The Tech Guy Episode 1906 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 26th, 2022. This is episode 1,906. The tech eye podcast is brought to you by Wealthfront. To start building your wealth and get your first $5,000 managed for free for life. Go to wealthfront.com/techguy. And buy CacheFly. Deliver your video on the network with the best throughput and global reach making your content infinitely. Scalable. Go live in hours. Not days. Learn more at cachefly.com. Why? Hey, Hey, how are you today? Leo Laporte here. The tech guy. Yes. It's time to talk computers, the internet, home theater, digital photography, smartphone smart watches, augmented reality, all that jazz. Eighty eight eighty eight. Ask Leo as the phone number (888) 827-5536 as toll free from anywhere in the us or Canada toll free everywhere in the world.

Leo Laporte (00:01:14):
If you Skype out to call that number, it shouldn't cost you anything. 88 88. Ask Leo when we talk about something on the show and I will say periodically, oh, put the link to that on the website. What I mean is tech guy labs.com. That's the website. We put links there, so you don't have to write anything down. We also put a transcript of the show after the fact and audio and video too. So you could find that part of the show you're interested in professor Laura's musical selections will also appear there on the Sunday episode episode, 1906. That's this episode, and again, tech guy labs.com absolutely free, no sign up. Don't you worry about that? You use March right in sit right down.

Leo Laporte (00:02:01):
Ah, let's see. Looks like Netflix is gonna add a lower cost ad supported tier ad supported. They're going, they're not sure who they're gonna have help 'em out. They think maybe NBC universal that's a Comcast company or perhaps Google could sell those ads. Comcast video ad unit FreeWheel would supply technology to serve the ads. Hmm. I think, you know, it's just probably the case. I mean, Netflix gets more and more expensive all the time. It's probably the case that having a lower cost ad supported tier is not a bad idea. Although, you know, and Hulu does this other other sites do it. There's a lot of free TV. In fact, that's what Amazon calls it. Free TV that's ad supported. Hey, this show is free and ad supported, but it's free and ad supported. I don't like the idea of paying for something and having ads in it.

Leo Laporte (00:03:05):
That seems to be is that greedy? I don't know. It seems like double dipping, but either is it, is it free then ads. I understand they're paying for it. That's how, that's how this show works or is it paid? And then there shouldn't be any ads. In fact, we do offer my podcast network ad free versions of all the podcasts. If you pay seven bucks a month, you don't have to listen to the ads. That seems fair, right? It'd be weird if I said seven bucks a month and I'm gonna put some ads in there. I don't, mm. That bugs me. I guess Netflix can't afford to do a free tier. That would be too much. <Laugh> that would be way too much. Hey, this is a scary idea. I wonder what Dr. Mom thinks about this, Amazon, you know, the echo, the Amazon echo they're they're talking speaker, the one you talk to

Leo Laporte (00:03:58):
At the conference this week, the re Mars conference, which Amazon holds every year, the company said it's, it's working on a feature that can synthesize short audio clips of a person's voice and then reprogram it as longer speech. They say, we only need a few, a few minutes of speech to be able to synthesize it. A few minutes of me talking. You could have me and your Amazon echo, but that's not what they think is gonna be the golden use of this, the sweet spot. How about the voice of grandma? The voice <laugh> of a deceased loved one is used to read grandson a bedtime story. <Laugh> I don't know what to say. That sounds a little to me. It sounds a little creepy. I mean, it might be, might be kind of a beautiful thing. Do you want to hear the voices of your deceased relatives emerging from your Amazon echo? Remember they're not gonna be, well, actually, I don't know which would be creepier if they were perfect. Like grandma, are you in there? That would be pretty creepy. Or if it's sort of grandma, grandma as a robot, neither one sounds that good.

Leo Laporte (00:05:19):
<Laugh> they're both that creepy. I feel like any <laugh> Jordan peel is gonna do a, to a horror show. This is grandma <laugh> grandma in your echo. There have been actually sci-fi shows about this very topic, the idea. I mean, imagine, I mean, the next step is to make a an Android, a a, a, a thing that looks like grandma with grandma's voice that was walking around the house.

Leo Laporte (00:05:57):
Ye <laugh> ye <laugh>. Oh, it's it's it's just so fascinating that Amazon, Amazon just says, well, you know, just offhand they'd even like, you know, this might be weird or what do you think? They just said, Hey, by the way, here's what, who's another thing we're gonna do. All we need is a few minutes of grandma's voice so we can make a make your Amazon echo sound like grandma. Oh, yikes. Y yikes. That is, that is weird. Average American home uses a record 6.8 over the top services like Netflix. Have you noticed that they're kind of multiplying like topsy, you got Netflix, you got peacock, you got paramount. Plus Hulu, Hulu used to be an umbrella for you know, several different companies than networks and so forth, but then they spun it out. I think mostly Hulu is owned by Disney now, which is weird.

Leo Laporte (00:07:00):
Cuz Disney has its own channel Disney plus there's YouTube, YouTube TV. There's Amazon prime video, HBO, max, apple TV plus peacock. And the average American, if there is such a thing, I don't know, is there such a thing as an average American? I don't think so, but the average American has 6.8, eight <laugh> of these streaming devices in the home. I think that number probably went up a lot when we were stuck at home for the last two years, watching TV to access. In fact, it's, I feel kind of bad for Netflix cuz Netflix of course like all the other streaming services grew has enormously since 2020, but then as the pandemic eases, so did its subscribers in a large number, well a somewhat large number of the people. New subscribers dropped off about a hundred thousand causing Netflix stock to tumble tumble, tumble, tumble.

Leo Laporte (00:08:01):
Netflix has been laying people off. They just laid off another 300 people this week. They're looking at ads, they're in deep DDO, but that's not. That's a, that's a manufactured problem. That's a problem manufactured by the demands. The short term needs of the stock market. The stock market says, if you're not growing every quarter constantly, we're not gonna buy your stock. And if you start to tumble a little bit, we're gonna definitely get rid of your stock and you're gonna, your stock's gonna go through the floor, which means you're not gonna be able to attract employees. Current employees are gonna leave. It's it's a, it's a, it's like a Jenga, you know, you're pulling out that and everything falls over and it's not that the company isn't profitable. It is, it is it's, it's very profitable. It's making a lot of money. I don't even know if there's clouds, storm clouds on the horizon. It's just that they had a lot of growth in the first two years. And then they, it, it retrenched a little bit. They're still ahead of where they were in 2020. I, I don't get it. It's the stock market. And that's a problem. I think because it means companies have to do things. Not because they're good for business or good for us as users or, or customers, but what the stock market wants 'em to do.

Leo Laporte (00:09:21):
Hmm. Netflix and Amazon prime video used by more than half of us, internet households. Netflix is so dominant. When you get a streaming TV device, it often has a Netflix button on the device. Like we know you want to use Netflix, okay. Here's a button just for Netflix, but usage levels flat versus the first quarter 2020. Well, nothing's gonna compare it to the pandemic. I think flat's pretty good. You're holding onto those people that you got in the, in the beginning of the pandemic, ESPN plus B E T plus crunchy roll AMC plus Fox nation stars and Showtime also doing well

Leo Laporte (00:10:08):
<Affirmative>

Leo Laporte (00:10:10):
6.6 services. But I think that if you look at that, that probably parallels pretty closely people who are getting rid of their cable company, right? Oh. And by the way, I don't need the cable company. I've got 6.6 services full of content, I guess. I don't know. Have you played Diablo's imortal on iOS or Andrew? There's a big, fewer over that going on in the tech world because it's one of those games it's free to play, but not free to win and people can spend a hundred thousand dollars. Yes. $100,000 on the game and beat everybody and be the, the top dog and then players who don't have that kind of money obviously to spend or who are just simply smart enough not to spend it or going, Hey, that's not fair. <Laugh>

Leo Laporte (00:11:16):
I guess it is not. I just play it cuz it's fun personally. I, and I'm not gonna spend a penny on it. Sorry. And you could play it without spending any money on it. It's completely free, but it's weird. I guess it is weird that there are it's possible to spend so much money on it that you cannot be beaten. You're like the king of the, the king of the Diablo. It's a game on on iOS in the iPad. All right. 88, 88. ASCL that's kind of some of the things on the tech agenda this week, we can talk about anything you want. 8, 8, 8, 8 2 7 5 5 3 6 tollfree from anywhere in the us or Canada will go to your calls in just a bit. Also Sam bull, Sam, our car guy coming up. Ow, Sam.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:12:01):
Hello, Leo.

Leo Laporte (00:12:02):
How are you today?

Sam Abuelsamid (00:12:04):
I am doing well.

Leo Laporte (00:12:06):
Good. It was good having you on TWiT on Sunday. Thank

Sam Abuelsamid (00:12:08):
You. Yeah, it was fun.

Leo Laporte (00:12:09):
Yeah. Really fun. Always it one always is.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:12:17):
I got to get did you, you see my new grand Charo rig here behind me?

Leo Laporte (00:12:23):
Oh yeah. You're gonna play grand Charo in that thing. Wow.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:12:27):
No, actually the

Leo Laporte (00:12:29):
Truck simulator. That's what that is, right?

Sam Abuelsamid (00:12:32):
Yeah. Go visit Ford's new dynamic driving or driving dynamics laboratory. How

Leo Laporte (00:12:36):
Cool is that?

Sam Abuelsamid (00:12:38):
It's a giant SIM that they can use to replicate the entire suspension system, different roads, all kinds of different things. And also do a, a driving assistance systems testing in here. So we got to drive, pretend we were driving a Ford Maverick, also Ford lightning on different road surfaces. Try some different stuff with the adaptive cruise control and it felt remarkably realistic.

Leo Laporte (00:13:13):
Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:13:16):
It's it's a little, little bit too much for grant Charo, those several million dollars that they spent on this. Well,

Leo Laporte (00:13:23):
But if you could spend a hundred thousand dollars to win Diablo mortal

Sam Abuelsamid (00:13:27):
<Laugh> yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:13:28):
It could spend a couple hundred million for the best simulator ever.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:13:33):
But you know, I mean this, this kind of stuff saves them tens of millions of dollars in development costs because they can try out a lot of different things with the different suspension settings and different different systems in the SIM before they have to build prototype parts and they can do it a lot faster.

Leo Laporte (00:13:54):
It's very cool.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:13:55):
Yeah. And I got to drive the Cadillac lyric this week as well, but I can't talk about that until Tuesday,

Leo Laporte (00:14:03):
So yeah. That's I saw your pictures on Insta. I saw you on the Insta. Very nice.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:14:09):
Yeah. So that'll be on wheel bearings on Tuesday when the embargo lifts and then we'll talk about it here next Sunday.

Leo Laporte (00:14:17):
Cool, cool, cool, cool.

Leo Laporte (00:14:20):
<Affirmative>

Leo Laporte (00:14:23):
Yeah, I guess a Tesla's a driving simulator in a way. <Laugh> very realistic. <Laugh>

Sam Abuelsamid (00:14:32):
Kind of, yeah, it was fun. When, when I first got into the simulator one of the things that they didn't mention was that the for the, the model for the Ford Maverick, their small pickup truck, they didn't have the abs enabled in there. And so I just wanted to see what the simulator would do under hard break. So I slammed on the brakes and all of a sudden it starts sliding around because there's no abs

Leo Laporte (00:14:57):
Hey, Y YY,

Sam Abuelsamid (00:14:58):
It felt, felt just like a real car with no abs.

Leo Laporte (00:15:00):
Yikes. All right. Well talking a few it's Kim Schaffer, but it's pronounced SK. Charday

Kim Schaffer (00:15:10):
Kim

Leo Laporte (00:15:11):
Charade. Kim. Charday the unbreakable phone angel. Hello cam.

Kim Schaffer (00:15:15):
I've been waiting for that one for a while. <Laugh>

Leo Laporte (00:15:17):
It's a smooth up Veta. Whenever I ask my Siri to play smooth jazz, it plays that song, but you know what? It's interesting. So that is by an artist whose name is spelled S a D E

Kim Schaffer (00:15:32):
And it's Charday

Leo Laporte (00:15:33):
She pronounce it Charday yeah. As all of us who worked in radio in the in the nineties, no. Or eighties maybe. No, mm-hmm <affirmative> but Siri pronounce it, right? Siri says chary. Oh, really?

Kim Schaffer (00:15:44):
Yeah. <laugh> because cuz my Siri pronounces, everything

Leo Laporte (00:15:48):
Else, everything wrong. Somebody went in there and tweaked Siri. Who should I start the call? 

Kim Schaffer (00:15:54):
Let's go to Trevor inborn, Texas.

Leo Laporte (00:15:57):
All right. Hello Trevor. Thank you. Kim. Leo Laport, D tech guy. Welcome

Caller 1 (00:16:03):
Leo two things. First of all, I called you back in December. I was looking for a 17 inch quiet laptop. You recommended the LG Graham. You were right on the mark. Thank you. It's been

Leo Laporte (00:16:12):
Quiet,

Caller 1 (00:16:13):
But since I purchased it

Leo Laporte (00:16:14):
Quiet and thin.

Caller 1 (00:16:16):
Yes sir. The so the reason I'm calling today is I'm a third grade teacher south of Fort worth. My principal is looking into live video announcements and so

Leo Laporte (00:16:29):
Wow. We've come a long way from the speaker in every classroom and the principal getting on. No, we're on tell.

Caller 1 (00:16:39):
Yeah. Yeah. So currently that's exactly what it's over the Intercom. Yeah. And all that. Yeah. So I was doing some research,

Leo Laporte (00:16:46):
So she wants to have a screen in every room or how, how does she wanna do it?

Caller 1 (00:16:50):
Well, we all, so my school was built in 2007. They all came with projectors installed in the sign.

Leo Laporte (00:16:55):
Yes. Very nice.

Caller 1 (00:16:57):
And so yeah, we can you know, what I was looking at was using a open broadcast software with YouTube to stream an announcement. So I was looking at different video equipment. I'm familiar with like the Sony cameras around $900, but I was looking for something cheaper, like maybe the zoom Q eight and 4k,

Leo Laporte (00:17:17):
And then you, what? You'll hook it up to a computer and then have the computer stream it.

Caller 1 (00:17:21):
Yeah. And then yeah, so we have zero equipment. So I need to get the cameras. Tripod green stream.

Leo Laporte (00:17:26):
You said cameras. You, does she want <laugh> I'm saying she is it is she is the principal of her or him?

Caller 1 (00:17:32):
Yeah. It's land

Leo Laporte (00:17:34):
Ms. Lands. Hi, Ms. Lands. Do they want a two camera shoot? Do they? They want like, do you think more they'll have more than one camera or just one camera?

Caller 1 (00:17:44):
Well, well the thing minimum of two, one would be for, for her and then another camera would be for the students,

Leo Laporte (00:17:52):
The student so she can see the students or

Caller 1 (00:17:55):
No. So the she, so the students could be like doing the pleasurable allegiance in one part of the room. Ah,

Leo Laporte (00:18:00):
I

Caller 1 (00:18:00):
Get it. Do some of the announcements and the other part

Leo Laporte (00:18:03):
Of the room. As soon as you have more than one camera, it gets more complicated because obviously you have to have a switcher <laugh> right. There is a switcher. I mean, yeah, I don't, I know your budget's tight. I'll mention this. There's a switcher from black magic design, black magic design.com called the a 10 mini pro, which streams direct. It's a switcher that streams direct. You could hook up up to four cameras. They could be any camera that supports H D M I. So yeah, you can get cheap. Honestly, I would get cheap consumer cam quarters, you know, nobody's buying cam quarters anymore. So they're cheap couple hundred bucks. Then you could have up to four of them. Somebody would have to sit there and switch it. It also has audio and it will stream. So you don't need a computer. Then the whole thing does itself. Unfortunately, this you know, it's about 500 bucks for the mini pro. And then maybe 200 bucks for each camera. So you're still under a thousand total plus tax.

Caller 1 (00:19:05):
Yeah. I was concerned about audio quality. So that's what I was looking at

Leo Laporte (00:19:09):
At ATM solves this because you can have LA layer mics, which you kind of, you're gonna want a Laier for the, for the principle and you're gonna want a a wider angle. Mike that's just aimed at the students so they can pick up the students. They're gonna be separately miked, but that's the beauty of the a 10 mini. It has a, has a mixer built into it. So I'm thinking that's what you should probably look at the zooms. You're gonna have different audio from each zoom, plus how do you switch cameras? So it's a little tricky.

Caller 1 (00:19:41):
Are you familiar with the open broadcast software?

Leo Laporte (00:19:45):
Yeah, I mean, there, you could do a lot of this in software, but you'd have to be able to take multiple USB inputs and then you'd have to mix it and that's actually harder. Believe it or not. As long as the software can handle multiple audio and video streams and then mix 'em down, you could do that.

Caller 1 (00:20:03):
This black magic you're recommending, how does it connect? You know, I'm not familiar with that at all. How does it connect to YouTube stream or the internet

Leo Laporte (00:20:10):
Just with an ethernet Jack or wifi? I think it can do wifi as well. So it's kind of a cool idea because it becomes that computer and it's designed to be a switcher, you know, you can do like like they do in <laugh>, you know, you see in the control room on the football games is, and actually it would be a great choice if you did school sports and it has some real growth potential. And the nice thing about having H D M I in is you can use any variety of of camera sources and you can use their audio, individual audio too, come to think of it. So I think that's probably the way I would I would at least look at that you could do it in software, but it's always better to do it in hardware. That was the advice I was given when I first started streaming our video hardware do hardware. Don't do software black magic design.com. It's called the a E M mini pro Leo Laport, the tech guy.

Leo Laporte (00:21:15):
Yeah. And you could control it with an iPad or another computer as well, which is kind of nice. Probably you would have to do that to set up the stream. This, these will stream to gosh, you know, YouTube Facebook, pretty much anything there's software that can run an iPad or a computer that can control it, but you also have physical hardware buttons on there. You can have, it's got a lot of advanced features too, like the ability to do transitions Chrome keys. You have green screens. If, if it's, it's the first step in building a mini production studio, which is kind of cool. So anyway, 500 bucks, it's not cheap, but on the other hand, given what it does, it's incredibly cheap. <Laugh>, it's surprisingly cheap.

Caller 1 (00:22:09):
Yes, sir. The technology's come a long way.

Leo Laporte (00:22:11):
Sure has the eighties and all that. If we, if they'd had this when I was just starting out we might have gone this way instead of with the TriCasters but you know, this is TriCaster gives us more capabilities, but are a lot more expensive. I think you want the ATEM mini pro five. It records as well, which is nice. So you can stream it, but you can also record it. If you get a really good pledge of ance you can you can play it back next time. <Laugh> that kind of thing.

Caller 1 (00:22:43):
Well, thank you for the advice, sir.

Leo Laporte (00:22:44):
Hey, my pleasure. Thank you. Have a great day. Take care. The tech guy podcast brought to you today. Bye. Well front. Oh man. Oh man. I'm talking to my son Henry he's 27, starting out in life starting to invest, starting to invest. And my daughter too, a little older, she I remember she asked me, should I buy doge coin for my investments? I said, you know, honey, <laugh>, Henry's all over the other meme stocks. I said, you know, guys, man, when I was young, I wish somebody had told me this. Yes, it's fun to play with these fun investments like cryptocurrency or or meme stocks. And that's fine, but it's not the way to build your wealth. Okay. Building your wealth, preparing for your future, that first house, your kids' college education, your retirement, all of that. That's a different beast entirely.

Leo Laporte (00:23:50):
So stock trading a lot of fun, but best enjoyed, I guess I should say in moderation like casino, gambling or eating questionable street food <laugh> if you're playing the market fine, but understand that's play money for the real wealth building wealth front wealth front, by the way, I'm happy to say both kids took my advice. They listen because you know, I want them to take care of themselves down the road, cuz I'm not gonna be here to do it. Wealthfront has a lot of data to show that time in the market. And if you're young, you've got 30, 40 years before your retirement, you know, you got, you've got time, time in the market. Almost always beats timing the market. And that's the hard thing about buying a meme stock. When do you buy, when do you sell when's high? Wind's low. Is it gonna go up again?

Leo Laporte (00:24:36):
Is it gonna go down again? And cryptocurrency it's even crazier right? Easier. Right? With wealth front, they've got globally diversified portfolios. They're automatically optimized to hit the goals you set and the risk tolerance you have. So you just say, look, I'm saving up for my kids' college education. That's probably 30 years off cuz I'm not married yet. That kind of thing, you plan it. And they do all sorts of interesting things. They give you automatic tax breaks can booster returns. It's called tax loss harvesting. And they actually welfare actually invented the software that does that. They were the first, you can also personalize your portfolio. They understand you might want some customization hand picked funds picked by wealth fronts, financial experts, and yes that they have cryptocurrency funds and cannabis funds and clean energy and social responsibility. That's a good way to customize it again with a diversified portfolio in those realms, much less risky.

Leo Laporte (00:25:37):
You know, there's always risk, but the idea is we're in it for the long haul here, right? Wealth. Front's trusted now with one 27 billion in assets they've grown and, and for good reason, nearly half a million people build their wealth with Wealthfront. I think that that makes that warms my heart Investipedia named Wealthfront the best robo advisor in 2022 already. We're only halfway through the year. Start building your wealth. Get your first $5,000 managed for free for life. Go to wealthfront.com/techguy, w E a L T H F R O N t.com/tech guy start building your wealth. I like that phrase. That's where you should be thinking not, you know, I'm gonna make a lot of money. You're building your wealth, right? Wealthfront.Com/Techguy get started today. Thank you Wealthfront for sport. And the tech guy show you support it. By the way, when you use that address, I know you could just go to wealthfront.com but use wealthfront.com/techguy. So you know, you saw it here. Thank you. Wellfront. Thank you. Now back to the show, it's time to talk automotive technology with our car guy. Samble Sam principal researcher at guide house insights. He also does the wheel bearings podcast@wheelbearings.media. Hello Sam.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:26:59):
Hello Leo. How are you this week?

Leo Laporte (00:27:01):
I am great. How are you?

Sam Abuelsamid (00:27:03):
I am doing fantastic. The weather's been great here in Michigan. Nice storm shining.

Leo Laporte (00:27:08):
Beautiful. I Salanti

Sam Abuelsamid (00:27:10):
Yep.

Leo Laporte (00:27:11):
It's a beautiful day.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:27:13):
My Miata. <Laugh> doing a little paddle boarding

Leo Laporte (00:27:15):
With the top down.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:27:17):
Of course, of course. That's the only way I drive it. Yes. At the time, if I can't put the top down, I just stays that. Take it outta the garage. Exactly. That's exactly right

Leo Laporte (00:27:24):
Now. You're not sitting in front of a Miata right now on the screen behind you. And I could see Sam cuz he's on on zoom. It looks like a truck, a Ford truck looks like a big rig actually. Well

Sam Abuelsamid (00:27:36):
It it's it's actually part of the, the front, the front portion of the body of a Ford Explorer, ah, in this particular case. Okay. but I, I went over to Dearborn a few days ago where Ford has their product development center and we got to see a new lab that just opened up a few months ago. It's called their Ford driving dynamics lab. And what we have in here is basically a, you know, a multimillion dollar grant Charo rig, if you will. <Laugh>. but it's actually far more sophisticated than that. This is a nine degree of freedom simulator. And you know, and when, when, when we visited on Thursday, I think it was they it had a buck on there which was the front portion of an Explorer, but they can swap that out in a couple of hours and put in different ones for different vehicles. So that the experience you get in there is representative of the vehicle they're working on. And this is not actually so this is a full motion simulator if you've ever seen like aircraft simulators where they have the front portion of an aircraft and it moves around, it's on a, a bunch of hydraulic jacks and it moves up and down side to side and around and tips forward and tips back. That's basically what we've got here.

Leo Laporte (00:28:53):
Wow. This is like the ultimate gaming rig.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:28:56):
Oh, absolutely. And there's a 200

Leo Laporte (00:29:00):
For on it. That'd be kind of fun.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:29:01):
<Laugh> in theory you could. 

Leo Laporte (00:29:04):
But I don't think they'll allow you no. Yeah,

Sam Abuelsamid (00:29:06):
They, they, they don't

Leo Laporte (00:29:07):
But what did they do at night after hours? I,

Sam Abuelsamid (00:29:09):
No, you never know. It is running, it is running windows, is it? Wow. Yeah. There's the windows, windows rigged, that's running this thing. But you've got a 270 degree field of view all around you. Wow. they've got LCD displays in place of the mirrors. So you have the simulated view of your rearview mirrors when you're driving. And it, it feels remarkably realistic and they also have sound in there to simulate the sound. And it is funny when, when we get to try this thing out when I was still working as an engineer back in the late nineties, that, that the company I worked for at the time Kelsey Hayes we built a driver in the loop simulator system using a Silicon graphics Iris machine, which you're familiar with, you know, this was a multi hundred thousand dollars machine that now probably has less power than our typical smartphones.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:30:04):
It's ironic. Yeah. And the, the thing is with that one you know, it wasn't a full motion. Similar. We had this giant screen, a projector and giant screen in front of us and we had a, a buck that we could put the different antilock, brake, traction control, and stability control hardware into, and it's got pedals and a steering wheel and everything, and you get in and drive it to, to test out the software we were working on. But the thing is you, it was hard to do it for any length of time because you didn't have the feedback you had this giant, very immersive screen. It would make you nauseous. It did, did it made you very nouse because you're not moving, even though the screen you're you see the motion in front of you of what the vehicle's doing. Right.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:30:46):
But you're not actually moving still. And it, it, it was, it very, it often induced motion sickness. So does this not, does this work better? It does not because the, the motions cause your inner ear agrees with what you're seeing. Exactly. Yeah. It's very well synced to what you're seeing. Wow. And what it's used for. They they've actually had a similar one at the Ford performance development center in North Carolina since 2014. And they also have an older one that they also have in Dearborne that they call vertex, which was originally developed more for doing human factors testing. So it's not as high fidelity as this one. It's, it's a motion simulator, but it doesn't, it, it can't replicate road surfaces and things like that. This has enough power and enough speed that it can very accurately represen or simulate driving over different kinds of road surfaces, doing different kinds of maneuvers.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:31:42):
You feel the the lateral forces when it, you know, when you're turning and it moves from side to side and you feel what you would feel in the vehicle. And the great thing about this is that when they're, when they're doing development particularly on suspension systems, they often go through many iterations of trying out different spring rates, different dampers, different tires, changing the suspension, geometry. And that takes a lot of time and costs a lot of money to build all the prototype parts. And then it, you know, can take many hours or, or days in some cases to take prototype vehicles and swap out the parts and then, you know, go to the track. So you might go to the tr go to a, a test track for a day or two and take maybe three or four different iterations of hardware. And they'd go out and drive and gather data for an hour or two, and then come back into the garage and spend the rest of the day changing out parts and then go back out and drive some more. And

Leo Laporte (00:32:41):
That's a costly

Sam Abuelsamid (00:32:42):
Process. It's very costly and very slow. Yeah. Whereas with this, you can make those changes instantaneously. You can go through all these different variations,

Leo Laporte (00:32:50):
Tweak the variables,

Sam Abuelsamid (00:32:53):
And they've got, they've got road surfaces that they've got out and laser scanned. So they know, you know, the exact contours of the road so they can replicate all of this stuff. And it really does feel like like driving a real vehicle. And it was, I was, I was really impressed with it. They used bef this one, this particular lab just opened up in December of last year, the existing lab in North Carolina, their, their, for their, which was originally developed primarily for developing their racing programs. That one was also used for several production programs, including the Maki, the Mustang Maki and the lightning and the Ford Maverick. So they did a lot of that work on, on the, at, at that facility before they built prototype vehicles. And it really speeds up the development process.

Leo Laporte (00:33:41):
I, I would think so. Yeah. You know, it's in a way you're riding on a robot, that's doing the moves mm-hmm <affirmative> while the moves on the screen duplicating the moves on the screen, there is a place. If people are interested, you can do this yourself, which is, believe it or not, the Harry Potter ride a universal studios. I dunno if you've ever gone on that, but there, the reason that ride works, it's a, it's a virtual reality sort of ride, but you are being held in your seats by a giant robotic arm, a, a two, I'm sorry, 5,000, 258 pound Coca KR, 500 robotic arm, which moves your seats around to match the screens. And then you move through the castle. So you feel like you're flying. It's actually, I've been on it. In fact, when I discovered it, I went out like five times in a row, cuz I was fascinated by it. And it's very simulator.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:34:36):
There's been a number of rollercoaster simulators like this over the years. Yeah. In a lot of places and

Leo Laporte (00:34:42):
This, this thing is used in industry. In fact, I think Tesla uses them to to on its assembly line to build cars. But 

Sam Abuelsamid (00:34:49):
It also, yeah, every, every manufacturer uses these types of industrial robots. Yeah. Yeah. And, but, but those, you know, these, these robots here that you're, that you're talking about, these move relatively slowly compared to the kinds of motions you're getting,

Leo Laporte (00:35:03):
Were you Jo in around like, yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:35:05):
Oh wow. You know, we're driving over, over rough roads and, and rumble strips and, and it feels like exactly what those types of road surfaces feel like. Wow. and what was really funny was what, what they didn't tell me when I first got in the first model they loaded up was for the Maverick. But that the model was, did not have the antilock brakes enabled, didn't have the abs enabled and I wanted to see how it would respond under hard break. So I slammed on the brakes. Oh dear. All of a sudden, the back end starts to swing around to wow counter steering. And it felt just like driving a real car without abs and, and hitting the brakes too hard. This would be great for training, race, car drivers and well, and that's one of the things that they do with it at their, and, and most, most of the manufacturers have these kinds of facilities to do this. Very cool. Sam bull, Sam, our car guy will barings.media. Thank you, Sam. Live pleasure. Leo looks like a great ride.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:36:09):
That's hysterical. Yeah. I, this Harry Potter ride. I don't know. You say the, you say the robot doesn't move very fast, but honestly, I mean, it it's fast, fast, fast enough until you fast enough to run. Yeah. But not, not fast enough bumps to replicate the kinds of motions you get from yeah. Bumps, frost, heaves, and potholes. I mean, you can simulate all, all those sorts of things with this. I went on it and loved it so much. I kept going on it. Lisa said, I'll never go on it again. It may made her nauseated, but you see there's four people in a seat held by each robot, the robot's on a, on a track and it's moving around. It's really kind of sophisticated. It's kind of amazing what they're doing in these amusement park rides and yeah. The the Simpsons ride, which is their first simulated rollercoaster rides much more like this, where you're in a box that's on actuators like that, not a robot arm and going to, and that's Joe, you know, that really it's terrible.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:37:07):
I really don't like it. Yeah. To, to have this kind of fidelity to, to replicate the way the vehicle. Did it feel like you were really Dr. I mean, I guess it did, if it spun out in the rear wheels. Oh yeah. No, it, it did feel very realistic. Wow. That's cool. And as I said, you know, they used it to do suspension development for Maee for the Maverick and for the lightning. And now, you know, they're working on new programs with this one in Dearborn. Nice. Yeah. Do you wanna stick around to this week or not? Sure. All right. I shall give you, I don't have anywhere else to be, so that's not a reason to it I'll give you control. No, I mean, it's, it's, I mean, I enjoy doing it. I mean, the only reason I didn't last week is I, I know you were gonna be on TWiT, which is very important.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:37:50):
That's right. I'll give you a little clock there and you'll Alrighty. So let's see, web 1, 1, 4 asks about the mole Maki ever be back in production. Actually. It's never gone out of production it, oh, I thought they stopped because of the recall they stopped, stopped selling. No, they, they, they, they, they temporarily stopped delivering new vehicles to customers. So they're sitting on those are, those were sitting on dealer lots for a bit. But the they're doing an over the air software update, so they're still building them. Ah they're just stockpiling 'em for a couple of weeks until they get, until they push out the software update. Yeah. Cuz demand's been good, right? Yeah. No, they, they can't build 'em fast enough. Yeah. There's, there's lots of demand. And there, there is also the question of profitability, which yeah,

Leo Laporte (00:38:35):
I saw they didn't have underwater on them.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:38:38):
Yeah. I mean, when, when they launched production last year, they were making money on it. You know, unfortunately the cost of commodities like particularly the the battery raw materials, nickel, manganese, cobalt,

Leo Laporte (00:38:49):
Can't they just raise the price on the thing.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:38:53):
You, you can up to a point you know, but there's, you know, and in fact, some manufacturers have done this Tesla raised their prices yet again, right last week by about two to $3,000 on various models. And GM announced a $6,000 price increase on the Hummer EV so, you know, some manufacturers are raising prices and there has been a bit of a price increase on the, the lightning on some models of the lightning to offset these commodity price increases.

Leo Laporte (00:39:23):
Jerry, the lightning arrived at the dealer.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:39:26):
Oh yeah. Yeah. Jerry Wagley. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:39:28):
Excellent. Yeah. He's excited.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:39:30):
I'll bet.

Leo Laporte (00:39:31):
Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:39:33):
Can't he must have ordered his like right day one.

Leo Laporte (00:39:36):
It wasn't that long ago. I, I feel like a few months ago. 

Sam Abuelsamid (00:39:40):
Well maybe he, he must have gotten his reservation in very

Leo Laporte (00:39:43):
Early. Oh, he, yeah. You know what? That's what it was. Yeah. He had a reservation and he did the build. Yeah. Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:39:50):
Nice. Yeah. Just like, just like you did so nice. Cool. Yeah, no, it's I think he's gonna really like it.

Leo Laporte (00:39:59):
Stick around for the top. Yep. Okie doki. Lord money. Vema temperature raising. So professor Laura is all excited, cuz she's gonna go see the new Elvis movie professor. Laura, do you even know who Elvis is? Duh, duh. She says that's interesting cuz I mean, honestly you were born long after Elvis was even on this earth. He was in Lilo and stitch. Come on. He was in Lilo and stitch. Oh, that explains it. <Laugh> yeah. Which song was in Lilo and stitch. All of 'em all of them. I didn't know that this one. Okay. A hunk, a hunk, a burn and stitch. So yeah, the that's an interesting question. Laura said during the break, are you gonna go to see this movie but love to, but I'm not sure. I wanna sit in a movie theater. People are people back in the theater.

Leo Laporte (00:40:54):
Are they going to, when you go to the movies, Laura, do you see a lot of people in the theaters? Yes you do. John, our studio manager rented an entire theater so we could see Dr. Strange without strangers <laugh> that was fun. But I had that's the first movie I'd seen in a couple of years, honestly. I think a lot of us over the intervening, two years of the pandemic have built, you know, decent home theaters, nice TVs have gotten better and better and better sound is better and better. You can really duplicate the movie experience at home. I think in most cases I'm just gonna wait. I'm gonna wait until it's a a ride at the universal Stu tours, studio tours. Then, then I'll do it as a ride. How about that? The Elvis, the ride, Michael on the line from Cincinnati, Ohio. Hello? Michael Leo Laporte the tech guy.

Caller 2 (00:41:46):
Hey Leo. So I think it was yesterday. I listened to your podcast a lot. Don't always get to listen to the live show. Thank you. You were talking about YouTube TV and I kind of panicked. When you said you had to reset your account. I've done a user of YouTube since it first came out. I have a son in Washington, DC. That's on a internship for 12 weeks. I said, be careful. I just heard on from the tech guy that, you know, if you're logging in from DC, they might see that as that we've moved or whatever. And I could lose have to set up a new account and lose all the recordings that you, you talked about. I did some digging and it looks like Google, maybe put in a fix with two factor authentication. At least that's what I could see online. But

Leo Laporte (00:42:38):
Yeah, they have rules about how it works. They say you have to check in at your home area at least every three months. So he's just on the, he can watch it. That's not their issue. It's just that if you keep watching YouTube TV in a new locale after three months, they're gonna say, oh, you moved

Caller 2 (00:43:03):
Okay. Three months. So

Leo Laporte (00:43:05):
Yeah, I think you have a little leeway on that. So I think he'll be all right. I think so that's exactly three months. He's gonna be gone.

Caller 2 (00:43:14):
Yeah, it is. It's 12 weeks. So it's basically three months. I wasn't sure. I mean, so certainly when he logs in, I'm getting notifications, I

Leo Laporte (00:43:22):
Think you might even be okay because you're gonna continue to watch it in your home.

Caller 2 (00:43:27):
Right.

Leo Laporte (00:43:27):
So he, you know, YouTube TV is, is very generous. They say, you can watch it on three devices at the same time. You can have family members watch it, blah, blah, blah. I wonder, and

Caller 2 (00:43:39):
That, that was the other thing I saw that you could, I saw on there. They said, yeah, you can set up a, a family member out of state as a group or something. I hadn't dug into that. That's I wasn't sure I needed

Leo Laporte (00:43:52):
To. So they, I believe have changed their tune. You have to have be in the same area code.

Caller 2 (00:43:58):
Okay. Okay.

Leo Laporte (00:44:00):
So yes, you can have somebody who doesn't live with you. This has always been, you know, a loophole for other services like Netflix, where Netflix says you're buying a family plan. You can share with your household. Well, what's my household mean? Does that mean my daughter who lives in, you know, another county? She's kind of part of my household. I don't know. So, and of course Netflix is starting to crack down on that. And YouTube is even well more sophist, sophisticated,

Caller 2 (00:44:30):
They family. And so they said, so I thought, well, he is my son, so

Leo Laporte (00:44:35):
Yeah, exactly. But now they're saying all members must live in the same area code.

Caller 2 (00:44:41):
Okay.

Leo Laporte (00:44:44):
That's tr tricky too, because a lot of cities now bay area has like three area codes. Right. and frankly, my phone might have a different thanks to cell phones, different area code from my wife. So we live in the same house, but I have a 3 0 2 number because I have a vanity number. Right. So that may be by the way, why YouTube TV decided I don't live here because I have an area code that's in Baltimore. I, we think it was just badly then geolocation, but we don't know why

Caller 2 (00:45:14):
It would be maybe VPN or maybe,

Leo Laporte (00:45:16):
Yeah, well, I wasn't using a VPN, but but it may be that the you know, we have, and I it's complicated. I don't even know how it works, cuz we have a very smart it guy, but we obviously have a lot of layers of security here. Right, right. And it may well be that the IP address YouTube TV was getting at work was in Wilkes bar, Pennsylvania. I don't know why that would be <laugh> but maybe geolocation is an imperfect science. And they decided my IP address belonged in Pennsylvania. And after three months I might add with some warnings, which I ignored because I, I, you know, I was at work and I didn't couldn't really, I didn't have the time to read the screen with some warnings. Eventually they said, oh no, you you've just moved you're in Pennsylvania now.

Leo Laporte (00:46:00):
Enjoy your local Pennsylvania TV stations. So yeah, but they understood when I called they were, they gave me no trouble. It just said we don't have a way to reset your local okay. Address. So you have to, and I didn't lose any recordings. So here's the worst case scenario. Your son watches it. You watch it at some point they will warn you, I think before they do anything. And at that point you could tell your son, okay, <laugh> no more TV. Watch the issue is the locals. I should point out by the way because they have a deal with the local TV stations in your area, in my area. And if you are watching in another area, now you're watching local TV in other area and that breaks their covenants with these channels.

Caller 2 (00:46:44):
Right. And yeah, we certainly want the locals here in Cincinnati. So. All right. So you think I'm just, I just gotta keep an eye on,

Leo Laporte (00:46:51):
Just keep an eye and tell your son, if you get a warning, stop, if it says, Hey, congratulations on moving. We're gonna reset. If you, you get three or four chances to change your local,

Caller 2 (00:47:05):
I already warned him. Cause when it comes, when I listen to the pod year or so yesterday. Yeah. Like panic, like

Leo Laporte (00:47:11):
Stop. Yeah. So you, you did the smart thing, which you went and you read all of the, you know, their advices, but the system isn't perfect. I guess that's what I experienced is something screwed up. Cause at no point, did we ever watch TV in Pennsylvania? <Laugh> right. It was always within two, two mile radius of my home.

Caller 2 (00:47:28):
<Laugh> but they will, they will see that he's in DC, watching TV will, as long as I'm watching here for three months, but after three months, that might be,

Leo Laporte (00:47:37):
That might be an issue. Okay. And, but like I said, you'll get plenty warning. So you can, at that point say, Hey son, how about you? Get your own YouTube <laugh> is he going to school in DC? What's going on?

Caller 2 (00:47:49):
Well, he got an internship, you know, I hate to say it. He watched house of cards.

Leo Laporte (00:47:54):
Oh no. He wants

Caller 2 (00:47:56):
<Laugh>. Yeah. Yeah. And he still wanted to go, wanted to go into politics, which I was against. He goes to UC, but you know, he got an in 12, 12 week internship out there.

Leo Laporte (00:48:08):
Wow. That's great. Where's he gonna be working?

Caller 2 (00:48:11):
He does. Well, we don't know. There could be a job after this. We're not sure. He's not crazy about DC, but we'll see <laugh> but

Leo Laporte (00:48:18):
It's great. If you wanna be in politics that's ground zero. You gotta go there.

Caller 2 (00:48:22):
That's why I tell him, man, if you wanna do this, this is the

Leo Laporte (00:48:25):
Place. Has he been there before?

Caller 2 (00:48:27):
No.

Leo Laporte (00:48:28):
Oh, okay. It's really wait til he gets there.

Caller 2 (00:48:30):
This time he's been away from home.

Leo Laporte (00:48:32):
You're never getting him back because there's something about being there. The energy of it, you know, that you are in the nation's capital, you know, it, you feel it every street, right. It's very potent. And and it's addictive. <Laugh> I hate to say it, but it's addictive.

Caller 2 (00:48:50):
Right? I mean it's again, out the cards

Leo Laporte (00:48:53):
Right out the cards. If that didn't scare 'em off, nothing will <laugh>

Caller 2 (00:48:57):
I know. That's what, like how can this not scare you?

Leo Laporte (00:49:00):
So just stay away from subway platforms. You'll be okay. <Laugh>

Caller 2 (00:49:04):
Wow, exactly. Just texted means somebody just got shot, you know? So I

Leo Laporte (00:49:10):
Was like, tell him to watch west wing, watch the first four seasons of west wing. He'll have a much happier point of view.

Caller 2 (00:49:18):
Yep. All

Leo Laporte (00:49:19):
Right. That's a very inspiring show for politics. Hey, a pleasure talking to you have congratulations on your son's success. That's good. And I think you'll be all right. Michael Leo Laport. The tech guy. Yeah. Watch west wing. That's a much more positive spin on on government. I don't, I don't think house of cards is really, I hope it's not what it's really like great show, but Ooh. All right, Sammy, as you can see, you are in charge.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:49:55):
All right. So let's see, going back here in the chat was it Phoenix? Warp? I think, yeah. Phoenix warp was asking, but I guess he's got a Jeep Wrangler right now says his Jeep hasn't produced an electric Jeep after after his current Wrangler. He's really gonna start thinking about the mock E well, the good news such as it is, is that Jeep has promised to introduce battery electric versions of vehicles in every product segment it's in by 2025. And an electric Wrangler is probably going to launch in 2024. So if you can hold out for another two years in fact, we may even see something later this year, I know Stant Jeep's parent company is going to be showing off some concept versions of some of its upcoming EVs in August including their promised Dodge E muscle car.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:50:56):
That's gonna be revealed in August. And we'll see some other stuff as well coming in, in August and, and through the fall. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if they used the Detroit auto show, which is coming back in September as the launch event to show us, to give us a preview of the upcoming Ram 1500 EV their full size pickup truck. But the Wrangler is probably from what I've been hearing, probably gonna launch in 24. Jeep's first EV is gonna be launching early next year compact crossover. That's gonna be launching in Europe first. And then over the next couple years, we'll see electric versions of all the other Jeeps coming. So that's, that's on its way. And then what else? Oh somebody asked for was web oh 1, 1, 4 asked about the V w I D buzz wanted an update on that.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:51:52):
So the buzz is I think it's, I think it has started production or if not, it will be very momentarily with the first version of it, the shorter wheel based version of it going on sale in Europe, they have started taking orders for the ID buzz in Europe. And those deliveries will probably start late summer, early fall in Europe. But the for the us market, we're only, we're getting a longer wheel based version. So it'll look basically the same, just a little bit longer and that'll be a three row van as opposed to the two row that they are selling in Europe right now. That one is not coming here until early 20, 24. They will open the order books for that probably sometime next year. But it's, it's gonna be about another year and a half, a little more than a year and a half before we start to see those delivered here in north America.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:52:50):
And then let's see somebody commented about oh, is James commented about Musk saying Tesla is bleeding money? Yeah. What what Elon was referring to in the recent months, Tesla has opened two new assembly plants. And unfortunately neither one of them is making vehicles in any notable quantity yet. They, they started started construction on these assembly plants with the assumption that they were going to be building versions of some of their products, like the model Y and the model three based on new technologies, particularly around the batteries which is that's, that's turning out to be the, the, the main issue here. The the technology that they promised at their battery day event in 2020 has not come to pass yet. It's, it's not, it's not ready for prime time.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:53:47):
They showed off new type of cylindrical cell. It's a new form factor. It's a little larger cylinder cell called a 46 80. And when you're talking about cylindrical battery cells, the numbers refer to the size of the cells. So the first two digits are the diameter in millimeters. And the second two digits are the length in millimeters. So the original batteries that Tesla used were the 18, 6 50 cells. So those were 18 millimeters in diameter by 65 millimeters long when they introduced the model three, they switched to a 2170, which is 21 millimeters in diameter, 70 millimeters long. So a little, little fatter, a little longer, the new cells are 46 80. So they're more than twice as thick in diameter and a little bit longer. And one of the reasons why they're going to these larger cells is that if you were to look at, you know, and this is the same reasoning, why apple started eliminating removable batteries from their laptops and from, from the iPhone as well.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:54:57):
Because when you have a removable battery there's a case that has to go around the battery cell, and there's also structure that has to go inside of whatever that battery is, is powering to support that, that the the, the battery. And if you eliminate that, you can just put a bare cell inside the device. And so you can make the cell larger within the same volume in the inside the, the device. So the, the same thing is true with EV batteries. What you wanna do is you wanna maximize the volume of the active material in the cells. So when you have very small cells like 18, six fifties, or 21 7 S every one of those cells has a metal can around the, the active material that is actually inside the battery, that's holding energy. And if you make that can larger, you have a larger ratio of the active material to the, the can the structure of the battery of the cell.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:56:01):
And so by going to larger format cells, and this is why most other manufacturers were already using significantly larger cells even than what Tesla uses, because the, you can get a larger volume of the active cell material within that battery. And so Tesla wanted to use these larger 46 80 cells, but the thing is, what they didn't do is they didn't just make a larger cell, the same basic design, but just scale it up. They also changed a bunch of other things, or were, are trying to change a bunch of other things. They wanna go to something called a, a tablets cell, and I'm not gonna get into a full explanation of all that right now, but basically the ideas you can get better. If you can do that, you can get better thermal heat, dissipation dissipation from the cell. It should be able to last longer.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:56:49):
And they were also trying wanted to try a different manufacturing process called a, a dry coating process. So the electrodes and the the, the odes in the anodes in the cell, the way they're made today, they coat the either copper or aluminum foil with a, a slurry, a basically like a mud of the, the active materials, the nickel, manganese, cobalt, aluminum, whatever whatever's in there. And the lithium, they coat that onto the, the the current collectors, the, this copper foil and then it's gotta dry out and they roll it up. And what Tesla wanted to do was do a dry coating process. So they don't have to, they could skip the drying of that coating but they have not been able to actually get that manufacturing process to scale up. They've made they've about a million of those, but when you're talking about 400 or 600 to 700 cells per battery pack per vehicle a million only amounts to enough for about 1500 cars.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:57:51):
And so, you know, they're still very early pilot production on those. No, they're, they're not mass producing those cells yet. So that brings us back around to Musk's comments about those factories burning money. It built two factories, assuming that they were gonna have these batteries ready. They don't have the batteries ready. They don't have enough battery production capacity to support another half a million units of vehicle production. And so they can't build cars. So they've got factories that they're paying for that are costing them money. And the one thing you don't want in manufacturing is unused production capacity, because that's a very fast way to turn large amounts of money into Ash.

Leo Laporte (00:58:30):
That's what Elon's suffering right now. Isn't it? He's

Sam Abuelsamid (00:58:33):
Yeah, yeah, exactly. And so until they can get their battery production issues sorted out with these larger cells, those plants are not gonna be able to turn out any significant number of vehicles and they're gonna be losing a ton of money on those. And question big question. Now we're gonna have to wait and see in July when they have their, their second quarter financial report on just how much money they're actually losing.

Leo Laporte (00:58:59):
He's warned there on the edge of bankruptcy, which seems a strange thing for yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:59:02):
But he's CEO

Leo Laporte (00:59:03):
To say. Yeah, well, yeah, but that's a dumb thing to say. I mean, especially since

Sam Abuelsamid (00:59:06):
Your wealth, also your stock price, they, you know, they have last quarter, they had 15 billion in cash reserves. I know. So I don't think they're quite on the verge, but if it goes on for no, why would he say several quarters? It might be.

Leo Laporte (00:59:18):
Thank you, Sam.

Leo Laporte (00:59:25):
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, all that jazz. Eighty eight eighty eight ask Leo is the phone number (888) 827-5536. Toll free from anywhere in the us or Canada, outside that area. You could still call, just use Skype out to reach us it's toll free. So it shouldn't cost you anything. 8 8, 8 8 2 7 5 5 3 6. We got a call. It didn't wanna go on the air. So I'm not sure exactly what her problem was. She says that her windows due to the windows 10 forced update. I'm not sure what that means. She can't use some of her Adobe products, not sure why. So this is why we wanted you to be on the air so we can have a little dialogue. You would be about what's going on windows 10, forced update, no such thing.

Leo Laporte (01:00:24):
You can be on windows 10 and will not be forced update until 20, 25. Unless, and I suspect this is what she's talking about. You're using an older version of windows 10. This is something Microsoft does that. I'm not sure. I really appreciate it. Maybe they're doing it in the world of you know, Rocky security. They've gotta do something, but in the old days, they'd say, well, you got, you know, windows eight. That's gonna be good for this many years. There's usually 10 after that. We're not gonna support it anymore. But what they're saying today with windows 10 is if you have windows 10, let's say 20 the, the 2019 spring version, which is 1904, cuz four is April, right? You are out of date. You are insecure that isn't windows 10 anymore. That's the old windows 10, and you need to update it. And I guess, you know, it's, it's reached what they call the end of life.

Leo Laporte (01:01:35):
So maybe that's what you're talking about, which is that Microsoft saying, well, you know you got update and are, I guess there are some machines with 1904 or 1909 or even 2004. They can't update cuz of, you know, some incompatibility. And if that's the case, yeah, you, you might be kinda, you might be kinda outta luck because now you have a version of windows that is not updateable. And if software manufacturers say, oh you have to have version you know, 2008 or 20. Now the latest version current version is 21 H two, the second half of 2021. I so confusing. I know, although 2022 H 2 22 H two is currently in beta testing. You can even get it if you wanna be a windows insider and that will soon be out. So what have I done to con I've just confused.

Leo Laporte (01:02:41):
This haven't I <laugh> partly my confusion is I'm not sure what her issue was, but I did wanna respond to that. It, it is a big problem. If you have a version of windows 10 that you cannot update past, say 20, 19 0 4 or 2004 20. Oh, let's see. Oh, these numbers drive me crazy. 20, 20 spring, 2020, which is 20 0 4, 2 0 0 4. Sounds like windows 2004. It's not it's <laugh> it's windows 10, 20 0 4. If you can't get past that. Yeah. It maybe software will no longer work. What do you do? Nothing. Get a new computer. That's what irks me. Here's a computer. It's only two years old or well, must be more than that, but it's old enough. But it's running a two year old operating system and they, and, and companies saying, well, that's not good enough.

Leo Laporte (01:03:39):
<Laugh> Cameron saying this is authentic tech guy. Gibberish don't blame me. <Laugh> I didn't make this up. <Laugh> it's Microsoft's fault 80. I it's clear as mud. I'm sorry. I haven't helped at all. Have I <laugh> update. If you can, if you can't update, sometimes you can reinstall windows and you can get it updated. But if really Microsoft saying no, no. There's something about your hardware. That means I can't update. You need to get a new computer. I, those are your choices. It's pretty, it's pretty clear. Cut. John and Moore park. Leo LaPorte. The tech guy. Hi John.

Caller 3 (01:04:17):
This is John.

Leo Laporte (01:04:19):
Yes, this is you. Welcome.

Caller 3 (01:04:22):
Hi, this is John. I in Mopar, I have a question about windows windows 11. I keep getting invited to become a member. Last time

Leo Laporte (01:04:34):
You said here's an invitation <laugh> yeah. They want you to use windows 11. You don't have to. You could say no. Well,

Caller 3 (01:04:45):
Six months, six months ago. You, you suggested hold off. I just wondered. What's your current position on that?

Leo Laporte (01:04:51):
Oh, that's a good question. I see no reason now not to get windows 11.

Caller 3 (01:04:57):
All right. I'll I'll order it this month.

Leo Laporte (01:04:59):
You shouldn't have to pay for it. Do you have windows 10?

Caller 3 (01:05:03):
I have windows. Yeah. I bought a Microsoft computer about two and a half years ago. And 

Leo Laporte (01:05:10):
So you have 10 on your computer. 11 is a free update.

Caller 3 (01:05:14):
So I I'm, yeah, I've got everything I need. I just figure, well, you said to hold off. So I,

Leo Laporte (01:05:20):
Yeah, it's always a good idea. When a new operating system comes out to not rush to jump on, but I think there are no issues with 11, honestly. There's also not much different with 11. It looks different. Some people that will, will find that disconcerting the, the, the kind of the new look, but it's close enough. I see. No reason not to. And if you've got, if you've tired of the of the warnings from Microsoft, you better get it. You better get it. Go ahead and get it. It's fine to do that.

Caller 3 (01:05:48):
I'll just go ahead and get it. I've got go ahead and get it off. 365. I've got all of that junk, so,

Leo Laporte (01:05:53):
Oh yeah. You're all in. I'll

Caller 3 (01:05:55):
Get it. I'll get it in July. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:05:57):
And it'll be it. It should be an easy upgrade. If anything doesn't work, it should also be an easy return to windows 10. They make that you have two weeks to do that, to make it pretty easy for you. So I, I don't see any reason to hold off anymore. It's been long enough now that all the rough edges are smoothed off, sanded down.

Caller 3 (01:06:15):
All right, Leo. Thank you very much.

Leo Laporte (01:06:17):
Thanks. Good question. Thank you, John. I appreciate it. Roy mystic, Connecticut.

Caller 4 (01:06:22):
Hi, Leo. How are

Leo Laporte (01:06:23):
You? Hi. I'm gonna be out your way in a bit. In fact, I was thinking

Caller 4 (01:06:25):
About 32 miles, I guess, from your mom.

Leo Laporte (01:06:28):
I was thinking of taking my daughter up to the old mystic sea port. Is that still around? 

Caller 4 (01:06:33):
That's three miles away.

Leo Laporte (01:06:34):
I love that. You know, we used to go there when I was a kid. They got the whaling boats.

Caller 4 (01:06:38):
Yeah, because you were from Rhode Island, right?

Leo Laporte (01:06:40):
That's right. Grew up in Rhode Island, old

Caller 4 (01:06:42):
Swamp Yankee, right. It's

Leo Laporte (01:06:44):
Swamp Yankee. That's what my mom called me. <Laugh> wonderful. Wonderful. Well, maybe we'll come up and visit old mystic. That's great. What can I do for you?

Caller 4 (01:06:53):
Well, Leo, I got a problem. Yes. And it's got computer related so much is I've had a Yahoo email account for about 25 years. Wow. And about three months ago, somebody hacked into it. Oh

Leo Laporte (01:07:07):
Yeah. This is a big problem with Yahoo.

Caller 4 (01:07:10):
Okay. So anyway, they turned around and they fixed it. Good. However, yeah. They want me to use a secondary password, which is a phone number guy I've had in 15 years. I, and they don't want to talk to me. I can't get,

Leo Laporte (01:07:25):
I, you got so, so they're saying in order to keep using your Yahoo mail yeah. You need to verify that you are, who you say you are through a phone number you no longer have

Caller 4 (01:07:38):
Exactly.

Leo Laporte (01:07:39):
Oh yeah. Yeah. I don't know how to, I don't know how to get around that. <Affirmative> especially, you know, it's a, they've been sold twice. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> you know, I don't even know who owns <laugh> Yahoo mail these days. Was I think it was Verizon for a while. I don't know. It's, it's very confusing. And obviously whoever owns it doesn't really care about it anymore.

Caller 4 (01:08:07):
Yeah. I had, I talked to Eva, I, I went on the pay review thing, you know, and talked to them. Yeah. And they said, no, there's nothing we can do. I said, well, this is, you know, it's like five years.

Leo Laporte (01:08:19):
Let's see. Is it Verizon now owns it's yeah. I, I don't know. It's very crazy. So yeah. I don't know what you can do. The problem of course, is that everybody knows your email address as Yahoo.

Caller 4 (01:08:35):
Oh yeah. That's sending me emails and I got about 10,000 of 'em by now.

Leo Laporte (01:08:40):
Oh, you, you can't even log in to get your old email. Hey, that's terrible. You can't do anything. Yeah. They, this they've been notoriously insecure for a while. I mean, I guess at this point, what I would suggest is get a new email provider.

Caller 4 (01:08:54):
I do have one, but it doesn't help me with the old,

Leo Laporte (01:08:56):
Well, I, what you have to do is email everybody. You, you, you know, and say, mm-hmm <affirmative>, this is what happened. And can you, if, if you sent me email in last six months, I don't have it.

Caller 4 (01:09:06):
Yeah. Because I asked them tutorials from years ago, you know? Oh shoot. And you know, I you're the last for Leo. I'll

Leo Laporte (01:09:14):
Tell you, I have, you know, I have no special input with Yahoo. Like I said, I don't even know who I would call anymore. I can't figure out who owns them. Because you know, Yahoo was sold for parts and so different people own different parts. Let's see, Yahoo mail became the business. I, you know, even apparently even Wikipedia doesn't know who owns them. <Laugh> I can't, I can't get any information here. So, and so I don't even know who you would, who you would call it's it's basically, you were to have to move soon anyway, because I really think they're falling apart and just the wheels are coming off.

Caller 4 (01:09:57):
Yeah. Well, at least if I could get in to get my old one general, that would've been okay. You know,

Leo Laporte (01:10:02):
They're, they're owned by Mike be in the chat room. Who's generally right. Says they're owned by Apollo global management. <Laugh> 90% Apollo, global management, 10% Verizon, I guess, you know, you might try, I mean, good luck. This is even worse, but you might try calling Verizon just to see if maybe they do, they own 10%. It's just a mess. It's just a mess. I'm sorry. I think there is no fix for this that's okay. You know, and the only advice in the future is keep your secondary phone number up to date.

Caller 4 (01:10:36):
Yeah. Well, you know, it's been so many years, you know, and I had it and

Leo Laporte (01:10:39):
I know, but things go wrong. And so yeah, I know it is a really good idea. You know, if you've got a Gmail account, do the same thing. It's good idea to have that phone number, for sure. For backup, you know, they call it recovery phone number. Yeah. But make sure it's up to date. Yeah.

Caller 4 (01:10:54):
See, they never asked me for before. Oh right. Except to, you know, my password works and my, you here's your name. And then they said, oh, you gotta log into this other phone number. I ah, I don't have it anymore.

Leo Laporte (01:11:08):
Ah that's because it dead phone. They've been hacked so many times at this point, they don't know who's who <laugh>. So I think, I think you just have to write off the mail that's in that inbox, you have to send email to everybody, you know, from your new email account saying, Hey, look, this is what happened. If you sent me email in the last six months. Sorry, I didn't get it. Try again. If it's important, they'll send it again. I'm sorry. I really apologize. But this is what happens when a company just slowly declines. We haven't had a deal with this. This is all new, right. Technology's new, but we're gonna start dealing with it more and more as these companies, you know, fall apart, get sold, get sold again, get sold again. Apollo global management. What do they care? Right? Why do they even buy it? Probably they didn't. They don't care about Yahoo mail. That's just a cost center for them. They make no money on it. Probably they care about the name, intellectual property rights, something maybe they're gonna put out a Yahoo television or a Yahoo lawn mower. I don't know. They don't care about the mail.

Leo Laporte (01:12:18):
Sigh. <Laugh> 88, 88 ask Leo. I've been getting a lot of calls lately about Yahoo mail, AOL and Yahoo mail because you know, people don't change and then stuff. The case, Leo LaPorte tech guy, Hey lawn do. And our chat had this crazy idea. It's a long shot for our last caller, but you know, your old phone number, somebody else by now, has it call it, say, Hey dude, <laugh> this is crazy. <Laugh> but call me maybe. No you say, Hey dude, I know this is crazy, but I need to get account my account, access to my Yahoo account just once. Cuz I'll change the phone number. The minute I do. Could I have Yahoo send you a text and you would tell me the number and then I will be able to log into my Yahoo mail account. Now, if I am the guy with your old number, I'm gonna say, yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:13:16):
Right, nice try scammer. I'm gonna assume that that's a fishing attack against me, but maybe you could be persuasive. So cuz doesn't that sound like a fishing call? Yeah. Hey <laugh> you don't know me. Call me crazy. <Laugh> but could you just tell me what Yahoo just texted you? Yeah. Yeah. I wouldn't do that myself, but give it a try. Give it a try. It was a good, clever idea. Lawn dog. I like it. <Laugh> I never, I didn't even think of that. Somebody probably has that number by now. Right? Janet San Diego, Leo LaPorte. The tech guy. Hi Janet.

Caller 5 (01:13:56):
Hi. Hello. I'm the person who wasn't able to speak before. And I'm kind of new to speaking.

Leo Laporte (01:14:02):
Oh, you're the one with the windows 11 issue. Oh good.

Caller 5 (01:14:05):
Well windows 10 windows 10. And the version of windows is two, one H one. So I don't know if that's no. Oh,

Leo Laporte (01:14:11):
That's not a problem. So when you say the Kim told me, you said there's a problem with the windows 10 forced update, but I'm not sure what that means. Can you clarify?

Caller 5 (01:14:22):
Yes. So the schedule that I have with updates sometimes seems to be overridden by them. And this primarily has to do with premier pro and this happened also about two months ago. Sometimes there'll be updates. I'm not expecting in the middle of the night with windows and all of a sudden I won't be able to even access premier pro.

Leo Laporte (01:14:43):
So this is something Adobe. Oh, that's weird. Adobe is doing. It sounds like.

Caller 5 (01:14:49):
But it's only in relation to these two updates. The one about two months ago and the one on the 23rd. So Adobe wasn't able to solve it. They thought it was a permissions issue. I then went in and saw that at the same time, there had been a windows update. Two months ago I uninstalled that update and all of a sudden I could go back to opening, ah, premier.

Leo Laporte (01:15:13):
So it's a compatibility issue between a, the, a windows update in premier and, and premier and Adobe didn't know anything about it.

Caller 5 (01:15:20):
Not two months ago. And the same thing happened over the last few days. So there appears to have been an update on the 23rd. It really didn't seem to be impacting me until later in the day on the 24th Adobe was not seemingly aware of that update. I tried rolling back the windows update again. I could get back into opening Adobe, which I couldn't do before rolling that back, but now it keeps showing pending, pending, pending that it wants to install. Meaning windows wants to install those updates.

Leo Laporte (01:15:55):
How important is premier pro to your life? It sounds like pretty important core

Caller 5 (01:16:00):
<Laugh> core

Leo Laporte (01:16:01):
Computer.

Caller 5 (01:16:02):
The computer was designed built for premier.

Leo Laporte (01:16:04):
Okay. Here's what you're gonna have to do. I think. Okay. Something's messed up. Duh. <Laugh> okay. The easiest way to fix this would be to start over reinstall windows. When you download it from microsoft.com, they have a windows media creation tool. You'll be getting the latest version and then install a fresh copy of premier on pro on top of that. And since you have creative cloud, that's not gonna be a hard thing to do. I think at that point it should all work. Leo Laporte the tech guy, hold on Janet, because it sounds like it's not just, it's not a general issue. It sounds like it's it's with regard to the way your machine is configured or something like that general, by the way, we're not on the air anymore. You can breathe the sigh of relief.

Caller 5 (01:16:54):
Oh, Hey,

Leo Laporte (01:16:55):
<Laugh> nobody.

Caller 5 (01:16:57):
And this was, you know, a major manufacturer and it was built specifically for premiere.

Leo Laporte (01:17:01):
I don't think it's the hardware. Okay. But it's easy enough for windows get messed up. <Laugh> again. I guess I'm being very technical here. Go ahead. So I do you do, do you have a lot of other stuff on the machine you can't afford to lose or something or

Caller 5 (01:17:20):
Yeah, so everything

Leo Laporte (01:17:21):
Will have, so you're gonna have to back up all of that. Yeah. Yeah. And

Caller 5 (01:17:23):
You have to it's primarily for premier. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:17:25):
Well that's why I asked because this is a pain in the butt, but yes, job one is getting premier working. Then I would suggest a, how old is the machine?

Caller 5 (01:17:38):
Just a little over a year and already with the manufacturer that I'm not gonna mention, we already did one uninstall and reinstalling and then reinstalling.

Leo Laporte (01:17:47):
So you went to them and they said, well, let's do this. That's by the way, that's their SOP because they don't know what's, you know, software's gone on. So they want to get you back to the way it was when you bought it. And that did not. And then you reinstall Adobe, premier pro and it still had a problem.

Caller 5 (01:18:01):
Well, no, this only came up recently, so that happened many, many months ago. Okay. There are some other issues that I'm not gonna get into that are not related. And I have a, another computer for premier pro that doesn't seem to have any of this going on.

Leo Laporte (01:18:15):
This is life in the windows lane. Yes. I hate to say it. 

Caller 5 (01:18:21):
But if I, if I, if I may, if we're not on the air, so after we did all those reinstalls with some exceptions, so it wasn't a hundred percent perfect. You know, I have not run into this problem until two months ago in relation to that windows update. And it was, it was something where one day you just can't open premier period.

Leo Laporte (01:18:44):
Yeah. You, I presume have tried uninstalling fully uninstalling, premier and reinstalling it. Yes. And that did not fix it. Correct? Yeah. So some interaction between windows and premier, you know, my hope was, well, maybe just premier is, is messed up. That can happen. And then it won't run. Right. it is conceivable that there's something in this windows update that doesn't work with premier, but the fact that Adobe doesn't know about that, it, it, it kind of indicates it's probably not because it'd be why, if it, if look, everybody's got that update, if everybody who had that update, couldn't run premier pro I think Adobe would know about it.

Caller 5 (01:19:21):
I would think so too. And that's the thing that's bizarre to me. Because and it is, you know, it's just like night and day, like a switch has gone off. Yeah. And you don't even,

Leo Laporte (01:19:31):
We actually believe it or not. We use premier pro on windows here. We were using windows eight. We have eight, six editors using windows eight until just recently when we bought new computers <laugh> right. And we never updated it because probably for this reason, you know, once you get it stable and it's a work computer and your editor and you need to have this working, you don't mess with it. Right. so,

Caller 5 (01:19:55):
But I think it is a compatibility. Oh, but then one

Leo Laporte (01:19:58):
More question. Do you have antivirus software running on there?

Caller 5 (01:20:02):
No. Just whatever comes with the window.

Leo Laporte (01:20:03):
Good. You don't have trend micro cuz that is a known problem with trend micro.

Caller 5 (01:20:07):
Good question. No. Okay. I, I try to follow all of your advice. <Laugh>

Leo Laporte (01:20:11):
Thank you. And that's good advice in this case. Yes. so sometimes security software will block a program from launching mm-hmm <affirmative> I appreciate your calling, Janet I'm. I have no answer for you except the really one you don't want to hear, which is, but how, but this is important right. A fresh install with a current version of windows in premier, and just hope that it was some weird thing that happened. Like it's, like they said a permissions issue or something reinstalling well, should fix all of that. I know it's a waste of your afternoon.

Caller 5 (01:20:43):
Well, more than an afternoon, but in any case because I mean, I've got a lot of red projects and other things on here. Yeah. but these are N E T frame type of updates. Does that tell you anything?

Leo Laporte (01:20:56):
It's just.net. I don't know. Off the top of my head. No. Okay. And I, unfortunately I have to run. I've gotta do. Oh,

Caller 5 (01:21:01):
Certainly. You've been awesome. Thank

Leo Laporte (01:21:02):
You. Sorry, Janet. Thank you. I wanna, I wanna talk a little bit about our sponsor, the good folks at CacheFly CacheFly brings you this show, not only as a sponsor, but literally <laugh> brings you this show. They're our CDN, our content delivery network. And we've been with CacheFly practically. Since the beginning, they solved a big problem that we had, which was how do we get the show to people this big download without breaking the bank and breaking our servers and CacheFly. They came to me, actually, Matt Levine, one of the founders said, Leo, we can help. And boy have they helped. Now cashflow has so many additional features. It's, it's actually a, quite a cool business. They have ultra low latency, video streaming. And when I say ultra low latency, I mean it, this is streaming with sub one second latency.

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Leo Laporte (01:22:58):
So CacheFly. That's our CDN. It should be your CDN with ultra low latency video streaming that delivers video to more than a million concurrent users. Lightning fast gaming delivers downloads faster with zero lag, glitches or outages, mobile content optimization that offers automatic and simple image optimization. So your site loads faster on any device and of course, multiple CDNs for redundancy and failover balancing your traffic across multiple providers. In fact, in the past 12 months, 100% availability, not one bit lost and they're 30% faster than other major CDNs with a 98% cash hit ratio. And best of all, cash lie has 24 7 365 day a year priority support. You know, they'll always be there for you when you need them. We love you cashflow. Thank you for what you've done for TWiT. And now I invite you to check 'em out at cash. Flight.Com, C a C H E F L y.com. Thank you. Cash flight. Now back to the show. It's time for our photo guy. Chris Marwar is here. He is a brilliant photographer teaches classes and workshops@sensei.photo has written many books, including a book I love on wide angle photography. Another one I love on film photography. In fact, it's your fault, Chris? That I have two film cameras that I bought recently.

Chris Marquardt (01:24:28):
I feel bad. You do. Which ones? Steve did you buy? Well,

Leo Laporte (01:24:31):
You, you helped me buy them. I have a, like a M three that 

Chris Marquardt (01:24:35):
Oh, those ones yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:24:36):
Is a classic. And then I have a, I always wanted, when I was a kid, all my life, I've seen photographers looking down at their waist, shooting with a camera at their waist and then cranking and, and I found out that's a roll of that's it right there. You got one,

Chris Marquardt (01:24:52):
One of these, this one, this one is a Ukrainian one and old.

Leo Laporte (01:24:55):
Oh, that's weird.

Chris Marquardt (01:24:56):
An old it's

Leo Laporte (01:24:57):
A copy. Yeah. <Laugh> yeah, but I have a, I have a role of flex also original. Yeah, same, same vintage as my with this original leather case. And it's fun. But I have to say it's, they're not as good as my digital camera really well

Chris Marquardt (01:25:14):
You, there, there aren't be. There are people out there who would probably beg to differ because the, the whole film photography field has seen quite a big resurgence recently. And that includes a lot of young people who didn't grow up with that. Picking up used film cameras. Well,

Leo Laporte (01:25:31):
I

Chris Marquardt (01:25:31):
Second hand

Leo Laporte (01:25:32):
Still in colleges all over the country when they teach photography, beginners start usually with film cameras. My nephew is a student at the Rhode, very prestigious Rhode Island, school of design, majoring in photography, they're shooting with Olympus, om, one film cameras,

Chris Marquardt (01:25:49):
Nothing wrong with that. It forces you into a specific kind of working and thinking, which you can't get with digital. So

Leo Laporte (01:25:56):
Digital's too easy. <Laugh>

Chris Marquardt (01:25:59):
Yeah, actually, yes. So, so you know what, you know, addicts around the country, hold veritable really good treasures. Or if you ask a friend or family, like, do you re remember if grandpa still has his old camera, there will be, there will be treasures coming up. Of course there's online. There's eBay, there's Craigslist in other places, the usual suspects where you can get used cameras. And can you still get film? Oh yes, you can. You can. Kodak still makes film Fuji film makes film. There's a lot of smaller manufacturers now that have emerged over the years. So there is film, not as much as, as they used to be, but most of that, you buy online these days. So but you picked up the camera, you have this old camera and now there are a few things to look at to make sure it's working properly.

Chris Marquardt (01:26:52):
And one of the, the first, the first thing that I would typically look at is light leaks. So the camera has a, has a light seal at the back where you put the film in that film. Doesn't that light doesn't come in other than through the lens. And there are different kinds of seals back there. There's what we call labyrinth seal, which is just a way the, the, the, the corners are folded over each other. So light doesn't come in. Those are normally not critical. There's foam seals, and those can be dodgy because especially if an old camera from, let's say the 1970s, they, they don't age. Well. Yeah, well, foam foam back in the 1970s was a, was a new new material. The foam has only been developed in the sixties. So the, they didn't have long term experience with some of the foams and decades later that might decompose.

Chris Marquardt (01:27:45):
So you can check for that carefully with a toothpick, because sometimes that turns into like a tar like substance. So those can luckily be switched out there's replacement kits that you can buy on eBay and other places. So with new forms, so you can, that's a DIY job for a Sunday afternoon, kind of take a toothpick and scratch the old stuff out and put the new stuff in. And there's a third kind of seal, which are typically okay if even after many years and that's velvet seals, they used to put real velvet in their elegant, very elegant. Some older cameras have read velvet seals, there's black velvet seals. So that's the first thing, the light leaks. And by the way, you find out about light leaks by, by just putting a roll of film in there and shooting, and then looking at the pictures, if there's weird, weird phenomena with, with bright edges and things that is typically a light leak.

Chris Marquardt (01:28:43):
So that's the first thing, the, the light leaks, the second one is the shutter shutters age. And especially the material shutter is like a clockwork, you know, so it's a mechanical thing and that has lubricants in it and the, the dust can get in there. So that, that shatter clockwork can get gummed up a bit over time, like oils, age, and they get a bit they, they don't, they don't, they don't lubricate us as well, like, and that will manifest itself through shatter speeds that are slower than advertised. Like if you set this to a hundredth of a second and you take a picture, they might actually just take a picture of a 50th of a second, cuz it's slower, cuz it's gummed up. Finding out again, take a roll of film, shoot pictures based on your light meter. And then you will see that if pictures come out too bright all the time, then that's a good indication. There's also free app for iOS and for Android called chatter speed that uses your, your smartphone's microphone to listen to the click and gives you the timing between like the first and the last click. So you can sort of measure the shutters to that. Oh that's

Chris Marquardt (01:30:01):
<Laugh>, those are fully mechanical. These cameras, you can't, you can, you see a little peak and when, when the shutter opens and another peak when it closes and, and it tells you how fast that was. Another fix for, for gum up shutters or at least a temporary fix is what I used to call shutter, gymnastics, which is just actuate click and, and, and, and wind up the camera and click it again 50 times. Just move it, get it moving. It's like with an old machine you have to to, to move it. Another fix is slightly warming it up in the oven. Believe it or not, cuz that will make some of the old oils be get better again. Don't heat it up. Just warm it up. Or if that doesn't have crazy, get it to no, that's not crazy at all. Honey,

Leo Laporte (01:30:51):
What you what's in the oven? Oh, I'm baking the camera. Don't mind me.

Chris Marquardt (01:30:55):
It's not baking it's or warm me head up. So that's the, that's the second thing the shutters are. All shutters can be a bit a bit of a diva sometimes. And the third thing of course I would look at is the lenses and again, they have mechanics, so check for those mechanics, but good news.

Leo Laporte (01:31:15):
These are all very inexpensive cuz nobody wants them anymore. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Yeah. You can get amazing. The

Chris Marquardt (01:31:21):
Last thing to check on the lenses is the glass in the lenses might have, if it was, if it was in an, in a, in a, in a, in a humid cell or something for, for 20 years, it might have some fungus in it. Yeah. And you can see that and that's not a good thing. So that's one thing to watch out for also. So that's the three main things, the lenses shutter and the light leaks. Then most of those won't be a problem. But if they are now, you know what to do about it?

Leo Laporte (01:31:49):
Where do you bring your film after you've shoot shoot it. I mean,

Chris Marquardt (01:31:54):
There's, there's there's labs. You can send it in there's there's lots of, lots of that stuff has moved online. So you can, you can send it in to have it processed and get scans back and pictures back and

Leo Laporte (01:32:04):
Yeah. That's so then it becomes digital at that point, your image is is not a print it's digital. Yeah.

Chris Marquardt (01:32:11):
Yeah. Oh, you can get 'em printed as well. <Laugh> so, or, or you, or you should, you should Polaroid or Instax and you just create a picture on paper.

Leo Laporte (01:32:21):
Those are big with the kids. Now everybody likes those instant photography cameras. Great for parties.

Chris Marquardt (01:32:26):
Intax is, is the money is the money maker for Fuji film? Yeah. Big one.

Leo Laporte (01:32:30):
It's really interesting. Yeah. Yeah. It's not pure nostalgia. I mean, some of it's nostalgia it's for me, it's a nostalgia thing, but it's also it's an interesting discipline to shoot film. You don't get to Chimp. You don't get to look in the sensor on the back and see let's take another one of this

Chris Marquardt (01:32:47):
Courses, you into a different mode of thinking, cuz yeah, you have to, you have to be patient and

Leo Laporte (01:32:53):
Every shock costs money, you know, it's not, they every shot it's expensive. Chris mark. He has a great book on film photography, highly recommend it. You'll find it at sensei photo. And also don't forget his podcast tips from the top floor. He also has one of the future photography. So it's not just looking back, he's looking forward too. And he joins us every week. Thank you, Chris.

Chris Marquardt (01:33:17):
Thank you.

Leo Laporte (01:33:20):
Yeah. I gave I gave Lisa I think an Instax printer, so she could take a picture with a camera phone and then it pairs to the printer and has an instant print that it's kind of cool. I just, she never uses it, but it's kind of cool. It's really an interesting these,

Chris Marquardt (01:33:38):
These kind of things are good for parties. And when you have people around just print out a few snaps and hand it to people that, that these are unique, you know, you're creating a one of a kind thing, which is you can't, when you, when you shoot directly, when you shoot directly on the medium, then that is, there's a different feeling.

Leo Laporte (01:33:56):
It's the NFTs of photography sort of. Yeah. Yeah. I, you know, obviously I was just looking at sales for camera sales and they're just plummeting because nobody's buying cameras anymore, especially point and shoots, but even the SLRs are, you know, slowly dwindling. Yeah.

Chris Marquardt (01:34:17):
But the, the compact digital cameras are, are, they're gone. The compact digital ones are on the way out.

Leo Laporte (01:34:22):
Yeah. Cause because you have a phone that does everybody as well.

Chris Marquardt (01:34:26):
Oh, I I've said it for, for 10 years. Phones are taking over.

Leo Laporte (01:34:30):
Yeah, yeah. Happening. I, I'm not gonna, I'll just bring a, my phone to visit my mom. I don't see any reason to bring a fancy camera, although I could do some fun shots with her. I'd love to, but I'd probably just bring the phone. Yeah. What a world,

Chris Marquardt (01:34:48):
Quick reminder, quick reminder. Next week I'll be in Southern Germany in the black forest.

Leo Laporte (01:34:54):
How

Chris Marquardt (01:34:54):
Fun

Leo Laporte (01:34:55):
With my parents have a wonderful trip. I'll be with my mom in in two days. So I understand. Awesome. Yeah. Have fun. And we'll see you in two weeks. I'll see you on the 10th. All right. All right. Take care. Leo Laport, the tech guy, eighty eight eighty eight. Ask Leo the phone number. I, I feel so bad with Janet. I just don't I'm not sure what's going on. And honestly, the <laugh> the, the few things in our in our toolkit are inadequate to the problem. She updated windows, she's on a current version, 21 H one of windows, 10 updated it. And all of a sudden Adobe premier, their video editing program stopped working and Adobe doesn't know why. I'm sure Microsoft has no idea why. In fact, it's, I don't think it's a widespread issue or we, you know, probably know more about it.

Leo Laporte (01:35:53):
You'd be able to Google it and find it. So it's something unique to her system. Okay. Well, that's, that's a data point. How do you solve this? I do have to say the first thing I always look for, if something's acting funny is other programs interfering in particular security software, not at all unusual. It's one of the reasons I've kind of formed a, a dislike for antivirus software on window windows. It comes with, you know, Microsoft defender, which is adequate. And, and, you know, there are lots of reasons you might wanna run an antivirus if you've got a kid using the computer or, you know, strangers or it's in a challenging environment. So I'm not, I'm not a, I'm not dead set against it, but because they can cause compatibility issues often they're the source of more problems than they solve. In this case, she didn't have an extra antivirus cuz she listens and she has the same idea, I guess.

Leo Laporte (01:36:49):
So I hate to say it, but at this point, I mean you could start tearing out little bits and pieces of windows here and there to see what's causing the compatibility kind of hard to see what's going on. There are logs. Windows has an event log and that might be of value if you, because what's, what's probably gonna happen when you hit the you know, the premier icon and you launch it and then it doesn't launch. It's gonna put something in the event, in the event viewer. So there is a program called event viewer that lets you view the event logs. The only reason I don't talk about it more is because it's easy to underestimate what you're reading the importance of what reading overestimate. It really more likely you'll you may freak out <laugh> cuz it looks like everything's failing. Windows has all sorts of negative events.

Leo Laporte (01:37:52):
<Laugh> critical errors and warnings and all sorts of things. But it's probably a good idea to go through the logs and especially do it right after premier pro won't launch. And see if you can see what's going on. I'm I'm looking at a, what to me is a completely, fully operational version of windows 11 on a brand new machine. As soon as I go to administrative events will look like half an hour ago. There was an event 42, 27 with TCP I P failed to establish an outgoing connection cuz a selected local endpoint was recently used to connect the same remote endpoint. There was an application hang earlier this morning system sevens stopped interacting with windows and was closed. These things are going on all the time. There's there's a variety of logs. The application logs. I see a application, hang, I see error reporting. I see security. It's very easy to look at these and go, wow, <laugh> I'm amazed windows runs at all, but you might be able to glean a clue there. You know, if, if Adobe, you know, Adobe premier system hang or application hang or didn't launch, you might be able to, but oftentimes the computer's kind of dumb about what happened. So the log will contain something that isn't that useful or at least not that actionable, still worth checking you. You're trying to track down, you know, what is this interaction what's going on?

Leo Laporte (01:39:29):
But ultimately the easiest, it doesn't sound easy. But the easiest thing is to back up your data, wipe your drive, reinstall windows, reinstall the, the program that's not working in this case premiere pro and see if that helps. Now, if that doesn't work, I don't all bets are off cuz we we're starting with a fresh install, right? Miles on the line from San Juan Capistrano. Hi miles, Leo Laporte the tech guy.

Caller 6 (01:39:55):
Hi Leo. How you doing today?

Leo Laporte (01:39:57):
I am. Well, how are you

Caller 6 (01:39:59):
Doing well, first time caller been listening to you for long time.

Leo Laporte (01:40:04):
Welcome.

Caller 6 (01:40:05):
I have just remodeled my entertainment room home theater and I ran all the wires into the wall. It came out absolutely beautiful. I'm running a Samsung, LG O L D G two. Nice,

Leo Laporte (01:40:22):
Very nice TV.

Caller 6 (01:40:23):
Absolutely.

Leo Laporte (01:40:25):
Yeah. Beautiful, gorgeous TV, gorgeous

Caller 6 (01:40:27):
Couple questions. I'm gonna probably start streaming that looks like, should I run a hard wire into the router for the TV? Can I do that by wifi? What's your suggestion on that? So you

Leo Laporte (01:40:41):
Can stream Netflix. You mean inbound streaming. You don't mean you're gonna start your own TV channel in the living room. Right?

Caller 6 (01:40:46):
So on that.

Leo Laporte (01:40:47):
Yeah. So you're gonna watch Netflix, Amazon prime, premier Hulu, all that stuff. Honestly the best thing is a hardwired connection and, and the other a couple of years ago, we did in fact remodel to the extent we had somebody crawling up in the attic and underneath in the crawl space, running ethernet to the places where there are work computers, cuz we are zooming more cuz of pandemic and TVs that is gonna always give you the best results. But if you have good wifi and a good quality signal, you're fairly close to the wifi base station. That's what most people use should be good enough.

Caller 6 (01:41:27):
Sure. And fantastic.

Leo Laporte (01:41:30):
I, yeah. So in other words, yeah, it would be better. Always is better to do hardwired, but it's gonna be a little bit faster, but if you've got good, you you're getting on your wifi, you're getting a hundred megabits down on your computer. Oh yeah,

Caller 6 (01:41:43):
Yeah, yeah. I went for you're probably familiar with Cox. Yeah. And I'm using their high volume perfect. To get back to the service. Perfect. And but my wife is zooming upstairs now since COVID and you know, we, we have a few machines running in the house, but it seems adequate.

Leo Laporte (01:42:09):
Here's what I would do. You know, it's a pain to put ethernet in. So try the wifi <laugh> if it's working fine, don't worry about it. Well

Caller 6 (01:42:18):
I put the router as well as the wifi right next to below the TV in the entertainment center.

Leo Laporte (01:42:26):
Oh well you're golden then.

Caller 6 (01:42:28):
Yeah. It really wouldn't be that, that

Leo Laporte (01:42:31):
Then do it, then do it. You'll just be glad you did it. Yeah. As long as you have an extra ethernet port, I would always do that. It's it's always gonna be, you know, better speed. It's true that a lot of people can do that because often the, especially if you have cable, internet, that's the same, you know, place the cable internet comes in is where your TV comes in. So good. I think that's a good way to do it

Caller 6 (01:42:54):
And what's the best way to get more reports.

Leo Laporte (01:42:57):
There are a couple of things you can do if you only have one or two, you have a router I presume or using the Cox router.

Caller 6 (01:43:05):
Yes. No, I have my own router. Yep.

Leo Laporte (01:43:07):
Okay. And it has some ports, but you want more?

Caller 6 (01:43:10):
Yeah. It actually only has two ports. I'm running directly into my apple TV as well as

Leo Laporte (01:43:20):
Oh yeah. You run out. Yeah. Yeah. So, so you, you know, you can get a switch. We used to get hubs. You might even remember that in the early days of home networking, you get something that was completely passive. That was like the, the hub on a wagon wheel. And it would just have a bunch of ethernet coming off of it. Nowadays, most of the devices you buy are managed switches. A lot of companies make these net gear makes very good switches. So you know, you can pick 'em up. TP link does too. A lot of companies do and they're managed only in to the, you don't have to do anything with 'em. They're only managed to the extent that they, you know, maybe you have a little bit more smarts for 15 bucks you can get a net gear, five port gigabit, ethernet. It's an unmanaged switch, which is fine. I've used the net gears before they have an eight port for 40 bucks. That should be more than enough.

Caller 6 (01:44:15):
Right? Exactly. Yeah. Le are you're local in Los Angeles, are

Leo Laporte (01:44:19):
You? No, we're not. We're up in Northern California, but hope Leola port, the tech guy got a break, but but we're on, KFI in Los Angeles. That's where you listen. I'm sure

Caller 6 (01:44:31):
It is. Yeah, yeah,

Leo Laporte (01:44:32):
Yeah. Yeah.

Caller 6 (01:44:33):
Thank you so much, Leo. I

Leo Laporte (01:44:34):
Appreciate it. Hey, always a pleasure. Thanks for calling. Take care. Great.

Leo Laporte (01:44:38):
Whoa. 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, film photography. Yeah. Smart phones, augmented reality. Virtual reality, eighty eight eighty eight. Ask Leah windows 10, failing windows 11 working somebody. I think scooter X in our chat room, we were talking with Janet about windows 10 and Adobe premier not playing nice. And we'll put this in the show notes, but scooter X in the chat room came up with a link that said, oh yeah could not open key. It's on the premier pro.fandom.com. Wiki error could not open key verify that you have success sufficient access to that key contact, your support personnel error 1402 error, 1406. And there's a registry fix, which is weird. I think a little bit of blame on Adobe for this Adobe doesn't Microsoft used to be this way too on the Mac. Doesn't like to do things the official way they like to do. 'em Their way <laugh> and sometimes I think they get in a little troubled by you know, kind of going around Microsoft's official systems. So maybe that's maybe we'll, you know what, we'll keep collecting solutions. That's what all we can do. Sounds like a registry issue. Possibly herb and Rancho Santa Fe. California's next? Hello herb.

Caller 7 (01:46:14):
Hi Leo. Hello. I came home from taking my wife to lunch today and I walked in, turned on the radio. And you were talking with the lady that was having problems with Adobe, her mail program

Leo Laporte (01:46:27):
Or a Yahoo. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yahoo. Yeah.

Caller 7 (01:46:31):
I've had a, I had att.net for years and years and years and Adobe apparently got in there somehow. So

Leo Laporte (01:46:38):
Yahoo did. Yeah. So Yahoo

Caller 7 (01:46:41):
Fantastic.

Leo Laporte (01:46:41):
A lot of these companies, both Verizon and at and T didn't want to do their own mail systems so that for their subscribers, they, they kind of worked with Yahoo. And then, and then I think Verizon, I mean, like I said, it's a confusing tattered saga, but at some point I think Verizon and at, and T both had some ownership stakes in any event. You know many, many people have Yahoo mail because of those two, two companies, I guess. Were you at and T you said

Caller 7 (01:47:11):
Yes. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. Well, the question I have is I I'm getting past the patients period of my

Leo Laporte (01:47:20):
Time to get new email.

Caller 7 (01:47:22):
There you go. And that was gonna be my question. Do you have a what's your first and second choice?

Leo Laporte (01:47:28):
Well, I I am a little different on this one and you know, it sounds like you're a little older, maybe email for you is more recreational and business focused,

Caller 7 (01:47:37):
Correct?

Leo Laporte (01:47:38):
Yeah. I honestly think, I mean, so many people rely so much on email and yet wanna use a free email service. And I, I sometimes feel like maybe we're being a little cheap <laugh> and it might be worth if you wanted, for instance, the free services, Yahoo mail and Gmail outlook mail. Those are the big three of Microsoft does outlook.com. Google does gmail.com, Yahoo, whoever owns them does Yahoo mail. Those are the big three free services. They're ads supported, but good luck getting support. If you have a problem, good luck calling somebody and saying, fix this when it's free. They can't afford really to provide good tech support. On the other hand, for as little as 50 bucks a year, you can pay for email and there'll be somebody on the other line end of the line. And because they're making money off you they'll kind of pay more attention.

Leo Laporte (01:48:35):
Plus you won't get ads in your email. So maybe not for you herb, but maybe not for me because, you know, we don't use email for business, but so, but if you use an email for business, you should pay for it. You should go to a company like fast mail or proton mail, or, oh, there are many, many companies island mail. There are million of them that do email and they, and it's their business and they pay attention and they have somebody on the other line. You can call in all of that, if you want free email. I think there's no question. Google's is the best gmail.com. It's certainly the biggest. So well, unless you use a Mac, do you use a Mac?

Caller 7 (01:49:12):
Yes.

Leo Laporte (01:49:13):
So apple might be a better choice in that case, you know, they have iCloud mail and you can have it address herb@icloud.com or herb@me.com. That's free because you're already in effect paying for it by buying an apple product. You can buy more storage if you want. And I think Apple's security and folk curity and focus on privacy is much better than Google's. So maybe, maybe for you, iCloud would be a good choice.

Caller 7 (01:49:44):
Well, sounds good. My only problem with that is where I live at and T mail or my computer, my internet is at yeah. One about 1.8 megabytes top.

Leo Laporte (01:49:59):
Yeah. Well E the good news is email is a good choice because it's doesn't need speed. It might take a while to get your email, but it doesn't need speed. I think it's almost always a mistake to say, well, well at, and T's my internet service provider. So I'm gonna use the free email that they provide. The worst email comes from your internet service provider. In every respect they spy on you. They don't care if it's working, it's not their primary business. It's always an afterthought. So just because you have at and T as your internet service provider or your phone company, I still, I think apple would be a good choice and actually outlook.com Microsoft's solution. If you're a windows, user is not a bad choice either at least they're making money from you in other ways. So, and they kind of want to keep you happy.

Caller 7 (01:50:44):
Well, I understand and appreciate that now,

Leo Laporte (01:50:48):
And the speed. Isn't the speed. Shouldn't matter. Now that's very slow for surfing the internet. Yes. That's not gonna be great.

Caller 7 (01:50:55):
Yeah. I'll that drives me nuts, but

Leo Laporte (01:50:56):
Yeah, I don't, that's another problem. You should definitely get the best you can. I know it's expensive.

Caller 7 (01:51:04):
Do you know anything about Hughes satellites?

Leo Laporte (01:51:07):
Satellite's not great. Are you far enough away? You're kind out of the out of the area of the phone company kind of, they only go about two miles and then it gets deteriorat deteriorates.

Caller 7 (01:51:18):
It's it's a old phone system. Yeah.

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

Caller 7 (01:51:23):
HB and T it's called U and it's they have, it's not great cable. 

Leo Laporte (01:51:28):
Does your cable company offer internet?

Caller 7 (01:51:31):
No, there's no cable where I live. Yeah. You know, Rancho Santa Fe.

Leo Laporte (01:51:35):
Yeah. I don't, I, I mean, I know where it is, but I don't, I don't know it well. Yeah.

Caller 7 (01:51:39):
So, so they, some of the areas have the high speed mail, but it goes from a joint connection by way of 80 year old wires to the

Leo Laporte (01:51:51):
House. Yeah. It's kind of amazing. It works at all. One point a megabits is amazing. <Laugh> yeah. Hughes is expensive and they have caps, you know, Elon has promised Elon Musk has promised that Starlink will provide good wireless in rural areas like yours, but that's also expensive. He's 500 bucks for the dish and then 110 bucks a month. So, and satellite internet generally is not very good. It's gonna be better than 1.8 megabits. Yeah. Yeah. This is a problem in rural areas in this country. We just don't have good choices if at and T ever upgrades its Uverse to fiber, maybe, maybe,

Caller 7 (01:52:33):
Well, they've made promises. I had a 56 K when everybody else was in the gigabytes and they made promise promising I guess if I go to apple, I have to that's a whole new email address.

Leo Laporte (01:52:46):
It will be a new email address, but this is a good time to do it because you still have access to your old account. You can have it automatically forwarded to your new address, or you can have your mail client pick it up. I would use Apple's mail program given their slow internet and let it, you know, just run all the time and it'll keep your email. It'll keep it downloaded. You don't have to use the web browser to go to your email. You can just open it on your desktop. And so the speed won't be an issue and you can have it go check the old mailbox and then start adding to your signature. Hey, by the way, I've moved. My new email address is X, Y, z@icloud.com.

Caller 7 (01:53:24):
Oh, okay. All right. Great. Thank you. Thanks. Thanks for taking

Leo Laporte (01:53:27):
My call. Always a pleasure. Good to talk to you. I, I do know Rancho Santa Fe is beautiful. This is the price you pay for living in a beautiful part of the country. Generally, there's a direct trade off between the beauty of your surroundings and the quality of your internet, the denser, you know, the population, the tighter jammed you are, the more likely there's gonna be internet service provider there who says, Hey, it's worth digging a trench out to those that block because there's a thousand people there I can make money from when you're one person per square mile, nobody's gonna give you internet service. It's just too darn expensive. The good news is I, I had high hopes for Starlink. Those hopes have kind of been dashed. We were promised that as more satellites went up to speed would improve. That doesn't seem to be the case. It's really not designed as I was hoping it was to handle a lot of people. So, and it's very pricey still. In fact, they just raise the price. So that's not the solution I was hoping for. It's always good. When you can get competition right, then the companies go, oh, oh, we might lose herb.

Leo Laporte / Rod Pyle (01:54:38):
In this case, they don't seem to care. Eighty eight, eighty eight, Leo, the phone number rod pile's coming up in just a little bit, our space guy and and a surprise visit from Dick de Bartolo, our gizmo wizard. He's gonna have a gadget of the week in just a bit. Stay here, Roderick. Hello. How are you? I am, well, how are you? I'm good. I, I made a, a nice discovery yesterday. What was that? I was getting together my stuff from a little Arctic track in August. And I thought, you know, I, I can't just have one of anything cuz technology fails. And I know they only have power up there a few hours a day, cuz it's all on generator. And I thought I need a backup laptop. Gee, will I get a, I better talk to Leo? You know, it'd be nice to get something that I could charge with solar batteries, maybe an iPad or something.

Leo Laporte / Rod Pyle (01:55:30):
And I dug out my MacBook air from 2010, <laugh> re loaded the latest operating system update. So there wasn't a bunch of crud running in the background. Yeah. Turned off the wifi cuz there isn't any up there. Yeah. And ran it where the word processor going for 10 hours on that 12 year old, old battery. Oh so I guess that's it. There's your solution to apple man. You already have what you need and that's light and thin. Yeah. That's the one he pulled out of a Manila envelope. <Laugh> so I guess the question is I'll have to figure out, apparently you could charge those off of like phone bank batteries, but it's a little twitchy. So I'll have to figure that out. And solar you'd have to have a big array to really get any reasonable charging time. Well you do. Although, because it's sunny up there 24 hours a day, you know, if you, you have a lot of solar power banks.

Leo Laporte / Rod Pyle (01:56:19):
Yeah. You'd have the fold out solar panels. I'm testing one. Now it looks like it'll charge in about about eight hours. Oh that's not bad. Oh that's not bad test to verify, you know? Yeah. I would absolutely try before you go because mm-hmm <affirmative> those, those, those solar chargers are notoriously slow and small and not great. There's a reason they're inexpensive. Yeah. Yeah. <Laugh> yeah. So yeah. Cool. What do you wanna talk about today? Today? We're gonna talk about citizen science for Jupiter and the planetary alignment that's happening right now, which is very, I thought I missed it. No it's gonna be for, you know, they thing change really slowly cuz the planet's changed the sky very slowly. So you you're good for about a week, but you gotta get it. Oh neat. You gotta get it. Preon to see it, but it's worth it.

Leo Laporte / Rod Pyle (01:57:09):
I think why you get up PreOn tomorrow for a flight. So maybe I'll see it. Oh, where you going? Flying? my I'm taking my daughter back to Boston and then to Rhode Island to visit my mom. Haven't seen her in years cuz of COVID. Aw. Yeah. And so that's gonna be nice to spend the week in province, fly home on Friday for the shows. So that should be fun. There's gonna be a bunch of pinch hitting for you this week. Huh? Just Tuesday and Wednesday. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They'll be, you know, it's the, it's the usual suspects. That's nice to have these guys. I don't have to worry. It's in good hands. Yeah. I've been enjoying hearing an on warrior shows. I think it's it's fantastic. Mike is fantastic. Great time. Jason's fantastic. Yeah. So between the three of them, yeah, we can, we can get this stuff done. Yeah. Good to have a strong core like that. Yeah.

Leo Laporte / Rod Pyle (01:58:04):
You know, I've only been to Boston once and I did wasn't there long enough to see I was interviewing people at MIT, but I didn't get to see all the cool stuff. Oh Boston's I like I'm a new England. So I I'm fond of it except for the weather. I'm fond of it. Yeah. <laugh> we're gonna, I'm gonna give my daughter a, a crash course in new England. How to be in new England up. Has she ever been there? Yeah, but I doubt she remembers it. We, before, when she was probably a sophomore in high school, maybe a junior, we went to a few colleges. So she could, we went to brown and I think I took her to Yale, which took her to some colleges so she could see it. I went back to my, I know what it was. It was my 35th reunion in 2008. Oh my God. Is that right? <Laugh> no, it'd be later. It'd be 2000. I've been to one of those decades. 2012. Don't really miss him. Yeah. Yeah. I missed my 45th was this year. I missed that one. The big 50th coming up. Yeah. Bogie time to say hello to America's favorite comedian, Arizona. Lou, Hey Arizona, Lou

Caller 8 (01:59:20):
Monday. Maybe my mother made me match my mini mashed

Leo Laporte (01:59:23):
And a&ms mama made me match my and Ms.

Caller 8 (01:59:30):
But I did a lot more syllables than, but it's more fun.

Leo Laporte (01:59:34):
We were talking Scott Wilkinson. It is our home theater. Geek's wife is a vocal coach. And I said, should I be doing vocal warmups? Since I talk all day, she said, yeah, you might want to. So I found one on YouTube and one of the phrases is mommy made me match my M and Ms. Mommy made me match my S and I just like saying it

Caller 8 (01:59:57):
A little to it. I add a little to it. <Laugh> and if it would be possible for me to hook up with Yolan, since I do comedy across the country with a weak voice right now, I'm in the outer banks off the coast of North Carolina. During between shows

Leo Laporte (02:00:14):
How fun I just do. So you live in Arizona, but you travel all over doing shows.

Caller 8 (02:00:20):
Well, I've been com in 50 states and five countries. Is that now? Wow.

Leo Laporte (02:00:24):
Yeah. Are you on the, are you on your veteran's appreciation national tour right now?

Caller 8 (02:00:30):
Yes, I am. Leo.

Leo Laporte (02:00:33):
How cool is that

Caller 8 (02:00:34):
More information@arizonalead.com and see where I'm gonna be. I've got five states left on the tour.

Leo Laporte (02:00:42):
Wow. That's yeah. That's I'm looking at your dates here. You don't get to go home ever. You're this is you're the hardest working man in show business.

Caller 8 (02:00:52):
Well, I don't know about that, but I do know because your tour happens when I'm on two, when I'm on tour, I can't go with you on your crew.

Leo Laporte (02:01:03):
Aww. Well, tomorrow morning you're gonna be on beach 1 0 4 with Jody in the morning. And that's kill devil Hills, North Carolina. You're gonna go to Kittyhawk kites cuz I know you're big into kiting as well, right?

Caller 8 (02:01:19):
Yep. Yep.

Leo Laporte (02:01:20):
A merchandise signing on Tuesday and then you'll be on Tuesday night at the comedy and sunset and Haulover

Caller 3 (02:01:27):
It's a beach show,

Leo Laporte (02:01:29):
A beach show water, the sun, this watch the sun go down on Arizona. Lou

Caller 8 (02:01:36):
<Laugh> no, I don't know if I like that.

Leo Laporte (02:01:38):
Don't the sun go down. Do you sing during your show or just do tell jokes?

Caller 8 (02:01:45):
I, I do an official comedy show for whoever shows up for the show

Leo Laporte (02:01:49):
Comedy and sunset, the

Caller 8 (02:01:51):
Show we watch the sunset.

Leo Laporte (02:01:53):
Oh, that sounds great. That sounds that. And you're doing that every Tuesday in June. Bring a chair or blanket show. Oh this is the last one. Yeah, of course. June's almost over. Yeah. Yep. Yep. Oh Arizona. Lou. How cool.

Caller 8 (02:02:09):
Then I go to Maryland and Delaware, Ohio on Kansas and been back home and that's like a noble person for a while.

Leo Laporte (02:02:15):
Is it tough when you're touring like that? You don't you're sleep in a different bed every night. So that must be hard.

Caller 8 (02:02:22):
Nope, Nope. Nope. My minivan is my home.

Leo Laporte (02:02:26):
Ah, you bring your house on your, on your back. You're like a turtle. I get it.

Caller 8 (02:02:32):
What you hear about the old Dyna minivan though?

Leo Laporte (02:02:34):
<Laugh> there's a guy in town who's guess got a good sense of humor. Although I think he's kind of creepy. He drives around a minivan with blackout windows and is painted on the side free candy. It seems to me <laugh> seems to me asking for trouble kids stay away from that guy. 

Caller 8 (02:02:54):
That's if you could hook me up with Joanna.

Leo Laporte (02:02:57):
Oh I will. I'm just let's see how we can do, did we have your email?

Caller 8 (02:03:02):
Put me on hold, put me on hold and I'll give me information.

Leo Laporte (02:03:06):
I will we'll get you. Joanna's she has a website and everything she's you can sign up there and she's great

Caller 8 (02:03:13):
Thousand emails a day though. So,

Leo Laporte (02:03:15):
Well, we're gonna make her famous if we keep this up. But my, my I'm just like you, I, I thought, you know, here I am, I'm talking all day and all night and my wife says, you know you know, I, you never talk unless there's an audience. And I said, well, I'm protecting my, my voice.

Caller 8 (02:03:32):
You ought to try doing a comedy show with a voice. That sounds like Martha Stewart.

Leo Laporte (02:03:38):
<Laugh> it's a good thing.

Caller 8 (02:03:42):
<Laugh> why I called you though. You wanna know why?

Leo Laporte (02:03:44):
Oh yeah. Why'd you call me?

Caller 8 (02:03:46):
I have lots of faith. People who requested my friend on Facebook and they're people that I don't really know personally, there may be people that have seen me in comedy.

Leo Laporte (02:03:56):
Well, I would, you know, this is audience. So it's a different answer for just a, a normal person who doesn't have a, a profession that puts 'em in front of an audience. But for you, your Facebook is a bus is a business generator. I,

Caller 8 (02:04:13):
Yeah. And I'm just wondering, is there a hazard to either me or the people that I friend in friending people? Or can I just willing nearly

Leo Laporte (02:04:22):
No, let 'em all let, 'em all friend you the, the, the only hazard there's several hazards on Facebook, obviously, but you're in control of those hazards. First of all, of course, you're giving them information about you, which they sell in advertising. That's a minimal hazard. I mean, that's just life. That's how you pay for it. It's a free service. I wouldn't worry too much about that. Especially for the wor if the world's oldest comedian, I don't think that's gonna be a risk for you. <Laugh> but, but and then there's the bigger hazard, which is malware. Don't click be careful about clicking links from strangers. You know, what happens to a people on Facebook? You might even seen this, you get an email from, or a Facebook message from somebody says, wow Lou, I had no idea. You were such a wild man. What were you doing last night? Do you wanna see the video? And, and you go, wait a minute. What I was at home last night, I was in my van down by the river. I what happened? So there's a link on that message.

Caller 8 (02:05:21):
A warning to your listeners is I got an email supposedly from Facebook saying you know, this is your code to get back into your account. Exactly suspended. Exactly. I

Leo Laporte (02:05:34):
Went to my

Caller 8 (02:05:35):
Facebook account and it seemed to operate normally. So I figured that was someone trying to get my

Leo Laporte (02:05:40):
Stuff. Yeah. If it asks you for a password don't yeah. And so this, the problem with this email that says, what did you did last night? Here's the video, you click the link. It looks like a normal video link, but it doesn't play. It says, oh, your flash is add data or your software's add date, download the new updater and you go, well, yeah, I really gotta find out what I did last night. So you download the updater, but it's not an updater it's malware. Yep. So be very careful about clicking links fine to talk to people you don't know on Facebook, you know, it's no worse than talking to people at your shows. It's in fact, I think for you, this is a valuable publicity tool. I think I know a lot of comics for whom Facebook is their number one tool for building audience.

Leo Laporte / Rod Pyle (02:06:23):
So go ahead and have a great show. Lou space coming up next space, the final frontier space. These are the voyages of the Starship pile. <Laugh> we gotta come up with a better accent done. You know, if they, if I get one of those messages of Facebook, I just think to myself, you know, I, I don't care how bad the video is. Cuz all PR is good PR and <laugh> my life just isn't exciting enough to yeah. To really put me over the edge of where. Yeah. You know, people, people wanna stare at me glowing with my double chin while I'm typing my computer. That's their problem. I look at my email these days and you know, half of it is fishing attempts. It's really remarkable. Yeah. Well, especially you though, cuz you're a public figure. Maybe I don't think it's personally targeting me, but it's a lot of, oh, you know this is your bank chase, which I don't have an account with.

Leo Laporte / Rod Pyle (02:07:18):
Oh, somebody tried to log in you better, you know we're or we're gonna cancel your thing if you don't log in and stuff like that. You know, I know it's fake, but it's it's I think for somebody who's not prepared for the yeah. Depth to which bad guys will go, it's kind of a shocker. I miss all my Nigerian princes. Oh, I still get those. And they're trust funds I still get and they must work or they wouldn't send them cuz it costs something, you know? Yeah. But not much. Yeah. It doesn't have to work more in one in a thousand or one in 10,000 or a hundred thousand. Cuz you know, so how come Dick's coming on today? Because he was doing something yesterday. Oh cool. And he said, well can I come on Sunday? I said, well, you sure can because Rod's at the half pass and you could be at the quarter of and yeah.

Leo Laporte / Rod Pyle (02:08:11):
<Affirmative> yeah. Yeah. Well that's great. Yeah. I'm gonna hang around. Yeah. I don't think we're gonna get to any more calls unfortunately, because we got, we got stuff. We got people got programming. Ah yeah. You know, entertainment coming. Yeah. I filled now every hour with at least one with a one at least one contributor. Now I'm wondering if I've over. If I have I over done it, but it's fun. Isn't it? I it's great. I think cuz it adds variety and yeah. If it's just calls, you know, the, the quality of the contributor is higher quality, both in content and audio. So I feel like that's and you know, you can kinda look ahead to, oh, I, I really like this guy or that guy and so well, and you've got a great crew, you know? I mean the people that you've, you've selected for this I'll include myself are, you know, bring, bring lot to the table.

Leo Laporte / Rod Pyle (02:09:07):
That's exactly. Right's fun. Yeah. I find it really appealing. Yeah. And Dick's a hoot <laugh> oh, I love Dick. I love 'em all. You're all my buddies. Yeah. The woods, man. I remember when I got locked outta Yahoo mail. Oh it's time. Isn't it? I remember when I got Yed at locked at it. Yeah man. I, so I, I was working at Cal tech and I, I, you know, I'd had very little time to, to mess with this and it was urgent. So you know, you try getting ahold of Yahoo. Good luck. Nothing happens. So I finally called PAC bell cuz apparently the issue was, I'd been with the Yahoo a long time and it's when they detached from PAC bell that a bunch of the emails got jammed up. So I actually reached a woman at PAC bell that said, I'm not supposed to do this, but I'm gonna make some calls. I'll call you back. And she solved the problem for me. Nice by hand. Yeah. I mean that never happens. Right. And I was like, can I send you something nice? She said, nah, we can't take gifts. But thanks for the thought. But she was my hero man. Not to be repeated. I'm sure. Yeah. You only get one hero. Yeah. That's it. You get one hero per you. You got one hero now you're done. Yep. <Laugh> all right. I am going to fire up. El Elton sir. Elton. Okay.

Leo Laporte / Rod Pyle (02:10:30):
He's our rocket guy. Rod pile. Author of space. 2.0 editor in chief of ad Astra magazine@spacedots.org. He keeps us in touch with the things happening out there. Hello rod. Hey, how are you? Did you see the Mars Rover that it was running windows 98. That's getting its first update. <Laugh> what we know better than that. <Laugh> it's running Linux. I would, I would think, well, let me see if I could find that story. Oh my God. Yeah. everybody sent it to me. That's hilarious. Yeah. I mean it's, it's a little weird here from windows 98 to Mars 22, this 20 oh year old spaceship. The Mars express just got old express. The Mar the Mar it's the European it's ESA. Yeah. It's the European space agency. It's their lowest cost and most successful mission. 19 years after its launch, the Mars advanced radar for subsurface and ionic.

Leo Laporte / Rod Pyle (02:11:35):
I'm sorry. I fear sounding MARSIS it's an instrument on the Mars express is finally getting an update. It was running cuz it was launched 20 years ago. Windows 98. Oh my God. We don't NASA doesn't we don't no NASA. Doesn't I'd have to check on Issa, but I'd be surprised cuz those chips, as we've talked about before are pretty old designs cuz they've all embedded for radiation environments and what a waste of overhead. It would be to be running windows and they'd be better off running dos, you know? Yeah. Or CPM or something. Yeah. I'm kind of, it's kind of surprising. I'll check that out. Yeah. It's interesting. ESA, Mars, express scientist. Colin Wilson says it really is like having a brand new instrument on board Mars express. <Laugh> almost 20 years after launch until all those windows pop up asking me if I wanna clean my system.

Leo Laporte / Rod Pyle (02:12:29):
Yeah, exactly. Windows 98. It must have been like an embedded version of windows or so I can't imagine it was the consumer version of windows 90. They wouldn't do that to themselves. They'd do that to themselves anyway. What's up in the world of so Hey, so Hey, you got a cool story. You can be, you too can be a citizen science hero. So a new program called the Jian vortex hunter, which is what a great name you could make a whole TV show just on that <laugh> yeah. Has been launched and it invites the public to aid NASA and their affiliates and researching Jupiter's atmosphere. So you remember the Juno probe it's been up there since 2016, orbiting Jupiter and a big part of its mission was measuring Jupiter's gravitational field and so forth. But they did put a camera on it and originally it was not expected to do a whole lot.

Leo Laporte / Rod Pyle (02:13:17):
It was kind of a citizen outreach tool, but it ended up being very valuable for research. They thought it was going gonna last a few years, but, and go out in 2017 cuz of all the radiation, but it's still going. So NASA and the Southwest Southwest research Institute got together with a site called Zooniverse. I sent you the link. I think so maybe show notes. I have the video. Yes, yes, yes. Yeah. And so you can go log onto that site and sign up and read some instructions and download the copious imagery from that camera looking down at Jupiter surface. Well not the surface, the cloud tops. And they're looking for people to help identify vortex patterns, to like little hurricanes or cyclones to help them call through these tens of thousands of images. So they can figure out more about how the upper atmosphere works and therefore Intuit how the lower atmosphere works.

Leo Laporte / Rod Pyle (02:14:07):
So is this, this isn't just a stunt. This, they really want people to circle vortex. Yeah. So this is really cuz sometimes you see this stuff, it's like, ah, that's kid stuff, you know, they just wanna get people engaged. This is no they need help. Cuz the crew at Southwest research Institute and the people operating in the camera is called Mailin Mike Mailin systems. You know, they're very small units at this point and they, because they didn't plan for the camera to last as long, right. So they said, well, we got all this data. It's gonna take us years. But if we can get citizens involved in helping identify this stuff we can figure out about what's going on, which is neat. This is the kind of thing a computer could do pretty well. Maybe they just don't have that, that computer hardware to do it.

Leo Laporte / Rod Pyle (02:14:51):
It may be a matter of horsepower and it may be a matter of just wanting to engage the public more. But I, I do think there's a a good human component. They've got 760 volunteers already. Yeah. It's easy to go to the website zooniverse.org and sign up to be a Jovi and vortex center. It doesn't look that hard. Really. You can pretty much tell yeah. What a vortex looks like in a turbulent region. Cloud bands are a little harder. I don't know. What do you think? Is there a vortex here? Is that a vortex? I don't know. Doesn't look like what it's a circle, but I haven't, I haven't gone through my training yet. Yeah. Yeah. And you can switch to a dark theme, so makes it a little easier to see you go, you know, this kind of thing actually probably does work better than machine intelligence.

Leo Laporte / Rod Pyle (02:15:38):
If you get enough people doing it, maybe you' got a hundred different people looking at the same image. And if 76% said, that's a vortex, I get you. That's a very high accuracy rate, much better than, and that's one of the things they talked about is, is, you know, comparing the, the, the numbers as they come in. So right. I just think it's a cool way to get involved. Cuz I, I remember I met Mike Malin years ago and he's developed the cameras that went on almost all the Mars spacecraft and now this outer solar system mission and just a brilliant guy. Well, and they're backlogged. I mean these are pictures from 2018, we're looking at. Right, right. So so that's really cool. And I think it's a great idea. They probably got tired of looking at 'em they probably oh yeah. Well, you know, those guys are pretty dedicated and there was a guy working with him who spent, you know, a year and a half going through just pictures of the March and surface.

Leo Laporte / Rod Pyle (02:16:31):
But you're kind of exploring at that resolution. I guess you're looking for caves and well, it's fun and so forth. Yeah. Yeah. And it's exciting cuz it's a chance to do that without having to sit in a classroom and get a PhD in planetary geology. Yeah. Yeah. Speaking of planets. Yes. If we get up in the wee hours of the morning, anytime between about three and five and go outside and look to the east and the PreOn sky, you'll be able to see five planets clustered there, which only happens about every 18 years. So Mars, Venus, Jupiter and Saturn will be easily evident. Mercury comes up last just before sunrise and it's a little harder to spot, but those are all naked eye objects, better with binoculars or a telescope. Of course, if you have a telescope or really go to the pair of binoculars, you can spot Ure in a Neptune as well.

Leo Laporte / Rod Pyle (02:17:19):
And the Crescent moon will be joining them a couple of days. So this is really, that's very wonderful. You know, you love these, these, these moments of, of incredible nature, right? It's it's a little bit like a solar clips. So I'm gonna get up tomorrow morning and try and figure out how to look to the east past all the condos that surround me and that's cars. That's a condo <laugh> yeah. Well there's a lot of that here. <Laugh> and space.com just announced they're seeking images taken by us, the readers. So if, if you do find something that you, you like and you make a happy snap that turns out well, you can send it to space photos@space.com, nice partner in the podcast. Yeah. That's really really cool. Isn't it? Oh, and if you can't see it it's online. So you just do a search for planetary briefing.

Leo Laporte / Rod Pyle (02:18:07):
I remember when you know, you see the moon and is it Venus a line a lot, right? You see the two of them kind of like two little stars hanging in the sky. Venus is the brightest. Yeah. To next. Yeah. And so I remember when my daughter was little getting her up and saying, look, there's the moon and that's and that's Venus. That was funny, which was good for about three minutes. Right. Said, dad, can we okay? Can I go to bed now? Yeah. It's kinda like, no, you know, it's funny. Maybe it's that particular bond that father and daughter have, but to this day, 25 years later, she remembers it. She'll bring it up. She say, I remember that night, you got me up to see. So it's a good, this is a good thing to do with your kids. It gives him an it's great.

Leo Laporte / Rod Pyle (02:18:49):
Yeah, yeah, yeah. A little, I used to take my, my son out to meteor showers and he still remembers and asks, what are we going out? See a meteor shower. It's a great bonding go out to the desert or the mountains. And yeah. So the best time is right. Quiet evening. Right before Dawn is when you'll see the most stars go online and look at what you're gonna be looking for. Cause that'll give you some idea. Yeah. Cause it's not exactly. I mean, there's other things up there. Yeah. But you can find there's a good guy that NASA for viewing Griff observatory website also has a good guide. So it gives you an image of what to expect. You know, if you have one of the, you can phones like the pixel six that does Astro photography, get it all set up and get a nice shot and send it to space.com. Rod hosts a show called this week in space with te Mallek of space.com. Yes, sir. And you can hear it right here on our TWiT network. Twi.Tv/T w I S this week in space. Thank you rod. Thank you.

Leo Laporte / Rod Pyle (02:19:46):
Now I have to hang up on you quickly. Okay. So that we can get Dick coming, right? Yeah. All right. Pleasure. Have a great week. See you. I'll be listening in. All right. Thanks. See ya. All yours, Johnny. Hello, Dicky

Dick DeBartolo (02:20:02):
There. Hey Leo, how you doing

Leo Laporte (02:20:05):
Pal? I am great. A rare Sunday appearance.

Dick DeBartolo (02:20:09):
Yes. Thank you for letting me do a shift.

Leo Laporte (02:20:12):
Oh, of course. Of course.

Dick DeBartolo (02:20:15):
I had to go outta town. Very frightening.

Leo Laporte (02:20:17):
Where did you

Dick DeBartolo (02:20:19):
Goning <laugh>

Leo Laporte (02:20:21):
Up? Why'd you have to go visit a friend at sing. Sing.

Dick DeBartolo (02:20:23):
Yeah, exactly. Yeah. You know, I, yeah. You know, it's really hard to get a file in a chocolate chip cookie

Leo Laporte (02:20:29):
<Laugh> now, now did you, you obviously didn't drive.

Dick DeBartolo (02:20:34):
No, no. Took it took the train. Which train? Cause it runs along. Yeah. It runs along the hot. How fun

Leo Laporte (02:20:39):
Is that? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I always wanted to, when Abby was at Bart, I thought, oh, it'd be so much fun. She used to take the training into the city all the time. I thought, oh, that would be a nice to fly to New York and take the train up. We just never got around to it. All right, here we go. Oh, okay. Here he is dancing on to our stage. A rare Sunday appearance for our digital gizmo wizard, the GWiz Dick de Bartolo mad magazine's mad writer. Hello? Dickie D

Dick DeBartolo (02:21:11):
Leah. How you doing pal?

Leo Laporte (02:21:13):
Couldn't be better. We missed, missed you yesterday on the show, but I'm really glad we get you today.

Dick DeBartolo (02:21:18):
Oh no, it's super. It's super, super. And I had a fun thing. Pep com had another live event last week and the, these are the,

Leo Laporte (02:21:28):
These are like the kind of trade shows, but they're small. So you get to see a small number of gizmos and gadgets, but there's often yeah. Without

Dick DeBartolo (02:21:38):
And

Leo Laporte (02:21:38):
Crowds and no. Yeah. And good food. Small crowds. Oh,

Dick DeBartolo (02:21:41):
Well not so much. <Laugh> because of COVID now everything is in a little box. Oh

Leo Laporte (02:21:47):
That's that's so fun. No more chocolate fountains, huh?

Dick DeBartolo (02:21:50):
No, no.

Leo Laporte (02:21:52):
Many's the time Dick and I have wandered the food tables at a pep event. Chowing down on burgers while laughing at products.

Dick DeBartolo (02:22:03):
No, I know. Well, I remember that you said the, the focus of this is terrible. I said, Leo, you chocolate covered the webcam.

Leo Laporte (02:22:10):
I, it was

Dick DeBartolo (02:22:13):
It all

Leo Laporte (02:22:13):
Over. I sear it all over. So what do you, what did you find

Dick DeBartolo (02:22:15):
For, you know what Leon I read about this, but I never saw it in persons. It's the Kodak reels, which is the eight millimeter and super eight digital converter for your old

Leo Laporte (02:22:29):
Movies. It's funny. We were talking about film photography with Chris Marwar last hour. Oh. You

Dick DeBartolo (02:22:34):
Know, 50 years ago. Oh, I'm sorry. Go ahead.

Leo Laporte (02:22:37):
Well, I was just saying, somebody was saying, how do I convert my eight millimeter film?

Dick DeBartolo (02:22:42):
Oh, well, great. And 50 years ago I kept a video of video at aunt mill millimeter camera in the prop room.

Leo Laporte (02:22:49):
I know

Dick DeBartolo (02:22:50):
I had front people. You

Leo Laporte (02:22:51):
Had amazing films that you shot backstage at the match game with Betty White. And in fact you made a, like, you were trying to make a murder mystery with Betty White. Oh,

Dick DeBartolo (02:23:00):
We made a musical,

Leo Laporte (02:23:02):
A musical musical. Okay. Yeah. I thought you murdered the, the score. And that's why I thought it was a murder mystery.

Dick DeBartolo (02:23:06):
No, I murdered the script, but that's a, that's

Leo Laporte (02:23:08):
A whole

Dick DeBartolo (02:23:09):
Of story. So when I had to send the videos away to have them translated or digitized, I was so worried. I called the company and explained, and the guy said, give me the FedEx number, send it overnight. First thing I'll be here. I will personally scan these myself. And if, if I can look at them, you can have the digital copy for free. I should feel free. Wow. Take a look at them. So the Kodak reals is a way for you to do it at home. Okay. So it does the old 3, 4, 5, and seven inch, super eight and eight millimeter. You feed it into it's, it's almost like threading a projector. It

Leo Laporte (02:23:51):
Looks like a little projector with, but without the light.

Dick DeBartolo (02:23:54):
Exactly. Exactly. And then there's an 8.8 little megapixel sense, little megale sensor in there. Now you don't watch it at first because it takes two seconds per frame. So the lady said, if you have a little reel of film, it's probably gonna take two hours for this.

Leo Laporte (02:24:10):
You do this overnight or something.

Dick DeBartolo (02:24:12):
Exactly. But there's an SD card in there. And then she showed me, she brought up on the screen 10 videos that they had done. You can watch them on this if you want, it's a five inch screen, but then it has a USB out. So you can hook it up to a computer or your big screen TV, but you also have, that's

Leo Laporte (02:24:30):
A great way card. So you can transfer it over and burn a DVD or whatever. That's right.

Dick DeBartolo (02:24:35):
Exactly. Exactly. And that way you don't have to worry that the videos left, especially videos, you can't replace. Yeah. Left your house.

Leo Laporte (02:24:43):
Yeah. Here you are at the Kodak booth shooting this on super eight. I hope

Dick DeBartolo (02:24:49):
<Laugh> yes. Yes I did. I did. Yeah. And we dubbed the sound in later. Yeah. There it is. It's pretty neat. So 

Leo Laporte (02:24:55):
So is there a Kodak anymore? I thought they <laugh>,

Dick DeBartolo (02:24:57):
You know what? I, there there is a Kodak. I met someone who was at the real Kodak. It's small, it's small group up in Rochester, but mainly they licensed their name out to different companies. Okay.

Leo Laporte (02:25:09):
Yeah. So this is some other company that makes this,

Dick DeBartolo (02:25:12):
I, I believe this is not one of the original people.

Leo Laporte (02:25:15):
Yeah. But still it's, you know?

Dick DeBartolo (02:25:18):
Yeah. And also they do keep track of how well built everything is because it's, that's their brand on.

Leo Laporte (02:25:24):
Yeah. They auto. Yeah. And you know, a lot of this film that they're scanning is old Kodak, eight millimeter film.

Dick DeBartolo (02:25:31):
Absolutely. So

Leo Laporte (02:25:32):
It's all in the family.

Dick DeBartolo (02:25:34):
Yeah. Yes.

Leo Laporte (02:25:34):
Neat. Yeah. So for those who don't know a Dick, he comes by and visits us every week with a gadget or something like that that he collects in his travels to sing, sing and elsewhere <laugh> and this was not in sing, sing this, this,

Dick DeBartolo (02:25:49):
No, this is

Leo Laporte (02:25:50):
Not, this was in Manhattan. All right. In Manhattan. But you may not know that Dick not only was mad magazines and still is mad magazines, you know you know, writer, MAD's Madis,

Dick DeBartolo (02:26:03):
Mad writer. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (02:26:04):
And, and a member of the usual gang of idiots. Which, and I read you when I was a kid, my whole life I've been reading Dick de Bart's movie parodies and so forth, but he also was a writer on the match game. Did you post the videos that you

Dick DeBartolo (02:26:19):
Shot? You know, they were, they were up for about, oh a minute and a half because all the mu you, I dubbed a track on it. Oh, all the music was

Leo Laporte (02:26:28):
So YouTube took it down immediately.

Dick DeBartolo (02:26:30):
I took it down immediately. I, I, I, I used another catalog of a company I used to work for and that got taken down in two days because the company was sold and they didn't recognize that they had given me <laugh>. Anyway,

Leo Laporte (02:26:46):
This is historic stuff. I mean, not just Betty White. You had, well, who else did you have on this?

Dick DeBartolo (02:26:51):
Oh, van Johnson. Kitty Carlisle

Leo Laporte (02:26:55):
I mean just big names from TV in the sixties, but also movies.

Dick DeBartolo (02:27:00):
Lauren BCA, Lauren book, MCCA, Mansfield,

Leo Laporte (02:27:03):
Jane Mansfield. <Laugh>. Wow. well I'm gonna come over to your house and everybody's invited. Okay. Very good. Yeah. Yeah. We'll all go over and look at those movies, the movies. Okay. Now you can, by the way you can put it the movies, YouTube didn't want you to see something like that. That would

Dick DeBartolo (02:27:18):
Be good. Yeah. That would be,

Leo Laporte (02:27:19):
It's a good selling point band band on YouTube. Finally. See the

Dick DeBartolo (02:27:26):
<Laugh> the see buddy, white as you've never seen her as

Leo Laporte (02:27:30):
You've never seen her band by YouTube. I like that. That's gonna help sales a lot.

Dick DeBartolo (02:27:36):
I think so.

Leo Laporte (02:27:37):
Yeah. Yeah. If you wanna get more information about this. I think actually probably pretty useful Kodak reels, eight millimeter and super eight film digitizer. Here's what you do. You go to his website? GI whiz. G I Z w I Z dot B Iz. What's the, what's the first responders Alfred link there. What's that?

Dick DeBartolo (02:27:59):
Oh, you know what? Someone asked me if I could give free Alfred pictures to first responders. And I said, absolutely. I'll I'll put a link up and they can just print

Leo Laporte (02:28:07):
Out. You come and essential workers. That's exactly. That's cool. That's really cool. There's so much stuff on your site. It's really kind of like going into Dick's attic. Of course I'm proud to say there's the button that says the GIW visits, the tech guy, that's the gadgets he mentions on this show every week, but also his visits to ABC world news. Now the, what the heck is it contest coming to an end? Just a couple more days. Yeah. What is that blue blob? There are six autograph copies of mad magazine available for anybody who can figure out the right answer 18 or no, I'm sorry. 12 for the best wrong answer. 18 total. And you're plan for this mad magazine, Alfred Newman as a, in a squirrel suit. I <laugh>. Okay. Well, they'll have the issue after that one. Oh, it's not.

Leo Laporte (02:28:56):
Oh, this is the, this is August. You're gonna get the eptember. This is eptember. Yeah. The people. Yeah. September. Okay. There you go. And and you only have until the end of June. So just a couple more days to play that game. There's lots of other stuff in there, including match game memorabilia. If your match game fan, Dick saved the match game and wrote all those, what, you know, fans fan Don dumb, Donald dumb, Donald dumb, so dumb. And then all those questions we remember for 18 years, he's got a lot of match game memorabilia, dumb Dora, and dumb Donald and the gang await you. GI whiz.biz. Dick have a wonderful week. You too, buddy. Take care. You next week, I will be here my Saturday on Saturday with Dickie D thanks to all of you who have joined us on the program this week.

Leo Laporte (02:29:49):
Thanks. Especially of course, to professor Laura, our musical director, and yesterday, Jeremiah, who did a, a bang up job, playing the music, pushing the buttons thanks to Kim Schaffer, our phone angel each and every episode. Thanks, especially those to those of you who listen. And those of you who call. We really appreciate it. Thank you for being here. I'm Leo Laporte your tech guy. I'll be back next week. I hope you will too. In the meanwhile, please have a great safe geek week. Bye. Well, that's it for the tech eye show for today. Thank you so much for being here and don't forget twit T 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 week in tech, you'll find it all@twit.tv and I'll be back next week with another great tech guy show. Thanks for joining me. We'll see you next time.