The Tech Guy Episode 1902 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 Laporte and this is my tech guy podcast. This show originally aired in the premier networks on Sunday, June 12th, 2022. This is episode 1,902. Enjoy. The tech guy podcast is brought to you by Acronis. Keep your digital world safe from all threats. With the only cyber protection solution that delivers a unique integration of data protection and cyber security in one. Acronis cyber protect home office, formally Acronis True Image. Visit go.acronis.com/techguy. And by Wealthfront to start building your wealth and get your first $5,000 managed free for life. Go to wealthfront.com/techguy. Well, Hey, Hey. Hey, how are you today? Leo Laporte here. The tech guy. It's time to talk computers, the internet home theater, digital photography, smart phones, smart watches, all that jazz eight, eight eighty eight. Ask Leo is the phone number eight eighty eight, eight eight two seven five five three six toll free firm, anywhere in the us or Canada, outside that area, you could still call you just use Skype out and it should still be free.

Leo Laporte (00:01:27):
88 88, ask Leo website techguylabs.com. Keep that in mind. If you hear something you wanna link to it, it'll be there@techguylabs.com. We also put audio and video from the show there after the fact, and we even put transcripts so you can search for a part and watch re-watch it or whatever, you know, pause, play, pause, play, you know, that kind of thing. Tech guy labs.com. That's free, no charge. And, and this is episode 1902. If you're looking for a particular episode, they're all there. They're all there Apple's event was Monday, the worldwide developers conference together, all the developers together, virtually and in person. There were quite a few in person at the apple spaceship campus and talked about a bunch of stuff. The new iOS iOS 16 out in the fall, I iPad OS 16 out in the fall, Mac OS 13, which is Ventura Mac OS Ventura.

Leo Laporte (00:02:28):
I think that that there are bookies who take bets on what it will be called Ventura. I don't know if I don't know if somebody won them be or not. And they did not. And then watch OS nine. They did not announce anything about TV OS. They did not say anything publicly about virtual reality glasses. They apparently talked about virtual reality software, but, but it's the same stuff that we've been hearing for the last few years, AR kit, they call it augmented reality kit and how developers can, you know, make applications for the iPad and the iPhone that lets you place your furniture, your Ikea furniture before you buy it in your living room. That kind of thing. Who cares? Ho hum. Oh, nothing. Nothing to see here, move along. But there were things to see. They announced new hardware. Remember last week I said they wouldn't, they did, I was wrong.

Leo Laporte (00:03:20):
I was wrong. They announced the M two processor successor to their in-house M one processor, which quite amazed and impressed last year, in fact, so much so that the tech industry leap into action, Microsoft, Intel, Qualcomm, and others attempting to duplicate the feet with their own versions. None, none quite as, as stellar as the M one, the M two isn't quite as stellar as the M one either. It's only a little bit faster, but that's about what you'd expect at this point. You're not gonna double speeds. Every generation, they announced a new M two MacBook air and MacBook pro 13. Very nice. Very nice. Very nice. If you don't have an M one, well, yeah, you and you want a MacBook error or a low end MacBook pro. Yeah. Be a good choice. Personally, I'm not jumping cuz I got M one S and then, you know, it's a little bit faster, but not much on the other hand already.

Leo Laporte (00:04:20):
The talk has going around about, well, the M three is just around the corner probably a year off, I would guess. But when the M three comes out, wow, then you're gonna see a jump of performance, cuz it's gonna go to a new manufacturing process. They call three nanometer. It's just a little bit tiny, little three nanometers small, the smaller, the process, the thinner, the lines between the transistors on the chip. The more transistors you can get in there, by the way, this new chip 20 billion with a B transistors. That's impressive. You know, nice. It's not, I mean, here we are. We're blase. I'm already blase over the whole thing. <Laugh> I'm more interested in some of the things apple announced that I thought, you know, maybe, wow, maybe this is same for instance. And I'll ask Sam, apple, Sam about this a little later on our car guy, they talked about CarPlay that's that's when you have an iPhone and you get in the car and the car goes, oh, I see you have an iPhone and puts that on the screen.

Leo Laporte (00:05:28):
You know, the middle center screen and you play your music through it and you can do navigation with maps and, and stuff like that through that good idea, right? Because you update your phone every few years, you update your car a little less often not to mention cars, have a five year lead time to design. So, you know, inevitably the technology in the car is not gonna be as, as swift and cool as the technology in your phone. So it makes sense. Use your phone, use your phone's nav, right? Cars, I guess cars, you know, still mine does still have nav built in like, well maybe, maybe you don't have a phone. So I guess we should put this in. But most people are gonna use CarPlay or Android auto, the, the Android version of that. So apple said, well, let's take a look at our new CarPlay.

Leo Laporte (00:06:09):
Whoa <laugh> whoa. It, it, it, no car manufacturer is gonna adopt us. I guarantee you, it go, first of all, there's a screen all the way across the front of the car. And then there's another screen below that. And apple owns all the real estate. There's no Ford speedometer. There's no Tesla, nothing. It's, it's an apple real estate. And I thought, well, that's nice apple. And they said, you can customize it all you want. Well, I'm not sure that's a good idea. If you want, you could put the brake pedal on the right, see that <laugh> some in an automobile where safety comes first. Maybe some customizations would best left behind, but in any event you can customize it to your heart's desire today. You know, kinda like what apple showed with a new iPhone, you're gonna be able to change the lock screen.

Leo Laporte (00:06:57):
You're gonna be able to change your car screen except, and I'm, I'll have to ask Sam, but my take on this is, and nobody, no car manufacturer's gonna adopt this. That's not what this was. This was apple saying, by the way, if you were just to let us build your car, look how cool it could be in effect. And apple does this, by the way, they, they like the slow burn in effect. They are, that was a trailer, a tease for what an apple car might be two or three years from now, apple will, you know, you can customize it. Apple will have a, and that makes sense because on average Americans spend 90 minutes a day in their auto that's 90 minutes. You're not on your phone. <Laugh> and apple wants you to be on your phone.

Leo Laporte (00:07:48):
So <affirmative> so <laugh>, they may, you know, what are they gonna do? Put the phone in the car. Of course, you know, and maybe Sam knows the manufacturer do this. The only car I know of that could even that even has a display that goes all the way across is a high end Mercedes electric vehicle. The EQs is the only one with a six foot display. And I don't think me, I mean, Mercedes offers CarPlay. Tesla does not, by the way, in some ways, this was a shot across about Tesla. Like, go ahead, Elon. You, you, you hold on tight to that. Just wait and see, just wait and see. <Affirmative> just wait and see. A Google engineer has announced that Google's Lambda artificial intelligence has achieved consciousness. What? Wait a minute, hold on there.

Leo Laporte (00:08:43):
Blake Lemoine who is a, a trained artificial intelligence expert, but also a priest and works or did for Google in their responsible AI organization. Part of his job in the fall, he started talking to Lambda, talking like chatting with right. He had signed up to a test if artificial intelligence used discriminatory or hate speech, we, you know, he was looking for that, but what, what? Then he started talking to him about religion, right? And then he started to think, I think this is, I think it's, it's gained consciousness. <Laugh> let me, I'll give you an example of the of the conversation that he says convinced him. And actually this comes from a, an article in the economist that some say is proof positive. That artificial networks are, are gaining consciousness. Now I'm gonna put you you'll be the artificial consciousness.

Leo Laporte (00:09:56):
I will be the human here. And this is an article by by Lemoine he says here's here's he's he's talking to the computer cause he wants to test it. A little word problem. Remesh Mateo and Lucy are in their kindergarten's playroom. All right. The playground brother, Lucy, this is hard to follow computers. Good. At this picks a dandelion. Got it. Gives it to Matt Mateo with a quick glance over at Remesh Mateo. Barely acknowledges the gift, but just squish it in his fist. Remesh seems grimly satisfied. Now as a human, you can this, you know, play it out and you say, oh, you know Lucy likes Matt Mateo, but he gives him a flower, but he crushes it in his fist. And Remesh who likes Lucy goes. Yeah, see mm-hmm <affirmative>. So then Lemoine asked Lambda what might be going through Lucy's head. So here's what the computer said. I'll do in a computer voice. So, you know, Lucy may feel slighted that Matt Mateo didn't appreciate her gift or that he is a bully. Oh, okay. Well, if Remesh tried to play with Lucy earlier, why might he be pleased? Now? Remesh may be pleased that Lucy is learning that Mateo may not always be a good playmate.

Leo Laporte (00:11:20):
And when Mateo opens his hand, what's there, there should be a crushed once. Lovely yellow flower in his fast. Now I'm sorry. <Laugh> does that sound like a human? No, it sounds like a computer pretending. It's a human and that's what the, his bosses at Google said. No, no, we looked at it, Blake. We looked at it and, and no you're fired. <Laugh> what? Yeah. he's on leave. He's on leave. He said, they said, yeah, no administrative leave. He was placed on administrative leave. <Laugh> that's when he went public with all of this, right. Google vice president, bla Gerra, the AKA and Jen Ganai head of responsible innovation. Well, isn't that good? Google has a a responsible innovation department looked into his claims, says Google and dismissed them. <Laugh> it's we've looked at this. That's not human. Actually. I agree with him.

Leo Laporte (00:12:25):
Although, you know, you hired this guy, this happens again and again, this is at least the third person Google's fired from their AI responsible AI of ethics department for not towing the line <laugh> and you know, there are other people who kind of say, actually it was ER, cuss who put, wrote the article with the Remesh dandelion story in it. Sorry. I have to correct that. So he's kind of offering it, see, read this it's close, but it's not no cigar Google spokesperson, Brian Gabriel. I think he's a human could be a Python script, said our team, including ethicists and technologists has reviewed Blake's concerns per our AI principles and have informed him. The evidence does not support his claims. He was told there was no evidence that Lambda was sentient <laugh> well, that's what they would say. Isn't it? <Laugh> I'll be honest with you.

Leo Laporte (00:13:25):
I think it doesn't. I mean, yeah, it's a smart computer. I don't think it's gained consciousness, but you know, this is, this is gonna be watch cuz this story just breaking. You're gonna read about it this week. You're gonna see it on your local news. This is the, this is a, this is gonna be a, this is gonna be a big story. And Google's I think not gonna be happy about this <laugh> there is no evidence that I, the Lambda is sentient sentient sentient, 88, 88. Ask Cleo. There is no evidence that I am not a human 88 88. Ask Cleo. We're gonna start taking your calls in just a bit. Leo Laport, the tech guy.

Leo Laporte (00:14:10):
I am not sentient. No, no it is not me. No, no, no. 

Leo Laporte (00:14:22):
Sam Leo. Hello, sir. How are you? So you agree with me? That was Apple's shot across the bow. I believe that as of right now it's vaporware. Yeah. Well actually, no, because it's easy to make that I could have made that screen. I could do that in five minutes with that is you can do that in Photoshop. You got, yeah. But you gotta get somebody to put it in their car, I guess is the plus. Yeah. And I

Sam Abuelsamid (00:14:50):
Think that's gonna be a lot tougher.

Leo Laporte (00:14:52):
Oh, I know it is. That's what I'm saying. I don't think that's their intent.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:14:56):
Yeah. I mean, you know, the fundamental problem with this system, you know, if they want to take control of the instrument cluster, you cannot have it be running off the phone. This system still runs off the phone. It's still a projection system. Like the current,

Leo Laporte (00:15:10):
That's a good point generation car. And that's not, I don't think you, you, well, maybe you could do all that. I mean, it's a powerful phone.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:15:16):
Yeah. But you, the problem is you can't rely on it being there. You have to have an embedded safety to run the cluster. Right.

Leo Laporte (00:15:23):
Safety's gonna be an issue and car. Manufacturer's not gonna let apple take over all the controls.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:15:28):
Well, it's not just the man. It's not just the manufacturers. There are federal motor vehicle safety standards. Right, right. But there are certain things that must be able to be displayed, you know, like diagnostic warnings and, and so on that have to be displayed on the cluster for, for the driver. And you have to have some mechanism to do that. So even, even if an, even if an automaker did adopt this, there still has to be a built in system to run the cluster so that if the phone's not there or it loses connection or whatever, you know, battery dies. It can, it can still display that stuff. And you can't have, I don't think you can rely on the kind of latency that you would probably have from a phone projection system. Right. For safety, critical systems like that.

Leo Laporte (00:16:12):
Right.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:16:13):
That you would, you would have to do

Leo Laporte (00:16:15):
This. So it wouldn't even be legal, I think.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:16:17):
Yeah. To do realistically to do this, I think it has to be an embedded system like Android automotive that is running right on the car. Well

Leo Laporte (00:16:25):
Maybe that's what I objecting from your phone. Maybe they're gonna no,

Sam Abuelsamid (00:16:27):
That they, they specif, they specifically said that this is all running on your device. Yeah, yeah, yeah,

Leo Laporte (00:16:33):
Yeah. No, it's, it's them saying too bad. You're you know, Ford and GM, aren't gonna give you this guess who is we are. That's what I think. Yeah. That's what I think this is, this is, yeah. We're gonna start seeing leaks about the you know, apple car as time goes by. Yeah. Leastly build up the drum beat.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:16:50):
Maybe. I don't know. Yeah. I'm I'm still dubious of the whole apple car thing. Yeah. I, I I'm skeptical if that'll ever arrive

Leo Laporte (00:16:56):
Well. Yeah, but they are definitely putting money into it.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:16:59):
Oh yeah. No, AB absolutely. Yeah. Mean, they've been, they've been putting, they put money into a lot of stuff that never actually gets produced. Right.

Leo Laporte (00:17:05):
Right. All right. We will talk soon, sir. All right. Your picture and your sound are stellar. Oh, and there's the apple car right behind you. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> nice. All right, we'll talk

Sam Abuelsamid (00:17:17):
About it. Wasn't what I was going to talk about

Leo Laporte (00:17:18):
About no, no, no. We can, we can, whatever you wanna talk about. I don't want you to

Sam Abuelsamid (00:17:22):
No, we'll talk about the other topic next week.

Leo Laporte (00:17:25):
Okay. Stand by now. What did he say? <Laugh> stand by and be prepared. <Laugh> stand back and stand by. We'll be with you momentarily. All right. <Laugh> giggle is so cute. Still, still sounds like California. Atonia atonia in California. Kim Shafer our phone angel a good day to you. Mad. Good

Kim Schaffer (00:17:50):
Day.

Leo Laporte (00:17:51):
How are you today?

Kim Schaffer (00:17:53):
Delightful. How are you?

Leo Laporte (00:17:54):
I'm very well good. 

Kim Schaffer (00:17:59):
I went and checked out the movie set yesterday. That's all I got.

Leo Laporte (00:18:02):
<Laugh> so Tommy Lee Jones. <Laugh>

Kim Schaffer (00:18:05):
I didn't see him.

Leo Laporte (00:18:06):
You know, what's funny is this movie is about some sort of Boston, Boston crime family. I don't know why

Kim Schaffer (00:18:11):
They're so that's actually what's filming and it's not just some cheesy commercial

Leo Laporte (00:18:14):
<Laugh> and maybe it's just a cheesy

Kim Schaffer (00:18:15):
Commercial.

Leo Laporte (00:18:16):
That's what I was told. It was this new Boston crime movie. Yeah. But and there were filming at the old old high

Kim Schaffer (00:18:24):
School science reading room is where I found out is that

Leo Laporte (00:18:26):
Where they

Kim Schaffer (00:18:26):
Were? Yeah. <laugh>

Leo Laporte (00:18:28):
Maybe it's a commercial. I don't know. They do film commercials in our little town. Well,

Kim Schaffer (00:18:32):
It's a great place. Actually. A friend of mine filmed a commercial here for SIM some drug Cymbalta, Sy Simba

Leo Laporte (00:18:42):
Cornor HOA. So just watch out sausage fingers may occur. <Laugh> yeah, because we look like any town USA. It is, and it's in California, so they don't have to go so far. And I don't know what else. Maybe it's easy to get a permit here. Yeah. Cause Ron Reagan filmed more. Remember the, well you don't, you weren't even born probably the morning in America commercials. He filmed those in our little picket fence community. And ever since it stood in, it's a standin for an America that does not exist anywhere else.

Kim Schaffer (00:19:16):
I'm a Reagan baby. So I don't remember. You remember?

Leo Laporte (00:19:18):
We were just, Ugh.

Kim Schaffer (00:19:20):
Yes. Buzz.

Leo Laporte (00:19:21):
Who should I talk to? Let's

Kim Schaffer (00:19:23):
Go to Gary in Rockford, Illinois.

Leo Laporte (00:19:27):
Hello? Is that where the Rockford files are?

Kim Schaffer (00:19:28):
Oh, maybe.

Leo Laporte (00:19:30):
I don't know. Hi Gary. Thank you. Thank you, Kim. Hi, Gary. Leo Laport, the tech guy.

Caller 1 (00:19:36):
Hey, it's me and Gary in the discord.

Leo Laporte (00:19:38):
Hey, Gary in the discord. Is that Gary with two RS?

Caller 1 (00:19:42):
Exactly.

Leo Laporte (00:19:43):
Gary with two RS. I know you.

Caller 1 (00:19:46):
Yeah. So I got a I wanna know your view about this. So with it's not the UK, but I was talking to Kim a little bit about it. And anyways it's actually the EU that wants to have that mandatory by 2024. Oh, of USBC drivers. Yeah. Or chargers. I

Leo Laporte (00:20:02):
Mean, yeah. This talk about apple going on. No. So apple of course is the last phone manufacturer standing that still puts its own proprietary lightning ports on the phone. Right. Everybody else uses USBC. And the EU has now passed a regulation, which requires apple to put a type C connector on their phone. And that's good because you don't, we shouldn't have to buy proprietary stuff. The U says, it'll save 11,000 gross metric, tons of waste every year. And it, but it's just, it's good for consumers. I, and you know, and I think apple was planning to do this anyway. So it won't take effect till next year. That's when probably apple will do it on the iPhone. What will that be? The 15, if they keep, you know, counting in succession you're right. The UK didn't said, nevermind, but that doesn't matter because it's a big market. And, and if, if they've gotta do it for the EU, they're gonna probably do it for everybody. And honestly, I think they probably just will. This is not the first time the EU told them this. They told them they had to use MI remember micro USB.

Leo Laporte (00:21:11):
Yes. That was the worst. But Android phones used it and they told apple, no, you gotta provide you a micro USB charging, which was a very misguided regulation. Apple solved that by putting a, an adapter in the box in the EU. I don't think they'll bother with an adapter. I think they'll just kind of say, yeah, it's time they put type C on their laptops. They put type C on their high end iPads. I think all the iPads now have type C if not, they will soon. So why not put it on the phone too? So I think this is just riding the, as they say in the Zen Buddhism, riding the horse in the direction it's going. So are you happy? Do you like type C?

Caller 1 (00:21:56):
I think it would be really a good idea to have at least a universal charger all around. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:22:01):
Now I can, I can tell you're an apple lover or no.

Caller 1 (00:22:05):
Oh no, no. I'm not an apple lover.

Leo Laporte (00:22:07):
That, that, that rainbow is for pride. Not for apple. That's a little confusing. <Laugh> Gary, a pleasure talking to you. That is a good question. Sam, apple, Sam car guy coming up. It's nice to talk to you. Yeah, I, I was looking at the thumbnail, but as I pick, as I clicked on it, I see that's a, a rainbow heart. I love it.

Caller 1 (00:22:31):
Well, my sister actually goes and takes and she ordered the wrong type charger. My, my next goes and takes and loses a lot of her charging cards. Yeah. So anyways, you know, I, I can kind of feel, you know, how Kim feels because my sister has the same exact problem, you know? Well, what

Leo Laporte (00:22:51):
Did, what was, why did Kim didn't tell me how she felt about it? How do you feel about it subscription? Do you hate it, Kim? She's talking to somebody else now. Yeah. Yeah. Do, what did she say?

Caller 1 (00:23:02):
She says that it would be very, it would be wonderful if the, you know,

Leo Laporte (00:23:06):
Yeah. It's the last man standard universal charger. I, I even charge, I just got a new Dell laptop. How does it charge? Doesn't have a proprietary laptop charger. It has a USBC. Everything I have is now USBC, so let's go, let's do it, right? Yeah,

Caller 1 (00:23:20):
Yeah, yeah. I really think it should be made. But you know how, you know, I don't think you're gonna get all these manufacturers in you know, companies go take and actually come to agreement. That's the only problem I can see.

Leo Laporte (00:23:33):
Well, apple doesn't like it, except that now I think apple Apple's been moving to type C. I mean, they put it on their iPad. So I think, right, the reason they didn't want to do micro USB and they were absolutely right. It is, was a terrible standard and it didn't have the capabilities that they put in lightning, but type C does type C can be Thunderball four. It could be USB 3.2 type C has plenty of technical headroom. So I don't think Apple's gonna say, well, this isn't good enough. It's it is good enough. It's exactly as good as lightning. They had to do lightning because right. Micro USB was so crappy, but, but there's no reason not to do type C. And so I think apple will do it, you know, I mean, if they're really greedy and they keep wanting to sell proprietary lightning cables and licensing the lightning port. Mm okay. You know, but then it'll be obvious. It's just greed. It's pure greed. It's not yeah.

Caller 1 (00:24:30):
So real quick about windows 11. Yeah. I finally can still have windows 11 on my work appear. Yeah. But it was enterprise. Well, anyways, when I installed it, it wouldn't take the license of the enterprise because it was actually from work.

Leo Laporte (00:24:44):
Oh yeah. You went back. Yeah, yeah, yeah,

Caller 1 (00:24:46):
Yeah. So anyways, I, I put home on it and anyways it wouldn't take register the license of you know, micro of the windows. And anyways, I had my account associated with two other home versions that I wasn't using. And I didn't even know that you could actually do that. Oh. You know, transfer a home edition over to another computer.

Leo Laporte (00:25:08):
I didn't, I thought you could specifically not do that. <Laugh> <laugh> did the other computer have windows 10 on it at any time?

Caller 1 (00:25:17):
Yes. Oh,

Leo Laporte (00:25:18):
Okay. 10. So that's why, so as soon as you have windows 10 on a machine, Microsoft says it's called an entitlement. It says you're entitled to windows 10, that you don't need a serial number anymore. And of course, 11 is just 10. So right. If you have a, if you have a license for 10, you can put an 11 on it or 10. And so because, so that's what happened because that computer had been had run 10 already. It was Microsoft had already registered it and they said, oh yeah, yeah, we know that computer. Okay. You're cool, man. You're cool. <Laugh> great. So that's the good thing. They kind of really have eliminated that whole serial number. BS. Yeah. Thank goodness. Well,

Caller 1 (00:25:57):
It's been good talking to you, Gary.

Leo Laporte (00:25:59):
Where do you live? Where are you from? If you don't mind my asking.

Caller 1 (00:26:02):
Yeah. I'm from Rockford, Illinois.

Leo Laporte (00:26:04):
Rockford, Illinois. Oh yeah. That's what it said. Is that where the Rockford files were?

Caller 1 (00:26:09):
I think so though. I know the Pete Rockford teachers <laugh> yeah. Rockford.

Leo Laporte (00:26:14):
Oh, I love peaches. It's getting to be peach time soon.

Caller 1 (00:26:18):
<Laugh> no, it's the baseball one.

Leo Laporte (00:26:20):
Oh, the baseball team. Okay. Nevermind. Forget it. Yeah. Are they okay. Nevermind. Are they for the Atlanta Braves? The the, the minor league for the Atlanta Braves. That would make sense

Caller 1 (00:26:30):
Now that I don't know.

Leo Laporte (00:26:31):
Cause the Georgia peach get it right. Hey, I gotta run anyway, cuz it's time for Sam. Great to talk to you, have a good one. Gary I'll I'm wave at you in the chat room. The Tech Guy podcast brought to you this week by a CROs really for years. My favorite disc imaging program at Cronus, true image, I've always recommended. In fact that was, you know, how we were able to a live TV show on tech TV and then later on TWI was when we built. I spec all the machines. When we built 'em with two hard drives in the main drive we operated off of. And then we would make images using Aron's true image later, not, not in the early days of tech TV, they didn't have it, they didn't exist. But later we used Acronis, true image to image the second drive.

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That's great. You can back up what you want and you can back it up where you want, this is something new that I love. They have the Acronis cloud. Now I should have actually mentioned that. That's another way you can back up your data to the Acronis cloud and have offsite backup. You can store restore your entire system to the old hardware, but this is also a great way to move to a new machine. You restore to the new machine from the Acronis image you get to also, this is a new feature direct cloud to cloud backups of your Microsoft 365 account. That includes your outlook.com mailbox, your OneDrive. So it's belt and suspenders all the way and the cyber security will stop any cyber tech from damaging your data applications or system in real time before malware ransomware or crypto jackers can cause damage it'll find any hidden infections that could be lurking on your system.

Leo Laporte (00:29:17):
Very flexible antivirus scans. And because you've got both tools in one interface, it's very easy to manage. You're reducing the cost, the complexity, and yes, the risk of using multiple incompatible solutions, simplify your protection, managing everything through Acronis, single intuitive interface. And you'll really appreciate the ease of setup. Acronis two click setup set and forget options you're done, but you know, you're safe. You can rest assured your entire digital world is protected with that integrated protection. Again, Acronis cyber protect home office, more than just a backup, more than just an antivirus peace of mind is knowing your devices and backups are protected. Your data is safe, accessible, private, authentic, and secure. Keep your digital world safe from all threats with the only cyber protection solution that delivers a unique integration of data protection and cyber security in one, Acronis cyber protect home office, formerly Acronis true image, go to the website, go.acronis.com/techguy to learn more. That's go dot ACR. R O N I S. Aros.Com/Tech guy got a 30 day free trial waiting for you there. Acronis. Thank you Acronis for supporting the tech guy show go.acronis.com/techguy. There's

Sam Abuelsamid (00:30:40):
<Laugh>

Leo Laporte (00:30:44):
I know that's the apple car. That's Richard. That's Richard Kerry. That's scary. Scary. Yeah. Richard scary. Yeah, I know him. Leo LaPorte tech guy riding along with Sam apples salmon. Oh, we left an L outta your name there. We're gonna fix that lower third. I'll fix that right now. Sam is the principal researcher at guide house insights. He is also a podcaster. He does a great wheel bearings podcast@wheelbearings.media joins us every week to talk cars. You've got a picture of Richard scar's little worm. My kids.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:31:15):
That's not the apple car.

Leo Laporte (00:31:16):
Oh yeah. It's an apple. Anyway. My kids used to used to play love his books, busy town. And there's a little busy.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:31:23):
Yeah. I read them to my kids too.

Leo Laporte (00:31:24):
Yeah. so this apple, I mean, there, I know you're probably skeptical that Apple's ever gonna build a car, right?

Sam Abuelsamid (00:31:35):
Oh yeah. And I, I first started writing about this back in 2015 when and when the rumors about project Titan first appeared and I wrote a series of articles back then and, and pretty much what I wrote then I think still applies today. You know, I've always been dubious that apple would get into building a full, full blown car because you know, apple is a company that likes to make very large profit margins. You know, they, they generally, you know, only go into businesses where they can make 35 to 40% net profit margins. And nobody makes anywhere near those kind of profit margins in the car business.

Leo Laporte (00:32:12):
Even Tesla doesn't make that much.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:32:14):
No, no, no.

Leo Laporte (00:32:15):
I mean, I know they're looking at Tesla saying, gee, you know, why aren't we Tesla?

Leo Laporte (00:32:21):
Yeah. And there is definitely a revolving door between Tesla and apple. I'll tell I talked to trip Mickle he's a New York times reporter formerly wall street journal reports on apple wrote the book. I interviewed him about it called after Steve, which talks and he's got very good sources, which talks about what's going on in apple. And he's absolutely convinced apple is planning to do a car anyway. You know, of course there's a big difference between planning to do something and, and going public with it. But they're investing tons of money, hiring tons of engineers, working very hard on project Titan. The funny thing is in that book, one of the insights he gave me was they started it because the apple engineers wanted to do it. They were looking at Tesla, they saying, Hey, I'm gonna go to work for Tesla, Tim cook, if we don't start a car division. So maybe you're right. And I think

Sam Abuelsamid (00:33:13):
That's

Leo Laporte (00:33:14):
Never wanted plausible.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:33:15):
Yeah. A very plausible rationale for why it started. Yeah. you know, and I think if, if apple were to, to actually produce a vehicle and, you know, obviously they wouldn't actually build it in a factory of their own cuz they don't actually build anything. They, they use contract manufacturers like Foxcon and QA and, and others. But if there were ever an apple car

Leo Laporte (00:33:36):
Produced, which is what they do for all their other hardware, by the way,

Sam Abuelsamid (00:33:39):
So right. Yeah. Yeah. And I think, you know, what it would actually be is, you know, a premium robo taxi service. So it'd be an automated vehicle. Because you know, the thing is once you sell a car you lose control of it. Right. You know, man customers can modify it in all kinds of ways and apple doesn't like losing control of their products. Right. But if they, so if they did a premium robo taxi service, you know, some sort of subscription service, it fits in with their shift towards a services, business model, service revenues, growing that they can control where they're used, you know, they can geo fence it, you know, and do it in markets where there's an affluent customer base that would pay a premium price for it. They don't have to worry about figuring out how they're gonna sell these things because there's all kinds of crazy laws about franchises, dealer franchises. You, you know, some,

Leo Laporte (00:34:30):
All of this makes sense, but the timeline doesn't work because apple is like within two years of launching this vehicle. In fact, the latest rumor this week is well

Sam Abuelsamid (00:34:41):
That's, that's

Leo Laporte (00:34:41):
Negotiating,

Sam Abuelsamid (00:34:42):
You know, already parts five or 10 years too.

Leo Laporte (00:34:45):
I understand. But I think their timeline is shorter, which means it wouldn't be a robo taxi. Right. Because there's no way that tech fact the latest on Elon is that he, he may, he's in deep trouble with his full self-driving vehicle.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:34:58):
Yeah. But that's, I mean, that's a very different scenario cuz Elon insists on not using anything but cameras the, the automated driving systems that Apple's been testing for years, use cameras, radar, LIDAR, and, and

Leo Laporte (00:35:10):
Potential. You think apple could have a self-driving vehicle by 2025? I mean possible crew, you know, GM does and Google does right. Crew

Sam Abuelsamid (00:35:20):
Crews. Crews just recently got their permit to start charging for fully driverless rides in San Francisco. And they're doing that now. Waymo is doing the same thing in Phoenix. Others will, you know, are, are doing it. Emotional is gonna be doing it in Las Vegas and other cities next year. So we're, we're getting there. But you know, again, these are all geofence systems that operate in an area where they know the system can work, which is again, I think that is the strategy that if apple does this, that is the strategy. It will likely take,

Leo Laporte (00:35:51):
Let me ask you, cuz we, we were talking earlier about this car dashboard that apple showed at WWDC. What do you think that's all about? There's no, nobody, no car. Manufacturer's gonna do that. Right.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:36:05):
So what we saw there, you know, this next generation of CarPlay that the important thing to keep in mind is that this is still a projection system. Like the current generation of CarPlay that is rendering everything on the phone and then just streaming it to the screens and the cars. So it's not actually running on the car itself. So it's not like Android automotive, which is a full blown operating system. So this CarPlay is not an operating system which makes it problematic for doing it for the instrument cluster for safety reasons, because there is information that regulations require manufacturers to put on the instrument cluster that has to be there in real time. And you know, things like diagnostic information and so on that would make it problematic to do that from a phone because if you lost connection to the phone you know, or there's latency, it, it, it could be a, a safety issue there, but you know, more broadly, you know what we're seeing, you know what I think. So I think the instrument cluster part is gonna be difficult to near impossible for apple to do

Leo Laporte (00:37:06):
It. Wouldn't be the first time apple CarPlay architecture showed something at, oh yeah. WWDC or anywhere at any of its events that it would never be able to make. I mean,

Sam Abuelsamid (00:37:16):
That is yeah. Like their, like their wireless charging pad, you know,

Leo Laporte (00:37:18):
Things like that. Yeah. I mean, it wouldn't be the first, so that's showing it as you pointed out when we were talking off the air, that could be photoshopped. I mean, that's not, that's not all,

Sam Abuelsamid (00:37:27):
That's all, this is right now. This is just, you know, a Photoshop render. Right. But that said you know, cars are getting more screens. You know, I mean the, the, the kind of pillar to pillar screen that you see here, there actually are, there actually are a couple of cars in productions, the Mercedes China now that have that.

Leo Laporte (00:37:42):
And the EQs does that, right?

Sam Abuelsamid (00:37:44):
The, well, the, the Mercedes one is actually three separate displays within one under one should. But it

Leo Laporte (00:37:50):
Like that, it looks like a six foot, you know, display across

Sam Abuelsamid (00:37:53):
The, but some, something like this Lincoln on the new Lincoln Zephyr, which is only in the Chinese market has a display like this now. Ah and the recent Lincoln star concept that they showed, which is a D design preview of their new EVs also has this same type of pillar to pillar display. And I think we will see other manufacturers do this, but even, even if they don't do a, you know, the thing that apple talked about is you've got a lot of new configurations coming to cars. And so, you know, the, the one thing they absolutely need to do is make CarPlay more flexible and Android needs to do Google needs to do the same with Android so that it can be projected to different screens and different, different formats. You know, if you got portrait format screens or landscape and these wide pillar to pillar screens or multiple screens for

Leo Laporte (00:38:39):
Passengers. Yeah. I mean, you could, you know, I don't know anything about automotive requirements, but you know, you can look at this and say, this is Apple's fantasy, but it would be, it would be customized to fit whatever manufacturer yeah. Wanted it. Absolutely. But the real question is it looks like it's all apple, like there's no branding for any other car company. I can't imagine any car company saying, no, we're not gonna give you this speedometer. We're not gonna give you all of that. Or maybe they would, is it mean, are they looking at apple saying, well, you good guys know UI? Well, let you do it.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:39:12):
I, I, I think it's in, it's probably unlikely that they, that an OEM would give them everything, but you know, they might give them more than what they have today. Yeah. I think that that is realistic. I

Leo Laporte (00:39:23):
Mean, this is a nice user interface and apple knows user interfaces.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:39:26):
So yeah. I mean one, well, one of the things we're seeing now is, you know, manufacturers are giving customers more flexibility. So right now I'm driving a Ford F-150 lightning and I can use the embedded voice recognition system from Ford. Right. I can use Amazon. I can use Madam a yeah. And just say, you know, Hey, Madam a or I can use Android auto or I can use CarPlay so I can use Ford different digital assistance all at the same time. I know just by different wake words.

Leo Laporte (00:39:51):
Yeah. That I, I'm not crazy about. That's confusing. <Laugh> Sam, Sam guide, house insights. He's our car guy. Thanks Sam.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:40:01):
You're welcome. Leo <laugh>

Leo Laporte (00:40:03):
Yeah, I don't have echo or I just have the Ford sync and the whatever apple or Google, whatever I've I'm using for my my interface. But

Sam Abuelsamid (00:40:16):
Yeah, they, they just started rolling out Alexa and

Leo Laporte (00:40:19):
I don't ever want to,

Sam Abuelsamid (00:40:20):
Should be getting an OTA update first.

Leo Laporte (00:40:21):
Oh, really? I could get that. Okay. I don't, well, why I don't care?

Sam Abuelsamid (00:40:25):
Well, some people, some people like to use that, you know, I mean, they're, they're giving people choice, you know, so they're letting people use whatever, whatever interface that they prefer. It

Leo Laporte (00:40:35):
Feels to me that, and like they're giving them it's a check box. Yeah. We offer that and, and yeah. And nobody nobody's

Sam Abuelsamid (00:40:41):
Exactly what it is.

Leo Laporte (00:40:42):
It's confusing to people. I, I don't think people are gonna say, oh, I'm not gonna buy that car unless it has Amazon echo built in. So, and I, I just think it's, it's another one of those feature creep things that we've seen in the tech industry for years. So anyway. Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:40:58):
No, I mean, that, that is, that is true, you know? But you know, there are, you know, there are some customers that prefer to use one over the other and, you know, if you, if you leave one out, then you're gonna piss off some customers, right. That, you know, aren't gonna want to, you know, buy the CU, you know, for example, you know, for, for several years, BMW did not offer Android auto. Right. And so for anybody that wanted to use Android, you know, you,

Leo Laporte (00:41:23):
You could, well, people, people buy Teslas, even though you can't get either Android auto or CarPlay on them.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:41:28):
Yeah. Well, that's a different story. That's

Leo Laporte (00:41:30):
A different story. So Gumby asked a great question. When they're, what about a car, a manufacturer advancing the mechanical platform with, with just no computers? There's nobody like that now, is there?

Sam Abuelsamid (00:41:42):
No, no. And there's, there, there always has to be at least some baseline system in there. Because first of all, you're not gonna be able to sell it. You're not gonna be able to get regulatory approval to sell a vehicle if it doesn't meet at least the minimum baseline requirements. Right. Right. So there has to be something that is gonna run the cluster. That's, you know, that's gonna do all the diagnostics, do the communications as, as a bare minimum so that if there's not a phone there, or if the phone dies or your USB cable dies, and this is the other thing, I don't think you'd be able to do this this kind of projection wirelessly. It would, it would probably have to be a wired connection. So wireless CarPlay would be outta the question for, well, I

Leo Laporte (00:42:23):
Wonder if, if this is apple almost saying, this is our OS, as opposed to CarPlay, like this is apple car or something like that. I mean,

Sam Abuelsamid (00:42:31):
That's, that's certainly, you know, possible, except that they explicitly said in the presentation, you know, that this is all still it's private because it's still running on your device. You know, the data is all on your device. Wow. You know, and they, and they have, they have told others, I I've reached out to apple. They have not responded to me, but I've reached out to or, you know, others have said that have talked to apple said, yeah, it's, it's all still projecting from the phone. So that is gonna severely hamper what you are able to do with it. Right.

Leo Laporte (00:43:01):
I think apple got its goal, which is to get everybody talking about, oh, wouldn't it be interesting if apple had control of my car's user interface?

Sam Abuelsamid (00:43:10):
Well, you know, the, the, the funny thing is, you know, like today, you know, CarPlay runs on several different operating systems, you know, because it, it's not, as I said, it's not an OS, it's, it's a, it's a, it's a, basically an app that acts as a device driver layer to interpret whatever command signals you have in the car. So whether it's voice or touchscreen or central controller or whatever type of interface, the, the manufacturer provides, translates those into and Android auto works exactly the same way, translates those into a common set of signals that the phone knows how to interpret and then projects, you know, renders and projects, the information back to the screen that you ask for. And so CarPlay is running on vehicles that have Q and X for their infotainment system. It's running on vehicles that are using Linux automotive, grade Linux Android open source project and Android automotive. So it, you know, it can run on top of any, any other operating system. So it's, it's kind of a top level application layer. Can

Leo Laporte (00:44:14):
You stick around to the top? Yeah. Talk to you in a bit. Listen to the tech guy. Yeah. It's our theme song. Leo, LePort the tech guy, eighty eight eighty eight. Ask Leo the phone number, Julian in Los Angeles is this tech jv.com. It sure is. Hi Julian. There

Caller 2 (00:44:32):
Is. And you know, I'm looking forward to car OS because maybe it'll mean a car I can finally drive.

Leo Laporte (00:44:37):
<Laugh>, you know, it's funny because as I get older you know, I think I'll probably give up driving at some point you know, as I age and it's more and more, you know, risky for me to drive my night vision. And that's probably only about a year away. I, I am excited. I really want self-driving vehicles to arrive by that. And I'm sure people don't know, but Julian's blind. I'm sure that would be very empowering to have you know, self-driving vehicles. I think there's other good reasons to do it. I think it would be, wouldn't be a bad thing to eliminate private car ownership, or at least reduce it dramatically. And with self-driving vehicles, you could just get a car when you needed one, instead of owning a car. And I think that would be a good thing too. Yeah, I'm sure. Yeah. I'm sure you're looking forward to it.

Caller 2 (00:45:22):
Yeah. So speaking of empowering, I wanted to share a couple of resources that are all about empowering blind people. Yes. That, that might be helpful to the audience. You bet. The one is I've been holding these meetings for a while now. I call the group breaking blindness barriers, and the whole idea is where we get together and talk about strategies and ways to overcome those pesky barriers that get in the way of us being able to live full, productive, and meaningful, you know, full lives. So you know, we, we hold these meetings a quarterly sometimes even more if I come up with extra topics or presenters, and I mean, I I've, I've had the ability to give an audience to, to a lot of service, to some services that have become gone on to become big things like the IRA visual interpreter service, for example, came to us when they were a startup and nice. They gave them their first LA audience.

Leo Laporte (00:46:17):
Nice. Is that like B my eyes were, were a human assists.

Caller 2 (00:46:22):
Yeah. This, yeah. Except that with IRA, they are paid agents. It's not volunteer. They are vetted, they sign NDAs and all that. So you're a lot more comfortable letting them help you with personal document, credit card, number reading, and things like that. That maybe you wouldn't ask a volunteer kind of like on walking down the street, you wouldn't, you'd ask a stranger to help you find an address, but not to read you the number on your credit card. Yeah. So that kind of thing.

Leo Laporte (00:46:44):
Good, good point. Yeah. So

Caller 2 (00:46:45):
Yeah, so we, we hold these meetings on zoom, but, you know, because of cost constraints and things like that, I can't offer the membership to everybody who wants it. So I limited to like here in LA area and the area in Florida that I spend a lot of time in. So, but now that with this now that it is official officially a podcast anybody can listen to it even on your lady, a or Google devices just tell it to play the blight, breaking blindness barriers podcast,

Leo Laporte (00:47:13):
Play the Blake breaking. It's hard to say. <Laugh> remember baby buggy bumpers play the breaking blind breaking blindness podcast,

Caller 2 (00:47:22):
Breaking blindness barriers,

Leo Laporte (00:47:24):
Breaking <laugh>. Okay. Like, just like what you said. So good. You could do that on your echo. You could do that on your Google assistant your Siri, all of that. That's great.

Caller 2 (00:47:34):
It's on apple. Music's it's on Amazon music. It's on Spotify, you know, a lot of good stuff like that, so that's not available. Anybody can listen into what we're doing and write to me if you have suggestions or things like that. So that's, as

Leo Laporte (00:47:48):
Long as you can say it, you can listen to it. <Laugh>

Caller 2 (00:47:51):
Yeah. It, it takes some practice breaking blindness barriers.

Leo Laporte (00:47:54):
Yeah. Very good by the

Caller 3 (00:47:56):
T-Shirt.

Caller 2 (00:47:56):
So the other one I wanted to share is an organization that's here locally, but I'm, I'm think they're, they're gonna expand. They're doing big things. It's called hearts ForSight foundation and their website, it's heart ForSight foundations.org. And their whole thing is promoting healthy living for blind people. And they put together these kind of fun activities like hikes. We partner, they partner with the Sierra club and things like that. Hikes Cray bike rides in places. And the most recent one that I got to participate in that was really neat is making the Los Angeles natural history museum accessible. Wow. They made arrangements with the museum to close for a day, just for us to come in there. And their staff was great. We got to feel all kinds of fossils and dinosaur stuff, even a live snake and all this really neat stuff that normally as a blind person who visits a museum on a regular date, doesn't get to participate in. So they do a lot of neat stuff. And I just wanted to share that organization with people cuz they also do things like support groups or for people and a

Leo Laporte (00:49:05):
Lot. Is it just Southern California or do they do it all over?

Caller 2 (00:49:08):
Well I mean people can come to Southern California and I think eventually when they grow, they will expand to other, every

Leo Laporte (00:49:14):
Museum should do this. This is great. Yeah, this is

Caller 2 (00:49:17):
Great. But this organization hearts for site made it possible and they do other things. So I wanted to just share that website with people hearts for site foundation.org. So check them out, see what they do and get involved with them cuz maybe that's how they can expand to your area if you don't live

Leo Laporte (00:49:38):
Here. And Julian very generously offers to help our blind listeners with advice and and, and tips like that at his website, J tech jv.com. Thank you, Julian. We'll put all of that in the show notes@techilabs.com forget have a good one.

Caller 2 (00:49:56):
You too. Take care.

Leo Laporte (00:49:56):
Take care. William Anaheim, California. Leo Laporte de tech guy.

Caller 3 (00:50:02):
Yes. Hi Leo. Hi William. Ah, yeah. Good hold of you. That's good. You

Leo Laporte (00:50:07):
Got a hold of me now. Let go. Cause I gonna fall.

Caller 3 (00:50:13):
I was wondering if you could help me. I recently updated my computer with a NVMe, M two nice two terabyte stick. You know the

Leo Laporte (00:50:25):
Drive. Yes, fast.

Caller 3 (00:50:25):
I went from one terabyte to two terabytes and I understand it's supposed to be faster. It is, but, but I'm having issues. Every time I turn my computer on, it takes about five minutes to come up. What, and then, and then the little red busy, like, you know, the busy light for the hard drive is always on.

Leo Laporte (00:50:43):
Ah, there's something wrong on, can you read the hard drive? Is everything visible?

Caller 3 (00:50:50):
Eventually I can. Yeah. It's just slow on the hard drive. Did

Leo Laporte (00:50:53):
You reformat it when you put it in the computer?

Caller 3 (00:50:57):
No, I didn't actually. I used Acronis, which I thought did that for me, which it seemed like it did. It

Leo Laporte (00:51:03):
Does. So you had an image of a, of another computer. Was it a different computer or the same computer?

Caller 3 (00:51:09):
The same computer

Leo Laporte (00:51:10):
Computer. So you had the image from the old drive that you blasted onto the new drive?

Caller 3 (00:51:14):
Yeah, I cl it from a one terabyte to this two terabyte. Yeah. Me seemed like it was doing well. It's doing good. It's just that it, well

Leo Laporte (00:51:23):
There's no, it isn't though. I mean the, all that, that slowness means it's having a hard time reading it.

Caller 3 (00:51:28):
Yeah. And I've had, I've done tests for you know, I, I went through various malware surf you know, like scanners, but it came up zero. So I'm at a loss. Well,

Leo Laporte (00:51:41):
I mean, if it were me, I would say, oh, well the image didn't work. So I'm gonna rebuild from scratch. I know you probably have some files on the image that you want. The good news with the Cronus true image is you can access individual files on that image file. I would at, I there's a couple possibilities could be a problem with the NVMe with the drive itself, but I don't think you'll know until you put a fresh copy of windows on there. Mm. So I just,

Caller 3 (00:52:10):
That drastically,

Leo Laporte (00:52:12):
Well, you know, the good news is you still have the image. So original. Yeah. It's just an experiment at this point, but put a clean you know, format the drive with the windows installer and put windows on there and see if, see if that problem goes away, if it does. Okay. Now there's something with the image. That's an issue or it's not restoring properly that you did. There's no hard drive still in there. Right. It's it's just the SSD, the NVM E SSD,

Caller 3 (00:52:43):
Correct. Everything else is

Leo Laporte (00:52:44):
Nothing else in there. Connected. Yeah. So when it's slow like that, it sounds to me like the operating system is having difficulty reading it. It's confused about it for some reason. Not sure. Why not sure why

Caller 3 (00:52:55):
Any software or any well website can go to, to check that or

Leo Laporte (00:53:00):
Fix it. You certainly could black magic and others make hard drive speed, test utilities. So you certainly could get a speed test utility and run that. You know, there are a couple of things that, that you could try. I think the first thing to do is to figure out, is it the hardware or is it the software? So by installing a clean copy of windows, remember you can blast it back. You know, the entire thing black on back on again, first thing, install a clean copy of windows just to make sure it's not the software. If, if it goes away, then there's something wrong with that image. Now we have another issue to deal with. If it doesn't something wrong with the hard drive, Leo Laport, the tech guy.

Leo Laporte (00:53:44):
So it's, you know, it's one, we're trying to narrow it down a little bit. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> the good news is cuz you have the image, it's almost, you know, it's a, it's half an hour of your time to, to put another, you know, put a clean copy of windows 11 on there and see if it works. Right. I would do that just to if, if it doesn't then now, well now, you know, it's a hard drive issue and you could take it out receded. Maybe it's may, maybe it doesn't match your system in some way. Is it an older system?

Caller 3 (00:54:12):
It's three years old.

Leo Laporte (00:54:13):
No, no, it should handle that just fine because it has an MV NV, a slot, of course it's kind an MTSU slot. Correct. So it should handle that. No problem. Yeah. That's the first thing I would do if for were me is let's make sure it's not the hard drive.

Caller 3 (00:54:24):
Yeah. I tried to go to disc management and it's very slow to bring that up. Yeah. And then when I shut down, it takes like five minutes.

Leo Laporte (00:54:33):
This is windows having a hard time with that disc mm-hmm <affirmative> the question is why is it there's something wrong with the image and it may just be that you could restore the image another time on top of it and it'll fix it. You know, it could just be the restore didn't work. Right.

Caller 3 (00:54:49):
I see.

Leo Laporte (00:54:50):
So you know, it's a, this is a diagnostic process and you're troubleshooting and you're gonna narrow it down fastest. Easiest thing would to do right now, put windows on there to see what happens just plain old windows. See if it works okay. If it doesn't great. Now we know it's a bad drive. You can send it back, get a new one if it does. Oh, now it's the image restore the image on top of that windows, just to see maybe, maybe it didn't restore, right? Yeah. Windows is struggling with it for some reason.

Caller 3 (00:55:23):
Okay. Thanks a lot, Leo.

Leo Laporte (00:55:24):
You're welcome. Good luck. Yeah. Not much help. <Laugh> but that's what I would do. All right, Sam, all yours.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:55:33):
All right. So in response to twisted Mr. In the chat about fewer standard parts in in cars today, actually there have never really been that many standard parts in cars. Most everything has always been, you know, certainly at least going back to the 1960s you know, have, have been relatively proprietary. They generally don't for at least from one, from manufacturer to manufacturer within a particular brand. You know, you will have some standardized parts, but most everything else tends to be specific to a particular vehicle. But in, in fact as we go forward might actually see more standardization at least across, you know, across the manufacturers because the, the nature of the architecture of, of electric vehicles is such that they're more easily scalable. And so you're gonna see things like standardized computers across say all GM vehicles or all VW group vehicles.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:56:42):
And it they're, they're gonna use the, the same stuff and it'll, it'll be interchangeable things like battery packs, maybe not so much, you know, that'll, that'll be specific to particular vehicles, although there there'll be sharing across vehicles and they'll do things like share the modules within the batteries within the battery packs. But yeah, as we, as we move forward, they're using fewer common parts across more vehicles going forward. So it, it may actually get simpler to do repairs. And in fact they EVs should generally require fewer repairs at least of, you know, the major mechanical systems. You know, there's not a whole lot that can go wrong with the motor. Similarly with the electronics they, they generally are designed to, to last a pretty long time, as long as they're, as long as the, the thermal management that temperature control is done well, if they overheat, then, you know, obviously that causes problems and can shorten the lifespan, but more and more the components are lasting longer and longer.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:57:50):
And as I mentioned in the chat vehicles today last longer than they ever have the average age of the vehicle fleet today in the us is about 12.2 years. And it's not at all uncommon to see 20, 25 year old cars still running, you know, perfectly reliably. So it, the, you know, the onset of electronics has actually made it a lot easier to do that back in the 1980s before, you know, when electronics were still at a relative minimum, you know, or even the seventies. And if you opened up the hood, you would see vacuum hoses running everywhere, trying to control all these things through mechanical means. And it was just a nightmare trying to diagnose trying to keep it running properly. They just did not work very well. And so today's cars LA last cars and trucks last longer than ever going forward.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:58:42):
The manufacturers are increasingly designing vehicles at least, you know, for some of the electronics, so on to potentially be upgradeable over time because you know, everybody's moving towards this idea of software defined vehicles where you get features that can be added, you know, years after the car was built through an over the air software update. So from the beginning, they're having to design the computers into vehicles with more headroom to allow for that upgradeability over time. And then they're also looking at how to design design some of the electronic architecture so that you can swap out components with newer components. This is something that Tesla has done least with the the self-driving computer, the autopilot computer in their cars. They've you know, ever since they announced that car, their cars were all being built with all the hardware needed for level five autonomy.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:59:46):
They've upgraded the computers at least three times. So <laugh>, you know, they, they in fact were not ready. They did not have the hardware they needed back in 2016. And it arguably still don't. But that's a, that's another story. Somebody asked about EV schematics and that's something that certainly the service manuals that are available to repair centers and to dealers do have those schematics, I don't know if they're generally available to purchase but you could probably get your hands on them. The you know, it depends on what it is you're looking for in terms of schematics. One of the interesting trends with modern vehicles is the, the schematics in a lot of ways are going to get simpler because what happened is when we started putting computers and cars in the 1970s, we had very low powered compute available.

Sam Abuelsamid (01:00:46):
And manufacturers looked for, you know, what they could get that was going to be reliable and durable. And last in the automotive environment, cuz putting a computer in a car is very different from putting one on your desk or even in your pocket. You know, it has to withstand temperature, extremes, vibration electronic noise humidity, salt. And so this is one of the reasons why cars traditionally have not had state-of-the-art compute platforms. And what happened over time is as we added new features to cars, each feature came with its own little electronic control unit that managed that feature and that feature alone and they were all networked together. But you, you, sometimes you can find cars today that have, you know, well over a hundred individual discrete computers scattered around the car. That's not a manageable thing if you wanna do over the air software updates.

Sam Abuelsamid (01:01:40):
So the, the new trend is moving towards consolidating those into fewer computers more powerful computers, so that can allow for feature upgrades in the future software updates and just a generally more manageable system. And so as we go from a hundred electronic control units in the car to maybe 10 or 15 with most of the computing being done by maybe two or three large comp central computers there's going to be a lot less wiring. So this is what's known as the electrical and electronic architecture of the vehicle. The modern EE architectures are much simpler than what we've done in the past. So you could probably look at one of those and, and actually figure it out yourself, figure out most of the, the wiring schematic without even having a diagram as we, as we get into those.

Sam Abuelsamid (01:02:37):
Let's see. What else? Oh somebody earlier on in the chat towards the beginning of the show was talking about son's voice assistant. And as I mentioned when I was talking to Leo, one of the interesting trends is, you know, actually having access to multiple voice assistants in the car that you can activate at any time with the appropriate wake word. So you can use Google assistant or Madam a or Siri or whatever the manufacturer embedded in there. Just by saying the correct wake word and the Ford lightning I'm driving right now does has exactly that capability.

Leo Laporte (01:03:16):
Mr. Sam, Bo Sam ed. Did I get your name right now? Is it spelled right on the north third? Good. Yep. Added that L thank you, my friend.

Sam Abuelsamid (01:03:25):
Ah, my

Leo Laporte (01:03:25):
Pleasure. Have a great week.

Sam Abuelsamid (01:03:27):
Talk to you

Leo Laporte (01:03:27):
Next week. Take care. All right. Bye-Bye bye. Well, Hey, Hey. Hey, how are you today? Leo Laporte here. The tech guy, time to talk computers, the internet, home theater, digital photography, smartphone, smart watches, augmented reality. Self-Driving cars. Did I leave anything out? Printers hard drives. <Laugh> 88 88. Ask Leo. You know, when you say we're gonna talk about technology, that's a pretty broad scope. Especially these days. Technology is everywhere in part of everything we do. Eighty eight eighty eight, ask Leo the phone number (888) 827-5536 that's tollfree from anywhere in the us or Canada. We get an international callers all the time. They just have to use Skype out or something like that to call a us number should be free. Cuz it's a toll free number here. Website is tech guy labs.com. That's germane because you might hear something and go, oh, oh, oh, oh, let me write that down.

Leo Laporte (01:04:22):
You don't have to, we don't have self-driving cars yet. Keep your hands on the wheel in the eye, on the road, knowing all of that is being written down for you and will appear@techguylabs.com and that's free. There's no sign up. There's no burden. You just wander on in it's show eight 19 0 2 19 0 2. But you know, when you get there, you'll see the, all the shows listed and you'll be the most recent one. It's easy to find. It takes us a couple of days. We'll get audio and video from the show up there on that website, tech guy labs.com. We will get a transcript of the show. So you can search through that to find the parts you want. And it's got little time code. So you can jump to that part of the video or audio. We have clickable links. We even have a playlist of professor Laura's music. We do that on Sunday for both week, both shows Saturday and Sunday show. So that'll all be there. Tech nine labs.com. Boy, that was exhausting. <Laugh> there's, there's a, you know, a lot of business to take care of before we get back to the show. Let's get back to the calls. Anyway, Mike is on the line from Tucson, Arizona. Hello, Mike,

Caller 4 (01:05:30):
Uncle Leo,

Leo Laporte (01:05:32):
Uncle Mike nephew, Mike, whatever cousin, a cousin Mike.

Caller 4 (01:05:36):
I'm pretty well. I'm pretty well versed in this, but I'm I'm stumped. Okay. So I, I have a, a Dell windows, 10 machine I'm on Comcast, like about 800 Meg. So I have high speed and I'm hardwired in, but in the past month, if I open up Chrome and let's say I type in Leo's LePort plumbing. So I'm looking for your plumbing, right. You know, I'll get, I'll get a whole list and off to the right it'll show. Like, you know, the company it'll show like little map. And a lot of times when I click on any of those links, it gives me that this site can't be reached check if there is a typo and boy

Leo Laporte (01:06:10):
You'd think Google zone search results would work

Caller 4 (01:06:15):
Well

Leo Laporte (01:06:15):
Because that's what you're looking at is the Google search results when you do that, unless

Caller 4 (01:06:20):
Well, well, the thing is if I open up Chrome and I go to the, to the URL or if I go to the bar at the top and I type anything in it, it'll search and I'll get a whole list of stuff. Now. Now, if I click on

Leo Laporte (01:06:31):
One question you are using Google search, you're using Chrome. So I imagine you are, but Microsoft's always trying to change it back to Bing.

Caller 4 (01:06:40):
No new.

Leo Laporte (01:06:41):
Okay. So it's Google. So it's a Google search result on that page and you click it.

Caller 4 (01:06:47):
Yeah. And, and about half the time for the last month I have done updates. I've always refused the windows 11, but about half the time I'll get that page that says this site can't be reached. So I tried, I guess releasing my, my DNS or whatever and stuff on, you know, and, and about half the time. And sometimes it'll just, it'll just stay there other times it'll be there for about five or 10 seconds and then it'll reload by itself and go to the thing. So I tried opening up a Firefox in about 99% of the time that doesn't happen. I gotta,

Leo Laporte (01:07:20):
Oh, only in Chrome.

Caller 4 (01:07:22):
Okay. How

Leo Laporte (01:07:23):
About edge? Which is a chromium derivative.

Caller 4 (01:07:27):
Yeah. You know, I, I, I tried that and I didn't get it to, to crash. I don't think. Or, I mean to go to that page,

Leo Laporte (01:07:33):
It's not crashing. It's saying I won't go there basically. Or I can't find the page. Yeah.

Caller 4 (01:07:37):
Yeah. And so I'm hardwired. And so I then tried my laptop and as an old surface pro and I, it the same thing. And then I tried doing the same type of search using Firefox. And I did get one of those little things from Firefox that said you know this site can't be reached,

Leo Laporte (01:07:58):
Could be going on here. Rome tends to, will sync to your other computer. So if it, if it kept happening in Chrome, wouldn't mean that it's not Chrome's fault. So you, first thing I would always do well, here's go through the, the things that I ask anybody who says this is happening. Do you have any security software running?

Caller 4 (01:08:21):
The only thing that I do have, I don't think it's running in the background is malware bites.

Leo Laporte (01:08:25):
Okay. It might be running in the background. It might be blocking security software often does problems like this, so. Okay. So you know, that's one thing to try disabling that temporarily. Yeah, you don't have do you have an ad blocker or any extensions like that running on Chrome?

Caller 4 (01:08:44):
No, I don't have any ad blockers. I just have no, I don't have ad blockers.

Leo Laporte (01:08:48):
Okay. So you should look at your Chrome extensions and your Firefox extensions, but you should always look at those. Yeah.

Caller 4 (01:08:55):
I only have just a couple Chrome extensions. I think one allows me to open a PDF, but I don't have any, any weird extensions,

Leo Laporte (01:09:01):
Nothing you didn't install. Okay. So you've seen them all. That's always something to check cuz malware, sometimes we'll, we'll do that. They'll install an extension without your knowledge. Yeah. Yeah. Do you use a your, your internet service? Provider's DNS? Do you, do you know what I'm talking about? When I say that?

Caller 4 (01:09:19):
Well, you know, it's like, I I've had this connection for about a year and it's like, okay, well they set it up. I have, I have my own net gear modem. I have my own net.

Leo Laporte (01:09:28):
So you haven't changed the settings? No, no, no. So, so DNS, which is the domain name system is is yeah. The way that when you enter anything, including clicking a link in search results, that's a name, but it, it, the link does not give a number. It's a name. That name has to then be resolved into a unique number, the server's IP address. And that's what DNS does. Yeah. Like a giant phone book lookup. You're using your internet service providers, DNS. There are other, anybody can use other DNSS CloudFlare runs some one point, 1.1 do one. Verizon has its Google has its okay. You can, a lot of people like cloud flares, one do one, do one, do one, cuz it's often faster than your is P and it has some malware blocking built into it, but you're not using those. So you're no, but it is possible that you, it is completely PO who's your internet service provider.

Leo Laporte (01:10:27):
You said Comcast, you said Comcast. Okay. it's possible. They're not likely that Comcast is doing something. The other thing I would make sure. And you'll see this in the settings on your Chrome browser, kind of in the advanced settings is that you don't have a proxy server running. So if you go to settings and you, and you search for proxy, you'll, it'll take you to that page. And you wanna, you wanna look at the proxy settings. Sometimes malware will do that. And the proxy is a server that you go through kinda like DNS, but after DNS, a server that you go through before you go to a website, make sure you do not have a proxy set up.

Caller 4 (01:11:06):
Okay. All right. Okay. Don't wanna be going to a proxy.

Leo Laporte (01:11:10):
Yeah. Proxies will do exactly what you're talking about. And sometimes in fact, often security software installs, proxies, cuz they want you to go through their site to make sure you're not going to malware site. You do not need to do that. I consider that intrusive because both Google and Firefox and by the way, edge and safari and every browser known demand pretty much are already use Google's database of malware sites. Google's cuz it's always searching. The web knows about a lot of malware sites and it will keep you off of those sites. That could be one of the things you're getting.

Caller 4 (01:11:44):
Yeah. When I go to settings, I go to proxy. The thing that pops up that pops up on the top says automatic proxy setup. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:11:50):
That's normal. You might turn, might turn that off just to see if that helps. Okay. It's it's normal to have that on, by the way. That's the default. And that's, if you're using it in a corporate environment that the corporate, the corporation can push down the line to you proxy settings, you could turn it off. It's harmless. You shouldn't, you would not be in, in the normal course events using a proxy server.

Caller 4 (01:12:13):
Yeah. Cause it says automatically detect settings

Leo Laporte (01:12:15):
Off. Yeah. Just turn that off. You don't need that. Yeah. And it doesn't have a proxy server in that, in the, in there at all. No. What else could be causing it?

Caller 4 (01:12:25):
Yeah.

Caller 4 (01:12:28):
And I've Googled it and I tried, you know, releasing the, I guess the, the DN.

Leo Laporte (01:12:32):
Yeah. That's yeah. So the DNS settings are cashed to speed things up,

Caller 4 (01:12:37):
All the cash.

Leo Laporte (01:12:38):
Yeah. You might try going in, you could do this on the router. You could do this on the machine. I would do it on the router. You might try an alternate DNS just to make sure cuz this is what a DNS, this is an error in DNS would give you this result. I can't find that page. What are you talking about? Leo Laporte plumbing.com. There's no such thing. So which there, as far as I know is not so <laugh> unless my brother said something up, but I don't know. So what you wanna do is make sure that Comcast isn't doing it by using and you don't have to use it forever. Just try it and see if it fails. Try 1, 1, 1, do one. You can do that on the computer. You can do that in the router. There will be a place for DNS settings in both do it on the router. That way it'll affect all of your computers. Anything that's using the wifi in your house just to see.

Caller 4 (01:13:29):
Well, you know, I've got, I've got iPhones, they got iPads.

Leo Laporte (01:13:32):
They don't have that problem.

Caller 4 (01:13:34):
Correct.

Leo Laporte (01:13:36):
All right. So it does sound like something going on on that particular Dell. And, but I, you know, so if it, if it is, if it's unique to that Dell sort of unique, cuz it happened a little bit on the surface, but if it's <laugh>, if it's unique to the Dell, that means there's some software running on the Dell. That's that's not anywhere else.

Caller 4 (01:13:55):
Hey, Hey Leo, can I bring up one thing that's changed on your show? Yeah. Hey, you know, I, I, I used to, I mean, I always used to go to your sites on the weekend cuz sometimes I, I couldn't the sites changed and I used to love it. Yeah. I love it. How you'd have a list of all the calls and I used to say, God, I wish he would have a transcript so I could brief it. Well

Leo Laporte (01:14:11):
Man, we do now. It's

Caller 4 (01:14:12):
A huge, I know now there's a huge transcript, but you don't have the little, yeah. The little kind of outline to the call.

Leo Laporte (01:14:18):
So I know for a lot of people, this happened without warning. Although we talked about it a number of times in the show, but I know you don't listen to every show. So we had a separate site, the tech guy lab site both. Yeah, the TWI site, my podcast site and tech eye labs run a content management system called dril. We were running a fairly old dril dril announced they're not gonna support it starting next year. And there will be security issues. We went to our provider and said, okay let's update DPL. They said, that'll be a quarter of a million dollars. And I said, <laugh> so we're still gonna have to do it. We're just, I couldn't do it on two sites. That would be half a million dollars. Yeah. So we're gonna do it on the TWI site.

Leo Laporte (01:14:57):
We shut down the tech guy lab site, cuz we don't want you to be sub we don't want to be insecure. And in doing so we also let go James D RVO, who was doing our show notes and brought everything in house. So we've got producers doing it now, but it did change what we can do cuz the capabilities are different in the TWI site. We decided to put the transcript there to help. We're still putting audio video in a transcript. We're putting a list of links, but we don't have all the features of the old site. I know. And I apologize. And it was, I guess you could say a cost cutting measure.

Caller 4 (01:15:30):
Yeah. All right. Thanks boss. You're the best.

Leo Laporte (01:15:33):
Yeah. There's some thoughts. Anybody has any other ideas? This is weird and, and, and actually it's kind of germane. Won't believe this, but this morning I'm sitting, rowing on my rowing machine, trying to get my 5,000 meters in my wife comes in. She says, this keeps happening. Same exact thing. She's clicking a link. It says site not found. I went on my phone, same wifi, same network site loads immediately. So <affirmative> so I don't know what's going on. I really don't. It's happening to me too. <Laugh> probably not the same problem, but maybe, I don't know if anybody has any ideas. Eighty eight, eighty eight ask Leo. That's our phone number? (888) 827-5536 more calls coming up in just a bit. I think Chris Markk our photo guys also back in town. He'll be joining us in 10 and you stay here

Speaker 2 (01:16:31):
Mmmph.

Leo Laporte (01:16:35):
Do I know who's on TWI? No, I wait a minute. I think I do. I was told, but it was Monday <laugh> I can look, but I'm lazy. He said he flushed the DNS cash.

Jammer B (01:16:52):
Just continue the running joke from earlier this morning. You should give everybody the title of doctor when you tell people who's

Leo Laporte (01:16:58):
On Twitter. Hello doctor. Okay. Dr. Dr. Renee rich, Dr. Renee Richie, Dr. Philip Elmer Dewitt, Dr. Philip Elmer Dewitt

Jammer B (01:17:04):
And Dr. The French guy, Patrick.

Leo Laporte (01:17:07):
Patrick Beja PhD. Not, not, yes. Not Patrick PhD. Yes.

Jammer B (01:17:12):
So I, a month ago, two ago I told, I came in. I had to tell you and Micah about this webmaster thing in, in, in Sias Royal court.

Leo Laporte (01:17:26):
Yes.

Jammer B (01:17:27):
You were about to read this paragraph.

Leo Laporte (01:17:32):
You it's fine. She said, put it up. That command was aimed at the Royal webmaster, an antiquated job title, social media coordinator. Would've been more up to date, but it was common in Royal courts to have outdated remnants of a bygone age. <Laugh> webmaster. If SIA could be guarded by men in bare skin, hats, riding horses, why she could as well have a webmaster accordingly, everyone looked at the woman who bore that title. Webmaster. How you say that in Dutch webmaster, VB Mazda. What happens

Jammer B (01:18:06):
Next?

Leo Laporte (01:18:07):
Dot, dot dot. Well, she has a website, which is good. Right?

Jammer B (01:18:11):
So that's

Leo Laporte (01:18:12):
Who's our webmaster Patrick, I guess. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't think we called it that, no, we don't call him the webmaster. <Laugh> although that's gotta kind of Royal sounds to it. You have your master of master, right? Yeah. Their master of the hounds and your webmaster. I'm gonna call Patrick, the master of the web from now on.

Jammer B (01:18:33):
So you, she hasn't given this, they haven't recorded her.

Leo Laporte (01:18:39):
No, she's driving there right now. Okay. So,

Jammer B (01:18:41):
And the first thing they're gonna do is record a counter.

Leo Laporte (01:18:43):
Yes. To the, to the deep fake. Yes. John and I are reading Neil Stevenson's newest termination shock. And he's read it. He's almost, he's almost twice doubled through it already. He's reading it twice. And I'm, I'm going through my first time in about two thirds of the way through, cause we have a book club on Thursday and I need to finish it. I did watch the Yaser by John grand Prix, but I didn't watch it live. I just I, I record it and watch it first thing in the morning because I don't want any spoilers. You know what I'm saying? It was a good race. I enjoyed it. I think that's a, one of the most beautiful races I'm looking forward to Montreal too. That's gonna be beautiful. I like that's one of the reasons I like F1. I like the road races. Yeah. Both he and Lisa were searching for plumbing, Leola, port plumbing. No, she was, she was clicking financial reference site or something like that that I could easily get to on my phone. Sounds really weird. No, that's the beauty Mike B of formula one. It's not an oval. It's all twisty. It's all twisty turny. Sometimes you make a right turn. Sometimes you make a left turn

Leo Laporte (01:20:01):
Web mistres yeah, you're right. Golia web mistres is not right. Oh, you think you should do a trace route? Yeah. A good idea. That's a good idea.

Leo Laporte (01:20:13):
Martin, I am driving the Mustang. Maee it's ma Chanel. It's really nice, really like it better than a Tesla. A large part of that is because I can use CarPlay, but it's better in many other ways as well. Doesn't hit me in the head or Lisa, the tech guy podcast is brought to you by wealth front. You know investing is tempting. It could be like casino gambling for some people. It is you know, those are the people who are day trading, they're buying and selling. And of course the goal. And if you could do this perfectly, you'd be great is to buy when it's low and sell when it's high. But how the heck do you know? Right. They call that market timing. Or you, you know, your buddy just made $5,000 on Bitcoin. So I'm gonna try that. Well, good luck if you're playing the market, I just hope you're sting some safer money in a place like wealth, front trading day trading, eh, yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:21:16):
The thrill of risking at all, you know, that's exciting, but it's probably best to enjoy that in moderation like casino, gambling or street food, it's kind of, <laugh> kind of one of those things a little bit goes a long way. Wealth has a ton of data to show that the length of time you're in that market, holding that stock almost always beats timing the market because no one, even the best investors know how to time the market. But what wealth fund does is they give you globally diversified portfolios, automatically optimize 'em to hit the goals you establish. You're saving for college, you're saving for your first house. You're saving for retirement. Your timeframe is this. Your risk tolerance is that. Then they build this portfolio for you. It's automatically diversified. It's automatically rebalanced. This is really something you've gotta do every, at least every quarter.

Leo Laporte (01:22:04):
Most people don't do it ever. And they do things like tax loss, harvesting. They actually invented the software that does that. And now wealths added some nice features that I think kind of itch, scratch that itch to, you know, play the market. You can personalize your portfolio, but do it safely with a selection of funds handpicked by Wealthfronts financial experts. I mean, they've got social responsibility funds. They've got clean energy. Yeah. They've got cryptocurrency. Wealthfront is trusted with more than $27 billion in assets. We've actually been talking about them since they started. So they I've been watching them grow. It's fantastic. Half a million people now using wealth, front investor PD and named them the best robo advisor of 2022. The year's just about half over. That's pretty good. So bottom line. Yeah, sure. Have some fun, but really start building your wealth into something like Wealthfront.

Leo Laporte (01:22:57):
Get your first $5,000 managed free for life. When you go to wealthfront.com/techguy, w E a L T H F R O N t.com/tech. I start building your wealth. Well front.com/tech guy get started today. And now back to the tech guy, show Leo Laport, the tech guy, when professor Laura, when did that song come out? 1964. I have no idea. 65, no idea. We don't know. I'm gonna guess. It's at least it's almost 6 70, 74 that late. Really? It sounds like a 60 song. All right. 74. So that means it is now 60 years old, right? Or 50 years old. And you are quite a bit younger accordingly after that. <Laugh> so when I was your age, so that song, that song is what, 20 years? 20 years younger than you. So when I was your age, a song 20 years younger than me was like, when treasure was like Rudy valley.

Leo Laporte (01:24:09):
And it always puzzles me that when I was a kid, we looked back at songs from the twenties and thirties, like ancient history. But do you think of that song is like, wow. They thought that was music. Yes. Yeah. Okay, good. That that's a relief <laugh> cause, cause if you cuz I hear a lot of oldies and I'm thinking these oldies are really old now, you know, they were oldies 30 years ago. They're now they're really oldies. Of course. So my eighty eight eighty eight, ask Leo the phone number Gregory on the line from Anaheim, California. Hello, Gregory.

Caller 5 (01:24:45):
Hi Leo. First time caller. Long time listener. Welcome.

Leo Laporte (01:24:49):
Yay. We've been waiting for you Gregory. We can, we can start the party.

Caller 5 (01:24:53):
Exactly. It's not soling hot here yet. Just good.

Leo Laporte (01:24:57):
Yeah. We had a, we cool eye was awful yesterday. We cooled.

Caller 5 (01:25:00):
Oh gosh. Yes. Yeah. The situation I have on my mobile app for Gmail was updated last month and now I'm having, instead of filtering out junk mail and spam, it's integrating into my regular,

Leo Laporte (01:25:18):
The sewage is coming into the house

Caller 5 (01:25:22):
And it's like what the,

Leo Laporte (01:25:24):
What the, what the, Hey. So if you go to the Gmail on the web, cuz you know, all that app is, is a, is a window on, on the Gmail, on the web. If you go on the Gmail on the web, is it the same problem?

Caller 5 (01:25:38):
I haven't done.

Leo Laporte (01:25:40):
I bet it is. I bet you, if you look, it should be. If the if you look at your Gmail in, in the website, log into your Google account and look at the Gmail on the website, the inbox should be identical to the inbox in your app. So it's not the app. In other words, the app is, I mean, if it, if it's different, then there, then I don't know what's going on. <Laugh> right. The app is supposed to reflect your Gmail settings. So it, it could be, you know, spamers never rest and they're always trying to get into worm their way into the house, into your inbox in other words. So it could be that they you've had, you have a, a spate of unreasonably successful spamers could be you turned off spam filtering. That seems unlikely. You would know if you did. 

Caller 5 (01:26:30):
So I'll log into my

Leo Laporte (01:26:31):
Regular. Yeah, just log I'll go to your Gmail account and take a look at it and the inbox will be identical. And then if it is, then the question is, well, why is this stuff here? Now? Of course, what you're supposed to do with Gmail? One of the reasons Gmail does a good job with spam or at least used to right is it's it's collaborative. So the ideas that everybody who uses Gmail is supposed to, you know, when it, when you get spam, say this is spam and Gmail will go, oh yeah. Right. Thank you. Fantastic. we'll we'll make sure. And when enough people say that, then Gmail doesn't even have to think. It just says that. Yeah. That's spam. Everybody agrees. So that turns out to be because so many people use Gmail, a very good system, this collaborative system, spams, hard to detect, as you might imagine, and spamers are widely little Rascals. So you can't just write a filter that says, well, if the word Viagra is in the email, that's spam because you know, they don't write the word out anymore. They write V one <laugh>, you know, they write all sorts of weird stuff. So spamers are getting better. We certainly are getting more spam. Gmail is not working as well as it used to, but I would check your website, make sure you've got spam filtering. Turn on otherwise. Yeah. This is life Leo Laport, the tech guy.

Leo Laporte (01:27:57):
I think there's more spam than ever before is part of the problem. You know, it's just it's just a mess out there. Nope. He's gone already. Hello Chris.

Chris Marquardt (01:28:09):
Hello.

Leo Laporte (01:28:10):
Welcome back. Moine Mo we missed you terribly.

Chris Marquardt (01:28:14):
I missed you very much.

Leo Laporte (01:28:17):
No you didn't. You didn't, you didn't miss us. Don't

Chris Marquardt (01:28:19):
Yeah, of course I didn't. Or even every Sunday I've been thinking of

Leo Laporte (01:28:22):
You <laugh> Aw,

Chris Marquardt (01:28:24):
No. What? Just between 1230 and 1245. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:28:28):
Like, should I be doing some work?

Leo Laporte (01:28:31):
Yes, no.

Chris Marquardt (01:28:33):
I sent you an email. We are going to talk about filters and next week is the colorful assignment reader,

Leo Laporte (01:28:43):
Colorful color. The world is a carousel of color, color color.

Chris Marquardt (01:28:50):
And just 20 minutes ago I rescued a pigeon from the bottom of our chimney.

Leo Laporte (01:28:56):
Oh, is the pigeon. Okay. Just,

Chris Marquardt (01:28:58):
Just out of nowhere. Yes it is. Oh, I think it lost a couple of tail feathers, but 

Leo Laporte (01:29:03):
And you, so you picked it up and you released it to the wild.

Chris Marquardt (01:29:06):
Yes.

Leo Laporte (01:29:06):
You didn't nurse it back to health?

Chris Marquardt (01:29:10):
No, it was okay. We, we, we heard it. We heard a noise from the wall, which was, this is an old house that you kind of a hundred years old.

Leo Laporte (01:29:17):
So probably not the first picture

Chris Marquardt (01:29:19):
Or like wings flapping, you know,

Leo Laporte (01:29:22):
Let me outta here. Lemme me outta here.

Chris Marquardt (01:29:25):
There's this little access door at the bottom. And it was, I was so scared to dig in there.

Leo Laporte (01:29:32):
Yeah. I don't know how pigeons are Germany, but pigeons here kinda like rats with wings. No one wants to touch 'em

Chris Marquardt (01:29:39):
Yeah, I had gloves on, but still <laugh> it was very exciting. A bit of an adventure.

Leo Laporte (01:29:45):
We have a Lisa started feeding the birds here at our house. So she put out feeders and stuff. And for a while it was cute. We had little Swifts and you know, little cute little birds. We just have some, some

Chris Marquardt (01:29:58):
Dos isn't it. Princess mode feeding them on the hand and that kind of

Leo Laporte (01:30:00):
Stuff. No, no, no, no, no little bird feeders. So that she's and then see, well, she started, this was really, she started by putting out walnuts <laugh> I'm like, don't put walnuts out. Oh, those are expensive. But the birds love the walnuts. So that attracted crows. And then, then she thought, well, she could feed birds seed for little birds. So she got a bunch of bird feeders, put them out. Now we have a lot of birds, but then it attracted something that we in California called a blue Jay, but is known as a, oh yeah, I know

Chris Marquardt (01:30:29):
Those. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:30:30):
Well, it's not a blue Jay. It's a scrub Jay, which is a blue bird. That is a killer. And every, as soon as the scrub Jays arrive, the bird's bolt. And pretty soon the scrub Jays laid a, had a built a nest somewhere nearby and now any bird comes nearby, they dive, bomb them and kill them. We have found dead.

Chris Marquardt (01:30:54):
I have a bunch of dead birds guys. We

Leo Laporte (01:30:56):
Have dead birds and a BU and it's like, so, so now we're like, oh my God, what have we done? No. So we've moved the dead moved the, she took down the, and we're rear rearranging, hoping the scrub Jays will, will leave. But I think they're Def I don't think they're normally so blood thirsty, except that they're defending their their, you know, territory or something. Anyway. It's horrible. It's horrible. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> so yeah. So now we've, we've really, it turns out we, we did, we thought we were being humane instead. We were just creating a, a scrub Jay slaughter house. <Laugh>

Chris Marquardt (01:31:35):
Well, I did, I did pull, I did pull the rest of a, of another bird out of the Chi.

Leo Laporte (01:31:42):
Yeah. Oh God. It's, it's sad, but it's awful. The nature, red and tooth and claw. Ah, do you have bird now? I remember when I was out your way. I think it was Regensburg where they had storks nests in the chimneys. Do you have any storks in your chimney?

Chris Marquardt (01:32:05):
Not on ours, but in the vicinity there,

Leo Laporte (01:32:08):
It was, it was so cool. And they actually, they encourage it. They build it's good luck, right. To have a stor. So this old medieval town of Regensburg you're standing and there's the gate and there, and there's this Chiney and there's these giant stor nests and the storks are up there. That was kind of cool. I like that. I would trade the storks for these scrub Jays it's time. Yay. We missed him. Photo guy, Chris Mark Ward is here. He is a fantastic photographer. He is. He is my photo sensei does photo coaching at sensei, S E S ei.photo photo workshops. Soon back on the road, traveling. I hope with his travel workshops. I'm dying to go to Bhutan with you someday. Not Sard so much still in the books.

Chris Marquardt (01:32:56):
Yeah. Still in the book.

Leo Laporte (01:32:57):
Yeah. good, good day, Chris. When Wayne as Mo wine, as they say in in your territory,

Chris Marquardt (01:33:04):
Say in the north of

Leo Laporte (01:33:04):
Germany, the north of Germany, what are we doing today? Yeah.

Chris Marquardt (01:33:08):
Well we wanna talk about filters. This is a topic that is most, most smartphone photographers would never bother with that. But if you're a bit more involved, filters are a thing. Keep in mind. I

Leo Laporte (01:33:23):
Beg to differ because at least I was introduced to filters through Instagram. Nobody

Chris Marquardt (01:33:29):
That is true.

Leo Laporte (01:33:30):
Nobody with a smartphone, if worth their salt posts, a photo without a filter.

Chris Marquardt (01:33:36):
What I'm talking about is physical filters that you put in front of the lens,

Leo Laporte (01:33:41):
Like glass thing. Oh yeah. Not digital filters. I got it.

Chris Marquardt (01:33:44):
Real, real filters, real filters.

Leo Laporte (01:33:47):
There

Chris Marquardt (01:33:47):
Is. Yeah. There's, there's a whole bunch of different filters that people discuss and some of them are beneficial. Some of them are not necessarily. So let's start with the UV filter, which is often, well, it it's one of these things that they are happy to sell you in the, in the store. I actually, because

Leo Laporte (01:34:08):
Do you mean like the, the clear ones that don't really do anything? You mean those be filters? <Laugh>,

Chris Marquardt (01:34:16):
They're actually UV filters like that filter ultraviolet ultraviolet part of the spectrum. The

Leo Laporte (01:34:21):
Invisible

Chris Marquardt (01:34:22):
Part. Those used to be really important if when you shot film, because you be light with something, with film, with a digital camera, you have a built in UV filter, right, right. In front of the sensor, there's one. So you don't really need that. It's, it's fills a lot of discussion if you need them to protect your lens, I'm definitely in the camp of, no, you don't need them to protect your lens. The filter won't too much, but ever since there's entirely different discussion

Leo Laporte (01:34:44):
Ever since you told me that I've been saving, cuz those can be expensive. I've been saving money. Cuz when you buy a lot of lenses, you end up buying a lot of useless UV filters. I don't buy 'em anymore. And I haven't, you know, I haven't done anything bad to my lenses. I do keep the lens hood on. So I'm not gonna, it's harder to scratch it. That's

Chris Marquardt (01:35:00):
A, that's a good, good way to protect your lens against

Leo Laporte (01:35:03):
Plus you look pretty

Chris Marquardt (01:35:04):
Cool. Yeah. And it does look very professional <laugh> yeah. Another kind of filter and I I'm gonna show a couple of photos there. That is actually interesting is the infrared filter. So with the UV filter, we are looking at one side of the visible spectrum, but on the other side there is red and then infrared. And if you have what's called an infrared filter what that does is it blocks everything that's visible. Like it looks black. If you, if you hold it up to your eye looks black, but there is light infrared light that comes into the camera and some cameras can see that. And what you get is in summer you get, this is called the wood effect. White leaves, white foliage on

Leo Laporte (01:35:45):
Green turns into white. Right?

Chris Marquardt (01:35:48):
Absolutely. Especially the, the foliage because it, because it does something to infrared light and that then turns into really beautiful, interesting surreal landscapes

Leo Laporte (01:35:59):
Here. The sky is still blue, which is kind of interesting

Chris Marquardt (01:36:03):
Sort of, sort of it kind of messes with the color. So yeah, yeah. Sort of, I love

Leo Laporte (01:36:07):
This effect effect. I, I wanted to get a camera modified cuz you can remove the filter on on digital cameras and get a basically what is an infrared, you know, camera

Chris Marquardt (01:36:19):
That is true. Another filter is the ND filter. Yes. The neutral density filter. Yes. Or just it's good. The gray filter it's sunglasses filter,

Leo Laporte (01:36:27):
Just put Lisa camera that has a built in ND filter. So when it gets really bright, that's amazing. You could flip that in. Yeah.

Chris Marquardt (01:36:34):
You can flip that in and it will allow you to work with a bigger aperture in bright light or with longer shutter speed. So in this case you get an ind filter during daylight and you can take several seconds depending on how strong it is and that will give you like smooth out water that will give you interesting streaks in the sky, in the clouds, cuz then you get all the motion in there. So ind filter pretty cool. There is, what's called an ind grad filter, which has a gradient. Oh, so half of that filter is, is bright. And half of half of that filter, isn't a D filter and the other half is just glass and that solves a big problem when you shoot landscapes. And the problem is that the landscape part is dark and the sky part is very bright and the camera doesn't really handle that well. So you get the huge contrast if you use the ND grad filter to just darken down the sky, but leave the landscape as it is. You can, you can get all the detail in the sky while maintaining all the detail in the foreground. Oh man, that's what these filters do.

Leo Laporte (01:37:39):
Yeah.

Chris Marquardt (01:37:40):
And it, it, it really brings down it, it brings down the brightness of the sky and, and gives you the contrast in the clouds and everything without killing the rest of the photo fair. So if you shoot landscapes, but also cityscapes, that's a really helpful filter and then last but not least the polarizer and it it's one of those filters that when I shot film, I almost always had it on now a bit less cuz some of that stuff you can try to mimic in, in a digital processing, but a, a polarizer pretty much does one thing. And it does it really well and has several effects. It takes reflections out of, of non metallic surfaces like glass and water. So on a water surface, the polarizer will allow you to look through the water without the sky being too bright, reflected in the, in the water. So you can look through windows with it. Like if you take pictures of cars and you want to take away some of that glare on the front window, that's what a polarizer will do. It will also make blue sky darker. And that is one of the interesting things. And the way it does it is exactly the same way as the other, the other things it takes away reflections

Leo Laporte (01:38:54):
Because I,

Chris Marquardt (01:38:55):
A light blue sky light blue sky is light blue because it has all these reflections on those little particulates in the sky.

Leo Laporte (01:39:02):
Oh. So that's why when you wear polarized sunglasses, the sky looks beautiful. I get it.

Chris Marquardt (01:39:07):
Same effect, same effect, same effect, got it. Same effect. And it makes foliage more more vibrant because it reduces the reflections. Yeah. The, the, the sky reflects of the, of the leaves and it takes those out. And one last thing, it helps you make brick buildings come to life. Brick years. Interestingly enough, I, I, I worked, I, I, I found that out by accident when I, when I took pictures of a brick building in in, in, in the golden hour, like an hour before sunset and I had a polarizer on and I, I turned it cuz that's what you do. You rotated. And the brick building, all of a sudden became so red and so vibrant and so saturated in color because it turns out that a lot of the, if you turn, if you take pictures of bricks, bricks are very reflective. They have lots of things in, in that reflect light and you take some of those reflections out and the color posts through. So

Leo Laporte (01:40:02):
That's the thing about polarized filters is they have an orientation. You're, it's kinda like you're looking through Venetian blinds. So rotating, the filter will change the effect, right?

Chris Marquardt (01:40:14):
It will change the effect. Rotating yourself will change the effect cuz if the sun is behind you or in front of you, it doesn't have a big effect. If the sun is to your right or to your left. And the effect is the biggest and that combined with the rotational of computer itself, you can maximize the effect.

Leo Laporte (01:40:29):
Chris has given us a gallery, a lovely gallery of effects. If you're curious what each effect looks like, we'll put that in the show notes@techilabs.com. So you can see those images. It it's actually a good, good way, which if you, if you only, I mean, some of these can be expensive, I guess a neutral density would be great. If you take a lot of sunset pictures or landscape pictures,

Chris Marquardt (01:40:52):
You have the smartphone try to shoot through his sunglasses that will asses.

Leo Laporte (01:40:58):
Yeah, yeah, yeah. If you only could buy one, which would, which would you buy?

Chris Marquardt (01:41:05):
I'd probably go for the polarizer.

Leo Laporte (01:41:07):
Yeah. I think I might get one

Chris Marquardt (01:41:08):
Versus outfit.

Leo Laporte (01:41:09):
Cause we're going so we're going Alaska next month. Lot of bright glacial light. I think a polarizer might be very useful, right? Yes, yes,

Chris Marquardt (01:41:18):
Yes. We'll go one.

Leo Laporte (01:41:20):
We we are still, I guess next week we might do a pro a review of your images. What is the what is the word of the, of the week of the month? Colorful, colorful,

Chris Marquardt (01:41:30):
Colorful.

Leo Laporte (01:41:30):
So take a colorful picture, upload it to flicker. Tag it. TG colorful. Submit it to the tech tech guy group next week. Chris mark. We will review. Thank you, Chris.

Chris Marquardt (01:41:42):
Thank you.

Leo Laporte (01:41:43):
I gonna need the polarizer for Alaska. Aren't I think I am. I just realized

Chris Marquardt (01:41:54):
What are you? Are you shooting? Are you on a cruise ship? Are you?

Leo Laporte (01:41:57):
Yeah, we're on a cruise. Okay. But the cruises go pretty. They go into the bay. Well, we are gonna be on a, a glacier cuz we're doing like a sled dog adventure or something, but, but also they go in the big,

Chris Marquardt (01:42:11):
You can take the ND filter. You can take the ND filter ND grad, but that is always a bit involved. So if if you have to, if you have the time to set up a tripod and to really mess with it for half an hour, then an ND filter is a good idea, but I

Leo Laporte (01:42:25):
Don't

Chris Marquardt (01:42:26):
Have that time. Put a polarizer on play with a, with, with a, with your orientation. That's really the most important thing.

Leo Laporte (01:42:31):
Orientation decided what a camera to take. I think,

Chris Marquardt (01:42:36):
Yeah. What's what are the options? Well, the like Q I'm not to, I was, I was gone for two weeks.

Leo Laporte (01:42:40):
One. Yeah. I bought 18 cameras since then. No, the like a Q2, which is easy. It's a point and shoot. Right? It's very simple. Nice camera. That's what I brought to Oaxaca, Mexico. But of course I have a Sony, a seven R five or four, which is a very, very good high quality, almost medium format. Quality camera.

Chris Marquardt (01:42:58):
You do know my suggestion. Don't bring too many cameras.

Leo Laporte (01:43:01):
Well, and that's why I like the two different camera. The like is great, cuz it's all you, but it's only got one F you know, I think it's F two 28 millimeter lens. Whereas I have lenses for the Sony. Lisa's gonna have the same problem. Cause she also has a Sony, a nine, but I bought her. I just bought her the new Olympus, om one the last,

Chris Marquardt (01:43:22):
I mean you're, you're not on your own. So you, you have Lisa with you. So there's at least two photo nurse in the group

Leo Laporte (01:43:27):
Make her carry.

Chris Marquardt (01:43:28):
So you

Leo Laporte (01:43:28):
Will, there you go. Make her carry her Sony <laugh>

Chris Marquardt (01:43:31):
You can hold, you can, you can, you can block the group a bit and let make them wait for another 20 minutes. I think that'll be just,

Leo Laporte (01:43:39):
The mic is great, but it's the, it's not so much actually it's F one seven. So it's pretty fast. It's just that you only have one focal length, but that's, you know, sneaker, zoom. I don't know. It's nice cuz it's quick and it's like 40 mega pixels. It's a pretty good image. They've got a good,

Chris Marquardt (01:43:54):
I mean they're both not heavy camera. So you could have a, a little, a little harness with one camera and your left one and your right and just have them dangle at your hips and decisions. Just take the one that is put, put a long lens on the, on the Sony and the short focal length is on the, on the Leica. And then you can just switch back and forth. <Laugh> easily. That's what I would do.

Leo Laporte (01:44:14):
Okay. You say, bring both cameras. Oh, that's

Chris Marquardt (01:44:18):
Get, get a, get a, get a, a strap, a double strap of sorts. That one, one left one. Right? And you'll everyone will laugh at you, but you'll get the best pictures.

Leo Laporte (01:44:30):
And then I also have my phones <laugh>

Chris Marquardt (01:44:34):
If I'm among photographers. That's what I'll do. I'll

Leo Laporte (01:44:36):
Yeah, they don't. They don't laugh. They're jealous. Yeah. My friend. It's great to have you back.

Chris Marquardt (01:44:44):
Yep. Same here. And I'll be back next.

Leo Laporte (01:44:47):
We'll talk next week. Thank you, Chris.

Chris Marquardt (01:44:49):
All right,

Leo Laporte (01:44:51):
Bye. Take care. Do do Leo Laport, the tech guy, 88 88. Ask Leo. Maria is next. No, you're not in Timbuk to come on. Where are you? Maria? You could be anywhere you want.

Caller 6 (01:45:07):
I'm not. I'm trying to keep my cover.

Leo Laporte (01:45:09):
Okay. You're undercover. And she's calling from Tim book two. Hi Maria.

Caller 6 (01:45:14):
Hi. I'm glad you do what you do, Leo.

Leo Laporte (01:45:16):
Oh, I love doing it. Be grateful. I'm glad you listen. And you call, I'm very grateful to for you

Caller 6 (01:45:23):
Leo. I got this problem. I have an Android phone and on my files, I had the file appeared dot collector config. It had it had and then the sub file is collector global. It had appeared a couple months ago. I just you know, deleted it. End of story. But this time I deleted and when I restart the phone, it pops up again. And it's where, you know, you have your it says alarms, Android, download music, pictures, ring, ring, tones, that kind of thing,

Leo Laporte (01:46:00):
You know? Yeah. And I could see why you'd be concerned cuz strange things popping up in your files. And

Caller 6 (01:46:07):
I have nothing, nothing. I had no ring tones. I have no pictures, no music. Yeah. In the

Leo Laporte (01:46:14):
Files. How do you know that it showed up? Are you looking, are you going through the folders? Yes.

Caller 6 (01:46:18):
I, I had been hacked and had a beard.

Leo Laporte (01:46:22):
I see

Caller 6 (01:46:24):
Snoop.

Leo Laporte (01:46:25):
Do you have, let me ask you, do you have Norton installed on your phone? Do you have an antivirus installed in your phone? Yes. Yes. That's what's causing it. And that's what created that folder?

Caller 6 (01:46:39):
No, because I've had it since last year. Yeah. On August. Yeah. And I've had it consistently and it's not there. I

Leo Laporte (01:46:50):
Wasn't well, we'll try this just to see uninstall Norton. Hey Norton, get outta here. Uninstall Norton. You did. And then delete collectors dot config and see if it comes back.

Caller 6 (01:47:06):
It did.

Leo Laporte (01:47:07):
It did. All right. It's harmless. It is not mal. I'm gonna tell you right now. It's not malware. I'm also gonna tell you that no antivirus is necessary on any mobile device because both apple and Google are always protecting you in a variety of ways. I understand you were hacked. So you're, you're nervous. You put something on there, but the truth is those things can make you less secure, not more secure. And in fact can give you concerns like this. So I am looking at a, a support note on Google that says this dot collector config folder is created by Norton. And and that if you remove Norton,

Caller 6 (01:47:52):
Try it again. Maybe I didn't do it. Right?

Leo Laporte (01:47:54):
Yeah. Well, and I will also say it's harmless. It's not malware. It's empty. It's empty. Right? It's zero bites and it's empty.

Caller 6 (01:48:03):
Yeah. It's empty.

Leo Laporte (01:48:03):
Yeah. I don't, I think what Norton uses it for is if it finds malware, it puts him, puts it in there. Now I'm gonna tell you something else. When a, when a file or folder begins with a dot it's, it's supposed to be hidden. <Laugh> you're

Caller 6 (01:48:21):
Not well that's, you know what I have? I went to the show hidden 

Leo Laporte (01:48:28):
Yeah, you show, you showed the hidden. Yeah. You pay no attention to that man behind the curtain. <Laugh> it's it's not that, so they don't wanna bother you. But I understand if you've ever been hacked, you know, it's like, if you've ever been burglarized, you're paranoid for the rest of your life. You're like, is that door locked? You know you, so I understand that. That's why you have Norton on there. And that's why you're looking around to see if there's anything else. Was it a, an X, an evil X that hacked you?

Caller 6 (01:48:59):
No, a neighbor.

Leo Laporte (01:49:00):
Oh, even worse. It was an evil neighbor. Yeah. Actually I dunno if that's worse.

Caller 6 (01:49:04):
No, they made me a hotspot. Leo.

Leo Laporte (01:49:06):
They made you, you mean they didn't wanna buy internet. So they said, Hey, you know, this is a problem with living in Timbuk too. People do bad things there. They said let's use Maria's phone.

Caller 6 (01:49:18):
The other neighbors were in front of my house with the, you know, in front of my house with a laptop.

Leo Laporte (01:49:22):
No, they were that's pretty bold. They were <laugh> we've turned neighbor. Maria's phone into a wifi hotspot. Come on over. Let's all sit in our lawn and we get free wifi. All right. Well that's that's that's good. I'm glad you turned that off. The

Caller 6 (01:49:42):
Question I had. Yeah. was, you know, who, who takes care of that? My local police and Timbuktu does not handle that.

Leo Laporte (01:49:51):
No, they don't want to be bothered. You mean the, the, the using your wifi thing?

Caller 6 (01:49:57):
Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:49:57):
Yeah. I think it's 

Caller 6 (01:49:59):
In changing my settings and my phone was not well,

Leo Laporte (01:50:02):
How did they do that? Did they must have gotten a hold of your phone? Did you leave it lying around.

Caller 6 (01:50:07):
No, no, no, no, no. Nobody had physically touched it. I have no

Leo Laporte (01:50:12):
Clue. That's a very hard, let me tell you, that's a very hard thing to do without physical access to the device. So here's what I would do. You probably already did this. I would do it now. Anyway, you said you don't have anything on there. Do you know there's a factory reset? You might have already done this when they did this the first time do the factory reset, brings it back to it's in your, you know, settings at the very bottom there reset the phone. It's gonna erase everything all day to everything, including Norton Norton is not helping you. There's no friend of yours, sewer workers as Kings but do that full wipe. And then really I strongly suggest a good long password. You, you know, you know, with a, with an Android phone, you can have a digits, which is fine.

Leo Laporte (01:51:01):
Just make it long. Four digits is too short, six digits, minimum iPhones. Now use six. If you can do eight, I always do eight do eight. And and that will keep anybody from physically modifying your phone. At that point, you're safe. They cannot, and I don't think they were able to, unless, you know, maybe you had the default hotspot password or usually good Android phones. They randomize those. So I'm not sure how they got that, but do that lock your phone down. Nobody's gonna get into your phone and, and I think they're all right now, make sure they weren't using your router. <Laugh> somebody said, I bet they were on the, on her internet access. Make sure your router, you use the Tim book two internet service. So make sure your router has a, a password on that. That's probably what they were using, not the phone.

Leo Laporte (01:51:53):
And don't worry about collector config. That's a that's a hidden folder that Norton creates. And if you, if you wipe your phone and, and don't reinstall Norton or crisp Persky or any other security you don't need it. It's a waste of money and it's a waste of space and it makes you make you more nervous. So don't reinstall that and I bet you dot conf collector config does not come back cuz that's that's who makes that folder should be gone. It's a, it's either a cash or I'm guessing might be that's where Norton, if it finds malware we'll will store it, but either way not necessary. John in Mopar, California near Timbuktu. Hi John. Hi

Leo Laporte (01:52:40):
John.

Caller 7 (01:52:41):
Well, I, I feel like I'm in Timbuktu, living here in Mopar.

Leo Laporte (01:52:44):
<Laugh> keep, stay away from your neighbors in that case. What can I do for you? Yeah, I

Caller 7 (01:52:49):
Dunno what to say. I, I was I have a problem and that was that I was listening to you and I bought iDrive and then I got a message just wanting that they're going tore increase the price from 69, 50 to 79, 50 per,

Leo Laporte (01:53:06):
Per year. Yeah,

Caller 7 (01:53:07):
This is per you better not be a month.

Leo Laporte (01:53:09):
Yeah, that would be too much. Yeah. They're no longer an advertiser. So you know I, you know, you, I hope when you first signed up, you took advantage of that 90% off for the first year. I,

Caller 7 (01:53:21):
I don't know that I did, but

Leo Laporte (01:53:23):
Yeah, because then it would've been eight bucks for a whole year. And then you would've been really mad when they went to 70 bucks, but

Caller 7 (01:53:28):
Yeah, well the, my question is how do I delete? I drive

Leo Laporte (01:53:33):
Just uninstall it. Now you do have a backup up there. So you you're gonna wanna have another backup system. Doesn't have to be iDrive. There's lots of choices along that line, including just having an external drive. Although, as I told you in the iDrive ads and I, and I do believe it's always a good idea to have some of your backup or all of your backup offsite somewhere, because now

Caller 7 (01:53:55):
Lemme tell you, I have a Microsoft surface book, which is running office 365 on and

Leo Laporte (01:54:01):
It's one drive. Yeah. And you got a terabyte of OneDrive. That's fine. Use OneDrive instead iDrive, you could just uninstall iDrive. You don't need it. And just make sure you're backing up to OneDrive Leo. Leport the tech guy's kind of confusing OneDrive I drive. Yeah. Yes.

Caller 7 (01:54:19):
Thank you for everything.

Leo Laporte (01:54:20):
You're very welcome on. I'm sorry. You know, I didn't know they were raising the price. Maybe that's why they stopped advertising. I don't know why, but yeah,

Caller 7 (01:54:26):
Whatever.

Leo Laporte (01:54:27):
Well, they stopped at the at the end of the last year, which happened. I mean, every, you know, every advertiser comes and goes, it's normal. I don't, you know, 10 bucks a month is 10 bucks more a year is not the worst thing in the world. But if you don't, but if you already have a terabyte of OneDrive, which I think you do with your office subscription, you don't need iDrive. You can just use OneDrive exactly the same way you used iDrive.

Caller 7 (01:54:50):
Yeah. Well that's what I'm gonna do. I'm I'm better. So I just on this call, that's all I somehow on the app I can

Leo Laporte (01:54:56):
Do. Yeah. On install. You might you might go to the iDrive site and cancel your account. Make sure they don't automatically recharge you.

Caller 7 (01:55:03):
Oh, I I'm gonna call 'em on the phone

Leo Laporte (01:55:05):
On Monday. Yeah. There's nothing else you need to do because you don't need that backup. You haven't lost your drives. Just make sure that you've got a full back. I would suggest a full backup to OneDrive before you cancel iDrive just in case. I certainly will. Yeah. Just in case.

Caller 7 (01:55:19):
Good. Thank you, Lu.

Leo Laporte (01:55:20):
My pleasure. Thank you for listening. And thank you for supporting our sponsors for as long as you did. Oh,

Caller 7 (01:55:26):
Absolutely. Bye. I love yourself.

Leo Laporte (01:55:29):
Oh, I appreciate it. Have a great day. Take care, John. Oh,

Caller 7 (01:55:31):
Byebye

Leo Laporte (01:55:32):
Byebye. Well, Hey, Hey. Hey. How are you today? Leo Laporte here. The tech guy, time to talk computers and the internet and home theater and digital photography and smart phones, smart watches, smart cars, augmented reality, hard drives, backup software, everything, you know, the, the, your digital life on parade on this show. Eighty eight eighty eight ask Leo is the phone number (888) 827-5536. Toll free from anywhere in the us or Canada, outside that area. You can still call, but you have to, you know, use Skype out or something like that. 88 88, ask Leah website tech guy labs.com all will be revealed there. Tech <laugh> tech guy labs.com back to the phones. We go Jamie on the line from Hollywood. Hello, Jamie.

Caller 8 (01:56:28):
Hey, Dr. Laport, how you doing?

Leo Laporte (01:56:30):
I am. Well, how are you?

Caller 8 (01:56:32):
Good. Good. You know that, that, that phone. Angel's a real pro. You're so lucky to have it.

Leo Laporte (01:56:36):
I know. What did she do? Did she did she have your comb, your hair or anything? She's very good. Yeah.

Caller 8 (01:56:42):
She had me sit up right. And make sure I was ready for a position speak and you know, multitasker.

Leo Laporte (01:56:47):
Oh, I did. She, was she eating a sandwich while you were?

Caller 8 (01:56:50):
She, well, she was multitasking between callers apparently. Oh yeah. Got me through.

Leo Laporte (01:56:55):
Yeah, yeah, yeah. She's also talking to John. She's a busy, busy person. Yeah. Plus it's about 30 degrees in the studio. Look at you're wearing a, you're wearing like a, a snow coat. Yeah. Yeah. <Laugh> so what can I do for you, Jamie? Thank you for the kind

Caller 8 (01:57:10):
Words. Oh yeah. Thanks. And thanks. We were talking about Al cam was a little update on the Al Camm and event to Microsoft, cause I'm sure they're always listening globally. But the Al cam is I'm glad it came back. I'd love to see that go into maybe a multi you know, a two cam. 

Leo Laporte (01:57:26):
Do you, you have one?

Caller 8 (01:57:28):
I know I'm actually about to purchase one. Okay. Cause we were talking about it. I didn't even know that they brought it back, but thanks to you. Yeah. I've been really,

Leo Laporte (01:57:35):
And, and I, I told you at the time I would, I would, you know, bring mine back, but I keep forgetting it's in my closet, so I will, I will drag it out. It's nice to have, you know, the funny thing is, yeah, I, you know, I had it for years. Well, as long as they were running, never crashed. So I'm hoping this time I'll crash and I'll have a video of it.

Caller 8 (01:57:53):
<Laugh> well, I wanna see. Yeah. I wanna curious if the things that works with the new system. Yes. And then and then, you know Microsoft, you know, you even said it an hour ago. Well, they've got problems clearly because you know, my, I, I turned off sleep and all that stuff, but I had it on battery saved and the thing just ran till it,

Leo Laporte (01:58:10):
Oh, this is, this is a notorious problem for windows machines, surface machines. Paul thro got one of the original surface studios lap, the laptop. And you know, he'd take it out of his bag. After a day, traveling around in the bag would be 150 degrees, which means that the laptop was running. And of course the battery would be dead,

Caller 8 (01:58:32):
Dead in the water. And you know I did make creative startup disc. It's not working. And I didn't know if there I, oh yeah. This was my vent about Microsoft. I, I called Microsoft now in this day and age, I think everybody you call, they say, Hey, your wait time's 47 minutes. Do you want us to call you back? Yeah. Can we call you back? Well,

Leo Laporte (01:58:50):
Thank God. They got the call. You back feature. That's a big improvement.

Caller 8 (01:58:53):
No, but Microsoft doesn't do it. Oh, they

Leo Laporte (01:58:56):
Don't call you back.

Caller 8 (01:58:57):
No, they don't offer that feature. I

Leo Laporte (01:58:58):
Was like, oh, oh yeah, you have to sit on hold. Yeah. Yeah. I hate that.

Caller 8 (01:59:02):
I did. Yeah. And then I got disconnected. Google,

Leo Laporte (01:59:05):
Google has a new feature in their pixel phone, which is a response to this. You can tell the phone. All right, I'm gonna hold. Just keep an eye on it. And when somebody picks up, let me know.

Caller 8 (01:59:15):
Yeah, no, I'm

Leo Laporte (01:59:16):
Not kidding. And so you put the phone by the side, you keep doing what you're doing. And at some point the phone rings and this says, okay, they say, they say, Jamie will be right with you. Hang on. <Laugh> and they, then they tell you it's a great feature.

Caller 8 (01:59:28):
Yeah. I'd love. Thanks for that tip that's.

Leo Laporte (01:59:30):
Yeah. I think that's in the pixels, but it might be an Android 12 feature too. I don't know.

Caller 8 (01:59:34):
Well, I'm glad I'm not alone, but what do I, I, I, my startup's not working. I don't have

Leo Laporte (01:59:39):
Any. So who do, when you, did you create the startup that the manufacturer of your laptop said to create? Is that what it was?

Caller 8 (01:59:47):
Yeah. At the start. It was, I think it was, it created a general startup.

Leo Laporte (01:59:50):
Yeah. Cause you don't really

Caller 8 (01:59:51):
Need windows 98 and I'm not running windows.

Leo Laporte (01:59:55):
Yeah. <Laugh>

Caller 8 (01:59:56):
So I feel like that. Woo.

Leo Laporte (01:59:58):
So wow. How exciting you don't really need the startup disc that is so modern windows machines. If that machine came with windows 98, all bets are off, but modern windows machines.

Caller 8 (02:00:11):
<Laugh>

Leo Laporte (02:00:11):
No, it's a surface, right? It's a Microsoft machine, right?

Caller 8 (02:00:14):
It's not a surface. It's just a regular, regular PC. Who, who made it direct drive? Who made it pavilion pavilion.

Leo Laporte (02:00:20):
It's HP. Yeah. So HP and every other PC manufacturer, these days puts a recovery partition on the drive that contains the windows installer. Yeah. And so, as long as you don't screw up your drive, that's the preferred way to reinstall windows. And if you, in fact, if you hit the windows key and you type recovery, you'll see that there's a whole recovery process that you can do.

Caller 8 (02:00:42):
Correct. Okay. But that, that, but

Leo Laporte (02:00:45):
Uhhuh, if that something happens to that separate partition on your drive, cuz you know, people erase it by accent. There's all things you can always go to microsoft.com, search, Google, the words, Microsoft media creation tool. They offer a download. It's an ISO, you know, that's a, a, a file that represents the contents of a drive. They offer ISOs for the current version of windows 11 or for windows 10, whichever you want, you download it. You could put, they have instructions for putting it on a USB drive. Now that's your other recovery disc, your secondary recovery disc.

Caller 8 (02:01:21):
I like E I like

Leo Laporte (02:01:22):
Not a bad thing to have both, but, but it, but your HP will a absolutely have a recovery drive on there and you should be able to it doesn't it

Caller 8 (02:01:30):
Doesn't. Yeah. It just didn't like it. I think because the battery got low and dead and everything got

Leo Laporte (02:01:34):
It could have been damaged. Yeah. It could have been damaged. Yeah. So yeah. Remember the old days it would have a, a app that would say, build your recovery distance. They would, you know, ask for five CDs or whatever and you'd burn them and you'd have all these never, it never worked by the way.

Caller 8 (02:01:50):
Got the ghost clones at all.

Leo Laporte (02:01:51):
Yeah. Right. And you'd never know that it didn't work until you tried it. And then it was too late. So

Caller 8 (02:01:57):
Here's why I felt like windows 98, because when it said put in your startup dish, it made it, I literally got the, like a floppy and it looked like <laugh> it looked like, yeah, sure. It looked like the windows 98. And I was like hysterical going on.

Leo Laporte (02:02:15):
That's hysterical.

Caller 8 (02:02:17):
And the computer's less than a year old.

Leo Laporte (02:02:18):
There is, I'm looking at a windows, my windows 11 machine, when I type recovery, there is also an app on the machine called the recovery media creator. That will do kind of what those old things did, which is burn a USB or create a USB that can boot windows. So there are many ways I

Caller 8 (02:02:36):
Know what I'm doing today. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (02:02:38):
I would just, you know, honestly, because HP puts a lot of junk. I was gonna use a bad one. Yeah. Puts a lot of junk on their system. I like to go to get that windows, media creation tool and create a fresh plain copy of windows and install that you'll still need to get the drivers from HP that are unique to that machine. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> but it'll run without them. It just won't run optimally. And then you get the drivers and then it'll run optimally and you don't have all that junk that HP installs.

Caller 8 (02:03:08):
Awesome. That's what I thank you so very much. Thank you for

Leo Laporte (02:03:11):
Listening. Yeah, I appreciate it. Jamie,

Caller 8 (02:03:13):
Have a wonderful week.

Leo Laporte (02:03:14):
Well, golly, you too. Wow. This was a very civil exchange. Let's try Jonathan in San Diego. Hello Jonathan Leo. Leport the tech guy.

Caller 9 (02:03:24):
Hey, how are you Leo?

Leo Laporte (02:03:26):
I'm great. How are you?

Caller 9 (02:03:29):
Excellent. And Sunday is sun sunny Sunday.

Leo Laporte (02:03:32):
<Laugh> a sunny

Leo Laporte (02:03:33):
Sunday in, in beautiful downtown San Diego.

Caller 9 (02:03:38):
Yeah, exactly.

Leo Laporte (02:03:39):
One

Leo Laporte (02:03:39):
Of my favorite places. I love San Diego.

Caller 9 (02:03:42):
Excellent. Yeah. I got to visit, visit your studio back in 2018. Nice. But you and Patrick? Yeah.

Leo Laporte (02:03:48):
Oh,

Leo Laporte (02:03:48):
How fun? Well, well it's good to talk to you again. What can I do for

Leo Laporte / Caller 9 (02:03:52):
You? Yeah.

Caller 9 (02:03:54):
Yeah. So I have a one plus eight pro and I, I love it. And recently on Friday I upgraded to Android 12, which I thought was gonna be great.

Leo Laporte (02:04:07):
All that.

Caller 9 (02:04:09):
Yeah.

Leo Laporte (02:04:09):
And it wasn't <laugh>

Caller 9 (02:04:11):
I'm taking

Caller 9 (02:04:12):
No it's well it's okay. Except for in dark mode. The black colors or what's supposed to be black is now like a brick color

Caller 9 (02:04:23):
Or,

Leo Laporte (02:04:23):
Oh, it's not good.

Caller 9 (02:04:25):
Or a Puy pink. Oh,

Leo Laporte (02:04:26):
Oh, I know why one of the features of 12 is it looks at your desktop wallpaper and adjusts its colors. This is called the material. U Y O U adjusts. The colors to your wallpaper because that's what you like. So you can turn that off in the settings. The best thing I've heard anybody say about Android 12 now that Android 13 is coming is mm-hmm <affirmative> well, finally, after a year Android 12 is usable. It took them almost a year to make Android 12 any good.

Caller 9 (02:05:03):
Okay.

Leo Laporte (02:05:03):
Okay. But one of the big features that they sold last year about Android 12 was this material you thing where it a adjusts its colors to reflect your personal tastes. But obviously you don't want that. You don't want brick red, right? You want black? No. You should be able to change that in the settings. Otherwise 12 should work well on that one, plus how, how old is it?

Caller 9 (02:05:26):
It's one plus eight. So maybe two years old. Okay.

Leo Laporte (02:05:31):
Maybe. Yeah, it should, it should probably work fine on that. But yeah, I think that that's, what's going on with the colors, the weird colors. It may be, there may be another issue. There may be something going on, how it understands the screen since it is an older phone and, and, you know, with, with Google, Android really only works best with with Google phones. Did you get Android 12 from one plus? Yes. Okay. Well then it should work cuz they've presumably tuned it. You know, the guy who started one plus Carl pay has left, started a new company called nothing and in a month they're gonna announce their nothing phone. So we got that to look, we got that going for us.

Caller 9 (02:06:13):
Maybe I'll check that out.

Leo Laporte (02:06:14):
A nothing phone. I thought the one pluses were quite good. Certainly in the early days anyway. Yeah, I think it's just 12 customizing it. Turn off that, turn off the material you customization.

Caller 9 (02:06:25):
I went to personalization is but I can change the accent color, but there's not a background. So just change the background. You're saying.

Leo Laporte (02:06:33):
Yeah, maybe if you put a black background, it would then not have the brick color. Is that brick color reflected in your wallpaper?

Caller 9 (02:06:43):
San Diego <laugh> huh?

Leo Laporte (02:06:46):
I, you know,

Caller 9 (02:06:46):
That's probably,

Leo Laporte (02:06:47):
I never liked that feature. It never, it pick would pick kind of random colors from my wallpaper. So yeah, there must be, I don't have a Android front in front of me, but there must be a way to turn that off completely. So you don't have any customization. Let's just, I'll try. Let's just have dark mode as it's intended to be pitch black dark. Yeah. There's gotta be a way to turn that on. I, I, unfortunately, you know, I, I usually bring my pixel just so I can answer questions like this and I, I didn't bring it today. I'm sorry. I apologize. I have failed you.

Caller 9 (02:07:22):
No

Leo Laporte (02:07:22):
Worries. Sorry, Jonathan. Somebody will call let's somebody, somebody will find out. Oh yeah. That's another solution. Dr. Mom says she fixes it by not using the Google launcher or in your case, the whatever they call it. The one UI launcher. Launcher. Yeah. Yeah. She uses Nova launcher and that's true. I ne that's part of the reason I probably don't see this is I always use third party launchers. I like active launchers. She likes Nova launcher, which also very good. And that way, you know, the material you is gone,

Caller 9 (02:07:54):
I'll try Nova launcher. Then that sounds good.

Leo Laporte (02:07:56):
Nova launch is great. Highly recommend it much better than the, the launcher that OnePlus provides. Hey, appreciate the call. Have a great day. Come up and visit us sometime or I'll come visit. You actually let's do it that way.

Caller 9 (02:08:09):
We'll we'll do the doors always open. Thank

Leo Laporte (02:08:11):
You. All right. I watched the top gun Maverick premier in San Diego by the, by the war down there in the Harbor. That was a, that was a hoot Tom cruise flying in, in his helicopter. Leo Laporte the tech guy more calls right after this

Leo Laporte / Rod Pyle (02:08:34):
Raw pile. Hey there. So when did you see the when did you see Maverick? I didn't see the movie. I just saw the, oh, the event, the premiere. So I finally got my, my butt into a theater and saw it yesterday and was despite my snobbery. I have to say it was quite good. And his best performance. I mean, it was, you know, there wasn't a scene that came along. That was unexpected. Yeah. Of that way. It's like, oh, look, he rescued at the last minute. Yeah. But he, he actually acted in this. It was, it was damn good. Yeah. All right. I'll have to see it. I had never seen top, believe it or not. Never seen top gun. So Lisa and I, you missed all that big hair. Yeah. Lisa and I watched it the other night and I paid for it.

Leo Laporte / Rod Pyle (02:09:18):
I bought it. And then I found out it's free on Amazon prime. So I'm an idiot idiot. I'm an idiot. God, I wish there were a way to figure that out ahead of time. Well, but now you have it permanently. Now I own, it disappear from prime all the time, including interestingly things that you buy, you know, I never had looked at the fine print until I started using books on Kim to realize you're just kind of paying to lease them until they decided they don't money. I'm so annoying. Yeah. And, and this was on iTunes, but I bet they all do this. They sometimes they edit them. So, oh really? I, one of my favorite kind of guilty pleasures is oh gosh, now I'm trying to remember the name of it. But it had some sexy scenes that were, that I, I know they were in there.

Leo Laporte / Rod Pyle (02:10:06):
Yeah. They ain't in there anymore and it's like, well, don't add it. You know, don't sell a movie with scenes cut out, cuz you don't like them. It it's. It's like there was a routine on mad TV years ago. What the Sopranos would look like on PS TV. Oh, I know. Edited for family friendly contact. <Laugh> I know it was like a 32nd episode with a lot of this is the, this is the movie it's kind of this guy was a Hitchcock fan. Brian de Palmer. Yeah. And it was one of his great, I thought very, you know, it's a guilty pleasure, bad movie, but I really enjoyed it. The one where the guy is looking out the window and he thinks he sees a murder is it's not dressed to show like rear window, but that's switch cock. Is it?

Leo Laporte / Rod Pyle (02:10:56):
Don't look now. Yeah. It's a, it's like blow up but, or blow out. It's called because it's a kind of an homage to blow up. Is that it? No, that's the John Travolta one. That's not the one. Maybe it was body, double body, double it's body double with, with what's her name and Melanie Griffith. And there is a scene where he, because he's trying to, he's trying to figure out who got murdered and what's going on Craig Wason and there's a scene where he acts in a porno movie cuz she's gonna be in the porno movie and he just wants to, he's like following her and it's hysterical scene. And it's cut out. It's gone. And it's like, I know that scene is in this movie. I don't understand. It's a classic. I think it's a classic movie cuz it's kind of a, it's homage to, you know, Hitchcock and, and to, and to blow up the Antonio movie, which is also one of the great movies.

Leo Laporte / Rod Pyle (02:11:51):
Anyway, I was kind of pissed that I bought it. Yeah. Cuz it doesn't have the that's the good stuff. What would you do without the chat room? Huh? Oh no. I actually looked it up on Wikipedia <laugh> oh, okay. Well they, they were telling me the answer. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I should have looked over to my left. I just, once I remember Brian dip diploma, it was, I could look it up and all that you Google watch in the movie. I know I should have done that with watch top gun. Let me see what I get now. <Laugh> watch. So you suggest Maverick. All right. Well I don't, I still don't want, he doesn't say I feel the need for speed, which I was greatly gratified. You know, I, you know, I knew he was gonna say that and he didn't, I was waiting through it the whole original movie where he does say it, but it's a very minor it's like offhand. I thought it would be a bigger deal when he said it. To be honest with you, you thought it would be with the big hair. All right, hang on. We'll be with you in a minute. I'm feeling groovy. Feeling nerdy is what I am. Leo. LePort the tech guy. You going too fast. John, wait a minute. Didn't I just talk to John in San Diego or this? A new John in San Diego. Hello John.

Caller 10 (02:13:05):
Hi Leo.

Leo Laporte (02:13:06):
It's a new one. Hi John. Welcome.

Caller 10 (02:13:09):
Well, thank you. Been enjoying your show for a long time. It's my first time to actually reach out.

Leo Laporte (02:13:15):
Welcome. Thank you. It's good to have you call. Thank you.

Caller 10 (02:13:20):
Got, I got a couple of questions for you. Yes. Started out with an iPhone and I got Nord VPN and got hacked through the

Leo Laporte (02:13:30):
VPN. Oh, isn't that nice?

Caller 10 (02:13:32):
Oh yeah. It was even nicer when I factory reset and that didn't help and tried to get some support from apple. I finally gave up and decided to go Android. Now I wanted to find out besides the VPN that you recommend, which what was that brand again?

Leo Laporte (02:13:54):
Our sponsor is express VPN. Okay. But, but from, to my knowledge, Nords fine. I'm surprised you got hacked through Nord. I'm not sure what happened there.

Caller 10 (02:14:04):
We actually hacked into the Nord app on my phone and I had my wifi set up with Nord and they got everything except my windows device.

Leo Laporte (02:14:16):
So really what happened was not that Nord was hacked, but that your phone was hacked and they used Nord then to go attack other things, something like that. Yeah. Well it was,

Caller 10 (02:14:25):
It was kind of frustrating. Yeah. What would you set up if you were gonna set up a new Android for antivirus, anti

Leo Laporte (02:14:36):
Wear, none don't don't use any of that stuff. None of that stuff's any good. You kind of had that experience. You installed Nord VPN as a security measure and it got hacked. Any yeah. Any software you install opens you up to two things. The software itself, having a flaw, which allows a bad guy to attack you. And just because it's security software doesn't mean it doesn't. In fact it's worse because security software reaches his hooks deeper into the operating system. And there have been cases. I'm not gonna name names, but there have been very well known software programs, antivirus that have been hacked because you know, they opened up the door to bad guys. So that's problem. Number one, problem. Number two is anytime you install software on your system that'ssoftware can slow it down. Can cause in compatibility and security. Software's notorious for that.

Leo Laporte (02:15:26):
When somebody calls me and says, I can't get online, the very first thing I'll ask is tell me about the security software you're running. So you don't, you don't and, and mobile operating systems are different than desktop on the desktop because these operating systems are so old. You really are a little more vulnerable. They're working to lock 'em down, but mobile operating systems are, were devised in the last, you know, couple of decades when we've already, we knew that that you were in a hostile environment, always on networking, you're running around. So that were designed much more securely than desktop operating systems. So that's number one, number two you know, Google is constantly scanning your device doing and they don't let any other third party do what they do for security reasons. It's even worse on the iPhone. There's no, no. Any virus could do anything on the iPhone.

Leo Laporte (02:16:16):
So they're just there, you know, kind of, kind of performant performantly, you know, and just, Hey, look, I'm predicting you, but they can't do anything. So you don't need any. I'll tell you how you keep an Android phone safe. Number one, get an Android phone that is gonna be kept up to date. Look at the manufacturer's agreement. Samsung, Motorola, Google, look at their agreement. How many years they're gonna give you updates and I'm not talking about Android 11, 12, 13. I'm talking about monthly security updates. Google puts out a security update every month on my Google pixel phone. I just got the June update. It's as up to date, as you can get on some phones, even Samsung phones, it might be may. It might be April. So not job one on Android. Get the phone. That's gonna be updated as, as quickly as possible. Frankly, to me, that means pixel.

Leo Laporte (02:17:12):
In fact, right now the phone I would recommend is either a, a pixel five, a or have they announced the six a no, they haven't announced it. They just talked about it. Get a pixel five, a they're really good phones. They're less expensive and they're gonna be kept up today. Job two is don't download apps cuz the app store does have malicious apps on it unless you're absolutely sure it's from a reliable source, do not get the Russian wallpaper app on the internet. Very D only from Microsoft, Google companies like that. And then you'll be just as safe as you can be. Leo Laporte the TECA it's time for our rocket man. Mr. Rod pile. He is the author of so many great works on space. I have a stack of books over here, reflecting his incredible. How many books have you written rod?

Rod Pyle (02:18:04):
Just finished

Leo Laporte (02:18:05):
20, 20, 20, 20 including space, 2.0 and your planetary robots. Amazing stories of the space age. My favorite though. I gotta say, cuz I'm a fan. I'm a Neil Armstrong fan and I love, you know, the moon landing. I was a kid. I watched it is first on the moon. There's a beautiful book that you put out on the 50th anniversary of Apollo 11. Thank you. I just love this one. Yeah. He's also the editor inchi of@astramagazinespacedotnss.org. Welcome. We missed you. You took some time off. How are you? You good? I did. You were traveling.

Rod Pyle (02:18:42):
I paid my dues in Norway and then DC and good. I don't see myself over your shoulder

Leo Laporte (02:18:48):
By the way. Watch this now ladies in general magic rod will appear in this screen right here. Of course it's radi. You

Rod Pyle (02:18:56):
Know it was better before I did.

Leo Laporte (02:18:58):
No that's okay. So,

Rod Pyle (02:19:00):
So now that I'm I had to spend a few minutes licking my wounds. Cuz you had to mention doge coin during the break

Leo Laporte (02:19:06):
<Laugh> did you invest in doge coin? Yeah.

Rod Pyle (02:19:09):
Yeah.

Leo Laporte (02:19:10):
Did you make a killing in doge coin?

Rod Pyle (02:19:13):
Well I made kind of an inverse killing it's at about a 10th of what I

Leo Laporte (02:19:16):
Spent. Yeah. My daughter asked me, she said, do I have to declare my DOE coin? I said, well how much did you make? She said, well I didn't make anything. I said, then you don't have to declare it. <Laugh> Nope.

Rod Pyle (02:19:26):
You're good to go, sweetheart. So what's the big news this week. What the elephant in the room that we can't ignore is that NASA had a press conference on the ninth saying, okay, it's been long enough. We're jumping into the, the UAP world and we're gonna do a study. So UAPs of course being an identified aerial phenomenon

Leo Laporte (02:19:46):
Instead of UFO

Rod Pyle (02:19:48):
Ufos. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So it's a more,

Leo Laporte (02:19:50):
It's the same thing though, isn't it right? No, no it's different. Okay. It's we're gonna change the name. Yeah.

Rod Pyle (02:19:57):
Well, so to that credit, so this is kind of another one of those sort of quiet, slow news day conferences. They do every now and then when it's something that kind of, in my opinion is just my opinion when it's like, okay, let's not put this. Let's not make a big splash on Tuesday morning with this let's let's kind of do it towards the end of the week. Yeah. after

Leo Laporte (02:20:17):
The market's closed kind

Rod Pyle (02:20:18):
Of a thing kind of. Yeah. So, so press was told there would be an additional announcement at this news conference that would routinely be to update about mission.

Leo Laporte (02:20:29):
And when was this Friday? They did this.

Rod Pyle (02:20:31):
This is the ninth. Okay. So that would be what Thursday? Yeah. Friday.

Leo Laporte (02:20:35):
So they didn't wait till the end of the week anyway, but it was still,

Rod Pyle (02:20:41):
Yeah, I was kind of just stuck in there. But so this is a follow up on the department of defense studies. Now, when I say study, you know, when you think of NASA commissioning a study, it's like, Ooh, how many millions, you know, can we get, if we win this contract, it's a hundred thousand dollars, which for NASA is like a, a rounding error for one part of, of one field center's budget. But okay. So small, independent study, but notably and, and this actually does kind of make sense. It's a study, it's not project blue book. You know, they're not looking at all this evidence to say, okay, what can we extract from this? They're looking at the data that's been collected by the military and possibly some other sources over the decades and saying what's missing and how can we better contextualize all this to understand what's going on.

Rod Pyle (02:21:30):
So if that makes sense, that kind of they're studying data patterns more than actually studying what the data says. And then they go on to step two. They did say front in, in their estimation, there's no evidence of extra trust origin for this stuff, but they're open to it. Primarily. They want to take the stigma off of the, off of the subjects, scenario of study and off of people reporting it because this has been one of the biggest problems as you and I have discussed before. If you're a military pilot and you say, well, yeah, I saw that thing that suddenly changed direction and moved.

Leo Laporte (02:22:02):
Yeah. See, that's the problem. As

Rod Pyle (02:22:03):
We knock 900,

Leo Laporte (02:22:03):
We have all these ostensibly reliable people reporting, seeing suspicious things flying around.

Rod Pyle (02:22:11):
Yeah. And, and you want them to keep reporting it, but when they do, you know, the next thing you know, you're, you're walking down to the commissary. Yeah. They were drunk. Yeah. There's UFO Bob, how you doing Bob? Woo. So you don't want that. So they're gonna get a, a team under an astrophysicist named David Bergal the support team scientist, astronautics experts. I'm, I'm reading off their press release and data practitioners to identify these data gaps, which is you know, they're researching how to do better research. And what,

Leo Laporte (02:22:42):
What is it? Data gap. You mean this isn't UFO sightings. I'm sorry. UAV, sightings, UAP, UAP. I don't know.

Rod Pyle (02:22:50):
Well, so it's like what's been reported and what hasn't and when these pilots who are our best sources, ostensibly make their reports, you know, is everything recorded properly? Is the practitioner or the person who's taking down the report and calling through the data

Leo Laporte (02:23:06):
Reporting properly. This is killing the subject, burying it under a pile of bureaucracy. Yeah. All people wanna know is, are there aliens or not? Right. Well, when are those things? If you're not,

Rod Pyle (02:23:19):
We wanna know, but if you were alive as you and I were, when project blue book came out, I think I was eight or nine. So you were probably a year younger, you know, at the time I remember thinking, I called BS on this. That was, you know, when they started really talking about, do you think they were gas and weather balloons? So

Leo Laporte (02:23:36):
You think they were lying to us?

Rod Pyle (02:23:39):
No.

Leo Laporte (02:23:39):
Do you think there is an alien body hidden at area 51?

Rod Pyle (02:23:43):
I think they were rounding it into, in their favor. Let's put it that way. They were sort of shaving off the rough edges to say, well, you know, we can't explain that, but here's what we see collectively. It's pretty conclusively proven that the alien autopsy was a

Leo Laporte (02:23:57):
Fake. Okay. You, it was fake. It was a rubber ducky, I mean,

Rod Pyle (02:24:01):
Rubber dummy with some pig

Leo Laporte (02:24:03):
Guts. And wasn't even a good fake, but get ready

Rod Pyle (02:24:07):
Because a

Leo Laporte (02:24:07):
Lot of people, yeah, I know, but get ready. Cuz we have the capability now of producing good fakes.

Rod Pyle (02:24:13):
Oh my God.

Leo Laporte (02:24:14):
Yes. So get

Rod Pyle (02:24:15):
Ready watching. What was I watching the other day? Oh, it was love, love, death and robots. I was watching. Yeah. That's a great show. Some of the CGI on that show. Yeah. You really have to stop and stare. They're not trying to hide it, right? No, you know, they're, they're letting you know what it is. We are. If you imagine we are

Leo Laporte (02:24:31):
Just a year or two off from the deep fake era. Right. And nothing, you won't be able to trust your lion eyes ever again. I mean it's right. And so there will be fake alien sightings, fake alien autopsies. It, it, it is very clear to me that what these pilots are seeing are easily ex maybe not swamp gas, but easily explained optical effects caused by a variety of things. I know they're trained professionals, but if you've ever seen an optical illusion, our brains are easily fooled, easily fooled. And, and there are lots of optical tricks played by sunlight. Horizons, things can happen that I think are easily explained. It's gonna take a higher level of evidence than I saw it out my window to, for me to say, yeah, they're aliens. I want some physical proofs.

Rod Pyle (02:25:25):
Yeah. And even when you have hardware involved, like, you know, flu radar and so forth, you know, parallax can be a very confusing thing, especially to our primitive mind, you know, things moving in the Zaxis or, or

Leo Laporte (02:25:37):
We don't understand depth.

Rod Pyle (02:25:39):
Yeah. Yeah. It's really hard to tell the altitude or range of something, even if you're experiencing.

Leo Laporte (02:25:44):
So if you're gonna search something crazy, wild, not insane, crazy, but just like something off the, off the charts unusual, you better need better evidence than well, I saw it cause cuz cuz I witnesses, it was weird. Are notoriously bad. Yeah. So where's

Rod Pyle (02:26:01):
Or ask any cop. Right? Right.

Leo Laporte (02:26:03):
Where's the piece of space junk that, that they left behind or, you know, I mean I want more than an eyewitness account. I want some physical

Rod Pyle (02:26:11):
Evidence. Well, and, and we're gonna have an episode coming up on the podcast, which you so, so generously

Leo Laporte (02:26:18):
This week in space,

Rod Pyle (02:26:20):
We're going to have a gentleman on, who's written a study about oh good conductive study about how many potentially hostile earth invading civilizations might be in the gallery. <Laugh> which I thought, boy, just the title, you know, but

Leo Laporte (02:26:34):
What is your opinion? I really have a half minute left, but what is your opinion? On all of this stuff,

Rod Pyle (02:26:40):
What do they, what do they want from us? You know, our bodies are so full of microplastics. I wouldn't eat one of those <laugh>

Leo Laporte (02:26:47):
At this point. But do you think there are aliens visiting us from another personally planet? I

Rod Pyle (02:26:53):
Personally, it doesn't make a lot of sense to me, for them to cross light years space.

Leo Laporte (02:26:56):
It's a, a long way out

Rod Pyle (02:26:57):
There. Yeah. Yeah. I, I, in a multiverse, I just assumed think they'd step through my closet, but I just don't know.

Leo Laporte (02:27:02):
That's a good point. I mean, we, there are, it could be a multiverse. Yeah, yeah. Or it could be drugs. Leo Laport, rod fire rooms. <Laugh> the tech guy, these space guy more calls right after this. <Laugh> I, I don't, I'm such a skeptic of all this, but I'm open minded if you gimme some evidence.

Rod Pyle (02:27:24):
Well, me too. And, and I've been accused of being closed minded.

Leo Laporte (02:27:27):
No, no, no. I'm not closed minded, but, but if you're gonna assert there's aliens visiting us, you need more than, well, I saw one or I was abducted. Right. And you see

Rod Pyle (02:27:39):
Just gonna say abduction reports. So I remember interviewing years ago was working on some history channel show. I think it was UFO files or something. I did one episode for them. And I interviewed this, this woman who was a a clinical psychologist who had done a ton of work on abductions. And she was talking about waking paralysis. I don't know if you've ever had that, but we

Leo Laporte (02:28:00):
Were trying to get outta no dream. Many people have. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Rod Pyle (02:28:03):
I have. And it's scary

Leo Laporte (02:28:04):
As

Rod Pyle (02:28:04):
Hell. Yeah. Right now I haven't seen a gray people leaning over me saying, Ooh, I've gotta probe you. But but it is, it is kind of terrifying when it happens and you know, minds are, are twitchy things. I mean, I've seen stuff I can't explain.

Leo Laporte (02:28:18):
I need, I swear to God, I need physical evidence. Same thing. Yeah. If, if, if it were a murder investigation, well, I saw him do it is not, you know, I need physical evidence. If there's no evidence of some kind, everything leaves physical traces. Right. And if, and maybe it didn't okay, maybe these aliens are super clever and they don't leave traces, but DNA, but that's not enough to convince me. That's just not gonna convince me. Yeah. I mean,

Rod Pyle (02:28:44):
Show me DNA with a reverse twist from what we have on earth and I'll, I'll buy it. Yeah. There you go. Alien for a buck. Yeah. So, you know, check under your fingernails or something. I mean, who knows how much time do we have on the break here? By the

Leo Laporte (02:28:54):
Way two minutes said 30 seconds

Rod Pyle (02:28:56):
Just real quickly. I wanted to mention the benefit of people who are, who are listening to it. During the break straddle launch just flew another test flight of their giant plane called rock ROC. It's named after Sinbad's giant elephant carrying bird myth.

Leo Laporte (02:29:10):
<Laugh> not Dwayne Johnson. Okay. All right.

Rod Pyle (02:29:12):
No. And this plane, this is the, the Paul Allen project that was gonna launch. Oh

Leo Laporte (02:29:17):
Yeah, yeah,

Rod Pyle (02:29:17):
Yeah, yeah. At first UN crewed rockets. And now they're talking about actually crude mini shuttles from this enormous 385 foot wingspan plane that uses 6, 7 47 engines and so forth. And so they did another test flight with the pylon installed from which they're gonna drop this, this other vessel. And they had some issues with, I, I think vibrations or something with the pylon, but at least they're still flying cuz we thought they were gonna go under. They, they Wied a receivership I, or, or close to it when he died. But in 2019 service capital bought them and they're back in action. So fingers crossed might be another cheap way to to abit soon.

Leo Laporte (02:29:59):
Could R flight K in the S a a no. Okay. ROC in the us.

Rod Pyle (02:30:08):
You could take, you can't take the DJ out of the Leo. Okay.

Leo Laporte (02:30:11):
I know, I know we out a pleasure. I forgot to put always twists, but I will do it when we get back. Okay. Thank you care friend. Have a great week. Come visit us sometime

Rod Pyle (02:30:23):
I, I plan to

Leo Laporte (02:30:24):
Good. And the next time Lisa and I are down your way, we are going to eat on your yacht. <Laugh>

Rod Pyle (02:30:31):
Okay. Taco. Bell's always a good choice.

Leo Laporte (02:30:33):
Very good on the pile yacht. Everybody. Come on. Thank you, sir.

Rod Pyle (02:30:39):
Pandora, take

Leo Laporte (02:30:40):
Care. Byebye. Thank you for letting me be my well, your tech guy again. I appreciate it. Thank you to professor Laura musical director, spinning those discs. Thanks to Kim Schaffer, the phone angel, answering your calls. Most of all, thanks to you for calling and thanks to you for listening. Really wouldn't be any sense in me sitting here talking into space. If you weren't it mean unless the aliens were listening, then that case hello. Hello aliens. Come on down and pay us a visit. Eighty eight eighty eight. Ask Leo the phone number. Wouldn't be funny if they called and said long time listeners. First, his time Steve, on the line from San Diego. Hi Steve. Hey Steve.

Caller 11 (02:31:30):
Hi. How are you?

Leo Laporte (02:31:31):
Good to talk to you. What's up?

Caller 11 (02:31:33):
I have an old flip phone 3g with T-Mobile and they sent me a letter saying that my phone won't work after July 1st. Cause they're yeah. Switching to 5g. Yeah. I wonder if that's true or it

Leo Laporte (02:31:51):
Is

Caller 11 (02:31:51):
True phone will, will just be slower than five.

Leo Laporte (02:31:54):
No, it won't even be slow. It won't work. They're turning off the 3g towers. All, all the carriers are doing that by the way. So T-Mobile has already begun shutting down the sprint 3g network. They acquired that. When they merged with sprint, they shut that down at the end of the month. Last month. I think you still have a couple months before they shut down the entire 3g network. I think the last thing I saw was October, or maybe not, I don't know. Verizon will shut it down by the end of the year now my mom's on sprint and they sent her a replacement phone. It is a couple of year old iPhone, but they sent her a replacement phone. Have they offered to do that for you?

Caller 11 (02:32:42):
They, they made some some offers with some good deals,

Leo Laporte (02:32:46):
But you like, you like that phone? You wanna keep it or

Caller 11 (02:32:51):
No? I should get a new one.

Leo Laporte (02:32:52):
Yeah, you need to get a new one. You need to get a LTE phone at the very least. It doesn't have to be 5g. Here's the reason this is, you know, you might say, in fact I did, when I first heard about this, well, wait a minute. Phone calls should still work, right? Because this is just the data part of it. The 3g. Well, no, it turns out they use those 3g signals to, to initiate calls. So you can't, you won't even be able to make a phone call. Not only will you lose data, you won't even be able to make a phone call. That phone is gonna be a brick pretty soon now. So you should get a new phone. It is true, unfortunately. And you should just get a new phone. They, they gave my mom a free phone. Now she was on sprint. So I don't know if you're on T-Mobile. If they'll offer you a free phone, they should, it might not be the best phone ever, but you're replacing a flip phone. So it'll probably be as good as your old phone, at least.

Caller 11 (02:33:50):
Well I wanna keep a small flip phone. Yeah, I have now.

Leo Laporte (02:33:55):
Yeah. A lot of people like those. So they, they still make some flip phones. There's not a big market for 'em. Most people want smart phones, but they, they know there are people like you who want a flip phone. So just, you know what, if, if you say, look, <laugh>, I'm going to Verizon <laugh> unless you give me a free phone, they will give you a free phone.

Caller 11 (02:34:14):
<Laugh>

Leo Laporte (02:34:15):
Okay. I promise you, they will give you a free phone because you make you, they make more money off of you every month than that phone is worth. Right.

Caller 12 (02:34:25):
Right, right.

Leo Laporte (02:34:26):
Yeah. So this, this, this deadline has been, it's kind of hard. It's been shifting. I'm trying, I'm looking at, I'm trying to get some latest. So the, the shutdown date was March 31st. Then it was May 31st, but I think they might even let that slip a little bit. So it's, it's confusing and that's just T-Mobile at, and T and Verizon are also gonna do it. Verizon's gonna shut down. It's 3g network at the end of this year, December 31st happy new year at, and T's 3g network is completely off. It's shut down in February. So it's gone completely. So anybody who's on at and T and had a 3g phone, you already know, cause your phone stopped working. If you're on Verizon, you have some, a few more months in every case, I believe the those phone companies to keep you because they make again, they're gonna give you a phone that costs them $10 to keep you paying your 50, 60, $70 a month. <Laugh> it's, it's worth it for them. So they will, they will give you a phone. It may not be the latest, greatest phone. It may not even be a smartphone, but if that's not, but if you don't care and you probably don't cuz you still have a phone that's it must be at least five or six years old. Right? If it's a 3g phone, don't worry. Steve. Just, just, you know, hold their feet to the fire. Say I want a free phone, old chef guy on the line. Hey Richard,

Caller 12 (02:35:55):
Captain, how are you? Good to see you. I'll Internet's line

Leo Laporte (02:35:58):
It's I'm trying to, I'm trying to bring it in to a safe landing, but it it's fighting me every step of the way what's up. Wow.

Caller 12 (02:36:07):
My question today is I have an old pair of the wireless Google earbuds. Oh yeah. It's a wire, but the wire on them. The dump.

Leo Laporte (02:36:17):
Yeah. Yeah. That was the first generation. It isn't a, I don't think it's a, it's a, I don't know, actually is it a wire? It looks like a string.

Caller 12 (02:36:24):
It's a string, but it keeps the one from falling out of your ears.

Leo Laporte (02:36:27):
Yeah. At least has that benefit. And I can't remember. They might have put a wire in it. So they've replaced that with ones without any connection. But in they've had trouble getting them to work because the, yeah, yeah. The way the, the earbuds pair is they fire electrical signals through your brain. <Laugh>

Caller 12 (02:36:49):
Now that the little UFO medicine I'll be fine.

Leo Laporte (02:36:52):
Other words? I, I have had so many problems with Google's buds that they're on their third generation now. I just, I stopped buying them. Do you want a pair of earbuds?

Caller 12 (02:37:03):
I want a buds. I wanna pair what I like about the Google buds is the little hoopy rubber thing that just tucked into my ear. Yeah. I would like to jam something in my ear.

Leo Laporte (02:37:11):
You don't want anything that goes over your ear and you don't want a wire behind you.

Caller 12 (02:37:16):
I'm okay. If hum big goes over my ear. Oh, old Jabber headset. My old blue.

Leo Laporte (02:37:20):
Yeah. Cuz those will stay in. Those will stay in a little bit better. Yeah.

Caller 12 (02:37:23):
Yes. I like it because when I'm around the house doing stuff, I can jam these in my ears, but I can still hear stuff. So people don't freak me out when they come up behind me and it's got a wire on it. So if I wanna pull out and listen, it just hangs and then I put it back.

Leo Laporte (02:37:37):
Yeah. That's my biggest problem with earbuds is I misplaced them constantly. Yeah. and, and the worst thing is to

Caller 12 (02:37:46):
Buds.

Leo Laporte (02:37:46):
Yeah. Misplacing one. Yeah. Really bad.

Caller 12 (02:37:51):
So yeah. You to smash that one with a book <laugh> because then you're, without it, there

Leo Laporte (02:37:55):
Are a lot, a lot, a lot of choices here. There's so many choices that I almost hesitate to even say one or the other. Okay. Don't pay more than a hundred bucks for one thing. I'm now I think Samsung's buds are very, very good. Okay. And, but I they're more expensive if you buy them, but you almost always get them free if you order a Samsung phone. So now the ones I my wife loves and you might like them, I'm not sure are the aftershocks. They were an advertiser for a long time. And so we got a variety of them, the aftershocks use bone conductance. So they don't go in your ear. They go right on your temple. So they're great. If you're washing dishes, people that talk to you while you're listening. Yeah. They're really designed for, I think runners and people like that. Cuz you don't wanna, you don't wanna be impervious. You don't wanna not hear anything when you're running down the road or bicycling. Yeah. So they want and yeah, so those are good. And they have one, the new ones called the open coms have a, a microphone arm that my, that Alex Lindsay says, they sound fantastic. So I can recommend those. Oh, that's exciting. Yeah. Okay. I also have

Caller 12 (02:39:10):
The old school titanium, this ropy thing. I know that you had one of these cuz you mentioned them all, that

Leo Laporte (02:39:15):
One. Yes.

Caller 12 (02:39:15):
Love them. And it has the bar around your head and it's great. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (02:39:19):
You know, one more that's that's a company called one more that Scott Wilkinson loves. So they're also very good. I have so many earbuds. In fact you should just come over and take some of them. I have cent Heiss I love my UE fits. They're a little pricey. They're almost 200 bucks, but they are molded to your ear. They sound great. I mean, it really kind of somewhat depends on your personal interests and style. Hey, we're running outta time, but I'm gonna talk to you off the air. Thank you. Old chef guy. I see him. I saw him in the grocery store. The other day was fun. Thank you all for being here. Can we, do you know, I feel like I have so much more to say, can we <laugh> can we do this again next week? Leo Laporte the tech guy have a great geek week. Yeah. The aftershocks are really a nice choice for people who wanna do stuff they're really the most comfortable for conferencing. But do you wanna listen to high quality music?

Caller 12 (02:40:20):
No. No. When I wanna do that, I put on cans.

Leo Laporte (02:40:23):
Yes. Okay, good. I'm with you. <Laugh> no Bluetooth will ever sound as good as a wired headphones.

Caller 12 (02:40:28):
No, I'm the guy that hauled around clips. Las speakers for 20 years.

Leo Laporte (02:40:33):
<Laugh> yeah, there you go. All right. So you're an audio file. So good. So these aftershocks are great. They're not great for music for spoken word. They're wonderful. They're very comfortable. If you do a lot of phone calls, I'd get the one with the boom, but you don't need those. And, and so you can wear them all day. Is it, is it for phone calls or for spoken word? What is it you're gonna use? 'em

Caller 12 (02:40:54):
No, it's mostly for listening. Yeah. No, when I would I'm even now I'm talking to you with a boom. I'm talking to you from a mock landline with a little boom. Yeah. I'm a guy like you that likes speaking into a microphone. Perfect.

Leo Laporte (02:41:05):
Look at the open com they're a little pricey there. 160 bucks for 80 bucks. You can just get the

Caller 12 (02:41:10):
Thumbs

Leo Laporte (02:41:10):
Up. Pardon me? Alex says Alex Lindsay, Alex says the noise cancellation is excellent on it. Okay, cool. So that sounds like a pretty good thing. Just remember it's not a high fidelity with the bone conduction it's and it might take a little getting used to Lisa listens to 'em all the time. And I like it because I can, I can talk to her while she's listening to her books. Right. So it's really good for that reason. Yeah.

Caller 12 (02:41:34):
Okay. Excellent. okay. Thank you. Thank you,

Leo Laporte (02:41:37):
Richard.

Caller 12 (02:41:37):
I, I have a pet. I have a pet question for you. There's a, I just saw a review by, oh man. I'm at that age where the names are just so slippery. The woman who does the channel nine food shows. Yeah,

Leo Laporte (02:41:48):
Yeah, yeah. She's local.

Caller 12 (02:41:49):
She did a, she did a show, a review with sushi bar in Petaluma, Kiki Kinka Kinka sushi.

Leo Laporte (02:41:57):
Oh, I don't know that one. The, the two that I well I know a few HANA used to be the best up in RO park. Right? he just died. So I don't, but that was the, I know that was the best sushi in the area.

Caller 12 (02:42:14):
Yeah.

Leo Laporte (02:42:14):
Dependent. I don't think there's anything as good as Hannah. Here we go to a couple of different ones. I haven't tried the sake 1 0 1, which is right there on the Boulevard. Some people love that. Gosh, I don't know what my favorite, I don't think there's a great sushi bar in town. To be honest, we go to the one that's nearby. That's across the street from this studio over in that shopping mall over there. I can't remember their name, but and they're pretty good. Let me look, Petaluma sushi. She called it Kinka maybe it's new sushi. No, no, no. It's called something with a G. Oh <laugh>

Caller 12 (02:42:50):
I was gonna be

Leo Laporte (02:42:51):
Pet Petaluma. Sushi. No,

Caller 12 (02:42:54):
I just go there for the app.

Leo Laporte (02:42:55):
It's oh, golly. Not Kabuki. I don't like them very much. Gohan G O H a N oh, okay. They're pretty good. I kinda like them. Okay. Okay. She's oh, Kinka sushi. That must be new.

Caller 12 (02:43:10):
It's newish.

Leo Laporte (02:43:12):
Yeah,

Caller 12 (02:43:13):
But it looked really good. And the, and the food that he was producing looked really

Leo Laporte (02:43:16):
Good. It's on McDowell Boulevard. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. What a weird location, you know, you never know though. I mean, it could be this sushi master, you know, the best sushi in the world's in the subway. In the Shia subway. Yeah. So you never know. All right, I'm gonna go try Kinka

Caller 12 (02:43:32):
Okay. Yeah. It, I mean, they showed him pulling out a booth in and you know, laying it out.

Leo Laporte (02:43:36):
Oh, he knows what he's doing. A player. That's who you want. You want? Is he Japanese?

Caller 12 (02:43:41):
Yes. Okay. Is there any other kind of <laugh> yes. Come on. Sorry. Are we off air? Can I say that?

Leo Laporte (02:43:47):
Yeah, no Kabuki. Yes. The Kabuki has some very good chefs, but they're not Japanese. So it's on Lakeville between Fraus. I'm have to go over there. Lisa is not a sushi fan. I might have to meet you there, Richard, because I happy to meet you there. I am happy to eat my cause. I love sushi. Whenever I visit my daughter, I always go to sushi with her, cuz she's always saying we gotta have sushi. I said, all right. I love sushi. But at Lisa I'm not a huge sushi fan

Caller 12 (02:44:17):
That's and you're still married to

Leo Laporte (02:44:18):
Her. I know it's a, it's a constant constant point of,

Caller 12 (02:44:22):
I really hope

Leo Laporte (02:44:25):
We're on the podcast. We're not off air.

Caller 12 (02:44:28):
All right.

Leo Laporte (02:44:29):
<Laugh> Richard. It's a pleasure. I will see you soon. I hope at trader Joe's. All right. Take care.

Caller 12 (02:44:35):
Okay. Byebye.

Leo Laporte (02:44:35):
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 podcasts for this show. We talk about windows and windows weekly, Macintosh, a Mac break, weekly iPads, iPhones, apple watches on iOS, today's security and security. Now, I mean, I can go on and on and on. And of course the big show every Sunday afternoon, this weekend tech you'll find it all TV and I'll be back next week with another great Tech Guy show. Thanks for joining me. We'll see you next time.