Ask the Tech Guys 2021 Transcript

Please be advised this transcript is AI-generated and may not be word for word. Time codes refer to the approximate times in the ad-supported version of the show.

00:00 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Well, hey, hey, hey. How are you today? Time for Ask the Tech Guys. I'm Leo Laporte Coming up. Can you get a private?

00:07 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
AI and I am Micah Sargent and we answer a question about managing multiple subscriptions for your business with your Apple ID.

00:16 - Leo Laporte (Host)
And then spaceman Rod Pyle and his memories of Voyager 1. It's all coming up next on Ask the Tech Guys. Podcasts you love from people you trust. This is twit. This is ask the tech guys with micah sergeant and leo laporte, episode 2021. One recorded sunday, april 21st 2024 warp lorp. Well, hey, hey, hey, how are you today?

00:50 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
that's there, that, there's my casarge and that there's leo and stripey socks. Oh, I've got hearts on mine my mama made these.

00:57 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I I thought I'd wear them. You know, I was back, uh, east. That's why I look such a cowboy. I was back east, the eastern cowboys easter. I was back east, uh, I remember panning for gold I remember talking to a cowboy in california. He said those aren't eastern, those aren't westerns, they're easterns.

01:16
All happened east of us yeah, that's easterns anyway, I was in the east, in rhode island, had a nice dinner with andy and not go by the way good, I'm glad you got to see, andy and I was visiting with my mom, who's in the old age home and she's just doing great, good, good, and she made these socks and so I'm wearing them in honor of my mama. It was a very nice visit, good, and I brought back a leather cowboy hat. No, I didn't have this. This is local, this is a, this is a western local, made well. Do you see this problem the parents are having now?

01:51 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
oh, the parents they're going. We we need to wall street journal. Be in touch with the kids.

01:56 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Schools want to ban phones. It's a problem in schools. Kids tick tocking, youtubing in class so they try to ban them in schools and the parents say, no, we want to know where our kids are at all times does this not make you go?

02:12 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
you know, I didn't. My parents didn't know where I was at all times but now.

02:17 - Leo Laporte (Host)
But see, once you get that, once you have it, it's hard to let it go in brush colorado, says the wall street journal. Teachers administrators said it'll done a compromise for the 2022-23 school year. Students could keep their phones, but they have to be out of sight okay which is fair.

02:34
To reach their parents they need teachers permission. Then they have to go to the office to use the phone. If a student's busted phone confiscated, parents need to pick it up. But parents didn't even like that. Several parents transferred their kids out of the school, saying no, I want my kids, I don't know what they are texting them during the day I guess so. That's odd to me. I guess so, but I understand also how parents feel where they want to keep well and to be fair, you know you've got lots of school shootings.

03:03 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
You've got all you know what, all the stuff that goes on. I understand wanting to be able to be fair. You know you've got lots of school shootings. You've got all the stuff that goes on. I understand wanting to be able to be in touch if you need to be, but I don't know that Parents are worried about their kids in school.

03:16 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Part of that's a little bit of a problem, because I don't think kids are free range anymore, right, because we parents are so worried about our kids. Oh hi, good to see you. This is the show where we answer tech questions. I probably should have mentioned that at 888. Get those phone calls coming in. We just got right into it 724. I made a song for us. Did you hear that song?

03:34 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
Yeah, we listened to like four of them last week.

03:37 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Oh yeah, that's right. Yeah, it all blends together.

03:41 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
It's all in the past.

03:42 - Leo Laporte (Host)
You got to say goodbye, but that number was in the song, which is good. Atg at twittv or Zoom us.

03:46 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
You can Zoom, zoom, zoom, calltwittv.

03:50 - Leo Laporte (Host)
And we will take your questions, but we'd like to start off slow, slow burn, really get you into the show, easy into the show, by talking about some of the week's news. So that's my story, what you got.

04:05 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
Do you have anything? No, no, there's. There's another story that we should talk about uh, it's big and you actually, I know, did uh lock it into your links which is that there's uh potentially some precedent being set when it comes to what is considered testimony versus what is not. Oh yeah, this is bigrics.

04:22 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, we've kind of thought this would be the case. So the issue is can a police officer say give me your thumb buddy and push it on your phone and unlock your phone, or hold it up to you, unlock it and then look at your phone? Can they do that?

04:39 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
Can they do it? Because, of course, we have a right to not incriminate ourselves, and so that is where the the disagreement happens. Is putting my fingerprint down or looking at the phone potentially incriminating myself and I. It was interesting that it was based on cognition. I thought that was. That was a fascinating sort of uh crux of the argument. Does it count as cognitive? Is it cognitive to actually take your fingerprint and put it on the phone to sort of unlock what's in your brain, which is where the rights to not incriminate yourself is protected.

05:22 - Leo Laporte (Host)
This is kind of what courts have ruled in the past as well. There's kind of standing precedent. The police can't come into your home and say unlock that safe brother. You can't get you to to do what's in your mind. They don't have acts, they don't have legal access to the contents of your mind. They can can't force you to do that. But they could take a hair for DNA, right. They could take a thumbprint, right. So the judge and I think probably correctly ruled. But it's good for us to know this.

05:53 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
That's the thing. Know the implication there, because that could mean that you would have to hand over that. Now, this is the time where I tell you with an iPhone, if you press and hold all three buttons the volume up, volume down and the side button all at once, it turns your phone into well, it locks your phone in such a way that face ID or touch ID doesn't work and you actually have to type in your passcode. And apparently, as it stands, passcode does require cognition and therefore is more protected as things stand, in a way that you would not be required to incriminate yourself.

06:31 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It's interesting this is a Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals judgment and in their ruling they said to date, neither the Supreme Court nor any of our sister circuits have addressed whether the compelled use of a biometric to unlock an electronic device is testimonial. That's the debate over whether you're testifying against yourself or if it's just passively giving a fingerprint or a hair. The the panel said yeah, it's not testimonial, it's just like taking a fingerprint. Um, you can be forced to use your thumb. So this is really important.

07:06
Have a good password on your phone. You could actually turn off face id or thumbprint, but I think it's so convenient people don't want to turn that off, but know that gesture that mike had just mentioned to force your phone to go into the mode where you have to give it a password and then, in theory, yeah, exactly, they can't say son, what's your password? And you, you could say, well, the United States Constitution Fifth Amendment says I don't have to give that to you, sir. And now, depending on how adamant they are, because what they you know, you could be at the border and they could say well, ok, you just rest, cool your heels there in a airport jail for a while.

07:45 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
Yeah, we'll see what you'll break first, Right Uh chicken.

07:51 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I think it's probably, if you're crossing the border, good idea not to have anything incriminating on your any of your electronics.

07:58 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
I think that's a good bit of advice.

08:00 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Maybe don't have anything incriminating on any of your electronics at all.

08:03 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
What a thought, huh, what a thought.

08:06 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I'll have to keep that in mind. There's an idea. So yeah, we've actually talked about this over the years because there hasn't been a definitive judgment, but I think the general consensus is anything you have in your mind, like a password, is protected. That's your private property and they can't compel you to reveal that, so that's good news. The other thing kind of related is that the FISA spy program has been reauthorized and Senator and President Biden has assigned that into law. That was the renewal of Section 702. Now, there were quite a few amendments to this that added some features. In fact, there was some concern that it extends the FISA to cover more than it used to. Senator Ron Wyden and Josh Hawley introduced an amendment that would have taken language out, and this is a little tricky, but I'll explain it. There's language in the bill that expands the definition of an electronic communications service provider, which would normally be Twitter, facebook, your Verizon, to anyone who has access to equipment that is being used or may be used to transmit or store wire electronic communications.

09:27 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
In other words anybody with a device that can communicate?

09:30 - Leo Laporte (Host)
yeah, or your apartment landlord? Yeah, because they can get into the basement. There's that device, there's all sorts of it.

09:36 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
Extends it, quite wait, yeah can you read that again anyone?

09:40 - Leo Laporte (Host)
anyone who has access access to equipment being used to transmit or store electronic I have access to a router, so I should also be included in that right.

09:51 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
You are included in that.

09:52 - Leo Laporte (Host)
You are, that's basically everybody, so they introduced this amendment to say brown wyden, who's very smart, uh, introduced this but it failed. Oh good, no, no, they were trying to block that. That's in the bill, that that's in the law now.

10:05 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
Oh, it failed the block was failed.

10:06 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It failed, the blocking Dang it. Senator Rand Paul and Dick Durbin introduced amendments imposing warrant requirements on surveilling Americans. Failed, failed, okay, failed, okay, uh. So it's passed and it gives the law enforcement this vast power to surveil us, which they've had. They've had ever since 9-11. That's, this is just more. This is the patriot enshrining it, right? Yeah, well, it's just renewing. It has to be renewed, uh, on a regular basis. It has been renewed. Another thing in there. They stuck in there, uh, in the uh, in the appropriations for uh ukraine and uh israel. They stuck in a little thing about killing the old tiktok. Snuck that in and now, so you remember, the senate was blocking. It already passed the house once. Uh, the senate was blocking it, but now it's thought, because it's part of this funding bill, it's probably going to go through the senate. It. It looks pretty bad for tiktok right now, which frosts my leather chest. Amen, uh, because, uh I am.

11:16 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
I'm still not convinced that there's and I and I've I've read a lot on this at this point and I'm still not convinced, convinced that there's any ground to the need to divest. It's just. I know some very compelling people have made very good arguments for why it needs to be the case, but I don't know, I don't know where do you stand on it right now?

11:35 - Leo Laporte (Host)
uh, well, here's, here's my problem. So I can, I'll acknowledge, and brianna will argue, it argued quite uh, I think, uh persuasively on twitter a few weeks ago that there is a threat to our national security, that the Chinese government effectively controls TikTok. It's not owned by the Chinese government, they have a stake in it. But also, because it operates out of China, the Chinese government can go in any time and get whatever information TikTok has. So there's two concerns one that TikTok can be used to spy on Americans, and the second that it could be used to propagandize our youth, making them think that communism is okay, or something like that. So the first one I'll dismiss out of hand, because every program you have on your phone is doing the same thing and they're collecting that data and they're giving it to data brokers who then sell that data to China. China doesn't need TikTok to spy on us, right, china has many avenues and unless you're willing to be much more sweeping in your privacy protections, china's going to go fine, take it, we don't care. Now there is a legitimate concern, perhaps that TikTok might be used to propaganda, propagandize us, although we know, for instance, chinese and Russian operatives have full reign on Twitter and are constantly posting propaganda there. There's also a Chinese TV broadcast on your cable CCTV, chinese Communist Party television just like there's a Russian television, rt, on your cable, so they're allowed to broadcast in the United States their propaganda.

13:01
I think the concern is that TikTok is so compelling the youth love it so much that perhaps it might, might be more powerful. Maybe it is, but the argument on the other side is that so many people have used tiktok to launch a creative careers, to reach out to. I mean, it's an incredible medium for young people in this country and actually all over the world. Uh, and you're taking that away from them. And, by the way, the beneficiary of all this is meta right, which, whose instagram will immediately take all of that. My son, who's a big tiktok chef star, has two and a half million followers on tiktok. He's on instagram. He has one and a half million, but he's he was smart. He knew they saw this coming, so he made sure that he had a second channel and google will scoop up the leftovers with the shorts youtube shorts they're trying.

13:50
Everybody linkedin has tiktok fees. Yeah, everybody knows that tiktok well, we can, you know so, and those and I think honestly those media can also be used to propagandize american youth, certainly being used to propagandize american youth, certainly being used to propagandize american youth into buying more sneakers or whatever it is right. So, um, I feel like this is a little bit picking on tiktok because it's chinese, because it's the outsider, it's anti-chinese, it's the outsider, without really addressing a very real issue of privacy and propaganda. Those things are going to continue with or without TikTok. So I'm a little disappointed because I think it does take away a voice for a lot of people, especially young Americans, who have used TikTok, my son included, to make their fame and fortune. And you know he makes a living thanks to the success that TikTok gave him. But it's not just my son's. Millions of others, right, uh, some really amazing people uh have come out of tiktok.

14:51
Uh, dancers, singers, creatives, little nas x. Right, I'm gonna take my ride on the whole town road gonna make he. That whole story was started on TikTok, I think. Where he went out he bought a $50 rhythm track, yeah, and he recorded Old Town Road and he became a superstar, thanks to TikTok. So if I were Taylor Swift, I'd be hopping mad. That's all I can say. Anyway, there you go. That's the news across the nation. Beautiful Thank you everybody.

15:27 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
Thanks for listening. We'll see you next time on Ask the Tech Guy.

15:31 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Who's coming up on the show today? Mr Anthony Nielsen, I think it was Sam. No Well, Chris was going to. Chris is taking the day off. He's going to be back. His fiber went down.

15:46 - Anthony Nielsen (Other)
Oh, you really need. Went down that backhoe. You need metamucil. Yeah, yeah, too much fiber, not good for your internet access.

15:48 - Leo Laporte (Host)
We do have rod pile at the top of the hour, mr spaceman coming up in half a man, and we should mention that that means you get another week. Yes, your brilliant picture. Yes, of what?

15:58 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
power. I think it is, I will tell you, tell us, because I wasn't here that day, just a moment.

16:05 - Leo Laporte (Host)
So I don't know, I was in Mexico.

16:06 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
Chris Marquardt said it is TG. Yeah, yeah, it's powerful, powerful, and so you can use TG powerful and TG powerful AI if you do the AI version of the assignment Of course those go.

16:27 - Leo Laporte (Host)
This picture that I'm doing right now is TG Powerful AF. There you go. I did it Powerful AF. Is that one of the ones I can submit as well? No, so take the picture, tag it TG Powerful or, if you're using AI to make it or modify it, tg Powerful, ai ai. Upload it to flickr. Get into that tech guy group before uh the end of the week, and then chris is gonna pick some shots and I'm gonna submit this powerful af shot to uh to the group now. Anthony nielsen. Yes, sir, filling in for john ashley, would you?

17:05 - Anthony Nielsen (Other)
we could take a break, or do you want to Take a little break?

17:07 - Leo Laporte (Host)
That's okay, Just a little break. Take a little tiny break. You know this is the 19th anniversary of TWIT this week.

17:13 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
I know Wednesday was the 19th birthday of this Week.

17:17 - Leo Laporte (Host)
In Tech, that is a whole human being. So we have a lot. That's a whole human, a full-grown human. So we have a bunch of people I think, more than more. I think last count more than two dozen people coming to the studio later today to watch a all live twit. You're going to be on it. Jason howell makes his triumphant return, he can promote his new tech sploter uh channel on youtube and a bra al heedy will all be in studio, plus 20 carefully washed members of our audience to celebrate of our club, to celebrate our 19th anniversary as a podcast network. April 17th 2005 was the first twit, so that's, I'm looking forward to me too, our show today.

18:00
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19:02
My time is up, but the list keeps on going. You got to check it out. I tell you what. Every time I go there, I am blown away by how beautiful these sites look. Each one a perfect snowflake, unique, one of a kind. Step into Wix Studio. See for yourself. Go to wixcom slash studio. W-i-x dot com slash studio. We'll put a link in the show notes so you can click that link and find out more. Or on our sponsors page, twittv slash sponsors. Thank you Wix Studio for supporting. Ask them Thar Tech Guys, should we change the name to them Thar Tech Guys? I like this hat. It gives me a personality I lack otherwise. Maybe not a good personality, but it does.

19:42
It's something I feel like I'm in yosemite yeah yeah, yeah, uh, all right, it is your turn now, mr anthony nielsen, to pick some wonderful.

19:52 - Anthony Nielsen (Other)
Let's go with a caller from texas. Oh, that's perfect, howdy caller from texas.

19:57 - Leo Laporte (Host)
What's your first name? Just john. Hi, john. And what whereabouts in in Texas, because that's a big state. Central. I don't know where that is. Where's that? Central Texas Central, the middle of the state oh. Central. I thought you meant the town of Central or Centralia.

20:20 - John (Caller)
What can we do for you? It could be a town, but I don't know it could be. It could be a town, but I don't know it could be. I'm just curious. I am an advocate for VPNs and, given the discussion you had with surveillance mass surveillance by various organizations, including outside the US I don't want to name any actors or any of that, but how do you know if you can force similar service or protocols actually at work, like protecting your privacy?

20:57 - Leo Laporte (Host)
That's a really good question. So, as an anecdote, I'm on the plane flying uh home from visiting my mom and they have internet on the plane and I can't for the life of me get on it. I can't get on it, it just won't work. And I asked the flight attendant. She says well, just keep trying, it'll probably work. She's it's working for everybody else. She says.

21:18
Then my the seatmate says oh, you have a VPN turned on. I said yeah, to protect myself. He says it won't work with a VPN turned on. Well, okay, so that's a good example of how you know it's working if it won't lay on. And the people who are running the service obviously monetize the free Wi-Fi by spying on you right by collecting information, because if it won't work with a VPN, there's a good reason for that. So, but how do you know that your VPN's working? You don't. How do you know that if you're using I was using actually Open or Next DNS, which I use on everything, which is kind of it's not exactly a VPN it just becomes your DNS provider and can block stuff like advertisements and so forth, but it can also block malware.

22:10
They didn't like that either, but mostly it's trust and this is the problem in the modern world. We're all interdependent and there's a certain amount of trust that is basically required in a civilized society. When I drive down the road, I'm trusting that the person coming in the other direction isn't going to suddenly decide that he wants to use my lane instead of his. And there's a certain amount of we're both traveling with two-ton vehicles at 60 miles an hour. There's a lot of trust that goes in just driving down the road. There's a lot of trust that goes into just to driving down the road. There's a lot of trust that goes into almost everything we do because we're so interconnected. Right, I have to trust the manufacturer of my c-cell sweater did not in fact use cow patties to make it or whatever. Right, there's just trust. So there's a certain amount of trust that goes into the security software you use now, because unless you are ready to run uh nmap and a packet sniffer and really check and see, and even then you can't really you can validate that it's kind of doing what it's doing, for instance, sending all your traffic to their server, but once it gets to their server it's off your device. We don't know what the vpn server is doing. It could be making a careful note and sending it to the nsa. There's even, you know, for years been conspiracies that microsoft has a back door for the nsa. I don't know if they do or don't. There's really no way to to know. There's really no way to know.

23:43
It's one of the reasons I always recommend, if you're going to use crypto software for encryption, that kind of thing, that you use open source software. And there is one little trick that I think is really important that real hardcore privacy advocates and paranoias paranoiacs use it's something called reproducible builds. Paranoias paranoiacs use. It's something called reproducible builds. If you've got a program that's open source, let's say your messenger program or your VPN software or your encryption software, it's open source. Normally people will just download the compiled blob right and say well, I'm, you know it's open source, I'm sure it's the same. But that's not really the trick. If you really want to make sure there's a lot of effort on your part that it's secure, you look at the source code. You make sure there's no backdoors, there's nothing. You don't understand, everything makes sense. And then, instead of downloading the pre-compiled blob, you compile it yourself locally. It's a reproducible build that will, in theory, give you the same result as the binary blob.

24:48
Now here's an interesting point. There's a company called signal that we all trust, signal messenger, you know. Uh, steve gibson, our security guy, says oh yeah, that's the gold standard. Moxie marlin spike, I love him and trust him. But for some reason, even though they are open source and they offer open source, they don't make it reproducible builds. You cannot build Signal and run it as a build. You have to use their blob.

25:16
For hardcore people and, john, I suspect you might be one of those that's a non-starter, because, well, I don't know what's in that blob that may have an extra little bit of code that's not in the open source source code. So if you really say, look, no, I am not going to use anything that I can't look at. You're going to use an open source version of Linux that has no blobs, no pre-compiled proprietary stuff. You're going to compile it all yourself with something like Gentoo or one of the or Arch. Yeah, exactly, you might want to use Tails, which is Desire Cubes. These are all designed to be highly secure.

25:54
Compile it yourself from scratch, don't use anybody's binaries. But then you also have the expertise. You need to have the expertise to look at the source code and really know what's going on. You don't have to understand it word for word, but you have to be able to find anything that doesn't make sense or is sending code out somewhere that you don't know about. That would be the only way to do it and, honestly, for 99.999% of everybody it's just not going to happen. We're going to have to trust, and then you, so then you just have to vet the company. You have to see what other people say about the company. I trust signal. I don't think signal's got any shenanigans going on. But honestly, the lack of reproducible builds is a red flag. That's not good. So you want reproduce, you want open source with reproducible builds.

26:37 - John (Caller)
That's the only way to be sure yeah, I feel like that's the main obstacle to getting that digital equivalent of Harry Potter's cloak of visibility Right, if you know what I mean, yep.

26:51 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
Are you the caller who asked about purchasing multiple laptops? Maybe, but yeah, I just remembered that I had a lot of security questions. Yeah, no, it was a fun question that we got to answer. I remember not too long, yeah, that was wild right um oh, wait a minute, I take it back.

27:11 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I lied. Signal does now have reproducible builds, uh, for android at least. So, uh, that's very, very good news. They've been doing signal for android. I don't know why other signals don't versions, versions of signal, but you're going to be using Android anyway. In fact, you're not going to be using Google Android, you're going to be using an Android you compiled yourself on a Fairphone or something like that. Graphene, yeah, graphene. Graphene's good, I like graphene. But again, you're still using it pre-compiled. I bet you I don't think you're are you building it yourself?

27:47 - John (Caller)
Well, I got to learn how to like compile it myself.

27:51 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Right, you know what If worst case I mean it's a lot of work Worst case, you're going to learn a lot about how technology, computers work, about coding and all that stuff, and you're going to help protect your privacy a little bit. The thing about open source is most of us just assume that somebody is looking at the code, because we don't have the skills to look at.

28:14
I mean, I could look at it. I don't have the time. Yeah, I could probably verify everything if I really wanted to. I'd spend the rest of my life looking at source code and compiling it.

28:22 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
But see, this is where I bring up Douglas Adams, because in that book, hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, I distinctly remember conversations surrounding the other people's problem paradox, which is that we say, oh, that's somebody else's, somebody else will worry about that. And then that person also says, oh, somebody else will worry about that. And then someone else says, oh, somebody else will worry about that. And then finally you have the person who is a Linux volunteer who discovers a millisecond lag in SSH and discovers a backdoor, thank goodness. But that's because we all spend our time thinking it's somebody else's problem to worry about and not verifying yeah, so yeah, I mean, if I, I guess what I'm saying in the end is, uh, if you uh, john from somewhere in texas was a john uh want to really know whether it's working. Yeah, you got to do the, you got to take the time to do a lot of labor, a lot of labor john I thank you I thank you for the call.

29:24 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I'm wearing I'm wearing the Texas hat just in your honor there and I really respect your desire to verify. You know, trust, what's that saying? Trust, but verify. That was Ronald Reagan saying about the nuclear arms in the Soviet Union. Trust, but verify. I thought ronald reagan saying about the uh nuclear arms in the soviet union.

29:45 - John (Caller)
trust, but verify I thought it was trust no one yeah, that's steve gibson.

29:50 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, that's steve gibson. If you, he calls it tno and if you really want to do tno you're gonna have to somehow make another 24 hours appear in your life.

30:01
I mean, by the way, steve does not open source his program. Yeah, so you have to trust him. If you're going to use Spinrite, right, maybe someday when he retires he'll open source it. But that's the thing. If you really, really really don't trust anybody, you got to compile your own open source software from scratch and you got to review all the code that you're compiling. A lot of work, but it is doable, it's possible. I just think in this modern world there's so much trust. We have to have so much trust that you know the people who make our Twinkies aren't putting you know something awful in this filling. We just have to trust that you know. And we live in a world of trust and honestly, uh, trust isn't so bad. Trust is a good thing. You can maybe go a little overboard in paranoia, I think I agree.

30:52 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
Trust a little bit hey, thank you, john I appreciate it little trust goes a long way yeah, little trust goes a long way.

31:00 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Thank you, john, appreciate that's one of the reasons I think people should learn how to code and even if you don't really compile all your own software, it's good to learn that yeah, March Linux you do that?

31:14
Tails Cube? He was using Arch. All of those allow you. In fact, Arch has a big whole section on reproducible builds. That they talk about what's reproducible builds, um, that they talk about what's reproducible and what you shouldn't use, um, anyway, that that's a fun question. How do you know that you're safe? You don't. You really don't. If the only way to really be private and safe is to move to a cabin in the woods, chop your own wood for heat, I don't know how you get your water. Uh, put out cat rain catches for the water, um, and uh don't. Whatever you do, get on the internet.

31:49 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
Yeah, oh, and, by the way, when it comes to VPNs, um, having a nation state do an audit, a raid and an audit of your VPN, as uh happened with express VPN, uh tends to be very helpful. Yeah, uh, yeah. A sponsor of the network we should mention, we love express vpn yeah, that happened in turkey.

32:10 - Leo Laporte (Host)
They were looking for a murder suspect and they just took the servers. They didn't knock. They just came in said give us those servers. Stop, keep your hand hands up off the keyboard, don't press any buttons. Don't press any buttons. We're taking the service there was nothing on them, they couldn't do anything with it. Uh, so that's a good sign, unless okay, if you're really paranoid the turkish government was in cahoots, see that trust no one leo yeah, I mean this is the problem.

32:34
It's you, it's turtles all the way down, it's it's untrustworthy, untrustworthy turtles.

32:40 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
Look at the way they look at you just so untrustworthyworthy, let's do another one that was fun. Oh and by the way, if you have a question, remember that you need to look towards the bottom of your UI, the user interface, for a little hand. You want to click that hand and raise it to let us know you have a question Like lonely elderly man.

33:01 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I don't know, should we take lonely elderly man? That sounds like I think we'll go to the phone call, right, let's do the phone call. Oh, do we have another phone call?

33:09 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
Yeah, I see a phone, Unless that's a fake See now I've got me paranoid, I don't know who to trust. We're going to voicemail.

33:17 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Should I trust you?

33:28 - Eric (Caller)
Oh, we trust that because we pre-listened to it. Go ahead. Hi, leo and Micah, it's Eric from Tucson. A couple weeks ago you were talking about the NFC chips and using them to log on to a Wi-Fi. I've gone through the process and have chips that work with my iPhone, but it seems that the Wi-Fi application doesn't work. I can read the chip and see the information there, but the iPhone doesn't actually go to a Wi-Fi login. Looking at Google, I'm seeing a lot of entries indicating that, while this works well on Android, it's not yet enabled on the iPhone. So I was wondering if I'm missing something or if that feature indeed is not available on the iPhone.

34:08 - Leo Laporte (Host)
If you had listened carefully, you would have heard Micah say it doesn't work on the iPhone.

34:14 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
Yes, so unfortunately that is something that was available at one point briefly in a beta and then was no longer available again. Apple's concerned about security.

34:27
Apple says it's concerned about security. Some would argue it is simply locking down the NFC as much as possible, but I think there is some. You know, trust no one. There is some semblance to understanding that. Yeah, if I tapped my phone and it automatically connected me to a Wi-Fi network, that was then gobbling up a bunch of my information and I didn't realize it. That is kind of troublesome. But again, there's an argument made for both sides. In other words, it doesn't work.

34:56 - Leo Laporte (Host)
This is why we recommend and we talked about using QR codes. See, I have a QR code on my camera. I use these are ping tags tags. But after I showed the ping tags, remember, I put them on everything my keys, my phone, my oh no, my cameras. Uh, somebody, no, no, no. Somebody pointed out that tile is also now doing that. Tile makes those bluetooth trackers and they now have introduced the same idea. Uh, as now. I haven't tried it, so I don't know if it works exactly the same as the ping tags. I'm very happy with a ping tag, ping tagcom, but tile now has, uh, something that they call well, they call them stickers, not the most complicated. Are they nfc? Oh no, this is not this, is not it? No, they're. They have qr codes, got it. Where are they? Maybe they stopped doing it? Somebody emailed me said you know, tile does these qr codes too.

35:48 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
You know the stickers are nfcs oh yeah, tile lost and found labels lost and found labels.

35:55 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yes, so, uh, I'll have to do some investigation to see if this is the same as a ping tag. You buy a three pack of labels for $15. The idea is now this is for lost and found. You scan it, but we put up. We've got people come in the studio, we put up a QR code, big QR code, on the front door as you come in. It says scan this to join our Wi-Fi and that works on iPhone and Android and everywhere else. So instead of an NFC tag which honestly I think most people are now more used to QR codes than they are NFC tags Instead of an NFC tag, I would just put up a QR code or, you know, make it a little label. It doesn't have to be like this tile lost and found. It could just be you make it yourself.

36:42
There are quite a few open source QR code makers online and there are also some non-open source that are. You know, I would actually prefer going with somebody who's doing it open source, because sometimes they'll send it through a server or whatever and they can do some monitoring. But Adobe offers a free online qr code generator. I see quite a few uh online, but I would maybe look for one that's open source. I found one that's written in python that I can run locally. Um and uh. Then I know nobody's getting talking about paranoid and I know nobody's getting any of that information that I'm making.

37:23
In the QR code it's called QR code Good name 7.4.2. It does what it says on the tin. I love that. It does what it says on the tin. It's on PyPy, which is the Python library. So you just do a pip, install QR code and now you can make QR codes. You have to have Python installed in your machine, but almost all machines machines. It's easy to install python. So that's nice because you're doing it locally. You generate a qr code you could print on an avery label. You could don't say anything, not any sudden. I think there's an alien in our tv. You can print it on a sticker. You can put it up as we do a sheet of paper up on the wall, I think you know that's probably the easiest thing to do. If you are running Airbnb or you let your house out or you have friends staying with you for the weekend, just put a little sticker on the table or whatever. And they can. Everybody now knows they know Every restaurant during COVID Exactly.

38:24 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
Their menus that way, all that way.

38:27 - Leo Laporte (Host)
So, yeah, I've used this QR code in Python because it's open source. I can look at the code. I can know it's not sending anything at the home office, it's just generating a QR code, exactly, yeah, so that's my suggestion and, yes, you were right, apple doesn't allow it, like we said. That's okay okay, I don't listen. Half the time micah says something and I repeat it right and then the other half.

38:55 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
I am worried I'm going to repeat something that you say, so that I just don't say we're busy doing our own thing here. You know we got what we're splitting splitting the work, we've got one brain cell to share between exactly two, exactly.

39:05 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Our pile is coming up in just a little bit, but I think we can do a. Should I do an email or you want to do a call? What do you want to do? Let's do a break, A break, Do a break. What a novel thought you're watching. Ask the tech guys that there's Mike a Sergeant. I am Leo Lap. Did you see the latest? I almost ordered one.

39:25 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
I know you're getting one. I'm glad because, once again, see, this is what I love about you, leo is that you get to be the person who tries things before I do, so I can decide if I want to spend my money on the day that Kobo announced a color e-reader with pen.

39:42 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Like that morning Micah texts me Can you buy that so we can look at it. I said I already did already and bought it. I already got it. It's on its way. It comes at the end of the month. Oh uh, you didn't text me this. I didn't have to.

39:55 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
I know because I actually heard you moments afterwards say on, I think it was mac break weekly at the time, or even windows weekly, I don't remember. But you said moments after I learned about it I, I ordered this and I thought, okay, good, we're good.

40:09 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I know the guy who does the marketing, stammy. He's an old friend and I feel like this is probably going to be very interesting. The idea is it's a little pin you wear that records everything, but it doesn't record people without their permission if it uses voice print identification. So if I'm sitting talking to you and it doesn't know who you are, I have to explicitly say hey, micah, can I record this conversation? And if you say yes, it adds Micah and the voice print and it will record you.

40:39 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
I was wondering about the consent aspect. Yeah, that's really clever.

40:43 - Leo Laporte (Host)
The thing that we know about AI is it's really good at making transcriptions of voice, right, and it's also good at taking those transcriptions and summarizing them, perhaps doing action items, that kind of thing, or if you're a husband and wife solving a fight. It's that instant replay thing, right, okay that, Okay, okay, okay.

41:04 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
You's that instant replay thing right, Okay, that Okay, okay okay. You want it now, don't you? This is going to solve, but also break, a bunch of relationships, because no one will be able to gaslight anyone anymore. That's fantastic, honey, you said.

41:19 - Leo Laporte (Host)
You did say this, honey, let's check the instant replay. Oh, you're right. I did say that I've got receipts, so this comes in august or late august. But it got me thinking. I've got an apple watch. It has a very good microphone on it, it has. You know, I have just press record, or voice memos, a variety of apps in fact. I have just press record on here which, when I press it, immediately starts recording and it then sends it to icloud and transcribes it. So I'm halfway there already and I don't have to ask your permission, which is illegal. But I don't have to ask your permission, so I'm recording right now. See, it says it's recording.

42:00 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
So wait, but you haven't been. Have you been recording this whole day? Maybe you have to tell me if you're a cop, otherwise it's entrapment. No I just started so there's, I just have to speak to this. Um. There's a new show on netflix called baby reindeer and I won't get into it because people should watch it, but it's about stalking and, um, who who knew how recording could play a role and, yeah, could have an impact there.

42:29 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Well, get ready, because this is going to be a big, a difficult thing to enforce and it's going to be universal? Uh, I've already. There's already a company that sells a credit card size device that you put up on lectures or whatever does exactly this it records, it transcribes, it sends it to an ai for summary, and then you get it. You know the information back. I have to say, though, there is that privacy concern. Yeah, but used in, I think, thoughtfully how?

42:55 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
useful is that? See, because this is the thing I I do not like the idea of committing to things and then forgetting about those commitments, whether they're small or big, whether you know they could be anything. I really want to be a person of my word and so, to you know, accidentally, let let that lapse. I love the idea of saying, okay, I can go back and I said I would do this, and I said I would do that, and what was that conversation I was having? And also, just here's the thing, I have thoughts all the time that I could just say out loud and suddenly that's being dictated back and I would be able to look at that later and go right, I did have that great idea. I think it's going to be very cool. I honestly will probably, even before you get this, I'll probably end up getting one, just because I but that is the thing for for me, leo is I do have a little bit of concern about the privacy concern, yeah, and I don't know if I quite feel comfortable wearing this around other people without full and true transparency and well, you need a hat, difficult, that has a sign it says I'm recording

44:01 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I'm recording this I don't know if that would count legally, but it certainly would be a notice. Everything is and I think honestly, look we already in that situation where every school this is a problem. In schools, the kids have smartphones, every fight every little thing is recorded.

44:19
You know, my kids grew up with relative privacy, but this generation can pretty much assume that there is somebody with a camera that could be recording everything they do when they're in public. And I think that we're going to rapidly get to that in the next few years where we just assume that audio is being recorded at all times.

44:35 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
Yeah, because it's already the case that we don't have, there's not really a reasonable right to privacy in public. Anyway, there's kind of an agreed upon right to privacy in public. But if you are out and about and you're in public, there's only so much true protection that you have as an individual outside of just kind of somebody's comfort level. That's why people can, you know, take video and photos and stuff like that out in public, versus if you're at a private event, that kind of thing, where they do have to get your consent, et cetera, et cetera.

45:10 - Leo Laporte (Host)
So the other thing I should mention you know I was, as I mentioned, visiting my mom. She has Alzheimer's and what that really means for her she's, she's very happy, she's. She's 91. She has no physical ailments at all. She remembers everything that used to happen. She's 91. She has no physical ailments at all. She remembers everything that used to happen. She's unable to make new memories, and that's actually an interesting concept. Christopher Nolan's done a lot of that with Memento remember and other of his movies.

45:36
The idea what if you couldn't remember anything from moment to moment? And that's why she has to be in an assisted living facility, because people take care of her, because she can't remember did I eat, did I have I bathed, what time of day is it? She can't remember, but she. But what's interesting is she's 100 there. One of the things we do with her is show her old pictures and look at picture books. She remembers every detail much more than I do. So she, her memory, is great for things that happened before she got Alzheimer's, before she was able, unable, to make memories. But now that she can't make short term memories, nothing gets into the longterm memory or very little does. And so she, it's kind of every day is a fresh day. But imagine if she had a device recording and she had notes that she could refer to. Yes, she could have an artificial memory, in effect.

46:28 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
Oh, my goodness. Yeah, that's augmented memory, and I was also thinking of this. How cool is this? You have someone you're taking care of. They go to the doctor on their own, but now you can look through that and see what the doctor actually said. That's a very good use for it. That would be amazing.

46:43 - Leo Laporte (Host)
In fact, every time I go to the doctor from now on.

46:45
I'm going to say can I record this? Because you want to remember all those details and it's hard to you know, especially when he's telling you bad news. So I think that this is going to be more and more prevalent, more and more prevalent. We know this is something AI is very good at is taking this text, transcribing it, assigning voices to it and then analyzing it, and I imagine you'll have custom prompts so you could say look, michael will say anytime I agree to do something. Please make a note of that. Add it to my to-do list. Maybe Rosemary could write a script that would take. So I'm halfway there. I got ability to record. It goes to iCloud, which means it's also available on my Mac and it's transcribed. This actually Just Press Record does a very good job of transcribing. So what I'd like to do is get the transcripts to ChatGPT or to some other AI for analysis.

47:40 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
Yeah, through an API which could To chat GPT or to some other AI for analysis?

47:42 - Anthony Nielsen (Other)
Yeah, through an API. Have you heard of makecom? I think you'd probably build something Exactly.

47:46 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, well, I know you can because I have friends who do this. I told you the story. Yeah, I think Doc Rock actually does something like this, so you may not need the limitless pin, because you really probably could do it all with an Apple Watch, but it's so slick. And it's a visible pin and it has a light on it when it's recording it feels more. It's a little more alerts people that I am recording this and it won't record unless you ask permission.

48:11 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
So everybody will stay away from me, which is great, yeah, which is also All right.

48:16 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Time to talk space with our spaceman. Rod Pyle is here. He's the host of this week in space, along with tarik malik of spacecom. Rod is the uh editor-in-chief of the eye of the official publication of the uh something, something size you want me to finish?

48:35 - Pod Pyle (Guest)
yeah, would you please. It's ad astra for the national space society, our fine quarterly magazine.

48:40 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Love it author many, many books and he's on his way to. Uh, I don't know, are you on your way to alpha centauri these days?

48:49 - Pod Pyle (Guest)
zeta reticuli for this trip, because that's how far I would have to go to actually win an argument with nice significant other, with a recording. And if you think that Lisa is going to, let you get away with that, I just don't think so.

49:03 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
But that's just me. I love the smoothies they have at Zeta Reticuli. They're the best. There's no better.

49:09 - Leo Laporte (Host)
And then there's a restaurant at the end of the universe, which is true. There's nothing like it.

49:12 - Pod Pyle (Guest)
You know I tried to wear a hat today in celebration of you but it went out of camera so it wasn't very interesting looking now I want to know, rod given these.

49:23 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, oh, look at that a top hat, given the speed with which those stars are moving, can you tell me what the speed of travel you're at? Probably multiple times the speed of light, I'm guessing. Uh, I think it's warp, glorp, warp glorp.

49:36 - Pod Pyle (Guest)
Yeah, that's. That's as technical as I can get.

49:40 - Leo Laporte (Host)
You know me, I'm not mr technical we're waiting for thursday, next thursday, uh, for the stacy's book club and I and I forgot how much I love this book we're reading, uh, dennis taylor's uh, incredible, we are legion, the first book in the baba verse series. Have you read any of those?

49:58 - Pod Pyle (Guest)
no, I started uh, I guess it was that first book and I I kind of I had some trouble with it. You lost interest, but I will go back. Well it happens. You know one of the things I liked about it.

50:09 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Uh, it's a lot about ai. It's not a spoiler, because this happens in the first chapter. The guy uh dies and they cut off his head because he paid for it ahead of time he paid to have his head cut off.

50:21
He frozen after his death yeah, yeah, like walt disney and uh. And then he wakes up 117 years later and they've taken his head and they've turned it into an ai. So he's in a, he's in a machine. He's actually an ai, but what he becomes is a von neumann probe. And this is a von Neumann probe, and this is a fascinating concept.

50:40
The idea is you could explore the universe with AI driven probes that had built in the ability to reproduce themselves using 3D printers. So when they arrive at a planet, the first thing they do is gather resources, build some copies, send them off and they can slowly multiply and spread throughout the universe. And it's a great. It's a wonderful concept, and that's why the book is called we Are Legion and why he is in the Bobaverse, because there are many Bobs by the time we get to the end of the book. It's a wonderful book. If you have read it or you want to read it, read it and join us Thursday for Stacy's Book Club and we will talk a little bit about it. So you didn't like it for club members, right yeah.

51:22 - Pod Pyle (Guest)
Club members. Are you a club member? You can, you can, yeah, but I just you know, put the ad out there.

51:28 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Make sure they join. Members join the club.

51:30 - Pod Pyle (Guest)
Yep, we can. We can still have a club. Yes, yeah, an interruption um yeah, you should read.

51:38 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I think it's quite amusing. I think it's really fun and funny. It's in this kind of the vein of the martian, maybe because ray porter's reading it. It's great audible book. Uh, ray porter does all the voices, including one of the bobs who's decided they all have to have different names to avoid confusion. One of the bobs has named himself after homer simpson and talks like this. It's really funny. It's very good in an audio book. Anyway, what's going on in?

52:02 - Pod Pyle (Guest)
space. You mentioned probes beyond the solar system and we have a little bit of additional information about Voyager 1. Voyager, yeah, so let's just set the backstory. Voyager 1 was launched in 1977, so that's 46-ish years ago. It's currently 15 billion miles away from Earth. One-way radio messages take 22 and a half hours to get out there. So it's out on the extreme edge of human presence for sure.

52:32
And Voyager 1 was the one that flew past Jupiter, saturn and Saturn's moon, titan, and then was ejected out of the solar system to the north of the ecliptic, whereas Voyager 2 continued going out to the outer planets. So in December last year it started sending back gibberish JPL pings it every now and then to say how are you doing and it sent back a bunch of code that didn't make any sense and they went uh-oh. So they looked for a carrier tone, which it sends, and so they can instruct the carrier tone to modulate itself to let us know that it still heard us. But the data it was sending was bad. So about two weeks ago they announced that they think they figured out it's corrupted memory in a single chip in a flight computer.

53:17
It's worth bearing in mind, you know, if you have a chip way out there in the radiation-saturated outer solar system where you've got a lot more cosmic rays than you do in the inner solar system and they have big heavy energetic particles. One of those particles can come flying through your chip and flip a bit or two and you've got problems. So their estimate is there's like a 3% corruption somewhere. Oh, anthony, bless you for pulling those up. I was going to send them to you but you did it already, and that that's the problem. So they think they could do a workaround, but it'll take a couple of months. However, at this point over half of its instruments are shut down anyway, and while we anthropomorphize these things, we love the Voyagers. They're the leading edge of human presence, as I said, but the RTGs on them, the nuclear power supplies, are probably good for another three to four years. They're barely sending back enough wattage to track now, so we may be looking at a few more years before they've got to be shut down.

54:17 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Part of the reason we love them is because they've kind of exceeded their mission, right?

54:22 - Pod Pyle (Guest)
oh my gosh yeah well, it's like all this stuff that JPL does. Well, we'll give you a warranty for three years. Or, in the case of uh the uh the uh opportunity rover, that was supposed to last 90 days and it lasted 14 years. So JPL does spectacular stuff, which is why it was kind of a shock. Earlier this week, nasa held a press conference about this much beleaguered mars sample return mission and basically said and I'm I'm paraphrasing greatly but basically said jpl, you're too expensive, you're that's so frustrating.

54:56 - Leo Laporte (Host)
This drives me nuts industry well and know.

54:59 - Pod Pyle (Guest)
The problem is if you're a NASA field center.

55:03 - Leo Laporte (Host)
They're there.

55:04 - Pod Pyle (Guest)
They're sitting on Mars waiting for a mission, and we knew this was going to happen, because this mission wasn't approved before they set up. How they're going to do this and what's infuriating is you know the way the setup works. If you want to get a budget through NASA and pass Congress, you either have to deliberately bid low and then have it go up, or be honest and have your your mission not approved. So it's. It was bid originally a lot cheaper. Costs have gone up, of course, and you know, can private industry do it? I don't know. They haven't even been able to land successfully on the moon yet, so it seems like going to Mars and grabbing rocks is going to be a far stretch. The other problem is, at this point you know JPL is flying out the remainder of the life of the Mars rovers and orbiters. They've got a Venus mission and they've got Europa Clipper and a couple other smaller things, but that's about it. So if they don't continue feeding that field center work, you start losing the brain trust and you lose all these brilliant people.

56:07 - Leo Laporte (Host)
There's a wonderful documentary about the team. Now remember, voyager was launched in 1972. And the team that launched Voyager is still running it. But they're all our age, rod. They're all and older, they're all and older and older.

56:23 - Pod Pyle (Guest)
Well, so that's ed stone. So he's probably in his mid-80s.

56:27 - Leo Laporte (Host)
He's still yeah, that picture of him was back in 72. Yeah, yeah, there we go now. We're getting there. Yeah, yeah, so, and it's a real small crew it is. It's a handful of people. It's a wonderful documentary because it's just in a little little storefront in pasadena or somewhere that used to be a dentist's office. It's just a handful of them, but they're running this longest. This is the farthest a human craft has ever gone away from earth. They're running this mission. They're just a handful of them left. It's a wonderful. It's called it's quieter in the twilight and, uh, it's available on your streaming. Uh came out a couple of years ago Wonderful story and I actually during that story, uh, one of the first crises, uh hits Voyager one and they have to shut down some features because their batteries aren't keeping enough power going.

57:21 - Pod Pyle (Guest)
It's a really beautiful story not to get carried away, but the interesting thing to me about the rtgs. So these are radio isotopic generators and they have a plug of plutonium in there. That's got a half-life of 87 years, but it's surrounded by thermocouples and over time, you know these bimetal things, over time they apparently start growing little hairs towards each other and get small shorts. These get micro shorts and that's what uh ends up, causing them to not last.

57:51 - Leo Laporte (Host)
You know the full span of time but you said they were only supposed to last seven years and they've lasted quite a few more. Yes, the probes. Yeah, that that was the original estimate. Here is one of the shots from it's Quieter in the Twilight Voyager mission. Critical hardware. Please do not touch.

58:10 - Pod Pyle (Guest)
Yeah, and that was so. They moved away from that old dentist's office and brought it back up to JPL. Oh, did they? Oh good, oh good. But it's still. It still it's like you know 12 people or 10 people and a banquet table and a couple of old, I think their son workstations. Oh yeah, because you know from this it's all from that era.

58:29 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It's amazing, though how do you use that software? No, it is. They're able to communicate with this. How long? What is the? What is the lag? What is the latency? How far out it's billion.

58:38 - Pod Pyle (Guest)
Two and a half hours each way. Wow. So it's 45 hours to get a command out there. And and let's not forget, you know their data recorder is a tape recorder, it's not a drive, it's not a disc, it's 1972 technology, my commodore vic 20, you know, with its little tape drive or something.

58:59
oh, man, so it. You know just the fact that they're still working out there and it's a hostile environment. You know, they're just amazing machines and if you ever get a chance to do even the small tour of JPL, which is where they, it's kind of a hassle to get in, but they take you into the main auditorium.

59:26 - Leo Laporte (Host)
But they've got probably I I don't know 15 spacecraft in there hanging from the ceiling on the walls. They've got a voyager engineering twin there and they're huge. If I go down and I say I know, rod pile, if I don't wear this hat, will they let me in? No, they'll call security. I want, I want to do that. I know you used to work there, used to do a pr for them, right?

59:39 - Pod Pyle (Guest)
I did pr and then I did this yearly uh technology highlights book. That was really great that's right.

59:45
Yeah, there's 30 stories of their coolest stuff. But you know the cutbacks came and that's a soft, a soft project, so that was the easy one to get rid of. Yeah, but I still got a few copies of the old one, but I I'm hoping it'll come back. You know it's just nasa's operating under this dumb continuing resolution that makes funding uncertain. And you know just one more small thing. I don't know if a lot of people know this, but JPL is the only NASA field center that isn't staffed by civil servants. Nasa pays Caltech to manage JPL, so they're Caltech employees, which is a whole different structure, and for better or worse, that makes them easier to dismiss than if they're civil servants. So I think that's why we see so many cutbacks happening there. So that's unfortunate.

01:00:32 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah Well, I know we have some JPL scientists who listen to our shows. I've talked to them in the past and of course we appreciate what they do and what you do. Ron, ron, what's his?

01:00:44 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
name ron pile ron pile that's that's because rod has already landed on the other planet.

01:00:49 - Pod Pyle (Guest)
We're talking about the evil twin ron ron, and you know all I do is go up there and listen to the smart people and try and write down what they say so the rest of us can understand it. But you're right, I mean it's a real incredible environment up there and I think because the caltech connection it's a little more of a college campus feel. But working with those people is just such a pleasure and it really took a bite out of my heart when they had those cutbacks, and I'm sure you know everybody there too this week in space every week.

01:01:23 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Uh now open to the public. We started it in the club and it was such a success. It's available uh internet wide. Uh just search for this week in space in your podcast client or visit twittv slash twi s for all the episodes. Uh, thank you, rod, it's always. Thank you, sir, and you're rocking that hat. I want to see one on T W I S for all the episodes.

01:01:42 - Pod Pyle (Guest)
Thank you, rod, it's always. Thank you, sir, and you're rocking that hat. I want to see one on Micah next week.

01:01:46 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I'll get him one. Actually, I have a. This is from the American hat maker, as opposed to somebody else, so it's a very handsome. I think it's not. My Lisa got is a very handsome. Yeah, Lisa got it for me. It is a very handsome hat.

01:01:59 - Pod Pyle (Guest)
Yeah, Lisa got it for me. That's kind of like Stetson quality, right. I mean it's the real thing, it's not.

01:02:03 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I don't know if it's the real thing. It's certainly made out of leather. That's the real thing.

01:02:09 - Pod Pyle (Guest)
That's a sweat catcher.

01:02:10 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Exactly. Thank you.

01:02:13 - Pod Pyle (Guest)
Ron. All right, gentlemen.

01:02:28 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Thank you in space, probably if I had the right face mask and tell your brother ron. We said hello. Now you know why I ordered that ai pin exactly? And if you know why, could you tell me, because I forgot? Yeah, I'll let you know. You're watching. Uh, ask the tech guys. Uh, seven, eight, eight, eight, seven two, four, two eight eight, four is the phone number. Yep, you can leave a message if you call in when we're not on the air. Otherwise, if you call between what is it 2 and 5 pm Eastern on Sundays, we're here, we'll answer. Who should we talk to next, mr Nielsen, let's take a breather.

01:02:55
then we got a wireless caller on the line, a wireless caller coming up as ask the tech guys continues this is mike over there. I'm leo laporte. I got hat hair, the only thing I you know I love hats. That's why I don't, but I don't like hat hair, yeah. Is there a solution for that? Is there a hat that doesn't?

01:03:14 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
give you hat hair that somebody should make it, because that's a hat I'd wear. I buy that hat. I basically have a choice between wearing a hat or not wearing a hat. There is no wearing a hat and then later not doing it, that's why many of the people who wear hats don't have hair.

01:03:28 - Leo Laporte (Host)
There you go, there you go. That's the explanation. That's the solution. Welcome back to Ask the Tech Guys. Let's see who's next A wireless caller. Hello, hey, hey, welcome. What's your first name?

01:03:40 - Dan (Caller)
This is Dan from Fresno. Hi, dan, welcome, what's up. Thanks. Well, I have a question about a wireless hotspot using an iPhone 15 Pro Max. I'm not at home. I'm at a friend's house because I'm having work done on my house, okay, but she doesn't have any kind of internet here. So I'm trying to use my hotspot with my computer. I have Xfinity Mobile and I've had them since October, but when I connect, it lets me connect and everything I can connect, but once I do anything like, say, I check my email, it immediately disconnects me.

01:04:25 - Leo Laporte (Host)
That's useful.

01:04:27 - Dan (Caller)
Well, exactly, it's so weird because if I look at my phone at that point, I can still stream. It's not like I don't have internet, I can still stream stuff. Oh, really so you can receive, but you can't.

01:04:43 - Leo Laporte (Host)
You're thinking you can't send, but the truth is you can't receive without sending. It's kind of like the natural law so we know you're sending. If you're able to stream anything, you're sending.

01:04:56 - Dan (Caller)
Right, so I can get on the Internet. Like I said, on the computer I can do something and it immediately drops the connection. If I go into my system tray and look for the Internet connection, it says there's no Internet connection.

01:05:11 - Leo Laporte (Host)
So what is it that causes the Internet connection to drop? What actual activities cause it to drop? You can look at YouTube.

01:05:20 - Dan (Caller)
It seems as if if I stop doing something then it goes away, like if I check my email it connects and everything. I get it, but right after that, if I go to try and load a web page, they tell me there's no internet so it almost it lasts for a moment and then it stops right and you said you're using Xfinity.

01:05:40 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Now let me ask you a question about Xfinity. One of the ways Xfinity works. It's very frustrating to me is if you're an Xfinity customer and you're using the Xfinity router on your internet, is they actually create an open hotspot? It's called Xfinity. I know that people can use and, uh, and, and you know it's. Unless you turn it off, you're helping other people. Now that's fine. They say it doesn't come, it doesn't cost you, it doesn't cost uh, you know you any money. It doesn't take away bits from your downloads and so forth, but the wireless works that way. So they do fall back to Verizon. But if you're within a hotspot, if that phone can see an Xfinity hotspot, it says I'm not going to use Verizon because it costs them. When you use Verizon, I'm going to use that hotspot.

01:06:35 - Dan (Caller)
Let me tell you this too. So say, I try using just the Xfinity mobile, the cellular data, to get the hotspots Right. It does the same thing. Okay, so where I'm at right now, the neighbor has one of these open hotspots. Aha, so if I lean right up against my neighbor's wall, you know, right up against the wall I can get their Xfinity hotspot right Right. But it does the same thing If I connect to the internet on the computer. As soon as I do something, right after that, it drops.

01:07:07 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Do they? I don't know this about. Xfinity do they charge you extra for hotspotting, or do they say hotspotting is part of your plan?

01:07:16 - Dan (Caller)
It's part of my plan, part of the unlimited plus plan that I have. Okay, so it's like 15 gigs of hotspot.

01:07:22 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Okay, good Okay.

01:07:25 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
This is bizarre to me, that it disconnects right afterward. Is it just this one computer? Have you tried it with your neighbor? I can't refuse it. Is it your neighbors or your friend's house? Have you tried another device to hotspot with?

01:07:38 - Dan (Caller)
I haven't, I don't have another device here.

01:07:43 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
Okay, hotspot with and is it? I haven't, I don't have another device here. Okay, um, because we've had this problem.

01:07:46 - Dan (Caller)
This is a windows machine, right?

01:07:47 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
yes, so I remember a similar issue with a windows pc, where it ended up being an energy saver issue. Yeah, that the wi-fi card kept dropping right after it will do that.

01:07:59 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Sometimes you have to go into the device manager and turn off sleep on the network cards.

01:08:05 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
Oh, and here's the other thing. Yeah, I know that windows has a feature where it can recognize when it's using something like a mobile connection and it will automatically do what's called metering. Yeah, it's called a meter because it it thinks that, oh dear, you might use too much and so we're going to protect it. So that might actually be what's happening here, is you run that email thing once and it's running up against the meter, and so then it's disconnecting right after that. So you might check in your. That's the thing about Windows is we don't know necessarily which Wi-Fi card you have, et cetera, et cetera. But you might look around in your network settings to see if there's something that is marking it as a metered connection and then turn off that metered connection.

01:08:50 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, by default Windows sets Wi-Fi to non-metered. Oh, it does. But mobile broadband networks by default it sets to metered. Oh yeah, so there you go. Yeah. So what you probably want to do is turn off uh metered. So here's how uh swipe in from the right edge of the screen, select settings, change pc settings, choose network, select connections and then, under data usage, turn on or off, set as metered connection. So that's ridiculous.

01:09:21 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
I know it's so involved.

01:09:24 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It could be, that it also could be. Xfinity is weird. It's kicking you for some reason.

01:09:30 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
I'm going to.

01:09:31 - Dan (Caller)
The one time that I did get it, the one time I did get it to actually last for a while, what I actually ended up having to do was load a YouTube video, you know, like a playlist. And keep it running and at that point it kept it running.

01:09:45 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
Do you have low power mode turned on on your iPhone?

01:09:49 - Dan (Caller)
No.

01:09:50 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
Okay, that's interesting.

01:09:52 - Leo Laporte (Host)
So, in other words, by keeping something running in the background and this is on the phone or on the Windows.

01:10:00 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
Yeah, on the phone or on the Windows PC. On the phone or on the windows pc.

01:10:02 - Leo Laporte (Host)
On the windows machine okay on the windows machine, so this may be is what you were talking about with the, where the card is for some reason going to sleep and and keeping the youtube running is is constantly pushing the card so the network says, oh no, no, you're still working.

01:10:17 - Dan (Caller)
Um, that is, that is a strange, it's very strange, dang thing here that is incredibly frustrating, because I go to do something and I just have no more internet and I have to restart everything to get it back up and going again you're not using a VPN, are you?

01:10:35 - Leo Laporte (Host)
no ok, you know it's in the network and internet settings, windows 10 or Windows 11?

01:10:46 - Dan (Caller)
11.

01:10:48 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Okay, that's what I'm using here. Let me go to the internet option. Look how small that is.

01:10:52 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
I can't even write that, um, when you so, you do something and then you wait a couple of seconds in the network settings, are you still connected to the network and it just says that there's no longer internet connection, or does it completely disconnect from the network as a whole?

01:11:14 - Dan (Caller)
So so what? What? So when I go to system pray, when I have, when it's working, it says connected to Dan, you know, to my Daniel's iPhone internet. You know that's working, it says connected to my Daniel's iPhone internet, but when it loses it it just says no internet.

01:11:27 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
Okay. So see, it says no internet. It could still be connected, but just not have internet. The reason why I'm asking is because that can help us narrow down if it's coming from the Windows side or the iPhone side. Coming from the Windows side or the iPhone side? If it completely loses connection entirely, then that's more likely to be on the iPhone side, but it sounds like this is definitely on the Windows PC side.

01:11:54 - Dan (Caller)
I don't think it's the iPhone, because I went as far as connecting the USB cable to the computer and connecting the internet that way, you know, not using the the the wireless the iPhone. It actually says that you can. You can do it wired.

01:12:07 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
Yep USB tethering.

01:12:08 - Dan (Caller)
I'm doing it that way, thinking yeah. But I thought, well, maybe that'll remove any possibility that there's a problem with the iPhone, because it's not. It's going through the cable now. It's not going through whatever you know. Uh, that's on the iPhone is going through the cable now. It's not going through whatever you know. That's on the iPhone. It's going through the cable. Yeah, but it still did it.

01:12:25 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
Yeah, it's a great troubleshooting step. So props on that, on attempting this is a real thinker I have to say my experience with.

01:12:35 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I'm an Xfinity customer. Much to my sadness I am not an Xfinity wireless customer, but I have to say one of the things I find is that many of those xfinity wi-fi hotspots I want around are unreliable, and I'm thinking that maybe this is part of the problem. Is that neighbor's xfinity hotspot, the phone, when as soon as it sees it, says oh, forget verizon, I've got a, I've got a Wi-Fi hotspot and joins it. I wouldn't get closer to it, I would get farther from it.

01:13:06 - Dan (Caller)
But it's a weird thing. It doesn't either way, though it doesn't either way.

01:13:12 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, because I think that my experience is when I'm wandering about, I make sure I do not join any Xfinity Wi-Fi.

01:13:19 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
Yeah, because it's always bad.

01:13:22 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It's not that it's bad.

01:13:23 - Dan (Caller)
I've gone as far as turning off Wi-Fi.

01:13:26 - Leo Laporte (Host)
And it still happens.

01:13:27 - Dan (Caller)
So it doesn't try and join anything and it still happens.

01:13:29 - Leo Laporte (Host)
So you're on Verizon for sure. Now I'm a little bit puzzled. I would look at this metered connection thing.

01:13:36 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
Yeah, definitely check that.

01:13:37 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Here it is in the network and internet settings. I'm on ethernet so it's under ethernet, but for you it would be, uh, under wi-fi.

01:13:45 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
But you'll see, there's metered connection and you want to make sure that that's off this is where I wish that we had uh ai bot, where I could ask it the whole history of ask the tech guys, because I remember an episode where we were talking to someone and we found out that one specific wi-fi card was just a bad card. Do you remember what that was?

01:14:06 - Leo Laporte (Host)
yeah, it was the killer, the killer card card from uh, I think it's intel. Yeah, and we. They were on a dell system that had a killer. So you don't need an ai, you just need my just need leo's my cowboy hat brain.

01:14:18
um, yeah, the killer cards are bad, but uh, could, uh, could, be that I mean that I would. That's the other thing, that I would go into the um, the uh device settings on that network card and make sure sleep is turned off, that's for sure. Um, you know how to get to the device manager.

01:14:38 - Dan (Caller)
Yeah, yeah.

01:14:40 - Leo Laporte (Host)
So you're going to go and look at that particular uh uh internet card and, uh, you know I'm on a virtual machine so I won't actually have a hardware uh internet card here. So let me just see network adapters. Yeah, it's all. It's all uh virtualized. So I, I can't really. But you'll go into uh device manager, network adapters, you'll choose that wi-fi adapter, you'll go to properties and you'll see somewhere in here that there is the ability to sleep. Turn that off. You don't want to sleep, you want that thing to always be on. That's a common issue for a lot of windows users. And after that, I don't know, I don't know, I honestly I want to blame everybody. I hate, I hate xfinity, want to blame them. Not a fan of windows want to blame windows. Uh, one who makes the card want to blame? That could be, could be the iphone, for all I know. Uh, this is a such a complicated setup.

01:15:35
That's what I wasn't sure it's so weird that it works and then it drops. Yeah, that works, then it drops and email.

01:15:43 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
Seeing you mentioned, you know, email that can be a relatively heavy uh bit of data grabbing. That's what made me think metered connection because, yeah, when, when you hit that refresh button, depending on your email program, it might be pulling a lot of of information and sending it back and forth yeah, the only way that, like I said, it did stay on when I when I loaded up that youtube um playlist, it stayed connected.

01:16:13 - Leo Laporte (Host)
So that's why I was thinking something, something was going to sleep or something weird like that yeah, this is a a a great article Thank you, quippy from a site that I'm going to bookmark from now on, called Rotten Wi-Fi. Why does Xfinity Wi-Fi hotspot keep disconnecting, and in this case it is because he's connected. You cannot see my computer, is that the problem? Oh yeah, the cable fell out the little cable fell out.

01:16:41
Apparently, in this case it's because of this public Wi-Fi network called Xfinity Wi-Fi that I was talking about, and there's a limit on how much you can use. So it's apparently very common to have connectivity problems when you're on an Xfinity hotspot.

01:17:01
So yeah, the neighbor's Wi-fi is definitely something you don't want um, there are some other things you can troubleshoot in here that are kind of interesting. Um, so I will put a link to this in the show notes too. Thank you, quippy, for this, and I like the name of this site. I'm gonna, I'm gonna start haunting this rotten wi-fi site. You know what really grinds my gears uh, yeah, we don't have a good solution for you turning off the hot spot yeah was the first thing you know at home.

01:17:35 - Dan (Caller)
I always turn that off yeah, you don't like it either. A couple of times they've actually turned it back on on me and the only reason I noticed is because, yeah, and I noticed because my phone tries to connect to it, right, and they want it, because that's what's I know nobody else.

01:17:49 - Leo Laporte (Host)
The whole idea that Xfinity had now other cable companies are copying is hey, we got a lot of routers in town. We could be in mobile network If we just had enough routers, open their wi-fi and to the public, then we we could be a cellular company. They realized, of course, that wasn't going to work as soon as you got out of town so they made a deal with verizon, but they still don't want to use that. Verizon cost some money. They want to use their hot spots and I. It's just a terrible solution. I do not recommend a cable internet company as your mobile phone company. I just don't think that that technology is very mature. It works very well. It was. It was a way of making money, which xfinity is very good at.

01:18:37 - Dan (Caller)
What do you guys think about frontier fiber?

01:18:40 - Leo Laporte (Host)
they just recently came into here where I live, I would do it. Frontier has a very checkered past, I mean.

01:18:48 - Dan (Caller)
I've heard such bad things about Frontier yeah.

01:18:50 - Leo Laporte (Host)
But I have heard good things about Frontier Fiber. So the history of Frontier is terrible and they moved into Southern California and they just messed with people like crazy and Cory Doctorow has raged at them because they basically took government money to build out their network and never did, and on and on and on. But I hear very good things about Frontier Wi-Fi from a number of customers. So Frontier Fiber, in fact there's Scooter X, scooter x saying frontier fiber is amazing. So I think I would put the history in the back mirror and say maybe, review mirror and say maybe, uh, I'll give them a chance with the fiber. Uh, everybody I know who has it likes it. So there you go. So give that a try.

01:19:38 - Dan (Caller)
We laid a bunch of fiber here in town.

01:19:41 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, I think, when you can get fiber you should get fiber, lisa and I are looking for a downsize. We're looking at smaller houses around town and over in Sonoma. First thing I do type in can I get Sonic here? First thing I do. You know she has other priorities, but for me, yes, high speed internet at a low cost is a great deal.

01:20:07
Yeah, I think fiber is really. Uh, if you can get it is really the way to go. Uh. Thank you for the call. I'm sorry we weren't much help, but we gave you some ideas.

01:20:16
we gave you some things to try and keep listening because somebody might call in with some a better idea Because we got a lot of. That's the best thing about this show. It always has been. It's a community. When I started doing it 20 years ago. It's a community. We've always had great people in the chat room who help out listeners who call in. It's not just us, the tech guys answering your questions, it's this vast community of tech enthusiasts all trying to answer. Yes, scooterx says Frontier Fiber is amazing. Very happy customer in Southern California. It's been rock solid since I installed it a year and a half ago. The price is fair and it just works. Is this the same ScooterX?

01:20:58 - Pod Pyle (Guest)
I know this is a different.

01:20:59 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Scooter x seems awfully very positive, yeah awfully non-grumpy.

01:21:04 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
Yeah, no, we love you, scooter x uh uh, let's, uh, let's move on.

01:21:10 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Oh, april 24th, chocolate milk mini sip said this along april 24th. Is that? Is it april 24th? Yet no, tomorrow day after tomorrow is js naked day.

01:21:21 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
Okay, can we explain what that means? It's the web should work without javascript.

01:21:28 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Got it? Js naked day promotes the rule of least power. Start with html and css and that's, and then stop before you get to javascript. You know how few sites work without javascript? Very few, very few sites work without javascript. Very few, very few sites work without javascript. But uh, it is naked.

01:21:45 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
Js naked day javascript is like what the earrings and cufflinks to an outfit yeah, it's, which is fun.

01:21:55 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It's more like suspenders. Okay, like it. You could probably get along without it, but many of us, our pants would fall down there you go, I like it.

01:22:04 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
Yeah, that's what you're here for.

01:22:06 - Leo Laporte (Host)
The metaphors the metaphors keep coming the reminiscing uh, now the discord chat is saying no way, that's scooter x we have, we have fun trust no one.

01:22:17
Trust no one. We have real fun in the in the Discord chat. That's just one of the faculties, the facilities, the things we provide you as members of the club. We have all those club events coming up today. We're going to have a live recording for club members. Stacy's book club is Thursday and, of course, you record iOS today in the club every Tuesday and we're going to do that watch party. Are we still Anthony's idea here? We're doing this may 9th. We're still doing metropolis. Yeah, we think the soundtrack is copyright.

01:22:48 - Anthony Nielsen (Other)
Yeah, because it was restored recently, or well, I mean not recently, but relatively. We'll show a crappy old 1927 print, yeah, but that's missing like half an hour, like oh yeah, we'll figure it out, we'll figure it out you and I will act out the last half hour ai create the last.

01:23:05 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Wouldn't that be funny yeah, here's watch this hour and a half incomplete movie and provide us with the last half hour. I think that's a great idea. Anyway, it's going to be a watch along. We're going to do it, uh, lisa and I are going to do it at the house, where much, much of the staff's going to join us. I'll be making brisket, uh, and you can join us in the club twit discord.

01:23:26 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
Sadly, no brisket in the discord, but I haven't figured out a way to do that yet I'll show you brisket, but I can't give it to you to eat.

01:23:33 - Leo Laporte (Host)
What is that mukbang?

01:23:35 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
mukbang mukbang, not bong mukbang. Oh, I thought it was like ong, but maybe it was beng. I don't know what you're talking about. It's where people watch, people eat.

01:23:44 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Oh, that's disgusting. Anyway, I don't, hey, don't yuck people's yum, don't yuck people's mukbang.

01:23:52 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
You keep saying bong and it's not bong. I'm telling you, it's definitely not that you said it.

01:24:04 - Leo Laporte (Host)
You said it. You said it. We're unclear anyway. Google it, guys.

01:24:05
The reason we do that is we want to make it fun to be in the club, and I think it is fun to be in the club. You get ad-free versions of all the shows. You get, uh, video of all the shows that we don't make video publicly available. For instance, micah does this wonderful hands-on macintosh show and for a long time it was behind the paywall in the club. Only we realized that's terrible. We want everybody to have access to it. So we thought what could we do? And Lisa said why don't we just put the audio out to the public? People can listen to it, get the value of it, but if they want the video they have to join the clubs.

01:24:33
We want to give you some sort of reason to join the club. Now. It's only $ dollars a month, which I think is a is a pretty low. You know there are many podcasts, the whole podcast. One podcast, seven bucks a month. We give you a bunch of podcasts, access to the discord ad, free versions of all the shows, twit plus content we don't put out anywhere else. But the main reason you should be doing this, by the way way, the main point of this yeah, I'll bake biscuits. If you'll join the club, I'll bake biscuits. You can muck bung my biscuits.

01:25:14
Anyway, the main reason you join the club is because, for some crazy reason, you think Mike and I should just keep doing what we're doing, not just this show, but all the shows. You want to keep Jammer B employed and Anthony Nielsen employed, and Benito and Sebastian and Debbie and all the people who work here. You want to keep the lights on, you want to keep the studio going, but we can't do that without your help because unfortunately, sad to say, ad revenue is dwindling, audiences are dwindling. It's a very competitive environment and we're just you know, we're giving it to you and saying you want us to keep doing it. It's up to you. So twittv slash club twit.

01:25:52
If you listen to more than one show a week, I think seven bucks is a very fair bargain and it really does help us keep doing what we're doing. And I think I've recently I don't know about you, but I've recently come to the opinion that tech, which was getting kind of monotonous over the last few years the iphone just so dominant and everybody's just copying them and didn't seem like any really real innovation was happening all of a sudden, ai happens and everybody's waking up and things are happening and I think it's going to be a very interesting next few years and I really think it's important that we're here to give you unbiased coverage with no axe to grind, no faith or no favor. What do they? How do they say that? No something or favor?

01:26:35
We don't we, just we're, we're. We're giving you the straight facts and I think it's worth seven bucks a month so that we don't no fear or favor. We don't have any fear or favor. We don't, we just we're, we're. We're giving you the straight facts and I think it's worth seven bucks a month so that we don't no fear or favor. We don't have any fear or favor. Uh, we just, we just say tell it like it is, and I think that's it. That'd be very valuable, I think, without fear or favor.

01:26:52 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
Yes, that's us, mukbang it's called yeah, but I think the a is um, it's uh or it's korean, of course, and it's pronounced okay there you go, that's it it's an eating show, an online audio visual broadcast.

01:27:12 - Leo Laporte (Host)
See, I'm not a fan of that, I wouldn't watch it, but some people some people love watching other people eat and they eat they what's the term there? Is a term for a phobia uh of.

01:27:25 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
Oh yes um or any mouth sounds or any mouth what is that? I don't know, but if you didn't ask me, I would know I?

01:27:32 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I know that there are many people who hate me because of my mouth sounds gosh darn it I the.

01:27:37 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
the fear of god was put into me as a child with that, so I chew with my mouth closed.

01:27:41 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Don't smack your lips and chew with your mouth closed, as you should.

01:27:43 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
Yes, amen, there's oof we're watching. Yes, misophonia.

01:27:47 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Misophonia.

01:27:48 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
Thank you, we were watching a show recently and they purposely it was a reality show and they purposely made the mouth sounds of the people louder.

01:28:01 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yes, people gusting louder, oh yes. And for for people who have that sensitivity, it's sometimes called sound rage.

01:28:05 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
Yeah, because it will make them angry, yeah yeah, it doesn't make me angry, but I just think it's gross.

01:28:10 - Leo Laporte (Host)
There are people because I used to, you know I'd bite an apple while I was on the radio and people get very upset. So you bit harder. Yeah, I bit harder. Let's move on to. That was our little break. Thank you for putting up with that and thank you for joining Club Twit to all of our Twit Club members. I really appreciate it. Who should we? We got Fernando on the line.

01:28:33 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
Fernando, fernando on the line.

01:28:36 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yes, hi, oh, look, there he is. He's in the Stargate.

01:28:39 - Fernando (Caller)
Hi Fernando, where are you calling?

01:28:41 - Leo Laporte (Host)
from.

01:28:42 - Fernando (Caller)
San Diego California.

01:28:43 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Beautiful Is the weather, gorgeous today.

01:28:47 - Fernando (Caller)
It's a little overcast, but it's bad.

01:28:49 - Leo Laporte (Host)
We got your weather it's 75 degrees and clear. It was a beautiful day yesterday for the Butter and Eggs Day in Petaluma, heart healthy.

01:29:05 - Fernando (Caller)
Good for the heart. What can we do for you, sir? Well, let's start with that. For those people that don't like the mouth sounds um, I wanted. I've been listening to you talk about dot as the uh um ai that you're using locally yes, or l For LLM. And I work for a local hospital and we support their EMR and of course, they don't like their stuff. Public, right, right, they want it local. So I like to set up a local and a library for our support, but it's really difficult. I was trying to do it with notebook lm, but that's public and yeah, because it ends up, everything ends up going to google.

01:29:48 - Leo Laporte (Host)
So even if you have local content, google gets the stuff and hip probably hipa prevents you from doing that, I would guess well, there is a patient information, but it's just Okay.

01:30:03 - Fernando (Caller)
But you're still sensitive to it and you know folks that call in and are having issues and we need to fix.

01:30:10 - Leo Laporte (Host)
So let me, let me tell you what you're looking for, which is something called RAG, and this is so. There's two things actually you're looking for, so RAG, which is something generation retrieval augmented generation is an AI term, which means the AI is retrieving local documents to augment its AI retrie augmented generation. The other thing I think you're looking for is a completely local AI, which means you're so. So this is dot. By the way, you can see, uh, this is one of many open source AI choices that's out there. Uh, I downloaded this one cause I'm playing with this. Okay idea is with dot. You're going to let me go to the settings here. Uh, if it has any, I don't know where I? Uh, where do I find the settings? There's going to be a way to choose the model, um, the it's. You're going to download a model locally now I would suggest.

01:31:20
So all of these, there are two ways you can operate. It needs, at some point, the base large language model or LLM, and that is the thing that teaches it how to talk, basically, so you're going to either. And so ChatGPT is an LLM, so is Quad from Anthropic, so is Google's Gemini. Those are all large language models that have general abilities. But in every case, you take a large language model and you tune it for your use case, and the tuning is really what differentiates these LLMs. But you need an LLM.

01:31:57
Llms are costly to generate. They're big, they take a lot of time, they take a lot of GPU or NPU power. That's why the big boys have their own models, these LLMs. But there are a handful of models that are available for you to use free, to download for free. In fact, facebook Meta just released the latest version of their open source model, llama, l-l-a-m-a, l-l-a-m-a right, yeah, they just released it, and the idea is they're going to do all the work to generate it. They're going to use all the electricity to generate this in the big server farms, but then you can download the LLM and use it on your machine. But then you can download the LLM and use it on your machine and then you fine tune it using retrieval, augmented generation, with your own documents.

01:32:50
There are other ones. The other one that's very good is called Mistral. It's from a French company that has recently received a lot of venture capital, but also Mistral is a downloadable LLM. So the idea of these is, instead of going to OpenAI or Gemini or Claude, where you go out on the internet and use their LLM, even with your own documents, which is how this Google LLM Notebook LLM works. You give it your documents, but it's still using Gemini, right? It's still going up to the cloud tuning Gemini and getting your answer.

01:33:27
You can run these on modern machines, especially on Macs, because they have built-in machine language processors, but also the new Windows machines with NPUs. There's one Intel chip that has an NPU. They'll be a little faster, but you can use your GPU for it. So they could take the LLM, apply your documents. I'll show you. So the first thing I did was with ChatGPT, and I created a couple of ChatGPT calls them GPTs One for the language, the programming language I use, common Lisp, and one for Emacs, the editor I use. So what I did, in fact, if I go to the configuration, you'll see how this works.

01:34:12
What I did is I took an LLM and the LLM is online. So I am going to what is probably the best LLM out there, which is OpenAI's LLM, and then I added to it these documents. Furthermore, I told the LLM only give me an answer that comes from those documents. So in fact, I can ask it questions and it will say you know what? I don't have any of that information in my documents. It also has a checkbox that allow web browsing in that, so that is also going to be going out to the public internet. So this was my first experiment. It works really well, but it is sending data the questions that I ask out to the server and coming back with the information. But it's generating brilliant stuff.

01:35:06
Now this is an interesting question. I asked it. I asked it to create a polynomial function using the Lagrange interpolation formula. It said the documents you provided these methods are not directly detailed in the documents you provided. So it warned me look, I'm going to do stuff that is not from the tuning that you gave me. But it still went out, looked up on the internet the Lagrange polynomial and even wrote Lisp code for me that I could execute. So it combined the two. It actually did something that I thought was remarkable. Now I agree with you. There's several reasons you don't want to do this. Besides privacy, you also have to pay ChatGPT or Claude for API access and it's slower because you're sharing their big processor with a lot of other people. So in theory, here's DOT With DOT, I have downloaded. I think I downloaded Mistral. Actually it comes with Mistral 7B, so it's a very nice LLM. And then you upload a folder so I can upload all the Lisp documents. It churns on it for a while.

01:36:16 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
And upload doesn't mean to the cloud.

01:36:19 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yes, that's correct. So upload's probably not the best term. It's actually just adding. Using RIG, it's adding these documents to its tuning, its data, its LLM.

01:36:31 - Fernando (Caller)
Can I ask a question, leo Sure, can that folder be shared? So my bigger vision is everybody loads ai on their workstation right, because I have a team of 10 that it could be on a network share yes. Yeah.

01:36:49 - Leo Laporte (Host)
In fact, you tell where you want it to store its information and it will then put it there, and that could be a network share. Now I've just been playing with this. It seems like, first of all, uploading documents takes a while. It's going to chew all of those right. There is, I'm sure, a theoretical limit. What it's doing is it's turning those provided documents into tokens which the LLM uses, and there's a limit on the number of tokens an LLM can handle. You perhaps have seen that you know with newer LLMs saying oh now with 500,000 tokens, so there are limited. It depends how much you want to upload to it. This is not a solution you probably would want to use. Yet it also seems to forget it each time and I have to reload them each time. You can see it's still chewing on this folder that I provided to it.

01:37:39
There are other ones out there, though. There's one called Jan. Let me launch Jan. Jan also allows you to choose. You can see here I'm choosing which model I want to use, and there are a variety of different models. You can choose from using Mistral Instruct, you can use the API for OpenAI or Claude, but you can also use local ones.

01:38:05
This requires a little more effort to do RAG, and that's been my experience with a lot of these. Adding PDFs or documents to the corpus is non-trivial you have to use Python to do it. So this is another one. Jan, this is all local, so the beauty of this is it's a local LLM. I have yet to find the equivalent of what I did with OpenAI and ChatGPT. That's what I'm really looking for is something that I can do. Just as you want to Take an LLM, that's the large language model that somebody else has created Download it now so I'm not sending anything up to the cloud and then add my own tuning and corpus of data to it and say to it hey, you can please use your LLM superpowers, but only give me answers that come from this corpus of material.

01:39:02
That's how you keep it from giving you. You know, hallucinations yeah, I don't. I'm trying to find a better word than hallucination because it's such a human word. But, yeah, to keep it from hallucinating, keep it from from making up stuff, and my experience, by the way, is that doing what I did with the OpenAI, chat, gpt, saying just get information from these documents has been 100% reliable. It has not made up anything Nice, and you saw, it warned me when it said well, look, that's not in your corpus, but I do happen to know how to do a Lagrange polynomial, so here's how you do it. Uh, but it warned me ahead of time, so I think we're really close here now. You see, dot has now absorbed all these documents. I gave it a whole folder and it seems to absorb a lot of stuff.

01:39:51 - Fernando (Caller)
um, how do I've been playing with notebook lLM and the only problem is it only allows you 20 sources.

01:40:03 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yes, and chat GPT is the same and I think that that's. That's that tokening, tokenization thing. I'm not sure what the limit is on Mistral, which I think this is what is using Mistral, but it seems to be quite. You can see all these documents. I've loaded in there quite a few Now. By the way, this is incredibly slow, so the benefit of having it local, which I thought would be speed, is not so.

01:40:30
The idea of DOT was to make RAG easy. It's still got a ways to go. There you go. I asked it for some sample code to do a while loop in Lisp. Lisp famously lacks one and it was able to come up with some examples and give me some code, but it was slow. So it's getting this from the documents I gave it. It wouldn't know this otherwise.

01:40:56
I don't think we we're getting close, but I don't think we're there yet to answer your question. I gave you a very long, ant winded answer to your very simple question, which is you want rag. You want as many tokens as possible. There will be a limit on the number of tokens. You will choose an llm and they're a variety, like llama and mistral, to choose from. There are many more than that, so you should try different ones. And yes, in most cases, I think what you're going to have to do is your own Python thing. You can cobble this all together with Python, including the rag part of it.

01:41:33
The whole idea of dot is so an idiot like me can just download it and do it. It's worth playing with. I don't know if I'm doing something wrong. Maybe there'll be a new version. It seems like I have to load this code all the time. I don't know why. Well, that is in beta right now. Right, yeah, this is just. You know, it's somebody's hobby project. That's the thing. The idea of DOT was you don't even have to choose what model. You don't have to download anything, it just comes with it and it has DocDOT, which is what I'm using for documents for RAG, and BigDOT, which is just the LLM by itself. All LLMs are tuned. You're going to tune it further with a corpus of data, right? Did I help you at all?

01:42:19 - Fernando (Caller)
Yeah, yeah, just to be patient.

01:42:22 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, it's happening. It's happening by the end of the year. See, this is to me, the real promise of AI, Something local that is working on your personal information, Because that could be, you know. That's why I thought this pin was interesting. Record every experience you have and then let the AI generate stuff and you can ask it stuff like hey, how did I get to that, how do I get that gas station that I visited the other day? You know, you can ask it, query it about your life. To me, that's got to be just around the corner.

01:43:00 - Fernando (Caller)
We're so close but we're not there yet and I think locally is the biggest key right, Because there's so many issues with privacy and our data and everything like that. If you can have it local, I think people would like it more.

01:43:14 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Well, this is why Microsoft made a big deal about announcing their AI PCs and why Qualcomm is building in these they call them neural processing units into their hardware. Because, yes, people want to do it locally, people want her, you know, but I think ultimately, for most stuff, the connected AI is going to be better because it can go out and look on the internet for information.

01:43:41 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
It depends on if you're using it for search and new knowledge or if you are looking using it for rag right, Right, yeah, Well, ideally both right.

01:43:50 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I mean, if I should be able to cobble together something that knows everything every I ever did and can get more information like directions from Google maps right, I like it if it can go out and get stuff. I just don't want it to exfiltrate my information, and that's a little tricky. The real problem all of these companies are facing right now is they've run out of material to build these LLMs with, so they're anxious to use your information to help their LLMs. They watch because they really need, they want your email, they want your Reddit posts, they want your tweets, they want everything because the LLMs to train these things, the giant moths. They've already absorbed most of the internet, so now they've got to go into your pocket, get some information there. That's really what's going on. I think it's a fascinating subject. I'm excited.

01:44:43
I think AIs could change the world soon, very soon, in very unexpected and interesting ways. It could also be bad for the world. There will be consequences. It is disruptive. Hey, I'm glad you asked. Got me a chance to get up on my soapbox. I'll get down now.

01:45:06 - Fernando (Caller)
Thanks, Leo and Mike. I really appreciate your help. Great to talk to you.

01:45:09 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Thank you, you're watching. Ask the Tech Guys Mike is Sergeant and Leo Laporte. More of your calls coming up? 888-724-2884. Don't get me started on the eye, don't get me started saw that right, I lost control it's okay though I, I'm so I'm excited too, and I I'm I'm of the opinion that we should just forget ethics, copyright, give it everything, okay.

01:45:39 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
Give it everything. I don't think the ethics and the morals part I agree with. Give it everything.

01:45:44 - Leo Laporte (Host)
The copyright part I do agree with. Give it everything, Because the more it knows, the better the chance it's going to cure cancer and invent fusion and put us on the moon and all the stuff that you know, all that stuff it could do.

01:45:57 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
I'd love if it had access to the patented medication.

01:46:01 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yes, yeah ai is is only as good as the stuff that is put into it. Yeah, and, and as as sam altman at opening I said, you don't want to ai that's only trained in the public domain because it won't know much nor do you want an ai that's trained on what we are doing right now creating with ai like pretty soon there's gonna be a lot of ai stuff that ai is gonna get trained that's how you get bovine encephalitis that is I.

01:46:29
I read that I'll explain why I said that someday, but it's too disgusting to do it now. I'll explain. So BCE was a big problem in the UK because cows were eating meal made out of cows and so it was spreading, got it. So you don't want AI to get BCE by eating itself. Well, it's always bad that fair by eating itself. Well, it's always bad. That was a good reference. It's always bad to do that, always, yeah, don't eat. You need original material. Did you listen to taylor swift's new album?

01:47:09 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
no, I think there are two. Oh, you know who will have listened to the new album? Who abrar al-hiti? Yeah, she'll be in soon. Who should we listened to the?

01:47:17 - Leo Laporte (Host)
new album, who Abrar Al-Hiti. She'll be in soon. Who should we talk to next?

01:47:20 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
Somebody waiting on the line? Tim, hello Tim, hello Tim. Well, we know your name. Where are you calling from? Ooh Tim's in the dark.

01:47:27 - Tim (Caller)
Coming to you from the 3Com network net cam. Oh my God.

01:47:32 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Blast from the past you have to hold a phone to your ear because you never could get audio working. Hey, that's great. You seem too young to have ever seen the screensavers.

01:47:42 - Tim (Caller)
Oh no, it was back in, I want to say 1998. That's right, I was a junior in high school. Did you call in? Did you call in? I never. This is my first time, oh, welcome.

01:47:52 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Welcome. Where are you calling from? I'm calling from louisville, kentucky. Love louisville. We went out. I don't know if you remember, but kate and I went to louisville one of our very first appearances. We went to the little cable company's offices there and signed oh yeah, it was an awesome experience, yeah way back when, that's probably 2000 or 1999 thereabouts uh-huh what can we do for you?

01:48:16 - Tim (Caller)
time I ran into you, leo, was, uh, the 2011 mac world. Do you remember the sleeve 360 ipad case, the one that you tethered? That was me, that was you.

01:48:28 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I love it. Oh, that's awesome, did you make?

01:48:31 - Tim (Caller)
it uh, yeah, we uh manufactured it does it.

01:48:35 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Are you still doing it with?

01:48:36 - Tim (Caller)
the product. No, we ended up selling it about a year and a half later. We just offloaded the IP, basically.

01:48:45 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I hope you made a little money on it.

01:48:48 - Tim (Caller)
Yeah, I think we did okay.

01:48:50 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Congratulations. See, isn't that? Great Uh-huh. This was a wearable iPad case.

01:48:59 - Tim (Caller)
Correct. Yeah, you could tether it to your hand, rotate it 360 degrees, and now it's almost like ubiquitous. I see that on so many different cases.

01:49:10 - Leo Laporte (Host)
So did you just have this idea and say let's make it?

01:49:14 - Tim (Caller)
It was the. My buddy came home with the iPad when it first came out and we had the idea like the concept, within like 30 minutes nice of like after I had showed up there. So nice yeah well, that's.

01:49:28 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I am so thrilled to see you again and I'm so glad to hear that it ended well for you. Yeah, that's great. Yeah, yeah, here is the three sleeve 360 oh my gosh, talk about, don't go to sleeve360.com. Nobody. Nobody's there, nobody's home anymore here's yeah this is brilliant. I mean really seriously. Yeah, you see them everywhere now. Uh-huh, but uh, you were the first to think of it my dentist has three of them does he? No? No, is that steve right there?

01:50:04 - Tim (Caller)
no, that's some guy, that was carter, that's the other guy that's carter yep, you saw him too at the show that's so great I still think that 2011 mac world was like one of the last great mac worlds. It really was, and one of the last great Macworlds.

01:50:18 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It really was, and one of the things that happened at Macworld is it became an accessory show Accessories for mostly iPhones, unfortunately, but it really became an accessory show. So that was a good place for you to be.

01:50:31 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
I want that thing right now, I know.

01:50:34 - Leo Laporte (Host)
What can we do?

01:50:34 - Tim (Caller)
for you today. Nice to talk to you again. So my question today it has to deal with payment methods when it comes to subscriptions on the iPhone. Okay, so I feel like I'm locked in with the single payment method to pay for subscriptions through my phone.

01:50:55 - John (Caller)
You should move to the EU. Yeah, to pay for subscriptions through my phone.

01:50:59 - Tim (Caller)
You should move to the EU. Yeah Well, I'm just. You know, I'm an architectural photographer, and then I also own a preschool, and so there are certain subscriptions that I want to pay for, but I have to use the same card when I do that, and it drives my accountant nuts.

01:51:17 - Leo Laporte (Host)
And so Well, you can have multiple cards on here but can you use for app for the multiple cards?

01:51:25 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
for the app store subscriptions. Yeah, so this that you can't can you?

01:51:33
that's an interesting question you can, can, but it is.

01:51:37
It's something that you have to be very proactive about, because essentially, what you would have to do, um, in the settings for the for your Apple ID, there's a section that's marked payments, and you've probably seen this screen many times, and in that screen there, you can have multiple payment options and it actually lets you reorder those payment options.

01:52:00
So, for example, I've got three cards in there and one of I think it's two cards in a PayPal account, and whichever one is at the top, that is the one that Apple will start with when it tries to charge you, and then, if there's nothing in that account or if there's something wrong, then it goes down, down, down.

01:52:18
So what you would have to do and this is why I say I don't think that it's a tenable solution is that you would have to keep in mind when that subscription payment is. If you do a managed Apple ID, then you can have one that's personal or one that's for this job and then one that's for the other, and it gets a little bit easier to switch between them, particularly if it's on an iPad, and I think that that might help with the payment switching, don't quote me on that 100%, but I think that that would be something to look into, because being able to do that is a possibility and that seems like something like a corporation would want, so that you could have your personal account but you could have your corporate card or that kind of thing.

01:53:20 - Leo Laporte (Host)
So I can go into payment and shipping and I have one card in there but I can add another payment method.

01:53:27 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
And so you would add that second one, and then, once you do, leo, you'll see the little three lines that pop up to the right whenever it's a list that can be reordered, and then whichever one is at the top, that's the one that pop up to the right whenever it's a list that can be reordered, Okay, and then whichever one is at the top, that's the one that Apple goes to first. So you have to remember.

01:53:43 - Leo Laporte (Host)
So that would be the way to do, that is, if you I mean when you were going to charge something that your accountant wanted to be on your corporate card you'd switch. You just have to remember to switch back afterwards. Yeah, every time right to switch back afterwards.

01:53:55 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
Yeah, so every time. That's not fun, right, you'd have to go in and manually do it, but that is a solution, so I just added my apple card to payments, but that's going to default to that yeah, if that's at the top now it's at the top, so there should be edit in the top right, I believe so okay and then you can uh, you can reorder whichever one goes at the top.

01:54:17 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Under edit. Oh yeah, I can swap those around.

01:54:20 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
Yeah, and then whichever one goes to the top there on the yep.

01:54:24 - Leo Laporte (Host)
So now the American Express will go first, or I can make the Apple Card.

01:54:27 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
Exactly, I'd have to do that each time. You'd have to do that each time, yeah, so it's not a great solution.

01:54:33 - Tim (Caller)
You can use multiple payment methods that would work, though yeah, yeah, you can set a calendar, because a lot of times when I do these uh subscriptions, it's on a annual basis, right, that's true, once a year go in and swap it around.

01:54:46 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
Yeah, okay, that actually seems much more doable than every single month having to do that. But but when you're in the app store.

01:54:53 - Leo Laporte (Host)
You can't. There's no drop down there to choose.

01:54:55 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
You have to you have to go back into payments.

01:54:58 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Go into that first. And, by the way, you have to log in each time too, because they want to protect you, yeah usually you can face id though.

01:55:05 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
Um, if you've logged in with face id into the app store recently, then that'll be there. Um. Another option would be someone's kind of, I think, maybe brought something bringing it up by is link it to your paypal and then on the paypal side, you could switch between the two cards, um, but I I think that this is a little bit easier, especially, like you said, if you're only doing it annually. This seems, uh, not not too difficult, but we will include a link in the show notes um, what is it? Tech guy labscom?

01:55:36 - Leo Laporte (Host)
uh, to the managed apple ids you just gave me, though, a thread I'm gonna pull on okay, tug on it because there might be some things like paypal where you could have multiple cards and it would all go to. So apple go to paypal and then whatever is active in paypal be easier, right, because you could swap that around.

01:55:58 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
Yeah, but is it easier to swap that around?

01:56:01 - Leo Laporte (Host)
And can you do it? I wonder if there are payment solutions where you can have 10 cards in there and have it automatically and have it automatically choose, and then Apple doesn't have to know. Apple's just going to say okay, I'm going to charge that thing.

01:56:13 - Tim (Caller)
Yeah, like you know how they have, you know the, the privacy app how you can create.

01:56:17 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, it's like yeah, I use privacy. I don't think privacy will let you have a default card, though it's not, but maybe yeah, that's a really maybe paypal, I don't know that's a really see, that might be another way to handle it as a third party. That looks to apple, like the same party. I don't know. I don't know if that's even exists, but that's an. Interesting. Sounds like a great new business for you. Good point we could call it card three, 60. That's a ticket. It's how it starts, so yeah.

01:56:50 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
I think the if it's an annual subscription, just hopping in and changing that right before it happens, and maybe your accountant will thank you for that extra bit of work.

01:56:59 - Leo Laporte (Host)
So great to see you again after all this time. Good to see you On the Twit Netcam Network.

01:57:06 - Tim (Caller)
That's right.

01:57:08 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I had a fight with Tech TV because they wanted to call it a webcam, which was the common term then, and I said but it's not on the web, it's a netcam, and I don't. But it's not on the web, it's a NetCam. And I don't know how I convinced him to call it a NetCam, which I think has a little better sound to it, don't you think the NetCam network?

01:57:26 - Tim (Caller)
Yeah, it definitely had a ring to it, see.

01:57:31 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I wanted to also call this NetCasts, but nobody bought that one.

01:57:35 - Tim (Caller)
Yeah you lost that one Because it's not it casts. But nobody bought that one.

01:57:38 - Leo Laporte (Host)
yeah, you lost that one, but because it's not, it's still lived on for several years, though I well solely with me. Finally, my marketing guy, jerry, said you can't keep calling that cast. No one knows what the hell you're talking about. But a neck, it's such a better name than a podcast. And now today people go what, what's a pod?

01:57:55 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
Right, they don't remember iPods? Well no, but also people call them pods.

01:57:59 - Leo Laporte (Host)
They think it stands for play on demand. Who said that?

01:58:03 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
Everybody. That's wild. Those are the same people who think Jeep stands for just every essential part.

01:58:09 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Or Fiat. Fix it again, tony yeah.

01:58:12 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
Tony, whoever you are, thank you for your call. It's great to catch up with you, thank you.

01:58:20 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Have a great day. All right, you too.

01:58:23 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
Bye-bye I believe that's the sound of this episode powering down, yeah.

01:58:28 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Is it? Oh, come on, it's only 1.14.

01:58:31 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
Well, I know we've got an audience. I know we have.

01:58:33 - Leo Laporte (Host)
The studio's audience is starting to filter in, but I would really like to do Quick email. Okay, we haven't done any email today. That's a good idea. I'll put up a shot clock Did we? We mailed the, we mailed the Newton message pad out to that guy right Last week.

01:58:51 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
John Ashley would.

01:58:52 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Maybe John Ashley mailed it out. I think Google takeout photos, says Steve. Yes, I've been using Google Photos for several years now, but I am up to my 15 gigabyte limit. Yeah, oh man, I got two terabytes. I'm hitting the ceiling with two terabytes and I want to move photos to a hard drive to free up space and continue using Google Photos storage. When I looked into Google Takeout, it lets me remove photos. Yeah, it does to a hard drive. Yeah, but it separates the metadata from the pictures into a JSON file. This causes problems when rematching the data to picture later on. Also, the delete command is very limited number of photos I can delete per click. There is a way around this. There are a couple of ways around this. I did this by hand many moons ago and I used a variety of tools. I've talked about this before to do this, but honestly and it is a sponsor, so I'll have to disclaim this I was really pleased when I found out Miley can import Google photo takeout directly from those zip files.

01:59:54 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
Yes, specifically works with those.

01:59:56 - Leo Laporte (Host)
So it's very frustrating because Google does have takeout. That's great, right, that was from day one. Google said we don't want to ever make you trapped, but the way they made it so that you really never wanted to use it is they zip them up into file. You can say how big the file is I think they've gone past the two gig limit but they zip it up, they separate the exif into a JSON file and they change the file names and all this stuff. So Mileyo is smart about the format and so you still download all the zip files, but then you can import them into Mileyo. Now the good news is Mileyo is free for one computer, so if you're using Mileyo, you'll see here there's all these different places Facebook, instagram, uh, android phones.

02:00:47
Let's see Where's the Google takeout, maybe because I already did it photos, or maybe they don't do it anymore, I don't know. Let's see. Maybe it's just to use an existing folder. You download all your stuff and you report it, and Miley also will delete duplicates, which I found very handy because, uh, I have, of course, everything's in my Google Photos. I didn't want everything, I wanted the things that were in Google Photos only right. So it deleted the stuff that was doubled. That was very smart, so I only got the new stuff. Nice.

02:01:14
Where is that. I wonder if that's photos from instagram, flickr, I don't know. It seemed like they said in the past that said google takeout, let me, let me do this, let's do it. There you go, thank you. There's the myleo help file import from a google. That's google photos, but does it use takeout? I think it does yeah, use takeout, just take out yeah, so it will understand that that's how I did it and I got I don't know 100 000 photos in there. So you're, you're p, you're piddly 15 gigabytes we'll be fine bless you excuse me, shouldn't take too long, though I'll.

02:01:53
I will show you the comp more complicated, and I think I've talked about this before. I used a pair of programs to get stuff out of my Google Photos. Excuse me, I think this hat's making me sneeze. Is that possible?

02:02:09 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
Leather. I thought you. Is that possible? Have you become allergic to leather?

02:02:14 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Clean up Google Photos. Take a. I put this into a Notion page because I knew I wouldn't remember it. So I wrote a little script to unzip. I removed the JSON files, because what I did is I used Jhead, which is a free tool I think it's Python to take the EXIF files, move it into folders by year, month, day, renaming the file with the date and time, and then I use this really nice tool from Phil Harvey called the EXIF tool. These are both free, jhead and EXIF tool. Exif tool is written in pearl, but he keeps it up today. You see, the latest version is from april 20, april 18th, 2024, which is pretty recent, like two days ago. So this is a really powerful library. It's a command line application that processes all of these and cleans them up. So between jhead and exif, I was able to get those into better shape. That's when I was doing it by hand, I have to tell you, once I found Miley.

02:03:22 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
Yeah, it's like okay.

02:03:23 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, that's an archived page Much easier.

02:03:26
Yeah, but those are two good tools to know about Jhead and Exif tool. We'll put links in the show notes to both of those. They're handy, they work on Mac, windows, linux because, uh, you know they're pearl, pearl and python, I believe. Uh, good question one more. What do you say? Why are you laughing? Why are you laughing? Moving dns off of google from tim? Hi guys, I've been using google dns for several years as a personal, for personal domain. I have a couple of Linux servers, a PFSense FW that I use as a dynamic DNS client to update the relevant A records, if you know what I mean. I'm now looking for another provider that would support dynamic DNS updates. I was wondering if you have recommendations. Huh, wait, so, huh, wait, so he's running a server. So this is the issue. Uh, when you're running a server at home, what did we say last week?

02:04:29
don't, don't but but if you're gonna do it, even though we say don't because your uh internet service provider with a home network does not guarantee you a static IP address. It changes, so you need to use something called DynDNS that periodically usually it's running as a client on your server checks to see what the IP address is and adds a forwarding so that you can point people at a static IP address and then DynDNS will connect it to the actual IP address and your server will continue to work you know what I use.

02:05:01 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
What do you use, eero? Eero has a feature Dynamic DNS built in oh that's very nice, a good router.

02:05:10 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Many routers actually do support DynDNS, so that's one thing to look at. Honestly, I'm not sure what else is out there.

02:05:24 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
Yeah, because the last time I looked into this doing it.

02:05:27 - Leo Laporte (Host)
PFSense does it automatically somebody's saying YZF donor. Hello YZF.

02:05:33 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
I was using a free thing for a while and I did not end up liking it. Cloudflare, of course, is an option.

02:05:43 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It has dynamic DNS, but yeah, I think Cloudflare would be a very good choice actually. Yeah, Cloudflare would probably be my first choice because they're very reliable.

02:05:56 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
So that would be one to look at and you can get it looks like it's free usually. Yeah, free with any Cloudflare.

02:06:02 - Leo Laporte (Host)
In fact, these days, don't use DynDNS, which is a company that's done it for years. Either do it in your router, which is cool, or do it with Cloudflare. I think that's a great way to do it, because Cloudflare will also give you other benefits. All right, I could do one more. Or do you want to do a call?

02:06:22 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
I don't think we have a call, so you know, let's do one more okay you don't want to.

02:06:33 - Leo Laporte (Host)
No, no, no, I think it's a trap. It's a trap, I don't care to know. No.

02:06:35
I think it's a trap. It's a trap, I don't care. Mirroring hard drives issues, says Shelly. Hi, leo, and Micah Howdy. Shelly's in Kansas. Oh, I have followed you since tech TV days. Leo Twit network is wonderful with all the helpful info. Love what you and Micah do. Thank you. I have an issue. It's driving me crazy because it doesn't seem to make any sense.

02:06:59
I have two identical, identical, ladies and gentlemen, samsung external hard drives. They're both four terabytes. Okay, take a note, I previously always manually saved to them, so they were a little different, because I'd be cleaning up files, renaming folders on one drive, get rid of some duplicate items. They're a little bit different. I'd be cleaning up files, renaming folders on OneDrive, get rid of some duplicate items. They're a little bit different. I formatted the one I want to make match. I did the backup once by manually copying and pasting oh, it's off by a significant amount 205, six gigabytes, essentially. So I formatted it again, used FreeFileSync, mirrored the drive still 205 gigabytes difference.

02:07:40
Random checks looks like everything's there, but I don't see how it could be. It could be. Can you tell me what I need to be looking for? Why is the? So? What she's basically doing is she thinks making a duplicate of the drive, but the difference in drive consumption worries her and there's a lot of reasons that could be. I wouldn't worry about that if it looks the same. Now those aren't the tools I would use.

02:08:04
So if you really want to make this, uh, as duplicate as possible, samsung offers every hard drive manufacturer offers a bit copy, sector copy tool, and that's what that's going to give you identical, like the free size will match and everything because it does. It says this it doesn't know anything about files. This is the problem. You're doing a file copy and there's slack on files. There's all sorts of reasons why a file might occupy more space or less space on one drive than another. Don't worry about that. You probably have all the files. But if you really want them to match, samsung offers probably on their website for download, a sector copying utility designed to duplicate a drive when you're moving from one drive to the other. That will go sector by sector, doesn't care about files, and just make sure all the sectors match. Then the file sizes will be. The usage will be identical. I wouldn't worry about the identical usage.

02:08:57
My tool that I would use for something like this is called rsync. It's available on all Unix-style machines, mac and Linux. I think there's even rsync. Well, you can use Robocopy on Windows, but I prefer rsync. Rsync is a very smart copying tool that will only copy file changes. In fact, you could have done it with rsync without deleting the contents of the original drive. It would have been much faster because rsync would look at each file and say that's different, that's the same, that's different, that's the same, and only copy the changes. In any event, rsync is your friend for future. It's a command line. You'll have to learn how to use it. It's not hard, but it's not hard. But I would say, find the Samsung sector by sector copying tool and that will do it.

02:09:41 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
Yeah, you told me about rsync and I use that all the time rsync is oh, you use it, good for you.

02:09:47 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Amazing tool Comes on all Macs and Linux machines. I don't know. I'm sure there's an rsync for Windows. The idea of rsync is it's only copy the changes, so it's very efficient. And it does verification, so it's very effective. That's what I like. Copying is not very good. There's lots of errors get introduced, things like that. You want to check after copy to make sure it worked. But it's not surprising that there's a difference. It's the way drives are. Sometimes files can occupy more space, uh, not logically, but physically, uh, and and that's all it is. It's probably harmless. All right, mostly harmless. I think we should probably end now. I don't want to end. I like this show, I like keep, I want to keep. But there's another show that's also great, that's coming up and you and I are going to be on it.

02:10:38
It's called this week in tech, our 19th anniversary show. We're going to have a live studio audience, a brawl. He's on her way up. She's going to join us, as will jason howell, his first time returned to the network since we summarily fired his ass, which was a mean thing to do. No, we had to lay him off because we ran out of money and we don't want to run out of money anymore and we love Jason still. We're going to tell you about his new thing that he's doing called TechSploder. We're going to support him. John, you're looking at me like I said a bad thing.

02:11:11
I mean, I just feel. I feel terrible because we had to lay off people and nobody ever wants to do that and we don't want to ever do it again. So please join Club Twit and keep this boy from crying. I did cry. I shed tears. It was very hard. It was very hard with Ant and Jason and Victor. It was a sad day. We don't want to do that anymore. We'd like to keep doing what we're doing. Please, twittv slash club twit. Micah sergeant, you're going to be back on tuesday with ios, today on thursday with tech news weekly and next sunday with ask the tech guys once again. Did I miss anything? You did not. I will be here, you know, whenever I feel like showing up. Uh, what else? Oh, stacy's book Club's coming up Thursday.

02:11:58 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
That's going to be fun.

02:11:59 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, make sure to tune in for that, if you haven't read we Are Legion, the first book in the Bobaverse series, and you're in the mood. Dennis E Taylor highly recommend it.

02:12:07 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
It's a great Audible listen to if you have an Audible account, twittv, slash ATG. Techguylabscom for the show notes.

02:12:16 - Leo Laporte (Host)
You can email us ATG at twittv.

02:12:18 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
Yep. You can also call us during the week 888-724-2884 to leave a voicemail.

02:12:23 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, that's a nice way to do it. Hey, thanks everybody for joining us. That would be Micah Sargent, and that there is Leo Lepore. We'll see you next time. Have a great Geek Week. Bye-bye.