Transcripts

The Tech Guy Episode 1931 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 / Mikah Sargent (00:00:02):
Podcasts you love from people you trust. This is twi. Hi, this is Leo Laporte and this is my Tech Guy podcast featuring Mikah Sargent once again this week. This show originally entered the Premier Networks Saturday, October 1st, 2022. This is episode 1931. Enjoy this episode of The Tech Guy is brought to you by Melissa. Make sure your customer contact data is up to date. Try Melissa's APIs in the developer portal. It's easy to log on, sign up and start playing in the API Sandbox 24 7. Get started today with 1000 records cleaned for free at melissa.com/twit Well, hello. Hello, it's time for the Tech Guy Show. Hello, Mikah Sargent. Good day to you, sir. All right, let's do the whole show in Dick Van Dykes. Mary Poppins, Cockney Accent Rao. Hello Jim. Jim Cheerio. So this is the show where we don't talk like that. No, it was talked like a pirate day recently, wasn't it?

Mikah Sargent (00:01:14):
I

Leo Laporte (00:01:15):
Hate that day. I hate it. Yeah, people go around going ar

Mikah Sargent (00:01:18):
I don't think everyone forgets. So the only thing I ever hear is someone say, Oh, today's talking like a pirate day. But I've not actually experienced people talking like pirates

Leo Laporte (00:01:28):
In back in the day before you were born. Talk like a Pirate Day was a national holiday. Everybody go around with I patches going r r r, but not anymore. It's kind of lost. Its

Mikah Sargent (00:01:40):
Was it invented by,

Leo Laporte (00:01:42):
I

Mikah Sargent (00:01:42):
Don't know the greeting card

Leo Laporte (00:01:43):
Industry. It was September 19th. That's one of the reasons I like it cuz it wasn't clearly there's no greeting card involved. It was created in 1995 <affirmative> by two guys from Albany, Oregon, John Bauer and Mark Summers, who declared September 19th is day every year when everybody should talk like a pirate. They were cat and slappy, an old chum bucket. They called themselves during a racketball game. Why is Wikipedia, why <laugh> <laugh>. Hello Micah. Sergeant Leo Laport here. This is the show we talk about tech, all the computers, all the internet and home theater, digital photography, smartphone, smart watches. I got my Apple watch, my Utra Utra. It is monstrous, but I love it. It's big and beautiful. So we could talk about that. We could talk about anything on your mind. Yeah.

Mikah Sargent (00:02:40):
What's

Leo Laporte (00:02:41):
On your mind? Robots.

Mikah Sargent (00:02:42):
Robots are on my mind.

Leo Laporte (00:02:43):
So Elon Musk yesterday I was really waiting, cuz a year ago, Elon Musk at their big AI day, which is really more recruitment for employees than anything else. <affirmative> at Tesla's big AI day. Elon Musk said, We're gonna make a robot and it's gonna be humanoid and it's gonna be the greatest thing ever. And in fact, he brought it out <laugh>. And it was some dancer in a costume, a robot costume. This year he actually had a robot <affirmative>. He said, I don't wanna put it through to many paces. It might fall over

Mikah Sargent (00:03:18):
<laugh>. Wait, <laugh>.

Leo Laporte (00:03:21):
But someday everybody's gonna have a robot just like this. They call it optimist as in optimist Prime, which is, Isn't that the scary robot from the transformer?

Mikah Sargent (00:03:32):
No, that's the good one.

Leo Laporte (00:03:33):
Optimist is good. Okay.

Mikah Sargent (00:03:34):
Yeah. The other one is some sort of decepticon whose name escapes me.

Leo Laporte (00:03:39):
Well maybe they'll have a evil robot to make as well called the Decepticon. Anyway he says it'll cost less than a car. But remember Elon's always wrong. What car? Yeah. What car cut Could be a Bentley. We don't know. He says commercially available under $20,000 in a few years. Very, very vague. It is not. I have to say there are companies like Boston Robotics were much farther along. They have a robot that could do back flips. <affirmative> can lift boxes, carry them around, open doors for you. It's actually terrifying.

Mikah Sargent (00:04:13):
<laugh>. Yeah. Whenever you watch these robots actually do this, it is kind of frightening. And I also do wonder if that kind of played a role in the way that they announced this thing where there were like six humans supporting it. It makes it feel less threatening. You know what I mean? You see this robot come out, but it takes almost like a

Leo Laporte (00:04:29):
Feeble robot. Yeah, it's feeble.

Mikah Sargent (00:04:31):
It's like, oh, I could push it down to this. It's top a

Leo Laporte (00:04:33):
Puppet <laugh>. This is Elon right here. According to Tesla, a human worker uses a hundred watts at rest and 500 watts when walking briskly. Did you know that? Do you use 500 watts? Optimist will be able to perform a full day run by a 2.3 kilowatt hour Tesla battery pack and 52 volt subsystem comparing apples to nothing. I was

Mikah Sargent (00:04:55):
Gonna say,

Leo Laporte (00:04:56):
What the hell does that mean?

Mikah Sargent (00:04:57):
Can you feed it a burger? This I don't Exactly.

Leo Laporte (00:05:00):
<laugh>. And then Elon's final capping moment, he tweeted, he always does his best stuff on the Twitter. Naturally there will be a cat girl version of our optimist robot. I, You're giving me what I is that called? What's that

Mikah Sargent (00:05:14):
Eye? That is the, I'm so done. <laugh>. That's what we call that. My eyes rolled back in my head. You

Leo Laporte (00:05:22):
Know what else is done?

Mikah Sargent (00:05:23):
Who's done? And it's

Leo Laporte (00:05:24):
Making me mad. Google.

Mikah Sargent (00:05:26):
Oh yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:05:27):
I'm so mad.

Mikah Sargent (00:05:28):
Yeah. Did you play that at

Leo Laporte (00:05:30):
All? Yeah. I bought an account and everything. Google, three years ago announced a online streaming game service called Stadia. <affirmative>. By the way, everybody else has one too. Microsoft has one, Invidia has one. GForce now Amazon. Amazon's got one actually. Amazon's is pretty good. It is. And the idea is you on low and slow computers or phones or tablets, you can play high end triple A hardcore P PC games because all the work's being done at the home office on servers. In fact, when you do it on Microsoft's whatever it's called, Cloud game pass, you're playing on Xboxs in the cloud. They actually, cuz they make the Xbox, they put up a home bunch xboxs that you can in effect log into. That's where all those xboxs went. Yeah, I know Xbox. So the idea I guess is, well if you have enough bandwidth, you don't have to do any work at your end.

Leo Laporte (00:06:24):
It streams, you know, press the up button on your controller, sends that to the cloud, the Xbox goes okay. Makes the move and then sends the video back to you. But you have to have a lot of bandwidth. More importantly, you have to have what they call low latency. The amount of time it takes for your up button to get to Microsoft and then get back to you. If that's even more than a 10th of a second, it's no fun to play the game. Yeah, you'll notice, you'll more than notice you'll get waxed by some eight year old. So playing at home. So anyway it's a hard thing to do. Google did a weird thing. You had to buy the game for full price and then they would run it on their servers. Apparently it's a flop cuz they killed it. <affirmative> over January 1st there's a guy, Oh boy, this guy.

Leo Laporte (00:07:17):
No, I don't know where this is going. Never heard of this guy. Anytime you say there's a guy, there's a guy. Oh boy. There's a guy who really bought into this whole thing, Stadia and he played a game, which a fun game where you're kind of in, you're a cowboy. It's called Red Dead Redemption. Okay. Yeah. Version two. And he liked being a cowboy I guess, cuz he really spent a lot of time. 6,000 hours. Holy moly. If you do the math, that's like 200 GA days. Real life, real G Days. Human days, Human days. 246 days playing this game. But then when Google kills it, this character that he created, Oh no, Disappears. Woo poof. And he has to start all over again. What? Can't transfer it. Well, not according to the current rules he's pleading. He's begging for rockstar games, which makes the game to somehow give him, come on and out. They need to. He says, you don't understand how seriously peeved I am along with a screenshot showing this is it's color tv, He's a YouTuber. So maybe he was gainfully employed, streaming on YouTube, playing this game. I don't know. It's a really cool, it's a nice game. I like it. I've played it for about half an hour, but it's not 6,000 hours Rockstar games. He pleads. Please let us do a one time character transfer. I'm begging you. I'm begging you.

Leo Laporte (00:08:47):
But larger story, cuz I'm sure most of our listeners haven't spent 6,000 hours in game on Stadia, is why would anybody invest any amount of time, energy, or money in any Google product at this point? Yeah.

Mikah Sargent (00:09:02):
They have made a reputation for themselves as a company that is more killers than likely They're killers. Something that they've created.

Leo Laporte (00:09:13):
They're stone coat killers. <affirmative> There's a Google graveyard website. Yes. Of all the things Google has killed. Killed is, I mean it's not a person or an animal, it's a software. It's a service. But still the Google graveyard will tell you that there are many <laugh>, by the way, I'm gonna Google Google graveyard cuz I can't remember the

Mikah Sargent (00:09:39):
Year. Killed by Google

Leo Laporte (00:09:41):
Kill, Killed by google.com. Thank you. The Google graveyard. And there's 274 things, Geez Louis, that Google has acted, including, we now add Google Stadia. And I think this is from a corporate point of view, look, I understand something's not a success. You don't wanna keep doing it. We do podcasts and if a podcast doesn't grab an audience, we sunset it. That's normal. TV channel Network will kill a show if it doesn't do well or a movie if they think it's not gonna do well. Like Bat Girls. So these things happen, but I don't know, I think it's kind of bad for Google.

Mikah Sargent (00:10:22):
I mean because of that reputation. So now whenever you're trying to make, especially with things where you require outside aid, outside interest, when you're trying to make deals, content licensing deals, or you're trying to talk to these different companies about, Oh yes, please do join us on this service that we're trying to launch because you'll make this amount of money in five years. No, we probably won't. Cause we'll close it down in two years.

Leo Laporte (00:10:46):
Yeah. We don't trust you Bruce Willis. Well I love

Mikah Sargent (00:10:52):
Single handedly bringing back Stadia.

Leo Laporte (00:10:55):
No. Oh, this is a news story. Oh, okay. Page two, <laugh>. I have a script in front of me as you may know, it's very sad. He was diagnosed with a language disorder called Aphasia. In fact, the last four or five movies he's been in, he, it's been like a little cameo part cuz he can't remember the lines. He can't speak the lines. So he announced this year he's gonna retire. He's not working anymore. But his people just announced that he's sold his likeness to a company called Deep Cake, which is <laugh> a funny name for a company that does deep fakes.

Mikah Sargent (00:11:36):
Got it.

Leo Laporte (00:11:38):
He has sold the digital twin rights to his likeness for commercial video production use. This move allows him to digitally appear in future commercials, possibly even films. In fact, there's a Russian commercial in which he appears using the deep cake technology. It's a cell phone commercial for megaphone. You could, it's on YouTube. You could look for it. I'll put a link. I'll tell you what, put a link in the show notes. That's

Mikah Sargent (00:12:06):
What we do. Yeah. Can you imagine the length of that contract? So I cannot use it for these things that I can, He

Leo Laporte (00:12:13):
Would hope support, but he is not working. And you know what? He probably want a little something for his little extra something. So why not? I will do it.

Mikah Sargent (00:12:25):
Isn't James Earl Jones doing something similar?

Leo Laporte (00:12:27):
He is the voice of Darth Vader <affirmative> and he is agreed to let a company that Ukraine company continue to make his voice in Star Wars shows, movies, tv. Again, faked thing about Bruce. So that's just Darth Raider's voice cuz anybody could wear the costume.

Mikah Sargent (00:12:45):
Right? Exactly.

Leo Laporte (00:12:47):
That's any of

Mikah Sargent (00:12:47):
Us will. And that's how it worked in the beginning. It wasn't him in the costume. Yeah,

Leo Laporte (00:12:50):
It was a very tall guy. David Prouse, I think was his name. And then he would, Who's strong in this one? So they're going to use a computer to generate the new lines. But this Bruce Willis thing, what they do is they get an actor who's physically similar to Willis and they replace his head with Bruce Willis's face. I'm gonna just quickly watch this commercial. I haven't seen it yet. It's got a yacht burning and Bruce Willis is tied to a bomb, which is counting down on the yacht and a Russian phone call comes in. It looks just like Bruce. It's pretty good. I think it's kind of cool. I mean it doesn't look, it's sort of just like you. It's what we call that uncanny valley where it looks like something might be a little bit off.

Mikah Sargent (00:13:43):
Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:13:44):
And they don't show him a whole lot. You've seen deep fake Tom Cruise on TikTok, right? Yes. That's a guy who does a Tom Cruise impression. Looks a lot like Tom Cruise has his physical physicality, but they superimpose Tom Cruise's face on it and it's pretty darn

Mikah Sargent (00:14:01):
Good. It's kind of frightening.

Leo Laporte (00:14:02):
<laugh> I think this is, it's gonna get better and better. So anyway, Deep Cake is training a deep learning neural network model based on Bruce Willis's films from the nineties. They don't want old Bruce Willis. They want Die Hard Bruce Willis. And then they can deep fake him from now on.

Mikah Sargent (00:14:21):
Apparently he's not fully giving up his rights to his likeness, but is allowing them to do all of this.

Leo Laporte (00:14:31):
So first time any Hollywood Star has said, you can make a digital twin of me for work. And I presume there's a royalty that his family will get or he will get. So you know what a world, Huh? What

Mikah Sargent (00:14:44):
A world. 88 80

Leo Laporte (00:14:46):
<laugh>. I dunno. That's the what? A world segment on the tech guy. You got two tech guys today. Mica Sergeant Leo Laport, ready to answer your calls at 88. 88. Ask Leo more calls. Your calls right after this. So that's a good point. There was a Fred Stair commercial where he is dancing with a vacuum cleaner. But that a was a different technology that wasn't a deep fake technology. Telephone Love ladies gentlemen. Yeah man, it's Kim Sh. She does, She's the telephone answering girl. Hello Kim Sh Hello the reggae Kim Shk. Kim is your wonderful host. Whenever you call in, she'll be saying Hello Mom. Hello mom. <laugh>. And I like little reggae every once in a while. It would be so boring to be in a reggae band though, wouldn't it? Like,

Kim Schaffer (00:15:48):
Cause it's the same beat over and over. Just

Leo Laporte (00:15:51):
Cause they're slow. It's like, and you don't Yeah, but

Kim Schaffer (00:15:54):
They're all stoned. So wheel

Leo Laporte (00:15:58):
In the music. So they're happy. They care. Guy going beat, he's happy. Yep. Steel drums. Man. That's my

Kim Schaffer (00:16:06):
Ambition. Steel drums in middle school. What?

Leo Laporte (00:16:08):
No steel drums are hard. That's

Kim Schaffer (00:16:09):
Hard. It was so much fun. I loved

Leo Laporte (00:16:11):
It. Would you bring your steel drum in? Sometimes.

Kim Schaffer (00:16:13):
I don't have a steel drum, but I played in my middle school. Had a program.

Leo Laporte (00:16:17):
What mean? You don't have a steel drum? <laugh>? I don't have it. If you did play a steel drum, you should have a steel. No, we should. We can make you one. Oh that be

Kim Schaffer (00:16:24):
Awesome. Manufacture me steel drum. Put

Leo Laporte (00:16:28):
Your rubber hammer out. Make a, make Kim a steel drum.

Kim Schaffer (00:16:32):
It. It's a really fun instrument.

Leo Laporte (00:16:33):
I bet it is. Yeah. Is it hard though? They paint the key, the note on the

Kim Schaffer (00:16:38):
Drum. Well, I mean because we were middle school students, the notes were written on each note and those And I didn't have to even read g

Leo Laporte (00:16:48):
E

Kim Schaffer (00:16:49):
If I had to read music or know where the notes were. That's perfect. In a different story for

Leo Laporte (00:16:53):
Middle school. Oh, I can get one for under $200 that has all the notes written on

Kim Schaffer (00:16:56):
There. There you go. It's not gonna be a good one, but,

Leo Laporte (00:17:00):
Well you've, you know what, Isn't there a to thing where you do show a picture of you in junior high school and then a picture of you Now?

Kim Schaffer (00:17:07):
Would you like me to do that?

Leo Laporte (00:17:09):
You could do that with a steel, with

Kim Schaffer (00:17:10):
Your steel drum. But the funny thing is pictures quality when I was in middle school is terrible. Terrible. Yeah know. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:17:17):
Oh, that smudge there. That was me. Yeah.

Kim Schaffer (00:17:21):
Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:17:21):
Who should I talk to? Who should we

Kim Schaffer (00:17:23):
Go? David In Toronto, I believe he just got a new phone. Oh it's, And Apple pays a little different now because he used to have a eight and now he's got a no home buttons.

Leo Laporte (00:17:33):
Oh no home button. Oh no. Hello there David. How are you? Welcome from to Canadian. Good to have you. Yeah,

Caller 1 (00:17:42):
By the way, that wasn't phone. I stick my head all email

Leo Laporte (00:17:45):
<laugh>. So you are lucky you got a brand new phone, but it doesn't have a thumb anymore. But what it does have is a face is you have a face and it has face recognition. Right? So the same, I think the same thing, right? Micah? Yeah.

Mikah Sargent (00:17:58):
It depends on what David is wondering if it's the shortcut to get to it or what's your question?

Caller 1 (00:18:05):
Well, basically right now when you pay for something on the old phone, I gave my phone eight plus and I touch 80. So when you go to the, Before, I just touch, touched my thumb. Paid. Right? It

Leo Laporte (00:18:19):
Paid <affirmative>. Ah yeah. Right. So now

Caller 1 (00:18:22):
Happy now.

Leo Laporte (00:18:23):
Now it's it to launch. If you wanna choose the card, you double tap the screen off on key or you know you hold it right? Yeah. You

Mikah Sargent (00:18:31):
Double tap the

Leo Laporte (00:18:31):
Side button. Right. Double tap it and then you pick the card, you tap it on the receiver and it'll go, Oh, it'll look at your face if you can't see your face. So there's no place to put your thumb anymore. But that's okay because it's in theory. And by the way, it's all a theory. It's better with your face. Micah and Leo and Scott Wilkinson coming up. So have you tried it? Have you done it David?

Caller 1 (00:18:57):
Oh yeah. There's a few times, but it's kinda annoying because <laugh>, well I figure it out.

Leo Laporte (00:19:01):
You're used to the fingerprint, That's the thing. <affirmative>.

Caller 1 (00:19:04):
Yeah, I play my finger on it. I launched it. Cause hands, you go to the touch thing, it shows up. But then you have to double cap to pay.

Leo Laporte (00:19:11):
Yeah.

Mikah Sargent (00:19:13):
So,

Caller 1 (00:19:13):
So I'll just kinda avoid the double tapping.

Mikah Sargent (00:19:15):
Okay. So what you were doing before is whenever you bring it up against the thing pay it would pop up. Pop up, and then you just have your thumb there. So then it automatically do it now. But your problem is that you don't like that you have to say, Hey, I wanna pay and then touch. So

Leo Laporte (00:19:30):
It won't pop up automatically anymore. I

Caller 1 (00:19:32):
Don't. It does. Oh it does.

Mikah Sargent (00:19:33):
Oh

Leo Laporte (00:19:33):
It does. Okay. But now you just have to be looking at it <laugh>.

Caller 1 (00:19:38):
Right. But you're looking at not looking at it. Right.

Leo Laporte (00:19:40):
No, I know. Cause it's down on the payment thing. So you have to bend over. Yeah, that's kind.

Mikah Sargent (00:19:44):
I think my suggestion for you, it will require some rethinking. But if you have your phone looking at you and you double tap the side button first, then it's gonna automatically do that face recogni. And

Leo Laporte (00:19:56):
Now you can tap

Mikah Sargent (00:19:56):
It and tap it. So

Leo Laporte (00:19:57):
That's what the new here, I'll show you a close up here. That's what the new habit is. Here. I'm gonna buy an ice cream cone. So I don't, What you used to do is you'd put it on the thing and then you'd have your finger in the thumb and now what you do is you double tap. So you're in the wallet and notice. Oh, I see your face, Leo. Now it said hold the reader and you don't have to have the face anymore. So yeah, your workflow is different. You double tap first. See that first? Yeah.

Caller 1 (00:20:26):
As I, That was happened fast.

Leo Laporte (00:20:28):
Yeah. Yeah. If you just the

Mikah Sargent (00:20:29):
Opposite.

Leo Laporte (00:20:30):
I can see why it's frustrating.

Mikah Sargent (00:20:32):
Absolutely.

Leo Laporte (00:20:32):
A lot of us had to retrain when we went from the home button. A lot of face id.

Caller 1 (00:20:37):
This is my first face id phone. Cause I gave my iPhone A plus. Yeah. That I told. This is a big, you'll

Leo Laporte (00:20:44):
Get used to. I think you'll love it. It's a, it is a big

Caller 1 (00:20:47):
Phone. I think camera's great. Yeah, Think camera's great.

Leo Laporte (00:20:49):
I think the biggest thing is the bigness. Right? The size is the hard thing to get used to.

Caller 1 (00:20:53):
It's actually, so it's same physical size as the old phone.

Leo Laporte (00:20:56):
Oh it is Because you had Nate, Oh wait, which one did you get? The IV phone

Scott Wilkinson (00:21:01):
Plus. Okay, okay. Yeah. So the phone size is,

Leo Laporte (00:21:05):
You got the six

Caller 1 (00:21:05):
Point heavier. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:21:07):
Heavier.

Mikah Sargent (00:21:07):
More screen though.

Leo Laporte (00:21:08):
More. There's more money in it. <laugh>

Caller 1 (00:21:10):
More screen on more screen size. Yeah, that's right. You're right. Yeah. More screen size. The way I tell you on Rogers here in Canada, it was still a show and call for help.

Leo Laporte (00:21:20):
Oh I know. For years

Caller 1 (00:21:23):
After a couple years ago

Leo Laporte (00:21:23):
It was kind of embarrassing cuz they'd show the 2004 episode where Amber shows me this new thing called YouTube. Oh my god. And I'm going, Wow, that's really cool. I'm an idiot. <laugh>. He didn't know YouTube. YouTube,

Caller 1 (00:21:39):
Yeah. It was a four in the morning too. That's the only thing. Wasn't I Middle day four in the morning.

Leo Laporte (00:21:42):
Hey, at least he had something to watch when you couldn't sleep. Yeah. Put you right out.

Caller 1 (00:21:46):
Yeah. That's great. Yeah. I just noticed it was on four. Did

Leo Laporte (00:21:49):
They stop

Caller 1 (00:21:50):
The urgent call for help? The original call for help?

Leo Laporte (00:21:51):
Yeah. They stopped. There's one.

Caller 1 (00:21:53):
Yeah. Stopped. Now we now. Yeah. Yeah. Oh now.

Leo Laporte (00:21:57):
Hey it's, I love Toronto. I miss Toronto. Sorry that yeah, I used to go up there every month. It was so much fun. Yeah

Caller 1 (00:22:03):
Know. Yeah. But Ambers up

Leo Laporte (00:22:04):
There actually. She's doing great. She's doing fine. So

Caller 1 (00:22:07):
Yeah. I'm actually lunch when you come up here. Yeah. Yeah. I can't wait. Your meeting here. Very nice.

Leo Laporte (00:22:12):
Appreciate it David. Have a great day. Get used to it. That's life. Yeah. Apple in its infinite wisdom has changed your world. Oh

Caller 1 (00:22:21):
How Hang of it. I'll get hang up. You'll

Leo Laporte (00:22:23):
Get that. Actually, it's funny cuz I had to really think about it cuz I do it so automatically.

Mikah Sargent (00:22:27):
Exactly. Yeah. I had a moment of like, okay, what's going on?

Leo Laporte (00:22:29):
And the other thing is, if you have an Apple watch,

Mikah Sargent (00:22:31):
That's what I mostly do. I double tap my side button.

Leo Laporte (00:22:33):
Same process, which is, cause the watch is already authenticated once you, So you double tap the side button and tap.

MIkah Sargent (00:22:39):
Yeah. And make sure you set the default card to what you want it to be most often. So that you only ever have to change. Yeah. If it's a,

Caller 1 (00:22:46):
I have one card on I run card. Oh

Mikah Sargent (00:22:48):
Well they you go. Makes

Leo Laporte (00:22:48):
It easy. Perfect.

Caller 1 (00:22:49):
Yeah. One Carrie. OK Terry, thank you. Hey

Leo Laporte (00:22:51):
David, have a great one. Take care. Hey ladies and gentlemen, Boys and girls, children of all ages. It's the hip cat Heca, the man with the knowledge. The man with the trumpet, the trombone and the tuba. It's Scott Wilkinson Home theater. Geek youtube.com/avs forum is where his podcast lives. Yep. Hello Scotty.

Scott Wilkinson (00:23:14):
Hello Leo. Hello Micah.

Leo Laporte (00:23:16):
Hello Scott. Scott joins us every week to talk about big screen TVs and surround sound and all that cool stuff. AV jazz. Were you in the AV squad as a kid?

Scott Wilkinson (00:23:31):
I, for some reason I didn't quite get into that. I did. However, in when I was sixth grade, I brought my little planetarium. I had this little planetarium thing and I brought it into to show the kindergartners. So

Leo Laporte (00:23:46):
You were a nerd. That was

Scott Wilkinson (00:23:46):
Cute. I was a nerd. I was nerd. Super nerd. No, no,

Leo Laporte (00:23:49):
That's good. You're an astronomy nerd.

Scott Wilkinson (00:23:50):
I love it. I was, Yeah, yeah, yeah. Exactly right. So one wanted to tell you a couple things. One is my latest home theater of the month is up. Just posted it yesterday. Oh. And the interesting thing about this one is that it's the home theater of the new editor of AVS Forum. Oh.

Leo Laporte (00:24:11):
So he's got, He's gotta have a, He's established his street cred.

Scott Wilkinson (00:24:14):
Yeah, exactly. And what's interesting, and what I wrote about in the article is that many of the editors that I know, and I know most of them now in the last 30 years of being in this industry, they don't build a true home theater. It's what they have is more like a testing lab. But what Eric did, Eric Wesley is the new editor of AVS Forum. He actually built an honest to goodness home theater with acoustic panels and really cool seating and all the stuff that really makes a true, true home theater.

Leo Laporte (00:24:55):
Looks like he got a sponsor to pay for it too, which is <laugh>.

Scott Wilkinson (00:24:59):
He didn't. No he didn't. No he did not.

Leo Laporte (00:25:03):
Okay.

Scott Wilkinson (00:25:04):
He actually built this before he was the editor. So

Leo Laporte (00:25:07):
What's the anthem part brought to you by Anthem?

Scott Wilkinson (00:25:10):
Oh well that's okay. Home Theater of the Month as a co.

Leo Laporte (00:25:15):
Oh I get it. Sponsor. Oh, so the series is power series is but not theater.

Scott Wilkinson (00:25:20):
No. Correct. So

Leo Laporte (00:25:22):
I'm looking the series, he's got a very nice audio set up. These are big two subwoofers, not one, but two sub wolfers.

Scott Wilkinson (00:25:30):
Two sub roofers. Which is a good thing to have. Believe me. It helps smooth out the base response in your room. Oh, his speaker system is all clips.

Leo Laporte (00:25:39):
Yeah. Very nice. Big center channel. And it looks like he built it himself cuz you He did. Yeah. A lot of work goes into this. Wow.

Scott Wilkinson (00:25:49):
Wow. Yeah, some serious work goes into this. And one of the most amazing things is when you look at the final result and then you learn how much he spent under $30,000. Which, yeah, $30,000 is a lot of money.

Leo Laporte (00:26:04):
It's the median income for an American, but okay. <laugh>. Okay.

Scott Wilkinson (00:26:09):
But to get a room like this, to have a room, a true home theater that you, And he's a, he and his wife are serious movie bus.

Leo Laporte (00:26:19):
Well he's the editor in chief of avs for him. I think that that counts. Now what projector did he choose?

Scott Wilkinson (00:26:25):
He chose the JVC NZ seven, which is a 4K projector. JVC is the projector I would recommend, generally speaking, they have the best Blacks the greatest contrast native contrasts. They don't do have now automatic irises, which close down in dark scenes and open

Leo Laporte (00:26:45):
Up bright scene's. Cool. Ooh,

Scott Wilkinson (00:26:46):
That's neat. But they don't even really need that you can do without it. And you still get fantastic contrast. Much better than almost any other home projector. Wow.

Leo Laporte (00:26:58):
And how big is that screen? Cuz that looks big.

Scott Wilkinson (00:27:00):
It's big. It's 138 inches across. Wow.

Leo Laporte (00:27:04):
So really when you say home theater, in this case it's a movie theater in your house.

Scott Wilkinson (00:27:09):
Correct? Correct. And that's what we try to focus on and feature in Home theater of the month. Yeah,

Leo Laporte (00:27:16):
Yeah.

Scott Wilkinson (00:27:17):
Is something that's a real, he says in the article, he says, when he first got there, this room actually had been a home theater by the previous owner of the house. And he said he had 115 inch screen in there and that was too small.

Leo Laporte (00:27:29):
<laugh>. Oh, Now I'm feeling somewhat inadequate, but okay.

Scott Wilkinson (00:27:35):
<laugh>. Yes. He only wanted something bigger.

Leo Laporte (00:27:37):
I like it that he has a stadium seating. I know his

Scott Wilkinson (00:27:41):
House. He right, the rise

Leo Laporte (00:27:42):
Scene.

Scott Wilkinson (00:27:43):
Yes. Yep. Yep. And that riser, by the way, you saw it earlier in a picture. He built it if you're looking Yeah, he built it and it becomes a base trap. I was gonna say insulation inside. Yeah. I noticed that insulation inside means that it mitigates some of the base buildup that happens at the boundaries of any room.

Leo Laporte (00:28:02):
So it's a trap, like it traps the extra rumbles

Scott Wilkinson (00:28:05):
Extra bass. Correct.

Leo Laporte (00:28:07):
Interesting. Does he have atmo?

Scott Wilkinson (00:28:10):
He does have atmos. He has four speakers on the ceiling. Oh

Leo Laporte (00:28:14):
Wow.

Scott Wilkinson (00:28:15):
And it's a beautiful thing. Next time I'm at ces, I hope to go and visit and watch a movie

Leo Laporte (00:28:24):
In that room. Nice. Yeah. And you like those clips, Speakers? He's certainly all in on clips.

Scott Wilkinson (00:28:28):
He's all in on clips. He calls that he chose those for the price to performance ratio. Some people like clips, some people, I mean that's a brand and a technology that some people really like and some people don't. The tweeter is in a horn. It's called a horn tweeter, which is what commercial cinemas

Leo Laporte (00:28:49):
Use. Well, it's what Clipse is famous for. I mean. Correct. The, in the fifties clips was famous for its clips, horns,

Scott Wilkinson (00:28:57):
Clips, horn, which

Leo Laporte (00:28:59):
Were speakers the size of a medium sized child that That's right. Big old horn where the tweeter was.

Scott Wilkinson (00:29:06):
Yep.

Leo Laporte (00:29:07):
People don't do that anymore. They do diamond domes and things for their

Scott Wilkinson (00:29:11):
Tweeters. They do. Many people do. Jbl I often has horn loaded compression tweeters. So they use horns. What

Leo Laporte (00:29:19):
Does the horn do? How does that change the sound?

Scott Wilkinson (00:29:21):
It changes the directivity. So it controls how the sound emerges from the speaker and expands out into the room. So if you can control that, you can avoid a lot of bouncing off the ceiling

Leo Laporte (00:29:39):
There. There're directional days. You would expect more to be They're directional. They're more directional. Like my vuze here. <laugh>.

Scott Wilkinson (00:29:44):
Exactly.

Leo Laporte (00:29:46):
<laugh>, I won't of that. Have you done? No, I won't play it. I promise. Burke our studio engineer says clips is fine for movies but I don't like him for music. Is that true?

Scott Wilkinson (00:29:58):
That is true. And in fact in this article Eric mentions that he was testing some focal speakers

Leo Laporte (00:30:05):
And he said, Oh those are those French expensive French

Scott Wilkinson (00:30:08):
Speakers. Oh, super expensive. Yeah. He said for movies he actually preferred the clips. But for two channel music, the focals blew the clips away.

Leo Laporte (00:30:17):
Oh, interesting. Interesting.

Scott Wilkinson (00:30:19):
But 90% of the time in that theater he's watching movies, wife and his kids.

Leo Laporte (00:30:24):
It's a home theater movies. Yeah. It's a home theater for many of us. Our home theater doubles as our music system.

Scott Wilkinson (00:30:30):
And there's a whole big debate in the whole community about can the same system work for both purposes and for many of us it has to. Yeah, there's no choice. You don't have the room or the money to put a separate two channel system in somewhere else or even in the same room. But if you can afford it, then you have this debate of should I have a separate two channel system.

Leo Laporte (00:30:56):
Interesting. So I have in our bedroom we have a 2.1 system of sub and left right speakers and we watch TV on that and that sounds fine. That's fine. It's very nice for music. I use that. Oh yeah. The talk about price to performance ratio. I use EL a speakers which have even better

Scott Wilkinson (00:31:15):
<laugh>, even price to performance ratio.

Leo Laporte (00:31:17):
They're may not as good as those clips, but they sound pretty bad.

Scott Wilkinson (00:31:20):
But they're mighty fine. I mean designed by Andrew Jones. Yeah. One of the best designs.

Leo Laporte (00:31:24):
Well I bought 'em cuz you told me to

Scott Wilkinson (00:31:26):
Actually. So

Leo Laporte (00:31:26):
Well you better approve of them

Scott Wilkinson (00:31:28):
<laugh>. I hope you're happy with

Leo Laporte (00:31:29):
'em. I'm very, very, No, in fact I converted every room in the house to elac. I ended up Oh good. Up going elac. All I figure, well if I'm gonna have elac, I might as well have elac. Yeah. But the subs are not because subs don't matter as much. Right. They just make,

Scott Wilkinson (00:31:42):
They don't Yeah, that's correct. Yeah. You want the speakers around you to be from the same manufacturer, ideally from the same line, from the

Leo Laporte (00:31:50):
Yes they are. They're all debut twos. Yeah,

Scott Wilkinson (00:31:51):
There you go. Yeah. I'm thinking seriously about putting debuts or I like ELs in my theater when we move into our new house.

Leo Laporte (00:31:59):
Yeah. Scott Wilkinson re more@avsforum.com. His home Theater of the Month for August, 2022. It is quite a sight to see. Thank you Scott.

Scott Wilkinson (00:32:10):
You bet.

Leo Laporte (00:32:14):
The well equipped home will have both a home theater at an audio file. Music listening room. Listening room. Yes. Okay, fine.

Scott Wilkinson (00:32:25):
I've, I've heard of audio files who have a listening room with two channels. Yeah. And one chair.

Leo Laporte (00:32:30):
Yeah. Yeah. Right in the right spot.

Scott Wilkinson (00:32:32):
In the sweet spot.

Leo Laporte (00:32:33):
<laugh>. I understand. Wowie wy.

Scott Wilkinson (00:32:36):
It's that unlike theater, they should have those commun experience. Sure. Audio file listening often is a solitary experience.

Mikah Sargent (00:32:45):
They should have those to rent. Cuz I would pay for to go listen to an album,

Leo Laporte (00:32:49):
Go to Magnolia, go to one like Best Buy Magnolia, right? Yeah.

Scott Wilkinson (00:32:54):
Yeah. No, yeah. No, I mean, yeah, it's set up better than

Leo Laporte (00:32:57):
They won't let you sit there anyway. After while <laugh>.

Mikah Sargent (00:33:01):
Okay.

Scott Wilkinson (00:33:01):
Listen to a whole album,

Leo Laporte (00:33:02):
<laugh>, I have to hear dark side of the mood all the way through to really understand if it's gonna work for me.

Scott Wilkinson (00:33:10):
Right, right. Exactly.

Leo Laporte (00:33:12):
Oh well that's okay.

Scott Wilkinson (00:33:14):
Now I have to tell you, I didn't wanna, didn't necessarily wanna bring this up during the show, but have you guys heard of the new game that's sweeping the world?

Leo Laporte (00:33:25):
No. What? Pickle Ball

Scott Wilkinson (00:33:27):
Tro. Trombone Champ.

Mikah Sargent (00:33:30):
Trombone show.

Leo Laporte (00:33:31):
Don't think it's sweeping the war. I'm

Mikah Sargent (00:33:33):
This up.

Scott Wilkinson (00:33:33):
Go. It's look it up man. It's

Mikah Sargent (00:33:35):
It's

Scott Wilkinson (00:33:36):
Fifteens on Steam.

Mikah Sargent (00:33:38):
Trombone Champ makes a hit video game of an unlikely instrument. The New York Times. Oh

Leo Laporte (00:33:42):
You should right mention this. This is your Bailey

Mikah Sargent (00:33:45):
Wick. How Trombone Champ evolves from an inside joke to a viral success. Ign. Yep.

Scott Wilkinson (00:33:51):
Yep.

Mikah Sargent (00:33:51):
Okay. I'm gonna get this on Steam <laugh>,

Leo Laporte (00:33:55):
Let's hear it. Let's hear. Is there a lot of trombone music in it?

Scott Wilkinson (00:34:00):
No, you play the trombone, The

Leo Laporte (00:34:05):
<laugh>,

Mikah Sargent (00:34:06):
The old Gray mayor.

Leo Laporte (00:34:08):
Oh, I'm sorry. Have you tried it Scott?

Scott Wilkinson (00:34:11):
I have not. I just learned about it yesterday.

Leo Laporte (00:34:14):
So it's rock. It's like rock band or guitar hero.

Scott Wilkinson (00:34:18):
It's like Guitar Hero. It's like Guitar Hero but with trombone. And you play the trombone by moving your mouse up and down.

Leo Laporte (00:34:30):
<laugh>, I love that

Mikah Sargent (00:34:30):
Background.

Leo Laporte (00:34:32):
I hope they have better songs.

Scott Wilkinson (00:34:35):
They've got like 20 songs.

Leo Laporte (00:34:37):
It makes sense cuz it's this slide trombone. So you're sliding your mask up and

Scott Wilkinson (00:34:41):
Down. Exactly.

Mikah Sargent (00:34:43):
Oh, this looks so fun.

Scott Wilkinson (00:34:45):
<laugh>. I I'm gonna buy it too. I'm not a gamer. You guys know this. I mean, Leo this I've always said I have, Well

Leo Laporte (00:34:51):
This isn't a game so you're in luck.

Scott Wilkinson (00:34:53):
I'm gonna buy this. Yeah,

Mikah Sargent (00:34:56):
They reminds me of an Nintendo we that the characters look like

Leo Laporte (00:34:59):
The Yeah. Yeah. You better be good at though Scott

Scott Wilkinson (00:35:02):
<laugh>. Oh well I mean I read an article from the base trombone of the Boston Symphony or one of the big symphony in the country and he said he sounded terrible on it because you're

Leo Laporte (00:35:17):
Not playing the mouse in the real world. You're not.

Scott Wilkinson (00:35:19):
Yeah, yeah, exactly. It's very different. So tactile. Very tactile different. So he said it was terrible, but in a way, the point is to sound terrible. Right. And that's part of the fun, right?

Mikah Sargent (00:35:32):
Yeah. That's what a lot of people are saying about it on. It's like you're laughing

Scott Wilkinson (00:35:36):
Both with and at the trone for being come in. Sounds like a lot

Leo Laporte (00:35:41):
Of

Scott Wilkinson (00:35:41):
Fun. Yeah, exactly.

Leo Laporte (00:35:42):
$15 on steam. That's not bad.

Scott Wilkinson (00:35:46):
That's

Leo Laporte (00:35:47):
Not bad.

Scott Wilkinson (00:35:48):
I thought that was pretty great.

Leo Laporte (00:35:50):
Yeah. How funny. That's hysterical.

Scott Wilkinson (00:35:53):
You know it's not an AV thing. I thought, well

Leo Laporte (00:35:56):
Is there any trombone in modern music? Is there a modern song we can think of? That's a

Scott Wilkinson (00:36:02):
Question <laugh>. Well that has a trombone.

Leo Laporte (00:36:04):
Yeah. That you could play this song with

Scott Wilkinson (00:36:07):
<laugh>. Well that's a good question. <laugh>

Leo Laporte (00:36:11):
Seven, six Trombones you.

Scott Wilkinson (00:36:13):
Yes, there is Stars and Stripes forever. Right?

Leo Laporte (00:36:19):
All right, want stick around for the top?

Scott Wilkinson (00:36:21):
Sure. Happy to. All right, thank you.

Leo Laporte (00:36:23):
Hey, I wanna talk about one of our sponsors. We love these guys Melissa. And if you're a business, you will love them too. Cuz you know what the worst thing in business is? Having an address list of customers, or it could be clients or suppliers that's at a date so that you're sending things to the wrong address, emailing the wrong person, calling people by the wrong name. None of that's good. Melissa is a leading provider of global, they call it global data quality and address management solutions. Poor data quality can cost organizations a lot. An average of 15 million every year. And the longer poor quality of data stays in your system, the more it could cost you. Because of course data goes bad over time. When people move, name changes, email changes. So it's accumulating to make your business successful, your customer information has to be accurate.

Leo Laporte (00:37:16):
High quality data actually saves you money and Melissa's the place to do it. There's another side to inaccurate data. Poor customer service. I mean the worst thing, somebody calls your customer service line, they're already frustrated, they're unhappy for some reason and you address them as mister when they're ais, that's not good. Or you say, Yeah, well we have your address here in Florida. And they say, No, I'm in Idaho. That's terrible. You've had that happen, right? Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, that's a company not using Melissa. Melissa recently partnered as a new feature. They just added with ID p to launch Melissa id. Now this is seamless contact verification in real time. There are a lot of reasons, legal reasons you might need to do this. For instance there's any money, Laing statutes, politically exposed person statutes, the Bank's Secrecy Act, all of which might require you to have an authentication session.

Leo Laporte (00:38:08):
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Leo Laporte (00:39:12):
That's how it works. It helps you with your compliance strategies. You can score and target customers with detailed demographic and firmographic data pens. You can complete customer records, you can add business names, missing names, addresses, phone numbers and email addresses. And let me tell you, Melissa takes good care of your data. They undergo third party independent security audits so that they are SOC two, HIPAA and GDPR compliant. I gotta tell you, the other thing Melissa can do is fix your duplicate information that can hurt your bottom line. I used to get three or four catalogs from Restoration Hardware, the big, thick, beautiful color catalogs. Same name and address, same catalog, like that's completely wasteful of money, right? And trees. Well if they had been using Melissa's data quality suite, they would eliminate clutter and duplicates. They would reduce their postage and mailing costs. They finally stopped.

Leo Laporte (00:40:07):
Maybe they got Melissa, I bet you they did batch address cleansing. You could process an entire list for accuracy and completeness, identity verification. Mention that there's so many features. Geocoding Enrichments, where you could take an address and get the longitude and latitude. Email verification removes up to 95% of bad email addresses from your database. They even have an app for iOS and Android called Lookups that lets you do it. Ones Z two Z search addresses, verify social security numbers, access detailed property data, things like that. Oh, and one more thing, they've got an api. So a lot of companies build Melissa into their customer service software or their shopping cart software, which eliminates problems right from the start. Make sure your customer contact data is up to date. Try Melissa's APIs in the developer portal. It's easy to log on, sign up, start playing in the API Sandbox 24 7.

Leo Laporte (00:40:59):
Get started today with 1000 records plain free. Just go to melissa.com/twi melissa.com/twit Thank Melissa so much for supporting the Tech Guy show. They've been a long time sponsor with us. We love them and we also thank you for supporting us by using that special address. That's how they kind of know that you heard it here. melissa.com/twit. Back to the programming. No trombone in this, you notice really would be improved I think with a little bit of right trombone, right? Like a LA Mikah Sargent, your tech guys during the breaks got informed us of the hot new game. Trombone champ. Trombone champ, where it's like a guitar hero, but instead of playing an instrument, people really wanna play. You're playing a trombone with your mouse. Like a slide whistle kind of. Yeah. Okay. I'm looking forward to it. Playing. You're gonna buy it, You're gonna play it on steam, huh? Yeah. All right. Okay let's go back to the phones. Another Dave on the line from Portland, Oregon. Hello Dave.

Caller 2 (00:42:10):
Hello Leo. I'm calling in about your favorite subject, Linux. Oh,

Leo Laporte (00:42:15):
I thought I was, You scare me. I thought I was gonna Printers. Oh, you're not being sarcastic. You're being honest and true. Yes,

Caller 2 (00:42:21):
Being honest. I wanna know the version you like the best and the,

Leo Laporte (00:42:25):
That's a common question and it really depends on what you're going to use it for. As with everything else, if you ask me what laptop to get, I, I'd give you the same fudge

Caller 2 (00:42:36):
Words. But what I wanna do is I didn't know if Linux, will it still use the Chrome browser? Because over at our church, we use the Chrome remote desktop quite a bit. Yep.

Leo Laporte (00:42:47):
It sure will. And Chrome Remote Desktop will work on it. You can also use the open source version of Chrome, which is called Chromium Chromes. Based on that can, there's a lot of browsers available for Linux. Linux these days is a very mature I think very usable operating system. And it's free. It doesn't, One of the things that lacks is all the tracking that the commercial companies, because no, nobody owns Linux. So there's no incentive for somebody to put Trackers as there would be for Microsoft and Mac to do so. A lot of people who are privacy focused and security focused like Linux. Linux is not free of malware. But because it's such a small percentage of the overall operating system base a lot of malware authors just say, Well, I don't really need to get into it. That's starting to change because Linux is widely used.

Leo Laporte (00:43:41):
It's the number one smartphone operating system known as Android is a Linux and it's used on web servers everywhere. It's used in Internet of things devices very commonly. So we are starting to see some more attacks, but I think as a normal desktop user, you're probably more secure. I'm definitely more secure in Linux than you are with Windows. And it most linuxes look a lot like Windows. So that's another thing that people might want to consider when choosing a Linux because Linux is open source was invented by a finished graduate student in the early nineties. Linus to Vaults he kept the copyright to the name but not the rights to the software. So anybody can create a Linux and if it's gonna be called Linux, Linux gets to approve it. That's the copyright he's kept. And then what's on top of that is what's called a distribution.

Leo Laporte (00:44:30):
So you take the Linux operating system kernel and you put a lot of software on it and what's called a package manager, an installer, and that makes it a distribution. Then on top of that goes a desktop environment. Most Linux is out there, can use any desktop environment. The most popular right now desktop environment is probably, well, it's probably a split between Nom G N O M E and k D E. Those are the two most popular. But there's some like Cinnamon, which is what Mint Linnux comes with, they're very Windows. So, but the nice thing is you can install Linux and try different desktop environments that you find one that you like. I would recommend, Now

Caller 2 (00:45:10):
Can you do a partition on your laptop and run one or the other? You

Leo Laporte (00:45:16):
Can do yes. In fact you can run Windows too. So if you, Yeah, that's what I mean. Yeah, if you're

Caller 2 (00:45:22):
Run Windows or Linux

Leo Laporte (00:45:24):
Or any number, you can Windows in three different kinds of Linux. Yeah, absolutely. And most linuxes will walk you through that process. Usually, almost always. You'll install Windows first and then add a second Linux boot for brand new

Caller 2 (00:45:40):
Users. Go ahead. My Chromebook says that your version of laptop now will no longer update Google Chrome. And so it's stuck on version 99 and I'm on my Windows 10 machine. I see they're up to 1 0 6. So can I reload a new Linux on my Chromebook?

Leo Laporte (00:46:03):
Little complicated. So yeah, that's an, It's annoying cuz Chrome comes from Google as does Chrome as your Chromebook but they put a limited number of years on a Chromebook. Your Chromebook must be fairly old. I think the current Chromebooks, you get eight years of updates.

Caller 2 (00:46:22):
Well this is 20, 20 16 model.

Leo Laporte (00:46:25):
So in the old days it was more like five years. So you can either get a new Chromebook. The good news is they're pretty cheap. It's hard to put Linux on a Chromebook because Chromebooks are locked down for that very reason. You have to put it in developer mode but you have to put in developer mode. You can also run Linux on Chrome OS and then open the Chrome browser under Linux <laugh>, which is kind of goco. But yeah, there are a lot of choices. So you're gonna wanna Google putting Linux on a Chromebook because it's a fairly complicated process. And as I said, you can also put embedded underneath a Chrome os. You might wanna read up on that either way. So your goal is you've gotta use the modern Chrome at church basically.

Caller 2 (00:47:19):
Right. And what version did you say you liked the best?

Leo Laporte (00:47:22):
Well if you're putting it on a Chrome book, you're gonna probably want to use a version.

Caller 2 (00:47:28):
Well I've also,

Leo Laporte (00:47:30):
You got a regular pc? Oh yeah, yeah. Windows

Caller 2 (00:47:31):
Eight machine. And a Windows seven machine. I'll probably put it one

Leo Laporte (00:47:35):
Of those. Perfect. For an older machine you might wanna look at Buntu and some specific versions of Buntu designed for older machines like X O Buntu or L buntu u B ntu.org is a buntu and there's a version of a buntu I like even more from a company called System 76 called Pop Os. And it really handles a lot of different hardware better I think, than a buntu does. So if you Google Pop Os, you'll find it at pop pop dot system 70 six.com that has instructions on how to download it, put it on a USB key so that you can install it. They have instructions for doing it with as a dual boot. That's what we call it with Windows. I think that's probably a good choice for first time users. A lot of first time users like Mint. I'm not as big a fan I like Pop Os. I think that's a good way for you to go. And then when you get a little more sophisticated the Linux that I use everywhere is called Manjaro. That there's some, it's a little trickier M A N J o.org. But I think I would go, if I were you with podcast

Caller 2 (00:48:43):
Let's Thanksgiving, I might upgrade and get a new laptop. And what do you think the difference is between the gen 11 and the Gen 12? Are there,

Leo Laporte (00:48:51):
Well get ready. Cause Gen 13 came out that <laugh> there is a lot of controversy over Intel's 12th generation processors I bought and I'm sitting in front of an I five 12th gen cuz I wanted to try it. In theory, Intel's added this thing that Apple did and I think Intel. And by the way, Qualcomm also does it in phones. And Intel looked at it and said, Oh that's a good idea. So they're doing it now. They have efficiency cores and performance cores. So most processors these days have multiple cores for 6 8, 12 32 sometimes. And they devote a certain number of to efficiency so that when you don't need a lot of horsepower, they run the efficiency course which sip at the battery. And then when you need a lot of horsepower, they can go, okay, let's kick in. And the performance course kick in. I think that's worth getting.

Leo Laporte (00:49:45):
A 12th gen over the 11th gen, which does not do that. And they don't yet have laptops, 13th gen processors, they're brand new, but early next year they'll come out with 13th gen. And there are people, I've heard people complain about some of the performance characteristics of the 12th gen. So it might be until that was their first one using performance course. So might be worth certainly I would get a 12th gen now. I'd be honest with you, I wouldn't get an I seven, I would get an I five, which is more than enough horsepower. I've had good results on this. Dell XPS 15 with the 12th generation I five. So I

Caller 2 (00:50:22):
Had an old HP laptop that I still have and one of the Windows updates totally crashed it. Oh Lord. So I had to load windows from Microsoft and of course it would not find the video driver for it. And so I went to HP and HP says Well here's the driver, but you don't have access to it. So I called tech support, HP tech support, and they say, Sure, we can fix that for you for 99. Oh,

Leo Laporte (00:50:55):
That's ridiculous. That's insult to injury. Gotta run Leo Laporte, Mic sergeant, your tech guy. More calls coming on. That's frustrating as double h e double hockey sticks. <laugh>. I wouldn't buy another HP laptop in that case.

Caller 2 (00:51:15):
No, I think any HP laptop under $500 is crap. <laugh>.

Leo Laporte (00:51:19):
Yeah. The high ends I really like. I spec your 360 I liked a lot and I think they're pretty good. But that they do think that kind of thing with the printers. Maybe this is the new way to make money is like, well we'll do it, but it cost you 99 books <laugh> like come on.

Caller 2 (00:51:37):
And I even just got one off of eBay because it had a two year guarantee on it and it was a refurb and sure enough they had to reload windows. And so when I got it, you couldn't get any audio out of the H d i Jack. And so I returned it and got my money back cuz I wasn't gonna go through that with HP again, even though it was only one year old.

Leo Laporte (00:52:01):
Yeah. You like the Chromebook though, don't you?

Caller 2 (00:52:07):
Yes.

Leo Laporte (00:52:07):
<laugh>. At least there's that.

Caller 2 (00:52:10):
Well that's the, That's what really makes me sad is this Chromebook's got an I five processor and now it says you can't update the Google Chrome anymore. You can't reload the new Chrome operating system on these either

Leo Laporte (00:52:26):
You can Google bought a company called Neverwhere that does. Yeah, that one. Yeah. Yeah, that works. It's worth a try. It doesn't work everywhere. Doesn't always work. But I honestly think that's a good idea for putting a Chrome, making something. I know Chromebook. Yeah, they call it Chromes Flex. I think they have a list of compatible laptops. I would check that. Hey, gotta run. But I hope I helped a little bit there. It's a lot of technical mumbo jumbo.

Caller 2 (00:52:57):
Thank you sir.

Leo Laporte (00:52:58):
Hey, a pleasure. Thanks for calling and listening. All right, Scotty, it's coffee time in the USA coffee time. You know what that means, Tom? To Scott. I know what that means. I mean <laugh>. Oh yeah. Let's ask Scott about his shirt. 50 year. 500 years of 500 years of chicken music. I was gonna tell you about that here. Hang. No, what does it mean? Look at that. For antique funks, who are the Antiqua Funks?

Scott Wilkinson (00:53:27):
The Antiqua Funks is a group I was in when I lived in Santa Cruz in the

Leo Laporte (00:53:32):
Seventies. Oh, oh cute.

Scott Wilkinson (00:53:34):
And one of the concerts we did was 500 years of chicken music basically from 12, 1200 something to, Well

Leo Laporte (00:53:44):
What do you mean when you say chicken music?

Scott Wilkinson (00:53:47):
I mean music that was written about chickens. <laugh>. So

Leo Laporte (00:53:53):
One is, well

Scott Wilkinson (00:53:54):
There's one called Kiki Leaky Kuku Ruku.

Leo Laporte (00:53:57):
Kiki. That's Hawaiian probably. Yeah,

Scott Wilkinson (00:53:59):
<laugh>. No, no, no. It's British I think. Sounds

Leo Laporte (00:54:03):
Like Justcan. Dere Kuku.

Scott Wilkinson (00:54:09):
Yeah, exactly. There's a ton of music written up about chickens.

Leo Laporte (00:54:14):
Well as it should be. They're the greatest

Scott Wilkinson (00:54:16):
<laugh>. What I loved was in one of the finales was the finale was a woman coming out and singing. The hen has laid an egg wearing a chicken outfit.

Leo Laporte (00:54:26):
Oh my God. So that's great. Is are you getting the band back together?

Scott Wilkinson (00:54:32):
No.

Leo Laporte (00:54:33):
Oh,

Scott Wilkinson (00:54:34):
This shirt was actually made. The leader of the group unfortunately passed away last year.

Leo Laporte (00:54:40):
And

Scott Wilkinson (00:54:41):
At the memorial we played some chicken music wearing these

Leo Laporte (00:54:45):
Shirts

Scott Wilkinson (00:54:46):
And the woman who sang the hen has laid an egg, came out in her chicken costume costume.

Leo Laporte (00:54:53):
Oh. And sang.

Scott Wilkinson (00:54:54):
It was so great.

Leo Laporte (00:54:55):
What a sweet, That's a boy. What a way to go. Yeah. Oh

Scott Wilkinson (00:54:59):
Man. He was my mentor in early music. He anything past 1700 he wasn't interested in at all except jazz. He loved jazz. But as far as the music that he played, it was 1700 or earlier.

Leo Laporte (00:55:13):
Wow.

Scott Wilkinson (00:55:13):
And he had the most amazing collection of music and instruments. He introduced me to the sack butt. As a matter of fact, he found me playing recorder at a little fair somewhere and he said, Oh, you sound pretty good on recorder. And I said, Well thanks, but it's not my primary instrument. He said, Well what is? I said, trombone. He said, Oh, have you ever heard of a sack butt

Leo Laporte (00:55:34):
<laugh>? And

Scott Wilkinson (00:55:36):
I said, No. What's

Leo Laporte (00:55:37):
That? He said,

Scott Wilkinson (00:55:39):
Come to my house, I'll

Leo Laporte (00:55:40):
Show you.

Scott Wilkinson (00:55:42):
And from then on I was a sack butt player.

Leo Laporte (00:55:44):
Lovely,

Scott Wilkinson (00:55:47):
Lovely. There you go. The

Leo Laporte (00:55:48):
How I

Scott Wilkinson (00:55:48):
Got introduced to the Sackbut.

Leo Laporte (00:55:49):
Thank you very much. I wanna get that coffee before it's too

Scott Wilkinson (00:55:52):
Late. Get that coffee,

Leo Laporte (00:55:52):
Man. Thank you.

Scott Wilkinson (00:55:54):
Hello everybody beat master. Yeah. Do the funky chicken. No, I'm not gonna do the funky chicken however it is time for the chicken dance. It's octoberfest time and every October fest. Every October Fest band I know plays the chicken dance and everybody in the halls doing this. So there's another example of chicken music. It's after 1700, but the chicken dance is a great part of Octoberfest. Let's see SW Pipe says the Sony A 95 K one, the European version of the TV shootout as it did the American version. Tom Norton, my friend and fellow reviewer is doing the A 95 K for sound and vision and I'm gonna call him later this afternoon to see how he's doing with it. Cycling coast. Aloha. Thank you very much for your kind words. Just listen to us talking about contemporary songs and bands with trombone. And I wanted to mention there's a very good current band. Oh of course. Trombone shorty. I don't know why I didn't think of him. He is great New Orleans and man, oh man, what a great player. I saw him not live unfortunately, but I saw him on Austin City Limits. His band was playing and what a great trombone player he is. And Chicago and Earth Wind and Fire had trombones, blood, sweat, and tears. Also had a trombone. So yeah, there's quite a bit of trombone out there in the world. But trombone shorty, thank you for reminding me of that.

Scott Wilkinson (00:57:51):
Loquacious v2 loves the chicken dance. Of course you do. You're my kind of gal. But then again, we already knew that from all the fair stuff we've done together. We're still gonna try and go to the fair up here, even though it's pretty small. But we're still gonna go cause what the heck, we haven't been in a couple of years. My wife and I do like getting dressed up and playing and playing the roles. Brian sets her orchestra. Yes, Rin. In fact a good friend of mine from college, a fellow based trombone player plays in the Brian Setser Orchestra. Of course, that's a whole trombone section. It's a big band essentially. And big. Does big bad Voodoo daddy still record? I think they do. I'm not sure if they have a trombone. They might might very well I just saw, by the way, I just saw last night on great performances there was a show about Latin jazz featuring, Oh, well I get this right. Sis, Jazz Orchestra, R I A C E S, which is basically a big band. So four trombones, four trumpets, five saxes, lot of percussion doing Latin jazz. And oh man, they were awesome. Really amazing, really amazing. R I A C E S Riyas. Really, really good. So I highly recommend you check them out. They are amazing cowbell. Yes, <laugh>. So let's see. Yes, Loquacious. The Cowbell is all yours. O Elf trombone shorty with Jeff Beck. That could be interesting. Wow. Okay. I'll definitely check that out.

Scott Wilkinson (01:00:00):
Let's see. Anybody got any questions for me? Oh yeah, Laia saw the launch last night from Vandenberg. I'm jealous. I would love to see those launches. That would be really fun. Let's see here. Tedy, Yes, the day I became a gamer. Yeah, I guess I'm not gonna say I'm, I'm a gamer from playing trombone the trombone game, but Oh indeed. By the way, recent Trombone. Trombone shorty.

Leo Laporte (01:00:41):
Trombone shorty.

Scott Wilkinson (01:00:42):
Yes, from New Orleans. Look him up. I

Leo Laporte (01:00:45):
Will rock and roll, man. I think there were Sky bands were big and they had a lot of trombone in them too. Well, hey, hey, how are you today? Leo Laport, the tech guy. Time talk, computers, the internet, home theater, digital photography, smartphone, smart watches. We got the expert here in many things. Certainly all things iOS. He's the host of iOS today Mr. Micah, Sergeant Tech guy too as well. Also 88. 88. Lio is the phone number. Micah's also I think you're rapidly becoming more of a Windows expert than I am. Cause I, on my way there, cause I don't like Windows <laugh>.

Mikah Sargent (01:01:29):
Yeah, I don't mind it. I don't use it every day, but I don't mind it.

Leo Laporte (01:01:34):
Yeah, yeah. Well I'm sitting in front of it right now. I mean, it's fine. It works all right. I just feel like people who use Windows unfortunately have to become security experts in some odd way. And I don't know if that's a good thing for most normal people. You heard our last call who's like all the ins and outs of Windows end up getting to you in the long run. HP wanted to charge him $99 to upgrade his driver. Come on,

Scott Wilkinson (01:02:01):
Man.

Mikah Sargent (01:02:01):
Thousand cuts. Yep.

Leo Laporte (01:02:03):
Dennis is on the line from Marina Del Ray, California. He's our next scholar. Hi Dennis.

Caller 3 (01:02:09):
Hey, I don't know if I call in to get your great technical advice or to listen to that gorgeous laugh from Kim.

Leo Laporte (01:02:15):
I know Kim is an attractive nuisance. Wait a minute. That's wrong. Yeah.

Caller 3 (01:02:20):
Hey, by the way, I owe you big because you and Scott helped me pick out the big Sony TV for my wall. The 77 A 80 J.

Leo Laporte (01:02:28):
Oh, Scott's still here. So let him heap the praise upon him. I didn't have anything to do with it. <laugh>. So you got the Sony that was picked as the best TV at the No, no,

Scott Wilkinson (01:02:40):
No. It's the regular O led, but it's a 77

Leo Laporte (01:02:44):
Inch so big. Yeah. Tell us all about it. Glasses nice. <laugh>. You love it, Dennis.

Caller 3 (01:02:51):
I love it. And I need your help. Again I, I've talked to you before. I'm the photographer and the ham radio or ham radio operator, but I'm the photographer and you put my name out there and I helped a lot of people free of charge given lessons and really enjoyed inspiring them to get into photography.

Leo Laporte (01:03:09):
That's wonderful. Thank you Dennis. Thank you.

Caller 3 (01:03:12):
No, no, but you're a great service. I have had the Aus monitor for about the last eight years. Surprise at last, but it was 25 60. 1440. And it just went out on me. And I can't do any more video editing or photography editing. I'm using a Samsung 27 inch television. It's 1920 by 10 80. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:03:35):
Yeah. HD's not you need 4k, my friend.

Caller 3 (01:03:39):
Yeah, actually I was looking at one and it was the LG 27 up P eight 50 W.

Leo Laporte (01:03:45):
That's a very nice tv. It's only 27 inches though,

Caller 3 (01:03:49):
Right? No, I mean not a tv. A monitor. Yeah,

Leo Laporte (01:03:51):
No, I know. I misspoke. Yeah.

Caller 3 (01:03:53):
Okay. So I'm wondering is that a good one to get or I don't want to get something. I always try and get as good as I can afford and even if I have to kind of stretch a little bit because I want it to last for a while, then want it to be good.

Leo Laporte (01:04:09):
How much was the lg?

Caller 3 (01:04:11):
Lgs? About 450.

Leo Laporte (01:04:13):
So that's a 27 inch. I honestly think you might do well with a little bit of a bigger monitor. I don't know. It's up to you, but I think 27, which is what you're used to, is kind of old school nowadays. A lot of us are going to 32 inch monitors and there are certainly some very good 32 inch plus they're uhd, which I think that LG is. Does it have Ultra? It's 4k, but does it have I'm sorry, hdr?

Caller 3 (01:04:47):
I think it does. I'm

Leo Laporte (01:04:48):
Not sure. Yeah, more modern ones do. I'm a big fan. I mean certainly your price is pretty good. Dell has similar monitors, might be a little bit more expensive. I think the LGS are very good fact most of these guys are using LG panels, to be honest. Right Scott? I think I

Scott Wilkinson (01:05:07):
Believe that

Leo Laporte (01:05:08):
So, I think so. Yeah. One

Scott Wilkinson (01:05:10):
Of the things is that I like

Caller 3 (01:05:12):
Seven inch it, it's adjust vertically, which I, I need to do that, but it also will go vertical where you

Leo Laporte (01:05:20):
Can Yeah. Rotates. Yeah.

Caller 3 (01:05:22):
Now the ASUS did that, but I never used that. I probably should have, but I never did. Yeah,

Leo Laporte (01:05:28):
Don't Windows will understand it when you do that. In most cases Windows will just go, Oh fine. And reorient. That's more for programmers, people who wanna read long webpages. Gotcha. That kind of thing. I think as a photographer you're gonna keep it in portrait mode

Caller 3 (01:05:43):
Right. Now the other thing,

Leo Laporte (01:05:45):
I'm sorry, Landscape mode.

Caller 3 (01:05:46):
Landscape

Leo Laporte (01:05:47):
Mode, mode. I am misspeaking like crazy today. Landscape mode. Why that?

Caller 3 (01:05:51):
That's okay. We know what you mean. The other thing is, I've been holding off on this lg, but if you've got a better recommendation, I'm open to that. And then the other thing is I'm using the TV for right now. So I'm wondering if I should hold off till Black Friday to get something or,

Leo Laporte (01:06:08):
Well first of all Scott, you were saying you have a Dell 27, you like a lot.

Scott Wilkinson (01:06:13):
We just got a Dell 27 and S 27 22 qc, which looks great and it does have height adjustment. That was a critical factor. <affirmative>. And you can rotate it so it becomes a portrait mode, but he doesn't really need that It it's looks great. Now, I didn't do any comparisons. I'm sure the LG looks great too. The Dell's about 400 bucks and that's about the minimum you're gonna wanna spend on a 27 inch. But I do agree with you that a 4 32 might be worth checking out if you have the room for

Leo Laporte (01:06:44):
It. Dell's high end line, the ultra fine line actually has a 32 inch for 6 99. So that's LG as well. I'm sorry, LG Ultra fine display. Ergo 4K hdr 10, 700 bucks. That might be just a little bigger. I'm just thinking. I'm just saying. Big is good. It's up to you. This one has an interesting mount. It looks like it's got a visa mount that is a side arm. Oh, I guess it goes either way. And it does slide up and down to much. And it tilts is an angle too, which is really nice. I think LG is fine. I would say you like the lgs good, get a 4k. They make fine. You don't

Caller 3 (01:07:30):
Know anything about it. I just happen to see it. No,

Leo Laporte (01:07:31):
They're very good. They're very good. I stand by and I often do. My stock recommendation is Dell as Scott Bite, because Dell usually has pretty aggressive pricing and they have, What Dell does is they have a consumer grade monitor just like to do with their computers and they have a pro level monitor. And the pros, the ultra sharps are much more expensive. But those are for photographer again, they're calibrated. So your colors are true. Things like that. Yep,

Caller 3 (01:07:58):
Yep. Sounds great. One other thing I wanted to tell you, I'm not gonna order it from Amazon as much as I love Amazon, but recently I found out I had some packages missing. Amazon. Once they give it to a shipp or whoever it is, they're out of the picture. They say they will not help. And if they give it to ups, they're out of the picture. So if UPS and I've talked to UPS and I said, Hey, with my package, and they said, no, the contract's not with you. It's with Amazon. So just wanted

Scott Wilkinson (01:08:28):
More back and forth. Yeah,

Leo Laporte (01:08:29):
That's depressing.

Caller 3 (01:08:30):
I just wanted to warn people that and I love Amazon, but when they give the package to somebody, they say they're no longer involved and that's actually in their rules and regulations.

Leo Laporte (01:08:42):
So there's no recourse. And you're saying when you went to the ups, they said, Well we don't wanna even talk to you,

Caller 3 (01:08:49):
Right? Cause our contract is not with you,

Leo Laporte (01:08:53):
So you're outta luck. Is that what they're saying?

Caller 3 (01:08:56):
Outta luck? And I said, What if I ordered a TV from you and I wanted to get insurance only could I do that? And they said no.

Leo Laporte (01:09:01):
Wow. Yeah. Maybe buy Lo something big like that. Maybe by local. I'm more and more thinking buying local. Yeah. Yeah. I think we wanna support our local, otherwise they'll go away and all You'll, your only choice and I think is gonna happen anyway, but in a couple of years, your only choice will be Amazon. And then watch out. Watch

Caller 3 (01:09:19):
Leo and thank you for the service that you provide. And loving my big screen tv. I tell you. All

Leo Laporte (01:09:25):
Right, well I thank you. And I pass along the thanks to Scott Wilkinson too, cuz it's his recommendation and 77 inches. That's nice. That's a nice, That's a sweet tv. <affirmative>. Enjoy. Have a great day. Take care. Thank you Eric. 88. 88. God bless you too. 88. 88. Ask Leo the phone number. (888) 827-5536. Micah, you gotta take the next four calls. I'm in gassing <laugh>. Mic's turn coming up. Give us a ring. Thank you. I'm glad you were still here.

Scott Wilkinson (01:09:59):
Yeah, sure. Nice. Glad to hang out.

Leo Laporte (01:10:02):
Good. Well have a wonderful day. And beautiful Santa Cruz's weather. Nice. Or you're getting the marine layer now you're getting that. Yeah,

Scott Wilkinson (01:10:09):
We've got the marine layer this morning. Yeah, but it'll burn off. Yeah, it'll burn off. All right, we're gonna, we're going to LA for a couple days for the end of the high holidays. Good. Cole Nidra and Yam Kipur. We're gonna be in a big program down there and Joan's gonna sing the prayer. It's gonna

Leo Laporte (01:10:24):
Be Aw. Well Luhan Tova, have a great luhan. Hi holidays.

Scott Wilkinson (01:10:29):
Thank

Leo Laporte (01:10:30):
You. And we'll see. But you'll be back next week. I'll

Scott Wilkinson (01:10:32):
Be back next week. Awesome. No question about it. Thank you

Leo Laporte (01:10:35):
Scotty. See

Scott Wilkinson (01:10:36):
You then. Bet. See ya. Bye.

Leo Laporte (01:10:39):
Leo Laporte and Micah Sergeant, your tech guys. 88. 88. Ask Leo the phone number. All I'm just gonna pick a random Micah. This one's all yours. Okay, here we go. It's Dr. Mom. What? Dr. Mom? Dr. Mom's on the line from San Diego. Hello doctor.

Caller 4 (Doctor Mom) (01:10:56):
Hey guys, how y'all

Leo Laporte (01:10:58):
Doing? I'm great. Dr. Mom is my internet doctor. <laugh>. Well

Caller 4 (Doctor Mom) (01:11:03):
That depends on your insurance carrier.

Leo Laporte (01:11:05):
She doesn't, doesn't. I'm Medicare now. Dr. Mom

Caller 4 (Doctor Mom) (01:11:08):
<laugh>. Oh, then we're good. So am

Leo Laporte (01:11:10):
<laugh>. What's up doc?

Caller 4 (Doctor Mom) (01:11:13):
Well, I got a couple of interesting emails this week. I was wondering what was gonna happen when Amazon bought Euro

Leo Laporte (01:11:21):
<affirmative>. Yes.

Caller 4 (Doctor Mom) (01:11:22):
And it came out this week.

Leo Laporte (01:11:23):
Yes. They had their big Amazon had their big event this week and made some interesting announcements. I thought.

Caller 4 (Doctor Mom) (01:11:29):
I know one of the big ones is they're gonna be the new Echo fives. <affirmative> are gonna come with an aero beacon built into it.

Leo Laporte (01:11:39):
Isn't that cool? I love that. So if you get an echo, so if you have an aero base station, you might even have other beacons and you wanna have extend the internet with it. You don't have to buy an I device. You can buy these new Amazon Echo devices and get kind of the best of both worlds.

Caller 4 (Doctor Mom) (01:11:57):
Exactly. Exactly. It's similar to a beacon in that you're not gonna get the ports off the back. Part of the reason I have a lot of just the base stations put around the house is that I can put switches on and a lot of my stuff is hardwired. Right. I'm not sitting off the wifi, but there's, they're still gonna sell beacons because there's places you're not gonna wanna put an echo unit. Plus, if you remember the beacons also have that little nightlight function. <affirmative>. I do like that guys stuck in a haul. You can turn it on as a nightlight.

Leo Laporte (01:12:25):
This is such a good example. An Apple, of course the poster child for this of a company of synergy. So Amazon bought Euro, which was for a long time our favorite mesh router and has now because it's Amazon, added the Euro capability to its echoes. They say even the fourth generation echoes will be upgraded firmware upgrade down the road. So they must have

Caller 4 (Doctor Mom) (01:12:51):
Supposedly sometime in October, they're pushing a software path.

Leo Laporte (01:12:55):
They've been, So what that means is secretly <laugh> and apparently nobody noticed they were building wifi antennas into the Echos and nobody noticed.

Caller 4 (Doctor Mom) (01:13:05):
Well if you think about it, they always had to have the receiver antenna. They always had to have the ability to broadcast. So sticking one more bandwidth. It is a big deal. Now the other thing, the email I got today, they're finally end of life in the first generation eras.

Leo Laporte (01:13:20):
Oh really? Interesting. So if you have an old one, you're gonna have to replace it.

Caller 4 (Doctor Mom) (01:13:24):
Well, I've got a question out to them. I've gotten an answer back. Yet my system is a combination of new ones and old ones. Because when I moved from New York, I took the old ones with me. I needed more here, put 'em in. If the old ones don't get a so patch, I'm not that concerned because I have a new one is at my gateway. But does this mean my entire system is not gonna get updated?

Leo Laporte (01:13:46):
Yeah. I bet's what Sonos did. Right? <affirmative> to. Yeah. That's an interesting question. Well, let us know when you find out. I'd like to know.

Caller 4 (Doctor Mom) (01:13:57):
Yeah, because to me, I don't have any reason to take out, as they said, the Euros are gonna function perfectly. If it was my gateway one, I would absolutely upgrade it because I want the latest security patches. Now

Leo Laporte (01:14:11):
You have to, by the way, be buying Euro plus their $99 year software addon to do this. And I presume you're doing that.

Caller 4 (Doctor Mom) (01:14:20):
No

Leo Laporte (01:14:21):
<laugh>.

Caller 4 (Doctor Mom) (01:14:22):
No, I get patches anyway.

Leo Laporte (01:14:24):
Yeah, but you won't get all the fund features. Yeah. This is a really good example of why this integration could be a bad idea. Nowadays we buy hardware. It's not like the old days where you'd buy something and would work until it failed. Nowadays they're reliant on servers and software updates from the mothership. <affirmative> and the mothership can cut you off. Google did with Stadia. They can just after a while say, Yeah, no, you gotta get a new one. I would not be at all shocked if Hero said, Yeah, no, you can't use the old arrows. We're gonna disable them and you're gonna have to

Caller 4 (Doctor Mom) (01:14:59):
Get, I don't care. I don't care if they disable them, but if they don't, I wanna make sure the rest of my system, especially my gateway,

Leo Laporte (01:15:04):
You wanna keep updated. And that's a reasonable question. I bet you they will at least, I would hope. Why wouldn't they? Unless again it would be at a commercial interest to force you

Caller 4 (Doctor Mom) (01:15:15):
<laugh>. The other thing they added on is they're now gonna be in, this is part of the premium package. They will store your system settings in the cloud

Mikah Sargent (01:15:23):
So that way if you get a new device, it will automatically bring those

Leo Laporte (01:15:27):
Over. Amazon does it anyway when you get a new Kindle, unless you say otherwise, it's gonna be set up for, you have all your books

Caller 4 (Doctor Mom) (01:15:33):
On. But it's one thing if it's a Kindle, it's one thing. If it's an Echo, I'm not sure I want Amazon or anybody else saving all the special settings I have in my ethernet, my wifi and ethernet system.

Leo Laporte (01:15:44):
Right. Yeah, that's fair. More and more they're doing that. Dr. Mom is our echo expert. Thank you Dr. Mom.

Caller 4 (Doctor Mom) (01:15:52):
Okay, well thanks. When I find out that answer I'll send you an email. So

Leo Laporte (01:15:55):
Yeah, we're in the chat room. You can always send us, right? Shoot us a chat as they say. You got it. No one says that. <laugh>. Thank you. Thanks Will. It's great to hear from you. How are things in San Diego? You're doing well.

Caller 4 (Doctor Mom) (01:16:07):
Oh yeah. We're just suffering through another heat wave here at 72 degrees <laugh>

Leo Laporte (01:16:13):
Having a heat wave. And how is your grandson?

Caller 4 (Doctor Mom) (01:16:17):
Well it's funny we had to disconnect the echoes in the house for the four year old because he's going around doing things like buying the Fard app. Yeah,

Leo Laporte (01:16:26):
Boy.

Caller 4 (Doctor Mom) (01:16:27):
And talking to a nonstop

Leo Laporte (01:16:29):
There. So there's a bunch of artists on Spotify who have songs about poop because four year olds don't let him discover this. Nothing better. <laugh> torturing their parents by report, repeating again and again. Play the Poop song. Play the Poop song. In fact, there's a group called the Toilet Bowl Cleaners. It has a whole poop album. And what they make good money because of repeated streams from toddlers.

Caller 4 (Doctor Mom) (01:16:57):
Well there's also books out for little kids like everybody Poops.

Leo Laporte (01:17:01):
Yeah. Those are good books. I think that's different. It's, it's, this is more like a con game. Course it, but it's not a good song. <laugh>. Just to get, in fact, NPR did a whole story on it. I see that Scooter X is posted in the chat room. This is how I found out about it. And it's got a list of the songs. If you yell Alexa, wait a minute. I shouldn't say that out loud cuz now people are gonna get it. But I'm a toddler at Heart Play Poop <affirmative>. And they did a whole piece on all the different songs you'll get and white toddlers just can't stop it. Used to be Baby Beluga then it was What was that one about? Mama Shark and Pop Baby Shark. Shark. Yeah. Baby Shark. Does your four four year old grandson know Baby Shark.

Caller 4 (Doctor Mom) (01:17:50):
Oh, every little kid knows Baby Shark

Leo Laporte (01:17:52):
<laugh>. Really? Earworm <laugh>. An earworm

Caller 4 (Doctor Mom) (01:17:54):
Was the thing Amazon announced that I think is dead in the water. Remember they had the original Echo Auto

Leo Laporte (01:18:01):
<affirmative>.

Caller 4 (Doctor Mom) (01:18:01):
They've upgraded it. Yes. My question is, what do you need it for anymore? Both the iPhone and the Android phones. You can put a widget up. It's either tap it or just say the word and wake it up.

Leo Laporte (01:18:13):
And a lot of cars are being built with Alexa built in now. Oh, I keep saying

Mikah Sargent (01:18:17):
It right?

Caller 4 (Doctor Mom) (01:18:18):
I just, it's something I don't see the utility for. I

Leo Laporte (01:18:21):
Love doing

Mikah Sargent (01:18:22):
That. So when I reviewed the original one, I did a review, video review for it. And that is what I said. Even at that point that it kind of made no sense because our devices can just do that already. And we have our devices with us and this auto requires a phone connected to it so that it has internet connection. So it feels like a pointless device. Right.

Caller 4 (Doctor Mom) (01:18:43):
I mean I fiddled around on my Tesla to see if I can get it to hook in to the phone. Built into the Tesla. No, Doesn't work.

Leo Laporte (01:18:51):
<laugh> good. And are you gonna get the robot Amazon's Astro, which now can detect close the door <laugh>?

Caller 4 (Doctor Mom) (01:19:00):
I am sitting here. I am on the wait list. Thank you for your order.

Leo Laporte (01:19:04):
<laugh>. Yeah, that was one of those day one specials. I did not order that one. I did get the sticky note printer. Happy about that. Well

Caller 4 (Doctor Mom) (01:19:10):
Well remember I, I got the original Alexa before you did. I went.

Leo Laporte (01:19:14):
I know you're good.

Caller 4 (Doctor Mom) (01:19:15):
You were so jealous at the time.

Leo Laporte (01:19:17):
Leo and Micah and Dr. Mom. You're tech guys more coming up. Did you see anything Lil that you site was exciting?

Caller 4 (Doctor Mom) (01:19:33):
I, I'm looking at, I have two of the really first generation hockey puck echoes <affirmative> that I'm thinking about upgrading. If I do, I'll probably go to a five just to have the ability to turn on the beacons if I want to. That's

Leo Laporte (01:19:46):
Amazing. I mean, cuz I have echoes in every room and that would be incredible.

Mikah Sargent (01:19:51):
So to have more. Yeah, I'm excited to So why

Caller 4 (Doctor Mom) (01:19:54):
Don't rid of the beacons? Because right now, for example, I'm in a cut. The end of style house means I've got a courtyard surrounded by rooms and I have a utility room out there that's the closest to my doorbell and some of my exterior lights. So I stuck at Beacon in there to boost the wifi signal. I don't need to put an echo in there. So I'd rather just keep the beacons running. Yeah. But the beacons are first generation. I'm waiting to see them die.

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

Mikah Sargent (01:20:20):
I've still got two of them in my house and I Oh,

Leo Laporte (01:20:23):
You're an you guy too, huh? Yeah. Yeah,

Caller 4 (Doctor Mom) (01:20:25):
Yeah. Those are first. I think those are considered first generation arrows.

Mikah Sargent (01:20:29):
<affirmative>. Yeah. The big

Caller 4 (Doctor Mom) (01:20:30):
They die. They die. They die.

Mikah Sargent (01:20:34):
Yeah. I'm looking forward to describe, I think it was I wanna see a company that's been doing ink displays for so long. Well

Leo Laporte (01:20:45):
You played with my remarkable too. I love the Rare Remarkable too. Yeah. I really am still using that. You did not so much.

Mikah Sargent (01:20:51):
I didn't. And what's interesting is, I thought about it in the times when I find myself really wanting to be able to make notes and do all that kinda stuff is whenever I'm reading a book from, typically coming from Amazon. So now to have that opportunity or option rather to do that while I'm looking through different trivia books and who knows what I think it's, it'll be a lot of fun.

Leo Laporte (01:21:16):
He's been everywhere man. Johnny Jet, Our traveling guru helps you better travel with tech. Joins us every week to talk about traveling. Hey jj.

Johnny Jet (01:21:28):
Hello. How are you guys doing?

Leo Laporte (01:21:29):
We are great. How are you Micah? I'm

Mikah Sargent (01:21:31):
Doing great, thanks.

Leo Laporte (01:21:32):
He's great. Yeah. Thanks for asking. We're all great. Yeah.

Johnny Jet (01:21:35):
Good. I just got back from Catalina Island for a couple nights

Leo Laporte (01:21:38):
Now do you take a boat to get out there? Right. You

Johnny Jet (01:21:41):
Take a ferry. It's an hour. About an hour. Hour and 15 minutes. 23 to 26 miles across. There's multiple places you can do it. We did Kelly Express and stayed at the Blanca Hotel. It's awesome. I mean this is such a great little getaway. It's my wife's birthday a couple days ago and

Leo Laporte (01:21:58):
Aw,

Johnny Jet (01:21:58):
It really feels like a world away. It's only an hour.

Leo Laporte (01:22:01):
I've always wanted, I've never done this. I always wanted to do it. Is there a better time of year to go when? When's the best time of year?

Johnny Jet (01:22:07):
Well, summer's the most crowded, but I would say right now it's great time because Wanna go?

Leo Laporte (01:22:10):
Crowded. Crowded. Yeah.

Johnny Jet (01:22:13):
And the weather's perfect. And yeah, it's a really good time. And try and go to midweek. You can go midweek. There will be really no one around except if the cruise ships come in. I heard the cruise ships are starting to come back. Oh no.

Leo Laporte (01:22:25):
There

Johnny Jet (01:22:26):
Were supposed to be one yesterday, although I did not see it. So maybe it came in last night. I'm gonna be on a cruise ship tonight. I'm going on the Love boat. Princess Cruises. They're having a big event cuz they're doing a new TV show.

Leo Laporte (01:22:37):
Yes, I saw that with my favorite Chief Stew from Below Deck. Joanna's gonna be the love connection that it's Australian. Is it? Is this the same show? Must be. I mean, how many shows could Princess Cruises be sponsoring <laugh>? Yeah. Anyway, this one's on in Australia. I don't know if we could see it up here. I would like to.

Johnny Jet (01:23:01):
No, this is gonna be in the US It's called The Real Love Boat. Yeah. CBS Original. That's

Leo Laporte (01:23:07):
It. Yeah. The Real Love Boat. Yeah. And they bring, I guess couples come on for a long time. Like 30 days or something. It's like kind of the Bachelor at Sea <laugh>.

Johnny Jet (01:23:19):
I know nothing about it tonight they're having a big media event. They're gonna have a lot of celebrities, a lot of the old cast members and

Leo Laporte (01:23:26):
Gofer be there. I love Gofer and Julie and Isaac and the whole gang.

Johnny Jet (01:23:32):
Yes. This is gonna be great. Unfortunately Captains stupid. Captains

Leo Laporte (01:23:35):
Dubin no longer with us. Yeah. Yes. I think the American one has a different cast than the Australian one. American one has Jerry O'Connell and Rebecca Romine in it.

Johnny Jet (01:23:44):
Right? Their husband and wife, aren't

Leo Laporte (01:23:46):
They? Yeah. So it's, I guess it's an one.

Johnny Jet (01:23:51):
<laugh>. It must be. Cause I haven't heard the Australian one.

Leo Laporte (01:23:53):
Yeah, there's one on Channel 10 in Australia called the Real Love Boat. So interesting.

Johnny Jet (01:23:57):
Well it's funny cuz I love watching some Australian shows. If you ever go down to Australia, actually sometimes you can see it here. The Border Patrol is the best show where, you know, watch travelers coming in and if you, you've been to Australia, you know how strict they are at the border. Yeah. And to watch it on TV is just, it's exciting and nerve wracking.

Leo Laporte (01:24:16):
So cool. So you get how long? Two days on the

Johnny Jet (01:24:20):
Princess? No, you know what, I'm actually only going on for a few hours just to do a little preview. Some of the stars. Oh, fun. So hopefully I'll have some good content

Leo Laporte (01:24:30):
Tomorrow. So this is gonna be on CBS and Paramount plus their streaming channel Premiering Wednesday. See I give 'em a ice plug. Maybe you can get Julie to call me

Johnny Jet (01:24:40):
<affirmative>. I, you know what, I will try and get her. I've met her mult. I bet. Met her multiple times. She's really nice. And

Leo Laporte (01:24:47):
My wife, when she was a kid, her parents wouldn't let her watch the Love boat on Saturday nights because it was too sexy.

Johnny Jet (01:24:55):
I watch it when Sexy. It wasn't, Yeah, I watched it when I was like 17 or something. But

Leo Laporte (01:25:00):
It was kind of a hookup thing. Right. But

Johnny Jet (01:25:02):
That actually, it was one of the reasons what got me into travel. It just fascinated me. And these days you look at that old ship that was such an old looking ship, but back then it was so state of the art right now it really would look like a barge cruise ship.

Leo Laporte (01:25:16):
It seems like they scrap 'em after Not very long. They

Johnny Jet (01:25:20):
Do, unfortunately they do. Some of them after 20 years, I think they just scrapped the one recently. That wasn't even that old. Yeah. So

Mikah Sargent (01:25:27):
Not like airplanes then. Cuz those stay

Leo Laporte (01:25:29):
Right, They keep 'em going forever, right?

Johnny Jet (01:25:31):
Yeah. They keep going. Why

Mikah Sargent (01:25:32):
Do they scrap 'em? What do they do?

Leo Laporte (01:25:34):
Well they don't necessarily scrap 'em. They sell 'em to a lesser cruise line. Oh.

Johnny Jet (01:25:39):
You can Google it and you'll see, I think it's a place in Turkey where they literally, they'll cut 'em in half and just

Leo Laporte (01:25:43):
Oh wow. They scrap 'em? No,

Johnny Jet (01:25:45):
They scrap. They scrap 'em,

Mikah Sargent (01:25:46):
'em they And see if fossils inside.

Johnny Jet (01:25:48):
Yeah. And sometimes there are, You never know what you find in there.

Leo Laporte (01:25:51):
I sailed on a boat a few years ago that they cut in half and put a middle part in and sewed it back together again to make it longer.

Johnny Jet (01:25:58):
Yes. That was Was it called the Titanic? That sounds No, that just happened

Leo Laporte (01:26:04):
Recently. Yeah, it was a Silver Sea.

Johnny Jet (01:26:06):
No, that was wind at the joint. Windstar

Leo Laporte (01:26:08):
Windstar did it too. Yeah. But a silver seat I think did one. Or maybe it was Seaborne somebody. Anyway. Yeah, they are. You saw that the world's largest cruise ship is too big. They couldn't buy a get a buyer. So they're going, they never Nope. The Global Dream two cost one and a half billion to build. And they're it. They're

Johnny Jet (01:26:29):
Done. That's just one. They're scrapping. Yeah, scrapping on. I do. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:26:33):
That is a waste.

Johnny Jet (01:26:34):
I didn't say it because I wasn't sure and I was just like, how could they really just do that?

Leo Laporte (01:26:38):
Yeah. That couldn't find a buyer. Complete waste. Well it's so big. I think it was 8,000 passengers. That's more than,

Johnny Jet (01:26:45):
And that's without the crew because these new ships do have 8,000 total people on 'em because there's crew and passengers,

Leo Laporte (01:26:50):
Right? No, this was Global. Dream two was 9,000 passengers. Nine. You don't wanna be on a boat with 9,000 people. And another, this means with a crew, there must be another couple thousand. At least

Johnny Jet (01:27:03):
It feels like you're on a Vegas. It's like a city.

Leo Laporte (01:27:06):
Yeah.

Johnny Jet (01:27:07):
Is what a Vegas hotel resort. Yeah. Floating too big. Listen, sometimes they're fun. So

Leo Laporte (01:27:13):
I am starting to think maybe the river boats are the way to go. Those are of a hundred to 200 people. Small. They move slowly. And unlike a cruise ship, which is gonna destroy Catalina, when the 5,000 people get off all at once at Catalina, that's not gonna be any fun for anybody.

Johnny Jet (01:27:28):
Well I asked a local about that and they said, you know what? We love the tourism, the business, but it's good

Leo Laporte (01:27:32):
Business.

Johnny Jet (01:27:33):
It's crowded. Yeah. Yeah. So that's why I'm telling you check the check. That's a good tip for anywhere you go. By the way, if you're going to a small place like Catalina, check and see if they're having cruise ships come in because you wanna avoid those

Leo Laporte (01:27:44):
Days. Don't go nowhere near that. Yeah, yeah.

Johnny Jet (01:27:46):
It'll be difficult to get a chair cabana or whatever you're looking for. Or a restaurant reservation. Especially during the day. What

Leo Laporte (01:27:53):
Else is going on? Are airlines still having these scheduling issues or they settle down a little bit these days?

Johnny Jet (01:27:58):
No, they still are. Amsterdam came out this week hand. They're gonna have, they're cut capacity till April. So unfortunately they're still having some issues

Leo Laporte (01:28:07):
To the beautiful ski pole airport. Yes.

Johnny Jet (01:28:10):
And that was one of the best run airports in the country or world. And now, I mean they're really taken a hit. I think the the CEO just got let go or he or we resigned. But yeah. And actually I just put in a chat room a link to a great link. A website where you can plan your fall Fage trips.

Leo Laporte (01:28:33):
Your fall foliage trips.

Johnny Jet (01:28:35):
Yes.

Leo Laporte (01:28:36):
I wanna do talk

Johnny Jet (01:28:36):
About this one before. Smoke mountains.com. Yeah. And they have a link. It's not just for the Smokey Mountains. I've never been to the Smokey Mountains, but they can do it for the whole United States. It shows you when and now is the time to start planning because the leaves are starting to change on the east coast.

Leo Laporte (01:28:52):
They call it leaf peeping <laugh>. Yeah.

Johnny Jet (01:28:56):
I mean you grew up in Rhode Island so you know how I

Leo Laporte (01:28:58):
Know it's beautiful, especially if you're near woods where all the trees have changed and you get yellow and red and green all mixed together. You feel like it's very special. So what time this year are we? Because it changes, right? It does change. And so they have a little slider at the bottom of it. And I'm saying October 17th is gonna be almost past peak in Connecticut and Rhode Island. No kidding. Oh well that's a problem actually. No, it's a near peak in Rhode Island. Okay. Yeah. I've always wanted to do because Lisa grew up in California, she doesn't know about this riot of colors that happen. I think it'd be so they in parts of California, but it's not as Yeah, we have a need. Des deciduous trees my friend des deciduous. That's the key. That is a good word. By the way, <laugh> the word of the day.

Leo Laporte (01:29:48):
Des deciduous. Des deciduous. That means those are the trees with leaves fall off in the winter. And that's why this color riot of color is happening. Cuz the temperatures change and they And the sap cuts off and the leaves off the chloro fill. Yeah. Yep. That's like he said. And speaking of that, by the way, I just booked a ticket to go late October to New York to go see my dad and do an event and I just got a Google alert saying that my flight, the price just dropped. So right before I went on, I was busy canceling that flight and rebooking it to save $55. They've the market drawing, they don't automatically change it. Yeah. Nice. Do you gotta cancel it and then rebook it. Johnny jet.com. That's the place to go. He's got great newsletters, all sorts of travel deals. Follow 'em on Twitter and Instagram and join him here each week. Thank you John. Thank you. Thank you.

Leo Laporte (01:30:41):
The fall foliage map. Calling all Berks. Calling all bes. The browser has crashed. <laugh>. I wouldn't doubt it. This happened before where I mentioned, or Leo's mentioned the website, it crashes. This is kind of cool. Yeah cuz Lisa and the chat room. Just put one up for the New York, New York one. I love New york.com foliage reports haven't on there at all Now. I love New York. Maybe got downsized.com cause I did see it refresh things to do fall foliage. Oh look at that. It was working though. That's the Adirondacks which are beautiful. Beautiful. So, but they didn't put any dates in this. So you wanna kind of orange to red, light red. Oh this is cool. Is this a New York one? Yeah. Yeah. That's really cool. I couldn't think it. I just thought Mary Joe foliage. Mary Joe Foliage. That's what I'm gonna call her the week. We're in the week of this the, Okay. This is the third fall foliage report for New York State. Reports are obtained from volunteer field of surfers. So you can just check. I like it. That's nice. I like the Hudson Valley. I'm this, that's my favorite spot. Very nice. It is. Yay. Very nice. You always wanted a house in the Hudson River Valley.

Johnny Jet (01:32:10):
You and every other celebrity

Leo Laporte (01:32:12):
Farm. I know a farm house up there with George Clooney in the rest of the gang. We could just hang out. How's everything else? Everything good?

Johnny Jet (01:32:20):
Good. I'm looking at the chat room, Big island saying I should do an article on the shrinking size of airline bathrooms. I'm sure you're talking about the 37 max.

Leo Laporte (01:32:27):
Are they getting seven 30

Johnny Jet (01:32:29):
Small max? Well the max ones are ridiculous. Literally the first time I went into one I was like, oh my gosh. Either I'm really getting big or they're cutting down. You have to go in sideways and the sinks,

Leo Laporte (01:32:38):
Oh come on man. Is

Johnny Jet (01:32:39):
Like six inches and you definitely get wet. So you walk outta the bathroom, everyone's like, oh my god, he wet is pants and what? That

Leo Laporte (01:32:47):
Is ridiculous.

Johnny Jet (01:32:48):
Yeah, the 7 37 max. The airlines have really tried to cut the size down in those bathrooms. Is that

Mikah Sargent (01:32:54):
So that they have another chair they can fit

Johnny Jet (01:32:56):
In another row they can squeeze in. Mary

Leo Laporte (01:32:58):
Mother of I am turning into an old man cuz the whole world is going to hell in a trap. It's not as good as it used to be in my day. I remember going in a bathroom on, I told you this on sas, it was like my living room. Yeah. Fellow flowers in there had a, Well

Johnny Jet (01:33:14):
You still have some of those on the triple seven. There was handicapped bathrooms usually in the middle of the plane and there was huge. They're huge. They're huge.

Leo Laporte (01:33:23):
Huge. So you get a wheelchair

Mikah Sargent (01:33:24):
Course meal in there.

Leo Laporte (01:33:25):
Well that was the one, that was the flight. I loved that flight where they had chefs and chef outfits. Really? That would come with a SGA board plane used

Mikah Sargent (01:33:33):
To be more like it was a whole thing. Right?

Leo Laporte (01:33:36):
Yeah. That's the one where Henry and I, they had somehow booked Henry into the exit row and he was 14 or something. So they up, they said, Oh yeah, don't sit it here. We'll we'll put you up front. Oh cuz he couldn't do, And Henry was so spoiled <laugh>. He said, this is how travel ought to be from now on <laugh>.

Johnny Jet (01:33:50):
Well if you're flying front, it's way better now if you're flying and coach. It was way better back then.

Leo Laporte (01:33:56):
It's worse. Oh, because they made more room for the people flying up front. Yeah.

Johnny Jet (01:34:00):
It used to be five extra inches of leg room 10, 15 years ago and now you have to pay for that. Interesting. And that was standard

Leo Laporte (01:34:08):
Mr. Jet, it is time for

Johnny Jet (01:34:10):
Us me

Leo Laporte (01:34:11):
To bid you a fond farewell. Have a wonder, are you traveling this

Johnny Jet (01:34:15):
Week? Oh

Leo Laporte (01:34:15):
You are. You're going on the low the boat. Oh, the low boat.

Mikah Sargent (01:34:19):
Well enjoy

Leo Laporte (01:34:21):
The love <laugh>.

Johnny Jet (01:34:24):
I will.

Leo Laporte (01:34:24):
So which of the original casts can be there? Did they tell you?

Johnny Jet (01:34:28):
I know, I know. Julie's gonna be there. Julie

Leo Laporte (01:34:31):
Has nothing else

Johnny Jet (01:34:32):
To do. And I think Isaac, so you drink good.

Leo Laporte (01:34:36):
Isaac the

Johnny Jet (01:34:37):
But I've been board when they're all on. I have a picture of all. That's so cool. They were amazing.

Leo Laporte (01:34:40):
That's so cool. Yeah, I grew up watching the Love Bone. All right. Well grew up.

Johnny Jet (01:34:45):
All right. And Charles's gonna be there,

Leo Laporte (01:34:46):
But Charles the third. Third,

Johnny Jet (01:34:49):
Char Charles

Leo Laporte (01:34:52):
Charles's still alive.

Johnny Jet (01:34:53):
Charles's gonna, Oh my gosh. Yes. He's still alive

Mikah Sargent (01:34:56):
Now. This is a good pick. Professor Laura. Oh no, the browser crashed again. <laugh> for Burke.

Leo Laporte (01:35:05):
What is this song?

Mikah Sargent (01:35:07):
I honestly don't remember the band. I just really like the song. Sounds

Leo Laporte (01:35:09):
Like cake. Oh, it's the Strokes.

Mikah Sargent (01:35:11):
Yeah, The Strokes. Thank you.

Leo Laporte (01:35:14):
That's Mike, a sergeant in the striped shirt. Leo Laport in the Beige.

Mikah Sargent (01:35:19):
Beige doesn't look

Leo Laporte (01:35:20):
Good. Yeah. Somebody once told me Beige doesn't look good on anybody.

Mikah Sargent (01:35:23):
I disagree.

Leo Laporte (01:35:24):
Okay, well it doesn't look good on me. I'm a little beige myself. I should have

Mikah Sargent (01:35:28):
Some, maybe a more contrasty shirt underneath <laugh> and then you be rocking it. For sure.

Leo Laporte (01:35:34):
This is Geek eyes for the

Mikah Sargent (01:35:37):
<laugh> for the radio guy.

Leo Laporte (01:35:39):
Strange guy. Radio guy. 88. 88. Ask Leo the phone number. No geeks probably do need some

Mikah Sargent (01:35:46):
Of

Leo Laporte (01:35:46):
Them. Of

Mikah Sargent (01:35:47):
Them. Depends on if you're a fashion geek. In which case

Leo Laporte (01:35:50):
My definition of geek always was somebody who cares more about what's going on above the neck than below the belt.

Mikah Sargent (01:35:57):
Oh really? Do you

Leo Laporte (01:35:58):
Like that? I think that's clever. I just like, I'd like to get that trademark Please.

Mikah Sargent (01:36:01):
So maybe when I think of it as a person, So perhaps that's why I use the word nerd more cuz it's a person who is very passionate about a thing. So you could be a music nerd or you could be an Apple nerd or you could be a fashion nerd. It's just you.

Leo Laporte (01:36:15):
Yes. I don't speak to the nerds. I speak to the geek.

Mikah Sargent (01:36:17):
Only to the

Leo Laporte (01:36:18):
Geeks. Only to the geeks. According to Oxford languages, a nerd is a foolish or contemptible person who lacks social skills and is Bo or is boringly studious.

Mikah Sargent (01:36:30):
That's so sad. <laugh>. That is

Leo Laporte (01:36:33):
Not my, Is that really what you wanna be? Is that what you wanna

Mikah Sargent (01:36:35):
Be? What is a geek on According to Oxford?

Leo Laporte (01:36:37):
Let's see, I think I have a geek on the line. Let's go to Miami and say hi to Chris. Hi

Mikah Sargent (01:36:42):
Chris.

Caller 5 (01:36:42):
Hi Chris. Hey, I'm back on the line. How are you my friend? Good afternoon sir. Oh,

Leo Laporte (01:36:48):
I should warned people

Mikah Sargent (01:36:49):
Not friends, just friend.

Leo Laporte (01:36:51):
No, he's your friend. You like Micah too, don't you?

Caller 5 (01:36:54):
I like Mikah Sargent probably more than most because he's absolutely spectacular. Oh, him and Rosemary Orchard are an absolute party. And they did something on shortcuts recently that, well I still need to have a fixed, but yes, I appreciate Mic Star. This

Leo Laporte (01:37:09):
Is now, that's more than we expected. That is a big plug for the iOS Today Show. Which Micah hosts with a wonderful Brit Rosemary Orchard. That's her real name too, right?

Mikah Sargent (01:37:18):
Yeah. Rosemary Orchard.

Leo Laporte (01:37:20):
Yeah. Great. And they did, they've been doing a lot of shortcuts. She's a shortcut queen. And now I found out I can have a shortcut on my watch <affirmative>, which means basically I'm a button on my watch. It could do, it could open my garage door, it could transport me to Mars. It could do anything. <affirmative>

Mikah Sargent (01:37:36):
Mars give you a new cup of coffee.

Leo Laporte (01:37:38):
Get me a cup of coffee. Coffee.

Caller 5 (01:37:40):
Ah. Oh see

Mikah Sargent (01:37:42):
That

Caller 5 (01:37:42):
Was it. Well I'm in about five cups now, so I think I'm doing pretty good. Wow. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:37:46):
Five. What

Caller 5 (01:37:47):
Can we like that? And Mike is like, what, how, when, where?

Leo Laporte (01:37:50):
No, he knows about you. Chris, you've, you, your reputation precedes you.

Mikah Sargent (01:37:55):
I can hear your heartbeat through

Caller 5 (01:37:56):
The <laugh> heartbeat. Speaker.

Leo Laporte (01:37:58):
Yeah, your heartbeat precedes you.

Caller 5 (01:38:00):
<laugh>.

Mikah Sargent (01:38:02):
Oh, you're right. Let's see, what is your question, <laugh>? Well

Caller 5 (01:38:08):
I, well want to just ask you one thing and then I called actually cuz I wanted to talk to Leo also about the new Apple watch. But okay, so for you and Rosemary, what I was looking to do is I wanna set up a shortcut, automation <affirmative>. I can send you an email on how to do auto redial. So on the iPhone, I went through the process, I found a video and it does redial the call. But then when it hangs up, it doesn't redial the call again. So I need something

Mikah Sargent (01:38:38):
That's

Leo Laporte (01:38:39):
Probably illegal.

Mikah Sargent (01:38:41):
Oh yeah.

Caller 5 (01:38:41):
Cause it's, it's on landline phone. You can find it. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:38:43):
But I do think that there is a law about auto redialing. There's a limited number of times you can auto redial. And it may be that apple for that reason is limiting the auto redial redial once <affirmative>. But they don't want you just to sit there dialing and dialing, dialing everything

Mikah Sargent (01:39:04):
You need to know about automated dialing laws.

Caller 5 (01:39:08):
Yeah, I've been doing this for two weeks now. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:39:10):
So who would you be redialing again and again and again as if I didn't know? Well

Caller 5 (01:39:15):
Let me give you a hypothetical example. Okay. So today I called in, I got lucky. The lovely and talented Miss two Cups herself took my call and

Leo Laporte (01:39:23):
Don't, please don't call her Miss two cups. Okay. I don't think she would like that <laugh>

Mikah Sargent (01:39:28):
Kim. She,

Caller 5 (01:39:30):
If I am selfish as you Kim, I completely take it back. I apologize

Leo Laporte (01:39:36):
To be honest, be better than Miss three cups. <laugh>.

Caller 5 (01:39:40):
<laugh>. It's a party.

Leo Laporte (01:39:44):
The party has begun. She has a great laugh. This is good. I

Caller 5 (01:39:48):
Love, oh my God, Kim is wonderful. She's a very special person and we love having her here at twit. So we love herself. I'm gonna have another cup just for that comment. We've

Leo Laporte (01:39:57):
Lost track of where we were going here. So have you looked up auto redialing laws?

Mikah Sargent (01:40:01):
Yeah. So there are specific laws about this that is interesting. I didn't realize this but as far as, So you're saying that it does it once and then it stops, right?

Caller 5 (01:40:12):
Yes. And actually I found that video out there on the, where is it? That's up there on YouTube by this fellow this company by the name of Boom. And he just shows you how to do it. It's very easy to do it and it's, it just auto redials once. So it does show you what to do and it does work, but it doesn't. So if I call into Twitter, what

Leo Laporte (01:40:35):
They don't want you to do, what they don't want you to do, and I understand why cuz it's illegal in some places, is just sit there dialing and dialing and dialing. It's funny because years ago, that was one of my first computer programs that I released to the world. I had a bbs, this was in 1996. I had a bbs, it was very hard to get into it cause I only had two lines. This was in the old days, actually it wasn't 96, it was 86. Pardon me. And I wrote a little program called Q Dial that would dial again and again and again and again. This is how I know it's illegal. <affirmative>. So after the feds let me go. No, I never got in trouble for it. But it turns out, you know, can do it. You can figure it out how to do it. I doubt Apple will let you do it in a shortcut though. Because for that very reason, in fact though, the things I'm seeing online suggests that you have to jail break your device if you want to.

Caller 5 (01:41:24):
Yeah, I saw that too, Micah. Yeah, well I had a phone landline from at t back in the nineties with a 400 phone. I used to get it from the at and t scores in War Rhode Island. And I went and bought it and it actually had the redial feature on there. In fact, it even had two way conversation. But you did have to ask the other caller, can I record this part of the call or the information? Another

Leo Laporte (01:41:45):
Problem. Legal. Yeah, another problem. Yeah.

Caller 5 (01:41:47):
Yeah, another problem. But you could redial again and every, Yeah,

Leo Laporte (01:41:51):
Apple's never gonna give you a tool that will let you break the law with their full knowledge. Right? So I think that that's what you're gonna gonna see. What was your other question?

Caller 5 (01:42:05):
My other question was about the Apple watch. Now I'm gonna get the Apple Watch series eight. Cause I get

Leo Laporte (01:42:11):
The trick. Get the ultra. Are you gonna get the, are you a large man

Caller 5 (01:42:16):
<laugh>? Not really. I mean, I'm not always

Leo Laporte (01:42:21):
<laugh>. Should I call you Mr. Tu cups? So here's the thing

Caller 5 (01:42:26):
Is I'm five eight please.

Leo Laporte (01:42:28):
That's, Oh you're, you're a small man. Five

Caller 5 (01:42:31):
Eight. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:42:33):
Large fellow. Yeah. So I work on a lot. If you have skinny wrists, you have kind of skinny wrist mic, right? <affirmative>. And you've tried this watch on Actually I just let Kim try it on. Now she's not a large man or a small man. <laugh> did, but did you think it was too big, Kim? No,

Kim Schaffer (01:42:50):
I think it would've been fine.

Leo Laporte (01:42:51):
I think, you know, just have to, It's a fashion statement.

Kim Schaffer (01:42:54):
Clunky, thicker. But as far as the screen size, I didn't find it to

Leo Laporte (01:42:58):
Be too big. Well, and that's what I like about it. In fact, I've made the text even bigger than normal. It's very legible because it's so big. Apple has a special watch face just for the ultra, which I don't know what complications are. Those little widgets that are go on a watch face and some of the watch faces. Apple makes have two complications. This one has 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 complications. And I like that be. But you couldn't do it without a big right face <affirmative>. But I like that because I can have buttons to call my wife. I have a button to record, a voice memo to see the weather, to see my calendar, to set my activities. I have one to take notes and I have one for my reminders. I mean that's great. Plus the date. In fact, this one even has a feature which is on many Apple watches, but it's not on the watch face. It's the compass feature. If I double tap the bele, Oops. Gotta do that just right. Double tap the bele. I get longitude and latitude and compass bearing on the face. So there's some really not, I think honestly it's more expensive. It's $800. So that's something that's certainly a consideration. It is bigger, but I think the materials it's made of the way it's made and the features. I love this watch <affirmative> more than I've ever loved an Apple watch. Thank you Chris. Leo, LA Port Mica, Sergeant Moore calls coming up.

Leo Laporte (01:44:40):
Well hey. Hey. How are you today? Leo Laporte here. Mica Sergeant, your tech guys for the day. 88. 88. Ask Leo is our phone number eight eighty eight eight two seven five five three six. Toll free from anywhere in the US or Canada outside that area. You can still call but you gotta use Skype out or something like that. 88. 88. Ask Leo should we go to another call? Micah, let's go to another call. Okay. On the line Micah, I, Oh I get to choose. Well you don't know because you don't get that arrow. This that I get true. I like to take him in order. Yes. So Robert in Huntington Beach is next. Hi Robert.

Caller 6 (01:45:20):
Hey, how you doing?

Leo Laporte (01:45:22):
I'm good, how are you?

Caller 6 (01:45:23):
I'm old. And this is me too. This is a deciduous question. Are

Leo Laporte (01:45:29):
Your leaves falling off? Yes,

Caller 6 (01:45:32):
All the time. All

Leo Laporte (01:45:34):
The time.

Caller 6 (01:45:35):
Yeah. Hey, where's Jackie? Oh, oh

Leo Laporte (01:45:38):
<laugh>. What can I do for you? My

Caller 6 (01:45:43):
I, the other day I wanted to send my tax guy a picture of some IRS forms and I use my cell phone to capture the picture. And then I'm not really used to using the cell phone for anything but a cell phone. I use a desktop for most things and I don't have my cell phone and my desktop coordinated. So I tried to send through the mail area of the cell phone, the picture and it wanted a password. So I went, looked up my password and stuck it in there. And then it gave me a very strange question. They wanted to know if I would let iOS delete all my emails and such and such. I had to give it some kind of permission to delete. I forget whether it was just emails or a lot of stuff. And I thought, well if I can't, I wanted to go to my sent folder in Gmail and I couldn't do that unless I went through this process. So I was given two options, either cancel or continue. So I pressed continue under the risk that somehow iOS was gonna delete all my whatevers <affirmative>. And I wonder if that was a smart thing to do. And I think it gave me a way out, if you go in into the settings in some way you could reverse this maybe. I

Leo Laporte (01:47:24):
Just remember Apple's always trying to protect you. Okay. And your security.

Caller 6 (01:47:31):
I

Leo Laporte (01:47:31):
See. So what was Apple asking Micah?

Mikah Sargent (01:47:34):
Yeah, so it, it's likely that while the prompts are coming up, it's

Leo Laporte (01:47:41):
Not gonna delay anything that's not on the phone.

Mikah Sargent (01:47:43):
Exactly. So when those prompts are coming up, it's kind of trying to reconcile what it's downloading versus what is on the device and how those two are sort of syncing together. <affirmative>. So one of the good, you said this was for your email, right? I mean one of the good things about modern email systems is most of the time you're not having full on local files on the phone that are downloaded. And so those would still, even if you went through a process where it's removing them locally, they're likely still stored in an archive or in the trash or in some place elsewhere. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:48:20):
Let me ask you though, before we even go too much farther. Yeah. Are these forms filled out?

Caller 6 (01:48:27):
No it was just something the IRS sent me. Oh,

Leo Laporte (01:48:30):
Okay. Cause it's insecure to send stuff like that through email, through texts and if your social's on there, you really don't wanna find a better way I do that. Yeah. Okay, good. You understand that? Yeah. Yeah. So you, that happens all the time. We got a letter from the irs, we forward it to our accountant. It's perfectly fine if your accountant's okay with it to say send me a picture of it cuz he or she can read it I guess from the picture. Yeah. I'm not sure why you got this prompt <affirmative>. Cause you did try to delete it after you sent it. Is that what was going on?

Caller 6 (01:49:09):
No, I actually wanted to know if I had actually sent it. I just wanted to double check that he got,

Leo Laporte (01:49:16):
So you know, go in the sent folder and you can see what got sent. Right?

Caller 6 (01:49:20):
Yeah. And I couldn't get into the sent folder so

Leo Laporte (01:49:22):
I see.

Caller 6 (01:49:24):
Yeah. One of the password, I looked up my password.

Leo Laporte (01:49:27):
Did you get a new phone recently?

Caller 6 (01:49:28):
I got my desktop. I'm not really using the,

Leo Laporte (01:49:31):
Oh this is on the Mac?

Caller 6 (01:49:33):
No, I don't have a Mac. It's on the phone. Right. I have a Windows 10 I

Leo Laporte (01:49:38):
See

Caller 6 (01:49:39):
System, but I'm using an iPhone to try to send the, So

Leo Laporte (01:49:44):
I get what's happening,

Caller 6 (01:49:45):
Send the picture on the iPhone. Now I'm trying to send the iPhone picture to him and I had to double check to make sure it was sent.

Leo Laporte (01:49:53):
So did you use the mail on the phone to send it?

Caller 6 (01:49:56):
Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:49:57):
Okay. And your email provider is Gmail?

Caller 6 (01:49:59):
Yes.

Leo Laporte (01:50:00):
Okay. And so now you're going to your Windows desktop logging into gmail.com to see if you've sent it.

Caller 6 (01:50:05):
Okay. That's what I did eventually, but I didn't know why they would ask if <laugh>, they could delete this or that. And I thought that's, I

Leo Laporte (01:50:16):
Don't know about that. That's, unless you asked to delete something, that's

Mikah Sargent (01:50:19):
The part that's strange to me as well. This is one of those situations where we have to know close to the exact verbiage that was used in order to be able to,

Leo Laporte (01:50:27):
Here's my guess. So you're using the program on the iPhone call mail, is that correct? Yeah, exactly. And you'd set it up to send and receive mail before and have been doing that? Yes

Caller 6 (01:50:39):
But I changed my password on my desktop at one point. Okay. Recently. And I guess I hadn't done that on the shelf

Leo Laporte (01:50:48):
Happening as well. So Apple is at, and this is purely to protect you. They wanna make sure that it's you and that you give them permission to manage the mail, which includes deletion as well as downloading and other things. So really I think what that prompt was is, well sure Robert, we can look at your mail, but you better tell us you're Robert first

Caller 6 (01:51:12):
<affirmative>. I see.

Leo Laporte (01:51:14):
And part of those permissions are do in fact deletion you know, might ask for instance to delete a message. So they need, they're gonna get all those permissions up front.

Caller 6 (01:51:23):
Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:51:24):
And I think that's all that was.

Caller 6 (01:51:25):
Yeah. I didn't suspect so much that it was somebody hacked my phone.

Leo Laporte (01:51:30):
No, no, no, no, no. Yeah it was Apple.

Caller 6 (01:51:33):
I just found it strange that they would wanna delete anything. Well

Leo Laporte (01:51:37):
I think what my guess is they're give asking for overall email permissions. So Yeah, because this is the first time you've used your email account with this new password. So they just wanna make sure, because one of the things mail will do when you delete a message locally is go to Gmail and say, Now I need to delete this. They wanna make, get all those permissions up front

Mikah Sargent (01:51:59):
And the words remind me of anytime you set up an account with your contacts for example, and it's trying to reconcile. So those words sound familiar at the very least.

Leo Laporte (01:52:08):
And so that they can manage it, they're okay. They don't, they're being explicit. They could just simply say, Okay, I just wanna make sure you're Robert and you gimme full permission to manage your email.

Caller 6 (01:52:18):
Okay. Okay. Yeah, I get now. Oh do you use Sea Cleaner by the way?

Leo Laporte (01:52:23):
I don't usually recommend it. You usually you don't need it. Windows is pretty good these days about managing temp files and cash files. See the problem with a program like Seat Cleaner is if it's really aggressive it can break your system.

Caller 6 (01:52:38):
I see.

Leo Laporte (01:52:38):
And if it's not aggressive, it doesn't do much. <laugh>.

Caller 6 (01:52:41):
Yeah. Cause I went to a site called bleeping Computer to

Leo Laporte (01:52:45):
Good site recommend it.

Caller 6 (01:52:48):
And they told me they don't use seat cleaner. It can take away system files and

Leo Laporte (01:52:52):
Exactly.

Caller 6 (01:52:53):
Thought maybe I better change my tune. I would

Leo Laporte (01:52:56):
Seek, It's funny cuz different personalities. You're a neat freak, aren't you Micah? Yeah. You like tidy, right? Yeah. Yeah. And I personally don't care, but people act with their computer the same way they might act around the house. <affirmative> put stuff away. I don't like things lying around <affirmative>. And so people who are tidy, the idea of periodically going through your Windows stuff and deleting trash, getting rid of temp files, that's what seat cleaners for <affirmative>, I would say this is one place where you can be a little less O ct.

Mikah Sargent (01:53:30):
Yeah. A lot of times it's just busy body behavior. It's not actually doing much

Leo Laporte (01:53:36):
To help.

Caller 6 (01:53:37):
The only reason I use Seat Cleaner is I think it's because I really need to update my system. I've got an I three system with four gigs of memory. And when I'm going on a site, it has say a message board like one of the news sites I sometimes go to. And then

Leo Laporte (01:53:56):
It's a pretty lightweight machine. And I think there are, especially as time goes by and the web gets heavier and heavier and a lot of that's advertising, it's very annoying to me. You might need more ram or more processor. Sea cleaner will not help that.

Caller 6 (01:54:11):
Okay. Okay.

Leo Laporte (01:54:12):
Trust beeping. Complete bleeping computer is a great site. All right. And if they say no, don't. Lawrence Abrams, who's the guy behind it, is a very sharp cookie <affirmative>. And he and I are almost always in complete agreement when he says, You don't need sea cleaner. I think you mm-hmm. <affirmative> need it. I noticed that they do advertise another cleaner. <laugh>. Use either one. You don't need either one.

Caller 6 (01:54:36):
All right, well the forest be with you. You

Leo Laporte (01:54:38):
Too. Is there a follow up to that is like, And with you and may it with you always my friend. Okay. Robert. It's a pleasure. Thanks for We always like our deciduous callers. We do, Yes. <laugh>. I myself am slightly des deciduous. 88. 88 Ashley of the phone number (888) 827-5536 Tollfree from anywhere in the US or Canada. I will tell you something Robert and others could do if they feel like sites are slow when we come back. Stay tuned.

Speaker 12 (01:55:12):
Oh, what a,

Leo Laporte (01:55:13):
I am such a, Is this Julio? Wow. I'm in the late Julio sad. Leon Ivy Jr. Artist. Leon Ivy Jr. Passed away this week at the very tender age of 59. On the line with us, our next caller, Oh my God, it's all Home Week. Did We did our <laugh> Micah from Maine. Hello Micah.

Caller 7 (01:55:52):
Hello Leo. And hello Micah. And I told Kim, if you didn't wanna have me on, because I've been kidding. I

Leo Laporte (01:55:57):
Love you. I love you. But what we did and then maybe it expired, I thought I told <laugh> to get expired cuz we just have Chris from Miami on, is that we wanted to get more first time callers. But you know what? You haven't been on in so long. It's refreshing and new.

Caller 7 (01:56:12):
Well it's, I've been very conscious of it because I've done radio for years and it's important to keep radio fresh. Well, so I don't wanna do anything to what,

Leo Laporte (01:56:20):
I don't want our wonderful audience to think that only our friends can call. That's all it is. But we always like to talk to you. I mean, that's not that I don't want to hear from you. I wanna make sure everybody feels welcome.

Caller 7 (01:56:35):
But I completely understand and was never insulted. But thank you for saying that.

Leo Laporte (01:56:38):
I appreciate that.

Caller 7 (01:56:40):
I was calling because I understand a little bit about the redialing process and the federal law.

Leo Laporte (01:56:46):
Well, here we go. Tell us all about it.

Caller 7 (01:56:48):
You are only allowed to redial the same number nine times. But there's a way around it because you did, when you talked to Dick, ask him if he remembers the Demonn dialer from the 1970s, which was a landline dialer that was eventually replaced by a company called Technology Arts called the Power Dialer, which was incredibly popular for Las Vegas shift work when you had to call in and you had to get shifts and to be the first one in made a big difference. So the way it works is that, and that's how I got in today, is on my power dialer by the way. <laugh> what?

Leo Laporte (01:57:22):
Still have one? Yep.

Caller 7 (01:57:24):
You want one? I've got about 10 of them. <laugh>,

Leo Laporte (01:57:27):
Why do you have so many? Wait a minute. Did you used to try to win radio station contests in your youth?

Caller 7 (01:57:33):
No. Well no. I never really did. But I used to sell them on eBay. Oh. When I could. And they were very, very hot and I could sell them for two, $300 and I was able to get them for considerably less. And if anybody needs one, Leo, If you wanted one, I'd send it to you for free.

Leo Laporte (01:57:48):
Well, let me go to eBay and look for demo. What do they call Demonn? Dialers. Power Dialers. Power dialers. And do you still sell them on eBay or is that a

Caller 7 (01:57:58):
I still do. And mine is the only one up there that's brand new. Never open. Still in the box. Wow.

Leo Laporte (01:58:03):
Is the power dial thereby call cowboy <laugh>.

Caller 7 (01:58:08):
No. Technology arts, power dialer,

Leo Laporte (01:58:11):
<laugh>. So let me ask you this. How do they get around it again?

Caller 7 (01:58:16):
Well, after the ninth call it sets automatically. You can't dial number over again. So it dials one and then it continues to dial over the number that you did.

Leo Laporte (01:58:26):
Seems like it's not quite the spirit of the federal law.

Caller 7 (01:58:30):
That's true. But it's perfectly legal.

Leo Laporte (01:58:33):
It is the letter of the federal law

Caller 7 (01:58:34):
<laugh>. Absolutely. So it'll dial nine times the number that I want. And if it gets a busy signal, it'll hangs up and it redials, I don't know, maybe 60 times a mi Well, maybe 40 times a minute. And

Leo Laporte (01:58:46):
Is this the secret to getting into the tech guy show <laugh>?

Caller 7 (01:58:51):
I dunno. About anybody else's secret. <laugh> my secret.

Leo Laporte (01:58:55):
Interesting. Wow.

Caller 7 (01:58:57):
And then it, it'll dial one and then it'll go back to dialing it. What

Leo Laporte (01:59:01):
Happens when it dials one? Does it get a tone or something? What happens? It

Caller 7 (01:59:05):
Nothing. It's a blank. It, It's blank for a second and it's listening. And so it hangs up and it redials again until it gets another dial. It listens for a dial tone and it listens for a busy signal or a fast busy signal. And when it gets a ring, it lets you know there's a ring and it goes right through.

Leo Laporte (01:59:20):
Are you saying that the market for these is dried up?

Caller 7 (01:59:25):
Pretty much because nobody uses a landline anymore and people now have voicemail automatically. So you get the voicemail. It's not like you're redialing. Got it. You're not getting a busy signal. This

Leo Laporte (01:59:36):
Only made sense when you get a busy signal and when's the last time you got a busy signal? It's only calling radio stations the only time you ever get a busy signal.

Caller 7 (01:59:45):
But it used to work for Tron, it used to work for all sorts of tickets. It used to work for radio contests and things like that. And lines like yours

Leo Laporte (01:59:55):
Does work. Chalk up another dinosaur. Wow. Made obsolete by technology on the internet. How fast are you? Very, very. So how many a week do you think you sell at these? Actually, you might suddenly have a run on

Caller 7 (02:00:09):
These. Oh, I haven't sold one in months.

Leo Laporte (02:00:10):
Months. <laugh> that. Interesting. I do see quite a few on eBay, but I'm gonna find your listing. So if I search for power dialer new

Caller 7 (02:00:20):
I might think mine says brand new. When you look

Leo Laporte (02:00:22):
Brand new, What is brand new as opposed to new <laugh>? It's a band. Well

Caller 7 (02:00:30):
You actually on eBay you could be new and it might be an open box. Ah,

Leo Laporte (02:00:33):
Brand new means no one's opened this. I prefer brand spanking. New brand spanking new.

Caller 7 (02:00:40):
I don't want to talk about spanking on the

Leo Laporte (02:00:42):
<laugh>. very good. Hey Micah, this was well worth it. Yeah, I appreciate the call. Fascinating. Thank you for power dialing in. We appreciate it.

Caller 7 (02:00:52):
I won't do it again for another few months. <laugh>.

Leo Laporte (02:00:54):
Okay. I thank you. Just, you're just making room for others, that's all. But that's absolutely, And maybe you've, you're gonna sell a few of these Power dialers. Brand new.

Caller 7 (02:01:02):
Anybody want some brand new? I gotta And Leo, I'm very serious. Leo Micah. You guys want one?

Leo Laporte (02:01:06):
No, I can't think of a single use for line. What would I do with it? It'd just be fun to have. Yeah, I can't think of a single use for it. Old tech. We have landlines here. No, I think even our landlines are there are internet based so I don't even know. As long as

Caller 7 (02:01:23):
There's a dial tone at

Leo Laporte (02:01:24):
Work. Okay, there is a dial tone. Yeah,

Caller 7 (02:01:26):
It works with VoIP without any problem at

Leo Laporte (02:01:28):
All. It's VoIP. Yeah, I think we're ring central. So

Caller 7 (02:01:31):
Interesting. Sure, Not a problem.

Leo Laporte (02:01:33):
Interesting. Boy, it's funny when you search on eBay for things, even when I search for power dialer brand new, you get an interesting assortment of not related things. Now

Caller 7 (02:01:45):
Are you searching for power dialer with one word power dialer? It's not two.

Leo Laporte (02:01:49):
Yes. Yes. I modified it one word power dialer brand new. But I also got a no's flip gill five inch, which I guess is bait. Wait, a five inch flip guild? Yeah. Holy. Have you been looking for that? Crus? A Japanese fishing tackle baby. I've

Caller 7 (02:02:03):
Only been able to find a seven inch one <laugh>.

Leo Laporte (02:02:05):
That's it. Exactly. I didn't know they made five inches still. Or I'll send you a link. They're only $10. eBay is something <laugh>. Have you sold other things on eBay, Micah? I mean is this a

Caller 7 (02:02:16):
I've sold those. Yeah. Here and there. I've sold things on eBay for a while. I gotta tell you it's it. It's, it's the last resort it's worth. It's horrible. There's no Texas, there's no support. You can't even call in to get anybody.

Leo Laporte (02:02:28):
Used to be a kind of nice side sideline, maybe not so much anymore. Thank you Micah. Leo and Micah. Yes. Thank you. And Micah too. More calls coming up. The standard Nori is five four inches. So we clearly, I think that's hysterical Micah, that you know all about power dialing.

Caller 7 (02:02:52):
Yeah, well I've got a once you're geek, you're a geek for many different things as you

Leo Laporte (02:02:57):
Know. I bet you Dick does know about this cuz that's the kind of thing. He probably has a few. Oh

Caller 7 (02:03:01):
I'm sure he would. Yeah. Pablo power dialer. And it's, the original one was called a Demonn Dialer. Yeah. It was made by one of the modem companies. I can't remember the name.

Leo Laporte (02:03:11):
The software that I wrote, Q Dial was its name was a Demonn dialer. But I think that was just a generic term. Not a brand name but a generic term for something that would dial in the background. And the idea was it would, you'd be doing your stuff on the Mac and it would keep dialing the bulletin board and when it got in it would go, it was really loud so you could hear it across the room. I wish I could find that source code. I wrote it in 68,000 assembler. That was a long time ago. Actually. I was writing it when the shuttle challenger blew up. So was that 86? Wow. Yeah. So as I remember that cuz I was watch. That's what I was doing when it happened. I was watching it. Yep. 1986. Wow. Yeah. Hey always Mike, I love hearing from you. That and Chris from Miami too. You guys are fun. You know how to make it fun. I got, somebody sent me an email and I thought he's right where he said, I keep hearing Micah and Chris and he had three or four other names all the time. And it's discouraging. I said, Yeah, you're right. That's a good point.

Caller 7 (02:04:21):
No, I completely get it. It makes complete sense to me. I did radio for over 10, over a decade on public radio.

Leo Laporte (02:04:27):
That's why you're so good at it. Yeah. That's why you're so good at keeping it moving. So do you wanna give out your eBay handle or is it you prefer not to

Caller 7 (02:04:35):
It it's Shep fan all in one word.

Leo Laporte (02:04:37):
Oh Jean. Not I'm a Shep fan.

Caller 7 (02:04:41):
No, I was friends. I met Jean Shepherd. I had, yes, I have his autograph. He drew a sketch of me in one of his books. Oh cool. Unbelievable. He

Leo Laporte (02:04:50):
Was my inspiration. He was totally my inspiration. I used to get up. Me too. I used to get on, I'd have to go outside to hear it sometimes cuz he was on w R in New York and I could barely get it in Providence, but I would listen to Shep every night. I loved him.

Caller 7 (02:05:06):
I had the most amazing time with him. They brought him out to Colorado and nobody knew who he was. And I was for the public radio station and I was working for the university at the time and I knew the director. They invited me to the luncheon because I knew who he was. They sent me down next to him and we hit it off. And then he did a standup show that night. And for the whole theater, they put me in the front row and he played the whole show to me. He recognized my laugh, he saw me, and honest to God, he was looking at me playing that whole show to me the whole night. It was the most incredible experience I have ever had like that. And he was the best. Nobody did radio better than

Leo Laporte (02:05:42):
He did. So everybody knows his name because of a Christmas story and he narrated it. But that's what his show was telling those stories on the radio.

Caller 7 (02:05:53):
And the Christmas story is from his first book of short stories called In God We Trust All Others Pay Cash.

Leo Laporte (02:06:01):
<laugh>. I remember is this saying Deone like a fish? Keep on. Oh, keep on. I was hearing Deone. Yes. It's the theme song of Fishmongers Everywhere. Ladies and gentlemen, Boys and Girls, children of all ages. Mic is Sergeant Leo Laport. We are your tech guys for another 15 or so minutes. Let's you wanna take another call? Mike? Let's take another call. I think we should take another call on the line. Christie from San Pedro, California. Hi Christie.

Caller 8 (02:06:31):
Hi Leo. Thank you so much for taking my call.

Leo Laporte (02:06:33):
Thanks for calling.

Caller 8 (02:06:35):
Thank you. I tried to call last week and it was so busy I couldn't get it through either day.

Leo Laporte (02:06:40):
I have a product you might be interested in purchasing <laugh>.

Caller 8 (02:06:46):
Yes, I heard. I heard <laugh>. My problem is, last week when I went into my email, all of a sudden a big red popup screen came and it was flashing and there was a voice. Never had anything like that before. Maybe you've heard of it, but I had not.

Leo Laporte (02:07:04):
What did the voice say?

Caller 8 (02:07:06):
The voice said warning, Do not use your computer. Your IP address has been fraudulently used. <laugh>

Leo Laporte (02:07:15):
Mary, I hope your reaction was the same as ours, which was <laugh>. You didn't, You didn't panic. You didn't panic, did you?

Caller 8 (02:07:28):
No, I didn't panic. But there was no way to get out of it. <affirmative>, the voice was very loud, my speaker, It was nothing. It filled up the whole screen. Yeah. And it kept flashing and it said, call the number, but I wasn't gonna call the

Leo Laporte (02:07:41):
Yes

Caller 8 (02:07:42):
No, never call the number that's on the screen.

Leo Laporte (02:07:44):
Never call the number that's on the screen. That's such a good motto. Yeah. This is the gospel of Christy,

Caller 8 (02:07:51):
But I did not know what to do. And so it said, don't turn off your computer.

Leo Laporte (02:07:56):
Of course

Caller 8 (02:07:56):
You'll lose all your information.

Leo Laporte (02:07:58):
Anything like that. That's a lie.

Caller 8 (02:07:59):
So I turned the computer off.

Leo Laporte (02:08:01):
Good. Beautiful. Cause that was the only way to shut it up.

Caller 8 (02:08:04):
It was the only way to shut it up. But then I didn't know what to do after that. So I called Microsoft and I got that was hard to get to <affirmative>. And I finally got a live person and the person said, Well we need to go into your computer to find out if your IP address has been used and it has been compromised. No,

Leo Laporte (02:08:25):
No, no, no, no, no, no. Where did you get the number that you called for Microsoft?

Caller 8 (02:08:29):
I called Google.

Leo Laporte (02:08:30):
You Google it. Oh, that's so second corollary to Christie's law. Never Google a support number. Because what the bad diet guys do is they make sure that when you search Microsoft help or supporter a whole variety of terms, that their number comes up. There is no, that's a nonsense phrase. Your IP address has been stolen. That's a nonsense phrase.

Caller 8 (02:08:56):
Nonsense. Anyway, I told her I wasn't comfortable with that. Good. And she said, Well, you called us. I said, I'll have to think about it. Goodbye.

Leo Laporte (02:09:03):
Thank you. God bless you. You're hearing you on support hero of day.

Caller 8 (02:09:11):
Then when I opened up, after I turned it off, it took a long time to come back on. And there was a lot of strange things that were happening on the email. The toolbar was gone, the things weren't there, <affirmative>. And so I'm, They put something on the computer while they were doing

Leo Laporte (02:09:33):
That. So wow, this is great. <affirmative>. First thing is the number one tool that hackers use is fear. Panic. Because when you're scared, when you're panicking, when a big, loud voice is yelling at you, you don't think <affirmative>. But Christie, you thought you did. God bless you. I'm getting goosebumps. I'm not even lying right now. It's so cool. They were trying to scare you to jumping before, looking before you looked, leaping before you looked right. Do something quick. Quick. Yeah. Click that number. Call that number. Oh my God. Yeah. None of that makes any sense. Now,

Caller 8 (02:10:11):
Even when my bank sends me an email, I don't call the number on the screen. Good. I call the number on the credit card

Leo Laporte (02:10:18):
<laugh>. Precisely right. <affirmative>. And the same thing with Microsoft. Don't Google it unless you go to microsoft.com and you're sure it's microsoft.com. That number's okay. <affirmative>. Okay. But probably what happened is that was cuz what she said and what she wanted to do. Do that didn't make any sense. That was another hacker trying to get into your system.

Caller 8 (02:10:37):
I don't want someone, unless I really know the person, maybe it's my provider or something like that, I'll let them come in. But somebody that I just unknown person. No, I'm not letting them in. But how do I make sure that,

Leo Laporte (02:10:51):
Well, that's the next question is it wasn't put on what happened and how did it happen. <affirmative> you could honestly do that on a webpage. You could be surfing and go to a webpage and I could write a webpage right now that would do that. That's easy. So that's one possibility. Were you on the A browser when it happened?

Caller 8 (02:11:10):
I was going into my email.

Leo Laporte (02:11:13):
Okay. So you should know this. Also. All email is effectively a webpage these days. And I think this is very, very dangerous. But any email that you display on the screen can be a webpage and do anything, a webpage you can do, including playing a loud noise, <laugh>, flashing your screen and all of that. And they can, they have interesting techniques to take over the computer so that it's not paying attention to you going on is computer's very busy doing something for the bad guy, counting to a billion instead of watching your mouse and keyboard. And so that's what they do to take it over. Your response was exactly right. You turned it off. But there's still that email in there <laugh>. So, all right, here's a thank you. Scooter X, He's got a webpage that sounds like exactly what happened to you. Loud hacked warning with popup asking me to call Microsoft Security.

Caller 8 (02:12:17):
This was from Windows Defender. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (02:12:20):
No,

Caller 8 (02:12:20):
I don't have Windows Defender. Well

Leo Laporte (02:12:22):
Actually you do All Windows installs have it, but they're not dumb. I can say I'm from Windows Defender. Right? They're making you think they're from Hello Lady, I'm calling from Windows Defender and I wanna be in your computer.

Caller 8 (02:12:35):
And then I just got another hack email telling me that I had paid 3 9390 $9 to renew my Windows

Leo Laporte (02:12:43):
Defender. I get that one all the time. I get one from the Geek Squad at best by, Except I never did anything with them. And by the way that works. They're hoping you'll call that number saying, Wait a minute, didn't what? I didn't buy that. And they say, Oh gosh, I'm so sorry. Can you give me the last four digits of your credit card

Caller 8 (02:13:01):
And your social

Leo Laporte (02:13:02):
And your social? Yeah, yeah. Cause it's all a scam. You got it. Christy, you're so smart. <affirmative>. But the right question is, well, what's on my computer? Did it get hacked? Is it's just something I saw on a webpage or just something I saw on an email and that I can't really answer without looking at it. No idea.

Caller 8 (02:13:19):
Did put Malware Bites on.

Leo Laporte (02:13:21):
Yeah. That's not if maybe

Caller 8 (02:13:25):
They said nothing was wrong. Okay.

Leo Laporte (02:13:27):
I think it's, That's good news actually. I don't normally recommend it. It does work. It's not a bad program if you get it from the right place. Malware bites.org, I think I'm gonna

Mikah Sargent (02:13:37):
Check

Leo Laporte (02:13:38):
It's dot com. Dot com. Okay. Make sure you get it from the right spot. And it's B yt e s. Of course it's another, Anytime you have any virus or malware stuff, bad guys are gonna make fake sites that are slightly differently spelled right.

Caller 8 (02:13:54):
It was with a Y

Mikah Sargent (02:13:55):
I am including in the show notes@techguylabs.com, a link to a Microsoft document that tells you how to use the builtin Windows security to do a manual scan.

Leo Laporte (02:14:05):
Yeah, you can do a thorough scan. It's actually pretty easy. Hit the Windows key and you type M S R T and hit return. And that will launch the Microsoft tool that will then let you do a thorough scan. It doesn't normally do it. That might help too. But I think the good news is, since Malwares found nothing, this is just a malware email. So if you don't open your email program, everything's normal.

Caller 8 (02:14:31):
So

Mikah Sargent (02:14:31):
The toolbar had disappeared

Leo Laporte (02:14:32):
In the email program.

Caller 8 (02:14:34):
The email program has come back to normal.

Leo Laporte (02:14:37):
So I think it's a malicious email. And any time you view that email, same thing gonna happen. But it's just an email. So what I think probably, if you could remember that email is delete it without looking at it. I think you're all right. I don't think you're infected. You were smart to try Malware Bites just to see. Do this Windows Defender thorough scan, Ms. RT return. I think you're okay. Honestly, <affirmative>, I really do

Mikah Sargent (02:15:12):
Good work, Christy.

Leo Laporte (02:15:13):
Honestly. Yeah, actually that doesn't work anymore, so never mind. Okay,

Caller 8 (02:15:16):
Well after I turned the computer off, Hold

Leo Laporte (02:15:18):
On. Hold on

Mikah Sargent (02:15:19):
One sec.

Speaker 12 (02:15:25):
You're good.

Leo Laporte (02:15:27):
Okay. Sorry. We had to take a break. That's what that music was

Caller 8 (02:15:31):
Doing. Okay. After I turned the computer off, the email disappeared or that popup disappeared? Yes, it was a popup.

Leo Laporte (02:15:38):
That's a popup. Yeah. But a pop. So anything can create a popup. I a website or an email can both create popups. Okay. And the way they create popups, Dunno

Caller 8 (02:15:46):
What caused it. I don't

Leo Laporte (02:15:47):
Know. We don't, But you were not on a brow, you didn't have a browser open. You had your email open, is that right? Right. Yeah. I think And who do? Who's your email provider?

Caller 8 (02:15:58):
My email. My comp? Yes. At and t.

Leo Laporte (02:16:01):
Your isp. Yeah. They do a terrible job of filtering this stuff out. <affirmative>. So very likely it was a spam email went to a million people. When you on your email program and you click that header, the email displays in a window. That's a browser window. That's how it works. And so anything I could do to you in a browser, I could do in that window. Very common for malware to do that. So I think, Is it mrt? I got the wrong.

Caller 8 (02:16:37):
Yes. No, they came ups rt. Yes. They kinda did

Mikah Sargent (02:16:40):
It. Oh,

Leo Laporte (02:16:40):
It worked. Okay. So older versions of Windows, it was Ms. Rt, now it's mrt. It will say, Do you wanna allow this app to make changes to your device? Then you do a thorough scan. There's a checkbox that says Thorough scan, it's their malicious software removal tool.

Caller 8 (02:16:53):
Okay.

Leo Laporte (02:16:54):
If you do

Caller 8 (02:16:55):
Some Windows can. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (02:16:56):
If you do a full scan and Malware bites found nothing and this found nothing, then that's good news. It means it didn't install anything. It's just taking advantage of the fact that that's a webpage you're displaying in your email and it's using all the JavaScript and magic that it can I

Mikah Sargent (02:17:15):
Turn off all that? Unfortunately, it's a hard thing to

Leo Laporte (02:17:18):
Yeah. I don't use an email program that displays html. Yeah. So that I avoid all that HTML is dangerous but unfortunately that's not how people live. <laugh>. Christy, your instincts were so good. <affirmative>, I think you're fine. I can't promise But if Malware Bites and a full Windows Defender scan find nothing, you can just do it from Windows Defender and they find nothing, then I think it means they didn't install anything. And that's cuz you didn't click anything. Yeah.

Caller 8 (02:17:51):
No, did not. No. And I did not let the other lady on because I just wasn't secure with her. So

Leo Laporte (02:17:59):
Exa Oh my

Mikah Sargent (02:18:00):
Goodness. Instincts are amazing. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (02:18:01):
Everybody, It's too bad we have to be paranoid like this. Right. Cynical <affirmative>. Right. But you were right. You did the right thing. So I think you're all right. It may happen again if you go to that email again. So if you can remember what the email subject line was or whatever, you can delete it without viewing it. But if it happens again, what's happening now? It's just a bad email.

Caller 8 (02:18:24):
Yeah. I don't remember. Usually if I don't recognize the sender good. I just delete it.

Leo Laporte (02:18:29):
Perfect. You have the instincts required

Mikah Sargent (02:18:33):
To survive

Leo Laporte (02:18:34):
On, to survive as a Windows user. Absolutely. <laugh>. Good job.

Caller 8 (02:18:39):
Thank you Mike and Leo. Thank

Mikah Sargent (02:18:41):
You. So welcome. Thank you.

Caller 8 (02:18:42):
Okay, have a great day. You too. Thank you. Bye.

Leo Laporte (02:18:45):
Byebye. We'll put that mrt. I'm doing one right now. We, it's, It's Windows Key mrt, not Ms. Rt. Windows Key mrt. And that's the malicious software removal tool. You could also go into defender and do that. Wow.

Mikah Sargent (02:18:59):
I know I could get overly emotional about things, but it actually made me tear up a little bit because it means that there is hope and that people are being as safe as they should be because I just, It's

Leo Laporte (02:19:10):
Cuz she listens to this show. I tell you hope right

Mikah Sargent (02:19:12):
Now. You know what I mean? Yeah, yeah. I just

Leo Laporte (02:19:14):
Love that. Yeah. I mean, I don't want to take credit, but I think the people who listen to this show have learned,

Mikah Sargent (02:19:18):
What do you call it? The BOGOs filter or,

Leo Laporte (02:19:21):
Yeah. Yeah. You need a good BOGO filter. All right. Dickey Ds next. Dick, do you remember the hustle? Do you know how to do the hustle?

Dick DeBartolo (02:19:31):
Oh yeah, I know how to, Yeah, I hustled on the street for years. I'll wait.

Leo Laporte (02:19:37):
Not that guy. Dick d Barlo. He's MAD's maddest writer. He is also our Gimo wizard. We call him the Giw for short. And he joins us every week to a rousing disco theme to talk about a gadget or something.

Mikah Sargent (02:19:52):
Dick, do you know what arrived in the mail this week for me?

Dick DeBartolo (02:19:57):
Oh, I hope it arrived in the mail for all of you.

Mikah Sargent (02:20:00):
Yeah, I at least I know. I got it. It's the New Monkey game.

Leo Laporte (02:20:04):
The new monkey game. I got one too. Monkey

Mikah Sargent (02:20:06):
Tail game Game box sit. And it was playing around. It's

Leo Laporte (02:20:09):
Bananas.

Mikah Sargent (02:20:09):
It's bananas. That's what it's called. Ah. I gotta tell you. It's a nice leg workout too. So wait, you actually my sketch. Oh,

Dick DeBartolo (02:20:15):
Great, great.

Mikah Sargent (02:20:16):
Oh yeah. I had to

Dick DeBartolo (02:20:17):
Show also, I sent the new man told you were talking about that.

Leo Laporte (02:20:20):
Oh, that

Mikah Sargent (02:20:20):
<laugh>. Not too, I don't, don't think

Leo Laporte (02:20:23):
Somewhere maybe. All right, I'm gonna go check the man while you talked to Dick. Cause I want my mad magazine. Dick. What's our gadget of the week?

Dick DeBartolo (02:20:30):
Oh, you know what it, it's bizarre. We're gonna talk about that. Anca had another event Thursday night and introduced three more earbuds.

Mikah Sargent (02:20:40):
They're always releasing earbuds, doesn't it seem?

Dick DeBartolo (02:20:43):
Yeah. All doing different things. I thought that. And they just released the A 40 space at the end of August. Oh, there. Oh, up there it is. Yeah,

Leo Laporte (02:20:55):
I got it. Yeah, it came.

Dick DeBartolo (02:20:58):
Perfect. Perfect, perfect.

Leo Laporte (02:20:59):
It's his name. S not Sina, but that's good. That's good. It's close enough. They got <laugh> got here. So are you talking about those new sound Core

Mikah Sargent (02:21:08):
Earbuds? Three new pairs?

Dick DeBartolo (02:21:10):
Yeah, there three new that they just introduced.

Leo Laporte (02:21:12):
Yeah, I've been reading about these. I think they're very good. Yeah, they're

Mikah Sargent (02:21:16):
Doing the facial

Dick DeBartolo (02:21:16):
Audio I got, I did get one of them.

Mikah Sargent (02:21:18):
Which ones?

Dick DeBartolo (02:21:21):
I got the Liberty four. Oh,

Mikah Sargent (02:21:23):
Top of the line.

Dick DeBartolo (02:21:26):
Yeah. No, it's not action. Oh really? The new sleep. A 10 are gonna be 180. And then something you might be interested in, they didn't announce a date or a price is there coming out with their Bluetooth 2.4 gigahertz, low latency. Ooh.

Leo Laporte (02:21:53):
Gaming ear

Mikah Sargent (02:21:54):
Put. So you can use them whenever you're gaming away on. Yes. What's the latest game, Leo?

Leo Laporte (02:22:00):
I forgot. My latest is

Mikah Sargent (02:22:04):
Factorial or something

Leo Laporte (02:22:05):
Satisfactory. And then I'm also playing Farthest Frontier. This Frontier. But yes, this sounds good. I carry around now. I just got the Apple earbuds and I carry them around now. But maybe I'll have to try these cuz they're a lot less than the Apples AirPods Pro too, right? Yes. How much are the liberties? Do we know? Yeah.

Dick DeBartolo (02:22:26):
Yes. The Liberty fours are 1 49.

Leo Laporte (02:22:31):
Oh yeah, that's a hundred bucks less. Yeah,

Dick DeBartolo (02:22:33):
Yeah. Yeah. And also they say that they analyze your ears. Oh. The same way that post, Well they didn't say the same way that Bo, they didn't say the name Bose, but when I got them it said go in here, put them on, go in and take the test to see if they fit properly.

Leo Laporte (02:22:58):
Oh, they also do heart rate. Oh that's

Mikah Sargent (02:23:02):
Right. They beat Apple to the,

Dick DeBartolo (02:23:07):
I actually put the heart rate thing on and I put on a disco record for three minutes and my heart rate went up about four points. <laugh>. I guess that mine

Leo Laporte (02:23:15):
Would go up 400. So I'm impressed by your fitness. Oh wow. <laugh>. So the sleep ear Budds are more expensive. But this is the bow sleep earbuds where they don't, they're not for playing music, right? Or are they?

Dick DeBartolo (02:23:30):
No, they

Leo Laporte (02:23:31):
Just play customized sleep sets. You

Dick DeBartolo (02:23:33):
Know? You know what? It did say that you can play your own music.

Leo Laporte (02:23:36):
Oh well see that's cause that's something the Boes won't do. Which really I found annoying.

Dick DeBartolo (02:23:41):
I'm pretty sure he told me he said that there is an awful lot of white sounds and sleep sounds to put you to sleep. But then I thought he said, And you can also play your own music.

Leo Laporte (02:23:55):
Look at this. So this is a company that we like a lot called Anchor <affirmative>. They make, and you probably heard us talk about anchor batteries and of chargers. In fact, they got one right here. This really great power port that they do. But they also are starting to make other consumer electronics like these earbuds and I think they're really good.

Dick DeBartolo (02:24:17):
They are making a 4,800 wat outdoor device for campers.

Leo Laporte (02:24:23):
Oh, I want that. I saw that. Yeah.

Dick DeBartolo (02:24:26):
Yes. I mean I think it was 7 99 and then there was an additional battery. So you could double the power. No, they're doing incredible things and they have vacuum cleaners, <affirmative> and they have a whole security system.

Leo Laporte (02:24:45):
This kind of reminds me of why W Y Z. Exactly. This is a Seattle company where they said people overcharge for this stuff.

Mikah Sargent (02:24:53):
We can do it for less but keep the quality <affirmative>. I kind of really want these sleep ones because they're designed to fit actually inside of your ear. I listen to audio books to fall asleep at night and because there's someone else in the room, I don't listen out loud.

Leo Laporte (02:25:08):
Yeah, Same thing for me.

Mikah Sargent (02:25:10):
And so being able to have something that goes in my ear where I, cuz I'm a side sleeper and be able to lay on my side that

Dick DeBartolo (02:25:14):
That's what they said at side sleeping. And also you can set an alarm to only wake you. Oh, that's the alarm. Will

Leo Laporte (02:25:24):
It tell you to urgently call Microsoft because there's something wrong with your

Dick DeBartolo (02:25:28):
Computer? Your computer? No, but it doesn't ask for my credit card number when I first turned it on.

Leo Laporte (02:25:33):
I'm looking to see if it plays music. They don't say this in the spec, so I would share. Oh,

Dick DeBartolo (02:25:39):
So I might have misheard that. Yeah. Or possibly he said it incorrectly. It's

Leo Laporte (02:25:44):
Got passive noise blocking. It will play those sleep sounds. You can sleep on your side. Wait a minute. Yeah, no I'm wrong. It says enjoy virtually unlimited audio so you can connect. This is something the Bowes won't let you do. Bluetooth

Dick DeBartolo (02:26:01):
5.20

Leo Laporte (02:26:01):
To audio books and more. So this is perfect for you, Micah.

Dick DeBartolo (02:26:04):
Yeah, this now we're talking about the

Leo Laporte (02:26:06):
This is the other ones 10

Dick DeBartolo (02:26:08):
Sleep,

Leo Laporte (02:26:08):
The eight 10 sleep. Yes. And you got the Liberty four

Dick DeBartolo (02:26:12):
Four. Yeah. They sound very really nice. I did the hot,

Leo Laporte (02:26:18):
How accurate was it? Did you compare it to a chest strap? Yeah,

Dick DeBartolo (02:26:22):
I compared it to my Bowes. I think the Bowes sound a little fuller and richer and deeper base. But we're talking, Oh, and another big plus for this is it's a charging case. That was a disappointment with the Bowes. Yeah. Is that it just uses us p charging.

Leo Laporte (02:26:40):
Honestly, they're probably

Dick DeBartolo (02:26:41):
This call Liberty four.

Leo Laporte (02:26:42):
They're probably the same components that Bose marks up higher.

Dick DeBartolo (02:26:46):
It could be. Yeah, It could be. All right. And I believe you can order them now and they're shipping Amazon's getting em first and then stores later on Keys. But within the next two

Leo Laporte (02:27:00):
Weeks.biz. That's the Dick's website. G Z W I Z dot B Iz. He's got a link there. And I'm sure it's an affiliate link. I hope it is. So that you can get a little

Dick DeBartolo (02:27:09):
Something. It is. That is

Leo Laporte (02:27:10):
Correct. And there is a good Night Us is the 20% offer code for the sleep sounds, which is kind of, Anyway, all of that's a Dick's website. While you're there, click the, what

Dick DeBartolo (02:27:21):
The heck is

Leo Laporte (02:27:21):
A contest? The button there that gives you a picture of a Gizmo Gadget. I think we're almost, We got one more month right at the end of October.

Dick DeBartolo (02:27:29):
Yeah, we just start started just the month.

Leo Laporte (02:27:32):
And if I can have a drum roll myro, because I have in my hands the Mad magazine you're playing for when you play the, what the heck is at contest? Unfortunately Dick really taped this

Dick DeBartolo (02:27:47):
<laugh>. Oh, I did <laugh>.

Leo Laporte (02:27:48):
Well you don't want Mad Magazines spell all over the highway. That would be

Dick DeBartolo (02:27:51):
Terrible. Okay, so you can show the cover and you can show the surprise wraparound cover, which is, now look at that. It is that amazing.

Leo Laporte (02:28:00):
It is in

Dick DeBartolo (02:28:01):
The back cover and it makes all one big picture.

Leo Laporte (02:28:04):
Oh, I can do that now cuz

Dick DeBartolo (02:28:05):
You said, Yeah, if you can,

Leo Laporte (02:28:07):
I have permission

Dick DeBartolo (02:28:08):
On Friday. Oh, oh.

Leo Laporte (02:28:10):
Or this Oh,

Dick DeBartolo (02:28:12):
Oh, no, no, no. The wrap. Yeah, just fold the fold in thing in. And you'll see outfit in bed. Yeah. If you just turn it over now there. Go. Now look at Gray Hair.

Leo Laporte (02:28:21):
Getting his teeth off the side. 70 years of Mad Magazine. Amazing. Wow. That's so great. Thank you. Dicky D Oh, you're welcome. Appreciate the magazine. Let me give Micah his. There you go, Micah. Okay. Very good. And I'll hand them out to the rest of the studio staff. Leo Laport, Micah, Sergeants saag website, tech guy labs.com. We're done for the day. But let me tell you, have a great geek week. We'll see you next time. Bye bye.

Leo Laporte (02:28:51):
Well, that's it for the Tech Guy Show for today. Thank you so much for being here. And don't forget twi, t I t. It stands for this week at Tech and you find it@twi.tv, including the podcast for this show. We talk about Windows and Windows Weekly, Macintosh, a Mac Break, weekly iPads, iPhones, Apple Watches on iOS. Today's security and security Now, I mean, I can go on and on. And of course, the big show every Sunday afternoon this weekend Tech. You'll find it all @ twit.tv. And I'll be back next week with another great tech guys show. Thanks for joining me. We'll see you next time.

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