black and deck are not a name I associate with kitchen gadgets.

Dick DeBartolo (02:23:54):
No, a actually they, they have branched out, you know, last let's say at CES, they introduced the drink maker called the

Leo Laporte (02:24:01):
Oh, that's right. Yes. So what is this?

Dick DeBartolo (02:24:05):
So this is

Leo Laporte (02:24:06):
Wait, can I, can, I guess what a kitchen wand does.

Dick DeBartolo (02:24:09):
Yeah. Yes.

Leo Laporte (02:24:11):
It turns liver and onions into pork chops and fried chicken.

Dick DeBartolo (02:24:18):
God, he's good. <Laugh> none of that. Now, then I would that

Leo Laporte (02:24:21):
Then I would buy, then I would buy.

Dick DeBartolo (02:24:24):
Oh, okay. No, the kitchen wizard can comes with it's a handheld device. Okay. Battery operated. You can attach the milk for author. You can attach the can opener. You can attach the salt and pepper grind. It does it all. You can attach the wine bottle opener. What the hell? Whisk attachment. The, how

Leo Laporte (02:24:44):
Many attachments is this?

Dick DeBartolo (02:24:47):
Six, six blend. Six attachments.

Leo Laporte (02:24:48):
Do they come with it or do you have to attachments sold separately? It

Dick DeBartolo (02:24:51):
It's, it's sold. It's sold threes. It's sold as a complete set, which is 1 99 99.

Leo Laporte (02:24:58):
Yay.

Dick DeBartolo (02:24:58):
Okay. It also comes in in two carry cases.

Leo Laporte (02:25:02):
You have to have a carry case.

Dick DeBartolo (02:25:04):
Well, if you wanna

Leo Laporte (02:25:05):
I'm here. I'm bring, I've got my wand with me. Holy cow. Go.

Dick DeBartolo (02:25:10):
Or you can buy

Leo Laporte (02:25:11):
Or he must be a professional cook. He has a case for his magic wand.

Dick DeBartolo (02:25:16):
Yeah, exactly, exactly. Or you can buy the the cordless with the immersion blender for $99.

Leo Laporte (02:25:26):
I already have an immersion blender, but it's just, that's all it does. It doesn't grind pepper.

Dick DeBartolo (02:25:30):
Oh yeah, no, this and the bottle opener is really fast. Let me 

Leo Laporte (02:25:35):
Oh, is it really? Oh, that sounds oh yeah.

Dick DeBartolo (02:25:37):
So

Leo Laporte (02:25:37):
I can see why black and Decker. They make drills. They make electric screwdrivers. This is just the same handle with kitchen attachments basically.

Dick DeBartolo (02:25:45):
Yeah, it doesn't come with it. Doesn't come with a screwdriver attachment. I'll talk to em about, they

Leo Laporte (02:25:48):
Really ought. They might as well.

Dick DeBartolo (02:25:50):
Yes. Now the other one Leo. Yes. Okay. I, you a man who bought the June oven for 16.

Leo Laporte (02:25:57):
I have. Now this I'm on my third June of it. I got one from mom for mother's day. Oh my tomorrow. Yeah.

Dick DeBartolo (02:26:03):
Okay. Malto by cooking pal. Can chop saute steam, slow cook whiskey. Oh, I might way ingredients need grind. Great boil emulsified survey, clean. <Laugh>.

Leo Laporte (02:26:24):
Wow.

Dick DeBartolo (02:26:25):
So it comes with its own wireless pad. Every week. They send you five to 10 new recipes.

Leo Laporte (02:26:32):
Oh, I know what this is competing with the Thermo mix, which I have. Oh, okay. It's very similar. It does all even, even kind of looks similar. Yeah. It's like a blender with a crock pot with a, all of the stuff in one thing. It cooks and grind. Yeah. Okay. Yeah.

Dick DeBartolo (02:26:52):
Yeah. Yes. And in one of the videos she was mixing something, but on top fish was cooking.

Leo Laporte (02:26:56):
Yes. That's a Thermo mix. Fish

Dick DeBartolo (02:26:58):
Vegetables with steaming.

Leo Laporte (02:26:59):
Yes. Got a steaming basket. All that stuff. Yeah. Yes. Yes. Well, this guy now the Thermo mix is 1500 bucks. It's expensive. Oh,

Dick DeBartolo (02:27:06):
Oh 9 99.

Leo Laporte (02:27:08):
Oh wow. Much. And with a Thermo mix, you also have to subscribe to their, to get the recipes you have to subscribe for. I don't know what it is. 30 or 40 bucks a year to cookie do, which is their recipe site.

Dick DeBartolo (02:27:23):
She did mention 

Leo Laporte (02:27:24):
So you get the recipes for free with this

Dick DeBartolo (02:27:26):
For free.

Leo Laporte (02:27:27):
Nice.

Dick DeBartolo (02:27:27):
She mentioned nothing about any sort of a choice, no subscriptions. And I'm, I'm looking on Amazon now. I'm liking, this looks like there's also a $50 coupon. So it's nine 50.

Leo Laporte (02:27:38):
If I don't already have a Thermo mix, we love our Thermo mix. It's really?

Dick DeBartolo (02:27:42):
Oh, good,

Leo Laporte (02:27:42):
Good. I make mashed potatoes in it in half an hour. No lumps, no fuss. No must. I make a risotto which normally have to stir constantly. It does all the stirring very easy soups. You can. Yeah. Nice.

Dick DeBartolo (02:27:57):
Yeah. I, I was thinking about, all I could do is make popcorn in the top. <Laugh> while I'm making a peanut butter and jelly, you

Leo Laporte (02:28:05):
Know how a big cauliflower lover is that the problem

Dick DeBartolo (02:28:08):
You

Leo Laporte (02:28:08):
Need more cauliflower in your life. More

Dick DeBartolo (02:28:10):
Cauliflower.

Leo Laporte (02:28:11):
Yeah.

Dick DeBartolo (02:28:12):
Anyway, so,

Leo Laporte (02:28:13):
Oh, this is a, this is, you know what this is the, all the rage. So the Thermo mix, which is I think Swiss or German is very popular in Europe. It's a very, and this looks just like,

Dick DeBartolo (02:28:24):
Oh, okay. The thermal. Yeah. I was surprised when I was doing some research after I saw this, that it's a cat, it's a category. I thought the

Leo Laporte (02:28:32):
It's a category. Just,

Dick DeBartolo (02:28:34):
Yeah, it's a category.

Leo Laporte (02:28:36):
Wow. This looks pretty good though. Yeah. See, it has the same steaming thing on top and all that. Yeah.

Dick DeBartolo (02:28:41):
Yeah. And then, and I said, just plugs into a regular outlet. And she said, absolutely,

Leo Laporte (02:28:45):
No, you need it outlet. You need a 220 volt dryer outlet to keep this thing going. No, no. The

Dick DeBartolo (02:28:51):
Same thing you use to charge your car. Exactly. It's ther the

Leo Laporte (02:28:54):
Biggest difference in this, the Thermomix, the screen is built into the body. So the body's bigger. This has a standalone screen that you can move around.

Dick DeBartolo (02:29:03):
I think that's almost better,

Leo Laporte (02:29:04):
Isn't it? Yeah. I think it would be. Yeah. Yeah. But boy, the, the, every, in every other respect is very similar, interesting, excellent thousand bucks. But if it's for the it's for the guy who has everything and wants more, needs more. Exactly. You can't get enough of everything. Perfect. The cooking pal. Malto

Dick DeBartolo (02:29:24):
Malto

Leo Laporte (02:29:26):
M U L T O Malto. Now, if you wanna know more about either one of these gadgets, I love it when you do cooking. Oh, okay.

Dick DeBartolo (02:29:34):
I'm glad.

Leo Laporte (02:29:35):
I'm glad. Okay. That's kind of my, one of my hobbies go to gwiz.biz. G I Z w Iz dot B Iz. If you click the tile that says the GIW, the tech guy, you'll see all the things he's mentioned on this show. There's another one for the GWiz visits world news now, and ABC do that every month. There's all sorts of interesting stuff there. You can buy mad magazine, memorabilia match, game memorabilia. Dick was the, the chief writer for the match game. For many years. He also has a fun little game. The, what the heck is a contest, which just ended, right?

Dick DeBartolo (02:30:09):
Yes. And a new and began.

Leo Laporte (02:30:11):
So tell us what it was.

Dick DeBartolo (02:30:14):
Okay.

Leo Laporte (02:30:15):
So do you remember it was, looked like a, like one of those buttons that you pressed that says that was

Dick DeBartolo (02:30:19):
Easy. Yeah. Well, you know, it, it, it was very clever. It was actually a pizza cutter.

Leo Laporte (02:30:25):
Oh, I would never, that

Dick DeBartolo (02:30:26):
Can also do vegetable. And what, so what's clever about it is when you are cooking chopping up vegetables, you leave the two stainless steel cutters wide apart. Oh. So they roll over what you're chopping up. When it's time to cut a pizza squeeze, the two red buttons and the two stainless plates become one and you cut pizzas.

Leo Laporte (02:30:48):
So it looks like some people actually didn't know it was the kitchen IQ two and one herb pizza cutter, but did kind of get the pizza cutter part. That's pretty good. Yeah,

Dick DeBartolo (02:30:56):
They did. They did. Yeah. Well, three people won and one got pretty close.

Leo Laporte (02:31:00):
So, and then some others guessed the wrong answer, but did it in a clever creative way. That's how it works. Take a look at the new gadget. It looks like Papa S Smurf's liver, but who knows? <Laugh> it could be anything 

Dick DeBartolo (02:31:16):
Always talking about something to eat.

Leo Laporte (02:31:18):
Yes. That's me. GIW up is chance to win an autograph copy of mad magazine from the sky right here. You have a couple of months to play, so have plenty of time to come up with a clever answer. And of course, don't forget Dick's podcast@giwiz.tv. Thank you, Dickie D thank you, sir. Take care. Take care. Thanks to all of us. All of you who joined us. Thanks to professor Laura, our musical director, Kim Schaffer, the phone angel Micah Sergeant had the day off. You'll be back next week. Thanks to all of you. I'll be back next time. Leo Laport, the tech guy have a great geek week. Well, that's it for the Tech Guy show for today. Thank you so much for being here and don't forget twit T w I T. It stands for this week@techandyoufinditattwit.tv, including the podcast for this show. We talk about windows and windows weekly, Macintosh, a Mac break, weekly iPads, iPhones, apple watches on iOS today. Security and security. Now, I mean, I can go on and on and on. And of course the big show every Sunday afternoon, this week in tech, you'll find it all at TWiT TV and I'll be back next week with another great tech guys show. Thanks for joining me. We'll see you next time.