The Tech Guy Episode 1930 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, September 25th, 2022. This is episode 1930. Enjoy. This episode of the Tech Guy Podcast is brought to you by New Relic. Use the data platform made for the curious. Right now you can get access to the whole New Relic platform and a hundred gigabytes of data per month. Free forever. No credit card required. Sign up at newrelic.com/twit. And by 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@cachefly.com.com.

Leo Laporte (00:01:00):
Oh. Hi. Oh, hi <laugh>. How are you today? Leo Laport here, the tech guy. Hi <laugh>. Good to see you. Time to talk tech. Yes. 88. 88. Ask Leo the phone number. (888) 827-5536. That's toll free from anywhere on the US or Canada outside that area. You could still call, but you have to use you know, Skype out or something like that. Some sort of vape solution to call 88. 88. Ask Leo and what can we talk about? Anything on your mind, Something's not working. You want some help fixing it? That seems to be the number one cause to call, but you know, we can also talk about stuff. What's going on in the world? I feel like we're making oh. And I also, I will at some point talk about, cuz I just, I got UPS came through yesterday and I got my new Apple Watch Ultra.

Leo Laporte (00:01:53):
The big one, the big boy with a band that designed for going over my wetsuit, which I'm not wearing today, but I could cuz it go right over it. And and I set it up so that if I <laugh> if I go under water, it will tell me how deep I am and how cold it is right there. Automatically. Don't think that's gonna ha hope that that would be bad. That would be, that's maybe that would happen at the same time as the crash detection feature, which is kind of cool. That's in the new iPhone as well as the new Apple Watch where if you, you know, if you experience some severe Gs because your car hits something, it'll say, Are you all right? And if you don't respond, it'll call 9 1 1. Already people have said that it's working, so I mean you have to get in a crash to test it.

Leo Laporte (00:02:45):
I think haven't had a chance to test the satellite feature either. I'm not really kind of, I'm not that kind of go off into the wilderness far and far away from everybody else, kind of, kind of guy. So I don't know if I'll be able to test those features. Really. This is what they call an aspirational product. That's what they call it. Just like, you know, a guy in a big city driving a four by four with snorkel. I aspire someday to dive, sky jump, sky dive, scuba dive, nose dive. And I'll have the watch to do it when I do. So yeah, I like it. And battery life's really amazing. So I wore it all night. You're supposed to wear it to bed at least for the first five nights to calibrate the temperature feature cuz it measures temperature while you're asleep. It's the only good time to measure it.

Leo Laporte (00:03:32):
And by the way, they don't call it body temperature, they call it wrist temperature cuz that's where the watch is. And I'm not particularly interested in the retroactive ovulation feature, but I guess it might have some utility, you know, like in this day and age of covid, you know, a temperature that's going up, maybe an indicator something, I don't know. But anyway, I wore it to bed. It only lost about 4% of its total battery overnight, eight hours. And then, you know, when I got in the shower, I didn't wear the watch in the shower. I could, I could cuz it's a diving watch, but I didn't, I didn't wanna know how deep I was or cold I was. I I put it on the charger and 2020 minutes later it's fully charged again. So that's kind of cool. They say this, you can get this a few days through a few days in a track. Isn't amazing that I am singing the praises of a wrist watch that will last a few days. <Laugh>.

Leo Laporte (00:04:27):
Well, you know, that's the way it is. You don't have to wind it. Anyway, I don't know. It's cool. It's cool. That actually wasn't what I was gonna talk about today. Also got the new AirPods too. Oh, maybe I will talk about that. The new air. See, Apple put out a lot of stuff. Don't worry, don't worry. Microsoft's putting out a lot of stuff on the 12th of October. Google's putting out a lot of stuff on the sixth. There'll be other companies to talk about at that, that time. But Apple, you know, we're, we're getting the Apple stuff. The new AirPods too, they claim double the noise cancellation. It's pretty good. I could barely hear my wife talking to me <laugh>. So that's, that's pretty good. I think it'd be fine on an airplane with jet noise. I think it'd be fine. The other <laugh>, gosh, I hope she's not listening.

Leo Laporte (00:05:14):
The other thing that's kind of interesting is they give you four different tips, as you know, with earbuds, things that go in your ear. And these AirPod pros go in your ear with little silicone earbuds. The better the seal, the better the sound. Of course it helps the noise cancellation, but even the base sounds much better if you get a good seal. So they have this new feature where you see, put in the AirPods with whatever tip it, you know, comes with a medium tip. And you go and it and it says, Okay, let's check to see how well it says. And it plays some music. And I guess the phone's microphone. You have to have an iPhone to do this. The phone's micro, of course you do, right? The phone's microphone somehow detects leakage. And and then says no. In fact, on the medium tips, he said, Nah, that's not a good seal.

Leo Laporte (00:06:01):
Push your left ear in a little more. It knew my left ear. So I, so I did that and I said, No, that's not a good seal. So then I took off the medium tips, put on the large tips cuz I have, I guess I have large ear holes. Who knew Apple knows. I then played the music on the phone, the thing did the thing, and it said, Oh, that's a good seal <laugh>. And they were right. It sounded better. They were right. They knew. I'm guessing the micro, I guess it's playing music, apparently stereos. So the microphones on the phone can tell which is left, which is the right and how much leakage and they're looking for minimizing the leakage. It's good. It didn't leak cuz I couldn't go any bigger. I had the biggest tips they had in there, but it worked.

Leo Laporte (00:06:45):
Then there's another really weird thing you do, and this is, I don't think this is new. I think this has been around for a while. You take a, you do a scan of your ear and this, it took, I took me a while to figure out I needed a mirror <laugh> hold a mirror in my right hand. Why? I held the phone in my left hand, pointed at my left ear, and then I used the mirror to make sure that the phone could see my ear. Otherwise, you have to turn your head and then you can't see the ear anymore. So I had to comp, this is Rube Goldberg thing. I'm standing in the bathroom holding mirrors and and then you have to kind slightly turn your head left and right while the phone is, it can't be too close too, It has to be 10 to 20 inches away. And it'll tell you it said, No, I'm too close. Stop. So it has to be exactly, I don't know, 10 to 20 inches away. And then you turn your head slightly and then eventually it goes, Okay, got it. And you do the other ear and then it says, I don't know, no idea how to test this. That's, that's gonna make s spatial audio better. You know, the round surround sound thing that Apple, you know, is all hot and bothered about these. It's so spatial. It's spatial spatial audio. Anyway, so I did that.

Leo Laporte (00:07:55):
I don't know <laugh>, it's kind of new H two chip and I don't know, you know, these are very expensive. 250 bucks. There are, there are, I believe less expensive and, and probably just as good certainly from audio Fidelity point of view, just as good earbuds. I think the Samsung Galaxy buds actually are quite good. Not the pros, just the, the low, low end ones are quite good and, you know, a hundred bucks less. But if you're an Apple person, you want to get, you know, I felt like I was the Apple night riding into battle as I got ready for work today. Put my AirPods on the lanyard around my neck. I put my Apple watch on my wrist. I put my Apple iPhone in my pocket and then put my air tags on my keys. And then, and then as I'm leaving the door, the my car says, You've left your MacBook behind.

Leo Laporte (00:08:50):
I know, I didn't really need it. That's a new thing. All of a sudden it's telling me now I've left my, my laptop behind. That would be good, I guess if I were leaving a coffee shop. Anyway I'm, you know, I'm actually, I think this is, I've had the Apple watch since that came out. I, I was kicking and screaming the whole way. I didn't really want the Apple Watch for a long time. I thought I was just like a side card to your phone. It's just a, like a, you know, another way to get your money. And, but over time what Apple's done and I have to give them, I, you know, when it's, when they do a good job, I gotta say it. They've slowly added features to the point where the Apple watch now is pretty darn cool. For instance, I could leave my phone here and I've put a little icon in the face of my watch for of my wife's face.

Leo Laporte (00:09:38):
And if I, if I tap it, I can call her or send her a text, but I don't even need my phone. I could do it from the watch as I'm hiking the wilderness or diving deep below the seat. I guess you probably couldn't do it under water up here, but that's kind, you know, so I can listen to music. There's music on the watch. Listen to books. There's books on the watch. I can call people, text people. Oh, I didn't, I forgot there's a siren. <Laugh>. Wait a minute. I haven't done this yet. I don't know how you do it. Oh, I'll have to say one other thing that was really cool with the old watch. With the old watch. I was at the rock concert on on Friday night, Roger Waters concert. And my watch almost immediately said, That's 90 db you should have ear protection.

Leo Laporte (00:10:29):
And then it said, that's a hundred db and I can even see a graph of the sound of the concert. It's monitoring how loud, which is great. Now, this siren, I'm gonna play this. This is just a test. This is only a test. Don't worry. This is not the emergency broadcast system. I already know I'm not supposed to do that, but I'm just, I've never played this siren. Should I push the button? Supposed to be like 89 decibel siren. What? What do you think, Kim? Should I press the button? Press the button. If, if you're in another room, if you hear this, tell me. Okay, ready?

Leo Laporte (00:11:05):
I guess you have to, That's not, that's not loud at all. Oh, it's getting louder. Oh wow. That's not good. Let's stop that right now. That shouldn't play that on the radio. You couldn't hear that in the other room. But the theory is, you might have heard it in the hall, but if you, it's not that loud. But if you stumbled and, and, and you, you know, you use your watch to call for help and the rescuers saying, Where are you? Where are you? You press that and they can somehow locate it. It's like making it sound in such a way that they can use some sort of device and they could find you. So that's, I guess, interesting. I neither plan to jump into the sea or fall down on a hike. I'm just gonna stay right here and answer your calls. 88. 88. Ask Leo. That's the phone number. (888) 827-5536. Toll free from anywhere in the US or Canada website. Tech guy labs.com has all the show notes and your calls are next. It wasn't that loud. So when you open the Siren app, it also gives you a choice. It says you could make an emergency call and it says, I'm a hundred percent battery. Let's do it again.

Leo Laporte (00:12:34):
This is getting louder. It's not that loud. It seems like it's getting louder. Maybe. Hmm. I think it's mostly like your <laugh>. You fell on the woods, you're under a bunch of leaves and and they're going, Where are you? And then you'd relay the siren and they can find you. I do. This is the special way Farer face, which has a lot of complications. It's very complicated. Look at those are all the complications.

Leo Laporte (00:13:16):
Mm-Hmm. Hmm.

Leo Laporte (00:13:20):
Yeah. The AirPods also have a alarm alarm on them now. So if you lose them in the woods, you can, you can find them. I must be, Yeah. Face is cool. You can't do that with an Apple watch. You just have to use the provided faces. I know the band is cool. It took me a while to figure out how to use it, but when I did, I said, this is cool. This is cool. I like, this is cool. Commissioner Gordon to the Apple Mobile. Ah, see, there you go. Precision finding. Yeah, this is the Ocean band. And then I got, I also got another one just to, to look at it. I don't like quite as much. But you know what's cool is it still works with all the old bands, so I'm okay. It can take well, good or bad take you here. That's true. Depends who you're calling. It does.

Kim Schaffer (00:14:26):
You never know what's

Leo Laporte (00:14:28):
On the ands, who you're calling side of

Kim Schaffer (00:14:30):
That phone. Although now with caller ID you do know is on the

Leo Laporte (00:14:33):
Other side of my I do. And now I can answer it on my watch. Just like Dick Tracy. I know. And this thing apparently has three microphones. I'm not sure why. Oh, my. And it has two speakers and so it's all fancy. It's all fancy. That's why they spend, they cost $700. Well,

Kim Schaffer (00:14:50):
I wish I wouldn't have just bought mine, but also that looks really big. It might,

Leo Laporte (00:14:53):
I'll I'll let you try it on. It's, it's, it's the largest Apple Watch. But it doesn't look bad on me, right? It looks No, it looks like I'm a sportsman. I am ready to go diving. Show me the tanks. I'll I'll jump right in.

Kim Schaffer (00:15:07):
Was my watch supposed to tell me the other night that it was too loud and I needed to put in earplugs?

Leo Laporte (00:15:12):
Yeah. Oh, you gotta turn that on though. Oh, it's a feature. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. I'm pretty sure. Yeah, that's a

Kim Schaffer (00:15:18):
Cause mine's a seven, so

Leo Laporte (00:15:19):
Yeah, I had a seven and it did a go to the, the Noise app.

Kim Schaffer (00:15:23):
Noise

Leo Laporte (00:15:24):
App and then, and then you can see how much noise there is. And then it'll give you a notification too. You have to turn the, So right now I am 76 decibels loud. Now

Kim Schaffer (00:15:33):
You're, Oh, 80, 81.

Leo Laporte (00:15:34):
I see. It says loud, loud. But I can't get as loud as Roger Waters.

Kim Schaffer (00:15:40):
No, no

Leo Laporte (00:15:40):
You can't. No, I can't. <Laugh> who should I talk to

Kim Schaffer (00:15:45):
Too? Joah, Haynes, Alaska, Bob, Bob, and some Linux questions. Bob, you love Linux?

Leo Laporte (00:15:51):
Yeah, I know <laugh>. I dunno if I should start the show with my particularly weird passions, but what the heck. Thank you, Kim.

Kim Schaffer (00:15:58):
You're welcome.

Leo Laporte (00:15:59):
Hello, Bob. Leo Laport, the tech guy.

Caller 1 (00:16:02):
Hi, Leo. Lennox Report.

Leo Laporte (00:16:03):
Leo Lennox Laport, that's what they call me.

Caller 1 (00:16:06):
I have making the plunge and stop using Windows. Now that I was able to find two pieces of software for Linux that useful to be available for Windows. And also now that Windows requires a Microsoft account. What, Or do I even need an antivirus for Linux? 

Leo Laporte (00:16:25):
No, you don't need it. Web, you know what, you know, So there's one called Clam av which is probably the, you know, most commonly used. Mostly what it does is checks for Windows viruses so that you don't inadvertently send an attachment to your friends stuck using Windows

Caller 1 (00:16:42):
<Laugh>. Okay? There

Leo Laporte (00:16:43):
Are Linux security flaws. There is, in fact this was actually a big story last week because there aren't a lot of them. And I have to say the reason there aren't a lot of Linux viruses mostly is because there's so few people using Linux. They're just not worth going after, right? Most of the viruses go after Windows, cuz 90% of the world uses Windows, so why not, Right? Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. But unfortunately as Linux gets used more and more, for instance, Android phones, Android is Linux. It's based on Lenox. And a lot of internet of things devices are running a version of Linux, cuz Linux is free and it can be made really small. So, you know, a lot of things. So as a result now the bad guys are saying, Hmm, maybe we should go after Linux. And so there, there is actually a pretty nasty little Linux bug going around that is really designed to, I think, infect t devices mostly, or servers. That's the other reason you might want to go after Linux is because most web servers run Linux, right? So, Right. You know, that, that might be a good reason to go after that too. So this Linux bug is called SGA discovered by, I never heard of these guys, the at and t Alien Labs <laugh>.

Leo Laporte (00:18:06):
And it's very sneaky. It's a very sneaky, when I'll put a link in the show notes to Chi cga. But it's probably not something you're gonna run into. You know, it it, it, it could be, you know, you could go to a, an infected website and, and get it, but I think it's probably not something you're gonna run into. And, and it's probably also the case that no, that the antivirus isn't gonna detect it. It's very stealthy. There have been a lot of, there are Linux viruses, I guess is the point. Should you run a Linux antivirus? Know, which version of Linux are you running?

Caller 1 (00:18:43):
I'm running Bluetooth.

Leo Laporte (00:18:45):
Okay. So I would then do a, just a quick Google search for hardening ktu. Mm-Hmm. <Affirmative>, or probably even hardening. So hardening is the word you want. So this is what sysops SISed admins, you know, the gray beards, the neck beards, the guys in charge of you know, hardening systems. They, they, that's what they call security. They call it hardening to make it less likely to be affected. You actually can find hardening windows and hardening Mac posts as well on the internet. And it's just a few things. You, for instance, Linux has a firewall. There's a few things you could turn on. I don't, I don't, most Linux users, I don't see running any viruses. Maybe that's cuz we're cocky. I don't

Caller 1 (00:19:33):
Know. I guess I, I guess that's maybe why isat used to have until August 3rd of this year. Huh. Analytics <laugh>. And they stopped supporting it in August 3rd of this year. And Kabuki and Soho and the Kathy are only business and they're several hundred dollars, you

Leo Laporte (00:19:49):
Know? Yeah. Yeah. And maybe that makes sense for business. You know, I I think honestly, your behavior is the most important thing. Stay off of weird sites. Don't click links. You don't know stuff like that. Yeah. It's interesting. I see that there, this is, you know, these companies are gonna make a, a antivirus if they think they can sell it. <Laugh> mm-hmm. <Affirmative>. So yeah, I see a, a VAs Kaspersky McAfee E set. I, I don't necessarily recommend doing this. You, you free forget, get ClamAV, it's free. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, that is a open source widely supported boy, it's expensive. Yeah. Kaspersky, which you get 10 seats. Yeah. $404 a year.

Caller 1 (00:20:36):
Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:20:37):
<Laugh>. Hmm. So, yeah, I guess if you're a business and you run a lot of Lennox computers, that makes it kind makes sense. Yeah. But I, I wouldn't worry it as a home user, I've never used an antivirus, but I don't use one on Windows or Mac either. So, and mostly because I feel like I'm just careful and I have never actually gotten a virus. Not in years. I got a Mac virus maybe 15 years ago. <Laugh>, I haven't gotten one since. It's a good question actually. Leo Laporte the tech guy. It's really, it's an interesting question. 

Caller 1 (00:21:12):
Yeah, I, I just used it with the, the built end defender for Windows for the last several years. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:21:16):
And that's actually all any Windows users should use. And I think it's probably a good idea. But I know, you know, that's an interesting question on Linux. I've never used one. Just, you know, this chi take is kind of an interesting question mark. Now, so this is this,

Caller 1 (00:21:31):
That's the one that like, comes in pieces or something. Yeah,

Leo Laporte (00:21:33):
It's got a 300 bite dropper. So that's the thing. So here's this scenario. You go to a website and and it's been, you know, it's not a, you're not going to hacker.com or hacker.you. You're going to a well known site that either takes ads that without vetting them, which is a lot or most, or maybe more likely got hacked. And what that is, it just put this little dropper on there and whenever it sees a Linux machine, it says, ah, and it, and it goes in and then it triggers everything else. So it's quite a complicated. Yeah. Ours, Technica has a very good Dan Gin's. Great. I'll put this in the show notes so people can re you. You could, you've probably already read it sounds like you've been doing your,

Caller 1 (00:22:19):
Your I've been looking for a long time. Yeah,

Leo Laporte (00:22:22):
Yeah. Your research.

Caller 1 (00:22:24):
The other question, if you have a minute. Yeah. Is there any big difference between Linux Distros? Cause basically the only I see is the, the KDE desktop, and I prefer the KDE desktop.

Leo Laporte (00:22:36):
So that's, so there's three different things. There's the kernel, which almost all are using the same kernel that's Linus to Vaults. That's, that's what Linux is really, is just the kernel, the o the, the root part of the operating system. Then on top of that, they add a layer of software that's mostly canoe Foundation software. In fact, that's why Richard Stallman wants you to call it Canoodle Linux, Not Linux. Cause he says, Well, all, all liners ever did was the colonel. And then on top of that, there's the desktop environment. So, and the, and the thing, the main thing that distinguishes Linux, Distros one from the other is is the installer. So you probably noticed this, A buntu uses appt, right? Arch distributions use PackMan RPM for Red Hat. So they all have different package managers. All, they all do pretty much the same thing.

Leo Laporte (00:23:30):
And then the other thing that differs, and this is to me, the most important thing is the people who make the distro kind of decide what packages to update and to install. And so O Buntu is based on Debian, which is one of, there's, there's two big, well there's more than two. There's about four big branches in the family tree. There's suse Red Hat which is sent os slash you know. Anyway, all of that Debian and Arch Debian, which a Buntu is based on, is essentially slow. Their whole goal is let's make it as stable as possible and not update too quickly. Only do security updates. So that's what a buntu does. I use an arch, Derivative. Arch is what we call a rolling distro. Rolling distros. They try to, whenever there's an a down, an upstream patch, a patch from the originator, they try to make sure that that gets into the distribution.

Leo Laporte (00:24:31):
So you have updates all the time, constantly. And some people don't like rolling Distros cuz you, things can break, right? You know, you're, you're patching stuff and things can break. But that's why I use a distro that's based on Arch called Manjaro, where they kind of let stuff sit for a few weeks before they push it out to you. So I think it's the best of both worlds. You're gonna always have the latest versions of everything, the latest security patches, but they're not gonna push 'em out the minute they're available. They're gonna wait until they've been kind of vetted. So Manjaro is my favorite.

Caller 1 (00:25:06):
Okay. And the last thing I called you well, several months ago about Paramount Plus telling me I was in instead of in Alaska. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:25:14):
Did you figure that out?

Caller 1 (00:25:15):
They, they, well they did some kind of update and I now in Alaska Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:25:19):
Good. Where you, Hey, Thanks Bob.

Caller 1 (00:25:23):
Okay.

Leo Laporte (00:25:23):
Have a good one.

Caller 1 (00:25:25):
You, you too.

Leo Laporte (00:25:28):
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Leo Laporte (00:26:20):
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Leo Laporte (00:27:10):
Sign up a newrelic.com/twit, w r e l I c.com/twi. Thank you so much for supporting the Tech Guy. Show you support the show too when you're listening by going to that address if you're interested. New relic.com/t w i t. Thank you. New relic, New relic.com/wood. It's like Beetle juice. We play this song and hope that he appears, but unfortunately he has not samble Sam normally on this time. I forgot he is traveling, right? He said he last week he said he has, he's, you know, one of the things Sam does, he's our car guy. And one of the reasons he is our car guy is in his offices as a researcher, guide House Insights and as a podcaster with his wheel bearing podcast is and his relationships with all the car companies. He's always trying new cars. So he was flying, I think he was flying out here, I believe, to drive a new vehicle. And that's why he's not with us this week. But he'll be back next week. But you know what, That's good news cuz it means I have more time to take your calls. 88. 88. Ask Leo. Dan's on the line from New Jersey, the whole state. He's from the whole state of New Jersey. Hi Dan.

Caller 2 (00:28:27):
Hello. I represent the entire state <laugh>. And we agreed. So Leo I have, take a long story short, I have come across a a piece of property in the middle of nowhere and New York State. Nice. Not far from, not far from Colgate University.

Leo Laporte (00:28:50):
Very nice.

Caller 2 (00:28:51):
Is, and we my wife and I are going to, at least in the moment, we're not sure what we're gonna do with it. We might rent it out, but in the meantime, it's four hours from our house.

Leo Laporte (00:29:03):
You might be retiring there though. I bet you that's what you're thinking is someday. That's a possibility. Yeah. We'll wanna live up in the trees and

Caller 2 (00:29:13):
The middle of nowhere.

Leo Laporte (00:29:13):
Oh yeah. Lots of trees. I

Caller 2 (00:29:15):
Mean I, you know, I like the middle of nowhere, but this is kind of like one of the middle of nowheres where there's not that much to do. Yeah. Middle of nowhere. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:29:24):
Well that's why you do it when you're tired. So you can just, you know, sit there and look at the trees. <Laugh>, I guess on the porch sipping as feeding the birds, watching the trees. It's a good life.

Caller 2 (00:29:40):
Dogs. That's

Leo Laporte (00:29:41):
Right, that's right. Car going by, yell at the clouds. It's a good life.

Caller 2 (00:29:45):
<Laugh> shape like this. That's

Leo Laporte (00:29:48):
<Laugh>. So, so there's a car. Of course, the beauty of living out in the boon docks like that is, is, you know, it's quiet, peaceful. The bad news is there's no internet usually.

Caller 2 (00:29:59):
Right, Right. They do have internet.

Leo Laporte (00:30:02):
Oh wow. Can't be that bad,

Caller 2 (00:30:06):
But Well, but we're, well we're getting that set up. I mean, I think the previous owner seemed to have it, but my thing is that because we're gonna be four hours away, we want some kind of a security Right. System. Right. You know, And plus we might have workers come into, Spruce it up a little bit. So I like some kind of a ePad block so that we can

Leo Laporte (00:30:26):
Ooh, nice.

Caller 2 (00:30:27):
You know, each guy could have his own code to come, you know, and come in that as needed. We had, I have a chale at home and my father had a nest and they're great. We,

Leo Laporte (00:30:39):
Yeah. So you had the Thele Bluetooth lock that will open the door for you and everything.

Caller 2 (00:30:43):
Yeah. And I can do that remotely if I have Yeah. That's, you know, I all,

Leo Laporte (00:30:47):
So yeah, Thele Smart Lock is great. Highly recommended.

Caller 2 (00:30:51):
But, but also we wanna get maybe some like a camera, you know, like a door

Leo Laporte (00:30:58):
Yeah.

Caller 2 (00:30:59):
As well as the and Navy of course there, there are actually two houses. There's like a barn and, and a a house. But the thing is that, I don't know whether there's a system that maybe works together, you know, like Oh yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:31:14):
Might not. I mean, it really depends on how elaborate you want to get and how much money you wanna spend, et cetera, et cetera, for instance. Right, Right. There's a company called Ubiquity that offers a whole range of products that include doorbells, cameras. They even have key card sensors. They will work with Thele, Glock mm-hmm. <Affirmative> that, you know, does the whole thing. It records locally can be available over the internet. It's pricey. You'd be, you know, you'd be, This is why the first question is how good is the internet because you know, you, you have to have consistent and not super high speed, but enough broadband to send a video image. So that's important. So that's one way to go. I think

Caller 2 (00:31:56):
It's gonna be cable, somehow. A cable.

Leo Laporte (00:31:58):
Okay. Cable's fast. Good. So, so the cable company decided it was worth it probably. Cuz there's, you know, Colgate students all over the area. They, they, they wanna watch. Right.

Caller 2 (00:32:08):
And teachers and things.

Leo Laporte (00:32:09):
Teachers. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. So, so that's one way to go. One of the problems, what you're doing essentially is home automation and, and Internet of Things devices. And one of the problems is you can buy devices that don't work together and there's all different base stations and stuff. I asked this question of our home expert, automation expert, Stacey Higginbotham. She has a website, Stacey on iot. She has an IOT podcast. She's really an expert in this. And I said, you know, is there one system that she said mm-hmm <affirmative>, and you're gonna think I'm an Apple fanboy, but I'm not. But, but she said, Home Kit, which is Apple's soft Software framework. It doesn't mean you're buying it from Apple, but you wanna buy home kit compatible devices because then they'll all work together and it'll be a label on the box. It'll say on the specs, Home Kit compatible. There's two reasons why that's a good way to go. One is Apple really emphasizes security. And so a lot of the IOT devices you buy have very sketch security. You know, they made in China, they don't care, they never update it, blah, blah, blah. If it's a, if it's got a home kit label, Apple requires, they keep those up to date. Plus the base station can be an Apple TV or an iPad. Which means

Caller 2 (00:33:23):
Right, right, right.

Leo Laporte (00:33:25):
You have, you have nice control over the whole thing. And there are Home Kit, everythings, there are home kit cameras, there are home kit doorbell cams. There are home. I I, I think the sh I'm pretty sure Thele Smart Smart Lock. Yes. Is a home Kit enabled?

Caller 2 (00:33:39):
It is. It is. It's cause I've been using it with Home Kits, but it was my only item on the home kit, so it didn't

Leo Laporte (00:33:45):
Really, Well, you're already, you're already halfway there. <Laugh> a third of the way there. So there's all sorts of stuff that works with Home Kit and that's, again, I'm, I'm quoting her, but that's her recommendation. Is, is is if you, if you make sure everything's home Kit, then you have some, some confidence that everything's gonna kind of work together. And you can get home Kit enabled plugs so that you can turn the lights off and on. You can have outdoor lights that light up, you know, all of that stuff's possible. So that gives you a little more flexibility than saying, Well you should go buy one brand. You know, just get everything Nest. I mean, that's another way to go. You get everything Nest, Google's Nest, they have every, all of this, all of the above. And then but then you'll have to work with Thread.

Leo Laporte (00:34:30):
And, and this is, you know, this thing that Apple's starting to do with Google and Microsoft and others is called Matter. Again, trying to solve this problem of, you know, things not talking to each other. Stacy's been telling me that matter is not as gonna be as, as as good as as home Kit. It's a much lower level thing. So I think since you already Home Kit, you kind of, you know, you like that Chile. I think that's probably thing to do. And then there are a lot of home kit cameras, Door Home Kit, doorbells, you know. Yeah.

Caller 2 (00:35:03):
I'll look it up on the Apple site. I think they list the,

Leo Laporte (00:35:05):
They list 'em all. You don't have to buy 'em from Apple obviously, but, but Right, right. Bekin makes some Logitech Actually. A lot of people are saying they like the Logitech Circle. That's Home kit capable. And then yeah, I mean, yeah, on the Apple site, just look at all the things not all made by Apple. Like mostly not made by Apple. Logitech makes cameras. Uta Belkin, Phillips Eve. Sorry.

Caller 2 (00:35:34):
Is Nest defunct? Is Nest defunct? I mean, I thought they discontinued Nest.

Leo Laporte (00:35:38):
No, no, no, no. They, it's, it's Google Nest, Google Bottom. But I, you know, that's a good question. <Laugh> should you trust Google with this? Google? I don't know what's going on over there at the go, but Woo.

Caller 2 (00:35:53):
But, but if you go to the internet, I mean, maybe that's my confusion that Google bought Nest, but then the Nest supposedly was being disco.

Leo Laporte (00:36:00):
No, no, no, no, no. They just what? No, no, no. Yeah, that is a little confusing. They discontinued the Nest. You know, My Nest and it's all within Google, but No, no, no, no. It's everything. They have displays, streaming, Caming, wifi, smoke alarm, co alarms, door locks, cameras, doorbells, thermostats. They have it all, all into the Nest brand, but it's all from Google and I I Oh, that's fine. Yeah. Yeah. I see no reason to assume that they will not continue with that. I don't see a door lock however, so I don't know if they're doing that. Or is door lock Oh yeah, Yale does Nest. Nest Nest has a Yale lock. Yeah. So there's the one. So I don't, I think Home Kick gives you a broader variety of choices. But I think either one is good because you're gonna have a more attention to security, which is always a problem here. Leo Laporte. Teca. Yeah. I, I have, I'm Nest at home because I don't know, it just kind of grew that way. And I have a Hello Doorbell and, and all that. I don't <laugh> I don't like the door locks. I'm, I'm nervous about having a door lock that but I think for what you, you're, you use Case, of course you have to have that cuz people are gonna come in. You're not gonna drive, you know, four hours to let 'em in the D house.

Caller 2 (00:37:22):
No, exactly. Yeah. I mean, and how my father has it where, where I put the nest in with him and the Yell lock. I've spoken to you before, but my, my father's elderly and he have all these people come in to help whatever they are the nurses or the companions and things like that. And they would just have their own codes. Yeah. They could

Leo Laporte (00:37:42):
All just, it's

Caller 2 (00:37:42):
Great. I mean they're rather getting outta key all the time to people who are walking around with

Leo Laporte (00:37:47):
The key. It's perfect. And you can revoke it. No, it's brilliant. Exactly. Yeah.

Caller 2 (00:37:52):
It's like the greatest thing ever.

Leo Laporte (00:37:54):
So the reason I think you wanna go with that is cuz you just know that Google and Apple are paying attention to the backend security. Right. And I think that's really important. Right. And I see no reason to think Google is not all in on Nest. This is, they, they've committed so much to Nest and I'm sure they're making money on it. So those, the home kit gives you more choice. Cuz it doesn't have to all be Apple mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, you know, so it's, it's, I think it's I think either one would be fine. Yeah. Yeah.

Caller 2 (00:38:26):
That's

Leo Laporte (00:38:27):
Great. So it's cool. I'm glad to And do you have a camera with your dad or?

Caller 2 (00:38:31):
Well, I don't have a camera to watch him, which might be good, but you know, he does walk around and go in different rooms and things like that.

Leo Laporte (00:38:39):
Yeah, Yeah. People don't want cameras snooping on him. I mean, it just depends Right on how

Caller 2 (00:38:44):
Yeah, he's just got the camera on the, for the for the front door. Right. He can kind let people, He has an iPad and he lets people in and out. Perfect. Necessary. Yeah. Perfect. And he's like 98 years old like a maybe.

Leo Laporte (00:38:57):
Wow. That's awesome. Good for him. And he lives alone,

Caller 2 (00:39:01):
Still use the iPad. Nice. I know that's a whole other

Leo Laporte (00:39:03):
Yeah, I know. My mom's almost 90

Caller 2 (00:39:07):
Buying our fingernails. I know your, Cause my father's in Rhode Island. Like your

Leo Laporte (00:39:10):
Oh yeah. No, I'm just terrified that she's gonna fall. Fortunately my sister lives with a block away, so she and my sister now have set up a thing where every day she gets the Amazon Echo to, to tell my sister I'm okay, I'm up and about <laugh>.

Caller 2 (00:39:24):
Oh, that's a good

Leo Laporte (00:39:25):
Idea. And if she doesn't get that signal, she'll come over and see what's going on.

Caller 2 (00:39:29):
And my sister lives like a mile from my father too.

Leo Laporte (00:39:31):
Yeah, there you go.

Caller 2 (00:39:31):
Heavy. The heavy lifting though.

Leo Laporte (00:39:34):
I know. I feel really terrible about that. I mean, but you know, that's what happens. Yeah, I know. Oh, it's a pleasure talking to you. Thank you, Dan. Let me know how that all works out for you. That's great. And I Congratulations on the new house. I think it sounds beautiful. Thanks a lot. And as if Colgate's nearby, you're not really in the back woods. You, you have No, no, no. There's a little culture out there.

Caller 2 (00:39:58):
That's it. You know, it's like a little tiny town. Just enough for few college to students aren't even allowed to live off campus. They have to have to live

Leo Laporte (00:40:06):
Campus. Wow. Interesting.

Caller 2 (00:40:07):
So it's a I know it's interest small school. Interesting. Yeah. But that's for another day. A conversation for another.

Leo Laporte (00:40:13):
Yeah. No, but I think as long as there's a university there, there's gonna be professors, there's gonna be some culture, there's you know, there's a town. It sounds actually like a very nice place to live. <Laugh>. I might, I might not check it out. <Laugh>.

Caller 2 (00:40:27):
I know, I know. It's an hour from Utica and an hour from Syracuse. Those are your like,

Leo Laporte (00:40:33):
The only problem is is winter is gonna be wicked. I

Caller 2 (00:40:38):
Know, I know. Wicked well. Well my son is going to school there.

Leo Laporte (00:40:41):
Oh good. Oh, that's why you did it. I get it. Okay. That's

Caller 2 (00:40:44):
What that added to the property. Right? Right. Yeah. So so he is the so that helps. But they have, it's one of those places where it's crazy weather, I think. Like it snows.

Leo Laporte (00:40:54):
Oh, you're gonna have six feet of snow for for all winter.

Caller 2 (00:40:59):
Yeah. It's like heavy snow. Then it, then it rains.

Leo Laporte (00:41:02):
Right. Makes it slush and then it freezes. Yeah. Goes

Caller 2 (00:41:06):
Right, Right. It's horrible. What weather is it? This minute over there. Okay.

Leo Laporte (00:41:11):
Hey, have a good one. Walking down pocket everybody. We are 1930, episode 1930. I love this. Is that Fred Stair singing? Don't know where. Go go. Leo Laporte the tech I 88. 88 Ask Leo. Very funny. Scene in Young Frankenstein, Frankenstein sings this on the Monster Sings. That's song Jack is on the Line. Our next call from Goldendale Washington. Hello Jack.

Caller 3 (00:41:54):
Hello Leo. And first I wanted to say kudos to Kim. She does a fantastic job of juggling all the calls and still remaining cheerful.

Leo Laporte (00:42:03):
Aw. Do you hear that Kim? It's very cheerful. I told him it's really not that bad, but I don't know. Women multitask. So she's good at it. She is, she's really good at it. She's great. She's also making me lunch. I am. Yeah. No, I'm kidding, kidding. Cup of noodles. Cup of noodles. <Laugh> kidding. What can I, what can I do for you, Jack?

Caller 3 (00:42:24):
Well, first I wanted, before I get to my question first I wanted to touch on what you said about the Apple watch. Yes. Just recently right across the Columbia River from me over there in the little town called the Dows.

Leo Laporte (00:42:36):
Oh yeah. Know the Dows? Yeah.

Caller 3 (00:42:37):
One of those Apple watches. Did you hear about that?

Leo Laporte (00:42:39):
No. What happened?

Caller 3 (00:42:41):
Well, she got her foot caught in some rocks while she was out swimming and she nearly was drowning and she used her apple wast, called the police. The police showed up the brand new guy. He was two weeks on the job. He took off this gun belt and his boots went out there in his uniform and saved her.

Leo Laporte (00:43:00):
Wow.

Caller 3 (00:43:00):
That watch.

Leo Laporte (00:43:01):
Hallelujah.

Caller 3 (00:43:03):
That's impressive.

Leo Laporte (00:43:04):
Yeah, no kidding. You know, Apple, at the beginning of their event LA a couple weeks ago, they showed a very long <laugh> advertisement that just basically featured people like that who had almost died but didn't because of the Apple watch. The only thing was a little weird about it is they put them in the scene where they almost died. And so there was a, a young woman who had gotten a plane crash and she's filming this in a crashed plane. It's like, it was, I thought it must be a little traumatic for her. It's certainly dramatic. I don't know. I think Apple maybe overplays the, the drama of it. But it is the case. I mean having a communi, this is, I feel like Dick Tracy with this thing on my wrist. It's, it doesn't do a camera, but everything else having a communication like that. Yeah. And I,

Caller 3 (00:43:55):
You know, I just told you you can look it up online. Yeah,

Leo Laporte (00:43:57):
I did. I looked up the story. Apple Insider had it. Yeah. Swimmers stuck in frigid Columbia River uses Apple Watch to comb for help. Yeah. Awesome. I

Caller 3 (00:44:07):
Was impressed. Anyway, my question was,

Leo Laporte (00:44:09):
By the way, that's one of the reasons I have an Apple watch and I got one from my mom 89. Again, we talked about it. I, if she falls, the fall detection is gonna be huge. It's gonna be really valuable. Same for me. It also does something interesting for older people, gate detection. Because apparently if your gate changes dramatically, that's this bad sign obviously. And it will and it will also signal that there's something going on. So I think this is a new thing. It's not new, but it's really become clear that Apple wants to be the good hands people, you know, we take care of our our customers and you're safer.

Caller 3 (00:44:42):
The problem is you gotta make an appointment and drive two and a half one

Leo Laporte (00:44:46):
And you have to have, you have to have some money too. Cuz this stuff is very expensive.

Caller 3 (00:44:51):
Yeah. Anyway, my question was we recently had our local internet provider over to my house,

Leo Laporte (00:45:01):
<Laugh> to tease out for tea, for coffee. Come on over.

Caller 3 (00:45:05):
Yeah. Well he came over and changed out the router to a hero little white.

Leo Laporte (00:45:11):
Oh, that's nice. Okay. With

Caller 3 (00:45:12):
A white light on it. Yep. And he hooked it up and said, now you're gonna get a hundred megabits per second. Great. Right. So he plugs in his laptop directly to the modem. He's getting a hundred megabits per second. Nice. Here's what I'm wondering because what he told me, he says, Wow, look at all these devices on your, your wireless. They're all these, all these Bluetooth. You got nine of them.

Leo Laporte (00:45:33):
Nine.

Caller 3 (00:45:34):
Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:45:34):
You know how many I have

Caller 3 (00:45:36):
<Laugh>? Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:45:37):
90.

Caller 3 (00:45:39):
Well,

Leo Laporte (00:45:39):
Nine's nothing. <Laugh>,

Caller 3 (00:45:41):
You said that's too many. No, no. We did a, we did a speed test on both cell phones on the laptop and I get 20 megabits per second.

Leo Laporte (00:45:51):
Yeah, that's what a euro does. I don't, he doesn't really know very much about what he's installing. I'm sorry to say. First of all, more, you know, any modern router can handle dozens and dozens of devices. Nines nothing. Think about it. You know, nowadays we've got doorbells, we've got locks, we've got cameras, we've got all this stuff on our, on our internet. That's normal.

Caller 3 (00:46:12):
Exactly my question. Yeah,

Leo Laporte (00:46:14):
That's completely normal.

Caller 3 (00:46:14):
I wanna get the cameras up back.

Leo Laporte (00:46:16):
Yeah. And an i, mesh router is designed to handle that. But one of the things that's interesting about the era is it automatically adjusts the bandwidth to each device to make sure the devices that need high bandwidth have it. So you may in fact have, but if you are watching Netflix on that phone, it'll go up or you're watching on your tv it might go down because on a phone, 20 megabits is plenty. So it's, that's what these mesh routers do that's kind of interesting is it's called quality of service and they automatically adjusted. Now the downside of that is all of the information about all the devices on your network are being sent to the Arrow headquarters. Cuz that's where it's done. It's done, it's done in software at the Arrow headquarters. So they have a lot of information about you, but in return for that, you get I think a very interesting, people are very puzzled by this because the bandwidths that you get on, on an era mesh network will vary from device device and it's because the the, actually the arrow's doing that. So don't worry. And you can, I don't know what the limit is on I, but I guarantee you it's more than nine <laugh>.

Caller 3 (00:47:27):
Okay. So there's also a wireless extender because our house is really long. Yes. It's 150 feet long.

Leo Laporte (00:47:33):
A very good reason to get a mesh router. Yeah.

Caller 3 (00:47:36):
Okay. So I, I've got a, a net gear wireless extender, which seems to work just fine, but we're still seeing somewhere, you know, off the extend No, no, no,

Leo Laporte (00:47:45):
No. You don't get rid of the net gear. Get rid of all that. Okay. If once you go <laugh> you gotta go all arrow.

Caller 3 (00:47:52):
Oh really? Yeah. Okay. So I need to get a wireless extender. I

Leo Laporte (00:47:56):
You get it's, they don't call it extender, that's the difference. It's a mesh. So the way extenders worked like that net gear is they, they're, they're duplex so they talk to the base and then they send it off to the other device and they back and forth. So it's half, it is immediately cutting the speed of the base station in half cuz it's only talk. So that extenders out mesh has a separate back channel, doesn't impact the total speed. So mesh is much faster and mesh is designed for exactly your house. So you get the euro base station and then you get as many and they call 'em beacons. They don't call 'em extenders. They get as many I beacons as you need. And, and you may want even more than that. . They're not cheap, but they're not super expensive. And, and the idea is a competitor plume put it I thought very well. Plume also makes these mesh systems. They, they think of your wifi as a lamp. You wouldn't wanna read by the light of a lamp in a room two doors down. You wanna put a lamp in every room. Now that's plume. You don't need a arrow in every room, but you wanna have an arrow with every 50 feet or so.

Caller 3 (00:49:01):
Okay. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:49:03):
Each arrow

Caller 3 (00:49:03):
Recommend the model of this mesh Beacon. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:49:07):
Arrow. There's, there's only one <laugh>.

Caller 3 (00:49:09):
There's no, there's no model to, well, what I would call an extender, what I just call it a up online to find.

Leo Laporte (00:49:17):
If you go to Euro, they do have different base station models. But I think the beacons, you're gonna get the beacon that'll match your base station. So Beacon Arrow.

Caller 3 (00:49:27):
Okay.

Leo Laporte (00:49:27):
Just I Beacon. I, I don't know which one he put in. If he put in the new six E those are very, very expensive. I suspect he did, did the, does the internet service provider pay for it?

Caller 3 (00:49:41):
Well, they were, he was very reluctant to leave that in my house, but yeah. Yeah. I didn't have to pay for.

Leo Laporte (00:49:50):
So I is one of a number of companies or neck year has their product called Orbi, which is also mesh. TP Link has mesh Velop is from Cisco. There's a bunch of these mesh routers. They're all essentially the same idea. They're better than extenders. The idea is you cover your house with internet and all of them do roughly the same thing the Euro does, which is shape your bandwidth according to your needs and it gets better over time. So yeah, you want Euro beacons, you throw out any other extenders. And by the way, I should just mention, each Euro device handles 128 connected devices. So I think you're okay.

Caller 3 (00:50:29):
That's exactly what I needed. Fabulous job.

Leo Laporte (00:50:36):
Leo Laport and Kim, your tech guy

Leo Laporte (00:50:48):
Frontier gives you two Era six pro for free. That's pretty good. That's pretty good. I like it. Well, hey, hey, hey. How are you today? Leola Port here, the tech guy. Time to talk computers, the internet, home theater, digital photography, smartphone, smart watches, all at jazz. 88. 88. Ask Leo. Is the phone number? (888) 827-5536. That's toll free. Anywhere in the US or Canada outside that area. You could still reach us, but you've gotta use Skype out. Skype out. No. Chris, Mark qut this week he's taking some time off for the next couple of weeks, but that's okay. Just means I have time to take more calls again. 88. 88. Ask Leo now on with the show to Ray in font, California. Hi Ray.

Caller 4 (00:51:41):
Howdy.

Leo Laporte (00:51:41):
Ah, howdy. Boy. Howdy.

Caller 4 (00:51:44):
So I, I've got a weird issue.

Leo Laporte (00:51:48):
Yes.

Caller 4 (00:51:48):
I, I generally keep my cell phone in my left back pocket. Yes.

Leo Laporte (00:51:54):
And

Caller 4 (00:51:55):
Use a Bluetooth device. I drive a truck for a living. My truck does not have a radio in it. So I listen to everything on my Bluetooth. When I'm out of my truck with my phone or my back left pocket, I get interference <laugh> or it, it sounds like I'm walking away from my phone. The craziest thing is I wonder if it has to do with the rods in my leg.

Leo Laporte (00:52:26):
Oh, you got metal rods in your leg.

Caller 4 (00:52:29):
I do.

Leo Laporte (00:52:30):
Oh, there you go. There you go. It does,

Caller 4 (00:52:34):
It really does. Oh

Leo Laporte (00:52:35):
Yeah, absolutely. I was gonna ask you if you had a plate in your butt, but a rods in your legs are just as good. Yeah, metal. So, so radio waves don't like metal. In fact, you know, you ever wanna keep somebody from using their cell phone? You you just put them in a cage of metal mesh. Actually, metal window screens do just as well. Just does not go through those. So metal ros could absolutely interfere with the Bluetooth. Absolutely.

Caller 4 (00:53:06):
Well, that almost seems too simple.

Leo Laporte (00:53:13):
You also, I I'm not sure I'd wanna sit on my phone every day. You get sciatica that way. Maybe keep it in a different pocket. <Laugh>.

Caller 4 (00:53:21):
Well, no, I, I don't sit on it. I keep the console in the tractor, but I, I can walk 60 feet to the end of my trailer Sure. And my Bluetooth has no interference. But if I need to walk to the, all the way to the back of the trailer where I gotta keep the phone in my pocket or walk away from the tractor, I get interference and it's what, two and a half feet from my head.

Leo Laporte (00:53:45):
Yeah. <laugh> you. Yeah, of course. You should understand that Bluetooth does have a limited range. It's about 30 feet, so you're actually getting very good Bluetooth reception you know, by, as you walk away, but you're right. Yeah, it could very well be. Also, humans are big bags of water where mostly water. That's not good for radio either. So in fact, you'd probably bitter off, you know, if your phone's in your pocket and you're going that way away from you there's nothing blocking it. But if it's coming, if you're, you might even try it as an experiment turning around and having your phone go through you to the, to the tractor. And I bet you that would also impact it. 

Caller 4 (00:54:30):
It, it will work through the other side of the tractor. And I, one ex a couple experi experiments I've done, but one of which was going from the left rear pocket to the right rear pocket. Yeah. In the right rear pocket, no interference,

Leo Laporte (00:54:47):
The right rear pocket, no interference,

Caller 4 (00:54:51):
But in the left rear pocket. And I don't know that it's a problem that could be solved. I was just curious if that was a, a legitimate theory. Having the hardware, the hardware comes all the way up to my hip, so it's almost right there. I'm a pretty skinny guy. And being a ham, I know metal rods

Leo Laporte (00:55:12):
Obviously. Yes. You know that. Are they titanium?

Caller 4 (00:55:16):
The the rods are titanium. The screws are stainless steel.

Leo Laporte (00:55:20):
Yeah. so you, okay, so you do, you're a ham. You understand? It doesn't necessarily block it, but it interferes with the pattern.

Caller 4 (00:55:31):
Yeah. That seems to be what it is, is when it's in that pocket, it, it almost sounds like I'm walking away from my phone while wearing a

Leo Laporte (00:55:40):
Bluetooth. Isn't that interesting? Isn't that interesting? You know, you could try and experi a moving it around. Yeah. Rf. Okay. So you're a ham. I could you, you understand this RF radio frequency is voodoo <laugh>. It is, it is. I mean, I'm sure it's rational in some way, but it feels like it's, it's like the weather. It's a little chaotic and how it behaves is a little chaotic. And so very hard to to figure out.

Caller 4 (00:56:07):
Well, at the least it was kind of reassuring to have somebody else say,

Leo Laporte (00:56:11):
Yeah, I think it's your Rods <laugh>. I think it's your rods. So yeah. Wow. just try putting another pockets. That's fascinating. I never even thought of that. That I have to say Bluetooth. One of the things that's good to know is that the Bluetooth folks are trying to make it better and better all the time. And so there are, there are, you know, there's Bluetooth 5.2, there's Bluetooth 5.3, there's a lot of work being done, and a newer phone and a newer receiver might give you better results as Bluetooth improves.

Caller 4 (00:56:47):
Yeah, unfortunately, I, I think I'm kind of stuck with that.

Leo Laporte (00:56:52):
Yeah.

Caller 4 (00:56:52):
But if I could ask you one more, Is

Leo Laporte (00:56:56):
It a, is it a John Deere tractor? Don't mess with it.

Caller 4 (00:57:01):
No. No. I'm not messing with my tractor.

Leo Laporte (00:57:03):
<Laugh>.

Caller 4 (00:57:04):
No. I drive, I drive a Mac truck.

Leo Laporte (00:57:07):
Oh, okay. Cool.

Caller 4 (00:57:09):
Highway tractor.

Leo Laporte (00:57:10):
Oh, that kind of tractor trailer kind of thing. I get it.

Caller 4 (00:57:13):
Yes, sir. I do have a cell phone question, though. If I could throw and at you.

Leo Laporte (00:57:20):
Yeah, sure.

Caller 4 (00:57:22):
So on my old cell phone, if it got kind of crowded, I could shut it down. And then when I fired it back up, there was no apps in the I guess recent apps button. I'm not a big tech guy. Yeah. With my current cell phone, every app seems to try to remember where it was. And if it was misbehaving <laugh>, it goes right back to Misbehaving

Leo Laporte (00:57:51):
<Laugh>. So you, you're an Android device. Yeah.

Caller 4 (00:57:55):
Yes, sir. Yeah,

Leo Laporte (00:57:56):
But it's the same on, on iPhones as well. So the, there's a recent button on Android, on the iPhone. You slide up a little bit and you get pictures of all the things you've run in the past. So the first few of those might actually be running programs. It depends how aggressive Android is being about killing them. But anything past the first few, those are pictures. <Laugh> of what? Once was <laugh>. But those, those have long ago been closed in the background. So if you, if you have a misbehaving app, then you go to Recents and you see it, slide it up, get rid of it, that forces it to be closed. And then it will launch again, clean. But I should also point out, cuz I see people do this all the time where they go through all their recents and they slide, they get rid of all of them.

Leo Laporte (00:58:45):
They kill 'em all. I think, as I remember, Android has a, let me have to look. Android has a clear all you can use, but you don't need to. It's not saving any memory or anything like that. So but, but it is important to force kill an app that if, if it's not behaving properly, you don't wanna launch that existing version of the app. You want to, you wanna force kill it. So I'm gonna go here to my, my Samsung where I've got the recents. In fact, it's funny cuz this phone is rebooted and yet it still sees all of these, these recent apps, which is really just a memory, a dim, a dim memory. But you just slide 'em up. If they've misbehaved, just slide 'em up or press the close all button. But it's, but despite the fact that Android, or at least the Samsung has a close all button, there's no saluatory be benefit to doing that.

Leo Laporte (00:59:40):
It, you don't need to, The a phone operating systems are very aggressive because of battery life about really killing things in the background. Android, a little less so than an iPhone, but both of them do that. And they do it on, because they don't want battery life to be shot by 23 different apps running in the background. They'll also give some apps, you know, permission to do that. Music apps, for instance, can run in the background. Most apps, all you're seeing when you see that recent is a picture of what the app looked like the last time you ran it. If you're, if you're having a Miss Bathing app, close it, swipe it up, get rid of it. And when, and, and by the way, and I've noticed, and maybe this is just anecdotal, I like to wait a few seconds after I swipe it up. It takes a few seconds to close it. And then when you open it again using the icon on the phone, that's a fresh instance and it shouldn't be misbehaving anymore.

Caller 4 (01:00:30):
So are you aware of Galaxy behaving different?

Leo Laporte (01:00:37):
Well, I'm looking at a, this is a Galaxy S 22 I'm using here. How so? In different, in what way?

Caller 4 (01:00:44):
So like you would say, swipe it away and, and get rid of it. Yeah. So you'll get a, So I've swiped it away. Shut down the phone. Yeah. Fired it back up and, and found it right back where it was.

Leo Laporte (01:01:01):
So it's still misbehaving

Caller 4 (01:01:05):
And, and misbehaving right where it left up. I think I have the worst galaxy ever day.

Leo Laporte (01:01:10):
<Laugh>, If you've rebooted it, you've definitely closed the process down. So, I mean, it should be closing down anyway, but after available. Yeah, if you're rebooting it, it's closed down. What, what program is it?

Caller 4 (01:01:25):
It, it does it with everything. It, it misbehaves with Amazon music. I,

Leo Laporte (01:01:31):
So what, and, and, okay, so let's take Amazon Music example and what is Misbehaving doing?

Caller 4 (01:01:37):
So like it will just say playback unavailable.

Leo Laporte (01:01:42):
Okay.

Caller 4 (01:01:43):
Not even,

Leo Laporte (01:01:44):
I think it's just running into the same problem. It's not, I understand now, kind of. So let's say, I mean, and I understand it's more than one app, but Amazon music is trying to play, it's trying to stream down the internet. And and so it may merely be, it's not that the app has, has failed you <laugh>, and it's going back to the same place and failing you again. It's that the same problem occurs, which is it can't get whatever it's trying to get over the internet. That may be that it's a, a song, a bad song, or the app has a bad name for the song, or that the internet is unreliable. But I don't think that that's, it's not stuck at that problem. It's the same problem cropping up its head over again. Because once you reboot a phone, you have now closed everything.

Leo Laporte (01:02:28):
Even if, you know, you reopened everything after you rebooted the phone. And I mean, rebooting it, not just, sometimes people think that pressing the on off button is rebooting it, it's not. That's just turning the screen on and off. I mean, really rebooting it, you know, pressing and holding it until it says, Wait a minute, you want me to shut off? Yeah. Actually, I think on Galaxy Funds you can actually tell Bixby, Reboot <laugh> and Bixby. Yes, we reboot. If it's done that it's closed, all the apps, they're, they're, they're not starting up in the same pulitz place. Some apps may say, Oh yeah, I remember the la in fact, Amazon Music definitely does. I remember the last song you played. Try to play it again and have the same problem. It can't get it. It's got the wrong name. The bandwidth's not good enough. But that's just the same problem cropping up. It's not, you know, if a, if an app continually has problems deleting it and the on, you can do this on Android devices, deleting all the data associated with it and then starting over, sometimes that fixes it. So that could be also a problem. 88. 88. Ask Leo. (888) 827-5536. Lots of time for phone calls today. Don't let those football games seduce you. We got some talking to do. Let's talk more tech right after this.

Leo Laporte (01:03:52):
So read the article that you sent me. Scooter X class one. Bluetooth radios are for industrial applications, not used for consumer products. <Laugh>. So you're not gonna get 300 feet from any consumer product. You're gonna get 30 feet. Bluetooth is intentional short range. That's, that's by design the Tech Guy podcast brought to you this weekend, every week, frankly, all of our shows every week, every day, by Cash fly, I mean really literally brought to you by Cash Fly. How do we know Cash Fly is amazing because we've been using them for over a decade. Cash Fly saved my bacon. They made it possible for us to stream to you at high speed, high quality from anywhere in the world. That's cuz they have 50 points of presence all over the globe. So when you download one of our shows, you're downloading it from a point of presence near you.

Leo Laporte (01:04:48):
That means faster downloads. And if a server goes down, don't worry, you can get it from another one. So that means a hundred percent availability. In fact, that's exactly what cash flies given us for the last 12 months. 100%. 100% availability. They're 10 times faster than traditional methods and 30% faster than other major CDNs with a 98% cash hit ratio. And yes, a hundred percent availability in the last 12 months. But that's not all cash light as they're a cdn. But they also do do video. Their ultra low latency video streaming is amazing. Sub one second, latency not, we're not talking about unreliable web rtc. This is web socket. Live video scales to millions of users. And you can go live in hours, not days you boom, but boom, better b I think it's just a great idea, but it's not the only idea. There are many things cash flow bringing to us.

Leo Laporte (01:05:41):
For instance, their storage optimization system takes a load off your origin servers, reduces your S3 bills, reduces bandwidth, increases your cash it ratio to a hundred percent cuz they're s stirring your content. So you never have a cash miss. Right? I love it. Plus you ain't got time to manage your cdn. Let them do it. Cash flies fully manage CDN solutions and their elite managed packages. You'll get VIP treatment 24 7 support response times under an hour. This is just the best lightning fast gaming, delivering downloads faster with zero lag glitches or outages. Mobile content optimization that does automatic and simple image optimization. So your site loads faster on any device. Multi CDN for redundancy and failover. They intelligently balance your traffic across multiple providers, giving you the shortest roots and mitigating against performance glitches. I mean, I can go on and on. We'd love Cash Fly.

Leo Laporte (01:06:39):
They've been with us forever. Frankly. I think you should check out Cash Fly and with 24 7 365 day a year priority support. You're never on your own. They're always there when you need them. Just as they have been for us for the last decade. Cash fly. Thank you. Cash fly. C a c H E F L y.com. Cash flight.com. Lao the tech guy. 88. 88. Ask Leo the phone number. Yeah. Mobile phone operating systems are really a miracle of modern computer science. They are, you know, they're designed to work in a highly constrained environment. You know, a small battery you know, lots of radios, limited amount of memory, limited processor, although that's changing, isn't it? They're getting faster and faster and you, and you're doing all this stuff. You're always on the internet, you're doing your Bluetooth thing. So the operating system is, is carefully designed to really be efficient.

Leo Laporte (01:07:45):
Also, by the way, secure, which is why I never recommend an antivirus for your phone. You on an iPhone. It's completely the useless cuz Apple doesn't let them access the things they'd need to access to be useful on, on Andrew, Maybe it's useful, but both Apple and Google with their operating systems are doing that kind of scanning all the time anyway. So you, you really don't need an antivirus on a phone because phones are designed, they were designed later than Windows and Mac and Lennox. And so they were designed, designed in a, in a world where they knew there would be, you know, a lot of bad guys floating around trying to get into your phone. And so they're very carefully designed to be safe. And I think they do a very good job and they're very carefully designed to be efficient. So in general, I guess my point is, you don't need to take extra steps to protect yourself on your phone.

Leo Laporte (01:08:36):
You know, some phones, all the Galaxy phones have a special Samsung optimization application that you run. And it does. I've saved you gigabytes of storage and no, that's nonsense. You if, I mean either, either Samsung has designed their operating system so poorly that doesn't do that in the background. So you have to do it manually or, and I think this is the case, they put something in the phone so that you feel good <laugh>, they give you an application, a cleanup application, so you feel good. It doesn't really do anything important. You generally speaking, you know, you don't need to pay a lot of attention to your phone. You don't need to charge it at certain times and disconnect it from the charger at certain times. It, it, it's, it's full of circuitry to protect itself, to opt, op, operate optimally for the longest possible time.

Leo Laporte (01:09:33):
You don't need to close all the recent applications that serves no purpose. You don't need to reboot it every day. That used to be the case. In fact, Samsung used to come with a setting that said reboot every day. That would automatically, every morning it would reboot. I noticed they took that out. Like maybe it doesn't need it anymore. Android's a little bit of a different world because it is you know, there's a huge variety of Android devices, but I could say with confidence, you do not need to reboot your iPhone every day. That's for sure. Randy on the line from Huntington Beach, California. Hi Randy.

Caller 5 (01:10:08):
Hello there. Leo. Hello there. This is a continuing it adventure. I started maybe a month and a half ago. I was looking to get a new laptop. Got the new laptop, by the way. I got it at Costco. They were great about return policies. They,

Leo Laporte (01:10:21):
That's the reason to get Yeah, that's the reason to get a, a laptop at Costco or any of the big buck stores. They're very generous in their return policies.

Caller 5 (01:10:30):
I was blown away. Yeah. And so I've been topping everything back. And I thought I copied all the, the data over in an unencrypted format, but I missed certain music data. And so I said, no problem. I put it back with AO M e I a and I'm trying to copy it from the backup onto the new computer and I'm running into permissions problem.

Leo Laporte (01:10:54):
Ah,

Caller 5 (01:10:55):
And it's killing me. Can't do it. You don't have permission. I've gone through and tried to give myself permission every way possible. And it's not letting me good. And so it's been locked up one of the computers and corrupted one of the backups. So I've got, I've got more than one backup, so I can go back to the other backup. That'll be okay. But it's just proven to be a nightmare.

Leo Laporte (01:11:20):
This must be a flaw in Naomi. So if it's just music, I mean, honestly, take a USB drive, plug it in, drag the music from your old machine onto the hard drive, then drag it from the hard drive onto the new machine. 

Caller 5 (01:11:36):
It's music that I've created and it's under the ah yeah. And that's the whole reason I got the upgraded laptop.

Leo Laporte (01:11:43):
Yeah. Very important. You don't wanna lose the stuff you made. Yeah. Hang on, I gotta take a break, but I will talk to you off the air. There's there, I think they're gonna be ways to reclaim this, but we'll check the laport, the tech eye. So, couple questions.

Caller 5 (01:12:06):
Yes.

Leo Laporte (01:12:08):
You're not, so you're on Windows are, you're not using BitLock, You're not in, you said encrypted. Are you using BitLocker?

Caller 5 (01:12:16):
No, I'm, I'm, I'm assuming aom e i is encrypted.

Leo Laporte (01:12:19):
Oh, okay. That that it encrypts the backup.

Caller 5 (01:12:22):
Yeah. It's either encrypted or it's on some

Leo Laporte (01:12:26):
Yeah, it says aoe. It says AMA applies 256 bit AEs encryption. But that's to the data on the server. So this is a is to the backup to the cloud.

Caller 5 (01:12:40):
Nope. Just to my backup hard drives.

Leo Laporte (01:12:42):
Yeah. So it should, I understand why it would encrypt it on the backup, but it should automatically decrypted on Restore and it's not doing that.

Caller 5 (01:12:53):
I don't think so. Well, what's happened is it, I, I was able to copy it to the new hard drive. I was able to, Naomi has also changed whether policy, everything used to be free. And now if you wanna copy and explore portions of your hard drive, they want you $50. So, Oh boy. I went back, Yeah, I went back and got one of my old versions that I have on one of my old computers and installed it and it seems to work. And I was able to copy the file over, but I can't access it due to permissions problem.

Leo Laporte (01:13:26):
So it's all in one folder. You right click that folder.

Caller 5 (01:13:31):
Right.

Leo Laporte (01:13:32):
And then you select let me just do this here cause I haven't done it on Windows. Are Windows 10, Windows 11? Who's Windows

Caller 5 (01:13:39):
11.

Leo Laporte (01:13:40):
Okay, so I'm on Windows 11 here. You right click the folder and you go to properties. So Alt enter would also do that. Yeah. And then the custom properties, there's a tab that says security, and that's who owns this. And as long as you're an administrator, you can change the folder. So there's an edit button that says to edit permission. You

Caller 5 (01:14:06):
Probably needed to log on as administrator then,

Leo Laporte (01:14:08):
That you do need to be an administrator to do this. That's correct.

Caller 5 (01:14:11):
Ah, there you go.

Leo Laporte (01:14:13):
And then you can, but you can change your permissions and you can give, you'll see yourself, I think in the, in the user names. And you can give that user permission, you know, full permission. You'll see there's, there's a bunch of things, you know, modify, read, execute, read, write you wanna give them give it, allow for all of those permissions to that user.

Caller 5 (01:14:35):
I, I told it to allow for everyone. And what it says is, unable to display current owner read permissions and permission. The other one says permission denied,

Leo Laporte (01:14:47):
But you're not an administrator.

Caller 5 (01:14:50):
I'll have to log on I administrator.

Leo Laporte (01:14:51):
Yeah. Run as administrator. Yeah. It won't let you do this as a regular user for obvious reasons. But as, as far as I know, if you're administrator, yeah, you can change all these permissions. That's, you know, you

Caller 5 (01:15:04):
Can check when's 11, what's the best way to log on as an administrator?

Leo Laporte (01:15:10):
You need to <laugh>, I hope you have an administrator account because you need to go to the users and groups and just change your account to be an administrator or create an administrator account. If, if you, you, it, it's unusual to have a set up with Windows that there isn't an administrator account. It might be called admin. And you should, and you need to know the password to it. Who, who set up the computer.

Caller 5 (01:15:34):
I'm in the process of doing it now.

Leo Laporte (01:15:35):
Okay. So normally, unless you say otherwise, you are an administrator, you can set up a limited user. And, and a lot of people do that for security reasons. It's not a bad idea. But you, you would always need an administrator account. And then by the way, you can run any program by right clicking it and say, and selecting run as administrator. So you could, I mean, and technically you can run the file explorer as an administrator without logging in as an administrator, that's what you're using. But I, I feel like you probably just wanna be an administrator. Windows cool. Because of uac. You, you can run as an administrator always on Windows.

Caller 5 (01:16:13):
Nice. Okay. Well, I may have solved my problem.

Leo Laporte (01:16:16):
I hope so. Don't want you to lose your music, man.

Caller 5 (01:16:20):
Yeah, that's scratch. That's the whole reason I bought all the upgrades.

Leo Laporte (01:16:23):
<Laugh>. Yeah. If I had more time, I'd asked you about it. I, but I'm afraid the music is Crosby still a Nash saying you need to do a show. Leo LaPorte, tech guy. 88. 88. Ask Leo. That's the phone number. Wind. So people have used Windows for a long time. There's a little bit of a cognitive break because it, like Windows 3, 3, 1, Windows, even Windows 95 and 98 weren't really designed as multi-user systems. You own the system. Your system, you can change anything, do anything you want. But real operating systems like Unix assume that it's a multi-user system. This really hearkens back to the pre-history of personal computing. When if you were using a computer, it was a computer, a mainframe used by many, many people. And so those operating systems are designed for different users. Now, most cases, your personal computer, you're the only person using it.

Leo Laporte (01:17:31):
Nevertheless, Modern operating systems, Mac, Windows, and Linux, all are set up as multi-user systems. So when you log in, you're logging in as a user. I'm logging in as Leo, Leo has the rights to see Leo's documents. But to keep Leo from messing with, you know, Johnny's documents there's a bunch of settings, bits that are set for each file that say who has rights to that file. And and it actually is not, It's by user, by group and by wheel. And it's, so, it's a lot of, it's very granular, it's very complicated, <laugh>. But it's again, just to protect other users. So I can't wander around in the system and see what Johnny's files are. I can't open them. I can't write to 'em and I can't delete them. If I wanted Johnny's files, I would have to log on as a system administrator because system administrator sometimes called root, have permission to do anything.

Leo Laporte (01:18:39):
They can delete the whole hard drive. They can look at any file. That's a very important lofty position on multi-user systems. Back in the old days, on a modern personal computer, most people run as the system administrator. It's your computer, you're the administrator. So generally, if you're running as administrator, you can see everything. You can change who can see stuff, you can, you know, modify all that. They buried a little bit. And then I told you, you have to go to properties and click the security tab and it's buried away on Windows Mac. And the Unix and Linux are a little bit different. It's a little easier to change these things, but people get in trouble with these permissions and this ownership thing, it's very, it's a little, you know, obscure and complicated cuz it comes from the pre-history of computing. But it's there to protect you.

Leo Laporte (01:19:27):
But it can bite you. You know, if you're using a program, and apparently this backup system he was using didn't properly set ownership on the files. So when they're copying the files, they're copying the data, but they weren't properly copying the metadata. The additional information about who owns this file, who has permission to access it, that wasn't copied or was improperly copied or got damaged in transit, something went wrong. And then when it restored it, it didn't have permissions. Now actually come to think of it because it was from a different machine, that kind of makes sense because the person who owned that machine had permission, not the person who owns the new machine. Yeah. In your case, it's the same person. But the computer doesn't know that. So that's, that may be what's happening is it's saying, Well, you know, you're not the administrator of this machine.

Leo Laporte (01:20:19):
You're the administrator of that machine and he's the guy who has access to it. So anyway, <laugh>, even as I described this, it sounds kind of crazy complicated. It's, it's all about who owns the files in the backup process, the ownership of the files either wasn't preserved or more likely it did the right thing. It said, Well, you have to say that you're the owner of these files. And so you way you do that in Windows is look at the properties and you say, No, no, no, these are my files. I own these files. I can read and write and delete the, it's kind of a nightmare. Come to think of it, <laugh>. And the problem is, and it was a big problem in the early days, I, I know I was doing this show when people move from Windows 95 to Windows NT or Windows 2000, where suddenly this became a problem. You know, Windows 95, you owned every whatever you want. Go ahead do it kid. It's your 88. 88 John on the line from Rock Hill, South Carolina. Hello John.

Caller 6 (01:21:24):
Hello. I have to ask you a quick question. Yes, sir. I, I hear you talking about the ERO mesh router system. Yes, sir. A lot. And our local telephone internet company in northern part of South Carolina called Capor is offering something called air ties, Air dash ties, Mesh Router. Is that comparable? Is it as good

Leo Laporte (01:21:51):
<Laugh>? Not fam. Well it's a Turkish company. Let's see, <laugh> they probably got it cheap. Oh, <laugh> air ties. Huh? Okay. I I am not familiar with these. I think they're really designed for broadband operators as opposed to home users. So I see they're used all over the world. It is designed to be a mesh system. I just, I've never used it cuz it's not a consumer system. It's, it's, it's designed to be exactly used as they're using it. Which is, you know, they, they, they, they, they buy a license and they can, they can distribute it as a is p a couple of things to pay attention to. Usually if you have a situation like that, it means that the broadband operator has some special access <laugh> to your data or your system. Not necessarily a problem if you trust them. Do they require that you use this air ties?

Caller 6 (01:22:55):
Well, it's, it's their mesh. Well, like I said, they have the monopoly in Northern South Carolina with a couple of

Leo Laporte (01:23:02):
Counties. Yeah. But, but sometimes internet service providers will provide equipment as a convenience for the customer, but will also let you use your own, if you wish.

Caller 6 (01:23:12):
Mm.

Leo Laporte (01:23:13):
So that's the thing to inquire. They may have, on their website, they may have a list of compatible hardware. You'll need two things. You need a cable modem, that's what's connected to the cable coming out of the wall and turns it into ethernet, which is a, you know, something standard that you can use. And then you'll need a router. Generally the air ties that they're providing, I suspect is both, it's a cable modem and router built into one device. That's for their ease of use. They're probably also charging you for it. I bet you might look on the bill and see what the rental is. 

Caller 6 (01:23:43):
Yeah, I didn't get it. Probably. It's, it's, it's an option that you get charged for. I'm sure. I'm just, I'm just, I'm looking for something that'll get me better reception across Yeah. To the end of the house. You know, everybody wants, so, so

Leo Laporte (01:23:57):
You gotta make sure that they'll let you do that. But I, most of the time they will and they'll have on their website a list of approved cable modems. And then that's just the modem that just gives you one ethernet connection, which then goes into a router and that's where you really have the world opens up for you. Arrow's good, but it's not the only one. Neck gear orbi I think is probably the fastest of the bunch. How big is the house?

Caller 6 (01:24:24):
About 2,500 square feet.

Leo Laporte (01:24:26):
Yeah. Okay. So if, So a typical base station routers for about 1500 square feet. So at the size of your house, you might want a base station and a satellite neck gear or for instance, the Orbis, they sell both. So in, in a bundle. So you plug the big neck gear base station into your cable modem, which is plugged into your internet service. And then you put a satellite halfway between that and the end of the house. And now the whole house is lit up. And I think you get very good results by doing that. So I, if they'll let you, if they'll let you get your own cable modem, that's all that matters. Once you get your own cable modem, you can use any router.

Caller 6 (01:25:06):
When you say a satellite is, isn't that the same as mesh has various

Leo Laporte (01:25:10):
Yeah, it's the same. It's, I Orbi calls it a satellite. Euro calls them beacons, <laugh>, they're just Oh, extra units, <laugh>.

Caller 6 (01:25:20):
Okay.

Leo Laporte (01:25:20):
And check and see how much they're charging you cuz the, they're probably charging you 10 bucks a month for the hair tees. So over say three year period, it would pay, you know, buying your own would pay for itself. Mm. So I, I think you're almost always better off using your own equipment if the cable company lets you because you have a much broader choice. So what you wanna know is, can I use of my own modem? If so, which, which brands do you approve of? And then you can choose the router after that. Leo Laport, the tech guy. Sometimes what you'll do if they don't let you use a third party router is use their air tees only as the cable modem. Right. Because the cable modem is the thing that has to work with their equipment. It turns it into a standard ethernet that you can use anything with. So if, if they say, no, no, no, you have to use the Airts, then say, Can I disable the router in the airts so I can use my own router?

Caller 6 (01:26:18):
Hmm. Well this is, this system is called comp. It's our local phone company, which I, like I said is a monopoly and this part of South Carolina. Yeah. All,

Leo Laporte (01:26:26):
All internets, all Cable pro companies are Oh, this is phone only or do they provide

Caller 6 (01:26:31):
No, no, no. They, they, they are the old phone company Monopoly from Yeah. 30, 40 years ago. And now they are the monopoly on, on internet. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:26:41):
And is it, is it coming to the wall as it cable or as a phone line?

Caller 6 (01:26:45):
No, as a ca as a cable. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:26:47):
Yeah. So it's cable internet.

Caller 6 (01:26:48):
The old coax, the old coaxial cable now just provides the internet to me. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:26:53):
So essentially, let me just see if I'm looking at the, their website. If

Caller 6 (01:27:01):
You, I, I would like to go, I would like to go with their product if possible. Well that's fine. Just cause Yeah,

Leo Laporte (01:27:07):
It'll work and then they support it.

Caller 6 (01:27:10):
And you're calling it Air Teases? I was calling it Air Ties.

Leo Laporte (01:27:13):
I don't know what it's called. They're Turkish <laugh>.

Caller 6 (01:27:17):
So you do know their Turkish. How'd you learn their tur? How'd you find out they're Turkish? I

Leo Laporte (01:27:21):
Checked the web <laugh>.

Caller 6 (01:27:24):
Okay. Okay. I see. 

Leo Laporte (01:27:26):
You know, I in general I like to use my own gear, but you do have a good point. They're gonna support their gear. Yeah. So you just wanna see how much they're charging you for the rental cuz they're not giving it to you, they're renting it to you.

Caller 6 (01:27:43):
No, no, I understand that. Yeah. I just, just curious if you knew anything about Capor and their, you

Leo Laporte (01:27:48):
Probably, I don't, No. And I don't know Air ties RTS or ds, I don't know them. And I'm looking on the Capor site and I do not see a list of compatible cable modems. Let me see if I can find it. Cuz they may not let you, in which case you're gonna use the airts anyway. I don't have any reason to not like them. 

Caller 6 (01:28:08):
Like I said, they are, they are the monopoly here. I'm kind of stuck with them, you know?

Leo Laporte (01:28:12):
Yeah. But it doesn't, it doesn't necessarily mean you're stuck with their equipment. Most cable providers will let you use your equipment and then the federal law prohibits them from charging you rental. Here it is. Can I buy my own cable modem? Yes. But the cable mode is provided with the cable modem service. You decide to use your own, it must be docs as three one compliant. That's fine. And then you have to call them and say, Here's the Mac address of my cable modem. So you can, if you're happy with, with them. I don't know anything about rts. I don't know if they're bad or good or anything. I don't see any negative reviews. The, the negative is it could be older equipment that, you know, they've been reusing. It could be, and you're paying a rental fee for it. It may not be as good as a third party mm-hmm. <Affirmative> router that you could use. But, but if it's easier for you, I don't want to cause more problems. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, what I'm saying is you don't have to use it, but if it's easier for you and you're gonna get better support and it's working fine, then I'd be, I'd say fine, go ahead.

Caller 6 (01:29:14):
Right now I have a box, one box. It's, it's working fine. I have to alter the higher band. Not, not the live, you know, over 150 mega

Leo Laporte (01:29:24):
Yeah, you're happy.

Caller 6 (01:29:25):
Yeah. Yeah. I'm just, just having trouble getting it to the other parts of the house.

Leo Laporte (01:29:29):
Well that's what you should ask them then is if there is a way that they know of, they may offer rts extenders.

Caller 6 (01:29:37):
Yeah. Isn't the extender the same as mesh?

Leo Laporte (01:29:40):
No, they, But the airts are mesh, I believe so. They

Caller 6 (01:29:45):
Are. They're, I

Leo Laporte (01:29:46):
So say I wanna, So if it's mesh, the whole point of mesh is to have multiple units,

Caller 6 (01:29:51):
Right? With they're extended same as extenders, right?

Leo Laporte (01:29:54):
Nah, technically no. But yes.

Caller 6 (01:29:56):
But the results

Leo Laporte (01:29:56):
Is the same. The results the same. It's actually better. So yeah, if they offer an extend or get it, it'll be from Airts and it will be mesh. And that's a good thing. Leo LaPorte, the tech guy, 88. 88. Ask Leo. I was just looking up comor. And like most internet service providers especially cable internet service providers, they will let you bring your own gear. So the federal the Congress just passed a law last year that said, cable companies cannot charge you rental on gear you're not using, but you gotta check your bill because a lot of cable companies still do. And they may charge as much as 10 bucks a month for the use of their equipment. And if you replace it with your equipment, which in general is gonna be more modern and higher quality they should stop charging you rental for their equipment cuz you're not using it anymore.

Leo Laporte (01:30:54):
Bring it back and give it back to 'em. Of course. So make sure they're not charging you for that. Now I have to say John raised a good point, which is, well, I don't know if I wanna support my own gear. And that's the downside. You may save money over time cuz you're not paying rental. You may have more modern gear or features that you want. You need a cable modem and a router you know, that can end up costing hundreds and hundreds of dollars. So you may not save money and they may not support it. So for, if, if all you care about is I wanna make this as painless as possible, use their gear. Cuz then you can, if something goes wrong, you can call 'em and they'll fix it. And you don't mind the, the rental fee. And if you look at the how much the rental fee is and compared it to how much it would cost to buy new gear and it, and it doesn't cost a prohibitive amount of money, then I'd say, you know, do go the easy way.

Leo Laporte (01:31:47):
I'm not that guy. <Laugh>. Of course not. You look, you're looking at me. You know. No, no. He's the guy who said to Comcast, I'll do my own thing. Thank you very much. So I have my own cable modem which I like a lot. It's a neck year CMS 1000, I think Dous 31, which is the protocol. And you wanna make sure you get Dous three one. In fact, Conium even says that. And then I have that hooked up to a very fancy, elaborate routing system from ubiquity. I like to do my own thing. Did it cost me more? Absolutely. <laugh>, am I responsible for keeping it working? Absolutely. <laugh>. If the cable guy comes and looks at it and says, Uhuh, am I gonna live with that? Absolutely. But you may not be that guy. In fact, probably shouldn't be that guy. I shouldn't recommend it. James, on the line from Apple Valley, California. Hi James.

Caller 7 (01:32:45):
Hello.

Leo Laporte (01:32:46):
Hello.

Caller 7 (01:32:49):
Hi. Yes. It's a pleasure to talk to you. Thanks

Leo Laporte (01:32:52):
For

Caller 7 (01:32:52):
Calling yours. As many have. Nice. Thank you. I appreciate it. KM six J and Z by the way.

Leo Laporte (01:32:57):
Ah, nice. W six T WT 73.

Caller 7 (01:33:02):
Yeah, I like that vanity.

Leo Laporte (01:33:03):
I know that was a good one. And I think Godo you know, of course we did a ham show for many years with Bob Hele. And I think it was Godo, his partner who got me the vanity handle. He has friends at the fcc,

Caller 7 (01:33:19):
<Laugh>

Leo Laporte (01:33:21):
Gordon Gordon, the Gordon West Radio School at Gordon West radio school.com. I'll give him a plug. Is a great way to learn the stuff you need to get your ham license. That's how I learned. And he's a great guy. I really like him. So plug for Gordon

Caller 7 (01:33:36):
Thought Amateur Radio back in well back in the sixties and seventies at high school. Oh, nice. And I'd always been, I'd listened to 10, 10 meters, two meters you know, all around the world. And then finally got my license during Covid when I had a lot of down time.

Leo Laporte (01:33:54):
Oh, perfect. You know, I'm a terrible ham. We're talking to amateur radio, obviously I'm a terrible ham because I realize I talk on the radio all day. The last thing I wanna do is get home and go back on the radio. Although Art Bell did it for years, he would do his show and then he would go and get, go out to his H shack and stay up all night.

Caller 7 (01:34:14):
Yeah. Art Bell was something,

Leo Laporte (01:34:15):
Something else, wouldn't he? So what can I do for you, my friend?

Caller 7 (01:34:20):
I have heard you speak about being able to connect to your parents' computer remotely. Yes. Yes. And my mother lives outta state in Sedona, Arizona. And I live in California. She's in her eighties, doesn't understand the technology. I can't visit very often, so I would like to connect to her Max so that I can help her through issues where both running Monterey 12.6 and I understood with the Monterey operating system, they made it easier. Yes. However, I can get my max to talk to one another because I'm inside the same network. The problem I'm having, it seems that is because I'm outside of their network. Can you lead me down the right

Leo Laporte (01:35:06):
Here? Yeah. So probably she has security software. Mac has a built in firewall that's preventing it. So you might have to go to Sedona. In fact, I'm almost certain you're gonna have to go to Sedona and set this all up. She has to go into sharing on her system preferences and turn on remote management. And then at that point she will be offered a chance to say what you can do. Can you modify files? Can you look at things cetera? She'll also get to say who gets to do it. And I would suggest you don't say anybody, but you be very specific. Oh, no. And you, and I think, I think it does it James, by your login, not your IP address. So you say No, no, it has to be james@applevalley.com. 

Caller 7 (01:35:52):
Wow.

Leo Laporte (01:35:52):
Okay. Yeah. So you're gonna add that user, and that's for security. You don't want just anybody logging in, right? No.

Caller 7 (01:35:58):
Right. See the option for everyone. And that would be bad. That

Leo Laporte (01:36:01):
Would be bad. And then make sure her firewall allows it as well. Normally in Apple, on the Apple system preferences, when you turn on a feature like that, it opens up a port in the firewall. But just in case, make sure that the firewall also allows remote sharing.

Caller 7 (01:36:17):
And that firewall part of the Mac and top it is computer operating system, right? That

Leo Laporte (01:36:23):
A's No, no, no, it's in the Mac. It's under the security tab. Now it is possible that her ISS P might be blocking those ports. And I'm, I don't think that's typical. I'm not sure. Let me see what Apple remote sharing uses. I'm not sure what ports it uses. Ooh. So 5,900 udp 32 83 tcp. And then it uses 22, which is SSH for con control. And so there are some ports you'd have to open. This is a available to an Apple support document. I doubt very much that the ISP blocks those. If they do, you might be outta luck. But of course you could call and ask. It's more, it is possible though that her router is blocking those ports. In fact, properly configured, router should block those ports, right? You don't want people to kind of willy-nilly be whi in. So you may have to port forward. This is why you're going to Sonsona. Is she in a, is she in a group housing or is she a live alone?

Caller 7 (01:37:34):
No, she's in a, in a resident, you know, regular home along with my stepdad. Good. And

Leo Laporte (01:37:41):
So

Caller 7 (01:37:41):
She manages their, their isp.

Leo Laporte (01:37:43):
So step, Yeah, it wouldn't be the issp, it would be their router. You just have to port forward, which is a setting in the router says when people come in over port 22, I want you to go to this computer <laugh>, and it will just, it will forward it to that computer. That's for safety. You don't want to go on any other computer. And then that computer knows what to do when it says, Oh, there's somebody making an SSH request. Who is it? You need to log in. Do you have permissions? Oh, you do. Good. Come on in. So now, all that, all this is about security. There is, Apple has a fairly extensive, you know, guidelines for use with remote desktop, et cetera, et cetera. So what, just in a nutshell, so that you can remember this, what you'll have to do is configure her computer, computer for remote desktop, allow and all that, and give your, your login and everything.

Leo Laporte (01:38:31):
Make sure her router passes those ports through to that computer and then you, you're golden. And that, so that's the difference between if you're doing it on the land, like you bring your laptop down there and you're sitting on the network next to the, your mom's computer. It doesn't have to go through the router. The router doesn't have to allow it. But if you're out at home, if you're back in Apple Valley, you're going over the public internet. Now you've got traffic coming in through the public internet to the router. The router quite rightly is gonna say, No, no, no, I don't know who you are. And, and block it. So you wanna tell the router? No, it's okay. In this case, pass it on to mom's computer.

Caller 7 (01:39:08):
Okay. And how I've heard you talk about the firmware updates and things for your is p router and network. Yes. How is, how is that accessible? Is that through the website of the is p typically?

Leo Laporte (01:39:21):
That's a good question. It depends on the router. A lot of these routers have in the settings update firmware and you can check and see if the firmware is up to date. I would do that first. But yeah, the is p should be able to also push it if they've configured it properly. So it's worth a call to the ISP as well. Leo Laport, the tech guy. More calls with another hour to come. Stay right here. Well, hey, hey, how are you today? Leo Laport here, the tech guy. Time to talk computers, the internet, home theater, digital photography. Smart phones, smart watches, all that jazz. 88. 88. Ask Leo's the phone number. (888) 827-5536. Toll free from anywhere in the US or Canada outside that area. Well, you could still call, but you'll have to use Skype out or some sort of internet device to to do it.

Leo Laporte (01:40:12):
88. 88. Ask Leo. Should be toll-free though. That's the good news. Website tech guy labs.com. That's where we put links to everything. I mention all the songs that we play. Thanks to Professor Laura, our musical director. I put audio and video from the show there. The, the full, the full version of the show. Not abridged audio and video. Cuz it's a podcast. I even put the stuff that you don't hear that's in between when I'm talking to people after. And also we put a transcript there so you can quickly find what you're looking for. Again that's tech guy labs.com. Back to the phone as we go. Mark on the line from Studio City. Hello, Mark.

Caller 8 (01:40:59):
Hello there, Leo. How are you? I'm

Leo Laporte (01:41:01):
Well, how are you?

Caller 8 (01:41:02):
Good. Ok. So I have AOL mail, which I've had for, for a very a

Leo Laporte (01:41:09):
Hundred years. Yes,

Caller 8 (01:41:11):
Yes. So, so on my MacBook Pro which runs Mojave, up until like six months ago, I had access through aol, through the you know, through the Apple Mail. That's what I use. I had access to all, I don't know, 20 years or whatever it is, 80,000 emails. Somehow about six months ago, my MacBook Pro cut off the mail and it only goes back six months under Apple Mail. Now, if I go on AOL mail, which is kind of clunky, it'll come up, it'll go back to the very beginning. But why isn't my Apple computer going back all the way anymore

Leo Laporte (01:41:51):
To help protect the security of your account, AOL will stop allowing connections from some third party apps, including Apple Mail. Thank you. Aol, what are your options? Use our free AOL app for iOS or Android, or use the web@mail.aol.com. Do you ever log into the web version of aol?

Caller 8 (01:42:13):
I do, but it's, it's much, much more clunky. Yes. And it's not tied to everything in my computer. My computer, I can go on the spotlight and I can say, Hey, remember that thing in 2014? Boom. It hits it instantly. Right?

Leo Laporte (01:42:26):
So what aol what AOL did, I mean, honestly, this is an ancient system. And so last year they changed it, their security requirements, and they require you to reset it up in mail. So, and you also have to do it with a app specific password. Have you ever experienced this where you can't use your regular password, but you have to use a generated password? This is not at all uncommon, unfortunately, but it is very confusing. I'm gonna put a link in the show notes to Apple's description of this process. So the trick, the trick is to, you're gonna have to start over and it, I, I don't know about missing. I do know actually what happened really is you no longer accessing AOL mail. So you're seeing a limited amount, the stuff that the Apple Mail had downloaded, but it's not seeing the entire database of your old mail.

Leo Laporte (01:43:19):
So to do that, you need to delete it from Apple Mail and start over, you know, your password and all that stuff, right? Yeah, yeah. So I can give you a c of the steps, but essentially I'm gonna put a link AOL mail changes in security notice in 2021. It'll be in the show notes. Or you can Google that. It's on the Apple Discussions thread. So what you need to do is let's see generate a unique app password that gives your third party app Apple Mail permission to log onto your AOL count and then use that password, not your old AOL password with Apple Mail. 

Caller 8 (01:44:01):
And who generates that pa that password?

Leo Laporte (01:44:03):
AOL does, And I'm gonna, I'm gonna put a link, Okay?

Caller 8 (01:44:05):
Okay. But I won't lose my, my, I can't lose my

Leo Laporte (01:44:09):
In theory. In theory. You haven't. No, no, no, no. You still have your same email address. Okay. In theory, all of your mail is still there. Okay? They just la I get this call a lot <laugh>, which is why the answer is that my fingertips <laugh> last year, that's when we started getting the call. AOL changed. Its, its method for doing this.

Leo Laporte (01:44:30):
And of course they didn't really tell anybody. It's because AOL was sold, remember to Verizon, and then Verizon sold it again. And it's just a mess. Honestly, what if I were you, this would be an opportun, I would suggest this is an opportunity to get a better email provider. Keep the AOL mail. Yeah. Just to have it be forwarded to your new provider and then, you know, you can, the best way to do this, and you may not care enough to do it, but this

Caller 8 (01:45:01):
Is, Well, I do have a Gmail account. Yeah. I mean, I have four other email accounts, so

Leo Laporte (01:45:05):
Maybe the easiest Yeah, maybe the easiest thing to do is to have Gmail go get your AOL mail. You'll still need to use the, the new special password with Gmail, but it could get the mail, put it in your inbox you can even filter it. You could have a folder that's for your AOL mail, and then you, whatever you're using to get your Gmail, you can use and your AOL mail will be

Caller 8 (01:45:25):
There. But can I still do it through the, through the Apple Mail program? Sure.

Leo Laporte (01:45:29):
You can use Gmail. That Gmail with that. Right. Okay. You know, it's kind of a mess. This is almost everybody. Gmail does this now too. I use fast mail and they do it too. They don't want you with third party apps to use your actual password because that gives the password to that app. They want a, you go to AOL and the mail program and they generate an app specific password. You say, this is gonna be for Apple Mail on my, you know, on Mac, you know, 62. And that way you can revoke it if there's a problem. And it's only good for that machine. It's just gives them more control. They don't like, and I understand they don't want you to give your actual password to strangers,

Caller 8 (01:46:15):
Right? I would never do that.

Leo Laporte (01:46:19):
<Laugh>. Well, you are really, if you're giving it to Apple Mail, Okay. <Laugh> in a way, I mean, Apple Mail is completely safe. Apple's not stealing. Apple has no interest in your AOL mail. But that's the theory is Well, we don't know who that, you know, we don't know whether to trust them or not. So we won't.

Caller 8 (01:46:35):
Okay. All right. So on your website, it's gonna be

Leo Laporte (01:46:38):
Yeah, and I'll put

Caller 8 (01:46:40):
Old people with AOL mail.

Leo Laporte (01:46:43):
Yeah, it, you know, I've said this before. I'll say it again. If you, if if emails important to you, I think it is, is it's important to all of us, it's probably worth paying for a good email provider. That's why I use Fast mail, Fast mail.com. They're not a sponsor. I don't get anything from them, but Gmail's okay, but it's free, right? I think paying for it is better cuz then they have an interest in supporting you. So that's the first thing I would do. And then the second, and, and, and by the way, you want one that does that, does it, right? And incidentally, they still use application specific passwords. So, you know, it's just as complicated then, then let's make it even more complicated. Don't use. So, so let's say I have, you know, the techGuy@fastmail.com as my fast mail address, but don't give that out.

Leo Laporte (01:47:30):
Go to a domain registrar. You know, Go Daddy's the biggest I hover as a sponsor of ours. Anyway, go to one of them and get a, get a nice fancy email name, you know laport family.com or you know, something like that or your company name and register it. Now you own that. I, in fact, that's how I do my email. I have a, I'm not gonna give it out on the air. You think I'm crazy? Well I do. I have leo@techguylabs.com right? But, but there is no email provider@techguylabs.com. That's just a domain I own. I then tell GoDaddy or hover whoever, when mail comes to that address, forward it somewhere actually Hover has an email, very good email program. You can just use theirs. You pay for it. But that's very good. Or I tell hover forward it to Fast Mail. So if you sent mail to leo@techeyelabs.com, it won't go to tech Eye labs.com, it'll go, it'll bounce off tech ilabs.com cuz they don't handle email and go to my fast mail account and then I have a special fast mail inbox and it looks at the two address on all the email when I see leo@techilabs.com.

Leo Laporte (01:48:46):
I put that a special folder and I may even do more filtering on top of that. Now we're getting really complicated, but this is, you know, if you, if email's important, and especially if you're in a business, it's really important. You, you wanna have a bunch of features like that. You wanna have an address you own so that no matter what email provider you're using, you can point that address at that provider. You don't ever have to tell anybody I've changed my address. It always goes to the right place. You wanna have an email provider that cares about you, that gives you real support and ideally one that has a lot of features for email filtering, because that's very, very important. You know, choose an email provider based on their ability to get rid of spam and their ability for you to set up filters to organize your email.

Leo Laporte (01:49:35):
I don't know about you, but I literally get thousands of messages a day. 90% of which are, I don't want to even see. They're not necessarily just spam, they're newsletters, they're, you know, there's stuff I just don't care about. So that mail comes into my fast mail inbox and then I have a filter on top of that that says, well is this person in your contact list? Oh yeah, it's in my address book. Okay. That goes into an important folder. That's somebody I know. Is this your wife? Oh yeah. More important that goes to a V I P folder. Is is this an a notice, a security notice from your network attached storage? Yeah, I wanna see that. So that goes into the Sonology folder. So I have all these filters that make it much easier for me to, to, it's really triage.

Leo Laporte (01:50:24):
Isn't it much easier for me to go through my mail cuz I'm not gonna go through a thousand messages a day even with all this, By the way, don't email me because <laugh> as people who do email me, No, it's about 50 50 that I'll see it. There's just too much. Right It's too much. 88. 88. Ask Leo. That's the phone number. I hope that helps Mark. Yeah. Tech guy labs.com. I've put an article from actually Apple's discussions forms on what to do about the email changes at aol. More calls right after this.

Leo Laporte / Rod Pyle (01:51:00):
That's one advantage of becoming a, how shall I put this? A senior member of the community. <Laugh>. I don't mean old, I just mean I've been around for a while. I don't really need to look at PR messages. I don't really, I just, I don't need to. There's nobody that I need to talk to that urgently except for my immediate family. I own my own business. There's, nobody has a hold on me, so I just pretty much ignore email <laugh>. I think that happens as you get older anyway. Right? You just kind of life kind of relinquiss its Hold on you. Yeah. And I can do that with fast mail I have. So the domain, I use it fast mail can have anything at that domain. So whenever I sign up for something you know, when I sign up for my Verizon account, it was Verizon at my mail address.

Leo Laporte / Rod Pyle (01:52:05):
And so anything that comes to Verizon at my mail address I know is if it's not from Verizon, then they sold the mailing list. Surprisingly, that doesn't happen very often. I was kind of shocked at that. Or it's a communication Verizon, which means I can filter it. Hello there, Mr. Pile. You're the only guest on the show today. Everybody bailed on me. What? Yeah, that's all right. Oh, that's so well. Happy to be here. Hey, I, if I had known that I would've taken up three separate slot <laugh>. Cause I have a lot to talk about today. Now, did you get my email about the Space Force theme song? Didn't you just hear me hear me talking about how I don't, Yeah, I didn't, but I'll, I'll look. Okay. Yeah, no, I wasn't able to get the show feed for a bit. I was, I was all just the last call. Zoom. Oh, good. Space Force. Yeah. Yeah. It's so bad. You want me to play it? Well, when we're on, if you wouldn't mind. Just so people can, can hear it. Oh,

Leo Laporte / Rod Pyle (01:53:07):
It sounds like a, it make it stop. It really sounds like a parody. It sounds like something from the fifties about a better dishwasher for Maytag. You know, And I mean, you know, we'll talk about it when we're do it, the segment, but it, it just, it was stunning to me after all these decades of great movie music and, and I sent you a, a follow up link. I don't know if you can use it or not, cuz it's just a private group out of Florida. But there are other people that, you know, were vying for the honor of making a Space Force theme and they're better. They're a little dark, they're a little contemporary, but, No. Anyway, we'll, we'll talk, but also we have to talk about the double asteroid redirection test, which is impacting an, an asteroid live on television tomorrow.

Leo Laporte / Rod Pyle (01:53:54):
Oh yeah. I gotta remember to watch that and Yeah. Other stuff. Yeah. I actually dropped you a line to see if you wanted to do it live, but it's it's kind of a weird time That's in the evening. Yeah, no, I don't You got a life. I got a life <laugh>. You got a new watch to look over, right? Yeah. Well, Artis, the Artis launch got put off. Again, thanks to a Typhoon <laugh>, I have a standing bet long standing. Be with Rod Pile, our space guy Bet. Whether Artis will ever launch <laugh> we will be talking to Rod Pile in just a, a few minutes about space. There's more than just that. In fact, there's a very exciting space event you can watch on TV tomorrow, but Rod will explain. Meanwhile, back to the phones Aaron on the line from Ashfield, Massachusetts. Hello Aaron.

Caller 9 (01:54:46):
Hi Leo. Welcome. I have called in once before, but

Leo Laporte (01:54:52):
Oh my God, That's okay. That's

Caller 9 (01:54:58):
Here in the,

Leo Laporte (01:54:59):
Oh, you're making, that's all. That's okay.

Caller 9 (01:55:02):
But the reason I'm to call now is just to complain. I figured you'd be a good guy to complain to. Sure.

Leo Laporte (01:55:09):
I'll be his shoulder. You can cry on what's, what's a matter?

Caller 9 (01:55:13):
Well, I'm complain. I just, I'm a, I was a little annoyed because my wife is a big Red Sox fan and so Well that's

Leo Laporte (01:55:21):
Annoying in and of itself. Are you a Yankees fan?

Caller 9 (01:55:24):
No, no,

Leo Laporte (01:55:24):
No. I'm a Red Sox fan too. I'm with her.

Caller 9 (01:55:27):
When I met her, I was not a baseball fan, but after 50 years, I, yeah. Started to see in Good. So you know, Friday night the Red Sox game was on Apple tv.

Leo Laporte (01:55:39):
Oh. It was one of the Friday night games. Okay. Yeah.

Caller 9 (01:55:43):
And so they have, you know, you're forced to listen to their

Leo Laporte (01:55:49):
Horrible horrible play by play people. Yeah. Yeah. I am told, by the way, that's not Apple's fault. That's who Major League baseball gave them.

Caller 9 (01:55:58):
Really? Yeah. Well, well that, I mean, that's generally the way it is when there's any kind of a national That's right. Broadcast. It seems like they think that the people that are watching don't know anything and they need to explain how the game works and everything.

Leo Laporte (01:56:13):
There's a certain also political correctness in their team. They, they feel like they have to get more women on. And some of these women are not very good. They're like social media experts and stuff. They're trying to be hip. You know, I'm looking now at the Wikipedia article and maybe Apple did hire these guys. I don't know. I'm certainly with the approval of Major League baseball

Caller 9 (01:56:38):
For a fan. You know, they wanna hear their, the people they're used

Leo Laporte (01:56:42):
To. I'm completely with you.

Caller 9 (01:56:44):
And the thing that's annoying is that there's no DVR function. You can't pause it. So you can't sync it up with Joe Castiglione, you know, which

Leo Laporte (01:56:54):
Is I didn't know that. Yeah, cuz that's what I usually do. I get tune in, fired up. I get the, the, the Boston play by play guys. Cuz I wanna hear the homers. And then I, and then, you know what, I used to sync it up as the crack of the bat. So I would pause the, with the TiVo, I'd pause it when the bat hits the ball, and then I'd wait on the tuning audio till I hear the crack of the bat and I press play. And that works pretty well. But you can't do that if you can't pause it.

Caller 9 (01:57:22):
No, you can't do anything. And it's it's the, the the radio is about 15 seconds behind the Right.

Leo Laporte (01:57:31):
So you video. Yeah.

Caller 9 (01:57:33):
And

Leo Laporte (01:57:33):
So, so you need to be able to pause the video for that amount of time and then, and then that way everything will be synced up and yeah, you don't wanna listen to the play by play 15 seconds later. That's no good.

Caller 9 (01:57:45):
And if I was, if I was making a YouTube video about this, my clickbait

Leo Laporte (01:57:50):
<Laugh>, what would your headline, what would your headline be?

Caller 9 (01:57:53):
My hit my headline would be streaming sports is a big conspiracy to make us all force us all to watch commercials.

Leo Laporte (01:58:00):
Yeah. I'm surprised I haven't gotten that call yet about Thursday night football. Cuz you know, Amazon bought the rights to NFL football. Amazon

Caller 9 (01:58:10):
Thursday night on Amazon. You can record it.

Leo Laporte (01:58:13):
Yeah. In fact, they do it for you. Now Apple, I think will let you watch the game afterwards on a recording, which you could pause and forward, but you don't wanna watch the game when it's over. That's not,

Caller 9 (01:58:24):
Yeah, well I, what I like to do is start 15 minutes

Leo Laporte (01:58:27):
Late. Yeah. Skip the commercials. I know what you're up to. Don't think, I don't know what you're up to. <Laugh>. Yeah,

Caller 9 (01:58:33):
Well, you know, having all these years with TiVos and getting used to this stuff and

Leo Laporte (01:58:37):
Yeah, no, it's a, if you do that with the nfl, you know, there's only 11 minutes of actual action in an NFL game. So you really can cut the time down quite a bit. With

Caller 9 (01:58:47):
My, with my old Direct TV TiVo, we had two live stream, two live buffers. So I could watch two games at once and I'd, I'd get to a commercial and pause it, switch to the other one with one button click, you know, And

Leo Laporte (01:59:01):
I had, I did not know that Apple TV didn't let you pause the game

Caller 9 (01:59:06):
That, So what's weird is what's gonna happen, What's gonna happen if they, if they end up getting Sunday NFL Sunday ticket,

Leo Laporte (01:59:14):
If they are in the bidding for,

Caller 9 (01:59:17):
How can they, they have, they seemed like they'd have to have a TVR function for that. Yeah. I, because it's all the game.

Leo Laporte (01:59:25):
So you can't, you're watching the, the game live on Apple tv. You can't press the pause button on the Apple remote.

Caller 9 (01:59:32):
No. Well, I'm watching on Roku, but, ah,

Leo Laporte (01:59:37):
That may be, You can't see. That may be, Cause I think you can do it on an Apple tv. You just can't do it on a Roku.

Caller 9 (01:59:46):
Well that sucks. <Laugh>

Leo Laporte (01:59:48):
Apple wants you to buy their hardware, Dude. In fact, I found it mind boggling that Apple made Apple TV plus available on all these other devices, including many TVs. But I guess they just want the business. But yes, I think it works better on an Apple tv. Of course.

Caller 9 (02:00:08):
Yeah. I, I had to go through,

Leo Laporte (02:00:10):
I'm not, I am with you. I think Apple hasn't done a very good job. I am sort of excited though about companies like Amazon and Apple getting game rights because in theory, if they wanted to show off technology, they could do so much more. You know, they could really have a, In fact, I think Amazon plans to have Amazon stats. You're gonna have the x-ray feature on Thursday night football. There's a lot more you could do than broadcast does. And I think it's an opportunity to reinvent how sports or broadcast, and it's disappointing that Apple has done so little along those lines. Rod pile space guy coming up next. Ah, I see the issue. Edmonton oiler guy says it's streaming at two K HDR and a higher frame rate on Apple tv, but it can't, there's not enough processing power on Roku or those TVs to, to do that. So they send a lower quality stream. And I imagine that might be the reason you can't pause and rewind and all that. So

Caller 9 (02:01:21):
On, on it's

Leo Laporte (02:01:22):
A technical

Caller 9 (02:01:23):
Thing. And Thursday night football you can, you know, there's a DVR function. Yeah. But, but, but it doesn't work. You know, it's a little funky. I mean, I started the game to watch the game, you know, part way through and, you know, the standard deal. You, you yeah. Click on it and it says gives you a choice to start from the beginning or right. Or, or live. And you click on start from beginning and it starts live, which is not really what you wanna have happen. No.

Leo Laporte (02:01:56):
Now you know who's winning. That's no fair. I, I don't, I don't know. I think that this is new

Caller 9 (02:02:05):
All way

Leo Laporte (02:02:05):
Back. I'm with you. I'm with you. Not

Caller 9 (02:02:08):
Takes a long time.

Leo Laporte (02:02:10):
Well, the moral of this call is, Well that sucks, <laugh>.

Caller 9 (02:02:16):
Well, hopefully they'll get their act together.

Leo Laporte (02:02:18):
I hope so too. Cause there's a real opportunity for Apple to do something special. Right. But you might need an Apple TV to really get the benefit of that.

Caller 9 (02:02:27):
Well, you know, Neston now you can, you can subscribe to, to New England Sports Network only, which I always wished you could do because you had to get a, you know, basically a cable package or something, you know, Direct tv, I mean YouTube tv Right. In order to get this. But it's $30 a month.

Leo Laporte (02:02:45):
Yikes.

Caller 9 (02:02:46):
With co with commercials and no dvr.

Leo Laporte (02:02:49):
Wow. Those greedy sobs. I tell you,

Caller 9 (02:02:52):
I can't believe that people will do that, But well,

Leo Laporte (02:02:55):
Don't

Caller 9 (02:02:55):
Have, we don't, we have, at this point, I have no choice. Unless I was to use a friend's login for his for his cable package, you know. Right. Which I would, you know, I wouldn't do that. But

Leo Laporte (02:03:11):
I'm gonna have to go back and watch the the Red Sox game. I didn't realize it was on Apple tv on Friday. Hey, I gotta run. I gotta do a rod pile. Can we let me play the music for Rod coming out. Okay. Laura, I have a very special theme song for Rod. Do you hear me? Laura? Do you hear me? War Fighters

Space Force... (02:04:05):
10 Space Force on

Leo Laporte / Rod Pyle (02:04:09):
The Space Force from on High Rod Pile. Your new theme is here. How do you like it? <Laugh> Rod's dead. And my ear is, was Rod's hiding is head <laugh>. So after, you know, a thousand years or more of Western musical tradition, a hundred years of great movie scores, 50 years of Star Trek and 40 plus years of Star Wars and Batman and Elman and Williams and all these great guys. This is what we get. You're saying we could do better. They could have pulled this from the Mickey Mouse Club. You know what, it sounds like somebody, it sounded like that somebody in the in the YouTube comment said, this sounds exactly like the dystopian music that plays at the beginning from the radio at the beginning of the Fallout 76 game. Some, you know, kind of Well or storm ship troop Starship Troopers or, or you name it.

Leo Laporte / Rod Pyle (02:05:03):
So, so I did little research cuz I thought, I thought it was a joke at first I thought, no, this is a gag, you know, but no, no, no. This was unveiled on September 20th. It's the official well, you know, when the Kons go rolling along is Exactly, you know, I mean military music, as some would say, is an oxymoron. And I realize it's a national anthem versus military. But, but in Casablanca, when they strike up the Marshall is, is great song. Yeah. You know, it's fantastic. And the lyrics are kind of stinky, but the songs great. Or the all father up. Yeah. The we're in, you know, if John Phillips Suza wasn't rotting away before this, this poop and a punch ball would do it. So, so I take it you're not a a fan. I was in high school band for four years. <Laugh>, you know, we marched in the summer with the LA smog so thick.

Leo Laporte / Rod Pyle (02:05:57):
You couldn't see the mountains two miles away. And we played better stuff than this. So I assumed it was some general's. 10Th grade kid. But it out. No, it was a very talented, it was composed by two former service members. Well, James Tech, nor I believe who was in the Air Force, but he's a recording artist. He's at least a Nashville recording artist. <Laugh>. Really? Anyway, yeah. Don't, don't waste more time on this. That's the new space for us team. Welcome. What else is going on for, Okay, so very important, Tomorrow, Monday seven 14 Eastern Time, four 14 Pacific. And all the ones in between the DART space am the, I hope that's not am pm. Oh, thank God. Okay. Yeah. <Laugh>, tomorrow afternoon direction test. Okay. Yeah. Slams into an asteroid. So this spacecraft, which is a 1200 pound probe, its sole purpose in life, was to go 7 million miles and Ram into a moonlet orbiting an asteroid called Did Moss.

Leo Laporte / Rod Pyle (02:06:58):
So the mood is called dho is 500 feet across. We've talked about this before. The plan is that we're practicing for someday a earthing asteroid coming our way. Right. And deflecting it. And you don't have to deflect it much deflect the quarter of a degree if it's a million miles out. And it's gonna miss entirely so well in this. The deflection here is just enough to measure from Earth. So really this is just a test of a kinetic. But here's my question. How are we gonna watch this on tv? Because the cam, the only instrument on this probe, besides the AI that directs it into the rock for the last four hours is the camera. And that rock is gonna get bigger and bigger. Oh, bigger. Oh, that's cool. And it's gonna go whoop. But how, what, how long does it take for the signal to get back from the camera though?

Leo Laporte / Rod Pyle (02:07:45):
It's 7 million miles, so it's a couple of seconds. It's not a big deal. Oh, okay. 7 million. And then there's, Okay. Yeah. And then there's a cube set which was released called Leisha Cube. The Italians built it that was released from Dart a while back. And it's cruising in a similar trajectory. So we won't get live images from that, but we will get a couple days later, we hope images from the cube set of the impact. So we're gonna see about 2 million pounds of rock throwing up when this little thing, cuz it's going, you know, almost 15,000 miles per hour when it slams into the into the asteroid. We'll see the, the impact and the ejecting plume come out. And then in 2027 the European spacecraft is gonna show up and actually closely measure whatever change of trajectory there was. But one, so, so DFOs, which is the actual rock we're hitting orbits.

Leo Laporte / Rod Pyle (02:08:41):
The asteroid did emo and the reason they picked that is, you know, you don't have to wait a year to see the change of the orbit. You can see it in a matter of day. Is it p Diddy Moss? I'm sorry. No, it's just, But they do call it Diddy Moon, you know, just to, cuz it's kind of fun. And where can I watch this? What is NASA TV gonna do? It? space.com. NASA tv. I imagine most of the news feeds will probably take it too. And just, just to be fair, this is a combination of NASA's planetary Defense coordination office and they should have a theme song Space Force. Yeah. Not that theme song. Okay. And John Hopkins. Johns Hopkins Applied Physics lab. So this will be very cool. We love the John Hopkins people. Yeah. Johns Hopkins. And just a reminder about, you know, the why Earth Defense Planetary defense is something we talked about a long time, but there's 25,000 or so large rocks in our neighborhood and any one of them could bang into another and head our direction.

Leo Laporte / Rod Pyle (02:09:39):
It's, it's unlikely, but it could happen. And we're kind of statistically overdue. So as you point out, we want to be able to figure out how to divert these things. Now kinetic impacters aren't always gonna be the way to do it because they can only handle things of so much mass. Attaching a rocket engine might do it. There's even talk of course, and let's invoke the movies here. Bruce Willis. Can Bruce Willis do it? Your explosions? No people. Okay. You can do this all robotically, but if you set off a new next to it, you're not trying to blow the rock. Possibly go all the way. Yeah, well you're nudging it, right? Yeah. And that's when you might discover that it's actually a rubble pile instead of a solid rock. And then you get a huge, you know, media storm instead. But I mean, there's only so much you can do.

Leo Laporte / Rod Pyle (02:10:21):
But it's an important thing as you said, because you want to be able to intercept these things. So we're not gonna forget. Gonna blow up P did the most, We're just gonna nudge it. <Laugh>, I'm sorry, I'm calling it that. I don't care. We're gonna, you should, we're gonna nudge it. Yeah. A tiny, tiny bit. But just enough to measure. And you know, in terms of physics, it has to work as long as it makes impact, but they just wanna make sure that it does. Wanna make sure physics works. How much do we have left NASA tv? 5:30 PM Eastern Time. You can watch it on YouTube or just search for NASA tv. Yeah, that's when it starts. It's actually seven 14. Yeah. You Well they're gonna have, you know, they have all the dignitaries come shake hands, give long speeches. Play the space theme. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Leo Laporte / Rod Pyle (02:11:08):
Oh Artemis, what the hell? We're never Yeah, I'm gonna win my be I know I am. So we were, Well I'm gonna win my bet too cuz I get Tarric Mallek Star Trek chair when it rolls into August or, or excuse me. October. Well maybe August. I think you won your day. So September. Yeah, September 27th was the launch date that was in play up through yesterday. It's now been called off due to Tropical Storm. Ian, you know, summer in Florida, it's a rough time for weather. So this isn't a big surprise. So as of late yesterday, they were still debating whether or not they knew they were gonna do the launch. But the question is, do you leave the rocket out in the storm or do you roll it back in the va b So they're still looking at wind patterns. Try to figure out, you know, cuz on the one hand you don't wanna roll the rocket back and forth too many times is hard on the hardware.

Leo Laporte / Rod Pyle (02:11:55):
On the other hand, you probably at this point, you know, the Space Force finally, finally said, okay, nasa, you can use the aging batteries in there for the range safety system, which is what blows the rocket up if it heads for Miami instead. That was not certified up until yesterday. As far as I know. They Space Force finally said, Okay, but then they have to stand down for the launch. So they may have to go back to the v b anyway just to change those bags. Well, yeah, cause Ian, it might blow it over. We don't want it to, you know, get blown away. Well, you know, bungee cords, dude, <laugh> great big one really could have rocket that big just survive a hurricane. It depends on the size of the hurricane, but it feels like you wanna move that back into the shed. You know, it would take a lot. I mean it's got, there are swing arms there. It depends on the direction of winds blowing. You don't want Pete did it most to do it. Swing arms of course.

Leo Laporte / Rod Pyle (02:12:54):
Enough. Enough. Fooling around. We are out of time. Mr. Rod pile I didn't mention is the editor in chief of the fabulous Ad Astra magazine. You can get yourself subscribed@space.nss.org, the National Space Society. Also the author of many great books and he's our official space expert. Thank you. Rod is off. Thank you. See, it's catchy. No it's not. It's an earworm <laugh>. It's very catchy. It's catching like small PS. It's very catchy. All right. I was stunned. You know, wait a minute. I didn't. Sean Han says he listens to this weekend space Tino, or are you you teasing us. Seriously? Cause I have a message for Sean <laugh>. <Laugh>, you got a whole bunch of messages that you can't do in the clear air, right? Oh, not ity. Oh, okay. Who else is named Ity?

Leo Laporte / Rod Pyle (02:14:03):
<Laugh> the lawyer guy. Oh, handle. Oh, well, of course handle listens to it. Oh, well that's nothing <laugh>. Well that's something that's nothing. He's not as big as you, but he's, he's Oh, he's bigger than me. He's, he's, he's the number one morning man in LA Yeah, but I told you last time I saw you, your audience is actually larger in numbers. Is it really? Yeah. The the drive time market in LA I think is 900,000. Oh, your well we probably, we're probably related. We're probably close. Yeah. I think Bill, Bill still is a bigger star. You know, everybody knows Bill handle. Well if I ask he's a legend. A legend. He's got a star on, not a star on the walk of fame, but he's got a radio Hall of fame thing. Right. I know it's, you know, it's too late. I'm never gonna be in the, not even the Bay Area Radio Hall of Fame. Right. I don't even have a chance at the Bay Area Radio Hall. Kim Schaffer's in the Bay Area Radio. I am not Hall of Fame, but is Leo Laporte? No,

Kim Schaffer (02:15:01):
I have gone to many of them. In fact, I wanted to go a couple weeks ago, but you know, only working two days a week does not justify Take your day off <laugh>.

Leo Laporte (02:15:10):
So, because I had some who got in, well I know this is gonna hurt me, but who got inaugurated into the Bay Area Radio policy?

Kim Schaffer (02:15:18):
Oh, let's

Leo Laporte (02:15:19):
See. This I know is gonna hurt my heart.

Kim Schaffer (02:15:22):
I know, I'm trying to think of what

Leo Laporte (02:15:25):
You would cover. If it's Mory in the Bean or somebody like that, I'm gonna be gonna be so upset. Celebrating Outten Bay Area class of 2022. Let's see here. My

Kim Schaffer (02:15:37):
Favorite, one of my favorite engineers, George zma. The flawless George zma got in and he is the one, he was Dr. Don Rose's engineer.

Leo Laporte (02:15:47):
Okay, I see Bruce McGowan good friend. Yeah.

Kim Schaffer (02:15:50):
Was that this year though?

Leo Laporte (02:15:51):
Yeah, 2022 Art Finley. Long time. Legend in Bay Area. Anna Lisa. Who's Anna Lisa?

Kim Schaffer (02:15:58):
She was on KFO forever.

Leo Laporte (02:16:00):
Oh man.

Kim Schaffer (02:16:00):
Dave Padilla is,

Leo Laporte (02:16:01):
How come? I am not Who's Dave

Kim Schaffer (02:16:03):
Padilla? He's a news guy.

Leo Laporte (02:16:05):
Kenny Wardell Senior.

Kim Schaffer (02:16:08):
I think he does like marketing

Leo Laporte (02:16:11):
Ed Cramp.

Kim Schaffer (02:16:12):
He's management Before I think you would fall. Do you think you would fall under specialty

Leo Laporte (02:16:17):
Legends

Kim Schaffer (02:16:18):
Or program

Leo Laporte (02:16:19):
Legends? No. Talk show host. Probably

Kim Schaffer (02:16:21):
Program host.

Leo Laporte (02:16:22):
Talk host talk show host. That's one of the categories. Talk

Kim Schaffer (02:16:24):
Host. Okay, so you're not dead yet. Art

Leo Laporte (02:16:26):
Finlay. Isn. No, there's no way. It's too late. I'm done. It's over. I'm cooked. I'm never getting into the, into bar off. Which actually, now that I say it, I know.

Kim Schaffer (02:16:35):
Well that, that is the joke. Doesn't sounds like bar

Leo Laporte (02:16:38):
Off <laugh>. I am not in bar H and I'm pretty glad of it.

Kim Schaffer (02:16:42):
But have you been nominated?

Leo Laporte (02:16:44):
No. Not even. Nobody knows I exist. I kind of

Kim Schaffer (02:16:47):
Think you have to almost throw

Leo Laporte (02:16:48):
Your own. You nominate yourself. <Laugh>. I guarantee you Anna Lisa nominated yourself. No, Bruce McGowen is a good guy. I've known him for years. Yeah, he's great. Okay. Lobster. Paul Lobster. Wells Lamont Tinelli. Oh yeah. Last year. Peter B. Collins used to work with him. Yep. For a long time. I

Kim Schaffer (02:17:08):
Was at the KGO reunion last

Leo Laporte (02:17:10):
Night. Oh, nice.

Kim Schaffer (02:17:11):
That was fun. I almost gave a what's his face? A ride

Leo Laporte (02:17:16):
Home. Tom Campbell, the legend. Top of the Hill. Daily City. Come on down. That's who that is. Tom Campbell. Yeah. Legendary Station. K o m e. The come spot. That's what it looks, That's what it says in the citation. I know,

Kim Schaffer (02:17:32):
But

Leo Laporte (02:17:33):
<Laugh>, that's their slogan. Terrible. I

Kim Schaffer (02:17:36):
Don't know how they got away with

Leo Laporte (02:17:38):
That. All right. I gotta go <laugh>. Thank you for letting me be my Now be your tech guy again. Leo Laporte. I am your tech guy. Thanks to Professor Laura, our musical director. She brings the band in, forces them to perform using her baton, which I hear is quite pointy. Thank you. And we'll put our show playlist up on the website, Tech guy labs.com and a little bit thanks to of course, the great Kim Schaffer Radio Hall of Fame member Kim Schaffer who answers the phones for us. But most of all, you're in my hall of fame. Thanks to all of you for tuning in, for listening, for calling in. I I do appreciate it. Do appreciate it. Let's let's get our, I think maybe our last call today. I don't know, it depends how hard the question is. John is on the line from Knoxville, Tennessee, and I love how Kim's spelled Knoxville. K n o c k s. <Laugh>.

Caller 10 (02:18:37):
It's actually Joe in Knoxville. Hi Joe. But that theme song that you were playing for the Space, Space

Leo Laporte (02:18:45):
Space Force.

Caller 10 (02:18:45):
Awful lot like the, the theme song from a Jimmy Stewart movie called Strategic Air Commander.

Leo Laporte (02:18:50):
Oh, I remember that. That was a great movie Sac. I loved that. Yeah.

Caller 10 (02:18:54):
Yeah. My youngest son and I went up to date Ohio a few months ago and went through the Air Force Museum up there and they've gotta B 36 inside the museum.

Leo Laporte (02:19:02):
Wow. So, and of course Jimmy Jimmy was in the Air Force during the war. He was a colonel Pilot. Yeah. And

Caller 10 (02:19:09):
He actually flew some the POWs home from Vietnam. Wow. Right. Wow. But no, I was calling in about I've got a couple of my TVs. I've got the fire sticks on. Yes, sir. And yesterday and today I go to the TWI network thing and it would sit there and a little circle going around and around and around and around and around. And then he'd come up with an error message and he was showing, you know, the browsers. Okay. Cloudflare is the next step that it jumps to. And then it gets to fire apps.agm.me.uk and it says

Leo Laporte (02:19:48):
UK You're getting it from the United Kingdom. Yeah. Huh. And then what are you trying to watch? You, Me? So are you using an app to do this?

Caller 10 (02:19:59):
No, it's on a fire stick. Google Fire sticks.

Leo Laporte (02:20:02):
Using the podcast player.

Caller 10 (02:20:04):
Yeah. Yeah. I, you know, you put in the Fire Stick Powered Up, comes up with a menu. I scroll down to, you know, TWI tv or TWI Live. What? I don't remember exactly which one it says, but I, it's about the second one down cuz that, that's about the only thing I use this for. And then it wouldn't load yesterday on two different TVs with two different fire sticks. And it's same thing today started getting a different message a few minutes ago, but then he went back to the same one. So I was thought maybe they were working on the, the problem and it was just giving a different era this time.

Leo Laporte (02:20:38):
I don't honestly know how we get on <laugh>. Get on there. It, there, there <laugh> I do know. Okay. I'll give you a couple of things. It could be, do you use any security software? Do you use a any blockers on your, on your route or anything like that to predict? No. No? No.

Caller 10 (02:21:02):
Cause I have been having some issues with the cable, but it's man been mainly with, on regular television where I would get what they call tiling. I call it pixelization, You know, we could have, I, my son's got a TV in his room. I've got a TV in my office, got a TV in the living room TV in their bedroom. We could have each, each device on, on different channels. And at the same time they would all go into Pixelization. And I kept telling 'em, I, some my neighbors are having the same issue and I keep telling,

Leo Laporte (02:21:30):
Oh, that might be an ISP issue. Yeah.

Caller 10 (02:21:32):
I keep telling Comcast, you know, it's not here. They've changed out a couple of boxes here and stuff.

Leo Laporte (02:21:37):
No, no. But if your neighbors are getting the same thing, it's at the head end. So Yeah. In fact, I've had the Comcast guys come out and and on our, I'm on a little cul-de-sac on the one place in the cul-de-sac. It's got a cement box that says cable tv. He pulled that up. He said, Oh yeah, your splices are bad. And he went in there relic the connection and everything's got better. So yeah,

Caller 10 (02:22:00):
Everything's overhead here, but he

Leo Laporte (02:22:03):
Might have to climb that pole.

Caller 10 (02:22:04):
I quit calling Comcast tech support because you can't get anybody who speaks English. I know. So I, I, I go to the top and let it come downhill. I emailed the ceo,

Leo Laporte (02:22:14):
Good job. Get, get, get that Roberts guy.

Caller 10 (02:22:18):
Two hours

Leo Laporte (02:22:20):
Did worked.

Caller 10 (02:22:21):
I had, well, a few years ago we had a lot of issues called, we had Storm. I love it. I had 11 trucks. I live on a cul-de-sac with six houses. I had 11 Comcast vehicles on the street in front of my house.

Leo Laporte (02:22:32):
Oh my.

Caller 10 (02:22:33):
They went through the whole neighborhood.

Leo Laporte (02:22:35):
They don't like doing that either. Those truck rolls, cost money, <laugh>. So a lot of big companies, the CEO has something called the office of the ceo, you know? Mm-Hmm. <Affirmative>. Brian Roberts is too rich and famous and he's not gonna see your email, but he's got a team of people who do. And they, you know, if he sees, it'll forward it to them, but more likely they see it first. Brian Roberts probably the kind of guy who has his email printed out for him on a <laugh> and put it in a loose leaf notebook. I'm just guessing. So somebody saw it. The team of the c and that often works, believe it or not. You know what, if that does, an email doesn't work, tweet it. These people are terrified for some reason about getting bad reviews on Twitter. So that's another, we

Caller 10 (02:23:16):
Have a consumer reporter for one of the local TV stations that really likes to go after companies. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (02:23:21):
That's another good way to do it. Yeah. Can't tv or call a radio show and complain. Now one other thing you can do if the, I'm not sure how you're getting in this and the Fire TV stick, but go to the YouTube app and we're also stream on YouTube live and you can

Caller 10 (02:23:36):
Yeah, I found it that way. And, and I've,

Leo Laporte (02:23:38):
That might be better quality. Anyway.

Caller 10 (02:23:40):
Three other computers in my office that, so I just put one of them. Log onto Twitter. There you go. Directly. Bless you. Show it that away.

Leo Laporte (02:23:47):
Bless you. Thank you so much Joe. I appreciate it.

Caller 10 (02:23:50):
So, oh, I got one other thing real quick. Yes. I got a, I got a nosy neighbor that had put some cameras up and she's put two on, on her front of your house to just watch her yard. That's no problem for me. She put one on the side of the house, all he does is watch my driveway. Was

Leo Laporte (02:24:05):
Watching you.

Caller 10 (02:24:06):
Yeah. So I, I've got a high power laser. I mounted on a trip <laugh> focus on the camera.

Leo Laporte (02:24:14):
<Laugh> did she did she call

Caller 10 (02:24:20):
Yet she probably buying next day. Cause also put a chain across the gate between there two properties that says no trespassing.

Leo Laporte (02:24:27):
Yeah. It's, it is probably illegal, certainly unethical to point your camera on your property to watch somebody else's property. Yeah. That's a big problem with doorbell cams. All of these cameras. Yeah. You shouldn't be looking at somebody else's property and I think you're, you know, a laser's a very good solution to that.

Caller 10 (02:24:46):
Yeah, I did security cameras for about 30 or 40 years and we had certain, you know, we had to mask out if it was covering any sort of private property, we had to mask that area. So it was not huge.

Leo Laporte (02:24:57):
Yes. And rightly so, by the way, the chat room's telling me WB 60 d h w same problem with the Fire Stick and twit the last two days. So it must be something that the Fire Stick is doing. If there is an app, those apps we don't do and they probably expired after a period of time. One of the guys, great guy who was doing our app for years got a real job, <laugh> and, and so we don't, we don't have any official apps. So if it's an app then that could possibly be it. But YouTube live is a good way

Caller 10 (02:25:29):
To do on the firesticks. I'll probably just go back to the, to the usually YouTube. I said I've got several other computers sitting here around my

Leo Laporte (02:25:36):
Desk. I'm grateful you put in the effort. Thank you. We appreciate it.

Caller 10 (02:25:40):
Okay.

Leo Laporte (02:25:41):
Hey, pleasure talking to you in Knoxville. <Laugh>, Joe, I think your neighbor's getting some hard knocks right now.

Caller 10 (02:25:48):
Oh

Leo Laporte (02:25:48):
Wow. What color laser was it?

Caller 10 (02:25:51):
Well, I've, I've got a red one on it right now. I had a green one on it and I've got a high powered blue one coming in in the next few.

Leo Laporte (02:25:58):
Oh yeah. The, now I can't, I think green is a higher power than red, but blue. That's gotta be the worst, right?

Caller 10 (02:26:02):
Well, I've got, I've got a laser engraver that's got a blue diode on it. Yeah, it's, it's a 10 wat laser and it, I can cut plywood with it. <Laugh>,

Leo Laporte (02:26:11):
You're so

Caller 10 (02:26:12):
Good. I bo holes camera though, if I did

Leo Laporte (02:26:14):
That one. Yeah, don't damage the camera. Just blind it. That's the trick. <Laugh> red, green, blue, red, orange, yellow, blue, green, indigo, violet. So yeah, blue would be, blue would be higher power, higher frequency. Hey, I I have run out of time, but a good way to end it with Joe in Knoxville. Thank you all for listening to the show. I really appreciate. We're gonna take a week off watch. Let's watch tomorrow. Watch that asteroid get deflected. Let's hope it gets deflected in the right direction. And I will be back here next week to talk about tech. Thanks to all of you. Don't forget Tech guy labs.com is the website. This is episode 1930 for all the show information. And while you're there, you can see what Joe's been watching. All this stuff we do on the TWIT Podcast Network. Have a great geek. We,

Leo Laporte (02:27:03):
Well, that's it for the Tech Guy Show for today. Thank you so much for being here. And don't forget twit, T W I t. It stands for this week at Tech and you find it@twit.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, Security and Security now, I mean, I can go on and on. And of course, the big show every Sunday afternoon this week in tech. You'll find it all at quit tv and I'll be back next week with another great tech guys show. Thanks for joining me. We'll see you next time.