The Tech Guy Episode 1943 Transcript

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Leo Laporte (00:00:07):
This is TWiT. Hi, this is Leo Laport and this is our Tech Guy podcast. Join Micah and me for a show. We recorded Saturday, November 12th, 2022. This is episode 1943. Enjoy the Tech Guy podcast is brought to you by Podium. Join more than 100,000 businesses that already use Podium to streamline their customer interactions. See how Podium can grow your business. Watch a demo today at podium.com/twit.

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I always know to talk when I hear that woo woo. That's my turn to talk. That's a good Micah. Sergeant Leo Laport. Hello everybody. Hey, hey, hey <affirmative>. It's tech guy time, time to talk about computers, the internet, Home fi, digital photography, smart phones, smart watches, smart headbands. You wore this headband. The 16, $1,500 headband. Woo pricey headband. Last week we put Micah in the I don't know why I'm holding it up to the microphone. <laugh> like you could see it. Does it have something he wants to say? <laugh> into the pricey. I always wanna say Oculus Quest. Yeah, the Quest Pro. That Facebook You don't wonder, Facebook laid off this week. Laid off. Was it 11,000? 11,000. Oh, my heart just aches at that 11,000 people. They also killed some of their divisions, including their portal. Division. When I'm not, I don't use Facebook and I have a Facebook account.

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I should probably, because I get a lot of questions. We get a lot of questions about Facebook, but I quit a few years ago and I don't really miss it mostly cuz I would go on there and I would feel bad afterwards. It's like, ugh. Yeah. And so I just thought, well that's not good. Twitter's gotten to be that way too for me. So <affirmative> I thought, eh, that's not good. So I quit. But at the same time I'm fascinated by them. And when the portal came out, which seemed to me an interesting idea, was this first one we got, this was expensive and big. It was like a big 24 inch screen on its side, but it rotated and you could call grandma on it. <affirmative>. That was the main, I think, in fact I meant to send one on my mom, but then I realized she doesn't have a Facebook account either. <laugh>, neither of us have a Facebook account. And at the time that's all you could use it with. They later opened it up to Zoom and Skype and everything else. And so I gave it to Burke and I think it was <laugh>. When you give something to Burke, Burke is well how would we characterize Burke as his employment here? He's our guy. He's our fixer.

Mikah Sargent (00:03:06):
Yeah, yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:03:07):
There's

Mikah Sargent (00:03:07):
A jack of all

Leo Laporte (00:03:08):
Trades if you're lucky. And I am so lucky. If you're lucky in a radio or TV station or car shop or somewhere, there's a guy you don't see a lot of him. He's in the back usually in a messy room with lots of parts and tools and that's Burke. And sometimes he'll come out and he's wearing those glasses with a magnifying glass built in

Mikah Sargent (00:03:32):
It's grease on his face. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:03:33):
Yeah. That's Burke. And he could fix anything. But there's also the downside to Burke, which is he can also take apart anything <laugh>. And for instance, when I spilled coffee into my laptop a few weeks ago, I gave it to him. I said, Is there anything you can do with it? And all I got back was that motherboard.

Mikah Sargent (00:03:50):
<laugh>. Rest of

Leo Laporte (00:03:52):
It's gone. Rest of it. I don't know what happened. Same thing with the portal. I gave him the portal and I'm sure he scavenged it for parts.

Mikah Sargent (00:03:59):
Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:04:00):
It's like that guy in the original Blade Runner who had all the robots he'd built and stuff. It's just like, there's these guys in the world, they're like little mechanical wizards and he's a mechanical wizard. That's his title.

Mikah Sargent (00:04:12):
There we go. Mechanical wizard. That's perfect way to put it. Absolutely.

Leo Laporte (00:04:15):
He's not mechanical but he's a wizard with the mechanical <laugh> mew. We'll call 'em the mew. We got the GWiz, we've got the mew. Anyway they're killing it. Which is sad because I thought it was a kind of cool

Mikah Sargent (00:04:28):
Product. And I was talking about this too, I, it's odd that somehow the portal seemed to be relatively immune to the feelings that people tend to have about Facebook where oh I don't want to give Facebook this, I don't wanna have an account. Yeah. That's

Leo Laporte (00:04:44):
Why I bought it

Mikah Sargent (00:04:44):
A portal. For some reason I have only heard good things about it. And so it is odd to kill a product that kind of was a darling among the skeptics. And I guess it's just because not enough people ended up buying it. And when you think about Amazon, you know can call grandma with your Amazon shows your echo shows rather

Leo Laporte (00:05:07):
Facebook, you don't really need it.

Mikah Sargent (00:05:09):
Yeah. Why is, I

Leo Laporte (00:05:10):
Get it from Facebook. That's kind of what I do with my mom. She has an iPad but we also sometimes will put her on the Echo show I'm cooking cuz it's in the kitchen. She can watch and it's like she's there. It's kind of nice. She's far away. My mom lives in Rhode Island, we're in California. So it's kind of a nice thing to do anyway. Yes. If you're a Facebook employee, some of the most talented people in fact I think our original chief engineer, our original me, wiz Colleen was working in the portal division. I know she's at Facebook, I hope she survived the layoffs. And then there's a Twitter not so dramatic. Well it isn't is and it isn't. So Facebook fired about I think 15%, something like that of its yes team. It looks like Twitter fired half of its team. So 3,785 people. That's a lot of good people also kind of outta work. And

Mikah Sargent (00:06:06):
Amazon right now is looking at cost cutting measures as well. The company is looking, especially at its devices division and has instructed a lot of them to find jobs in other parts of the company as they start to either put a pause on those teams or completely get rid of those teams. And Ale X a Amazon's virtual assistant is the only one that seems to be immune to it. But I think we're going, it's gonna be a while before we start to see more robots from Amazon and all the weird stuff that they started to make because the CEO now Andy Jasi is doing a very in depth, it's cut cost. Look at the costs

Leo Laporte (00:06:46):
There. Is that a loss do you think, to the world new? No,

Mikah Sargent (00:06:50):
I think what Amazon has done for a long time is leverage. Its reach to test its devices with people and still make them pay for it.

Leo Laporte (00:07:02):
<laugh>. So we're all just beta testers.

Mikah Sargent (00:07:04):
We're just beta testers except instead of getting the product to try and give feedback about, they make us buy it. And then if it doesn't work after a year and a half, then oh well that's just what it is. And I am glad that there's somebody else going, Okay we need to not cost us this money. But it also means that individuals aren't getting these products that end up, not that they abandon after a

Leo Laporte (00:07:28):
While. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So you're saying basically it's junk ynk,

Mikah Sargent (00:07:33):
A lot of

Leo Laporte (00:07:33):
Ynk and we don't need it. And

Mikah Sargent (00:07:36):
I feel we don't need it. That in many cases it is again just, oh let's the

Leo Laporte (00:07:43):
Spaghetti project. I have some of that spaghetti in my kitchen. It's the Amazon sticky note printer that you pair with your echo show <affirmative>. And then you can say things print out a TicTacToe game or, which is really stupid, isn't it? <laugh>, print me off Maze. 2, 3, 4 lines. Yeah, you could print a maze I guess. I don't know. Mostly I use it for shopping Grocery. Shopping list.

Mikah Sargent (00:08:09):
<affirmative>. How often do you use it?

Leo Laporte (00:08:11):
Sincerely? Well, yeah not much because you have to train the other members of the household instead of, And Lisa gets a <laugh>, she's got a notepad and a pencil and she writes it on that. So weird. And I keep saying, no honey, you can say, Hey echo, add peanut butter to my shopping list and

Mikah Sargent (00:08:33):
Then repeat it again

Leo Laporte (00:08:34):
And then say, Hey echo, add mayonnaise to my shopping list. And then the echo goes, Thank you. Actually the echo will also sometimes say, Do you have anything else? Yeah. And then you can say a bunch of things. I

Mikah Sargent (00:08:45):
Do like that it, it's in the moment I'm in the refrigerator.

Leo Laporte (00:08:48):
Yeah, I do that all the time. I don't have that. In fact, I'll even order batteries is a big one. I'm always running outta. So I'll say, hey echo order some AAA batteries. And it says, Okay, this is what you ordered in the past. And I'll say, okay, that's fine. That one it says, what's your magic number? I tell it and then I get 'em in the

Mikah Sargent (00:09:03):
Mail. I will tell you my one problem with the sticky note printer. The reason why I don't use it more regularly is because it does not take ink very well because it's a thermal printer. So you have one. Yeah. Yeah. I've had one for a long time as well. I thought I was special. No, sorry, I think I actually beat you too. Getting mine before you did actually. It's

Leo Laporte (00:09:20):
What Amazon calls. It's day one

Mikah Sargent (00:09:22):
Devices. Yep.

Leo Laporte (00:09:23):
Which really are telling you this is making up stuff and seeing who will buy it.

Mikah Sargent (00:09:27):
Who's gonna buy it. <laugh> buy this. Only the fools <laugh>.

Leo Laporte (00:09:31):
Cause you got two of them on your radio Exactly right now. 88. 88. Ask Leo the phone number. Boy. We could talk a little bit about the dumpster fire going on over at the bird site at Twitter. Wow.

Mikah Sargent (00:09:46):
I kinda wanna hear about your new way of verifying your you this. We'll talk

Leo Laporte (00:09:50):
About that too. Yeah, Leo and Micah, your tech guys s I don't know if I wanna talk about rel.me. What was it on the radio

Mikah Sargent (00:10:04):
<laugh>? The

Leo Laporte (00:10:04):
Oh, you were talking about K oxide. Yeah, that, yeah.

Mikah Sargent (00:10:07):
But I don't know. Is that a little

Leo Laporte (00:10:10):
Inside? Inside? Is

Mikah Sargent (00:10:13):
It K oxide.org?

Leo Laporte (00:10:15):
Yeah, I think so. Try

Mikah Sargent (00:10:16):
It. Yeah, that worked. I just don't wanna go to the wrong word.

Leo Laporte (00:10:22):
And the problem is so rel.me on, on Mastodon is very easy compared to this <laugh>. This is a really geeky thing to do cuz you have to control the DNS and then you modify your dns, which is for most people, I think a little abridge too far. So this must have just come, I guess the post office did me a favor and got this to me because it's coming out next week.

Mikah Sargent (00:10:55):
Oh,

Leo Laporte (00:10:55):
Neat. Yeah. Thank you Steve. And I will, yeah, mean he's always been very kind and generous. But I also feel like, I don't know, maybe that's probably, that's an occupational hazard for him. I'm just not as funny as I need to be. So <laugh>, I think this is inspired by an encounter I had with Steve <laugh>.

Mikah Sargent (00:11:28):
I hated being famous. Hey everybody. It's a substitute weather guy who wore a green sweater on camera looking at hole. It is funny. So

Leo Laporte (00:11:36):
Steve was playing with his what do they call 'em? Storm City Rangers. I don't know. His bluegrass band up here at the Green Center. And he sent me passes, which is cool. And then we went backstage afterwards and there's people surrounding him and stuff and Steve says, Hey look, it's the tech guy. Everybody <laugh>. And it was like everybody went who we're here to see Steve Martin. You've probably heard of him. I wonder if that's inspiring <laugh>. Cause that's exactly what I looked like. <laugh>. And he did that

Mikah Sargent (00:12:11):
<laugh>. Yeah. He was like shouting.

Leo Laporte (00:12:13):
I was like

Mikah Sargent (00:12:14):
That. That's probably what it is. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:12:17):
I wonder if that's inspired by it. I have to say though, I think Steve sometimes feels that way too. He told me, he yelled at me when I said we're fans. He says, I don't like fans. <laugh>,

Mikah Sargent (00:12:28):
Did you see this really neat?

Leo Laporte (00:12:30):
Oh, now I know. Oh are you now I know because this is I, Okay, so a couple years ago they very kindly over invited me to come to their apartment for dinner in between shows of the Harry Potter, the incredibly lengthy Harry Potter play <laugh>. And I'm running up there after the show lets out. And I, I thought I gotta bring something. So I bought a little stuffed animal, a little toy. It's probably full of carcinogens from the guy from some

Mikah Sargent (00:13:00):
Guy street. A street corner

Leo Laporte (00:13:01):
<laugh>, some running up for his kid. And they were very, They're so sweet Steve Ann so sweet. And seemed acted like it was very nice. And then his kid comes in and he does this <laugh>,

Mikah Sargent (00:13:21):
He makes it talk. He does that for his kid. Yeah. Aw.

Leo Laporte (00:13:24):
He makes it talk for his kid. And I thought he's trying way too hard at this point to make me feel better. Maybe this is inspired. You

Mikah Sargent (00:13:32):
Know what, there's, you're getting an interesting level of self-awareness whenever you're talking about Steve Martin that I, It's like you get very conscious yourself. You

Leo Laporte (00:13:41):
Get very self-conscious when you're with a big celebrity. I do. Right.

Mikah Sargent (00:13:46):
I imagine that would be

Leo Laporte (00:13:48):
A

Mikah Sargent (00:13:49):
Reg

Leo Laporte (00:13:49):
Thing. I do. And because he's so damn funny. Everything coming every, He's like, he's just funny all the time.

Mikah Sargent (00:13:56):
I gotta tell you truly funny people. They make me doubt myself. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:14:00):
I'm not, Cause I can't be

Mikah Sargent (00:14:01):
That funny. I'm not that smart.

Leo Laporte (00:14:03):
Yeah, exactly. That's how I feel. I'm not that smart. Yeah, he feels like he's so smart. Anyway.

Mikah Sargent (00:14:07):
Sometimes Dick does that. He'll say something. I'm like, Where'd you even come up with that?

Leo Laporte (00:14:13):
Dickie Bartolo. Yeah. Makes you feel smart.

Mikah Sargent (00:14:16):
No, makes me feel not smart enough. Whenever he just comes up with these things to

Leo Laporte (00:14:19):
Last. Oh, he's very funny. Yeah. No, that's not true. Our numbers are never disconnected, are they? What happens if somebody that's, By the way, ladies and gentlemen, I introduced to you the wonderful Kim Shaffer. She's our phone. Angel answers the calls. What happens when you're not there though? What do they get?

Kim Schaffer (00:14:40):
A really fast, busy signal I think. Okay.

Leo Laporte (00:14:42):
Beep. You have a switch that you have that you can,

Kim Schaffer (00:14:44):
It's called Block All

Leo Laporte (00:14:46):
Block All.

Mikah Sargent (00:14:47):
I wish I had that on. Well we

Leo Laporte (00:14:49):
Don't do that to be kind. Right? We don't.

Kim Schaffer (00:14:51):
Right. Because you don't want them to have hopes that they're gonna get through

Leo Laporte (00:14:55):
<laugh>. It's ringing. It's ringing. I'm gonna And it's four in the morning and there's no, Or it's a Tuesday. Yeah. Or it's a Tuesday <laugh>. And as everybody knows Kim, Leo and Micah get put in a box on Sunday night and we don't get let out till Saturday. So

Kim Schaffer (00:15:10):
I do get calls from people. Oh, I've been trying for an hour. Why I'm not here. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:15:16):
Who's

Kim Schaffer (00:15:17):
Answering it?

Leo Laporte (00:15:17):
<laugh>. Do you ever forget to press that block all button?

Kim Schaffer (00:15:21):
No. I do forget to shut down some of my computer windows. But not, I like

Leo Laporte (00:15:27):
It when you do that. When the 49ers game is on. Yes, I

Kim Schaffer (00:15:29):
Do that on purpose for

Leo Laporte (00:15:30):
You. Thank you. Look very generous.

Kim Schaffer (00:15:31):
But tomorrow it's at five o'clock so you don't Yeah,

Leo Laporte (00:15:33):
I can watch it. Sunday night. <laugh>. So besides being Niners fans we are also colleagues in that. Kim is sitting there as the kind of the border guard <laugh> saying, Pay plus please. If you wanna get on the show, you gotta get past her. But you always seem to do a good job. Except last week. Okay. There was that one crazy person

Mikah Sargent (00:15:58):
I watched that Leo and was laughing so

Leo Laporte (00:16:01):
Hard. I didn't know what to do.

Mikah Sargent (00:16:03):
Yeah, you were just out. What do I

Leo Laporte (00:16:05):
Say? I had no idea what to do. It

Mikah Sargent (00:16:07):
Was amazing. Cause

Leo Laporte (00:16:08):
I didn't wanna be mean.

Mikah Sargent (00:16:11):
Right. You know, don't wanna be mean. You also,

Leo Laporte (00:16:12):
But her neighbors were not

Mikah Sargent (00:16:13):
Hack, we're not cia, fbi, et

Kim Schaffer (00:16:16):
Cetera. You probably are the luckiest radio host because you don't get as many wackadoos as most people do. <laugh>

Leo Laporte (00:16:25):
Say that. You know why the Wackadoos will go, Oh, he doesn't. Well good. Let's call <laugh> <laugh>. We once we got the Howard Stern guy who says BBA Bowie to you all at the end of

Kim Schaffer (00:16:36):
This. Yeah. And I think the John Lennon guy

Leo Laporte (00:16:38):
Got through. Did the John Lennon guy get through? Is he still around? I think he's gone.

Kim Schaffer (00:16:41):
I think he's still around. Is he? Yeah. Pretty sure

Leo Laporte (00:16:44):
He's, He's a local radio celebrity. He calls all the talk shows and talks about something.

Mikah Sargent (00:16:49):
Who knows? Who knows.

Kim Schaffer (00:16:50):
Yeah. He constantly, It's just hard to understand the Xra station

Leo Laporte (00:16:54):
That the former exist Station formally knows kgo. That's right. Our former sister station, which now is no longer

Mikah Sargent (00:17:01):
Sports betting or

Leo Laporte (00:17:02):
Something. Yeah, they kind of made a bad bet. Yeah, that I was

Kim Schaffer (00:17:04):
Gonna say bad. Wasn't it Pass, did it.

Leo Laporte (00:17:05):
They thought sports betting was gonna be legal in California. So they changed the whole format of this News talk station in San Francisco to a sports betting show. We were on the weekends there, but in fact I'd worked there for

Kim Schaffer (00:17:19):
Years. Is that called putting the cart before the horse?

Leo Laporte (00:17:21):
I think so. Here's my theory. <laugh> your Chickens before the, I do have a theory. They were losing money. They've been losing money since they bought the station 10 years ago. Lost millions of dollars. MGM Draft Kings, all the gambling interests who sponsored those two initiatives came to them and said, we'll give you a pile of money to switch formats now. Because they were hoping that would help the Vote <affirmative>. And so this station said, Well, okay, well that's good. We'll do it. And there a lot, turns out there's a lot of syndicated programming about sports betting. Who knew? But yeah, now that you can't Sports be in California, I don't know what they're,

Kim Schaffer (00:18:00):
We'll see how long that lasts. I give it six months.

Leo Laporte (00:18:03):
<laugh> still probably getting some money from these, probably these guys. So I didn't know this. You can't be like, can't go to Draft Kings and be real money in California.

Kim Schaffer (00:18:14):
I don't know. We

Leo Laporte (00:18:15):
Don't even know how it works. Yeah, I don't have no idea. Any of it works. We dunno.

Kim Schaffer (00:18:18):
I don't do the betting thing.

Leo Laporte (00:18:20):
Who should I talk to?

Kim Schaffer (00:18:22):
Let's go to Salmon and Cino.

Leo Laporte (00:18:24):
Salmon and Cino. Sam and En So upstream. Hi Salmon. I,

Kim Schaffer (00:18:30):
Same

Leo Laporte (00:18:31):
Thing. Well, welcome to the Tech guy Show Micah Sergeant Leola Port. How you doing?

Caller 1 (00:18:37):
Fine, thank you. I have the Spectrum package of internet television and landline phone.

Leo Laporte (00:18:46):
They call that the triple play baby.

Caller 1 (00:18:50):
And I got a notice saying that they use McAfee as their security software which I've been used for several years. And they sent me a notice saying that they're switching to their own security suite called F, Secure Security Suite. And

Leo Laporte (00:19:12):
I prefer, to be honest, I know F Secure I'm friends with the guy who started at Miko. Heon just wrote a great book on security. I would prefer that frankly, to McAfee McAfee's. Okay. Now it's owned by Intel. I mean, it's not the crazy guy anymore. But yeah, F Secure is fine. And then do you need to insist that you use it?

Caller 1 (00:19:35):
Yes. Yeah. Yeah. I, I don't mind switching. But you always commented on the fact that

Leo Laporte (00:19:43):
You don't really need it.

Caller 1 (00:19:44):
Yeah, because Well, if I have Microsoft the

Leo Laporte (00:19:51):
Yeah. Windows comes with a very good security package. As good as S Secure, they call it Defender. So they say, we won't give you service unless you install this. No, they just saying we're giving it to you for free.

Caller 1 (00:20:10):
Yeah, we're giving it to you free. But they're discontinuing the MacAfee.

Leo Laporte (00:20:14):
Yeah. You should discontinue both at this point.

(00:20:17):
Okay. You don't need them. Okay. Yeah. F secures good. I mean, if you wanted to use an antivirus since they're giving you one free use F Secure, that's fine. But I think it's Belt and suspenders. So you've heard me say, no, you don't really need an antivirus. But on the other hand, if you had teenagers using the computer who often downloaded stuff from sketch sites, or if you yourself weren't careful about where you got stuff and you were clicking links and email willy nilly. And if you fall for stuff a lot then, or you have somebody using the computer who does, maybe it's not a bad idea to have that extra protection. The problem with security software, there's several problems. I've mentioned this before. One is, anything you install, your computer uses resources, security software. Especially because in order to work, it has to install itself deep into your system.

(00:21:08):
It has to access the kernel. And when you do that you're really in there. And so it can affect performance, it can block stuff that you don't want blocked. And a bigger problem is because it has that deep connection into your system, if it has a problem. And it's not unheard of for antivirus software to have a flaw, a security flaw within itself. This happens unfortunately once in a while, then you're given the bad guys a highway into your system. So it can actually be worse than not having anything. All the third problem, which is, I think the larger problem is people say, Well I've, I got anti antivirus software so I could do anything I want. And antivirus software does not protect you against everything. In fact, it only protects you against well known viruses. It doesn't protect you against those things. You hear about all the time, the zero days.

(00:22:03):
That's what a zero day means is something no one's seen before. So the antivirus doesn't know about it. So it still gets through. So because it slows you down, it gives you a false sense of security. And they even make you less secure. I generally say, as long as you are willing to practice good computer hygiene, not click links and email, be very suspicious about text messages. Just be cautious. A bad guy in order to infect your system has to get you to install something. So that's what you always wanna be really careful about. And if you don't do anything dangerous, you, any virus isn't gonna add to your security. So it's really you. It's in your mind. You gotta know, well, who's using this computer? Can I count on them to be safe? And if so, then you probably don't need it.

Caller 1 (00:22:46):
Okay. Well, if one does not use an exogenous security software, does you have to activate? Do you have to activate

Leo Laporte (00:22:59):
No Defenders. Defenders on all the time on Windows. In fact, all the big operating systems are well secured. Leo and Micah, your tech guys. Scott Wilkinson coming up. Yeah, I think you're probably, you're worried about whether defender is working now. Is it on the job? Oh, he's gone. Oh no. Yeah. Sorry. I apologize. When that sound happens, we have to stop. Same thing Tokyo. Tony says, My company forces us to use an antivirus on my Mac. You really don't need one on the Mac. I mean, viruses happen. They don't happen. But my question is how well an antivirus protects you. And I don't think it gives you a false sense of security.

Mikah Sargent (00:23:55):
I agree. There you go.

Leo Laporte (00:23:57):
Yeah. That's the real problem. Yeah. Hello Scotty.

Scott Wilkinson (00:24:01):
Hello, Leo. How are

Leo Laporte (00:24:03):
My friend? Ho there

Scott Wilkinson (00:24:05):
A hoi Hoi Hoi <laugh>. I'm doing great. Had a long, wonderful musical day yesterday. Oh, Veterans Day. And we played a concert in the lovely town of Watsonville.

Leo Laporte (00:24:21):
Oh yeah, I know Watsonville. Yeah, that's That's where the brussel sprouts live

Scott Wilkinson (00:24:26):
Actually. They live in Santa Cruz. Watsonville's, well known for apples and strawberries.

Leo Laporte (00:24:31):
Oh, nice.

Scott Wilkinson (00:24:34):
And Castroville of course is the ar part

Leo Laporte (00:24:36):
Of the world. Yes. And Gilroy's, the garlic capital.

Scott Wilkinson (00:24:39):
Garlic capital of the world. Right, exactly.

Leo Laporte (00:24:41):
It's all around. It's all in that same sling. This valley there. Yeah. Hey so did you play your terrible underwater breathing apparatus?

Scott Wilkinson (00:24:49):
I did. <laugh>, I think that's so funny. I did play my terrible underwater breathing apparatus. <laugh>. And yeah, I played in the Watsonville community band, which is

Leo Laporte (00:25:02):
Fun.

Scott Wilkinson (00:25:03):
Been around for 75 years.

Leo Laporte (00:25:05):
Wow.

Scott Wilkinson (00:25:06):
Yeah. Wow. That's really cool. That was a lot of fun. We were playing a lot of patriotic music. A lot of

Leo Laporte (00:25:11):
Marches. Did they look gazebo in the park?

Scott Wilkinson (00:25:14):
No, this was inside, This was in the Watsonville High School auditorium. Oh,

Leo Laporte (00:25:18):
Fun.

Scott Wilkinson (00:25:19):
It's, it's November. It's a little cool out.

Leo Laporte (00:25:21):
Yeah, you, We used to go up to Cooperstown for the 4th of July every year. And they had a placebo in the park and they played John Phillip S There

Scott Wilkinson (00:25:29):
You

Leo Laporte (00:25:29):
Go. Did you do some s

Scott Wilkinson (00:25:32):
Oh yeah, we did. We did that one. Exactly. <laugh> bottle bottled up.

Leo Laporte (00:25:53):
See, I can play the tuba.

Scott Wilkinson (00:25:54):
You can. The part already

Leo Laporte (00:25:57):
<laugh>. Is tuba the equivalent of a bass guitar in orchestral or band music,

Scott Wilkinson (00:26:03):
I suppose? Yeah, I suppose in a band, certainly. Because there's no, well, in concert bands, there is often one string bass, which is kind of

Leo Laporte (00:26:16):
Weird. Oh, interesting.

Scott Wilkinson (00:26:17):
But not in the band. Not in this band. I

Leo Laporte (00:26:20):
Always look at the bass players that might get a little boring. Just I'm

Scott Wilkinson (00:26:27):
Remember maybe more to the point. They are the foundation. They are the foundation. Well,

Leo Laporte (00:26:34):
It's true. You gotta have that rhythm at Fleetwood Mac.

Scott Wilkinson (00:26:37):
There's much of a rhythm as a harmonic instrument. Sure.

Leo Laporte (00:26:41):
Yeah. Make Fleetwood was a drummer. Yep. John McVee was the basis. Yep. They laid down that heavy line man.

Scott Wilkinson (00:26:48):
They laid down that groove. That's what establishes the groove. It's like Jon Ball Jon Gaon music, you know, have all these xylophone type instruments and gongs and stuff stuff. And the biggest gong, he only hits the note. He only hits the gong every 32 beats or something. And you'd think, Wow, that's so boring. And yet without him, the rest of the ensemble would just fall apart.

Leo Laporte (00:27:14):
There is a very famous, muted trumpet player. He used to play Sinatra's bands for Nelson Riddle and others. Right. And he'd play maybe two notes. A song literally <affirmative>. Yeah, <laugh> <laugh>. But

Scott Wilkinson (00:27:30):
Really great notes.

Leo Laporte (00:27:31):
But they were the sound, Hey, by the way, the show today brought to you by Podium. Oh my God, I don't remember to talk about this. This is so cool. I don't know. You might have already had this experience. The best way a small business could communicate with you, in my opinion, is not calling you who answers the phone. It's not emailing you. Who reads their email. It's texting you. Now, you don't wanna text all the time, but texting can be very effective. The open rate for texts is over. Well over 90% people open their texts. And for a business, what a boom. When I leave my dentist's office, they send me a text that says, Your appointment is, And I press the button, I add it to my calendar. It's great. They also, and this is brilliant, send me a text to say, Please leave us a review.

(00:28:18):
If you like the service, please leave me a review. We have an ice cream parlor. You ever been to Lalas? <affirmative>? Careful. If you sign up, give 'em your phone number. Which I always, I do. Cuz I use the Apple Watch. They will start sending you texts every six weeks or so saying, Hey, we haven't seen you in a while. How about 30% off ice cream? Oh it always works. It's terrible <laugh>, but it's the best ice cream ever. That's cuz text messages work. If you have a small business, I know, first of all, congratulations if you're still in business, it's, it's been a tough few years, hasn't it? From supply chain issues to increased demand all of a sudden. And you can't get stuff. And then of course, employees hard to find. And the businesses that are thriving right now are the ones who, from day one were forward thinking, kept their marketing in mind and so forth.

(00:29:12):
And many of them use Podium. Actually I think it's a hundred, What is it? 150,000. A hundred thousand businesses are using Podium right now. Mostly your small mom-and-pop businesses. Main Street USA Podium helps that small business stay ahead of the curve with modern messaging tools that put you on a par with the big businesses that are already doing this. Right. It makes it easy for your customers to connect with your business and customers, and I'll speak for myself, prefer this. I don't want to want to call a business. I want to text a business. I don't want to call from a business. I want to text from a business. Whether it's a plumber, a landscaper, I hate phone tag. If the landscaper can't make it today, then a text message is great. Right? That's the best way to let me know. If you're running a business and the only way to get in touch with you is a phone number, you may be missing out on a lot of business.

(00:30:04):
Podium gives businesses the tools to compete with the convenience offered by bigger businesses like Amazon. What can you do with Podium? You can collect if you're got customers getting in a little bit behind it. Dentist said he had a, I can't remember what it was, $200,000 in outstanding people. Just, it's not that people don't wanna pay, they just don't get around to it or whatever. He sent out payment requests through texts, got 70% of that money in just two weeks. It really works because it's easy. Convenience is a big part of this. A car dealer, you've seen this I have a mock e. If you've a car dealer and you've got a very hot car in stock, you send out a text and it really works. One car dealer sold a $50,000 truck, four messages, 1, 2, 3, 4, back and forth. That's it. You can coordinate curbside pickup, you can send out coupons, you can ask for reviews.

(00:30:59):
You can do marketing campaigns that actually get a response all with a quick text. And your employees will love it. Cuz everything, whether it's from your website or from your texts, comes into one inbox. So that's easy for them to handle. Yeah. You could put Podium in your website too, see how Podium can grow your business. We, there's a demo that you will love today. Go see at podium.com/twit. If you've got a small business, you've gotta check out Podium, very affordable, very reasonable, and very effective. It pays for itself P O D I U M podium.com/twit. And please use that address so they know you saw it in the tech I show that way we get credit right podium.com/twit Podium. Let's grow. And let's go back to the tech guy. There's much more to the trip. There's this cat right here, man. Scott Wilkinson, our home theater geek on the tech guy show. He is a, of course a podcaster. I don't know, is a YouTuber a podcaster?

Scott Wilkinson (00:32:00):
I guess

Leo Laporte (00:32:01):
Not really. I think you're a YouTuber now. I think a

Scott Wilkinson (00:32:04):
Tuber is a potato. Oh, that's true. But it could also be It's tuba. A tuba tuber. Exactly.

Leo Laporte (00:32:11):
<laugh>. Anyway, you'll find it at youtube.com/avs forum and you'll find him here every week. He's our tuba tuber. He plays the tuba for those don't know. Yep. Hello Scott.

Scott Wilkinson (00:32:23):
Hello Leo. Hello Micah.

Leo Laporte (00:32:24):
Hello. And every week Scott talks about big screen TVs, surround sound, all that jazz.

Scott Wilkinson (00:32:32):
All that jazz. What's on? Well you, as you well know, I'm sure Black Friday is now black. November

Leo Laporte (00:32:42):
<laugh>. I saw somebody, a European complaining on our mastodon about how American culture is now the dominant culture. He said, we don't even have Thanksgiving, but we've got Black Friday <laugh>, which is the day after Thanksgiving in the States.

Scott Wilkinson (00:32:57):
Right, Exactly.

Leo Laporte (00:32:58):
Except now you say it's the months of Thanksgiving.

Scott Wilkinson (00:33:01):
The month of November is basically what Black Friday used to be. People have all these pre-Black Friday sales. Right. So I started looking around, I mean, I get emails, tons of 'em about pre-Black Friday save 50%. And so I said, okay, I, I'm gonna do a couple weeks here on the show of deals. Cause people look for deals. I mean there's nothing wrong with looking for a good deal. Right? Yeah. And so I found some this weekend only ending tomorrow at midnight at Best Buy. The TVs that I found for the most part are only discounted on the order of 15 to 25%. Which that's not terrible, but it's not like wow. But I did find some high cents that I thought were really, really good at Best Buy. It's there U eight H series, which is mini l e d, full array back lighting, LCD tv. They have a 55, A 65 and a 75 inch this weekend only. The 55 inch is 700 bucks, which is almost 40% off the list price. The 65 is 900 bucks. It's like 36% off and the 75 is $1,300. Which wait. Which is 38% off. So that's

Leo Laporte (00:34:32):
A lot.

Scott Wilkinson (00:34:33):
I guess those are pretty good. Yeah, those are really good deal.

Leo Laporte (00:34:35):
So this, so we've talked about this before. It's the waning months of this year's model, right? These are correct. These are gonna be superseded in the spring by new models?

Scott Wilkinson (00:34:49):
Correct. And which are gonna be introduced at CES in January.

Leo Laporte (00:34:53):
So really what this is, is it's a kind of a clearance.

Scott Wilkinson (00:34:57):
It's kind of a clearance.

Leo Laporte (00:34:58):
That's correct. Should you though, as to the clearance models in favor of

Scott Wilkinson (00:35:04):
Next year's

Leo Laporte (00:35:06):
Shiny fancy models?

Scott Wilkinson (00:35:07):
Yeah, no, I, generally speaking I think not. Okay. Because in general, the next year's models are incremental. They might have a slightly better processor.

Leo Laporte (00:35:23):
Sometimes you get a year where there's like a huge new

Scott Wilkinson (00:35:27):
Oh yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Like this year when we saw for the first time Q D O LED quantum dot O led which is a pretty new, not radically new but quite new technology and improved and very improved. Yeah. Very. It's the my next TV for sure.

Leo Laporte (00:35:45):
But I guess the point is that was this year. That was 2022 and it's not gonna be

Scott Wilkinson (00:35:52):
Another one.

Leo Laporte (00:35:52):
A big jump next in 2023.

Scott Wilkinson (00:35:55):
No QD O LED was years in the making. Yeah. We heard about it five, six years ago and kind of said, Okay, when's it gonna come out? Well, it's gonna be several years from now. Right. So it's meanwhile they come out with a slightly better every year. They come out with a slightly better L C D every year. So I don't think there's anything wrong with buying this year's model and not waiting for next year's model. So the high sensors are the best deals I found so far. The other ones over 20 percenters. The LG 48 inch O lead is 1,050. That's 25% off. So if you want a smaller tv, but you want that O lead picture quality, that's a pretty good deal.

Leo Laporte (00:36:46):
I like O

Scott Wilkinson (00:36:47):
Lead. Do you think I do too?

Leo Laporte (00:36:48):
Do you think this QD olet is that much better? That we should go for that though? Well,

Scott Wilkinson (00:36:53):
If you can afford it, it's expensive because it's a new technology. And that

Leo Laporte (00:36:58):
Might be something 2023 brings is maybe lower cost QD

Scott Wilkinson (00:37:01):
Owner. Correct? Yes. I believe that's probably gonna be

Leo Laporte (00:37:04):
True. Okay. Mm-hmm. <affirmative> lower cost though, Not 36% lower. Like no. The deals you're getting today, No. Are there any good deals on QD O lets this holiday season or whatever? You, as

Scott Wilkinson (00:37:15):
A matter of fact, the Sony a 65, A 95 K, the 65 inch QD lead is 3000 down from 4,000. So that's a 25% savings and 3000 that's not

Leo Laporte (00:37:29):
Bad. Little on the

Scott Wilkinson (00:37:31):
High side for a 65 inch or

Leo Laporte (00:37:33):
It is. Yeah, nowadays. It is

Scott Wilkinson (00:37:35):
Nowadays. Yeah. Exactly. Especially when you can get a 65 inch of the high cents for $900.

Leo Laporte (00:37:42):
You should also, if you are for the first time getting a nice new tv mm-hmm. <affirmative>, save some of your budget for a nice new surround sound system. Yes.

Scott Wilkinson (00:37:52):
Well that's true. Absolutely. So absolutely.

Leo Laporte (00:37:55):
You budget for that.

Scott Wilkinson (00:37:57):
Well I actually looked also at soundbar. Now I did not find speakers of a separate speaker soundbar or a system. But for example I found a couple of L, I found an LG and a Samsung 5.1 0.2 with actual surround speakers and up firing speakers to give you some overhead Dolby atmo in the $400 range down from seven or $800.

Leo Laporte (00:38:27):
Well that's not bad. 400.

Scott Wilkinson (00:38:28):
So that's not bad. That's 43% off.

Leo Laporte (00:38:31):
But that you wanna keep that in your budgets. You absolutely do. Speakers on TVs are really not great. Really

Scott Wilkinson (00:38:39):
Bad. Yeah. Now the Sony, I will say that Sony does a better job than most with their TV speaker because they actually turn the entire screen into a radiating speakers surface. Which is really interesting. And people always ask me, Well, doesn't that make the picture jiggle? Yeah, <laugh>.

Leo Laporte (00:38:57):
Yeah.

Scott Wilkinson (00:38:58):
No, no, not at the frequencies. Not at the frequencies that it's reproducing. It doesn't reproduce the low frequencies that would make the picture jiggle.

Leo Laporte (00:39:08):
I think you and I saw that or went to see that at CES before the plague. Yes, yes, yes. In 2020. Yeah. And it didn't make anything jiggle. It sounded good. No.

Scott Wilkinson (00:39:19):
Yeah, it sounded great. It sounds better than Samsung typically uses tiny thin little speakers. And because these TVs are so skinny. Oh, I know. There's no room for any decent speaker. Yeah. Which this whole screen vibrating makes a lot of sense.

Leo Laporte (00:39:36):
This is not all Sony models though, right?

Scott Wilkinson (00:39:39):
No. No. Only the higher

Leo Laporte (00:39:40):
End. Okay. It's not the qola that you just described for $3,000 probably.

Scott Wilkinson (00:39:45):
No, I think it probably does. Interesting. I don't know that for sure.

Leo Laporte (00:39:48):
Go listen to it somewhere.

Scott Wilkinson (00:39:49):
I will. Like you. You could. Well I'm gonna buy one. So now I'm gonna be using that external speaker system. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:39:57):
Anyway. But give us your view. Some people are using that built in behind the screen speaker as a center channel. Correct. Which is kind of a good idea. I think

Scott Wilkinson (00:40:05):
It is. Except for the tonal balance, if that speak, if the TV speaker becomes the center speaker and you have real left and right speakers. Yeah. Will it maintain the tonal balance as an object moves across the screen? Nice. It's hard to say. Hard to say. Unlikely

Leo Laporte (00:40:23):
Scott Wilkinson saving us money. So don't wait until the day after Thanksgiving to go TV shopping.

Scott Wilkinson (00:40:29):
No, you can go this

Leo Laporte (00:40:29):
Weekend. Go this weekend. There are usually sales before the Super Bowl. But these will be the same models that they're selling today. Correct. And correct. Not necessarily a bigger deal either.

Scott Wilkinson (00:40:39):
No, I doubt it

Leo Laporte (00:40:40):
Actually. Yeah. Okay. Good to know, Scott. You bet. Theater geek youtube.com/avs forum. You can read his writing on AVS Forum and other fine journals covered on

Scott Wilkinson (00:40:51):
Theater <laugh>

Leo Laporte (00:40:52):
Arena. Thank you Scott. You bet. Leo Micah, your tech guy here calls after this. See that's what's missing from that is some good tuba.

Scott Wilkinson (00:41:10):
Yeah, man. A little tuba with some multiphonics.

Leo Laporte (00:41:18):
Ooh, mul. How do you do?

Scott Wilkinson (00:41:20):
Well you play a note on the tuba with your lips vibrating in the normal manner and then you sing at the same time a different note.

Leo Laporte (00:41:29):
Can you do that? It's

Scott Wilkinson (00:41:30):
Not easy. Yeah. Yeah you can. Wow.

Leo Laporte (00:41:32):
Can you

Scott Wilkinson (00:41:33):
Do that? Oh yes, I can do that. Wow.

Leo Laporte (00:41:37):
Wow.

Scott Wilkinson (00:41:38):
Yep. So you get two notes at the same time.

Leo Laporte (00:41:43):
That would be

Scott Wilkinson (00:41:44):
Hard. And if you tune them just right, you can get interference tones to create a third note. So

Leo Laporte (00:41:49):
You sound like one of them too. Va throat singers.

Scott Wilkinson (00:41:53):
Exactly.

Leo Laporte (00:41:54):
Exactly. We're making people see that

Scott Wilkinson (00:42:01):
<laugh>, I don't wanna do that. Sorry. It's right.

Leo Laporte (00:42:04):
You is my friend for the next 30 minutes. Thank you.

Scott Wilkinson (00:42:07):
Thank you so very much. By the way, the Roku streaming stick 4K at Amazon and Walmart off 50%. Wow. 25 bucks. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:42:17):
50. Is it 4k? You said

Scott Wilkinson (00:42:19):
4k? Yeah. Yeah. 4 20, 25

Leo Laporte (00:42:20):
Bucks. Wow.

Scott Wilkinson (00:42:21):
Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:42:22):
Wow.

Scott Wilkinson (00:42:24):
That's pretty amazing. Yeah. Best Buy has aen Heiser, Bluetooth an C active noise canceling headphone 80 bucks down from 200, That's the H D 4 58 BT Cent Heiser makes some great headphones. So I think for 80 bucks that's a hell of a deal. Yeah. Anyway, I will be happy to take the here for the next couple minutes and also stick around for the top.

Leo Laporte (00:42:55):
Thank you.

Scott Wilkinson (00:42:57):
My pleasure. Let's see. Mac Bookie says, which is better for a UST projector, ALR or C lr? A LR is ambient light rejecting. I'm not sure what C LR means. If you can explain yourself. Almo, virtually all UST projectors are alr the screens for them. UST projector screens are ALR by default. They just are partly because of the nature of them, because they have to take light coming up at a steep angle and then reflect it back horizontally. And that by nature rejects light coming in from other directions. So that's going to happen. It's gonna be ambient light rejecting clr. I don't know what you mean by that. So if you would explain learn.

(00:43:58):
Let's see. Jarvis, is it possible to find out? Well, you haven't finish your note there. I think you hit return before you finished. Jay has does have the screen actuators. Okay. I thought so. I would be very surprised if it didn't aloha cycling coast. I did have a great musical Friday. I played patriotic music in a big concert band in the morning and I played brass quintets on the deck of a beautiful home in the afternoon up in the Santa Cruz mountains overlooking Happy Valley. It was wonderful. Really good and good players too. And we were just reading through a bunch of brass quintet music and that was loads of fun. Loads of fun. So let's see <laugh> redacted says if I owned a cat it would be a Scott Wilkinson. Yeah, man. Is

Leo Laporte (00:45:09):
There, That would be a good variety of cat

Scott Wilkinson (00:45:13):
<laugh>.

Leo Laporte (00:45:14):
Can you stick around for

Scott Wilkinson (00:45:15):
The top? Yeah, sure. Happy to.

Leo Laporte (00:45:16):
Right, thank you. Leo Laport, Micah Sergeant, your tech guys answering the phones at eighty eight eighty eight. Ask Leo. That's the phone number. (888) 827-5536. Don't free from anywhere in the US or Canada website tech guy labs.com. That's where you can go to find anything we mention on the show links and so forth. This is episode 1943, so I think we're gonna get some, maybe Glen Miller a little later on to celebrate that. Dave on the line from Riverside, California. Hi Dave.

Caller 2 (00:45:56):
Hi. How you doing today?

Leo Laporte (00:45:58):
Great. What can we do for you?

Caller 2 (00:46:01):
I got a dilemma trying to pick a printer and I've got a laser printer right now. A xeroxs all in 1 6 0 27. But it's printing very, very dirty copies with printing. Nothing. It comes out multiple colors.

Leo Laporte (00:46:26):
Oh, that's interesting, huh. Wow. <laugh>. Yeah.

Caller 2 (00:46:30):
And I'm trying to take it apart one way or the other to see what I

Leo Laporte (00:46:35):
Can find. So you probably know, but the way lasers print is very different from the way inkjets print. It's more like, in fact it's very, it's identical to a shouldn't use the brand name, but I will Xerox machine a photocopier. There is a drum that should be completely clean <laugh>. And I think it's not in this case it's in fact if you look at it sometimes it's a shiny silvery drum and then it's charged electrostatically where the letters are gonna be. And then toner is drizzled over it <laugh> and the electrostatic charge catches it. It's almost like the drum has been magnetized to catch the toner. And then papers run through it. The toner releases that rather the drum releases that ink onto the page. Now if there's something wrong with your drum or it's dirty, the imaging drum or the toner cartridge is leaking, then you might get more toner than you than just the printing leather. So you can actually clean this, believe it or not. And so you said you're gonna get into it. The first thing I do is be careful. You wanna don't want to get grease on the drum or anything like that. But can't clean a laser printer. And I'll give you a link to a blog post where the guy describes going through this process and actually cleaning it. And I would guess, unless it's worn out, it could be that the drum itself, it sounds like it's pretty old. How old is it

Caller 2 (00:48:13):
Purchased? 2016. But

Leo Laporte (00:48:16):
Oh, that's not too bad. It

Caller 2 (00:48:17):
Only has 10,000 copies on

Leo Laporte (00:48:20):
It. So it, and it also could be and be again when you get in there, be careful. In fact, this guide that I'm recommending says wear latex gloves and a dust mask <affirmative>. Cuz the toner may be out there. Maybe that you had a link in the toner cartridge and that's why it's dirty and you don't wanna breathe that particle and you wanna make sure that it doesn't, those particles can really mess up an office to get toner particles all over. I've done it. It's bad.

Caller 2 (00:48:52):
I can see what I can see of it when I get into the back of it, which this model particularly is, doesn't have much access but it's got a transfer belt in it and the transfer belts, I really don't know what it looks like till I see it, but it is just full of toner

Leo Laporte (00:49:12):
And there you go. Toner is just, that's going on then. So there's a couple of possibilities. One, it could, and by the way there are things in there that can be dangerous <affirmative>. So read a guide designed for that laser printer. If you're at all nervous about it, I would probably get somebody who's a professional to do this. But the electrical areas, there's corona wires and things that actually may hold a charge. And so you've gotta be really careful. The drum itself could be cleaned with a simple alcohol, isoprol, alcohol wipe, not rubbing alcohol, obviously that least glycerin behind but pure alcohol wipe. And then I would check, you might remove the cartridge and maybe the cartridge has somehow been penetrated and is leaking. That would be a problem. That would make a mess.

Caller 2 (00:50:03):
Yeah. Any advantage nowadays to buying like I said, 200 copies a month maybe? Should I be looking at an inkjet?

Leo Laporte (00:50:13):
No. In fact for low, low, well 200 is a lot actually for low, if you didn't print more than once a week, I would probably stay away from inkjet. They tend to get clogged if they don't get used regularly. If you're printing 200 a month though, an inkjet might not be a bad idea. Honestly. Laser printers have gotten much cheaper since you bought that. Xerox a brother laser printer now is just under $200 and they do a great job. It's the one I have as well. And they do a great job. So if it's not immediately obvious what's causing this mess And in fact if you don't wanna make another mess by getting into it, which you might very well I think not, it would cost you more to clean it with, bring it to the shop.

Mikah Sargent (00:50:57):
You have to, yeah, either take it to a shop or you have to buy a special vacuum. Even every guide I'm seeing says that you need a special vacuum. Cause otherwise the don

Leo Laporte (00:51:04):
Will, that stuff is awful. It's very fine. And it

Mikah Sargent (00:51:08):
That's dangerous. You don't want that in your lungs. No.

Leo Laporte (00:51:11):
So yeah, maybe just go out and get a brother and ink jet's cheaper. But remember the reason ink jet's cheaper is cuz the consumables mostly the ink are more expensive. So sometimes we talk about the price per page of printing and that includes paper of course. But mostly it's ink. And the price per page of a laser printer is usually three or 4 cents a page on an ink jet, it could be 20 cents a page. So that's a significant difference. You may save money up front buying at ink jet, but you'll, you'll be paying for it down the road. The only ink jets I recommend are the ones that have big tanks. Not cartridges, but they've replaced the cartridges with tanks like the Epson eco tanks. Now, once the EP showed that these were successful, every manufacturer started to do this, they no longer have the market on eco tanks. But that means that you don't have to go out and buy cartridges. You're buying ink in bulk, which saves you a huge amount of money.

Caller 2 (00:52:07):
Another question on this, the cost of original cart tos are pretty prohibitive. You know, bet Go to the website. You bet you look at their,

Leo Laporte (00:52:19):
But remember you're getting 5,000 pages or more from one cartridge.

Caller 2 (00:52:26):
I'm not though. I've been and remanufactured, but I know what they do. They just open 'em up, put new,

Leo Laporte (00:52:34):
Yeah, put new toner in. New

Caller 2 (00:52:35):
Toner and they

Leo Laporte (00:52:36):
Put a new check on. I hate to tell you, but that's maybe why you're having trouble with this right now.

Caller 2 (00:52:40):
Well that's possible.

Leo Laporte (00:52:43):
I always buy manufacturer toner cartridges. But the thing is, so remember when you get the printer, the first cartridge they give you is nothing. It's a couple hundred pages. They don't give you a full toner cartridge. Yes. But if you then go out and buy a high capacity toner cartridge, usually I get it from the manufacturer, it's gonna have, it'll say what it's rated for. 5,000 pages is typical. That's a lot of printing even for you. Even a 200 page a month guy, that's a couple of years. So if it costs 150 bucks for the cartridge, but you're gonna get two years out of it, you're way ahead of the cost of an inkjet. Now the advantages inkjet have, and this might be important to you, the color is better. You can do photo printing with inkjet. You can print on things that a laser printer can't print on.

(00:53:28):
So there are advantages to an inkjet printer. In fact, everybody who does photo printing uses either uses an inkjet or a much more expensive dye sub. Nobody uses lasers for photo printing. So you have a nice color laser printer. But you understand, cause you print in color, it's what they call business color. It's great for graphs but it's not gonna, your eyes aren't gonna pop with a brilliant color coming outta that Xerox <laugh>. So if you really want, I mean honestly, if you really want beautiful color, inkjets are great. And then of course it's the choice of paper as well. Makes a difference. But inkjets are good for that. So I don't want slam ink jets. Most people buy ink jets <affirmative> but I

Mikah Sargent (00:54:14):
Think it's because they don't realize the investment. A good investment that a laser.

Leo Laporte (00:54:17):
Yeah. Cause it's 99 bucks. Oh wow, this is great. A PRT is 99 bucks and then you get home and you had to buy cartridges every month for 40 bucks. It's like, well

Mikah Sargent (00:54:27):
You don't use it for a couple of weeks and then you have to buy new cartridges anyway cuz it dried up. It's just a nightmare.

Leo Laporte (00:54:31):
Yeah. So it's interesting. You and I both ended up buying lasers. Leo and Micah, your tech guys more to come after this. Most people buy ink jets every year or two. That's right. Twisted mister Every year or two. Now you know what? At the time, you know what time it is, Scotty. Time. It's coffee time. Beammen. Scotty Coffee times. What a coffee. Scott, this is the huge service you do for me and Micah, by taking this segment you allow us thank you to go Caffeinate. Thank

Scott Wilkinson (00:55:07):
You. To get some Joe. Get some Joe man. All right, cool. You guys go. Hello everybody. So Mac Bookie was it is that who asked me about CLR and alr? I since looked up some stuff cuz I had not heard the term CLR before and I found that it stands for ceiling light rejecting screen. So whereas ambient light rejecting screens, and I will say there is some ambiguity about these terms, but according to projector screen resource.com ambient light rejecting screens reject or probably retro light from any angle other than straight on. So they're really meant for projectors in the back of the room hitting the screen at a perpendicular and the light comes back at a perpendicular and light coming in from the sides or top and bottom are rejected, which would make them not work with USTs. CLR stands for ceiling light rejecting, which means that the light coming from above gets retro to reflected or absorbed.

(00:56:23):
I'm, I don't think it specifies which but depending on how they're manufactured, light from below will get reflected back. Now the micro structure of a UST screen in any event has to be basically little reflectors, microscopic reflectors, bunches of them that take light coming from deep below and reflect it out straight horizontally. I have heard plenty of s t ultra ultra short throw screens referred to as ALR and maybe technically they're clr. But as I say, there is some ambiguity in the definitions here. So what you have to be aware of if you're getting a UST projector, that the first thing you have to get is a screen designed for USD projectors. And they are such screens are almost always going to reject ambient light coming from other directions in one way or another. So calling them ALR or CLR is debatable. That could be the subject of a great debate over a beer at the end of a CES day or a CD a day. But in any event that is what I've learned about that so far.

(00:57:55):
Let's see if anybody else has any questions for me here. So let's see. Mac Bookie says, I guess CLR would provide a brighter picture. I'm not sure that's true necessarily but he ordered an L Vision 3,500 UST projector. I don't know that one and I forget now how if they did, did one at the UST projector shootout a couple months ago. I'd have to look that up. But yeah, you definitely want to get a UST projector screen. Whether or not it's CLR or alr I'd have to do a little more research to see if I can make a greater, a clearer distinction between those two.

(00:58:50):
User 3,200 sent me a link to the web podcast of Steve Guttenberg with his interview with Andrew Jones explaining the design of his new MOFI speakers. Now Andrew Jones was on my show a few months ago and at that time he couldn't talk about the speakers. So now he can. And I'm really looking forward to checking that out cuz boy, he designs and builds some really, really nice speakers reverb. Mike's asking, What's your top TV for this holiday season? Well, that depends on your budget reverb. Mike, tell me what your budget is and I can give you a recommendation. But they are all over the place. Those high senses U eight H models at Best Buy this weekend are really pretty good deals. reverb.com. reviews.com. Sorry, no, sorry. R ings ratings. <laugh>. I was recently corrected that they pronounced their website ratings, but it's spelled R T I N G s.com.

(00:59:58):
Anyway, they gave the high senses U eight H pretty high marks, so I'm gonna say, yeah, those are gonna be good. Probably a very good deal. iTech unfortunately informed me that the Sennheiser $80 headphones that I spoke about are crap anc. ANC is poor. Ear cups are way too small. Better bet to get the new momentum for watch if they go on sale. Well, I will look for those. The momentums I know are very good and I just generally like SE Heiser. I'm sorry to hear that. These are crap. Oh, well <affirmative> Jarvis, Larry has not finished his question to me, so I will just have to say, okay.

(01:00:53):
We learned that the O Qola does have screen actuators, which is good to know soon as we get into our new house that is the TV I will probably be getting. Oh, Alfred Jingle. Okay, well the new EU energy restrictions that certainly affect TVs for sale in the eu. That's true. Will they affect TVs sold in the us? That's a really good question. I don't know the answer to that. I heard recently that these energy restrictions in Europe are gonna make eight K TVs almost impossible to sell. I would tend to doubt that that's gonna happen in the us. That's a big, big bite out of their market. If it's true at least for Europe.

(01:01:51):
Let's see here. Oh, reverb. Mike says 500 to a thousand dollars. Okay. And in that case, I'd look at this high senses. I would also look at the TCL six series and also, what size do you want? If you're looking at a 65 inch, which is a pretty common size let me look at my list here. The 65 inch high sense U eight H at Best Buy this weekend is 900 bucks. The 55 is 700 bucks. If you want a small smallish tv, the LG 48, C2 48 inch, which quite small, but it's an O Lead 10 50 at Best Buy. And the tcl, here we go. The TCL 65 R 6 35, which is a 2021 model. It's a mini l e d, LCD tv, nine 98,000 bucks. At Best Buy this. So if you want something, Well, I would say the cheapest one I have here in my list for this weekend is the high senses, 55 inch U eight H, which is 700 bucks down 40%, almost 40% from the list price. That's like, wow, that's pretty damn good

Leo Laporte (01:03:18):
Here for your entertainment from Steve Martin's book.

Scott Wilkinson (01:03:23):
Yes,

Leo Laporte (01:03:24):
<laugh> Once loved a parade. I don't get it, but I get <laugh>. Maybe it's explained earlier, Cuz this is Harry Bliss's illustration.

Scott Wilkinson (01:03:34):
Oh, and I saw a picture of a tuba there.

Leo Laporte (01:03:36):
Yeah, yeah. This is Harry Bliss's illustrations to Steve's newest memoir about making movies.

Scott Wilkinson (01:03:42):
Oh yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:03:43):
It's called, number one is Walking and I don't, Maybe this refers to something in the, I'm sure it does. In the book.

Scott Wilkinson (01:03:50):
Yeah. Yeah. Oh, that's great.

Leo Laporte (01:03:53):
Yeah. Koalas when no one's looking <laugh>. It's the landline

Scott Wilkinson (01:04:03):
<laugh>. It's great. We're getting our new house remodeled. And we went through it with the electrician and he said Do you guys want a landline <laugh>? I said, No, we don't

Leo Laporte (01:04:18):
Need a landline. Yeah, we can not do that. Thank you, Scotty. Have a wonderful week.

Scott Wilkinson (01:04:23):
My pleasure. See you next week.

Leo Laporte (01:04:25):
Oh, it's a song reference. Ah, well, hey, hey, hey. How are you today? Leo LePort, the tech guy. Mike Sergeant, your tech guy. Two at 88. 88. Ask Leo. Eight, eight. Eight, eight. Two, seven. 5, 5, 3, 6. This is a day to call because you got the double the wealth, double the brains. Actually, some might say three times the brains. I don't know. There's more brains in here. Let's say that much. Let's say that 88. 88. Ask Leo website, Tech guy labs.com. Episode 1943. Joe's on the line. Our friend from Knoxville, Tennessee. Hi Joe.

Caller 3 (01:05:09):
Hello. How you doing today?

Leo Laporte (01:05:11):
We are great. How are you?

Caller 3 (01:05:13):
Oh, pretty good. Little rainy here, but we definitely need it. We've had a lot of brush fires and stuff in the area.

Leo Laporte (01:05:23):
Oh, well we know. So dry. We know how you feel up here in Northern California.

Caller 3 (01:05:27):
Oh yeah yeah. We've had quite a few. So anyway, I get interesting combination spam spoof call yesterday. Oh my caller ID pops up, phone rings, caller ID pops up. St. Mary's Medical Center.

Leo Laporte (01:05:48):
Oh, there's a good caller id, huh? Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. Okay. You wouldn't ignore that, would you? Oh, at St. Mary's,

Caller 3 (01:05:54):
No. And

Leo Laporte (01:05:55):
By the way, my doctor, whenever my hospital or medical practice calls unknown number for privacy reasons. <affirmative>, right?

Caller 3 (01:06:04):
Yeah. Well anyway, this was pops up St. Mary's Medical Center. And the funny part is, my wife used to work for a hospital here in town by that name, which has since been bought out and no longer went by that name. And matter of fact, the building that she was in, she worked in has got bulldozed. So it's not even there anymore.

Leo Laporte (01:06:31):
<laugh>. Wow. It's a ghost call. Okay.

Caller 3 (01:06:34):
But the call, when I answered it, just for the heck of it. Cause I like to cause the number. I have two phone lines at home and the number they called in on is one is not. None of my friends know. So anything comes in on that's, I know it's gonna be a spam call. The spam call was Comcast. We're offering a special promotion right now.

Leo Laporte (01:07:00):
Oh, that's interesting. Comcast identifying is St. Mary's.

Caller 3 (01:07:04):
Yes. Well, so I've called you several weeks ago about some issues I've had and I found out the quick way to solve issues is emails the CEO and let it roll downhill. <laugh>, it wasn't, wasn't 15 minutes after I sent the email last night, I got a call back

Leo Laporte (01:07:27):
And Wow. And did they say that that was a legitimate Comcast call?

Caller 3 (01:07:33):
No. Yeah, they didn't say it was a legitimate one, but they said they were gonna look into it because I gave them the number that showed up on caller id. Good.

Leo Laporte (01:07:43):
So whether they'll be able to figure that out or is unknown providing your phone services? Well yes. Okay. So they are your telco as well. So they may have more information.

Caller 3 (01:07:55):
They provide all my services and I've been rocking the boat with them recently because of issues I've had with my TV with channels freezing what they call tiling, which is the pixelization. Yeah. And stuff like that. I got an email from them the other day. They did at 1.2 or three weeks ago, found a section of hard line they said was bad. They pulled a temporary cable in to until they get the

Leo Laporte (01:08:29):
Well good. They're being responsive. I like that. You didn't even have to go on Twitter. So that's good. That's a blessing. So let me tell you what happened here. First of all, they will get back to you and say, No, that wasn't us, cuz it wasn't. In fact, Doug am and our Chatham is saying per his Nextdoor account, that's where you have the neighbors on a social group social network. He says lots of Comcast Xfinity scam calls going on right now. So that's a scam. They are calling, probably not from the US but from a call center overseas. And the way the phone system works, you can spoof the originating number. So what they most frequently do these days is they spoof your area code and sometimes they'll even spoof your exchange. The three digits before the four digits, that's called the Exchange. Pennsylvania six is an exchange 5,000, speaking of Glen Miller.

(01:09:31):
And they call that that FCC calls that neighbor spoofing. Why they do it, It works because you go, Oh, the school's calling somebody nearby is calling and most of those calls get answered. If it's an area code you don't know, you're not gonna answer it most of the time. So that's why they do it. It is illegal in the us. So we have some clues. First of all, they did neighbors spoofing and by, and this is totally by chance, by chance, the exchange matched your neighborhood and the four digits matched St. Mary's. St. Mary's would've had a block of numbers and just by chance it hit that. And the caller Id said, I know that number at St. Mary's, it isn't obviously <laugh>. So that's a S. So not only are you being spoofed by the guy identifying himself as Comcast, cuz he is not the, there's a spoofed phone number, which is a local number and that's being identified, but it's identified incorrectly.

(01:10:29):
That's just a coincidence. That's not anything they did on purpose usually, I don't think. Now here's the thing. That's an illegal phone call and the reason I know it's overseas is cuz it's an illegal phone call. No company in the US can do that or will do that. So in fact, you should know from now on, if you ever get a call from St. Mary's, which has been bulldozed, that's a scam call you will, and I'm sure you've seen other calls with your area code in exchange. This is just what they do. The good news is this is now being blocked by most phone companies. Maybe not Comcast though. So the big phone companies, the big carriers in the US have agreed, they've been forced by the Federal Communications Commission to adopt a framework called Stirred and Shaken. Stir and Shaken is what we call an authentication framework.

(01:11:24):
It says that the phone call is originating from an authenticated source, a real carrier, and that carrier is identified and that caller is identified as a customer of that carrier. Your receiving carrier then can say, Okay, we know it's verified, we'll let it through. This is only now being enforced in the us. It's been around for a couple of years. The FCC really dragged their feet. They're still dragging a little bit for a while if they didn't enforce it. And so that's why you were getting a lot of spoof calls. The most recent enforcement, which was a couple of months ago, said, if you are a phone company overseas that doesn't have a facility, you don't have a building, you must adopt this. Now it's up to your phone company, Comcast, in this case, to reject UNU authenticated calls. So if a call comes in from a phone company overseas or in the US that isn't authenticated by Shaken, the stir framework is supposed to say, Nope, can't call our customers.

(01:12:36):
I bet Comcast is not yet doing that. There is still a loophole that oversees phone companies that have buildings. <laugh> still don't have to adhere to this until next year. So it's also possible that it's an unauthenticated call, but it's coming from somewhere overseas. That is a real phone company. In other words, not a virtual phone company. So there's still loopholes. The FCC didn't wanna close it off too fast. And I think this was mostly because the telcos lobbied them saying, We make a lot of money on these calls. We really don't want you to turn them off. They make money on these calls. I bet you Comcast makes money on these calls. That's why you get so many of these. They're cheap for the scammer to make and the incoming phone company's not blocking them. Well you do the math. So Comcast should have been blocking this.

(01:13:31):
Maybe they got through cuz they used a phone company overseas that has a facility. I don't know. I think you will all see less of this. We should all see a lot less of this report. Them say you're annoyed that the carrier is not blocking them. They are legally supposed to block them. You shouldn't be getting illegitimate calls from carriers that don't have facilities anymore. That's supposedly over and the big carriers are ignoring that. I don't know where Comcast stands on that. Eighty eight eighty eight. Ask Leo the phone number. (888) 827-5536. Ah, good. Comcast put out a press release. We've got it in the show notes. Thank you. Scooter X. We'll put that@techguylabs.com. Comcast rolls out Nation's largest landline voice verified caller ID solution. Good for you Comcast. Comcast today announced the company has rolled out the nation's largest landline voice implementation of Stir Shaken based on verified caller id, feature and effort to help protect the company's Xfinity voice, Comcast business voice and business voice edge select customers from illegal robocall and caller ID spoofing. Oh, they're not gonna block 'em. <laugh>. They're gonna put a V label in the caller ID. When the caller is authenticated. I think by now they've gotta block it. So look for a verified caller id secure telephone at any revisited protocol.

(01:15:12):
Huh? So Comcast says they're not blocking them. This is as of last year. This is March of last year, I think now they have to, Were putting a V next to it if it's verified. So Mike B says he's got the V, he's got the V, He's got the V. They need a blue check for $8. They kind of have to, The FCC has finally started to crack down ceiling. Cat is back. I miss, I miss sealing Cat <laugh>. I missed you ceiling ka

(01:16:06):
<laugh>.

(01:16:07):
But that is at a very old internet meme now. Hello. Red cod five.o

(01:16:23):
He's

(01:16:24):
Got

(01:16:24):
The V.

(01:16:28):
It is is a beautiful day in the neighborhood. We had a lovely Veterans Day parade yesterday. Lisa and I went to and enjoyed. Oh, sbf. What a story. Huh? Where? That's tomorrow on TWI baby. I don't, I guess we should talk about that. I guess we should talk about that. I think people are probably more concerned about spam calls than they are

(01:17:01):
<laugh>.

(01:17:04):
Let me read the latest fcc. FCC seeks to fill challenging gap in stir shaken robocall defenses. <laugh> <laugh>. Well, let's see what it says here in the Well I clicked text, but nothing happened. All right. Washington October 27th, 2022. Continuing its focus on combating spoofed spam robocall. The Federal Communications Commission today launched a proceeding. Oh, there you go. They launched a proceeding to consider ways to fill in the most significant remaining gap in implementing the stir shaken framework over phone networks. It can only technologically work on IP based phone networks. That leaves a relatively small but still important hole in this critical robocall protection.

(01:18:12):
The FCC will begin a proceeding to consider ways to combat illegally spoofed robocalls that pass through non IP networks. That's interesting. I didn't realize Stir shake and it makes sense would require an IP phone system. So if they're using, Oh, interesting. The old line based, the notice of inquiry adopted today seeks comment on the prevalence of non IP technology in the country's phone networks generally. And the impact this technology has on the problem of illegal robocall. Leo LaPorte, Micah, Sergeant, your tech guys answering your calls. I was just looking up the latest on the FCC and stir and shaken and there are still yeah loopholes. There's still problems. Unfortunately in implementing this caller ID identification one loophole is apparently requires a phone company that's using modern technology, old fashioned technology <laugh>, it doesn't work.

(01:19:11):
FCC rules require most providers, I'm reading from the fccs call authentication document to implement and use stir shaken in the internet protocol portions of their networks, their IP networks, but not necessary. Now good news, if you are using a triple play package from a cable company like Comcast, you're on IP for sure. Facilities based small service providers are required to implement stir shaken by June 30th, 2023. So this is the last gap. If you've got a facility, if you've got a building, I guess you don't have to implement this till June of next year. So it's not done yet. It's not done yet. They really slow walk this gateway providers, the entry point for foreign calls into the US are similarly required to adapt, apply stir, shaken to foreign originated calls by June 30th, 2023. So that's problem. All of these scam calls are originating overseas. <affirmative>,

Mikah Sargent (01:20:14):
There's really not a lot one can do using these systems that are supposed to help

Leo Laporte (01:20:19):
Us. Right. What Comcast does do, Xfinity does do is they put a little <laugh> V for verified next to a number if it is in fact verified authenticated by stir shaken. So that is one thing you should know when you get a call on a line provided by Comcast Xfinity, I would say don't answer it unless you see the V. Look for the

Mikah Sargent (01:20:41):
V. Yeah,

Leo Laporte (01:20:41):
Look for the V

(01:20:44):
<laugh>. All providers are required to submit to this public database, the contact information for the personnel at their company, blah, blah, blah. Yeah. I suspect it's hard, especially for overseas companies. Where are you gonna go to The Bahamas and arrest these guys? No. Right. But they have to have a US gateway to get in and that's where you really have to enforce it is where they get in. I don't know, it just seemed like it's gotten better. Remember that political calls and political texts are protected speech and so they can't limit those. That's why we got so many of those on the lead up to the midterms.

Mikah Sargent (01:21:23):
I don't think I know if it's gotten better or if I'm just using the right tools to keep it from happening to me. Yeah. I have a feeling that between what iOS has built in with the silence unknown callers and then the third party tools I've used in the past that has cut back. But maybe it's gone down. I don't

Leo Laporte (01:21:44):
Know. I choose the rude option, which maybe I'm missing some calls from my doctor, I don't know. But I just say don't answer the call if that person's not my contact list. <affirmative>, just send 'em straight to voicemail. And I think that you could do that. I know you could do it on pixel phones. Can you do that on iOS?

Mikah Sargent (01:22:01):
It's just called Silence Unknown callers. Yeah. So it won't ring for you, but you can see the notification. But yeah, it'll go to after it rings, it goes to voicemail.

Leo Laporte (01:22:11):
Okay. So that's what we want <affirmative>. Yeah. So yeah, news use the nuclear option. The only risk is, and this is why they do this neighbor spoofing, if somebody's calling from your area code and your exchange is at the school and they're not in my contact list, but I

Mikah Sargent (01:22:27):
So just don't have kids.

Leo Laporte (01:22:28):
Don't have kids,

Mikah Sargent (01:22:29):
Don't ever go to the doctor. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Those are the only ways those to really get there.

Leo Laporte (01:22:34):
<laugh> 88 88, No, we don't really recommend that. That's just a joke folks.

Mikah Sargent (01:22:39):
Those are jokes.

Leo Laporte (01:22:40):
<laugh>, they're doing a joke. The jokes such as they are. Let's go back to Chit Wagan, New York. Joe on the line. Hello Joe, Leo and Micah.

Caller 4 (01:22:50):
Hi Leah. Hi Micah. Hello. Welcome. I just wanted to say little cautionary tale of experience I had recently. I use KeyPass for my password manager. Yep.

Leo Laporte (01:23:04):
It's a good password manager, right? I think. Yeah.

Caller 4 (01:23:08):
Well yeah. It's pretty good. What I like best about it is that it can simulate a keyboard. So all those sites that try and do those silly JavaScript tricks for entering your username and password, well it acts just like a keyboard. It's a

Leo Laporte (01:23:24):
Software KeyPass. You're using the open source K E E P A S S. Yes.

Caller 4 (01:23:30):
Yes. Installed as part of Ubuntu

Leo Laporte (01:23:34):
Keypass.info. It's free, it's open source. And it's pretty up to date. The last release was September, so that's good.

Caller 4 (01:23:42):
Well one of the downsides is that, you know, have a database file,

Leo Laporte (01:23:46):
You're responsible for it. You have to.

Caller 4 (01:23:49):
Yeah. That you're responsible for. And one of my slight errors here was relying on a cloud service P cloud in this case. I really liked them there, the offer they had. Because you can pay them one time and you can have like 500 gigabytes or two terabytes for life. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:24:08):
I have a Lifetime P Cloud, which I never use. Okay, go on <laugh>. I did, I fell for that. I think they're okay. What happened with them?

Caller 4 (01:24:17):
Well, unfortunately the database, my KeyPass database was all of a sudden coming up with 4 0 4 errors.

Leo Laporte (01:24:28):
Oh no.

Caller 4 (01:24:30):
Oh yeah. So

Leo Laporte (01:24:32):
That means that's the error where you can't reach that website.

Caller 4 (01:24:37):
Well, where you can't reach a file on that website. Right?

Leo Laporte (01:24:40):
Yeah. It doesn't exist.

Caller 4 (01:24:42):
Caution number one, keep a manual backup of your

Leo Laporte (01:24:45):
Yeah, this is one of the reasons I stopped using P Cloud. I've heard from other users as well that cloud has had some, I don't think they're a bad company, but I think they've had some technical issues. It's an interesting question. That

Caller 4 (01:25:00):
Would be one of them. Yep.

Leo Laporte (01:25:01):
That's terrible. It's an interesting question that I actually asked our security guru, Steve Gibson this week on security now. And it really applies to password managers. Should you keep your own database of passwords? The plus side is, well only you have access to it, right? Don't, no. Right. There's no failure mode where somebody screws up at a big password manager's site and gives away your passwords. The downside to that is you're not an expert in securing databases. And mistakes happen and security issues happen. And this is a good example of the potential downside. Did you have a backup?

Caller 4 (01:25:46):
Oh yes, I hallelujah. Regularly. And the other thing is debatable. Should you keep the one time passwords key past with an plugin will calculate those one time passwords.

Leo Laporte (01:26:02):
Yeah, but see then you have a single point of failure. I don't, Yeah, I don't do that. Last pass does that as well. And I don't use their authenticator because I want a separate, completely independent in case the password database gets breached. You don't want those secret numbers that go with that one time password to be breached as well as your password. So I always keep those separate. This is a bigger, we're gonna take a break, but it's a bigger subject. We'll talk more about in a bit. Leo and Micah, your tech guys. Johnny Jet coming up. Yeah, see, so we use Last Pass Ely and I use Bit Warden myself and I and Bit Warden will let you keep your database if you want. But I let them manage it cuz So that's the debate. Is it a single point of failure? Worse than me screwing up my security <laugh> and good Joe, good on you. Had a backup. But there's a good example. Plus you're relying on P Cloud too. Knowing that

Caller 4 (01:27:05):
The one thing is that if you do your one time payment now they don't have any economic incentive. Exactly. To give you good customer service. Exactly. This is something I've discovered right now. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:27:18):
I actually stopped using them after paying $400 for two terabytes for life for that very reason. It's too bad

Caller 4 (01:27:28):
Now. They're offering a 10 terabytes for like a thousand. But it sounds like a really good deal. But that economic incentive not to

Leo Laporte (01:27:36):
Help you nailed it. That's something to always consider, isn't it? If they're not getting a continuing income from you, then are they gonna support, How are they gonna support you? How are they gonna manage to do that?

Caller 4 (01:27:51):
Oh yes. Our Chandra in the chat room if you wanted to know. And also like to say seven three from kd, two TF

Leo Laporte (01:27:58):
Ah seven three. Really good to talk to you as always Joe. And have really excellent point. And I think for the majority of our listeners, the less sophisticated, you're better off letting one password or last pass or bit man bit warden or whoever your password is. Manager is manage it.

Caller 4 (01:28:17):
Yeah. A service that does the storage for

Leo Laporte (01:28:20):
Yeah. Cause that's their business. And remember that you have, it is strongly encrypted. So not only would somebody have to breach them and get the database, then they would have to break the encryption. And as long as you've used a good long password, I think you're probably, you probably

Caller 4 (01:28:35):
It's like 12 or 12 or 13 characters, something like that. So I'm not gonna

Leo Laporte (01:28:39):
Yeah, see remember if they have the database now they can brute force cuz there's nothing to rate limit them. So that's very true. Yeah. Yeah. That's why you still wanna have a very good master password because that is the, and that's why I don't keep the T otp the one time passwords in the same company. Because if there is a breach then they get everything. They get the password and the secret. Oh

Caller 4 (01:29:04):
Yeah. What

Leo Laporte (01:29:05):
Do you use for your ttp? Oh yeah, I use Oy authe. some people say you shouldn't use Aui cuz Oy keeps that database. Twilio, which is the owner or the creator of Authe, keeps that database on their servers. A I trust Twilio. I think even though they got breached, they got breached recently. But they got breached.

Caller 4 (01:29:22):
And here's the thing, I wrote a little Python desktop app that will calculate the TTPs and I feed it with

Leo Laporte (01:29:33):
Best way to do it. Neat.

Caller 4 (01:29:35):
I feed it with files that I keep GPG encrypted.

Leo Laporte (01:29:38):
Best way to do it. And then you keep, So you're smart. Obviously it's very sophisticated. <affirmative>, you keep the, so T OTP is taking a secret which never changes and hashing it with the time of day. That secret is like a password. If you had that secret, you could figure out what the one time password code is. You're doing that aren't you Joe? But so the keys is to protect that secret.

Caller 4 (01:30:04):
I mean Steve, Steve always says, yeah, keep a picture of those QR codes that you get from, That's fine. I mean that's also give you the hash too. Yeah. So

Leo Laporte (01:30:13):
Yeah, that's fine. You

Caller 4 (01:30:14):
Know, can store that.

Leo Laporte (01:30:14):
The QR code is the secret so you don't have to enter in 24 Kara character string or whatever it is. Yeah I think that that's fine as long as you keep the secret somewhere. Oy. I'm trusting Authy to keep the secret, which is not the most secure thing to do. I know that I probably should do what Steve does, which is just take a picture of the QR code. The issue is I'm always getting new phones and always moving. Yes. So Authy really saves me a lot of time. I just log in. Alright, gotta run. Joe. A pleasure as always. Okay, thanks so much. Keep on hacking Byebye. Listeners of this program get an ad free version if they're members of club twi. $7 a month gives you ad free versions of all of our shows. Plus membership in the club. Twit Discord, a great clubhouse for TWI listeners.

(01:31:04):
And finally, the twit plus feed with shows like Stacy's book club, the Untitled Linux show the G Fizz and more. Go to twi.tv/club twi and thanks for your support. What'd you say John? What'd you say? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Said you don't want hear me singing? No, I don't wanna, I turn your microphone off so we don't hear <laugh>. Oh good. Then I'll just start blaring it. Oh dear. Oh dear. Oh dear. Johnny Jet is here. Ladies and germs. He is <laugh> the man, the myth, the travel legend. You're gonna be up here soon. I am. We're gonna have to get together. You're gonna stay at your favorite spot, I take it. Not sure actually. Oh, A lot of times when I book hotels, I book 'em last minute sometimes. I use hotel tonight. The app. Especially for last minute hotels. Hotel. I'm gonna write this down hotel tonight. That's the way where they have rooms they haven't yet booked. And so they're, Yeah,

Johnny Jet (01:32:03):
That's been around for at least a decade.

Leo Laporte (01:32:05):
Yeah, but you can only try are

Johnny Jet (01:32:07):
Not as good as they used to be. Oh no, no, no. You can try up to three months.

Leo Laporte (01:32:11):
Oh, okay.

Johnny Jet (01:32:12):
So when they first came out, you can only do it after noon for that day and then they expanded. Now you can do it for three months from now. Right. So you gotta shop around whenever you're looking for cheap hotels. Just not necessary.

Leo Laporte (01:32:26):
A vast difference in hotel. Just like airplane seats I guess. But hotels, that rack rate, the rate they post on the door,

Johnny Jet (01:32:34):
That's a joke. <laugh>, the,

Leo Laporte (01:32:36):
That's like the most you could possibly pay.

Johnny Jet (01:32:38):
That's a, that's just a joke. <laugh>. Yeah, I look at that. I'm like, what are you talking about? $800 for this room. You're crazy. Hotels are, Hotels are getting, they're getting so much, they're getting a high rate right now. I'm

Leo Laporte (01:32:52):
Not gonna say that. They're stunningly expensive. All of a sudden

Johnny Jet (01:32:55):
You're the CEOs of both Hilton and Mart. There are, by the way, to pronounce Marriott. Not Marriott like Mart. I didn't pronounce it. My

Leo Laporte (01:33:03):
Mart. Marriott.

Mikah Sargent (01:33:04):
Marriot

Johnny Jet (01:33:05):
Mart. If you love it. Yeah, they're getting bigot money. I mean it's, It's amazing. You would think. Yeah. Marrit what? Put a ring on it. Did you say Marriott? Yeah. Yeah. Mart. Did you know that's, That's what they do. Teach people how to say it correctly. Mart.

Mikah Sargent (01:33:19):
Oh really? That's funny.

Johnny Jet (01:33:20):
Mart.

Leo Laporte (01:33:21):
That is hilarious. Do you love it? Mart put a ring on

Johnny Jet (01:33:23):
It. Yes. That's what they, I learned that from one of my Marriott friends.

Leo Laporte (01:33:28):
That's good to know.

Johnny Jet (01:33:29):
Good for you Micah. You are

Leo Laporte (01:33:31):
On itus. You know, that's why he's here. He's making me look good. That's his job. Yeah, yeah. Anyway. If he wanted to stay at a Vegas hotel, Let's say you wanted to stay at the Bellagio next weekend, $5,000. Of course that's cuz the Formula one race is right out the window. So

Johnny Jet (01:33:49):
You gotta go off peak, You gotta make sure there's no big convention going in town. Especially like San Francisco.

Leo Laporte (01:33:54):
Although the rodeo's in town today at in Vegas. So yeah. Is

Johnny Jet (01:33:58):
It Used to be December. We used to always have my dad's birthday party in Vegas. How

Mikah Sargent (01:34:04):
Do you have an end? There's

Johnny Jet (01:34:05):
Always a rodeo going on.

Mikah Sargent (01:34:06):
Do they bring all the animals? Oh yeah. Why wouldn't they just be nearby? I dunno. It just seems odd. Like, Oh, the

Leo Laporte (01:34:12):
Rodeo, the biggest rodeo of the year,

Johnny Jet (01:34:14):
They ship those animals all around the world.

Mikah Sargent (01:34:16):
Where I'm from. You can have a rodeo in your backyard in like five seconds. So that's why I'm saying it's just odd. Oh, the rodeos in town today.

Leo Laporte (01:34:25):
<laugh>. The rodeos.

Johnny Jet (01:34:26):
November.

Leo Laporte (01:34:27):
November 30th. But people get there earlier.

Johnny Jet (01:34:29):
Okay. Cause we used to do it. My dad's birthday's actually coming up, but we used to always have his birthday party in December cuz it was cheaper. And so you, you'll have to move things around if you want to save money, go off peak, go into the middle of the week, you're not gonna find a good deal in Vegas on a weekend. Yeah. But

Leo Laporte (01:34:46):
Now's why Lisa and I go, cause I have Thursday and Friday off. Lisa and I like to go on Wednesday and stay till Friday. Come back for work on Saturday. And it's great.

Johnny Jet (01:34:54):
That's, that's the way to go. And also Expedia recently came out with some tricks on how to save air on airfare.

Leo Laporte (01:35:01):
Yes.

Johnny Jet (01:35:02):
I don't agree with all of them by the way. They say book on a Sunday to save money <affirmative> up to 15%. I'm like, that's ridiculous right there, first of all. But

Leo Laporte (01:35:11):
Well, why would they say that if it's not true, Johnny?

Johnny Jet (01:35:14):
Well listen, I don't know where there are numbers are coming from, but there's not one day of the week where you'll save more money. You always have to try set a fair alert and they do say set a fair alert, which is the best advice. Always set a fair alert and find out if the price drops or not. They also say book at least a month before domestic flights and six months before international to save up to 10%. I do agree with that. Although you can sometimes find cheaper flights. Actually Thanksgiving prices have actually gone down for some routes because the airlines are not filling the seats. They thought they were. The inflation was so high. People are like, you know what? So now some of the prices have dropped. Some of my far alerts are like, wow. So if you were gonna go somewhere this or next weekend or whatever, Thanksgiving is two weeks. Look again because you might be able to save some money. And if you did book a ticket, by the way, price it out. That's another reason why I set those fair alerts because if the price does drop, because the airlines no longer charge change fees, you can cancel it and rebook. Just make sure you don't book a basic economy ticket cuz you can't do that with that.

(01:36:20):
There's a bunch of so

Leo Laporte (01:36:21):
Many rules. I just wanna go somewhere.

Johnny Jet (01:36:25):
Hey. That's why my head is always spinning. I'm sitting there trying to read. I remember when I first not met you, but when I saw you in Toronto one time, I was like, let's go to dinner. You're like, I gotta read. I go to my hotel room and read this stuff is always

Leo Laporte (01:36:39):
Changing. Oh, that's what you said. I didn't believe you but okay.

Johnny Jet (01:36:42):
No, no. That's what you told me.

Leo Laporte (01:36:44):
Oh,

Johnny Jet (01:36:44):
I told you didn't believe in you

Leo Laporte (01:36:46):
<laugh>. I said I have to go back to the hotel room and read.

Johnny Jet (01:36:49):
Yes. I guess that was your way of saying, Sorry, I got, I'd rather I'd rather watch a movie than hang out with

Leo Laporte (01:36:54):
You. Well maybe I did. We had did 15 shows in four days.

Johnny Jet (01:36:59):
I don't blame

Leo Laporte (01:37:00):
You. That was a lot of shows. 15 hour long shows in four days of taping up there. So I might have just been like cross side tired. You should

Johnny Jet (01:37:11):
Said. Sorry dude. I'm, I'm tired. I apologize. I respect that.

Leo Laporte (01:37:15):
Have we ever had dinner?

Johnny Jet (01:37:17):
Yes.

Leo Laporte (01:37:18):
Okay. Definitely

Johnny Jet (01:37:20):
<laugh>. We had dinner one time in Caballo Point.

Leo Laporte (01:37:23):
That's where you usually stay when you're in town. Yes.

Johnny Jet (01:37:25):
Yep. And then I also had dinner. We had lunch in Toronto. So

Leo Laporte (01:37:31):
Maybe never had dinner in Toronto. Cause I usually was That's success. We

Johnny Jet (01:37:34):
Had lunch with Amber Ack one time. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:37:37):
Well the lunches weren't great cuz we had taped two shows in the morning. We had to tape two shows in the afternoon. Usually we'd go out and get a cold cheese sandwich at the cafeteria next door. It wasn't fun. That's

Johnny Jet (01:37:47):
Awful. We went to sushi pretty sure.

Leo Laporte (01:37:48):
Oh, I remember going to the sushi bar with you. Yeah, that was fun. That was our fancy place. The sushi. Okay,

Johnny Jet (01:37:54):
Well you guys, guys, well you paid, so thank you. Johnny is a Johnny's a long time, a good friend. And thanks to Johnny I've traveled a lot better. A lot better since I mentioned. Well, thank you. So yeah, hopefully people will sign up to my free newsletter. Johnny jeff.com. Yes. The website is, You got a tip today, by the way. Yeah. Do you use MyQ? No. What's my door open? Oh, I, Yes, yes. Oh yes. We're both. That is the best when you're traveling. I mean, I've been in Bangkok when I'm like, Oh my God, I forgot to put the garbage out. And I'll text my neighbor, say, Hey, can you put my garbage out? And he's like, Yeah, I don't have the key to your place. I said, Just stand by the door and tell me when you're there and I'll just open the door with my phone.

(01:38:34):
And he's like, Are you kidding me? So I can open and close it right there. It takes me literally less than a minute no matter where I am in the world. So you just gotta make sure that your garage door opener has a little MyQ symbol on it. And I just looked on Amazon. They're 70 bucks right now. I think you can even get cheaper ones. Nice. Nice. Or I use a travel hack. Oh, I use it all the time. Yeah. So, and what I love about it, by the way, is that you can set an alert if it's been open for, I love that part more than 10 minutes. Cuz sometimes you forget to close a door. And these days everyone's stealing stuff. I get an alert text message or an email or both saying that your garage door has been open for 10 minutes. And I almost was

Mikah Sargent (01:39:13):
Always closed mine. But in my brain I'm going, I left that open. I know I left that open. So it's nice to have it to just not have to think about it for the rest of the day. I can go, Okay, I did close it. I'm good.

Johnny Jet (01:39:23):
Johnny started like an old man. Everyone's these days, everyone's stealing. They're stealing. They're stealing stuff. Those guys, I tell you, they come on my lawn and they take my flamingo. I take my bike. Did you get your bike stolen? I'm sorry. No, I did not. Actually. I've been, fortunately I live in a safe neighborhood, but yeah, it even in safe neighborhoods. Oh, keep your garage door closed. Oh yeah. You should definitely keep your Yes, keep your garage closed. That's

Mikah Sargent (01:39:53):
Why I keep my flamingos. I don't want

Johnny Jet (01:39:54):
Them to hang out. Yeah you have flamingos.

Mikah Sargent (01:39:58):
No, I'm just being silly.

Johnny Jet (01:39:59):
I'm sorry. Today don't apparently. But Mike has a Bengal tiger that he keeps. So those

Mikah Sargent (01:40:06):
Are illegal in California. You can't tell people.

Johnny Jet (01:40:08):
Oh yeah. Mike, you

Mikah Sargent (01:40:10):
Didn't hear that. Gavin Newsome in

Johnny Jet (01:40:12):
The ferret cage. He has. Yes. Right

Mikah Sargent (01:40:14):
Next to my ferret. Ferret. I got a ferret cage

Johnny Jet (01:40:18):
<laugh>.

Mikah Sargent (01:40:19):
No, there's a far day cage and a fair

Johnny Jet (01:40:21):
And a ferret cage. It's easily confused. Johnny jet.com is the website. Johnny jet.com/newsletter for the newsletter. You have a, of course a wonderful YouTube channel, which everyone should follow. Instagram and Twitter too. Thank you jj. Hey, thank you Leo and Micah, Your tech guys more calls after this. Yeah, baby. Right. So you're not gonna stay at Cavallo Point, huh? You know, we'll see.

Leo Laporte (01:40:55):
Okay. Surprise me. But I hope we can get together. We'll come down to the city if you want. Really. In fact, let us know what night and I'll try to get a reservation at one of our better restaurants

Johnny Jet (01:41:08):
In the city.

Leo Laporte (01:41:09):
<affirmative>.

Johnny Jet (01:41:10):
Nice. Well,

Leo Laporte (01:41:11):
Wherever you're staying. If you're staying in Sausalito, I know a great sushi in Sausalito. If you're staying in the big city. I know many great Michelin star restaurants if you want to come up here. How

Johnny Jet (01:41:23):
About Sonoma?

Leo Laporte (01:41:24):
Oh yes. I know some very good restaurants in Sonoma. I don't know if I can get in, but I'll try. Sonoma actually. Cyrus I think Cyrus will be the one to go to these days. Let me see if it's opened yet. Miley or Billy Ray? Billy Ray. Got

Johnny Jet (01:41:38):
It.

Leo Laporte (01:41:40):
I think it's in him,

Johnny Jet (01:41:41):
By the way, are you doing a show after Thanksgiving? The day after than two days

Leo Laporte (01:41:44):
After than Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Sorry to say. Yeah,

Johnny Jet (01:41:47):
Just making sure.

Leo Laporte (01:41:48):
Sorry to say.

Johnny Jet (01:41:49):
That's alright. I'll be home.

Leo Laporte (01:41:51):
The 17 course dining journey at the new Cyrus restaurant. Geyserville, How hungry are you? That's amazing. Cyrus closed in 2012 and they have reopened. And this is, I

Johnny Jet (01:42:05):
Have two little kids.

Leo Laporte (01:42:05):
Oh, you're gonna bring the kids? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, we'll go to Mickey DE's.

Johnny Jet (01:42:09):
I was gonna say let's, let's go to Chuckie Cheese. I've

Leo Laporte (01:42:11):
Got a great ball pit. <laugh>. Yeah. Cyrus is reopening, which is huge. This was the restaurant and I was so sad and I missed it up in Ka.

Johnny Jet (01:42:24):
How about the famous, the one you invited me to once? Is that still going?

Leo Laporte (01:42:29):
The French lonely

Johnny Jet (01:42:30):
Yes.

Leo Laporte (01:42:31):
Yes. Of Carice. But I think Cyrus might be better French Laundry's been there for so long. I think.

Johnny Jet (01:42:37):
I've never been there, but Oh,

Leo Laporte (01:42:39):
We should. It's so hard to get reservations. I'm sure I can't give me the date. You're gonna be in town. No,

Johnny Jet (01:42:44):
No. I'm not taking my kids to French laundry. <laugh>.

Leo Laporte (01:42:48):
You'd better not. That would be a huge error. <laugh>.

Johnny Jet (01:42:51):
Are you allowed to bring kids there,

Leo Laporte (01:42:52):
By the way? No, I'm sure you're not. Okay. I'm sure you're not. But not that they have to tell anybody that.

Johnny Jet (01:42:58):
No, just curious. All right, well I hope you guys have a good week.

Leo Laporte (01:43:03):
You as well. Stay off the Twitter, Johnny. Come on over to Mastodon. We're waiting for you at twit dot.

Johnny Jet (01:43:09):
You know what I was, I'm just watching the ship go down, man. It's too bad. It's fun to watch the learning.

Leo Laporte (01:43:14):
Love Twitter. Yeah, I know. I know.

Johnny Jet (01:43:16):
It's like, I thought the guy was so smart. How could you be so dumb doing the same things he is doing?

Leo Laporte (01:43:21):
It's kind stunning. I just don't get it. Kind of stunning. I noticed though, that his last tweets are all about space and other businesses. He's like, Somebody said, Elon, you gotta knock us off. You're, You're just really screw it up.

Johnny Jet (01:43:36):
I mean, how much could Twitter be worth now? He paid 44 billion.

Leo Laporte (01:43:39):
It wasn't worth 44 billion to be

Johnny Jet (01:43:41):
I know he overpaid then and now. It's definitely

Leo Laporte (01:43:43):
Not. Oh, you cut it in easily. Value enough. I mean, but nobody would buy it at this point. He'd be crazy.

Johnny Jet (01:43:48):
He's trying to make that fdx guy. He's trying to make that guy look

Leo Laporte (01:43:52):
Good. Oh man, that story. Whew. I guess we'll talk about that when we come back. Yeah, that's quite a story. Yeah.

Johnny Jet (01:43:59):
His jet was the most tracked flight yesterday on a flight radar 24

Leo Laporte (01:44:04):
SPF flight.

Johnny Jet (01:44:05):
Of where?

Leo Laporte (01:44:05):
Yeah. Oh, he

Johnny Jet (01:44:06):
Was supposedly going, I don't know if it's true. He disappeared. I thought he was gonna Bahamas to born Asari as Argentina.

Leo Laporte (01:44:12):
Yeah, he lives in The Bahamas.

Johnny Jet (01:44:14):
I tweeted it so you can find the tweet last night so you can see the handle.

Leo Laporte (01:44:20):
Ah.

Johnny Jet (01:44:23):
But then I saw a tweet today saying that he's in The Bahamas, but I don't know if I believe

Leo Laporte (01:44:26):
That that's where he lives.

Johnny Jet (01:44:27):
Right. But I chat was one from the private jet

Leo Laporte (01:44:31):
G4. There's a billion dollars missing. So I wouldn't be surprised if he is now fleeing the country. Oh,

Mikah Sargent (01:44:39):
I thought you were talking about a billion dollar. I thought you were talking about the whole weird. Are you talking about that? Who's billion is missing?

Leo Laporte (01:44:47):
No, no. Ftx.

Mikah Sargent (01:44:49):
This is so confusing. The whole thing. I don't, You

Johnny Jet (01:44:51):
Guys are crazy. Anyway, have a good week,

Leo Laporte (01:44:53):
You John. Bye

Mikah Sargent (01:44:54):
Bye.

Johnny Jet (01:44:55):
Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:44:58):
This is from 1943. Oh, this is country music

Mikah Sargent (01:45:10):
On the road. I need my dashboard.

Leo Laporte (01:45:14):
I love this song. I haven't heard this in ages. Not since I was a young man.

Mikah Sargent (01:45:18):
You should play the Irish Rovers, Laura. If you've got Irish rovers on there, Especially the unicorn song.

Leo Laporte (01:45:24):
Is that like

Mikah Sargent (01:45:24):
Your favorite I The Irish Rovers unicorn song. Oh,

Leo Laporte (01:45:27):
I used to work with the son of one of the rovers.

Mikah Sargent (01:45:31):
Really? Yeah. And then the what? The chewing gum song <laugh> does your

Leo Laporte (01:45:35):
Chewing gum ching gum lose its favor on the bed post overnight

Mikah Sargent (01:45:38):
Night. And if your

Leo Laporte (01:45:39):
Mother says, Ladies, ladies and gentlemen, you might wonder, what have I tuned into on the radio? This

Mikah Sargent (01:45:43):
Is the tech guy.

Leo Laporte (01:45:44):
This is the tech guy. Show

Mikah Sargent (01:45:45):
Where old people talk about. Old

Johnny Jet (01:45:48):
I. I'm

Leo Laporte (01:45:49):
The old guy here. You're supposed to be the youngin. I don't get it. Oh,

Mikah Sargent (01:45:52):
Let me see. Okay. Oh, here we go. So yesterday on TikTok

Leo Laporte (01:45:57):
<laugh>. There you go.

Mikah Sargent (01:45:58):
I was browsing the TikTok.

Leo Laporte (01:45:59):
Now we're cooking with gas. Wait a minute, I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said that. <laugh>, I am Leo Laport, the old guy. He's Mike Sergeant, the young guy. We are your tech guys, young and old, answering your calls at 88. 88. Ask Leo. We were talking with Johnny off the air about this. By the way. I want to get on record here. I have been saying, mm-hmm <affirmative>, stay away from crypto. Yes. Mm-hmm. <affirmative> stay away from NFTs. I've been saying that, haven't I?

Mikah Sargent (01:46:25):
Yes. Yeah. Leo wants to get on record saying, I told you so.

Leo Laporte (01:46:27):
I <laugh>. Well, no, I don't mean to say that. I just don't. I hope that you took my advice.

Mikah Sargent (01:46:33):
That's actually what I've been thinking about in this. I've been thinking about how for the longest time, it's a pyramid. I feel good about us being skeptical about it and not ever really encouraging because it's, Yeah, what this is every single instance of it continues to prove that it's just scam after scam after scam.

Leo Laporte (01:46:49):
It's frustrating. So the latest is ftx, which you've seen everywhere. In fact, you probably saw Tom Brady and his wife Giselle Bunin advertising How much money, Pardon me, Ex-wife, sorry. <laugh>. Laura reads the trades keeping up with this. But you might have seen those ads on the Super Bowl for ftx, which was a cryptocurrency exchange. They were doing something a little fishy all along, which was owned by a guy who really looked like a genius. A guy in his twenties who was worth at one point 92 billion. What does that even mean? Well, he even said it's not liquid, so it doesn't mean anything.

(01:47:41):
He had two companies, ftx, which was a cryptocurrency exchange. You put your wallet there and if you wanted to turn Bitcoin into Sheena IBU or something like that, you would do that. Or is it Sheba? Sheba? I always, the problem I've had <laugh>, you don't know which one. I don't know which meme, currency I should be in <laugh>. Anyway that's where you would do that on that exchange and they would hold your money for you then. But at the same time, he started a trading company called Alameda Research. He said, I used the word research cause I figured it'd be easier to get a license cuz they'd think I was a research company. Oh, lovely. That should have been a sign running the whole thing out of a penthouse in The Bahamas where the entire company lived all together on a bunch of beanbag. In a penthouse in The Bahamas. Another bad sign. <laugh>. It had turned out that they were funding the one with the other. And I think if these were regulated securities like stocks and stuff, you wouldn't be allowed to do that. This

Mikah Sargent (01:48:45):
Is what it boils down to because it's all this funny money nonsense. Then they can do whatever they want, however they want.

Leo Laporte (01:48:52):
So all of a sudden there was a run on ftx. People got spooked, they got scared. It's probably a run that was started by another competing cryptocurrency exchange called was it Binance? Or Coinbase? I think it was Coinbase. Anyway the run was started because the chairman of a Coinbase which is by the way, a Chinese company. So we're all worried about TikTok being Chinese. This is a financial company, <laugh> this Chinese. So he said, Well, I'm a little nervous about ftx. So there was a run on the bank. That's a bad thing, 6 billion worth. So people who had money at FTX said, I want our money back to the tone of 6 billion. Well, they didn't have 6 billion. They couldn't give them the money back. So they shut down trading, they closed the bank, <laugh>, <affirmative>, <laugh>, which meant you couldn't get your money out. Now they've filed for chapter 11, which is not total bankruptcy reorganization, but there's some question about whether they could even do a reorganization.

(01:50:13):
The value of Sam Bank, Friedman's Holdings has gone to zero from 92 billion. The company is in a bit of a pickle, and if you did, it was financed by the way that said, We're gonna rescue you. We're gonna come in and rescue you. This is this Chinese health company that's gonna come in and rescue you. Just as SPF and FTX had rescued before this, a number of companies, Robin Hood, the trading app, they gave them a ton of money. Blocky another crypto bank, or I guess crypto exchange. They gave them a bunch of money, eventually just kind of acquired them. So Binance was gonna come jump in and save them. Then they looked at the books and said, Oh nevermind. <laugh>. Oh boy. Now maybe it could well be that the Binance, which is a competitor for ftx, use this as an opportunity to crash ftx. I don't think so because this hurts Binance pretty badly as well. In fact, it hurts all crypto.

Mikah Sargent (01:51:15):
You suddenly have people trying to pull their money from crypto because they see these crashes

Leo Laporte (01:51:19):
Happening. And of course, companies, big venture capitalists like Sequoia, who'd pumped a lot of money into ftx, valuing it at 32 billion earlier this year, are now left holding the bag. And I hope you are not one of those people who put money in Fdx, cuz you probably will never see that money again. As much as a billion dollars seems to have disappeared. And we were talking with Johnny about this because sbf, this young guy, Stanford guy who started the whole thing and was LA lauded by many as being a genius. He was, I think a little bit greenwashing his reputation by saving these other companies, by saying he wanted to practice effective altruism and give back and he was gonna give all the money back. So everybody thought, Oh, this guy's a golden boy. Well his private jet flew off to Argentina from The Bahamas, according to Johnny Now he says, Oh no, that was just my jet. I'm still in The Bahamas. People are keeping an eye on this cat. You have to now, he may have some of your money or a lot of your money an unbelievable collapse. Basically just add it to the collapses boom, boom boom of crypto and NFT schemes over this past year. If you're interested in kind of following this, his whole saga, there's a wonderful website called Web three is going great. I

Mikah Sargent (01:52:51):
Love

Leo Laporte (01:52:51):
That. <laugh> by Molly White. She writes about crypto web. The number three is going great.com. Web three is another scammy Bitcoin nft, blockchain. Blockchain brother. That is not the web. In fact the guy who invented the web, Tim Bernes Lee just came out saying it is, that's not the web. That's something else. FTX is now saying they were hacked and 600 million was mysteriously withdrawn yesterday. <laugh> mysteriously withdrawn yesterday despite the company freezing withdrawals. That's the latest

Mikah Sargent (01:53:32):
I'm look, no, cuz we can't say what that

Leo Laporte (01:53:35):
Is. We don't know what's going on. But it's tell you if you, my wife, I didn't know this, but we had an advertiser a couple years ago it was block fi that had a credit card that the points you would gain. Oh right, yes. Would be in crypto, would be in Bitcoin. And she said, yeah, used, she used it for a long time. <affirmative>, she had their nice black block fi card. She said, I had a lot of Bitcoin. I said, Well I don't think you have any more now. I would check. I would check. So I think there are a lot of people now that's not really losing money, that's just losing points. But yeah, I hope Anyway, I hope you listened and if you are thinking about, Oh, diversifying into crypto at this point I would say just wait, wait, wait a little bit. Leo and Micah, your tech guys, three coins in the

Mikah Sargent (01:54:36):
Fountain mentioned that it adds a whole lot of complexity to filing your taxes if

Leo Laporte (01:54:40):
You Oh yeah. Do anything. Yeah. Yeah. Cuz they expect you to pay taxes on your gains. Your ill gotten gains.

Mikah Sargent (01:54:47):
I remember I signed up for some wallet at some point just to have some level of awareness of how any of this worked and the wallet gave like five blah blah coins or whatever and having to report that it didn't affect my taxes, but it's just like, it's one extra thing to have to pay attention to. So thinking about the people who did make any level of money on that and how that's all played is,

Leo Laporte (01:55:11):
Well, what did we say? What did we say last week? Last week I was talking about artists <affirmative> and that all the games rely basically on your greed. Yes. As a victim they get you because you go, Oh, free money. Yeah, I could.

Mikah Sargent (01:55:25):
I could get into

Leo Laporte (01:55:26):
This money a bunch of money and then

Mikah Sargent (01:55:28):
They make

Leo Laporte (01:55:29):
A bunch of money. So I think to some degree, a lot of this is people expecting to make tons of money. It's speculative, but there's always a risk. So he says, Oh no, I'm still in The Bahamas re's, got a text message. So there you go. That must be true. <laugh> denying rumors that he flew to South America. Wow. Yeah. It's not regulated in the same way as securities. And I think a lot of people said it should

Mikah Sargent (01:56:14):
Be. Yeah, they're tr and they're trying to. Yeah. But I don't know, I think it's gonna flame out before any regulations end up getting in place. Maybe don't quote me on that.

Leo Laporte (01:56:23):
It feels like it's flaming out right now,

Mikah Sargent (01:56:24):
Doesn't it? Yeah. And I think about the original individual who created Bitcoin all those years ago, who is allegedly an Australian person, if I remember correctly. Or maybe New Zealander. And if what that person had in mind is what we're seeing, what's what it's become today. Cuz I don't think that was ever the intention of the coinage.

Leo Laporte (01:56:57):
Well hey. Hey, how are you today? Leo LaPorte, Micah Sergeant, your tech guys, we're here to answer your questions. Talk about tech. 88. 88. Ask Leo the phone number. (888) 827-5536 Tollfree from anywhere in the US or Canada. We were talking in last hour, at the end of the last hour about this whole crypto thing going on, this scandal and so forth. And I think maybe it sounded very confusing. There is a simple bottom line. Do not invest in crypto. Do not deal with crypto. Do not buy NFTs. Or if you do, you're buying it from an artist you love and you just want to give them a donation.

Mikah Sargent (01:57:34):
It's just about giving

Leo Laporte (01:57:35):
Them money. It's a donation. Don't expect to make money on an ft. It really is starting to look like the whole thing was a Ponzi scheme from day one. The people got an early made money

Mikah Sargent (01:57:47):
<affirmative>,

Leo Laporte (01:57:48):
People getting late, lose money.

Mikah Sargent (01:57:50):
There will be documentaries and

Leo Laporte (01:57:52):
Movies. I can't wait. They did WeWork, which was the story of the WeWork that was fantastic. On Apple Plus we crashed. <laugh>, I think was the name of that. Yeah, yeah. There was one about Uber. Uber, yeah. There was one about the story of Theranos, Elizabeth Holmes story. That was really good. Yeah. Somebody's gonna have to make a story about ftx. And you've seen ads for FTX all over the place. Tom Brady and Giselle doing ads for this. Somebody asked Matt Damon, Matt did those ads for a crypto. Fortune favors the brave. Remember

Mikah Sargent (01:58:34):
That? Oh dear. Shouldn't that be illegal <laugh>? You can't make certain promises about other types of investments.

Leo Laporte (01:58:41):
Well, and the idea was, oh, you know, should invest in crypto. You should. Because fortune, if you wanna be brave, be brave. Yeah. Fortune fa, that was October 28th, 2021, almost exactly a year ago was an ad for a company called crypto.com. On that day, crypto Bitcoin was trading at $60,000. What is Bitcoin today? A year later, if you bought all of that Bitcoin, cuz Matt Damon told you to, it is now $16,800. You would've lost $44,000 per coin.

Mikah Sargent (01:59:21):
But the cowards save their money.

Leo Laporte (01:59:23):
Coward saved their money. Fortune favors the brave. Don't believe this stuff. Okay. It's not, it's leave it to others to get, You see, this is the problem. This is what Vegas does too. You highlight, you advertise the winners. Yeah. You talk about the Bitcoin billionaires there are made, there's these young guys. They're in their twenties, they're worth billions of dollars. You could be too. No, you can't because just like Vegas, <laugh>, those billions of dollars come from somewhere and you know where they come from. Us, the suckers, the

Mikah Sargent (01:59:53):
Ones who lost

Leo Laporte (01:59:55):
The brave Mike is on the line. Phoenix, Arizona. Hello, Mike.

Caller 5 (02:00:01):
Uncle Leo, I need your

Leo Laporte (02:00:03):
Help. Oh, yes sir. I'm glad to help. Say hi to nephew Micah while you're out. <laugh>.

Mikah Sargent (02:00:08):
Hi

Caller 5 (02:00:09):
Mike. Okay guys. Now, okay. Obviously I could Google this, but I can't get a straight answer. And the geniuses at the Apple store don't know. Oh,

Leo Laporte (02:00:17):
This guy. This guy's a super genius. He's the Apple genius. Go ahead.

Caller 5 (02:00:21):
Okay. Okay. I'm gonna be impressed if you guys can figure this out. Okay, so I have a question on the Apple air tags. Okay, so lemme preface the iPads that I have. I always buy the cellular iPads. I never activate it, but when I travel using the map in my car, it always tells you where you are <affirmative>. Okay. So if I took a spare iPad, like say my iPad mini fives, okay. Turned on and I hit it in my car and someone steals my car and drives it to Kansas, I can use my phone to find my iPhone and I can see where that iPad is sitting in some guy's driveway in Kansas. Okay. Right. How come I, I can't do that with the Apple air tag and no one will gimme a straight answer.

Mikah Sargent (02:01:01):
What makes you think that you cannot do that with the Apple air tag?

Caller 5 (02:01:06):
Because they tell me that it works on Bluetooth. No, no, no, no. And I,

Leo Laporte (02:01:10):
No, you could do that with the ear tag, but the difference is because people were using tags to track and stalk other people <affirmative>, the air tag will announce itself. So anybody with an iPhone in who stole your car, the iPhone will say you're traveling with an unknown air tag. It will announce itself. This is to protect people from being stalked. It will not do that with an iPad though. Okay.

Caller 5 (02:01:35):
Correct. The

Mikah Sargent (02:01:36):
Thing about the

Caller 5 (02:01:37):
You logged in.

Mikah Sargent (02:01:37):
Yeah. Yeah. The thing about the iPad that's a little bit different from an air tag is it's not meant to do that. And so if you have a non cellular iPad, it has to try to connect to some wifi network somewhere in order for you to be able to use it. The battery's going to run out sooner because it's on. So an air tag is the device that's more likely to be able to have you be able to track it across different areas.

Leo Laporte (02:01:59):
Here, let me explain. The magic of what Apple's doing it is Bluetooth. Yes. It doesn't have GPS in the air tag, but it's done in such a way that any Apple device that comes near it sees it and phones home and says, I saw Mike's air tag in Poughkeepsie. And then when now it does this in an anonymous way so the phone owner doesn't know that that happened. It's protecting, it's really air tag X 37 42. But what happens is the Apple databases record that. And then when Mike goes online says, Where's my air tag? It was last seen in Poughkeepsie. The reason this works so well is there's so many iPhones and Apple devices in the world. Now, if your bad guy drives it into a driveway that's nowhere near anybody else, you won't know where it's, You

Mikah Sargent (02:02:51):
Wouldn't be able to find it.

Caller 5 (02:02:53):
There you go. So they take it to a town and everyone has an Android, then I'm not gonna be able to go

Mikah Sargent (02:03:01):
An Android city, Arkansas.

Leo Laporte (02:03:03):
And the key on this is where the air tag was last seen. By which they mean this is where the air tag was last seen by an Apple device. I should point out that for less than an air tag, we're not much more, Anyway, you can buy a little GPS device with a magnet on it that

Mikah Sargent (02:03:20):
Has fewer privacy protections in place for

Leo Laporte (02:03:22):
That works much better. Beep.

Mikah Sargent (02:03:25):
Anything like that really? Yeah.

Caller 5 (02:03:28):
If you can put a suggest. Well the thing is, I just bought a different car and I used to have a LoJack.

Leo Laporte (02:03:32):
Yeah, this is like a LoJack. Except it's on your, you know, you're, you know how to reach it. Yeah.

Caller 5 (02:03:38):
Yeah. So can you put some suggestions in your show notes?

Leo Laporte (02:03:43):
Here's what you do. You go to Amazon.

Caller 5 (02:03:46):
Yeah.

Leo Laporte (02:03:47):
And you search for mobile GPS tracker for vehicles. And you will see, let me just give you, I'm seeing dozens of them. Most of them have magnetic mounts. I wonder why. Here's one for 30 bucks. There's quite a few of them. And depends on the functionality, right? <affirmative> the land CER 54 GPS tracker 2023 version. Just a little in discreet device with a magnet. Uses

Mikah Sargent (02:04:15):
Cellular.

Leo Laporte (02:04:16):
Uses cellular personal GPS for reliable tracking of people, vehicles and or assets. Waterproof super strength magnet fits in small pockets discreetly hide in a backpack case of burst. This is why Apple was a little surprised by all of the privacy concerns over Apple air tags. Because this is the same price as an air tag

Mikah Sargent (02:04:41):
And its much better expensive

Leo Laporte (02:04:42):
And it's much better. You could track and map with Google Maps in real time on web-based software <laugh>.

Caller 5 (02:04:50):
But if I try to use it as a low jack, how often do I have to take it out my car in charge? The battery.

Leo Laporte (02:04:56):
Oh, I wonder how long the battery lasts. Let's see, let's see. And just read the reviews. I think in most of these cases,

Mikah Sargent (02:05:00):
Rechargeable battery can last up to one to two weeks.

Leo Laporte (02:05:03):
Oh, not long. That's disappointing. Ah,

Caller 5 (02:05:06):
All right.

Leo Laporte (02:05:06):
I'm sure there's some that go longer, but they're gonna be bigger. Right.

Caller 5 (02:05:09):
Okay. I, That's what got me confused cuz they keep saying that the Apple tags use Bluetooth and I'm like Bluetooth works for 30 feet. Right. That's what part, That's what didn't excessive.

Mikah Sargent (02:05:19):
Got it. Okay. Yes. And

Leo Laporte (02:05:20):
There have been other Bluetooth trackers. There's lots of 'em. Tile does it. But the problem is Apple has this vast

Mikah Sargent (02:05:26):
Network, huge network. Whereas with tile, they were relying on other customers who had the tile app on their phone. So that could, the tile app was essentially looking at the Bluetooth connections from the phone. And when it found one that was a tile tracker, then it could say, Oh then this is where this device is. That same company Land Arc makes a version that plugs into the O B D two port. So then in that case you wouldn't need to charge it, it would just be running. And as long as the person who's trying to steal your vehicle doesn't think to look in the O B D two port, then you would be able to use it. But there are bigger ones that are I guess, tougher to hide but would last a lot longer. <affirmative>

Caller 5 (02:06:04):
Interesting. Cause you know what a lot of people are doing with their older iPads that have the cellular function is if they have a little travel trailer and they go camping, they hide it in their travel trailer. So they disappear for the day and someone rips off their trailer, they can find it.

Leo Laporte (02:06:16):
It's not a bad idea. It depends where the trailer is.

Caller 5 (02:06:20):
Have an older where it ends up an older iPad and

Leo Laporte (02:06:23):
Yeah. That's not a bad idea at all. Especially cuz you're gonna be able to use the iPad when you get where you're going. Right. It's not like you bought a device that you're never gonna get to use for anything else. So Yeah. So that's how it works. It sees other people's Apple devices. It's not, is it just iPhones? No,

Mikah Sargent (02:06:41):
It's no any participating device. So if you use fine my on your device, iPad, iPhone, Mac, even then it can use those as well. So how

Leo Laporte (02:06:49):
About your watch?

Mikah Sargent (02:06:50):
That's a good question. I don't know about the

Leo Laporte (02:06:52):
Watch. Mike and I both wear giant Apple watches huge. But I know my wife could find me. I don't know how she's doing that. <laugh>. I told her I was at the office, but it turns out that was the name

Mikah Sargent (02:07:04):
Of her. Every single one of your shoes has a GPS record. You just didn't know.

Leo Laporte (02:07:09):
88. 88 asked Leo the phone number. Micah, Leo, the GWiz coming up in about half an hour with a crazy gadget or gizmo. More of your calls right after this.

John Slanina (02:07:34):
I

John Slanina (02:07:34):
Think you brave?

Leo Laporte (02:07:36):
Yes.

John Slanina (02:07:37):
<laugh>.

Leo Laporte (02:07:37):
What do you got there? Mr. Mr. John. John. The living

John Slanina (02:07:41):
Room. We got one in the living room. We have one in the round table. This is an analog node.

Leo Laporte (02:07:45):
Oh

John Slanina (02:07:46):
Wow. So I got analog nodes specifically for analog inputs, Line level inputs as opposed to Mike notes, which have Mike preempts in them.

Leo Laporte (02:07:56):
Yeah.

John Slanina (02:07:58):
Specifically.

Leo Laporte (02:07:58):
So we could plug in what

John Slanina (02:08:01):
IPad today? iOS today

Leo Laporte (02:08:04):
We Oh that's right. We had that little dongle

John Slanina (02:08:07):
Ports.

Leo Laporte (02:08:07):
The courage ports. What is a courage? The he jets. Oh, got it. So these are all useless in other words. Well we got no analog inputs.

John Slanina (02:08:17):
Actually, I'm going to repurpose this for my planned analog backup system.

Leo Laporte (02:08:20):
Good. I like it. Put this right

John Slanina (02:08:22):
Next to

Leo Laporte (02:08:23):
The analog. Brilliant. You're brilliant.

John Slanina (02:08:25):
And I can have ins and outs to

Leo Laporte (02:08:27):
The D If the Axia completely dies on us. We want to have an to the AY dies the power station. Yeah. The

John Slanina (02:08:32):
Nodes and the switches still mark. Yeah. So I can still get to the nodes and

Leo Laporte (02:08:36):
Then we can go analog for the analog feature. Yeah.

John Slanina (02:08:39):
But it just blows me away that I bet I spent $6,000 on two of these for I So we could listen to iPads.

Leo Laporte (02:08:46):
Oh wow. It's just for iPad. iOS today. Oh really? Today. Wow.

John Slanina (02:08:50):
And

Leo Laporte (02:08:51):
Now it's all digital. We have airplane. This place is loaded with obsolete tech. <laugh>. Face it.

John Slanina (02:08:59):
I got an idea of what to

Leo Laporte (02:09:00):
Do with it. I'm glad you have some way to reuse it. I am. Get

John Slanina (02:09:02):
Around

Leo Laporte (02:09:02):
To building my, But honestly who would know, look at everything back here. <laugh>, right? I mean who would know? This is the word of the modern times. And I always think this John, I just thought again with the Zoom iso, you have been amazing since day one at saying, okay, how do we solve this <affirmative>? And I don't think I give you anywhere near enough credit cuz you really do a good job. You have built this from scratch with

John Slanina (02:09:35):
A lot of help from Russell

Leo Laporte (02:09:36):
And Russell's. Great.

John Slanina (02:09:37):
So I had a major conceptual failure

Leo Laporte (02:09:43):
Uhoh with you figured out what you figured it out.

John Slanina (02:09:47):
So I made a new I don't know how much time we have.

Leo Laporte (02:09:51):
We got 40 seconds <laugh>.

John Slanina (02:09:53):
I made a new

Leo Laporte (02:09:54):
Will we be able to use it tomorrow?

John Slanina (02:09:56):
<affirmative>? I made a new session on the Well I'll tell you about it later.

Leo Laporte (02:10:00):
Okay. Okay. We'll talk later. Thank you. He's amazing. <affirmative>. If you go back in this server room, it's like, this is insane. It really is. And then I really screwed him up because when we moved from the old place, <laugh>, I said, You have 24 hours <laugh>. No, I didn't even say that John. Right. I said, we're gonna decommission the last show in the brick house and then I want to be able to do the next show in the site studio. And you were able to do it.

John Slanina (02:10:39):
Russell said, No way.

Leo Laporte (02:10:40):
Russell said, Can't do it. This

John Slanina (02:10:42):
Is the editors. Yeah. Getting all of their system up and coming in a new place. You said that we would have four days. Yeah, we would in on a Wednesday

Leo Laporte (02:10:51):
And on a Wednesday. Be back on Saturday.

John Slanina (02:10:53):
Yeah.

Leo Laporte (02:10:54):
Is that what we did?

John Slanina (02:10:55):
Said? No, we can do it. We can do

Leo Laporte (02:10:57):
It. You're the amazing Well it happens. You're the man John <laugh>. You did it. Lost

John Slanina (02:11:03):
A lot of sleep.

Leo Laporte (02:11:04):
I thank you. It's kind of amazing. I don't know how we could have done this without him. Truly an amazing fella. Leo LaPorte, Micah Sergeant and Professor Laura, our musical director, imposing her personality on the show. <laugh> without ever speaking a word. It's amazing. I found out the other day that she actually could talk on the show if she wanted to. But she doesn't ever press that button. She only talks in my ear. Yeah.

Laura (02:11:37):
I mean, I could if I wanted to,

Mikah Sargent (02:11:38):
But Yeah, but you don't

Laura (02:11:40):
Like right now. I just

Mikah Sargent (02:11:41):
Turned it on. Are you on? Yeah. Yeah. Say hi to Professor Laura, everybody. Oh wait, they ca you can't hear them. All those tiny voices out there. Hang.

Laura (02:11:49):
I wanna Leo. Hey, this is all Leo. He talks to the bosses and he got me a mic.

Mikah Sargent (02:11:55):
<laugh> came

Laura (02:11:56):
In, They connected it. They connected it. I saw them. Thank you Leo.

Leo Laporte (02:12:00):
No, you've had that all along. I know you.

Laura (02:12:02):
No, that's not true. No,

Mikah Sargent (02:12:03):
Really? No, they <laugh>.

Leo Laporte (02:12:07):
See, as soon as she opens his mouth, she's lying to me.

Mikah Sargent (02:12:11):
It's, It's a young people thing. We speak almost

Leo Laporte (02:12:14):
Exclusively sarcasm. Thank you Laura. And what a great song. That is a great song. Let us get back to the phones however. Okay. Laura you can turn off the mic now.

Mikah Sargent (02:12:23):
What's up? Breathing.

Leo Laporte (02:12:25):
<laugh>. Joe is on the line from Longwood, Florida. Hello Joe the

Mikah Sargent (02:12:30):
Third Joe. Today

Leo Laporte (02:12:31):
It's been Joe Day on the show.

Caller 6 (02:12:33):
It's a Joe Day. Yay. Hi Leo and Micah. How you doing? Doing well. I have a que I go listen to you guys about four years and wish I knew about you sooner, but unfortunately I did not.

Leo Laporte (02:12:44):
I'm sorry. Yeah.

Caller 6 (02:12:45):
A question that's probably gonna be more related to Micah. I have an iPhone and an iPad and I use the iPad for work. A lot of times I got my AirPod Pro and my AirPods connected to them. Is there a way of doing the hey blank to distinguish which one is which?

Mikah Sargent (02:13:04):
Ah. So you're saying when you say it, you want either your iPhone to respond to you or the iPad to respond to you, but you want it to kind of be in control of that.

Caller 6 (02:13:14):
Yeah, kind. Cause the way it is right now, when I do that, I'll just go ahead and do the closest thing to my body, which in most cases the iPhone, not the iPad.

Mikah Sargent (02:13:21):
Right. Unfortunately the only way that I can think to do this, and I agree there should be like, Hey, you know who on my iPhone, <affirmative> da da da da da. What? The only way that I could think to do this is by being a bit of a voice changer where when you train it, Hello. Yeah. And then that way, Yeah. Unfortunately the way that, and I will say this is not just an Apple thing. Amazon does this as well. They will try to, if you've got much to

Leo Laporte (02:13:50):
Nearest

Mikah Sargent (02:13:51):
Echoes, Yeah. They kinda use the microphone to tell you what's nearest. There isn't a way to,

Leo Laporte (02:13:56):
But if you're sitting here as I am with a phone and a, let's say a home pod <affirmative> and how would it know which one I'm talking to? Well

Mikah Sargent (02:14:04):
It also depends on the command. So it's contextual about that as well. If you ask for something that the home pod can't do and your iPhone's closer than it is more likely, I'm not gonna say it works every time, but it's more likely to go forward on your iPhone

Leo Laporte (02:14:18):
Knowing that

Mikah Sargent (02:14:19):
That's knowing that that's where you probably meant to do it. Yeah. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (02:14:23):
This raises a huge rant that I've gone on before and I'll do it quickly, which is these companies have the capability to allow you to assign the trigger word <affirmative>. In fact, it was in 2013, the Moto X came out and you could tell it. I don't wanna say, Hey Google, I want it to be Help me, you're my only hope. That's what I did. I recorded that and it worked and it rarely triggered wrong. And even though I might have other Google devices around it knew I was talking to it, you could give them different names. Companies can do this. The technology's been around for 10 years. I don't know why they don't drives me nuts. They could solve so many problems. And now by the way, Apple is according to Mark Gman, the rumor guy trying to take hay away. <affirmative>, they just want you to say the S word and that's not gonna be enough. That's gonna trigger accidentally more often. Yep.

Caller 6 (02:15:21):
Okay.

Leo Laporte (02:15:21):
Drives

Mikah Sargent (02:15:22):
Me nuts. I'm sorry Joe, that we don't have a better answer other than do

Leo Laporte (02:15:26):
Some voice. The answer's a bad answer, but that's the way Apple does it.

Caller 6 (02:15:29):
Well the one we're trying to do is do the other voice. I try that.

Mikah Sargent (02:15:33):
Hello? See Yeah, you could do deeper. My

Leo Laporte (02:15:37):
Work iPad is my deeper voice <laugh> and so it can tell,

Caller 6 (02:15:41):
I can impersonate,

Leo Laporte (02:15:42):
It can. Oh by the way, all my devices are now going off saying, Oh, in fact it looks like you've taken a hard fall. <laugh>. No, I'm okay. I was just making a funny voice. I did not fall. That's crazy.

Mikah Sargent (02:15:56):
Well, good luck and have fun exercising those vocal chords. Do

Leo Laporte (02:16:01):
You think that maybe it thought, cuz I was talking like that I was injured.

Mikah Sargent (02:16:04):
I think it's because you slammed your hand down. It looks

Leo Laporte (02:16:05):
Like you've had

Mikah Sargent (02:16:06):
A stroke. Do you remember slamming your hand down? Did

Leo Laporte (02:16:08):
I slam my hand down?

Mikah Sargent (02:16:08):
Yeah. Yeah. You went like,

Leo Laporte (02:16:10):
So the watch should know and say, I think you're in a rant right now.

Mikah Sargent (02:16:14):
Yeah. This is ranting.

Leo Laporte (02:16:15):
Either you've taken a hog fall or you're ranting about something. <laugh>. Which is it? That's

Mikah Sargent (02:16:20):
A Amazon tried to do that.

Leo Laporte (02:16:22):
We're lucky it didn't call 9 1 1. I just happened to notice

Mikah Sargent (02:16:24):
If you paid a Yeah, cuz you paid attention. Oh, can you imagine? They show up? What's going on here? Oh, Leo was just ranting again. <laugh>

Leo Laporte (02:16:33):
Red con. Our chat room says, Leo, would you like to be checked into a psych ward?

Mikah Sargent (02:16:37):
Right.

Leo Laporte (02:16:38):
No thank

Mikah Sargent (02:16:39):
You. No, I was just killing a fly. Yeah, gum be

Leo Laporte (02:16:43):
I can, I wonder, can you adjust the sensitivity of the fall? Oh, sensor.

Mikah Sargent (02:16:48):
So I have a false sense. The fall sensor turned so that it only works while I'm doing exercises. It does not, no.

Leo Laporte (02:16:56):
Let's see. What if I But you, I'm an old man, I could fall walking out the

Mikah Sargent (02:16:59):
Door, but that's the only choice right now. Break

Leo Laporte (02:17:02):
A

Mikah Sargent (02:17:02):
Hip, unfortunately,

Leo Laporte (02:17:03):
Lie there squirming and then my watch would say, well you're not exercising, so I figure you're all right. No, it should be the other way around. I think so too. You have it set so it does.

Mikah Sargent (02:17:12):
It only works during exercises. So yeah, there's, let me see, I'm gonna go into watch.

Leo Laporte (02:17:17):
It should be the other way around. Don't do it when I'm not exercise. I mean only do it when I'm not exercising.

Mikah Sargent (02:17:22):
Right. That's what I thought too. And I don't know why it is the other way, but let's see, where is that health? Where

Leo Laporte (02:17:29):
Here Apple has a support document, which we'll put in the show notes, what to do if the wrong device responds to, Hey, you know who make sure each device has Bluetooth turned on. If Bluetooth is turned off or device isn't in Bluetooth range of other devices, it doesn't know the other device is there. Oh, that's interesting. Make sure each device is using the latest Apple software. Some older software, multiple devices might answer on each device that you want to use with, Hey Schlomo, make sure that hey, Schlomo is turned on. Well of course if you have an iPhone or iPad, you could place it face down and then it won't respond to, Hey Schlomo, really put it face down. Well, there you go

Mikah Sargent (02:18:07):
Joe. I hope you still

Leo Laporte (02:18:08):
Listening. If you have a home pod, you can say, Hey Schlomo, turn off. Hey Schlomo, by the way, you understand I'm using Schlomo in place of the other ones.

Mikah Sargent (02:18:16):
S iri. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (02:18:17):
Or use the home app to turn off. Listen for hey Schlomo to turn it back on, blah blah, blah. If you have, We'll put this in the show notes. There's some good stuff. You can close the lid on your Mac so it won't respond. There you go.

Mikah Sargent (02:18:27):
Yeah. So I guess there is one way

Leo Laporte (02:18:29):
More calls after this by Mike and Cam with, Yeah, with Echo you can have a big variety of mm-hmm.

Mikah Sargent (02:18:44):
<affirmative>, There's Ziggy, there's Echo.

Leo Laporte (02:18:47):
Ziggy computer, computer, A L E X A <affirmative> I. This one will respond to

Mikah Sargent (02:18:53):
Amazon. You can also choose Amazon.

Leo Laporte (02:18:55):
Hey Samuel, why do you curse so much

Mikah Sargent (02:19:01):
Here?

Leo Laporte (02:19:02):
Curse

Speaker 16 (02:19:02):
So much.

Leo Laporte (02:19:08):
Hey Melissa, what's the weather?

Speaker 16 (02:19:13):
I was wondering the same thing. Right now in Petaluma it's 60 degrees Fahrenheit with clear skies and sun. Today's forecast is clouds with a chance of showers with a highest 61

Mikah Sargent (02:19:24):
Degrees,

Speaker 16 (02:19:25):
34

Leo Laporte (02:19:26):
Degrees. Yeah, that's the automatic one.

Mikah Sargent (02:19:28):
Yeah. So fall detection, you can toggle it on or off. And then there's a choice between having it always on or only on during workouts. It says the more physically active you

AI (02:19:36):
Are. I don't know that

Mikah Sargent (02:19:37):
<laugh>, I wasn't talking to you. You must have follow up mode turned on. The more physically active you are, the more likely you are to trigger fall detection due to high impact activity that can appear to be a fall. Enabling fall detection only during workouts may reduce false detections. Ah. I thought I'm somewhat active so I don't want to have it trigger when I'm doing my rants. So then I turned that on.

Leo Laporte (02:19:57):
That's so weird. It seems like it should be the opposite. Right? Because I almost always trigger when I'm doing, What are those pushups you do with

Mikah Sargent (02:20:05):
Your

Leo Laporte (02:20:06):
Fists? With dumbbells in your hands? Oh golly. And you lift them up. They always go down like that. Oops.

Mikah Sargent (02:20:12):
<laugh> check again. It appears you've had a hard fall.

Leo Laporte (02:20:19):
Hey Echo computer.

Mikah Sargent (02:20:22):
You

Leo Laporte (02:20:23):
Have Ziggy. Ziggy. What names can I call you?

AI (02:20:30):
I'm not sure.

Leo Laporte (02:20:32):
Ziggy, what's your name?

AI (02:20:35):
I share this name with lots of amazing people.

Mikah Sargent (02:20:40):
Ziggy, what's your wake word?

AI (02:20:42):
There are four wake words. Echo, Amazon, and computer to change the wake word. Just ask Alexa, can you change your wake word?

Leo Laporte (02:20:57):
Hayes. Schlomo Elmer. Fun. Hey Elmer. Hey look at Wake.

Mikah Sargent (02:21:03):
Wow, it's listening.

Leo Laporte (02:21:04):
What vo celebrity voices can you do?

AI (02:21:08):
I'm glad you asked. I can help with morning activities, <laugh>, relaxation, education and more. Which would you like to explore?

Leo Laporte (02:21:17):
Cancel. Hey Ziggy, celebrity voices.

AI (02:21:26):
Here you go.

Leo Laporte (02:21:29):
<laugh>

Mikah Sargent (02:21:31):
Ideas. Me.

AI (02:21:34):
I

Leo Laporte (02:21:35):
Don't know that. I know you don't. <affirmative> B, B, B. Whose voice can you do? <laugh>

Mikah Sargent (02:21:47):
Just completely was

Leo Laporte (02:21:48):
Like she says I've, I'm not having any of it. You loser.

Mikah Sargent (02:21:52):
<laugh>. Don't talk to me. Loser.

Leo Laporte (02:21:54):
Loser. Well, I have Samuel Jackson and Melissa McCarthy. I like them. I think thinks

Mikah Sargent (02:21:59):
And then you came their I on the holidays.

Leo Laporte (02:22:00):
But the problem is it doesn't turn off Ziggy.

Mikah Sargent (02:22:04):
Got it. So you Yeah. Yeah. Cuz you were able to say Melissa and Samuel, those had to have Hayes in front of them though versus Ziggy, which can just be that on its own.

Leo Laporte (02:22:13):
Shaquila, O'Neal, Gordon Ramsey.

Mikah Sargent (02:22:16):
Oh my. Gordon Ramsey's shouting at you. O

Leo Laporte (02:22:19):
Sh Ziggy. Oops. Ziggy introduced me to Gordon Ramsey.

AI (02:22:30):
Do you mean Gordon Square Market? 5,605?

Leo Laporte (02:22:33):
Definitely <laugh>. No.

AI (02:22:38):
All right.

Leo Laporte (02:22:40):
That was really weird. Is that a robot?

AI (02:22:43):
To an Alexa. Answers.

Leo Laporte (02:22:44):
That's a robo. Gordon Ramsey. Leo Laport, Micah Sergeant, Your tech guys on the radio. If you have not seen the hysterical Saturday Night Live skit about Amazon Echo for seniors it is a must see. It's hysterical. Just all you have to do is Google echo silver, cuz that's what they call it. The echo silver. And wow. That just shows you the number of possible names you can use for your Amazon Echo <laugh>. It's quite hysterical. 88. 88. Ask Leo the number. Micah. Sergeant Leo Laport. I think this is our last call segment, so let's get some in here. What do you say? Is there another Joe <laugh>? Is there another Joe? No, Carolyn, unfortunately. Well, not unfortunately. Not unfortunately. Fortunately Carolyn have you here? Carolyn from Sedona, Arizona. Hi Carolyn.

Caller 7 (02:23:41):
Hi Leo. Hi Micah. Hello. Speaking of seniors I'm the senior in the group and I help a lot of my friends figure things out. Good

Leo Laporte (02:23:53):
For you. Nice. Good for

Caller 7 (02:23:54):
You. First <laugh> first I have a public service comment. And then maybe a question for Micah if we have time. These devices don't come with any instructions and a lot of it is intuitive and

Leo Laporte (02:24:10):
Or not <affirmative>, depending on or not, You're mixed to intuitive.

Caller 7 (02:24:13):
Yeah, I, I'll give you, And so it's really hard for people who aren't intuitive with these devices to figure them out. Why

Leo Laporte (02:24:22):
Do I know that? I'll

Caller 7 (02:24:23):
Give you an example. And no one helps them and no one helps them. So I have a friend who has a Roku TV in Connecticut and she has been without Netflix for a week. Oh no. She has premier. Premier internet. And she can't access net Netflix. And she said, Well Premier is not letting me. So she called Premier, she was on the phone with them for 45 minutes. They said, No, it's not us, it's Netflix. And so she called Netflix and of course Netflix says, No, it's not us from

Leo Laporte (02:24:56):
Here. So frustrating for normal people.

Caller 7 (02:24:58):
So I

Leo Laporte (02:25:00):
Know it's so frustrating.

Caller 7 (02:25:01):
So she finally called me and I said, Okay, go over to your tv. She has a Roco tv. I said, We're gonna reboot, we're gonna reset your Netflix channel.

Leo Laporte (02:25:13):
<affirmative> good syncing. So

Caller 7 (02:25:14):
I walked her through because obviously her TV was the problem. She had a update or something <affirmative> and then there was a glitch. The handshake didn't happen. So in two minutes we had her Netflix back. Of course.

Leo Laporte (02:25:31):
And this is a perfect example because you, Carolyn, for some reason, is it a gene? What is it? Your brain understands that and works that way.

Caller 7 (02:25:41):
Yeah, I'm like a duck in water. So

Leo Laporte (02:25:44):
You and Micah were in the same boat,

Mikah Sargent (02:25:46):
We're in the same water, all of us are ducks.

Caller 7 (02:25:49):
But her question to me was, why didn't they tell me to do that? Right. But I said, the problem wasn't them. The problem was your tv. So they didn't have anything to do with that, but no one told her. So how a lot of people have this problem, they're open up their iPad, there's a blank screen, they don't know that all they need to do is reboot it or even there's know when they're stuck. So anyway,

Leo Laporte (02:26:18):
I'm, I'm gonna venture a guess. I think that often customer service reps are hired poorly trained, given a notebook. And the most important thing is they lack that gene that you've got Carolyn, that intuitively understands, oh you just need to reboot. And so they're going through the notebook. That's why it takes 45 minutes. And they don't, either they don't think or or more likely they're normal <laugh>. And they don't. And they don't can't. So this is why people like you are so valuable to the community because for some reason you're wired that way that you understand what's going on,

Caller 7 (02:26:58):
Right? Yeah. Because there it's, And she could not understand it. No.

Leo Laporte (02:27:05):
The other problem is that this stuff is all designed by people like you who do understand it. Engineers intuitively get it and they go, Well I don't get why she doesn't. Why don't they get it? Why doesn't she get it?

Caller 7 (02:27:17):
Yeah. I mean if we opened up our iPad and it was blank, we'd go, Oh yeah, it just needs to be rebooted. Yeah. We would automatically go, Oh no problem, blah blah blah. Or figure it out. But to her it's like there's no way to go.

Mikah Sargent (02:27:32):
You get stuck. No, you just, what do I do now? It's broken and she's doing what she thinks she's supposed to, which is call. And I think that it is part partly that intuitiveness is not there, but I think another failing oftentimes of the customer service rep is not listening and just that this assumption that the person probably doesn't know what they're talking about. And so you just need to follow these instructions that I have in front of me. And if they just take a second to just hear out the person, I think that could lead to some other things in the end.

Caller 7 (02:28:03):
Right.

Leo Laporte (02:28:04):
What's your question for Micah? You said you wanted to ask mic or

Caller 7 (02:28:08):
Something? Well, yeah, I had a quick question for Micah. Maybe he can help me. Maybe not. I have friends who text me from Android and iPhone. I have an iPhone <affirmative> and I live in a senior community. So if people text me and they don't hear back, cuz I'm pretty quick usually texting back. If they don't hear from me, they get worried. So they may show up at my door. Oh

Mikah Sargent (02:28:36):
My. Okay.

Caller 7 (02:28:37):
It doesn't seem to be any way to, Oh, if I have focus on, okay, let's say if I just, I've just turned off my phone for a while, I'm watching something or whatever. If they don't hear from me, no response via text that tells them I'm busy, I'll get back to you. Or something like that.

Mikah Sargent (02:29:03):
Got it. Yes. Okay. So there is one way to do this, but it's a little hacky. There is a great feature for people when you're driving the driving. Yeah. So this, you've probably seen the way to do it using that. That is, as it stands, the only way to be able to message a non iPhone user. So you know, could use focus modes. If the other people were on iOS, they would be able to see that you're in a focus mode. But because of that lack of connection between Android and iOS, the only way would be to have that automatically reply message set up. But instead of having it say, Hey, I'm driving with do not disturb turned on, you could have it say, Hey I'm busy but I'm still alive. You don't have to come knock on the door kind of thing.

Caller 7 (02:29:51):
Yeah, right. I didn't see any, I'll have to look at that again cuz I didn't see any way to say I'm driving or something like that. I didn't see any way to change how

Mikah Sargent (02:30:01):
To change the message. Can

Leo Laporte (02:30:02):
You create a focus mode that would do that? That isn't driving? No, it has to be in driving.

Mikah Sargent (02:30:07):
Right? It has to be the driving one. That's the only one that will text an Android device. The other focus modes will alert iOS users but not Android users. So

Leo Laporte (02:30:17):
Once you turn on the capability is focus modes by the way, the worst thing ever. Crazy stuff. But once you have a driving mode, I can turn that on manually right now and it will still give that message. And you could change a message. Yeah. It doesn't have to say I'm driving just that I can't talk right now. So the trick is to look in your focus modes. This is iOS 16, I'm showing you. But if you slide down from the left corner, right corner, I'm sorry, right corner, you can get into the focus modes. Let's do that again. So you can see that I'm doing it on the radio again. I, and you can choose which one. And you notice I have television so I have, Oh good. I have four do not disturb work, sleep driving. Micah told me about sleep, which is a great mode when you're sleeping, it blanks the screen so you don't have any always on display that does a lot of nice things. Leo focus mode's crazy. It's too

Mikah Sargent (02:31:08):
Complicated. Quickly launch your setting app. I want to show

Leo Laporte (02:31:11):
People my setting app.

Mikah Sargent (02:31:12):
Yeah, launch your setting app.

Leo Laporte (02:31:13):
Okay, we're gonna show you on the radio. So I've launched the setting app.

Mikah Sargent (02:31:16):
I'm thinking it out loud. Then choose focus.

Leo Laporte (02:31:18):
Focus. So

Mikah Sargent (02:31:19):
That's right there. And then tap on driving.

Leo Laporte (02:31:22):
By the way, I could use a plus sign there to add some new ones if I wanted <affirmative>. But I'm gonna go into driving

Mikah Sargent (02:31:26):
And then choose auto

Leo Laporte (02:31:27):
Reply. And this is the

Mikah Sargent (02:31:29):
Text and there's where you can change the message.

Leo Laporte (02:31:31):
It normally says I'm driving with focus turned on, but you could say I'm just not available right now, which would work fine I'll see your message but I'm not dead. Right. <laugh> would be, I'm okay <laugh>. So then that way no problem. They'll, they'll know you're not dead. But you know what, you have good friends who come over and check. Yeah, I think that's very nice of them.

Caller 7 (02:31:54):
Yes, we have a very wonderful community here and very grateful for it. But there are times when a little really don't want people showing up at my

Leo Laporte (02:32:03):
Busy bodies. Yes. Thank you Carolyn. Leo, Laport, mic is Sergeant Dick d Bartolo coming up now there is a problem if she is dead

Mikah Sargent (02:32:14):
That it would be notable.

Leo Laporte (02:32:15):
It's gonna continue to say I'm not dead <laugh>. So yeah, I don't know what you'd do about that. Just don't die I

Mikah Sargent (02:32:24):
Guess. Or you tell them, hey, if I don't get back

Leo Laporte (02:32:28):
To this goes on for more than a day.

Mikah Sargent (02:32:29):
Yeah. Then you know what? They're probably gonna come on

Leo Laporte (02:32:31):
Over.

Mikah Sargent (02:32:31):
Yeah.

Leo Laporte (02:32:32):
Yeah. I wish focus weren't so confusing <affirmative>, but I didn't even know that I could do the sleep thing. And when you told me that I went, Oh that's great. So it's worth looking at your focuses and press the plus button. Cuz you really actually do have, They have predefined fitness. <affirmative>. I'm gaming. You could do the mindfulness. I wish there were a way to say see

Mikah Sargent (02:32:59):
And it's triggered by the Nancy when you turn on mindfulness. Right?

Leo Laporte (02:33:02):
So nobody can bother me. No apps can do anything. Let's see if there's an option show on lock screen. Yes. Dim lock screen. Yes. Hide Notifi.

Mikah Sargent (02:33:13):
<laugh>. Excuse me.

Leo Laporte (02:33:14):
I said yes. Why is

Mikah Sargent (02:33:17):
It doing that?

Leo Laporte (02:33:18):
Is that cuz I have show on lock screen.

Mikah Sargent (02:33:19):
Oh that's why you can't

Leo Laporte (02:33:21):
Have, can't have both. Yeah. That's pretty cute. So when I turn that on, then it takes a while. It's

Mikah Sargent (02:33:27):
Like, oh where? Well now it doesn't look like <laugh>. Who knows?

Leo Laporte (02:33:30):
That's I would say B U g. Okay.

Mikah Sargent (02:33:33):
Indeed,

Leo Laporte (02:33:34):
Indeed. Customize your lock screen for that. Set a schedule. See

Mikah Sargent (02:33:39):
There's so much it and I don't like setting all these up.

Leo Laporte (02:33:41):
It's so complicated. And I wish they would add this message thing. I can't talk to you. I'm meditating

Mikah Sargent (02:33:47):
Right now. Yeah, I'm meditating.

Leo Laporte (02:33:49):
It would be great.

Mikah Sargent (02:33:50):
Now that's what they need to do to the people who are just a little bit more involved is make a type of shortcut that says trigger it based on when I get a text message, then send this message automatically. But they don't have that feature available right now because I think they're worried about people using that to spam or something. So there's not currently a way to say if I get a text message while this focus modes turned on then send a response. Your golly G, can you have to make your lock screen the poo emoji?

Leo Laporte (02:34:29):
Obviously. <laugh>. Well I had a little stethoscope. That's what gave me the idea. But again, there should be a message. Mm-hmm <affirmative> a custom message.

Mikah Sargent (02:34:38):
I can't talk to you right now.

Leo Laporte (02:34:39):
Can't talk to you right now. I'm under the

Mikah Sargent (02:34:42):
Gun. I just drove to the proctologist in my brown probe.

Leo Laporte (02:34:46):
Oh Lord. You took it farther than I was rid. It's a

Mikah Sargent (02:34:49):
Car. It's a car.

Leo Laporte (02:34:50):
Oh Ford probe. I get it. Yeah. <laugh>. I made myself dizzy that disco dancing is hard work. Let me see if my watch says I took a fall. No <laugh>. Dick d Bartolo is here. The GWiz, the gizmo wizard. Mad magazine's maddest writer for umpteen decades. And the king of the hill when it comes to crappy gadgets. Hello, Dickie D. Yeah.

Dick DeBartolo (02:35:14):
Leo, how are

Leo Laporte (02:35:15):
You? I am very well. How are things at gland?

Dick DeBartolo (02:35:20):
Things here are very good and I am one of those people who suffers from sad.

Mikah Sargent (02:35:27):
Okay. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (02:35:29):
Seasonal affect disorder.

Dick DeBartolo (02:35:31):
Yeah. Second disappointing is what I, Okay, okay. <laugh>. Yes. So

Leo Laporte (02:35:40):
When it's dark out, you don't like it?

Dick DeBartolo (02:35:44):
No. As a matter of fact, I have a big 20 wat l a d light on a remote control and three days before daylight, saving times and I put it out in my backyard, shining it toward my window so that I could turn it on when it started to get dark and it wouldn't look like it was getting dark. Oh

Leo Laporte (02:36:06):
Wow. So you don't day the end of daylight saving time at all? No, no. Yeah, no. Yeah.

Dick DeBartolo (02:36:12):
But then there's a chain of stores. There's 140 of 'em, three in California, but maybe not up by you called five below we, we've mentioned them before, five below, below, and almost everything is five bucks or under 50. Yeah. Or under. Yeah. Oh, they have a thing called five Beyond where they sell keyboards and stuff.

Leo Laporte (02:36:32):
Basically they just call it we live, but okay, I get it.

Dick DeBartolo (02:36:36):
Right. So it just opened. I said did ends flip front down there and buy something for $5. So $87 later.

Leo Laporte (02:36:44):
That's why it works, by the way.

Dick DeBartolo (02:36:46):
Yes, yes. So I bought something site unseen called the Sunset projection lamp for $5 and 50 cents. And they have nailed what sunset looks like and it can't be outdoors. But I have it facing the Venetian blinds in my back apartment. So it looks like the sunlight is coming through forever. It's also forever <laugh> eternal. I leave it on a, I turn it on as soon as I get up and turn it off when I go to bed. But then I thought, now by the way, what does damage, just so

Leo Laporte (02:37:29):
People understand this, when do you go to bed? What time? Yeah

Dick DeBartolo (02:37:34):
2:30 AM

Leo Laporte (02:37:34):
2:30 AM Wow. So you leave this on Friday. Yeah. But eight

Dick DeBartolo (02:37:38):
Hours, you don't get up till 10. Yeah,

Leo Laporte (02:37:39):
No, you get your eight hours sleep. I'm not saying that.

Dick DeBartolo (02:37:42):
Well, seven and a half. Yeah. Yeah, exactly.

Leo Laporte (02:37:44):
It's a little much to expect the sun to, I mean, you don't live in the northern arctic circle. I mean of course you're gonna need some sun source of artificial light. It's two in the morning.

Dick DeBartolo (02:37:56):
Yes. Okay. Yes. <laugh>. Okay. So I thought I'd check Amazon to see if they actually sell the same thing. And then I find out, wait a minute, wait. Amazon has the sunset projection lens with remote control. Ooh. So you can pick many colors including ocean,

Leo Laporte (02:38:18):
Sunset, and

Dick DeBartolo (02:38:19):
Penis.

Leo Laporte (02:38:19):
Then I

Dick DeBartolo (02:38:20):
Found, if you want Yes, Sun. Then I found one that has remote control and in app so far I have four of them <laugh>. Okay. But they are ridiculously inexpensive. I paid $13. But when I checked early today, and also as Micah pointed out, sometimes when you have prime you get a different price. When I checked earlier, the one with the app and remote was $10 and 30 cents. And just in case I break some of them, I ordered another one.

Leo Laporte (02:38:58):
Now let me ask you though, because I have seen treatments for seasonal effective disorder that involve sitting in front of a giant light array that is of daylight temperature. So it's blue and it's bright and that, you know, do that for a few hours and that supposedly is a treatment. Does sunset help you though? I mean it seems like that helps yellow, It

Dick DeBartolo (02:39:20):
Does help you. I just don't like the darkness and the fact that this is yellowy enough to look like a sun. And I know those lamps that you're talking about, the little portable desk one is like $80 and those great big wins are in the hundreds.

Leo Laporte (02:39:38):
The one you would use at a doctor would have you use is very expensive. And they're big and super bright and you're basically trying to send light beams into your eyes, to your brain to tell your brain to

Mikah Sargent (02:39:50):
Your super charismatic nuclei specifically.

Dick DeBartolo (02:39:53):
Right. Wow. Wow. Your

Leo Laporte (02:39:56):
Julie is your Siri have a strange voice. Yeah. Where did you get an arm?

Mikah Sargent (02:39:59):
How'd you get an arm for your Siri?

Dick DeBartolo (02:40:01):
That doesn't, Doesn't Julie Andrew sing that song?

Leo Laporte (02:40:04):
Say

Mikah Sargent (02:40:05):
It again. Charismatic nuclei. Yeah. Super charismatic nuclei. It is the one, it's, it's a sensor essentially in our bodies behind our eyes. And it's the one thing that connects directly from our vision to our brains. It's really

Leo Laporte (02:40:21):
Cool. And it's a receptor for that blue

Mikah Sargent (02:40:24):
Sunlight specifically. Yeah. What makes us able to start our cycle for sleep and tiredness. And that's why sad does what it does. Because without that super nuclei getting these signals that say, okay, it's dark now. Now it's time to start sending those chemicals into our brain to kick into our sleep cycle then we can kind of keep going. Wow.

Leo Laporte (02:40:46):
Yeah.

Dick DeBartolo (02:40:47):
So would there be a way to adjust that through your belly button? The screw <laugh>? Yeah.

Mikah Sargent (02:40:52):
<laugh>. Yeah, what the Phillips said,

Dick DeBartolo (02:40:54):
<laugh>.

Leo Laporte (02:40:57):
Wow. Wow. It's right. He's an resource, isn't he? <laugh> And apparently Myra

Dick DeBartolo (02:41:04):
Was, I would not go on vacation anymore.

Leo Laporte (02:41:06):
Myra says she did research on this in the graduate school. Oh, okay. What was her degree? Yeah, what

Mikah Sargent (02:41:11):
Did you, Yeah,

Dick DeBartolo (02:41:12):
I'm curious, what was your degree? Neuroscience.

Leo Laporte (02:41:14):
Neuroscience. So that's what this is. Yeah.

Mikah Sargent (02:41:16):
Okay. I just, I'm a huge sleep science nerd, so that's why I know about it.

Dick DeBartolo (02:41:20):
Isn't

Leo Laporte (02:41:21):
That when your super CAG nerve gets hit by light? Isn't that when you create melatonin?

Mikah Sargent (02:41:26):
Well, it's actually when you start to get less of that less melatonin, whenever your brain knows that it should be making more melatonin, it should be

Leo Laporte (02:41:33):
Need more melatonin when that light goes

Mikah Sargent (02:41:36):
Out. When light goes out. That's why they say looking at blue light all day, it keeps your brain from

Leo Laporte (02:41:41):
Creating. Cause your super fragile istic zone exactly. Gets activated. And the blue light of course is coming off your computer, your TV screen, your phone everywhere.

Mikah Sargent (02:41:49):
It's signaling to your brain through the supervis nuclei. Hey, there's still light out so don't start to make me sleepy yet. You need to stay awake. You need to stay awake.

Leo Laporte (02:41:57):
But this works for Dick. So I guess we wouldn't prescribe this for people with sad. No

Dick DeBartolo (02:42:03):
But you could. I mean

Leo Laporte (02:42:04):
You could try it Seven bucks.

Dick DeBartolo (02:42:06):
You could reach seven bucks. Why

Leo Laporte (02:42:08):
Not tape?

Dick DeBartolo (02:42:09):
It works for you. It's not a

Leo Laporte (02:42:11):
Lot of light. I mean it's just a little dinky little thing.

Dick DeBartolo (02:42:15):
The fixture itself. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And actually I believe it's a five wat l e d in there, so, Well that's pretty broad. Five wat, l e d produces like 70 watts.

Leo Laporte (02:42:26):
Right? That's what's changed. Of course these LEDs now we have these can do so much light with so little power. Interesting. I might get this cuz I just would like an eternal sunset

Mikah Sargent (02:42:37):
Of the Spotify.

Dick DeBartolo (02:42:37):
There you go. There you go.

Leo Laporte (02:42:40):
<laugh>, There you go. The sun is always set.

Dick DeBartolo (02:42:43):
The sun never shut in my house.

Leo Laporte (02:42:45):
Yeah. Dick di Bartos website. G I Z W I Z dot b I z gwiz.biz. If you click the button, the Gwi visits the tech guy, you'll see a link to this and all of the, You tested three different ones, right?

Dick DeBartolo (02:42:59):
Three different, three

Leo Laporte (02:43:00):
Different versions and links to the three different, as low as $7, which is, I mean, for that it's worth a try. You'll also see the, what the heck is it Contest. A chance to win an autograph copy of Mad Magazine by identifying a closeup photo of some sort of weird gizmo. They're getting weirder too, by the way. The last one, <laugh> was a carrot cutter. The one before that. A toilet paper holder. I mean you're getting weirder all the time. Well you have to. Ouch Fox these people. I, besides the whole game is to be funny. Yes, exactly. GI Biz, his podcast. GI tv. Thank you Dickie D Thank you sir. Thank you sir. Thank care. Thank you Micah. Sergeant. Mm-hmm <affirmative> as always. Saturdays are better with Micah <laugh>. really appreciate you being here. Thanks to all of you who joined us. We do with a Tech Guy show every weekend right here. I hope you'll come back and visit soon. The website tech guy labs.com has all the information plus links to other podcasts. Micah and I both do. Yeah, all week long. If you need more, if you can't get enough of us, tech guy labs.com. I'm Leo LaPorte, your tech guy. Have a great geek week.

Leo Laporte (02:44:11):
Well, that's it for the Tech I 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@twit.tv, including the podcasts for the show. We talk about Windows and Windows Weekly, Macintosh, a Mac Break, weekly iPads, iPhones, Apple Watches on iOS today, Security and Security now, I mean, I can go on and on. And of course the big show every Sunday afternoon this week in tech. You'll find it all@quit.tv and I'll be back next week with another great tech guys show. Thanks for joining me. We'll see you next time.